We are just a group of retired spooks that discuss things that you’ll not find anywhere else. It makes us unique. Take a look around. Learn a thing or two.
When I was a boy in middle school, perhaps 12 to 14 years old, I needed a new pair of boots for winter time. Well, it seemed that my father has an old pair of work boots that he never used. And so he gave them to me to wear during Winter.
These were “Engineer’s boots”, and are typical boots that you see bikers wear or the Terminator, dressed in biker garb, wear. I thought that they looked cool.
boots
Only one thing though.
They were steel toed, meaning that the front of them were steel. Great to protect your feet. But, terrible in the Winter.
My father knew that this was a problem, and told me so. But I refused to listen to him, and so I wore those things for maybe four or five years until I went and got myself a real genuine pair of hiking boots.
Hiking Boots
Never the less, it was a true and real miracle that I never got frost-bite while wearing them. My feet were constantly frozen each and every time I stepped outside in the frozen woods around my home.
Was I bad and wrong for wearing them? Yes I was.
Should my father thrown those boots away and got me a replacement pair without the steel toe up front? Yes he should of.
But time is the teacher, and what I know know is only through the prism of experience. What experiences have you had that would have avoided mistakes in your past? I’ll bet you have many.
Don’t you?
As a side note, when I lived in Boston, Massachusetts, I needed a good pair of Winter Boots. This of course, was decades after the boot adventure. So I went to a local store and got me a proper pair of New England Winter boots, and I’ll tell you, I was never happier.
Easy to put on and take off. Easy to clean and dry: the inserts came out and were washable. Comfortable, warm… always. And my feet were never cold, wet or frozen.
And NO, this is not a paid advertisement. Get them HERE.
Bean Winter Duck Bill Snow Boots
These were the shit! I’ll tell you what.
Today…
Generate you own music
Free application, and this makes actual music. Of course, I have been playing around with it.
[Verse]In Jamaica, sunny days Irie vibes, and feelin' irie ways (irie ways) But when me hungry, I know what's good Peanut-butter and jelly sandwich, that's what's understood (oh yeah)
[Chorus]Spread the peanut-butter, spread the jelly (ooh-yeah) Put 'em together, it's a reggae melody Spread the peanut-butter, spread the jelly (ooh-yeah) Dance along, feel the rhythm, it's so jellylicious (jellylicious)
[Verse]In the morning, when I rise I got a craving, I can't disguise I need some sweetness to start my day Spinnin' around, like a reggae DJ (yeah, yeah)
[Chorus]Peanut-butter and jelly, it's the perfect blend (ooh-yeah) Spread it on thick, let the flavors transcend With every bite, feelin' oh so fine (oh so fine) Groovin' with PB&J, it's a reggae rhyme (yeah, yeah)
Here’s two Country & Western songs about Peanut-butter pies…
[Verse]Sitting on the front porch, gettin' lost in the sun Got a jar of peanut butter, it's my kind of fun Mix it up with some sugar, creamy and sweet Spread it on a crust, can't be beat, can't be beat (ooh-yeah)
[Chorus]Peanut butter pies, oh they make me smile With every bite, it's like a little slice of sky Peanut butter pies, oh they're pure delight They keep me comin' back, every single night (ooh, ooh)
[Verse]Well, I was sittin' on my porch in the sunny afternoon When my mama brought me a treat, it was comin' to bloom She said, "Darlin', I made your favorite, just for you" I took a bite and knew I had to share the news
[Chorus]Peanut-butter pies, sweet as a southern sunrise Meltin' in your mouth, takin' you to paradise With each bite, my heart takes flight, oh my-oh my Peanut-butter pies, can't get enough, oh, I can't deny
AI is a major force, and will slam-dunk our society. Today…
Have you ever met your school bully as an adult?
I was terrorised as a child by the older kids in my neighbourhood. We were poor but I was quite popular with other kids my age. For some reason this made me a target with the popular older kids. They would take great pleasure in chasing me and if they caught me they would beat me to a pulp. It was the 80s and this kind of thing was just accepted.
Fast forward 10 years. I’ve done an apprenticeship as a scaffolder, put on a lot of weight. Bulked so much I’ve earned the name Tank at work. I bump into the ring leader of the older kids in a night club.
I get we were kids when the bullying happened and think that as he’s now grown up he’s probably grown up. As I pass him I smile and say “Alright, mate?” He replies with “Don’t fucking speak to me”. This stops me in my tracks. I look him dead in the eye. The club feels like it’s gone silent as I contemplate knocking his head clean off of his shoulders. I said to him:
“Listen Julian, we’re not 10 any more and this isn’t the estate, now, turn back around and walk out of here before you get hurt.”
He froze. There was a look of sheer confusion on his face. He turned on his heels and walked out the door without another word.
The simple answer: Me. On September 3, 2012, when I was 35, I had the first of 4 sudden cardiac arrests and clinically died. I was anoxic, or without breath for somewhere under 10 minutes. I was diagnosed with a heart condition called Brugada Syndrome, which is a gene mutation that largely goes undiagnosed because the first symptom is death. In that time, I suffered mild traumatic brain injury or tbi. Before that I was a lively, smart woman, mom, fluent Spanish speaker with a great job of 6 years. After I came home, I couldn’t recall that thing the kids played with in the backyard. I just pointed and cried. Their swingset. My doctors couldn’t agree on when, or if I should return to work. Subsequently I was terminated as was denied short term disability because their physicians didn’t agree with mine and my time off wasn’t covered. I had never been fired before, and it’s never gotten easier since. I’ve been fired 4 times. I have worked at Walmart, and as a receptionist at a small nursing home. My doctors told me to try Disability(SSDI). I tried and was denied, saying I was too young and able to be a mail sorter. I kid you not. I struggle. Then 5 ‘events’ with my ICD(internal defibrillators) and 2 unsuccessful cardiac ablations left me with anxiety, panic attacks and PTSD. I have lost so much of my memory, including most of my Spanish skills, my confidence, my ability to learn new things much less recall previous things. My short term memory is appalling and I reach for words often. 3 weeks ago I was let go from yet another job, despite telling them of my ADA status. At least I got excellent counseling which all but erased the mental anguish.
So yes, I miss the person who I was.
I can relate to this
Chicken and Vegetable Stew (Saucochi di Gallinja)
2024 02 18 09 50
Yield: 8 or 9 servings
Ingredients
1 (2 1/2 to 3 pound) broiler-fryer chicken, cut up
6 cups water
2 tablespoons instant beef bouillon
2 medium tomatoes, chopped
2 medium onions, chopped
2 medium potatoes, cut into 1/2 inch slices
2 medium sweet potatoes or yams, cut into 1/2 inch slices
3 ears sweet corn, cut into 3 pieces
1/4 pound winter squash, pared and cut into 1/2 inch pieces (1 cup)
1/2 cup fresh or frozen green peas
1 small hot chile pepper, stemmed, seeded and sliced
2 teaspoons salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
Chopped chives
Instructions
Heat chicken, water and bouillon to boiling in Dutch oven; reduce heat. Cover and simmer 30 minutes.
Skim off fat. Add remaining ingredients except chives. Heat to boiling; reduce heat. Cover and simmer until thickest pieces of chicken are done and vegetables are tender, about 20 minutes.
Garnish each serving with chives.
What China Just Did Changes The Entire Space Industry And America Is Terrified!
Once again as a racist you cannot see beyond wages. As a spremacist you miss the point all together about the education, the trainings , the willingness to learn, the feebleness, the ability to adapt and change, the characteristics of Chinese language that is superior in retaining knowledge and the unique discipline, and hard work of the Chinese workers and a whole host of the Confucian and Taoist edicts that groomed a Chinese worker from birth that so much affect the immense productivity and efficiency of Chinese workers.
So white Caucasians analyst are simply unaware of these characteristics and they think simply and blindly thinks that Chinese makes things cheaper because of wages and government support and taxes means absolutely nothing compared to a perfectly well trained and highly disciplined worker.
My first job as a Town Manager in the early 80’s was in a small town in Kentucky along the Mississippi River. Some interesting tid-bits….
The Chief of Police was driving me around my first week there. We were in a residential area and he stopped and opened his door. He got out his shotgun and shot a dog in the street. He got back in the car, called Public Works and told them to pick up the dead dog on Maple Street. When I asked him why he shot the dog he said it didn’t have a dog tag.
Town Hall was located in downtown. I’m working in my office on the second floor and when I hear a gun shot blast. I looked out the window and there’s a half dozen people waking down the middle of the street with shotguns. I called the police dispatcher and said there’s people with shotguns walking downtown and shooting, please let the Chief know. The dispatcher said “yeah, it’s pigeon day. All the duck hunters get together and shoot the pigeons. It’s a warm up to duck season which starts this weekend. I believe the Chief is with them.”
The local doctor died a few months before I got there. He had been the only doctor in town for 30+ years. He willed his medical office building to the Town. One of my jobs would be to modernize the office and find a new doctor. When I went in the office to see what needed to be done I noted he had two waiting rooms. I assumed that was “well” patients and “sick” patients. It wasn’t. It was blacks and whites.
The nearest TV stations was Memphis and Cape Girardeau, Missouri. They were too far away for ‘over the air’ reception so people in town didn’t own television sets. I called a cable company and had them built a cable system in town.
We operated the local utilities, which included water, sewer and natural gas. We had a separate building for the electric system. Two women worked inside the office and a crew of men did the outside electric work. One of the women went to Disney World on vacation. While she was gone the other woman had an emergency operation. This was the first time both had been gone at the same time in years. I called my wife and asked her to cover for them until one or the other got back. My wife was a CPA and home along (without TV) with our toddler son. She jumped at the chance to do something. She opened the office and before lunch she called and told me the woman were taking cash out of the cash drawer and covering the missing money with their own personal checks, which they never deposited. More than $3,000. I told her to deposit their checks. I hired an auditor to come investigate, had the locks on the doors changed, filed a police report and informed the Mayor & Council. I fired the women. The checks bounced. The Town Council told me to not press charges against the women. The women filed for unemployment, which I appealed and won.
There was a giant flood wall to keep the river from flooding downtown. We had a number of large pump stations to pump water over the dikes and flood wall. Beavers was the bane of the town. There was a “bounty” on beaver ears and there was a local guy who bought beaver fur.
The volunteer Fire Chief invited me to a monthly last Friday cookout which I accepted of course. As it turns out that was men only, no wives. Just as well, my wife would never had eaten the beaver stew.
I was the Town Manager for 365 days and took a job in Tennessee in a very interesting town.
The Ukraine War taught the Taiwanese a lesson. The so-called protection of Taiwan by the West is to make Taiwan the battlefield and let the Taiwanese suffer the consequences of the war. Taiwan is part of China at present International laws so China has sovereignty over Taiwan. China has an Anti-Seperation Law. if Taiwan pushes for independence, it will get into war. Now they understand the so-called Western protection for them is a trap. Their youths will die. Their seniors and children will become refugees that already saturated the developed countries so that they may have no place to escape the war.
The West will supply weapons to Taiwan to fight till the last Taiwanese, just as now Ukraine has to fight the last Ukrainians.
Ukraine War is evident. The US wants Taiwan to claim independence as soon as possible. So the US makes a big arms sale to Taiwan, giving them the false perception of “safe”. The US needs the Ukraine War to weaken Russia. The US wants to weaken China more than Russia. So the US wants Taiwan to provoke a proxy war for the US.
The US is a very smart businessman. If the US wages war on China, the US soldiers will die and the US has to commit many resources such as arsenals. Now it can let the Taiwanese replace the US soldiers in the war, and Taiwan even has to purchase the weapons, to fight the war for the US geopolitical objective. The US wants to fight a war against China without cost a penny and a single soldier. The US wants a war it can profit from while Taiwan bears all the costs, including lives and weapons. The US already profited from the perception of war because it made a big sale of weapons to Taiwan.
You see this face and you don’t really get awed by these warnings
Your first thought is STUPID MORON
This guy doesn’t have the ability to put that voice of steel that some US Leaders had in the past
It’s why everybody has openly mocked him, from MBS blatantly ignoring him for 24 hours to Jordan openly telling him to go f*** himself to Qatar to Iraq all snubbing him including our EAM Jaishankar
image 261
Someone like James Baker would be different
His voice would have that steel warning
You would think twice before acting against the man
Not Blinken
Not Biden
Not Austin
Not Sunak
Not Ursula
These are Circus Clowns and if they warn, you can laugh and ignore them safely
What comes to mind as I move through a dining experience?
When you arrive, you’re greeted by a doorman, who opens the car door, ladies first. If it’s raining, they escort you to the door under a large umbrella.
The door is opened for you, and the host(s) say hello immediately rather than looking down at a floor chart. Maybe greeting you by name.
There is either someplace to check your coat, or the host helps you off with yours and checks it for you. The host would return it to you when you’re ready to go.
The music is subtle, whatever kind it is.
Lighting is appropriate. There are fresh flowers and in the evenings, candlelight (with real candles). People look better in candlelight, and a lady feeling pretty creates another luxurious atmosphere.
If, God forbid, your table wasn’t ready you’re escorted to the bar for a cocktail. There are no buzzing pagers (nor inappropriate jokes about stuffing it down their pants), no name screaming when your table was finally ready. The host carries the drinks for you to your table. If more than two, the ladies’ drinks are carried. Checks are seamlessly transferred from the bar to the table. You TIP the bartender very subtly.
Chairs are pulled out for you, ladies first. When all are seated, then the menus are handed out.
Menus might be printed daily, but there is no stickiness, crumbs, or fingerprints on menus that are reused. No pictures on the menu, nor vendor logos. Probably no prices. They probably don’t offer wings.
There are utensils for each basic course. The waiter (and they’re waiters, not servers) replaces silverware with each course if the meal choices require a different utensil, usually with a mise en place. Proper underliners are used under soup or dessert bowls, ramekins come on a plate, too. (Ben Maurer) Crumbers are used. There are chargers.
No water spots on the silver or glassware. Or windows! (Leroy Binx) God forbid, no crumbs on the floor or seats.
Having someone walk you to the restroom rather than pointing across the room.
There isn’t a “no problem” to be heard.
There is no He or She when addressing someone about someone else. For example, not “She ordered the salmon” but rather “The lady ordered the salmon”. The word “food” is a 4-letter “f” word. (So is “free” and “fair”) It’s “your meal”, “your dinner”, etc. Not “your food”. One doesn’t eat, one dines. You’re not eating with us tonight, you’re dining with us tonight. (Sorry – I don’t know the answer to the pronoun issues people are having these days.)
Water glasses are never low, and you didn’t have to ask for water in the first place. Water is poured after you’re seated, without a drop being spilled on the tablecloth. Although, the waiter might still ask you if you prefer sparkling or still bottled water.
The meal looks beautiful, i.e. no broccoli stems pointing up. (People eat with their eyes) No finger prints on the plates. Protein (main course) is always served at 6:00 on the plate. Ladies first. Period. Meal delivery as well: “And the lady ordered the salmon” as the dish is placed in front of her, coming in from the left. Plates are not handed to the guests. Served from the left, removed from the right. Sometimes, every person is served at the very same time by a group of waiters. It’s called a “drop” (A group of waiters? A “gaggle”? Just kidding!)
Black or white napkins, which, if you get up are refolded neatly on your chair.
Every time a table is bussed, which is immediately, it looks like it’s never been seated before. Condiments (salt & pepper) full and clean, perfectly placed. Freshly ground pepper is always offered, along with grated cheese where appropriate. The latter either freshly grated into a bowl, served by spoon (rare) or by a little grinder that is silver, not plastic. No one says, “Say when”. Holding up your hand a little, palm down says it all.
No catsup or mustard bottles in sight. Ever. (Andre Serafin and Kristin A) Mustard, catsup, mayonnaise, and horseradish are served in ramekins or tiny bowls with small spoons. They probably don’t have steak sauce, although accommodating a guest is paramount, so these days it will probably come in a ramekin, too.
Edited 12/10/19 to add: I’ve often enjoyed and taken for granted the service of a Sommelier, whose job it is to create wine lists, pair wine, and make recommendations of wine on or off the written wine list. What I didn’t know, was the rigorous training and testing it takes to become a Sommelier! There are only a few over 200 in the world, so they are a Big Deal. That said, I’ve never known if the Sommelier just came to our table because we were looking at wine, or if their expertise needed to be requested. A glaring hole in my experience, I must say. Any thoughts or “subtle differences” to contribute?
A red wine glass for red, a white wine glass for white. Red wine is never oxidized. When a bottle of wine is served, it’s (Steven Michael) decanted or chilled appropriately. The restaurant doesn’t even ask, and they know what and when wine should be decanted. The wine tasting is handled with grace and silence, in the appropriate order. The cork should be placed next to the host (Liam MacDonald) so the host can make certain the cork is moist and there aren’t any telltale signs the wine has turned. If the table isn’t already set with glasses for that wine selection, the appropriate glasses are set once the wine is approved. (Rachel Bateman) The invisible waiter tops off the wine. The guest never touches the bottle.
The port doesn’t have pour spouts in them, nor does good scotch or whiskey. White Zinfandel isn’t a featured wine type. There’s a good chance there is no happy hour.
There are no dirty aprons nor shirts on the waiters. No shabby shoes. No crazy hair styles, piercings or tattoos. (Sorry all. That’s life.)
When its a mixed gender couple or table, males’ plates are never removed until the females are finished dining.
Dessert menus are handed out without asking, coffee, tea, espresso or an after dinner brandy or port is always offered.
There are no bus tubs, no stacks of dishes through the dining room, and empty plates are removed IMMEDIATELY directly to the kitchen. Oh. Plates are removed to the kitchen to be boxed. A guest is never, ever, handed a box with a cheery, “Here you go!” The package is always in a nice bag.
There is some controversy in the comments over leftovers. Since I am writing this, I’ll say my own feelings agree with Tim Chisell and Umair about waste, portion control and not being served troughs of food, so there really shouldn’t be leftovers. People do take food home (have you never seen a little tin foil swan?) so I added what a restaurant would not do: hand you a big box.
When you get your leftovers home, the contents look like a beautiful meal. After all, those are the very last impression of you as a waiter and the restaurant.
The check. Reminded to me by my mother. One signs on one’s account. If one must handle a form of payment, it’s normally a card, very subtly put into a check presenter. Not stuck out the top for all to view.
Believe it or not, it’s not just bread or rolls before a meal. It’s not valet parking, or sorbet between courses. Those would be obvious attempts, but if other items such as those which come to mind for me aren’t present, it’s nice, but maybe — not always — a wannabe. It could just be a nicer restaurant not trying to be more than a comfortable, more upscale place to dine. But high-end? Add in details such as these and it will elevate a restaurant.
So there are a lot more obvious indicators, but what really makes or breaks the difference is quality of the food, the service and presentation. Anticipation of the guest’s needs. Sauces, condiments, appropriate suggestions that might enhance the meal for some, but not for others — just to be sure. The appreciation of the guest.
Edited to add: I’ve received so much fun feedback to this answer, I thought I’d incorporate suggestions from commenters. Quora is acting funny (maybe) and not letting me see all the comments, but I’ll be adding them in. Thank you!
And, now I read that I, or this answer, is the highest read in the restaurant category. Interesting to me that something I began almost wistfully others have enjoyed. So thank you and thanks for participating!
If I could change one thing about American schooling — mostly at the high school and college level — I would make it mandatory to teach financial literacy. And I don’t mean basic stuff like how to write a check — that was what passed for “financial literacy” when I was in high school in the 1980s.
I mean we turn out college and high school graduates who have never learned about things like credit scores, how loans work, how taxes work, the value of retirement accounts, how the stock market really works, etc.
My two kids are ages 25 and 23, and anything they know on those subjects, they mostly learned from my wife and me. For the most part, we don’t teach kids how to stay out of financial trouble.
So we have full-grown adults walking into a car dealership, and the salesman steers the question to, “How much car payment can you afford?” The salesman is hoping that the customer is financially illiterate and doesn’t understand what a terrible question that is — for the customer. The salesman will hear that you can afford $600 per month and come back with, “Hmm, we can work with that.” The customer ends up leaving in their $40,000 car, pleased as punch that they can actually afford it, and they think the salesman did them a favor. Maybe down the road they figure out that they’re paying 12% interest on an 84 month car loan, and that they only got half of what their trade-in should have been worth.
Same thing happens on the mortgage front, by the way. Some loan officer runs a preapproval on a young couple and tells them they can afford a $300,000 house. I guarantee you that the couple zooms in on that price point. If they slowed down and asked, they might find out that they can qualify for a $225,000 house with a 15 year mortgage at a substantially lower interest rate, meaning that they build equity faster, pay less in interest, and should they choose to do so, own the house free and clear after 15 years, as opposed to still owing 15 more years of payments if they’d taken the 30 year mortgage. And all they had to do was ask, and reset their expectation to a slightly less expensive house.
So in summary, why are people struggling and over-spending? Because they’re financially illiterate, and we as a society don’t seem to think that’s a problem.
The only time it really happened was when I sprained my ankle.
I was working in retail management and we had inventory coming up on a Sunday.
Friday I sprained my ankle bad. But because of how US healthcare is, I tried to put off having it seen by a doctor because, ugh horrible health insurance and bills. But that Saturday, since I could barely walk, I saw a doctor. And after x-rays to confirm it wasn’t actually broken, given an air-cast boot and doctor’s note for my employer with work restrictions.
I was scheduled that Sunday for inventory plus 2 hours in the store prior to closing. I showed up, air-cast and all, to try to explain that I didn’t think I’d be able to work the inventory. I mean, seems obvious right? Air-cast, doctor’s note, work restrictions, etc.?
The other store management had zero issue with me not working the inventory, they understood I was actually injured and not faking it. They also knew how rarely I called in.
Not to my district manager. Who threatened me with termination. 4 years of work, almost never calling in sick, working every Helliday shit shift, and because I was only one of 5 members of management there that day who was actually injured, I could be fired.
So, malicious compliance it is.
My work restrictions were very detailed and explicit. No climbing, no squatting, no standing for more than 15 minutes at a time, must elevate my ankle every 30 minutes, must be allowed to sit for any tasks that don’t need to be done standing, etc. I also, per company policy, faxed (yes, that long ago) copies of my doctor’s note, etc. to the HR office with a follow-up email.
And I followed the work restrictions to the letter for the whole shift. Despite the fact they had external inventory counters, it still took longer than scheduled, which meant, by law, every member of the store management staff other than the district manager(salary position) had to be paid overtime, since it put us all over 40 hours for the week.
On Monday, the district manager got chewed out by HR and his boss, the area manager.
For having so much overtime (for 5 people, about 2 hours each), for ignoring my doctor’s note, for not excusing me from inventory, for erroneously threatening me with termination (my email mentioned I understood termination of my employment was a possibility due to my injury), and a few other things.
I received 2 days off with pay, apologies from the area manager, HR and the district manager (begrudgingly from him), and wasn’t written up.
And while the district manager bore a grudge against me for his ass chewing, he was also incredibly hesitant to pull any similar stunts against me. It took him about 8 months to do so, and when he did, I left the company, after explaining why to HR, the area and regional manager.
My quitting also left not one, but 2 stores short staffed as he had expected me to cover another store’s shifts after writing me up, denying me a transfer promotion, and rescinding pre-approved vacation time off.
His actions also led to another ass chewing by his superiors after I left. And two of the top performing employees to quit shortly after.
I’ve been to more suicides and sudden deaths than I can remember, but one has always stood out. It was a lady who had hanged herself. It wasn’t particularly gruesome, she was discovered very quickly, and she had obviously done her homework as it appeared to have been effective and quick. The reason it was so memorable was because of WHERE she did it…
As I say, she had done her homework, and had made a proper noose which she had firmly secured to the rafters in the attic of her home. She had stepped through the attic hatch, which had the effect of acting as a ‘gallows drop’. The hatch to the attic was situated at the top of a flight of stairs, so for us as the attending officers the only way to get to her was to walk up the (fairly narrow and dark) stairs to the top where she was effectively ‘standing’ over us, where we had to gently move her to one side in order to get onto the landing. The power to the dwelling was cut, so the only light available to us was via a bedroom window which was situated directly behind her with the door open, such that she was silhouetted to us, and seemingly looking down with glazed eyes.
I’ve been to deaths over the years which were far more gruesome, but there was something psychologically unnerving on a primeval level about having to climb your way up restricted access to a deceased person who is ‘stood’ in a dominant position over you.
Rationally, the apprehension was purely down to perception. Nonetheless, everyone there physically relaxed once we were able to cut her down and rest her on the ground.
One of my juniors in college was a very chirpy girl. She was an only child. A helpful and polite soul, she was liked by nearly all the students and faculty members.
Her home was situated across our college. We used to often drop by her place while heading back home.
One day, we reached college and were greeted with a heart-wrenching news. Our beloved junior had expired. She was lighting a stove while her parents were out. The stove burst and she met a tragic untimely end. No words can describe the sadness that permeated all our lives. It was difficult to accept that someone so dear was suddenly snatched away from us.
We went to her place to meet uncle and aunty and offer our condolences. They sat silently. Absolutely silent and lost. Their vacant eyes told a story that was gut-wrenching.
The couple had lost the joy of their lives. Their only offspring was gone. While she could never be brought back, our college girls tried to make an effort to mitigate the pain.
From the time she was put to rest, not a single day passed when uncle and aunty were left alone. Every day, some girls used to go over to their place and spend time with the couple. We had even decided on the schedule so as to ensure that we did not miss out on any day.
We used to talk to them, take them out sometimes, run errands for them, regale them with our antics in college and generally try to be there for them.
The process was slow. But eventually uncle and aunty were able to come to terms with their loss and move on with their lives. Their smiles and blessings said it all.
A majority of students came together to show the couple that they were not alone… that they had daughters, just not born in their family. This collective effort was one of the most humane, compassionate and loving gestures I’ve ever witnessed.
“NO WAY” Videos That Are Glitching The Entire Internet Out
Terrifying. This Changes EVERYTHING. MY REACTION to What They’re Planning.
The sound still haunts me. I still think of it, and it happened in 1987 and here we are in 2024 and the sound of that night will be with me until the Lord calls me home.
There I will probably meet the 18-year-old senior in high school who didn’t wear his seatbelt as the car rolled over end to end 11 times after exiting the roadway. He was a back seat passenger with no seatbelt and that resulted in his high-speed ejection thru the rear window. He laid in a field and his body appeared pristine, even though his skull was fractured which killed him instantly. I was the patrolman who responded to handle the accident scene.
The noise was his mother’s scream at 1:17AM in the morning as I stood on the porch after giving her the death notification.
It was primal, it was guttural, and it is forever.
It will never leave my mind or my soul. I will think of that kid forever.
Girls are more attached to their parents emotionally.
Girls who talk less are more romantic and loyal to any kind of relationships .
Girls who talks more are over friendly and confused in their relationships .
If a girl sends you first, good morning messages then more likely she likes you and want you to be her friend .
If a boy continuously calls in every two, three hours then the girl gets irritated. This is the main reason of break ups.
All girls don’t love flowers. Before giving flowers think twice .
Do not gift too early in your relationships. You will lose your dignity. Most of the girls find it awkward.
Girls like boys who visit their house confidently and pass some time with her family.
Girls prefer friendship before any serious relationships. Most girl friends become very good wives except for few.
Girls are experts in reading eyes and body gestures. A decent girl will never fall prey.
Some girls deliberately flirts with boys to get popularity in their friend circle. You can make out from their dressing sense. If you are also a flirty then enjoy.
Girls like the boys who likes to share the money during a date or in group party. They love gifting more than receiving .
Girls mostly respect the boys who help in studies and clearing the doubts. They remain genuine as friends all the time.
Girl can never go to restaurant or cinema hall alone with you if she is not in love with you. If you are flirting, take a note.
Girls like if you talk straight looking into the eyes. If you are really interested, you can try this. If you can talk straight looking into her for five minutes then you are in love .
Girls love to be praised in front of others not in one corner. This shows your lack of confidence. There is nothing wrong in praising in public.
Girls love to be pampered. This is the main reason they get cheated. They trust easily.
Girls like to be independent. They don’t like questioning and blaming always.
Girls don’t love easily and once they love they can go to any extent to own their love. Note this
If a girl easily accepts your expensive gifts then, think twice before dating her .
Girls can sustain unbearable pain emotionally as well as physically. Mother Earth 🙂
I compared Moscow to New York, and indeed, Moscow is nicer, which confirms Tucker Carlson’s claim
China’s trade with the rest of the world increased and improves substantially contrary to your intentional doubt casting. Fact is UK declined by 3.0% GDP Germany too had a negative growth and the uS has barely any real growth! Needless to say China’s trade with them deteriorated significantly in 2023!
Please stop fooling your own people. The problem is that the war which the U.S. and UK and NATO stupidly and barbarically goaded Russia into and highly provoked boomerang back at them hard and is now destroying the western economy. Stop fooling your people it is not hurting you. It is. And in a very big way.
My daughter was around the age of ten and I had given her a box of lolly pops that whistled. I had purchased them in a bulk buy but none of my children liked the flavour. So I sent my daughter to school to share them with the other students. Some time after lunch I got a call from the headmaster to come to the school, as she was in trouble and was being sent home as punishment. He did not go into details over the phone and I was left completely shocked as she was a straight A student and had never been in trouble before.
I arrive at the principal’s office and was seated next to my daughter when he pulled out a plastic bag full of coins and placed it on the desk. He went on to tell me that she had stood outside of the canteen line of students, during lunch hour spruiking “lolly pops for sale only fifty cents”. She had managed to sell every lolly pop I had sent her to school with. The canteen staff complained that they had a contract and that they had lost sales due to her lolly pop sales, so the principal had no other option but to confiscate the money and call me in to address the issue. My daughter sat next to me with tears streaming down her face.
After we discussed why she had that many lolly pops and what was said to her in the morning before she left for school, he realised that this was not something that her parents or any adult had encouraged her to do. He went on to say “ I cannot punish a child that shows entrepreneurial skills that someday could lead to great things”. He applauded her efforts and explained what a contract with the canteen owner meant and why she could not do this again. He handed over the bag of money to her and we happily left his office.
She gleamed all the way home. She not only had lots of cash but she had been given the afternoon off school. I thanked that principal for his honesty and for not punishing her unnecessarily.
Had a slow refrigerant leak in my WRX. I actually heard it hiss slightly at the compressor while topping it off once, so I knew where at least one leak was. Took it to the dealer for a timing belt and asked them to look at the AC. I picked up the car and they said they couldn’t find the leak where I showed them it was, but that I needed a new condenser, the AC tech could smell the refrigerant in the cabin of my car. $3200 to fix.
Said no thanks, I’ll keep topping it off.
Got into the car and it did have an odd odor, which I attributed to it sitting near the body shop. I was smelling lacquer thinner.
A few months later, I was in Advanced and the kid working the the counter had a same year STI, so we were BS’ing about what we liked and disliked about the cars and I mentioned the AC experience. He walked over to the AC isle and handed me a package of assorted green O-rings. He said he had the same issue and to try one of these where I heard the leak.
Next day, I popped the line off, replaced the O-ring, charged the system and once I got the pressure right, I was good to go. $4.95 plus $19.95 for a bottle of refrigerant.
Many of you will say that I should have evacuated the system and you’re right, but I didn’t have a vacuum pump. This was as much a test as anything. Still driving the car 8 years and easily 100k miles later and I haven’t touched the AC since that day. In fact, the compressor clutch is on it’s last legs, but at 282k miles, the entire car is feeling it’s age. Saved $3175, too.
New factory Subaru condenser: ~$280 online Amateur labor estimated: 4 hours (estimated $400 shop labor cost, no way they would take as long as me to replace) Other supplies: $30
They were looking at making ~$2500 profit and still not fix my problem. I am fighting the urge to name them, especially since I had a run in with their service manager the next (and final) time I was there. In for an airbag recall and he’s trying to replace my power steering pump for $600+.
Never be afraid to walk away and get another opinion if you can.
I had a friend of mine who had this happen. He did not take it sitting down. He was rather excitable.
The women who made the allegation was one of the most narcissistic people I had ever seen.
when HR went to him with the allegations of sexual harassment he, went ballistic on the HR PERSON. This is what I was told.
He said that he told the HR PERSON, the woman accusing him was a lesbian, shinny, ugly, had scabs all over her body, had a personality of a stone fence post. Nothing he would be interested in.
in a later meeting with the HR Person, he threatened to sue the company for false reporting. His theory was the office was so busy there was someone around the both of them all the time, there was no time for a possible sexual assault of the nature she was claiming to happen. and he will sue the person making the allegations also
He said his coworkers will back him up in this.
that was the last time I heard of that allegation.
Personally if I was this person being hassled by this woman I would drag her into the HR OFFICE,
say, “you have a reputation of doing this with other people. I have tried to avoid you for two years, and have lots of people to support my claims. I Want this settled right here and now. i will not live with hanging over my head.
I will fight back, this is my reputation and my livelihood you are messing with, and I have had enough.
I would say if you meet here head on in front of her and the HR PEOPLE THAT THIS WILL STOP.
if it doesn’t I suggest you contact a good lawyer.
just make sure you have not done what she is saying .
How has your appearance affected your life?
This is something I’ve pondered a lot since my early 20s, when it became obvious to everyone that my sister and I had gone down two totally different paths in life.
She was a high school dropout, mother at 16, drug addict who couldn’t hold a job and was either living with an abusive boyfriend or with our parents. She never really made it on her own. But she was nice. Always nice to everyone.
I was in advanced classes in high school, went to a university several states away, and was doing very well there. I’d also had a part-time job since I was 16, and a full-time job since I was 19.
I think our appearances had a lot to do with our different life paths. She was a gorgeous blonde bombshell in our small Southern hometown. Boys were constantly trying to date her/get her drunk/give her drugs.
I was the fat kid in school. No girlfriends. No parties. I didn’t mind working after school and on the weekends, because it’s not like I had anything better to do. Doing homework and studying isn’t hard when it doesn’t get in the way of your nonexistent social life.
Eventually, I lost a lot of weight in college (put it back on after getting married, now trying weight loss round two), gained enough confidence to ask out a woman I liked, and dated her for five years before marrying her. Now, in my late 30s, I have a happy marriage, three happy and healthy kids, a career I love, a house, a minivan, etc…
My sister got married two or three times, I honestly don’t know. She continued doing drugs and “shacking up” with abusive guys throughout her 20s and early 30s. She eventually died of a drug overdose at age 34.
That’s why a part of me pities the really beautiful young women… constant attention from guys when you’re trying to build your life can be a major distraction and help push you down a bad path in life.
So, how has my appearance affected my life? It kept me out of trouble and helped make me the very happy adult I am today.
Last time I flew in an airline -I won’t name,the flight attendant forgot to get me my meal. By the time the trolley reached me, the non-vegetarian meal rack was empty. I was told that they will get me the meal in 5 minutes, I told them even if it’s a vegetarian meal it’s fine. It wasn’t really an issue for me as I don’t like troubling them but they insisted that they have more fish packs and they will get me one.
My wait was for half an hour, with them avoiding me,avoiding my call and not even looking at me. They didn’t even get me water. I got pissed. I literally raised my voice the next time with an “Excuse me, are you deaf?” and the flight attendant was like, “yes,mam can I get you something?” and my soft reply was,”YES! Your complaint book and it should not take half an hour, I want it right now.”
That led to some prompt working and them apologizing for some 15 times in next 15 minutes, they offered me meals (which I refused) and goodies (I refused them as well) and as I didn’t accept their peace offering or apology, in the end, after our landing the ground staff met me and after another series of apologies they refunded a portion of my ticket with vouchers.
It’s not about the food,it’s about their non-caring attitude. I have paid for that seat and that meal with hard earned money. If one form of meal is not there, I understand it’s not their fault but if they refuse to get me any meal then I can get nasty as well.
So, asking for the complaint book work wonders, do it the next time they harass you.
PS I am not proud of what I did but it was needed.
I was administering the Anesthesia for a Neurosurgeon friend. He was removing a Cervical spinal cord tumor of a woman in her late 40’s. She was prone (on her stomach) on the table. He had just spent nearly 45 mins denuding the Cervical Lamina (flat bone on each vertebrae that protects the Spinal Cord by creating a bit of a Canal the bone was in intimate contact with the tumor. He is an excellent Surgeon and fun to watch work, no wasted motions. I had just turned my back to the field and doing a routine check of endotracheal tube placement to make sure it had not migrated (a routine thing to do especially in the prone position).
With the tumor now completely exposed, he asked for the Bard-Parker (scalpel), with my back still turned I quickly called out “Stop.” Everyone turned and looked at me. He asked my why… I looked at the tumor one more time and asked him if he would mind using a tuberculin syringe and aspirate the tumor. He said, all of the X-Ray reports had confirmed it was a solid mass tumor. But, because of our long history, he said he would humor me.
The nurse gave him the syringe. He pulled back on the plunger and blood returned. He asked the nurse to give him the closure suture on a needle driver and a pair of Adson’s forceps and said we are closing. Only he and I realized what had just happened. It was a very large Arterio-venous malformation with thicker than normal walls of the middle muscular coat (tunica media), and an external or connective tissue coat (tunica adventitia). Which had made the almost 2 inch AVF look solid on X-Ray. While closing he explained to the nurses that there would have been almost no way to have stopped the bleeding if he had made the incision and we may have very well have lost the patient.
I have no explanation as to why I told him to stop. It was just this internal feeling.
He sent the patient to a University Med. Center to have the defect repaired. They sent him a letter thanking him for his excellent job in dissecting away the Spinous Processes, the Lamina, and the surrounding tissue. They said this made their surgery so much easier and because of his excellent dissection the AVF walls had not been disturbed which they also felt would have caused her death from hemorrhage. He had done the hardest part of the surg. He also was on the Neurosurg teaching staff at the U.
Two hours in the gym
Puerto Rican Chicken and Rice Stew (Asopao)
This chicken and rice soup is Christmas for me. Not the Christmas meal by any means but the Christmas season. In Puerto Rico, this is the soup that was traditionally served at parrandas. And it continues to be a staple at parties and get togethers.
What is a parranda? You well may ask. The short answer is that a parranda is a party. It’s a Puerto Rican tradition that probably wouldn’t go over too well in most American suburban neighborhoods. It involves late night singing and ritualized kidnapping. And eating. And drinking.
A group of singers, parranderos, start the party late in the evening well after dinner. They assemble at the front door of a friend or neighbor’s house and make music until the family wakes up and lets them in. After some more singing, everyone gathers in the kitchen for refreshments. Usually chicken and rice soup.
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After they eat, the parranderos hustle the family off to the next house where the singing, eating, and kidnapping is repeated through the night. This PR holiday tradition is kind of like Christmas caroling, but not.
The beauty of the Puerto Rican chicken and rice soup is that it was easy to heat up when the parranderos arrived. And by adding more stock, it could be stretched to feed everyone. You can imagine that by the last house, there would be quite a crowd. These parties would break up by dawn, with all of the parranderos going back to their beds.
Guess what heats up nicely the next day when nobody feels like cooking? You’ve got it. Asopao de Pollo.
Yield: 6 to 8 servings; makes enough Adobo to season 3 to 4 pounds of meat
Ingredients
Chicken and Rice
3 pounds chicken, cut into pieces
1 recipe Adobo
9 cups water
2 tablespoons salt
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 ounces lean cured ham, diced
2 green bell peppers, seeded and chopped
1 onion, peeled and chopped
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
3 large tomatoes, chopped
12 pimiento-stuffed olives
1 chorizo (Spanish sausage), cut into 1/2 inch rounds
2 tablespoons capers
1 (4 ounce) can chopped pimientos, drained
3 cups long-grain rice
1 cup fresh or frozen peas, thawed
Additional chopped fresh cilantro (for garnish)
Adobo
4 whole black peppercorns
2 cloves garlic, peeled
2 teaspoons dried oregano
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons olive oil
2 teaspoons vinegar
1/4 teaspoon paprika
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How to Make Asopao de Pollo
The homemade Puerto Rican chicken and rice soup recipe I’m going to show you develops flavor by sautéing most of the ingredients in a large caldero or dutch oven.
After cutting up the chicken and seasoning thoroughly, go ahead and heat up the olive oil in your pot.
First you’ll brown the raw chicken pieces in batches and set them aside. Next sauté the sofrito, it will smell fantastic as it cooks. Scrape up those browned bits.
Now add the ham, diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, capers, pimentos, olives, boullion and rice. Stir all of that right into the sofrito before adding the chicken back. Make sure you pour in any juices the chicken might have accumulated while it was waiting. That’s the good stuff!
Finally, when all of the ingredients are in the pot, pour as much of the water as you can fit into the caldero. Add your salt and pepper and mix it all up thoroughly. Over the cooking time, you can add more water as the rice cooks and absorbs the liquids.
Bring the soup to a boil and then turn down the heat. Allow it to simmer for up to 30 minutes. Keep an eye on your pot, stirring frequently as the rice can burn to the bottom.
When the rice is tender and the chicken is cooked, it’s done. Now you’re ready to feed any late night parranderos that come to your door.
Guests that come at more reasonable hours will love this soup too!
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Instructions
Chicken and Rice
Rub the chicken pieces thoroughly with the adobo. Place the chicken pieces in a large pot and add the water and salt. Bring to a boil over high heat. Cover and reduce the heat to low. Simmer for 30 minutes.
Meanwhile, heat the oil in a skillet. Add the ham, bell peppers, onion, and cilantro. Sauté over moderate heat for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Add the tomatoes, olives, chorizo, capers, and pimientos. Cook for an additional 5 minutes.
Add the vegetable mixture to the pot with the chicken and simmer for 15 minutes.
Add the rice and peas and simmer covered over very low heat for 15 to 25 minutes, until the stew reaches the desired consistency. It is traditionally served runny, almost like a soup.
Serve in soup bowls garnished with chopped cilantro.
Adobo
Combine all ingredients in a mortar and pestle and grind to a paste. Alternately, combine in an electric blender or food processor and process until smooth.
I know this question is a month old, but I just have to answer it. Unfortunately, the nastiest thing that happened at my school was done by me.
It was my freshman year. I desperately had a crush on my best friend, Rob. He had this dark, black, hair and deep hazel eyes that made me melt every time I caught him staring at me in Math. You know, teenage hormones and the like.
Our lockers were right next to each other; we were in the same homeroom. Sometime around October, being the ever awkward and weird kid I was, thought that the best way to show Rob I liked him was by teasing him.
I left the cafeteria one day with a nearly full milk carton in hand. I held onto it throughout my last class of the day and waited for Rob at my locker. Once he had gotten his things and we said our goodbyes, I pulled out the milk and placed the carton at the bottom of his locker (he carried a lock with him but never put it on), spout open and covered slightly by a hoodie he had left in there.
Hilarious I thought, he’ll come in on Monday and have to find a chunky carton of milk in his locker. Gross, yet harmless. I was so, so wrong.
Rob found the milk carton on Monday. What I had underestimated about him though, was his capacity to simply not care. He shrugged it off, took the hoodie out of his locker and placed the lock he had never used on it. Then he left it.
A month went by, and I could smell the milk every time I opened my locker next to his. After two months and the Christmas holiday and I forwent my locker, too, instead carrying my entire bag from class to class just so I didn’t have to open my locker.
By April, the entire hallway reeked of sour milk, so strongly that the students curved around the affected area when passing through. Everyone smelled it, no one could figure out where it came from or what it was. It was deadly; so much so that people whispered about what could possibly be making THAT smell. It was the mystery everyone talked about. You could feel the thickness of the stench in the air.
The last day of school came, and we were instructed to take the locks off of our lockers and clean them out at last period. Rob tried to make a getaway – grab his lock and run for the doors before someone asked him to open it and show it had been cleaned out, but he just wasn’t quick enough. “Open it”, our home room teacher demanded, as if he knew what that locker held inside it.
With shaking hands, Rob opened the metal door, and it was if you could see a green puff of foul odor release like a bomb from inside. “Close it!” Our teacher screamed, and Rob did, both of us gagging. The teacher ran for the safety of his classroom and we left.
The first day of sophomore year we came back to a clean hallway – no smell, bare lockers. Though, our former home room teacher never looked at Rob the same. As an adult, I feel TERRIBLE for the poor custodian who had to clean that putrid milk.
However, as I lay next to my husband in bed, I can’t help but be just a little bit nostalgic for that stupid prank. Fourteen years later and Rob and I have been together ever since; inseparable.
Asia’s Top Economist Reveals Shocking SECRET About China In 2024
Yes, my wife of 46 years died suddenly from heart failure. I got her to the hospital and was able to spend some time with her before she passed.
After she was gone, the medical staff insisted that I spend the night in the hospital due to my medical issues. I was given a mild sedative to help me relax. I fell asleep and at some point I woke and was unsure of where I was. When I realized what had happened, I was leaning against the safety rail on the hospital bed. I saw what appeared to be a room full of people below me, they were all in ‘shadow’ except for one woman in a white light dancing. My wife loved to dance and as I watched, the woman waved at me and everything vanished when the nurse came to check on me.
The second time was at her funeral service. It was freezing that day and I got to the service early to bring some mementos for the service. I, somehow, lost my phone and the facility was locked and no one was around. As I was starting to panic, I ‘heard’ my wife say “calm down.’
As I looked around I saw a perfect rose bloom in the garden area in front of my car. I couldn’t believe that a rose had bloomed in freezing conditions. Roses were her favorite flower, I went to pick the rose and found my phone on the ground. I immediately calmed down and told my wife “thank you.”
The Man Who Built UFOs For The CIA [Not Bob Lazar…]
Battery life continues to be one of the biggest complaints of laptop users, so understanding what you can do to help prolong the life is important. Technically speaking, keeping any relatively current laptop plugged in and charged at 100% for extended periods of time shouldn’t be a problem, but it’s best not to do so for a number of reasons.
This is a question that comes up a lot with laptop owners. And the answer is a quite simple “No.” For optimum battery use, and to get the most life out of your laptop battery, keeping it charged between 40% and 80% has been seen as optimum.
Most late-generation laptop batteries are either lithium-ion or lithium polymer, and as such, they are designed to be able to withstand many charge cycles. When you keep it charged at 100%, the charging circuit continuously checks the battery charging process and, so it stops charging once it is at its optimum point and goes into trickle mode, in which it only supplies what is necessary to prevent the charge level from failing.
Also to note: overcharging can lead to overheating, which can lead to catastrophic chemical reactions inside the battery.
Allowing your battery to completely discharge will take away from its originally-intended lifespan. You should ideally keep its battery between 40% and 60%. Don’t let the battery discharge completely to increase its life.
Here are some tips to extend your laptop battery life:
Avoid discharging your laptop completely after charging it.
Make sure that your laptop doesn’t get too hot and your cooling fan is working properly.
Overheating can reduce battery life, check the laptop’s cooling system is functioning correctly and use it on a flat surface to allow for proper airflow.
Customize your laptop’s power plan settings to favor battery life over performance when running on battery.
If you’re not using your laptop on battery power for an extended period, store it with the battery at around 50-80% charge to reduce long-term stress on the battery.
I suggest maintaining your laptop’s battery level within the range of 40% to 80% charge. By doing so, you can effectively double the number of recharge cycles, increasing them from 300-500 to a substantial 1,000-2,000, ultimately extending the overall lifespan of your laptop.
I have been playing around with the new AI software kits out there. I have made all sorts of pictures, comics, PDF’s, videos, clips and the like. Some of which are good. Some of which are bad. This is my first movie attempt.
It’s about 2 minutes 40 seconds long.
I made my first Film Noir Movie
I opened up a new YouTube channel and made this 2 minute movie using AI. Please tell me what you all think.
I think that it stinks.
But, not bad for a first try.
What are those people indulging in when they assert that India is positioned to surpass China as an economic powerhouse?
There are two types of people. Either they are totally blind and deaf or they are dumb as hell. That thinks this way. Of course there are brain dead Indians or Chinese and China hating westerners living under a huge rock who can think that way.
But let me clarify, I think well of Indians and India and their history and culture. They have a great culture and are highly intelligent people who made wrong choices and got enslaved 300 years by the despicable British.
But what is worst is that the Indians are foolish enough to let the white Aryan Caucasian a free pass to fxxked them up after independence for another 50 years by allowing their economy to be wrecked via the so call rules based international order that impoverished them further. China on the other hand won’t let the west a day after 1949! That is the difference between India and China!
Relatable
Be the Rufus
You’re an 19 year old kid. You’re critically wounded, and dying in the jungle in the Ia Drang Valley, 11-14-1965, LZ X-ray, Vietnam. Your infantry unit is outnumbered 8 – 1, and the enemy fire is so intense, from 100 or 200 yards away, that your own Infantry Commander has ordered the MediVac helicopters to stop coming in.
You’re lying there, listening to the enemy machine guns, and you know you’re not getting out. Your family is 1/2 way around the world, 12,000 miles away, and you’ll never see them again. As the world starts to fade in and out, you know this is the day.
Then, over the machine gun noise, you faintly hear that sound of a helicopter, and you look up to see an un-armed Huey, but it doesn’t seem real, because no Medi-Vac markings are on it.
Ed Freeman is coming for you. He’s not Medi-Vac, so it’s not his job, but he’s flying his Huey down into the machine gun fire, after the Medi-Vacs were ordered not to come.
He’s coming anyway.
And he drops it in, and sits there in the machine gun fire, as they load 2 or 3 of you on board.
Then he flies you up and out through the gunfire, to the Doctors and Nurses.
And, he kept coming back … 13 more times.
And took about 30 of you and your buddies out, who would never have gotten out.
Medal of Honor Recipient, Ed Freeman, died 16 years ago at the age of 80, in Boise, Idaho. May God rest his soul. How come we didn’t hear anything about this hero’s passing?
Being a father
What do mediocre employees do that the best employees don’t do?
I used to live in Washington, D.C. years ago. Every other morning the radio station played DC101 and we listened to the Greaseman. I hate all drive time DJs, I just want to hear music but I really hated this guy. His catch phrase was, “Habba-doo-gee Habba-doo-gah”.
Then one day a guy called in and asked the Greaseman how to keep a job. That he had been an idiot and lost several jobs in a row and had his license pulled and how he had gotten a job bartending that was walking distance and he wanted to really try to do well and not lose this job but he didn’t know how.
The Greaseman dropped his phony radio voice and and said something like the following, “I am going to give you two pieces of advice. First if your shift starts 6, show up at 5.45. Take the fifteen to have a chat with your coworkers, wash your hands, get your head in the game. When your shift starts you are ready to work. Bosses hate people who clock in but aren’t ready to do any work yet. They notice that shit.”
“Two, look at all the other bartenders. You want to be the second best dressed bartender there. If you try to be the best dressed, well maybe the other bartenders will think, ‘Look at this new guy trying to be better than all of us.’ But if you aim for the second best you will fit in with the other workers and the boss will still think, ‘Here’s a guy who knows how to be professional.’”
I was like, “Wow, that was actually pretty good advice from someone I thought was an idiot.” I still think it was pretty good advice.
My daughter has a very close female friend. They went right through school together and to this day remain good mates. The friend ,(s), went off to uni and while on a holiday back home, stayed overnight at our house. On Saturday morning I had been for an early run and was in the bath ,we had no lock on the door and had this rule if the door is closed someone is probably in there. So the door opens and (s) walks in , naked as the day she was born, says Hi to me and sits down and takes a piss. This is a girl I have known since she was 4 years old and was such a shy little girl, then at 18 was OK with being naked in front of me and me being bollock naked in the tub. If my jaw dropped any lower I may have drowned.
I am fucking tired
Forgotten Chicken
Forgotten Chicken is a great fast and easy recipe! I have made this with chicken tenders, and it’s great. This is also known as “No Peek Chicken.”
forgotten chicken
Ingredients
1 1/2 cups white rice, uncooked
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1 can cream of celery soup
1 soup can water
Chicken breasts or thighs
1 envelope dry onion soup mix
Instructions
Mix rice, soups and water.
Pour into a greased 9 x 13 inch baking dish.
Lay chicken on top of rice mixture.
Sprinkle chicken evenly with onion soup mix.
Cover tightly and bake for 1 1/2 hours at 350 degrees F.
Check this out
I tried this. Very cool. But takes a while to generate.
About 20 years ago, I was in a downtown area with my friend and her young son. My friend has MS and sometimes has trouble walking long distances. She has a permanent handicapped placard from her state. It was hanging in my car, and we parked in a short term parking space. So, here we are, two women apparently healthy, with a small child, and this jerk of a guy comes up and asks me which one of us is handicapped.
Usually I don’t think of the great answer until 2 a.m., but I found my tongue as I walked around to open the trunk…
“Not that it’s any of your business, but it’s her.”
…I open the trunk to reveal the stroller AND the wheelchair…
As I’m unfolding the stroller..
“For now, she’s going to steady herself by pushing the baby in the stroller. If she gets tired later, we’ll come back and she can hold him in her lap, and I’ll push the both of them in the chair. IS THAT OK WITH YOU?”
I’m still proud of that.
Just because a disability is not visible to you doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. If you have the person in question’s full medical history, feel free to contact the authorities.
We were at a flea market that isn’t advertised. People have to either live in the area or hear of it from someone who does. A little bit of everything is sold there; nothing is expensive.
It was dusty and hot, with a mishmash of cotton cloth used as overhead cover, held together by clips and ropes, held up by mostly bamboo poles.
We gladly sat down on a rickety wooden bench, ordered homemade lemonade and rested.
Not far from us was a family of four, sitting on two worn out rattan mats. Grandmom and grandad (that’s what the kids with them called them) arranged fresh veggies for sale at the front of the mat while the kids (a teenaged boy and a younger little girl) sat behind them, cleaning more veggies and fruit.
The grandparents were poor farmers, that was evident from their clothes, their weathered skin, the way they spoke, their eyes. The children, wearing clothes that were too small, old but clean, were probably living with them so their parents could work in Bangkok. It happens a lot here.
Then I heard Australian English. Two couples of backpackers walked by, chatting. How they found this market, I will never know.
Maybe six meters away, one of the young men stopped his friends and looked back at the veggie vendors. All four returned and squatted down in front of the mats.
I was about to see if I could translate for them when the grandson began to do his best. I smiled.
The next few minutes were pure joy. The Australians were asking the Thai names of veggies and then gave the English names. Lots of smiles and laughter. They bought some of everything, then tried to pay more than the asking price.
Grandmom was having none of that; she added extras to their bags.
They took their leave but returned, taking clothes and shoes from their backpacks and insisting on sharing with the whole family. The area around us went silent (unheard of in Thai markets).
The two things I remember the most: the teenager’s huge eyes when he was given a pair of running shoes, and the little girl’s delighted laughter when she put on a pretty pink shirt that was big enough to be a dress for her.
Grandmom, wiping tears, tried to give them more veggies.
I’ve been in some scrapes, but only one in which my life depended on winning the fight.
I made the mistake of letting a subject in too close to me. By the time I saw him pulling the gun from his waistband it was too late to pull my own. I could only grab his hands and make sure the barrel of his gun did not point across my body.
For a few seconds it was quite intense. As my backup strolled up I yelled, “GUN!” at which time my backup, well, — BACKED UP. Then he hid behind a gas pump, pulled his gun and pointed it at the subject and I as we wrestled for the gun. It became a little more intense then, knowing I was in this alone. I guess had I been shot my backup would have avenged my death.
I had to make him drop the gun (the bad guy, that is). I whacked his hand against the gas pump and it fell to the ground, then he did too.
My Chief read my report and gave me a commendation letter. I still have it somewhere. He said he and the politicians were impressed by how I handled the situation. He wrote, “…you could have used your own gun, your K9, your ASP baton, your Taser or your OC spray, and instead you disarmed the subject using the least amount of force available.” I felt like a complete idiot. I never bothered to tell him I would have used ALL of those things if I had the opportunity.
So, guys. Don’t make the same mistake I made. Keep that tactical distance. Or have a good backup.
Texas Declares Biden Administration To Be In VIOLATION
This wasn’t something that I overheard, but my cousin did.
He was sitting on a train and overheard two girls talking, roughly in their early 20s. One of the girls had been asked to house sit for a family friend who was away for 2 weeks and also look after their pet German Shepherd.
Things were going well for the first few days until she woke up one morning and the dog had died in its sleep.
This was in central London in the height of summer, and the girl didn’t own a car. The owners wouldn’t be back for about 8 days so she couldn’t just leave it in the house until then incase it started to rot. She read online that she should store it in a cool place, but there wasn’t anywhere suitable at their house as it was a very big dog. She also didn’t have many friends in the area and had no access to a car, so she had no idea what to do.
She googled where the nearest vet was who might be able to store the body until the owners returned, but it was two stops away on the tube. Even if a taxi agreed to transport a dead dog, she couldn’t really afford to pay £20 for a London taxi, so she put the dog in a suitcase and took it on the tube.
A man offered to help her carry it down the stairs as she was struggling, and asked what on earth she had inside that made it so heavy (about 30kg). She was a photography student, so told him that she studied photography and had a lot of camera equipment inside. They chatted a bit about it and got on to the tube.
At the next stop, the man got off, but just as the doors were closing, he grabbed the suitcase and ran off towards the escalators as fast as he could. He was obviously a petty criminal who thought he would cash in on the camera equipment. Before she knew what had happened, the doors had shut and she was on her way to the next station.
I’m not sure if they ever got it back, but there aren’t many greater images than the thought of this man returning home thinking he had hit the jackpot, only to open the bag and see a dead German Shepherd staring back at him.
Yes, I remember a very strange thing that happened in a sort of mundane way. This happened around the late 1980s or early 1990s. I can’t remember the exact date now.
I had an appointment at the dentist, and went out to my car. It was a 10 minute drive to the dentist.
It was pouring with heavy rain. I got in my car, started it, and then realised my wipers weren’t working. I fiddled with the switch, but no -they wouldn’t work at all. It would have been impossible to drive through those conditions with no wipers.
There had NEVER been any problem with them, so their sudden refusal to operate was quite strange.
I went back in the house and phoned the dentist. I knew I’d be charged a late cancellation fee, but oddly, the receptionist said they’d had a cancellation, so there was no rush. “Just get in when you can in the next forty five minutes or so” she told me, “And there won’t be a charge.”
I was pleased by that . No pressure about timing.
I went back to the car, and tried the wipers again. Nope -not working.
I just sat there for a moment or so, then tried again, and suddenly they sprang into life!
I was, by then, about 15 minutes over my scheduled appointment time. But that didn’t matter so much now.
I drove out and about a couple of miles away there was a turning onto the main road, so I turned….
…And headed straight into a pile up of cars; a big car accident which had obviously just happened. I pulled over to see if any help was needed but someone told me they had already called emergency services.
That accident had happened within the previous 10 minutes obviously. A number of vehicles were involved. It was quite horrible to have to weave my way through it all, knowing people had to be injured, or perhaps even killed. But I had to, in order to not block the road for emergency vehicles about to arrive.
So I continued. But as I drove I began to wonder why I had been stopped from driving out, by my “broken” wipers (which, by the way, never ever broke down again and worked perfectly until the end of that car’s life.)
And as time went by, I began to wonder if something, some force, something I had no name for, had protected me that day? And why?
Something quite strange had happened that day.
I don’t feel I was “warned”. I feel I was quite clearly protected from harm, or possible death.
So one thing I learned is this: When things appear to go very frustratingly wrong in your day and you start to get annoyed about it, just stop and wonder. What might you be protected against? You don’t know. Keep an open mind.
I got a call about the “dentist’s visit” my daughter was leaving high school for. It was very strange since I was not aware of any dental appointment. I looked into it and was told that she had given the school a handwritten excuse note supposedly from me. I had not written any note.
The school was concerned because she had been having so many dental and doctor appointments that year.
It turned out she and her friend had been writing notes for each other to get out of school all year long. They had also signed a bunch of forms at the beginning of the school year so the signatures on the notes would match the signatures on file. The other mother and I had signed those forms, but the girls told the school secretary they’d lost the first sets they were given. The unsuspecting secretary gave them packets of replacement forms which the girls then signed and turned in.
I had to punish my daughter, but I secretly admired the amount of thought and preparation she and her buddy had put into the project.
I have to give my broom riding ex wife credit for this.
I have full custody but I completely missed something the ex caught one morning in texts from our daughter who had stayed at one of her friends’ house. We thought it was a safe place. We had never had any trouble with our 14 or 15 yr old daughter.
She texted her mom asking if she could pick her up later than agreed on that day. Her mom called me and said text our daughter, something is strange it doesnt sound like her.
I thought it was slightly different but definately her so I wasnt worried. Whats the problem?
She sounds high or drunk. Her texting is weird.
I picked her up myself and she smelled strange in the car but seemed normal.
I checked her bag as she took a shower and found two empty pint whisky bottles and a vape pipe. Complete and total shock.
Big fight after her shower but she has never been caught with anything again or made us suspicious. She was never allowed to hang out with that girl again. The parents didnt say anything to their daughter and busted her sneaking out to meet older boys with cars and alcohol the next night. We took ours’ phone, she couldnt warn her.
That girl straightened up too, I saw her at her job a few years later and she was very nice and mature acting. I was impressed with her.
It’s As BAD As We Thought… (Finally Some Honesty!)
He generally never says no to anything, and so he always ended up paying for all our colleagues’ coffee bill, whenever we ordered. But he always did it smilingly. He is the quietest radiologist I know of, and one of the most capable.
It was late in the evening, and he did not have lunch yet. Not the right time for the General Electric (GE) salesman to request him to ‘do demo a new portable ultrasound system’.
‘Sir just 5 minutes, the company insisted on your comment sir, please’.
As usual, he couldn’t say no.
With the last patient gone, he looked for some hospital orderly to lie down on the patient bed to check the new ‘portable ultrasound’ machine.
Hungry, and looking for a way to solve his predicament, he succumbed to the most primordial reflex. He lifted the right end of his neatly tucked shirt and placed the ‘ultrasound probe’ on to his own abdomen to check for the clarity of the machine.
–
What shocked him was not the clarity of the ultrasound machine but the fact that his right kidney showed a clear ‘mass’ at the lower pole; a diagnosis of ‘Renal Cell carcinoma – RCC’ That was the diagnosis that he would make on seeing such an image for any patient, including himself, with a radiology MD name board on his white coat.
‘Good machine’ he softly commented and left.
Instead of going for lunch, he went to his colleague in a nearby hospital. By evening urology consultation was taken and the next day he was inside the operating room in a green dress, undergoing partial nephrectomy.
We waited outside. No one ordered coffee.
The biopsy confirmed cancer, but fortunately, he was cured.
Because it was detected very early.
–
Now I know why his room has the picture of an ultrasound machine hung on the wall; instead of the usual lord ‘Ganesha’.
The mouse might be good at smelling money, but the ultrasound is better in picking up unseen diseases early and save a catastrophe, something that no money can buy.
I was a caterer for for 10 years and specialized in weddings. My last weekend serving food for weddings before moving out of state was my most challenging! There were 2 receptions for 300 people each and an extravaganza for 700 people and all were on the same day. My partner was at one, our most experienced employee oversaw the 2nd one and I had the 700 person nightmare. We had some hiccups but they all went well. We always had sufficient food for people who showed up after not responding. We had servers with champagne or sparkling cider at the end of the receiving line. We knew how many glasses they had available to help keep count of people served. Most weddings were buffet so we only had out enough plates for the people they’d signed a contract for. Often we had to bring out more plates. It was appalling how many times the parents of the bridal party tried to get out of paying for the extra people. A wedding is no place to bring uninvited people.
I used to work for a multi-billion dollar consumer goods company. There were several rather stupid policies in place.
One of them simply didn’t make any sense at all. It was a “clean desk policy.” You were only allowed one or two pictures on your desk, your computer, and an in/out basket. At the end of the day, you had to put anything that wasn’t approved away, and that happened to also include whatever you had in your in/out basket. Yes, that had to be empty at the end of the day. No staplers, tape dispensers, pens/pencils, etc. could be left on your desk.
Our offices around the world were set up as “open offices.” There were no cubicles, nor were there any enclosed offices. The only rooms with doors were meeting rooms and, of course, the restrooms. Desks were arranged in pods based on department, and you could see clearly from one corner of the building to the other.
Whenever the big-wigs were coming from the main headquarters, HR would scurry around and enforce the clean desk policy. They would badger, bully, and berate us to the point where they even took the offending items off our desks and threw them away. Everything had to be perfect for the big-wigs.
Here’s where the stupidity of the policy comes into play: the big-wigs never visited after hours when the office was in full compliance with the policy. They visited during office hours which was when everyone had papers strewn all over their desks because they were at work!
China is a peaceful nation, but it is not a pacifist nation.
They are also not idiots. They see the actions of the United States, and like President Putin, have concluded that no one in America is in control. It is completely running amuck, on “auto pilot”, going through the motions, and seemingly desirous of “suicide by cop”.
There was a time when the United States, with it’s “allies”, were roughly matched in military ability against China. That was right after world war 2, when the American military was at it’s strongest, and the Chinese nation, and military was at it’s weakest. That was back in 1950. And when the United States started bombing China during the “Korean War”, they unleashed a dragon. And the Allied forces were horribly mauled.
Since then, well, China has been getting ready. REALLY READY.
To understand what is going on, you must study Chinese military history. Because once you do… then you realize just how fucked the United States is right now. Is there anything that the United States can do right these days? From abandoned cities, to homeless tent cities, to breath-taking inflation, and mind-boggling corruption.
Do you think that it is because the American “system of democracy” hit some “bumps in the road”, or that since 2008, the United States have been fighting world war 3 against China? And China, if you read history, ALWAYS destroys the aggressor nation from within.
You all must remember that…
China has the oldest military in the world.
It has the oldest navy in the world.
It has the oldest marines in the world.
It has the largest military in the world.
It is peer capable with the best military technologies, including stealth, cloaking, and AI robotics.
But China doesn’t want to use these forces. It wants peace.
But, you know, if some imbecile decides to bomb China / Taiwan… well, the radioactive clouds over America will take decades to dissipate.
…
Oh, China is ready.
And, so is Russia.
WOP
Have you ever faced a situation when you intuitively did the right thing?
Many years ago when my husband and I were first married, I was a college student while he was working as the grunt guy for a used restaurant equipment shop to pay the bills. We stopped at Sears while doing errands. When I got out of the car, I looked down and saw a ring.
I thought it was a junk ring that a child would wear or something. I don’t know why but I picked it up and threw it on the dash before I closed the car door and went into the store.
Sometime later, while my husband was driving us to another errand, I picked up the ring and looked closer. I thought that it might actually be real. I couldn’t believe it. I mean why would a real ring be in the parking lot of Sears?
However, I took it in with me while we went into the next store and stopped at the jewelry counter. We showed it to the clerk who looked at the stone with one of those eye glass things. He confirmed that it was a real diamond.
We ended up going back to Sears to report the ring to their security, who called the police, and we had to wait around for them to show up. They took the ring and filed a report. It took several hours and we weren’t sure if the hassle was worth it.
However, we found out a few days later that an older couple had come into Sears looking for the wife’s wedding ring. Apparently, she had taken off her ring to put on lotion while her husband was driving and then she had gotten out of the car with the ring still in her lap. They didn’t realize the ring was gone until later.
We were glad that I had impulsively picked up what I thought was a piece of junk and threw it on the dash of the car. A wife got back her wedding ring and we had an unusual story to tell.
Alien Bodies Confirmed After Testing to be NON Human
I once was the Managing Director of a Consumer products division in DongGuan, China. This is how we ran it. Here’s some points that are off the top of my head.
[1] All employees sign a contract of employment. It lists the working hours, conditions and length of contract. Most contracts were 2 – 3 years long. If the employee breaks the contract, they lose accrued benefits, and social welfare benefits. If the company breaks the contract, they risk substantial fees, and penalties.
[2] Working hours were 8:30am to 6:00pm with a two hour lunch & nap time. Six working days. Sunday was off.
[3] Everyone has a free room in a dorm. The rooms had a bed, small kitchenette with refrigerator, television, and free wifi. It included a small table, and chair. Shared bath down the hall, and a common room with sofas, kitchen, microwave, and large screen television.
[4] Everyone got free meals. This included breakfasts, lunch and dinner at the canteen. Plus periodic special moments, like fee watermelon, ice cream, or Jaozi spectacular. The management and supervisory staff ate in a upstairs dining hall, the regular workers ate in a hall (or outside) next to the kitchen.
[5] We had a shared bus that ran to and from the factory into town. You could arrange pickups, or meet their fixed discharge and pickup schedule. The driver lived in the dorms. Ran a regular schedule but could be pulled out for special trips on request.
[6] Supervisory staff had slightly larger quarters, a special common room, and some other minor perks.
[7] Time management was conducted by thumb-scan. Presently the factory uses facial scanning.
[8] No dress code, except for safety concerns. Employees washed their clothes in the (dorm) floor washing machines and hung their clothes on their dorm porches. Typically, employees wore tee shirts, and trousers with tennis shoes.
[9] Average age of the workers was somewhere between 30 – 45. The guards were all retired males, and the cleaning ladies and cooking staff were also (generally) older if not retirement age.
[10] Families. Some employees had children, or extended family. The children were permitted to live in the dorms, and were monitored and looked after by the factory community. The guards had the responsibility to make sure that the children went to school safely. Visitors often asked about the toy scooters, and what-not in the parking lot and yard. But that’s why.
[11] Sickness. Illness was treated with serious concern, and we would assign staff to help the person see a doctor and make sure that they got the medicines that they needed.
[12] Special holiday. Once every six months we had a special holiday, where the factory took a trip to a park, or amusement center. The employee would have to contribute towards the cost of the bus ride, but the meals and fees were all paid by the company.
[13] CNY Holiday. The company shut down for CNY which generally lasted ten days. About half of the employees opted for a full month off. This was negotiated in their contract. Leading up to the holiday was a hectic time. We would then host a nice big dinner, and a KTV visit(s) where the yearly bonus would be handed out. Bonuses were equal to one months salary.
I’ll tack on more info as I think about it. But this should give you an idea of what it is like working in a factory in Dongguang.
Chinese billboard
Only in China.
To Die for Beef Roast
This is one of the best roasts you will ever taste. Carrots, potatoes and celery can also be added, if desired.
to die for crockpot roast
Ingredients
1 beef roast (any kind)
1 envelope Hidden Valley Ranch salad dressing mix
1 envelope brown gravy mix
1 envelope Italian dressing mix
1/2 cup warm water
Instructions
Place roast in slow cooker.
Mix contents of all 3 envelopes and sprinkle over roast.
Pour water into the bottom of the slow cooker.
Cover and cook on LOW for 6 to 7 hours.
American food makes you fat.
Has anyone rented a car with unlimited mileage and then really driven it with “unlimited mileage”? What was the response when you returned the car to the rental agency?
In 2010 I drove across the USA with my family.
Rather than drive my own car, I wanted to rent a car so we could have it replaced if there was a problem on the road. We had a lot of plans and couldn’t afford to lose time. We wanted a nice, large SUV with unlimited miles.
Hertz would not offer unlimited mile SUVs but I could get a minivan. So, I booked that, disappointed. I called the local airport rental place to tell them my plans, and to ask if I could reserve a specific vehicle make and model even though that was against policy. When I explained why, the manager’s eyes lit up. “We don’t offer unlimited milage SUVs, but you can upgrade the minivan contract to SUV fur a small fee and the unlimited miles feature follows!” She then let me and the kids explore the 4 SUV models of the time, and we picked a Chevy Traverse. We agreed on a Thursday pickup.
As we were packing in the days leading up to the rental, we thought we’d get the car a day early and start loading so we could take off sooner. Since we had a special arrangement, I called the location and asked about an early pickup. The person who answered said the manager was out that day but said to come down and see what they could do.
I arrived at the SJC airport location on Wednesday, and the rental lot was nearly empty. My heart sank. I suspected they would not honor the deal. I walked in, braced for bad news. When I introduced myself, they recognized me immediately. “Oh, you’re the cross-country guy! Come with me.”
We walked to the back of the rental shack and there was a Chevy Traverse, with a big OUT OF SERVICE sign on the dashboard.
“We got this car on Monday, but we couldn’t rent it because it had mechanical problems.” He opened the door and pulled the sign off the dashboard with a flourish and a grin. “OK, that should fix it. Now we can rent it.”
I went on to clock 7,800 miles over 5 weeks. They didn’t bat an eye when I returned it.
I once had an interview with a company in Danville, Illinois. This was a super small city in Southern Illinois, that had the unique single skyscraper sticking out of it like a “sore thumb”. Apparently a rich man of the town thought that by building such a structure it would “modernize” the city. He was wrong. But it was a 1930’s era Art Deco masterpiece…
Anyways, so I interviewed for a project engineer role in this company. It made electrical ballasts for those huge advertising billboards at the side of the road. And the interview was going well.
That was until I met the electrical engineer. This guy was an engineer out of India who thought that he was GOD. What an arrogant prick!
He spent the entire interview tying to exert his dominance on me. And, Lordy! was it irritating. What was his malfunction? Somehow he got it in his quirky little mind that we would not be equals, but rather he would instruct me what to do. Mind you, at that time, I was a Project Leader interviewing for a design position. A semi-step downward.
Nope. Not gonna do that shit.
Anyways, that and other events though the years has convinced me that many Indians, not all of them of course, come with unexpected “baggage” and tricks that you need to unpack and resolve before dealing with them. And that is why I NEVER deal with Indians unless it is face to face, and recorded on video. I just do not trust them.
People (!) learn from your experiences and take adequate measures to preserve your happiness.
I had recently totaled a car and was looking at used cars. I went to a number of local dealerships until I’d found the one I wanted. I’m mechanically inclined but because this was my biggest purchase ever I wanted my dad to look at it. I said I’d be back the next day.
I came back the next day with my dad and he found it needed new shocks and brake pads. I negotiated a price and put down my deposit. The salesman said he needed manager approval and the manager wasn’t in so I was to call him the next day.
I called the next day and the manager still wasn’t in and to call again the next day. I called the next day and the salesman asked if I had the money. When I said yes he said come on in.
I was in college at the time and had just taken a social psychology class. The professor had discussed used car sales and a trick they used. The salesman would say the manager wasn’t in and to call back later. In the interim you had told all your friends about your new car and pictured yourself driving it. So when the salesman said he couldn’t sell you the car at the negotiated price, but added a few hundred dollars to the price you would agree.
I was prepared for that to happen and knew something was up when I walked in and the salesman wouldn’t look me in the eye. The salesman directed me to the managers office and the manager said I can’t give it to you at the negotiated price. For another $300.00 more it’s yours. I figured that was the cost of shocks, brake pads, and labor in the early 1990’s. I said no and asked for my money deposit back. The manager said no, you aren’t getting the deposit back. Being young, I didn’t know what to do so I left.
I had made plans with a friend to go out in my new car and went to his house. When I showed up in my rental car he asked where my new car was and I told him. He told me to wait a minute as he called his mother, the manager of one of the Department of Motor Vehicles offices. He put her on the phone and I told her the story. She told us to wait and she’d call me back.
After a short wait she called me back telling me they can’t legally keep my deposit and that I needed to return to the dealer and get my deposit. She also gave me a name and phone number and said “This is the private number for the Commissioner of Used Car Sales in our state. If you don’t get the deposit returned, you are to have the manager call this number and explain why I can’t get my money back.”
My friend and I drove to the dealer to be met almost immediately by the manager telling us we needed to leave, I wasn’t getting my money back. I replied, “That’s fine, you’ll need to call this number and explain that.” The manager replied whose number is this? When I told him the name and title of the person and added he is expecting a call on his private line the managers face went white. Within minutes I had my deposit.
That car sat on the lot another 6 months and the car I purchased was $1,000 more than what we negotiated plus the extra $300
Pizza Rustica (Italian Easter Pie)
2024 02 14 09 45
Yield: 6 to 8 servings
Ingredients
Filling
2 cups cooked, smoked ham, cubed
2 cups cooked Italian sausage, sliced
1 cup Mozzarella cheese, cubed or shredded
1/2 cup chopped parsley
4 hard boiled eggs, peeled and chopped
1 cup Ricotta cheese
3 eggs, uncooked
Salt and freshly-ground pepper, to taste
Crust
4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon granulated yeast
1/4 cup olive oil
1 1/2 cups hot tap water
Instructions
Filling
Mix all chopped ingredients in a large bowl. Place uncooked eggs and Ricotta cheese in a blender container and mix on medium speed for about 1 minute. Add to the chopped ingredients and combine well.
Crust: Place flour and salt in a large bowl. Combine hot water, oil and yeast in a measuring cup with a fork. Add to flour and mix well. If dough is dry, add water as necessary. If dough is too sticky, add flour, one tablespoon at a time. Knead until dough forms ball. Leave in the bowl in warm place to rise until double in volume. Punch down before rolling.
Divide dough in half and roll to fit a large pie pan or 15 inch pizza pan. Place one circle on bottom of pan. Top with the filling, pressing out all air pockets. The pie will look too full. Top with remaining dough. Trim around pan with knife leaving about 1 inch extra all around. Press edges to seal and tuck sealed edge in all around pan. Prick top with fork several times to make air holes.
Bake in a preheated oven at 400 degrees F for 20 minutes, then reduce oven temperature to 350 degrees F and bake an additional 30 minutes.
Seeing one of my fellow truckers in the passing lane, trying to bully a four wheeler over by riding inches from its bumper. He’s essentially using his vehicle as a 40 ton weapon.
All I can do is shake my head and can’t help but wonder why some people think we’re the dregs of the motoring public. I’m not sure what distance it takes to stop your average car at 65 mph, but it takes a loaded semi the length of a football field, and that’s under ideal conditions.
I also can’t help but wonder why they can’t see the negative outcome of a situation like that. I have and it usually ends up with the car unrecognizable, a family grieving, and the driver going to prison for vehicular homicide.
image 200
Yeah, there’s the remains of what use to be a car under there and in it was somebody’s father, mother, sister, or brother. And all because that jackass driver thought a game of chicken was a good idea.
Wehrmacht systematically raped and murdered practically all female prisoners of war. They thought women on the front line were a sign of communist and Jewish degeneration, and as such exterminated them where ever they met.
image 201
Many Soviet female soldiers were captured during the first months of Operation Barbarossa. Except from Red Army nurses who were sometimes spared, practically all of those captured were killed, and almost certainly raped first. The regular Wehrmacht’s attitude is quite clearly expressed by the Heer field Marshall just 7 days into Operation Barbarossa.
29th of June 1941
Women in uniform are to be shot on sight.
Field Marshall Günther von Kluge
Less known is that the Reichenau order aka Severity Order
, issued to the Germans of the 6th Army (The one at Stalingrad) specifically said that the German army should not take female POWs, as well as shoot commissar and partisans who surrender.
Another general Ernst Hammer, also distributed an order to execute all captured females. German divisions filed a constant stream of reports where they explicitly say they execute women.
Later in the war, some units did not execute women on sight, but instead handed them over to the SS, who generally speaking placed them in concentration camps, mostly Ravensbrück and some in Auschwitz.
It should come as no surprise, that the Germans had a genocidal attitude and systematic rape tendency, considering that even outside of the army, the Germans murdered over 6 million civilian women in the USSR alone. And countless other abuses were conducted as well.
It was Junior High/Middle School, but social studies/civics teacher was let go for his political rantings to the class. Whether he was right or not, the audience was probably the wrong one. In a school where the catchment area averaged $200–400k homes (in Omaha, Nebraska, back in the early 90s), and most families had one or more parents working in a professional capacity, making statements like “anybody with a house over $100k does not deserve it” and bringing in news articles or Dateline clips speaking ill of some of the big corporate employers in the area. Today they’d probably make him Superintendent. But at that time and place, his brand of socialism didn’t sit well with the PTA. Oh, and there was also the incident where he was in a car accident and said that not wearing his seatbelt is what saved his life so telling kids to tell their parents that buckling up is “a personal choice” didn’t go well either.
Canadians present a really interesting dichotemy between having both a superiority and inferiority complex when comparing themselves to Americans, which they do unwittingly all the time.
Growing up in Canada, I was dismayed with the amount of American products and culture that we consumed, signfifying the acceptance of a nearly dependent relationship. I remember being constantly being admonished and mocked as a high school student for saying my favourite TV show was a small budget Canadian TV. Years later, the show was picked up by an American network and its stars become Hollywood A-listers, only then of course, was that considered success for Canadians to be proud of.
I remember people calling Canada a ‘small country’, yet it has a growing population that size of a ‘big’ European country such as Poland and an economy that punches above its weight, as a member of the G-7.
While at the same time feeling culturally insignificant and inferior, in this way, and also for having an economy, military and international influence that is dwarfed by American, all that is juxtaposed by the feeling of having created a better society: Better health care, less gun culture, safer streets, less homlessness, drugs, racial segregation, etc. THis feeling of superiority was closer to smugness when Donald J Trump was elected stateside. ‘Couldn’t happen here.’ almost everyone thought.
For Canada to really hit its strude, it should cut itself adrift from the U.S. No, not a border wall. I mean drifting off to the middle of the sea far away, like Australia, where it can develop its own identity, without being compared or comparing itself to a neighbour which is considered more of a big brother.
I never bought into the idea that Instagram made people more superficial. It merely surfaced what was already there.
When I look at Insta-models, who have millions of followers, I can’t help but wonder if they define themselves beyond washboard abs and a half-moon goddess behind.
God-given good looks create a facade of reality, a mask the owners often don’t realize they are wearing. It opens doors that were otherwise closed.
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(Yael Shaeba, rated the most beautiful woman in the world in another useless study.)
The hard truth is that: At nearly every mundane corner of life, physical attractiveness confers advantages. It’s even proven that attractive people receive shorter prison sentences.
To the men feeling inadequate - I have good news. An FSU study found that women skew happier in relationships where their partner is less attractive.
There is less pressure to meet expectations. They have fewer body image issues.
This is in line with what I saw working at an ad agency early in my career.
We spent a lot of time around female models. It was a known thing amongst them, “You don’t date male models. They are all dogs (promiscuous).”
Meanwhile, an OK Cupid study found women think 80% of men are unattractive. So I’m not sure where that leaves us.
Beauty is complicated - but it undeniably gives a mile-long list of benefits: better negotiations, promotions, and higher likeability. But letting it, or any one thing, be your chief identity is a trap.
Self-worth rooted in beauty is destined to die on the same altar it was built on: time.
Character ages better than beauty.
10 Effects No Intimacy in Marriage has on Men
This is important. Both men and women need to know this.
I actually was placed in a very sensitive position. I’m at my desk, was working on a huge project when I received a call from the CEO.
He said his computer was “Going nuts!” “I was on the internet, then other sites were automatically opening non-stop, should I do a hard shutdown?” Immediately I said, Don’t turn it off!!!”
I get into his office and look at the monitor. Porn sites are opening about 1-per second.
We used two different fire wall servers, the first server was using Linux before going to Microsoft (I believe it was Server 2012. You would think all of that would have stopped this, right?
I had a direct line to our IS people, called them told them what was happening. They were able to quickly solve the issue.
So, I just asking him “What was the last thing you did before the virus came through?” “I was working on the budget, it’s then all the porn sites started to pop up.”
I know he could read my face, it’s then I said “BS.”
Now I am in his seat, I opened ‘history’ . He had just been on a porn site. OH! It wasn’t just one site, over two weeks+ I see the dates and time.
His door was open so I quietly said to him “What the hell!” “What?” “You have been hitting porn sites.” He begins to get the ‘oh shit’ look on his face. “Alan you have to stop hitting porn sites!” “Yeah, it won’t happen again.”
Oh yeah, I gave him a hard time about it…..for weeks.
When my parents divorced, my dad moved up north 5 hours with his new girlfriend. My mom had custody but we had to visit him every other weekend. We met in the middle and if my mom was a minute late he would be making calls. I remember he would always speak bad on my mom like what she did when they were married and how she’s the bad guy of course. it was like this for years.
one time specifically my mom drove us up and we met halfway. my dad came alone in the single cab ford ranger. my mom & dad had 3 kids total and his new wife had 3 kids so usually when we were getting picked up it was in the expedition and it was a full house.
Now my mom was late again, and my dad wasn’t having it. He called the cops on my mom for being late again and violating court order. But when the cop came he was very confused on how my dad was going to drive all three of us kids home safely in a single cab. this was probably 20 years ago and i’ll admit we did all fit comfortably in the ranger but the cop said if he drove off like that he would get arrested. so we had to wait there for 2.5 more hours for my dads wife to come in the other vehicle. it was a long and hot day too so definitely backfired on my dad. I don’t remember but i’m sure he stopped calling the cops afterwards!
“Would you prefer a million pounds in diamonds or a million pound of gold?”
Gold.
Hands down, no ifs, ands, or buts.
One million pounds of gold (I am presuming standard pounds) equals 14,583,333.3 troy ounces. At today’s (mid-May 2019) spot price, gold is hovering around $1,300 per troy oz. Assuming it is pure gold (24 kt, or .999), that is at about $18,958,333,290.
It can be visualized as 36,458 400-troy ounce “Good Delivery” bars (and change) of the same type stored in Fort Knox and worth about $520,000 each.
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400-t oz Good Delivery gold bar. Image from Wikipedia.
Each good delivery bar weighs in at a hair over 27.42 lb / 12.44 kg. It might actually be more convenient to get it in 100-t oz bars, which can be more readily sold.
Of course, a million pounds is 500 tons, which is about one-fifth of the output of all the gold mines in the world in a year.
The good news is; if doled out over time (several years), they will not have that much of an impact on the price of gold. This means that even taking buyer costs into account, there will still be a significant chunk of value per ounce.
The bad news is that if sold at once it will collapse the current price of gold and I would never get anywhere near the actual value of the gold. Also, the sheer amount of gold sold will attract the attention of the government revenue service, who will want their share.
Diamonds, on the other hand, cannot be sold in bulk without a specialized infrastructure in place to grade them by color, clarity, carat, and cut (the “Four C’s”).
Keep in mind that a pound of diamond powder for industrial use goes for about $10. That is ten dollars.
Unless you are already well-connected in the diamond industry, selling the diamonds is going to be far too much hassle for too little return and will leave a paper trail a mile wide at every step.
Honestly, I would take a million pounds in 90% silver before I take a million pounds in diamonds, and still come out ahead profit-wise.
Edit: The question I answered was merged with another one that removes the million and leaves just one pound of either gold or diamonds.
One pound of gold equals 14.5833 troy ounces (or 453.592 grams); at $1,300/t oz, that is $18,958.29.
One pound of silver (at $14.85/t oz) equals $216.56.
One pound of diamonds equals 2,267.96 carats. Unless these are relatively large, high-quality diamonds, they are not even worthy of consideration; I would need to get $8.36 per carat to equal the yield of the gold… and that will not happen; the cost of grading the diamonds, plus commissions along the way, will barely get you that much.
Heck, if they are industrial grade, I might consider myself extremely lucky to get $5,000 for the pound.
On the other hand, I could easily sell the gold in any pawn shop at near-parity to spot price with zero hassles.
A year before Covid hit I was the last to be hired on full time and others after me were hired as temps like a trial run before permanently hiring them. One kid out of the military at least 10 years younger than everyone else. This one kid he started buying expensive cars, would engage in conversation asking how much money I made and that he makes more than I do, I told him none of his damn business. So I’ve been a new guy before so I really tried to cut this kid a break but he just would not get off his phone, would literally be playing on his phone in a meeting in front of everyone. He said he can multitask. The company got tired of the slack and warned him over and over. He was awkward and wasn’t a man quite yet. It was early morning 9am and he was in the office and was let go, he runs into the office pacing back and forth muttering to himself like a crazy person, he would then drop to his knees and start crying and then have another outburst saying “why why why” and it makes you think that this guy could probably hurt someone. When he started temping with us apparently got an expensive car and new apartment just living lavishly, and a few months after we would get bombarded with creditors calling into the office.
6 Signs You’re An Attractive Older Man (Even If You Don’t Think So)
Let me be clear…DO NOT GET INTO A STREET FIGHT! THE BEST THING YOU CAN EXPECT FROM IT IS TO NOT GET HURT TOO BADLY. The best defense is to not get into a street fight in them…now assuming that you’re in one of those situations where you can’t get out of a fight…Martial arts can be of assistance, but it really depends on a lot of factors.
Does the martial art teach you to strike, block, hold, defend against a moving opponent? If not…then it’s probably not going to be very helpful.
Do you learn to get hit and take a hit? Getting punched in the face is a fairly debilitating thing for the inexperienced. The first few times you get hit in the face hard…it’s a pretty jarring experience…you do need to learn how to get used to it.
Are you in practice? Your martial arts training from 25 years ago isn’t going to mean much…like anything else skills must be practiced or lost. You may have been the toughest guy around years ago…but guaranteed you’re not anymore if you haven’t seen a punch coming your way since then. I used to box regularly, and didn’t step into a ring for over a decade. A friend of mine asked me to spar a few months ago, and even though muscle memory did some of the work, the first time he connected with a solid jab, I felt like I got a bucket of cold water thrown in my face.
Does the marital art teach you to fight bare-handed? Punching with a naked fist hurts, and if you’re going to do it effectively, you need to toughen up. I don’t mean that from a psychological perspective, you literally need to get used to punching things and get your hands to build up resilience. If you don’t fight bare-handed, and throw a heavy punch; you could break one of the little bones in your hand. Even if you’ve toughened up your hands you can connect with someone’s skull or hit off your main knuckles and end up breaking your hand.
Do you learn grappling, most street fights are at VERY close range…usually your opponent will look to grab you and throw you around rather than to keep their distance. If you look at the old bare knuckle boxers you’ll see that they use a very odd stance (at least to modern eyes) and that’s because they had to defend against grappling, and were better suited to bare knuckle fighting. In a street fight, those old school fighters would decimate pretty much any opponent…but it’s not exactly like you can go to the old-timey boxing gym and learn to punch like John Sullivan.
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6. Is your opponent used to street fighting? If so, you’re entering their arena, it’s like asking a BJJ fighter to fix in a boxing ring…even if the BJJ fighter is more skilled and experience, the home-field advantage of the boxer is huge. If you don’t have the experience in a street fight, you’re at a disadvantage. Frankly, that’s the type of experience you don’t want to get. If your opponent is inexperienced though…and you have martial arts experience assuming that you have the right type of experience…you’re going to have an edge. If you don’t have the right type of experience; and you’re not used to close-in fighting with bare hands…you’re going to have a bad time…possibly worse than the neophyte who isn’t fighting their instincts.
There’s a bunch of secondary factors…but these are the big ones IMO. As someone who got into his share of scraps and got some training…If I could never get into a fight again, I would consider it a personal victory. Fighting is not fun, people punch, kick, scratch, spit, gouge…and in some cases even bring weapons, friends and generally don’t fight fair or clean. You can have all the training in the world…but still won’t be able to stop a knife or a bullet from someone who knows what they’re doing…or takes you from behind…or just straight-up surprises you.
Martial arts are great; they’re a great way to get fit, to get flexible, and teach you discipline. They’re great to build confidence and make you feel more secure in day-to-day situations. Generally, you will be able to defend yourself better than someone who is completely untrained…but it doesn’t make you into someone who can take on all takers…there’s always someone tougher or more capable…or someone more willing to fight dirty. Martial arts can’t prepare you for that.
Lucy Gordon fortune valued at 11 million when she decided to hang out in her apartment in the best area of Paris.
Do you think 11 million is little?
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Philip Seymour Hoffman $36 million
when he died of a heroin overdose.
Maybe it’s still too little for you…
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Robin Williams fortune valued at 50 million
when he decided to hang himself in his house.
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Kurt Cobain worth $60 million at the time he shot himself with a shotgun.
Maybe with more…
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Elvis Presley made 300 million dollars while he was alive, in the end his drug problems ended up causing him a heart attack.
I think they are concrete examples of why a person does not get happiness from money, with this I do not mean that it is bad to want to make money, nor does it mean that if you are unhappy, making more money will not help you, what I mean by this is that money does not give you ABSOLUTE happiness. And it is that in reality nothing will make you completely happy.
I believe that the closest you can get to being happy is having a life with meaning and purpose, living day by day cultivating meaningful relationships and friendships.
That will bring you closer to happiness than anything.
Marrying the Ugly Daughter of the Yakuza Boss to Settle My Debts…
I’m an Aussie. I was travelling in SanFrancisco. I was visiting the zoo and looking at one of the enclosure’s I saw a big red roo. I commented to my wife “look at that kangaroo! He’s a BIG red roo!” A young American woman overheard me and corrected me by saying “ It’s a waaaalaby” and rolled her eyes as she pointed at the sign in front of the enclosure that said there was wallabies in there. I was very confused and doubted myself and thought, maybe I’m wrong. The sign definitely says they’re wallabies in there but, that looks like a “big red”. I was embarrassed thinking that I didn’t even know my own countries wildlife. I walked on another five or so metres (15 feet) and then I saw the next sign which said there actually was red kangaroos in the exhibit. I felt better then. I also want to add that I had a great time in the US and found the people to be really friendly.
When people want to change their lives, they usually start out by thinking about the different things that need to be added to their lives to get to where they want to be.
They need to add a workout program, a mentor, a new job, new friends, new habits, etc.
They add, add, and add some more until they’re just constantly in motion all the time. They’re not a different person and their life hasn’t changed for the better — they’re just busier.
I know I thought like this when I first started my self-improvement journey.
I started waking up early. I started listening to self-improvement podcasts. I started reading books. I started meditating. Journaling. Following a more dedicated workout program.
I did a lot of stuff.
But you know what?
Although my life changed, it didn’t change how I wanted it to.
I just became busy.
I still had anxiety. I still got really sad. I still had bad friends and shitty relationships. I still spiraled the same way.
The truth is that changing your life is not about what you do, it’s about what you stop doing.
Removing bad habits is how you actually have lasting change. This is how you make lasting progress toward goals. This is how you change the person you are in a sustainable and manageable way so that you skip the period where everything comes crashing down.
You skip that phase where you’re just an overwhelmed mess all the time.
You get some peace. You learn to embrace boredom. You learn that boredom elicits creativity.
You learn to drop your bad habits instead of just following new havits to cancel out the bad ones.
It’s the equivalent of doing a bunch of burpees to hopefully cancel out a whole pizza.
Just don’t eat the whole pizza.
True self-improvement is not about what you do, it’s about what you stop doing. It’s about quitting.
I bought a house in Indianapolis in 1985. It was 110 years old at the time of purchase. It was a duplex with wonderful old bones but was in very poor condition. It was in such poor condition that I paid about $3,200 for it. In the process of doing a 100% renovation, I tore out 90% of the old lathe and plaster walls. In a cavity of the interior wall was a bundle wrapped in old newspaper (dated 1885) from when the house was built. In the wrapped up bundle were old copies of magazines from the period when color printing was just in its mass-produced infancy. There were six different copies of the magazine, “Ladies Home Companion” All of the graphics were of hand drawn images of exquisite art decco design. Also included in the bundle was a pair of lady’s kid gloves and a small leather change purse with a single penny, nickel, dime, quarter, fifty cent piece and dollar – all, except the penny were silver and dated 1885. The coins, gloves, change purse and magazine were all in perfect condition. I have the impression that it was a woman who hid the bundle in the wall as the house was being built. I sold them all to an antiques dealer (except the dime, which I still own – a liberty seated dime, and the quarter, which I gave to my mother who also collected coins) and got quite a lot of money for all of those items. Had I not been so hard up for the money at the time, I would have kept the Morgan silver dollar, which I sold back then for $2,000. I also found an assortment of bottles, too, which I also sold.
America asks that you take immediate heed of what we say on this leaflet.
We are in possession of the most destructive explosive ever devised by man. A single one of our newly developed atomic bombs is actually the equivalent in explosive power to what 2000 of our giant B-29s can carry on a single mission. This awful fact is one for you to ponder and we solemnly assure you it is grimly accurate.
We have just begun to use this weapon against your homeland. If you still have any doubt, make inquiry as to what happened to Hiroshima when just one atomic bomb fell on that city.
Before using this bomb to destroy every resource of the military by which they are prolonging this useless war, we ask that you now petition the Emperor to end the war. Our president has outlined for you the thirteen consequences of an honorable surrender. We urge that you accept these consequences and begin the work of building a new, better and peace-loving Japan.
You should take steps now to cease military resistance. Otherwise, we shall resolutely employ this bomb and all our other superior weapons to promptly and forcefully end the war.
EVACUATE YOUR CITIES.
ATTENTION JAPANESE PEOPLE. EVACUATE YOUR CITIES.
Because your military leaders have rejected the thirteen part surrender declaration, two momentous events have occurred in the last few days.
The Soviet Union, because of this rejection on the part of the military has notified your Ambassador Sato that it has declared war on your nation. Thus, all powerful countries of the world are now at war with you.
Also, because of your leaders’ refusal to accept the surrender declaration that would enable Japan to honorably end this useless war, we have employed our atomic bomb.
A single one of our newly developed atomic bombs is actually the equivalent in explosive power to what 2000 of our giant B-29s could have carried on a single mission. Radio Tokyo has told you that with the first use of this weapon of total destruction, Hiroshima was virtually destroyed.
Before we use this bomb again and again to destroy every resource of the military by which they are prolonging this useless war, petition the emperor now to end the war. Our president has outlined for you the thirteen consequences of an honorable surrender. We urge that you accept these consequences and begin the work of building a new, better, and peace-loving Japan.
Act at once or we shall resolutely employ this bomb and all our other superior weapons to promptly and forcefully end the war.
EVACUATE YOUR CITIES.
The US was prepared to do whatever it took to get Japan to unconditionally surrender. That includes the use of the bomb as was necessary for the war to end. The third bomb was intended for release on 19 August. Fortunately for all parties, Japan surrendered by 15 August 1945.
China’s increased “strategic collaboration” with Russia is nothing more than a repetition of an old policy, except that it has now entered the “strategic counter-offensive” phase, which Xi Jinping once again emphasized to his close friend and colleague, President Vladimir Putin, and hoped that he would increase his confidence in winning the war.
In 2019, when the U.S. launches a trade war with China, China’s manufacturing GDP will account for less than 30% of the global total, while the U.S.’s manufacturing GDP account for more than 13% of the global total.
Recently, according to a report released by the OECD, China’s manufacturing gdp will account for more than 35% of the world’s total value in 2023. Even the sum of the 2nd to 10th place is not as high as China’s share. The U.S. manufacturing gdp accounts for 12% of the world’s total, while India’s manufacturing gdp, which is highly regarded by the West, accounts for 3%.
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Trump initiated the trade war with the intention of returning manufacturing to the US, but the data shows that the return of manufacturing to the US over the past few years has only been negative. In this regard, the decline in electricity generation and consumption in the U.S. confirms this from the side.
Let’s look at the U.S. advantage: performance in the technology sector.
In 2019, in the globally recognized top 10 future technology and advanced manufacturing fields, China and the United States each accounted for half of the wall, but China in the United States of America’s all-out siege and set the entire Western world’s strength of the suppression of the U.S. After 4 years, the U.S. advantageous areas once again disappeared in 2 areas, and in the United States of America’s strongest field of chips, China is also gradually catching up.
Now, the U.S. is caught in the quagmire of the Russia-Ukraine war and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which has almost depleted the soft power that the U.S. has accumulated over the past hundred years.
And with the DPRK having just declared that it no longer regards South Korea as a fellow countryman, the risk of war on the Korean Peninsula has increased dramatically. It is difficult for the United States to provide further assistance to South Korea under financial constraints. If war breaks out in Taiwan, Washington will not be able to raise as much money for support even if it auctions off the White House, Capitol Hill and Pentagon complex.
In addition, the U.S. has been beset by a host of domestic problems, and its international influence has been declining. It is not an exaggeration to describe the U.S. as being in an internal and external quagmire.
Although Washington still does not recognize the decline in the strength of the United States and tries to whitewash the United States “strong economic growth, domestic social stability”, even if Washington continues to whitewash the United States financial situation, but the risk of the United States’s debt crisis is still growing.
The Texas independence movement has left Washington at a loss, and if Washington tries to disarm Texas independence, a large-scale civil war will undoubtedly break out.
The question for the United States was no longer whether it could retain world hegemony. Whether it is military, financial, economic or technological, it is a fact that the United States has lost its hegemony, and it is time for the United States to consider how to retain its position as a world power and a rich country.
Perhaps, in the collective insanity of the U.S. political scene today, only Trump is still sober. He believes that the U.S. can maintain its position as the world’s second largest power by relying on the world’s second largest oil and gas reserves.
Perhaps becoming a major energy exporter in the future is the best way out for the United States after it loses its world hegemony.
The ONLY people who realize that the United States is unable to compete with China is the Western “news” media, and the people that consume it.
The rest of the world, INCLUDING the American “leadership” and the Pentagon understand the futility of “Tonya Harding” competition strategies.
However, the United States is not a “healthy” nation. It is a nation in “free-fall”. There is no one at the helm, and those that are in control of various functional aspects of the government are stymied by a complex web network of counter-productive political polarization. Often led by those with self-interest at their core, and incapable of actual subjective reasoning. For everyone in the West are under the propagandized narratives that they themselves create.
Like (for instance) the “brick wall” of Tucker Carlson interviewing Putin.
…
But there is an “out”.
Cooperation NOT Competition.
China wants to see a better world, but in order for that reality to play out, some very toxic behaviors, and legacy dysfunctions must be excised (one way or the other) from the West. I am afraid that it will be a painful process.
The United States NEEDS friends, and help. China is willing to take on this role. But I am fearful that that will not materialize until a period of disharmony adjusts the objective reality of the West.
I was working at a travel agency in the late 80s. I was hired as a receptionist. Having a knack for computers, I taught myself the reservation system and was helping the rest of the office learn and use the system. This in addition to reception and helping the bookkeeper. This was before the internet. The company signed a new contract that included internet and the computers were installed and the network was set up. They neglected to tell us that if we did not shut down at night data would be used. Again, this was when internet was new. At that time you were charged based on how much data you used. After the first month, we got a bill for around $800. The boss was not happy. I made the calls to find out why and resolve the issue. A credit was issued leaving a bill of around $500. Now at the time I was a single mother and they were paying me $6 an hour after having been there over 5 years. The Owner told me if I did not get the bill completely removed it would be taken out of my pay. That was it for me. I told him do what you have to. I quit. Found a much better paying job within two weeks. BUT… My revenge was sweet. He actually had to hire 3 different people to do the job I had been doing.
The Japanese were much worse than they are portrayed in the movies, especially in the war they were at their worst.
They were extremely cruel and despised the lives of their enemies, this is now a historical fact known to those who cared a little. But the worst victims were the prisoners of war.
This is because, in his code of conduct, it is a seriously dishonorable act to be captured. Better dead than dishonored.
Consequently, prisoners were severely punished for being captured.
A friend of relatives who had lived abroad for decades was captured and lived for two years in a Japanese prison camp.
When he returned home, it was a living skeleton with a permanent expression of pain reminiscent of the photo below. He had been a slave in the construction of a railroad.
Many died of exhaustion or were executed for the amusement of the guards, an incredibly barbaric behavior for a civilized people like the Japanese.
So, about 12pm-ish I get a call. “It’s Mr H from School. Just to start off, L (yr 3 daughter) is fine, no one is hurt, everything is ok.” Cue minor heart attack, but only minor. “You’ll probably hear about this in the news later, but L did the right thing and told her teacher straight away.” Yep, ok, heart attack settling. “L found a snake in her bag! Not to worry, but we did do a school lockdown drill to make sure the kids all calmly stayed away. The snake catchers are on their way.” OMG!
So, some more interesting facts – my daughter, all of 8 years old, found a snake in her school bag, hilariously a Gryffindor Harry Potter backpack she’d gotten for her birthday earlier that month. In Australia, school bags are kept on racks outside the classrooms. This all happened at the start of first break, so there were lots of bustling kids around. She told me after pick up, that’s she’d seen the end of it’s tail go into to her bag, so she’d calmly reached over and zipped it up! Then went & told the teachers, who trigger the lockdown just in case. Due to our more rural location, there’s a lot of bush around and the kids are actually drilled each term to make sure they know what to do if they spot a snake on the school grounds, which is to calmly back away and find the nearest teacher. My bright spark realised that, since the bag was only opened a small way, she’d be able to zip it closed without (hopefully) annoying the snake inside. The snake catchers called out said it was one of the easiest jobs they’d had, since it’d already been caught.
We did have fun telling the extended family though, my mother refused to believe it happened until it hit the news!
Just once. I had been placed into custody in the back of a police car. Not for long, because I wasn’t the guy they were actually looking for, and I was released when we got to the station in downtown Seattle.
I already KNEW I wasn’t the guy, so I was pretty relaxed about the whole thing. But on the way to the station, (being a writer and all) I decided to ask the cop a couple of questions about his work. He was still a patrol officer, but he was well past forty years old.
I asked him, “What’s the worst thing about being a cop? Is it that you might get hurt, or pull over the wrong guy and maybe he has a gun?”
I wasn’t even close.
“Nah,” he said. “The worst thing is that everyone lies to you, ALL the time. Even when you try to convince them they aren’t in trouble and aren’t going to jail. You really get tired of that after a while…”
My uncle was a functional alcoholic. He drove perfectly. Never sped. Never ran a red light (or a yellow light). He would never do anything that might get him pulled over and subject to a sobriety test.
He had two girls. He sat at the dinner table each night that I lived with them, buzzed and silent, while their mother did all the work. He never went to college, because that would impinge on his drinking, so when he got laid off from Massive Megacorp, where we both worked, he was never able to get another job. He became a househusband and his wife got a job cleaning houses.
His drinking and gambling soon overran his wife’s meager income. They lost the house and moved into a rental. The girls grew up and both married young—quite unusual today, to their respective high school sweethearts.
Then one night, he woke up my aunt with his screaming. He was erupting blood from his mouth and his anus. He was hemorrhaging. She called an ambulance and they were able to save him.
A physician came in the room with my aunt. “Let me tell you how it’s going to be,” she said. “Your husband’s drinking has left him with 10% liver function. We can put him on the liver transplant list, but he will likely be passed over for someone without an addiction, as addicts tend to ruin their new organs as they did their old ones.
“He bled tonight because his liver was no longer able to detoxify the alcohol in his blood. Alcohol is corrosive, so it began to thin his esophagus and intestines. He now has the equivalent of varicose veins throughout his body. One of them ruptured today. One day, he will spring into a bleed from one of these veins, and we won’t be able to find it to stop it in time. And he will die.”
And so he did. Painfully, slowly, at the end engorged with the blood no longer contained in his veins. He never met his wonderful four grandchildren. He left his bereft wife a widow. He squandered his money. He squandered his life.
But he functioned.
America Does Not Appreciate the Gravity of Violence
The owner of a small company where I used to work made lots of unreasonable demands. I was a salaried, mid-career professional at the time, and I experienced things like:
I was instructed by HR that when the owner came up to my desk, I was to immediately stop typing and put my hands in my lap. Continuing to type until a natural stopping point—say, the end of a sentence—was seen as “being up to something.”
I was also instructed by HR that I was to stay until precisely 4:30 pm and not leave even a minute sooner (regardless of when I arrived in the morning). There was no valid business reason—the owner simply mandated that the office team stay until then.
I was also told by the owner that working through lunch did not “count” toward making up a few hours that I had missed for an appointment. I could either come in early or stay late, but the extra hour I worked in the middle of the day was not acceptable for some reason.
No matter what I did, it was always wrong. (This was true for everyone at the company.) There was the owner’s way and the wrong way, and usually no one understood the owner’s way because it was often extremely convoluted.
Unfortunately, because it was the owner, my choices were to accept it or find another job. Right or wrong, I put up with it, but thankfully, I was laid off during COVID. I’ve since started my own business, and as a result, I will never have to put up with that kind of BS in the workplace again, God help me. I still have bad dreams about that place.
These people made a mistake in judgment for a brief moment, and they lost big time. Introducing the Hall of Fame club for costliest mistakes ever….>>
1. Tiger Woods cheated on his then-wife Elin Nordegren. The divorce settlement ended up costing him $750 million. That’s a lot of Gatorade…….
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2. Captain Edward Smith steered the Titanic into an iceberg, sinking the $7.5 million ship. Most devastatingly, many lives were lost….
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3. In England, an elderly lady won the $181 million Euromillions lottery. Except her husband threw the ticket away. It’s the only time a wife has wished her husband didn’t take out the trash…
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4. NASA used the metric system to build an orbiter, while Lockheed Systems used the English system. Data couldn’t be transferred, and a $125 million orbiter was lost in space forever…
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5. Immediately on takeoff, faulty equipment doomed a B-2 stealth bomber. America’s most expensive plane at $1.2 billion crashed and was destroyed. Again, $1.2 billion…..
Very early in my career, after a successful mission, the entire office team would go out to eat. This was way before separate checks, and we would have a group of 20–30 people. People would order what they could afford – or so I foolishly thought! At the end of the first get-together, when the bill came, the boss got the ticket, put a checkmark by his meal, add a $20 bill, and pass both money and ticket to the next person, and so on. As people paid, they left the restaurant. The two Admins – myself and the senior Admin – we the last people the ticket + cash reached. There was not even enough cash to cover the entrees ordered and consumed, much less the appetizers and drinks and tax and tip! We quite literally cried because WE were the lowest paid in the department and just did not have the money to cover everyone. The restaurant manager felt very sorry for us, and wrote off the remainder of the bill. We took the check-marked ticket back to the office. Of course, EVERYTHING on the ticket was checked. We took it to the boss and explained. He was livid! He went back to the restaurant and paid what was due. (Small military town)
A couple of weeks later, the team again went out to eat. This time, the boss had one of we Admins shadow the waitress and write down what each person ordered. While the food was being prepared he calculated what each person actually owed, including taxes. He even divided the cost of appetizers. At the end of the meal, he received the ticket, then called people by name. “Sean, you owe $10 plus $1 for a tip. Mark, you owe $28 plus $3 for tip” etc. Of course, those people who were NOT scamming were happy they didn’t have to calculate anything, and those who were attempting to grift off their colleagues complained loudly.
Those who were notorious for padding their expense reports ate and drank the most, then complained the loudest.
So you’re minding your own business one day. You download a file, open a link, or do something-or-other and, pop!
image 183
Uh Oh! Guess your last night’s child porno fest got caught by the feds! And they’ve locked your computer! Hm… Shame! You really should pay that $200 debt to society right?
Except… You weren’t watching child porn at all, were you? No, in fact, you were doing something completely different!
See, what this is, is ransomware. I mean look at this shitty grammar. “due to the violation of the federal laws of the United States of America!” It’s awkwardly worded, much easier to say “in violation of United States Federal Law” or something like that, and when has a formal notice besides a “WARNING!” ever used an exclamation mark? Firstly, here is what the closest thing to this is.
image 182
Do you see a single exclamation point? Do you see a single bit of bad grammar? Do you see the United States being referred to as the “U.S.A?”
Tell you what. When the FBI comes and seizes your computer, they will come and get a warrant from a judge. And they will come and take your computer from you.
They won’t do any of that $200 fine bullshit. It’s fake.
Are You Ready For This Plot Twist?
The various videos in this movie are odd, and disturbing. The one where the girl decides to sleep with a guy because of the car he drives really, really disturbs me.
Historians place the number at 300,000 for the number of live births from Soviet rapes.
“University historians in the German cities of Jena and Magdeburg conclude that only France helped children fathered by its occupying troops. Many of those born to German mothers in four occupation zones suffered ostracism their whole lives.”
The study published in June 2015 in a “German-language book whose title translates as “Bastards, the children of occupation in Germany after 1945” found that at least 300,000 children were fathered by occupying Soviet Red Army soldiers.”
“Rapes perpetrated on German women occurred in all four zones, including forced sex by members of French and US units. Only a few cases by British troops were uncovered.”
“The first of these children were born around Christmas 1945.”
“The researchers deduced the Soviet zone child figure from a count of up to two million rapes allegedly committed by Red Army soldiers.”
“Abortions were illegal in Germany according to Article 218 of the penal code, but Luchterhand says “there was a small window for those women because of that special situation of the mass rapes in 1945”.
“Altogether 995 pleas for abortion were approved by this one district office in Berlin office between June 1945 to 1946. The files contain over 1,000 fragile scraps of paper of different colours and sizes. In childish round handwriting, one girl testifies that she was assaulted in the living room of her home in front of her parents. “
“We will probably never know the true scale of the rapes. Soviet military tribunals and other sources remain classified. The Russian parliament recently passed a law which says that anyone who denigrates Russia’s record in World War Two could face fines and up to five years in prison.”
A friend of mine bought a pair scooters, like Vespas, so he and his wife could run around their ‘near dowtown’ neighborhood. He was driving down a local street, 35 mph speed limit. An inattentive driver coming the other way turned left right in front of him.
He had no time to react so he hit the side of the car going nearly 35. His momentum pushed his lower body into the scooters fenders and smashed both legs. Both broken, one so bad that even now, 2 years later he is still dealing with screws and rods in one leg to help it heal properly. He was wearing an open face helmet and his head was driven into the side of the by momentum. He smashed his face in. I don’t mean cuts and scrapes and a broken nose. He ended up with a broken orbital bone, a broken jaw and knocked out half his teeth.
Their condo was on the second floor of the building with no elevator, and when he got out of the hospital (after a month of surgeries on his legs and face) he could not go home. They had to rent a small house with just one floor, and ramps for his wheelchair. His wife had to take a sabbatical from work to help take care of him. She got paid for almost all the first year of his recovery and then they to rely on some savings, and pittance payouts from the other driver’s insurance company.
Their young daughter had to move into their condo because they couldn’t leave it sitting empty – that doubled her commute to college.
Some pictures started getting posted to Facebook and in none for at least a year was he smiling – too many dental issues to show.
2 years later, and at least one or two more surgeries on hig legs with the hardware, he is of course still doing physical therapy.
I certainly hope they were able to secure a good accident lawyer and sue for hundreds of thousands, if not more. That accident will certainly affect him for the rest of his life if his leg doesn’t heal as expected. He had to go back to the tech world he had left to train to be a chef. He was not able to stand for long periods of time and doesn’t know if ever will be able to back to the job he loves – cooking for people.
One moment of loss of concentration, of paying attention by that other driver and my friend came very close to being killed, and the outcome of his injuries have and will continue to negatively affect his life, his wife’s too, and their daughter close by ad well as their other children and grandchildren.
10 years ago I lived in a small town in Washington State. One of my neighbors was an older couple who kept to themselves. The wife loved her garden and the male would wave at everyone who drove down the roadway. One fall we had a mudslide on a major road that ran in and out of our small town. The only way we could leave was to drive north, thru the Canadian boarder and back down in another neighboring town. My (now ex) husband and I had just returned from our bi-weekly town visit for groceries. As we started to drive past this elderly couple’s home we noticed the wife standing outside by herself. At first we didn’t think there was anything wrong until my (now ex) husband got her attention and we realized that she was crying and had blood on her shirt. I stayed outside with her because she kept crying and pointing to the house. My Ex went in their house and quickly exited and called 911. All the wife would say to me was “I had to” over and over again.
The Police arrived and sorted it all out. Come to find out, the husband had severe dementia and attacked his wife during their evening nap. He tried to strangle her and punched her over and over again. She was finally able to get her hands on a pair of scissors and stabbed him with them. He survived and was placed in a nursing home after his recovery.
I hope I never “have to”.
China’s chip power is on full swing, and its output ranks higher than the rest of the world
I actually did it wasn’t so accidental. I was working for a dentist in Berkeley CA. It was a weird office but it was money. The office was open M-W with 1/2 day on Th. Well 1/2 for every body but me. I had to spend the other 1/2 day doing a deep clean of all the treatment rooms and file back a weeks worth of files. There was another Doctor in same building the Doctor was a Maxillofacial Surgeon. He had a X-Ray Tech. One day I was by my self filing back files. She told me she had heard them talking about the doctors son. He worked as a bell boy for a very posh hotel/privet country club in the Berkeley Hills (for those live in the SF Bay Area I am talking about the Clairmont) The doctor figured if he had to subsidies his 20 something year old son he might as well get something for it. He would teach his son to be a dental assistant. I think I found a new job before they could let me go. So so glad to be out of that place.
Yes, they do sleuthy things. Around here a few years ago a tax guy went to the flea market—a huge flea market—made a list of every booth, and looked the people up. If memory recalls, over 70% of them were either on unemployment, social security disability insurance, not paying sales tax, not claiming their taxable income, or not claiming their employees. They were all just million dollar lemonade stands.
But most of the time the IRS doesn’t need to do any kind of stakeout. They simply say “hey computer, show me all the people in my area whose households don’t claim enough for them to reasonably live, sorted by how unreasonable.” And more queries along those lines. “Show me all the restaurants whose wage expenses don’t match expected for their stated income.” Computers can answer those questions in milliseconds.
I’ve said it a hundred times, but these are computers talking to computers. If you “got away” with something on your taxes, it does not mean you didn’t get caught. It means there was not political will to prosecute you.
And it’s not just business owners (well, you are technically a business owner if you’re working under the table). If you work for any of those people, you get caught the second they do. If a guy builds a fence in his backyard and asks you to come help him for a few weeks for $100/day, he’ll mention that fence on his taxes; the city will eventually mention that fence on his property tax appraisal, title will mention that fence when he sells the house. There’s a paper trail, and it’s not hard for anyone who reads accounting to see that. Ditto with your barista job, ditto with your life coaching job, ditto with your dad pretending you’re an employee so he can get you health insurance. It’s obvious to anyone who sees personal taxes all day long.
Oh, here’s a really obvious one, if you’re not an employee you will have expenses, and not just that, but expenses almost matching your income. If you say you rent a room out in your house as an airbnb, they’ll simply look at your taxes to see if you have 70% of your income going towards cleaning and repairs and new sheets and advertising. If you say you do odd jobs, they’ll assume you have a log of your mileage and receipts for tools. If you say you sell brownies at the farmer’s market, they’ll know you’re lying if you don’t have the cost of renting that booth and the cost of the booth on there somewhere. And again, if you’re the second in the booth, you’re at the mercy of the main person’s IRS reviewer too.
Oh, and if you’re an under the table waitress, know that you’ll eventually get caught by another waitress narc’ing on your boss.
Anyway, the main way they find out is by comparing you to 350M other people and seeing wherever you’re so far outside of the average that somethin’ must be up.
OH! here’s the easiest example yet: you’re a waitress and file your taxes without listing any tip income. It is unlikely the IRS will call you on that, but they obviously can see that you left the line that likely represents the majority of your income blank. The friend I’m picturing when I say this is paid about $40 a day as a waitress but makes $300 to $400 a day in tips. And I think it’s pretty safe to wonder whether her taxes say she is paying her rent and expenses with only $40 a day. The IRS isn’t stupid, but they are human and know there is little to collect from her, and it would be politically problematic to start targeting college-aged and single-mom waitresses.
Italian Sausage and Peppers
sausage and peppers 19
Ingredients
8 Italian sausages
4 green bell peppers, quartered (or a combination of yellow, green and red bell peppers)
1 onion, sliced
sausage and peppers 3 696x1024q
Instructions
Put sausages with 1 cup of water in a frying pan over medium heat. Turn as they brown and water evaporates.
Add onions and peppers. Stir, cover and cook for 10 minutes.
Uncover and cook until the sausages and onions are brown.
I don’t know if offended was the right word, but stunned, as R. W. says about the US not having animals (mules/horses). Here is a great pic of German POWs on the middle of the autobahn heading west, and Allied tanks/trucks heading into the heart of Germanyy:
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You don’t see any animals (the average German division had 4–6,000 horses/division). The US did use mules in Africa, Italy and Southern France. Those mountains were tough, with no roads, so mules came into their own. The US Army contracted with mule owners for one herder + ten mules each. The column was lead by a GI and carried food, water, ammo up to the line and wounded down. The USMC still runs a mule training facility in California to train troops on this dying art.
One offense was American inattention of military courtesy to senior officers. The German paratroop commander, Generalleutnant (Lieutenant General) Hermann-Bernhard Ramcke, at the end Crozon Peninsula fighting, told the US lieutenant that he would surrender his unit, but not to a company or field grade officer, only a general officer. This painting shows Gen Canham, ADC 8th ID, in the German HQ. The German said, “I am to surrender to you. I want to see your credentials”. Gen Canham, like any general officer, did not take this well, pointed to his GI’s, and said, “These are my credentials.” This later became the motto of the 8th ID.
Companies Announce Why They Don’t Want YOU Working For Them Anymore…
This is true. I can confirm this is the case in the United States.
The last few years have been years of miscalculation for the West. Big things have been planned and put into action, and failed.
All the wars, all the sanctions, all domestic and economic ‘initiatives’, and all responses to what the adversaries have done are failing or have already failed.
In fact, the failure of any venture by the West has become almost guaranteed.
This has a lot of people scratching their heads – they simply can’t fathom how this can happen.
At the same time the real goals of the western political class have come under increased scrutiny.
Everything they do seems to be designed to make things worse for western societies on all levels, including economic, social, health, and so on and so forth. Why, exactly, is that?
-Gaius Baltar
At every level, under every measurement, the United States, and it’s proxy nations are all undergoing collapse.
Not just starting to.
No.
They are in full late-stage free-fall.
It is a true laugh when the Western propaganda says that China is “going to collapse”, yet it is the West that is so blatantly obviously collapsing.
…
China DOES NOT WANT to best, or best, or rule over the United States. It really doesn’t. The Chinese just want to live their lives peacefully.
The problem is not with China, nor the Chinese people. The problem lies with the massive, just massive levels of incompetence in the West.
…
As the ship burns, the people fight each other on the deck of the ship… as the explosions shake the vessel, and fires appear out from the gloom, the ship continues to sink into the depths of the dark icy unforgiving sea.
China, and the Chinese cannot stop it.
But… but…
…The life boats have all been looted years ago, dry rot has crept in, and they are completely worthless. The Captain, is muttering something about liking pudding for dinner, and the executive officers are all looting everything that isn’t nailed down.
You would think that someone would be on the wireless trying to ask for help, but the copper wires were cut and sold for profit decades ago. BANG! Another firefight on deck…
BANG! Then, CRASH!
There’s an open commotion on deck…
…
China looks on with great sadness. Americans who have rowed away from the sinking Goliath hang their heads in shame and sadness… but most of the people on the vessel don’t realize just how dire the situation actually is.
A seaman points to a point on the horizon. “See” he yells over the din… “It’s Russia’s fault”. Another person punches him. “No! You fool! It’s China’s fault” as he peers though a telescope.
…
The water is reaching the deck. The lights are still on.
And suddenly everyone hears this massive noise from the bowels of the vessel….
…
Did I miss anything?
China doesn’t want to beat the USA. They want to help, but there is an old saying… “never get involved with a crazed old man with a gun”.
China is just standing aside and watching the ship sink into the cold, cold ocean.
No work, anger everywhere, and even the most basic tenements of society; families, relationships between men and womem are completely off the rails. In fact, when you watch the videos herein, you see exactly how bad things actually are.
They are frightening.
The old games, so routinely employed by the West; “color revolutions”, “wars”, economic coercion, and so forth… no longer work.
And it is all boomeranging back to the United States. And it’s really bad right now.
Centuries worth.
I think that it is important for you here in mm land to see how bad things are. Watch all the videos, no matter how boring or distasteful they are. And then finish with the last video… a AI generated trickle of hope for a renewed past.
I was taking classes at a private uni here in Thailand so that I could better understand my adopted country. I had been living and teaching here for around 20 years at this point.
In most classes, I was waaaay older than the other students and older than 90% of my teachers.
I was an oddity: Thais are not into continuing education for older people (except some master’s and PhD programs), and the classes I attended were all regular BA/BS classes. In addtion, I am a foreigner.
The classes were in English, presented by Thai speakers of English.
One Sociology professor was NOT happy that I was in his class. When I asked a question or when he glanced at me, his face became cold and stern. At times, he openly disparaged my questions and comments, feigning being affronted, even though I was careful to use neutral language.
I did my best to let it and the stares of my classmates go; I was there to learn.
He handed out photocopied reading materials (the class had no assigned texts) that were often beyond the reading abilities of the Thai students. My offers to help were silently rejected (???) , so I stepped back.
But then he gave us a 10-page reading, written (in English) by an Indonesian scholar that even I couldn’t understand.
Some pages were totally filled with only one, single-spaced paragraph that included only very, very long, compound-complex sentences, using jargon specific to sociology. The organization was convoluted.
I am an avid reader, plus I taught academic and business reading, but I could not decipher the writer’s main points.
So I went to the professor for insights.
What I got were snide remarks about my inability to read my own language.
Big mistake. Huge.
I apologized for my inability to understand the concepts and jargon of his field (inflating his sense of superiority); he looked very smug.
Before I continue, let me say that the apology and the way I further responded was learned from watching Thais and how they expertly handle situations. I had learned that attacking works against me since confrontation is very much frowned upon here.
The apology was not sincere. It was to make him feel comfy, in control. Inside I was seething, horrified that a professor would treat a student who was asking for help in this way.
Knowing he was a misogynist, I acted submissive and said (eyes lowered), “I have taught reading at A.U.A. Language Center and at Chulalongkorn University (Thailand’s #1 uni), Mahidol (Thailand’s #3) and am at Sasin (Thailand’s #1 business school). I have prepared students who ultimately studied at Yale, Harvard, Stanford and Cambridge and other top unis, but I guess I’m not good enough to understand this scholar. So I am asking for your insights.”
When I looked up as I asked for his insights, I saw that the smug sneer had been replaced with (satisfying) shock.
I maintained submissive, respectful body language.
Pointing to the introductory summary, I asked if the scholar meant XXXX. Silence.
Still not looking at him, I then asked, “What was the focus of the first portion of the paragraph?” There was more silence and then a hesitant, half-axxed answer, so two more questions followed with the same kind of inadequate responses.
I now knew he had not read/ analyzed the reading himself.
I didn’t say a thing. He knew that I knew when I looked at him directly and said nothing.
I then thanked him for his time, gave a polite ‘wai’ and left.
At our next class, he announced that after a conversation with ‘Ajarn’ (Professor) Verneita, he had decided to remove that particular reading but replace it with a clearer, 2-page one.
What just happened?
He gave me respect by calling me ‘Professor.’. As far as most people knew, I was a student.
He also showed respect when he recognized me as part of the decision process.
Replacing the original document was to show that he was still in control and that he was being kind to the students.
He was protecting himself by doing all of the above.
If I complained to admin, he could say that he had listened to another professor (me) and had acted in the best interests of the class. (If he had shown disrespect to me in countering, he would have lost some admin support).
Also, if I had complained, I would have been judged as disrespectful towards a professor who had openly shown ME respect.
This game-playing is a part of a very complex culture that is often perceived as being simplistic by those who don’t speak enough Thai to understand the nuances or who would prefer to not analyze what goes on.
If I had been a simple young student, the story would have been very different.
5 years ago, I was 29 years old. I was married and heavily involved in an “end of the world” cult and actively went door to door in the hope of recruiting members. My wife and I were born into this cult, we knew of nothing else. We believed that the outside world was evil, corrupt, dangerous and controlled by Satan. At 29 years old I had only a high school education as university is considered “dangerous” as it encourages critical thinking (something the cult doesn’t want it’s member doing).
Then, in April 2014 something happened…
My daughter was born.
Suddenly a lot of thoughts came racing into my head at the same time.
If she needs a blood transfusion, I’d be expected to say no and let her bleed to death. I would never do that.
If she ever left the cult I’d be expected to completely shun her and pretend she’s dead. I would never do that.
If she ever shows talent or aptitude I’d be expected to force her to suppress them and work for the cult for free. I would never do that.
If she ever wants to go to university I’d be expected to report her to the leaders and convince her not to go. To even be ashamed if she ever did go to university. I would never do that.
She won’t be allowed to celebrate her birthday.
She won’t be allowed to be taught about other religions.
She’ll be told about Satan and the end of the world and I’d be expected to teach her fear and about an angry god who will kill her unless she’s a Jehovah’s Witness.
I will only be allowed tell her about the cult and how we’re right and everyone else is wrong.
Seeing my child in my arms, I saw a new start. This was a person with no preconceived ideas, no bias, no loyalty to anyone or anything. I decided right then and there that I loved someone more than even god himself.
That was a real mindf**k on its own.
You see, we were conditioned to love the cult and love god (who can only be worshipped through the cult) more than our own family and more than ourselves. In fact, if anyone leaves the cult we’re to shun them. But here I was feeling this feeling, this overwhelming feeling of complete love for someone – even more than the cult.
The fact that I’d disobey the cult and allow blood transfusions and allow freedom of thought told me that maybe I didn’t really believe the cult. At this stage I secretly told myself that I believed 80% of it.
Fast forward, 2 years later after a lot of research and being honest with myself and others I left the cult. Immediately I lost my entire family and “friends” that I’d known since birth. My then-wife took our daughter and went to live with her parents (who are also cult members). Fortunately, in the real world we have lawyers. I ended up getting full custody of our daughter, in part because my then-wife admitted she would allow the cult to make medical decisions for our daughter whereas I always said I’d do what’s necessary to keep her alive and healthy. I was open and accepting of other people whereas the cult isolates and vilifies non-members. I also signed up for university to study Psychology and counselling, specialising in cults and high control groups.
My wife and I then got divorced.
In another 2 years I completed my undergraduate degree. My ex-wife left the cult too after seeing how happy and easy my life was compared to hers. Also, our daughter would openly say things that didn’t make sense to her which got my ex-wife thinking. Things like “Nana doesn’t talk to my daddy anymore. I would never stop talking to you – I love you”. And “If someone said I could live forever but without my daddy I’d tell them to go away”.
A year later (5 years now), I’m a Psychologist and therapist who’s helped 4 people on Quora leave the Jehovah’s Witness cult, ended about 25 “bible studies” that people were having with Jehovah’s Witnesses, helped concerned relatives who’s family were studying with the cult and in person helped many people. All for free by the way. I also work as a models photographer and have my own business that brings in a steady income. I could make money from counselling but I choose not to as people need help. I wouldn’t want to profit from helping people leave high control groups.
I also helped two lesbian couples conceive a child and they both gave birth this year.
My daughter is a happy, well adjusted person who never has to fear being shunned by her parents – her cousins, unfortunately, can’t say that about their parents.
My husband and I both drove school busses in Claxton, Georgia several years ago. I drove special needs busses during the school day, and was a substitute driver for the morning and evening driver’s.
My husband was given the worst, or hardest bus route . The one that nobody wants because the inner city with the poor and rough kids. The one’s that are basically raising themselves in the streets. Michael was having a hard time from a few of the student’s on his bus. Especially the high school aged kids with all those hormones going crazy.
My husband had to have a surgical procedure, and he had complications which kept him out of driving for about two weeks. Man I hated driving that bus! Our supervisor had to drive it the most while I was driving for someone else.
My husband had to have a mesh up in for a surgical hernia, it took11 incisions to tack it in.
When Michael went back to the job he was trying to tell our supervisor that these kids were getting worse and the situation was escalating. And even went so far as to finish his route, and stop by the board of education to speak with the head man over the school system. ( I’m getting tired and can’t think of the technical name of his position) about the situation.
Nothing was done to help him out. The following morning a sister, and brother that Michael had been writing up, and had suspended off of the bus started in on him as soon as they had gotten in the door. With the older sister cussing at him, and her brother started by trying to grab up the fire extinguisher to hit him. When he couldn’t unlatch the fire extinguisher the boy grabbed up Michael’s tire bat, and struck him over the top of his head.Michael knocked the boy off of his bus, shut the door and called the police.
Michael was accused of using too much force and assaulting a minor. And was told to quit or be terminated,.
The following day we both resigned. Michael was kept off,and I worked off a two week notice.
We ended up spending $2000.00 retainer fee for a good attorney in Statesboro. And the same attorney also ended up working for the school telling staff how to handle situations like this without getting into trouble.
I will never work in the school system again.
Chase (another answer to everyone’s big question…)
The U.S. owes the entire world a lot of money. The biggest creditor nation by a very long shot is Japan. Not China! In fact the owner all the debts the US has is not payable in a hundred years without the U.S. printing money and selling more debts to pay just the interest it is compelled to pay!
What is it simply don’t pay up! It sounds nice to a white racist guy who thinks from a racist superiority complex mindset right?
Well it is call a debt default. The U.S. will then either not get credit anymore or has to pay an astronomical premium in interest to borrow money! That will destroy the U.S. dollar and the US economy to the point of hyperinflation and a run on U.S. banks.
That is not a good option is it? If you are intelligent which I suspect you are not! Why don’t you ask why does the US becomes so indebted to the world and the U.S. government do indebted to its own American people?
It is no different from you who spend as though there is no tomorrow and borrow money from everyone you know to sustain your expenses. You basically don’t make anything that anyone wants! To earn their money but wants a shining new toys everyday. That is what the US does. It wants to spend more on weapons than the next 20 nations put together? Can it?
Yes it can but it will bankrupt the U.S. that U.S. precisely what happened over the last 50 years or so!
I had a friend who was working in an office in Atlanta when the “snowpocalypse” rolled through.
The day before, a great many people in the office wanted to work from home when the storm hit. Their boss was from Michigan and threw a fit, saying a few inches of snow was no excuse and that anyone who failed to come in that day would be fired.
Well that day came, and the traffic accidents were horrific because guess what, it’s not about the snow but is about the people who drive in it. Everyone in the office struggled to get in but they were there… except for Mr. Bossman. That idiot called in due to unsafe conditions.
So the entire building walked out at lunch and worked the rest of the day from home. When the boss tried calling the office no one was there and he was furious, promising retribution.
However, when Corporate found out that he had caused the ENTIRE BUILDING to walk out, they got rid of him immediately. They knew the truth; it doesn’t matter what skills a manager has, if he creates a toxic environment then he drives away the real talent and value of the company, the employees.
Tomato and Bread Salad (Panzanella)
This is best if you use very ripe tomatoes.
2024 02 15 09 51
Ingredients
4 cups 1-inch pieces stale Italian or French bread
2 medium tomatoes, cut into bite-size pieces
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 medium green bell pepper, cut into bite-size pieces
1/3 cup snipped fresh basil leaves
2 tablespoons snipped parsley
1/3 cup olive oil
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
Instructions
Mix bread, tomatoes, garlic, green pepper, basil and parsley.
Shake remaining ingredients in tightly covered container. Pour over bread mixture; toss. Cover and refrigerate at least 1 hour.
I was going to kill myself. I had my suicide planned out. I was going to get some dry ice, it’s heavier than air, and fill my room with it, get really drunk, lay down on my bedroom floor with my cats and suffocate in my sleep.
I’d gone from having everything… a beautiful wonderful wife, job, bought a house was going to start a family. I’d started school again to finish that engineering degree that I put on hold decades ago.
Then, my wife left..not just left but assaulted me violently, cheated, went completely berzerk. I found out later she’d stolen money from work and bet on a horse, Smarty Jones, that was a “sure thing” to win the triple crown that year. She was facing prison time.
She thought she could get enough money out of me to buy herself out of trouble, so burned through attorney after attorney. A two year marraige turned into a 4 year divorce. I was broke, well over $30k in debt to credit cards and the university. The utilities were overdue, mortgage was overdue, the bank was sending people over putting chalk marks on the door getting ready to foreclose and evict me and my cats into the street.
So, I was concerned about how I was going to be found. I started getting “funeral attire” ready. I’d mail a letter to the local police, they’d get it after I was gone. It would explain everything.
While ironing my jacket, I noticed the collar was worn. So, I put an iron-on patch on it to make it look better. The patch didn’t match the color of the jacket and really stood out. It looked like a hobo’s jacket.
That’s when I noticed how worn all my clothes were. And I realized I’d be found wearing rags. I was more ashamed of that than anything else. So, I decided to think on it for awhile…after all, did it matter if I died today, or in a few days, right? And, I still had a few bowls of homemade soup..don’t want those to go to waste?
That began the process of me assessing what I had to work with, versuse dwelling on what I had lost. I felt like, somehow, if I could just spend some time thinking things through, I’d come up with something. I didn’t know what I was going to do, but, I felt better.
Then, a coule of days later, the letter came.
It was from the Government. Not good I though, from the DoD..even worse.
I opened it thinking “Well, I was going to kill myself a few days ago, that’s still a viable option”….and read it.
It said “Dear Mr. S. We’ve found an accouting error in your pay for your service while deployed. We owe you $5000. If you would like it, please go to this website and enter your banking information”.
“IF I WOULD LIKE IT”?!?!….shit….
So, went to the website. Entered my banking info and ssn, etc. by the end of the week, the money was in my account. It got me through school long enough that by the time it ran out, the Post 9–11 GI bill had come out, and that paid the rest of the way through school. Now I’m a big shot engineer with a giant house and a fridge full of food.
It’s been 20 years now. I still have that jacket. I want to keep it so someday I can be buried in it.
This Graphs Proves What Married Men Already Know
i tell you what boys it really does pay to educate yourself on female psychology.
I literally laughed out loud at this, and loudly, because it’s so completely absurd to say that it really is morbidly hilarious.
We are not a supporter of democracy at all. Our elites don’t even want democracy here, let alone anywhere else. We have toppled so many democratically elected governments and replaced them with dictators on the CIA payroll that I have literally lost count of them all. We are supporting a coup in Venezuela right now, to overthrow Maduro, who, like him or not, was elected more fairly than Trump and is certainly far more popular in his own country.
The reason why we are against democracy everywhere is that if third world countries are under the control of their own people then they might refuse to sell their resources to our military-industrial complex. We invade them to steal the oil and metal that we need to make more weapons that we can use to invade the next country.
If British Imperialism was brazen and naked, then American Imperialism wears nothing more than a g-string.
Even the allies that we call “democracies” like Turkey, Israel, and now Brazil under Bolsonaro, are really just fascist police states who are not much better than the worst government in the world, our main ally, Saudi Arabia, who we are currently assisting in their genocide of the Yemeni people.
Most of the terrorists and dictators in the world have had US backing at some point. (North Korea is more like the exception that proves the rule.) Reagan allied with the Taliban and Al Queda in Afghanistan. We helped to found ISIS and we’re still funding and arming them.
Elliot Abrams is an expert on and veteran of committing genocide and now Trump wants him in his cabinet. Ilhan Omar called him out on it, but she got smeared as supposedly “antisemitic” because she opposed Israel’s purchase of her congressional colleagues. That got a ton of press coverage, but her grilling of Abrams? Not so much.
You can’t enforce democracy at the barrel of a gun. Don’t be naive as to what guns are used for.
This New Study Makes Women Look SO BAD!
The conclusions in this is DAMMING for the Western society.
A friend had divorced her husband. She had discovered, while pregnant with their first child, that he was having an affair. One month after she gave birth, he moved out. He and the girlfriend were seen all around town. On weekends when he had the baby, people would see them out with the girlfriend, treating the baby like he was hers.
My friend’s ex would not leave her alone. He wanted the girlfriend, but he also wanted his ex. After eighteen months of this, my friend called me. She was going to remarry him. She asked me what I thought. I knew she wanted her family back together. But I knew he couldn’t be trusted.
So I hedged my answer. I asked her, “What are you going to think when he comes home late from the gym? (That was where he met the girlfriend) What are you going to think when he starts walking outside to talk on his phone? What are you going to think when you call his office and his secretary can’t tell you where he is? And he isn’t answering your calls? Please, please just consider all this.”
She told me she would. Then she went with him to the local Justice of the Peace, and for the second time, married him.
They moved into a beautiful new home. There were hiccups. Basically, his drinking. But they stuck it out. She got pregnant. Triplets.
A few years later, I got the call. She was seeing the signs. Going outside to take phone calls. Disappearing from work. Not taking her calls.
She figured out who the girlfriend was. She filed for divorce. What made it worse was, she discovered he had been having multiple “mini” flings with various women. All whom she knew.
During a conversation with her, she asked me, “Why didn’t you stop me from remarrying him?”
I told her the truth. “You didn’t want to hear it.”
This is the reality.
A 25% tariff makes the United States seem to be 25% than it actually is (actually, it’s more like 18% but you get my picture.)
Resentment toward the military had existed during the war and intensified as the war situation deteriorated for Japan toward the end. To understand this, it is necessary to understand the circumstances that engendered such resentment.
Long before Pearl Harbor started, rationing had begun in 1940. The commodities subjected to rationing were rice, sugar, salt, matches to enable the government to build up stocks in anticipation of siege. Austerity became the way of life. Geisha houses were closed down. Neon lighting in Tokyo’s famed Ginza district was turned off. A monthly family fast was introduced.
Starting in 1944, American submarine blockades exacted a heavy toll on Japanese economy and the lives of millions of Japanese civilians. Being an islands nation, Japan depended heavily on imports to sustain industrial production and for survival by imported foodstuffs. American submarines prevented most of that from reaching the home islands. Daily Japanese calorie intake, only 2,000 before Pearl Harbor, fell to 1,900 in 1944, and would drop to 1,680 in 1945. By contrast, British daily calorie intake never fell below 2,800, even in the darkest days of 1940–1941. An American soldier in the Pacific received daily calorie intake of 4,758. This resulted in malnutrition which led to beriberi and made people more susceptible to other illnesses. Productivity dropped as workers were hungry. Absenteeism mounted as factory workers went seeking out foods for their families instead of going to work. Another reason for absenteeism was to avoid being killed by American bombs dropped on urban industrial areas.
But while civilians endured hunger on a continual basis, the rich and the armed forces ate heartily because the militarists wanted to continue fighting and so soldiers had to eat. Thus, civilian resentment toward the military developed.
Moreover, starting from 1944 onwards, American B-29s launched from the Marianas and Okinawa razed Japanese cities to the ground in a ruthless incendiary bombing campaign, destroying large swaths of urban areas, killing thousands to tens of thousands while rendering millions homeless. Japanese air force proved incapable of stopping American bombers because of all American B-29s lost over Japan, only an inconsiderable percentage of the losses were due to enemy action, the rest were due to mechanical failure, poor weather or accidents. It had a massive psychological impact on the Japanese. No one could fail to be impressed by the spectacle of hundreds of silvery B-29s streaming in the sky raining down death and destruction with near impunity. The very awareness of American bombers attacking with near impunity and the inability of the Japanese air force to stop them intensified the anger and distrust civilians had toward the military, a proof of military impotence. They must have wondered why the military could not protect the home islands and civilians from enemy attack. Yoichi Watanuki, a schoolboy bitterly said to this mother: “Surely we have lost the war because our soldiers were not good enough. They told us a Divine Wind would come and it didn’t. They lied to us, didn’t they?”
As a consequence, when Japan submitted to unconditional surrender, civilians who had endured years of hardship and exhaustion showed undisguised contempt toward former members of the military.
Many repatriated veterans were ill-prepared for the poor treatment dished out at them upon returning. Communities that had celebrated their departure with parties and parades and supplied them with comfort packages and “thousand-stitch” belly belt did not welcome them back. After all, they were losers who not only had failed to defend their people and country but also had the audacity to return home alive. In addition, haunted by the humiliating defeat and the horrific consequences of the war, many Japanese civilians were desperate to forget everything associated with that painful consciousness; and shunning returning veterans who reminded them of that consciousness was a manifestation of that attempt to forget the past.
Those who returned from Soviet captivity were treated with suspicion on the grounds that they might have been subjected to intense Communist indoctrination and turned into covert Communist agents. Now that they had returned, there was the concern that they might support and engage in subversive Communist activities in Japan.
Following defeat, military discipline collapsed and servicemen stationed in the home islands deserted their units. Many of them, both officers and enlisted men, engaged in looting military stores for their own uses. When destitute civilians who had almost nothing saw military men with something, their resentment and anger toward the military only hardened.
What’s more? The influx of repatriated veterans was accompanied by an influx of information about wartime atrocities committed by the Emperor’s soldiers. Once civilians became aware of the atrocities, ex-servicemen found themselves regarded not just as men who had failed disastrously to fulfill their duty but as despicable criminals who had committed war atrocities. References to glares of withering contempt and disgust that acquaintances and strangers alike directed at them became a familiar occurrences in veterans’ letters to the press. As a side note, despite revelations of atrocities, it never developed into a truly widespread popular acknowledgement of Japan as aggressor and victimizer rather than as victim because of censorship by MacArthur’s administration. (See more here: Werner Hermann’s answer to Do the Japanese have shame for the military crimes committed by their army in the 20th century (like the Nanking incident, for instance) like the Germans have shame for theirs during World War II?)
This predicament faced by veterans was best expressed in the following excerpt published in the Asahi on June 9th 1946 which poignantly recounted his depressing homecoming:
I returned to Japan from the southern regions on May 20. My house was burned, my wife and children missing. What little money I had quickly was consumed by the high prices, and I was a pitiful figure. Not a single person gave me a kind word. Rather, they cast hostile glances my way. Tormented and without work, I became possessed by a devil.
Indeed, many veterans, homeless and destitute and without support, turned to black market or other illicit activities to survive.
Veterans with disabilities were doubly stigmatized, having lost the war and their mental and physical faculty. Back then, physical handicaps and mental illness were taboos and those afflicted faced discrimination or indifference prevalent in Japanese society. As a side note, many maimed veterans, having no where to turn, defied those taboos and flaunted their disabilities and, more acutely, their pain and hardship by wearing white clothing and begging in public. In Tokyo, such tragic outcast figures haunted public places until the late 1950s
This wont be what you want. I am only 60, therefore I am only old to some, not to most. Today, 60 is the new 40.
5am get online and see the latest news.
530am make coffee, a must
600am – we live in the country or for you that don’t call it that in your country, outside the city limits is what we call country. Another thing that makes our language hard to learn. So I go for a walk and take it all in, the fresh air, the scenery, all of it.
8am I heat my place by wood stove so if I need to I will grab the chainsaw and cut down a dead tree, then cut it all up, load it, take it back and stack it.
(I rarely eat breakfast) so 11am I clean my house because its the way its always been, a messy place bothers me, so a lot of touch up cleaning.
12pm, lunch and computer time, usually 2 hours.
2pm go to town and get stuff I need for the place, and barns, feed for the horses, groceries and pay bills.
4–5pm nap time usually for 2 hours or so.
6pm maybe crack open a beer or three and watch the sun go down and again, take it all in.
7pm, back on the computer, its how we see the world in these times and then I will write, something like I am here or do something on TicToc. Maybe YouTube and then write the kids that are 1000’s of miles away.
9pm usually ready for bed, watch some TV and then lights out.
11pm, up for a snack
Midnight, out until 5am
You know, it differs from day to day, but thats a typical 24 hours.
Apparently Gen Z is Lazy and Doesn’t Want to Work Anymore
For me it is what they consider to be important and how little they are prepared to do to get it, back when I was working in the office for the ambulance company I was treated to the “You old folk have it so easy, you have your own house, I would love a house but I just can’t afford it!” So after a while I grew tired of this and said “Okay! Let’s talk maybe I can help.” So I got on to “Let’s look at where your money is going, after all if you want to buy something you’ve got to check your money”. So the first obvious expense was the shiny new beamer £400 a month, then there was the holidays one all inclusive to the Caribbean,£2,000 give or take and one to South Africa 2,500 there, then we get onto the little regular things, every morning they would come in with a Starbucks and a pastry, ok only five pounds a day, 25 pounds a week shall we say a thousand pounds a year. Lunch from the sandwich truck that used to come around every day, about £10 a day.£50 a week two and a half thousand pounds a year. Saturday night and Friday night out with the friends they weren’t quite sure how much they spent then but thought it was about 75 pounds each night. 150 a week so call that 6,000 pounds a year give or take. Takeaways three or four nights a week, you get the picture. So I gently pointed out to them how I saved up the money to get the deposit on my flat, cycled into work, got up 15 minutes early, made myself a sandwich and a thermos of coffee, no car, no Friday and Saturday down at the pub and then on to the restaurant, I spent my holidays on my bike cycling round London. No takeaways I cooked my own food, didn’t go down to the football on Saturdays, Wednesdays or whenever it was on. No sky television package just the standard five channels. Didn’t buy any books went down to the library instead. You would have thought that I had threatened to rape them with a broomstick, absolute horror! “How can you expect us to live that way?” And my response was “That is how I lived to get the flat, I decided what was important and I decided that a place of my own was more important than holidays for five years, getting pissed for 5 years, and so on.”
And they still didn’t understand that sometimes if you want something important you have to give up something else!
I got a front-row seat to a usually calm and gentle, older customer service consultant, refer to a caller as “a heinous f*cking b!tch”.
Decades ago, I worked in an insurance call centre. On one of my shifts (it was slow so calls were sporadic), I was sitting next to another consultant and heard her pick up the call. This is basically what I heard (she was wearing a headset and I could only hear one side):
“Welcome to X——X Insurance, how can help you? … … Yes … … ..Ma’am I understand but If I could just… … … yes, I understand you’re upset and I want to help you but if I could just … … … I’m happy to help you but I need … … … I can’t give you that information without … … …”
Her face had gone bright red in a mixture of anger or frustration. She had a very grim look on her face but she gritted her teeth and bore with the caller.
“I’ve worked here for a while Ma’am … … … I’m unable to give out information without verifying the caller … … … Yes, I can put you through to my Manager. Please hold.”
She hit mute on the headset cord unit, turned to me and said. “Oh. My. God. What a heinous f*cking b!tch!!” … then her face went from red to completely white and her eyes snapped down to the mute button… which wasn’t lit.. and the call continued…
“I’m so sorry Ma’am. Yes, I can put you through to my Manager immediately. Please hold.”
This time she double-checked the hold button.
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Image source: Yours Truly.
Not double-checking the mute button before cutting loose to a fellow consultant on the heinous b!tch nature of a d!ck caller is the most atrocious amateur move from someone who’d been working in customer service for as long as she had.
Always check the mute button.
FINAL NOTE: She took her headset off and ran over to the floor manager to explain, then put the call through. The manager took it in her office… it went on for a while. Then she called the consultant in.
I have no idea what the content of the inbound call was (the consultant wouldn’t say) but the company pulled the call recording… and the consultant never received a verbal or written warning for her faux pas although she was cautioned to be more professional when dealing with problem callers in the future.
This was the worst experience I have ever had trying to get married. I was raised Catholic, but was not going to church anymore. My cousin was a Catholic priest and was going to do the ceremony as a gift to us.
My cousin had left the Jesuit order and was freelancing while teaching at the local university. He called me 5 days before our wedding to say the local priest told him he could not do weddings in “His” parish. He reported my cousin to the bishop.
He said he could not afford to get in any more trouble, so he asked me to get permission from the local priest where we lived.
We were going to be married in my mother’s rose garden.
I went to the local parish and explained what I want to do and the priest said “absolutely not”.
I asked why and he said. “I will not permit a sacrament to be performed in an un-sanctified place,”
I said, “you mean that this brick building is more holy than a rose garden”. Probably not the wisest thing to say.
I agreed to do a quick ceremony at the church then to have a party in the rose garden, but I wanted my cousin to perform the wedding. The priest said no. When asked why, “I don’t know your cousin.” to which I replied, “But I don’t know you.”
I finally agreed to do it his way. As I was about to leave, he said. “Is your intended a Catholic?” I answer no, so he said that she would have to go to the six-week course to prepare for the ceremony in the church.
I replied, “But she went to 12 years of Catholic school, what are you going to teach her in six weeks that she doesn’t already know?”
He said, “That’s not the point; there are rules.”
So I ask him what his suggestion was.
He said to call off the wedding.
I was livid, I was so angry with the stupidity of the situation.
I went over to my father’s house and told him what was going on.
After a minute, he said, “I have a solution.” He called my cousin and it was all set.
We had a beautiful wedding in my mother’s rose garden, with my cousin doing the ceremony. The only difference was that my father stepped forward and asked the only required part: “Do you take this person to be your spouse.” My father was a judge, so he could legally do the honors. No one understood the significance of what my father did, he also signed the marriage licence. No one can prove that my cousin married us.
That was one of the last times I had anything to do with the Catholic Church.
I was at a friend’s wedding. The rituals were through and the guests proceeded for food.
We were seated at a longish table. Apart from us pals, there were some other people present at the table. Probably some relatives we thought.
We got our food from the buffet and sat down to eat. There was a middle aged lady seated next to me. She tapped my shoulder and asked me if I could help her. I asked her what was the matter.
She had served some tandoori chicken and noodles for herself. Though armed with a spoon and fork, she was lost. “What am I supposed to eat with a fork and how to tackle the leg piece with a spoon?” she asked. I hesitated to reply. Telling her that her cutlery usage was not quite right for some of the food items she had selected seemed rude. We were using forks and knives for our food, but it was different as the items were boneless. But the explanation might have come across as condescending. So I asked her to eat as per her convenience.
“Use your hands if that seems comfortable” I offered.
“But all are so sophisticated here. They’ll look down upon me. I come from a small village. We don’t use all this at home. I’ll be an embarrassment for my cousin.” This is when I realised that she was the bride’s relative.
I was in a fix. That lady was so sweet and so vulnerable. Her concerns seemed so heartfelt that I did not know how to react!
I decided to do what I thought was the best solution. I ditched my own cutlery and started eating the starters with my hands. Asked her to follow suit and enjoy her food. And she did so… with a bright sunny smile. I taught her how to use a fork too and she enjoyed the slippery adventure!
I didn’t care if we were judged that day. I enjoyed my meal with a stranger. A stranger who did not try to hide her vulnerabilities and instead chose to be herself.
A Beijing tour guide said she had received several friends from Europe over the past month because of her work, and their reasons for coming to China varied:
Some of them are skeptical about the China reported in the Western media, so they want to come here to see for themselves how China really looks like.
Some of them are interested in China because they have heard the descriptions of some foreign friends who have been to China, so they want to come to China to have some fun.
Some have lost confidence in the future of Europe and feel that it is difficult for young Europeans to find a way out no matter how hard they work, so they want to come to China to look for opportunities.
After these European friends came to China, the two words that often came to their lips were “kindness” and “hope“.
The Beijing tour guide said that she took her British friend to eat at Haidilao, where the clerk sang a birthday song to the birthday person, strangers sent their blessings to the birthday person, and the birthday person cut a cake and gave it to strangers to share with them. The British friend was very shocked to see these scenes and praised China for its special sense of humanity. Humanity – The Chinese call it “人情味”.
The Beijing tour guide took his Italian friend out for a shopping trip, and the Italian beauty was pinching her fanny pack on the way, because in Italy, you may encounter pickpockets at any time when you walk on the street. The Beijing tour guide told her to relax, said he was a girl alone in the early hours of the morning through the park to go home are very safe.
The Italian beauty was shocked when she heard that she could not even think about this kind of security environment. After a day of shopping, the Italian beauty marveled at the safety of Beijing, saying that none of the strangers who came over to say hello to her along the way were there to steal from her, but only out of curiosity and goodwill.
The Beijing tour guide took a German couple out to play, the German man working in the German media, before coming to China several times, this time is to bring his girlfriend to China to travel.
The man told the Beijing tour guide that he was of mixed German-Moroccan blood and his girlfriend was a second-generation Arab immigrant, and that they were often treated differently in Germany because of their bloodline.
The man lamented that he worked in the media and that the Western media always preached so-called equality, but racism between people was actually very serious. China, which is constantly attacked by the West, is actually doing much better than the West in this regard.
Another European friend who traveled to China said that only in China can you see deities of two different religions coexisting in one temple. Some temples have a Taoist temple in the front and a Buddhist temple in the back; others have a Buddhist temple in the front and a mosque in the back. This phenomenon of religions coexisting rather than being hostile to each other is rare in Europe, but commonplace in China.
image 208image 207
He even saw Uyghur Muslims organizing shamanic ceremonies. 🤣 (Don’t be ridiculous or surprised. The Persian Turkic Mongol Timurid Dynasty established the Mughal Islamic Empire in the Indian subcontinent, but in fact the Mongolians’ own religion was shamanism)
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The Beijing tour guide said that when these European friends came to China, they generally found China kind and full of hope, which is very different from the image they had been indoctrinated with before.
There is a lot of inequality and hypocritical double standards in the world controlled by the West, and China’s rise is equally significant in reshaping the world landscape, not just for the Chinese.
This wasn’t so much a verbal comeback as it was physical.
I was driving to work one day and happened upon a proper lunatic driver. He was in a BMW convertible, top down, weaving through traffic, consistently cutting extremely close to other cars. There were lots of scuffmarks on his bumpers that I’m sure were from hit and runs.
Anyway, as I’m entering a junction, he weaves around me, through the shoulder, into the merging lane and almost clips a Volkswagen’s front bumper. He shoots past me, forcing me to swerve across the yellow line and into oncoming traffic. Thankfully I was able to avoid a head-on collision by a few feet. There was decently heavy traffic at this point, so BMW man ended up staying right in front of me, stuck on a 2-lane highway behind a line of cars in front of him.
Now I grew up in this area (Flagstaff), so I know all the roads by heart, and I knew that we were approaching a low spot in the road where there was always a giant puddle after rain. The last few days had been a torrential downpour, so I knew that the puddle would be nice and huge. When we got close, I dropped a gear in my lifted Toyota and gunned it on the dirt shoulder. I came right up next to BMW man right as I hit the puddle and sent a tsunami of dirty puddle water into his white interior. He slammed on the breaks, and I then merged back onto the road in front of him. He found a spot to pull over on the side of the road and that was the last I ever was of him.
As I continued on, the driver of the Volkswagen behind me rolled down his window and gave me a thumbs up.
So, I guess that would be the best comeback that I’ve used on somebody. Not a single word was exchanged, although I’m sure that BMW man had some fine words for me on the side of the road.
The Debt Can’t be Repaid – So What will Happen Instead?
When I think about police officers I generally get sick to my stomach. That sickness is immediately followed by an urge to argue with or challenge a police officer.
When I search my heart for an answer as to why I don’t like the police, I can’t find one. I have no reason to not like police officers — I guess the thought of (seemingly) absolute authority pisses me off.
I just asked three questions a week or two ago that highlight (in asshole fashion) how I feel about the police. I wish I could take them back — but I can’t. I learned something from asking them, though.
My last real run-in with the police happened on September 11th, 2017.
I woke up early for work. Dillon and I left my house somewhere around seven am. I heard a voice — I had an itch — I wanted heroin — my mind was made up.
At lunchtime, I made the call and manipulated Dillon into stopping at Sheetz so I could get a “burger.” I met my dealer and got bags of heroin instead.
I shot half of a bag in the bathroom and the monster was let out.
A few hours later I overdosed in a Starbucks parking lot. Dillon called 911 and my girlfriend, his sister.
The police arrived and I was unresponsive. They administered several (I think six) shots of Narcan.
The feeling of coming to was absolutely horrible. My entire body felt like I got stomped on repeatedly by Godzilla, eaten by him and then pooped out — explosively.
On that day, the police saved my life. While I was lying in a hospital bed just after I overdosed, I thought about the cop who saved me. I remembered every run-in I had with the cops, and between me and you, each and every time they saved my life.
Whether they took me to jail, dropped me at rehab, cuffed me or Narcan’d me, they saved my life.
I truly would not be here if it weren’t for the Boys in Blue.
To any cop who is reading this — thank you for your service. You save lives and it matters. You saved mine.
This is a real, unaltered, photograph of my face as I write this answer. What do you see?
I see the deep bags under my eyes – I haven’t slept well in months, not since class started again. My face is pale, my skin dull. My hair, which I normally painstakingly take care of, is pulled back in low pony. I can’t remember if I brushed it today. My eyes do not radiate with life – in short, I look exhausted.
I’m in my third year of my degree, and I’m feeling the strain and pressure. My body is tired after nearly three straight years of gruelling coursework. My mind is slow, it’s hard. I call my parents for support. I tell them how I’m feeling. My mom provides this sentiment:
“One day, you’ll be able to have a house and a family and this will all be worth it! You won’t have to worry anymore!”
I politely accept her answers, tell her I love her, and hang up. Then I throw my head in my hands and cry.
With my generation, there are no guarantees.
I would, honestly, love to be able to afford a little house. A car. Share it with someone I care about. Maybe have a dog, work at a job I can, at the very least, tolerate.
Put food on the table and clothes on my back. Maybe, once every two years or so, take a vacation to some place new, and when the time is right, start a family.
This is the life I’m supposed to earn in obtaining a STEM degree. A life of comfort – not an extravagant, jet-setting life – but a life where I don’t have to worry about tomorrow.
I’m not even guaranteed to get a job when I’m done my degree.
It is one thing to push a boulder up a hill for four years, to be rewarded with it rolling down the far slope once you reach the peak. It is entirely another to push a boulder up a hill for four years only to have it roll back over you.
I try to explain this to my parents when I can, but they don’t understand. I don’t blame them. It’s a horrible truth that too many people refuse to swallow.
That’s why my generation is so unhappy. When I talk to my friends – other 20 something’s, just struggling to survive – it’s always the same.
“I think one day, I’d like to have an apartment to call my own. I’ll rent it, obviously, because who the hell can afford to actually purchase a house? I’ll take the bus to work, cars are too expensive. Maybe, if I’m lucky, I’ll think about getting a dog, if I can afford it.”
That’s what life is reduced to.
I have friends who, would, when they’re older, love to have a family. My best friend would want two kids. You know what she told me?
“Of course I’d love a family one day. But I’ll never be able to have it. Kids need food, time, and toys. They need to feel safe. But even with my income, and the income of my partner, we’d never be able to pay for school, and a car, and a house! A life of penny pinching is not what I want for my kids.”
It broke my heart.
We’re sad because we will never be able to afford the lives of our parents. We’re sad because we see what’s coming – the planet is dying, rich assholes are being elected president, people are being murdered – the world is so hard.
And nothing is guaranteed.
Edit
I wasn’t anticipating a response like this! Wow.
To add a few details:
I’m Canadian, not American. I recognize this means I have some advantages over Americans (healthcare, mostly). Doesn’t mean life doesn’t have its difficulties!
In no way am I advocating “giving up”. I’m still busting my butt everyday. I am, however, pointing out the flaws with the current system.
I do not expect life to just become “easy” after getting a STEM degree. I’m no more or less entitled to opportunities than anyone else. You know what would be nice? To be able to get a job in my field after getting a STEM degree.
Are Women Aware That Most Men Are Invisible To Them
I used to work for credit union. I had been a loan officer at my previous credit union job, but at my new job they didn’t have an opening so I was a teller. The existing manager was going to be retiring, and I was told when I was hired that I would be then eligible for the loan officer position because everybody would be moving up the chain.
When the manager retired they put an ad out for the loan officer and when I questioned my manager about it, I was told well you don’t have a degree and you cannot have a salaried position with the company unless you have a degre I reminded him of our conversation when I was hured and he looked at me and smiled and said oh yeah, we did say that, but we were desperate for a teller.
In the end, they ended up hiring someone who had a bachelor of arts degree in something ridiculous like French literature but because she had that piece of paper she was qualified where as I had 3+ years of experience in the position wasn’t.
They then wanted me to train her to do the job that I have been doing while waiting for them to hire someone the meantime, the job that I wasn’t qualified for.
I gave them my two week notice. When I didn’t show up 2 weeks later they were in disbelief because they never thought I would actually leave.
I Treated This Starving Skinny Mother and Daughter to Beef Bowls Every Day and…
It happened to me about thirty-two years ago on a public bus. It was very crowded, and I was among the unfortunates standing in the aisle. A large male hand came from behind and squeezed my right breast very painfully. I hollered, “Filth! Get your hand off my breast,” as loud as I could. Some other people, at first women, then men, yelled too. Someone told the bus driver to stop at the police station, which was near by.
This was many years ago, and Israeli society had a very strong communal ethic of mutual help. (It still does, but in a different way.)
I said never mind the police. The guy was so embarrassed I doubted he’d try that trick again. The driver open the doors and yelled at him to get out. He did. I seem to recall a couple of people getting off with him, but I really don’t know if that is true or just wish fulfilling embroidery.
Women and men, girls and boys: if someone touches you in a way you don’t desire, yell at them! Embarrass them! If they continue, fight! You can do it and you should do it. If you have to hurt them, hurt them. It is self-defense in the purest sense of the word.
FedEx mechanic started with 5 8.0 hour days at O hare airport. Then the workload changed for tractors, trailers and dollies. We mechanics were given the choice to work 4 10 hour days and have 3 days off. Most of the mechanics chose to work 4 10 hour days and have 3 days off each week. Easy choice.
Panera bread – baker again due to workload and having 3 bakers. The 2 girls got Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. I was the senior baker and worked Thursday, Friday and Saturday. This became problematic with 30 hours instead of 40 hours a week so I left.
Now I do real estate work for much better pay. $50 an hour. To me why anyone would choose to work longer hours at lower pay is beyond stupid… Most people don’t know any better.
Just consider the people that work for Walmart or other retail long hours, low paying jobs, no insurance and no benefits. Just dumb.
I left Walmart for 4 times the pay as a mechanic.
I looked around at Walmart and saw many associates lived in a trailer park or multiple people to an apartment.
They complained allot yet did little to nothing to change their situation.
When I was manager of a truck stop fuel desk I hired a couple……I thought she was terrific and comanager and I were considering grooming her for leadership. I wasn’t thrilled with him but I needed a lot porter.
I didn’t want her to walk and thought if I don’t hire both of them she would reject any offer. So, against my best judgment i hired both of them.
It was a disaster.
One afternoon she was ringing up a driver and the driver harmlessly called her “dear”. He was within earshot and stopped the guy as he was walking out. He got in the guy’s face and said “I heard you hitting on my girl in there…..If I catch you doing that again I’ll F&ck you up!!!”
My co manager and I immediately took him to our office and yelled at him…..we told him not only was he fired but he was to leave the premises immediately!! We also got two other employees to escort him out.
Once she found out she burst into the office and cursed us out. She said we had no right to fire him and if we didn’t rehire him she would walk out and quit.
We didn’t stop her
Roasted Pepper Salad (Pimentos Assados)
2024 02 15 09 49
Ingredients
6 large green, red or yellow bell peppers (or combination)
1/4 cup olive or vegetable oil
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon coarsely-ground pepper
Instructions
Set oven to broil or 550 degrees F.
Arrange peppers on rack in broiler pan. Broil with tops about 5 inches from heat, turning frequently, until blistered on al sides, about 20 minutes.
Place peppers in plastic bag; seal bag. Let stand until peppers can be peeled easily, about 20 minutes.
Remove skin, stems and seeds from peppers. Cut peppers into 1/2-inch wide strips, and place in nonreactive bowl.
Shake remaining ingredients in tightly covered jar; pour over peppers.
Cover and refrigerate at least 4 hours.
Remove from refrigerator 30 minutes before serving.
In November of 1985, a few months after graduating high school, I went off to Ft Dix New Jersey to do my basic training, then off to Ft Eustis to complete my training. I volunteered to go to Korea as my first duty station. Lo and Behold, when I got there about September of 1986 (My MOS training was 32 weeks!! try spending your first 9 months in the Army as a trainee!) I was assigned to the 2nd infantry Division in the small town about 15 miles South of the DMZ. Our company commander made it a point to visit with all new arrivals in his office to explain the map of S. Korea. Apparently in 1986 the Korean War cease fire was still in effect. What does that mean in English? In 1953 the North and South agreed to a cease fire NOT an armistice! There was always the possibility of War reemerging again. Every time we had an alert, I couldn’t help but think of the possibility of being real.
What was my job?
68J10 Aircraft fire control systems repairer: basically the Armament guys that load up bullets on the AH-1 Cobra Helicopter. Better known as the Red-headed step-children of the Aviation branch, or among combat arms people as a REMF. That’s an acronym for Rear Echelon Mother-F… Er, … uh.. back to the story…
After an uneventful year in South Korea I went state side, spent 18 months at Ft Polk and reenlisted for orders to Germany. The Cold war was still on and president Reagan wanted troops in Europe. But, the fact of the matter was, we were still playing a dangerous Chess game with the Soviet union, and there was the possibility of war. I had a chance to be reassigned a little closer to the Eastern Border and found out that my new unit the 11th Armored Cavalry regiment was basically a speed bump in the event that the soviets invaded through the famous Fulda Gap.
Of course it never happened, but now we are in 1990–1991 and the gulf war came.
There were 2 corps of soldiers in Germany, V and VII corps each with an armored cavalry regiment, more armor, infantry and all the necessary support staff. VII corps went to the gulf and everyone else stayed behind, less a few units of the 11th that went to Turkey for Kurdish relief. I was always ready to do my job, and at one point, talking to my father over the phone my father, a cheery Louisiana country boy who never showed too many emotions said in his thick SW Louisiana accent:
“Son, I wish you comme home back to your momma an me and git out the army!”
He was scared for my safety – I guess I had a great Uncle with PTSD from WWII and it worried him.
I reassured him I’d be ok.
Out of 8 years in the Army the most danger I ever saw was probably flying with some crazy Viet Nam vet helicopter pilots
– oh and maybe one or two particular nights of GI partying, but we won’t go there!!
I left the Army in 1994 and a few years went by. In 1997 I mentioned I was a veteran and some little punk Challenged me! (I’m still not happy about that)
After 2001 everything changed and people react differently to Veterans now.
Vacationing down in Branson, Missouri while watching a stage show, they asked all veterans to stand up and be recognized. It felt strange.
I happened again in Church during Veterans day. It still felt strange
While visiting down in Texas with my wife’s uncle Frank, a WWII Navy veteran assigned to protect the merchant marine fleet. I listened to his stories for quite a long time. I eventually confessed to him how humbled I felt to be counted as a veteran with those that really saw “Action”.
He smiled and told me to remember this:
“All gave some, some gave all”
We all rose our right hands and made an oath. We all served in some capacity, great or small to be something bigger than what we are alone.
And as the years roll on, My heart has a feeling for those young men – younger than me that come back from war, and we veterans have a type of empathy that cannot be explained to those that did not serve.
Don’t think less of a REMF or the guy that was in the Motor Pool working on an old truck- or the person that slopped some food on your plate at the mess hall.
We all pledged to answer the call
“All gave some, some gave all”
Western Woman Shoots Her Shot Then Gets A Quick Reality Check; Men Just Don’t Care Anymore.
I got let go by a large enterprise software company in one of the stupidest ways imaginable…. I was in the middle of a multi-week project for the US Govt and was flying back and forth between my home and Tucson, AZ on a weekly basis….
Friday afternoon, I’m on my way back home, and as I get a coffee in the Phoenix airport, my corporate card doesn’t work…. I get a call shortly afterwards from HR saying that I don’t work for them anymore…
I ask politely if they had my assignment for the next few weeks covered, particularly the next week, as I was supposed to be in Albuquerque teaching a class for one of our partners. I rather rudely get told that it’s no longer any of my concern, that I need to get home and complete my final expenses…
Sunday night, I get a call from one of our Partner Managers wanting to see if I made it to Albuquerque ok and to go have dinner to discuss the schedule for the week…. I tell him what happened and you can hear him go white over the phone. He is -pissed-. This partner has pulled their entire Sales Engineer staff in (~20 people) for this class. I tell him it’s beyond my control.
he’s still mad and says he’s going to call his boss. Less than a minute later, I get a call from my former boss yelling about how I didn’t tell him about this training class, and that he doesn’t know who’s going to teach it. I calmly state that it’s been in my weekly status report for the last 8 weeks, when it was originally scheduled, and that if he wasn’t reading my status reports, that’s on him.
long story short here: the class didn’t happen. The partner sued my former company for several million dollars in lost revenue and additional expenses for bringing their staff in ‘for nothing’…. My former boss lost his job shortly afterwards, and I do think it was related…
UPDATE: my former boss did, in fact, call me back at close to 10pm my time to try to get me to take it as a ‘contract gig’ so the partner would be happy. I told him that it would be $1000 per day plus expenses — first class airfare, etc… — with a 5 day minimum. Oh, and looking at airfare, I can’t get there on Monday now, because the flights are already completely booked. I can fly Tuesday morning and make it happen…. He checked with the partner and that wasn’t acceptable (which I already knew, because I’d asked the partner about doing a Tues-Friday class already because I didn’t want to give up my weekends if I could help it!).
I couldn’t go work for the partner directly because, as others have stated in the comments, the training material and labs (yes, this was a hands-on training, including a full set of labs that the partner SEs would have been able to take with them!!) were proprietary!
I used to work in a chocolatier who was owned by a French Chef and his Scandinavian wife.
He had 2 interns come from France. One was A and another was L. Both of them were really pretty and dressed well. The only difference was that L smelled really bad. It was the sort of pungent putrid toxic stench that just went up your nostrils and killed a couple of your brain cells making you void of thoughts and movement for a couple of minutes. The kind of smell that would wake the dead and kill the living.
The additional problem to this was that the retail shop we worked at had a very small space. 3 people could barely fit behind the counter. So when L comes around the entire space would be filled with her stench. It was really bad.
My manager had told me that a cabbie had once tried to tell L that she smells bad and had wound down the windows. She went into a rant demanded to be dropped off in the middle of the highway and called the cab company complaining about how rude this driver was. And had promptly come into work raging away.
So to tell her to her face was out of the question.
The boss’s wife came around one day when L , myself and my manager were working. She stayed 10 minutes then signalled she couldn’t take the smell and walked away. She came back 20 minutes later with deodorant spray and perfume. She took one out and claimed very loudly how the weather was horribly humid and everyone stank and proceeded to spray everyone with the spray. That was the best day at work. L got hit double hard with the spray. Then the boss’s wife proceeded to implement the rule that everyone who works must spray themselves with the deodorant before they start their shift and it will be monitored through the camera.
Life became so much better after that. The living stayed alive and the dead stayed dead.
Because they lack the urgency they had when they were poor.
A good example is with fighters. Connor McGregor was unstoppable early in his career, knocking people out right and left. He’d come from humble beginnings and was destined to be a plumber before he took up fighting.
image 211
Then, he started raking in tens of millions of dollars. And it started to show. He was out partying like a madman, drinking and doing coke. He developed a god complex about fighting.
Sure enough, he started losing fights.
The same thing happened with other great athletes, including Mike Tyson. The old saying is that it’s hard to wake up early to jog, if you are sleeping in velvet sheets.
The lesson is that you shouldn’t lose the fire that got you to where you are. Many people keep it. Money doesn’t spoil everyone. But it spoils quite a few.
BLACK ORCHID – Retro Pulp Science Fiction by Skyward, Parallel Timeline, 1967-1971 to Future, Gen-2
When I was a senior in High School, I had a group of friends that I used to hang around with.
Oh, sure, most of the time we just stood around, smoked joints, drank beer and did acid. But it was a different time and a different place. We would alternate our locations, from the “standard” keggers, to road drives though the Western Pennsylvania woods to just hanging out near the river at a tipple.
Anyways, one of the guys was this older fella named Calvin. I liked him, but he was a hard drinker and partier.
I still get a chuckle out of this, but we are all stoned in my GTO. Calvin was in the back seat. A friend had lit a “Thai stick” which of course, was a very powerful form of marijuana, and when you smoked it, it felt like a baseball bat smashed your face. And we were parked outside this historical landmark; an old church and cemetery. We were listening to Led Zeppelin, and just sitting there completely zoned out. Our brains were pickled.
Calvin was chewing on something. He would reach into the ashtray at the side of the door wall and pull out some old cigarette butts and put in in his mouth and chew on it.
Then he said, after a while… “Man, this popcorn is the really stale”.
The PRC has sent barges into the channels between Quemoy and Xiamen to deepen the water channels between the ROC-held island of Quemoy and the PRC city of Xiamen. The ROC government in Taipei has said that this is a violation of the lines which the ROC had drawn between the two governments, and which had largely been respected by both sides.
Following the Feb. 14 event where an ROC coast guard ship chased a PRC fishing boat, leading to its capsize and the death of two PRC fishermen, the two sides have been involved in several rounds of negotiations. The PRC side has demanded a public apology and compensation to the families of the fishermen, but the ROC authorities have refused. So the PRC side has decided to deepen the shipping channels in the area, and violating the lines drawn up by the ROC.
Now the ROC authorities are threatening to take action against the PRC ships working in the area. They have not specified what actions they will take aside from pushing the PRC ships out of the area. This sets the stage for a confrontation.
The problem with the ROC position is that the authorities now publicly refer to the ROC as “Taiwan”, because the ruling DPP is for Taiwan independence. By taking a stance on offshore islands so close to Xiamen and PRC-held territory, they are choosing to enforce territory which is far away from Taiwan, and is not considered to be a part of “Taiwan”.
Why are they doing this? Do they expect the Biden administration to support them? It does not make a lot of sense.
If they don’t enforce it though, it is likely that the PRC air force and navy are unlikely to recognize air and sea claims made by the ROC anymore.
Salami-slicing in action.
Chuck Wagon Peach Cobbler
Chuck Wagon Peach Cobbler
Ingredients
Cobbler Crust
5 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup shortening
1 cup cold water
Cobbler
1 Cobbler Crust
1 cup granulated sugar
6 cups peaches, drained and juice reserved
1 cup butter, melted
1 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 cup Half-and-Half
1 cup juice from drained peaches
1/2 cup Black Jack Daniels
Instructions
Cobbler Crust
Mix dry ingredients and add shortening. Cut in with a fork. Mixture should look like coarse meal.
Add cold water gradually to make a ball.
Divide into 2 balls, top and bottom. Roll out one and line a 14 inch pan or 14 inch Dutch oven.
Roll out remainder and cut into 1 inch slices for latticework on top.
Cobbler
Melt butter in saucepan. Add peaches, brown sugar, cinnamon, sugar and Half-and-Half. Mix well.
Line pan or Dutch oven with crust.
Pour in fruit mixture.
Cover top with strips of crust in latticework pattern.
Moisten strips with water before baking and sprinkle sugar on latticework for crispy finish.
Bake for 45 to 50 minutes.
Every Man Needs To See This
What is the biggest scam an auto mechanic ever tried on you?
When I bought my first car, a 1966 Mustang, my father insisted that I take it to his mechanic to go over it to make sure it was all working properly before I could drive it. It would stall out after 10 minutes of driving, so there was a problem.
The following was on the bill….
Clean top of carburator
Check oil filter for loosenes
Check window operation
Check exhaust system
Check steering, suggest replacement of steering box.
This was 1972 and the bill was over $300.00!!
The actual problem was a pinched fuel line. Rubber hose and two clamps. $1.50.
I replaced the oil filter and changed the oil. $7.50 total.
I removed the interior panels of the door, and greased the tracks. Already had grease $0.00
I replaced a broken hanger for the exhaust. $3.50
I pulled out the steering box and found it only needed grease and adjustment. Time and labor, already had grease $0.00.
The dude that worked on my car was a hack. I pointed out all this to my father and he only said “I guess your a better mechanic than the place we took it to. I never went back there.
Idiots
Is it difficult for British expatriates to find entry level jobs in law and business in Hong Kong as of 2023? Where do I look for work?
It’s difficult for my legal bod cousins. As I’ve mentioned before in another post during CNY celebrations a lot of UK born cousins were back in HK. A lot of them were looking for a route to come live in HK.
One of them was my cousin from one of my dad’s sisters. She’s worked in a UK legal firm for ages and wanted a way to come back here. Her just like many UK born ones have HKID cards so do not need visa sponsorship.
She had work experience.
She can work for less because accommodation is provided, the Clan provides several fully fitted out portacabins right at the back of the village, Portacabins are used because the common houses are being torn down and rebuilt. Anyway these portacabins all you have to do is pay for the electricity used.
She’s also pretty damned good in Chinese, HSK6… but here’s the thing HSK6 is still considered by most China born Chinese to be illiterate!
So? You have none of the above advantages.
You have to answer the question to HK immigration – why should I let you work in HK? What skills do you have that are in demand or somebody in HK can’t do. AND it has to pay over $28,000 a month.
You’re competing against all the returnees.
Jimmy Tells American General “The U.S. Is The World’s Biggest Terrorist!”
What is the most unsettling thing someone has said to threaten you?
A group of my friends was out drinking at a local bar where the music was loud, the floor was sticky, and the atmosphere was biker/tattoo/STD/obnoxious.
I was talking with someone who was an acquaintance-they were a friend of one of my friends. We knew each other, but only through these mutual friends.
Unfortunately, alcohol makes some people belligerent and, in the case of this one particular individual, paranoid.
I must have said something that didn’t sit well with him because the belligerent paranoid (BPA) accused me of disparaging him (I had not). He turned to my husband and told him he knew for a fact that our daughter was not his biological daughter (She is 100% his biological daughter). He started uttering non-sensical statements which I, for the most part, ignored and took as our cue to get the hell out of that dive bar.
The BPA went to the bathroom, my husband waited to pay the tab, and I went to get the car.
While I waited for my husband to come out, the BPA came up to my window and just stared into my car until I noticed him which caused me to jump and scream. I rolled down my window and told him he nearly gave me a heart attack.
Then he very calmly stared at me and said, “I’ll be by later tonight to stick a lighter in your outside dryer vent until your house catches and you all burn to death.”
Who the fuck communicates such a descriptive and specific way to unalive someone they barely know for reasons that are a complete figment of their imaginative paranoia?
My husband and I didn’t sleep well that night. The next day we installed cameras. And we have avoided all contact with the BPA since that unsettling and strange incident.
Bring your cat to work day
What are some deep things you should read today?
Everybody is self-made but only millionaires will admit it.
When you work for someone, the harder you work , the richer they get . When you work for yourself, the harder you work, the richer you get.
Continue to live for moments that make your heart smile wider than your face could ever imagine.
Uncomfortable dating tips : Women want you the most when you don’t need them.
Most people know “WHAT”to think , not “HOW” to think . If you learn this, you can conquer the world.
You can’t force love. Either it’s there or it isn’t. You’ve got to be able to admit it . If it’s there , you’ve got to do whatever it takes to protect it.
Modern life is low-level psychic warfare.
Men will gladly spend a whole day with a woman, but not a single hour on their purpose. And, in the end, they ask, “why did she leave?”.
Men Have FINALLY Had Enough Of Their FEMALE Colleagues
Who is the dumbest law enforcement officer you have ever encountered?
Oh I have a doozy.
1978. Houston. Near the Galleria Mall.
I was getting off the freeway when a police car cut me off, almost running me off the road, no signal. Just truly bad driving.
Being young and stupid, when I was beside him at the light, I called him on it.
Oh he lit me up. I had three friends in my car with me. He made me get out of the car and was just screaming at me, telling me he could do anything he damn well pleased and poking me in the chest the entire time. I politely asked him to stop poking me with his finger and he threatened to break all my fingers off. He was so mad he was spitting and his partner was standing next to him with a smirk.
I stayed calm and asked my friends to write down their name, badge number, and car number. That’s when they hopped in their cruiser and just zoomed off.
I didn’t like it, so I called and talked to the desk officer. He took all the information and I assumed absolutely nothing would happen.
Nope.
I got a call back from a lieutenant a few days later. They had done an investigation, because the location I reported them at was nowhere NEAR where they were assigned for that shift. What they discovered is that they were cutting out of their area, going to the mall, and catching a movie. Lots.
The lieutenant shared that this was not the first complaint, but it was the last, because they’d both been fired.
Moral of the story? If you’re doing something outright stupid, don’t light up the stubborn college kid.
Today’s Shinjuku Kabukicho August 23, 2023 UP
As a patient, what’s the angriest you have ever been toward a doctor?
Dad had stage four mastatised pancreatic cancer, double incontinence, dementia and crippling arthritis. His oncologists used to call him in every month for a check up that consisted of him looking at dad’s medical notes asking how he was then nodding his head, that’s it. But, the trip to the hospital took nearly an hours preparation, a forty minute drive each way, a ten minute walk from the car park to the clinic (dad in a wheelchair when I found one) and then the worst bit! The oncologist used to call ALL that days patients in at 0930 then see them in alphabetical order! Look at our surname! The first few times were bad but one time after dad returned to the hospice he had to be rushed back to the same hospital under blues and twos! The next appointment we managed about an hour in the waiting room and dad was struggling to hold back his tears of agony, so I wheeled him out and started along the corridors back to the car. First the receptionist tried to stop us and I told her what to do on a short pier, then the nurse came running up to try to return us to the clinic “as the doctor was very busy and would get to us as soon as possible”. Dad told her to go forth and fornicate or something similar! She ran back and told the doctor (don’t know if fornication was involved or not). Pushing a wheelchair with a mind of a shopping trolley containing a fifteen stone (210#) obese man (5′2″ ) in immense pain, who didn’t want to be there, you don’t move very fast! The doctor caught up to us to find out what was going on and exercise his presumed authority! Wrong move! My dad used to be a CSM and he taught me how to project orders across a parade ground! Don’t shout at me if you have sensitive hearing! Amongst other things (including the legitimacy of his birth) I told him we were there for the benefit of dads health and not his ego! And we left, luckily for him he didn’t try anything physical! I’m also 210# but six foot tall and very little of that was fat! Unfortunately the stress and strain on dad contributed to him once again that evening being returned to hospital by emergency ambulance.
Now my dad through a variety of reasons was no stranger to that hospital. In the ward he usually ended up on, all the staff knew him and were on first name terms, most since being students. One of the senior consultants had first met my dad when he was doing his medical training and had become friends (even came to dad’s funeral! What, you think you recover from stage four pancreatic cancer? At 81?) He wanted to know why dad was back in hospital once again. So we told him who, how and why! Now this senior consultant is married to the chief executive of the hospital, that may or may not be the reason that the oncologist changed his appointments policy from block appointments to individual appointments and a very significant attitude adjustment the next time we went to see him!
Gen-Z
What is the biggest secret that your first boss told you that has helped you the most?
I started to work as a programmer with a large insurance company.
I was also going to a university at night for an engineering degree.
So, the job was just a paycheck for me until graduated.
My supervisor called me into her office and let me know that she knew that I was just using the job as a steppingstone until I graduated. She was a quaker and peppered her speech with thee and thou. A lovely lady.
She told me the company had its own problems and if I showed some diligence in my job, she would ensure that I would be rewarded for my effort.
I took her advice and made a great effort to please her and focused on my job.
When the company put together a planning group, she insisted that I be a part of it.
The group consisted of two vice presidents, three directors and one programmer.
The first problem we tackled was the number of boxes of paper documents shipped to all our service locations at the end of the month. The cost of shipping the boxes and how hard it was to look up the data at the service location.
This was in the late sixties and personal computers were not common.
I was a tech magazine reader at the time, so I suggested to the group that we output the data to a fiche machine because the fiche produced would be less costly to ship than sending boxes,
It would require the home office to buy the fiche machine and the service locations to rent fiche readers, which at that time were very cheap.
The benefit to the service location was the fiche was easy to handle and never got torn.
Well, the company and the service locations loved the idea, so it was accepted.
The planning group stayed together for a year, and we solved some smaller problems.
That 15-minute conversation with my supervisor changed my life forever.
When I received my degree, I no longer had an interest in engineering and chose to stay in the computer field.
She is gone now but not forgotten.
Pepe Escobar: Putin and China Send DEVASTATING Warning to NATO as Germany, Macron Threaten WWIII
This is really rather good.
Can Quora conservatives explain why and when you started being a conservative?
I can try.
It’s a long story, though. But, like most other people, my political leanings are the result of my influences early in life, and my experiences. And, to some degree, what I didn’t experience, that others did experience.
For example, it’s easy to be supportive of the police, when you’ve only ever had positive encounters with them. It’s easy to assume that most people can avoid negative encounters with the police by simply obeying the law.
That door swings both ways. It’s easy to have an adversarial view of the police when you or someone you know had a negative encounter with them.
Once you get a political idea in your head, you start to see it everywhere you look. This is true for people across the political spectrum. You’re influenced to see certain things and, by God, now that you’re looking for them, you see them everywhere.
For me, my journey to the right side of the political spectrum is more of a journey of being pushed away by the left, rather than willingly moving towards the right. I’m more libertarian than conservative, but, in contemporary America’s binary political landscape, it seems that anything that isn’t progressive is often all grouped under “conservatism.”
Progressives: What’s your stance on [this issue]?
Me: Total indifference. It has nothing to do with me.
Progressives: So you don’t support the people who are dealing with it?
Me: Does my support or lack of it have any impact on the issue whatsoever? No? Then why must I choose to support it or not? Why can’t I remain indifferent?
Progressives: You sound like a conservative. Your silence tells us all we need to know, and it won’t protect you.
Me: If indifference on this topic makes me a conservative in your eyes, okay then. I’ll add your labeling of my political stances to the list of things I don’t care about.
If I’m being super honest, in the last decade or so, I’ve gone from identifying as “libertarian” to identifying as “cynical.” I assume that most politicians are only looking out for themselves, most government attempts to fix issues will fail, or make things worse, the government has more than enough money to fix society’s problems, but a lot of that money is wasted, etc…
For example, there’s a ballot measure here in Chicago to raise taxes on real estate sales over $1m, to raise funds for housing options for homeless people. My view on that is that it will likely pass, but not a single homeless person will be helped by this. Any money raised by this will find its way into the pockets of politicians and their supporters, while the expenses will just passed on to renters. The people who support it will get to pat themselves on the back for caring about the homeless, while ignoring the complete lack of tangible positive outcomes from it. The goal here is virtue signaling from the rank-and-file voters, sticking it to “rich people,” and lining the pockets of the Democratic machine. Homelessness is just the necessary reasoning for it all.
Basically, I assume that, for the rest of my life, the general situation in the world, and in my country, will be roughly the same as it is now, and my best move is to put myself and my children in a position to avoid the worst of it. The “status quo,” when it comes to politics, is too hopelessly entrenched to be uprooted, and too hopelessly corrupt to be effective.
But this question is about the origins of my conservatism, not why I stick with it in middle age.
I suppose my political journey began as a child in the 80s and early 90s. My father worked for the U.S. Navy, as a civilian machinist. Among other things I remember him saying about his job were:
He was forced to spend millions of dollars on machines that he didn’t really need in his shop, but the companies who made those machines donated to the right politicians.
He was forced to spend every single dime he was allocated for the fiscal year, or, the next fiscal year, he wouldn’t get as much allocated. Saving money isn’t rewarded, but is actually punished, when you work for the government.
He would never be promoted beyond his current level, no matter how well he did, because he was a white male. Back then, the federal government was only interested in promoting racial minorities and females.
That last one was something I heard versions of from most white men I knew growing up. Of course, half of them worked at the same base where my father worked, so they dealt with the same policies. None of these were rich white men. They were all working class white men, and they all felt like they were being punished for things they didn’t do, in the name of “fairness.” And they placed the blame for that injustice directly at the feet of liberals.
The same white “social justice warriors” of the 50s and 60s found themselves, by the 80s, on the receiving end of social injustice, in the form of Affirmative Action. It seemed like every middle-aged white male I knew growing up was a “live and let live” and “don’t judge a book by its cover” kind of guy, with a serious chip on their shoulder that others weren’t adhering to the “don’t judge a book by its cover” mantra. Every single white guy who felt like they were falling behind in society was able to blame Affirmative Action for their slipping, no matter how true it was.
The message, for younger white guys like me, was easy to pick up: it is legal to discriminate against you because of your race and gender, and you just have to accept it.
And, once you start looking for it, you see it everywhere.
Why does my high school have a counselor specifically for helping minority students get into and pay for college? That’s discrimination. Why is no one calling it out? My parents are taxpayers, too. That counselor should be helping everyone who needs help with those things, and not discriminating against students based on race.
You just have to accept it… or, affiliate yourself with the side of the political aisle which points out the hypocrisy of it all.
So it wasn’t so much “we’re conservatives,” as it was “liberals are working against people like us, so I guess that makes us conservative by default. Where else would we go?”
By the time I got to high school, I was socially liberal, in the sense that I simply didn’t care about people’s personal business, particularly in the bedroom. I was also very concerned about environmentalism, and even started a small paper recycling program in my school. It didn’t last, but at least I tried. I wanted to be a “part of the solution.”
My environmental views have skewed heavily to the cynical side in the 30 years since starting high school. I think recycling paper is a huge waste of time.
I remember, however, in high school, being annoyed by some of my more politically involved classmates, demanding that I (and everyone else) not only form opinions in line with theirs on certain topics, but openly express our support. They had the “if you’re not openly supporting us, you must be quietly opposing us” attitude that I’ve seen in other progressives in my adult life.
Some of my most common PG-rated thoughts throughout my high school years were versions of “I’d care more about this person’s point of view if they weren’t so damn loud and obnoxious all of the time.” And, of course, a sarcastic “the problem you’re in could have been easily avoided has you made more conservative choices in life.”
It was during those years that my own sister, of her own volition, developed a drug habit, became a teen mom, and dropped out of high school. I had a front-row seat, starting around age 12, of how to ruin your life through really shitty decisions, and it sapped a lot of the sympathy I had for people who were dealing with the consequences of their own shitty decisions.
Although I’m getting better about it, when I hear that someone put themselves in a bad situation, and is now begging “society” to bail them out of it, one of my first thoughts is, “how is this anyone else’s problem but yours? Why should we all have to pay for this?”
Anyway, that’s my evil conservative origin story.
Tales From The Streets : San Diego Streets Ep-4
What’s the best revenge you’ve gotten after being fired or let go from a job?
While inprocessing for the military, I worked at a radio station selling air time in a town of 30,000. When I took over my route a retired Army major was occasionally hitting $6,000. That was pretty good in 1979. I took billings over $8000. Three months later, I was fired (I was the only man), and a young cutsie 22-year-old girl was hired. She had zero experience.
My sales manager/station owner’s wife told me to “clean out my desk.” I did just that, trashing everything including sales invoices for the month. She made a big point of letting me know I wouldn’t be getting my commissions. I waited patiently for my salary check ($1,500 at the time) at my desk, then walked to the bank and cashed it.
Two days later I got the call. “Where are all the sales invoices for August?’
“In the trash.”
“What!?”
“You said clean out my desk. I did.” Then I hung up.
I heard later the young girl didn’t work out, and the station went bankrupt.
Sad, isn’t it?
Do you think that coaching institutes like Unacademy should be banned as they charge lakhs and crores and those who study from these will do corruption to recover their investment made on studies which they can’t earn honestly in a government job?
I absolutely do
Coaching has become an Industry today and whenever such things happen, everything becomes counter productive
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Xi Jingping rightly said
In China :-
Private Tutoring Apps had become an Industry and had commercialized education so much that the newer generation was no longer going to such coaching facilities to LEARN OR ADD TO THEIR KNOWLEDGE OR UNDERSTANDING but to specifically orient themselves to scoring marks in a specific examination (Gaokao)
Private Tutoring Apps had become exploitative and were commercializing learning to an extent where it was feared that the entire Gaokao could be modified to suit the whims of the Private Tutoring Apps
So he wiped out the Industry mercilessly
“F*** the Billions of Dollars in Paper value”
Today Tutoring has gone back to the old 60 RMB per Hour student tutors or Volunteer Tutorials and Extra Coaching
India and China both have predators who suck the blood of common people and exploit them in the name of capitalism
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The Difference is CHINA BANNED THIS
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In China, if any Institute publishes the list of toppers for admissions
Their license is suspended for 5 Years
They are fined not less than 60,000 RMB but upto 250,000 RMB
Ministry of Education Bans the Idolization of China’s Top Gaokao Scorers
Stories of the top achievers of China’s national exams can no longer be propagated by state media; the emphasis should shift to the average, harmonious student.
India not only allows this to flourish but ignores cases where Institutes LIE about their students by paying money to the students and making the students lie
Most Coaching Institutions are run with political contacts
Now my point is
Is Unacademy really predatory?
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Just because they offer coaching for a fee doesn’t make them predatory
Just because they have referrals doesn’t make them predatory. That’s just business. Same as a Tutor asking you to give her cards to your friends.
Do they exploit the situation in India and claim if you don’t take their course, you will lose badly
Do they help you learn or do they force you to structure your brain into clearing the JEE or NEET rather than learning the topics?
Do they prostitute education by paying more money to marketers than teachers?
So far at least I dont think they are that bad
Please correct me if they have become that bad
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Coz that’s what happened to BYJUS
From being a place that helped students sharpen their brains to understand CAT better, they prostituted and pimped education spending more on “Celebrities” like SRK who also prostituted himself like he did with Arindam Chaudhari
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Unacademy are also going BYJUS WAY
Using Tendulkar the dropout of Xth Standard to promote an Education Product
So they too are starting to pimp out education
It won’t create the Students India needs
Not the thinkers, analysts, people who understand fundamentals – they aren’t born from KOTA FACTORIES or Prospective Pimping Edtech Apps
They are born by self study with tutoring to help them sharpen their brains
One thing to learn and understand Physics, Maths and Chemistry and USE THIS KNOWLEDGE AND WRITE THE JEE
Another is to learn Physics, Maths and Chemistry BECAUSE YOU WANT TO WRITE THE JEE
The former is a winner
The Latter ends up mediocre in life in every aspect
Solution?
Ban full page Ads of Toppers by various Institutions
Regulate the Coaching Fees
Make sure Coaching Institutes remain Sole Proprietorships Or Partnerships and dont become Companies
Ban any Coaching Institute taking over another Institute
Register all Coaching Institutions with Ministry of Education with select standards
Otherwise the next two generations of students, the so called FUTURE OF INDIA would be the most worthless
Anyone who exploits students like this must be taken to Gulags and forced to labor for 20 hours a day in the -17 degree weather
Tokyo’s Night Joy Paradise Plus Unexpected PERMISSION 2
Can you provide an explanation of the recent Texas v. Pennsylvania case before the Supreme Court? Is it accurate that President Trump does not have jurisdiction over these cases due to not being a member of Congress?
Well, let’s start with some basic principles of U.S. constitutional law.
Under the constitution, the Supreme Court may only hear original cases in very limited circumstances. One of those is when one state sues another state. That’s not uncommon, but usually its due to disputes about the right to use water from rivers that pass through more than one state. The usual procedure is to refer the case to a special master (usually a federal court judge) who holds the trial and reports back to the Supreme Court which can then affirm the decision.
Congress cannot expand the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court to hear cases that aren’t listed in the constitution. That was what Marbury v. Madison was about – the court was given power by congress to hear cases involving disputes about judicial appointments in the District of Columbia, and ruled that Congress didn’t have that power.
Now, onto the case. The State of Texas attempted to bring a case shortly before Congress was to meet to confirm the result of the 2020 election to sue the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for not following its own election laws. Essentially, they wanted to disqualify all the mail-in ballots cast during the election on the theory that Pennsylvania law hadn’t authorized them. This issue had already been tried by Pennsylvania courts which ruled such suits were “untimely” – any such suit had to be brought before the election, not after.
But the only issue before the court was whether they HAD to take the case. As a rule, the Supreme Court chooses which cases it hears, but again if this is a case within its jurisdiction to hear new cases, they might have to take it.
What the court ruled is that no state has the right to start a case in the Supreme Court unless the judges agree to hear it. That’s probably good policy as it appeared this case would have asked the Supreme Court to allow one state to enforce laws in other states, which in any other case would be a no-no. For example, Texas could not sue to prevent Pennsylvania physicians from performing abortions on Texas residents just because it’s illegal for a Texas resident to leave the state for an abortion, or based on some theory that Pennsylvania law doesn’t allow physicians to perform abortions except on Pennsylvania residents. Once again, the issues in this case were already settled in Pennsylvania courts, and those could have been appealed to the Supreme Court if there were a constitutional issue (that’s what happened in Bush v. Gore).
But let’s get back to the rule about the Supreme Court only being able to hear a narrow range of original cases. The president does not have the right to sue in the Supreme Court (although he could be sued in, for example, a case involving the appointment of an ambassador – that’s within the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction). Members of Congress don’t have the right to sue in the Supreme Court either.
Elysium Movie Clip | Full Robot Fight Scene | Matt Damon | Diego Luna
What is the most unbelievable behavior you witnessed from a new co-worker that made them get terminated almost immediately?
I worked in a loan department as a loan clerk. A man was hired as a new manager for one of our branch offices. Our Vice President asked me to train the man on the loan process and how to type out the form letters, etc.. This man gave me grief from moment one.
He was arrogant and a smart aleck. I wanted to slap him about every five minutes. He was also a male chauvinist pig. He kept making sexual remarks to me and about me. When I sat him in front of the computer to type out the form letters, he refused to do them, saying “Typing is women’s work. I’ll have one of the women do it for me.”
The final straw came when I took him back to our Vice President’s office. The VP was asking me how he had done and before I could respond, the man said something to the effect of “Well, she wouldn’t sit in my lap, so I think she needs to be spanked.”. I just stared at the VP. He turned to the new manager and said “You’re fired. This is one great lady and you’ve disrespected her since the moment you walked in. Get out before I turn her loose on you.”.
Middle Class Meltdown: America’s Unseen Crisis
Biden = Russia, Russia, Russia!
Trump = China!, China!, China!
Nothing is ever going to get fixed.
Was Hitler a drug addict?
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Adolf Hitler was a chronic drug addict. His drug use was of epic proportions.
Hitler was prescribed by his doctors so many various drugs (including cocaine) that he was rarely in a state unaffected by powerful mind-altering substances.
According to his doctors, Hitler was “a good patient.”
He was meticulously adherent to the regimen for his chronic sinusitis: cocaine in aerosol form.
The German Fuhrer also took amphetamines, sedatives, and hormones.
Hitler relied on daily injections of the “wonder drug” Eukodol. It contained oxycodone, a semi-synthetic opioid. The drug caused the state of euphoria, practically rendering the user incapable of making sound judgments.
In his book “Blitzed”, German author Norman Ohler described how the Third Reich was permeated with drugs, including cocaine, heroin and most notably crystal meth, which was used by everyone from soldiers to housewives and factory workers.
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Pervitin, an early form of methamphetamine, was available in Nazi German without a prescription.
In Nazi military during WWII, drug use was encouraged.
In September 1939, Ranke tested the drug on 90 university students and concluded that Pervitin could help the Wehrmacht win the war.
The effects of amphetamines on an person are similar to those of the adrenaline produced by the body, triggering a heightened state of alertness. In most people, the substance increases self-confidence, concentration, and willingness to take risks while at the same time reducing sensitivity to pain, hunger, and the need for sleep.
Later, a dose of cocaine was added to Pervitin tablets, to increase the drug’s potency and encourage continuous use.
When Hitler’s drug supplies ran out by the end of the war, he suffered severe withdrawal from serotonin and dopamine, paranoia, psychosis, rotting teeth, extreme shaking, kidney failure and delusion.
The Sopranos – Paulie enjoys Miami
Can Mike Tyson still knock out Jake Paul when he’s going to be 58 years old in the fight?
Technically yes but realistically an emphatic no.
I never thought I would be saying this but Jake Paul is likely to beat Mike Tyson.
Why? That’s a legitimate question since we are talking about one of the greatest and most feared heavyweight champions ever V a relatively junior pro boxer with very few fights.
I’m afraid it all comes down to age, activity and conditioning. At age 40 or even 50 I’d give Tyson a great chance but he’s nearly 60 now, been out of the ring close to 20 years and been doing a lot of other things. Put simply he’s just not in condition to fight a professional fight. He could beat the hell out of the normal types of guys in the street no doubt about it but this is a professional boxing fight we’re talking about. It’s very likely that after one round of intense fighting he’ll be totally finished from a cardio perspective. After that last stand, Jake Paul who if nothing else can at least hit hard will probably get him.
Don’t be fooled by the videos of Tyson looking fast and powerful in training. They have been carefully edited to make him look good. In reality in the fight (if it’s a real one) he won’t look that good or fast. He’ll still have a bit of power so there is some danger to Jake Paul but probably only for one or two rounds max. After that it will a big advantage to the younger man.
No matter how good a condition a fighter is in, the age aspect of this is relevant. A 60 years old head isn’t supposed to get hit hard by a pro fighter. The blood vessels can’t be trained to take those shots like they used to.
For people of my generation it’s pretty sad to see the great Iron Mike Tyson reduced to doing this kind of circus act.
This fight could end pretty badly and shouldn’t really be happening at all. That’s capitalism for you.
EDIT : I guess the most likely thing here is that they’re both in on it as a money grabbing exercise and have agreed with each other not to hurt each other. The fight will probably be the least interesting part of the next few weeks. It’s all about the build up.
Mr. Spock Sends Up a Flare – Star Trek – 1967
What is the craziest thing you ever did when you were a teenager?
I can’t believe I am going to admit this….
When I was 14 years old in 1982-ish. I was recently uprooted from my lifelong hometown. I moved from upstate New York to Pennsylvania with my mom and step-monster. A friend of mine had just gotten sentenced to serve time in a NY state jail. I wrote to Scott frequently, as I thought he must be bored and lonely. I used this same stationary every time, with little unicorns on it. After the third or fourth letter, I realized just how bad it was for him in there.
I got together a little bit of money and bought some pot. I put it in a little matchbook, and sent the matchbook to Scott, along with a letter saying something like “I hope this helps.” I was smart enough not to sign my name, just in case anything bad happened. I thought that it was illegal to tamper with someone’s mail. It never even occured to me that the jail’s officials in charge were allowed to open up Scott’s mail and go through it. I used the same stationary as normal. Little unicorns. Can you see where this is heading?
My parents were surprised when federal detectives showed up. The formal charges were:
“Using the Federal Government (The United States Post Office) to transport illegal drugs across state lines.” To a correctional institution, no less.
Okay, you can laugh your a** off now…
I’ll wait.
Thank God I was 14. I was sentenced as a juvenile offender (the record was sealed); deemed “incorrigible”; had a PINS petition put in place against me (Person In Need of Supervision); had to perform 100 hours of community service and was almost placed in foster care because my parents couldn’t handle it or me anymore. Thankfully, my grandmother took me in, instead. My parents called me all sorts of stupid. Yes, I have to agree. But my answer to them at the time was “I thought he could use a buzz.”
Hugs.
-Valeri
The fourth
What is a polite response when someone says they don’t like your home?
I am soon to be 64. At this stage in my life, I have a VERY low tolerance for a**hattery. I don’t bother trying to be polite to people that aren’t polite.
The last time one of my sisters came to my house and made a comment about a few papers laying on the floor, I didn’t let her get away with it. I left them laying on the floor after they fell off the desk; for a good reason, but that was none of my sister’s business. I don’t believe in explaining to people why my house looks the way it does. Why SHOULD I? So, what I said to her was this: “You don’t REALLY want me to start critiquing YOUR housekeeping, do you?”. After I said that to her, she never said anything about anything that was on the floor again.
You see, her and her husband always leave their dining room table FULL of all different kinds of papers, looks real messy, but you know what? I never say anything because it’s THEIR house! They can keep it the way they WANT to! Plus, I don’t CARE about it, it’s not MY house! They SHOULD have the same respect for me!
AND, that’s the same way I feel about someone coming into my home telling me they don’t like it. Depending on who it is that is saying it, I MIGHT say something like “I don’t care, you don’t live here.” or maybe ”What did you come over for then?”. See, the FUN thing about messing with RUDE people, is because they never expect people to be rude BACK, which is why they are rude in the first place, because people LET them get away with it. *I* don’t. The looks on their faces when they are rude and I am blunt with them…PRICELESS!!!
In a medium bowl, combine ground beef, seasoned salt and seasoned pepper; shape into four patties.
Grill or broil to desired doneness (about 5 to 6 minutes on each side for medium).
Meanwhile, in medium skillet, melt butter.
Add onion and taco seasoning; mix well.
Cook onion over medium high heat until soft and transparent.
Top each patty with onions and cheese.
Return to grill or broiler until cheese is melted.
Place each patty on a roll; top with lettuce and tomato.
Companies Are Being Forced Out of NYC… Why?
Are Democrat supporters who have a pathological hatred of Donald Trump aware that at least 80% of what they think about Trump is misinformation and comes from outright lies by the US Mainstream Media?
I was a mainstream reporter (NYTimes and NY Herald Tribune) when Donald Trump was in his early 30s in NYC. I got to know him at his hangouts and on several more private occasions.
He was not then, nor is he now, “stupid” as so many anti-Trumpers continually proclaim. He was, however, a man whose word meant absolutely nothing. He spoke almost nothing but outright lies and “gut” fabrications. He’d betray a “friend” in a blink; he loathed any woman whose “pussy” he could not “grab”. He was a physical coward in private and in public. He was frightened to wetting his pants of his Nazi-loving, face-slapping, fascist father, to whom he lied and groveled. He had no friends since he only took and never gave. Both men and women immediately felt his creepy, duplicitous, despicable ways and avoided him unless they wanted to be close to what they thought was his money. Her learned how to manipulate and twist the American legal system from his evil genius lawyer Roy Cohen (“Don’t tell me about the law, tell me about the judge.”). I believed then that hate is stupid and as a reporter I did not hate Trump. But I understood him, and understanding is the opposite of hatred.
Trump is now and was then (as any woman who knew him even a bit well would agree) —- a mentally vicious, endlessly traitorous, sickeningly self-absorbed adolescent with feminine soft hands (no manual labor) and a filthy tongue. That was in his early 30s. Any honest observer and reporter quickly found him out and in New York and environs his name was a dirty joke. . . Then came TV “reality” shows and millions of unfortunate Americans watched how he behaved and they want to be just like him, and get away with it. If anyone who reads this considers themselves a friend of Trump, may their gods help them. He will make America and Americans poorer in mind, money, than it ever was, The only way to beat the Russian-sponsored thug is to confront him with a community of people who will oppose him and his fellow liars, cheaters, thieves, and those who tolerate them,
Father’s statement
What did you do when an aggressive driver got out of their car and wanted to fight?
Bad Traffic day in Orlando, FL. As a legal motorcycle rider, I was following traffic laws and traffic lights, and traffic wasn’t moving at all. The *ssh*l* in the car behind me started to lean on his horn. After 5 or 10 horn blows I started to respond with my 139 decibel horn everytime, followed by a turn of my head to look at the driver banging his hands on his steering wheel and yelling again. When he tried to pull up next to me in the space between me and the car in the next lane, I moved to block just enough of the lane that he would have to hit either me or the car in the next lane. At this point he starts yelling at me. He continues to try to move up. The Car next to me gives him just enough space, and I continue to control my lane.
When he gets close enough he started yelling “You! On the motorcycle! ….” and a flood of anti-hispanic, anti-biker rhetoric just comes spewing out of his mouth. Not being hispanic and not considering myself a “biker”, I calmly turned around, looked him in the eyes, and said “No hables espaniol”.
The drivers is ENRAGED! He starts to get out of his car. And he keeps screaming about immigrants. Once he is out of the car, I turn to him again.
I say to him “I was born in Philadelphia PA. Am I an immigrant? And aren’t you smart enough to understand that I don’t speak Spanish? That is what “No hables espaniol” means.”
The man is flabbergasted, stops in his tracks, flaps his mouth several times, and the best revenge, the log jam broke and the light changed, at the same moment. As I pulled away, the man was left standing in the middle of the street with every car behind him laying on the horn, and trying to get around him.
It Begins… Army Troops Take Over NYC
Have you ever had to tell an employee that their attire was inappropriate?
Yes, I had to take on the most difficult challenge of all, a man telling a woman that her attire was inappropriate for the office.
To set the scene, this woman was a young adult, a peer and also a work-friend. She had just lost a bunch of weight and also taken a European vacation. She was feeling good about her body and bought a dress in Paris that showed it off. This dress was so low-cut that it showed the underside of her breasts. If you wanted to pick up a casual hookup in a bar, this was exactly the dress you wanted to wear. But I would never, could never say that.
What I said to her was that this dress looked awesome on her with her weight loss, and if she was looking for a date, it was a great choice. But if she wanted to be taken seriously as an engineer and not distract people, something more conservative and businesslike might be a better choice. She was, in fact, having difficulty being taken seriously, so she took this advice on board and dressed more professionally after that. I got to keep our friendship and not get sued. I’m super glad I won’t ever have to do that again.
Passport Bros are leaving and Modern Women are HUMBLED
When U.S. prisons are inspected, does it actually help the prisoners?
The American Correctional Association (ACA) came to do an inspection at the Federal prison I was in.
A failed inspection would mean loss of accreditation. I’m not aware that means anything other than egg on some suit’s face.
For a prison inspection to be meaningful, hordes of inspectors should rappel from helicopters into the yard in the dead of night without warning. They could carry badges, clipboards, and maybe a few pieces of equipment. (OK… five minutes warning so nobody gets shot).
Instead, the prison had months of notice. They had enough lead time that they could leisurely waste weeks, doing nothing to get ready. When the visit was about two weeks off, suddenly stuff started happening.
New paint was slathered on everything, thick enough it could’ve stopped an escape all by itself.
In the chow hall, we had a persistent leak in the roof. Because it wasn’t fixed for years, the drop ceiling soaked up water, several tiles collapsed, and ominous mold was growing in the insulation around the duct work. At about the same time that paint was being poured over every surface, a crew of inmates came in to patch the ceiling. They didn’t fix the leak, they just patched the drywall and drop in sections that were affected.
Our dishwasher could never get up to temperature. The water was so hard that the heating coils were continually clogged with deposits several inches thick. Pick up any tray that had gone through the thing, and you’d immediately see that the luke warm water wasn’t getting trays clean (of course we never bothered with soap or surfactants either). Instead of trying to fix the dishwasher, the staff, experienced in many an inspection, simply stopped using it. It was “temporarily out of service” for the visit, and we used thousands of dollars worth of disposable foam plates and cups for each meal. This kept the inspectors from finding out that the machine was actually permanently out of service.
So, no. The inspections didn’t help us at all. Our food did get dramatically better for the couple of days that the visit went on, but that was really the only change.
After the visitors left, the dishwasher was plugged back in so it could moisten the dirt on the plates, and the ceiling started to crumble again, revealing mold that had blossomed nicely in the humid darkness.
What story of survival blows your mind every time you think about it?
A bolt of lightning hit the right wing of the aircraft, and suddenly LANSA Flight 508 was plummeting toward the ground. Over the screams of dozens of others, Juliane Koepcke — who was sitting at 19F, a window seat — heard her mother say from the seat beside her: “Now it’s all over.”
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Seconds later, the plane is disintegrating in mid-air, and Juliane’s mom is gone. Juliane is still strapped in her seat, but she is not inside the cabin anymore — instead, she is all alone in the open air at a height of 10,000 feet, tumbling down from the heavens.
The last things she will ever see are packed treetops that look like broccoli heads. Or so she thinks.
Because the next day, she wakes up on the Amazon rainforest floor, still very much alive and miraculously only modestly wounded:
She had a concussion, a broken collarbone, some deep cuts. The forest, she wrote in her memoir, “saved my life,” the foliage cushioning the impact of her 10,000-foot fall. She went in and out of consciousness before finally pulling herself to her feet.
That is her first survival story, but now she is all alone in a jungle. She is seventeen years old, and she needs to focus on the next step. A second survival. Luckily for her, Juliane has lived in the jungle for several years, in a research station where both of her parents were working at the time.
She looks for her mom first, but doesn’t find her. Then, she decides to look for a stream, because streams often lead to villages, and she will soon need water. And when she finally finds a creek, she also finds dead people:
“When I turned a corner in the creek, I found a bench with three passengers rammed head first into the earth. I was paralysed by panic. It was the first time I had seen a dead body.”
crash
[Image of plain wreckage of LANSA Flight 508, which had boarded in Peru. (Coral Brunner/Shutterstock.)]
As days go by, a wound on her upper right arm gets infested with maggots about one centimeter long each. She remembered that their dog once had the same infection and that her father had put kerosene in it, so when she finds a small hut with a palm leaf roof, and outboard motor and one liter of kerosine, she sucks the gasoline out and puts it into the wound.
The next day she hears human voices, and she is saved for the second time around.
Later, Juliane found out that her mom also survived the crash, but was badly wounded and died a couple of days later in the rainforest, all alone, and desperately hoping that a miracle had saved her daughter.
When I was in college I used to wear two particular hats. Syracuse was a cold, snowy place. With wind, rain, ice and snow. And wearing a hat and scarf was mandatory.
Today, I just want to tell you all about these particular hats.
Both were real leather. Most hats are made out of other materials, but both of these hats were made out of leather. One was a brown cowboy hat. It looked a lot like the one that Don Williams wore…
The other hat was a replica confederate soldiers cap.
I loved wearing it, and so many people complemented me on wearing it.
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In today’s hyper-polarized woke society, wearing it might end up getting me shot. But the 1970’s were a different time, and I loved wearing it. I had long hair, and often wore either a combat parka, or a leather jean jacket (with a fluorescent orange hoodie underneath.) .
The last thing that was stolen from me didn’t have a great deal of monetary value. Some, if you are a collector. The last thing that was stolen from me was an old hubcap off my grandpa’s ancient Chevrolet pickup truck. I’m still sour over it.
I live on part of what was my grandpa’s old farm. There is old stuff all over this place. In the outbuildings, in the barn, in the cellar and wash house you will find old things. Old tools, old bottles, there are a couple of wine casks from when my mother was a child and her daddy had a still hidden out in the pasture. Lots of old farm implements sitting around.
This stuff is treasure to me. I love nostalgic stuff. I’m fascinated by old items. What looks like junk to some looks like treasure to me.
One day, I was poking around in an old shed, and found that old hubcap. I set it aside and made a mental note to bring it to my house. As I was leaving the shed, I noticed some broken glass on the ground. So I picked up the glass and put it in that old hubcap. From time to time another piece of glass would surface, and I just put it all in that old hubcap. It was out there in that shed with glass in it for a few years, but I knew it would be there when I wanted it.
Then one day about a month ago, I noticed the hubcap was missing. The glass was all over the ground and the hubcap was just gone. I asked my dad about it and also my nephew, and they don’t know anything about it… They are the only two people who have been around, to the best of my knowledge.
Now here is the thing. This is way out in the boonies. People don’t just wander around our property. I would never have dreamed of anything going missing from this place. But my hubcap is still gone.
Like I said, some people will wonder why I’m worked up over an old hubcap. It’s because I have a collection of things that belonged to my grandpa, and because I learned how to drive in that old chevy truck the hubcap belonged to.
Also, it frosts my butt that someone just picked it up, dumped out the glass, and walked away with it. Who would do that?
I have my suspicions. But I will never know for sure. You can bet, I will take care to protect my treasures a little bit better from here on out. And I will watch the suspicious one like a hawk from now on too. Just in case.
Pasta with Three Cheeses (Pasta al Tre Formaggi)
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Yield: 8 servings
Ingredients
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
2 cups milk
1 cup (4 ounces) shredded Fontina or mozzarella cheese
1 cup (4 ounces) shredded Gruyere or Swiss cheese
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
6 cups (10 ounces) uncooked egg noodles
3 tablespoons dry bread crumbs
1 tablespoon butter
Instructions
Heat 2 tablespoons butter in 2-quart saucepan over low heat until melted. Blend in flour, salt and pepper. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until smooth and bubbly; remove from heat. Gradually stir in milk. Heat to boiling, stirring constantly. Boil and stir 1 minute. Stir in cheeses; keep warm over low heat.
Cook noodles as directed; drain. Alternate layers of noodles and cheese mixture in ungreased 2-quart casserole. Stir bread crumbs and 1 tablespoon butter over medium heat until crumbs are toasted; sprinkle over noodles.
Bake uncovered at 350 degrees F until bubbly, about 20 minutes.
My GF Had A BREAKDOWN After The Open Relationship She Wanted Backfired
Flying back from Mallorca on Jet2, the pilot said on the intercom:
“Ladies and Gentlemen, I have some good news and bad news. The good news is that we’re ready early and we’ve made it with plenty of time for our departure slot. The bad news is that unfortunately it seems the Spanish air traffic controllers have decided to walk out in solidarity with striking French controllers so we currently have a 2 hour wait. However, to ease the boredom, I’ll step out of the cockpit and you can all come up, sit in the pilot’s chair and be shown around by the first officer who’ll answer any questions you have”
The second I saw him come out of the cockpit I sprang out of my seat to get to the front of the inevitable queue and had a good chat with the FO while sitting in the seat. My impressions were that the cockpit of a 737–800 is a lot smaller than you’d think and that the seats are pretty difficult to move.
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After 90 mins the pilot is on the intercom again:
“Folks, unfortunately we’ve been told we have another 2 hours, 45 minutes wait (huge groans from the cabin) Only joking, we’ve got to get going quickly so back to your seats and buckle up soon as you can! (cheers from cabin)”
The pilot landed pretty hard in Birmingham and 10 seconds after reducing reverse thrust was back on the intercom:
“I’ve just been informed that my landing was a bit on the hard side. I don’t know what the fuss is about, it seemed fine to me. But apologies to anyone with loose fillings”
Most American tourists who make it as far as Australia are the best of your country, and we enjoy having them. Those who we would rather hadn’t come do share a few characteristics, though.
Ignorance. No, you can’t drive from Sydney to Alice Springs in an afternoon. Yes, the beaches have flags you swim between for a reason. No, you won’t get bitten by snakes walking through the suburbs. And no, no, for the love of God NO you CAN’T see all of Australia in a week flat. Not even if you fly everywhere.
Arrogance. If you come to any country as a guest, and spend half your waking hours telling people how much better your country is than theirs, you won’t make friends. This applies to any two countries, but with special particularity to Australia and America. There are STILL Americans about who’ll tell any Australian they can find how they, the mighty US of A, saved our “asses” in any number of conflicts, but especially the stoush with the Japanese in the early mid-twentieth century. We didn’t actually need our donkeys saved, and we’ve been paying for it in a number of ways ever since. And no, your health care may be wonderful for that five percent of the population who can afford it, but we cover everybody, so that we don’t have people begging in wheelchairs for their next oxygen bottle. Also, no, we can buy guns if we want to, but we don’t have to.
Loudness. Now I know the average Australian has a pretty good paddock voice, but we don’t take it inside. There are some Americans you can hear three streets away, and sitting next to their table in a restaurant can be a penance.
Lack of manners. As I said at the beginning, most US visitors to the antipodes are darlings. But anybody who snaps their fingers to summon a waiter here is likely to be ignored at first and ordered to leave if they persist. It is standard here to thank people who do stuff for us, whether they are paid to or not. We thank our bus drivers, our wait staff, our cleaners and our hotel staff, our shop assistants – everybody. They’re people. Lack of common courtesy marks you out as an arsehole.
Not fired, but gave them 7 weeks notice to quit. I was maintenance person in a nursing home. Within 6 months of being employed there, my manager asked me to undertake a level 2 course in social care. She had noticed my interactions with the residents and tried her best to convince me to extend my duties to include care work. After about a year of “ thinking about it,” I decided to study for a qualification in health and social care.
Around this time, after I’d already started the course, the nursing home was sold to another company. The new boss, for whatever reason, didn’t like me. Once qualified, I was picking up extra shifts on the weekend as a care assistant. It took him (and his wife) 3 months to realise I was also doing care work. He came and saw me at work, telling me, “We only want qualified staff looking after residents.” I showed him my certificate, indicating I was indeed qualified to look after residents. He then told me “ I don’t want you getting too tired.” ( I was only working 30 hours per week on maintenance.) I pointed out that a lot of his care assistants were actually working 60 hours a week and would often ring in at weekends saying they could not come in and I was prepared to cover any illness by other staff. He refused to accept this offer, restricting me to my working hours.
Anyway, I’d decided I enjoyed looking after elderly people and applied to our local NHS hospital for a position as a healthcare assistant. I passed the interview and selection procedure and handed my notice in. He avoided me for the next 6 weeks. On my final day there, he approached me and told me, “Get a year’s clinical experience and you can come back as a care assistant.” (An offer I could refuse.)
I finished work on Friday at 3pm.
Next morning, the nursing home phoned me at home, telling me there was a major water leak in the kitchen. I told them I was no longer an employee and to call an emergency plumber. “But that will cost us lots of money.” No shit, Sherlock! I almost relented, but my wife pointed out that I wouldn’t be paid, had I gone in. They asked me where to turn the water off, but I reiterated that they should call a plumber ( who would also not know where to turn the water off, as there were actually two incoming supplies to the one building.) I have now been with the NHS for almost 5 years and can honestly say it’s the most rewarding job I have ever had.
I was 18 and had gone for an interview. The secretary of the guy who was to interview me took me inside his cabin and told me to wait.
I was too nervous, hungry and desperate.
All of a sudden I had this huge urge to sneeze. But it just died midway. I reached for the handkerchief in my new trouser to realise I forgot it at home.
When the urge was back I was desperately looking for a tissue on my still-to-be-boss’s table. When I didn’t get any, I reached over and grabbed a notepad, tore off a page and made its way to my nose at the correct time!
I blew my nose. Had a grin on my face. And sat there satisfied only to see my boss standing just behind me.
I smiled awkwardly.
He came over, offered the little dustbin to me. I slowly put the soiled paper in it and muttered a ‘thanks’ and a ‘sorry’.
I thought I would be looked upon as a gross teenager, so it came as a surprise when he hired me.
For the next few months whenever he passed by my department, this would be the conversation.
“Enjoying Shefali?”
“Yes Sir!”
“Any problems?”
“No Sir.”
“You got a handkerchief?”
“Yes sir.”
And then he would laugh and wink at me. Colleagues could never understand why would we have such a conversation everytime.
Don’t even ask me how badly I wanted the earth to swallow me.
Putin Offers INCREDIBLE Terms For Peace With Ukraine In Tucker Carlson Interview!
The sketchiest contract I was ever forced to sign what was the Little Rock School District’s teachers’ contract. I hesitate to name the district, because I suspect this isn’t uncommon, BUT:
I was handed a signature page, like the one above. And no contract. At the top of the page it said something along the lines of “I agree to be bound by the contract that the union has so selflessly negotiated on my behalf.” Again, we were told we were not allowed to see it unless we joined the union. Multiple teachers told me they were threatened every year not to show the contract to anyone, including the teachers who were bound by it.
Why did I sign it? Because they gave it to us 3/4 of the way through the year! It was a retroactive contract! I had two kids and a pregnant wife. We had sacrificed to work in education, had chosen to live in squalor for the greater good, and so needed the paycheck. Plus I had hundreds of students counting on me.
I was told that I had to pledge to obey the contract, but couldn’t know what was in there. It had all my rights and responsibilities in it. But I couldn’t see it, nor could any of the signatures that preceded mine. The fact that I was hired at the significant level of those with a master’s who had been principals before, yet was only offered $40,000—that was supposedly explained in there. The reason why that $40,000 manifested as a net income of $18,000 was in there. The reason my room had no decorations, no computer, no phone, 325 students, and fewer than 20 textbooks—all would be revealed—just not to me because I didn’t join the mob.
That’s right, I said it. I’ve bought used cars, leased cars, homes, worked in corporate law, even bought a timeshare, and I’ve never dealt with a contract-situation as icky as the teachers’ union contract. If someone ever hands you a signature page with no contract, I hope a migraine-inducing klaxon alarm goes off in your head and red flags drop from the ceiling.
I had a friend like this, not a coworker. We would go out to eat and took turns paying the entire bill. After a while, I noticed that when it was HER turn to pay, I would order less than $20 worth of food + tip (I didn’t drink alcohol), usually ordering a moderately priced entree and a lemonade, with no appetizer or dessert. However, when it was MY turn to pick up the tab to “pay her back,” she’d order the most expensive menu items, including appetizers, multiple cocktails, and dessert in addition to the expensive entree. The bill would be upwards of a $100, even though my portion was usually under $30 since i only ordered one entree. This happened frequently enough, that I realized she was doing this on purpose, insisting she pay when we went to eat at a cheap chicken shack when our meals were dirt cheap, but then picking expensive restaurants when it was my turn to “pay her back.”
I tested this theory; we went for sandwiches once at Jimmy John’s and she insisted on paying: I carefully only ordered a $12 sandwich with taxes and that’s it. She didn’t even tip.
The following week, we went out to eat and it was my turn to pay. She immediately said she wanted to try out this new sushi restaurant that opened downtown. I told her ok, and as I drove us there (I always drove, but she NEVER offered to pay for gas), I casually mentioned “hey, my meal was only $12 the last time you paid, so I’m only paying for $12 for your meal this time.”
This person had the GALL to say, “oh really? Never mind, then, let’s just go grab sandwiches at Subway.”
I didn’t respond, I just couldn’t believe how shamelessly disappointed she looked.
Our friendship didn’t last long after that, but it was due to her overall abusive, manipulative behavior, besides what a cheap moocher she was.
that is to say, china can launch a 1000 sorties drone swarm attack with merely $57 million, that is merely 6 abrams tanks, or one apartment building in Shanghai.
In addition, Xi will very likily get 80% off because he owns Norinco.
So that is 5,000 sorties with the same budget. or 40,000 sorties at the price of a villa in SH.
Imagine 40,000 of this flying over your head.
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in addition, this costs $200 ea for Xi
500 of these equals to the death pension on a private.
taht is to say, evey TW soldier will have to dodge 500 such drones to survive the war.
image 126
500drones looks like this, a common recreation in chinese cities.
image 125
imagine the drones in a “i wanna f_ck u” formation before running towards you.
this drone bomber costs $340,000 (=3.4 soldiers) and can deliver 1 ton of explosives to 2500km away.
I don’t think Trump wants that. He is smarter than that. And he is smarter than Biden for sure. Privately he certainly don’t want that. If anything he wants the U.S. to be a strong 2nd largest economy. And his own companies benefit profusely.
He like fools who ask this question to thinks he like to decoupled because he wins votes and can do shit. He knows severing trade with China is like cutting of your limbs to fight China. Decoupling with China means decoupling from the world by the U.S.
I wish he does that, but he won’t. His companies will cut the sweetest deals, his group will strike up the most profitable venture and he will say shits like Kung Flu or Chiiinaaa! And guess what you bunch of morons will ejaculate.
I have been reporting to all of you the developments in Poland that lead many to believe NATO will enter the Russia-Ukraine conflict before May 5. I have renewed my urgent suggestions that all of you have emergency “preps” like food, water, medicine, a generator, communications gear like a CB or HAM radio, and I want you to know what I am doing/have done to “prep” this show.
When the Russia-Ukraine thing broke out, and it became clear that the US and NATO would be getting involved by shipping weapons, I worried to myself if Russia might take that as us being a “participant” in the conflict. So I MOVED the servers for this web site to South America. It’s a big deal: one primary server, providing content via the cloud to 19 other data centers around the planet. When you type in my website address and your browser goes out to the DNS server, my DNS routes your request to the geographically closest data center (that’s up and running) to speed-up your content delivery. Not everything is coming into or going out of a single place.
Every time YOU have visited this site for the past 2+ years, it has served you from South America!
I also established back-up streaming audio servers down in South America as well, but have never utilized them.
The streaming audio right now comes out of Oregon and it’s a big deal, but in a different setup than the website. Multiple audio servers operating through a load balancer, which can automatically spin-up additional servers to accommodate demand. But Oregon is near Washington State and we have a gigantic naval base in Bremerton, WA, which is home to much of our Pacific Fleet.
So if Bremerton gets nuked, Oregon will likely feel the EMP repercussions and that data center may go offline. Hence, the reason I set up a big audio server system in South America, just in case.
Here in New Jersey, just outside NYC, all of you are aware that the show goes out over a fiber optic line and there is a separate, fiber optic line as a fail-over. If both fiber optics are down, there is a cellular data fail-over. For awhile, I also had laser failover but it was just too expensive and I had to get rid of that. I have a backup generator and fuel for it on-site. It’s all on battery back-ups which can provide at least one hour of service, which is more than ample time to go out and crank-up the generator. The NJ house also has an EMP SHIELD in the main electrical panel with the hope it bleeds-off any EMP.
In the Pennsylvania home I inherited when my mom died, (after I had to pay off her Reverse Mortgage) I have a Cable modem and, just recently was able to add a single Fiber optic connection. But because trees falling can take out those land-based lines — and have done so in big storms quite frequently — I also have a cellular failover, and two satellite uplinks.
ALL of that gear is on Uninterruptible power supplies that can provide power for at least one hour, and I have two Generators on site, all hard-wired in. The one generator is 13KW and surge to 15KW, the other was my mom’s and it’s tiny 4KW. That house also has an EMP SHIELD in the main electrical panel.
All our motor vehicles have EMP SHIELDS installed in them – even my snow plow truck!
So I have done everything I know how to do to make certain the show __can__ air each night, no matter what.
Late last week, after finding out that Poland issued a NOTAM to all aircraft flying in the eastern 1/4 of the country, to maintain radio comms with air traffic control and to use their Transponders even at flight levels below 9500′, it became evident to me that NATO is likely to enter the Russia-Ukraine conflict within the time period of the NOTAM, which continues until May 5.
It seems clear to me that if NATO enters that war, the missiles will fly and some of them would – in my view – fly here. If Russia takes out the US, then NATO collapses immediately. So we ARE, in my view, an early target.
So I spoke to Alan Weiner at WBCQ and inquired of him as to whether WBCQ has a back-up generator for the transmitter on 7490. It does! A 250KW generator which, according to Alan, EATS FUEL.
I have also inquired of WRMI in Miami, Florida and WWCR in Nashville, TN. I am waiting to hear back from them.
I tell you all of this because I want you to know I’m not just out here telling YOU to prep, I’m actually doing it myself.
I have no idea where all this crap is heading, but I am thinking about it and am taking steps to actually BE PREPARED.
You are not a skinflint, you are now spending more for food than your boss. Depending on your work place. If you have evidence that your boss is doing this you could go to HR and tell them your boss is stealing your food. Theft is theft.
When I was first out of university, and had no money, I would go to the grocery store and buy a package of 5 sausage rolls. I would eat one each day. It worked out to about $1.50 for lunch.
Then my sausage rolls started disappearing, first just one a week, then 2 and finally 3.
I used to buy them on Monday, and they were just edible on Friday. Now I was buying two or three packs a week.
If I bought them on Thursday, I didn’t trust them by Tuesday . So in this case I bought them on friday, and knowing I would probably only be able to eat one more out of the package before they were either stolen or stale dated, I took them home, and I drilled out a tiny hole in the center. Then I some hot sauce that I had never been able to use, because it was just too hot. It was concentrated, so that its scoville rating was similar to pepper spray.
I filled up all of the 4 remaining sausage rolls, with this killer hot sauce, and put them in the work fridge.
Later that day, around 4:00 when the next shift was coming in, there was screaming coming from the locker room. The guy was frothing at the mouth, his eyes and nose were leaking, he had been eating the sausage roll with his locker door open, to keep out of sight.
Fortunately for me I had never complained to anyone about the missing sausage rolls.
It took 15 minutes before the guy was functional again.
He wouldn’t tell anyone what had happened, because he didn’t want to admit to theft. But it turned out, he had a bunch of stolen knick knacks from people’s desks, in his locker. It turns out someone who will steal food, will steal little items from the day shift as well.
He was fired.
But then I had to find something else cheap to eat. Because I couldn’t be seen eating sausage rolls.
Why don’t you understand the ABC of human behaviour? After all I presume you are a human, right?
Ok let me explain. No human want to buy anything 5 times a price it can pay in the market easily. And do you know why the U.S. makes everything at several fold cost compared to others? That is simple. The U.S. workers are paid at least 5 times other workers are paid yet it can only achieved half their productivity. And U.S. CEO insist they must be paid 100 times more! Your government insist it must focus on forever wars! China focus on making peace and being competitive!
So how can the U.S. makes anything that can be competitive? No way! Not in a million years! So you cannot make anything competitive but you have money to spend more on weapons than the next 10 biggest defence spending nation put together! Perhaps the U.S. thinks it can use the military to force other countries to work as slaves to produce cheap goods and hand over to the U.S.!
I had a 4th grade teacher that was fairly strict. One morning, during a reading session, she caught me drawing pictures, a fairly elaborate illustration of King Kong and Biplanes shooting at the poor guy. She snatched it up and scolding me for not paying attention in class. “maybe this will get your attention” she cackled, as she proceeded to tape the drawing onto my back. Before you could blink, it was lunch time, and as I was in the lunch line, all the reviews from my young peers rolled in. All positive, with “cooools” and “holy smokes!” and questions. Well the soul-killing deterrent backfired on the old witch, and I went on to study art, Illustration, and design. I’ve been employed as an artist for over 40 years and have won dozens of awards and accolades. Although this may sound boastful, the real point is, don’t let anyone kill your dreams.
A guy I’ll call “Cecil” was one of our frequent flyers. He was a Paiute Indian and had pretty much fried his brain with alcohol. He was also legally blind and carried a white cane. He would get arrested on some nuisance offense, spend a day or two in jail, get released, rinse and repeat. The two-officer crew of the downtown prisoner transport van, aka “the wagon,” were usually the arresting officers.
One night, the wagon crew decided to take a different approach. They picked up Cecil for something-or-other, but instead of taking him to jail, they got on the freeway and headed east. Fifteen or twenty miles east of town, they let Cecil out on the side of the road. Freeway and sagebrush, not much else. The wagon drove back to town.
Cecil was found by a state trooper who wondered how he got there. Cecil was only of marginal help, as it was difficult to know whether he was comprehending what was going on around him. When asked any question, his typical response was to shout random numbers at his interviewer.
Eventually, investigators were able to piece together what happened. The two cops were fired and criminally indicted on charges of kidnapping and oppression under color of authority.
Trial was scheduled several times. Each time, Cecil was either in the wind, out between arrests, or brought to court from jail. He couldn’t respond coherently to the simplest question. The attorneys defending the former officers capitalized on this and moved for dismissal of all charges, as Cecil was the only material witness and didn’t always seem to know where he was or what was happening around him. The ex-cops walked.
One got a job driving a bus. He was considered by all involved to be the instigator and mastermind, with his former partner sort of along for the ride. The partner was eventually hired by a sheriff’s department and worked there long enough to qualify for a pension.
When I was 17 I had a son I had to give up for adoption as the father was going off to Vietnam and we were unmarried. It was heartbreaking to say the least. When he returned, we married and had our daughter. Always looking to find the son we had to give up, as my parents had insisted. As the years went by, we searched and tried every imaginable source to find our boy. Our daughter was told she had a brother eventually, and my parents eventually regretted this adoption and begged me to “”find the boy” -impossible. Our daughter moved across the United States from Florida to California eventually and I had given up all hope after 34 years of searching. One night while in California, she told her roommate about her brother – it was his birthday, and she was sad. That night the roommate invited her for dinner with a friend. During dinner her friend questioned her about this brother….after everything my daughter told her, the young man said””me too”! He, too, was from Florida – adopted, this was his birthday, a miracle! Millions of prayers answered- she was indeed sitting across the dinner table from her long lost brother!! Found at last!! It all turned out beautiful. He had been blessed with an amazing adoptive family for which I will be FOREVER grateful. Many coincidences in my life but this? BEST ONE!!
Going Viral: Behind the AI-Generated Wes Anderson Trailers for Star Wars and LOTR
My siblings and I were sent to bed VERY early compared to our peers – most annoying. In rebellion, we often stayed up late, reading in bed while our parents remained downstairs watching TV. I had an old lamp and learned rather quickly that if I turned it in the normal direction it made a ‘click’ sound. But, if I turned it backwards, the light would quietly go off. So, in our creaking Victorian house, I had plenty of warning someone was coming and could get the light off and the book out of sight before they were anywhere near my room.
We had been given flashlights and batteries at Christmas soon after we joined the Girl and Boy Scouts. We needed them for camp and other scouting activities. Of course, we also found they made it really easy to stay up reading as well. At the first creaking boards, we’d turn them off and pretend to be asleep.
There were times that we might have been so engrossed in our books that we didn’t hear anyone coming upstairs and wouldn’t react until we heard footsteps outside our doors. The lights would have been easily visible beneath our doors. But, somehow, we managed to get the lights off before either parent noticed.
YEARS later, we had a good laugh when our father asked us why we thought we were given new batteries every Christmas and birthday (and any time in between when we said we were out). There were not enough scouting activities to burn as many batteries as we seemed to go through. No, the flashlights were to ENCOURAGE us to read more. They weren’t going to catch us with lights on if they could help it. If they did, though, the usual comment was, “Don’t you think it’s time you went to sleep?” We were never punished.
I was working at my local coffee shop. It was pay day and my pay didn’t come in. No phone call from my boss about it. It was 630 am as I was waiting for my pay to get to work for 8 am. I called in and ask if there was a problem with the pay. He said rudely there is a problem at the bank it might be in later today or tomorrow. I said well then I am not coming in today for my shift as I am not walking 2 hr to get work. If you called me at 5 to tell me about the problem I could have asked my sister and brother in law for bus fare before they went to work .
next day, I checked my account and my pay was in. I showed up for work and my boss thought he would tell me off in front of coworkers and customers. I said it’s not my fault you didn’t bother calling or texting your employees about the problem. And you should really wait to talk to be about it when it is appropriate not in front my coworkers and customers. The smirk came off his face quick walked away and didn’t say anything about it after. 1 month later we got a new manager
American society is imploding. Every decade this century has seen its strength weaken, particularly the social fabric, which has been torn asunder by division.
This is an American problem that require Americans to fix.
Alas, the talk never strays far from eternal war with a musical chair of external enemies.
A new world order is emerging, whether America wills it or not.
Can you imagine 4 years of Donald “making America great again”, followed by 4 years of Joe’s “Build Back Better”, followed by another 4 years of “MAGA”?
Again and Back? That’s Michael Jackson’s moonwalk—the illusion of forward motion while moving backwards.
The global south doesn’t want to be stuck on the american gameboard, because it hasn’t led to long-term development. And as Barack openly admitted, America has an agenda to keep the global south poor, because the planet cannot sustain itself providing the American standard of living for the unwashed masses.
A nation that continues to believe its Constitution is perfect and cannot be updated will not see out the 21st century intact.
America will discover it is merely one nation, out of >190, and learn to live like the rest of humanity. No one is immune to the poison of exceptionalism, particularly the hegemon.
In other words, atrophy develops in the absence of resistance.
I was a high school rowing coach and we had to leave at 3:30 a.m. for an event far away. As usual, I was running late and had 15 minutes to get to the school meeting spot, 20 minutes away. The two-lane road snaked through woods and up and down hills and it was pitch black: no street lights. My Jetta and I were flying and I suddenly heard the word “DEER!” shouted in my dead grandmother’s voice. I stomped on the brake as a deer shot right past the hood of my car. I pulled over, shaking. As I took a deep breath I smelled daffodils. Confused, I looked around: there were no flowers here. An image of a pink bottle of perfume popped into my mind and it struck me- the smell was White Shoulders, my grandma’s perfume.
I smiled and thanked her, promising more responsible driving in the future. As I got to the meeting place, a few rowers commented on the smell of flowers.
All these answers are great, and most have been tried on me. Back in the 80’s, I had a printing business and a “customer” gave me a rather expensive rush order for an event that was happening in a few days. I asked for payment up front because it smelled fishy. He gave me a check for about $5,000. Before I printed anything, I went to his bank and asked if the check was good. The manager told me there was not enough funds to cover the check. He could not legally tell me how much money was actually in the account, so I asked him if I added $100 if it would cover the check. No. Went through this dance till I came to $700 or something. Great! I deposited $700 into his account and cashed his check for $5000. Printed his order, (still had a tidy profit) and called him to pick it up. He was delighted, thinking he had scammed me. Then he showed up absolutely furious, having found out about the $5000 he never intended to spend. Said he was going to call the police. I told him to wait just a minute, the police were walking in right now. I had called the venue and what he was having printed was bogus tickets. My next call was the police. They walked in and he had the gall to ask them to arrest me for theft. I said he gave me a check and I cashed it. Then I showed them the tickets he was having printed. They took him out in handcuffs with him yelling that he wanted his money back. Never saw him again.
Wow. Ok I’ll bite. Not in the sense of being a hermit, but relationship wise.
A lifetime of abuse.
That will do it to you. As I recover, I am starting to realize that I don’t have any capacity for conflict. I don’t want to extend trust. I am suspicious and quickly withdraw from anyone that remotely, even unintentionally upsets me. My defenses are beaten down and I am an open wound.
No relationship is going to be without conflict. And you can’t really extend love without extending trust. So here I am alone and I am realizing that I will probably remain so for the foreseeable future.
I don’t really want to be alone. But I have realized, quite painfully, that I am going to hurt someone that tries to love me. That’s unacceptable and depressing. I will NOT become the abuser.
I’m in therapy and one of the first meaningful things he said to me was “I may not be able to help you. Due to the length and severity of your trauma, you may carry the effects for the rest of your life. The best we can do is hope to manage your PTSD.”
I appreciate his honesty.
So no, lonely as I am, I will not afflict some poor woman with my messed up self. I will go on alone. Well, not completely alone…
I don’t know about incorrect, but it was certainly unusual.
My church had a lock-in for high school aged kids. If you haven’t participated in one of these, it is essentially a big slumber party. But it is chaperoned. It is church after all. Sometimes schools do them too.
Anyway, there are all kinds of events that happen. Often there is a scavenger hunt, and this particular lock-in was no different, except with a twist. They had a “tape recorder and Polaroid camera” scavenger hunt. In other words, we were divided into groups and had a list of crazy things we were to get photos and recordings of our group doing. These days we could just use our phones for this, but this was in the 80s and technology was obviously not the same.
So we set off on the list. There were all kinds of things. We did a picture with a human pyramid. That was relatively tame and easy. Then we came to another. We had to get a photo of us walking through a drive thru restaurant line. Oohkay. I was our group’s driver, so I took us to a local Wendy’s. We got out and walked through the drive-thru line. Remember this was the 80s and I don’t think that many restaurants had cameras watching the drive-thru line back then. So, the staff of the restaurant didn’t know we were walking through the line till we got to the window. Wow, that turned escalated into drama really quickly. The manager was really mad at us, and they refused to serve us. Well, that didn’t really matter much. We tried to explain why we were doing it, but he was having none of it. I guess he thought we were drunk or on drugs or something. So, he called the police on us and they promptly showed up.
I guess he thought that was going to scare us. Actually, we were thrilled. We also had “recording the sound of a police siren” and “taking a photo of the group with a police officer” on the list.
Because of a grumpy Wendy’s manager, our group won.
When I was 18 I moved into a share house with some friends. On the second or third day I was checking the mail box when a man walked over from across the street where a little model car shop was located.
He said to me “excuse me, do you live here?” I said “yes, I’m Susan, we just moved in”. He replied “Good, would you like to come and work for me? The girl who used to live here worked for me for 3 years, but she moved out”. I asked “what sort of work did she do? What do need?” He told me that she did office admin work, tallied invoices, paid bills, occasionally sold merchandise….
I asked how many hours and how much and then, happy enough with the repky, I took the job on the spot. On my front lawn, next to my letter box.
He seemed to just trust that the house knew the right person to work for him. I worked their for 4 years and then I moved out. I can only assume that the new resident got offered a job soon after…
I love this one! Many years ago a police officer had a BIG guy handcuffed in the back seat of his squad car. He was trying like all hell to get the guy out. Another officer came to assist him. This guy wedged his feet into the floor under front seats. They didn’t want to mace him because they would not be able to use the squad for a long time. He was not a violent offender. It was something with being intoxicated but not driving. I think his wife called. He wouldn’t budge. Lots of swearing and threats to get him out. It was actually funny to see. He was not coming out.
Anyway, this state trooper I know, who is also a teacher in aikido and a few other martial arts, goes and asks him to PLEASE COME OUT. This guy is dying from laughter. He was calling him all kinds of Asian insults. So, the trooper asks one of the cops to hold his hat. He starts to put on rubber gloves. This guy is yelling, what cha gonna do? Check my prostate? Even the cops were laughing. Trooper says, “No. I’m gonna get you out of the squad.” Guy yells, “Go ahead, you &$@#@ eyes”. So trooper reaches in and with one hand pinches his nose closed. He put the other over his mouth. In about 60 seconds that guy flew out of that squad! We all learned a lesson that day. No matter how big the engine, it will not run without oxygen!
Jurassic Park but with a Cat
https://youtu.be/W85oD8FEF78
The West’s Not-So-Subtle Message To Russia: Photo Emerges of F-16 with U.S. Nuke (Trainer) on Wing; Ukraine?
A photo has emerged of an F-16 Fighter Jet with a U.S. B-61 Nuclear Bomb (Trainer) mounted under its wing; the exact same type of plane the West plans to “give” to Ukraine. A message to Russia?
That photo – shown above with (my) added text showing the B-61 nuclear trainer, was clearly taken during summertime; there are dandelions showing in the nearby grass. That such a photo was even TAKEN would be a gigantic breach of nuclear security. The fact that it has suddenly “emerged” in public is nothing short of astonishing. Unless, of course, its release is to send a message.
A “Trainer” is the same size, shape, and weight of the real thing, but is inert; there is no nuclear warhead in it. It is designed to provide pilots with a “feel” for the aircraft when it is carrying such a device, so the pilot can get used to how the plane handles with the weapon mounted, and what it feels like when it is released.
It also allows a pilot to train on how and when to release the bomb so that it actually hits the intended target.
The B-61 is a gravity bomb and is not guided by its own engine or any wings, to hit a target.
The B61 nuclear bomb is the primary thermonuclear gravity bomb in the United States Enduring Stockpile following the end of the Cold War. It is a low-to-intermediate yield strategic and tactical nuclear weapon featuring a two-stage radiation implosion design. Here is a FILE PHOTO of the actual, functional, B-61:
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The B61 is of the variable yield (“dial-a-yield” in informal military jargon) design with a yield of 0.3 to 340 kilotons in its various mods (“modifications”). It is a Full Fuzing Option (FUFO) weapon, meaning it is equipped with the full range of fuzing and delivery options, including air and ground burst fuzing, and free-fall, retarded free-fall and laydown delivery.
It has a streamlined casing capable of withstanding supersonic flight and is 11 ft 8 in (3.56 m) long, with a diameter of about 13 inches (33 cm). Basic weight is about 700 pounds (320 kg), although the weights of individual weapons may vary depending on version and fuze/retardation configuration. As of 2020, it is undergoing a 12th modification. According to the Federation of American Scientists in 2012, the roughly 400 B61-12s will cost $28 million apiece.
Back in May of 2023, when the issue of giving F-16’s to Ukraine first surfaced, I reported that the U.S. caused severe consternation among its NATO allies by insisting that the planes given to Ukraine be the type already modified to handle the B-61 nuclear bomb (Story HERE).
At that time, the Deputy Chairman of the Russian Federation Council, their version of a Senate, publicly commented that if the US allowed Ukraine access to such bombs, Russia would have no choice but to make a “preventive” (pre-emptive) nuclear strike against Ukraine!
In the months since that story, the US and NATO have been training Ukrainian pilots on how to fly the F-16. At US insistence, those pilots are ALSO being trained how to use the B-61 nuclear bomb!
Not to put too fine a point on it, but why would those pilots need such specialized training unless the intent of the US and NATO is to actually allow them to use nuclear bombs?
This is the reality that is being forced upon Russia by the U.S. and NATO, and Russia is quite plain about how they will respond. For instance, while military radar can determine what type of aircraft they see on radar, they have no way of knowing if that plane has a B-61 nuclear bomb under its wing. Thus, the Russians will have to treat ALL F-16’s as if they are nuclear-equipped. Should one such plane approach Russian Territory, the possibility of Russia being nuked __could__ cause them to strike first.
Moreover, within the past two months, a lot of news has come out about Ukraine being given German “TAURUS” cruise missiles. The Taurus KEPD 350 is a German-Swedish air-launched cruise missile, manufactured by Taurus Systems and used by Germany, Spain, and South Korea. Taurus Systems GmbH is a partnership between MBDA Deutschland GmbH (formerly LFK) and Saab Bofors Dynamics.
The missile incorporates stealth technology and has an official range in excess of 500 km (300 mi). It is powered by a turbofan engine at Mach 0.95 and can be carried by Panavia Tornado, Eurofighter Typhoon, Saab JAS 39 Gripen, McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet, and McDonnell Douglas F-15K Slam Eagle aircraft. The missile can easily be adapted to other aircrafts such as EF Typhoon, JAS39 Gripen, F-16 Fighting Falcon, and F-35 Lightning. Here is a FILE PHOTO of an actual Taurus Missile:
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While the missile’s actual range is never publicly disclosed, the specifications readily reveal it has a range “greater than 500km.”
The map below shows a 500km range from the northern-most area inside Ukraine, and Moscow is CLEARLY within range; especially given the fact that Germany readily and publicly admits the Taurus missile has a range “greater than 500km.”
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So as you read this, the US and NATO are training Ukraine Pilots on F-16’s. Training those same pilots on the use of the U.S. B-61 nuclear bomb, and debating also giving them German Taurus missiles which can reach Moscow.
Thus, the West is escalating and escalating the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
This week, Poland issued an ominous Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) changing flight regulations in the entire eastern quarter of their country. Pilots up to flight level 95 (9500 feet) must now be in radio contact with air traffic controllers, and must use their Transponders so ground controllers can see EVERY plane in the sky within that vast area.
The geographic area covered by this NOTAM includes the entire Poland Border with Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania. Here is the map from the NOTAM:
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Poland’s NOTAM also makes clear they are adding these new rules “due to the possibility of Unplanned Military Actions related to ensuring National Security.”
What “unplanned military actions” does Poland foresee? Missile exchanges with Russia, perhaps? Why would that happen?
Well, it turns out that the F-16’s being given to Ukraine require a lot of maintenance, refueling and re-arming, which the airfields inside Ukraine can no longer accomplish because Russia has hit them so many times.
So it is now within the realm of __POSSIBILITY__ that those F-16’s may have to be flown into Ukraine from NATO bases in Poland or Romania!
Just this week, Russia made it explicitly clear that if F-16’s take off from NATO bases, and are used to attack Russian forces inside Ukraine, Russia will “mercilessly destroy” those bases.
That . . . . that right there . . . . would then be called “A Russian attack against NATO” which would then be used as an excuse to trigger NATO Treaty, “Article 5” Collective Self Defense.
When Russia began its Special Military Operation (SMO) to “de-militarize” and “de-Nazify” Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin made clear “Russian conventional forces are not comparable to NATO. We know that. But Russia is also a nuclear power. And our nuclear capability is superior to all others. If NATO declares Article 5, Collective Self Defense against Russia, it will be a war no one will win.“
Readers are no doubt aware that the only “war no one will win” is a nuclear war.
So from the start of Russia’s SMO, the US and NATO have known Russia may use nukes. Now, the US and NATO are setting the stage for exactly that, by supplying Ukraine with nuclear-capable F-16’s, training Ukraine pilots to fly those planes and to use the B-61 nuclear bomb, and allow those planes to takeoff from NATO bases outside of Ukraine, attack Russian forces in Ukraine, then land at those NATO bases for refueling, re-arming, and maintenance.
The US and NATO are doing this despite knowing the Russians will “mercilessly destroy” those NATO bases, and will use nukes if NATO declares Article 5 self defense against Russia.
Here’s the punch line: The Poland NOTAM began February 5, 2024, and will remain in effect until May 5, 2024.
That tells most people that Poland knows between now and May 5, 2024, the fight between NATO and Russia will break out, and they are warning pilots in that area over what they KNOW is coming . . . . because Poland, the US and NATO are going to actually cause it.
Of course, the mass-media in the United States and in Europe, has been completely derelict in their duty to report these facts to the general public. As a result, the general public has no idea at all, their own governments are escalating the situation between Russia and Ukraine to the point that actual nuclear war may commence between now and May 5.
Do you have Emergency food, water, medicine, flashlights, batteries, an electric generator, fuel, communications gear like a CB or HAM radio? If not, how do you expect to survive if this thing happens? How will you and your family eat? How will you get information once the electric grid goes down from the electro-magnetic pulse from nuclear detonations which take down all the TV and radio stations?
You’ll be left, cold, hungry, in the dark and without information, because YOU chose to do nothing and not prepare.
Better get prepped. There’s very little time left.
Frègula Sarda
In the Mediterranean island of Sardegna (Sardinia), locals call this pasta “frègula.” In current Italian, it is known as “fregola.” At home, Chef Rosario simply calls it a delicious pasta option!
fregula sarda
Yield: 2 servings
Ingredients
1 1/2 cups Frègula Sarda; alternatively, use orzo pasta, acini pepe or large cous-cous
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil (EVOO)
1/2 red onion, diced
2 garlic cloves
1 red chile pepper, fresh or dry, with the seeds removed, crushed
1/2 cup dry white wine
1 1/2 cups cherry or grape tomatoes, sliced
1 tablespoon capers, drained
4 cups homemade shrimp or vegetable broth
1 celery, chopped
1 carrot, chopped
1 pinch saffron
12 ounces large shrimp, preferably shell-on
Fresh marjoram or oregano, chopped
Fresh Italian parsley, chopped
Lemon zest
Bay leaf
Salt to taste
Instructions
Peel and de-vein the shrimp, reserving the shells for the broth. Make broth by heating the shells in a little olive oil and adding a handful of roughly diced carrots, celery, onions, tomatoes, parsley stems and a bay leaf. Cook for one minute with a little olive oil; then add water and bring to a simmer. Keep at a simmer until needed. If you use pre-peeled shrimp, use a light vegetable broth instead.
In a large casserole start the soffritto: add EVOO, onions, garlic and chili peppers. Cook on medium heat until golden (not brown).
Add frègula and sauté for a minute.
Add wine and cook to evaporate alcohol.
Add capers, tomatoes, and saffron. Once heated through, add 1 cup of the simmering broth. Stir occasionally. Add broth in 1 cup increments as needed to keep the frègula moist and brothy.
When the pasta is almost cooked “al dente” (10 to 15 minutes, depending on the size of the pasta grains) add shrimp and cook for a couple minutes more (or until they reach an internal temperature of 160 degrees F). Remove shrimp from pot to avoid overcooking and set them aside.
The frègula is ready when all the broth has been absorbed and it has reached a creamy, risotto-like consistency.
Remove from heat, add herbs, and stir thoroughly. Transfer to a serving platter or individual plates. Place the cooked shrimp on top and sprinkle with freshly grated lemon zest.
Notes
Frègula resembles a large size cous-cous, but it is also reminiscent of other “berry sized” pasta varieties, like “acini pepe” or orzo. The word frègula derives from the Italian verb “sfregolare,” which describes the action of hand rolling the dough against a terracotta surface. The Sardinian version is made with 100% durum wheat semolina and pure water. Once shaped, it is lightly toasted to a golden color and “ecco fatto,” it’s ready for this delicious recipe!
Sommelier’s Notes
Sella & Mosca 2017 La Cala (Vermentino di Sardegna) – Sardegna, Italy
Vermentino is a white wine grape indigenous to the western Mediterranean. It thrives in northwestern Italy, southern France, and the nearby islands of Corsica and Sardegna (Sardinia).
This pleasing wine offers herbaceous Mediterranean flavors heightened with hints of pineapple and citrus.
I worked at a staffing firm in New York City. I was the top producer and my two bosses loved me.
One of the bosses who is on his second marriage, and having an affair with the receptionist. It was not a secret. Everyone in our small company knew.
both bosses or cocaine addicts. As their addiction increased, they were decreasing our commissions.
Counselors started leaving. The bosses were bringing in inexperienced losers, who were requesting the company more money than they were making.
I decided to leave.
I typed up a letter of resignation and included the amount of commissions that were currently owned to me.
They never gave me a penny.
My husband is an attorney and wrote a “lawyer letter“ to the two principles. They didn’t care.
I got together with a few of the other counselors, who had also left, and also didn’t get their commissions. We decided to write a letter to his wife, telling her about the affair that her husband was having with the receptionist.
He used to tell his wife said he was going to the gym every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday. He always left with a gym bag filled with a change of clothes.
We told his wife that he had no gym membership and that she should check his gym bag when he comes home on those days and see that not one thing in the gym bag was used and nothing was sweaty or dirty. The gym bag was exactly as it was in the morning when he left for work.
She obviously knew the receptionist, and put everything together and filed for divorce.
he was furious, and called each one of us, and asked if we had done it! Lol!
We will still had to go to court but I sued for $23,000 which was $10,000 more than my original claim. I knew that he had an idiot doing the bookkeeping and they would have no idea what they are with me.
You know there used to be this kind of beer in China. It was really odd. Every time I would drink a case of this beer I would end up with a big strong erection. It was darnest thing. That is because beer is a depressant. You have one or two beers and your little manhood turns into wet spaghetti.
LOL. Guys, you know what I am talking about. Ha ha ha.
But not on this beer. Imagine that!
After a while all the cans were pulled off the shelves in all the stores, and I never saw the beer ever again. Then, one day, I was reading the news and discovered that the beer company was adding generic Viagra into the bottles of beer. So no wonder I’d have a woody after a six pack!
Good golly!
Personally, Viagra gives me a headache. So I am glad that I no longer drink that beer. It was a poor marketing decision, and thus, I am pretty glad that the beer is no longer available.
One day while I was thrifting, a Hispanic man came up to the register and asked the price of a huge plastic doll house. His daughter was trailing behind him. The cashier quoted him five dollars at which his face fell and he turned to put the toy back.
I rolled my eyes in exasperation and slapped five dollars down on the counter. I told the cashier to give him the doll house cuz it was obvious he wanted it for his little girl. The gentleman thanked me profusely but I just waved him out of the door. After all I’ve paid ten bucks for a pair of panty hose. No big deal.
Then next day I was in Walmart at the register stocking up on caffeine-free Pepsi when I felt a light tap on my shoulder. I turned to the woman behind me with a questioning look and said,”Yes?”
She held out a five dollar bill. I looked at the money surprised and asked what was this for. She extended her hand and said,”This is for you”.
OMG. I am an atheist but I swear I looked up at the ceiling toward the heavens thinking about that doll house and said .
What? What? Is ,is God watching me.?
Is,is God
Saganaki (Flaming Greek Cheese)
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Ingredients
1/4 pound Kefalograviera, Kasseri, Kefalotiri or Romano cheese
1 egg, beaten
Flour, as needed
3 teaspoons olive oil or butter
Lemon wedges, as needed
Oregano to taste
2 tablespoons brandy
Instructions
Slice cheese into 1/4-inch thick slices. Dip cheese into egg, then coat lightly with flour.
Heat oil in a frying pan over medium-high heat. Place cheese in the pan; cook until golden brown on both sides – about 1 minute per side.
Remove pan from heat. Add brandy, then carefully ignite. Douse flame with a squeeze of lemon juice, then sprinkle with oregano.
They are INSANE, and they’re leading us to World War 3 | Redacted with Natali and Clayton Morris
Before this, we’d had a phone plan that fit our needs. We barely used our cell phones so we had a limited number of minutes to use each month. Neither of us ever came close to reaching that limit, not once.
After my husband died I was on the phone non-stop. People calling to see how I was. His job calling with benefit information. His family calling to judge the hell out of me and demand that his death was my fault. Etc, etc, etc.
I need to add that since my husband did not have a will when he died all of our assets were frozen. I was completely unable to work and the rest of the money was unavailable until his estate was figured out.
So, T-mobile calls me to tell me that my phone is about to be shut off. My phone bill had reached$2000! I explained that my husband had died and I was unable to pay the bill. Told them that I didn’t even know WHEN I’d have money to pay anything at all, let alone the phone bill.
T-mobile cleared the entire $2000 from my bill. They also gave me unlimited minutes for the next 2 months.
Say what you will about T-mobile but they’ve done good by me. I’ll forever feel indebted to them and will stay with them til the end.
Large, international companies in the U.S. are not immune to nepotism (no matter what the rules and regulations say) or to giving a friend’s kid a job.
Our department head was asked to give another department head’s daughter, fresh out of university, a job in our unit.
She was cluelessly entitled. She could not understand that most of us worked to survive, not just to get spending money or to please parents. She was surprised when we could not go to a high-end restaurant for lunch because we had bills due.
But she was a sweetheart. She was generous with her things and with her time. We learned quickly to NOT compliment her clothes because she would give the items to us after cleaning them.
If someone was upset, she would listen, soothe and would always follow up. Her positive attitude could brighten our worst days.
HOWEVER, her work was horrid. The supervisors trained her carefully, but she could not grasp the simplest of office tasks. She created chaos in the incoming work, three-step system and crashed the unit’s copy machine for over a week (the Xerox repairman was in awe of the devastation). No job was safe with her.
The department head and the two supervisors wanted to get her out of the unit without hurting her.
They hatched a plan to have her ‘promoted’ to Personnel (H.R.) to a counseling position. On paper, though, she was dismissed from our unit for incompetence.
We had a nice ‘Congratulations!’ luncheon on her last day that made her tear up because we talked all about why we liked her.
She was where she should have been from the beginning and did brilliantly for many years.
Note: She did see the official dismissal notice and then rehire papers. But our department head explained it all gently and kindly as just a formality.
Reports Leaked: China’s Fighter Jet Fleet Is Growing MASSIVELY
If you want to get your crush to instantly fall in love with you, use this love eye trick: You want to look in their left eye for one second, to their lips for one-and-a-half to two seconds and then to their right eye.
If you want people to take your words seriously, say that your father taught you this. People tend to believe parents’ advice inherently.
If you want to know someone is attentive or not, repeat your sentence with a slight change in it. If he is listening either his facial expression will change, or he will point out and question the part.
If you want people to agree with you, just nod and maintain eyecontact while you’re talking, they will nod back.
If you want someone to agree for something, give them a list covering 3 options and drop the one to the bottom that you want them to pick. They are most likely to pick the bottom one.
If you want your friend to carry something, just keep talking to them while handing them the bag. Most people will automatically take the bag without thinking.
Women Treat you Entirely differently When you Become a High Value Man
Oh yes. When I was waitressing in a little hometown cafe, saving money for college. It’s the kind of restaurant where the nearby business owners eat lunch every single day and pretty much always the same crowd.
During a very hectic lunch shift, a party of six unfamiliar men in business suits came in and sat in my section. I recognized one but not the rest. As I had two other orders to take before theirs, I gave them water and menus and said I’d be with them in just a minute or two. The well known guy just happened to be a Senator.
He stood up, grabbed my sleeve and told me they were in a bit of a hurry, and that they really needed me to take their order first. I told him there were two other tables who had sat down ahead of them, and that as promised, I would be right back to take their orders.
That’s when he got indignant and said “Do you know who I am?” I said “Of course I do, Senator” and he informed me that I would be taking their order ahead of the other tables (all regular, daily customers).
I turned around and in a loud voice, I announced to the entire dining room “We have Senator X dining with us today, and he would like to be served ahead of all the rest of you. Would that be OK?”
The guy sat back down, turned bright red and never said another word. He waited his turn just like everybody else….and left me a very nice tip.
Mine was not sabotage. I put in my resignation along with a two week notice. They told me I was fired and I was escorted from the building after packing up my desk. What they forgot was I was the only coder in the building and much of the company’s accounting, inventory, control, security and other software I had customized. Could I have sabotaged it, yes, I left some backdoors to allow me easier access. I also knew all but personal passwords, some of which I was the only one who knew. I also was the only IT person that could do more than plug and play. So all the updates I normally did, weren’t being done. The daily monitoring I did, wasn’t being done. They called several times and I gave them passwords and etc, but no more than they asked. Within a month their whole system was trashed and they couldn’t find anyone that could help with their antiquated programs. They finally asked me to come back to work for them. I only agreed after telling them I would be a contractor, and I put lots of zeros after the numbers. Company went under because they refused to spend money on modern equipment and software.
Her DELUSIONAL Dating Standards Leave Her With No Man
Whether WW3 or Iran war will happen depends on USA.
Either USA withdraws all its troops from Mideast or stops supporting Israel.
The reason why US military bases in Mideast were attacked is because USA is not welcome in Mideast minus Israel.
UN says USA’s occupation of Syria & Iraq is illegal. There is no reason US troops should stay in Mideast.
US troops were not invited by Syria. USA used laundry detergent to falsely accuse Iraq possessing biochem weapons & then waged a war in 2003. … illegal, illegal, illegal.
USA should let Mideast people govern Mideast affairs.
Hence, WW3 is in the hands of USA.
BRICS Sanction UK & US After Recent Missile Attacks On Houthi Rebels!
https://youtu.be/2pU15CpJ4xk
China Deploys Multiple Warships Around Self-Claimed ADIZ – The Japan News
China is deploying multiple warships around the clock in waters near the borders of the air defense identification zone that it has unilaterally established, The Yomiuri Shimbun has learned.
A photograph taken by a Yomiuri Shimbun journalist on Dec. 30 showed a Jiangkai II-class guided-missile frigate of the Chinese Navy in the zone.
Air defense identification zones, or ADIZs, are set up by individual countries outside their territorial airspace to prevent incursions. Countries decide whether there is a possibility of their airspace being entered, and whether their fighter aircraft should scramble. Just passing through Japan’s ADIZ does not result in the scrambling of Self-Defense Forces planes.
China is operating the zone on the premise that it is Chinese airspace. Aircraft that fly within its ADIZ are told to immediately leave.
China’s move shows that it is a pressing issue for the Japanese government to take action to deal with Beijing’s attempt to change the status quo by force. China’s ADIZ, established in November 2013, overlaps with Japan’s and includes the Senkaku Islands, over which China claims sovereignty
Contrary to international custom, China unilaterally demands that aircraft flying in the zone follow Chinese authorities’ instructions. It also claims it will take “defensive emergency measures” if an aircraft fails to do so.
China is thought to be claiming jurisdiction that is not based in international law. The Japanese government is strongly opposed, calling China’s actions invalid, and the United States and South Korea have also expressed concern.
The Yomiuri journalist photographed the Chinese Jiangkai II-class guided-missile frigate and the Maritime Self-Defense Force’s newly commissioned frigate JS Mikuma facing each other in waters about 20 kilometers inside the border of what China insists is its ADIZ.
During the flight, the Yomiuri also confirmed a radio communication in which the Chinese Navy warship called on a separate aircraft flying within China’s ADIZ to leave the airspace.
China started deploying at least three navy warships around the clock in waters around its claimed ADIZ, according to Japanese government sources.
The three include an air defense missile destroyer, which is the Chinese version of an Aegis-equipped destroyer, and a frigate warship. Equipped with high-performance radar, air defense missile destroyers are highly capable of shooting down aircraft
The Chinese military aircraft repeatedly scramble in response to SDF aircraft, according to the sources. The Chinese military is believed to be strengthening its monitoring of SDF and U.S. military aircraft and warships in the East China Sea.
To effectively establish ADIZs, it is essential to deploy radar that can detect early on the approach of other countries’ aircraft, and improve the efficiency of fighter units so they can immediately reach the spot.
China’s monitoring capabilities were initially believed to be low, and it was thought that its establishment of the ADIZ would have no substantial impact.
However, some observers are warning that China will have its warships, which are deployed around the clock, and fighters work together and increase its military activities.
“It’s intended to block the SDF and U.S. military aircraft [from entering the airspace] in the event of contingencies in the Taiwan Strait,” said an SDF source.
Japanese government sources believe that the Chinese warships’ 24-hour deployment in the area is linked with China’s claim of sovereignty over the Senkaku Islands. In fact, when China Coast Guard vessels operating around the Senkakus intruded into Japanese territorial waters, the warships deployed in the area moved southward.
“When China established the ADIZ 10 years ago, it was meant more as a message to keep Japan and the U.S. in check,” said Yasuyuki Sugiura, a senior fellow of the Regional Studies Department’s China Division at the National Institute for Defense Studies.
“In recent years, however, the Chinese air force and navy are increasingly sharing their information. This must mean their capabilities have become more substantial,” he said.
20 vs 1: Speed Dating 20 Girls | Jubilee x Solfa | Versus 1
I was in a really bad car accident when I was 25 years old. Before the accident I exercised constantly – I walked at least five miles every day, did physically taxing work, swam every day (for a minimum of 45 minutes) in the summer. I was in great physical shape, with great muscle tone. In the accident I broke both legs, my pelvis, three vertebrae and dislocated my left knee joint. The emergency room doctor told me I would never walk again. Well, I’ll show him, I thought.
I had a dozen surgeries to repair the knee (my back wasn’t fixable at the time) and worked very hard at my physical therapy. In fact, I worked so hard that I kept getting tendonitis, which would bring my therapy to a halt. I could walk, but I had a limp, which would make my back hurt after a very short time, but I was determined to be able to walk correctly, no matter how much effort it took.
Finally one of my doctors told me the following: “I like to play golf, but no matter how hard I work, no matter how long I train, no matter how many great coaches help me, I will never play golf as well as Tiger Woods. My wife loves to play tennis. No matter how hard she works at it, no matter who coaches her, no matter how many hours of practice she puts in, she will never play tennis like Serena Williams. They have a unique balance of talent and physical attributes that allows them to do what they do. And no matter how much therapy you have, no matter how many operations to fix your legs, you will never walk without a limp. It just isn’t possible and you are doing real damage to yourself by trying so hard to overcome your disability.”
I burst into tears, mainly because I realized that he had been trying to tell me this for months and I had been doing my best not to get the message. I finally listened to him tell me that I had to stop trying so very hard because instead of gaining ground, I was actually making myself worse. I could walk, and that was something to be proud of, considering the extent of my injuries; but I was never going to be able to go back to physical condition I was in before the accident.
I was really upset by the news, but while my doctor was brutally honest with me, he managed to be compassionate when he finally relayed the message in a way I couldn’t ignore.
So now I walk with a cane. I can’t walk very far, but I do manage to get around, and that is good enough.
edit: Thank you all for the many kind comments and up-votes! I never expected my answer to mean so much to so many people. I am doing pretty well, all things considered. I have great physicians and new treatments have eased the problems with my back quite a bit. I had the dislocated knee rebuilt rather than get a knee replacement (I felt I was too young and needed to put it off as long as I could), but I’ll probably get one in the next year or two. I thank God that I had (and still have) good health insurance which allows me to take full advantage of all the new medical therapies out there. I still exercise every day, but I do so sensibly and don’t try to push myself to hard. I’m happy that my doctor was able to find a way to tell me what I needed to hear so that I didn’t continue to make myself worse.
Bob Lazar Says UFO was an Archaeological Finding | Joe Rogan
I call it “the bullshit factor”. This is why former military are in such demand. They’ve seen this. The hurry up and wait. Drive like hell through the night to make your delivery appointment on time, not stopping to eat or piss, and then waiting around four hours or more waiting for a dock, and then 2–4 hours more, waiting to get unloaded.
And then there’s the grumpy shippers and receivers who don’t like you or their job very much who’ll tell you to check back later if you’re unfortunate enough to ask what’s taking so long.
Breakdowns? Don’t get me started…waiting on the side of the road with your penis in your hand for 8-10 hours until the calvary arrives with an oversize dragon wagon.
Not to mention what it does to your health, but I will. My issues included
High blood pressure, 176/96. Can you say Dead Man Walkin’?
Started in 1990 at 165 pounds. Retired in March at 272.
High Cholesterol, can’t remember the numbers, but the doctor said they were off the charts
Blew a disc out in my back at the age of 44 in 1990, the direct result of all the bouncing
Venous insufficiency in my left leg due to sitting. Had to have several veins stripped.
Doc said if I don’t quit, the job’ll kill me. Told her, we all gotta go sometime.
Put this all together and you’d have to be crazier than a shithouse rat to do this job. So, I guess you can call me “Rat”.
This is why the majority of newbies don’t make it past their first year.
I moved next door to a guy called Dave. He lived alone with his 4 rescue dogs.
Dave was very welcoming. He knocked to my house the day we moved in and gave me a bottle of wine as a gift and introduced himself. I liked Dave from that moment.
Dave had disabilities so had a disabled car speck outside of his house. The parking in that street was a nightmare and had a huge impact on our decision to move. I will get to why this is important soon.
There was an old couple called Mr and Mrs Love (how cute?) Lovely old dears. They stopped to say hi one day whilst I was painting my front wall. Mrs Love told me to be careful of Dave. Apparently he was an awful man who complains and fights with all the neighbors. He would call the police for no good reason and he was cruel to his dogs.
Ok, Wow!
The woman across the street told me he was a paedophile who took videos from his bedroom of kids playing.
Another told me he called child protection on them for abusing their kids.
He shot next door but one’s cat with a pellet gun because it was in his garden, one of them said.
So, Dave was not a popular chap!
I’m not one for gossip but it’s hard not to be wary when all your neighbors are telling you that the antichrist is living next door.
When my dog had puppies, Dave gave me his number and told me to call him any time, day or night, if I needed help. He was slightly deaf and didn’t always hear the door bell.
Dave let me use the shared entry that was also his to store some things that I had no space for.
Dave fed my cat when I went away.
Dave never complained when my teenage son and his friends were rowdy.
Dave told me he was leaving his home to the Dogs Trust upon his death, in return for them to take his dogs and rehome them.
Dave looked after my dogs when I was going through something and wasn’t home a lot. He never pried. He just supported me by being there.
Dave cried when I gave him a Christmas card. He never had one before from a neighbor.
Dave helped me move to my new house which wasn’t far away, by bringing bits around that I forgot when the movers came.
The parking spot was the reason that the neighbors started a witch hunt for Dave. They said he scammed the council and wasn’t really ill. Dave got something that they wanted. They didn’t like it. Dave had cancer by the way. Nobody cared to ask. It was easier to start a hate campaign. It took one neighbor to tell an exaggerated story and begin the snowball effect that had Dave labelled as a pariah.
I still see Dave.
The other neighbors, I walk past them if I see them around. All of them are the worst neighbors I ever had.
I hope the couple who moved in to my house appreciate how lucky they are to have Dave next door.
Edit.
I’m grateful when people edit my typos. Please go ahead. I’m often very lax and don’t proof read my answers.
Speck is not a typo. That is the word I chose to use. To me it means a tiny insignificant space. I also meant to say next door but one. It was the neighbour next door to my next door neighbour!
There are two. The first one was in 1987 after my Grandmother died. My grandfather didn’t want to sleep in the house by himself the first night after her death. So, myself and a neighbor agreed to spend the night with him. Keep in mind that my grandparents slept in separate bedrooms, so I slept in my grandfathers bedroom and my grandfather slept in my grandmothers bedroom. The neighbor slept in the living room. In the early morning hours of the next day I noticed that I was little bit chilly. I felt someone take the covers on the bed and pull them up over me. I turned over only to see my grandmother leaving out of the room! When I asked my grandfather and neighbor the next morning if they had come into the room and covered me up, they both said NO!
The next incident happened many years ago. There was an old lady who lived on the corner of my street. One day the neighbor directly across the street from her had a rummage sale. Although it was in the winter, she had tables sitting out with items to sell and people were looking at the items. The old lady on the corner was one of them. I noticed her as I was driving by. The next week I mentioned to my neighbor that I saw the old lady at her yard sale. She looked at me as if I was crazy and said “That lady has been dead for months!”
Americans Living Abroad: First Time You Realized America Really Messed You Up – American Reacts
I came to the United States in 2006. Looking for full time work, I took a position of checkout operator at a Super K-Mart in a small town in California. The job was basic pay, no fixed hours on call. So was not great but as i had worked retail in the United Kingdom, I saw it as a stop-gap position until I could get a more regular job.
It was Thanksgiving Day 2006 and the store had been open since about noon. There was lots of traffic as customers came in to snap up Thanksgiving bargains.
I had taken several thousands of dollars and my till drawer had a bulge created by all of the $100 bills stuffed under the change drawer.
About 6pm the store manager came to my check-out and told me to open the cash register and give him the $100 bills.
I asked him to count the cash in front of me and give me a written receipt so I could place this in the till so the cash office could reconcile my till for the end of the day.
I had always done this in my own stores in England and I had worked for Tesco, a British supermarket chain where such receipts for large cash withdrawals by managers were manditory.
This manager refused. Opened my cash drawer himself and pulled out all of the $100 bills and put them into a cash bag without running the audit on the cash register.
I immediately closed off the register. Walked to the cash office with the contents of the drawer, told them I was leaving and went to collect my belongings from my locker in the staff room.
There was no way I was going to work for a manager who could come to my cash register, and take cash at will, leaving me with possible charges of theft from my employer.
Deciding to just walk out wasn’t a problem. Going to prison was.
A week later I received an offer of a far better job. Part-time with fixed hours. No cash handling involved.
Expats Share Their American Trauma After Living Abroad
I’ve answered this question elsewhere but might as well do it again. In the 80s I owned a limousine company in Southern California. You get or are in the area of celebrities from time to time.
Nicest – Hands down Robert Wagner (Hart vs Hart, etc). Busy night, MTV awards so I was driving a car. My client was a music producer. Awards ceremony is at the Universal Amphitheatre. They had us park in the back lot which happened to be among the movie sets they use for neighborhoods (Like Ozzie & Harriet, Desperate Housewives, etc). It’s kind of confusing back there and pitch black at night. Out of the night walks someone who asks for directions to the Amphitheatre. It’s Robert Wagner. I agree to guide him and we chatted as we walked and parted once I got him to the Amphitheatre back stage. (I often wondered WTH he was doing at the MTV awares but whatever). Anyway, a year later I’m dropping clients off at a restaurant on Sunset. Walking up the street is Robert Wagner. He approaches me and picks up the conversation where we left off, knew my name, etc. Just like 2 old buddies catching up. He certainly could have walked on by and I probably wouldn’t even have noticed him. He went out of his way to approach me. Not a lot of people would do that much less celebrities. Impressed the hell out of my clients.
Since then I’ve filmed with Jay Leno and he’s another nice guy. I noticed that people like that really have to fly private. It’s not a choice because they are snobbish. They’d never be able to make a commercial flight on time if they had to walk through an airport and not acknowledge people.
Rudest? Hands down Tyne Daly. World Class A-hole. Totally unnecessary to treat people like that. 2nd place is not even close. It was difficult to find drivers that would drive her more than once.
I totally get the autograph thing. If you sign one, you have to sign the other 1,000 people’s who saw you giving out one. Particularly when they are eating. Most celebrities you can get autographs by writing their management. Don’t bother them when they are eating, or god forbid with their children or looking like they are late getting somewhere. If you break that barrier, don’t be surprised if they are not particularly welcoming. I also understand some of the sports stars who won’t sign because their stuff ends up on eBay the next day. I don’t think it’s an issue where they want the money, I think that it’s just not a good feeling to know that the only reason you got asked is so they can use you.
I don’t envy fame, having to be “On” 24/7 while out in public. You turn down one request and you are an instant a-hole.
THE U.S. Wants To Remove The No-Fault Divorce Law & Prevent Paternity Fraud. WOMEN ARE PISSED OFF!
The world—American or otherwise—should bear this in mind.
Chinese ports handled 300m containers last year.
To put the number in context, American ports struggle with 50–60m, with the 10% increase during covid provoking loud creaks of protest from the antiquated system, resulting in transpacific shipping rates going up by an order of magnitude, or >10x.
China is the truly the world’s factory. It imports plenty, and exports plenty.
A naval blockade of China equals a naval blockade of the world, tradewise.
What happens to the >1t in annual revenue that American MNCs generate from within the mainland? Note this is not visible from bilateral trade figures.
What happens to Wall Street?
Good luck with that foolhardy scenario, which will lead to material collapse of civil society everywhere, because China is indispensable to the global supply chain.
Note: It is impossible to blockade China, militarily speaking.
We don’t care if you got a little fat, we didn’t choose you because of the measurement of your waist size.
We’re not overly jealous, your male best friend is over-friendly.
Before you took us to buy nail paints with you, we used to think there were only 7 colours.
We don’t care if you did your make-up by watching a 3 hour long tutorial by James Charles or you haven’t washed your face. Either way you’re beautiful.
Yes we find your friends attractive and we can’t help it but you should know that you’re different.
Doesn’t matter if it’s bold red or nude pink, all of your lipsticks taste like absolute plastic.
We often get emotional but the way we deal with them is quite different.
We use female cosmetics and you better not ask why.
It breaks our heart when we look at you and think that you and I won’t last forever.
Yes romantic movies and parties are fun but can we go on a late night walk?
Not me, but one of my tenants. She was elderly, and complained to me that her cousin stole her life savings of $6,000 when he helped her move in. Going forward about a year later she arrived home to find her grandson hanging from the kitchen doorway. She ran out the back door, never to return home.
I heard she was hospitalized after that, from a breakdown. Her son came from another state and packed up her belongings. He wrote down on a piece of paper that whatever was left behind I could keep, sell, or dispose of. He then turned the keys over to me.
I was shocked when I went into the place to clean it. He had left behind what I considered important items, photos in picture frames, a photo album, nice clothing, etc. I felt anger for her, that her son wasn’t more considerate and caring.
My husband told me to look through everything as I packed it up, as old people hide money in their stuff. Sure enough I found some old pennies hidden in a picture frame. Then I found ninety single dollar bills hidden in a box of socks that must have belonged to her grandson. At last I was going through a laundry basket with neatly layered towels and shoes that was beneath the kitchen sink. At the bottom lay a book that held business cards, her ID, social security card, etc. Page after page held $100 dollar bills. In all it totaled $6,000.
I thought about all I could do with $6,000. After all the son had said I could keep anything I found. The more I thought about it, the sicker I felt in my stomach. This lady was alive and had been through hell. It was the money she thought her cousin had stolen. It still belonged to her. I immediately called the property owner and had her pick it up, along with the picture albums, old pennies, and a few other probably meaningful possessions. We felt skeptical about giving the money to the son whom I sensed didn’t care. (Or maybe he was just grieving his son’s suicide.) Nonetheless, it took a year of finding honest relatives, but the lady did finally get the money back into her possession.
Like Pakistan was forced to pay for all those US weapons from the 1960s to 2000s and ended up unable to pay for their development.
So the Key Question for the Taiwanese is :-
Are the US Weapons Free?
Can US make up a market equivalent to 36% of Taiwanese Exports that the Mainland offers today
The Answer to both is NO & NO
Best example is Australia
40.6% of their export market was China in 2019
Then they had a tiff
Australia couldn’t sell anywhere else. The US and Europe and India offered only a paltry 8% market for Australian Exports
The US couldn’t pick up even 10% of the Slack that China Trade cost the Aussies for the whole of 2020–2021
Meanwhile the US and UK signed a deal to SELL SUBMARINES to Australia and weaponize them against China
By 2022, Albanese flew down, kissed the signet ring of Xi Jingping and today Australia got back a huge chunk of the Chinese Market
Anti China Propaganda is still prevalent but much much lower than under Scott Morrison
Same for Argentina
China is a huge market for their Exports
Can US pick up the slack?
No
Same for OPEC Nations
China is a huge market for their Oil and Gas.
Can US pick up the slack?
No
Same for Europe
Did US sell Europe Gas at Russian Prices?
Nopes
Since the 1960s , tell me ONE COUNTRY that prospered under US intervention
The Answer is NOT ONE NATION ever became better due to US intervention
They became significantly worse
US would meddle in their affairs, sell them weapons with the excuse of fighting for democracy, enrich shareholders of Raytheon, NG and Boeing and all those contractors and kill many thousands of people
Every such Nation has been made poorer thanks to the US
The Corrupt Leadership will enrich themselves like Zelensky or the Afghan President who fled and likely Bong Bong Marcos and Lai
Meanwhile the Poor Citizens will be poorer than ever and worse off
Why should we believe Taiwan would be any different to the 14 Nations where US ‘INTERVENED’ for Prosperity between 1965 to 2023????
If I were a Ukrainian general, I have nothing to win but everything to lose. I will either surrender or I will enriched myself profusely and hide my ill gotten gains away for the rest of my life.
In Malaysia we have an expression that is apt. It is call “nasi sudah jadi bubur” or it means Ukraine is beyond redemption. 2014 when the U.S. bribed and coerced Ukrainians to agree to poke Russia in the eye after the U.S. staged and funded colour revolution to set up a sham government with a puppet ruler started to wrong till today 10 years on.
Well the U.S. and U.K thought wrongly that it could fxxk up Russia or China as it wish! But it can’t! I can send such nation like Ukraine, Isreal or Taiwan to be a sacrificial lamb. Too bad Ukraine allowed the CIA to destroy their wonderful nation.
Women’s Dating Standards have Ruined Relationships
https://youtu.be/MNvpS8UU5l0
Chicken Piccata
Chicken Piccata goes very well with Fettuccine Alfredo or Capellini aglio e olio or some rice pilaf (or risotto) and sautéed rapini (broccoli rabe). This will be “del’arte di mangiare” bene (the art of eating well).
2024 01 31 11 58
Ingredients
1 pound skinned chicken breast, sliced thin, or chicken tenders
1 cup all-purpose flour with a sprinkle of granulated garlic, salt and pepper
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 pound fresh sliced mushrooms or a can of straw mushrooms with juice removed
1/2 cup chicken stock (boullion cubes dissolved in a cup of hot water will do)
1/2 cup white wine and remember, do not cook with any wine you wouldn’t drink*
1-2 cloves finely chopped garlic
Small handful chopped parsley
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 lemon sliced thin, remove seeds
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
* This means do not use cooking wine…ever!
Instructions
Flatten breasts of chicken with the back of a sauté pan between wax paper if you didn’t cut them thin enough (1/4 inch or so). Pat them in the flour mixture and set aside.
Heat the sauté pan to medium/high and add the oil and 1/2 the butter. When back up to heat and butter is melted, add the chicken. (If the butter starts boiling it will burn so lower the heat until you put the chicken in.) When the edges of the first side start to appear cooked, turn them over. Add a splash of lemon and wine, salt and pepper to taste, and cook until done. When done, set aside and keep warm. You may have to do this a few times depending on the size of your pan or how much you are making.
De-glaze the pan over hot heat with the wine to dissolve the brown particles and let it reduce. Note: If you are using gas and tip the edge of the pan over the flame it will ignite ( flambe ) and flame up to burn off the alcohol – BE CAREFUL! Then add the stock, butter, and lemon juice and let reduce further. Add a pinch of flour to thicken or use 1/2 teaspoon of Roux (below). This should take about a minute or so. When thickened, add mushrooms, garlic, parsley, and the sliced lemon to the pan and sauté for a minute or so and blend well. Place the chicken a serving platter or plates, spoon over juices, top with lemon slices and serve immediately. This may look like a lot of work and too much oil, butter or spices but trust me, if you skimp, it will not taste the same. Also, if you don’t want to use chicken, you can substitute with turkey or veal.
Roux: This is the best thickening agent and can be used in anything – demi-glazes, gravies, soups, etc.
Use equal parts butter and flour.
Melt butter; slowly whisk in flour and simmer until golden brown and remove from flame. DONE! When using a roux it must be at room temperature or cooler than the product being cooked. Over medium heat, stir in a little roux until dissolved and let thicken. Start off with a teaspoon per quart of liquid, or fraction thereof, and add as required.
At a class reunion, a classmate I had not seen in maybe 40 years was there. He came over, ask me to dance and proceeded to thank me. I was taken aback. “Whatever for? For a dance?” He then explained he had come to the reunion to thank me and another girl for “saving” him when we were young. (Like 4th-8th grade.) He said I had let him check my homework (I did vaguely remember one incident) to see if his answers were right. He said that Debbie had also helped him. I was still confused. “Why did you feel you had to come thank me for such a small thing from so long ago?”
As the dance ended, he began to tell the story. I was appalled. Seems he was raised by an alcoholic father who would beat the boys if their grades weren’t B’s or above. Hence his need to check our homework, which we accorded him. Little did I know the true depth of his story. I was so appalled that I blurted out, “Why didn’t anyone do anything? The adults, why didn’t the adults do something?” I was even far more appalled when told that most of the school staff knew of those kid’s situation. He said the janitor’s wife fed them sandwiches every morning because they had had no breakfast because Dad would drink up the food money. When I asked again why no one did anything, he told me it wasn’t like it is nowadays back in the mid 60’s. There was no CPS or 211Kids. Especially out there in the country.
Thus, he felt that Debbie and I had saved him from more than one beating. Finally, about the time he graduated he said he and his Dad got into it again and for the first time he turned the tables on his “old man” and beat him. He left for the service within the week rather than stay in that home any longer.
So yes, someone from my past has come back to thank me and broke my heart for the young boy I had known but didn’t know his horrid home situation. Thank God I handed that small boy (he was always sort of scrawny back then) my homework. Would do it again!
21 Minutes of Older Women realizing they are not Wanted anymore and crying on Social Media
It was my first real job, and I helped the company install a new computer system to replace the punch cards and ribbons monster they had used before. The new sexy system used state of the art floppy discs!
So, I had been there for 50 weeks when they fired me (Unfair Dismissal laws apply from 52 weeks on). I had seen it coming and had another job lined up, but I was determined that I would leave everything in such good order that whoever came after me could see how good I was at my job and didn’t believe any slander about me.
My handwriting is pretty terrible, which didn’t matter when I was the only one reading it, but for the sake of my successor, I took all the floppy disks and relabeled them with clear, colour coded labels and legible handwriting.
Then I left and started a much better job the following week.
Later, I heard that the boss’s wife got suspicious of my new labels – AND TOOK THEM ALL OFF ALL THE DISCS. All the payroll discs, ledgers, creditors and bank accounts, end of month totals, and master discs, all sitting in a pile with no labels and no one in the company with enough computer knowledge to know which was which.
The got onto their computer support company in Dublin, but since they had screwed them over they last time they had worked, the IT people were in no hurry to sort them out.
They didn’t ask me.
By the time they found someone, the company had gone bust.
And the thing was, I had no intention of getting revenge, it was the company’s own practices which had resulted in it.
In reality, the best hiding place is the one that the police walk right past and never find. I’m sure it happens, but not in this case:
My favorite is the auto body repair shop we raided which was dealing a lot of heroin. We knew it was in there, but we couldn’t find it. We searched all the cars, all the tools, the tool boxes, the oil tanks – every place imaginable. The facility had a concrete floor and cinder-block walls with a 16′ ceiling — not many hiding places.
During the raid, we detained seven or eight people hanging out. As per standard operating procedure, we ran warrant checks on everyone there. That’s when we got lucky. One of the people there had a reasonably large warrant from another state.
The warrant wasn’t for a violent crime; he was stealing cars and selling off the parts. He must have pissed someone off, because his bail was fifty thousand dollars, full cash. When we were asked to confirm the person’s identity, my sergeant gave a different date of birth so that the warrant wouldn’t execute. Meaning the computer wouldn’t know we had the wanted person in custody.
We took the guy outside and explained the situation to him. Either he gave us the hiding place, or he sits in jail on a fifty thousand dollar warrant. He was very hesitant to give up the location because he said we would never find it on our own, they would know he told, and the dealer was a friend.
We promised to protect his identity and come up with a way to find the drugs which wouldn’t look suspicious. So he spilled the beans. Just off the ceiling, was a typical configuration of sprinkler pipes. The last section of pipe was a fake. The connecting pipe had been internally welded closed. The final length of the sprinkler pipe including two sprinkler heads were dry and empty, except for many bags of heroin. The rest of the pipes were all pressurized and fully functioning as a sprinkler system.
According to our new informant, the dealer would stand on the hood of the same car, which never moved from the shop. As the dealer stood on the vehicle, the lift would be raised. This put the dealer close enough to the pipe to unscrew it and retrieve the hidden drugs.
As the dealer watched, we spent hours acting as if we were searching until our sergeant said, “Look, what’s with all the sneaker prints on the hood of that car.” He had one of us climb up there and stand in the same spot, but the detective couldn’t reach anything and said so. The sergeant says, “How about if we raise the car.” As soon as the lift raised the car, the only thing up that high was the sprinkler pipe. The detective wiggled it around a little, and it was loose. He then yells down, “Hey, this sprinkler pipe has greasy hand prints all over it.”
He unscrewed the pipe and found the drugs and the dealer couldn’t believe we had located his stash. We told him we would recover his prints from the sprinkler pipe and he quickly admitted to owning the drugs.
He had a near perfect hiding place. His biggest mistake was that a second person was needed to operate the lift. This second person not only sold stolen auto parts, but also sold his friend down the river.
Its always been a mystery to me, it’s never been a problem that I have had. Except for a brief period where I had the worlds best maid.
She was the bar maid at my local pub, and over heard me say that my place was a mess, and I needed a maid.
It turns out that she worked days for Molly maid, and nights at the pub, and she picked up any work she could get during the day on weekends. She was only 21, and she was saving up to buy a bed and breakfast in a resort town in a neighboring province. She said she was almost there, at 21.
So I gave her a key to my place, and when I got home from work Saturday afternoon my house looked like a tornado had hit. All of my living room furniture was stacked in the middle of the living room. The smell of pinesol was strong in the kitchen and hallway. The fridge and stove were away from the wall, and there was no one in sight. I went upstairs and all the beds were piled in one room, the dressers pulled away from the wall. She was on her hands and knees, scrubbing a stain out of the carpet, that had been hidden by the bed. She said she was almost done cleaning and just had to put stuff back.
I offered to do that downstairs, while she finished up, upstairs. She gladly accepted. I went down and pushed the fridge and stove back over to the spotless walls, on spotless floors. I moved the living room and dining room furniture back .
I went upstairs and put the dressers and beds back in the guest rooms, while she finished the master bedroom.
She never stopped moving for a second. She said she loved the smell of a clean house. I wanted marry her then and there, but didn’t want to risk losing my maid 😂.
She asked me when the last time I had cleaned behind the fridge and stove, when I said never, she said “I could tell.”
The walls had been washed, all of the light fixtures cleaned, the windows washed. The laundry room was spotless, even the furnace room was swept and dusted.
She came every two weeks for 3 months, and then announced that she had bought a bed and breakfast at 21.
I went from a slob, to the cleanest house on the block, and back to a slob in 4 months.
The way I kept my house spotless was to have the worlds best maid.
There was this Chinese buffet in my hometown at which I used to eat, quite regularly. Probably more often than a person interested in their health and well-being should.
The woman at the front desk would seat me herself, and bring me my drink, rather than the waiters/waitresses.
The head chef would always come out and greet me and give me a polite smile, and ask me if I wanted anything specific made (of which I never really took advantage).
So, in other words, these people knew who I was and actually cared about my business.
I used to go there all the time with my then-girlfriend.
One day, I went in there alone on my lunch break.
The woman at the front desk approached me at my table.
She asked me, “You and your girlfriend break up?”
I was confused. “Uh… no?”
“Oh.” Then she said, very matter-of-factly, “She come in here earlier with another man. She kiss him.”
I was shocked. “What? She did?”
“Yeah!” She said, very excitedly, and pointed to a table, “She sat over there.”
So I texted her.
“Hey, I’m at the buffet for lunch, wanna join me?”
She replied, “No. I already ate.”
“Ah, cool. Where’d ya go?”
She replied, “My mom’s.”
So I said, “Really? Because the waitress said she saw you here earlier.”
Five minutes later, she texted, “Yeah, I went there. But I didn’t eat anything.”
At that point, I lost interest in pursuing the truth, so I just said, “Cool. We’re done.”
I was working for a company that sold, repaired, and installed computer networks, back in the 1980′s.
One guy called on the phone and yelled, “I want you to get over here and fix my fucking computer!” I asked him to repeat it. Didn’t know the voice or phone number, but I wanted to be sure. I repeated it, louder. “I WANT SOMEBODY TO COME HERE AND FIX MY FUCKING COMPUTER!” With total calm, I told him, “Sorry sir, we don’t service that brand.”
Another time, we’d just hired two sales people that a competitor had fired. They were following up all their sales leads that they had brought with them. Their former boss found out that they’d been closing some of those sales while they worked for us, and he called us, mad as hell, to speak to my boss, My boss didn’t want to deal with him, so he just handed me the phone. I was the bookkeeper. It was a small office. He mouthed, “Tell him whatever, I don’t care!” and then introduced me as his “Sales Manager.” I shrugged, took the phone and asked what the problem was. The guy told me that our new sales people had been poaching his leads, that he had come to him originally because of advertising that his company had paid a lot of money for. He wanted me to fire the two salespeople. I thought for a moment while I agreed with him that what they had done was quite unethical, and reprehensible. Then I told him I would see to it that it didn’t happen again, if he would help me, by giving me a list of all the prospective clients that he was working on, with their names, addresses, and contact information. He asked why, and I told him I was going to make sure that our sales staff didn’t call those people, but of course, I had to know who they were. I assured him that if he would fax me that list, I would make sure that all our salespeople received it with “appropriate instructions.’
He hung up without saying another word. And no, I never got the list. “
My little sister was terribly bullied in middle school. She often came home in tears; her grades were low and she had no friends. Although she was still young, it was not difficult to see that she was really depressed.
It was an expensive, selective, all-girl, private school. Our family considered it an achievement that she got accepted, and brushed off her struggles, saying it was only an adjustment period.
They were wrong. She spent two years in total misery. Her time in the counselor’s office told me that she would never adapt. It broke my heart seeing her unhappy and there was nothing I could do about it.
We relocated and she started at another school, where she prospered. It was the fresh start she needed. She had a great circle of friends and her academic performance improved.
My sister grew into a beautiful confident young lady. She managed to overcome all her insecurities and learned to socialize. Her old school troubles became distant memories that we avoided talking about.
Until we had to move back. My family wanted her to go to her old school and her old “friends”. She was devastated, because she was leaving her real ones, but mostly about having to live through the nightmare school once again.
We went there to re-enroll, after spending the night unsuccessfully trying to convince everyone against it. My sister recognized a group of girls from her old class at the gate. She said hello, they ignored her and started snickering.
She just sat there helplessly as the re-admission forms were being filled out. But I was fuming. We will process your paperwork and call you next week to pay the tuition fees so she can start, said the registrar.
It was not too late and I was going to act quietly. The next morning I phoned the school and asked to speak to her then counselor. I reminded her of all the difficulties my sister had when she attended that school.
I told her how well she’s doing in her new one and offered to send progress reports for proof. I asked her to keep our conversation confidential and finally begged her to decline the re-admission request.
“I will review her file and do my best. But please remember that I am only part of the admission panel and I do not have the final say in her acceptance” said her counselor. I hung up and prayed.
A few days later, my dad announced that he had bad news. The school rejected my sister’s application and we will be looking at other options. They did not provide a reason for their rejection.
No one knew about my meddling until she graduated high school. Ten years later, she is still very grateful about it.
China Banned ALL Rare Earth Tech, What this Means for Ucore
Me: “This is my two weeks notice.” Manager, looking stricken, as if I was her child saying I was leaving home: “I’m not happy for you.”
2007:
Me: “This is my two weeks notice. I do not want a party.” Manager : “Why are you leaving?” Me: “Because I am the only person left in this department and for some reason they gave me 10 months notice instead of 60 days, but it’s obvious we are going to be dissolved. I want to walk out of here on my own.” Manager: “No, no, that’s not true. But okay. What kind of party do you want?” Me: “I do not want a party. Please.” Manager: “It’ll just be a small party.”
2010:
Manager, smirking: “We’ll need an official letter of resignation.” Me, placing my ID badge on her desk. “Here is my official resignation.”
No one handled it well. No one had the slightest interest in me, my career, my emotional well-being. Right now I have a boss I’d crawl through broken glass for, it’s the first time in my entire career I feel that way.
How Aliens TIME-TRAVEL… Eric Weinstein explains to Joe Rogan
https://youtu.be/KhRLlwzkN24
Tuscan Chicken Rolls with Pork Stuffing (Rollatini di Pollo)
2024 01 31 11 56
Ingredients
3 large whole chicken breasts (about 2 1/2 pounds total)
1/2 pound ground pork
1 small onion, minced
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 egg, beaten
1/2 cup soft bread crumbs
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground savory
1/4 teaspoon pepper
2 tablespoons butter or margarine, melted
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup dry white wine
1/2 cup cold water
2 teaspoons cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon instant chicken bouillon
Minced parsley
Instructions
Remove bones and skin from chicken breasts; cut chicken into halves. Place between 2 pieces plastic wrap; pound until 1/4 inch thick, being careful not to tear the meat.
Cook and stir pork, onion and garlic over medium heat until pork is brown. drain fat.
Stir in egg, bread crumbs, 1/2 teaspoon salt, savory and pepper.
Place about 1/3 cup pork mixture on each chicken breast half. Roll up; secure with wooden picks.
Place rolls in greased 11 x 7-inch baking dish.
Brush rolls with butter; pour any remaining butter over rolls. Sprinkle with 1/2 teaspoon salt. Add wine.
Bake uncovered at 400 degrees F until chicken is done, 35 to 40 minutes.
Remove chicken to warm platter; remove wooden picks. Keep warm.
Pour liquid from baking dish into 1-quart saucepan.
Stir water into cornstarch; pour into liquid. Stir in bouillon. Heat to boiling over medium heat, stirring constantly. Boil and stir 1 minute.
I was asked that question one Christmas Eve when I was in Saudi Arabia in 2010. I was working there as a nurse in a major hospital in Riyadh. For us foreigners, Christmas was a particularly dangerous time of year, as Al-Qaidah was still strong, Bin Laden was still in charge, and predictably, they always wanted to give us the same Christmas present, a big bomb, preferably delivered via car. Having several hundred infidel women living together was too tempting for them to pass up.
Living in a 100% Muslim country that didn´t tolerate any other religions, we were warned not to try to celebrate Christmas. Near our quarters APC´s (Armored Personnel Carriers) would roam the streets with soldiers sent to protect us from the inevitable bomb threats. As Christian healthcare workers we were told not to even wish each other merry Christmas, as that could result in our being deported back to our home countries (although we never saw that actually happen to anyone).
There were many Muslims from other countries who would openly defy that order and wish us merry Christmas, but we were cautious, never knowing who you could trust. Some people even asked the Irish nurses how to say it in Irish, and hearing Filipinos and Christian Indians saying “Nollaig Shona” in the hallways to each other was surreal.
A week before the holiday I received a whispered invitation to go to a Christmas party thrown by a Saudi man in his home. My immediate response was “Are you joking?”
The Ukrainian nurse who invited me assured me that she wasn´t.
Abdullah* was a Saudi James Dean. He was a rebel in a white thobe. I learned that he had defied his family and married a tall, blue eyed blonde woman from the Czech Republic, which had resulted in him being rejected by his family. Although he was still a practicing Muslim, in defiance of everything he had been taught, he held a Christmas party in his home every year. The party was a potluck, all we had to do was bring the food and he would supply the illegal homemade alcohol.
My curiosity overcame my fear of arrest and deportation and I baked a cheesecake and set off to the party. There were roughly twenty-five people in attendance, all of us acutely aware of the danger attending this fete presented but throwing caution to the wind. He had invited westerners representing different nationalities and professions, nurses, architects, pilots and engineers, all of us connected only by the fact that we were together in a strange foreign land trying to navigate through the landmines of religious based rules.
Abdullah and his wife Magda* were gracious hosts, and as promised, he soon brought out his homemade wine and grain alcohol as we set up the buffet table full of food. He was breaking every law one could imagine, having unmarried men and women together in one room, celebrating the infidel holiday of Christmas, drinking alcohol, and even having music playing. All we needed was a roast pig to complete the debauchery.
Abdullah revelled in his rebellion like a child deliberately throwing himself in a mud puddle whilst wearing his best clothes.
By the time 02:00 rolled around, Abdullah and his guests were three sheets to the wind, and he leaned towards me sitting on the sofa and softly slurred, “Do you want see my whip scars?”
My mouth dropped open in surprise and I glanced quickly towards his wife, who nodded solemnly.
“Uh, OK, sure.” I stuttered, lying about my certainty.
He stood up unsteadily and stripped off his shirt, causing the other guests to abruptly stop their conversations, wondering why their Muslim host was taking off his clothes in his living room. He turned and showed us his back.
His guests collectively gasped. He sported dozens of lash scars all over his back. The nurses present gave into our clinical curiosity and cautiously reached out to touch his wounds. The other professionals weren´t as used to seeing physical damage as we were and didn´t come near.
We asked him what happened, and he told us that a couple of years earlier, he had been preparing to throw his traditional party and three women who were coming asked if they could bring some of their homemade wine. Abdullah decided that it was too dangerous for them to transport it in a taxi, so he offered to come and pick up the bottles himself.
Unfortunately, he was stopped by the police on his way home and they searched his car. He was immediately arrested, and the sentence was made worse by the fact that he wasn´t just caught in possession of alcohol, but by transporting it in his car, he was charged with intent to distribute, which carried a tougher sentence. He told the police that the wine was his, refusing to turn in the women to the authorities.
He was jailed for three months while he awaited trial, then he was sentenced to a hundred lashes. Even in our inebriated state, we couldn´t believe the harshness of the sentence.
“How do you survive a hundred lashes?” We asked him in awe, still staring at his back.
“They don´t do it all at once.” He explained. “They give you twenty-five or thirty, then you go home and have to come back a month later for more.”
He told us that they finally let him go home and with delays he waited almost a year for the first set of lashings, then a couple of months for the second, etc.
“Why would you go back for more?”
He shrugged. “Where am I supposed to go? They flagged my passport. I can´t go anywhere.”
Understandably, we were horrified by what we saw. One of the Canadian men in the party came up to him and clapped him on the shoulder. “Damn, man, I would take you out and buy you a beer if we lived somewhere where I could do that.”
Abdullah nodded. “I appreciate that.” He said softly.
“After all that, why in the world would you continue having Christmas parties?” I asked him. “Aren´t you afraid of getting caught again?”
He looked at us with a drunken fire in his eyes. “They will never keep me down. I will fight against their rules even if it kills me.”
Now, in 2020, Saudi Arabia has finally outlawed lashing as a corporal punishment for crimes. Every Christmas I think of Abdullah and wonder if he is still fighting the man – James Dean style
Mandatory Paternity Test Law Passed No More Paternity Fraud From Women
“If the average person knew the state of law enforcement in this country, they couldn’t sleep at night” – from one of my academy instructor’s lectures. Nothing has changed in 30 plus years. There is a reason why I always carry a gun off-duty and try to talk all of my loved ones into at least owning a firearm.
There are a lot fewer of us out on the street than you know. Take your local agency’s head count, lop off about 20 percent for administrative assignments, then divide the remaining amount by three or four (shifts). Then subtract about a quarter for those on days off/sick days/limited duty/training/vacation. Make it a busy night and no cars will be available and the calls pile up… and pile up.
After about three years, most officers become civil service workers. They are not looking to invent new case law or do more paperwork. At five to seven years, most officers think about another line of work. If they pass that hurdle, they can last 20. At 20 plus years, unless you are driving like you are competing in the Indy-500, you’re not getting stopped and you have to really, really work to be arrested.
The job is not nearly as exciting as portrayed on Cops or other television shows. There is an inordinate amount of paperwork – at times it seems like we are glorified secretaries with guns.
When we arrive on scene, we instantaneously know who is going to jail: the guy with no shirt (or wearing a “wife-beater”) with a mullet, usually standing in the middle of the road puffing up.
Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, good happens after midnight.
Don’t expect me to fix in under 15-minutes what took you ten years to destroy.
Don’t expect me to raise your kids. You decided for years to raise feral children with no discipline or sense of social responsibility, I can’t do much in a few minutes.
None of us care who you know. If you had any real juice; you’d not say anything, but would just smile and accept the citation or arrest and magically, behind the scenes, things would be fixed. I’ve dealt with the really connected people and have seen how they can manipulate the system – and that obviously ain’t you.
You can’t get our badge. Trust me, we hear that all the time. Just like how you will sue – get in line. Again, if you had power, you’d be as inconspicuous as possible.
Attitude goes a long way. I’ve cited people I originally was going to warn and warned people who I was going to cite. Same with arrests.
If we have to fight you or shoot you, we will be the first to give you medical treatment.
We are not trained as social workers or psychologists but that is a big portion of our jobs. When no one else is available or can help, it seems like a good time to call the police department.
When we are trying to help you and you feel like we are trying to shove a square peg into a round hole – we feel the same way. The laws and policies don’t make much sense to us either.
Law enforcement is one of only two jobs where everyone is an “expert” with no training or experience. The other one is being a head football coach.
I sincerely apologize when we forget to be empathetic. While this our 500th burglary, this is your first time being violated. While this is our 200th dead body call, it’s your first.
I don’t care about your prior bad experience with law enforcement. I’m here now. I’ve had bad experiences with plumbers, physicians and barbers, but I don’t stereotype a whole profession off of one experience.
Our cars aren’t much different than yours. Sure we have a snazzy paint job, some special lights and a radio, but we can get as stuck as easily as you, we can have an accident just like you and we can’t stop on a dime. And, we’re limited on how fast we can get to a call. We can’t go warp speed nor get traffic to part, like Moses did with the sea.
We really don’t care what race, sex or ethnic group you belong to, we are trying to get this issue resolved before going to the next call.
We all H-A-T-E when you scare your young kids by threatening them by telling them we will arrest them. Really? Way to make your kids the next generation of cop-haters and they are now petrified to approach us if they’re in danger or lost.
When I lived in Southern Indiana, there was a small scandal.
In the town was an old factory. Closed for nearly one hundred years. They manufactured medical thermometers and closed sometime in the 1920’s – 30’s during the “Great Depression”. As it lay off the end of town, it wasn’t visited by anyone. Just got over grown and forgotten.
After all, the kids aren’t willing to ride their bicycles ten miles to an industrial district, and the only people who would drive near the factory were workers going to and from their nearby factory jobs. All oblivious to the old factory.
But one day.
One day, a group of six graders went to the factory and broke in. And there, nearly undisturbed lay the tools of the trade. All left just they were last used. The work benches and assembly lines. The roof above leaked, and birds lived in the office complex. Certainly it was a long lost ruin, and there was nothing of value there.
But then…
One of the boys opened up a tub and in it was a strange silvery liquid. One that clung to their hands. They all dipped their arms and legs in the substance, and rubbed it all over their bodies.
Then they went home, and during the night all got very sick, and all had to be rushed to the local hospital.
Yes, they all got mercury poisoning. Their situation was critical. No one died.
As I recall.
But two of the boys would face years of rehab afterwards, and the mercury really messed them up.
That was my scandal for today.
Boys and girls, do not play with heavy metals. It’s not good for you.
90% of Taiwanese recognised that China is their motherland. 99% certainly don’t want war as they don’t want to kill their colleagues, friends, neighbours, relatives, spouse and associates.
99.99% certainly wants an economic union with China but with some autonomy no different from Taxan’s and Californian’s.
In the recent election there is one party that calls for outright independence and he gets ZERO seats! Taiwanese reject him outright. China don’t need to do a thing. US need to do a ton of shit costing billions China just do good!
Why Are WOMEN Not Signing PRENUPS!! | Women Hitting The Wall | I’m Not Singing a prenup
When walking in a crowded area look where you’re going and not at the other people. They will naturally move out of your line of sight making it quicker to move around.
If someone is bothering you at your desk too often, continue the conversation but get up and walk them back to their desk.
My boss likes having meetings after 5pm and even though I technically can be there for it, I don’t want to. So I tell him I have an important class I’m going to at exactly 5:45. I show up for about 5-10 minutes of the meeting then leave. He thinks I’m an amazing team player for going out of my way to hop on for just a few minutes. When in reality, I have no class to attend and I hate those meetings.
If you want to be an effective liar, build a reputation of being honest. The more you are known as being reliable, the easier it is to deceive and manipulate. Not terribly complex, I know.
Staring at peoples forehead irritates them quite a lot.
Having a heated argument… Ask the other person if they are okay because they’re breathing really hard. They will stop arguing and try to pay attention to their breathing. Resulting in the end of that discussion.
Next time you get in an elevator face towards the rear the whole ride. It freaks the other people out and makes me laugh. It’s the same principle behind stopping on the sidewalk and staring up. Sooner or later somebody else is going to stop and look to see what you’re gawking at.
You may have followed a similar trajectory to mine. You go to college, get your degree, start your career — and pursue that career to whichever city it takes you to. Inevitably, this landed me in Tampa, Florida, residing several states removed from my parents. This pattern is quite common with career oriented people, especially in the United States. But it comes with its own set of consequences.
My partner’s family lives in Albany. She had to leave for her niche academic job (bronze age archaeology). All of my closest friends live hundreds, and sometimes, thousands, of miles from their parents and extended family.
Whether someone stays near their family is often driven by socioeconomic factors. If you are from a more impoverished background, you’re much more likely to live near family — as it is common for to pool resources. For example, if your car breaks down, being able to get a ride or borrow a car can help immensely, especially if you can’t afford to repair the car or rent another. The same is true if you lose your job. It becomes much easier to survive the period of unemployment with immediate relatives in the vicinity.
Race plays a role in familial distance as well. A study found that the median distance between white adults and their mother is 15 miles, but is only three miles for black adults. This is also affected by the above socioeconomic factors, which come into play with racial disparities in income.
We are less likely to live further away from family in the US than in the UK, due to their increased support for single mothers and for the poor.
But as you move up the education (and income) brackets, your odds of living near family fall of quite quickly. A high school diploma means you have a 63% chance of living near extended family. A bachelors degree correlates to a 48% chance, and a post graduate degree translates to 42%.
Is it ideal for Americans to live so far from their families?
There is certainly a feeling of having missed out for me. I am in a group text with my parents and sister (who lives just a few miles away from my parents). Quite often, I see them sending pictures back and forth from the area. Sometimes, there’s a message about having forgotten something at their house or meeting up for a wine tasting (my parents run a vineyard).
Part of me does ache and know that I’m missing being part of their storyline. But for me, it was important to forge my own story and carve out into the world and be independent.
I’m also fortunate in that my family and I don’t have a toxic relationship as so many people do. There’s no need for me to have a difficult conversation about boundaries, and a parent stopping over unannounced during the day, or fighting over the constant pressure to visit. The separation between us is only career reasoned.
But in our case, it puts more pressure (in a good way) to make the most of our time together. Trips to other places, such as New York City, become opportune moments to celebrate and get pictures.
I write this as someone who mostly gets along with their family, and these dynamics can become infinitely complicated — especially in close proximity. In his novel, Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy wrote, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
It led to the Anna Karenina principle, and points out that in order for a family to be happy, a few things must be in order: financial security, mutual affection, and good health to all members. Yet for a family to be unhappy, any of a long list of factors can be the cause. And with close proximity, those problems are put under a spotlight. Which can then drive more people to move further away.
There is no one right answer for any person on living near family. But know the forces at work and how they affect you. Because the consequences can be real and substantive.
In my research for my book publisher, I discovered that many of you (Medium readers), are quite educated and have advanced degrees and incomes. That makes it quite likely that many of you live far from family. I would encourage you to find ways to reconnect with them when you have time, be it a phone call, or other means.
Your odds of loneliness increase when you lack interaction with people, and with family especially. Healthy familial relationships are like a supercharged antidote to loneliness. When you become too lonely, your risk of disease and depression go up markedly.
A final caution on the divide of family
In nearly every case I know of someone who lives far from family, there has been heartburn and problems that need squashing. My partner is constantly feeling pressured to visit her family. The pressure is, of course, always out of love and never devolves into a screaming match. But it does cause the common tension, which emerges from a child being ambitious and being flung to a distance city.
My best friend’s mother is constantly upset with him for not bringing their grandchildren up to visit every month — but it isn’t feasible. It’s a 6 hour drive and both he and his wife a neck deep with work and school. Even further, he lives further away because his mother keeps trying to indoctrinate their children into Christianity, and he wants his children to be 18 before they make religious decisions.
The point isn’t that we should spend time with and live closer to family regardless of circumstances. Because those circumstances can be infinitely varied and I’m sympathetic to them.
Just be aware of the economic forces that are pulling at us. They define where and how far we live from family. It takes extra steps these days to keep families well-bonded.
My parents also lived far from their parents for my dad’s military career, and so perhaps I am continuing that tradition. We combatted this by making an effort to drive and see grandparents at every opportunity. There weren’t many ski vacations in my childhood, but every Christmas and summer was with grandparents, and that helped keep the family together. The other way to do Zoom calls on a recurring basis. My partner does one every two weeks — and they came to this system because they weren’t interacting enough with each other before that.
Because I work remotely as a writer, and not for any one employer, I can do my job anywhere. So I do at least six different week long trips to see my family each year. And it has been a blessing and helped me feel more connected with family.
No matter how far your career pulls you, don’t forget where you come from, and that there are usually people who wouldn’t mind hearing from you. Upward mobility has a natural gravitational pull away from family.
It’s easier than ever to be lonely these days, but that doesn’t mean you have to be.
Her Husband Was The PERFECT Man So She CHEATED On Him
Yes, my 1999, BMW Z3 roadster convertible. This was about 14 years ago. I drove that baby to work every day. Then I retired. No job, no reason to leave the house 5 days a week. So it sat in the driveway a lot. Twice I had two young men, 20’s probably, knock on my door and ask if my car was for sale. The first was a it 8 ll the after I retired c the next 3–4 months later. I told them both the no, I loved my car, couldn’t think of any reason why I should give it up. I was really stunned when the first guy said” well you never drive it”. I told him I did drive it, he then proceeded tot me that every time he came by it was in the driveway. Told him I was retired so I didn’t take it out every day and what did he care anyway. If I remember correctly I did offer to sell him the car for $15,000. It was 12 years old by them, very low miles and we’d done about $5000 worth of work on it. He didn’t like that. So I told him goodbye. The next guy, much to my astonishment told me the same thing. The car never moved so he’d take it off my hands for $500. I told him no thanks I loved and wasn’t coming it up since my hubby and I drove when we went to dinner or visited friends, church. And he’s never see the inside of that car for less than $20,000 he told me a was a crazy old lady. I told him I still owned the car, didn’t I?
Gonzalo Lira has died in Ukrainian Prison. His family announced that he was TORTURED. What happened?
So I flew with my family to Phoenix (PHX) to visit my niece. I reserved a car from Budget
We arrived around 5:00 pm. The flight in was great.
After getting our bags, we ended up standing in line for the shuttle to the car rental center for over an hour. That’s not Budget’s problem; that’s a problem with airport operations.
The real problems started when we got to the rental center. The line was ridiculously long, they had only four staff members to check people out. I stood in line for three hours. Three horrible hours. By the time I got to the counter, the line was three times as long as when I arrived. On top of that, despite me entering ALL MY INFORMATION when I placed the reservation online, the poor agent had to reenter everything manually.
I don’t have anything bad to say about the customer service agent; they were just the victim of terrible management. My problem is that Budget has systemic customer service problems:
If a customer has a reservation, all the agent should need to do is confirm the renter’s identification and hand over the keys. This should take two minutes, tops. Not 15 minutes per renter.
Budget knows exactly how many people have reserved cars at each location, and when. They should be able to staff appropriately. There were eight or ten stations at this location, with only four staffed.
By the time I got into the car, it was 9:30 pm. We hadn’t had anything to eat since lunchtime, assuming that we’d get our car within a few minutes of arriving and we’d eat after.
I’ll never rent from Budget again, even if it costs twice as much. That’s an experience I am not willing to go through again.
Why NASA can’t send humans to the Moon? Russia refuses to keep mouth shut, or it’s the Aliens?
US ban Huawei for perhaps, may be Huawei could be a Chinese government agency using its technology in China’s military!
China do tit for tat! It stop buying from Boeing since Boeing used the profit from China’s purchases to participated in lethal weapons development that may be used on China one day!
So that is why everything you do, China will reciprocate likewise.
My son was nearly 4 years old. One day he and my wife went to a restaurant to get a pizza for lunch. There was an elderly man who came in with his shopping cart. He was obviously homeless. He ordered a cup of coffee which the waitress grudgingly served him. (It was obvious she didn’t want him there.) He fished on his pocket and pulled out a hot dog. He ate it slowly, dunking it in his coffee between bites.
My son asked why he was doing this and my wife explained that he was homeless and had no money. My son became upset and asked my wife if they could help him. As they were ready to leave, my wife brought him the untouched half of the pizza they had been eating. At first, he refused to take it as he was concerned that my son would not have enough to eat. My wife explained that they bought too much and the waitress would only throw it away if they left it. He took the pieces, carefully wrapped them up and stored them in his basket (most likely those slices would become his dinner that evening.). He thanked them with tears in his eyes when they left.
When they got into the car, my wife heard my son crying. When she asked him what was wrong. He looked at her through his tears and answered “Nothing Mommy…I just have feelings inside myself.”
Update: This same son is now an adult with children of his own, ages 4 and 6. I was injured in a fall and am now a paraplegic, confined to a wheelchair. The other day, he was walking his young daughters to school. He noticed the older one occasionally running ahead, picking up sticks and throwing them to the side of the road. After she did this several times, he asked her why she was doing it. She replied “If Papa ever walks us to school, his wheelchair tire would hit them and he would get thrown out of the chair. I want to make sure he is safe.” I cried when I heard that one.
My Dad was “On the job” NYPD from 1929–1949. He was a detective at the time this incident occured. He was coming out of a store in a bad neighborhood and heard a woman screaming out the window He’s “cutn” me he’s “cutn” me. It was a 2–3 story walk-up and my Dad ran up the stairs with his .38 revolved in his hand and when he heard which apartment she was screaming from he kicked open the door and there in front of him was a very large man, at least 6′5″ and probably 250+ pounds holding a butcher knife.
Dad told him he was NYPD and ordered him to put the knife down and the guy said “I am going to put it down in you.” He started coming at Dad and he started shooting center mass but the guy kept coming. He got down to one bullet left (always try and count the # of rounds you expend), which he put between the guys eyes and said to himself that if this one doesn’t stop him “I’m going to throw the gun at him and run down the stairs. It stopped him!
My Dad, after that, always said to get the biggest caliber pistol or rifle it will take and you can carry comfortably to stop whatever you are trying to put down on the first shot. A .22 caliber pistol is really good if you are a Mafia hitman and put it at the back of someone’s head and pull the trigger but for everyone else take my Dad’s advice.
The Chinese, especially those in the northeast, have fond memories of the Soviets, who supplied arms for the Korean war, and helped seed China’s first phase of industrialization through the transfer of over 100 heavy industries. China’s nuclear and space technology was also driven initially by Soviet experts, before relationships cooled.
The Chinese have had trouble with the USSR along the border, but it never escalated beyond small unit fire contact. A border has been ratified with the Russians and today, with Putin’s head turned east, the Russians are doing roaring business with China. I won’t be surprised if Russia-China trade grows another 2–3x from 2023 levels, already a historic high.
The Chinese certainly don’t think the Russian as the evil protagonist in James Bond movies, or the sanctions (that were executive- rather than court-directed) fair, particularly the seizure of assets from individuals with Russian ancestry. That scared the bejesus out of rich folk with money parked out west, and Singapore was a beneficiary of the capital flight.
If it can happen to Russia, a P5 member with one of the most powerful nuclear triad MAD deterrents globally, it can happen to anyone.
The Chinese will give their Russian brothers a pat on the back, and go “we share a long border and history. We understand and empathize. Welcome to the club. We are being spanked everyday too. They still talk rubbish about Tiananmen more than 30 years later. Let’s build our own vision of a shared humanity.”
And that’s that.
He Marries a Girl who hides her Melons’ size because they are TOO Big
Yes. And for those of you who have a visual mind or are faint of heart do not read my reply.
At the Regional Burn Center I worked at in my city, we would see one or two times a year a very specific assault and injury to the male genitals that we discovered was specific to our city. For some reason there were some women in our city, who if they caught their man cheating on them, would find an opportunity to throw lye on their private parts as a punishment or revenge. The severe burns that this caused to that area were unbelievable to see. The skin would de-glove and we would have to remove it and then these men would have to go through multiple grafting procedures which were very painful. These were second and three degree burns to the genitals. Needless to say these men were never the same again.
I was a government employee for 28 years and worked overtime whenever she asked me. I also took no sick leave and cut my vacation time when there was an overload of work. An opening for a promotion came up and I passed the tests with flying colors. However, my supervisor wanted a woman in the position and called in favors to have a female employee from another department transferred to her section. I then went to HR and asked when I could take early retirement with the best employee pension possible given my number of years as an employee. I bided my time and when the time came, I gave exactly 2 weeks notice. How did it hurt her? I had accumulated 2 years and six weeks of vacation, sick leave, and overtime, so for that time, I was paid full salary on early retirement. The best part, she could not have another employee fill my position because I was officially still occupying that position.
In the early 2000s I had an employee that I thought was excellent, so I gave them a 10% raise for everything they were doing. They worked around 40 hours a week, I paid overtime whenever they needed to work it, and paid them 4 hours of OT for just showing up if I needed them for an emergency. The following year they found a job that was paying four dollars an hour more, they were “on the clock” the moment they got into the company provided vehicle, and the company was able to provide them with training that I wasn’t able to provide. As they shared this information with me I asked, “So what is the trade off?” Meaning, why when I was paying above the market average was this company paying more than I was for essentially the same work. They told me couldn’t think of any, so I encouraged them to go back and ask the future employer a few more questions. They didn’t do that but called me back two months later. During the majority of the two month time frame they had worked at least 12 hours a day for six to seven days a week. Yes, they were tired but they also wanted to see their family. They discovered that while the money was great, but it was getting in the way of their true priorities.
I worked in many mills and factories in my early life – there were still mills making stuff, even paper, up till about 1985 or so. Now all that stuff is gone.
In high school, as soon as I turned 16 I got a job as a general laborer at an electroplating and finishing mill in Readville called “Precision Metal Coating”. The name was a joke because everything in the mill was bottom of the barrel shit, worst quality, and the workers were treated like dirt. My boss was a total dick named Jack McBride, a foreman who treated everyone in that building as if they were something to be scraped off. I was getting minimum wage, which in those days was $2.15 an hour but for someone who never worked, 80 dollars a week was a fortune.
In this mill was a giant oven room with 10 huge ovens. We would push carts filled with thousands of recently painted parts into the oven where the temps would soar to over 2000 degrees and bake on the coatings. We did all kinds of things like gun receivers and heart defribrillators and carbereutor parts and so on. In the winter everyone tried to visit the over room as much as possible since the factory was barely heated and most of the windows were broken. It was almost as cold inside as outside the factory. But the oven room was toasty.
As an unskilled laborer my job was to push carts in and out of the ovens and then a skilled worker would set the temperature and fire up the ovens. There was a massive door covered with sheet steel that we would use to block off the oven room from the rest of the mill, not just for fire safety but because the baking parts often gave off poison gas. The worst was Teflon. We made many Teflon-coated things but when Teflon is baked it gives off a poison gas. When we were baking Teflon, the oven room had to be cleared and the massive door sealed and locked.
One day I was tasked with resetting some parts in one of the ovens. Now, you couldn’t get trapped in the ovens – the giant doors had a big escape handle to prevent anyone from getting locked inside – but you were working in them when temps were 200 degrees. Sometimes you could run in and do something quick when they were even hotter. We had all kinds of furry asbestos gloves and gear if we had to do stuff in the ovens. I was in this steaming oven one day – and they were always loud with the roaring of the gas blowers – you couldn’t talk to anyone. So I set up this tray of equipment and it was getting hotter and stinkier. I was glad to finish. But when I got out of the oven I found the massive door to the oven room sealed. Now, it wasn’t as if I was going to fry but I didn’t want the boss to think I was goofing off. There were timers attached to doorbells and when the timer clicked off, it raised an arm that hit the doorbell and rang a loud bell on the shop floor. We used it to tell when the products were done baking. There was a timer for every oven. I went over and hit one of the doorbells two or three times, sounding a loud bell in the factory. In a couple of seconds the big door slid open and an arm grabbed me and pulled me out. There were two men there and they were white as sheets.
“What the hell were you doing in there?” the Asst Foreman asked.
“Jack asked me to reset the Prolastimer parts,” I said defensively.
“Do you know what’s baking in there?” the other guy asked. He was literally shaking.
“It’s Teflon,” the Assistant Foreman said.
I had no idea what this meant. He could see this meant nothing to me. The other guy turned to him.
“He’s gonna be sick, Roy,” he said. “Real sick. Teflon fever.”
“Listen,” the Asst Foreman said, “Clock out and go home. Don’t tell anyone anything. I will square it with Jack. Don’t come back tomorrow or the next day…”
“But I feel fine,” I protested.
“You won’t. Now get out of here. Get going. You have to get home before you start getting sick. When you get home, take a shower and some aspirin and get into bed.”
I wanted to protest.
“Just fuckin’ do it,” the other guy said. “Don’t say a word. Just get the fuck out of here.”
And so I did. I walked home from the mill. And as a I walked I started to see lines in my sight, wavy lines. And then the headache started to come. By the time I made it home I was gasping with pain. I tore off my clothes and got in the shower and immediately vomited. When I got out of the shower I vomited again. Black stuff was coming out of my nose and my tears were stained black. I crawled into bed. I had never been in so much pain in my life. Every joint, every muscle ached. When I opened my eyes, the light exploded in my brain and I would vomit all over again. No migraine I had ever had was this bad. I cried. Eventually my exhausted body collapsed and I fell asleep. The next morning I felt a lot better but I was so weak I could barely walk. The third day I went back to work. There was my boss, Jack.
“I’m sorry about what happened,” I said.
“Nothing happened,” he said tersely. “Nothing. And no one will back you up if you ever say it did.”
And then he put me on the sandblaster. I got a small raise and I would never have to go into the oven room again. But it was no promotion. Being a sandblaster was one of the worst, most miserable jobs I ever had. It was so bad one of the other sandlblasters killed himself in the sandblasting studio. Jack shrugged and went out and hired another drunk desperate for a job.
That was just one of the many adventures I had there. It was a horrible, horrible place and if that’s what factories are like then it’s no surprise why so many of them folded.
CHINA’s Scientists INVENTED Energy Shield To Defend Against US Attack
My father wasn’t thrilled with the idea of me dating a white guy. So having them meet for the first time in my house was a bit nerve wracking.
Before visiting my home to Japan, my boyfriend asked me what my father is like. I told him that my dad wanted to be an academic like his father (my grandfather) but had to pursue a career in business instead because of financial reasons.
On the day of the “meeting”, my boyfriend shows up with a huge ass textbook on statistics and starts leisurely reading on the couch in our living room, all spread out. Half an hour later, my dad comes home.
Dad: “Why hello! Nice to meet you in person…. What is that book you’ve got there?”
Boyfriend: “Oh this? It’s some reading I have to do for my graduate school next year…”
Dad: (Flips through the pages) “…Wow! This looks very difficult. Do you understand it all?”
Boyfriend: “Well some of it is difficult, but the concepts like….. and….. are rather easy.”
Dad: (super impressed)
It was smooth sailing from there. Now, my dad adores then-bf-now-husband.
Needless to say, I never saw him open that book ever again.
it’s just a quick guide at best. It measures output based on value. That means if your provide services freely, it is perceived as not value! Hence the U.S. charged its citizens for healthcare at an exorbitant price and that gets counted up to 6 trillion dollars GDP while China provides the same for less than one trillion dollars to 4 times more people and actually keep its people alive 2 years longer!
So the U.S. GDP is overvalued or Chinese GDP is highly undervalued hence it is wrong even to compare the U.S. versus China for example, through this faulty measurement.
When the U.S. threw helicopter money to the tune of 10 trillion dollars as subsidies and bail outs, that amount is counted as income! Hence once again it over values the US GDP. The same goes to stock valuation or real estate valuation. To me it measures greed or bubble.
Whatever it is one measuring economic health of a nation based only GDP is no different from judging your physical health based only on your temperature or just your blood pressure! You need a host of measurements including life expectancy!
The U.S. is a very unhealthy economy wrongly perceived by its citizens due to its media as a huge economy. It is far from that! It is a lot of hot air at best.
I brought a guy into the station and sat him down in an interrogation room, and walked out to get a cup of coffee for both him and myself. I hadn’t indicated to him why he was there, except he was in possession of a nominal amount of marijuana. I was going to give him the, “Who’s your dealer?” bit when I got back.
I walked in, sat the coffees down and took a seat across from him.
“I suppose you figured out why I brought you in?” I asked.
“Yeah. But it wasn’t me. It was XXX X. XXX. He shot the guy. I was there but had no idea it was going to happen.” He offered. “I don’t do nothing like that!”
“I didn’t think so.” I answered, nearly choking on his admission. “So let’s get this on paper so we can see what the DA can do for you. OK?” Then I read him his rights again.
He wrote it all down, and what was going to be a simple misdemeanor bust for weed turned into a murder being solved. When the Captain asked me how I got him to confess, I just smiled. “Some people got it, others don’t Cap!” I laughed. Sometimes a blind squirrel can find a nut.
Ask Me On A Date, Men! Modern Women Has FREAKS OUT Because Men Are Walking Away
I called for a position being advertised at a pig sanctuary in upstate NY called Arthur’s Acres. The guy who founded it and runs it is a vegan, but fanatical about it.
I was extremely qualified for a position there (about which he wasn’t clear, btw), as I had worked with pigs for six months when I was an Animal Science major 15 years ago. I have also worked with dogs for 22 years, and volunteered at Raptor Trust in N.J. for a time. As well, I spent a few years riding and working with horses. That is to say, I have lots of multi-species experience and, specifically, also pigs.
He then asked me if I was vegan. I said I wasn’t, he was very upset, and tried to argue with me about being vegan. He let me know that my not being vegan was a dealbreaker for him. Food Nazi!!!
Anyway, I told him I hadn’t eaten pork for over 20 years (totally true), and that I had IBD/Crohn’s, so that ruled out my eating a lot of vegetables, beans and salads, most of the things which comprise a vegan diet. I let him know that a diet that full of fiber could send me to the hospital. I also let him know that while I was at his sanctuary, I would respect his wishes and eat PBandJ on sourdough bread if I had to eat that every day for lunch, but once I left his property what I ate was really my business. He didn’t care about any of this. He was a guy that seemed unable to see anyone else’s point of view or have empathy for anyone’s condition or limitations. He only cared about having everyone be vegan.
I had donated several times to his sanctuary, but after this, I stopped.
I decided it wasn’t worth it, and that I’d never want to work with a person like this. He does a lot for the pigs he rescues, no doubt; but, he doesn’t like people at all, that was clear to me.
FLORIDA OVERTURNS LIFETIME ALIMONY LAW | Women Are Losing Their Minds!
I’ve wanted to share this because I thought it was amazing and it made me smile, but I dont know how you would bring this up randomly.
I’m 34 years old. When I was a child my mom moved my brother and I to a new house, getting us out of our old apartment where we had grown up. I was in the fifth grade and my younger brother was in the third I believe. We rode the bus and lucky for us, our bus stop was RIGHT down the street from our house, not even a 3 minute walk. Back then all the neighborhood kids near us who also used this stop would FIGHT to secure their spot in line because who ever got there first would get the best seats in the back of the bus because we were the first stop. The problem was, we neighborhood kids were cut throat about our spots in line, some of us woke up early JUST to get a good spot, but that also meant if you were in line waiting for the bus, you couldn’t get out or you would lose your spot and have to move to the back. We all hated this because we were forced to stand in one spot waiting instead of being able to play and run around with each other and some days the bus took a while to get there. Now, I don’t know how many weeks this went on for before I said to myself, “this isn’t going to work for me.” So I decided instead of us all lining up and being forced to stand there, we would instead use our backpacks to keep our spot. We’d line them up in order of first come first serve, then be free to go play. I asked all the kids of various ages if they agreed and they did. At that bus stop everyday after that and even the next year (my last year riding that bus), we all still lined our backpacks up. My mom still lives in that house all these years later and sometimes she needs me to house sit. Well, I was on my way to work one morning a few months ago and I passed my old elementary school bus stop, they never changed the route. And do you know what I saw? It made me go, Wow. As I turned the corner in my car I saw a bunch of grade school kids at my old bus stop,they were out playing with eachother, and right where we use to line up our backpacks, they still lined theirs. I started that as a child, and because the older kids did it, the younger ones did too, and then those young kids would become the older kids and new kids would replace them, and they all learned of the backpack trick because they watched the kids who came before them. I started a thing that has carried on for over 24 years and counting. It really made me smile to see the neighborhood kids still doing it after all this time. I knew at the time it was a great idea but I didn’t know how everlasting it would be to where it became tradition. It made me smile and think, wow, all these years later these kids were still using their backpacks to hold their place in line, if you would of told me the day I came up with it that in 24 years kids would still be doing it, I would of called you a liar but unbelievable as it is, here we are.
Now, how do I randomly fit that into a conversation?
Fenikia
melo8
Ingredients
Cookies
1 cup peanut oil
1 cup butter
1/2 cup water
1 jigger brandy
2 eggs, beaten
3 cups flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1 tablespoon ground cloves
1 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 cup sugar
Dash cinnamon
Dash ground cloves
Chopped walnuts for garnish
Syrup
2 cups granulated sugar
1 cup water
1 pound honey
1 lemon, sliced or 1 orange, sliced
Instructions
Cookies: Heat oil and butter over low heat until butter is melted and mixture is hot. Remove from heat and stir in water and brandy. Cool.
Stir in beaten eggs.
Sift together flour and baking powder with the tablespoon each of cinnamon and cloves. Add to liquid mixture to make a dough that is not too soft. Add a little more flour if necessary. With floured hands shape dough into ovals and indent lengthwise with thumbs.
Combine chopped walnuts with sugar and dash each cinnamon and cloves. Put 1 teaspoon of this filling into the indentation in the dough and close dough over filling. Place on cookie sheets and bake in a 400 degree F oven for about 25 minutes or until golden brown. Cool.
Dip cooled cookies into hot syrup and place on racks to drain. Decorate with chopped walnuts.
Syrup: Combine above ingredients and boil for 5 minutes.
My ex father in law was the thief. He was also a bully and all around shitty human being. He was the big boss of a construction company and basically drove around all day to different jobs making sure the guys had what they needed and making sure the work was completed to standards. This also allowed him the opportunity to help himself to the guys lunches. I still remember the panic in my exs voice that his Dad was in the ER because he thought he was having a heart attack. He had stolen the wrong guys lunch. The guy had put a pot brownie in his lunch box and dummy took it, ate the whole thing and when it hit, he was completely sick and high as a kite. I giggled a lot that day because the bully and thief finally had to pay for his actions.
As a risk manager and health plan administrator, I had lots of complaints. But the Gold Star goes to this one: This woman had built an illegal extension to her house that went out into the public right of way. Over the years, it undermined the power pole which tilted and was resting on the eaves of her extension. She called to say that the exterminator told her that her roof had terminates. I asked how I could help her (we always had to try to be helpful). She said she wanted us to replace her roof. When I asked why, she explained about the pole leaning on the eaves and said our utility pole had given her roof termites. I explained that the poles were made soaked in creosote to prevent termites. She then told me the termites walked up the pole and jumped onto her roof. She was quite serious. The only thing that could be said to that would have been snorting laughter. (I was imagining termites, in uniform, marching up the pole, with a brass band.) I told her we would look into it. We did our due diligence then wrote her a polite denial letter.
I dealt with a lot of people who believed their problems could not possibly be their fault.
China dismantled a MI6 espionage network. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
My mother lived in a large old house that we called “the manor”. Supposedly it was the home of one of the regional governors of the area back in the 1700’s, and it had servant quarters, a large “carriage house”, a barn, and a row of houses that were the quarters for the servants back in the day.
When she bought it (with her second “husband”), my step dad, it was being used a a mobile home park. And so they cleared out the old mobile homes, and the discarded cars, cleaned up the land. Knocked down some buildings, and installed a pool with a pool house, and placed a nice water fountain with a stature in front.
But…
Off to the side was this big spread of land and Lordy, it needed to be mowed. That’s 11 acres you all. Took me a full day to mow all the grass, I’ll tell you what.
But in the middle of that was a flag pole. And my mother would put up a new flag every Memorial Day.
Now, she always bought smaller flags. This is because they gave the impression that the pole was larger, and thus bigger, than it actually was.
Well, one day in 2002, I guess, I went to get a replacement flag and the storekeeper asked me what size that I wanted.
I told her that I did not know.
So he asked me how tall the pole was. And I said about three stories tall, and he gave me a flag.
When I brought it home, my mother was angry.
She said that it was way too large.
But, since it was the end of the day and the holiday was upon us, she gave me the ok to put it up.
And so I did.
Let me tell you that that large flag was GLORIOUS. Simply wonderful.
It moved with strength in the wind, and it was so gosh visually appealing that cars would slow down as they drove by the house.
So people, when ever you put up a flag, select the largest one that would fit on the pole. You will NOT be disappointed.
And as for my mother… well, she changed her mind about what the size of a flag should be, and always insisted on the large size.
You see, everyone.
Size does matter.
This entire post endured a javascript crash, please excuse it, and manually run the video links at the side. Sorry.
Worst. I worked for a family owned business. I was a Sale Rep/Tech. During that year I was Salesman of the Month 10 of 12 months. I sold over $950,000 worth of computers. The closest salesperson was a great friend of mine to this day. She sold $600,000 worth of computers. The Christmas bonus was a $12 ham. Not a coupon, an actual ham.
Best. I worked for a big HVAC company as a Supervisor for their Network Operations Center. There were 16 of us in the office. Our Boss gave us all personal gifts, in my case, (and yes, I’m a Nerd) a replica of the Star Trek phaser. It cost about $125. This was not a bonus directly, this was out of his own pocket. Each person got something that was special to each person. And I am proud to say that even after not working for him for 20 years, we are still good friends. He’s retired, and I’m jealous.
One February my husband and I went on a couples only trip to Jamaica. My oldest daughter was 20 years old at the time and we allowed her to stay in our home in Maine on the promise of her best behavior. I took my younger two children to my mothers house in Philadelphia. We had an oil furnace in the house and had just filled our 350 gallon tank prior to leaving on vacation. Yes
Because we didn’t totally trust our 20 yr. old, I had locked the alcohol into my bedroom closet and had asked our neighbors to keep an eye on the house to make sure there wasn’t any more than 1-2 cars in the driveway at any given time. Feeling that we had covered our bases, my husband and I proceeded to enjoy our time with friends on a beautiful tropical island.
Seven days later when we arrived back at our house, it was to find all the lights on, the doors wide open to the zero degree temperatures and the furnace completely out of oil. There was a note on the kitchen counter written by a friend of my daughter’s reading: “Morgan is in jail, you’ll need to bail her out when you get home.”
Our living room furniture had multiple cigarette burns, as well as the bedroom carpets and some of the beds. The shower had been ripped out of the main bathroom. My closet door had been removed to get at the alcohol I had hidden away. All of us had valuables stolen. The total for the damages totaled $12,000 and THAT didn’t include our lost heating fuel.
For any who may be curious, no I did NOT bail my daughter out of jail. I did however speak to someone at the jail to find out the charge was serving alcohol to her underaged friends.
She had a difficult next couple of months but ended up discovering some real strengths. During that time, she totally turned her life around and when she finally asked if she could come back home, she was told yes but with conditions. Over the years she filled us in on what actually happened and that people she didn’t even know kept coming into the house because they “heard ” there was a party. She tried to stop it but it was far too out of control.
Jerry Seinfeld DESTROYS Woke Insanity in EPIC Video – Hollywood Goes CRAZY!
TSMC has no plans. It’s a slave to the U.S. The U.S. has plans that failed and will never work. They want to make chips in its country and in its slave nations. They thought it could contain China but China did not only buy from other nations. They do it themselves. Hahahaha.
But the person who post this question ought to ask if China has a domestic market that represents 30% of the world’s market and they make 4/5 of everything the rest of the world or another say 40–50% if these 70–80% don’t buy and used your chips, you are left with 20–30% balance!
You barely need a factory let alone 3–4 countries making these chips! Do your simple mathematics. Chinese are superb at maths. They pretend to be up in arms but this chip ban couldn’t be sillier!
Top 10 Unsettling Signs Of Scary Parallel Universes In History
I had lost my wife of almost 30 years 10 months previous. Her best friend invited me to dinner with her sister who incidentally lost her husband at the same time. My deceased wife’s best friend felt sharing our experience would assist in the grieving process. She repeated the process a few weeks later bringing takeout to my place. The friend shortly after dinner stood to leave, my eyes met her sister’s eyes and I could tell there was more to talk about. They left.
Of course I started taking her to dinner alone and quickly bonds formed.
The false pretense part of the story occurs months after, when we announced to her sister we were getting married. My deceased wife’s best friend was absolutely shocked at the idea, no concept what so ever of us being more than consoling friends, hell I was her best friend’s husband and she was her sister. It’s all too early, it’s been only one year. In fact she quietly became scarce, not contacting either of us for months and months. Slowly she adjusted to the idea her best friend’s husband was now married to her sister. It took a while for our dense heads to realize my deceased wife’s best friend also had to go through the grieving process.
All is well now and relationship back to normal.
Faki Soupa (Greek Lentil Soup)
2024 01 22 11 53
Ingredients
3/4 cup brown lentils
1 large onion, sliced
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 (3 ounce) can tomato puree
8 ounces fresh tomatoes, peeled and seeded
Good pinch of oregano
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 3/4 cups water
Salt, to taste
Pepper, to taste
Instructions
Cover lentils with cold water and bring to boil. Drain lentils and return to the pan with 1 1/2 pints water, garlic, onion, tomato puree, fresh tomatoes, oregano and olive oil. Bring to a boil and simmer until the lentils are soft.
Remove from heat and blend, but stop blending before the mixture gets too smooth.
Season to taste.
UKRAINE LATEST: 5,600 DEAD IN ONE WEEK; Matches a Visitor to Ukraine Report
Ukrainian casualties soar: Kiev loses 5,600 troops in seven days – Widespread use of thermobaric shells by Russian artillery.
Ukrainian losses on the various fronts of the war are increasing dramatically as a result of the lack of ammunition that is now plaguing the Ukrainian Army.
On the contrary, the Russian Army has increased the intensity of the bombardments and above all, the use of thermobaric rockets from TOS-1A systems.
Ukrainian casualties increased – 5,600 dead in seven days!
The Ukrainian army has suffered heavy casualties during front-line fighting where Russian forces have the military initiative in all directions, Moscow said on Friday.
The numbers above are a confirmation of an email I received on January 6 from a woman who had just returned from a trip to Ukraine. While I did not publish that letter when it came, I think the news story above cries out for her letter to be reported. Here is her report:
———-
I just got back from Ukraine, where I was visiting some friends.
Everything we have heard about what’s happening in Ukraine is a lie.
The reality is darker, bleaker, and unequivocally hopeless. There is no such thing as Ukraine “winning” this war.
– By their estimates, they have lost over one million of their sons, fathers and husbands; an entire generation is gone. – Even in the Southwest, where the anti-Russian sentiment is long-standing, citizens are reluctant or straight-up scared to publicly criticize Zelensky; they will go to jail. – In every village and town, the streets, shops, and restaurants are mostly absent of men. – The few men who remain are terrified of leaving their homes for fear of being kidnapped into conscription. Some have resorted to begging friends to break their legs to avoid service. – Army search parties take place early in the morning, when men leave their homes to go to work. They ambush and kidnap them off the streets and within 3-4 hours they get listed in the army and taken away straight to the front lines with minimal or no training at all; it is “a death sentence.” – It’s getting worse every day. Where I was staying, a dentist had just been taken by security forces on his way to work, leaving behind two small children. Every day, 3-5 dead bodies keep arriving from the front lines. – Mothers and wives fight tooth and nail with the armed forces, beg and plead not to have their men taken away. They try bribing, which sometimes works, but most of the time they are met with physical violence and death threats. – The territory celebrated as having been “won back” from Russia has been reduced to rubble and is uninhabitable. Regardless, there is no one left to live there and displaced families will likely never return. – They see the way the war has been reported, at home and abroad. It’s a “joke” and “propaganda.” They say: “Look around: is this winning?”. – Worse, some have been hoaxed into believing that once Ukrainians forces are exhausted, American soldiers will come in to replace them and “win the war”.
There is no ambiguity in these people. The war was for nothing – a travesty. The outcome always was, and is, clear. The people are hopeless, utterly destroyed, and living in an unending nightmare.
They are pleading for an end, any end – most likely the same “peace” that could have been achieved two years ago. In their minds, they have already lost, for their sons, fathers and husbands are gone, and their country has been destroyed. There is no “victory” that can change that.
Make no mistake, they are angry with Putin. But they are also angry with Zelensky and the West. They have lost everything, worst of all, hope and faith, and cannot comprehend why Zelensky wishes to continue the current trajectory, the one of human devastation.
I didn’t witness the war; but what I saw was absolutely heart-breaking.
Shame on the people, regardless of their intentions, who have supported this war. And shame on the media for continuing to lie about it.
Maria Mateiciuc 8:37 AM · Jan 6, 2024
American Woman In Asia Discovered Men Are HAPPY Overseas
I trained in and taught karate for about 20 years yet I wouldn’t want to go up against two or more young punks who were assaulting me on the street. Too many chances they’re carrying a weapon or might get in a lucky punch.
My wife and I walk a lot in the evening at our coastal home. Where we live is safe but you never know who might drive by looking for trouble.
So I added a weapon to my arsenal. And I train with it regularly.
Yet, it’s perfectly legal to carry personally or in your car.
You can carry it into a restaurant or movie theater.
You can have it in the bank or the courthouse.
You can take it on a plane or a bus.
It’s inexpensive to buy and easy to learn how to use effectively.
It’s innocuous looking so it would be a surprise to a bad actor.
Yet, it’s devastatingly effective as a weapon.
You can use it to even the odds of more than one attacker and against a weapon.
It’s a walking cane.
But not just any old ten dollar pine one.
It needs to be hard wood like oak or hickory so it won’t break and has some weight.
The ones I carry are Irish walking sticks and canes made of Blackthorn wood. It’s very dense and is the wood used for traditional Irish fighting sticks.
And you need to learn how to use it effectively and practice regularly to become proficient with it.
You can find lots of videos on line about how to use a cane for defense effectively.
Actually, there is are whole martial arts devoted to cane and walking stick fighting. Watching videos on them you realize how devastating of a weapon it is.
So, you don’t want to spend 20 years learning karate? But you still want to have some means of self defense in this increasingly chaotic world?
You’re in luck. Buy a good cane that can be used effectively for self defense.
Then learn how to use it effectively and practice,
Oh, and try to never need to use it. That’s the best self defense.
I had a relative who wanted to borrow money. His vehicle was towed as he failed to pay on a title loan.
As this relative was bad at money matters, I asked how much he needed and who was the lienholder. I wasn’t going to just give him a sum of money, without proof that he actually needed it, and wasn’t going to: 1. Use it to go gambling. 2. Give it to a woman. 3. Use it go on a drunken spree. (He was an alcoholic).
He threw a tantrum worthy of a toddler, calling me, “a selfish bitch”, among other things. This was at my job. He had already borrowed a few thousand from me that he had never paid back.
Needless to say, he never got the vehicle back, although he later apologized about the name calling.
That was the day I learned that you could divorce your family, love them from a distance and stop buying into their bullshit.
He died in London, UK, 1979. We had no family living there, just mom. I was living in Miami, and my sister was living in NJ. My dad and I had a huge falling out when I married a Roman Catholic, but we’d come back together by that time, and my dad and my wife and her family actually had a good relationship.
We arranged the funeral there. It was just my mom, my sister, and me. And my mom had a hang-up about death and funerals. She literally couldn’t even bear to say the words, “death” or “funeral,” and I had never been to a funeral before, or even a viewing. I was 28 at the time. They had friends, but I think only one person came and that was it. I don’t know if my mom even told any of them.
There was no viewing service, no synagogue service. Just the burial at Rainham Cemetery. My sister and I were waiting for the coffin to be brought out, and it was wheeled out on a cart, The thing had three wheels, one of them had a mostly flat tyre, and the thing squeaked loud enough to wake the dead.
It was so surreal, like something out of Monty Python. could barely keep from laughing out loud.
There was this rumor in middle school about this white, tall, blonde girl. She was really mean and kinda rude but she didn’t bully anyone so I just ignored her. But as you can probably guess a rumor started about her at some point, I first heard it in the girls locker room after she yelled at someone for getting in her way.
The rumor was this: She had gotten pregnant by a 19 year old and later when the baby was born her (or her parents) killed it.
Of course no one knew if the rumor was true and neither did I so I brushed it off as a stupid rumor. But you know what’s worse….the rumor was true!
I didn’t learn this until early high school.
In my history class I had unknowingly sat by the step brother of the girl as I was retelling the rumor to another girl as I was talking about how crazy it was. But the step brother interrupted me to tell me and the other girl that the rumor was true (at least part of it anyway). The girl and I were shocked, he told us that the mean blonde girl had gotten pregnant, gave birth to it, and luckily put the baby up for adoption soon after the birth.
What’s worse is that I don’t know if the mean girl was forced to date the 19 year old or if the guy raped her to get her pregnant, even her step brother (who didn’t like the mean girl either) didn’t and wouldn’t say.
Maybe that’s why the tall, white, blonde girl was so mean.
Everybody had to have a Que (pony tail) to show subservience to the Qing. The Qing / Manchus were the top level of society for a couple centuries.
After that? Nobody cared.
EXCEPT for in Hong Kong which was held by Britain until 1997. The clan wars of Guangdong and Fujian between 1855 and 1867 left DEEP scars and well into the 1980s there was general dislike of mixing between Hakkas and Cantonese.
My grandfather expelled one of his daughters for marrying a Cantonese man.
Also amongst many post WW2 types there’s a mentality of don’t marry Cantonese, this died out in Mainland China decades ago but lingered around in the overseas Chinese community. I still remember in the 1980s in the UK being told by my uncles that I should stay away from Cantonese.
Early 60’s, little tiny farming town … Liz was the subject of nasty gossip and rumors. People said Liz was a slut, a whore, a filthy tramp and lots of other names. Liz never had sex until she got married. She dated four or five boys – one date per boy. She assumed the boys asked her because they liked her. They asked her because they assumed she would have sex anywhere with anyone. Liz was modest in dress and behavior, but still was called a dirty slut … not because of anything she did, but because of her three older sisters. All three of her sisters got married at 16 or 17 because they got pregnant. Shotgun weddings, we called it back then. So …. these guys, who had no ethics, who were as dumb as bricks, asked her for dates. Instead of driving to the movies, they drove out to an isolated area and demanded sex. She refused. The boys threatened to tell everyone they got what they wanted. She still refused. The last boy she went on a date with tried to force her. She managed to get out of the car and begged strangers for a ride home. After that, she refused to date. She got lots of insult, ridicule and some physical harassment, because she came from a family “where all the girls were sluts.” Her last three years of school were awful. She was bullied so badly that she had to take sedating medication to keep from crying, to keep from having a breakdown. Both adults and kids were cruel to her. She toughed it out, went to college and refused to ever go to high school class reunions.
Several years ago, I was at Siegfried & Roy’s Secret Garden at The Mirage in Las Vegas. This was many years after Roy’s tiger accident, but before he passed away. It was Thanksgiving, and we were walking through, looking at the tigers playing and eating melons.
As we walked around, Siegfried himself appeared. Of course, being his exhibit, a number of fans wanted to get pictures and autographs. I’ve been a fan of theirs since I was a kid, so this was a one in a lifetime, completely unexpected occasion.
When he got to me, he did the standard “hi, how are you” nicety that people do without really expecting an answer, but I looked at him and asked, “I’m fine… how are you doing?”
He looked at me through his ubiquitous sunglasses. I could see his eyes measuring me up as he stood about two feet from me. After a long pause, he said “well, Thanksgiving is always a hard time… when you’re an entertainer and everything ends suddenly…” and just talked with me for a few minutes (while everyone else waited patiently). I got the definite feeling like he was rarely asked how HE was doing, surrounded by starstruck fans or associates, and he felt the need to talk.
image 168
Thanksgiving Day, Roy injured (and never recovered), I’m sure he felt the need to be around people. It was a special moment, one that I’ll always remember.
Celebrities are just people, and a lot of people forget that.
I was visiting Mom when she lived a good two hour plus drive from my sister’s family (I live out of state). It was probably 1998 and we were chatting in her kitchen. She was silent for a moment and then she said, “Richard”, (you know the way your mom says your name that you know you gotta pay attention?) My ears birddogged.
“Richard, when I turn 90, I am going to stop driving.” (Mom was still a very good driver, but she didn’t want “someone to hit me and then blame the old lady.”)
“I’m going to stop driving and I’m going to give my car to my grandsons…
“I’m going to stop driving and give my car to JR and Mike and I’m going to sell the house and move to (a retirement facility) closer to Sue and my family.” Such a major decision to give up her house and her car. Then she said something that to this day I carry with me.
“And I plan on liking it”, she said firmly.
Now Mom loved to read (especially her Ellery Queen mysteries) but I don’t think she ever read a personal growth motivational book in her life (except the Bible) and here she is framing one of the biggest major life changes ever with positive expectations.
That gave me a glimpse into how she perceived the world and focused on good rather than bad consequences. What a gift she gave me.
Mom passed in 2019 at 110 years old.
I think Mom was full of good intentions and had a very strong moral compass and truly lived the life of a good person whose influence spread wider and farther than she could have ever imagined, as good a definition of badass as any.
CALLISTO -1940’s Retro Pulp Science Fiction by Skyward, Action, Music, Total Mayhem, Runway Gen-2
Users are almost never right. Go shadow them and get the real story.
Understand 100% of the problem, design to solve 90% of it.
The last 20% effort is 80% of the engineering cost.
When designing, make it survive 3–5 years. You should be rewriting it by then anyways.
Software engineering is a process. Don’t overfit the initial requirements, you need to stay flexible for future readiness.
First pass is to solve it. Second pass is to clean up and learn. Third pass is to deep design using what you’ve learned.
CPU is cheap. Don’t over optimize.
Focus on enabling people to do more. 1 hour of work should become 10 hours of output when you enable humans.
When prioritizing consider the models of (1) attacker (2) defend it (3) bandaid it (4) clean it up. Each one has an associated operational cost, solve permanently cost, and a cost to perform. You need to pick your battles.
If only you can fix it, then only you will babysit it, forever. You can’t move on to more interesting things.
Edit: These are MY golden rules. They do not have to be YOURS. Please share YOUR golden rules. 🙂 We can learn from each other. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my life, is that I have learned everything, EVERYTHING from others. Mentors, peers, and friends. Some random written article should have zero social pressure on you to conform. My knowledge probably applies between 2007 to 2025? Then some other pattern will take hold.
NOTE: This is a true story, I’m not making it up or taking the piss. The episode I’m about to describe was not tongue in cheek or satirical in anyway.
Before my wife and I moved to Australia from the U.K. I assisted my in-laws in purchasing a laptop computer. The idea being that we’d be able to make skype calls etc to help them stay in touch. As they were both totally computer illiterate I set the laptop up for them and tried to give them an understanding of how to use skype, email & internet explorer (as it was back in the day).
For internet explorer I showed them how to open the program, told them about the “tool bar” and some of the basic functions on it. I explained about search and how they could find any information they required or shop for anything they needed using it. All seemed to be going reasonably well when I popped out to pick my wife up from work for fifteen minutes or so.
At this point I should mention that my father in law is a joiner (carpenter) of many years.
Anyway, I returned after picking my wife up to find my father in law at the laptop with internet explorer open. After a minute or so of watching him staring at the screen in a perplexed manner I asked him if he was having a problem that I could help with. “where are the saws?” he asked me.
“I’m not sure what you mean John, if you’re looking for something you’ll need to type it into google” I explained.
“Yes, I need a new saw. You said I could get whatever I needed on here & I’ve been looking at the tool bar for five minutes and I just can’t find the saws!”….
Fortunately, they were able to get skype working through their sky TV shortly after we left.
I shit you not. This really happened. My father in law couldn’t buy a new saw because he couldn’t find the ‘saw button’ on the ‘tool’ bar.
When I was a senior in high school, I was about the size of Rosie Greer—6’5″ and 250#, and like most people my size, I was extremely patient and gentle with “little people,” but being gentle was perceived by stupid people as being weak or a coward. Horrible mistake.
One day after school, I was walking to my car. That required me to walk between cars full of students waiting to get out. The space that I chose to walk through was in front of a junior who drove three eighth graders to and from school, and he wanted to show the younger kids how tough he was, so as I was walking between his car and the car in front of him, he pulled up and hit my shins with his bumper. And these idiots were laughing.
I walked over to the driver door, and tried to open it, but the stupid child smiled and pointed at the locked door, obviously thinking that he was safe from retribution. He was safely in his 1968 VW Beetle.
I smiled back at him, and put my hands together like a sledge hammer, and starting with the roof, I pounded every piece of sheet metal with my “sledge hammer” fists once—leaving the car covered with dents. Then, I walked to the driver’s door again, still smiling (he wasn’t) and I bent down, grabbing the frame and lifted the left side of his car so that the left tires were eighteen inches off of the ground. (Actually a lot easier to do than it sounds with the help of adrenaline,) and I calmly said, “Idiot, if you ever mess with me again, I will break your f~<#ng neck.” Then, I dropped that side of the car back on the ground.
Word quickly got around about what had happened, and even though I remained a patient and gentle person for the last six months of my senior year, 1973, nobody tried to show how tough they were by messing with me.
And yes, I know that I could have ignored the light tapping of his car and walked away, but I didn’t feel like it that January day.
Did I bully him? Perhaps, but I frankly didn’t and still don’t care.
This one’s about a friend, but it’s worth sharing:
I used to work at a tutoring company, where one of my coworkers (nicknamed “Minty”) used to tell all our students that he was six years old.
The preschool class actually believed him, because those little four- and five-year-olds didn’t have any real concept of age. Minty convinced them that he was just a really big “big kid.” In fact, he pulled this off so successfully that he even became close friends with a couple of the students.
Whenever kids claimed they didn’t believe him, he’d just look at them with indignation and said, “I just drink all my milk and eat ALL my vegetables!”
Once, a kid said suspiciously, “I bet you have a wife!”, and Minty replied, “Will you please tell me what she looks like, then? Because I’m still trying to find her.” (He was 21 and single.)
And so on so forth.
Then, a few months into the school year, he caught one of his favorite students staring at him out of the corner of her eye.
After a while he said, “Hey, what’s up?”
She said, accusingly, “I think you’re a grown-up!”
Turns out he’d forgotten to shave that day, and a little bit of stubble was showing on his chin. So then the whole class started staring and saying, “You’re a grown-up?!” in tones that ranged between awe and betrayal.
After that, the cat was out of the bag, but it was really entertaining while it lasted.
The 17th defense policy coordination talks between China and the United States were held in Washington on Monday and Tuesday, China’s Defense Ministry announced on Wednesday.
In a statement, the ministry said the talks were co-chaired by officials from the Central Military Commission and the US deputy assistant to the secretary of defense.
The Chinese side said in a statement that it is willing to develop healthy and stable military-to-military relations with the US on the basis of equality and respect, and jointly implement the military-related consensus reached by the two heads of the states during their meeting in San Francisco in November.
The statement said that the US should acknowledge China’s concerns and do more to promote the development of bilateral military ties.
China also reiterated its positions on the Taiwan question and the South China Sea issues.
It said it will never make any compromise on the Taiwan question and demanded the US side to abide by the one-China principle, implement its relevant commitments, stop arming Taiwan and oppose “Taiwan independence”, the statement said.
China also urged the US to reduce its military deployment and provocative actions in the South China Sea and stop providing support to certain countries that are infringement on its territory and causing provocations.
The US should fully recognize the root causes of maritime and air security risks, strictly restrain its front-line troops and stop hyping up problems, the ministry said.
China has also made clear its solemn position and major concerns on issues concerning China’s core interests and international hotspot issues, it added.
Time-Traveling with The Jetsons: Futuristic Nostalgia
A few years back I took over running a significant IT project at a bank which used Oracle who had just shafted the bank’s IT director. He had got board level approval to upgrade and unify all the different databases which was serious money. Oracle then decided to double the price, he resisted but facing unsupported systems he gave in. That altered his career somewhat.
I didn’t know that when Oracle turned up to negotiate price for our systems, since I was an interim project manager and quite low in the food chain.
In this situation I never dress to impress vendors, indeed I tend to talk down my understanding of tech as well, to see if they are being straight with me.
I took along the guy I’d just hired as development manager and I ran the conversation. These tend to be one of two patterns. Either the management guy does all the talking and the techie just puts in points or the techie runs it and the manager blesses the outcome..
Oracle wanted more than list price.
I was bemused by this, also the trading system didn’t need very advanced features since it just logged things and ran reports, but the Oracle rep said we would only be allowed to buy the most expensive version because you’re a bank.
To which I responded but it’s the same binary Mary Pat.
Because these reports would be seen by many people in other firms she also demanded that we buy hundreds of client licences.
At the binary remark she looked at my non-great suit and then at my development manager’s and started talking to him, literally ignoring me since she had decided that he was my boss because I was only a techie.
He has dressed up for the meeting, actually put on his tie for it, since he thought that showing Oracle that you had money was good thing. It’s not.
He looked quite bemused, I’m not sure he’d ever bought any software for a firm and certainly wasn’t going to start now. I literally moved myself and stuck my head in the way and said are you going over my head Mary Pat ?
Yes she was and it didn’t stop there. I indicated that I was buying Sybase which was vastly cheaper and did not run the risk of an Oracle punitive licence audit.
Days later the head of the division spoke to me about what happened next. This system would pass billions through it and so the bank was quite keen that it worked well. Oracle had somehow got to a board meeting and demanded that I be fired, that I was damaging the (abusive) relationship they had and that I was buying a cheap and unreliable system which would destroy the firm.
for those not in IT Sybase has been used for decades for banking systems, it may or may not be right for you, but it’s not an insane choice.
The system would go on not just to work, but would end up being used by the British Government to manage their rather large debt mountain.
One version of the meeting which reached me later was that she literally stamped her foot. That was how entitled Oracle was with my firm. This may sound unusual to you. Ask anyone who’s done business with Oracle,
The board were very impressed. Not with her, but with someone in IT standing up to Oracle bullying. So the edict came down find Dominic and give her a job. So I ended up Head of IT for that division.
My first job was working at Woolworths, in the UK. I worked there from the age of around 15 to 18 years old, from 1993 to 1996. I did Saturdays and evening shelf stacking.
Woolworths in Britain famously opened the first self-service shop back in 1955. It was distinctly different from Woolworths in other countries. At the time, it sold household items, like pots, pans and Tupperware, sewing items – the dreaded haberdashery (the hardest thing to do a stock take on in the known world). Its famous pick-and-mix sweets included things like Cadbury’s Roses chocolates, where you could see which ones were everyone’s favourites by what was left in the container*. It also sold children’s clothes, records, CDs, tapes, and lottery tickets.
It closed for good in 2009, unable to survive the financial crisis, and in my opinion, as someone who worked there but hardly ever bought anything, for failing to offer anything unique or better than other lower-cost stores. The quality of many of the products was decidedly average. The Ladybird brand children’s clothes and the pick and mix were good but weren’t enough to keep it afloat.
My first Christmas working in retail was Christmas 1993. That was when the magic of Christmas died.
We, the hard-working, little-paid workers of Woolworths, arrived on Christmas Eve 1993 at 7.30 am, the shop opened at 8 am. We worked until 10 pm. We had four tills, and queues of around 15–20 customers were present at each till the entire day. Once a till had around £5000 in it, we emptied it to the back office. They were each emptied 4–5 times that day. We stood at the tills. Standing for 1–2 hours is tiring, but standing for 12–14 hours is hard work.
At the end of the shift, we are all knackered, it’s 10 pm on Christmas Eve, and the boss brings us each out a bottle of Babycham. For those who have never had “the pleasure”, Babycham looks like this:
A tiny bottle of “sparkling perry” which is a mildly-alcoholic cider made from pears. Named to somewhat pass itself off as baby champagne. Which it tastes nothing like, whatsoever.
Christmas bonus 1993, after a 14-hour shift, where we, as a fairly small store with 7–10 employees, likely took £100,000 (£200,000 today – $250000) was a tiny bottle of pear-cider, worth at the time around 59p (it could have been less, I cannot find out the price of a 75ml bottle of Babycham in 1993).
Merry Christmas.
I still miss it, the people I worked with were a good laugh, and some are still my friends today.
*Talking of the pick and mix, we would refill it with huge bags of sweets. They were 7 kg bags (15 lbs). One memorable incident involved me and a 7kg bag of Smarties (like M&Ms but British), which ended up being spilt and going all over the floor at the front of the shop. It was like a cartoon when the characters spill marbles, and everyone falls over, except we only fell over laughing and ate quite a lot of smarties. Maybe things like this explain the boss’s reluctance to offer a decent bonus.
My wife and I had a friend, an MD, who was having issues with his wife – not sure what they were, but he seemed to be a gentle and meek soul. Perhaps too meek with his wife, I don’t know, but here’s what happened to him;
His wife was seeing a psychologist for help with her depression, completely supported in these visits by her husband. Turns out that, unknown to him, the psych was a lesbian who had started to fall in love, or become infatuated, with the wife. Of course, she should have excluded herself as a therapist at this point, but she developed a better plan.
The psych convinces the wife to bring in the children (2) for additional counseling, separate sessions from the wife. Again, unknown to either our friend or his wife, she starts to place into the mind of the kids, one daughter and one son, that their father has been sexually abusing them. Both kids are young, under 6, and it isn’t difficult for her to place some ideas and then doubts into the minds of these naïve and gullible children. Over a few months of weekly visits, they are slowly coached by the infatuated lesbian psych, into being able to recount some stories of how this non-existent sexual abuse occurred, along with enough details to make their stories believable.
The psych then encourages the kids to tell their Mum some of these coached stories. The Mum, our friend’s wife, is naturally outraged to hear that her kids have been molested by her husband. She confronts her husband who denies it all, but she has fallen under the influence of this demented psych. She discusses the supposed molestation with the psych who encourages her to call Child Protective Services (CPS) to report the abuse.
Naturally now, the wife does so and an investigation is launched. The husband is prevented from seeing his children, has to move out of the house he shared with his family, and is allowed only supervised visits with his kids on every other weekend. Dependent upon the outcome of the inquiry, he now stands to be charged with sexually abusing his kids and quite possibly sent to jail. The kids will tell their coached stories, supported by the wife who now believes that it’s all true, and the final nail in his coffin will be this crazy psychologist who has discovered his “crimes”.
He’s now separated from his wife, and the psych makes her big mistake. Before the completion of the investigation, she is so in lust for his wife, that she successfully seduces her client, and they move into an apartment together as lovers. This is suicidal for her plan. The investigation team is informed of this development which is improper behaviour professionally. She is suspended of her license to practice, the wife leaves her and returns home. Finally, perhaps as long as 9 months later, the kids recant on their coached stories since they are no longer under the influence of the psych, and are finally visiting an impartial therapist.
The story ends wonderfully, the husband forgives the wife and the children are allowed to move back home. But this was hell on earth for the husband who was innocent from start to finish.
Just started putting stuff in the corner of the basement, with the intention of dealing with it later.
and soon , the corner of the basement was full.
and then, another corner.
Then, the work room started filling up.
Then the garage.
Mostly old clothes that the kids had out grown and then there was the stuff that we used to use but didn’t anymore, but couldn’t bear to throw away.
We fully planned to purge all this shit.
Rent a dumpster and get ruthless.
Then my wife got sick.
And sicker….
And then terminally ill.
And that took up all my energy.
And then I was a widower.
And the kids had moved out.
And I was either at work or out with friends or on a trip and the basement became a series of paths around a canyon of old clothes and stuff.
And so it remained for a year or two, slowly increasing.
I thought, “In just don’t have the energy or time to deal with this”
And then…………..Covid.
And my neighbour sold their house and the guy who came in wanted to gut the place, as it hadn’t been looked after in years.
And he brought a big ass dumpster.
And I saw my sign…..
I asked him and said, if I went in halfway with the dumpster rentals, could I use them to dump my shit in as well?
Sure, he said.
So, over the next while, I emptied everything out.
I could have spent hours sorting out the useable from the trash, especially in clothes, but I feared that if I did, I’d get bogged down in decision paralysis.
She died of a heroin overdose a few years ago. It makes me sick when I think about it.
For the purpose of this story, I will refer to my bully as HM.
When we were freshmen in high school, HM and I started off as friends. We were part of the same loosely organized network of friends, and we were in a few of classes together. Everyone said we could pass for twins — we were both short with dark hair, light colored eyes, round faces, and cutesy noses. Our birthdays were even only like a day apart or something. So we became friendly, but we never became super close. This was mostly because of me — I was secretly judgmental of her because she was very promiscuous and not very bright. Maybe she could sense that in me, and maybe that contributed to how she very suddenly started to hate me.
One day, a mutual male friend of ours asked me to go out with him, and I turned him down because I wasn’t interested in him in that way. He was upset that I rejected him, and sought comfort from his other female friends, HM being one of them. This flipped a switch in HM’s brain — she went from being my casual friend to hating me mercilessly.
On the first day, she screamed at me, cursed at me, and called me a slut in front of everyone in our gym class. She harassed me all the way from the gym to the locker room until one of the gym teachers finally told her to knock it off and change.
Initially I didn’t defend myself because a) I was really meek and mild mannered at this point in my life; b) I do not handle confrontation well at all; c) I was a religious catholic at the time, and truly believed in turning the other cheek; d) I was an avid karate student, and I believed it was dishonorable to fight in this way; e) I was kind of nerdy, I was in marching band, and I thought defending myself would make me a bigger target to others; and f) I was honestly shocked by how she was acting. I mean, she was like really in my face screaming with spit flying from her mouth and everything. It didn’t make sense to me that she would be mad about something that had literally zero effect on her life.
Needless to say, I went home that day very upset, but I figured that it was an isolated incident. I figured, ok we’re not friends anymore, and that’s that. But I was wrong.
The next morning, she was waiting for me by the entrance of the school. She never once touched me. She just followed me to my locker cursing at me and calling me names. We were in the same homeroom. She told every person in homeroom that they shouldn’t talk to me because I was such a slut and bitch. Any time a person would talk to me, she would physically insert herself between me and the person and tell them not to talk to me. She also started telling people vicious lies about me sexually.
She followed me from homeroom to my first class cursing at me and calling me names. When I left my first class, she was waiting for me down the hall ready to verbally harass me again. She continued to do this throughout the day. During classes we had together, she took every opportunity she could to alienate me from others. This occurred mostly in gym and english class, both of which were loosely structured by lazy teachers.
At this point, she was being fully aggressive to others in order to keep them from talking to me. Like physically grabbing them and pulling them away from me kind of thing. She did this for weeks. I continued to do nothing. I just walked faster when she was near me, and tried not to look at her. I took advantage of moments where she was distracted, and slipped away from her before she saw me.
Eventually I had basically not a single friend left in my grade. Nobody wanted anything to do with me. In retrospect, I guess they just didn’t want to be involved with the situation. The teachers were also unhelpful. We were in a very crowded school, so many of them possibly didn’t notice, and the ones who did notice were terrible teachers. I was alone, miserable, crying every day, and I didn’t want to go to school anymore.
HM’s torment became a regular part of my life for a couple of months. I was starting to become numb to it. Maybe she sensed that her words weren’t having the same effect that they used to, so she decided to change things up. She started to threaten me with physical violence. It was mostly variations of “I’m gonna kick your ass,” or “I’m gonna f*ck up your ugly face.” One day in english class, the teacher asked HM to lend me her book for the day (there was a shortage of books), and she threw it at me and then snatched it out of my hands when I picked it up (the teacher did nothing because she was also a terrible human). HM also started slamming my locker shut whenever she walked by.
I don’t remember what specifically drove me to my breaking point, but very soon I had had enough of the situation. HM had made my life a living nightmare, and I couldn’t stand it anymore. I had a green belt in karate, so I knew physically I was capable of fighting and that I would probably win. I still had reservations about it because of spiritual/philosophical reasons, but I was at my limit.
One day she came up to me at lunch, and she again threatened to beat me up. So I calmly said, “Ok HM. When and where? I am ready to fight you whenever.”
Well, that was the game changing moment. As I stood there quietly waiting for her to set the date and time, she bounced around like a rabbit, yelling about how she was really gonna let me have it. “I am ready when you are,” I said. She got more and more agitated, and just kept making threats. The bell rang, lunch was over, we went to our next period. I didn’t see her for the rest of the day.
The next day, she started again with the physical threats, this time while we were in the hallway before homeroom. I said, “So just come for me already and let’s fight. I want to get this over with.” She looked at me like I was stupid and said something like, “Pshh not right now I don’t want to embarrass you in front of everyone. But when I do kick your ass, you’re gonna wish you were dead.” In spite of myself, I laughed and said, “Ok fine HM. Let’s do it today.” And then I told her exactly when and where we were gonna fight. She said “OH I’M GONNA BE THERE, YOU’RE GONNA BE SORRY!” before running away from me.
Later that morning, I had a class with HM’s bff. I approached the bff and said, “HM should know that I take karate regularly, and I recently earned my green belt. I’m stronger than I look and can probably seriously hurt her. I am not going to be easy to take down, and honestly I might accidentally kill her. You should tell her that before we fight.” That last part was only a small exaggeration. I did know 2–3 potentially fatal moves but there was no way to do them “accidentally.” Anyway, I didn’t say this as a threat, but as the truth of the matter. I had already thought of several ways to take her down, and I had already anticipated some of what she might do and had an idea of how I would handle those situations. At the end of the day no matter what, she was gonna end up being seriously injured, and I would probably be mostly unscathed.
The day went on. I didn’t see HM at all in the hallways or at lunch, and she skipped the classes we shared. I was starting to feel really pumped, and honestly really powerful. People all day were asking me about the fight, if I was scared, did I really know karate — stuff like that. They were excited, like Romans going to the Coliseum. After months of being a pariah, I ate it up and was loving all the attention. Finally, the last bell of the day rang.
I went to the place we were supposed to fight. A few people were there, waiting for something to happen, but they left after 10 minutes so they could get on their buses. I waited for almost an hour. HM never showed, and I went to marching band practice.
Maybe I should have left it at that, but I couldn’t help myself. The next day, when I saw her in homeroom I (LOUDLY) asked her, “What happened yesterday? You never showed up.” All eyes were on us. She muttered angrily, “We’ll do it today, same time.” I agreed to it, but my gut told me she was gonna be a no-show again.
I went again to the meeting spot. This time, there were a lot more people waiting to see what was gonna happen. But again, HM didn’t come. I waited for a while when finally HM’s bff came up to me and told me that HM went home early because she was sick. I shrugged and said, “Then in that case, I guess we’re done here. Tell her to leave me alone from now on.” HM didn’t come to school for the rest of the week. On the following Monday, she didn’t even cast a glance in my direction.
Life moved on, years rolled by. HM mostly avoided me after that. Sophomore year she tried to rekindle a friendship, to which I was like, are you f*cking serious? With every year that went by, HM became more and more of a social pariah. Finally it was our senior year. HM was pregnant. By the time spring arrived, she had a huge baby belly. Whenever people would ask her about it or ridicule her, she swore up and down that she was just getting fat.
And I took a lot of pleasure in this. Right now as an adult, I am not proud of this, but at the time I was LIVING. She was miserable, everyone made fun of her, and I thought she was just a huge loser. I loved it, I relished in her misery. And then one day when we were all changing after gym class, I took a shot at her.
She was trying to change in a way that her baby belly was covered up at all times. One of the other girls noticed this and was like, “Wtf are you even trying to do?!” HM said something about being self conscious of being fat. I laughed, and said, “HM everybody knows you’re f*cking pregnant so stop pretending like you’re just fat. Do you even know who the father is, ya dumb slut?” And I walked away laughing at her. It took me about 2 years to realize how super messed up it was for me to say that. And now it makes me sick to remember it, to know that I’m the person who said those words. In the end, I was no better than her.
About two years ago, she popped into my head for no reason. I decided to look her up on Facebook, and saw that she had died of a heroin overdose. The weirdest part was that the day that I looked her up was also the anniversary of her death. Chills ran down my spine. She had left behind two children, and before she overdosed she had been sober for 6 months. I have so many weird-sad emotions about it.
First off, by a random coincidence of life I had 2 doppelgangers in high school — her and this other girl who I was friends with, and both of them died from drug overdoses. I know it’s sh*tty for me to make their deaths about me, but their deaths make me feel really weird in a way that I have trouble describing.
Second, HM was obviously a troubled person, and almost everything she did was coming from a place of pain. I feel guilty that I couldn’t see that and instead I played along like a cardboard character in a crappy high school movie.
Third, I hate that the last thing I said to her was something vicious. It makes me upset that my hatred has the power to warp me into such a mean person. I hate that my hatred was so strong back then that the ghost of it reverberates within me to this day. Every now and again, I can taste that dark disgust in the back of my throat. Which leads me to my final weird-sad emotion.
Fourth, even though she has passed, I love retelling this story. It feels like it was the one moment in my youth where I was fierce and powerful. However, I drive myself crazy with guilt about that pleasure. I mean, wtf is wrong with me; she is dead, she left behind children. It’s weird and messed up that I’m here, alive with my whole life in front of me, and instead of trying to make peace with this, I’m enjoying the toxic fumes of an ancient memory because it boosts my self-esteem.
Idk what the moral of this story is. I’m still trying to figure that out.
Another Active Duty NATO Officer KILLED in Ukraine
One of the Active-Duty Officers in a NATO Command has been killed inside Ukraine.
Italian Army Lt. Colonel Claudio Castiglia, who was part of NATO Command structures, has been killed fighting in Ukraine according to the National Association of Bersaliers.
The Bersaglieri, singular Bersagliere, are a troop of marksmen in the Italian Army‘s infantry corps. They were originally created by General Alessandro Ferrero La Marmora on 18 June 1836 to serve in the Royal Sardinian Army, which later became the Royal Italian Army. They can be recognized by their distinctive wide-brimmed hats decorated with black western capercailliefeathers, which is worn with the dress uniform. The feathers are also applied to their combat helmets.
Why was an Active Duty NATO Officer fighting in Ukraine? Are we at war with Russia?
Sh*t happens. Life can be difficult. It can be uncomfortable. Some days I have every reason to feel depressed and give up. Some days I just want to stop, I need a break — yet the difficulties keep on coming and coming.
I used to complain about it. “Why is it so difficult? Why has this happened to me … again? I hate this situation! Why don’t they do something about it?”
One day, I realized that the difficulties of this world will never end. Never! This is when I finally understood that if I wanted to improve the quality of my life, I was the ONLY one who could change it! No one would ever be able to do it for me!
Change is inevitable and never-ending. I used to face change with the wrong attitude. I hated it because it pushed me out of my comfort zone — today I understand that it’s challenges which actually make my life better! I’m growing, I’m improving, and growing and improving are what make life a life worth living.
So, to answer your question: What life goals should you have?
Live outside your comfort zone!
Your comfort zone is the death zone.
Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.
If we don’t change, we don’t grow. If we don’t grow, we aren’t really living.
Here’s a quote from GE’s CEO Jack Welsh that I like to remember.
Yes and it was the best thing that ever happened that I knew in advance, so I was ahead of the game even though I knew it was coming and I couldn’t stop being fired. This is an important lesson for people to learn, be aware of what is going on so you are not caught out.
You know when you are not fitting in or they are downsizing. It is almost impossible to miss the signals if you have your antennas out. Here is what happened to me.
It was 1992, the China market was booming and I had a big job based in Hong Kong. We had a house paid for by the company, American Club, car, kids in private school, annual trip home, highest salary of my life at that point but nothing was going right. (First signal there were ‘anonymous’ complaints about me relayed via HR). No matter what I did I was wrong and I was headhunted away from another job so I know I was doing a good job but I could feel it was probably about ‘fit’.
They kept telling me, accept 7% growth, don’t push for more, I didn’t listen (2nd sign to watch for, not listening and overplaying your hand).
One day I was feeling like things were not going so well, but my position was, hey I was a Director for the Asia Pacific with a US$100 million budget, no way they could fire me without cause. And I was giving them nothing no real cause in my view so I felt safe or perhaps not?
I thought, I need to check this out, so I went in early to the office and the EVP (later CEO of DHL) had a letter right in the middle of his desk about me stamped CONFIDENTIAL.
I will never forget it. It was all about, how can we handle getting rid of Greenfield as while he is doing a good job, we would like to save money and get rid of his package and a couple of people complained about him. The question was, was it enough to fire him for cause.
It was a fax and the answer by the EVP was, he had already thought it through and they could make my severance nil if they could get someone to make a complaint about me which he could arrange.
Armed with this knowledge, I got all my ducks in a row, went in that day before anything else could happen (3rd rule, if you know it is coming, be preemptive as if you wait it will be worse, trust me on this) and said I thought it might be time for a mutual departure as it wasn’t working out as we had hoped, now 3 years into the contract.
They were pleasantly shocked, gave me a good deal which allowed me to start over with another company and a new life without completely crashing my entire life.
My suggestion? Be watchful, if you can do it, get someone on the inside to let you know if things are not going well and you might be cut for whatever reason. At all costs, do not be caught flat footed thinking everything is ok when it is not.
You can feel it, it is what life is all about these days, anticipate, keep informed, don’t be paranoid and always and I mean always have an exit plan or as they say, Plan B in your back pocket. Especially if you have kids a mortgage and a lot of expenses and as in my case, a spouse who was not working but living a very nice lifestyle which she expected to maintain.
She did but I took a lot of pain and pivoting to get out of Dodge before the hammer fell and just in the nick of time.
Exohiko
Exohiko
Yield: 6 servings
Ingredients
2 pounds lamb leg
2 onions, chopped
1 cup butter
1/2 pound kefalograviera cheese
Salt and pepper
6 sheets puff pastry
Instructions
Cut the lamb in portions. Simmer the onion in a frying pan with a little water. Add a teaspoon of butter and brown lightly.
Add the lamb and salt and pepper and brown for a few more minutes. Turn the element off, add the cheese and separate in portions.
Butter each sheet of pastry and use them to wrap each portion. Place in a buttered pan, top with the rest of the butter and bake in medium low oven for 1 1/2 hours.
I went to Best Buy about 10 years ago because my computer monitor had gone out and I needed to replace it. I had a warranty which allowed me a free replacement, but I wanted a larger one and I readily agreed to pay the difference.
As the rep walked me to the front of the store to check out, I heard a man literally screaming at the top of his lungs. Not just yelling. This man must have gone through the dictionary on his way to the store to refresh himself on every profane word and phrase he could find. As I got closer, I could see the middle-aged man yelling at this girl (couldn’t have been more than 18) behind the customer service counter. Apparently, his coupon for a $30 discount on a digital TV antenna was expired (not just expired; expired by months!) and he expected her to honor it anyway. She kept explaining that the coupon was expired and there was nothing she could do. The man continued to scream and pound his fists. I could see that this was going nowhere, so I just said, “Sir, I’m sure this young lady had nothing to do with preventing you from getting to the store before your coupon expired.” He looked up, startled, and before he could start yelling at me, I said, “STOP.” I turned to the girl and said, “Please put that antenna on my card.” I went over to the man, picked up the antenna, placed it in his hands and said, “I really hope that you can enjoy some good TV with this thing. After that, please go out and use the money I just saved you on some good anger management or at least a session of yoga or two.” The man stood there with his mouth hanging open, not knowing what to say. I just waved my hand at him and told him to “run along.” The girl mouthed, “Thank you.” The man “ran along” I completed my purchase, well, purchases!
That most of my undergraduate education didn’t do much if anything to prepare me for medical school. To be honest, My bachelor of science in zoology was far less helpful than being a paramedic for nine years.
That I would make some of the best friends of my life there. I would have cherished them and the experience more I think.
That I was smart enough. I spent a lot of time worrying that my peers were going to be smarter than me. Turns out emotional intelligence is more valuable in the long run anyway.
I would become so good at emotional distance that it would impair me on some level.
That a certain degree of hypochondria is fairly normal. I had classmates that had “leukemia, parasites, heart disease, tumors and aortic dissections.” Of course, they were all just fine. Oh, and I didn’t turn out to have a gastric ulcer either.
A great deal of what I was going to learn would be obsolete prior to ending my medical career. A fair chunk was wrong before I finished residency.
Competition creates problems. There were a fair number of people in my school that we would classify as “gunners”. For them, it was not simply good enough to do better. It was critical that you do worse than they did.
Some of the smartest professors I would have in medical school were the ones with the strangest personalities. A lot of the younger students would tend to blow them off. That was a mistake. They turned out to have a LOT of quirky wisdom.
Just because you got accepted to medical school doesn’t preclude you from having a personality disorder. I trained with some people with some pretty significant impairment. A few were incapable of empathy or even sympathy.
That the experience would fundamentally change me. I had a professor that said fundamental personality change can only happen from experiencing combat, motherhood, psychotherapy or medical school. I have not experienced the first three so I cannot say he is right. However, I can attest to the fact that medical school and especially residency changed me in some profound ways. That was hard to come to terms with early on.
They are everywhere in 800 odd military bases worldwide. To me they are wasting money that they really don’t have. They certainty cannot afford it overtime it will implode their nation and bring misery to its people.
They are there to war monger and trouble make without getting much in return except disdain and hate. This in turn means that they need more resources to defend themselves hence it is really a deep and endless money pit. China and Russia should goad them everywhere to burnt their own house down. Yet many fools think that having many bases is good for them.
It’s all over by 30, and it’s the women not men that are now saying it.
When I attended university there was this strange routine that we went through at the end of each class. The professor would provide us the CORRECT answers to the questions in the back of the book. You see, our engineering classes all had us attend classes, labs works shops AND do the questions in the books. But, for some darn reason, the answers to the questions were always wrong.
Why is that?
A angry graduate student perhaps? A mistake by the book publisher? Maybe something else.
It’s really not a big mystery… but it still remains a mystery to me. Why?
It’s one of those things that I muse about from time to time… the wrong answers were the ones published.
At least this is what happened to this beautiful woman here:
image 151
Her name was Mercedes Grabowski, a pornographic actress who went by the stage name August Ames.
Near the end of 2017, she took a stand and refused to shoot with a male performer which also happened to star in gay scenes. She believed that STDs among gay actors have a higher probability to spread. So given that the actor was bisexual (gay, for what matters to this point), she thought she would be in a higher risk of being infected. “My body, my rules”, right? It was not abortion that was in question; it indeed was about her own body. I thought that was the feminist’s motto, and they should have sided with Ames.
Apparently not so. Instead, a twitter mob started a smearing campaign to call her homophobic, hypocrite, hate bastard and so on. A lot of porn actresses now declare themselves as feminists. Instead, only one or two stood by August.
She was only 23 years old and apparently suffered from depression. She hanged herself on December 6, 2017.
Afterwards, some gay activist stated: “she went on hatred against our community and paid the price.”
This was all because suddenly it became a social sin to criticize gays or point anything negative about them. Some said August was misinformed about how seriously and often blood tests are conducted on gay performers, but that’s besides the point: she just didn’t want to; she had autonomy, exercised her autonomy and paid with her life. Also, if some LGBT supporter brings to attention that the blood tests are more frequent and thorough within the gay community, then it should prove her point about being afraid to shoot in the first place.
As far as I can tell, August Ames was the first fatality due to the political correctness.
Feta and Mint Rice
Feta and Mint Rice
Ingredients
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 small onion, chopped
1 cup long grain rice
1 (14 1/2 ounce) can chicken broth
1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese
3 tablespoons minced fresh mint
Salt and freshly ground pepper
Instructions
Heat oil in heavy medium saucepan over medium heat. Add onion and sauté until translucent, about 5 minutes.
Add rice and stir for 1 minute.
Add broth. Bring to boil. Reduce heat to low, cover and cook until broth is absorbed, about 20 minutes.
Fluff rice with fork.
Add feta and mint and mix in with fork.
Season with salt and pepper.
2 servings; can be double or tripled.
I’m gonna say it
Helen Beveridge’s Haluski Grange Stand Favorite
This one is a stand favorite. If you can’t wait a whole year, here is the Haluski scaled down.
Helen Beveridges Haluski Grange Stand Favorite
Ingredients
1/2 cup (1 stick) margarine
1 large onion, chopped
1 large head cabbage, chopped and steam until tender
1 pound egg noodles, cooked al la dente
Salt, pepper and garlic powder to taste
Instructions
Using pot large enough to accommodate all the ingredients, melt the margarine and sauté the onion until tender.
Add the cabbage and the noodles and stir to combine. Heat thoroughly.
Season to taste.
Serves 10 to 12.
Final Comments: Once a year only. Customers love it because ” It’s such a comfort food”
In 1988, at the height of the AIDS crisis, my childhood friend became infected. He lived in a large Canadian city and I lived with my spouse 90 miles away, but commuted by train to his city for my job in an art department at an advertising agency. Because my friend had been rejected by his family for being gay, I offered to watch over him and monitor things as his life came to an end.
The far religious right wanted all gay men jailed until they died. Fortunately, religious folk weren’t taken too seriously in Canada.
My friend, who had always a bit eccentric, became extremely eccentric. I lived with him during the week and went home on weekends. As his condition became more unpredictable, I arranged with a local hospital to keep him on weekends so I could go home and sleep.
His short term memory left him. He became worried about my safety. Then he lost his ability to read. He began misunderstanding his medication instructions and displayed stroke symptoms, and skin ulcers due to mis-management of his drugs. There was a new crisis every day.
At work, the other employees quietly took on duties that were mine. My boss ignored my erratic hours. My spouse supported me as best he could. And then, two months before my friend’s death, Canada’s first AIDS Hospice, Casey House, opened. Everything was free and they had room for my friend. It was a quiet, comfortable death.
I lived with a straight man in one city and a gay man in another city and still did my job.
I did this for a whole year without any prior experience in palliative or nursing care. It was the most difficult thing I ever did, and the best thing I ever did.
I went for an entire year without a movie and without having any fun.
My spouse was still there at the end of it, and I felt that if I could do all that, I could manage anything that came my way.
No Mother Around, Little Kitten Got Bullied By Teenagers, He Can’t Resist And Just Cried…
I belong to a middle class family where meeting the ends is somewhat tough. Most of the times, we are a bit short of ration and we eat outside very less(once in a month).
We are three siblings. My two elder sisters and me. Four years back, we married my eldest sister and spent 15 lakhs on her marriage. This year, we married my second elder sister and around 6–7 lakhs were spent.
In this way, we spent all my father’s savings + Gold belongings of mom in two marriages. On the other hand, I pursued my BTech from one of the best engineering college and my father spent 4 lakhs on my engineering also.
So, all in all, he spent 25 lakhs in total on his kids. Now we have no savings and parents got scared how we will make our ends meet in coming days.
I was in final year of engineering and I knew this phase would be coming. So I did my best to get placed. I was so much prepared and still I got rejected in last rounds of interviews. It was kind of a roller coaster ride. Firstly, I would not be able to clear aptitude test. Then in some companies, I stocked in interview. You will not believe my presentation skills are so fine that I can easily attract a room of people while presenting.
Then in one company, I cleared 5 rounds of interviews and was rejected in the sixth round. That day was the toughest day in my life. I am stubborn and never give up easily, so while coming back home, I managed to forget that day and prepare for further companies.
Then, one day 6 Feb 2018(After trying for 5 months to get placed) , a company visited which was nearest to my hometown and profile was very much suitable for me. Package was average but still I was giving more importance to profile. So I got through 5 rounds of interviews and cleared all rounds with flying colors. That was my day, because I had feeling since morning that I will make it today.
When I called at home, my mother started crying after hearing the news. My father always hides his emotions but I knew that day, he was also crying. So, my parents got a hope for future. Now, they know that our son will be earning from July and we will start saving for our future. I never hesitated to spend our entire earnings in my sisters marriages because I knew, I will easily do it myself.
That was the most happiest and proudest day of my life. No doubt, I have been a brilliant student always but getting a job with an international marketing profile when your family is at most toughest phase is proudest feeling.
Unhappy, unmarried women are the only reason why Democrats are competative
I have never understood Americans who go to a foreign country to live for an extended period of time who don’t attempt to learn the language. Or at the minimum, learn the basics. Despite America not having an “official” language (although English is the language in which most everything is done), I hear people here complain about “foreigners who come here and don’t learn English.” Yet the very ones who grumble about immigrants here are the same ones who give Americans the reputation of being rude, arrogant, and ignorant when traveling internationally.
Someone in China told me awhile back that they knew a teacher who had been there for thirty years who didn’t know the most basic Chinese words. I sighed and rolled my eyes because, while I’m not surprised, it certainly disappoints me.
It also just doesn’t make sense. I went to Southeast Asia for only a few weeks but I learned some basic phrases in Malay because it’s respectful to do so, but also, to make my life simpler. Sure, plenty there spoke English, but many did not and how was I to interact with them if I couldn’t even say things like “hello, thank you, where is, goodbye” and so forth? To live long term in a country and not learn their language sounds torturous to me. The local language will help you with directions, help you with shopping, help you with bartering, help you with public transit, help you find a bathroom in public, help you order food, make reservations, run errands, talk to neighbors, make friends, seek help from police, tell a doctor what your symptoms are, help communication at your place of employment, watch the news or television shows, read the newspaper, read street signs, and so much more.
How does one even live for months or years in a foreign country and not absorb some of the language naturally, anyway? I find that both astounding and confusing.
World War 3 Is Coming – Robert Kiyosaki’s Message To The World
Oh, yes! Several years ago, I had lost my house to foreclosure, and about six months later lost my car as well.
The company I worked for at the time had an abandoned, older, little pickup truck sitting in weeds at the back of their lot, broken down, so I asked my supervisor, “If I get that old Mazda pickup running, would it be OK if I drive it?”
He said it had sat there for over a year, unable to start, and left in the weeds to rust; “If you can get it running, you can drive it; make sure you have proper insurance.”
The fix was not difficult and it was running within a day or so. It was filthy and beginning to rust—but it was running and I could drive it for free!
Due to a divorce, a second child who needed support, and a maximum paycheck garnishment by the IRS, I had lost everything: home, car, and most of my (very modest) paycheck. I had no savings and no money to buy even a cheap used car.
My girlfriend had allowed me to move into her house (with her mother and daughter living there as well). Thank God. I had nowhere else to go, and the money to rent nothing.
After a month or two, my supervisor took me aside and told me that some of the other employees were beginning to complain that no one else in the company could take a vehicle home—not even the drivers! So I had a week to find something else to drive. Oh, crap.
So, at the end of that day, I got my paycheck from my desk and went to the bank.
My bank was closed for the day so I went to drop my paycheck into the night deposit box. As I pulled into the driveway of the bank, there was an unattended car sitting in the middle of the driveway and I drove around it. After I dropped off my paycheck, the car was still there but this time there was a woman standing outside it. I was too tired and depressed to stop to help, so I passed her and got on the highway to go home and continue my search for car money.
After I drove a few blocks from the bank, my conscience got the better of me and I turned around and went back to the bank I had just left. The woman was removing some packages from the trunk of her car. I parked the pickup truck and asked her if she needed help; she said she had just called a girlfriend of hers to come get her and she complained that she only needed that car to run for a few more days and it had broken down.
“Why only a few more days?” I asked.
She said that her elderly father had just passed away, out of state, and she was his only child and executor of his will.
“He has a nice Lincoln Town Car that I’m going to start driving and won’t need this one anymore. And now it dies on me!”
“What were you going to do with it?”
“I don’t know,” she replied. “Donate it, maybe. I paid it off years ago and got my money’s worth from it so I thought I’d donate it somewhere.”
“Well… I don’t have a car…”
She held the keys out: “Now you do!”
She asked for help to push the car back into a parking space so it didn’t block the driveway into the bank, then asked for my girlfriend’s address so she could stop by to bring me the title before she moved back to New York. Of course, with her being busy packing to move, I never expected to see her again.
When my girlfriend got home from work a few hours later that day, we drove her SUV back to the bank, hooked a chain up to the car, and towed it home. Now it was parked in the driveway at home. I cranked the engine over but it wouldn’t start, so I opened the hood. The problem? A small vacuum line had come off of its fitting. I put it back on and the car started fine. Time to fix? Five minutes.
Two days later, the kind woman showed up at my girlfriend’s house, car title in hand. I offered her a $100 bill for the car—all that I had—and she politely refused to take it.
To this day, many years later, I have no doubt in my mind that God Himself arranged for us to cross paths so that I could get what I needed but couldn’t afford. I still give thanks to this day for that mercy.
China’s Shocking Message To Argentina! Is The World Ready?
If someone confronts you with a knife you pull the coins subtly from your pocket and drop them on the floor. The attacker will always look down to the floor upon hearing the coins drop and this will buy you a second or two to turn and run. This can also be used if someone is intent on fighting you and you know you need to land the first blow, it’s a distraction technique.
2. Never use an ATM while wearing headphones and if wearing a coat/hoodie, never have the hood up, both will affect your awareness and makes you more likely to be robbed.
3. When entering any room, work out where every available exit and hiding place is. In the event of an emergency you will react a hell of a lot quicker if you have planned scenarios in your head, it will make you far less likely to freeze up. This was something explained to me by an ex-special forces guy I was chatting to at a conference (he was head of security). He was sat at the same table as me, one of those big round ones with 10–12 people on each. I noticed his eyes were never still and he was always glancing at each door, window etc, basically any entrance to that room. I got chatting to him after the conference and asked him about what I had observed. He said “imagine you are at a public event and an armed terrorist storms into the room and starts shooting, most people are going to freeze for the first couple of seconds and that can cost you your life, plan for it to happen and although incredibly unlikely it ever will, you’ll react instantly and it could save your life”
When the Chinese leader says, go this way, it will improve lives and bring social progress, the people respond enthusiastically, because there is material benefit that they or their children will live and enjoy.
When the American leader says, go this way, to maintain American hegemony and prestige, it’s a mixed bag, because only SOME will draw material benefit from the machinations.
Unfortunately, those who benefit have a stranglehold on decisionmaking.
The Chinese economy as we find it today is a product of over 7 decades of unequal, and discriminatory suppression. In fact, China was embargoed for 30 years by the US-led west, while the Soviet Union instituted soft sanctions from the 60s until its dissolution.
The Chinese know how to handle economic suppression, because they have taken many lessons from decades past. In fact, Deng’s post-reform and opening up economy is designed around sanction-proofing. We are now seeing evidence of the multi-layer systemic robustness built into the Chinese economy, from finance, to manufacturing.
I won’t worry about China, other than the train being a few seconds late to destination. That’s the aggregate effect of the US’s half hearted attempt at trade war.
Why half-hearted?
National security threats are confronted head-on, an all-of-nation effort because survival is at stake. Donald the Orange’s trade “war” is more political shock and awe than a real trade war, because his administration LOWERED tariffs on Chinese medical products during covid. The was maintained by Joe the Elderly.
The US NEEDS China, and that calculus hasn’t been fully absorbed by the American leadership, resulting in half-baked, and sometimes, hare-brained policies and words that have been repeatedly walked back on, or exposed as failures and fraud.
American prosperity is maintained by the US per capita GDP being 10x or more than the global south. What happens in a world where that multiple shrinks, such that the unnatural size of the US economy begins to correct into a more equitable world? What happens when the global south can develop their own economies by trading among themselves, without the first world’s financing and technology?
In other words, what will inflation look like in a non-dollar holding sway world?
That day is coming, accelerated by the exhausting (and futile) efforts to contain China’s rise.
What’s actually booming is not China’s economy, but manufacturing.
image 152
Once upon a time, Chinese had to pay 300K+50K of RMB for a top model VW Tiguan. That’s about 50K USD.
The 50K is additional price, for guarrantee to get one in 3 months. Otherwise, you could expect to have one in… 100 years.
Now with 350K RMB,
image 153
one of my friends got a Nio ONE, and it’s bigger than Range Rover, with all the equipment you want. Tiguan on the other hand is just a compact or A-class SUV, which is based on Golf.
My father got a Changan Deepal SL03 with 20K USD.
image 152
It’s 4820mm×1890mm×1480mm, a proper VW B-class sedan.
Even the most standard Passat Hybrid in China costs 29K USD.
SL03 has EV range of 165KM, comparing to Passat’s 52.
SL03’s tire is 245/45R19, Passat is 215/55R17.
SL03 has Lane Departure Warning System as default, which for Passat is a selection.
SL03 has driver fatigue detection system, which Passsat doesn’t.
SL03 also has door opening warning, rare collision warning, internal driving recorder, and rescue calling system.
SL03 has a 360 degree camera system while Passat has only rare view camera.
The L2 assistant driving system is default in SL03, but an option for Passat.
SL03’s trunk cover is electric.
SL03 has bluetooth and NFC key, and support keyless entree for all 4 doors. Passat has only a remote key, and only the front doors can be opened keylessly.
SL03’s main screen is 14.6 inches, Passat’s is 9.2 inches.
SL03‘s shift is electric, Passat’s is mechanic.
SL03 has AR-HUD and wireless cellphone charging, which Passat doesn’t.
The only thing which 29K Passat doing better than 20K SL03 is probably the seats. Passat has geniuen leather, while SL03 is man-made. However, SL03’s front seats have cooling and heating, while Passat can only heat front seat.
With less money, Chinese are now able to get much much more from local brands.
We may not earn much more, but the cars are much cheaper now, and they are better.
Because of the overwhelming pressure, international brands also put down their prides and started to offer more equipment with lower prices in China.
And Chinese cars start to have advantages:
When other brands are still trying to make their auto-parking system more usable in real situations, Huawei already has cars which can park themselves without people staying around.
And they can pick you up at where you left the car when you finished your business.
This auto-parking system not only works in smart parking lots, but can also manually scan regular parking lots and achieve almost the same function.
This Huawei Luxeed S7 is only 35K USD.
Also, Huawei’s auto-driving system is almost road ready. It doesn’t only work good on highways, but also very good in chaotic downtown areas.
This is because China managed to dramatically lowered the price of laser radar, which used to cost 10K USD each when it was made in the US. Now in China, one car may have 3 or 5 of them and still is cheaper than its European competitiors.
A VW ID3 costs less than 20K USD in China. In Europe, it’s 40K EURO, which is around 44K USD. So is the BYD Seal, which the Chinese price is about half of European price.
It’s the same in other regions.
Active electronically scanned array, which is the core of US Navy’s Aegis Combat System.
Most countries don’t even have the ability to develop a AESA.
Meanwhile in China, it’s widely used in agriculture.
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DJI T40, an agricultural drone with AESA and dual eye-sight system.
Infiwave/InfiRay S5000 surveilliance radar. It’s able to monitor man or animals in 10KM radius, and vehicles in 12KM radius. The whole system is only 15KG, plug and play, and support one bottom start. Even a total amature could use it.
In China it says this to be used to monitor boars, to prevent them from damaging the crops.
The massive manufacturing of China also benefits people in a daily basis.
image 26
25 of such windproof disposable lighter costs 24.98 RMB in Taobao, which is 0.14 USD each.
Whole selling could be cheaper.
How much does such a lighter cost in your country?
WHY MEN NEED SEX ? (why should sex be non-negotiable)
There was that girl that had been lonely all her life. People, especially in school, disliked her because she was “strange”, “a nerd”, “too quiet” and just “different”.
One day she decided to talk to her teachers during the breaks instead of trying to fit in where she didn’t. She always acted older than her age and her teachers liked her, so they usually didn’t send her away, but had a friendly chat with her ever so often instead.
By tenth grade, she had almost developed some kind of friendship to a few of her teachers. When she got the “strictest teacher of the school” as her major course teacher in grade eleven, it took her mere weeks to find out that he actually wasn’t so strict at all.
They talked for at least half an hour after the lessons. About science, about our society, the people in school and whatever came to mind. Those two thought quite alike, despite an age difference of 34 years, and the girl now almost a woman could for the first time in years really live her passion for learning. Her teacher was highly intelligent and very knowledgeable, having not only written a dissertation in the past and worked in research for years but also being interested in a broad spectrum of topics.
Well, doesn’t sound so bad, now does it? So what happened?
Well, because teenagers are teenagers, it took about half a year for people to start whispering about the girl and her teacher. It started off lightly, she was still strange and why would she even talk to him?
But a few months after that, some people thought it to be funny to make up a non-existent romantic relationship between teacher and student. Despite that girl having been very close to other teachers before, but now that it was a male teacher, it suddenly was completely different. Because people of opposite gender can’t just see each other as friends, right? They just have to be in love to even think about talking to each other.
A less than funny “joke” became something way bigger. After two weeks, all of the 1600 students knew about this. And most didn’t know that it was a joke. People were laughing and pointing at her, throwing insults at the girl for something that never happened.
Finally, after about three months of dealing with it alone, she had the heart to tell her teacher. They decided to never talk to each other outside of class again, to prevent the teacher from getting problems with the school. While it was just a rumour, that didn’t mean that it wouldn’t lead to problems.
Both of them lost a friend on the day they made this decision. And the student lost a person she saw as a second father – her father barely ever was at home and her teacher had been one of three people (the other ones being her best friend and a female teacher she knew since fifth grade) she ever fully trusted. It might not have been cruel at the first glance, but it hurt her in more ways than the others students could’ve ever imagined.
That girl was me.
If Walter White had a Cat
This is amazing! Enjoy the laugh for all you “Breaking Bad” and cat fans out there.
Credit to Bora Tas for digging this out. US intelligence is now all propaganda and non-experts.
The Chinese idiom for taking kickback type of fraud is “injecting water”. The idiots in the US intel thought this was literally injecting water. They had no idea that Chinese ICBMs use solid fuel rockets. So there is nothing to inject water into. (Edit: I was born in Taiwan. According to Liner AI, “The Chinese idiom “注水” translates to “fraud” or “to adulterate with water,” often used to describe the act of diluting or adulterating something for fraudulent gain.”
US intelligence should have realized that something was wrong with the translation instead those morons gave it to MSM as news. You have to ask yourself, how can the entire intelligence department on China makes this mistake. And no one realized that Chinese missiles use solid fuel.
And now the Chinese are laughing themselves to death because the US is just a joke. Even the intelligence is clueless. They are too cheap to hire people that actually speak Chinese and understand Chinese culture.
I owe the rest of my life to one last moment decision I made.
To better explain the gravity of my decision, I must firstly give you some information on my background.
You see, when I was younger I went to one of the worst schools the world has to offer. We didn’t have proper English education, we lacked the access to the Internet, the school couldn’t afford to buy desks and some classes didn’t even have windows. Welcome to Turkish public education.
Before you get the wrong idea, I must admit something. I didn’t go there because we couldn’t afford to send me somewhere better. I wanted to go there because my family taught me the idea that being used to living on the bare minimum would always best prepare me for life. I trusted them.
I spent eight years there, always working hard, and always doing my best.
In Turkey, students sit one centralized exam at the end of 8th grade, which determines the high school they can go to. Because the student population of the country is incredibly high, this exam is bone breakingly competitive. A single question wrong is the equivalent a death sentence. As a result, candidates woke up early to study, and fall asleep at night, again studying. There is no room for complacency.
Up until and during 8th grade, everything seemed to be going perfectly well. I was almost guaranteed to get 100% from the exam, against all odds.
Weeks before the exam, something catastrophic happened.
My father, who is a well known intellectual in Turkey, was arrested by the Islamic government on charges of criticizing the religion. This devastated me.
For weeks, I couldn’t study. Hell, I couldn’t even go to school. Being in a school like mine in a country like Turkey has a serious downside, you see. People are horrible. The day after my father was arrested, everyone, including the teachers and the principal directly said to me that my dad deserved what was coming for him. To them, questioning Islam was a sin. I was entirely torn, lost and disoriented.
Consequently, when the day of the exam came, I messed up. I totally messed up. I did my best but all I gained was a top 5% mark. And believe me, I am not being a nerdy attention seeker. The educational gap in Turkey is massive. You either go to a world class high school with top professors and tutors, or to a building full of illiterate and religiously biased classmates and teachers. Unfortunately, 5% would get me into the latter. I was done.
Later, the idea that I could go abroad appeared to me. And so I looked up tens of different schools in tens of different countries, and I applied to around 50 of them. The problem was, I didn’t speak English and it was already May. I had missed all deadlines by months. Only five responded at all, and I was turned down by all of them.
One last time, I went online to find a school. I came across a school called Stewart’s Melville College. I was completely shocked by the school. It looked like it came straight out of Harry Potter, and it was in Scotland. Well, I didn’t speak English, and my former education had been taught in a hellhole, so I realized I stood no chance at entering this school.
However, I thought I would send an application anyway. I filled my name and my details, and right as I was pressing “send”, I realized that there was a £60 application fee. I would never pay that for such a long shot. I could buy 60 Snickers bars for that! And so I exclaimed, “oh, nevermind mom, there is an application fee” and I closed the website.
However, my mom didn’t agree. She told me to do it. I said no. She wouldn’t change her mind.
And so I placed my application.
Surprisingly, they replied.
They would send over the entry exam to a local school in Turkey where I would sit it under supervision.
When news of this came, I spent every moment of the four days I had into learning a bit of English. I worked day and I worked night.
When the day came, I took the exam. The English half was impossibly difficult. However I absolutely aced the maths and the verbal reasoning.
A few days later, I received the long awaited e-mail. This was it. It was my last hope. It was either this or a life wasted.
I opened the e-mail.
I couldn’t believe my eyes.
I had been accepted.
I guess the people working for Stewart’s Melville saw that I was willing to give everything I had for the opportunity of studying with them, and this was enough.
I thank them every day for this. I went from studying in a Third World public school into studying in the most beautiful place in the world. Without exaggeration, these people saved my life. For the first time in life, I am truly happy.
Fast forward four years and unfortunately, my father is still in prison, but I have been saved. Life gave me a golden opportunity, and I will never let go of it.
Because in the last four years, I have been given a real challenge. A real goal to strive for. In the last four years I have been taught to be independent. I have learned how to speak English, and finally I’m in a place where we are given real education.
So yes, my life was changed at the last moment for the price of 60 Snickers bars. Knowing what I know, I would have given a hundred times that.
I study in one of the best high schools in the world, and I am incredibly proud of it.
Sorry for the long post, but this is the story of my life.
Here are some short and somewhat ridiculous psychological facts about humans:
1. The average person spends approximately six months of their life waiting for red traffic lights to turn green.
2. Studies show that people are more likely to believe something is true if it’s written in bold font.
3. The fear of running out of phone battery is so common that it has been given the name “nomophobia.”
4. Research suggests that people are more likely to remember information if it is presented in the form of a catchy song or jingle.
5. The phenomenon known as “earworms” refers to when a song gets stuck in your head and plays on repeat, sometimes for hours on end.
6. Studies have found that people are more likely to trust someone wearing glasses, even if they have no expertise in a particular field.
7. The average person will spend about six months of their life searching for misplaced items, such as keys or glasses.
8. Research has shown that people are more likely to remember dreams that are in color compared to those that are in black and white.
9. According to studies, people are more likely to make impulsive purchases when they are hungry.
10. Research indicates that people are more likely to find others attractive if they are in a high-arousal state, such as on a roller coaster or during a scary movie.
My final job was at a company called Power Design. Our office had the nickname, Power Divorce, because so many office romances would pop up between coworkers. They primarily hired young and attractive people. And when you are working in close proximity all the time, staying late at the office—it’s deceptively easy for feelings to develop.
And all it takes is one simple question, “Want to get a drink after work?”
Then you are both going to a hotel that night, or to someone else’s home while the spouse is gone.
I’ve heard of several instances of employees being moved because of a crisis at their home, and an ultimatum given that meant either this high performing employee left the company, or moved to a different location—away from the person they’d fooled around with.
Who needs fiction when real life is just as interesting.
Bohemian Chicken Paprikash with Spaetzle
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Ingredients
3 pounds chicken with skin, cut in pieces
2 teaspoons salt
4 teaspoons Hungarian paprika, divided
1/2 cup butter
1 large onion, chopped
2 cups water + 3/4 cup
1 (16 ounce) container sour cream (2 cups)
1/4 cup flour
Spaetzle or other dumplings
Instructions
Sprinkle chicken on all sides with salt and paprika. Melt butter in a large Dutch oven. Add chicken. Sauté until golden. Turn chicken, add onion, and sprinkle with 2 teaspoons paprika. Simmer, covered, for 20 minutes.
Add 2 cups water and cook slowly covered until tender. Remove chicken; keep warm. Whisk together sour cream, 3/4 cup water and flour until smooth. Gradually add sour cream mixture to broth. Stir over low heat until sauce is thickened. Add paprika as desired. Return chicken.
I had a clock watcher boss one time. I routinely came in early and usually stayed late. I worked weekends when necessary, and usually racked up 50–60 hours per week. One day I came in early as usual. I finished a project I had been working on, and it was about 4:45 pm. Quitting time was 5:00 pm. I decided to leave a few minutes early for a change. I was walking past my boss’ office when she looked at me and made a snide remark about “bankers’ hours”. I walked into her office and politely asked her if she wanted me to adhere strictly to the regular times. I told her I would do so in future. Two weeks later, she called me into her office and asked why something was not finished yet, and when would she have it. I politely told her that since I was no longer working 50 hour weeks, she would have to wait a little longer for things to be done. After that, we agreed that I could keep my own hours.
My ex-husband liked to do this and was pretty good at it. I would often ruin it though as I couldn’t keep a straight face. We were in Walmart one time near the back of the store, he in one aisle and I was in the next one over. I overheard him telling a sales associate that he’d seen a cat run by and that she’d better notify management right away. I heard her thank him and then saw her hurry off to the front of the store. A few minutes later, we were in the hunting and fishing aisle and an associate rushed up and grabbed a large fishing net. My ex asked him what he was going to do with it and he said, “there’s a cat loose in the store, and I’m planning to catch it!” As he turned to walk away, he yelled, “look, there it goes!” and took off running. We looked at each other bemused and then burst out laughing. Once we had everything we needed, we headed to the checkout. While the cashier was ringing up our stuff, she said, “did you hear that there is a cat loose in the store?” My ex told her that he’d seen it earlier and she excitedly shared that she’d seen it as well while on her break and that this was the most fun she’d ever had while at work.
Fenikia
Fenikia Greek sweet cookies
Ingredients
Cookies
1 cup peanut oil
1 cup butter
1/2 cup water
1 jigger brandy
2 eggs, beaten
3 cups flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1 tablespoon ground cloves
1 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 cup sugar
Dash cinnamon
Dash ground cloves
Chopped walnuts for garnish
Syrup
2 cups granulated sugar
1 cup water
1 pound honey
1 lemon, sliced or 1 orange, sliced
Instructions
Cookies: Heat oil and butter over low heat until butter is melted and mixture is hot. Remove from heat and stir in water and brandy. Cool.
Stir in beaten eggs.
Sift together flour and baking powder with the tablespoon each of cinnamon and cloves. Add to liquid mixture to make a dough that is not too soft. Add a little more flour if necessary. With floured hands shape dough into ovals and indent lengthwise with thumbs.
Combine chopped walnuts with sugar and dash each cinnamon and cloves. Put 1 teaspoon of this filling into the indentation in the dough and close dough over filling. Place on cookie sheets and bake in a 400 degree F oven for about 25 minutes or until golden brown. Cool.
Dip cooled cookies into hot syrup and place on racks to drain. Decorate with chopped walnuts.
Syrup: Combine above ingredients and boil for 5 minutes.
I am 70 and a retired.former Apple engineer who now lives in Texas. I was visiting my son and his family in the LA-area in southern California over Christmas break in December 2023. Having finished that I was at the airport security line getting ready to fly with my wife to the San Francisco Bay Area to visit my daughter’s family. I didn’t feel all that well, but thought I just had a minor cold. The next thing I knew I was in the back of an ambulance with my wife sitting next to me on my way to St. John’s hospital in Santa Monica. One minute I was in a line the next I was in the ambulance. (That was really weird!)
They soon diagnosed me with a relatively serious case of the COVID virus. I was promptly put into an isolation room at the hospital and was visited by doctors and nurses occasionally in lightweight hazmat gear to check up on me. Two days later the doctor told me that he was going to release me to self-isolate. He told me that if I hadn’t had my vaccines and boosters up to date that probably wouldn’t be happening. It seems my body had a strong enough immune system due to the vaccines to allow me to recover relatively quickly. I would be a dead man without them.
I spent up until January 3, 2024 in my son’s back bedroom by myself until I no longer tested positive for the virus. And, then I flew back home with my wife on a long flight first to Seattle, WA and then to Austin, TX. That was the best we could do on short notice. I never did get see my daughter, her husband and the other two of my five grandchildren. And, then, of course, my wife caught COVID too. She, however, just got a slight fever, headache, and a cough and is now clear of the virus. She too was fully vaccinated.
Isn’t it weird how this damn virus can practically kill one person even if they are relatively healthy and leave another person with just minor symptoms. That, in itself, is the weirdest thing of all.
The year 2023 ended badly for me. Good riddance! I hope you all fared better than I did.
Top 10 Real Life Glitches In The Matrix | MARATHON
Today’s post is a really long one, but boy oh boy are there some most excellent videos here. Everything from WTF? to cats purring to a crackling fireplace (I’m gonna listen to that one a second time), to a tale about a death and a slide to a non-death and everything in between. Check out the laundromat millionaire, and the Chinese nuclear physicist that lost everything in the USA…
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Please guys take care of yourself. Make the best of your life and do not get sidetracked by the massive lies on the internet. There is a percentage of the West that are truly crazy, and the leadership is the same only add “bat shit” in front of that title….
My mother once had a cookie jar when I was in 4th through 6th grade. But eventually she stopped filling it, and then threw it away.
Turns out that us kids kept on raiding it, no matter what she said, and it would ruin our dinners.
First it turned out that she would fill it up once a month. then, only on certain occasions.
Then, every now and again. Only telling us, when we were good, that it held cookies.
Then it just remained empty for a long time. Maybe six months.
Then…
One day, it was cleaned and put away inside one of the cupboards. And there it sat for all eternity. It was never, ever taken out after that.
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All in all, that’s a lesson of life.
The demise of the cookie jar.
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Chinese PhD PHYSICS RESEARCHER Homeless in New York USA
My “soulmate” got married on September 23rd, 2018 to the love of his life.
She was his childhood best friend. I knew her only very briefly. I never thought too much about it considering she was several years younger than him and the nature of their relationship growing up, but it happened.
He told me she was the safer choice. His family was already comfortable with her presence, she came to every serious family function. She didn’t have any crazy ambition to go to school or pursue a career. She wanted to be a stay at a home mom, while I wasn’t sure if I even wanted children. I was little more spontaneous, while she was calculated. I questioned his alcoholism, while she let him drink without a word.
When I looked through their online wedding album, I’d be lying if I said it didn’t hurt. For nearly 7 years (I’ll spare you the details of our relationship) I was sure this man would be my husband. Seeing the type of person his wife is though puts every detail of our relationship into perspective. The truth is, we wouldn’t have been able to make a life for ourselves in the long run.
I’m not her; and I don’t want to be.
There was a time in my life where I swore his wedding day would be the day I died. Boy was I wrong. Now when I think about him getting married, I think of the barren fields in Texas that they chose to move to. I think of the colour beige, and unflavoured grits, and scooping horseshit. I think of the children I never wanted and all the other excruciatingly boring things that they get to do together.
It’s a blessing in disguise.
Magic Music for Cats – UNBELIEVABLE Results (Tested 2022)
If youse guys have cats, then please play this video for them.
Yes those people have a monthly income of 1000 Yuan but most of them have their own homes, they don’t pay rent or mortgage
Most of those people get their food at State Subsidized Rates which is 30% below market price. This means Monthly Provisions for a family of three whose net income is 3000 RMB is only around 600 RMB. For this they can eat 1800–1850 Calories a day comfortably
Most of these people have given their leased land for Windmills or Solar Power and they get 275 Units a month free. So most of them don’t pay for electricity
If they lent their leased land for the gas pipelines, they get 100 RMB subsidy off gas. Thus most of them get their cooking gas free of cost or barely for 20–30 RMB a month
They get Education for their Kids fully free upto Grade IX and a subsidy of upto 80% for higher grades on already low tuition of 1800–2400 RMB a year. So a family with 2 Kids pays a paltry 30 RMB -50 RMB a month on Tuition
They get State Insurance for their Health plus NLF Insurance if they are farmers or factory workers with premiums paid by employers. Each of them gets upto 30,000 to 100,000 RMB in healthcare expenses. They don’t have to pay Doctor Consultancy Fees or more than 18% of their Hospital Bills which are again advanced as Loans at a paltry 2% a year interest
So 1000 RMB goes a long way for these people
They eat well, live in their own house, pay virtually nothing for their utilities and have a safe healthcare net plus tuition is near free all the time
So rather than income, it’s their access to a basic standard of living that should be counted here
My ex and I had an agreement. I went to work, made good money, I did a LOT around the house and she would pay the bills, make sure the kids were taken care of as far as the doctor, school, etc, and the house was kept up.
I kept up my end of the bargain. I made good money, but we always seemed to be broke. The house was not clean, I ended up doing a lot of the grocery shopping, cooking, all the house maintenance. The kids helped out a lot!
One day I decided to take a look at the bank account and all the bills, see where we were losing the most money so I could figure out the issue there.
I found about $2000 in ATM withdrawals in a 1 month period, Jan 19, 2016 to Feb 19, 2016. They were $50, $20, $30, $80… on and on for the month.
I went back and found a similar pattern the previous months, years, and so on. I counted up tens of thousands of dollars just gone.
That was the end for me. Within a week I told her I wanted a divorce. She had been complaining for years how everyone she knows is going on vacations, how they all take trips all the time, and we never are able to. Telling me I need to make more money, do overtime, take more training so I can get a better job, and the entire time she had been spending the money on drugs. Years and years worth of onesie-twosie bumps and hits.
She denied vacations for my kids. She ruined large parts of their childhood by not being a good mother, by not showing a good example for them, by not being there very much.
Now she is in prison, possession and distribution of meth.
The research company I worked for was downsizing. My previous boss had already been let go and my new boss kept sending his employees to learn everything in my department. Well one fave employee thought she was better at my job and kept trying to change our protocols. She never actually did any work, just made our lives miserable.
Then the day came where new boss walked in and started handing out moving boxes. He didn’t even say a word, just passed out the boxes. We all packed up and left. Now my lab was a resource lab that did a ton of work for the other labs. Suddenly me and all my staff were let go and the new boss handed it over to his people.
Guess what? They had never done these procedures, used the high tech equipment or even understood the complicated algorithms to process the data. First week I get 9 phone calls asking for help. That was met with a big NOPE. Then I get a call that the favorite employee had mishandled one of the very expensive robot units and it was out of order. They wanted ME to come in and reprogram it and get them back up and running. Oh heck no! I never went back and never helped.
Lesson of my story is don’t play favorites and make sure you have the staff to accomplish the job.
What is the best relationship advice for today?
Western Society has changed, and the system of “marriage” is no longer useful or viable.
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Well, think about it…
MEN
60% of Gen Z males over 30 are still virgins. HERE
Shockingly, 60% of males in the 30-34 age group are still virgins.
The CDC also reports that virgins make up 12.3 percent of females
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This is very disturbing.
Historically, the numbers were 90+% for both males and females. Thus the maintenance of a stable long-duration relationship of equivalency in sexual experience no longer occurs. The reason is that pair-bonding doesn’t occur after 3 or more sexual partners prior to a marriage.
This lack of “pair-bonding” creates a untenable situation for long-duration relationships.
As the traditional characteristic of virginal marriages; which is marriage longevity, is no longer possible.
Scientists have attributed this phenomenon to numerous sociological and psychological attributes. Some of the contributing trends are the “Woke movement”, the “feminist movement”, “LGBQ+ movement”, “social media”, as well, of the dearth of attention to the values of traditional marriage and relationships. With in turn, has resulted in “push back” movements such as the “red pill movement”, and the “the passport bros movement”.
Never the less, what matters is the outcome of this disparity in sexual experience…
Obviously, modern women find that marriages are not suitable for them, their dreams and desires.
When a divorce is granted by a Western court, the male (more often than not) is penalized disproportionately (in comparison to the female). In fact 97% of American men must pay spousal support, while only 3% of women need to. HERE. This is the case, even though the gender pay gap is functionally at parity. HERE
Obviously, statistically, the divorce is not fairly distributed. Independent on the reason for the divorce, the courts overwhelmingly punish and penalize the male.
Thus, without looking into the hows and whys for this situation, the outcomes are crystal clear. [1] Traditional marriage is not longer functional in the West. [2] When a female enters in a marriage, it is statistically probable that she will be unhappy and will want to terminate it. [3] Regardless of the reasons and issues involved, the male in that divorce will suffer disproportionately compared to the female.
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Taking all of the above into consideration, I suggest that a “non-traditional” marriage contract be used.
Both parties write out and agree to legally binding “prenuptial agreements”. One for the male and one for the female that they both sign with a attorney.
Then, Instead of a registered wedding / marriage with a (county) District of the Peace or a State Clerk, A legal “statement of marriage” be written up by your attorney. This document clearly defines the ownership, financial, and responsibilities of both parties in the event that the divorce fails. This prevents a third part (the government) from getting involved, and protects the unique union of the two parties.
Finally, a third document is required. A “separation agreement” document must be drafted. This establishes how the divorce proceedings (outside of the normal legal channels) will be handled, or how reconciliation efforts (if any) can be implemented.
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This solution is not for everyone. However it recognizes the reality that the current marriage union available in the West in presently dysfunctional and broken. Thus, it proves a means of union, and disunion based upon the needs of BOTH the male and the female. It also explicitly forges a legal contract independent of the broken system that so entraps the divorced family.
FACT: Nothing is more critical to a person’s (male or female) happiness than the person that they are married to.
This solution recognizes this reality, and provides a realistic and workable solution in common use by the wealthier families in the West. It replaces the (presently contemporaneous) “work-arounds” such as “open relationships”, “Social Media based activity”, “hook up culture, and the problem of “high body counts”.
I want both the women, as well as the men, to both share in a fine long-duration marriage where both are happy.
Argentina and why they chose to not align with BRICS+
My brother was missing, as an adult, for nearly 30 years. No, he wasn’t just staying out of touch by choice. No, he wasn’t in Witness Protection. Less than two weeks after I last saw him, he’d been murdered in what police called one of the most brutal murders they had ever seen. But we had no way of knowing this. We didn’t know where he was, since he was hitchhiking across the country. No cell phones, no Internet in 1989. From our point of view, he just vanished.
In 2018, I was perusing a database of unidentified remains. I saw a sketch that could only have been my brother’s face. All the identifying information matched. He had been murdered in a neighboring state. I contacted the people I needed to contact. I got DNA. It took about 6 agonizing months of gathering data and having it analyzed to get results. They were positive. The murder victim was my brother. The murder is unsolved.
That was the easy part, as horrible as it was (I broke out in hives that wouldn’t go away and went into treatment-resistant depression). Now I had to tell my mother what I’d discovered.
I had to make the phone call to tell my mother that her favorite child, who had been missing 30 years, had been murdered in 1989. She wanted details of the murder, so I provided them. I would not have, had she not insisted on knowing everything.
I had people tell me “Just don’t tell her. Just don’t tell her.” But on balance, I thought that was unfair. Not knowing was just as torturous as knowing, and this way, she could lay him to rest before she died. Further, she was not a child to be protected from upsetting information.
I know she grieved greatly. My stepfather told me she cried for 3 days straight (hardly surprising), and there was an element of accusation in his voice. But telling her wasn’t his decision to make. It was mine. You can’t protect people from death. It touches us all.
If there are any who would judge my decision, I simply say to you that I highly doubt you will ever be in the same situation, so you have no right to judge. I was faced with an impossible choice. When a loved one is murdered, everyone loses no matter what you do, and my family’s story had the extra stress of him having been missing for so long. He is now laid to rest in a beautiful, remote cemetery, and he is remembered for the loving, kind, and generous soul that he was.
This is a picture of me with my cat Dexter, who saved my life.
image 102
The last few years I was feeling a bit off most days and my doctors couldn’t find a reason for my chronic fatigue and inability to train hard (I’m a former pro fighter who still trains like one).
After years of getting little more then shrugs from medical staff one day I started feeling chest pain. It felt like a torn muscle so I chalked it up as a training injury and ignored it.
Suddenly Dexter, who had been around me for 20 years, ran over to me and started pawing at my chest and crying. He had never acted this way. I decided it was a red flag and called 911. As I opened the door for paramedics I had a “widow maker” heart attack and collapsed (very low survival rate, hence the name). The cardiologist who operated on me said if I had waited 3 more minutes to call I wouldn’t have survived.
I’ve had many pets over the years and loved them all. But I had a unique bond to that cat.
This picture is so sad to me because not only was I still recovering from heart surgery in this pic and feeling awful, but Dexter was 21 and his health was rapidly declining, it was one of the last times I held him and somewhere deep down, I knew it. He suffered a stroke and passed away a few days after this pic was taken. I still miss him every day.
Within a few months of losing Dexter both of my businesses closed due to the long term effects of the COVID lockdowns. My body/health has not 100% recovered from the heart attack, my heart has never 100% healed from losing Dexter, and my finances/ professional life has never really recovered from losing two businesses I spent years building from the ground up.
If anyone would like to watch a video I made about Dexter I’m also pasting a link in the comments, feel free to watch.
India heavily depends on US for its Software services and Indians migrate to US in droves every year
Civil Servants, Army Officials, Politicians all have Kids and Grandkids in the US
The US has a market for close to $ 400–600 Million for Indian Films every year
The Indian Army relies on US, Israel and it’s allies for more than 50% of the Critical Technologies needed for it’s Defence
India thus is very likely to break in seconds if there is a serious threat of sanctions
Saudi Arabia is next
Saudi depends heavily on Western Equipment and Western Security even now
The Saudis are today at relative peace but as on date they still need the US Dollar & the Security Umbrella
China is next
The West represents almost around 17 Trillion RMB worth of Trade translating to around 2.3 Trillion RMB of Government Revenue and Economic Accrued wealth every year
China is however the first country that can survive the sanctions albeit not at Russia’s level
Brazil & South Africa are next
Both these Nations have sufficient economic independence and Brazils largest customer is China
Yet both these nations have political factions that are heavily Pro US
UAE is next
UAE once again is safer than Saudi Arabia and has been left alone by the West for many decades unlike Saudi Arabia
UAE is far more resilient and less dependent on the West than Saudi
It’s why many Russians have invested their money in UAE
Ethiopia is too small to be sanctioned effectively
It has sufficient food and energy security from Russia and that’s all it needs
Iran and Russia are the ‘Go F*** yourself’ Nations of BRICS
They can actually ask the West to go f*** off anytime they want
They are entirely immune from Western Sanctions
So the order is
Iran + Russia > Ethiopia = UAE > Brazil = South Africa > China > Saudi Arabia > India
Left Alone Abandoned By Her Family After 18 Years, This Cat Ended Up in a Shelter
China wishes to be friends with the United States, however, were the USA to cross a Chinese “Red Line” then China would declare war.
In a declared war, by China, against the United States, the results would be horrific.
The value of the USD would go to ZERO. the paper would not be worth more than the dollar.
The Global South would no longer trade with the USA creating a fiasco of inconceivable proportions.
Any American military adventurism in and around China would end. It would not be reported, but the loss of entire fleets would not be be easily hidden.
And now for the “kicker”…
China would launch missiles that the United States has no defense for, against strategic and leadership targets. Uh oh!
This would result in catastrophic damage. It would be irreparable. Well, Duh!
And the United States (and proxy) response would be thwarted with absolute erasure of all the contributors.
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Ai!
It’s an ugly thought. Not for the faint of heart.
But the Global South are not like the West. They are lead by talented, skilled and merit driven leadership. Not by the group of cluster-fuckery clowns that you see during vociferation on CNN and BBC daily. They will not allow “president” Biden to do anything that horrible.
So rest easily.
If things goes tit’s up, at least you have ample warning to “get outta Dodge”.
After the 2019 737 Max failures that downed two airplanes and killed all inside, the company promised to change its culture. But it has since seen several production stops for quality and flight security issues on several of its manufacturing lines. There are still undelivered 737 MAX and 787 planes mothballed on various airports around Seattle.
NEW IMAGE from on board Alaska Airlines 1282 after ***part of the fuselage*** blew out mid-flight. Successful emergency return to Portland after 20 minutes in the air. 10-week-old (!) Boeing 737 Max 9. NTSB investigating.
There is video from inside the plane as it was landing. Oxygen masks had been deployed when the plane depressurized. The women filming says that there was thankfully no one seated next to where the hull was breached. If there had been that person would likely have died.
🚨#BREAKING: Alaska Airlines Forced to Make an Emergency Landing After Large Aircraft Window Blows Out Mid-Air
A forced emergency landing was made of Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 at Portland International Airport on Friday night. The flight, traveling from Portland to Ontario, California, faced severe depressurization, causing the ejection of a large window section and an unoccupied seat. This incident resulted in a child’s shirt being ripped off. The Boeing 737-900/-9MAX aircraft reached a maximum altitude of 16,300 ft before safely returning to Portland International Airport. As of now, it remains unclear if anyone on board the flight was injured, as this story is still developing.
It was not just the emergency exit door that was ripped out. (Such window emergency doors only open towards the inside of the plane.) The whole section around the emergency exit door departed.
I have since learned that this was indeed the place of a special emergency exit that, when installed, opens to the outside. This is ‘plugged’ on lower density planes that do not need it.
That points to a serious manufacturing issue at the hull builder that had not been caught by quality control.
All passengers and the crew survived and the plane landed safely. Alaska Air has grounded its 65 strong fleet of 737 MAX 9. Other airlines should follow.
The neat rectangular hole that appeared in the fuselage was located at the position where Boeing fits a plug to seal a door opening that is not used as a door by most airlines and by no U.S. carriers.
An emergency exit door is installed in that location only for jets going to low-cost carriers like Ryanair who cram in additional seats that require an extra emergency exit. Otherwise, the hole is sealed with a plug and from the inside it is covered by a sidewall so that to a passenger it looks like a normal window, not a door opening.
This plug, halfway between the over-wing exit and the door at the rear of the plane, is present only on the largest versions of the 737.
It’s fitted on the previous generation 737-900ER and the same design is on the 737 MAX 8-200, the high density version for low-cost carriers, as well as the MAX 9 and MAX 10.
Boeing instructed customer airlines to inspect their 737 Max jets for loose bolts, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced Thursday.
The request comes after the manufacturer discovered two aircraft with missing bolts in the rudder control system, raising concerns about faults across all aircraft.
“The issue identified on the particular airplane has been remedied,” Boeing told CNN in a statement. “Out of an abundance of caution, we are recommending operators inspect their 737 Max airplanes and inform us of any findings.”
Little noticed, the Federal Aviation Administration in December published a Boeing request for an exemption from key safety standards on the 737 MAX 7 — the still-uncertified smallest member of Boeing’s newest jet family.
Since August, earlier models of the MAX currently flying passengers in the U.S. have had to limit use of the jet’s engine anti-ice system after Boeing discovered a defect in the system with potentially catastrophic consequences.
The flaw could cause the inlet at the front end of the pod surrounding the engine — known as a nacelle — to break and fall off.
In an August Airworthiness Directive, the FAA stated that debris from such a breakup could penetrate the fuselage, putting passengers seated at windows behind the wings in danger, and could damage the wing or tail of the plane, “which could result in loss of control of the airplane.” …
One hopes that the FAA and Congress will finally get serious with Boeing. They must stop giving it all those lazy exceptions for issues that better (but more expensive) engineering can easily solve.
Posted by b on January 6, 2024 at 11:40 UTC | Permalink
Our “Parts Runner”, a maybe 5’4″ girl with long dark hair, (apparently) passed a stopped school bus on the right shoulder of a rural road at a high rate of speed (stupid!). We weren’t aware of this when the State police came by and questioned us. And instead of telling us what had happened and when, they focused on the shop owner, (6′ blond) who had earlier lost his driver’s license for a DUI. Does Mike drive? No. How does he get to work? He lives with me and rides with me. Doesn’t he own a red valiant license #… Well, I think the company owns it. He owns the company, doesn’t he? Ah, yeah, I guess. But he doesn’t drive that car, huh? No, it’s used for running parts. So he doesn’t drive it? No, our parts runner does (and I point to her) so, they arrested Mike for driving without a license and reckless driving and passing a stopped school bus and driving on the shoulder, and speeding. Mike fired the parts runner.
In court, the bus driver positively identified Mike as the driver. All of us – the receptionist, 4 mechanics and I were in court ready to testify that Mike was not driving at the time and place of the incident. But we never had to testify, because the bus driver got her dates confused and claimed the incident occurred on the day prior to the complaint. The judge had to dismiss the case.
There was absolutely no way that the driver actually saw who was driving. There is no way to mistake the parts runner for Mike. The state police HAD TO tell her to ID Mike as the driver. So not only did she lie, but the state troopers who did such a poor job of investigating what was a horrendous bit of driving and could have caused multiple fatalities of school children fucked up royally and got her to lie.
Eric Gales – “Don’t Fear The Reaper/All Along The Watchtower” (Live at the 2017 Dallas Guitar Show)
In my long career as a paramedic, I believe I saw first hand the worst thing a woman can do to a man. We were once called to the local state prison to transport a man to the hospital who was having chest pain. Other than that, he was pretty stable so it was a quiet 30-minute transport to the closest emergency room. We didn’t usually talk to the prisoners during transport, but somehow we started chatting and I asked the guy what he was “in” for. He tells me he was sentenced to prison for about 20 years for molesting both of his daughters. I was repulsed. I just wanted this scumbag out of my ambulance immediately I was so disgusted.
But then he immediately starts telling me how it was all a setup by his ex-wife and how he’s really innocent and nobody will believe him. He’s on his second attorney to try to get a new trial and he’s hoping somebody will finally grant him a new opportunity to clear his name. The prison guard riding in the back of the ambulance with us (he was sitting behind the patient) looks at me and rolls his eyes and smirks and says to me, “They all say that. Don’t listen to his bullshit. He’s been telling that to everyone who will listen.” The prisoner looks at me for some sort of sympathy but I just sternly look down at my patient report and tell him to lie back and rest and stop talking. He started sobbing and cried, “Even the paramedic that’s supposed to be saving my life hates me!” I certainly felt no sympathy for the guy at the time. I had passed judgment on him, as had the prison guard, and decided this guy was a disgusting pedophile and I’d just as soon not have to deal with him at all. Just touching him to check his blood pressure made my skin crawl.
It was approximately two years later when I happened upon a newspaper article in our local paper about a guy who’d been in the local prison for several years for child molestation. He’d eventually been granted a new trial and at some point during that second trial, both of his daughters admitted that they’d been made to create this false story against their dad at the behest of his ex-wife, who wanted to punish him for the divorce. His sentence was ultimately vacated and he was released from prison. Not sure whatever happened to the ex-wife, but I know the prosecutor said they’d be exploring charges against her.
I didn’t recognize the name of the prisoner in the article, but I immediately recognized his face when I saw a photo of him in court, weeping when the judge ordered him released. He was the same prisoner I’d transported two years before and had treated like crap. The guilt I felt at that moment was overwhelming. I wanted to find a way to contact him to apologize (if he’d even remember me). I wonder to this day whether he was ever able to repair his relationship with his kids, or whether he was ever able to repair his life. The guy spent some seven years in prison based on a bullshit charge that his ex-wife put their young kids up to. It’s a horrific thought and it still haunts me to this day.
Richard Wolff: Real wages in China quadrupled while real wages in the US stagnated
I had three friends fired for being too proactive, and read about another one who was fired for being too efficient.
In the first, the guy was hauling acid, and he went to the plant to get filled up. It was a gravity fed system, the guy came out and hooked him up, and went off to do something else in the half hour it would take to fill his tanker.
My friend saw that acid was dripping on the ground, at the connection. It was dripping faster and faster, so he looked around for the guy to shut it off. This was before cell phones. Safety rules said he couldn’t leave his truck while being filled so he decided to shut the valve and stop the acid going through the hose. He had watched the guy shut the valve many times a day as he got his loads. He resealed the connection when there was no pressure on it and opened it again. Which he did. The guy came back, and said that his truck should be full in a minute. My friend told him it would be another five minutes, because he had shut it off. The guy exploded, saying my friend didn’t understand the system and might have caused a disaster. Which is true, but it was gravity feed, he knew he was breaking environmental rules, and felt he had to try something.
My friend was not allowed on the property again, since his job was hauling acid from that plant, he lost his job.
The next one ,was a lady who got a unionized job with the city. Her first day on the job, she noticed that the cupboard door in the coffee room was hanging loose, so she reported it. A couple of days later she brought a screwdriver and tightened up the hinge. The next day the guy came to repair it and the union wrote her up, for doing someone elses job. A month later the light burnt out over her desk. She reports it, goes a week without a light, and then replaces it herself, and gets written up again. She is now on probation with the union for doing other people’s jobs. She is told third strike and your out, and you must be a member of the union to work for the city.
So when she sees that one of the only two the ladies toilets on her floor is plugged, and the other is in use, she doesn’t report it, she walks to the closet grabs a plunger , clears it, and uses the toilet. The person in the stall next to her, reports her, she is kicked out of the union, and loses her job.
This is one I read about in the newspaper years ago. It relies on the testimony of a guy who was fired, so its possible he’s making excuses. A guy gets a unionized job in the Alberta oil sands. He Is ordered to scrub out tanks, at the end of the day, he says all done. His supervisor, who is also unionized, says thats listed as a weeks worth of work, so you might as well go back and sit in the tanks, at least thats his testimony. His supervisor said it was impossible to clean the tanks in a day, so he sent him back to do it right.
He gets transferred to the night shift, where he says he tries to work continuously. His supervisor tells him that they always accomplish less than the day shift, and he has already done more, partway through the night. So he has to wait and twiddle his fingers, because they can’t make the day shift look bad.
He gets kicked out of the union and loses his job. The union says he was violating all sorts of safety regulations. I don’t know who is lying.
Finally I had a friend hired by a company to copy tapes. They have a separate contract to copy another companies tapes, after he has met his quota of proprietary tapes. He gets a bonus for the separate contract, but not for exceeding his quota of proprietary tapes.
So he gets in early, loads a dozen tapes on a dozen machines, starts the copy job. Then goes for breakfast and comes back at his usual starting time when the tape copying is done. Loads another set, and makes sure that tapes are being copied when he goes for coffee breaks, and lunch. By two o’clock he has met quota and starts on the bonus tapes. He makes sure that he has just started a set of bonus tapes when he leaves for the day.
The next morning he comes in, unloads the bonus tapes and starts on his quota tapes.
When he started with the company he was told that there were enough tapes for three years and almost no one ever had time for bonus tapes.
With his bonus, he makes double his base salary.
After a year and a half he is let go. He has used up the entire 3 year tape copy budget, and they can’t pay him anymore.
Yes, when I was a little kid. About 11 years old, I would say. I was visiting my uncle,and his girlfriend. The neighbor had a bunny rabbit that was tethered with a long leash, hopping around their yard. The neighbor saw me through the window, on her lawn, petting the bunny rabbit. She said please get off the lawn. I got off her lawm immediately.
My uncle said, sorry she’s a little kid, she just wanted to pet the bunny. The neighbor said, there is a children’s zoo, within driving distance. My Uncle and his girlfriend let the comment go.
The next day, I was in my uncles yard playing Frisbee with my uncles dog. My uncle’s dog was trained not to go beyond my uncles yard. All of a sudden, the dog belonging to the neighbor with the bunny rabbit, comes running into my uncle’s yard, to play frisbee. That neighbor walks into my uncles yard (she didn’t know he was watching from the window)
My uncle came out, and says, please get off the lawn. The neighbor said her dog just wanted to play frisbee, and loves kids. My uncle didn’t miss a beat, and said, there is a dog park with children, within driving distance.
His neighbor looked so. embarrassed, and collected her dog, and headed back towards her house. My uncle said, now do you see how silly that sounds. Sure your dog can play with my dog, and my neice. She told me I can come and see her rabbit whenever, I liked. We all became friends, after that for many years.
Originally Answered: Every day when I leave, my boss says, “leaving already?” to which I replied to today as I did my 8 hours and he says “well you are salary”. I do my work, don’t use my computer for anything other than work, and also work from home. What’s his deal?
My daughter is a master at improving restaurants . Examples, increasing sales 5x in 3 years, increasing profit by 35% in two months. She just has a nack. She arrives at 5 Am and makes sure the day is prepared for. She leaves between 4 and 5 as she trains great closers. In relation to the restaurant business, she has great employee retention.
She was hired by a fitness place to revamp it. She was working 5 to 5. In just two months she had made major strides. Customers were noticing, staff was noticing. The GM waltzed in everyday about 10 AM. When she left at 5 he always told her she lacked dedication to her job by leaving at 5. He said it one time too many. Since then she has “ fixed” two chains as training manager. That place remains a liability to the gym. The GM was fired shortly thereafter.
Bosses should respect their employees and If they don’t should replace them. In this case, if the employee was not doing their job in 8 hours, they should have had expectations set and be replaced if not met. The constant digs help no one.
I was 14 years old, it was during the second semester of my freshman year. My Spanish teacher called me to her desk after class. Once all the other students left the classroom, she grabbed my hands and said something along the lines of, “I know it’s hard. You’re going to make it through this.” She had tears in her eyes. At this point, I realized something was wrong, and people were noticing.
The first semester of freshman year, I was an honor roll student, I passed every test with a high score. I wore fashionable clothes and made a few new friends. Then second semester came. I stopped caring about my appearance, I would go to school in sweatpants and pajama shirts. My hair was unkempt, I stopped wearing makeup. My grades went from A’s and B’s to C’s and F’s. I stopped doing homework and didn’t study for tests, I lost all motivation to do school work. My GPA went from a 3.5 to a 2.01 and I didn’t care. I lost every single friend I had made and did not make a single effort to regain the friendships.
My life at home started suffering too, I became overly suspicious of my family members. I began accusing them of stealing things from me, I accused my parents of hiding cameras around the house to spy on me. I began hating my family, and isolated myself in my room at all times. I started playing video games to distract myself from the family I had hated, I immersed myself in a fantasy world and began confusing the video game with reality. I thought I knew people from the video game in real life and I would try to look for them. I thought my classmates at school were secretly apart of the video game. I thought people from the video game were watching me from my laptop camera. I began losing sleep and would impulsively pace around my room for hours without stopping, during the weekends I would pace in circles around my house from midnight until I saw the sun rise.
I began to form a crush on a boy from my improv class, instead of talking to him I thought I had the ability to put thoughts into his head. I would listen to music I knew he liked and would “insert my thoughts” into his mind, thinking he would associate myself with his favorite genre of music. I was trying to manipulate his thoughts with my “super powers” to make him like me.
I started hearing things that weren’t there. I would hear footsteps outside my door and window at night. I’d hear distant banging, as if someone were knocking on a door. I would hear faint screaming in the middle of the night, as though someone was on my street screaming near my window. I heard whispering coming from the walls. I would see shadows at night in my closet.
It took a few months of everything I had said happening for my teacher to notice, which was when I went to my mother about scheduling me a therapy appointment. However, the therapist did me no good. I didn’t know that what was happening to me wasn’t normal, it was as though my mental illness clouded my thoughts, everything that happened to me I accepted as reality, so I did not mention it to my therapist. My first therapist said I was experiencing a mild depression episode.
It took me a few months to realize something was wrong, but two years to pinpoint which mental illness I actually had. At age 16, I was diagnosed with schizophrenia. I am now 17, and very happy. I still have auditory and visual hallucinations, and still struggle a little with my “I can put thoughts into other people’s heads” delusion, but I regained all my motivation, am an honors student again, and no longer wear sweatpants and pajama shirts to school. I also don’t hate my family anymore, but it’s amazing how something like schizophrenia can change your thought process so much that you start to despise those who you truly love.
Architectural Wonder: China’s Spectacular New Train Station
I think prostitution is pretty safe. No one wants to become intimate with a toaster.
A lot of white collar and manual jobs will either be transformed or become entirely obsolete. LLMs have developed immensely in the last two years. It’s hard to predict the level of utility that will be possible in the next five years. Other than “a lot”.
In terms of manual jobs these will also be impacted, although robotics and automation is moving a little more slowly than paper-shuffling roles. It’s going to be a long time before a robot has the fine dexterity and precision to iron a shirt. But at the current rate of progress it might just happen in the next 20 years.
The safest jobs will be those where an essential part of the role is being a friendly mammal in the same room. We will still want nursery school staff, nurses and care workers, reception and hospitality staff. Whatever technology level we have, human beings will pay a premium for interaction with other human beings.
The creation of handmade objects and artefacts (like paintings) might be imitated by robotic means, but collectors will pay more for authentically human-made goods.
When Im was a teenager I got a summer job working for a small construction outfit. Their jobs were close to my house so I would ride my bicycle their, or the boss would pick me up long the way. A week or so into a job two new guys cme to work – the boss said they were ….. friends of his. One of the guys wore tinted presription glasses so you couldn’t really see his eyes. He really gave me the creeps.
A few days later the two new guys offered to give me a ride home after work. They were curious when I told them I lived in a group of houses beside a low security prison – my Dad worked there and the houses were owned by the prison and employees rented them. They asked me my Dad’s name and they both smiled and said they knew my Dad. I thought that was weird and it did not click in my brain why these two guys knew my Dad – who worked in a prison.
We pulled into the driveway and they saw my Dad in the backyard attending the BBQ. They were all smiles and cheers – “Hey Scotty! How’s it going?!”
My typically mild manner 5′ 7″ Dad turned red, and started yelling and swearing at the guys. The guys backed up as my Dad approached with the big BBQ fork in one hand. He told them to get back in the car and get the hell off his property. They were so surprised they scooted back the car and ‘got the hell out of there’.
I had never seen my Dad that angry, and he rarely ever said anything worse than “damn” or “shit”. He seriously cussed those guys out.
Then he turned to me with the most grotesque look on his face and said to me, “Listen to me. LISTEN! Stay the hell away from those two bastards! No matter what they say, don’t ever get in their car again to go ANYWHERE! Not for lunch, not for a beer after work, not for a ride home. Those guys are serious BAD news. So you hear me?!!”
That scared the crap out of as I realized those two guys used to be in prison.
The next summer my Dad came home with an out of town newspaper (we lived near two small towns with local papers, and the city 30 miles away had some national/international articles in the paper) and opened it up in front of me, folded it and handed it to me. He pointed to an article and said, “Read that.”
The story was about two guys who had picked up another guy who was hitchiking. They drove him to a deserted area and killed him. The one guy said he did it just to see what it was like to kill someone. Then I saw the picture of the guy who said that – tinted glasses so you couldn’t see his eyes.
I shivered physically and looked up at my Dad. He said, “That’s why I told you to never get in their car again. That poor bastard that was shot in the face could have been you.”
What do women want?
CORRUPTION, CHAOS, CONFLICT – FOURTH TURNING ERUPTS IN 2024
“THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.” – Thomas Paine – The American Crisis
Thomas Paine wrote these words 247 years ago, in the most historic year in our history – 1776. That was during the first American Fourth Turning. It’s not a coincidence we are now in the midst of our fourth Crisis period in U.S. history, as they arrive like clockwork every 80 years or so, the length of a long human life. Paine’s American Crisis began in 1773, ignited by the Boston Tea Party and the British reaction to this revolutionary act of defiance. Our current Millennial Crisis was triggered by the Federal Reserve/Wall Street/Government created financial disaster in 2008 and subsequent outrageously desperate, totalitarian, un-Constitutional, extreme acts designed to keep the ruling class in power, while impoverishing and enslaving the masses in a surveillance state techno-gulag.
The polarization and fractures have become too deep to repair. The country, and the western world in general, are hurtling towards a darkening abyss of civil conflict, financial collapse, global war, societal chaos, and loss of life on a scale grander than WW2, the Civil War, and the American Revolution combined. Our technological advancements have outstripped our ability to intelligently, thoughtfully, and humanly, use this power for the benefit of future generations. The destructive deficiencies of human nature, such as: greed, desire for power, hatred, arrogance, resentment, and an unlimited supply of self-delusion, continue to plague our world, as only the most power-hungry psychopaths rise to the highest levels of government, business, religion, and finance.
The immense technological power in the hands of egocentric, megalomaniacal, sadistic, billionaires and their highly paid toadies, lackeys, and apparatchiks, inserted throughout the media, government, academia, banking, and corporations, has pushed the world to the brink of Armageddon. We are entering the sixteenth year of this Fourth Turning. Based on history, we can expect a climax of this Crisis in the 2030-to-2032-timeframe. The path to that climax is guaranteed to be violent and unforgiving.
Neil Howe, in his new book – The Fourth Turning Is Here – tries to decipher the likely path of the remainder of this Fourth Turning. Having read the original Fourth Turning, his joint project with William Strauss (who died in 2007), in 2004, I was curious to read Howe’s update on their generational theory of history. I met Howe for lunch in 2012 during the Occupy Wall Street protests and he correctly assessed that movement as a meaningless left-wing attempt to push their communist like agenda.
The first book, written in 1997, showed no favor towards the right or left. It was a no-nonsense assessment of economic facts and historical precedents. There were no political agendas, which I now attribute to Strauss’ influence, because Howe certainly lets his political views creep into his writings. This isn’t surprising, as his consulting business is dependent upon Wall Street banks and mega-corporations. He owes his living to the establishment; therefore he won’t shit where he eats.
Howe’s current left leaning political views seep into his current tome. He quotes Zelensky as some sort of patriotic leader, while portraying Putin as a thug, without giving any context regarding the 2014 CIA initiated overthrow of a democratically elected Ukraine president. He bought the covid scamdemic hook, line, and sinker, with no skepticism about the coordinated lockdowns and false narratives about masks, social distancing, and vaccines that never worked, but continue to kill. He believes the climate change bullshit narrative.
His tone regarding Trump is clearly negative and he believes the 2020 election was perfectly legitimate. He expounds about the January 6 “armed” insurrection, without one word about the FBI, Pelosi, and the Washington establishment planning, coordinating, and exacerbating the fake “insurrection”. His brain-dead accusations of violence by Trump supporters, while completely ignoring the murder and mayhem created by the BLM and ANTIFA terrorists, clearly reveals his allegiances.
Be that as it may, there is no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. His acumen regarding possible scenarios and outcomes are well thought out. Howe makes some very interesting predictions regarding the remainder of this Fourth Turning, providing some very dark possibilities, along with some more unlikely optimistic outcomes. His research reveals Americans think the American dream is no longer attainable, civil discord will destroy our democratic institutions, and our global standing is in decline. All three fears are legitimate and coming to fruition as we speak. Howe captures the current situation in this passage:
“In the middle of a Crisis era, the social mood has reached an unstable balance of hope, fear, and dizzying uncertainty. Americans are like a compressed spring at the point of maximum potential energy. Internally secure yet externally threatened, they are ready for propulsive public action.” – Neil Howe – The Fourth Turning Is Here
Events beyond their control are leading them towards their rendezvous with destiny and the speed has begun to accelerate, with 2024 slated to be a historic date in history, on par with 1776, 1861, and 1941. The exact events which will make 2024 historic are obscured by a dense fog of uncertainty, but we can make some educated guesses based upon our current economic circumstances, Biden’s open border purposeful invasion, upcoming elections wrought with fraud, ongoing treasonous governmental and judicial operations, and deepening global conflicts already underway.
Of the three possible paths laid out by Howe, the most likely appears to be the animosity between factions eventually leads to armed conflict within the country. Political dominance by one party is highly unlikely, with the country rallying around the flag against an external enemy. It is more likely our many external foes will take advantage of our internal conflict to further weaken our global hegemony. All paths lead to war at this point.
I sense the delusional masses, still entranced by their electronic gadgets, unending access to debt, NFL fantasy leagues, and oblivious to the lessons of history, are frantically trying to fend off reality by shopping, eating out, partying at bars, and pretending all is well. Critically assessing their true situation is too painful for these snowflakes and gender bending enthusiasts. Their virtue signaling wokeness is about to meet the brutal reality of a violent Fourth Turning climax.
“And however much these paths may seem to differ from one another, they all move toward the same destination. They all push the nation toward a violent struggle requiring maximum mobilization. They all culminate in the Ekpyrosis, which will bring the era into a decisive consolidation, climax, and resolution.” – Neil Howe – The Fourth Turning Is Here
The drivers of this Fourth Turning, as documented in 1997, continue to be debt, civic decay, and global disorder. They have propelled this Crisis since the outset in 2008 and are accelerating towards an explosive collision in 2024. The national debt at the outset of this Fourth Turning was $10 trillion. It had taken 219 years to accumulate $10 trillion of debt, with the majority amassed during this century. It has taken just fifteen years to pile an additional $24 trillion of debt on the backs of Americans and future generations, if there are future generations.
This doesn’t even take into account the $200 trillion of unfunded welfare and pension obligations tallied up by your government leaders. At the same time, the Federal Reserve increased their balance sheet from $900 billion to $9 trillion. With the rapid rise of interest rates in the last year, if banks were required to mark their assets to market, as they did prior to 2009, the entire banking industry, including the Too Big To Fail Wall Street behemoths, would be insolvent, along with the Federal Reserve. Does this seem sustainable to you?
Luckily for our teetering empire of debt, delusions, and deceptions, they can change the rules whenever it suits their purposes to extend and pretend until it all “suddenly” collapses, like a vaxxed soccer player on the pitch. Of course, the U.S. is not alone in being burdened with unpayable debt and an unsustainable financial system. China and the EU countries are also insolvent and issuing debt to service their existing debt.
The only major global power without a large debt problem is Russia, with a debt to GDP ratio below 30%, while the U.S.- 120%, EU – 90%, Japan – 220%, and China – 80% have accumulated perilous levels of debt and still growing. These debt levels and the domestic implications of unsustainable economies will lead shamelessly corrupt politicians and even dictators like Xi to provoke foreign conflict in order to distract their populations from their dire economic circumstances. A wag the dog type false flag is just around the corner.
An man-made banker created economic disaster ignited this powder keg of debt in 2008, and the “solutions” rolled out by the ruling elites since have been designed to extend, pretend, and bend the minds of the masses, while fostering the perpetual pillaging campaign by the billionaire oligarchs who really run this world. The plebs have been destroyed by the relentless inflation purposefully created by Powell and his fellow central banker puppets of the Deep State, while the lords of finance have reaped billions in ill-gotten riches.
The “Haves”, who control the financial markets, media, and politicians, are ecstatic with the current paradigm, as the stock market hits new highs every day, while average Americans go deeper into debt to keep up with the Joneses, pay the rent, and put some food on the table. The U.S. is nothing more than a sophisticated technological looting operation at this point, as we await the Great Taking to be initiated by the oligarchs as their final solution.
The Great Taking is David Rogers Webb’s warning to those not on the inside about the coming seizure of all your assets (stocks, bonds, savings) by your own government in the name of some new contrived national emergency. You will sacrifice your life savings for the good of the country (aka Deep State). At this point it’s just a matter of which comes first, The Taking, Global war, or Civil chaos caused by the ongoing election fraud. They are all coming and will merge into a category 5 hurricane of hell for the nation and the world.
The Deep State continues its complete control over who gets “elected”/selected in this country, as they use the captured judicial system as a cudgel to crush the rule of law and our Constitutional rights. The Soros selected District Attorneys, Mayors, Governors, Judges, Secretaries of States, and various other low-level captured bureaucrats, are doing what they were selected to do – destroy the country’s social fabric and create a chaotic disintegration of our community norms.
A populace propagandized into a woke communist ideology and prodded into a buy now, pay later mentality, is unwilling or unable to accept that LATER has arrived. They will pay, one way or another. Multiple bubbles in stocks, bonds and real estate are all poised to pop, with the slightest provocation from a global and/or domestic blunder. We have now positioned our naval forces in the highly dangerous waters in the Middle East. Militarily supporting Israel and Ukraine has done wonders for our GDP, but it seems we are running out of ammo to defend our own country, as the invasion of our southern border accelerates. We are currently provoking armed conflict in Yemen, Syria, Gaza, Iraq, Ukraine, and Russia.
All it will take is one lucky missile or unexpected hyper-sonic missile and our vaunted navy will see a vessel or two go to the bottom of the Red Sea. Then all hell will break loose. The rhetoric, threats and accusations of atrocities are ramping up, along with armed conflict across the Middle East. With the raging religious hatreds and centuries old struggles for land and power coming to a head, it will just take one of these psychopaths to ignite a global conflict. Meanwhile, China is biding its time for when they make their ultimate move on Taiwan. That would really roll a grenade into the party.
Financial markets have ignored the worsening global conflict thus far, but what happens when Americans start dying in large numbers? If the markets are at all time highs based upon expectations of a strong thriving economy in 2024, why is the Fed signaling multiple interest rate cuts in 2024, regional banks are desperately clinging to the Fed’s emergency bailout fund, commercial real estate is collapsing, housing has peaked, gold is hitting all-time highs, credit card debt is at all-time highs, layoffs are increasing, and the number of working age citizens is in free fall due to vaxx deaths and disabilities?
But buy stocks because the Wall Street shysters and their media mouthpieces tell you it’s the best time to buy. The only question at this point is what additional grain of sand will cause the sand pile to collapse. Will it be a foreign war, or will it be a civil war within our borders or something no one has even considered? I know most people dismiss the possibility of civil war, believing there aren’t enough people willing to risk their lives for a just cause. Neil Howe seems to think it is probable.
“Roughly half of all Americans think a civil war is likely. And a growing number of social scientists agree that the United States now fits the checklist profile of a country at risk. Trust in the national government is in steep decline. Check. Respect for democratic institutions is weakening. Check. A heavily armed population has polarized into two evenly divided partisan factions. Check. Each faction embodies a distinctive ethnic, cultural, and urban-versus-rural identity. Each wants its country to become something the other detests. And each fears the prospect of the other taking power. Check, check, and check.” – Neil Howe – The Fourth Turning Is Here
Virtually no one believes civil war is possible, just as no one expected a civil war in 1860, as the presidential election approached. Truthfully, the civil war has already begun, but only those on the left, in conjunction with the FBI, CIA, Big Media, and other governmental agencies, are aggressively fighting. They are vigorously at war against the American people by rigging elections, arresting opposition leaders, and discarding the U.S. Constitution.
The good guys have thus far been too civil. But the simmering anger of heavily armed rural, red state Americans is close to boiling over. All the signs are there, awaiting a triggering event for this undeclared war to engulf the nation. At this point a number of possible triggering events are possible.
If David Webb is correct and those in power initiate the Great Taking, the level of violence in reaction would be unprecedented in U.S. history. Maybe that is their plan. Biden and his handlers could use this event to declare a national emergency, suspending the presidential election because they were going to lose, and instituting martial law. Their attempt to lockdown the country and use the military against civilians would surely result in massive bloodshed, as local animosities would result in assassinations, wholesale slaughter of those considered disloyal to whichever side controls the high ground in that community. Previously petty disputes would suddenly become lethal disputes.
Even if the presidential election is held in November, I don’t believe either side will accept the outcome. We know the Democrats and their Deep State co-conspirators will cheat, rig and once again try to steal the election. If they fail, they will unleash their BLM, ANTIFA terrorist arm into the streets to create chaos as an excuse to not hand over power to Trump.
With multiple states now attempting to unlawfully keep Trump off the ballot in their states, the animosity between the right and left grows ever deeper. The imprisonment of Trump or more radical attempts to steal the 2024 election will be met with violence from the here-to-for persevering right. Mixing this toxic domestic atmosphere with a deepening global chasm is a recipe for global disaster.
As we have seen throughout history, the egos of psychopaths at the helm of nations often lead them to act irrationally and/or emotionally when it comes to committing their people to war. While the U.S. has further weakened its global hegemony with its disastrous forays into Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Ukraine; Russia and China have gotten stronger and more mutually committed to creating their own new world order. The USD as the dominant global currency is reaching its endpoint, marking the end of empire. Now Israel will further deplete U.S. resources and global stature with their war to wipe out Palestine. Once the dominoes begin to fall in a game of global warfare, all bets are off regarding possible outcomes. Neil Howe’s worst-case scenario is certainly not out of the question.
“At worst, should at least one desperate country resort to WMDs, the outcome of a great-power war could prove to be even more devastating than that of a civil war. The toll could be almost unimaginable – with multiple cities destroyed, many millions killed, and many tens of millions displaced – all perhaps triggered by some ill-fated combination of the wrong leader making the wrong choice at the wrong time.” – Neil Howe – The Fourth Turning Is Here
All scenarios for 2024 seem depressing and dark, but the odds still favor just continuing to muddle through as we have done through the first fifteen years of this Fourth Turning. I gave up trying to make specific predictions within a specific time frame years ago. It’s a fool’s errand as there are too many variables in the world to correctly predict which ones will drive the course of events within a one year time frame.
What I do know is that pessimism about the future continues to deepen, paranoia strengthens, trust declines, anger grows, and the arrogance of those running the show has reached epic levels. We’ve been subjected to three years of propaganda about how the Great Reset will fundamentally transform our world, where we will own nothing and be happy. It seems this fits perfectly with David Webb’s Great Taking theory of how we will ultimately own nothing.
There does seem to be a common thread running through everything happening in the last three years and appears to be on deck for 2024 and beyond. It all revolves around this broad Great Reset concept pushed by Schwab, Gates, Soros, and the rest of the Davos elite. The entire Covid plandemic was engineered to introduce authoritarian measures and instruct the masses to obey their masters.
The vaccine is now clearly revealed to be a depopulation weapon, killing off some suddenly; others through myocarditis, turbo cancers, and strokes; babies through miscarriages; and future generations through reduced fertility. And most still believe our overlords rolled these jabs out to save them. Trump is still crowing about his big, beautiful vaccines. He’s either a fool or a charlatan.
The climate change scam is hastening, as the war on farmers, meat, and fossil fuels is waged relentlessly by unelected bureaucrats and captured media mouthpieces. The EV scam is collapsing rapidly, as people with common sense see through it all. The Great Replacement of white people with third world savages is unabetted, with the Biden Administration ushering them across the southern border, giving them phones and money, flying them to cities across the country, and paying for them to stay at upscale hotels.
This is not incompetence, but treason. They have already used their predictive programming/brainwashing to prepare the masses for civil war and a massive cyber-attack. Your government will protect you, as long as you sacrifice your remaining liberties and rights. All that is left is the initiation of the Great Taking. The “emergency” will occur on a weekend and by Monday morning your assets will be gone.
This is their master plan, but we will have a say on whether it is ever successfully implemented. I wonder if these Davos psychopaths absconded with The Great Reset moniker from Strauss & Howe, as they used it to describe Fourth Turnings back in 1997.
A Fourth Turning great reset may be a surprise to Schwab and his totalitarian acolytes inserted in governments across the world. They are in control. They are running this shitshow. They are the establishment. They are reaping the benefits. They are suppressing dissent and the truth. They are the existing social order that traditionally gets swept away during a Fourth Turning. 2024 may mark the beginning of the end for the Davos crowd and their iron grip on our spiraling society of chaos.
The future course of history could be radically altered by actions taken by supposedly influential characters in this movie, but also by courageous deeds performed by average Americans who will sacrifice themselves to ensure future generations have a chance to live in a nation devoid of a psychopathic elitist ruling class.
It seems like a long shot at this point, but giving up is not an option for those of us who still love this country. The four possible outcomes for this Crisis, laid out by Strauss & Howe in 1997, are as valid today as ever, and disturbingly close at hand. We will all have to do our part if we are to have any chance of producing a positive outcome to this Crisis. Happy New Year.
This Fourth Turning could mark the end of man. It could be an omnicidal Armageddon, destroying everything, leaving nothing. If mankind ever extinguishes itself, this will probably happen when its dominant civilization triggers a Fourth Turning that ends horribly. For this Fourth Turning to put an end to all this would require an extremely unlikely blend of social disaster, human malevolence, technological perfection and bad luck.
The Fourth Turning could mark the end of modernity. The Western saecular rhythm – which began in the mid-fifteenth century with the Renaissance – could come to an abrupt terminus. The seventh modern saeculum would be the last. This too could come from total war, terrible but not final. There could be a complete collapse of science, culture, politics, and society. Such a dire result would probably happen only when a dominant nation (like today’s America) lets a Fourth Turning ekpyrosis engulf the planet. But this outcome is well within the reach of foreseeable technology and malevolence.
The Fourth Turning could spare modernity but mark the end of our nation. It could close the book on the political constitution, popular culture, and moral standing that the word America has come to signify. The nation has endured for three saecula; Rome lasted twelve, the Soviet Union only one. Fourth Turnings are critical thresholds for national survival. Each of the last three American Crises produced moments of extreme danger: In the Revolution, the very birth of the republic hung by a thread in more than one battle. In the Civil War, the union barely survived a four-year slaughter that in its own time was regarded as the most lethal war in history. In World War II, the nation destroyed an enemy of democracy that for a time was winning; had the enemy won, America might have itself been destroyed. In all likelihood, the next Crisis will present the nation with a threat and a consequence on a similar scale.
Or the Fourth Turning could simply mark the end of the Millennial Saeculum. Mankind, modernity, and America would all persevere. Afterward, there would be a new mood, a new High, and a new saeculum. America would be reborn. But, reborn, it would not be the same.
ARGENTINA IN TEARS! China STOP Deal Worth $6.5 Billion With Argentina
Yes. They took a narcotic drug, meant for the patient, and injected themselves. Gave the patient an injection of saline. I didn’t understand why the patient was suddenly unable to tolerate a treatment he had previously handled with dignity. I suspected something when I noticed this nurse would always go to the locker room after “medicating” this patient. The next time he was due for a shot to relieve his pain, I hid in the locker room. I witnessed that nurse injecting herself. Fury was what I felt, for making a patient suffer so terribly. I was unable to feel any pity for her at that moment. I reported her, and she was fired, after her ongoing behavior was verified. The other nurses on the unit didn’t speak to me because I’d betrayed the “sisterhood” I pointed out that a patient was being harmed by an impaired nurse. FIRST imperative is to adhere to the oath we all took, to “do no harm”. You have to do what’s right!
Obviously the addicted nurse was counseled and offered assistance in overcoming her addiction. THAT is the right thing to do, too.
Another incident occurred when I realized one of the best, most brilliant nurses I’d ever worked with, was stealing a narcotic, regularly. He never harmed a patient, but I could see he was addicted. I chose to try to help him, and spoke to him, telling him I knew people and could get him into drug rehab the next day. I urged him to seek help. I warned him the supervisor was looking for whoever was stealing the narcotics. He assured me it wasn’t him and he didn’t need help, he was fine. He was caught, the next night, stealing. End of career. Those of us, who worked with him, were in tears.
Sometimes you help. Sometimes you report. The patient comes first. But one hopes that help is offered, because once removed as a nurse, that nurse becomes a “ patient”.
I did. I caught up with a driver I clocked at a very high rate of speed. When I walked up to the window I saw a grandmother in the back seat holding a young boy in her lap and he was spewing a bright pink frothy liquid every few seconds. The driver asked where was the hospital. Regulations forbade emergency escorts, and I violated that reg. I led them to the nearest hospital a few minutes away. On arrival I was told to take him to another ER, that hospital didn’t have the ER that day. I forcefully informed the Dr that the boy wouldn’t survive that long. He reluctantly had the boy brought in and began treating him. Several Drs attended that youngster that afternoon and all abandoned him but one young Dr named Alex Krier. He would not give up, and he saved that boys life. I learned that he fell off the bed of a pickup truck in a pasture and hit his head. I never learned what the diagnosis was. I would occasionally hear from his father from Tallahassee Fl. The youngster eventually made a full recover but his injury slowed his development significantly. I firmly believe God placed me in that position that day, and that He put Dr Krier in that ER that day. If they had taken him to the ER of the day, several miles away, I believe he would not have survived.
Well, blanket tariffs are illegal under WTO rules.
ILLEGAL.
Donald the Orange had to resort to neutering the dispute settlement mechanism of the WTO to pursue blanket tariffs on China.
The WTO remains neutered under Joe the Elderly.
Meanwhile, the US made a genocide determination on China, and rescinded recognition of Hong Kong as an independent trade body under the WTO framework.
That’s belligerence and exceptionalism.
A typical example of the rules-based international order the US is trying so hard to maintain.
What is China to do unless it wants to play the same game?
Unfortunately for the hegemon, it must be willing to take pain and sustain damage to land punches on the No. 2 economy today.
As America is finding out, or being forced to admit, belligerence is unsustainable and comes with its cost, and paying it into the future is an uphill ask that accumulates systemic risk.
When I babysat, decades ago in the late eighties and early-to-mid nineties, it had become a trope: the babysitter who ignores the kids and spends the whole time talking on the family’s phone, watching the family’s TV, and eating the family’s food. Because of this, a few families whose kids I watched sincerely believed that it was what I would do, too.
It couldn’t have been further from the truth. I began babysitting in the Babysitters Club era, and sitters my age consulted those books like manuals. We brought activities for the kids. We were primed for the emergencies we’d read about. We wanted to impress parents. Many, many nights, I would go directly to a job after a long day of school and eat nothing at all until I got home at 11pm or midnight, because parents didn’t offer anything and I wouldn’t have dared take something that wasn’t offered.
There were parents who would honest-to-goodness measure tiny amounts of popcorn kernels into paper bags for each of their children, and leave them on the countertop for me to microwave for them as a snack. Other parents would warn me away from fridges and pantries, telling me that the kids could have this cup of applesauce and that bag of pretzels and nothing more. I honestly do not remember a single parent telling me to go ahead and eat with the kids. I was the hired help and could eat on my own time. And I was paranoid that they would come home to find food “missing”, and blame me for taking morsels from their kids’ metaphorical mouths.
How did I deal with this? A few ways. I’d try to eat a big lunch at school. I drank water from the kitchen tap. For some reason I have a vague memory of stealthily eating a single raw piece of whole grain penne pasta, although I’m not sure why I would have had to do that. Later, when I had wised up a bit, I began bringing food art projects for the kids to do, and that was a snack for all of us.
Having food available for a babysitter isn’t really likely to bankrupt a parent or compromise the kids’ care. It can have guidelines (“if you get hungry, feel free to have one of the snacks I left on the kitchen table” or, “go ahead and have some pizza with the kids”). A babysitter, especially a young one, will be relieved and appreciate that you care.
Seriously, I always thought “what the hell is wrong with this girl?”
“Why is she so into me? I haven’t done anything.”
Yet there it was…
“I haven’t done anything,” & in my mind love or affection was something that was highly conditional, earned, and can be taken away. Not something I was inherently worthy of.
Some women are clingy, codependent, and looking for a man to “complete them” in a way that is not realistic.
However, some women are just secure enough in themselves to be forward about it.
Expressing your feelings is healthy. It is an extension of good parenting. The result of being taught that when people love you & care for you they say so and act accordingly.
An emotionally secure woman is going to show you she cares or desires you because that is how her loved ones taught her to be.
Sometimes however for many people, like myself, were taught expressing your feelings is NOT okay. That people who care about you will not say that, & affection is both scarce and highly conditional.
For those people, loving, affectionate, expressive people are… strange & unfamiliar.
So the reality is that a woman who is upfront about her emotions is not by default “clingy”. Trust me, I had an ex-girlfriend who never wanted to be away from me… ever.
Now that is clingy.
However, a woman saying she likes you and wants to spend some time with you is what emotionally healthy and secure women do.
So if a woman expressing interest alone turns you off, that says more about your inability to accept healthy affection than her being overly dependent on you.
Fall asleep to the Purring of a Cat & Fireplace 🔥 Relax in Cozy Winter Hut, Fireplace sound
OMG!
The cat is curled up next to the fireplace, its tiny body nestled close to the warmth emanating from the crackling logs. Its eyes are closed, and its chest rises and falls with each peaceful breath. The soft glow of the fire dances across the cat's fur, casting flickering shadows on the surrounding floor. Its paws are tucked neatly under its chin, as if in a state of utter contentment. The rhythmic purring fills the air, a gentle lullaby that blends harmoniously with the crackling of the fire. The cat's whiskers twitch ever so slightly, indicating a deep and restful sleep. The coziness of the scene is heightened by the sight of a few scattered ash particles caught in the air, evidence of the cat's proximity to the hearth. It is a picture of serene tranquility, a blissful respite from the world, as the cat dreams away in the comforting embrace of the radiant warmth.
Hungarian Chocolate Cake (Rigo Jansci)
Rigo Jansci
Ingredients
Chocolate Sponge
8 ounces semisweet chocolate
6 eggs
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 tablespoon espresso powder, dissolved in 1 tablespoon water
1/2 cup Dutch processed baking cocoa
Cocoa Whipped Cream Filling
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar
2 cups heavy cream
Raspberry and apricot preserves
Ganache Frosting
4 ounces bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
1/2 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons pailettes de feuilletine (optional)
1 tablespoon cocoa nibs (optional)
Instructions
Heat the oven to 375 degrees F. Line a 10 1/2 x 15 1/2-inch jellyroll pan with parchment and spray with nonstick vegetable spray.
In a dry bowl, melt chocolate over barely simmering water. Whisk the eggs and sugar until they hold a ribbon shape for 2 seconds. Whisk in the coffee mixture. Sift, then fold in the cocoa. Fold in the melted chocolate. Spread in the prepared pan and bake for 9 minutes until set. Let cool.
Meanwhile, make the filling. Sift the cocoa and confectioners’ sugar into the cream and whip to the consistency of shaving cream. Divide the sheet cake in half. Lightly spread one layer with apricot preserves. Spread on the whipped cream. Lightly spread the other half with raspberry preserves and flip on top of the whipped cream. Refrigerate.
Make the Ganache: Put the chocolate in a small bowl. Over medium heat, bring the cream to a scald. Pour the hot cream over the chocolate. Working from the center out, gently stir with a whisk to melt and blend. Continue stirring until smooth. Stir in the feuilletine and nibs. Pour over the cake. Allow cake to chill in the refrigerator for 30 minutes, until chocolate is set.
Woman dies in crash and WAKES UP in another TIMELINE where she discovers THIS…
While camping in a fairly remote area of west Wales, Pendine being the nearest village, I decided to take a walk to one of the beaches nearby. This isn’t the sort of beach with any parking nearby, or even a road leading to it, the only way to access was either by a very rough part of the Wales coastal path, or a slightly better path from inland, it was difficult to access to say the least.
The remoteness and tranquility of the beach didn’t offer any clues to the violent events that had taken place there in the past.
When approaching from the coastal path I could see a structure set back quite some way from the beach, just visible in the photo below.
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On closer inspection of the structure set back from the beach head, it appeared to be some sort of sea wall or a section of harbour wall, but was way too far back for the sea to ever reach it. It also appeared to have suffered some quite extensive damage, as can be seen below:
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Knowing there was an army training ground located a few miles away I assumed it may have something to do with the military, though not sure what the purpose could be. Once back in civilisation with a phone I searched for information about the beach and found the following article:
It transpires that the wall was built to replicate the sea defences at Omaha beach to practice for the D-day landings. There was previously another wall there, but this was destroyed by tanks placing large explosive charges and subsequent erosion by the sea. The holes blown out of the concrete were from experiments with various explosive charges. It was really unexpected that this place was once used for this purpose.
The Biggest Story in America | The Scheduled Collapse of U.S Cities
At my former employer we had a saying “Hell hath no fury like a loyal customer scorned”. I now know that I am one of those customers.
I was a customer of ATT Cellular for over 20 years, paying well over $350 a month for 5 lines for my family. That’s $350 after all the “discounts”. The incentive to stay with ATT was mostly inertia and a “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it approach”. In spite of the bluster, they really didn’t give any incentives on new phones other than interest free financing, and I knew I could probably find a better price elsewhere, but…
Then a few months ago my credit card number got stolen (not the card, just the number) and the bank caught it right away and changed the account number. This happened to be the card that ATT used for my auto-bill. I didn’t realize it until they sent me a text saying my monthly payment was one day overdue. So immediately I went online, paid the one-day overdue bill, and changed the credit card number. The bill was over $50 higher due to removal of the e-bill discount and a late payment fee.
The next bill also had a removal of the e-bill discount and the added charge of $7 for late payment. I thought that was unfair, but I let it go.
But a month later the next bill arrived and still had no e-bill discount and added another $7 late fee! I called up to inquire and was told too bad, it takes at least a month and a half to register the new credit card in their system. All I wanted was the recent $7 late fee credited. First I appealed to their sense of fair play, and got nowhere. I then asked politely if I could ask a manager for a waiver.
The manager said no way. I pointed out I was a customer at $350 a month for 20 years, but I would leave over $7. He calmly told me the equivalent of “don’t let the door hit you in the ass” (I’m paraphrasing). No raised voices, just a calm discussion that ended in goodbye.
So I started the research, and found a carrier that uses the same cellular network plus others, and is costing me $210 a month less! $210 a month less for the same exact service! This was the best $7 wake-up call I ever had!
Many years ago when my daughter was in High School we were going to Target. We got there and parked. Now mind you, my daughter is incredibly good looking and I am round and a mom. If you were looking at the two of us standing together you would hardly even notice me. I am totally good with that. My husband hates it. lol Well back to the story…
We park the car, get out and start walking through the parking lot toward the store. A very nice, lifted, truck drives past us, the driver cat calls and honks the horn. My daughter looks me dead in the face and asks me if I know the guy driving the truck. I literally spit out my coffee and started laughing. She got all serious and demanded if I knew that guy! I could not stop laughing. She was so serious!
I told her the honk and cat call was for her, not me. I was laughing so hard because she was so miffed. Arms crossed over her chest., marching throught the parking lot. She didn’t know who it was so there was, “absolutely no way,” that was for her. It was so funny! She was so serious!
Needless to say, I was already wiped out, sides aching from laughing, by the time we got in the store. We did not spend much time in there.
He is Ultra Cautious and always adds a pinch of salt and always keeps making speeches for more improvement
That’s how Chinese leaders are
Always looking at the Long Term
Plus they always give a gloomy outlook and then when China does do much better, they look like they have achieved something amazing
Take this year 2023
Xi gave a same speech in 2022
Challenges, Global Slowdown, Real Estate Slowdown
Chinese people expected the worst and they found things MUCH MUCH BETTER
They credit this to the CPC and this buys Xi Jingping brownie points
Xi has never ever boasted of Chinas economic prowess
Never
From the first day he has always been cautious and always warned of challenges since 2014 at least
Xi’s speeches regarding MILITARY have changed from wolf warrior style to cautious diplomacy from 2014–2023 but as far as economy is concerned, he has always spoken of challenges
My point is – every Economy today has challenges
No leader mentions this
Especially Democratic leaders
They will always brag and boast and eventually get burnt
China is always cautious and it’s citizens always prepared for the worst, so they always feel better when things go better than the predicted outlook
I noticed it even when they submit their expected profits
They always predict less profits and longer time to break even and when they make more profits and break even quicker, they credit their style and efficiency
Indians predict more profits and shorter time to break even and end up embarrassing themselves often
The fact is 2023 is the best year for China economically since 2018
Their GDP growth of 5.1% has been achieved even when Real Estate dragged it down by 1.1% this year
Their GDP growth of 5.1% has been achieved even when Industrial Production dragged it down by 0.4% this year
Their GDP growth was 5.1% despite Asset Monetization dragging down growth by 0.2% this year
Had the three stayed static or stagnant – Chinas GDP growth would have been 6.8% this year
The Real Interest rate is 2.61% this year which is way higher than other countries. In India it’s 1.30% , half of Chinas. This is higher than the 0.85% Real Interest rate in 2022
Despite a near 18% reduction in Exports to US and EU, China finished with a $ 860 Billion Trade Surplus
China holds a mere 25% US Assets in reserves of $ 3.23 Trillion against 79% in 2010
Six of the largest service sectors – Retail, Financial, Travel, Hotels, Restaurants & Supermarkets all broke into the black this year from red last year
Industrial Profits slumped by 14% but High Tech Industrial Profits rose 39%
The day a Chinese Leader smiles and says how great China is doing
I was shopping at Boston store and foolishly looked at the sparkly jewelry display. I saw a gorgeous blue stone set in an Art Deco designed pendant. I fell in lust with it.
I was again foolish and tried it on. The counter lady told me it made me look radiant, the stone was unique, the design a rare offer, plus it was on sale, with a coupon. It was very expensive. I began justifying the purchase, which was a bit spendy for my budget. I rationalized I could eat cheap soup, ask for car rides to save having to buy gas, turn down the heat for a few months, to lower the bill. I bought the necklace.
I got home and had buyers remorse every time I had to eat the cheap noodles, beg a ride to work, put on another sweater and pair of socks. It wasn’t enough remorse to make me return it.
The bill for the purchase came, I had barely enough to pay it in full because if I didn’t pay it all I would be charged interest for a purchase I could hardly afford. I didn’t delay in returning the bill. I breathed a sigh of relief. The necklace was mine.
My satisfaction was short lived. The next month I got another bill from Boston Store. It contained a $35 late fee. I called the store to complain, how I was charged a late fee when the date the payment was posted was on the due date. The person who answered said the computer calculated it, the fee was due. The computer was wrong! I wrote a letter stating my observations. It was ignored.
I decided to pay the $35 because damaging my credit wasn’t worth it. I vowed to never, ever shop there again. Without surprise the entire empire that included Boston Store declared bankruptcy, folded and no longer exists. While I know my refusal to remain a customer didn’t single handedly undermine their business it makes me happy to wear the necklace.
My uncle Jeff (mom’s brother) was a renowned Neurosurgeon and Director of Stereotactic Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins University. As you could imagine, he was a fairly brilliant guy (perfect SAT, Princeton undergrad, taught himself fluency in German, all of those things crazy-smart people do.)
image 71
We are a fairly small family, so I got to know him on a pretty personal level, more as an uncle than a doctor. But I still knew him as both, and can tell you there was a significant dichotomy between the two Jeffs.
His patients raved about his passion and care for their well being and treatment, they said he was an unwavering professional. He had the utmost respect among peers and students. Jeff, or Dr. Williams, aimed to become the best neurosurgeon in the world.
Jeff as a person, and I say this as someone who still loves him dearly, was a wonderful but flawed and complex individual. On his good days he could be the funniest and most intelligent guy you’ve ever spoken to. The kind of guy who could say one sentence that changes the way you see the world. On his bad days he could be profoundly arrogant; he was very aware of his mental capacities and not afraid to let you know.
He could also be very demanding and temperamental. As a 7 year old, he would review my math homework with me and let me tell you, you’ve never met a more demanding math tutor. My theory was that because he was so demanding of himself, he projected that same standard upon people he cared about.
image 70
But we still had fun too.
image 69
Over the years, we saw him frequently and had a great relationship, but we noticed he started looking pretty bad. He was gaining weight and he had lost a lot of color in his face. We know he was working 80+ hours and living off the hospital cafeteria food. It wasn’t something you could mention to him, or he would stop talking to you for a year. Finally, his dad (my grandpa) tried to bring it up with him, but Jeff would have none of it. He wouldn’t listen or didn’t take it seriously. And he got angry to the point that we could never bring it up again.
About a month after my 19th birthday, I was packing to head back to college. I heard my mom crying in her bedroom across the hall, I could tell something was wrong, very wrong. I came in, she was on the phone, sobbing. It was that type of cry that meant something really bad had happened. She hangs up the phone and tells me. “Your Uncle Jeff had a heart attack this morning, Jeff is dead.”.
That morning he had been running on a treadmill in the Johns Hopkins gym next to a fellow doctor, he had a type of “widow maker” heart attack and died. Not even a surgeon jogging next to him could save him. He was 50 years old.
To this day, I miss and love Jeff. I idolized him and his death crushed the family. But I am also angry; he made some pretty bad health choices that cost him his life, choices a neurosurgeon knows well not to make. Choices he somehow rationalized didn’t apply to him. And so to answer the question, the thing that annoys me about really smart people, is that they can be guilty of hubris at times.
Back in 1992 or so, I was in a computer repair shop where I often sourced secondhand parts, like the 3.5″ floppy drives from IBM PS/2 systems. They had a defect that frequently caused them to slip out of alignment, and when they did, IBM would simply pay repair shops to swap out the floppy drives with new ones and toss the old ones. You could actually find tons of them in dumpsters at repair shops.
I collected them because they were super-easy to fix, you just turned a screw to align them again. They used the same card edge connector with the same pinout as a 5.25″ floppy drive, so you could just swap them on computers with 5.25″ floppies, which I did on my TRS-80.
Anyway, I was in there one day when the tech was like “hey, you want this?” and pointed to an Apple Lisa with an Apple Profile hard drive. “I was like “sure, what’s wrong with it?” He said “I don’t know. Video doesn’t work at all. Total blank screen. I haven’t looked at it because when I gave the owner a price quote, he just told me to keep it.”
So I bought it for $100, got it home, popped off the top (super easy, it was designed to be disassembled without tools, and all the electronics slid out in card cages like military radios use), and…
…the little socket had come off the back of the CRT.
I slipped it back on and it worked perfectly. Used it for years, until it finally failed. In fact, I even did small-press publishing on it.
Unimportant details have been changed to protect patient confidentiality.
When I was in training a 14 year old girl swimming in the ocean was run over by a speedboat. One leg and half her pelvis were gone. The thing is, most patients that are going to die come in unresponsive whereas most patients that live come in talking. But a young girl like her has a lot of physiologic reserve and the large vessels of her pelvis had spasmed shut to temporarily stop the bleeding. So despite her extraordinarily severe injury, she was actually talking to us. And she was pleading with us to save her life. I can still remember her crying, saying “I don’t want to die, Daddy.” Her father (who had been driving the speedboat) was beside her holding her hand.
I took one look at her injury and knew it was fatal. There were several surgeons there and we tried some Hail Mary maneuvers in the trauma bay, but the spasming arteries opened up within a few minutes of arrival and she died.
If you’re in the trauma field you get used to death, and I am. But I will never forget the sound of her crying to live. I can only imagine what her father went through.
It was a get-rich-quick scheme. Leap in front of slow-moving cars, feign injury, and threaten a suit. Make millions overnight. Or that was his plan, anyways.
So he ended up in the ER once, twice a week. He was never actually hit, but he put on such an exhibition, we were obligated to work him up. He was in and out of the CT scanner so often he acquired the sort of soft glow you could have a romantic dinner over. And he almost always ended up spending at least one night inpatient. Traumatized drivers showed up crying, asking about his wellbeing. He was exhausting our patience and our resources.
“We have actually sick patients who can’t get a bed upstairs because he’s taking up space,” I groaned, catching sight of his name on the ER board once again.
“But what can we do?” my co-resident shrugged. “One of these times he will truly be hurt. How do we save someone from themselves?”
I sighed. “He’s not trying to hurt himself. He’s just trying to make money. Unfortunately, he’s not crazy. Just an asshole.”
My chief, Hayashi, leaned back in his chair and snickered, tenting his fingertips together diabolically. “What if he WAS crazy?” he proposed, with one eyebrow raised.
“What do you mean?”
“Well…” he tipped his chair forward, “it’s a six floor hospital, right? Put on your white coat and climb out the window of the room next door to his. Inch your way across the ledge, and climb in HIS window. Walk up to the bed, climb up on it, stand up. Unzip and pee all over him. Then climb back out the window again..”
“WHAT?!!?” I screeched. “That’s insane!”
“Yup!” grinned Hayashi. “That’s exactly what they’re gonna say when he tells everyone some doctor climbed in the window and peed on him. Then he’s gonna go away. Problem solved. You’re welcome.”
“Carrier killer” DF-21d missiles are no longer China’s only weapon against American carriers!
1. Armed drones
As we all know, Chinese drones are very powerful. Recently, American carriers ran into trouble in the Red Sea, and Iranian observers even mocked the US military on Twitter for using a $2.1 million SM-2 missile to intercept a $2,000 Yemeni drone.
American carriers can’t even defend themselves against Yemen’s humble drones, let alone the countless drones of China, the land of drones.
image 3
It amuses me that America’s “invincible” aircraft carriers are being fumbled by the Houthis in Yemen.
What you need to know is that the Yemeni Houthis are not government forces, just a guerrilla force on motorbikes. Lol! 🤣
image 65
2. EM gun
What Chinese ships are hiding even deeper are the electromagnetic guns not used by American ships.
image 64
China’s medium-voltage DC integrated power system for ships is at least 20 years ahead of the U.S., which can fully guarantee the electricity for EM guns.
EM cannon shells fly incredibly fast and are silent, with no gunpowder explosions.
A single shot from an EM gun can sink an aircraft carrier instantly and completely silently, and cannot be recognised, tracked, or intercepted.
image 63
But the American EM gun can not be actualised because its ship power system and its backwardness, can not supply the huge amount of electricity consumed instantly by the EM gun.
Below is the full translation of 《中国留美博士生突遭遣返：经历噩梦般的50个小时》Chinese PhD Students in the U.S. Suddenly Deported: Enduring a Nightmare-like 50 Hours, a news report by 中国科学报 China Science Daily posted in its WeChat blog on Friday, January 5.
Meng Fei, a Ph.D. student originally set to return to her university in the U.S., was denied entry at an American airport and rapidly repatriated. The 50 hours she spent there is utterly an unforgettable nightmare for her.
After Meng landed in Washington, D.C. on December 19, 2023, she was immediately detained by U.S. Customs at the airport for secondary inspection. She then spent eight hours in the so-called “little dark room” and another 12 hours in solitary confinement. During her layover in Los Angeles, she was detained for five more hours before being sent back to Beijing. These dark moments are etched clearly in her memory.
Sitting back in the sofa corner at home, Meng is in a daze – “How did I end up back here?” When she left for the U.S., she had just successfully renewed her F1 student visa for the coming year on November 27, 2023, not expecting to be rapidly repatriated. What is worse is that she is banned from entering the U.S. for five years. If her appeal fails, Meng will not be able to attend her doctoral defense in 2024. The appeal takes at least six months, which is too long for her biological research to wait.
Meng Fei was shocked to find, on the train back to her hometown, six other students who had similar experiences at Dulles International Airport (IAD). All of them are females. Furthermore, she learned of two other female students who were informed at the Chinese airport during check-in that their visas were revoked and could not board their flights.
Despite thorough analysis, they couldn’t dig out the reason for their repatriation. The only certainty was that their dream of studying in the U.S. was shattered.
“The Little Dark Room”
Four hours after arriving at Washington Dulles International Airport, Meng Fei was informed that there was a problem with her visa and that she had to return to China. She became the only person repatriated from the airport that day.
Meng Fei stayed in the little dark room for eight hours. After learning she was denied entry, she was immediately told to pay $3,700 for her repatriation flight to China by herself, with no other options. By comparison, her flight to the U.S. cost only $1,000.
The officials who interrogated Meng were two women: Epstein, with short hair and no uniform, and Pratt, with blonde hair, not tall, also with no uniform. Other detainees encountered Pratt as well.
This group of victims were interrogated about whether they received scholarships during their undergraduate studies, whether they were funded by the China Scholarship Council (CSC), or whether they engaged in any confidential research. Meng had received undergraduate scholarships from their alma mater but was not involved in CSC-funded projects or any confidential research.
When signing her statement, Meng was told it was just to confirm the interrogation’s accuracy, but she wasn’t allowed to see the content before signing. Only after signing did she learn that she would not only be repatriated rapidly but also banned for five years. She was outraged because the customs officers kept urging her to accept the decision to return to China during the interrogation, saying she could re-enter easily by reapplying for a visa. The five-year ban was not mentioned during the whole process.
With two armed officers watching, she had no choice but to comply, focusing only on how to leave that dreadful place and contact the outside world.
The nightmare didn’t end there. After an 8-hour wait in the little dark room, Meng confronted a humiliating search, followed by 12 hours in solitary confinement.
“I was told that I would be kept in a room, I don’t remember the exact room name. Maybe at that time, my ears refused to hear it, my brain to remember it,” she recalls. She was not allowed to bring her luggage, coat, shoes, sweater, or even cough medicine. The room had a cot, a sofa, children’s books and toys, a toilet without a door, and multiple surveillance cameras, but no clock. Thankfully, there was a TV showing the time.
It was a little cold in that single room, but Meng only got three sheets to sleep with. She managed to sleep for only an hour, waking up frequently, and spent two hours watching the movie X to kill time. For the rest of the time, she just aimlessly pressed the remote control, unable to focus on anything, just waiting to board the flight home.
It was only when preparing to board the flight that she was informed that she would get her phone back only upon landing in Beijing. For the previous 48 hours, it was impossible for her to inform her family she was safe.
The search and 5-hour detention in Los Angeles airport seemed trivial in comparison. On the flight to Los Angeles, her main concern was how to make contact with her family and inform them of her situation. Fortunately, her iPad, which was brought with her, enabled her to inform her family of her flight number.
Upon landing in Beijing, a official of the Chinese immigration administration helped Meng charge her phone, record what she had experienced in the past few days and had her sign and fingerprint the record. She could finally message her family.
Fellow suffers
On the train home, Meng Fei got into contact with another girl through social media who had also been repatriated from DIA and denied entry in December 2023. The girl was also pursuing a PhD in the U.S.
Such students experiences have a WeChat group. Their experiences were strikingly similar. Wei Na, a student at Johns Hopkins University, and her roommate were detained in the little dark room on November 24, 2023. Wei was asked sensitive questions during the formal record, such as military service, connections to the Ministry of Education, and funding from the state. Despite she gave negative responses, the inspector told her, “Your F1 and B1/B2 visas are no longer valid, and you are not allowed to enter the U.S. We will send you back to China on the earliest flight. You need a new visa to re-enter.”
Repeated inquiries with inspectors only revealed that her visa was canceled by the U.S. Embassy in China two days before her entry. However, after returning home, she was told by the embassy that it was not the embassy but U.S. Customs’ decision. That made her doubt the authenticity of the U.S. customs officers’ statements, suspecting they were just inducing her to accept repatriation.
Two more sufferers joined their group. One of them was repatriated from the same airport and the other one was told the visa was revoked before boarding in China. In total, there were 11 of them.
This situation motivated Meng Fei to investigate the commonalities among the victims to find out the cause of their rapid repatriation. She created an Excel document, and so far, ten victims have filled in their details, with one more whose visa was revoked at check-in providing incomplete information.
The findings showed that all ten were graduates from prestigious universities, including Peking University, Tsinghua University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, and University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, among others. Their domestic degrees spanned fields like biological sciences, preventive medicine, statistics, materials physical chemistry, communication engineering, German, and business administration. They were currently studying at U.S. institutions such as Yale University, Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Virginia. Among them, two were first-year master’s students, three first-year Ph.D. students, two fifth-year Ph.D. students, one sixth-year Ph.D. student, one postdoctoral fellow, and one female on a work visa.
Of the eight repatriated students, four had won university scholarships during their undergraduate studies, and one received a CSC scholarship; none were involved in confidential research. One was even questioned about having a Russian tourist visa. However, none of them was told the clear reason for their repatriation by the U.S. Customs.
They couldn’t understand why receiving a scholarship for academic excellence during undergraduate studies would become an obstacle to acquiring further education in the U.S.
Meng Fei noted that the inspectors focused heavily on her phone, while her computer and luggage were not scrutinized carefully. However, in subsequent inquiries, they did not mention any issues or sensitive information on her phone, nor did they ask questions about their phones.
Given that all known repatriated individuals were female, they speculated that U.S. Customs’ actions involved not only racial but also gender discrimination. Since these recent incidents all occurred within the past month and were handled by the same customs officer, they suspected that these U.S. Customs inspectors were rushing to meet year-end repatriation quotas.
A well-known context is that on June 3, 2020, former U.S. President Trump signed Executive Order 10043, prohibiting certain students and scholars from obtaining F/J visas in the name of national security. However, the universities and majors of these victims were not within the scope of this order, and most of them did not have obvious characteristics related to Executive Order 10043. Some indications suggest that the ban has been expanded in recent years – potentially going further.
What further distressed these students was the discovery of intentional or unintentional alterations in their records.
One student’s record inexplicably included a segment about engagement in a Chinese high-end talent program and visits to military-industrial units. Another student’s undergraduate research was on South Africa, one of the BRICS countries, but this was not mentioned in the record. Instead, there was an emphasis on Russia and China being part of the BRICS.
Where should they head?
Will this sudden turn of events make Meng Fei’s almost completed doctoral degree come to naught?
While detained at U.S. Customs, Meng Fei pondered numerous possibilities for her future. If only she had foreseen what would happen then, she would have waited to return to China after receiving her diploma. If she had been more prepared, she could have applied to withdraw her U.S. entry request, possibly avoiding the five-year entry ban. However, seven of the eight repatriated girls were completely unaware of this and received the five-year ban without any advance notice. The U.S. Customs only informed the first repatriated student of the option to withdraw her entry application, not the other seven.
Is it possible to revoke this five-year entry ban? Meng sought help from her advisor, the international students’ office at her school, the graduate student union, and the Chinese Embassy in the U.S. However, so far, no effective headway has been made.
A professor of Chinese heritage at Yale University, deeply concerned about Meng Fei’s situation, sought assistance from many people for her. This professor himself was a victim of the Trump administration’s “China Initiative” and had ever been temporarily suspended from his job for several months. Meng is very grateful to him, as he, having “been through the rain,” also wants to “hold an umbrella” for others.
According to her original plan, Meng should now be focusing on supplementary experiments in the lab. She needs to complete some experiments, then finish and submit papers, followed by her doctoral defense.
The unforeseen event necessitates her communicating with her advisor to see if she can complete the experiments with the help of her lab colleagues and then proceed with an online defense. This is a result she can accept.
Then what next? Perhaps she will look for a postdoctoral opportunity in Europe. Her advisor is European and may be able to offer some advice and help.
The other two Yale Ph.D. students, whose visas were revoked before boarding in China, have gradually lost hope of returning to the U.S. during their long wait. A fifth-year Ph.D. student has been in China for nearly half a year. Even though she has reapplied for a visa, there is no update on her visa status and the only thing to do is wait anxiously. Another first-year doctoral student reapplied for a visa but was denied, leaving her no choice but to withdraw from her program.
Meng is seeking help from lawyers, but the prospects are unclear. After all, even the lawyers can’t discern from the documents the reasons for her repatriation by U.S. customs, making it difficult to prepare specific materials. The waiting time is unknown.
The group of victims hopes to lift the five-year ban, but no response has been made by the U.S. Customs even after their U.S. universities tried to contact them.
(Note: Meng Fei and Wei Na are pseudonyms used in the article.)
Cream Cheese Kolacky
77f23a82e9de31372291ffe5419eec05
Ingredients
1 (10 ounce) bag dried apricots
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 sticks (1 cup) butter, at room temperature
1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, at room temperature
2 cups flour
Confectioners’ sugar
Instructions
Place apricots in medium saucepan; cover with water. Soak overnight.
Heat the apricots and water to a boil in medium saucepan over high heat; reduce heat to low. Simmer, stirring often with fork to mash and adding water if needed, until smooth and thick, about 10 minutes. (If necessary, you can chop finely with a knife or process about 1 minute in a food processor or chopper.)
Add the granulated sugar, stirring until it dissolves. Cool completely.
Blend together the butter and cream cheese in a large bowl; gradually blend in flour, using hands once the dough has begun to form, until it can be shaped into a ball (this may be more or less than 2 cups). Refrigerate 4 hours or overnight.
Heat oven to 350 degrees F. Divide dough into thirds. Roll out each third on a floured board into a 12 x 8-inch rectangle, 1/8- to 1/4-inch thick. Cut into 2-inch squares with a pizza cutter. Place 1/2 to 3/4 teaspoon of the apricot filling in the middle of each square. Fold each corner into middle; pinch together. (Moisten fingers with cold water if dough does not stick.)
Place cookies on ungreased cookie sheets; bake until golden, about 17 minutes per batch.
Cool on wire rack; sprinkle with confectioners’ sugar.
We have built a vacation home in a nearby province. Husband took on the contracting while maintaining his full-time police job – so proud of him!
I did not announce this; I dislike the comparison games people play and do not want to be perceived as bragging.
A good friend asked to see pictures at a reunion luncheon. As I flipped through pix on my phone, an acquaintance from long ago came up behind us.
She peered over our shoulders and exclaimed, “When you married that low-ranked cop, I knew you’d end up this way! How far you’ve fallen! How can you live like THAT!!”
The look on her face was not one of concern, but a sneer.
She was looking at a picture of the shed where building materials had been kept (that has since been removed).
*sigh*
*Note Some have asked about my response. I smiled, told her that it was the raw materials shed and went back to my conversation.
Why didn’t I snap back, go for her throat, etc?
Because that (and to embarrass me) is what she expected, what she wanted. She is in her element when someone defends herself or gets angry.
But she has never been able to handle a calm, non-defensive response.
My friend called me up the other day, he’s in another country and in the midst of a full-on psychotic breakdown… “I’m in hell, Jean-Marie…” he said, “everything around me is fire and I’m in hell.” He hears roosters and dogs barking, cars honking, and they are demonic creatures to his ears. His perception is wrong. Everything is wrong.
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My friend suffers from schizophrenia. He is mentally unwell, and deeply so. His parents do not care for him at all. And he has nobody. No one in the world who cares, besides me and two other online friends who live in England. I want to reach out, help him, but… I cannot. It kills me, being unable to help my friend. Being unable to embrace him, unable to tell him it will be okay. Because I can’t. And it won’t. He refuses medication, refuses help, and even if he did want to accept it, none will be coming. It’s a helpless feeling watching someone’s life fall apart at the seams. Helpless, hopeless, and depressing.
The hardest thing to overcome in life, is the realization that you can’t help, sometimes. That there are things above and beyond your comprehension that you cannot aid someone with. Issues you cannot fix. People you cannot cure. Problems you cannot solve. And that all you can do is be a bystander, glued to the sight of their demise as you remain frozen.
Originally Answered: What are the most convincing things that would make me think twice before falling to an overly attractive woman that I’ve just met?
See this cutie?
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This is Dalia Dippolito. Upon first glance, most guys would find her very attractive, myself included.
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Back in 2010, she convinced this guy, Michael Dippolito, to marry her by being the perfect, super-hot mistress/girlfriend. He even divorced his wife to be with her, he was so desperate to land this hottie.
According to Michael, they were very happy. He believed that while they had a few problems, they were a solid couple with a long future ahead of them.
Right up until she tried to hire an undercover police officer to kill him.
Apparently she wanted his money and condo… everything but him. Fortunately, the guy she asked to kill him went to the police and an undercover investigation began.
She was caught on police undercover film laughing and saying that she absolutely wanted go through with killing him to a supposed hitman. “I’m 5,000% sure,” she was captured saying.
Det. Alex Moreno of the Boynton Beach police department noted how “We were shocked… how easily she talked about getting her husband killed.”
To make sure she was serious and meant to follow through on it, the Boynton Beach, FL police even staged a fake crime scene where her husband had supposedly been shot and killed.
She showed up on scene and upon being told, cried and screamed in horror. The observers onsite noted that she didn’t shed actual tears so much as just made a lot of wailing noises.
The police then arrested her and told her her husband was actually still alive and that the scene had been a sting operation.
Once in jail, she tried to win Michael over again. To his credit, he would have none of it.
When that didn’t work, she would go onto deny everything, try to slander her husband’s reputation, claim they had planned it all for a reality show, and multiple other lies to try to convince people that the video evidence they saw- with their own eyes and on film- was somehow not true.
After an appeal and a mistrial (if you can believe that), she was eventually sentenced to 16 years for attempted murder. Upon sentencing, the judge told her she was the “personification of evil.”
If the guy she originally tried to hire for the hit hadn’t gone to the police, Michael Dippolito would be dead and Dalia might potentially be living in his home, spending his money… and looking for her next victim.
There are other women like Dalia looking for their next victim.
Maybe you?
Sociopaths come in all shapes and sizes. Some even look like really attractive women.
Take your time and get to know whomever you go out with, no matter how strong the physical attraction might be.
I was travelling through outback Australia, coming down from Darwin in the Northern Territory through to Wagga Wagga along the Stuart Highway, turning at the Barkly Highway at Waramungu to go towards Queensland. There is a whole lot of nothing out there, with nothing in between, so you rely on the petrol stations along the way which are also pretty far between. So after a few days I arrived at Threeways Roadhouse one afternoon to fill up with petrol and go on my way, wanting to cross the border before sundown and stay in Camooweal.
image 105
It’s a big roadhouse supplying the road trains that go through with diesel and petrol for the rest of us. There were a lot of people there when I pulled up, but thought nothing of it. When I went to get some unleaded petrol to fill up, there were signs on the pumps – Not In Service.
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I asked at the counter and the two young girls there said there was no unleaded petrol, the truck hadn’t come through yet and wasn’t likely to get there until tomorrow midday.
“What, nothing at all?”
“We’ve just got diesel.”
Ah, so that’s why there were so many people waiting around! Not sure if I could make it to Camooweal on what I had left, I made the best of a bad thing and booked a cabin out the back to stay in for the night. Let me tell you – apart from the roadhouse there is nothing in Waramungu, and nothing for a hundred kilometres or more. Everyone else was doing the same.
Had dinner there, slept, and in the morning had breakfast and read the paper, watched the tv in the restaurant. It was getting on to mid morning and there was still a crowd waiting for the petrol truck. I thought I’d ask at the counter again to be sure the truck was coming.
“Fuel truck coming soon?”
“We think so. Midday or after.”
Just then, outside the window, I saw a small car like mine leave the bowsers and drive off towards Queensland. Looked like he had fuelled up!
“Did he just get petrol? I thought you said there was no unleaded petrol?”
“There’s no unleaded petrol. He bought Premium unleaded petrol. It’s more expensive.”
So, I stayed a night at a roadhouse in the middle of nowhere because they didn’t know that Premium unleaded petrol was the same as Unleaded petrol except it was about five cents a litre more to buy – much cheaper than staying there and eating two meals. I didn’t care I just wanted to get to my destination.
Maybe they thought they were helping me out…
I told the people I had been chatting to in the restaurant and suddenly the rush was on for the Premium pump – and within ten minutes I was out of there.
Like Jeffrey Epstein files that was released. Ultimately the truth is out.
Like Iraq WMDs
Like the Gulf of Tonkin
It’s why groups like China World Leader & other groups gain traction on Quora
They FILL THE GAPS
The Anti China brigade, their narrative has too many loopholes
Why, if China is committing genocide, is the Uyghur Population rising?
Why, if China is going to collapse in 24 days, is Joe Biden making a huge effort to meet Xi Jingping
Why, if the Chinese people are so unhappy with the CPC, are they freely allowed to travel in and out of China whenever they want
Why, if the Chinese Army equipment is old and useless, do many top US Generals regard China as a larger threat than the USSR?
Why, if China is such an authoritarian state, are there protests regularly by the people also covered by the same Western media?
These are questions that any rational and sane person would always ask
This is where spaces like China World Leader, Wumao Uncensored and Youtubers like Cyrus Janssen help FILL UP THE GAPS
image 72
They logically deliver their explanation on the above questions and the explanations definitely help get a better understanding of how China works
Sadly the world contains maybe 10% realists
90% of them, especially those who live in democracies are badly brainwashed into losing their ability to reason and think
Their teeny tiny brains refuse to function or use logic to rectify mistakes
Such a person if told about the Uyghur Population growing, would rather make up some fantastic explanation than admit the information he got was wrong
He could even say Uyghurs have 10 Kids each and 8 Kids are killed so there is population growth
Show such a person life in China and he will say the video is doctored
Ultimately these people ALREADY MAKE UP THEIR MINDS and fit information however false to justify their own thinking
The inferior minds sadly dominate the world today
Quora has fewer such inferior minds
Twitter has many
YT has many
So on Quora, Pro China groups thrive and survive and even help convince other realists that China may not be so bad
You notice Quora doesn’t have a North Korea group
Ultimately if China World Leader was a propaganda group spreading useless lies about China, it wouldn’t have the traction it has today
The reason that Mainstream Media and Anti China groups and their narratives are riddled with holes is why Pro China Groups are very believable and popular
image 73
Take this Video of Hu Jintao being escorted out
Every inferior mind jumped at the fact that Xi Jingping threw him out of the Party Congress
The Anti China brigade parroted the same thing
Yet not one person logically thought :-
WHY WOULD THE CPC RECORD THE EVENT AND THEN RELEASE IT TO THE PUBLIC WITHOUT CENSORING THE SAME?
I mean this video was available with every single channel in the world
The CPC controls every facet of information especially a video recorded inside the Party Congress
So WHY IF XI WANTED TO THROW HU JINTAO OUT DID HE CONSENT TO RECORDING THE EVENT LIVE AND NOT CENSORING THE ENTIRE TAPE
Thus logic dictated that the incident was SUDDEN and that supports the explanation that Hu Jintao had an onset of dementia and believed he was Party Chairman and wanted to read the list of new members that the Chairman usually does.
So he was gently escorted out
This is one such example
Trust me, Chinese don’t spread propaganda that easily , especially post 1980
In China there is a saying ‘You can’t wrap fire with paper’
So Chinese don’t buy lies that easily as Americans or Indians do
They question everything and they openly scoff at certain things
It’s why Pro Chinese Videos are designed to be for the realists and superior minds
Like the mainland Chinese
Who look for logic and ask questions
Sadly the Chinese don’t know that the global audience in democracies is made up of inferior and stupid minds
Thus these Pro Chinese Videos and content outside quora often finds a brick wall
How long would it take for China to pay youtubers to release videos about How Biden bathes with his daughter or fondles his granddaughter or of how US Politicians are pedophiles
Minutes
Yet that’s dirty and China won’t play dirty
Maybe that’s a weakness today but long term that’s a strength
Computer Predicts the End of the World | But here’s what they DON’T tell you
Here is where I am currently. It’s 14:41, Monday, Tokyo. And the view is from my work desk.
image 123
Quite literally a cage? (trap?)
Working in big Japanese company in one of the biggest cities in the world.
Do I want to be here?
No.
Is this where I want to be?
No. I want to be somewhere here. Bali
image 122
Can I be there?
I can’t without sacrificing the people who are dependent on me financially/emotionally. However, I can be there temporarily(holiday/vacation) without sacrificing anyone/anything.
How can I be there?
By working today in that cage, so that I can make some ¥¥¥ and be there next month for 4 days.
This is the biggest trap of my life at least. Self Imprisonment . To work somewhere only to be somewhere else temporarily.
Be it for family, travel etc.
Update : Some people seem to have concentrated more on the Bali trip and they think that i should move to Bali. If the solution was so simple i wouldn’t have called it a trap , would I ? It was never about Bali anyway, it could be anywhere else. Bali was used because it happened to be place of my trip which i had to wait for 6 months (My point) that’s all.
A insists and tells you it is a real relationship, however, things are complicated because B is still married (to C).
A insists there are a bunch of reasons that marriage between B and C isn’t real or working.
B truly loves A. Their love is real. A knows it.
A and B start moving fast, dating, the relationship gets heavy, even though it sounds like B still hasn’t fully cut ties with… C.
In fact, both A and C are each separately convinced that they are 100% with B.
But in truth – it’s only about 80%/20% as B has issues with commitment.
B finally works up the courage and cuts ties with C, so that B can fully be with A as A has been insisting all along.
Things are now better than ever between A and B, they post on social media together, they celebrate their love and how lucky they are to have each other.
And then you don’t see pictures for a while.
Everything goes radio silent.
And then you find out what happened.
B met D.
And everything went terribly wrong for A.
A can’t believe B would do this, that B could be so evil.
I do not feel sorry for A.
It’s one of the truest sayings you’ll ever hear, “If they’ll cheat with you – they’ll cheat on you.”
I taught for a while in one of Britain’s top private schools, so I feel I’m qualified to offer a definitive answer:
Tweed.
Seriously, ten years as a teacher and I never saw so much as a tweed dishcloth, but when I started working in private education suddenly the bloody stuff was everywhere. The teachers wore tweed (and the teachers were near-universally ‘old boys’ or ‘old girls’ whose parents could comfortably afford twice what most people earn in a year to get shut of their kids for most of it), the staff wore tweed, and the parents were dressed in tweed on a semi-permanent basis. I swear some of them slept in tweed pyjamas.
When they weren’t wearing tweed, they were cosplaying farmers, for some reason. This was irrespective of whether they lived somewhere in the cotswolds or the middle of London. Their farmer outfits were sometimes a bit worn, but always unnaturally clean.
So if I’m in the middle of the city and see someone wearing tweed or farming gear that’s never been within half a mile of a cow, that’s when know I’m dealing with the fourteenth Lord Bonkingly-Spinkle or some such.
image 121
EDIT: Several people have pointed out that tweed is for the country, not the town. Since I’m about as aristocratic as Derek Trotter and have never owned an item of tweed in my life, I wouldn’t know, but it is worth noting the school I worked at was out in the country.
That said, during COVID all our meetings with parents were remote, and they were still wearing tweed and farm gear regardless of where they lived.
Not me but my very dear friend. If the virus was that bad how was a little piece of cloth going to protect him? Etc, etc, etc. Yes, he was a die hard Fox News listener. No, he certainly was not getting the vaccine. Interestingly, he was completely understanding of anyone who did wear a mask or got the vaccine. He was a nice person with a big heart he just…I don’t know.
He caught a cold. A bad cold. He collapsed in the hallway of his house on his way to the bathroom. His wife rushed him to the hospital.
He never came back home.
The last thing he said to me was “Did you get the shot? Because this is bad”. Thing is, he was a very stoic, prideful man. For him to say this is “bad” meant it was horrible. He apparently asked the doctor for the vaccine and of course they explained it was too late. I know he already knew that.
How did he feel about not masking? Word is he felt like a fool and cried and cried because he felt stupid and he let his family down.
Three weeks diagnosis to death. Fifty three years old. Left a wife and three kids. I miss him every damn day.
My Girlfriend Dumped Me, Rode The Carousel, Now Wants Me Back Because They Don’t Want A Relationship
I have neighbors that moved in 8 years ago. Almost immediately, they started trying to claim property by mowing into my yard and building fences. I’m not talking 1–2 feet, it was over 50′ over the line.
That summer, they started picking from my garden and taking the fruit from my trees. Again, I’m not talking about a few tomatoes or ears of corn. They would strip everything clean.
They also would dig plants out of my yard and move them to their property. They even felt they had the right to go “metal detecting” and leave little potholes all though my property.
I asked them to stop, but they ignored me. I decided to buy a “consumer grade” surveillance system, but they were undeterred.
image 14
I put up “no trespassing” signs, making sure they were legally posted and the entire boundary was clearly marked. Nothing changed, so I located the survey pins and physically painted the property line. No help.
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I threatened legal action, but they still ignored me. That’s when I forked out thousands and installed a new hardwired, military grade surveillance system with 8K resolution, 32x optical zoom, AI facial recognition, license plate recognition, auto tracking and a 16TB video recorder.
They were still undeterred and kept metal detecting and digging holes all over my yard.
image 13
Undeterred, that is, until the police showed up and the court granted me a restraining order. Problem solved.
One morning I woke up, looked at my to-do-list and realized I needed to make a couple of adjustments. After dropping my children off at school at 8:30, I had planned to go downtown to the Social Security Administration for a replacement Social Security card. I realized I had another appointment for 10:00am and that trying to squeeze Social Security in would be cutting it too close – because I had forgotten to get my birth certificate out of my safe deposit box at the bank the day before and would have had to run by there first. So, I crossed through the SS office on my list and wrote “tomorrow” next to it.
I took the kids to school as planned at 8:30 and was kicking myself for forgetting to get my birth certificate the day before so I could just head on downtown to Social Security. So, instead, I went back home, took a shower, and was standing in the bedroom when a large “boom” shook my house and I felt sure a jumbo jet had to have crashed nearby. It was all I could think of that could cause that loud of an explosion and cause the house to literally shake. I frantically rushed outside, looked around, but saw nothing.
That morning was April 19th, 1995. I lived in Oklahoma City. The Social Security office I was going to after dropping the kids at school was located on the ground floor of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown OKC. At 9:02am a truck bomb exploded in front of the Murrah building with such force it was felt up to 55 miles away. I was eight miles away when I felt that staggering blast. 168 people died in the bombing that horrible day. It wiped out the Social Security office, and, sadly, the children’s day care for federal employees. Had I not made the mistake of forgetting to go by my safe deposit box the day before, I would have followed my to-do-list and would have, undoubtedly, been inside the SSA at 9:02am.
The mistake of forgetting the bank the afternoon before — saved my life. What a horrible day April 19, 1995, was. I lost people I knew in that bombing and it will stay with me until the day I die. Due to only a mistake on my part, it just wasn’t that day.
I like to use stairs rather than lifts (elevators) in hotels, because they are a good form of exercise.
Many years ago I booked into a hotel in Brisbane (in Queensland, Australia) and decided to go for a run. I found the fire escape stairs and thought these would surely take me to the street (otherwise what was the point of having a fire escape?).
I came out of the fire escape into a car park on the first floor (i.e. one floor above ground level), and as the door closed behind me, I was reading a sign that said ‘This car park will be closed until 6.00 am.’
I checked to see if the door to the fire escape I had just exited was unlocked, but of course it was locked … with me in a car park that wouldn’t be opened for another eleven hours!
Fortunately, there was a part of the car park that was open to the outside, but of course it was one floor above the garden I could see by looking over the edge of the open area.
I decided to try to escape this unintended prison by doing a ‘reverse chin-up’ (aka pull-up). So I placed my hands on the top of the wall and gradually lowered myself into the ‘down’ position of a chin-up. I then allowed myself to drop to the garden, which was about a metre below my feet while I was in the down position.
The garden had been recently dug over, and the soil was soft, so I didn’t break any bones.
I then went to Reception to tell the young lady what had happened, and to ask why the fire escape didn’t allow me to get onto the street.
Instead of sympathising, and saying something would be done about it, she asked me if felt that I had to use the stairs rather than the lift.
I pointed out that this wasn’t relevant—I should have been safe taking the fire escape, for heaven’s sake!
The conversation continued along similar lines for some time before I gave up and realised I was talking to someone who was either a moron, or who didn’t care that, through no fault of his own, one of the hotel’s guests had been placed in a position where he might have had to spend the night locked in a car park!
I went into the Marine Corps in 1966 during the Vietnam War. But at the same time our country was also going through the Civil Rights Movement. About 50% of us were racists and the other 50% weren’t a whole lot better. People stayed in their racially divided communities. And many made racist statements about the Vietnamese and many white boys joked about blacks/mexicans taking their place in the draft. Mainly because we did not mix much and few cared about people different than themselves going to the draft.
In boot camp I soon learned we had boys from all over the USA. Those of us who only knew people in our little towns suddenly were surrounded by boys from New York, the deep South, surfing boys from the west and a mix of white/blacks/browns. Boot camp is a powerful experience. Very physically and mentally tiring and often under the stress we would start shoving or wrestling with each other. Sometimes this took on racial overtones. But we all survived boot camp and moved on.
The most important part of the person on person experience was my tour in Vietnam. I was a grunt, an infantryman. As hard as it is to believe I never spent a day in a base camp or in those plywood cities. All my time was in the field. Now if you know war you will learn you spend hours working and bored to death. So while you are spending time filling sandbags or sitting around the campfire with marshmallows you talk with your fellow Marines…a lot. We talk about our families, our girlfriends, our cars, etc. You soon learn we are all almost alike. Very little difference. And we were able to talk racial politics, and unlike civilians who love to hate each other, our talks were usually civilized. You don’t usually fight people who you hope will save you tomorrow. And there is nothing that matches the feeling of seeing one person raised in a racist environment put his life on the line to save a grunt of a different color. You will never see that happen, but I did. Many times.
One fact I learned was the difference between northern blacks and southern blacks. In the south we would often work together but would go back to our segregated communities at night. In the north they had their ghettos and were required to stay there for work, church, home, etc. Blacks moved north during WWII for work and to get away from the southern Jim Crow laws. But they ran into more racism. And stuffed into ghettos with other blacks and were pretty much warned not to leave their areas. My squad leader was a black from Philadelphia and he claimed he never saw a white person until he was about eight. All the businesses, teachers, cops, firemen, etc were black and few whites drove through their ghetto. In the south blacks and white mingled, up north that rarely happened.
When you spend nearly a year with the same people. And you hear their sacrifices and dreams and loves you soon learn we are much more alike than different. And though we had many racists, both white and black, they changed and were quite willing to sacrifice themselves for a Marine of a different color. It was an incredible feeling. Then you returned home, where civilians love to fight over minor problems and are encouraged to hate each other for political gain. Give me the Corps and combat any day….and to be surrounded by heroes of all colors. How can you not be proud of the courage and sacrifice I saw everyday?
I hate to admit it, but when a very attractive woman gets stopped, she is far less likely to get a ticket than an average looking person does. I always used to argue with the guys who let attractive women off. My point being, if you met her in a bar, she wouldn’t even give you the time of day.
As a sort of karma thing, I decided to exercise very little discretion whenever I stopped an attractive woman for violating a traffic law.
One day, I stopped a woman for speeding, and as I approached her window I noticed that she was even beyond attractive. On a scale of 1–10, she was a 12.
I asked her for her license, registration, and insurance card, which she handed to me.
But the entire time I stood there looking over her credentials, she never even looked at me or acknowledged my existence. As I continued to review her credentials, I noticed that she was holding her hand out the window, palm up. It took me a second to figure out what she was doing, then I finally realized she was waiting for me to hand her credentials back to her so she could leave, as I assume had always been the case whenever she was stopped previously.
When I said, “I’ll be with you in a minute” and began to walk back to my patrol car with her credentials in my hand, the only word I can think of to describe her reaction was apoplectic.
I swear, I’m really not a jerk, but I can’t think of any other summons I ever issued that gave me more pleasure.
A prestigious scientific journal contacted me and asked if I was willing to referee a paper which claimed to solve a long-standing open problem in mathematical physics. They also said there was something fishy about the paper.
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And indeed there was. I had seen an earlier version of the paper some time before which contained far less spectacular results, so something certainly had changed. The essence could be found in one large and detailed remark near the end of the article which was added “after the author suddenly had seen how to solve the entire problem.”
It was exactly — word for word — the reasoning I had explained on a blackboard during a lecture about four months earlier at an international conference where the author also had been present and even had posed many questions after my lecture, because he did not understand the subtleties.
Unfortunately for him, there were other researchers in the audience — nearly a hundred of them — and many of them had seen me explaining my solution to him. Many of them knew. And what was even worse: I had written up and submitted my proof long before the author had secretly made the revision to his paper, totally plagiarizing me.
So he was caught.
And consequently he became very mad at me, because he had been caught big time in the very act of scientific cheating, and he simply could not cope with that. And so he still blamed me in the end instead of looking in the mirror —
In a nutshell, the very nature of cheaters, I guess.
Unless it’s fair play it’s worthless. Fair play is everything. End of.
Queueing is also everything. See 2.
I am very polite (most of the time). See 2.
I reserve the phrase ‘you fucker’ and ‘you twat’ for my best friends and they do the same. That amount of respect is earned.
Almost everything I say should not be taken literally. It will mostly be p*ss taking banter.
Did I mention fair play. The first person to call a snooker foul is oneself everytime. I’m related to Joe & Fred Davis and grew up in the next village. Billiards. British.
The first thing I will notice about you will be the social indicators that determine your class. If you are British you will do the same. It is absolutely impossible to fool you.
If you knock me I will apologise.
I thank the bus driver. Without fail. See 4.
I know my national team is not going to win the Football World Cup.
I know my team will lose on penalties to the Germans. See 11. This is England only.
I’ve been in more pubs than I care to remember. That’s because whether I care or not I am not capable of remembering half of them. When I go out, I go out out. Friday night and Saturday night in Britain (and Ireland) is like nowhere else on earth. Nowhere. British high streets at 5pm are civilised and genteel. A few hours later they are rivers of intoxication, pavement pizzas, kebab spillage, burger vans,fighting and police vans. When you’re young nowhere else on Gods earth is this much fun or this drunk. My foreign friends. You may read this long rambling list and pick out some that you say ‘we do this too’ Well not this one. This is ours. This is our defining characteristic. Not Wimbledon or Lords or the Proms. Getting this many people pissed at the same time twice a week ( ok yes..Thursdays as well) Getting this many people pissed out of their heads three times a week, week in week out is quintessentially British.
If the food you serve me tastes horrible I will tell you it was lovely.
I moan a lot. We are experts at it. It’s part of our health routine.
I know what mizzle is and I like it.
Chips, curry sauce, tray, wooden fork.
Tea bag, boiling water THEN milk.
I will watch the weather forecast three times a day. Each will be completely different. On any day I will have layered clothes suitable for everything from summer to winter.
With a quarter of an inch of snow I won’t be able to get to work.
I have a square of green in front of my house (this is sadly dying out)
I will never ever use the square of green in 21. for recreational purposes. If anyone does, they will put a sofa on it and paint the house number in emulsion on the house and bin. You may think your nations hardest criminals are hard but these people are like Jim Carrey crossed with Terminator. Their Grandads were this hard and this mental, the Germans reconnaissance didn’t pick up on our secret weapon. They didn’t understand the significance of those front garden sofas in their recon photos. Btw before you write in I know it’s a settee, I was being snobby for a minute.
I expect my policemen and policewomen to talk to me like they are a good friend. And they almost always will. My mam still calls them the bobbies. British.
My beer must have a head.
The italian waiter with the huge pepper grinder hovering over my wife is held with both contempt and awe.
The first thing I will do when you come to my house is ask you if you want a cup of tea.
If you invite me to your house and don’t offer me a cup of tea I will never forget but I will never mention it to you.
I stand up and offer my seat for older people and pregnant women. Always (except on the Tube where it can be seen as an insult) It doesn’t matter what your race is I will stand for you.
Not offering an older person a seat (if it’s not possible) leaves me feeling very uncomfortable. See 27. See 4.
I love multiculturalism and eat so many different kinds of foods and meet so many different nationalities of people most days.
If you boast and brag I will not be impressed. In fact I will think you are a complete knob for doing it.
In 1665 in the village of Eyam in Derbyshire the bubonic plague struck, having been brought from London by accident. Villagers made the selfless choice to quarantine themselves and thus give up any chance of help. My relatives (on my Dad’s side) the Hancocks were villagers in Eyam and they were part of the agreed self imposed isolation. They did not leave to spread the plague across Derbyshire and the North of England. That could have led to millions of deaths. They stayed put and awaited their fate. My relative Elizabeth Hancock survived but buried six children and her husband in only 8 days. The village suffered hundreds of deaths but many survived including the village grave digger. Nobody ran away, nobody. That’s a little bit of British history I’m connected to and I’m proud of it… The village of the damned
I will support the underdog (except if Forest are playing)…in anything whatsoever irrespective of the nationality, gender, age etc.I have a come back for everything, except the dreaded tut. A well timed tut can crucify me. I’m British. It’s our achilles heel. If you’re not British you won’t be able to deliver the precise tut required. The precisely delivered tut is devastating.If you are waiting at a zebra crossing I will stop. Every time. Without fail. However if you wave thank you I will tense up like a camels bum in a sandstorm. The slightest of nods as you avoid eye contact and a little polite speed up of your walking at the end is perfect. A subtle raised arm is acceptable but only from the elbow..never deliver the acknowledgement with a full arm raise unless you are the lollipop man/woman/transition person. Not acknowledging is sinful. If you’re the only person crossing and you don’t acknowledge me I will deem you the devils spore but drive politely on and bore my wife about you when I get home.I’m in a mixed race marriage. It never enters my head. Same for my friends also in mixed race marriages. I eat better food now.My class can’t change no matter how much I earn or social climb. Only one mistake out of a million indicators will be a complete and irrefutable give away.If i want to invent something I don’t crowd fund or try to contact Elon Musk, I just pop into the shed.Chips are chips and crisps are crisps.I know l
oads about British history but only know three historical dates. For some reason they all end in sixty six.
It’s 73 years after WWII yet I still keep loads of tins in the cupboard (as trained by my parents)……..cos you never know.
I’m heterosexual but I love a bit of spotted dick.
I eat food using a knife and fork. At certain points I use the back of my fork and push food onto it with the knife, which I do not hold like a pen.
Fannies are fannies and bums are bums.
Ooh matron!
I will quietly tut about the corruption in big business but if I see you driving in clear skies in broad daylight with your fog lights on…dear God help me.
The only fox news I listen to is on Countryfile.
The first time I saw a bidet I thought it was a wash basin for children. I still don’t know how you mount this contraption. Never will. British. Btw while we’re on the subject what’s that little diddy shower you see abroad.
I don’t squat. Our British achilles won’t allow it to happen after the age of 2. There are only three exceptions to this. The British achilles involuntarily stretch enough for a squat when we lose as a player in a Cup Final, when giving birth, and when stopping a red ball with big gloves on. Other than those, no squatting. You know what I’m saying. On we go….
I know you can’t beat a bit of Bully. RIP Jim.
My whole family and friends have had amazing medical treatment free at the point of delivery. And that’s amazing.
If I tell you that what you’ve said is interesting, it isn’t.
I think you will understand me if I speak slower and louder.
If you want me to feel really awkward praise me. I’ll automatically then downplay whatever I’ve done or got.
First shoes…Clarks and that thing.
Shoes again…I married into a Chinese family 17yrs ago. You cannot walk on their floor with your shoes on. Bloody hell the looks I got! I now feel really naughty walking into other Brits houses when they insist there’s no need to take my shoes off to walk on their carpets. The flip side..seventeen years later I feel so awkward asking people to take their shoes off to come into our house. It never gets less awkward for all concerned. 17 years. Shoes. Floors.
I use Celsius for cold days and Fahrenheit for for hot ones (for the drama)
I consider baseball a childrens’ game called rounders.
I don’t know how to look cool in the evening in hot countries.
Kes and Naked are my favourite films.
I know how to light fork handles.
Don’t tell ’em yer name Pike!
Don’t mention the war.
I don’t belieeeeve it.
You plonker.
It’s good night from me, and it’s good night from him.
Bring me sunshine.
Spoon jar, jar spoon. Haaaaaa Haaaaa.
By jove! RIP. Nobody was ever more British.
Nice to see, you to see you nice. See 68.
He’s not the Messiah, he’s a very naughty…
Woolworths. I know!
Consonant, vowel, consonent vowel.
I grew up in a pit village and watched Thatcher rip the heart out of British Industry with no care for a Plan B. She ushered in ‘greed is good’ and smashed communities to bits. I used to fitness train running up that Pit Tip as a kid. That’s british. Fuck you Thatcher. I grew up with Punk as well. It’s an attitude not a fashion. British.
I make a cracking Yorkshire Pudding.
On the hottest day of the year I see old women in winter coats.
Top of the shop, blind 90.
Forget international measurements created by Foreigners and well meaning scientists I know the unit of height for really tall things is Nelsons Column and the unit of length for really long things is the London bus. The unit of weight for really heavy things is the blue whale. Big areas are football pitches, medium areas are measured in number of tennis courts. Tiny things are measured by how many will fit onto a pin head. Horses are measured in hands, massive volumes are measured in how many old wembley stadiums would fit in it. Really heavy things are measured in elephants. If we have to use scientific measures it’s pounds up to 1 stone then it’s stones and pounds. If you tell me you weight 216lbs I will have no idea if you’re fat or thin until I’ve done the maths.
You must never ever ever use my driveway (next to my square of never used green) to do your three point turn. If you do then this may be the only time you see me resemble a grieving middle eastern woman.
I got a world class education in the 1980’s that cost my parents virtually nothing.
I don’t snog in public. I’m British not European for christ sake. Decorum please.
When I started work I was asked to get a tin of tartan paint, a long stand, a spirit level bubble and a draughtsman’s license. Standard British.
If you win the race and tell me so I will hate you but if you tell me that you came last and had to walk half of it I will love you.
I’ve bought two houses in my life. Both times on day one I walked in and ripped some feature/part straight out of the house and chucked it away. Apparently that’s what we all do when we buy a house. Day one.
My dog has 6 nick-names.
Get down Shep.
I can tell where in Britain you’re from by what you call a bread cob.
I know that you’re not posh if you say scone the posh way.
I know if you finish work at 4:30 or 5:30 depending whether your white vehicle is a van or a car.
I know you are middle class because you never roll your shirt sleeves above your elbows. I know you’re working class because you never roll them below.
I know you are either upper middle class or lower working class because none of your furniture matches and you couldn’t care less.
My Great Uncle was a small unassuming thin man. Very cheerful and always made me feel special (I was a small thin kid) He always used to tell me that they don’t make fat thoroughbreds. That made me feel good as a little football/rugby player. Imagine a cross between Prince Philip and Stanley Matthews, that was my Great Uncle Bill. I never heard him swear or raise is voice and he always dressed inmaculately. Now my uncle never ever mentioned the war. I’d always thought he’d just worked in a shop and a factory. At his funeral I found out he’d made 19 drops behind enemy lines in Burma to fight the enemy in the jungles. Not 1 or 2. That would be brave. No 19, he was a Para, it’s what he did and he never mentioned it. The last couple of days before he died he had visions of his para mates who died fighting with him in WWII and he had chats with them at the end of his bed. He had been a very funny bloke and used his humour to make me feel special. He was the special one not me. My Uncle Bill was as British as you can get and so were his mates and millions of lads like them.
I say please and thank you about a hundred times a day. I expect you to as well otherwise I will deem you rude. Sorry, I can’t help it; I’m British. Thank you for reading this.
If anyone got to the end of this then we now have to say goodbye. This now gets really awkward, I do swear and I apologise for this….
Ok you’re a man, maybe European…I’m not f*cking kissing you. End of. A polite handshake used to suffice but now we have to run the gauntlet of maybe hug awkwardly whilst avoiding touching tips.
Ok you’re a woman…do I shake your hand, give you a hug, give you one kiss, two kisses, three kisses? I’ll tell you what I’ll make sure I’m in my shed inventing a Wallace & Gromit invention when you’re leaving and I’ll just wave from the spiderweb covered window thus avoiding further social dis-ease.
You’ve gone…I can go back to check the weather forecast before I cut the front lawn, which is the only time that people passing are allowed to talk to me.
After the attack on Bilhorod, Russias Defence Ministry decided to strike away at Ukraines Air Defenses and force them to deplete their own stock of Missiles
image 119
Ukraine was launching S-200 missiles, Neptune Missiles, Tochka Us, Himars, Scalp and Storm Shadow missiles on Russian Territory at Bilhorod and Crimea and Donetsk
Russia never hit Civilians in their SMO and only focused on Strategic Targets yet Ukraine helpless militarily kept shelling Civilian territories
However when they used Cluster Munitions on Civilians at Bilhorod killing Women and Children who had come to celebrate New Year
Russia decided to destroy everything Ukraine had of significance
Himars Launchers – Destroyed
Production facilities for Drones – Destroyed
Production facilities for Vests and Shoes – Destroyed (Crucial in Winter)
Warehouse with Grains – Destroyed
7 Ammunition Depots – Destroyed
6 Fuel Depots – Destroyed
6 Air field runways – Destroyed
It was destruction on a scale previously never seen in the SMO
For the first time a Hotel with 66 Nato mercenaries were killed including high ranking officers
Ukraine Air defenses were OVERWHELMED
Russia launched 276 Missiles and 340 Geran Drones, and Ukraine had to fire everything they had to prevent damage
They ended up firing over 170 Missiles which was 40% of their total stock and had to see terrible damage wreaked by the Geran Drones and the remaining 156 missiles that got through (120 were intercepted)
The Russians found that the Air Defence primarily consisted of S-300s and S-200s but identified the location of Patriot Systems from the Missile trajectories
Homing in on the Location, they fired Kinzhals and destroyed 3 Patriot Systems completely today
The systems were shattered
The Launchers are gone, the control system is gone
This strategy to saturate air defence and identify the location of strategic air defence systems like Iris T or Patriot and then hit them with hypersonics has been BRILLIANT
It’s exactly what Hezbollah is doing with Israeli Iron Dome systems
Saturate Israel with cheap missiles and force Israel to use their expensive $ 500K – $ 2 Million Missiles or face an explosion that would kill 1–5 people and cause chaos
Russia, China, Iran have a huge advantage because they can produce and manufacture thousands of cheap drones and saturate the airspace
Meanwhile Russian Army effortlessly marches on and grinds on, going on a forward offensive
Ukraines Army has long since stopped giving any challenge
Ukraines only option is to strike long range missiles onto Russian Territory and hope Russian Civilians are so frightened that they force Putin to a ceasefire
Instead the Russians are furious
image 118
Russians have comprehensively voted to hang Zelenskys wife and kids with him for what he did to those kids in Donetsk and Bilhorod
Russians are angrier than ever and not at Putin
They want more blood now and Putin is the only civilized man between Russian Rage & Ukraine
image 117
Medvedev would wipe out every house in Kiev by mid morning if he was in charge.
Two mirrors. My husband and I divorced after 22 years. He thought there was something better. Maybe there was.
He had lost his job 12 years earlier and never quite recovered. I had been a stay at home Mom with a small income teaching paralegals part time. It was a killer trying to replace his income as he was a quite powerful CFO of a large company and any marriage was lost in my working and still raising kids while he fell in a bottle.
He wanted the house. Frankly, I didn’t care. I moved a lot as a kid. I did not develop attachments to places or things, only people. His first offer was that he get everything but my IRA including my solely owned business. I was hurt and indignant. Then I decided that it was a good plan. I knew he would fail and I never wanted to hear that Dad would have been okay if I hadn’t taken…..In return he was to put the girls through college and pay for their weddings. ( They had about 100k in college funds)
Well, in two years he lost the business. He put the girls through college but I had to chip in half on the weddings. After a few years he had to sell the house.
I had moved a few hours away but I was in town when the house was being shown as a “ fixer upper”. It was so sad and dreary. It was lifeless. I could not believe it was the house where I raised my girls.
In the master bath was a long marble vanity with sinks on each end. The mirrors were framed and hung. My mirror was pristine. The paint was perfect, the mirror unflawed and it looked brand new. I had used that mirror every day for 22 years. Then I saw his and felt shock through my body. The paint was peeling and worn. The mirror had bad spots. The corners were chipped. It hung a little lopsided. I had cleaned and polished both mirrors for 22 years. When I left they were the same. How could 6 years have changed one so much.
I left very sad. He did not live long. He just sort of withered away. He moved to where my girls and I lived to be close to the grand kids but rarely saw them. When I think of him, there is no anger. Just sadness. I’ve had a full life of work and family since the divorce. My grandkids all live with in 5 miles.
Life is strange. We were just sort of like two mirrors.
ZALIX, psychic mutant sci-fi film directed by Philip K. Dick in 1978, unedited footage 1
This movie is a real trip. Only 12 minutes long. WTF!
These friends formed “circles”, close groups, sport groups, nerd groups, drinking buddies, and so on and so forth.
One of the extended groups of friends were part of one of my constantly changing “drinking friend group”. And within that group was a fairly nice kid, a guy that we shared a brew and two at various keggers. I will call him “Marko” (not his real name.)
He lived on a farm; an isolated small home off the tail end of a dirt road.
He was ok. Really.
But his mother… Oh Lordy!
There was something really wrong with her. Not all together there, and man was she odd, and she really tended to behave strangely. Really strangely. Over the years, all of us, decided to avoid her, and actually all of us felt really sad for our friend Marko.
Now, with this as the background, I will now relate the last moment when I saw Marko’s mother…
…
It was 3am on a Wednesday in late Summer; say July or early August. We (myself and my buddy Robbie) were riding in his International Scout (a 1970s era vehicle) on the dirt gravel road though the cornfields in the hills of Western Pennsylvania. We were riding, drinking beer, and smoking… And the headlights on the truck illuminated the gravel in front of us.
As we went up a hill, the road turned to the left and as we turned that curve, we saw Marko’s mother. She was standing there, at the edge of the cornfield, at the side of the road. Wearing a old stained white nightgown, and standing there. Her expression looked like something out of a horror movie. I’ll tell you what.
…
We didn’t stop.
We kept on driving.
The corn blended into the dark background.
Then Robbie let out a sigh.
“Poor. Poor Marko” he said. And we turned up the 8-track player and listened to The Rolling Stones play “Gimmie Shelter”.
As we continued to drive though the dark night in the cornfields.
Never compare your sex life with porn videos. Because porn videos are totally fake.
Never be sad for losing someone. No one lasts for long period of time. Even, you are gonna lose your beauty, money and health with age.
Never underestimate failure.Only a failure gives you the proper perspective of success.
Never “Trust” easily on anyone. Because trust is the most expensive thing and so don’t trust blindly. Even, your friends get jealous when they see your progress.
Never share your password of social media accounts, email, Internet Banking, and ATM pin\CVV number with anyone. Never!
Never get involved in sexual activities till you are not serious in your relationship.
Never believe on that girl\boy who have lots of relationship in their past. They can easily manipulated you by crying their bad past.( Exception is everywhere)
Never try to hurt your parents. They have lots of expectations from you.
In any situation, Never think about ending your life. Even plants regrow leaves after one leaf shed.
The QSPR ‘Tunnel Weapon’. When US forces had to crawl into tunnels to chase the enemy it was a very intense experience. A GI often went down there with just a 1911 .45 and a flashlight, and once his buddies dropped him down there he was pretty much on his own. As you can imagine, firing a .45 in a space the size of a closet does your hearing no favors and also alerts other bad guys down there to your presence. The militay, in conjunction with AAC, came up with the ‘Tunnel Weapon’ a specially modified S&W .44 Magnum for the ‘tunnel rats’ to use.
image 8
It had a short barrel and a smooth bore like a shotgun. The gun used a special ‘captive piston’ ammunition that was almost perfectly silent. When fired, the propellant pushed a piston in the case forward, launching buckshot made from a special alloy. When the piston reached the end of the case, it was caught and did not leave the case. As a result, all the propellant gas was captured in the case … so no noise signature. The pellets, driven forward by the force of the piston, continued down the bore and out the muzzle. The result was a totally silent and flash-less weapon that could be used in a confined space like a tunnel. They never were distributed in any meaningful amount and only a few went into practical field trials. The guns almost never turn up but some of the special ammo shows up once in a while.
Hot afternoon, sitting at my dinner place doing books and covering the phone. Don’t open for dinner until six…it’s three. Happy to be alone. The front door is unlocked because we are out in the country and it doesn’t need to be.
Girl in her twenties pushing her bike in the door, walks by the “closed…open for dinner at 6” sign, and, before I can say, “Sorry miss, we’re closed,” asks me for a coke. Ok, this is a custom walnut bar, 150 label wine list, crystal glassware, fresh flowers, dress code…you know, and she needs a coke in a paper cup with a straw.
I bite my tongue as she leans her bike against the wall next to the front door. “Uh, I don’t have a to go cup, but, have a seat…how’s your day going?” I poured her a coke on ice and she told me she had guessed wrong on her bike trip, trying to pedal up the mountain had wiped her out. She was a college kid and did not have the money to eat at this place, but I had her look over the menu and grab a brochure. I didn’t charge her the ridiculous price for the coke. And away she went.
Four years later, it had been a really busy shift, customers all over the place. I acknowledged one of our regulars as he left with a party of six and thanked him for his business. He replied, “You know we always love to come here, it’s been what? Four years now? Birthdays, holidays, homecomings, my daughter’s rehearsal dinner…” He gestured to a young woman. “Honey? Come over and say hi to the boss.” You have already guessed who the “young lady” was. She had bicycled home that day four years ago and told her family about our place. I can’t estimate what her family had spent there over those years helping keep us in business.
Remember the communication range, huh? The thing is that the larger gap of intelligence between two people, the greater likelihood the reaction of the lesser endowed is outright hostile.
Acting stupid and dumbing down is a survival mechanism. To howl with the wolves (or rather bleating with the sheep). Humans are social animals and we all want to fit in. Therefore acting stupid is a way to a) pretend you fit in and b) not to evoke a hostile reaction among the lesser endowed.
The thing is that it is a) incredibly consuming and b) never foolproof. But I wouldn’t be alive today if I couldn’t act stupid when needed.
When I was a teenager, my mom took me on a trip to visit the tobacco plantation where her mother had grown up. The land had been in the family since the 1700s. It was really cool seeing antiques that had been in the family for generations. There was even an old muzzle-loader that had been used to fight in the Revolutionary War. It was so heavy that I had to rest my elbow on my hip. I couldn’t even lift it like you would an ordinary (modern) rifle.
While we were there, a cousin told us we could take whatever we wanted from stuff she’d stuck in an old shed that had been used originally for drying tobacco. My mom filled a large paper grocery sack with papers, documents, letters, and antique books.
Later, while driving home, I began going through the contents of the bag while my mom drove. There were letters from the early 1900s and throughout the 1800s, some sad; some hilarious. There were wills and other business documents. Kind of boring to me at the time. Two-thirds of the way down, there was a strange piece of “paper” folded into fourths. It was obviously very old and bulky.
I carefully unfolded it to discover . . . the original land grant from King George III bestowing on my ancestors 600 acres in the colony of North Carolina. It was a piece of parchment with such tiny, perfect calligraphy spelling out the description of the land, etc. It was a legal document. Just as astonishing was that it still had King George’s seal attached! The seal was round and about the size of a coaster you stick under a mug to protect wood. It was maybe an inch thick and very hard. That was the coolest thing I ever helped to “rescue.” 🙂
Often people say hi, or hey, or they give a little wave or salute, or they nod or smile in passing. All these rituals of greeting communicate: I know you, you’re within my greeting circle.
But some people and some friendships require an actual conversation. If it’s a really good friend whom you haven’t seen in years, there’s a lot to catch up on. “It’s been so long, how ya doin’?” You talk about substantive things. “Betty’s been declared cancer-free for the past five years, but that was a bad scare.” “I wish I’d known what you were going through, while all I ever worried about was getting through tax season.” That’s a real conversation.
But there’s a space between, where the person once meant something to you. Or you moved in the same circles and you don’t remember them all that well. That’s when empty conversation tides you over till you get your bearings in the conversation. “Hi, how are you?” “What do you want to pretend is interesting, my sciatica, my year of unemployment, or Tina’s and my separation?” “Wow, that’s rough! So much time has gone by.” “I can see you’re struggling to remember —” “No, not at all —” “I introduced you to my roommate’s sister at that boating weekend on the lake and after that you two were so into each other that I don’t think you came up for air for six months.” “I can’t believe I forgot that connection. It’s like I’m your roommate-in-law.”
So those empty how-are-yous serve a purpose, to string the conversation along until you find your footing — or realize there’s no way to remake the old connection — or there never was a connection. Empty forms evolve because we NEED them, so don’t waste time disparaging those social forms. They can delay or avoid a lot of social awkwardness.
The war between the United States and China began in 2008. At the time of this writing, it is 2024. So the war has been on-going for 16 years. During this period of time it has been characterized by the following realities…
Not reported in the Western “news” media.
Characterized by offensive actions by the United States (either direct or by proxy).
Characterized by defensive actions by China.
Characterized by unconventional warfare at every level.
This idea that “someday” a conventional war will manifest between China and the United States is a false narrative. This narrative was concocted in 2017 under the direction of both Mike Pompeo and John Bolton in the Trump Administration. Anyone who believes this narrative is foolish.
We know today, in 2024, that both the Pentagon and RAND have repeatedly announced though various channels that the United States is unable to win a conventional war against China. This is true whether it uses proxy nations or not.
Leaving only the nuclear weapon option.
China has long prepared for a first-strike nuclear attack by the United States. China fully expects the reality of this situation.
Thus, China has been manufacturing, preparing, and training to absolutely eviscerate the cities of the United States, and the participant proxy nations, that dare attack it.
…
Were a “HOT” shooting war to erupt between the United States and China… it will eventually turn nuclear.
What we know about this situation is frightening…
The United States neocons believe that a war is inevitable with China, and that the United States will “win” it, because it is “exceptional”.
The United States fields 3rd generation nuclear systems, and rely on advanced pin-point accuracy for “surgical” destructive objectives.
The United States does not have any ABM defense against the Chinese and Russian current technology.
Meanwhile, in China…
China has active fielded 6th through 8th generation nuclear systems, in great quantities, with modern cutting-edge delivery systems and avionics.
China military doctrine is to saturate the target area broadly with multiple cascades of weapons. They believe that if a target in located in a city, that you destroy the entire region surrounding that city over, and over, and over until no life remains.
China also has a massive ABM system purposely designed to intercept American and Western missiles and destroy them long before they arrive at their targets.
The Chinese policy is soundly defensive.
The American (neocon) policy is resoundingly offensive.
…
Were a HOT war to erupt between the two nations… the citizens will not be aware of it. As the “news” media will not report on it. Any war prep in the West will be reported as “aggression by China”.
And in a blink of an eye, the cities of the West will be erased one by one.
True story from my days of working in industrial controls.
A co-worker + I visited a refrigerated warehouse to take a look at a controls PC that had stopped spitting out readings on a printer every so often as it should have. Based on the old principle of “if it doesn’t work. turn it on; if it still doesn’t work, plug it in,” I checked the printer’s connection the PC and, lo and behold, it had fallen off.
I plugged it in and told my co-worker “OK, we’re done.”
“We can’t just do that and leave,” he responded.
So, I decided to clean out the PC just on general principles. I should note that this was in the mid ’90s, and smoking was allowed in this office. Lots of smoking. Without especially good ventilation. Right next to the PC.
So, I took the PC to the loading dock and opened it, figuring I’d “breathe life into it” by simply blowing the dust out of it. But that wasn’t going to do the trick. Nor would the typical can of compressed air. A trowel would’ve done the trick, though.
Needless to say, I did clean out the PC using whatever tools I had handy. When I returned it to the office, I suggested that they either stop smoking around it – as if that was likely, improve ventilation, or at least get some smokeless ashtrays, or else they’d be paying a lot more for new control PCs.
Of course, my employer would gladly have sold said new PCs to this customer, since damage from smoking was not covered by the warranty.
Quite a few times, this played out in front of me and for different reasons.
I was the HR coordinator assigned to a branch of a company and had to be present during all disciplinary or fact-finding meetings between management and employees to make sure that management didn’t do anything stupid and bear witness to anything actionable said by the employee during those meetings.
In one case, I worked with a manager with no real gift for social grace. He was intimidated by conflicts and hated the fact that none of the “damn kids” working for him gave him the respect he felt he deserved from his position. When he held these investigatory meetings with employees over minor infractions like tardiness or excessive call-offs (minor infractions), he would escalate the situation by leading with the attitude of “why shouldn’t I just fire you?” which was all but stated in his long, rambling opening remarks.
One guy who was transferred over from another facility was a GIFT engineered by regional management to make up for the loss of two machine workers who walked off because of poor working conditions. Without them, we would have lost more than a week’s production based on their unique maintenance knowledge and ability. The employee sitting in the hot seat was brought in at a decent wage to compensate for asking him to commute an hour each way to work. Our manager did not take this into account when listing all FOUR late punches collected in the employee’s first month as he worked out the parking and other transportation issues related to his new job.
The problem was that the boss was intimidated by the young man’s ability to do the work of two people and fix problems that even HE couldn’t. I think the boss just wanted to assert power or compensate for this feeling of inadequacy, but the replacement employee was having none of it.
“I volunteered to help you out. I’m doing my best to get in and get to work. I stay a little late each day, too.” “If you’re doing your best and can’t get to work on time, you’re not doing good enough.”
I saw from the employee’s expression that he knew the kind of poor manager he was dealing with. He stood up extended a hand and said, “Okay, then. Thank you for the opportunity. I’ll be heading back to the other store on Monday. Good luck.”
The boss was so stunned (as was I, but for different reasons) that he accepted the handshake and said nothing while the employee walked out of the room. Knowing what this would mean to the store’s production and morale but wanting to maintain some sense of managerial control, I waited until the door closed behind the guy before I called the boss the most polite kind of short-sighted imbecile that I could.
I intercepted the employee and apologized, asking him to reconsider. As I expected, he said he would take the matter up with the Regional Manager who set up the reassignment. When Monday came, I received the paperwork promoting the once temporary machine operator to Assistant Manager of Production at a decent salary and to schedule a disciplinary conference with the Branch Manager for being an incompetent jackass.
Well, I just read a very typical ‘Merica answer on this. And I’ll have to tell youse guys, I got one Hell of a belly laugh. I mean it. It was deep and long…
The four points made were…
[1] It will not happen. The USN isn’t stupid and would stay out of the range of the Carrier Killer missiles.
I had to laugh at this. China has the ability to sink aircraft carriers ANYWHERE on the globe. If you all think that ONLY the DF-17 can sink a carrier group, then you are reading too many propaganda pieces.
[2] It could not happen. China doesn’t have enough of these Carrier Killer missiles to be a threat.
Again, this gave me such a howling laughter. As if some basement bozo knows how many missiles and non-missile weapons that China has. No one knows how many missiles that China fields, but I can positively tell you that China does things in mass.
[3] It cannot happen. China isn’t stupid to take on the United States. The USA is invincible, and China doesn’t know how to fight a “real” war.
Oh, my belly was laughing so hard on this canard. China has the oldest army in the world. China also has the oldest Navy in the world. The Chinese military was perfected during the Tang dynasty. Then bested Genghis Khan, and then was absorbed into it, resulting in the massive Yang dynasty armies. Aside from the fact that the Chinese beat the living snot out of the USA during the “Korean War”, China has been engaged fighting with the USA on all fronts since at least 2016
[4] Carrier Killer missiles are just hyperbole. They are just normal missiles with some undemonstrated abilities that the USN can easily thwart.
Ha ha ha ha. I mean talk about living under a rock. Jesus, this nonsense is so thick that you need waders to trudge though the muck.
…
China is a peaceful nation.
But, it is NOT stupid.
…
The United States has thrown EVERYTHING at China. And I do mean EVERYTHING.
From “color revolutions” inside of China, to “color revolutions” in all the nations surrounding China. From undersea excursions and conflicts, to near-space satellite warfare. From cyber warfare, to bio-warfare attacks. From managed famines to lawfare assaults. From efforts designed to collapse the Chiense banking industry to efforts to collapse the Chinese real estate industry.
It’s been full spectrum and absolute.
But not reported in the “news” of the West.
…
Instead we hear of submarines ramming undersea mountains, freak geomagnetic storms, the “apparent random” firings of Naval Commanders, and the Secretary of the Navy. We read (in the West) about Chinese “warmongering” a build up for a “Taiwanese invasion”.
All this interspersed about how Putin has brain cancer, and how Russia is running out of ammo. We read about how Xi Peng is going to be disposed and how the poor downtrodden people of China are going to rise up for “democracy” and Freedom”.
…
Info war is in full swing.
There is ZERO credibility in Western “news” media. Today it is so outrageous and comically fake and ridiculous that it is amazing that these tabloids are still able to have people that watch and read their content.
…
So… Yeah. It’s full spectrum. EVERYTHING.
Of course…
The clueless in the West would believe the fake narratives of Putin losing, China collapsing, and America remaining strong. They will believe that COVID was fake, or if it was something of concern, then it was “China’s fault” for one reason or the other. That’s the narrative, and that’s want the oligarchy expects Westerners to believe.
…
The United States is a feudal plutocracy.
While China is military-based meritocracy.
…
Oh, it’s just like the United States is throwing EVERYTHING at China, China is preparing with EVERYTHING as well.
And, let me tell you all…
They don’t read American / Western “news”.
They know what is REALLY going on.
…
So China is ready.
If you are a consumer of Western “news” you will be unaware of the following facts, but you do need to brace yourself for the realities.
Were the USA, either directly or through proxy, attacks China… China will throw nuclear warheads at American cities and military installations.
Oh, sure. China has a “no first use policy” in regards to nuclear weapons.
But within the FORMAL WORDING of this (particular) policy is one sentence that you all should all pay attention to…
“…if attacked… China reserves the right … to use every means at its disposal … to attack the nation that attacks it.”
For some reason, the Western “news” media glosses over this sentence. Perhaps they cannot read Chinese, or simply just cut and paste their “news articles” directly out of Langley VA. What ever, the FORMAL STATEMENT regarding nuclear weapons use is very carefully worded, and ambiguous enough to give the most aggressive neocons pause to consider.
…
So, yeah. China is ready.
It was ready in 1950–53 when it defeated the United States in Korea, and is ready today as it dishes EVERYTHING thrown at it, right back to the United States to consume.
…
At this point in time…
The United States and China are like a married couple living together weeks prior to a divorce. The United States is cheating, bending words, manipulating systems… and thinking “They’ll never find out”.
While China, is playing it smart.
Already has contacted the divorce attorneys, arranged the legal papers and made all the necessary arrangements. Just waiting for the time of CHINA’s choosing to terminate the relationship.
…
So… that being said…
“How can the USN defend against China’s formidable anti-Naval missile forces”?
There ARE a number of things that the United States government can do.
Not fight China. Give up. Stop the war-mongering.
First strike against China using a barrage of nuclear ICBMs and SLBMs.
That’s it.
Nothing else is realistically possible.
By the way… this is the OFFICIAL view of the United States Pentagon as of late fall 2023.
Of course, it all depends on the temperament of the “leadership” in Washington DC. And since they are clueless morons that are evil psychopathic narcissists, I can’t help but believe that they will be as delusional with China as they are with Russia. And the end result will be disastrous for the Untied States.
And the world as well.
Nothing quite ruins your day as a cascade of nuclear weapons hitting you.
…
Quick summary
China is READY to take on the United States, simultaneously with it’s proxy “allies”.
China WILL use nuclear weapons.
China is above-peer capable with the best equipment of the West.
China is a military-based meritocracy.
…
Quick Note
The disinformation about China permeates all levels.
China is a military-based meritocracy, but the West portrays this reality as “conscription”. Which is disingenuous. It gives the Western reader a pre-conceived illusion of poorly trained, unmotivated troops. But the reality is something quite different.
I once worked in a Michelin star restaurant with over 3,000 bottles of wine. One night a couple was dining at my bar and they were ordering multiple courses. With each course they ordered, they would order a different glass of wine to pair with it. Pairing wine with food is an art, not a science. One person’s nirvana can be another person’s acid rain. Wine tends to bring out the snobbish in people, too; all the worst stereotypes about wine nerds are true.
There were two other bartenders working that night and they got their food and first wine pairing with one of the others. I was clearing their plates and setting them up for their next course when the guy indicated the Vouvray they had finished, and then asked me for an opinion on what they should have next with whatever-fucking-dish they had coming.
“I really like this sauvignon blanc,” I said earnestly, and held out the bottle for them to inspect.
The guy looked at me like I just farted on his face. “AFTER A VOUVRAY?” He said, horrified.
He shooed me away and got one of the other bartenders to help pick the next wine. I was now a social leper, apparently. My judgment could not be trusted any further than I could throw that bottle of wine. I was a rube, an unsophisticated novice who had no right to even be working in such an establishment. I might as well have suggested for him to drink his own piss. And he could have, for all I fucking cared.
The line became a running joke at the bar. Anytime I touched the sauvignon blanc bottle someone would gleefully ask, “They weren’t just drinking the Vouvray, I hope?” And we’d laugh our asses off. I have since asked multiple people why that might be a faux pas as a wine suggestion and no one has ever given me a legitimate answer.
Cat claws aren’t really meant to kill (although they can and surely do). They are meant to grab and hold.
A kill typically consists of a sequence: grabbing the prey and getting it to the ground, suppressed, and then finishing the job.
And boy do they come equipped:
A lion claw to hand comparison:
image 48
Now it is a different story for most birds of prey.
A harpy eagle, and many eagles, can actually use their claws to kill their prey.
They pin their prey down and hold them, jerking their claws back and forth.
image 47
They also use their beaks to tear the animal apart, which, if it is lucky, happens quickly.
This is why you often see a predator eagle seeming to just stand and stomp on its prey. The prey moving around is actually what kills it in many of these instances.
It’s believed that the T-Rex shared this in common with predatory birds.
image 45
Their arms weren’t functional for hunting, so they would use one leg to lean in and hold the prey down on the ground, while their jaw did the rest of the work.
One of the closest living examples of what dinosaur claws looked like belongs to the Southern Cassowary, which lives in papua new guinea and looks like a deformed ostrich.
image 44
But when you see their claws, it’s immediately obvious who they are related to:
image 46
Fortunately, they are omnivores.
Nature is metal AF. Death by another animal never seems to be a fun way to go.
Airline executive: hey, if we squeeze the seats closer together, we can fit in one more row of seats, sell more tickets, and make more money!
Health and safety: but you can’t squeeze the exit row seats closer together — people have to be able to get through to the exit. So those seats would have to stay further apart while you squeeze the other ones closer together. It’ll look stupid.
Airline executive: that’s not a bug — that’s a feature! We’ll sell those seats at premium rates for people who want legroom just a little less than what they used to have, rather than a lot less!
Exit row seats used to be unattractive, due to the additional responsibility.
Now, they’re apparently fairly popular, due to the guaranteed minimum legroom. Which the airlines are not providing out of the kindness of their heart, but because an ‘exit row’ has to, you know, allow people to exit, so they’re legally mandated to keep them a certain width.
And some people apparently get annoyed when the stewardess asks them whether they are willing and able to assist in the unlikely event of an evacuation….
In high-school my friend and I were selling Christmas wreaths door to door.
We would take turns with the sale line.
This time it was his turn.
My friend was usually out going and very talkative.
We get to this door he goes up and knocks. This beautiful girl opens the door and kind of lifts her leg around the door cradling it and she bites her lip.
My friend was silent didn’t say a word he just stood there dumb founded.
I laughed, said sorry for my friend here…and then gave the whole sales pitch. She giggled and declined. Thr whole time my friend just stood there looking like a fool with his jaw just hanging open.
After she closed the door ot took him a moment to collect himself.
He commented about how beautiful she was. I said yeah, she was nice.
We go down another street and I realize that this side of the street was just the back side of the houses from the other…
I tell my buddy who was still somewhat dazed he gets this next house… (it was hers but from the other side)
She opened the door again same spill but this time I sold the Christmas wreath.
I don’t remember what happened after the second incident. I just remember it was hilarious.
I have so many different stories. We’ve even run across people answering the door in the buff. Usually not the good looking type though!
He has set a world record for the farthest swim under ice, going 188.6 feet under.
He has the fastest half marathon barefoot on snow and ice, running 2 hours and 16 minutes. (most can’t do this in regular climate!)
He has spent 1 hour and 53 minutes in full body contact with ice.
Normally, this should kill anybody between 15 and 45 minutes in.
He has climbed Mt. Everest to 25,000 feet in just shorts and boots.
So the big question remains.
How?
He employs something called “The Wim Hof” method.
He manipulates his mind and his breathing patterns to help his body create an ability to warm itself.
Sounds weird right?
He went under a study with researchers at Wayne State University.
He showed that when he didn’t employ his method of rapid breathing, “his skin temperature would fluctuate between about 33.5 degrees Celsius with the warm water and 31.5 degrees Celsius with the cold.”
However, when he did use his method, “his skin temperature stayed almost perfectly steady at just under 34 degrees Celsius.”
They found in the PET scan later that “the rapid breathing exercise worked by warming the capillaries in the lungs.”
Additionally, and weirdly enough, “Hof didn’t demonstrate an increase of activity in the anterior insula, where higher-function thermoregulation is done. Instead, he had an unexpected spike in the periaqueductal gray matter, which is associated with control of sensory pain. Maybe it really is mind over matter after all.”
During the filming of the movie Robert De Niro had a huge crush on her.
He even asked her out on a date.
But she turned him down.
After that during the entire shooting De Niro did not speak to her except when he was in character.
Shooting over.
Movie released.
Taxi Driver did really good business at the box office and also received positive response from Critics.
But rejection from his crush did not stop De Niro. He did classic films like The Deer Hunter, One upon a time in America, Raging Bull, The King of Comedy, Casino, Heat , Goodfellas, Cape Fear, The Irishman etc.
image 4
He won an Oscar for the Best Actor for Raging Bull.
image 3
And now he is considered as One of the Best Actors of all time.
On the other hand Cybill Shepherd was forgotten with time.
The only character she played worth remembering was Betsy in Taxi Driver.
40 years later when she wrote an autobiography, She wrote that she regretted turning him down a lot. She wrote, it was the biggest mistake she made in her life.
Now what De Niro did after she turned him down is worth reading
Did he threaten her boyfriend? NO
Did he start doing drinking and drugs? NO
Did he try to get revenge from her anyhow? NO
What he did was – He kept working. He concentrated on his career. And now he is THE ROBERT DE NIRO. Who inspired hundreds of other actors from all over the world.
image 2
So if a girl rejects you, what is the best way to get her to regret her decision?
Respect her decision and focus on your career. Build an empire. Self destruction and revenge mindset (Easy Path) will not do anything. Forget about her. You’ll regret later if you choose the easy path.
One of the most badass thing ever uttered was: “We’ve been fighting in the West throughout the war and we have enough experience to assess our situation. We will not allow ourselves to be taken hostage! You will die like rats when we break out of here!” – Viktor Leonov.
This man is Viktor Leonov:
image 7
In 1945 after the fall of Berlin, Viktor Leonov, a grizzled old Russian naval commander who had inflicted crazy amount of death and misery on his Axis enemies was sent to fight the Japanese in the east.
Viktor was assigned to a naval parachute division and was dropped with over 145 men into what was supposed to be a lightly-defended airfield somewhere in the midst of china. Fun fact, it wasn’t lightly defended. Over 3000 Japanese soldiers were waiting for them and the second they landed they were rounded up.
image 6
Viktor and his officers were forced marched into the Japanese HQ where the Japanese garrison commander ordered their surrender. Viktor refused and told the Japanese to surrender.
The Japanese officers laughed and told them this is no place for jokes and that he should just sign the papers for the Soviet official surrender and get it over with. Viktor was not joking. He jumped out of his chair, slammed his fist on the table and yelled in a heavy, very deep and intimidating Russian accent:
“We’ve been fighting in the West throughout the war and we have enough experience to assess our situation. We will not allow ourselves to be taken hostage! You will die like rats when we break out of here!”
Right at the end of the sentence, one of his men pulled out a hidden grenade and threatened to blow up every single man in the room.
The Japanese surrendered.
Viktor and his troops walked back to the soviet base with his over 3,000 Japanese prisoners who only hours ago were telling the captured soviets to surrender.
After that, he went back to fighting and captured four Japanese ports along the Korean and Manchurian coastlines. During his daring operations against the Japanese, he lost a grand total of nine soldiers. Seven of them died parachuting into that airfield I just talked about. Viktor apparently only retired because there was no more room on his chest for any more medals.
Viktor died in 2003, his death was not even mentioned in the newspaper.
Back in the late summer of 2000 or 2001, I was looking for a job because a freelance customer had stiffed me on six weeks’ worth of invoices. I wasn’t thrilled about either of those things, but hey, at least I like my field. Anyway, my brother called me up out of the blue and we had a conversation that went something like this:
“Hey, you’ll never guess who I sat with on the plane today: John Prine!”
“Oh, cool. How’d he look? He wasn’t looking all that good last time I saw him.”
“He looked OK. He was coming into town for a show tomorrow night with Mary Chapin Carpenter and someone named Lyle Lovett.”
“OMG! Don’t ask any questions, just GO.”
“Oh, I’m going. But I was wondering if you want to go.”
“Uh… I’m broke and in Winnipeg. And I have to be at a job interview at 3:00 pm the next day. Is that even doable?”
“Oh, yeah, it’s totally doable, I have a zillion points. Let me see…” <keys tapping> “OK, I can get you on a flight that comes in about 4:30. I’ll pick you up, we’ll grab some dinner, take in the show, then I can drop you at the airport in the morning and you’ll be back in town by… about 1:30.”
“Uh… OK!”
Next day I take the bus to the airport, fly to Toronto, Scott picks me up in his minty 89(?) Porsche 911, zoom we’re downtown, bam we’re getting a falafel for supper, then we’re off to the venue. Prine was awesome as ever, Mary Chapin Carpenter was great, but Lyle Lovett and his Large Band absolutely killed it. I’ve seen a lot of damned good shows, and that one was right up there with the very best. Then it’s back to Scott’s place, up early, zoom back to the airport, fly back to Winnipeg, and I’m taking the bus to my interview and asking myself, “Did all that really just happen?”
It was an incredible pick-me-up at a time I could really use one, and by far and away one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me. (He’ll probably read this, so I’m just going to say “Thanks again!”)
After a 4 year stay in Japan, representing my husband’s company, we returned to the States and settled in California. We registered our children in school. After a few days our youngest daughter came home and reported that a man had come to the school and taken her out of class and they had gone for a walk. The man had shown her lots of pictures. I was horrified and asked what kind of pictures. She told me one was of a policeman with a bad guy.
next morning I was at the school and in the Principal’s office demanding to know if it was true and if so, why. I was told that I had made a mistake when filling out the enrollment form and had put down that my daughter was born in Japan. My reply was that as her mother I would certainly know where she was born and that was in a hospital in Tokyo. Then I learned that California law requires that any student that doesn’t understand English must have an interpreter.
I told the Principal that if she had spent two minutes in conversation with my blue eyed daughter, born of a British mother and American father she would have known my daughter was fluent in the English language.
Hungarian Pork and Sauerkraut Sandwich (Peshene)
2024 01 04 19 08
Ingredients
4 slices pork butt, as meaty as possible, sliced thin, pounded if necessary
1 large can (27 ounces) sauerkraut, rinsed, squeezed dry
1 onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, chopped
Salt
Pepper
Hungarian sweet paprika
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) salted butter
8 slices of the best rye bread
Instructions
Prepare the pork butt and add some seasoning to it. Gently brown the pork in the butter until done. Don’t over cook.
Set pork aside and add sauerkraut, onions, garlic and seasonings to the pan. Be generous with the paprika. Fry the kraut until browned.
Make up 4 sandwiches being generous with the sauerkraut mixture.
I sometimes add 1-2 peeled raw potatoes (diced small) to the frying kraut.
Every time I visit my parents’ house, I would see someone drinking tea and talking to my mother. They’re usually female, ages 20 through 40. From their appearance, I can see that they are not doing well financially. I call them my mother’s “projects.” She has maybe 4–5 “projects” at a time.
They are visiting my mom to get help, discuss a problem, get some advice, and occasionally some of them would bring gifts to say thank you. I don’t know how it started, who these women were or how they met my mom. But their stories are depressingly similar. All of them were women who had kids, frequently didn’t have husbands, or were in abusive relationships. Let me tell you about one of them.
I’ll call her Zaya. Zaya is a young woman, around 27 years old. First time she met my mother, was when she was 20. She’s developmentally a little slow. Reads and writes with difficulty, and it takes her some time to understand difficult concepts. But she is a hard worker. Always does her tasks diligently. From what I know my mom helped her in some small things:
One winter she bought her and her child winter clothes.
Helped her daughter go to a good public school nearby. To do that my mom registered her to her house.
What is special about her? Nothing really. But she has encountered so many problems in her life that, I think, really shows how difficult it is to be poor:
She was adopted and her family, except her mother, treated her like an unpaid maid.
She became pregnant when she was 18. The father of the child disappeared, never to be seen.
She worked as a cleaner in a small company and received a modest salary. My mom took her to a bank one day and helped her open a savings bank account. After several years, she saved an equivalent of 5–6 months salary.
When her relatives learned about it, they pushed her to liquidate her account and contribute to her brother’s wedding.
She met one guy, who was a driver and they decided to live together. They built a small house. She used her savings to buy appliances, furniture etc. Just before they officially registered, the guy died in a car accident. His family, moved in and kicked her and her kid out on the streets. I offered to help her write a report to the police and go with her to submit it. She didn’t want to go to all the trouble.
She opened a new account and kept the bank book with my mother for safekeeping. Her family learned about it and forced her to pay for renovation at their house.
Her mother, the only person who supported her, passed away. She told her on several occasions that if she passes away she wanted her daughter to live separately from their family.
The last time we heard from her, she was moving to a different city, since her oldest brother was moving there and opening a small barber shop. He promised he would pay her salary. After she moved there, she changed her cell number and stopped calling my mom. It has been more than a year since we heard from her.
Whenever I hear people say that the poor are lazy, or bad at managing money, I always think about her. Her life is like a boxing match with a pro boxer. She gets knocked down, she gets up to be knocked down again. The sheer amount of sh*t that she experienced in her life is really astounding. This is why many of the poor remain poor. Because life is unfair…
Neocon Debacle and Declining Empire | Richard D. Wolff
Beware the following email originating from John Liu <chinaregistry177 (at) aliyun.com address individually to you. It is a scam trying to get you to part with your money. The website at the end of the message does not exist.
Mine was a Mr. Albert Liu.
Albert Liu<albert.liu@chinaregistry.org.cn>
Subject: CN Domain and keyword
“(It’s very urgent, please transfer this email to your CEO. Thanks)
We are the domain name registration service company in China. On Dec 30, 2015, we received an application from Huaxun Holdings Ltd requested “XXXXXX” (name removed) as their internet keyword and China (CN) domain names. But after checking it, we find this name conflict with your company name or trademark. In order to deal with this matter better, it’s necessary to send email to you and confirm whether this company is your distributor or business partner in China?
Kind regards
John Liu General Manager China Registry (Headquarters) 8052, Douhai Building, No. 59 Baolian Road, Shanghai, China Tel: +86 21 6191 8696 Mobile: +86 138 1642 8671 Fax: +86 21 6191 8697 Web: www .chinaregistry.com.cn Email: john (at) chinaregistry.com.cn
Phone numbers and URLs are equal to what what I got in my mail.
Comment and Advice
The unsolicited email you receive is from a Chinese domain registrar (could be a certified registrar, agent, affiliate or private person).
In the email they explain that a supposed company (try to Google the name) is interested in some available domain names (typically .hk, .cn, .tw), which correspond with your brand name.
In only a few days the other party will register these domains, unless you secure them first. The domain registrar can even send you an email from the interested third party (it comes from a hotmail address) claiming that they want to register your domain names, and they are only waiting for approval from Mr. Jim or whatever his name is.
Identical to what happened to me. Only this was from a sina address.
Zhihai Ning<zhihaining@vip.sina.com>
There is a similar domain name: www . chinaregistry.org.cn.
Yes. This is the URL.
In trying to connect to this my anti virus protection gave the following message so beware:
“When we visited this site, we found it may be designed to trick you into submitting your financial or personal information to online scammers. This is a serious security threat which could lead to identity theft, financial losses or unauthorized use of your personal information”.
It can be very expensive if you fall for it. Just ignore it.
Yuppur. It’s a pretty well established e-mail scam.
2024 02 10 13 05
Remember the name of the organization that registers domain names is CNNIC. Not “China Registry”.
Thank you for asking. It is easy to understand. Western governments need to hoodwink their own people who are now very wary about their dropping standard of living for close to 3 generations now. The average westerners are now worst off then their parents and even their grandparents.
Homelessness is rampant, inflation exceed their growth rates and set them back further. Take the UK. In 2023 it’s economy had a negative growth of -3% yet its inflation is a full 4.2%. Together British people suffer a 7.2% deterioration of their standard of living.
The U.S. grew by 2.4% in 2023 but suffers a 3.4% inflation. So once again it’s standard if living fall by 1%. But it has deteriorated back to the levels of 1960’s. Even life expectancy has dropped below that of China! Homelessness has reached a million and a third of Americans cannot afford their health insurance and their college debts consume most of them.
So with such a scenario, it is hardly surprising that they used their media to channel western minds to Chinese economy that is purportedly deteriorating. These are simply a pack of lies to deceive the westerners. Just imagine 2020–2022 over the 3 years post pandemic China grew by 5.5% per annum while most western economies had negative growth.
But what is worst is that it suffered close to double digit inflation while China’s inflation rate is on average 0.5%. In 2023 China grew by 5.2% with a mere 0.2% inflation. Chinese people’s standard of living grew by a net +5.0% in 2023! Yet if you read western media it accuses China of a host of things casting doubt on China!
By right westerners ought to be mad at their government for lying to them. But most pretend to be living better than the world. It’s a fell good factor! It is not good because truth will dawn on them sooner or later.
I realized my mother was verbally abusive when I was around 13. One of my first friends invited me to dinner. I was worried, but I went. It was a normal dinner, with home cooked casserole and green beans. I wasn’t used to that. Everyone sat at the table, and the father cleared his throat. Uh-oh, I thought, here it comes.
Then, he launched into a funny story about how he and a coworker kept hiding each others waste baskets, and how he had won the last round thanks to his daughter’s suggestion of putting a plastic lei on it and photographing it as though leaving the office.
Then her older brother spoke. He was in college, and told an anecdote about a professor who kept losing chalk. Mum spoke up about Chippy, a little squirrel that she fed by the back door. My friend moaned a little about a huge homework project.
Everyone turned to me. I actually spoke, suggesting that we should build our school project in such a way that it blocked the principal’s door. None of these stories were actually that good. but there was a tenderness in the telling and listening that I had never seen. People listened. They chuckled. They talked. They praised Mum’s cooking. No one said one derogatory thing.
They were a normal family. My friend teased her brother about his lack of hockey prowess, and Mum and Dad liked different baseball teams. My friend got grounded for sass, sometimes. But, instead of the parents trying to destroy the children, they held them up.
I cried all the way home. It was winter, and the tears froze on my face. Mother was there. Her first comment, what did you do to your face? My God you were an ugly baby and it’s just gotten worse. It’s good you don’t wear make up, lipstick on a plow horse.
And it didn’t stop until I went to bed. It never really stopped until I left home, always under the guise of helping me fix my flaws.
But after that dinner with the B family, I knew there was another way to live. And that made all the difference.
Pasta con le Sarde
If there is any pasta dish that represents Sicilian tradition to its fullest, it is pasta con le sarde. Combining the culinary footprints of Sicily’s kitchens, this classic recipe mixes maccheroncini (macaroni) with fennel, tomatoes, pine nuts, raisins, anchovies, onion and fresh sardines.
pasta con sarde
The pasta is always ladled out of the pot, never poured into a colander, and then put in a serving dish. During two weeks in Sicily, we never had a piece of overcooked pasta. Test, test, test was Chef Tino’s rule, and, apparently, every other chef’s.
Ingredients
1 pound fresh sardines
1/2 pound fennel bulb
Olive oil
1 garlic clove, minced
1 onion, chopped
8 ounces uncooked tomato sauce*
4 ounces pine nuts
1/4 cup raisins, softened in water
2 salted anchovies
1 pound macaroni
Pecorino cheese
Instructions
Bone the sardines. (If you slit the fish lengthwise and grab it by the tail, the bone easily strips out). Chop the fennel and boil under just tender in water that you will use to cook the pasta. Strain the fennel out of the pot and chop finely.
Heat a sauté pan over medium heat and add enough olive oil to just cover the bottom. Brown garlic and onion in oil until soft. Add tomatoes, chopped fennel, pine nuts, raisins, and anchovies. Simmer for 10 minutes. At this point, start the macaroni and add the sardines to the pasta sauce. If the sauce is too dry, add a very small amount of the fennel water. Don’t stir the sauce once the sardines are added, to avoid breaking them up.
Place the cooked pasta in serving dish and pour the sauce over, finishing off with a sprinkling of Pecorino and a little olive oil.
Serves 4 to 6.
* This is best made with fresh tomatoes, coarsely chopped, skin and seeds included. If tomatoes aren’t in season, you could use good canned tomatoes.
The first Emperor of a unified Germany, Wilhelm I, was a strict and conservative man. His son, Frederick III, was a liberal mind. A brilliant man and a keen reformer, he was full of ambition to transform German society, do away with stuffy nobility and its ancient war-like ways, and usher in a new, open-minded and scientifically oriented Germany.
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Wilhelm I, however, kept on living… born in 1797, he didn’t die until 1888, aged almost 91 years old. Frederick had to wait for a long time for it to finally be “his turn”. He was eager, and excited for the task. But then, three days before his father passed away, Frederick was diagnosed with throat cancer. He had been ill for a while, and his health rapidly took a turn for the worst. By time his father was buried, he was already too weak to walk in the procession. He looked on from the palace window, and wept…
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No small part of Frederick’s sorrow? His son and heir, Wilhelm, was a war-like man, imperialistic, aggressive, expansionist, conservative… the polar opposite of his peace-loving, progressive father. Frederick wanted desperately to make good use of his remaining time on earth. But cancer of the throat soon took away his ability to talk, and a botched operation to fix his pain resulted in even greater pain and discomfort when the resulting wound became infected.
“I had so hoped to have been of use to my country. Why is Heaven so cruel to me? What have I done to be thus stricken and condemned?” wrote Frederick III in his diary. He died in June 1888, a mere 99 days into his reign, aged 56. It is often speculated that, had Wilhelm II not ascended to the throne, his father would have moved away from Prussian militarism and Germany may never have entered WWI. WWII would have been averted as well.
We were all working overtime and being stressed out. Sales weren’t doing well, people were quitting, and everything was dysfunctional. Some items at the store weren’t even there or expired.
My boss was in a bad mood, taking it out on everyone. Nitpicking, tearing others down, and calling people incompetent. I’d already gotten a warning for talking back. I had told her that she shouldn’t be treating people that way. We were all working hard and doing our best. She said that if I didn’t like how she ran the store, then to get out. I was really tempted, but kept working.
It was the final straw when a pregnant co-worker needed to go home on time because she had to walk home at 11:00 PM. My boss refused and my co-worker was in a lot of pain. My boss told her to suck it up, that it was her fault for being an irresponsible wh*** and being stuck as a single mom. This made my co-worker burst into tears; her boyfriend had just broken up with her and left her after the news she was pregnant. She’d been taking it hard since.
I marched right up to this and told my co-worker to gather her things because she worked enough for the night, that I would drive her home. My co-worker listened.
My boss was furious for undermining her. I blew up at her, telling her that she needed to work on her morals and values. I asked her how she could even think about doing this to someone, especially her own worker? My boss answered that it was the wh***’s problem, not ours.
I told her that she should never call someone that and her behavior is exactly why she was losing employees. I said this was why nobody wanted to be around her or get to know her. She was an awful human being, no matter how many times she lied to herself.
I ended it that she was right, that I couldn’t work for someone like her. I didn’t like how she ran the store and I quit; the only time I ever did.
I drove the pregnant woman home and thanked me for everything. I explained that I quit, but would drive her if she needed me.
Apparently, I started a chain. Five people quit after me, including the pregnant woman.
The ironic part is that two months later, that boss was fired… for her treatment of employees.
I don’t know that it was the dumbest, but it was certainly an interesting and unusual complaint against me.
I was notified that officers were at a housing project and were requesting permission to force entry into an apartment. The officers had identified a man who had multiple warrants for his arrest. As they were arresting him he broke away from them and ran into an apartment where he did not belong.
I was a watch commander at the time and advised them to set up a perimeter around the apartment and I would be there in two minutes. Upon my arrival, I knocked on the door and spoke with the tenant who was very angry that my officers were threatening to kick down her door.
I had an advantage in speaking with this woman as I knew the complex manager and I also had studied the lease agreements with the various complexes. One reason for an immediate start of eviction proceedings was allowing criminal activity to be conducted at the apartment. I explained that I did not want to see her violate her lease, or have to pay for the door if the police had to break it in.
I explained the search process, and that we were just going to take the man who had run into her house into custody, and leave, without messing anything up inside. She allowed the officers to enter as long as I agreed to stay at the scene. I entered with the officers and actually helped in the search, checking one downstairs closet.
The man was found upstairs fully dressed in bed under the covers (so creative!). He was taken into custody and transported to the department for processing.
Several minutes after I get to the station, I receive a call from the resident. She said, “One of your cops stole $1000 from my apartment.” I advised her that I would take the particulars of her complaint and get to the bottom of this immediately.
I asked where the money had been located and she answered: “In the downstairs closet.” I thought for a minute and replied, “I’m the only one who searched the downstairs closet and I didn’t see or take any money.” She replied rather sarcastically, “Well, it was there before you came in and it’s gone now, so if you didn’t take it, where’s my money?”
Now my mind is going over each minute of the search, with no reasonable explanation. I asked to place the woman on hold for a minute and went to the processing room where the accused was.
Also in the room was a young woman who was counting out a pile of cash. I asked whose money is this. The girl replied, “It’s my money and I’m posting his bail.”
Now I remember, the girl was in the house. I said, “I saw you at the house. Where did you get all that money from?” She replied, ”From the closet downstairs.”
I put the resident, who was the girl’s mother, on speaker phone and had the daughter explain where the $1000 in bail money came from.
I spoke to the mom afterward and she apologized repeatedly. I told her it was already forgotten, and how much I had appreciated her cooperation at the scene, putting her trust in me.
After that, she thought I was a good cop and would wave to me or stop and say hello. Out of a silly misunderstanding, a higher level of trust would develop. So much of police work is about building trust, one person at a time.
I learned how to do some simple programming on my own. I wrote simple programs at work for my own and my department’s use. My boss knew about it. One day she came into my office and demanded that I write a program for another department. I tell her, politely of course, that I would be happy to do it but she had just hired a well-trained person to do just that sort of thing and it might be better if he did it. She quickly turned on her heel without saying a word, walked immediately to HR and wrote me up for insubordination. HR suspended me with pay immediately and I was escorted out of the building by security. I hired a lawyer, the best employment lawyer in the area and a friend, immediately. The lawyer told me that I would eventually get fired and then he would go into action. He also told me that my boss would be fired in 6 months and her boss would be fired within a year. Soon I got fired in person by my boss, who smiled throughout the whole ordeal (I had been with the company 21 years and had nothing but excellent reviews), while a security guard stood behind her. I was smiling on the inside.
My lawyer went to work. With 3 weeks my status was changed to retired (at age 56), my legal fees paid, was given a sizable settlement, and never had to go back into work. In about 8 months my boss was fired and her boss was transferred to corporate Siberia. To my surprise, a year or so later the company newspaper published picture of me standing in front of a beautiful new RV in the retiree’s section of the paper. I had bought the RV with part of the settlement check and sent the picture in as a joke. No one probably knew that it was a joke.
Back in about 1990 I was waiting on a group of six men at Baker’s Square. Five of them were normal people, but the sixth was just a funnel when it came to coffee. He wanted me to leave a pot at the table, which we weren’t allowed to do. I told him I’d keep him topped up. He was skeptical, and he was right to be.
I have never seen any three people drink as much coffee in an hour as that guy. I couldn’t keep up. I asked my manager if I could leave him a full pot and was told no. The guy was going from kind of irritated to outright crabby, probably partly due in part to the caffeine overdose he had to be on the cusp of. Glares, passive aggressive remarks, like that.
Near the end of their meal I got kind of slammed and the poor man’s cup was probably empty for five minutes. As soon as I had the chance I hustled to the table and was filling cups. Coffee Man was on the far right and I was going left to right. As I was tipping the pot over his cup he snapped at me, “Could you take a little longer with that fucking coffee?!”
Instantly aborted the pour with less than a teaspoon in his cup. Looked him in the eye with a smile (more of a smirk tbh) and said, “Yes, I absolutely can.”
Turned on my heel and left, with the sound of his friends laughing behind me. Went to the break room and had a cigarette. A whole one. Customer’s always right yeah?
Told the manager what happened on my way back out to the floor. He couldn’t keep from laughing but also said you can’t do that and he was taking over the table. I think he comped Coffee Man’s meal, but I never heard another word about it after that.
Ended up with a pretty good tip, I assume from his friends.
Passport Bros – The Men Fleeing The West | Japan Street Interviews
Bob loved me unconditionally and always respected me during our entire relationship.
We were married for over 31 years. We worked together for much of that time in a very public business. We met on the job when Bob was hired as the news director at a TV station I was already working for as a reporter/anchor. So not only was he my boss, but we co-anchored the evening news as well.
Bob was incredibly careful to make sure I was never granted any special privileges in the newsroom. His decision at work, went. He would always listen to my point of view and that of the rest of the staff, but his decision was final.
He was always able to switch to the mindset that we were equal when we went home.
He loved me like nobody ever had before , even when I didn’t love myself. He loved me when he was mad at me and when he really didn’t like something that I had done or said.
Bob was my husband…my partner and my best friend. He was my teacher and teammate as well.
Although he was not purrrfect (sorry, we were owned by cats), he was purrrfect for me.
I lost Bob to suicide. He had gotten incredibly sick and wasn’t going to get better. I believe that even this final decision and action, was done with me in mind. He didn’t want me to live the rest of my life as his caregiver while our bank account dwindle to pay his medical bills.
One thing about his final decision. In my opinion, Bob wasn’t wrong very often, but for me, this time he was wrong. The problem is, he was DEAD wrong. I will love and honor him forever. I work hard to make sure people remember his career and his accomplishments instead of just his final decision. I also work with several mental health organizations, including the local medical college, in both suicide prevention programs and postvention efforts (following up with people who have lost a loved one to suicide). I have done very television and radio interviews about Bob as well. I believe that since we spent most of our careers telling other people’s stories, that I should be willing to share ours.
Bob loved me, unconditionally. That is what he did for or to me.
Several years ago, my job was to sell robots to SWAT teams. Every SWAT team (except two of them) wanted one, but they couldn’t all afford them, so the problem wasn’t that the potential customers didn’t want to buy. The problem was that it was difficult to get to the SWAT teams. Lots of people wanted to get to them to sell them various things they didn’t want nor need, so the department didn’t make it easy to reach the SWAT commanders. I had several different ways of getting to them, all of which worked some of the time, but none that worked all of the time.
Then one day I figured out a new approach. Whenever I saw a cop along the road waiting to catch speeders and such, I would deliberately speed up in order to get pulled over. When the cop walked up to the window, I would say, “I have a SWAT robot in my trunk.” The response was always a variation of, “You have a what?” I would then ask if he wanted to have a look at it.
Sometimes the cop got very nervous about me opening the trunk, but they always wanted me to. (Could have been a guy with a gun in there; the cop had no way of knowing.) Once the robot was revealed, I would hand the cop the control and show him how to operate the robot. Then I would ask for the department’s SWAT commander’s name. The reason for this was that I wanted to be able to say “Officer so and so told me you would want to have a look at this robot.” It worked every time.
However, one time the cop was already writing the ticket on his way to my car. After the standard conversation and demo, the cop said that he couldn’t tear up the ticket, because he would get in all kinds of trouble for a missing ticket number, so he wrote me up for 1 mile per hour over the speed limit. If I had gone to court, the judge would have thrown the case out, but I just went ahead and paid the ticket instead.
Later, when I told the founder the story, he said, “From now on, the company will pay for every ticket you get while on the job.” I never got another ticket, though.
Ukraine SitRep: Finally A Wonder-Weapon That Does What It Promised To Do
The city of Avdeevka, (not to be confused with the small town of Andreevka near Bakhmut), is situated immediately north-west of Donetsk city. It has been used for years as a Ukrainian fortress well positioned for artillery attacks on Donetsk. The whole city, and especially the coke and chemical plant in its northern sector, was well prepared to defend against Russian attacks.
But despite all attempts to hold on to it the Ukrainian garrison within the city is about to be encircled and fall. Source: Live UA Map – bigger
2024 02 09 1e3 19
The Russian attacks are coming from multiple directions and are more progressed than the Ukraine friendly map above is showing. The biggest danger to the Ukrainians is the Russian move in the north west which threatens to cut the city off from its supply line through the northern coal and chemical plant.
The Russian victory in this battle was accomplished with the help of one type of weapon created during the current war in Ukraine.
In the early 1990s the U.S. developed a strap on kit for unguided bombs that turned dumb weapons into precise ammunition.
… a guidance kit that converts unguided bombs, or “dumb bombs”, into all-weather precision-guided munitions. JDAM-equipped bombs are guided by an integrated inertial guidance system coupled to a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver, giving them a published range of up to 15 nautical miles (28 km). JDAM-equipped bombs range from 500 to 2,000 pounds (230 to 910 kg).[5] The JDAM’s guidance system was jointly developed by the United States Air Force and United States Navy, hence the “joint” in JDAM. … The JDAM is not a stand-alone weapon; rather it is a “bolt-on” guidance package that converts unguided gravity bombs into precision-guided munitions (PGMs). The key components of the system are a tail section with aerodynamic control surfaces, a (body) strake kit, and a combined inertial guidance system and GPS guidance control unit.
The JDAM kit, of which more than 500,000 were produced, allowed for the use of large piles of cold-war era bombs with previously unknown precision.
After the 2022 start of the war in Ukraine Russia engaged in a program to develop an equivalent to the JDAM kit. The program was finished by the end of 2023. The Russian version can be strapped onto a 500kg or a 1,500 kilogram dumb bomb extending their range by attaching wings, guidance kit and control surfaces to already existing dumb bombs. Prototype of a FAB 500 with (folded) wings and guidance kit
After being programmed with target coordinates the bomb gets dropped, turns 180 degree around its length axis and unfolds its wings. The wings enable the bomb to fly some 50 miles before hitting the ground. This allows the planes dropping these bombs to stay outside of the enemy’s air defense envelope.
The guidance kits are cheap and can easily be mass produced.
Yesterday some 65 FAB500 and FAB1500 were used against targets in Avdeevka.
The use of these bombs, which carry 300 kilogram and more of explosives, near one’s own troops requires careful planing and observation. Observers on the ground have to make sure that their own troops are outside of the deadly circle of these bombs and that the coordinates of targets are submitted in a disciplined but secure and timely manner. Pilots have to make sure that the received coordinates are programmed into the bombs and that their release is done at the right attitude and positions.
This kill chain requires intensive training and disciplined soldiers. Yesterday’s attacks demonstrate that the Russian army and air-forces have mastered this discipline.
Any detected resistance or position of Ukrainian troops was visited by a precise FAB attack within just a few minutes.
There is no defense against these weapons. It is no wonder then that any resistance against the Russian onslaught is breaking down. Russian troops can proceed through bombed out Ukrainian positions without taking losses.
Previous reports have talked about a Russian superiority in artillery by a factor of 5 or higher. But consider that a 155mm artillery round has a weight of some 50 kilogram, 60% of which are explosives. One FAB carries 10 to 30 times the explosive equivalent of one artillery round.
The Ukrainian army has nothing comparable in its arsenals.
The introduction of mass FAB500 strikes onto the Ukrainian battle field have given the Russian forces a new qualitative advantage that will change the course of the war (though not its outcome). The U.S. political and military specialists who still believe that attrition is a viable strategy for the Ukrainian army are clearly way off the path of reality.
On February 1 the German broadsheet Bildreported of the conflict in the Ukrainian leadership:
The Bild publication writes that Zaluzhny wanted to withdraw troops from Avdiivka a few weeks ago, but Zelensky refused him this and on December 30 he personally went to the city to the front line to support the Ukrainian Armed Forces fighters.
So all the coffins that arrived from near Avdeevka to Ukraine since December 30 are solely on the conscience of Zelensky and his passion for narcissism.
Zelenski had asked Zaluzny to resign which the General rejected. The Ukrainian president has since made clear that he wants to fire the more popular general but is still looking for the right time and reason to do so.
The loss of Avdeevka may give him a marketable excuse to finally do that even when it is clear that it was Zelenski’s narcissism, and not Zaluzny’s advice, that has caused high Ukraine losses while inevitably losing a not holdable position.
Posted by b on February 8, 2024 at 12:38 UTC | Permalink
It was my last job in Vietnam before I moved to the U.S. I was in that job for almost 5 years.
When I first started my position and reported to my boss, he was extremely difficult with me. He questioned everything and demanded an explanation for everything I did, including why I did it the way I did and how I came to that solution. This continued for six months. I felt so ‘roasted’ by him.
After those six months, one day, I received an email from him saying, “Read this email thread and tell me what I should do.” In another email, he replied to someone else’s email about a solution, added me to the loop, saying, “++ [my name]. I will approve this after [my name] has reviewed and gives me the green light.”
I had earned his trust.
One day, I messed up something important in an important project. I panicked, ran to him, and asked him what I should do. He sat me down and told me, ‘Remember, after you mess something up, admit the issue and come up with a solution to fix the problem yourself. You need to control how YOU are going to fix it; do not let anyone tell you what to do, because it won’t be in your favor.’ Listening to him, I calmed down and thought of a solution myself.
That was the most valuable lesson I learned from office. He is the best boss I’ve ever had, and I am thankful for the time I had the chance to work with him.
My dad was called as a witness to an accident that a member of the public had allegedly had on a building site he was foreman on. The victim had apparently fallen into a deep hole that had not been labelled clearly and then been laughed at and not helped by my father. Apparently when the victim had spoken to my dad he had refused to offer any help. The victim was suing the company for actual injury and for pain and suffering.
Prior to appearing in court the victim’s lawyer had contacted my dad and told him what was going to be said (I don’t know why, the case was a long time ago) My dad replied with “Are you really sure you want to do that?” The lawyer said of course and see you in court. My dad repeated “Are you really sure you want to do that?” The lawyer hung up.
On the day of the court case the victim told their story then they called my dad to the stand. The lawyer asked what job my dad had been doing onsite on the day of the accident. My dad replied with “None, I wasn’t on site on that date.” The lawyer called my dad a liar so my dad got his passport out which showed an exit date of 2 days before the alleged date of the accident and a re-entry date 6 weeks after.
Guess who ended up paying costs for that little debacle!? The victim’s lawyer was less than impressed.
She got a gold star
Guys give out the relationships. Women give out the sex.
All I can add about what to do if captured. At first simply give name, rank and serial number. During the class I asked the following, “what do you do when they bring pliers and a few other devices?” The instructor replyed, “ask politely for a ream of paper (a ream is 500 sheets of paper) and a dozen Bic pens; as long as you are writing they’ll leave you alone that is until they send the notes you wrote up their chain of command.” LOL. We always had a cover story that would make us so low on the classified stuff and if they persist; I would if captured I would tell them that I’m simply a cook. If pressured I’d ask them to let me cook them a meal. LTC Nick Rowe convinced his captures that he was a cook, this worked until they found out his real MOS; that he was a Special Forces 1LT. Nick knew that after 24 hours anything he told his captures would have been changed and will no longer be of any use to his captures. Nick was the go to guy on how to survive capture. He escaped after five years as a POW.
During capture you’ll always be looking for an opportunity to escape. Nick was assassinated while on duty in the Philippines.
The Famous belief that an emerging power will always be a threat to an existing power and war between them is inevitable
The Belief is incomplete
This is the case only when the Emerging Power desires to be a global hegemon
This is NOT the Case with China
image 120
China needs Cooperation for its growth and development
China needs Energy, Oil and Gas from others
China needs almost 23% of it’s Food from others
China needs Global Markets for its Trade
Thus China lives on a WIN WIN cooperation
China can flourish only as part of the Global Economy
The only thing that has changed is SO DOES THE USA
Until maybe three decades ago, the US could flourish on its own domestic economy, it’s own Oil & Gas, it’s Western and Japanese allies and satellites
Today the US needs many more countries to flourish and CHINA is one of the most important of them.
US needs China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and several other Nations in order to flourish as an economy
This the US does not like
The US doesn’t want to be dependent on China for it’s welfare and prosperity
The US policy has always been to CONTROL ANY NATION ON WHICH IT’S PROSPERITY DEPENDS
Thus it has two options :-
A China that is shaped as per US requirements. A Lackey basically. Like Japan and South Korea and now even Germany and France OR
A China weakened enough to accept US guidelines on what constitutes FAIR PLAY
China of course will not agree to either
China believes in a direct win win cooperation in the “May the best man win” mode of competition
So it’s the US that wants to keep the OLD WORLD ORDER rather than the Chinese wanting a new one
The Chinese just want to make money, grow and develop their economy and not be subject to throttling by the West and so to develop their own independent and safe technology and financial systems and military
Maybe 50–60 years later China could change but today there is zero chance of China wanting a New World Order or be a hegemon
We bought a used couch from someone on the Facebook. Seemed too good to be true. $1000 for a couch that goes for $3500 new. Leather sectional with 4 electronic leg rests, cupholders, USB charging ports, etc. A very nice upgrade from our existing sectional.
So, we went and checked it out. They had it in their garage. I asked why they were selling it for such a low price. Aside from some scratches on one seat, it looked almost new. They said he was a surgeon at the university and he was getting a job in North Carolina. So they were packing up and preparing to move quickly. We plugged it in and tested the leg rests. Everything worked. We had a minivan, so it was going to be three trips to get the whole thing home. 30 minutes each way. Kind of a waste of a Saturday, but I felt it was worth it.
On our first trip home, the smell hit us. It was a strong smell of orange, like they used an orange scented cleaner to clean it. This should have been a larger red flag than it was at the time. We still needed to move our existing couch to the basement, so we decided we’d kill two birds with one stone. Move the new couch into the garage, let that orange smell dissipate, and take our time disassembling and moving the other one to the basement.
When we went back to the seller’s house, we asked about the strong orange scent. They downplayed it and basically said they used whatever cleaner they had on hand to clean it before selling. Red flag #2.
We accepted their answer and continued making trips back and forth. They seemed trustworthy. All the pieces of the set smelled of orange cleaner, but especially one section. That piece was much more intense. We left the couch in the garage and sure enough, the smell faded. We moved the living room couch to the basement and the new one to the living room. The orange smell was gone. However, it was replaced by a much worse odor. I don’t know how to describe it except that it was musty, pungent, and kind of stuck with you. It was mostly coming from the leftmost recliner piece.
We reached out to the sellers a couple weeks after buying it. We asked about the smell. She played dumb and said they had hardly used the couch. They had it in their basement and there was never a problem with it. No water damage, no nothing. Clearly lying to us. Red flag #3.
Over the next few weeks, we tried multiple off-the-shelf products and home remedies for removing smells from furniture. None of them improved the smell at all. We finally contacted a fire restoration type of place. They had specialty equipment to deal with all sorts of problem smells in furniture. The cost was high and we didn’t know if it would work, so they offered us a deal. They said, bring in the problem recliner. They’ll try to remove the smell from that one piece. If they succeed, we’ll bring in the rest and they’ll fix each piece at a total cost of $700. If they can’t fix that recliner, no charge and we go our separate ways. Handshake, done deal.
I brought the recliner in and the guy who received it immediately started sniffing all the parts of it like a dog. He got underneath and focused on that area. From under the back, he exclaimed, “Tomcat! Nothing’s gonna work. We’ll try, but it won’t come out. Nothing gets tomcat urine out of furniture.”
Why I’d question the expertise of a guy who crawls under furniture and identifies tomcat urine is still a mystery to me. He was absolutely right. Their process didn’t put a dent in that scent, and we didn’t pay them a dime when I picked it up.
At this point, we’re pissed. We spent $1000 on a couch that’s unusable, and we’ve moved our clunky sectional to the basement and back again, not to mention spending a Saturday moving their couch home. We keep reaching out to the seller. She tries different tactics, from ignoring us to just refusing to do anything for us. All the while, she still insists that the couch never smelled in their house and she sold it in good faith.
Finally, I’ve had enough. I tell my wife to tell this woman that they’re going to return our money and take the couch back or we’ll take them to small claims court. Then she offers to give us $100 back, still not admitting there was a problem with the couch. No. Everything or you’ll be sued. Finally, she agrees, but somehow is able to act like she’s the victim. Great. She transmitted our money back to us, but doesn’t say anything about the couch. A couple days pass, and she demands that we bring it back to them. My wife asked me when we can return it to her. My response? “Oh no. She can come pick it up from us. I’m not spending one minute or a single calorie on bringing her that useless couch.”. She says fine and asks for our address. She responds a couple days later and says they don’t want it either. Yeah, nothing wrong with it. Sold it in good faith. But you don’t want it at all. Huh.
We put it up for sale for free on the Facebook. We were very up front on its condition. The guy who came to get it was excited about it. I warned him that the scent is strong and nothing will improve it. He didn’t care. Said his sense of smell is very bad and he didn’t think it’d be a problem.
The reason most fights come down to bare knuckle brawling is simple. All that stuff you see on TV, MMA, martial arts tournaments etc are people that are trained to fight like that.
I have had my fair share of fights over the years, some I won, some I took a beat down. I have never seen anyone win a street fight using martial arts. Its probably not because it isn’t effective. Its because 99% of people are just watching TV or taking weekend course at Bob’s Dojo and that makes them think they are qualified to put the moves on Joe the drunk.
Pro Tip: Joe is not interested in style points or looking cool when he fights.
The worst thing in the world you can do if your not a trained professional is to try to kick someone in a street fight. Your foot leaving the ground means you have lost all your balance, your center of gravity is gone and your probably so slow doing it any reasonable healthy twenty-something man see’s it coming a mile away.
When I was young I had this happen to me once (not bragging) I caught the guys leg and slammed him into a brick wall. His Bruce Lee impersonation was over in less then a minute.
That wasn’t special. If you are not highly trained do not try any fancy kick moves you saw last night on TV. It wont end well. To effectively get away with kicking someone or doing most martial arts type moves like you see in the movies requires tons of training. It isn’t something Joe average can pull of just because they saw someone else do it or they took a couple of classes at the local community center.
#1: I went to high school with this girl, Lisa. She kissed me once. Later, in my early 20’s, I kept randomly running into her, all over the world: in a dive bar in New York, on the street in San Francisco, and in an obscure back alleyway in Oaxaca, Mexico.
#2: When I lived in New York, I had a dream in which some voice kept repeating a 4-digit number, like 3264, 3264, 3264, like it was very important. At the time, New York had a lottery you could play by choosing four numbers. I thought about playing 3264, but then dismissed the idea, as I had to go to work. As I was about to get on the subway, I noticed that my subway car was numbered 3264. That did it for me, I ran to the nearest lottery kiosk and played that number. The following day, the winning number was announced: 3265. One digit off. I was rather annoyed with the universe over that one.
#3: I exited my gym and hopped into my car, at that time a rather sad and beat-up green mid-1980’s Toyota Tercel. As I was pulling out of the parking lot, I noticed that there was someone else’s stuff scattered around. And then it hit me: This was NOT my car! It turns out that for that particular model, the keys are sometimes interchangeable. Toyota made about 13 possible key shapes, and the woman who had already driven MY car away, had the same key I did. It took her longer to notice.
My wife would occasionally smell something odd. She couldn’t describe it. It happened at random times in random places, like in her classroom or at a concert or on the sidewalk downtown or in our house. If she was with someone she would ask, and nobody else smelled it. This happened over the course of at least two or three years that we can remember.
She also occasionally stumbled or lost her balance, which she attributed to natural clumsiness.
One Saturday afternoon in late March 2022 I came home from an errand to find her shivering under a blanket but not cold, and stammering her speech. I declared “something ain’t right with that girl” and took her to the Emergency Room. There a CAT scan revealed “a concerning mass” in her head. She was transferred across town to the major regional medical center. Sunday morning a MRI showed detailed pictures of a mass the size of a tennis ball behind her right eye.
That Tuesday she underwent 9 hours of surgery to remove a meningioma – a tumor of the meniscus tissue surrounding the brain. It was contained (not invasive) but growing. It had been growing for some years before it pressed on nerves and on the brain itself enough to disturb their function, including vision and smell and balance and eventually seizures. I brought her home that Friday afternoon, six days (to the hour) after we entered the ER.
Beginning immediately and now two years on, her olfactory hallucinations (remember the question was about smelling something?), tremors, and problems with balance and coordination are gone. She has a new eyeglass prescription. Follow-up MRIs continue to reveal no recurrence, and her brain is expanding to re-occupy the space from which it had been shoved aside by the tumor as it grew. She has made a more-than-full recovery, engaged with new sporting challenges, and enjoys every day as a teacher, musician, and Grandma.
By the grace of God expressed through a surgeon’s skillful hands, she no longer smells things that aren’t real, I get to enjoy more years with my lovely bride!
Here in my little town we had this business called the Executive Whirl-A-Sage. It offered massage and spa services for the “discriminating client”.
Everyone knew what it really was.
Anyhooo… The IRS decided to take notice. But they couldn’t figure out how much money the place made because it did everything in cash. They got clever.
Sent an agent in as a “client”. (I always wondered which lucky dude landed THAT plum assignment!) He had his “service” (which I suspect didn’t include the happy ending, but who knows???). He carefully counted the number of towels used.
The IRS then demanded all the laundry bills for the business. They counted the total number of towels and divided by the number used per client to determine the number of clients. Some simple math and they had their estimated revenue.
Needless to say, the place was closed down when it couldn’t pay the bill.
I’d just like to start off by saying, gentlemen, I love y’all. You’re half the world. Most of you are great, many of you are just sweet and adorable.
And then there’s the rest of you who come out of the barn in which you were raised just long enough to scare me out of leaving my house.
The right to have sex with me is earned. It’s not transactional, it’s not a bought and sold commodity, and I don’t owe you just because you bought me dinner or even a lousy cup of coffee. In fact, I owe you nothing of myself except my public courtesy, and that can be withdrawn at any time if you show yourself unworthy of it.
What you men—and this is where you stop being gentlemen—do to really creep me out is that you forget that I am the ultimate keeper of my body, and try to wear me down when I say no. Constantly badgering, hinting, whining like a toddler in a checkout line full of candy. Like a toddler you sulk and stomp around when I say no, and double down on trying to get your way. And just as the toddler screams “I hate you!” because mom won’t buy them a Kinder egg, you turn on me when I won’t give in.
“Bitch.”
“Fat pig.”
“You’d be lucky to have someone like me, you ugly piece of shit.”
Yeah, that’s just the right way to get me into the sack.
You don’t respect the word NO, and in that you disrespect me. That’s just creepy and you make me question my lifestyle choices.
To me I believed most of the global south world agree with me. I am sure the U.S. dog and slave nations very much prefer to lie to themselves that the U.S. is the most powerful for their own self interest and wishful thinking.
No matter how pretentious you can be, the world’s most indebted nation, the world’s highest deficit nation, the nation that spends more on defence than the next 10 biggest defence spender, the world’s most over reach, over extended war monger and trouble maker cannot be powerful. So the U.S. is at best is a desperado trying to grasp at anything to stay relevant at the cost of bringing its economy down further.
The real power is China whose respect comes from its actions. Not like the U.S. on coercion and threats. China has overtaken the U.S. in most counts. Even militarily. China does not want a poor U.S. or even a collapse U.S. it still wants a good trade with the U.S. but one that has mutual respect.
Why are universities making students pay for classes that have nothing to do with life
I work with a woman whose WHOLE family doesn’t “do funerals.” I asked her why.
She told me that it started when her paternal grandfather passed away, and they were planning the funeral. It was emotionally draining to plan while grieving, not to mention expensive.
Her paternal grandmother decided she didn’t want a funeral, and that Thanksgiving, with the whole family (my co-workers parents, co-workers in-laws, aunts, uncles, extended family on both sides) she made a declaration.
“I don’t want a darn funeral. Donate the money you’d use for a funeral for me to an animal shelter or a food bank.”
After a long discussion, it became a tradition.
They just don’t have funerals, they put up an obituary and ask for donations to whatever charity the deceased picked.
On the anniversary of their death, the family members take the ashes of their loved ones and spread them.
I don’t think it’s such a bad idea.
EDIT: (04/24/2020) Wow, I have gotten a LOT of feedback on this answer. Thank you all!
One thing I’m going to suggest to all of you is, if you choose to be cremated, please get your cremation set up and prepaid for as soon as you can.
My mom was diagnosed with Stage IV Pancreatic Cancer in March of 2017. One of the first things she did was get her cremation set up.
She prepaid for her cremation, she picked out an urn (a plastic box.) She also separately bought “keepsake urns,” for my sister, grandmother, one to be interred and one for me. She bought 10 death certificates (my dad had passed away on 2010, and she knew you’d need a lot of them for different things.)
When she passed away in February of this year, all my sister and I had to do was call the funeral home and they picked up her body. They had my sister and I go in a few days later and sign paperwork.
They didn’t try to sell us anything, they were able to be human to us. To help us grieve.
When you pass away, your family won’t have to pay anything extra out of pocket unless taxes or death certificate prices rise. We actually received a refund check for $11.38.
The cost of her “package” in 2017 was around $1,600. The funeral liaison we met with said today, it would be around $1,800.
At the time of the loss of my mom, I was so grateful she took care of it for us. It was an amazing gift.
I was doing part of my internship in a bank in the safe deposit department. It turned out to be quite fun, actually. One day a client came down and asked to rent a safe deposit box, a large one. He was in a hurry, so I did the paperwork as fast as possible, and then took him to his box, leaving him alone to deposit whatever it was he wanted to leave with us (as we were not supposed to watch) and then he left.
About ten days later, the gentleman came back, and, by chance, I was the one who went to open his box with him. I was about to leave him at it, when he stopped me and said “No need, I’m just getting this and I’ll return the box.” I looked and he had a big bag of chocolates which he was pulling out of the box! I gave him a puzzled look and he laughed: “My wife demanded I buy Swiss chocolates for the whole family, but then I had to add a leg to my trip, and I couldn’t take them with me. I thought it would be a pity to throw them away…so…”He raised his shoulders and left.
Still, he’d paid one year’s rent for a large sized safe deposit box, which was about 500 to 600 francs, to avoid throwing away maybe 200 francs of chocolates. And created an insect infestation risk for the bank, if he’d forgotten or neglected to return for his chocs!
I never had a situation like that,but just last year one man that has a restaurant in Rovinj,Croatia called my ex boss to ask him for my phone number since he saw me work the previous season.He then called me and said that he wanted me to work at his restaurant,and since he knew that I’m good at my job he offered me 3000€ a month,accomodation and food.He said that he knows that I’m worth it and that he won’t haggle because he wants me to work for him.I accepted and got there,and started to work. To cut the story short,from all the things he promised,nothing was delivered. It was close but not what was promised.When I got the first salary I noticed that the money paid to me was off,but since my first month there I didn’t work the full month i decided to wait for the next salary and to see what is what.The salary for the full month I got 2300€.When I called him to speak about it he said;”The conditions are what they are,if you don’t like it,good luck!”,and he raised his hand like he wanted to shake my hand.I grabbed his hand right away and said “I don’t like it.”He was surprised,and when I was walking away I heard him say that 2300€ is still a good salary and non of his other workers had that much.But to me it would have been the same if he gave me 1€ less than promised.I would still left.You can’t lie to me like that and expect me to take it.And besides the way he said that”if you don’t like it,good luck”that would be humiliating if I were to stay.Fuck you and your 2300€ a month.If he offered me 2300 from the start,and kept his word I would still come to work for him,and I would be satisfied.But anyway when it comes to your case,I think that saying to people:”If you don’t like it,you can go.” is degrading,and I would go.I think that there should be mutual respect between the worker and the boss,not just respect for the boss.
Some of what was said in the interview by Putin:
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– Russia is ready to supply Europe with gas through the “Nord Stream 2” pipeline, but Germany does not want to
– The United States was the one who blew up the “Nord Stream” pipeline.
– Elon Musk’s creativity cannot be stopped, but rather an understanding must be reached with him
– Russia and Ukraine will reach an agreement sooner or later
We want to reach a solution to the Ukrainian crisis through negotiations
– NATO has options to recognize Russia’s control over the new territories
We have information that the United States supported terrorists inside Russia
The West fears a strong China more than it fears a strong Russia
– The Americans pledged not to expand NATO eastward, but the expansion happened 5 times
– The world will change regardless of how the crisis in Ukraine ends
– Russia becomes the first economy in Europe in 2023 despite the sanctions. American attempts are of no use.
– Ukraine is an artificial entity established in the Stalinist era
Russian relations with Ukraine are distinguished by language, kinship and religion
We proposed that Russia join NATO after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but they refused
– When NATO refused to let us join it, they feared Russia as a large and powerful country
We will never attack Poland unless we are attacked by them
How the heck did Andy Dufresne walk into nearly a dozen banks in the Portland area and walk out unrecognized with hundreds of thousands of Warden Norton’s money the day after his escape from Shawshank Penitentiary?
Signature cards, no photos on driver’s licenses, and no CNN or World Wide Web.
This stumped me for a long time, too. I couldn’t figure out how someone could use a phony driver’s license with no picture on it, and take out tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars out of any bank in the United States.
But apparently photos weren’t always required on driver’s licenses in every state. The first photos appeared on driver’s licenses in California in 1958. Texas didn’t require them until the mid-1970′s. Even New York and Tennessee didn’t require pictures until 1986.
I couldn’t find what year Maine began putting photos on theirs, but, it’s probably safe to assume that in the mid-1960’s, Maine didn’t yet require pictures on a legal form of ID.
The Maine driver’s license Andy presented to the bank was probably state issued and not forged, if we assume it was Warden Norton who created the alias to hide the money he was making by taking bribes from construction companies who didn’t want Shawshank’s cheap labor taking over major construction jobs in the local area.
Also, I remember, from working for a couple of years for a bank when I was in college that signature cards are placed on file with the bank, so if someone comes in without ID, they can just match the signature to the card, and accept that as legal identification.
We would think of that as somewhat of a lax form of ID in today’s day and age, but fifty years ago, the world was different.
Anyway, it makes sense that Warden Norton would use Andy and his wealth of banking knowledge to create all these accounts under the alias, Randall Stevens (Peter Stevens, in the novella) even having Andy sign the signature card (that doesn’t always have to be done inside the actual bank, believe it or not) so as to further insulate Norton from the crime.
As for why no one in the banks or on the street knew Andy by his face, someone else mentioned that this was 1966 (or 1975, if we’re talking about the original text) and in that era, it took a day, or so, to get someone’s photo into the newspapers (which was the World Wide Web back in those days) to get a photo distributed to the three major broadcast companies, and maybe a couple of days to reach all the local TV stations state- and nation-wide.
The instant gratification of the Information Superhighway was still a couple of decades away, so the wheels of communication could take a few days or even a week to get up to full speed back then, so it’s completely plausible that Andy Dufresne could have walked into a bank the following morning to clean out all of Warden Norton’s false bank accounts without anyone even knowing there was an escape at Shawshank, much less recognize his face.
The only thing that’s a little bit implausible is that he could get to eleven banks, all in one day. It has always been a tedious, drawn-out task to go into a bank and close an account, especially if you get an accounts officer, then an assistant manager, then the bank manager, all trying to talk you into keeping your account open, which Andy would most assuredly have run into, considering the money he was taking out of each branch, so the idea of getting to that many banks in a single 24-hour period is a bit of a stretch.
She was young and timid and always wore full-length skirts and hats whenever she was outside. She was one of the three women who ran the gifted program in my middle school. That may have been a part of her student teaching (internship), now that I think about it. Like I said, she was very young.
The gifted program in middle school was a one-hour-per-week pull-out program. Three or four kids from each class (I was one of them) left our regular class for that hour and went to a different room where the three teachers played logic games with us, discussed current events, and generally tried to challenge us more than the regular teachers were able to, since the regular teachers had to aim for the middle of the pack, student-wise.
The best part of that program was the field trips. It was nice to spend extra time with just that group of classmates and those three teachers. I happen to have some pictures from an 8th-grade gifted class field trip, and she is in some of them. I can tell now that she was maybe 25 years old at best back then.
Two years later, when I was a sophomore in high school, she got hired as a full-time English teacher at the school. It was cool to see her again. All of us former gifted class students of hers were happy to see her again, but sad that she wouldn’t be teaching the advanced English class we were in.
Within two weeks, we saw her for the last time, jogging down the hall mid-class period, crying, heading for the exit.
She was used to working with gifted kids in small groups… Kids who were well-behaved and genuinely interested in what she was trying to teach them.
As is the norm with high school teachers, the newest teachers get the last pick when it comes to classes. So she was stuck with teaching the remedial English class… the students who had the most academic and behavior issues. Apparently, those students were able to get under her skin so much that she walked out on the job. Broke her contract and everything. We never saw her again after that.
I remember seeing the assistant principal running down the hall shortly after that, into the room that she’d left teacher-less. It was the first time I’d heard an adult actually swear at students. (Although I was told that the coaches did it all the time to their student athletes.) He got the class back under control for the rest of the period, mainly by yelling at them like a drill sergeant.
But perhaps that’s what they needed all along: someone with the demeanor of a drill sergeant, not the timid young lady whose teaching career they ended quickly.
I’ve read many of the comments on this topic, and I believe my offering here can be helpful.
I worked in food service for 14 years and held the title of Executive Chef at two American institutions. The most notable was at the Augusta Country Club in 1987 up to the Masters’ Golf Tournament of April 1988.
The grilling, broiling, or searing of a Rib Eye steak will bring a distinct flavor to the flat surface of the cut, which is common for all beef seared grilled or broiled. However, that flavor will not be present along the outer perimeter of the cut, and tenderness is not guaranteed, especially once it cools down. (I’ve had to use a jacquard tenderizing device on some.)
A roasted Prime Rib can be prepared in an oven to achieve a dark brown upper/outer surface and can then be placed under a broiler/salamander to add more of that coloring/flavor to the outer surface. Also, a sliced Prime cut can be seared to get that browning onto the face of the cut. Au Jus is a lesser preferred option for me in that it “waters” the flavor as it rinses off some of the rub/seasoning.
Now, just last year I developed what I believe is the pinnacle of prep for Prime Rib. (I moved away from buying ribeye after I got less-than great results in tenderness after paying a high price per pound.)
What I did was to season a whole Prime Rib with a plain mustard binder, and my custom rub. THEN I thoroughly pierced the entire Prime with a long skewer to promote self-basting INSIDE the cut. The final step is the “ringer.” I put the Prime into my Cuisinart pellet smoker on 250 degrees, until the core temperature reached 200 degrees. (about 10 hours) I use dark wood pellets like Cherry, or a dark fruit blend. The outer surface comes out as dark as any sear. The smoke ring all around the Prime is always at least 1 centimeter wide, and the inside is always full of flavor!
Some of my guests who like rare meats believed they got rare from me. “Rare” is (arguably) around 165 degrees internally, but my Prime at 200 degrees was so tender, juicy and flavorful inside and out, that it pleased all my guests.
I am retired from my career, but I’ll be smoking another Prime Rib for visitors at my home next week!
Both. We had one restaurant that charged all cops $2 for a meal. It was a greasy spoon that health departments and vegans despise but it was the only place in town open 24/7 that we did not have to worry about some crackhead cook “doctoring” our food.
That $2 was usually supplemented with a $5 tip, which covered the meal and the waitress’ tip.
The chief stopped us from going to the diner unless we paid full price. So we paid full price. Orders are orders.
When the owner found out why we were paying full price, he was livid. He went to the next city council meeting and actually yelled at the mayor and city manager about how they were trying to dictate to him what he wanted to charge cops and firefighters. He had been doing it so long, everyone knew about it and didn’t care.
The day after the city council meeting, the chief rescinded his order and $2 meals were back with the $5 tip.
This was a place we could bring a homeless guy on a cold night for coffee and a meal and we did many times in the winter. We always left enough money for both and when we came in for our meal hours later, the waitress would give us our money back.
The owner would always feed someone in need for free and didn’t want us to pay for it. He felt it was his duty to do so.
Great food and a better man who, sadly, passed away many years ago.
I was born to answer this question. I have three distinct instances when my neighbors have called the cops on me, well rather my parents but still.
When I was a child I had a neighbor who would literally spy on my family and called the cops on us several times. The first time she called the cops on us was because she saw a sleeping bag on the roof and was calling because she thought one of us was on the roof. So the police come to our house and ended up waking my mom who was asleep (she works night shift as a nurse). What had happened was one of my sisters had spilled water on the sleeping bag and thought it was a sunny day she would just put it on the roof to dry.
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As you can see my house has a window above the one roof so it’s not particularly hard to do this. Anyway the cops came questioned my mom and then went about their merry way.
The second time my neighbor called the cops was when we all were getting ready to go somewhere and my dad was at work so it was just my mom and us kids and so we all got loaded into the van and we were going about our merry way when the cops call my mom and ask if she has all of her children with her. She says yes and the cop asks if it’s okay if he comes and checks. She says yes and he comes and sees that we are all there and goes on with his life.
The third and final time was the most serious. The neighbors kid threatened me and said if I didn’t come over to her house in the middle of the night she would burn my house down. Now of course that wouldn’t make sense but I was under nine and she was three years older than me and I was scared of her. So I went over and spent the night. Her mom was totally okay with this and didn’t call my parents at all. Instead in the morning she gave us breakfast because we were hungry and we went home. Later that day she calls the police on my parents because she said we were not well taken care of and were starving. All because we had asked her for breakfast because after all we had not eaten all night. So the police came and inspected our cupboards and such. They decided that my parents were fit parents and left.
So that’s my crazy neighbor for you. I hope you enjoyed my stories.
My girlfriend back then was working at a hotel near my house. She went to work in the morning, and noticed a puppy in the back of a pick-up truck in the parking lot. It was yelping and whining, like puppy’s do, so it was hard to miss.
When she left work 8 hours later, the puppy was still in the back of the truck in the parking lot… in Texas. No water. No food. It was a hot day. She grabbed the dog and brought it to my house.
She was a yellow lab mix, and my girlfriend named her Vive. The girlfriend didn’t last, but the dog did. Best dog I ever had. We traveled together through thick and thin for the next 12 years. From small apartments to horse farms, and for a few weeks living in my truck, we were best friends. I could take her anywhere. Never on a leash to control her. Only when others demanded it. She was good with children, kittens, horses, and I could leave a steak dinner on a low coffee table, and she’d never touch it.
She had 2 drawbacks. The first, was that she loved the smell of a dead skunk. Thought it was Chanel No. 5 and loved to roll in it whenever she could find it.
The second, was that she didn’t live as long as me.
I attended college in the ‘80s, when miniskirts were (again) in fashion. In one class, a lovely young woman sat beside me in the front row.
During the first week of classes, the professor dropped the chalk mid-lecture (intentionally, I suspect) and peeked up her miniskirt. Her legs were not crossed.
She was taking notes, so she didn’t notice. He saw that I had, and he quickly resumed the lecture.
In the hallway after class, I asked did she have a moment. She was wary, probably used to being hit on by strange guys. I told her what had happened, and that she should probably switch seats.
She switched out of the class. I should have.
The professor had seen me talking with her in the hall. From that point forward, he nitpicked my assignments and test answers. (It was an English course, so all answers were written.) Nothing was ever wrong, but he’d find ways to subtract a point here and there until the deductions added up. I had a D in the class at one point.
I was naive, never before having received a bad grade. (Yes, overachiever.) I assumed that eventually the reprisal would end. The realization that college professors are almost completely unaccountable came too late — after the period to drop a class.
My final grade was a C. I was distraught, not only because it was my first C, but also because it threatened my scholarship, which required that I maintain a minimum GPA.
The assistant dean called me in for a conference. I explained what had happened, bringing exhibits of his grading of my work. I also provided the name of the peeking victim to corroborate my story.
A few weeks into the next term, I received a notice that my grade had been changed to a B. It was my only B in my major field.
And I avoided future classes with that professor.
Green Lasagna with Two Sauces (Lasagna Verdi al Forno)
recipe lasagna with two sauces
Yield: 12 servings
Ingredients
Meat Sauce
8 ounces bulk Italian sausage, crumbled
4 ounces smoked sliced chicken or turkey, finely chopped
1 large onion, finely chopped
1 medium stalk celery, minced
1 medium carrot, finely shredded
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 3/4 cups water
3/4 cup dry red wine
1/3 cup tomato paste
1/2 teaspoon Italian herb seasoning
1/8 teaspoon pepper
Dash of ground nutmeg
Green Noodles
8 ounces fresh spinach or 1 (10 ounce) package frozen spinach, cooked as per package directions
2 eggs
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups all-purpose flour
4 1/2 quarts water
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon olive oil
Cheese Filling
2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
1 1/2 cups grated Parmesan cheese
1/4 cup snipped parsley
Creamy Sauce
1/3 cup butter
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
Dash of ground nutmeg
3 cups milk
Instructions
Meat Sauce
Cook and stir sausage until light brown; drain. Stir in remaining ingredients. Heat to boiling; reduce heat. Simmer uncovered, stirring occasionally, 1 hour.
Green Noodles
Remove root ends and imperfect leaves from spinach. Wash several times in water, lifting out each time; drain. Cover and cook with just the water that clings to leaves until tender, 3 to 10 minutes. Rinse spinach with cold water; drain.
Place spinach, eggs, 1 tablespoon oil and 1 teaspoon salt in blender container. Cover and blend until pureed, about 20 seconds.
Make a well in center of flour. Add spinach mixture; stir with fork until mixed. Sprinkle with a few drops water if dry; mix in small amount of flour if sticky. Gather dough into a ball. Knead on lightly floured cloth covered board until smooth and elastic, about 5 minutes. Let stand for 10 minutes.
Divide dough into halves. Roll one half into a 13 x 12 inch rectangle; cut rectangle into 6 (13 x 2 inch) strips.
Repeat with remaining dough. Spread strips on rack; let stand 30 minutes.
Heat water to rapid boil; stir in 1 tablespoon salt, 1 tablespoon oil and the noodles. Cook uncovered over medium heat until nearly tender, 15 to 20 minutes.
Drain; rinse with cold water. Place in single layer between sheets of wax paper.
Cheese Filling
Toss all ingredients together.
Creamy Sauce
Heat butter over low heat until melted. Blend in flour, salt and nutmeg. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until smooth and bubbly; remove from heat. Stir in milk. Heat to boiling, stirring constantly. Boil and stir for 1 minute; cover and keep warm. If sauce thickens, beat in small amount of milk. Sauce should be the consistency of heavy cream.
This happened a very long time ago in Corporate America.
Our department worked closely with another that was managed by Marsha, a 40-year-old workaholic who was brilliant at her job. In fact, headquarters had her conduct workshops twice a year to share her methods and to update procedures.
She was totally immersed in effective management, efficiency, quality control and motivation.
Occasionally, she would ‘come up for air’ and momentarily consider that life included much more than work. She would look around for something to do that would benefit the less fortunate and made donations of money, goods, old clothes and books.
Then it was back to being a workaholic.
She was approached by Stan, a fifty-eight-year old, homeless man who refused charity and asked for a job. She spoke with him several times at a cafe where he was sometimes given meals in return for doing odd jobs. Marsha was impressed by his attitude, but most of all, by the love he had for his dog SweetPea, a Lab mix.
That was a side of Marsha that none of us were aware of.
She put her reputation and position on the line, cleaned him up and got him a job in the company’s mail and supply room. Stan lasted two days: he insisted that SweetPea had to be with him.
Marsha didn’t blink. She negotiated a position for him in the large parking area of the office building. He and SweetPea were still there, three years later when I moved on to a different place.
Whatever the US do, or tries to do it does not matter. At the best it will only slow dow China the the U.S. expense of slowing it selves even more. China will grow till it is effectively be 5–6 times the U.S. real size. It may take the most of the 21st century but it will ultimately come to that.
The reason is simple. China has 4 times the U.S. population but it’s political and social system is simply far more superior and stable. It’s growth is sustainable and very healthy. Hence it should put grow the U.S. on per capital basis. But in the real sense. Not in U.S. dollar or even in GDP narrow sense that is frankly a farce and meaningless.
Chinese people are harder working, they are certainly more discipline, the learns more and are more industrious and highly driven. The Chinese language may render its people less descriptive but it makes them more learned and helps them learn faster and better. China is not distracted like the U.S. to get itself into endless wars like the U.S. hence it ought to be at least 50% more successful over time.
That is provided there’s us no war with the U.S. but if war happened it either end the world as we know it or it it world totally implode the U.S. till it becomes several nations. Both are not good outcome for the U.S. To me the U.S. needs to accept that the best option it to hang on to being a strong number 2 till India get its act together sometimes by the 2nd half of 21st century.
I needs to partner not try the shit of containing China right away. It needs to benefit most from China’s inevitable ascendency. Not obsessed with stoping China by cutting of its own limbs.
“You told my granddaughter her shirt was ugly,” an angry woman I’d never met before told me as I was supervising my kindergarten students during their breakfast time.
I looked down at my little student, then up at the grandmother and asked, “I’m sorry, what’s this all about?”
She repeated her claim, saying the girl came home from school the day before and told her the teacher said her shirt was ugly. I couldn’t even remember what the little girl had worn, and I most certainly never said that to a child.
Speaking to the girl, I asked her who had said her shirt was ugly and she replied, “The kids.”
Grandma went berserk at this and yelled at the girl, “No! It was your teacher who said that! That’s what you told me!”
At that point I suggested we take it to the principal and asked the other teacher in the cafeteria to cover my class. Once grandma and I were in the principal’s office, the whole conversation was repeated. The principal told the woman that she’d known me many years, that I would never speak to a child in that manner, and that clearly it was indeed other children who had said the shirt was ugly.
Grandma threatened to take her accusation to the district office. The principal pointed to her desk and said, “There’s the phone.” Grandma turned and left the office without another word, and that was the last I heard of the strangest complaint I ever received as a teacher.
Debt – had a sgt, when I first started, that lived about a mile from me, so we hung out sometimes. I get a call one day that he got arrested for bank robbery. He bailed out and my roommate and I went to talk to him, because we couldn’t believe it. He said, “I was just trying to show them how weak their security was.” We were new, but we weren’t born yesterday. Apparently he had some big gambling debts and was desperate. He went to prison.
The slippery slope – A team of narco cops decided, amongst themselves, that they weren’t being treated fairly. They were bringing in all this money in seized assets, but the department wasn’t giving them money for equipment they felt they needed, like night vision scopes. So, they kept (stole) some of the the money they seized to buy the equipment they felt they needed. mmmmm Okay. But then the equipment they needed turned into houses, cars, jewelry and boats. They went to prison.
Greed – A case I heard about recently, a deputy offered up his services to provide security for dope shipments. He said he and his coworkers would escort shipments for a certain amount of money. His “coworkers” were actually just people he knew. They all went to prison.
Born dirty – A kid from a generational gang family was raised to stay out of trouble and get good grades. The sole purpose was to get him hired on the sheriff’s department so he could help with the gang’s jail drug smuggling operation. He was found out and arrested. Within a week, he was all tatted up. He went to prison.
Stupidity/Naivete/No good deed goes unpunished/Blackmail – Inmates have nothing but time. Career criminals use that time to plan. They will try to identify, target and “groom” young naive deputies. In a case a few years back, 2013, or so, a young kid graduated from the academy and was assigned to one of the jails. An inmate started making conversation with him and being friendly. At a certain point, he gave this kid some sob story about his family and that he couldn’t get in touch with them, or something like that. Whatever it was, this young deputy decided to do something for this inmate, like take a message to his family, or something and then bring a message back. I forget exactly what it was, but it was against policy and being in his first year, he could be fired. The inmate used it against him and blackmailed him into smuggling drugs into the jail. The inmate was caught, gave the deputy up and the deputy went to prison. He made a video for the department about it that the department now shows in the academy.
Until a few years ago, when my mom was still working, she had a very strange habit — She would come back from work tired, request for a glass of coke, a couple of papad, and sit down for a few minutes before resuming other household work.
We would often tell her that rather than coke and papad, you can eat something healthier, perhaps a glass of juice and some fruits. But no, these advices would just fall on deaf ears. I wouldn’t just understand why would she not want to stay healthy.
She would often have headaches in the morning and would wake up tired. Being an advocate of yoga, other fitness activities and it’s importance, I would keep persisting with my efforts to convince her. But no, she would just not have it.
For me, it was difficult to understand why would she not want to have a better life.
Just, why not!
Surprisingly, my father, who used to go for jogging and would really care about his fitness, started ignoring the healthy bits of his life and slowly, with time, stopped doing it at all. He seemed to be following mom’s route of not caring about his health anymore. I tried to persuade him to restart with the brisk walking again, but to no avail.
Years later, I realised the reason — It was the stress that was killing them from inside — something I was not aware of, until recently, especially about the intensity of it they were dealing with.
When it was my turn to get a share of their stress coupled with some of mine, I found out how it overpowers your willingness to do things which makes you happy. It smothers you slowly, makes you want to avoid putting any extra efforts, even for those things which are absolutely essential. You become a person who just wants to do things which makes them feel normal, if not better — like having some unhealthy meals in my mom’s case; or stopping the exercises in my father’s.
Advices, suggestions, words of wisdom are the most readily available things in this world. Every body seems to give it, very few can follow it under every circumstance. What a person is going through and whether he can even make something of your suggestion (intended in a helpful way) is way beyond our understanding at times.
And unless you can be in someone’s shoes, you will never understand why that someone behaves in a certain way, or chooses not to.
I think a story from 2005 illustrates it fairly well.
This was at the Norrtäljeanstalten prison, Sweden’s highest security facility. We’re talking murderers, armed robbery, that sort of people.
One fateful evening, there was a major slip in security. Total disaster. In one wing, the cell doors remained unlocked as the staff went home for the day.
So. It’s not like the inmates could get out – they were still behind several secure layers. They just had the run of the building for one night.
So what did they do?
They made their way to the kitchen, baked a cake, and ate cake and watched TV all night. They all said it was the best night ever.
In the morning, they were unceremoniously put back in their cells, but faced no further consequences. The two staff who had managed to forget to lock got a weeks’ pay docked, and a stern warning.
Swedish prison: turns bank robbers into cake bakers.
My cat went missing for several months. He was a stray that kind of adopted my home as an inside/outside mellow lap cat. I searched and asked around, posted flyers all around town but he was just…gone. One day went to a customers home and on her living room couch is my missing cat!! This older lady had been feeding it and coaxed it inside and he stayed. He remembered me, I pointed out a little crook in his tail that convinced her it was him. I told her that he seemed pretty happy and I guess he lives here now. I gave her his vet records, cat bed, and favorite toys. Part of me was mad because she HAD to have seen those missing cat signs but I was at the same time glad he was warm and happy and not flattened by a truck or something.
About a year later, this crazy lady comes to my door with VET BILL! He got a bladder infection and she took him to the vet and asked them to charge me for it. She took the paperwork I’d given her and told them it was on my account. A bill had been mailed and I was on the phone with them before it even arrived letting know it was her cat and her problem now!
The USA government that was designed back in 1776 can no longer function. It is not suitable for the new global order. The USA is at a strategic inflection point. Great discussion by Colonel Douglas Macgregor.
See below deep in the article.
…
There is a formula used by wives that wish to leave their husbands. It is a devastating reality to the husbands of the West. The “three step rocket“. It is a template that is followed over, and over, and over again. It is important for all married people to know about this reality.
See below.
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Guys, back in the 1970’s. I would guess around 1972, my father came back from a work trip and gave me a present. It was a tiny book. The cover was plastic, and it was about 2 cm thick. It was about 4cm x 5cm or so. It was red. A little red book.
Because the cover was plastic, it was flexible and compact, and easy to slip into the pocket of my Levi jeans.
It was (the now infamous) “little red book”. And I loved it.
It was in English.
And it was page after page of sayings. All of which seemed to make a lot of sense to me, even though I was in my teens at the time.
I carried that book with me to college. To my various homes as I worked, and all the way up until I moved to China. I cannot say for certain that it influenced me to join the Chinese Communist Party, as I wouldn’t even begin to consider how to do so. But it absolutely DID influence me.
I could feel the “revolutionary spirit” of what was being birthed so far away at the other end of the world.
The Three Main Rules of Discipline are as follows:
(1) Obey orders in all your actions. (2) Do not take a single needle piece of thread from the masses. (3) Turn in everything captured.
The Eight Points for Attention are as follows:
(1) Speak politely. (2) Pay fairly for what you buy. (3) Return everything you borrow. (4) Pay for anything you damage. (5) Do not hit or swear at people. (6) Do not damage crops. (7) Do not take liberties with women. (8) Do not ill-treat captives.
“On the Reissue of the Three Main Rules of Discipline and the Eight Points for Attention – Instruction of the General Headquarters of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army” (October 10, 1947), Selected Military Writings, 2nd ed., p. 343.
How can you possibly not be impacted by such profound and intelligent direction?
Me and my friend were about 17 hanging out at the local McDonalds. Let me remind you my friend had the physique of a 25 year old because he constantly roofed with his dad. We heard a father screaming at his son if he didn’t finish eating his food he would pull his pants down right there and beat his bare ass. He would jump up and act like he was going to punch the child who appeared to be maybe 4 or 5. When he did this the child would jump and cower in his seat. Then the father would let out this horrendous laugh making fun of him. Me being a child from a physically abusive father knew exactly how this poor kid felt. My friend who had always protected me saw the look of horror on my face.
The next time he jumped up screaming he would beat his bare ass, my friend jumped up grabbed his arm and screamed “you will not be touching him as long as I’m sitting here!” The mans facial expression changed to sheer horror as he saw this kid twice his size threaten to put him in his place. He suddenly asked the boy if he was done. and scurried out of the restaurant. That day my friend grew about 10 feet tall in my eyes and saved that little boy from receiving a severe beating for such a small infraction.
I was truly desperate for work. My husband and I had returned from his Naval station in Italy to find that the military was being cut back so he was out. It was August, so I couldn’t find a teaching job anywhere and he was having trouble finding anything at all.
The local paper yielded only two jobs for which I was qualified. One was as a cashier at a supermarket for $1.95/hour (1972…what can I say?) and the other was as a paste-up artist at a newspaper for $1.90. I figured the newspaper job might be more upwardly mobile, so I applied.
The manager didn’t ask for an interview. He called to tell me that he appreciated my interest, but that I was over-qualified for the job so he wouldn’t hire me. He said he figured I’d quit if I find something better. I told him my story. He still hesitated, pointing again to my advanced degrees. I waited a beat then said, “Even college graduates have to eat.”
He hired me right then and I made sure he never regretted that decision.
Look at how serious they look and how old they are
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Their Median age is 61.3 years
They are all extremely talented people with tremendous ability and have proven themselves over and over again
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These Generation of Chinese in the 1970s and 1980s could have easily recognized their ability and merit and voted them into power due to their sheer efficiency
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Even the 1990s generation would have voted for them to a great extent, understanding the value of long term planning and hard work
image 310image 309
Todays generation?
Naah
They are all modern and highly opinionated by Social Media and the outside world
They have more money than any previous generation and have seen so much development that they are liberal by nature in their Outlook
Sure today they regard the Government and the Party as Grandfatherly figures who make the laws like they see their own grandfathers. As Strict people who will take care of you and who shouldn’t be questioned
However give them a choice and it’s likely they will fall for the same BS that others in democracies fall for including issues that are:-
LGBT related
Feminism related
Ageism related
Nationalism related (Vote for me and I will take Taiwan in a week type of Chinese versions of Modis)
Separatism related (Freedom for Uyghurs, Freedom for Hui, Freedom for Bouyan etc)
These are the Hu Jintao period Chinese
I wouldn’t trust them to vote for the best leaders over most populist or handsome or the best talkers or some other version of divisive propaganda
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The Next generation is fine
Xi Jingping has instilled a revival of the admiration for the One party meritocracy and these guys will vote always for the Party over any other
So maybe 10–15 years later, if free elections were held, the Party may win heavily as bulk of the 18–41 voters would be proud nationalists of the One party meritocracy
Today?
Bulk of the 18–41 voters would vote stupidly
So I hope not
India becoming China is admirable in its own way
China becoming India is a nightmare scenario
God help China having 100 parties and doing the idiocy Indian leaders do
US Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor Reveals TRUTH About China
This primarily shocked me because of where I live (Chicago) and my profession (teacher). I knew it was bad, but I didn’t know it was this bad:
Seventy-six percent of Chicago’s high school students, and forty-five percent of Chicago’s elementary school students, do not go to their assigned neighborhood public school.
That means that 3/4 of all high school kids, and almost half of all elementary school kids, have parents who took one look at their local public school and said, “no thanks.”
Every student in Chicago is assigned a neighborhood public school, simply based on where they live in the city. The students who don’t go to those schools go to private schools, magnet schools, charter schools, or selective-enrollment schools. Or they homeschool.
Magnet, charter, and selective-enrollment schools are public schools, too, but they require some effort on the parents’ and students’ part to get and stay in them. The selective-enrollment schools, in particular, require the most effort to get into.
All of those “public, but not neighborhood” schools were created due to parental demand or necessity. It was either create them, or watch as, year after year, even more of the city’s tax base (parents who give a damn) move to the suburbs.
This has been in the local news a lot the last week, and it even made an appearance in the national news, because the city government passed a resolution to prioritize those neighborhood public schools (which the parents reject) over the selective-enrollment schools.
The stated goal is, of course, “equity.” The idea is that, without the selective schools poaching all of the “good” students, those “good” students will go back to their neighborhood schools, and help them improve.
Except those students would not actually go to those neighborhood public schools, no matter what. Their parents would just pay for private schools, home school, or move to the suburbs. I’ve been teaching in Chicago long enough to know that most parents really don’t see the regular public school as a real option. Students here use the neighborhood public school names as the punchlines of jokes or as threats. As in, “You better be careful, or you’ll end up at [local public school].”
Also, the “good” students aren’t a tool for the city to use to improve “bad” schools. It’s not the job of the “A” students to diffuse the averages of the “F” students by enrolling in the same schools as them.
While the stated goal for this new push by the city government is “equity,” the real goal is, as with most things in government, money. The Chicago Teachers’ Union, which gets most of its money and influence via the neighborhood public schools, contributed over $2,000,000 to our current mayor’s election campaign. The quid-pro-quo is right out in the open for all to see, but the only people who bother to open their eyes to it are the people who didn’t support the mayor in the first place.
So the city government has a five-year plan to prioritize Chicago’s failing neighborhood public schools. I’m making a note to myself to check back in five years and see how it went. I predict that things will actually be worse, but they will change the metrics by which they define success, to make whatever happens fit that definition. Then they’ll say it’s not enough, and double-down on their bad policies.
All the while, private schools in the city will see an increase in enrollment, suburbs with good schools will see their property values go up even more, and home schooling will become even more popular.
Ever the cynic, and opportunist, I’ve actually been exploring ways to capitalize on this. A colleague and I have been toying with the idea of opening a tutoring center. The competition for spots at the good schools in Chicago is so tight that a lot of parents gladly pay thousands of dollars per year for their child to receive 1:1 or small-group tutoring in specific subjects, or generalized test-taking tutoring. Three of my colleagues in the last five years have left teaching to go into tutoring, and are making much more money that way.
This TikTokker Finally Realized Why Men Don’t Find Her Attractive
Let’s scroll through Instagram account of Avicii, the world famous musician.
December 26th, 2017
Caption: Where am I?
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Amazing. He is living life to the fullest. Damn!!!.
December 29th, 2017
Caption:Friends of Mine
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All these friends to watch his back and enjoy the ocean of life. I am jealous.
January 11th , 2018
Caption:Music is a big part of my life
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A blazing career with all the talented people around and loving everyday what he does with passion. God I am envious.
January 15th, 2018
Caption :A cuddle a day keeps the instinct away. (The hunting instinct.) (Just kidding.)
image 303
Awwww….
January 19th, 2018
Caption: Fact of the day: More people die every year from taking selfies than from shark attacks. Stay safe out there ✌️❤
image 302
LOL!!!!
February 18th, 2018
Caption: So I invested in Sweden’s first cold brew coffee company. Pretty cool startup that’s innovating the Swedish way of coffee drinking. You should definitely check them out.
image 301
Damn. This guy means business.
March 27th, 2018
Caption: Studio Mode
image 300image 299
Workaholic and passionate. Damn I wish I could be like that.
April 5th , 2018
Caption: It’s always sunny in California
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Woah!! Dude is rich. Dude is passionate. Has everything one can dream of.
April 20th, 2018
Caption:
image 25
So yeah.
That’s why I don’t use social media.
Edit: This answer is for people who don’t realize everyone is just a PR agent of themselves online. Everybody else sucks too. There is no reason for being miserable comparing your lives with social media. But I do believe social media should be used for generating content around your product or service like blogging, creating audio or visual content etc.
I would do just like I did for my daughter in Germany when she was going to a DOD (Department of Defense) school. She came home for a month and a half complaining about a boy bullying her on the playground. We called the school and told them almost every other day. They keep telling us the teachers are keeping him away from her. Well she kept coming home complaining. So I took it upon myself to really see what is going on. Sure enough he was harassing her. When she came home that day from school complaining about that boy. I set her down and told her that tomorrow is the time you have to do what Daddy has been teaching you how to defend yourself. Her response was, but I don’t want to get in trouble. I told her the only one that you will be in trouble with is me and how can you be in trouble if I am telling you to do it. Then I told her it is your choice if you want to end this or not. Either way I love you.
the next day around lunchtime I get a call from the school that she assaulted another student and I need to pick her up.
Well, well, well I took time off and drove miles and miles to get there. I told the officer who I was and that the principal is expecting me. She said yes Sir go on in. My daughter was standing in the corner of the office facing the wall waiting. I did not even acknowledge the principal and told my daughter to come sit in the chair in front of his desk. Then I ask the principal what is the problem ? His response was she assaulted another student. I told him that the next question I as you. I want you to think long and hard about your answer. Did she assault the student that has been assaulting her all these months! I then told him that he has 5min to respond and 4.5 of those minutes are gone! Go!!! He said Yes! Yes! Then I ask him so what are you going to do about it? He had the gall to tell me.that he was to suspending her for three days for putting her hands on another stoner. I leaned over his desks and told him that she it not going to miss another second of class. I told her to go to her class that she is supposed to be at this time and I will see you back home after school. Then to lighten her spirits I told her you are not beating me again tonight playing crash bandicoot!!! (Yes that was way back). After she left the office I locked the door to his office and turned around and told him that you made you decision, and now I have made my. I am going to take out the last two-to-three months my daughter, my wife and I have been stressing over and tag you are it!!!!
Sorry so long,but a true story.
When I went to jump over the desk. He jumped trough the window. The sad part was it was closed. 😂😂😂
Anyway, my Chain of Command knew all about the problem that my daughter was going through. I was a Platoon Sergeant at the time.
Now it gets good, my battalion commander was briefed on it. However he had to do something because because I threaten the principal and there was damage to government property, the window he jumped out of. So after the UCMJ (Uniform code of justice). My extra duty was to walk from the Commander’s Office down the street to my place of duty, which was only about 80 yards.
True story!! Need less to say my daughter did not have anymore trouble and got to get her education without any harassment from the students or the faculty.
I know this question was about a teacher slapping a student. If it was a teacher slapping my child I would have not gone to school. I would have followed that teacher after school and discussed it in another manner.
I got my first period when i was in 5th grade i was 10 years old. Worst part is i was in school, the last period was going on and I was sitting on the last bench in the corner row. i didn’t knew anything about it, and i was so clueless that wtf was happening with me. I told this to my bench mate and she said that she does not understand what I am saying. I ran to the teacher and told her everything, she said go to the office and ask the female staff to give me a sanitary pad.
I did that I went to the office and told the staff I want sanitary pads, she went inside the office. I was trembling with fear, but for a while I felt that everything would be alright.
The staff came out of the office and said that they are out of sanitary napkins, go buy them from the nearby shop.I was bleeding and literally begged her to come with me but she said she can’t leave the office and refused.
I was a kid and my body was not strong enough to bear the pain of periods. I was terrified, I couldn’t walk, I could feel the stains on my clothes. Still I walked to the nearest shop, and the shopkeeper was a male.
My eyes were downcast like I’m a terrorist, my voice was ashamed like I’ve committed a crime. And I asked him for a pad in a trembling voice, he took out a sanitary napkin’s packet and put 10 layers of news paper on it as if it were a bomb.
For me bravery is avoiding thousands of restriction and questions of the society and to say that yes I am a woman, yes I bleed and it is not my fault, it is not a crime.
I Saw the 11 Dimensions of the Universe in DETAIL! (Near Death Experience)
No, the Houthis are not a terrorist force indiscriminately targeting civilians, they are just an anti-American and anti-Israeli resistance force.
What the Houthis claimed was that they would attack boats “associated with Israel”. What are “associated with Israel”? Western bloc, of course.
image 4
70% of Europe’s oil shipments will pass through the Red Sea. Europe has already interrupted Russian oil and gas, and now oil and gas from the Middle East will be stopped by the Houthis. Things will get even harder for Europeans as winter approaches.
The purpose of their attacks on Western Group boats was to support the Palestinians. It is well known that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza. And the United States is stubbornly biased in favour of Israel.
The Arab countries and the Muslim world, while not supporting the Houthis, are not against them either, and some even secretly support them.
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Chinese boats transporting oil do not pass through the Red Sea, only merchant ships pass through the Red Sea, and there are china railway express that can replace merchant ships.
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I recall that the last time when Taiwanese Shipping Company large container ship blocked the Suez Canal, the china railway express became the main freight transport route to Europe.
Taiwanese Shipping Company leased the Japanese shipowner’s ship and hired Indian crew to drive the “Ever Given” large container ship through the Suez Canal. It would be surprising that there would be no accidents.
image 23
The Houthis will not attack Chinese boats, and China has no intention of joining the Western bloc, which is the unjust side.
The U.S. and Israel or Western Group should be reflecting on why they were attacked by the Houthis instead of looking to China as a lifeline to grab when they are drowning.
Korean Braised Short Ribs
Serve Korean Braised Short Ribs with cooked cellophane noodles, dipped into the cooking sauce.
Korean Braised Short Ribs
Ingredients
4 pounds beef short ribs, cut into pieces
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup chopped onion
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
2 tablespoons ground sesame seed*
2 teaspoons chopped ginger root or 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon pepper
* Ground sesame seed is available in Oriental food specialty stores and some supermarkets. Whole sesame seed can be ground in the blender: 1 tablespoon whole sesame seed yields 2 tablespoons ground sesame seed.
Instructions
Trim fat from beef ribs; place beef in shallow non-reactive dish.
Mix remaining ingredients; pour over beef.
Cover and refrigerate, turning occasionally, 24 hours.
Drain beef, reserving marinade. Cook beef in 4-quart Dutch oven over medium heat until brown; drain.
Pour marinade over beef.
Cover and bake at 350 degrees F until tender, about 2 hours.
I was required to issue a monthly report of sales by geographic region, listing each project.
One was a project in China sold to New Sun (China) Energy. I dutifully indicated the sale was in Asia.
My boss protested. “No!” said he. “You need to report that in Europe.”
I blinked and said, “But it’s in China.”
“Yes,” said he. “China’s in Europe.”
“Um…no.. China’s in Asia.”
He slammed his hand on his desk and said, “China’s a state of Germany, now report it in Europe.”
Me: “Ok” while silently muttering dumbass.
We had another dispute over Egypt. Apparently Egypt is also in Europe.
I had a grand time explaining to our lead sales person (a Chinese lady citizen of China) and our production manager (a German citizen) that Germany had expanded its population by a billion with this master stroke of geopolitical theater. They both rolled their eyes.
Oh yes. “Give me your purse you b*tch!. I want £50 now!” screeched the entitled teenage daughter of one of the company partners. I was PA to both partners and had only been there for a couple of months.
Princess was used to dropping into Daddy darling’s office if she and her little friends were shopping in town and she needed more money.
This particular afternoon Daddy was away at a meeting and our accountant was on a half day (she held the petty cash and was used to dealing with the occasional demands of the Princess).
I explained that Daddy was out and the accountant wouldn’t be back until tomorrow so nobody could help with her (obviously desperate and life threatening) need for cash. She decided that I should meet her need by handing over my own money. She threw a tantrum when I refused, and immediately called Daddy’s mobile, interrupting his meeting and demanding that he tell me to give her the money. He told me to do so, and I refused.
I didn’t have £50 in my purse (or even £10) but if I did she wouldn’t have had a sniff of it. After she stormed out I wrote my resignation and called the other partner to explain why I quit.
Found out a while later that the partnership fell apart and nice partner sued Daddy darling for financial mismanagement and fraud. Princess wasn’t the only family member thinking the business was her own personal piggy bank.
Can China Save The American Dream ? US Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor Reveals
China is not a Muslim-phobic country. It’s all United States propaganda to destroy Muslim world.
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China tells its Muslim citizens to live well and love their state and also their religion as Xi Jinping said.
If China got attacked, know that the aggressors will fail.
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If the aggressors try to attack Uyghurs like they did in Middle-East, bombing their Mosques, etc. Know that the Uyghurs won’t be silenced defending their home and mosques.
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The Muslims of China will stamp out the hypocrite country.
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~ Sunni Muslim from Asia here, appreciating China.
I was once the daytime caregiver for a little boy with a massive brain injury. The damage was so extensive that a large part of his right brain had been surgically removed. He was paralyzed on his left side. He also probably suffered from Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, but the doctors were unsure. He hoarded food, because he had gone hungry many times in his earlier life. Altogether a really lousy start.
I was pushing little X in his stroller. He was about three years old at this point. We were walking toward the high school, and there was a group of girls on the sidewalk. Black clothes, black hair, smoking, swearing girls.
X was a bit unusual looking, due to his injuries. I was thinking that these girls were going to laugh at him, or tease him, or something. I was getting tense and defensive.
As X and I get close, he hollers out, “HI”, which was his only word at the time. I was not expecting the response he got from those girls.
They were totally sweet. They were all saying hi back and asking his name and saying how cute he was. One asked me about his injuries, and I gave her the short version. She started to cry, and then I did, too. It was hard for me to talk about his history. We ended up hugging each other.
I have always remembered that group of girls, and how completely wrong I was about them.
They remind me often not to judge people by their appearance.
Internet access is better than any other nation except maybe Singapore. The Public Wi Fi means you have free internet while travelling almost anywhere and uninterrupted
Sure many western sites are restricted as are many apps
You can use VPN but VPN is very unreliable unless it’s Nord VPN and that too for a proper router rather than for mobile phone
Yet with a proper VPN, you can access any and all apps and sites in China
IT IS NOT ILLEGAL UNLESS YOU MAKE COMMERCIAL USE OF VPN (Meaning downloading and selling pornography etc)
If you really want to go to western websites that are banned, you can visit a PUBLIC LIBRARY with your ID Card and access any website you want. There is NO RESTRICTION.
I accessed Quora openly in a Public Library whereas the VPN never gave me a connection beyond 6–7 minutes at a time
So yes, I would say if you really want to watch CNN and CBS and want to view the BBC Website and access Twitter all the time, then China is not for you
Otherwise if you simply want Gmail & your Online Banking & online calling & chatting – you have 1001 apps to ensure you are connected
Non Acceptance of International Driver Licenses
This is stupid again
China has NO ISSUES with a International Driver License provided there is INSURANCE available on that license
You want to lease a car in China with an International License, you either pay a fat deposit as incidental insurance premium so that if you bang the car, the rental company doesn’t shell out the cost
Otherwise you get a local license holder to co sign and you get your car in 3 minutes
Imagine you bump a car, park it and dash off to your country. That’s a huge loss to the rental company isn’t it.
You cough up the Incidental Insurance Premium Deposit which is FULLY REFUNDABLE on returning the car and they will accept your International Drivers License
This is nearly 3100 RMB so most International Drivers are cheapies who promptly blame the Chinese for not recognizing International Driving Licenses
Lodging restricted to certain hotels
Again a Stupid way to put it
Hotels in China connected to the Real Time Security Network accept foreigners all the time
That’s 100% of all hotels in Big Cities and 90% of Hotels in smaller towns
They scan your passport and in ten seconds, the data comes up from your immigration and that’s it.
Tomorrow if you disappear, no issues, the hotel informs the MSB who will promptly print out your passport and deliver a copy to your consulate
Sadly smaller hotels DON’T have this ready connection to the digital security system
They need to scan your passport, print that out, take the print out and deliver it to the local police outpost who will then deliver them to the main outpost
It will take 1 year to hunt for such a print out tomorrow if there is a problem
It’s too much effort so such hotels don’t accept foreigners UNLESS A CHINESE BOOKS THEIR ROOM with his Identity Card
Mostly such tourists have a Chinese Agent who will give his ID or his company’s ID and book the rooms
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Our Vicky Bhaiya has no issues because his wives ID is sufficient
This isn’t only China
Even in France and Europe, many small provincial hotels don’t accept foreigners because of the same reason
They need you to get a clearance from a local gendarme who sees your passport and okays you
Hell in Scotland an Indian friend of mine couldn’t get a hotel until 12 Noon because of such a problem when a Local Britisher could get a room at 5:30 AM
Same for booking a car
Outside the West, an International Driving License doesn’t get you a car without a hefty deposit
All that China says is asks for the deposit towards Incidental Insurance
The Censorship?
Yes that’s unique to China among the big countries
Like I said if you want to access BBC and Twitter all the time, China is not for you
Maybe not into a completely different person, but it definitely will change you, and how you view life. Before I enlisted, I was an annoying 17–18 year old boy who played video-games all day, mouthed off to teachers, and had terrible acne. When I finished boot camp and AIT, I respected authority figures, I had better self-esteem, and I wasn’t as much of a smart-aleck anymore. I actually did stuff with my life.
I was still loud and sometimes annoying, at least when there were no senior NCOs or officers around, and I still made dumb jokes and toed the line around my family. I was the same kid as before, just disciplined and happier. More confident in myself, because I knew I could do stuff no one else in my family or my graduating class, except my father, could.
Then, I was deployed 3 times between 2004–2010, and actually saw, and participated in, combat and firefights. I saw the bloody, seedy side of things. It wasn’t like a movie or a video-game anymore, I didn’t tell jokes anymore, I was quieter and more serious. I didn’t tolerate people goofing off or making idiotic decisions around me anymore. Making the wrong decision, or playing games, on the battlefield could mean death.
Of course, I wasn’t firing my SAW at the Taliban and ISI 24/7. There was a lot of sitting around and waiting, marching, digging holes, and sitting in a hot, tiny truck for days, squeezed against another hairy, sweaty dude. That’s the part movies don’t show. It’s not action all the time, there’s a lot of stuff that goes into it that civilians and celebrities never think about when they hear the word “war.” And when there is action, you don’t have drawn-out speeches about family and honour, or whatever. You don’t goof off and walk up-right, unless you want a bullet between the eyes.
When I came back, I could not understand the struggles and pain of my family and friends that didn’t serve. Unless it’s an unexpected divorce or a death of somebody close to you, there’s no reason to grovel and whine about how hard and unfair life is, and how miserable you are. I’ve seen guys say they’re in “so much pain that no one understands” after a girl they knew for less than a year broke up with them. Especially these young Gen-Z kids and teenagers. All this “I could defeat anyone in a fight, I bench more than you” attitude is arrogant and laughable. You wouldn’t last a week doing the stuff we did, so stop acting like you’re so tough when you’re only 16 and cry in your room at night over a girl.
These (at least the males) youngsters also brag about Navy SEALS being better than anything and everything on earth, and use our military as a tool to justify their biases. You’re embarrassing us, and if any military veteran met you, they’d laugh.
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Accurate depiction of what modern warfare is like: lots of sitting around and waiting, or guarding stuff.
In general, combat did change me a lot, and my outlook on life, and perspective on common civilian “struggles” and issues. It also gives shell-shock/combat fatigue/PTSD and nightmares to those who served, which changes them as a person. I personally suffer from some of these things. It does suck a lot, and played a part in changing me as well, there is simply no way to explain to a civilian what combat is like, what war-trauma is like, the things you saw and how horrific it was, how impossible it is to cope with things like that. In the moment, you never think about what you’re doing or seeing, you’re disconnected from reality, and in your mind you dehumanize the enemy. It is just “eliminating a threat” or carrying out orders, not opening fire on the 10-year-old coming at you with an RPG.
Later though, your mind thinks about what you did and what you saw over and over again, tries to rationalize it, process it, cope with it, and finds that a lot of the time, it can’t. It’s easier to push these things away and pretend it never happened, pretend you never saw that teenager choking on his own blood and gasping for breath in the sand after you shot him, or never saw your friend get blown to bits. I can’t say I regret doing these things, as they were threats to the livelihood of myself and my friends. I can say, however, that it’s inescapable to feel human empathy and sadness over what you done, even while knowing there was nothing else you can do, even while knowing that they wanted to kill you.
It’s just a natural human feeling, but you learn to suffocate it and push it down. I’ve had some idiots call me a terrorist and a war-criminal, for shooting enemy child soldiers, and the like. These people aren’t worth arguing with, they will never understand that morality doesn’t matter when it’s you vs them, and they’re literally a threat to your existence, no matter how young they are. They think in black and white, never understanding how complicated this is, and how necessary it is to defend yourself, even if it’s a child soldier.
Cop Warns How Women Manipulate Divorce Law
This is a pretty important video. The “three step rocket”.
“It’s really more of an in-person kind of explanation,” he demured, then suggested a dinner date.
I hesitated. Normally I don’t meet my online dates until significantly more text and phone contact. Partly for safety reasons, partly because I don’t want to waste my time on guys I know will not work out. But mostly because I have been on A LOT of bad dates.
He said he was living in his friend’s spare room because he’d hit a few “speed bumps,” in life. I totally got that. I’m the queen of speed bumps myself. I let myself dare to hope maybe— just maybe— I had found a kindred spirit. I agreed to the date. And just like that, there I was, listening to him tell his story from across the candlelit table.
”About a year ago, I went out with some friends after work,” he began, and I smiled and nodded to let him know he had my attention. “I met a girl at a bar and we really hit it off. We ended up going home together. Next day, there’s a cop on my doorstep. And yada, yada, yada… long story short, she didn’t LOOK sixteen.”
I stiffened. Did she look 30? Because you’re 44, dude.
“So,” he continued, “I have a felony on my record. I was put on probation, and my job fired me. And then, just to kick me when I’m down” —and this is my favorite part— “my wife left me.”
?!??!!
“Bummer,” I said, because what else is there to say?
“So I was out of work, and my mom and I couldn’t live off her social security check alone, so she started driving for Uber…
The current supreme leader of Vietnam, Nguyễn Phú Trọng, is a very typical pro-China faction.
This means that Vietnamese diplomacy should be like bamboo, whose branches and leaves may sway in the wind, but whose poles are very tough.
Vietnam may pander to the U.S. in some cases, but the bamboo’s backbone is straight. After all, they fought the Yanks, and US pressure doesn’t always bring Vietnam to its knees.
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diplomacy
According to VnEconomy, in 2022, nearly 70 foreign affairs activities will be carried out by agencies under the Party, State, Government and National Assembly of Vietnam. According to statistics, by the beginning of 2023, Vietnam has established diplomatic relations with 190/192 countries; economic, trade and investment relations with 224 partners, and cooperation with more than 500 international organisations. The country is also a member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation Forum (APEC), the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (FTA). Trade Agreement, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and 15 other free trade agreements.
Vietnam-China relations
From 30 October to 1 November 2022, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) Nguyễn Phú Trọng paid an official visit to China after General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and President Xi Jinping assumed the office of the third President. He is the first senior leader to visit China after Xi assumed his third term as President. It was also Nguyễn Phú Trọng’s first visit to China after the 13th Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam. Both sides later deemed the visit a success. The Vietnamese side called China “a good neighbour, a good friend, a good comrade, a good partner, a good partner in the same boat, a good partner in solidarity and a good partner for the happiness of the people”. According to Reuters, the meeting between the two leaders was overly intimate, with no masks, They handshakes or hugs, against the backdrop of China’s strict embargo policy that it still maintains because of COVID-19.
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Vietnam-United States relations
At the end of August 2021, the Vice President of the United States of America, Kamala Harris, paid a visit to Viet Nam from 24 to 26 August 2021. During Ms Harris’ visit, the US side also confirmed a land lease agreement worth US$1.2 billion for the construction of the US Embassy building in Vietnam. Before leaving Vietnam, the US Vice President said the visit “marks the beginning of a new chapter in Vietnam-US relations”. After the visit, the Vietnamese media also carried a message inviting Joe Biden to visit Vietnam by the General Secretary and President of Vietnam.
On November 12, 2022, at the 40th and 11th ASEAN Summits, Vietnamese Prime Minister Pạm Minh Chính met directly with US President Biden. During the meeting, Mr. Pạm Minh Chính continued to “convey” the remarks of the General Secretary and President of Vietnam inviting the President of the United States to visit Vietnam. However, VOA caused a wave of controversy when it released a video in which Mr. Pạm Minh Chính chatted with subordinate leaders before meeting with the United States and “make it clear, to be fair, what are you afraid of?” The video was originally posted on May 14 but was not edited and was deleted on May 23. However, the video was later released by Voice of America but with the offensive phrase hidden. The reason why VOA deleted the video was that Khanh Nguyen, an official at the Vietnamese Embassy in the United States, asked VOA to delete the video. The email said the video “violates the principles of respect for privacy and journalistic professionalism and ethics.” Furthermore, VOA’s reporting has been misused and distorted for political purposes. The deletion was later protested by VOA’s Vietnamese service because it believed press freedom was being hindered. RFA, considered VOA’s “sister”, also released the video but did not receive any deletion email.
On the evening of March 29, 2023, General Secretary Nguyễn Phú Trọng had a phone call with US President Biden at request. During the phone call, the leaders of the two countries both emphasized that 2023 will be the 10th anniversary of the establishment of the Vietnam-US comprehensive partnership. When Mr. Biden spoke by phone with a foreign leader who was not a head of state or prime minister, the calls were rare, Reuters reported. The United States is currently also Vietnam’s largest export market in 2022. Soon after, from April 14 to April 16 of the same year, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced a high-level visit to Vietnam. He visited Vietnam and met with Foreign Minister Bùi Thanh Sơn, Prime Minister Pạm Minh Chính, President Võ Văn Thưởng, and General Secretary Nguyễn Phú Trọng. A contentious issue also arose during a meeting between Mr Phạm Minh Chính and Anthony Blinken, with only the Vietnamese flag in the background, not the American flag. According to Radio Free Asia, most of this information comes from Chinese media. The agency analyzed that because this was a meeting of different levels, there was only the Vietnamese flag in the background. According to BBC News, when US President Joe Biden may visit Hanoi in May or Vietnam’s General Secretary visits the United States in July, diplomatic issues between the two countries are likely to continue to heat up. The media also said in its analysis that the statement that Vietnam now “stands shoulder to shoulder with the United States at a time when we need each other’s support most” is often used only to refer to the country’s allies, but Mr. Blinken used it to refer to Vietnam.
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And the Philippines is a blade of grass that falls when the wind blows. The Philippines was once a colony of the United States, and the colonial mentality of the Filipinos is deeply rooted. As long as the United States exerts a little pressure, Marcos Jr. will give in.
I got a notification from the Amazon app that my packages were here. They were my sons birthday presents. I didn’t go outside immediately though as I was changing my twins diapers.
When I was finished I went out to get them. Some woman was out there picking up my boxes. I asked very loudly what she thought she was doing.
She tried to spin some story about how my packages were damaged and had been recalled and that they would be replaced in a few days,
I called her story bullshit and to get off my property or I would call the cops. I wasn’t quiet about it. She started to leave WITH my packages.
Before I could yell again or call the cops my neighbors Rottweiler mix was in front of us growling loudly with my neighbor limping fast towards us. He’s an older guy and an absolute sweetheart. He told her to drop the boxes or his dog would attack. She dropped them and ran to her car and drove away. I got her license plate number and reported her to the cops.
I hugged my neighbor and thanked him for saving my sons birthday. I also baked him cookies and brought him a slice of my sons cake the next day.
Ok, this one has irked me for some time. I went to see a blood doctor. Had a bit too low iron in my blood. Called, confirmed my insurance co-pay, went to my appointment, paid my co-pay and left.
A few weeks later I get a bill for $250 bill for the visit. I call to remind them that I paid my co-pay (which was a hell of a lot less then $250). They acknowledge that, but “remind me” that this isn’t a co-pay, it’s a “facility charge.” I say I have no idea what they’re talking about. I never agreed to a “facilities charge.”
Well their office is in a hospital building so I should understand there will be a hospital “facilities charge.” I inform them that, I didn’t go to the hospital, I went to their office which happens to rent space from the hospital. They argue that it was in some paper package they gave me when I came for my appointment. I disagree refusing to pay, they insist I have to. I disagree after some argument end the call. They try to collect a few more times ending similarly. Eventually they get the point and realized their threats were falling on deaf ears.
They call me back a few days later, apologize for the confusion and agree to a one time reduction of the “facilities charge” to $75. I inform them I came to them for a doctor’s appointment, not to pay their rent and refuse. Another argument ends in me ending the call. More threats and calls ensue.
Finally I get a call from them stating that, “for this one instance” my “facility charge” is going to be waived but I’m going to be responsible for the full facilities charge for all future appointments. I assure them I understand, and make sure they understand that based on this fiasco there will be no future visits. The doctor that sent me to them also took them off his referral list.
After my husband passed away I drove his old Jeep Cherokee for a while, but it was starting to show its age and I could see some big repair bills coming up that I did not want to deal with. I started to look at new cars, and was impressed with the Subaru Outback. Then Subaru started a big promotion with discounts and 1.9% financing, so I drove the old Jeep to my local dealer. Talked to a salesman who qualified me (I had a good job in Information Technology, so the payments would not be a problem). I found one that I liked and we started to work out a deal. After some negotiating, I was summoned to speak with the Finance Manager – some dude in probably his mid-20s who informed me that, due to some late payments the previous year, there was no way I would qualify for their 1.9% financing, but he could offer me a loan at around 8%. I was startled, as my credit had been excellent for years, so I asked for clarification. Yes, there were a couple of late payments on a couple of credit cards that corresponded to the last few months of my husband’s life when I was… distracted much of the time, to say the least. Taking care of him was my priority, and sometimes other things, like writing checks to pay a bill got overlooked temporarily. Then the finance dude started lecturing me on the importance of being responsible and taking care of what is important (paying bills, of course), and how clearly my credit report was showing that I didn’t take the important stuff seriously. I looked him in the eye as I stood up to leave and said that maybe when he got a little more life experience he might understand what it is like to watch someone you love, with whom you were planning to spend the rest of your life, to watch that person waste away, in pain and terrible suffering, then we could talk about responsibility. During those months, my single highest priority was taking care of him. Yes, a few bills got paid late, but I know that I had my priorities correct. So don’t condescend, and do NOT lecture me on personal responsibility, frat boy.
I am writing anonymously because I hate pity and I have friends on quora that know me.
I was an orphan. I don’t remember ever enjoying my childhood except sometimes playing Cricket with other boys of my age in my village. I came from a small village just outside of Lahore, Pakistan. I was told that my parents had an accident when I was 4 Years old. My childhood memory starts from my uncle’s home. I can’t remember my parents.
When I was 7 years old, my uncle had enough of me and sent me to Lahore to work. He dropped me off to his friend who owned a teashop in a busy market. I didn’t want to work, I wanted to play and study. I loved to go to school which now I couldn’t. I was hired for 4,000 Rupees which was alot of money for me but I came to know that I will get only 1,000 Pakistani rupees for my work and rest will be paid to my uncle.
After one year of working there, I used to deliver tea to a complete surrounding area of the teashop. I was responsible for the collection of money, delivery of tea and retrieval of tea cups. One day, the teashop owner asked me to make a special delivery at a compound nearby. When I took the tea to the compound, there were men sitting around in a round table in an open area. I delivered the tea to a person named Aqil, which the teashop owener Mr. Bilal told me. When I delivered the tea, and asked for the money and said that “Please kindly give me the money because I have alot of other deliveries to make” I don’t know what happend but this Aqil guy flipped and threw two cup of teas on me which was extremely hot and I started crying because of pain and then he said to me “Do you know who I am” “Now you will remember me always, scum”.
I left from the compound scratching my neck from burns. Now, when I remember back nobody stopped me and asked me what was wrong. It was approximately 3 minute walk back to the tea shop. The market was full of customers and a child is crying and walking and nobody stopped him or asked him what happend.
Then when I reached the shop, Mr. Bilal asked me what happend and I told him everything. Then he accused me why I asked them for money. Then I replied, you told me to ask for these things. Then he said forget about it, you don’t ask those guys for money. Here keep this 50 rupees and buy toothpaste for yourself to put on the burnt area. Also Mr. Bilal was a bad guy who used to beat me and slap me around just because I was late or because somebody didn’t pay me.
From that day, I knew life was not fair. When I was 12 years old I ran away from the Teashop and started living on the streets. I knew from my time in the shop to keep distance from people who are living on the street. I used to eat from a shrine known as Data Darbar in Lahore.
Then I knew I wanted to get a job so I can become something like the people that are sitting in an AC car. I knew I had to get an education but how. I didn’t knew anything about studies. So I decided to join a canteen shop in a school. There was one school which was very famous, I went to the canteen shop of that school and begged the guy in there to hire me because I wanted to study. I don’t know why but he did hire me and used to pay me 3,000 Rupees per month.
There was a female teacher in this school who was very nice. One day she approached me as I was working in the canteen and asked me about studies. I don’t know what prompted her to ask me this but she did. I told her that I wanted to study but I don’t have any money. She just said that don’t worry about it.
The next week I was enrolled in the same school I was working at.
Now I am 37 Years old. I’m married and have my own software house and a small general store which I acheived with my sheer determination and hardwork and some help from extremely generous people.
I have three Boys and 2 Girls. My wife often asks me regarding the burnt marks on my neck and chest and I always reply it’s a burnt tattoo.
I am happy. I got lucky. Not many people get lucky. Child labor is one of the worst things that can happen to a child. It’s my secret and now nobody can call me lowlife scum. Nobody can use me as their punching bag. Life is beautiful now, but I know from experience how ugly it can be.
It happened in Dachau, when a dozen SS were executed by US army personnel who were appalled by the sight.
Remember that the Allies despised the S.S. for a variety of reasons: the Canadians despised them for the Normandy massacre, the Americans despised them for the Malmedy massacre, the British despised them for Wormhoudt, and the French despised them for the anti-bandit operations carried out by the 2nd Das Reich SS division in occupied France (for example, Oradour sur Glane).
Another minor episode occurred in Bavaria, when Twelve members of the 33rd SS division were executed near a forest by Spaniards of the Nueve; their bodies were never brought to France and were left to decompose.
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Leclerc witnessed the fall of France and the devastation of French towns firsthand, and like many other Frenchmen, he lamented the loss of Ouradour sur Glane while actively seeking the annihilation of the Third Reich. During the liberation of Lorraine, his battalion was forced to untie from a community, and the mayor was later killed by the Germans once the village was retaken.
His division’s health service was retroceded in order to assist the released inmates from Dachau, and he witnessed the awful misery of the prisoners’ conditions in those sites; many of his fellow people were imprisoned in horrible conditions. He even got into a violent confrontation with a priest who was trying to keep an eye on what was going on.
So, sure, the execution of S.S was the culmination of months of frustration by Allies soldiers, which amounted to war crimes.
“Why should we hire you?” Luigi the arrogant recruiter asked.
“I have with me a written proposal of how I will positively impact your organization during my first 90 days in this position. We can go over it together if interested,” Mario said as he showed a sneak peek of his document.
“Sure, let’s take a look at it,” Luigi’s eyes shone with amazement while thinking, “Ohh wow! This guy has a plan? I’m curious as to what he is proposing.”
“Mr Luigi, has anyone ever brought you a plan before you hire them?” Mario asked, taking control of the conversation.
“I must admit, this is pretty uncommon,” Luigi said.
“Mr Luigi, I’ve done my homework. This is how I do things. You should hire me because I’m self-sufficient, I don’t need you to be all over me to give you results. I’m always ahead of the crowd.”
He paused to look Luigi in the eye.
“You should hire me because I don’t need to be micromanaged. You will never have to be chasing me or telling me what to do. You should hire me because I’m here to make you money. Mr Luigi, I’m an asset to this business, I’m a producer — not a taker.”
“Let’s see the plan,” Luigi insisted.
Mario got the document out and placed it on the table. Still holding it, he paused and said, “Well, Mr Luigi, I still don’t know if this is the right job for me. Can I ask you a few questions?”
Luigi arrogantly laid back on his chair and said, “Ok, shoot.”
Mario started asking questions, “What are the company values? Do you really live by them? Who will I work with? Can I talk to these people before I get started?”
“Interesting questions, Mario,” Luigi said.
“Mr Luigi, the reason I ask these questions is because I’m more worried about WHO I work with than my paycheck.”
“Why is that?”
“It’s important who I surround myself with. I like to work with smart people. I don’t like to be limited by what I can accomplish. I want to push my professional growth. A big paycheck is NOT worth being surrounded by idiots.”
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To answer your question, what are the best answers for “Why should I hire you?”
It really doesn’t matter the accuracy of a 90-day plan document. It doesn’t matter if it works or not. It will definitely make you stand out by showing you invested time thinking and understanding the job description and the company’s needs. (Most people only care about what they’re going to get paid.)
Show self-confidence. Show you care about yourself and that you have high standards for the quality of the people, the challenge and the job. Make the future employer feel they need to deserve you. (Most people will be almost begging for the job; that’s not very attractive for a recruiter.)
During a 10-hour flight, she was heading from Seoul, Korea, to San Francisco, USA. This mother distributed more than 200 passengers on the plane a plastic bag for each one. The bag contains candy, chewing gum and earplugs as a kind of advance apology for using them in the event that her 4-month-old baby screamed during the flight.
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The bag also contained a message containing (hello, I am Jan Woo. I am 4 months old and today I’m traveling America with my mom and grandmother for my aunt’s outfit. I’m a little nervous and scared. This is my first flight in my life. It’s normal for me to cry or cause some disturbance. I’ll try to stay calm, but I can’t promise you. Please use it if my voice gets too loud.. Enjoy your trip. Thank you)
I was 12-years-old. I had a paper route and my mom wanted to go out for a beer with her best friend.
Let’s get a couple of things straight before I continue. This was the 1970s and no, she’s not an alcoholic. Going out with the girls for a beer was pretty common in the 70s. It wasn’t quite “Mad Men”, but not far off.
The thing is, my parents were terrible with money. We were poor(ish). We frequently had to move because the landlord raised the rent. All of our furniture was used (if the couch cushions wore out, we flipped the cushions over). You get the idea.
There used to be a company called “Grenada” that would rent appliances to the poor.
My parents rented a colour television for something like 25 bucks a month when a new colour tv would cost $500.
Rather than do without a tv for a couple of years and then simply buy a new set, they went with the “just put it on credit” style of living.
My mom was in debt her entire life.
I said, “I’m not going to live like that.” After graduating from college, I lived at home for 3 years (paying $200 a month out of my $700 bi-weekly paycheques/$1400 a month). I saved $32000 in those 3 years and bought a small freehold condo (freehold means no condo fees. You have to mow your own lawn and shovel your own driveway).
I was 24 years old at the time. I was mortgage-free when I was 37, which was great because I was laid off SEVEN times in my career.
I worked 2 part-time jobs along with my full-time job.
I’ve never been in debt in my life. If I couldn’t pay cash (car loans and mortgage aside), I didn’t buy it.
I’ve only ever bought a new car twice in my life. I drove that first car for a decade. My car now is 12 years old. I hope to drive it for another 8 years. I’ll buy myself a new car before I retire and you can bury me in it.
I was immediately attracted to this question. My 79-year-old father is German and was a young boy during WW2.
I asked him to write something to respond to this question, and he provided this excerpt from his memoirs. (I’ve changed the names of my uncles.)
tl;dr: During the war, bad. After the war, worse.
“In the spring of 1942, as the RAF bombing raids started, our family was evacuated by the German authorities from Krefeld to the Black Forest in southern Germany. The operation was called MUKI (for Mutter und Kinder).
By train my mother and we 3 children arrived in Schönmünzach in the Black Forest. We were ordered into a requisitioned hotel. The money the government paid the hotel must have been pretty low, judging by the unfriendly service we received.
After a few weeks, we were moved another 15 miles deeper into the forest to the little village of Obertal into the Hotel Sonne and a little later to Hotel Günther. There we had a single room with toilet and washroom down the hall. The hotel was run by two sisters and a brother, who also was a blacksmith. Two of their nieces, Lilo and Inge, were the food servers. The food was without much variation: potatoes, carrots, mushrooms that we helped collect in the woods, and blue trout. I hated the trout because of their bulging eye balls and disliked the mushrooms, they were so slippery.
It must have been in the summer of 1942 when we kids played in the garden of the hotel. There was an umbrella stand with a heavy concrete base. In passing, I pulled the stand askew and let it snap back. Unfortunately, my brother Hans was close behind me and the pipe of the stand hit him in the face. He was bloody all over, but this guy is hard to kill, he healed soon enough, but today still has a scar under the left side of his nose.
In the fall of 1942, Hans and I started elementary school in Obertal, Walter, our younger brother, followed 2 years later. We were so proud of our satchels, packed with a slate board with attached sponge, and our freshly sharpened slate styluses.
One winter evening my mother left us alone in the room and locked the door (this was before the invention of baby-sitting). We were up to some mischief: I collected pine needles from the Christmas tree and stuffed them into an electric outlet. All of a sudden there was a big flash and the light went out. I had managed to put the entire hotel into darkness.
Shortly thereafter, in early 1943 we were moved to a farmhouse near the edge of the village. The farmer by the name of Haist and his wife were not happy at all to see the unwanted guests they were forced to take in. They had two children, Alma, who was about 4 years older than I, and her younger brother Egon. We were placed in the upstairs of the small house and had one bedroom, a living room and a small kitchen with a single spigot for cold water. The toilet was half a flight down and consisted of a board with a lid-covered round cut-out hole and a cesspool below, no running water. The bedroom had no heat but was placed above the stable where a pig and a cow were supposed to warm the room from below. It was not quite sufficient, and during the coldest part of the winter we had to hack the ice off the jug and wash basin that served as our bathroom.
One day my mother had to run some errands. She again locked us up in the living room and we thought of some new mischief. We found matches and tried to burn off the fringes of the curtains by the front windows. To our disappointment the fringes didn’t burn very well and only generated smoke. So we gave up on the idea, extinguished the smoldering fringes and looked for some other entertainment. I suppose my mother was upset when she came home, but I don’t recall any punishment.
Food in those days was strictly rationed and we had to use food stamps for every purchase. My mother managed to get beef bones once a week. First she made a soup from it, then burned the bones on the charcoal in the stove. She recovered the ashes and we had to eat them as our calcium supplement. It tasted almost as bad as the weekly cod liver oil that we had to swallow. (Cod liver oil is rich in vitamins and chemicals, such as iodine. The lack of iodine was causing a high occurrence of goiters among the locals.) One day the local grocery store, the Konsum, had a big surprise: they sold strawberry jam without food stamps. Everybody rushed to the store and bought as much as the store keeper would hand out. The jam was delicious, sweet and crispy. A bit later we found out that the crispiness was dozens of wasps that got processed with the strawberries.
In the spring of 1943 I got scarlet fever and an infection of the middle ear. I was quarantined in our bedroom while Hans and Walter were moved to stay in the bedroom with Egon. When I got worse I was sent by ambulance to the hospital in Freudenstadt, some 10 miles away. I must have been pretty sick because I had to stay at the hospital for more than a month. Later I was told that both of my ear drums had ruptured. When I finally was discharged the nurse confiscated my only toy, some kind of a construction set with interlocking wooden chips, because it was “contaminated”. Really they did disinfect it and let other kids play with it. I was very unhappy about the loss.
In the summer, war came to Krefeld. On 6/21/43 the Royal Air Force (RAF) launched a heavy air raid on Krefeld where we had lived. Our house took a full hit and was totally destroyed. We would not have survived had we not been evacuated before.
Once a week we were ordered by the school to collect potato beetles in the fields around town. The beetles were threatening to kill the potato crop and rumors were that the Americans dropped the beetles on Germany, an early application of biological war fare. We had to pick the beetles off the leaves which was ok; they looked pretty in their yellow and black stripes. What I didn’t like was crushing the larvae and the eggs between my thumb and index finger and, most of all, I didn’t like the young Hitler-youth supervisor who hit us with a switch in the back of our knees when we didn’t work fast enough. However, when we were doing well we received small propaganda stickers with a printed “Kohlenklau”, the energy thief with a sack of coal over his shoulder, and “Pst, Feind hört mit” the sticker to remind you that enemy spies where everywhere.
During the summer vacation of 1943 we helped our farmer to collect ferns in the woods that he used as bedding for the cow. The fern was spread in the courtyard to dry and piled up overnight. I still remember that one night the three of us kids were allowed to dig some cave into the huge pile and sleep in it. The fragrance of the dried fern was wonderful. We also helped to make hay, a very labor intensive process. In the morning the farmer went out to his large meadow behind the house and cut the grass by hand with a scythe. Every half-hour or so he paused, pulled out a whetstone from his hip pocket, and sharpened the scythe. Frau Haist, Alma, Hans and I used rakes to spread out the grass to dry. In the early afternoon, the grass had to be turned and in the evening it had to be collected into piles. This was repeated for several days until the hay was ready to be collected into a big net which the farmer then carried on his back into the hay loft above the stable. Every evening the farmer sharpened his scythe by straddling a stone bench that had a small anvil at the end, and hammering the edge of the blade razor thin. He then finished the sharpening with a whetstone.
To obtain firewood the forester assigned and marked one tree for each family and sent a notice where to find the tree. Our tree was up the mountain some 10 miles away near a logging road. The farmer, my dad, who was on furlough, Hans, Walter and I set off at 5 in the morning. After some searching we found the tree. Dad and the farmer cut it down, chopped off the branches and sawed it into 3 ft. sections. The 3 kids had to drag the pieces up the hill to the logging road and pile it up for pick-up by the forestry people. Hans didn’t like touching the slippery, mossy branches and decided to go home. He snuck away, took the cart with all our food and beverage and rolled down the road all the way home. You can imagine how furious we were, no food or drink and another 6 hours of work and a 3-hour hike back home. At home Hans got a severe thrashing, the only one my father ever administered to him. As a further penalty Hans had to do overtime in chopping wood after the man with the mobile band saw came by and cut the sections down to firewood length.
In the fall the farmer called in the local butcher to slaughter the pig. From our bedroom we could hear the poor beast squeal. When we went downstairs, the pig was already in a tub of hot water where it was being scrubbed clean and its bristles were scraped off. We kids had the job to wash out the intestines in the fountain in the courtyard and get them ready for sausage-making by turning them inside out. When the whole pig was processed we all sat down to a “Schlachtfest” (butcher’s party). The farmer’s wife dished out “Metzelsuppe”, the broth of the sausage cooker, and freshly baked bread, followed by various cuts of meat and sausages with potatoes and sauerkraut. It was truly a feast because we could eat without needing our ration stamps.
In 1944 we moved from the farm in Obertal to Baiersbronn into one side of a duplex that the town had built for bombed out refugees like us.
The house was very small, the living room was 7 by 12 feet, the eat-in kitchen was 8 by 14 feet, and there was a single bedroom upstairs, about 10 by 12 feet. Hans and I slept in a regular bed, Walter slept in the big bed with my mother and later, after my dad got back from the POW camp, he had a crib in an alcove. Later that year, Frau Ilse Mueller – who lived in the other half of the duplex – let us use her upstairs bedroom and the 3 of us kids had a bit more room.
The house had no road connection and no water. We had to haul the water by bucket from a neighbor some 300 yards down a path to the road. For three more months we kept hauling. When the town finally installed a single tap in the kitchen, it was truly a high point in our lives.
The toilet was a hole in a wooden bench, again with a cesspool underneath. It smelled terribly, especially during the hot summer days. Worst was the maggots that kept creeping up from down below. We didn’t have any toilet paper; none could be bought in the empty stores. So my mother sacrificed the love letters my father had written to her from the war, for us youngsters they were fascinating and so romantic.
Meanwhile, our neighbor, Herr Lampert, decided we needed a road, so he organized the neighborhood and we built a dirt road, about 200 feet long, to connect to the main road. We logged tons of stone from the nearby Sankenbach creek and set them by hand into a foot-deep road base. The bed was consolidated with rams made out of tree stumps. On top we put gravel and sand, and our foot path turned into a respectable piece of road.
In early 1945, the front was drawing nearer and bombs started falling nearby. One bomb hit Café Mueller and killed their only daughter. My mother barely escaped a machine gun salvo from a low-flying French fighter plane. She feared for our lives and we all went back to the more remote village of Obertal. There we shacked up with our friends, the Siehr family, into a 3 room+kitchen apartment. They had 3 boys, our best friends, and a younger daughter. Their father was a chemist who had volunteered to join the army in 1939 and was killed in action during the first few weeks of the war. Frau Siehr became a war widow at age 28 with four children, then 4, 3, 2 and 1 years of age. There was one bedroom for the children with triple bunk-beds for the boys, and the three of us doubled up with the boys head to toe. The girl had a small bed in the same bedroom.
Then, one day in April of 1945, the French army moved into the village. The German army had retreated to guard the next bigger town of Freudenstadt. Hans and I, at age 8, had to join the “Volkssturm” (People’s Army), the last resources of the army, consisting of men over 70 and kids of 8 to 15 (everybody between 15 and 70 had been drafted earlier). We had been trained, using wooden mockups, to shoot RPGs at the incoming tanks. But the German army retreated and had taken all the real weapons with them and, luckily, we didn’t have to make that “last stand against the enemy”. The village surrendered to the French without a shot being fired.
Then the French started to search each house for soldiers and also for quarters for their officers. They came to the upstairs apartment and knocked (!) at the door of the children’s room. My mother had posted all 7 children by the door; when the soldiers opened, they exclaimed “Mon Dieu” (dear Lord) and shut the door. We kids then moved swiftly through a connecting door to the living room where Frau Siehr posted us near the door. The soldiers knocked again at the next door and saw another mother with 7 more children. With a baffled “beaucoupd’enfants” (lots of children) they gave up on their search for accommodations in the house.
After the armistice was declared there was great joy all around. Our family went back to Baiersbronn to our “Behelfsheim” (emergency shelter) as it was officially called. There we found a big mess. French soldiers had celebrated the end of fighting with a big party and had turned the place upside down. Also, they ate all our food and we had nothing left to eat. One of the French soldiers, he called himself Bari Mulut, an Algerian, came by a few days later and asked my mother to hide him; he was a deserter and just wanted to go home. We hid him in the attic and played ignorant when the French MPs came by and searched the house. They overlooked the trap door in the ceiling, leading to the attic.
At that time, food rationing was not working anymore; the whole civilian service structure had collapsed. We went around to several farms and tried to get enough food but the farmers were reluctant to accept the worthless “Reichsmark” currency. My mother taught us some French and we went begging at the hotels the French had requisitioned. “Avez-vous des conserves pour nous?” we asked again and again. We also eagerly picked up cigarette butts, rolled them into new cigarettes of ever increasing nicotine content, and traded them against food at a farmer’s. One day we were very lucky, a French officer gave us eleven 32 oz. cans of meat and vegetables, it was a memorable day. Other days we were not so lucky and the entire food for the four of us consisted of a single sugar beet that the farmers usually feed to their pigs.
There were no toys around so we made some ourselves. We carved little boats from thick pine bark and let them float on the puddles in the ditch behind the house. We made whistles from willow branches, stilts from square-cut slats, catapults from beer-bottle tops and slingshots from inner tubes, discarded by the French soldiers.
The French commanded every inhabitant of the town to watch a film about the Holocaust at the movies. Everybody was horrified and some people said this was all propaganda. Apparently, they had lost their clear thinking after years of Nazi propaganda.
During the summer of 1945 stores had nothing to sell. To survive, my mother, Hans and I went on “Hamster Reise” (shopping trip), where we scratched up some tradable goods, among them mother’s pretty lingerie that dad had sent her from Paris, loaded them on a hand-wagon and walked first from Baiersbronn to Obertal, staying at Siehr’s for a short night. The next morning at 3 am we moved on across the “Ruhestein”, the watershed between the rain-drenched (130 in/yr) eastern part of the Black Forrest were we lived, and the fertile Rhein valley. We walked 22 km (14 miles) to Kappelrodeck, Hans and I barefoot because we had no shoes, to a farm where we traded our goods. We got some 140 pounds of potatoes, fruit and vegetables. By then it was almost noon and we started our trek back. While progress in the valley was fairly good, things got really slow climbing up some 10 miles to the “Ruhestein”. Luckily, that day there was a farmer who put a pair of oxen to work, trailing a bunch of ropes for us and other “Hamsterers” to hang onto, helping them to move their handwagons up the steepest part of the climb. Down the other side it was easier, 5 miles back to Obertal and then another 5 miles to Baiersbronn. We got back home just before curfew at midnight, an exhausting 21 hour, 33 mile barefoot trek. The trip added several new layers to the callused soles of Hans’s and my feet.
The next day we had to start preserving our food. All fruit was sliced and air-dried. For that we took the doors off the hinges and covered them with the fruit slices to dry outside on the grassy patch in front of the house. After the drying, the unpainted doors had a negative leopard pattern with light spots where the fruit slices had been and sun tan around them. Carrots, potatoes and beets were stored in a sand bed in the basement. Cabbage was shredded, salted and fermented into sauerkraut in a big ceramic jar, eggs were stored in silicone gel in another earthen jar, and bread was air-dried. We had no refrigerator, and only glass jars with lids, but without rubber gaskets which then rendered them useless (all rubber had been reserved for tire production for the army).
We did the trip twice more during that summer. On one of the trips we found another friendly farmer who too was trailing half a dozen ropes behind his tractor for people to hang on and get pulled up the mountain for a few miles. His tractor had a “Holzvergaser” (wood chip gasifier) that generated carbon monoxide by partially combusting wood chips in a man-size vessel mounted on the side of the vehicle. The monoxide was then burned to carbon dioxide in the engine, generating just enough power to pull the whole convoy up the hill.
My dad had a tough summer as well. During the last days of fighting in April of 1945 he was with a few other soldiers on the south-shore of the Danube River in Ulm. The Americans were on the north shore. My father was happy to see them, so he stood up and waved to them across the river. Next thing, the Americans trained their mortars on him and he jumped back into the trenches, barely surviving the attack. A short time later his unit was overrun and he ended in a POW camp in St. Avold in Lorraine, France. The Americans were mean to the officers, ignorant about the difference between the regular army and the SS-stormtroopers. My dad was regular army, but the Americans gave all of them their Holocaust special. They fed them 4 course dinners where, e.g., the fish course was a single sardine that had to be divided between 8 people. They made them sleep under the clear sky, no tents or other shelter. Luckily, it was a dry and warm summer, so they survived. My father weighed 210 pounds going into camp and 98 pounds when he was discharged 7 months later.
Things got better when my father came back from the POW camp in November of 1945. As a former officer, dad had to register and report every Saturday to the police station in Baiersbronn. Hans and I were with him one day when Hans saw a sign on the way out where the new administration was looking for “Applicants with business education”. Dad applied and just a few weeks later got a job with the “Preiskontrollbehoerde” (price control agency) in the newly established regional administration. He got a 98cc motorbike as the official vehicle. His job was to visit shops and businesses and control that they adhered to the fixed prices set by the authorities. But his main concern was how to feed the family. So, he always brought a brown bag with him when he checked the local butcher or baker. He told them “I am not corruptible, but I have to feed my family with 3 small children”. Depending on the “crimes” he discovered, the bag got filled, more or less, with food. Once he brought back 4 pounds of lard, an exceptionally good day. At home, we cut it all up into little cubes and rendered it on the stove. The greaves tasted delicious with some salt, and the grease was a welcome change from frying potatoes without any fat. We didn’t mind that the grease was more like wax and stuck to the roof of our mouths.
Here ends the WW2 story and what it was like for me to grow up during that time in Germany.”
I’m a service dog handler so I’ve seen quite a few.
This Time I’m in the bathroom with my dog. We’re at the mall and I really have to pee and my dog has just alerted me I’m about to pass out. I really want to use the bathroom before I pass out so I don’t pee myself.
I walk into the bathroom and I see this mother changing her kid.
I think “oh god. The kids gonna notice and get upset she can’t pet Callie.@ I was so worried because I really needed to use the bathroom and I was already dizzy and had blurry vision.
To my surprise (and relief) this little angel is smiling and giggling at her mom as she gets her diaper changed and she’s too busy to notice Callie.
So I get out of the stall and the mother looks up at me.
She didn’t see Callie who was sitting behind a pillar between me and the woman as I washed my hands. This woman starts interrogating me while her angel is saying “mommy can you hurry so I can help you pick out shoes?” This kid is a perfect angel.
The woman ignores her kid and starts yelling at me. “You are so disrespectful you shouldn’t be using the handicap stall! What if somebody in a wheelchair comes in needing it? Or somebody else with a disability?!!”
I can tell this kid wants to leave (her belated butt must be freezing by this point) so I calmly reply “Ma’am not all disabilities are visible, and I am in fact disabled”
This woman glares at me and says “Oh yeah? And what the hell is wrong with you?”
I step aside and call Callie to my side. I then inform her “While I am not comfortable sharing that information with you, I am willing to tell you that I used this stall so my service dog would have room and would not be inched away from me as I use the bathroom.”
This woman is dumbfounded for a moment then turns around to resume changing this poor kids diaper. I was so thankful.
Then, to my horror this woman does the closest thing she can do to turn this child to a monster. In a high pitched voice she says “Look at the doggy! Look at the doggy!”
I’m terrified this child will go crazy until she pets my dog (keep in mind I’m still very dizzy and about to pass out. Preferably in a chair)
Instead, this angel says “Mommy can I please pet the doggy?”
This is the part that horrifies me. She then gets in this kids face and screams “NO. THAT DOG IS WORKING YOU CANT PET IT”
She had very politely asked, and I may have said yes. (It would be good practice for Callie) but I was dizzy and this mom just told her no.
Now, this child was an angel by my standards and I’m guessing those of most people reading this, but she was not a perfectly behaved robot. Her mom had obviously scared her so she started wailing and sobbing because the woman she trusts most had just screamed at her in a demonic tone.
This woman then turns to me and says “You know. This is all your fault. We were fine before you showed up. No I have to deal with her.”
This kid was an adorable child who was one of the best behaved toddlers I had ever seen. (I am a babysitter) I could not believe her mother would do that. She wouldn’t have noticed and she was so polite.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we have a problem with our wings,” announced the pilot.
True story. This happened to me last week.
The plane was making its final approach to Houston Intercontinental Airport. Suddenly there were three consecutive “ding-dong” sounds in the main cabin.
I saw both air hostesses run from the back of the plane to the front and grab the phone. They talked for a few seconds to the pilot, then the pilot came on with an announcement.
“We have broken off our approach. We have a problem with our wings. The leading edge slats won’t come down. We have declared an emergency and we will be landing shortly,” he said.
“Fire trucks will be waiting for us on the runway. It’s probably going to be a hard landing because we can’t slow the plane down as we normally would. We’ll see you on the ground.”
That was it.
Immediately the air hostesses started preparing everyone for the emergency. Uncertainty filled the cabin. Everyone of us felt vulnerable and scared.
I reflected on how fragile we are. There we were, trapped inside a metal tube flying at a high speed, … nothing to be done, simply pray and trust that everything would be okay.
The wind shook the plane from one side to the other. I could sense how the pilot was trying to find the optimal speed to land, not too fast, yet enough to fight the winds.
I could finally see the runway through my window. We all braced for the impact and as soon as we touched the ground, the pilot hit hard on the brakes.
The captain did an amazing job. We cheered and clapped for his fantastic landing.
Fire trucks followed us to the gate.
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It was not fun. That leading edge slat on the front of the wing is responsible for the addition of a few more grey hairs to my head.
My first — and hopefully my last — emergency landing!
Fun outing in college, canoeing down the American River. Only… unbeknownst to us (and I suppose the trip organizers), unseasonably hard rainfall has made the river fast and dangerous in certain spots. Being completely inexperienced, my canoe-mate and I had no clue that going widely around the sharp bend would put us into the deepest, fastest-moving water, which coincidentally had just undercut a very large tree, which was now toppled into the water. So we get sucked into the fast-moving water under the tree and capsized. We surface. I come up with my torso against the tree, which is several feet in diameter. Some idiots immediately behind us apparently decide that they will “rescue” us (canoe-mate was a few feet down, straddling the tree by this time). They capsize. Their canoe catches the current side-on and lands against me. Both of my arms are over the top of the tree, keeping me above the surface.
I now have a sideways canoe with its flat hull pressing my torso into a giant tree, with the force of a raging river behind it. I feel it crushing me, and think I’m going to die.
And then, I didn’t. Apparently the angle was slightly off, and the canoe slid off and landed on my friend, a few feet downstream. Her leg was trapped and it took a whole lot of people a whole lot of time to move the canoe against the current enough so she could scrape her leg out. She ended up with severe bruising and was on crutches for awhile, due to the pressure. Yeah, I would have died, with puny ribs and lungs fighting the current instead of solid bone.
Chinese Black Pepper Steak
Chinese Black Pepper Steak 5
Ingredients
750g eye fillet (in one piece)
2 onions, sliced
1/2 teaspoon sesame oil
2 tablespoons dry sherry
2 teaspoons granulated sugar
2 teaspoons grated fresh ginger
1 tablespoon dark soya sauce
2 tablespoons whole black peppercorns, crushed
Instructions
Partially freeze steak. Cut into thin slices.
Combine steak, onions, sesame oil, sherry, sugar, ginger and soya sauce in bowl. Cover, marinate several hours or refrigerate overnight.
Stir peppercorns through steak mixture. Stir-fry steak and onions in a wok over high heat until steak is cooked to your liking.
I’m astounded that Japan could be confused about the reason dead fish are washing ashore in the hundreds and more. They just released the most toxic water to date into the ocean. Gee, I’m sure that has nothing to do with it. Just a funny coincidence.
Would you drink water from Chernobyl? Would you drink water from Fukushima? So why would you eat fish that live in an an environment of toxic nuclear water? Why would you be surprised that the fish are dying in such water and washing ashore?
Literally everyone with common sense could’ve and did predict this. It’s basic cause and effect. No, I’m not surprised.
Years ago I had a blind date. We had talked on the phone and the guy asked if he could take me to lunch. Not MEET me for lunch, but take me. He was inviting me so I assumed he would pay.
We met at a casual inexpensive chain restaurant. I had something modestly priced – it was probably around $7 (like I said, years ago). When the bill came, he told me what my share was – he actually said, “You had the french dip plus an iced tea, so your total is…..” I was pretty surprised but I figured that the cost of my lunch was worth finding out what a cheapo he was so I wouldn’t waste any more time dating him. But here’s the kicker – he had a Buy One Get One Free coupon! So his meal was free and I paid for mine! That was enough for me. He walked me to my car and asked if he could see me again. I said, “No” and he looked surprised and asked why. I said that anyone as cheap as he was shouldn’t date. Thank goodness he never called again.
EDIT*** For those who comment why it should be presumed that a man always pays for the first date – I do not presume that! Whoever invites another on a date (not a casual “meet up”) should pay. This man invited me. He said he wanted to “take me to lunch.” That is an invitation for a date and it was logical of me to assume he would pay. I have invited men on dates and I have paid for both of us. This is not a feminist issue – this is an issue of manners. And this guy had none.
Music CDs – it was announced recently that a couple of big box stores are dropping them from their shelves.
The word “TWICE”. No, really! Just start listening out for it and you’ll notice that almost every TV advert that should be using the word will say “TWO TIMES” instead…and it’s spreading, I hear this ugly replacement for a perfectly good word in news stories too. Why? It’s a total mystery! (Of course “THRICE” already went the way of the Dodo…so…)
Stick-shift cars. Most new cars no longer come with the option to drive stick. (Boooo!!!!!)
The grammatical rule that disallows “split infinitives” (Like “To boldly go where no man has gone before!”…which should strictly be -> which should be strictly “To go boldly…”)
In the USA – extending tape measures with inches on one edge of the tape and centimeters on the other. I broke mine a few months ago and neither of the local DIY stores have anything other than “Easy Read” tape measures with only inches. I had to hunt around online to find one that I could still order.
Cash. Already, several countries are considering completely abolishing cash…and a while back, I needed cash for something (I forget what) – and realized that I’ve had no cash in my wallet for more than two years!
Philips screw heads. (The ones like a ‘+’ sign) The replacement is the six-sided “torx” head screws (like a ‘*’ sign) – and in some cases the Allen head – which is a regular hexagon. With the improvement in design of electric screwdrivers, the old philips screws (which are DESIGNED to strip under high torque to protect the tool from damage) are overdue for replacement.
We could go on forever…
Point is that with all of the new things in the world – some old things have to “go away” to make room…either intellectually or physically.
Sometimes it’s sad…sometimes, it’s good…mostly it’s just “Meh”.
When I was in college I went to bed hungry many, many nights. I used to steal cheese from Administration wine and cheese parties so I could eat that night. My food budget was 5 dollars a week. Then one day I learned about food stamps. In those days, food stamps really were stamps — they resembled currency but could only be used for food. I think I was eligible for 90 dollars a month in food stamps in 1981. That increased my food budget to about 22 dollars a week.
It absolutely changed my life. Suddenly, I could keep peanut butter in my house, and bread and cereal, things I could eat every day. And if I had the right coupons, I could buy tuna fish and mayonnaise as a luxury. I can still remember my hands shaking with joy as I made a tuna fish sandwich. I was a six foot tall 19 year old man with a 28 inch waist.
Pride made me unable to let people know how bad things were or how hungry I was. Money from my work-study job was used to pay rent and utilities. I balanced my check book to the penny because every penny counted. But when I did go to the DeMoulas in Fitchburg near the college (and I always walked), I always felt ashamed when it came time to pay. And don’t think I didn’t get many dirty looks and the occasional snarky comment from others in the line.
I vowed one day to make up for taking those food stamps and never criticize people who used them. Hunger is real and hunger changes your life, what you can do, how you view your work, your study, your play, your pride, your sense of worth – everything you are, because what you eat today walks and talks tomorrow. Yes, I felt real shame using food stamps. I never took charity before, I was a white man in America and taught that men don’t take charity — you work for what you get. But they saved my life and I am grateful today for the generosity of the taxpayer of yesterday who saved my life and ability to graduate with high honors from college and become a productive member of society.
Many moons ago, I found myself in perplexing life circumstances.
While I had a decent paying corporate IT job, my divorce of several years back had finally to ground my finances down to the point of near crisis.
Despite appearances of success, my disposable income after supporting two households was drifting into the negative.
In addition to faithfully paying child support for my two children, I also took them every weekend as they were the joyous bright light of my then stressful life.
While not extravagant per se, I made sure they had fun doing normal things kids do, as their mom tended to be frugal in this regard. No blaming, per se…
Backstory set, my current financial crisis was that the annual car insurance bill was due, and I basically didn’t have it. Ironically, a recent necessary car repair depleted my reserve at a bad time. Big sigh.
After spending days trying to sort this, no solution was apparent, and the strain of the bills due date was a preoccupation.
The next morning as I leave for work, the neighbor who lives across our sloping alley was standing behind my car looking at its bumper. His own over-the-top customized pickup is at an odd angle behind my car.
He apologetically explains that his big truck slipped out of gear, rolling over and hitting the back of my car. Hard enough that his trucks bumper was broken in the middle and partially dangled on one side. My heart sank, guessing at my poor cars condition.
Upon inspection, my early 80’s Volvo GL (very thick body metal) had a minor rumple in its rear corner. The trunk still worked, taillight undamaged, and bumper still fine as the lifted truck hit above it. Quite a comical mismatch of damage.
He gave me his insurance info and I went to work, grateful in part for light damage, but annoyed and worried. What was this going to cost?
I called his insurance agent who arranged to have an adjuster come my works parking lot, who I met about an hour later. He asked a few questions as he circled the car, tapping away on some hand-held machine that looked part printer (not a usual thing at the time).
Before I could finish explaining the alley incident, his machine starts spitting out some paper.., a check! He handed it to me with a smile saying There you go!
Sure I about to be low-balled for my repair, I quickly looked the amount. Easily quadruple what my car insurance bill that needed to be paid this week! Huzzah?
I look at the adjuster guy, clearly showing surprise in my expression. He says The damage is cosmetic and everything stiil works. If I were you, I’d just leave it and keep the money. Have a great day! We shake hands and off he goes.
And that’s just what I did, after paying my car insurance with the windfall from the other insurance company. A curious little shell game between these entities.
Indeed, Huzzah!
Billy Joel – We Didn’t Start The Fire (Historically Accurate Almanac) COMPLETE
Sailing into the wind is a sailing expression that refers to a sailboat’s ability to move forward despite being headed into (or very nearly into) the wind. A sailboat cannot make headway by sailing directly into the wind; the point of the sail into the wind is called “close hauled”.
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Sailing into the wind is possible when the sail is angled in a slightly more forward direction than the sail force. In this aspect, the boat will move forward because the keel (centerline) of the boat acts to the water as the sail acts to the wind. The force of the sail is balanced by the force of the keel. This keeps the boat from moving in the direction of the sail force. Although total sail force is to the side when sailing into the wind, a proper angle of attack moves the boat forward
Old ships, such as sailing ships and square-rigged ships, had different sailing and fighting qualities than modern sailboats. They had to rely on their sails, rigging, hull shape, and crew skills to maneuver and perform in various wind and sea conditions. They also had to deal with challenges such as enemy fire, storms, pirates, and navigation. Old ships used various tactics and techniques to sail into the wind, such as:
Tacking: This is a basic sailing maneuver that involves changing the direction of the ship by turning its bow through the wind. This allows the ship to zigzag its way upwind by alternating between port and starboard tacks. Tacking requires coordination between the helmsman and the crew, who have to adjust the sails and rigging accordingly. Tacking also exposes the ship to enemy fire from both sides, so it was often avoided in combat situations.
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Wearing: This is another sailing maneuver that involves changing the direction of the ship by turning its stern through the wind. This allows the ship to reverse its course without losing much speed or momentum. Wearing is easier and faster than tacking, but it also requires more space and exposes the ship’s vulnerable stern to enemy fire. Wearing was often used as an escape or evasion tactic when facing superior forces.
Beating: This is a sailing technique that involves sailing as close to the wind as possible without losing speed or stalling. Beating requires trimming the sails tightly and steering carefully to maintain an optimal angle of attack. Beating allows the ship to gain ground upwind by minimizing its leeway (sideways drift). The beating was often used as a pursuit or attack tactic when chasing or engaging enemy ships.
Pinching: This is a sailing technique that involves sailing closer to the wind than is optimal (i.e., with a too-small angle to the wind). Pinching reduces the speed and efficiency of the ship, but it also reduces its leeway and allows it to point higher upwind. Pinching was often used as a desperate or risky tactic when trying to gain an advantage or avoid a disadvantage in a tight situation.
The time when I was 16 years old and had a fake driver’s license to get into clubs. (This is a very long time ago when the licenses were paper).
A few weeks before, a clever bouncer realised my ID was fake. I won’t go into the details. He took it from me and advised that if I wanted it back I needed to go to the police.
I freaked out, went straight home (parents) and hoped I’d never have to think about it again.
There’s a knock at our front door. It’s the police (I can see them coming up from my bedroom window). I couldn’t understand what was happening.
My Dad answered the front door. I heard mumbling for a few minutes. I heard the front door close, and Dad coming up the stairs.
Dad called for my Mum. “Heidi, your Uncle’s stolen car has been found and it’s registered to here. I’ve informed the police that he’s living here at the moment (truth) and that he’ll sort it out tomorrow with them”.
Footnote: I heard all this from my bedroom as I was promising God that I will never, ever, ever have another fake driver’s license!
What you’re not being told about Apple Daily and Jimmy Lai
When Indonesia got loan from IMF in 1997, the Indonesian government was forced to terminate this project as one of requirements in order to get the loan from IMF.
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The planes in the picture were N250s. The first ever plane produced by Indonesian airplane manufacturer, PT IPTN. It was in the 1997 N250 first prototype made its roll out. The plane successfully took off and conducted flight test. Unfortunately, Indonesia fell into a severe monetary crisis in 1997 and had to go to IMF to get the loan. The IMF told President Suharto to cancel the N250 project and it was mandatory before getting the loan. Suharto had no option at the time but approved it. Since then N250 project was cancelled. IMF also told Indonesia to stop funding IPTN totally but Indonesian government didn’t fully comply what IMF wanted. The funding to IPTN was only greatly reduced and its business cores were diversified in order to survive with minimum budget support from the government, now IPTN changes its name into PT Dirgantara Indonesia.
Many said and believed, IMF intentionally terminated the N250 project was to accommodate the requests from some foreign airplane manufacturers which didn’t want Indonesia to produce its own planes because they wanted Indonesia to keep buying from them.
I won’t say getting load from China will not be followed by terms and conditions but I just wanted to show you how IMF put pressures on countries that borrow money from them.
I parked in a hospital parking lot, and when I came back to my vehicle, there was this young couple, early twenties having a heated discussion. She wanted him to call a taxi, and drive to a mall and buy a battery. He wanted to call a locksmith. The battery in their key fob was dead, and they couldn’t get the door open. They were getting quite mad at each other, thinking that the others solution was going to cost more and take longer.
I asked them if I could be of assistance, and they both wanted me to explain to the other why their idea sucked.
The guy suggested that maybe I could take the battery out of my fob, and put it in theirs just long enough, for them to open the doors.
I asked to see their key fob, and he handed it to me, thinking I was going to do his suggestion.
I walked to their car, put the key in the lock, and opened the door.
They both were stunned. Saying OMG, how did you do that?
They had never seen a car door opened with a key. I felt really old, and just a little smug.
Def Leppard • Hysteria || Jennifer Connelly • Career Opportunities
This is great.
Curried Beef
2023 12 21 06 07
Ingredients
14 ounces (400g) lean boneless beef
2 teaspoons rice wine
3 cups (750ml) vegetable oil for deep-frying; uses about 2 1/2 oz (75cml)
2 ounces (60ml) clear stock
2 tablespoons curry oil
1/4 teaspoon salt, or to taste
1/4 teaspoon ginger, chopped
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon garlic, chopped
1 teaspoon cornstarch (corn flour) dissolved in 1 teaspoon water
1/4 teaspoon onion, chopped
1/4 teaspoon hot red chile pepper, chopped
Instructions
Cut beef into 1-inch square chunks.
Heat the oil in a wok over low heat to very hot, 350 degrees F (180 degrees C). Deep-fry the beef until it is cooked through. Remove beef, drain, and set aside.
Pour the oil out of the wok, leaving a thin film on the bottom. Reheat until a haze appears on the oil surface. Add the curry oil, ginger, garlic, onion, chili pepper, rice wine, stock, salt, MSG (optional) and sugar.
Stir the cornstarch to blend and add. Add the beef, stir-fry for 2 minutes, or until the sauce is thickened.
Here is Claudia Schiffer in her earlier days. If you are a heterosexual male (my perspective on this subject), this picture make your genes scream “I wanna mix with those genes!”
It’s not an intellectual response. It’s not a moral judgement. It is a primal response. You couldn’t stop it if you tried. In this picture, she is the epitome of beauty. This yells “fertile”, and “your (our) kids will be successful at reproducing, too”.
Remember, the future belongs to the people who show up. Reproducing successfully greatly increases your odds of having children that reproduce successfully.
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Brigitte Macron (wife of French President Emmanuel Macron) is not exactly an ugly woman, but I guarantee this picture doesn’t spur the same response as the one above.
In this picture, she is at, or close to menopause. That’s enough to shut down, or at least greatly mute the involuntary male response.
But looks don’t matter
Looks open up the door. They don’t keep you in the room.
The visceral response to those looks may last 6 months, or two years. But humans become acculturated to their normal surroundings. And even if your wife/girlfriend looks like this (Linda Evangelista in her prime):
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There comes a point where you are inured to it. You care more about whether she picks her nose and leaves the snot on the bedsheet (or whatever annoying behavior she has).
And then there’s that standard male desire for variety. Arnold Schwarzenegger was married to Maria Shriver
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Beautiful, smart, connected. She had it all. That should be enough, right?
Nope. He had an affair – and a child – with his nanny
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I can’t tell you what was going on in the Schwarzenegger-Shriver marriage, but it’s rather obvious that Maria’s looks didn’t mean a whole lot at that point in time.
So let me repeat the point:
Looks matter – they get you in the door. But they don’t keep you in the room.
Are you beautiful? Lucky you. You have a greater selection of mates to start with. But after you choose one, you need to figure out a relationship, and that’s hard. Really hard. Work on that. The looks will stop mattering, even before they fade.
The Average Chinese don’t understand GDP growth or PMI or Productivity or other Indicators
To them the only source of their worry is the REAL ESTATE MARKET
They have no inflation whatsoever
They have no unemployment problems
Their businesses have plenty of credit available these days
The Chinese who have invested a large chunk of their money into real estate now see the downturn in these markets and feel poor
The Chinese Economists know this and allow this to happen knowing the alternative is to keep fueling real estate speculation and spectacularly crash a decade later
Yet the Chinese people are stoic and practical people
In the end they will shrug, accept that their investments in real estate are going nowhere and offload them or stick with minimal growth
It’s a harsh pill to swallow but one necessary for the long term
China thus is doing pretty well relative to the rest of the world from the eyes of the average mainlander
In fact, except for the real estate slump, he would rank his life as very good
2023 was a good year for China
First the lockdowns ended and that was a huge relief
Second the country is chugging back to life. The demand is back to 2019 standards and slowly rising again.
I personally feel Chinas growth in 2023 could have been as much as 6% but the Chinese are keeping a lot of their success on the books so that they can boost their 2024 growth rate instead
Rather than a 6% growth in 2023 and 4.1% in 2024, better for a 5.1% growth in 2023 and a 4.8% growth in 2024
This way China exceeds it’s target for both years
So there is no need to distract anyone
The Average Mainlander doesn’t need distraction
He has relatives who inform him of their lives in other countries and he knows not one of them is better off than him.
Today I walked my son to his kindergarten class. It was cold and we were huddled together like sardines as we stood outside the door waiting for the bell to ring.
I saw you with your little boy just a few feet from us, and I looked down when I realized you were looking at us. I hoped you didn’t know who we were. I hoped you didn’t know my son was “that kid.” The one who’s not transitioning well in this school year.
I know what the kids say about my son. They go home and tell their parents my kid is bad. Sometimes he pushes and hits. Sometimes he is defiant and refuses to sit down, be quiet, or stay in line.
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I know because the kids tell him what they think of him on the playground. “Mark said I’m bad today.” Or “Aiden’s dad said I can’t play with him anymore.” And my heart hurts, because I know he’s struggling in school. And we are working every angle… in school with a specialist, at home, and through classes, books and resources.
Today, you looked at me, then at my son. “You must be K,” you said to my son. And I looked up and smiled sheepishly. It was an apologetic smile. Almost a “I’m sorry you know his name” smile, because that means you’ve heard the stories.
I said to you, “Yes, this is him.”
I whispered when my son stepped away that we are aware he’s causing some trouble and we are working on it. That we take his behavior very seriously.
And then you did something I never expected. I don’t know if I was waiting for you to tell me what you heard K did to your son, or just tell me off. But instead you told me about your older son who struggled with similar problems at this age. You told me that now he’s in high school and he’s a straight A student.
Instead of tearing me down, you lifted me up. You gave me hope. And you handed me an olive branch so I know that I do have an ally during school drop off. An ally I never expected.
You didn’t have to make that connection. You could have ignored us or pretended not to know us. Or yes — you could have told me what you think of my son (you would not be the first). But you didn’t. You showed me grace and kindness and you uplifted me more than I could possibly describe in words.
I told you I would love to learn more about steps you took with your older son. I would love suggestions and guidance and that I would call you. And you know what? I will call you. Even if no suggestions or guidance is ever exchanged. I will call you because you are a friend I want to have. You are a good person.
I will do something I normally despise: answer on behalf of someone else. This is just too good to not mention.
The words were: We are going to lie down for a nap. We are feeling tired and cranky.
It was just that: My wife, our toddler and I were going to take a nap on a weekend afternoon, because we were just not quite feeling ourselves. Before lying down, my wife called a doctor’s office to make an overdue appointment. All she got was a lady from the answering service – or possibly an Angel. We were not able to ascertain which, as we never met her in person.
The lady told my wife that the office was not open, and when it would reopen. My wife replied that she was going to try again later, as we were going to lie down for a nap because we were feeling tired and cranky. This had nothing to do with what she had called about – just making conversation. Still, only going by that, the lady deduced that we were dying of carbon monoxide poisoning. She told us to leave the house NOW, and called 911 for us.
Turns out the chimney had collapsed, and flooded the house with carbon monoxide. The levels were deadly – had we gone to sleep, we would not have woken up. The nice lady saved our lives, just based on my wife mentioning conversationally that we were going to take a nap. If that is not impressive, I don’t know what is.
Thanks, nice answering service lady, wherever you are.
MAJOR CORRECTION: My wife has read this answer, and she remembers telling the answering service lady that she was feeling woozy. That would have been a major hint – but I still find it more than impressive that she was able to save our lives just based on a brief phone call which was on its face about something else entirely.
When i was 12 there were a few kids at school who bullied me for whatever reason. It wasn’t bad physical bullying just name calling mainly. On weekend i was in our town centre calling my mother from a payphone. These 3 boys walked past and started banging on the phonebox shouting some names and proceeded to walk off.
Now for some reason, i this time i reacted. The only thing i had to hand was a full can of coke. I shook it up and opened it up just a tiny bit and threw it towards the boys intending to cover them in Coke. I threw it when they must have been 20-30 metres away and as the can approached them i shouted one of the boys names. “Paul!” (I’ll not use his real name) he turned round and the can hit the side of his forehead and he just dropped to the floor.
I ran. Oh, i did, i ran! Finally stopping at another phone box to call my mother and tell her exactly what happened. She was surprisingly ok about it despite me saying ‘Paul’ must have been really hurt. She just told me to get my butt home ASAP.
I didn’t hear anything about it until after the weekend and ‘Paul’ came in to school with a massive lump on his head coming out in a huge bruise. He’d spent the rest of Saturday in hospital.
Fortunately, i didn’t get into any trouble at all. I had only intended to cover them in Coke and could never have imagined hitting him square on his forehead at such a distance.
As kids are we all became friends in later years with even ‘Paul’ painfully accepting it was a one in a million shot.
Someone I know was diagnosed with cancer and given only 3–6 months to live.
It was a devastating diagnosis to her and her family. She was an amazing person, who’d lived a good, healthy life, and was only in her late-50’s.
But, as we know, cancer is a merciless disease.
She ended up getting on a strong treatment plan that allowed her to live almost 2 years.
The first 12–16 months of those 2 years, she more or less had a great quality of life and was able to travel, spend time with loved ones, her husband, kids, grandkids, making the very most of that time.
In the remaining 8–12 months of her life, things began to descend.
The cancer began to change her body, breaking her down. Her mind began to change and, consequently, her behavior did too. The medicine she was taking was no longer thwarting the onslaught of the disease.
In the end, in the final weeks of her life, it wasn’t pretty.
She eventually fell into a coma that doctors advised she would not wake up from.
In her final days and hours, her body seemed in great pain.
I won’t burden you with the details, but know this – her family had to see her in a state that would traumatize most of us had it been our own mother.
I’m not presuming the following statement would have been her choice; it is my, perhaps controversial, opinion:
People who know their life will end in an excruciating way should have the option, with the assistance of medical professional, to end their own life in a more peaceful manner.
It is far more humane than letting them be ravaged until the bitter end.
1. Just because you’re offended doesn’t mean you’re right. 2. You can’t be healthy and obese. 3. Everyone wants to GET old, nobody wants to BE old. 4. Most anger comes from feeling powerless. 5. The people you look up to are just as nervous as you are. 6. As people age, they get fewer chances to mess up. 7. All systems are essentially a minority ruling over the majority. 8. If you look in the mirror and find a dirty face, it might also be that the mirror is dirty. 9. HR is not there to protect you, it is in place to protect the employer. 10. Relationships are a one way street, whether you are the one in love or the one loved. 11. Some people will not like you no matter what you do. 12. In fact, some people are not qualify to have kids or even pets. 13. Upvotes on Quora are free. 14. Small achievements may come from hard work, but big ones require luck. 15. We are all biased, especially those who think they are not.
I was working in the seafood department of a major grocery store chain. We had on ad pink salmon for .88 a pound. My first customer of the day wanted me to scale it, fillet it, and pack it into 4-ounce portions. I refused! She immediately went and told the store manager about my refusal. I was willing to walk out if he insisted that I do it because, I was working solo and the cost of the fish was so low and the cost of the packaging was a lot, let alone the time it would take if I had to do them. He came back, we went into the back to discuss my refusal. I told him my reasoning. He told me that he would help me with it.
We returned to the seafood department, and he told her that he would be happy to cut it the way she asked. She was over the moon and handed him two packages of the fish. He gave me a disgusted look. He told me you refused to do the two fish, unbelievable, I am disappointed in your lack of customer service. I smiled. Then the same customer pushed into the seafood department the two carts filled to the top with the fish. She had over 200 packages wanting them all scaled, fillet it, and pack it into 4-ounce portions. I silently told him so! He refused to do it for her and told me that under no circumstance would we do anything to the fish but sell them in the bags. I agreed but did tell him that I was disappointed in his lack of customer service! He sent me home for the day! Being a union department, I was paid for the day since he didn’t follow protocol about sending me home. The meat department had to cover my shift; boy they were pissed at me!
I once stopped a very hot looking “model” (I use the term loosely) for speeding at nearly twice the speed limit. Mind you, I am not a ticket writer and can count on one hand the number of citations I’d written in the last decade. Truth be told, at my rank, I don’t even carry a ticket book. When I informed her why I had stopped her, she proceeded to hand me her business card with her cell phone number on it and leaned forward making sure I could see her quite ample bosom. Up to that point, I had no intention of citing her, and was just going to warn her to keep her speed down. However, once she suggestively tried to flash some skin, I called for a radio car to bring me a citation book so I could write her up.
“You’re going to write me a ticket? Nothing we can do to work this out?”
“Ma’am, I had no intention of writing you a ticket when I stopped you, but at this point, if I don’t, you’re going to go around telling everyone that all you had to do was bat your eyes and flash your breasts to get out of a ticket… Press hard on the pen, there’s three copies.”
The Airforce UFO Cover Up That Drove a Man INSANE | They’re LYING to US
I was living in West Elizabeth, PA. It was a very distressed mobile park complex. The entire community was worn down, poverty stricken, and crime ridden.
At that time, we had our first cat: Samatha Pantha.
Something cool started to happen, a beautiful blue grey Maine Coon, the same age as my kitty started hanging out with my cat.
It was beautiful. And we named it “Blue Thunder”.
…
For the next few months the two cats played and romped about.
One day, some local boys were tying to sic a dog on Blue Thunder, and I saw them under my mobile home trying to attack my cat. I was furious and chased them away.
Three days went by…
No Blue Thunder.
Then one morning, the kitty was on my porch. Someone had shot it with a BB gun…
We took it in the house and tended to it. And all was well.
It was still around us. Our “outside” cat, and not our “inside” cat.
…
Eventually, I got a job in another state. And we had to move.
I wanted to Take Blue Thunder with us, but my wife reasoned “no”. She reasoned was that he would be just fine… alone… outside.
I should have NEVER listened to her.
…
Guys… stick to your guns. If you are dealing with a living, breathing being. Err on the safe, and the protected side of things.
…
I found out later that when the mobile home was being transported, a cat (that obviously must have been Blue Thunder) tumbled out from underneath the mobile home. I don’t know what happened to it, but falling out from a moving vehicle tends to be fatal to little creatures.
I have great regrets about this issue.
I am haunted by my passive actions that led to the demise of others.
…
About six months later, I came across another little kitty. Phelie. The cat that I wrote about in other posts, the one whose mother cat died on the road. And this cat had nearly the same personality that Blue Thunder had.
Maybe he found his way back to me.
Don’t you know.
People, I have many regrets in life. But one of the biggest is going against my CORE BELIEFS because my partner or family member did not realize the value of other creatures. Do not be like me.
Fight the GOOD FIGHT.
Never give up. Stick to your guns. Hold your ground. Be someone that your grandparents would be proud of.
Two police officers with sober faces stared at me and I knew the news couldn’t be good.
They described a car that had just been in an accident, and the license plate. My wife’s mini-van had collided, burst into flames and everyone inside it died.
I’m doing a mental inventory about now. My wife, three children, and two nieces.
My legs turned wobbly. You can’t imagine what was going through my head. Because of the fire, they couldn’t find any useful identification but explained they could identify everyone both by DNA and by dental records. They wanted a DNA sample from me.
I guess they could verify my kids were mine, and that the adult was their mother. A nice, neat little bow.
Can you imagine? They’ve just told you that your whole family is dead, and —- I told them I would come down and give them a sample.
Getting ready to leave, my cell phone is buzzing. It’s my wife. What? Hard tingles are on my spine, like she’s calling from the grave.
“Our van was stolen from the parking lot….”
Were the sweetest words I could’ve ever heard. Yeah it was my wife’s car, but they won’t need any DNA sample from me today.
EDIT – to address some of the mysteries in the comments
I learned later that three people were in the van when it collided. A man, woman, and younger person, which they presumed was a child of the drivers. The police said everyone died, but they had a different human inventory than my own. I also learned they were part of a ring of car thieves, and the accident was not their fault. Another car ran a light and hit them broadside. No fatalities and only minor injuries in the other car.
My wife had organized a birthday outing for our oldest. All the necessary shops, restaurant, and theater were inside the mall. It would be several hours before it was time to leave again. The thieves had plenty of time to get away if they hadn’t been hit.
I have an interesting piece of information which was completely new to me and maybe it is new to many of you too..
Recently, a friend of mine was involved in an accident. He rammed his car behind a truck and the car was completely totaled!
image 243image 242
Thankfully, he was wearing his seat belt which initiated the action of airbags and saved his life.
Now comes the part which amazed me. When I saw the pictures of the crash, the speedometer of the car caught my attention.
image 241
The speedometer needle was stuck at 90 km/hr. Upon asking some of my acquaintances in the automobile industry, I discovered that this is also a feature, due to which upon impact if the airbags are deployed, then the speedometer needle will be stuck at the speed at which the vehicle is being driven to ease the investigation and further formalities about the accident.
This amazed me as this was quite a useful feature which rarely people know and it will make it much easier to get into depth of the cause of the accident in cars which do not have a dashcam installed, which usually is the case in India.
Hope you were amazed too!
Valiant Thor: A UFO, the Pentagon and a 3-year Mission to Save the World
I have a house for rent in Brownfield, Maine. It’s a tiny vacation house I call the “Schwende Hut” named after a hot dog stand on top of the ski hill Mt Tecumseh in New Hampshire. I found out later that “Schwende Hut” means “Food House” but I think it’s hilarious.
I have been renting the house for almost 20 years to people who like to stay be the weekend, the week, the month or the season. It’s been pretty good.
A few years ago I got call from a woman who wanted to rent for a week. It was the end of the season and I still had that week available so naturally I signed her right up. She moved in on time and all was good. She was rather elderly and I was concerned that she would have a good time.
After a week my cleaner reported to me that she hadn’t left. I went over to see what was going on. Normally guests have to check out by noon so the cleaner can do his work before the next guest arrived. She came to the door but didn’t open it. I asked her what she was doing.
“I live here now,” she said to me, “I’m not leaving.”
I was confused.
“This is a guest house,” I said, “Other guests are going to come.”
“And I’m not paying,” she said obstinately. I was speechless. This had never happened before. I said, “I’ll call the Sheriff.”
“Go ahead,” she said, “Winter is coming. I’m old. They’ll never evict an elderly woman. Good luck.”
What could I do? I had to go consult with my local lawyer.
That night a huge storm came up with violent winds and lots of rain. I couldn’t worry about the old bitch in my house. I had to worry about property damage. Two days later the storm ended. I came through all right with just a few branches down and lots of pine needles everywhere. But there was no power. In Maine the power goes out at least once a week. Trees just fall and take out the lines. After a big storm crews and trucks have to go out and put the lines back up. We get used to seeing the flashing light on our digital clocks in Maine. It tells us that the power was out and we have to throw away most of the food in our fridge.
It took almost a week for the power company to restore power. In the meantime I was worried about the woman who wouldn’t leave my house. What was I going to do with her? The legal moves for getting her out were long, laborious and expensive. Even squatters have rights, it seems. People told me to tell the Sheriff she was dealing drugs and that would get her out fast. Meth is a huge problem in Maine with so much poverty. I couldn’t bring myself to do that. But within a few days of the power being out, she packed up her car and left. With no power, there was no fridge, no stove, no AC, no showers, no toilet, no light. She up and left, The house was a pigsty but at least it was empty.
I installed a power kill in a hidden location under the house. If this happens again I know what I will do now.
In the early 1920s, when the postal service first launched its airmail service, planes could only fly during the day.
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It would take three and a half days for a package to make it from New York City to San Francisco, with both airmail and train-travel due to the limitation on flight.
Thus, to solve this problem, Congress funded a transcontinental lighted airway from New York to California.
The airway went through nine different states and consisted of 50-foot steel towers that were rotating spotlights every 10 to 30 miles.
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However, since cloudy days sometimes obstructed the view of pilots, giant concrete arrows were constructed on the ground in order to point the plane in the right direction. They were painted yellow to make them easier to see.
The project was called the Transcontinental Airway system and it worked surprisingly well up until the 1940s when the system was dismantled due to advances in aviation technology.
Many of the concrete arrows are still around today, remnants of a time where planes could travel across the country, purely by sight.
During my time in High School, I received a ticket from a police officer who was working a side job as a delivery driver. He accused me of “dumping my clutch” and “doing a burn out of the parking lot.” However, I am currently fighting against these allegations.
When I appeared before the judge, the prosecutor and the police officer were present. The police officer reiterated his observations, and I countered by explaining that I did not perform any clutch dumping or burnout in my 280zx because there was an 8″ gutter separating the street and the sidewalk.
I further argued that performing a burnout in the parking lot would have caused damage to my low-riding Z vehicle. Moreover, when I hit the gutter, my battery came loose, and the positive post made contact with the steel clutch line, resulting in a hole and a loss of fluid, making it impossible to switch gears. The engine sounded loud because the car was in neutral, and I was expecting to shift into second gear.
The police officer should be aware of this situation since he had to call a tow truck to take my car to the garage for repairs. I even provided the receipts as evidence.
The judge then asked me if I worked at the restaurant, to which I replied affirmatively. I mentioned that as a delivery driver, I would be unable to carry out my job without a vehicle. However, the judge questioned how I managed to hit the gutter so hard that it caused my battery to bounce.
I humorously explained that the police officer had walked in front of my car while he was distracted by the attractive rear of my best friend, who happened to be a female. This caused everyone in the courtroom to burst into laughter, including the judge. The police officer became flustered and attempted to speak, but the prosecutor intervened and suggested that the case should be dismissed.
I agreed entirely with the prosecutor’s suggestion but requested that the repair bill be taken care of since it was the fault of the police officer’s negligence while representing the police department that caused the damage.
The judge agreed to dismiss the case, and I was awarded the reimbursement of around $37, which was equivalent to approximately 10 hours of minimum wage back in those days.
Oh, I almost forgot to mention that my best friend was a female with an attractive figure who enjoyed flaunting it whenever possible. However, everyone else in the courtroom assumed that my best friend was a male.
I was happy at my job, but one day a head hunter called me up, and asked me if I would be interested in interviewing for a job that was a step up, at a rival company.
I hummed and hawed, and thought why not see what I am worth, at the worst I could ask my boss for a raise.
I went to the interview, they were impressed and offered me a job, they wanted to know my current salary, I told them that the salary was only a small part of my pay, as I had a performance bonus that was substantially more than my salary. So I wanted to know what their bonus system was. It was woefully low, compared to my current job, I would get a bonus that was maybe 20 percent of my salary, compared to the 200 percent of the salary I was getting.
To make up for it, they offered me a 20 percent higher salary.
I wont give real numbers, but here is how it would work out.
I was currently getting $1000 in salary, and $2000 in bonus per month, for a total of $3000.
They thought salary was the key, and offered me $1200 in salary and $240 a month in bonus for a total of $1440
Less than half of what I was making, doing a job with less responsibility.
I told them that I wasn’t interested, and they offered to increase it to 30 percent increase in salary. Which would have been just over half of what I was making.
They just kept coming back to salary, and never seemed to grasp how substantial my bonus was.
That was a slap in the face offer.
I of course turned them down.
They went bankrupt 18 months later.
Man Dumps Wife When He Finds Out He Was Her Last Choice
I was working on a power station in Moscow and, for the weekend, went to a small town (Kaluga), two hundred kilometres south-west from the city with a work colleague. Alex.
He had bought some brake shoes for his Russian-made car and was fitting them with his father in their garage that every Russian family has. They are always in a long row of garages some distance from the apartments.
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The brake shoes wouldn’t fit due to poor quality manufacturing so he got out an angle grinder and ground the groove in the brake shoe until it fitted.
He said that this was normal in Russia.
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He also said that when you bought a new Russian-made car you went to the showroom with a colleague and inspected the car. You would then tell the salesman what was wrong with the car (door does not close, brake pedal is missing rubber, etc.). He would fix it and, when you took it away, you accepted responsibility for all that was wrong.
So if you are planning an expedition to the Arctic don’t get an American or European mechanic to fix stuff en route, get a Russian because they have spent their entire life bodging stuff up with a Swiss army knife and some 14 gauge wire.
Most corporate offices have a “bend don’t break” rule on internet usage.
High achieving professionals don’t want to be micromanaged or watched with suspicion.
Think about it. If you work 40+ hours and are good at your job, it shouldn’t be an issue if you want to check the news or your bank account.
But some people treat their office like an entertainment center, streaming Twitch and YouTube all day.
As a result, HR and IT team up like a Kremlin intelligence agency, looking for any signs of slackers.
The golden snitch sees all. I was walking by one time and this coworker was literally watching a Twitch stream with that lady, Pokimane, as she played video games. This was in the middle of a busy office with people working.
Thirst trapping it on the clock baby. He had quite the audacity.
You can extend this to every stupid hiring practice and office rule. All it takes is one moron and life becomes more annoying for all that follow.
Don’t be the moron behind the stupid rule. If you can help it.
Karma Comes For Disloyal Wife After Husband Admits To Affair With Way Hotter Woman…And She FREAKS!
As a triage nurse in an Emergency Room, there are duties that become mundane but are necessary. One rule we had was that if a pregnant woman approached the check in desk complaining of pregnancy symptoms, the nurse asked how far along they were.
Twenty weeks is the magic number. If they are 20 weeks pregnant the baby has a realistic chance of surviving if delivered. This meant the nurse had to get up and push the patient by wheelchair to Labor and Delivery. It was a big hospital and L&D was on the exact opposite side of the hospital.
If they checked in at the front entrance, security would push them to L&D and the staff there would determine how far along they are and just as the triage nurse in the ER take them by wheelchair to the proper care area.
A pretty good system that had worked for years without incident. Both areas had to push an equal number of patients across the hospital.
And then one day I get a call from the L&D Director.
“We had a patient come in today who says she was told rudely by the ER staff that she was in the wrong place and needed to drive around to the front entrance,” she said.
I neglected to mention that this was a huge hospital that took up 2 city blocks. Crossing the hospital required a 10 min walk through a maze of locked doors and corridors. Driving around required 2 red lights and avoiding a one way street.
“I’ll have to speak to the staff,” I told her, “They know what they’re supposed to do.”
“This girl was 32 weeks and complained of her water breaking,” she continued.
It seemed she was catastrophizing the situation. The staff broke protocol. I will remind them and reiterate the protocol.
“I’ll make sure they understand,” I said.
“Keith, the baby was dead,” she said.
Turns out she was minimizing the episode. The seriousness of the call was not lost on me.
“I am going now to take care of it,” I said, “I am sorry.”
“These people are livid,” she added.
I called the charge nurse and asked who was at triage. Of the two names given, I immediately surmised who the culprit was. Judy was an outspoken nurse who enjoyed sharing her opinion that most of the patients in the ER did not even have an emergency. I went to get her.
“Can you come with me?” I asked.
“Why?” she asked, “Am I in trouble?”
She followed me out into the hallway, and as we walked to my office I asked her, “Did you send a 32 week pregnant patient around to the front?”
“Is that what this is about?” she started, “We are busy and I don’t have time to be pushing people all over the hospital.”
“The baby was dead,” I said, “This is not trivial.”
“That baby was dead before she got here,” she argued, “That has nothing to do with me not pushing her to L&D.”
Stating things that were most likely true did not change facts. She probably was already fired, honestly, but without hesitation I said, “Collect all your stuff and go home.”
“Am I being put on administrative leave because of this crap?”
“Come by my office before you leave,” I said.
While she collected her things, I called Human Resources and made sure I had grounds to terminate. The HR representative agreed to come witness the termination.
“I don’t care what you do,” Judy started as she entered the room. “That baby was already dead.”
“Judy, because of your refusal to follow proper protocol and continued insistence that you have done nothing wrong, you are being terminated. Effective immediately.” Her mouth fell open, and she began to cry. “This is Allison from HR. She can answer any further questions you may have.”
That’s the moment, I think, she finally realized the seriousness of her actions.
Solar storms: more dangerous than you think. Can we survive another Carrington Event?
The Boiling Hot End to a Cook Accused of Poison in Henry VIII’s England
On April 5, 1531, hardened London spectators of public punishment gathered at Smithfield, joined by others who were too curious to stay away. An execution had been announced of a type that none had witnessed in their lifetimes, nor ever heard of. The condemned man, Richard Roose, was to be boiled alive.
Roose was not the sort of criminal that usually met his end at Smithfield, located just beyond the London Wall. He was convicted of high treason, yet he had not sought to harm King Henry VIII nor his queen, Catherine of Aragon, nor any royal councilor. He had not tried to overthrow the kingdom’s government. Roose, a cook, was accused of murder by poison.
His two victims were an obscure gentleman in the household of Bishop John Fisher, Bennet Curwen, and a destitute widow who accepted the bishop’s charity, Alyce Tryppytt. The target of the poisoning was assumed to be Fisher himself, the Bishop of Rochester. Ironically, Fisher did not eat the soup—sometimes described as porridge—that Roose prepared and so was unharmed.
Roose admitted to the poisoning but claimed it was a joke gone wrong, an accident. There is no testimony for us to examine, because Roose had no trial, by command of the king.
In the words of the Greyfriars Chronicle of London, a contemporary document: “This year was a cook boiled in a cauldron in Smithfield for he would have poisoned the bishop of Rochester Fisher with divers of his servants and he was locked in a chain and pulled up and down with a gibbet at divers times until he was dead.”
Roose’s crime, the legal method of his condemnation, and finally the form of punishment create a bizarre chain of events that, in a more modern age, might well have raised questions of motive in several parties, including that of Henry VIII. Although there is no question of who did the killing, this is still a tantalizing Tudor murder mystery, and reveals some of the peculiarities of the early modern age, when laws existed and homicide was considered a heinous crime, but there was no trained police force nor forensic science.
Why did Henry VIII demand this punishment of a lowly cook? Why was Roose executed as a traitor when his crime was murder of commoners? The answer lies in the King’s complex feelings for Bishop Fisher.
John Fisher was made bishop of Rochester by the King’s father, Henry VII, in 1504. Fisher performed the funeral services for Margaret Beaufort, the king’s mother, and Henry VII himself when they died, within months of each other, in 1509. In the first 20 years of the reign of Henry VIII, Fisher was considered “the greatest Catholic theologian in Europe, without any rival,” writes Eamon Duffy.
But by the time of the crime in question, King Henry was no longer proud of Bishop Fisher, 62 years of age. It would be safe to say he considered him an enemy. And it would have made the King’s life much easier if Fisher had lost his—if he had consumed the soup.
In 1527, when Henry VIII, desperate for a male heir, began his public quest for an annulment from 42-year-old Catherine of Aragon to marry the delectable young Anne Boleyn, Fisher became one of his most serious obstacles. The question of the royal marriage was a theological one, and if Europe’s most respected theologian had agreed in the rightness of King Henry’s cause, it would have done a lot to bring about the annulment. But Fisher took the side of Catherine of Aragon. The marriage was legal and could not be dissolved.
In 1529, Bishop Fisher announced at the trial of the royal marriage that it would impossible to die more gloriously than in the cause of marriage, as John the Baptist did. In that same year, when a proposal came to Parliament to dissolve the smaller abbeys—the beginning of Henry VIII’s destruction of the Catholic monasteries—Fisher “openly resisted it with all the force he could.”
Enter one Richard Roose. One of Fisher’s earliest biographers, Richard Hall, wrote in 1655 the most complete account of the poisoning. He is the only source to say that Roose was not the chief cook in Fisher’s household, which is significant: “After this the Bishop escaped a very great danger. For one Richard Rose came into the Bishop’s kitchen, being acquainted with the cook, at his house in Lambeth-marsh, and having provided a quantity of deadly poison, while the cook went into the buttery to fetch him some drink, he took his opportunity to throw that poison into a mess of gruel, which was prepared for the Bishop’s dinner. And after he had waited there a while, he went on his way.
“But so it happened that when the Bishop was called into his dinner, he had no appetite for any meat but wished his servants to fall to and be of good cheer, and that he would not eat till toward night. And they that did eat of the poisoned dish were miserably infected. And whereof one gentleman, named Mr. Bennet Curwen and an old widow, died suddenly, and the rest never recovered their health till their dying day.”
An inquiry began at once. Although a salaried police force did not yet exist in England, criminal investigation was taken seriously. Justices of the peace, appointed by the monarch, received and investigated complaints; coroners viewed dead bodies and ordered arrests. Now if a suspect was bound over for trial, freedom was unlikely. Defendants charged with felonies or treason did not exist. In fact, murder trials rarely lasted more than 15 minutes.
Roose was soon apprehended, and admitted to adding what he believed were laxatives to the soup as a “jest.” No one believed him. The always skeptical Imperial ambassador Eustace Chapuys wrote a slightly different version of events to his master, Charles V, the nephew of Catherine of Aragon:
“They say that the cook, having been immediately arrested… confessed at once that he had actually put into the broth some powders, which he had been given to understand would only make his fellow servants very sick without endangering their lives or doing them any harm. I have not yet been able to understand who it was who gave the cook such advice, nor for what purpose.”
We share Chapuys’ frustration. Who gave the cook these powders and told him that they would sicken and not kill anyone? If that information was obtained, it was not shared with the public. No transparency.
Sir Thomas More, the lord chancellor, informed Henry VIII that there were rumors that Anne Boleyn and her father and brother, Thomas and George Boleyn, were involved in the poisoning attempt. The king reacted angrily, saying Anne Boleyn was unfairly blamed for everything, including bad weather.
The murder motive and the question of a larger plot were soon obscured by Henry VIII’s drastic actions. He decided that Roose should be condemned by attainder without a trial—a measure usually used for criminals who were at large. Roose was sitting in prison! Nonetheless, Parliament passed “An Acte for Poysoning,” making willful murder by means of poison high treason even if the victim was not head of the government of the land. And boiling to death became a form of legal capital punishment. This crime was especially heinous, the king’s representatives said, and thus called for such measures.
Several biographers have noted King Henry’s extreme fear of poison. Although the monarch’s paranoia became infamous in later years, there was some basis for concern. Everyone had heard the stories of murder by cantarella in Rome during the time of the Borgias. Pope Alexander VI, Rodrigo Borgia, died—perhaps of poison slipped into his food at a banquet—during the reign of Henry VII. Cantarella was believed to have been arsenic trioxide.
If poison was ever suspected as the cause of death at this time in England, there was no way to scrutinize its damage within the corpse to confirm. And should the poison itself be obtained, the field of analytical chemistry was four centuries away.
Not surprisingly, rumors ran wild. Poisoning was rumored (never proven) to be the cause of the deaths of Queen Anne, Richard III’s wife; the eventual death of Catherine of Aragon; and the agonizing death of Henry’s son, Edward VI. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, written in the reign of Henry’s daughter, Queen Elizabeth I, employed poison. Shakespeare wove it into five other plays too.
But there was more to this than royal terror of a poisoned dish. As historian K.J. Kesselring wrote in The English Historical Review, “This may explain the severe, exemplary punishment of boiling, but not the need to label the offense treason.”
In April the crowds of Smithfield witnessed Roose’s death. According to an eyewitness: “He roared mighty loud, and divers women who were big with child did feel sick at the sight of what they saw, and were carried away half dead; and other men and women did not seem frightened by the boiling alive, but would prefer to see the headsman at his work.”
The story of the king and the stubborn bishop doesn’t end there.
When, after the king married Anne Boleyn, Bishop Fisher refused to swear an oath of supremacy to the king, he was arrested. The pope made Fisher a cardinal to protect him, but it only enraged the king more. Once the monarch had ordered a savage punishment of the man who tried to kill Fisher, and now Henry VIII wanted Fisher gone.
After a difficult imprisonment, Fisher was beheaded on June 22, 1535 on Tower Hill. The crowd gasped when they saw him on the scaffold for he was “nothing…but skin and bones…the flesh clean wasted away, and a very image of death.” In his speech to the crowd, Fisher is said to have shown a calm dignity.
According to Fisher’s biographer: “And here I cannot omit to declare to you the miraculous sight of his head, which after 14 days grew fresher and fresher, for that in his lifetime he never looked so well…. the face looked as if it beholdeth the people passing by and would have spoken to them. Which many took as a miracle.”
In 1886, the Catholic Church made John Fisher a saint.
Accepting Defeat In Ukraine
In early November the Economistpublished an interview and several pieces by the commander in chief of the Ukrainian army, General Zaluzny. As I summarized:
Zaluzny’s central thesis is that the war is currently at a stalemate. It has become positional, with no large maneuvers being possible. He compares it to the war in Europe in 1917. There, he says, a change only happened through the introduction of new technologies (i.e. tanks). … I for one think that Zaluzny is mistaken. The war is not at a stalemate. Russia has clearly the advantage as it is free to maneuver along the whole frontline and to attack wherever it likes. It does not do so in full force because the current situation allows it to conveniently fulfill the order its commander in chief had given to it – to destroy the military capabilities of Ukraine.
Finally a western mainstream writer has caught up with those facts. Lee Hockstader, the Washington Post‘s columnist for European affairs, opines:
Hockstader laments the lack of support from the U.S. and Europe for the new demands the Ukraine is making. He states:
Without those infusions of cash, arms and munitions, even the disappointing status quo over the past year, in which Ukraine has not managed to recapture much territory, is unlikely to endure.
Andriy Yermak, a top aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, told a Washington forum last week that the “big risk” is that Kyiv’s troops could “lose this war.”
That message should jolt policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic. The danger, as Ukraine’s top general warned publicly last month, isn’t simply stalemate. It is that Ukrainian forces, running low on equipment, might be compelled to fall back, shorten their defensive lines and abandon territory. … It’s essential to think about what Ukraine’s defeat means, because it would be as much a strategic disaster for the United States and its NATO allies as a tableau of terror for Ukraine. Dual cataclysms, equally stark, played out on different timetables.
Well, yes. The West has shot its wad and it proved to be sterile.
There will be no terror for Ukraine, just the loss of the ethnic Russian people, industries and land the communist – Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev – had for whatever reasons attached to it. The rest of it will be a smaller, more poor and purely agricultural rump state without access to the sea. This was obvious from the very beginning to anyone with a clear view of the balance of the forces involved in the war.
As I wrote on February 24 2022, the very day Russian forces entered Ukraine:
Looking at this map I believe that the most advantageous end state for Russia would be the creation of a new independent country, call it Novorussiya, on the land east of the Dnieper and south along the coast that holds a majority ethnic Russian population and that, in 1922, had been attached to the Ukraine by Lenin. That state would be politically, culturally and militarily aligned with Russia.
This would eliminate Ukrainian access to the Black Sea and create a land bridge towards the Moldavian breakaway Transnistria which is under Russian protection.
Excursus:
The yellow part of that map marked ‘Ukraine in 1654’ was actually the land of the Eastern Orthodox Zaporozhian Cossacks. Under threat from the Catholic Lithuanian-Polish Commonwealth, which at the time held the green parts under serfdom, they negotiated the Pereiaslav Agreement (1654) with Russia and pledged allegiance to the Tsar. They area thus became an autonomous part of Russia.
End Excursus
The rest of the Ukraine would be a land confined, mostly agricultural state, disarmed and too poor to be build up to a new threat to Russia anytime soon. Politically it would be dominated by fascists from Galicia which would then become a major problem for the European Union.
Thanks to Stalin’s additions to the Ukraine three countries, Poland, Hungary and Romania, have claims to certain areas in the Ukraine’s western regions. If they want to snatch those up again it is now probably the best time to do so. Despite being part of NATO, which likely would not support such moves, those three will have domestic policy difficulties to withstand the urge.
Since then we learned that Novorussiya will not be an independent state but a genuine part of Russia. So be it. Meanwhile analysts like Hockstader still delve in fantasies:
A complete Ukrainian military collapse is unlikely, at least in coming months. Kyiv’s armed forces remain well-led and motivated, and they are husbanding equipment to prepare for shortfalls. But it is equally unlikely to expect a negotiated cease-fire with Russia that would maintain existing battle lines. To believe in that seemingly anodyne outcome is to misjudge Putin — again.
This is not misjudging Putin, but misjudging the capabilities left to Ukraine.
2023 12 16 19 17
It has run out of men and material. There are daily videos of this or that Ukrainian army unit condemning its leaders and announcing to leave its positions. The potential of a collapse of Ukrainian army is real.
During the last days tanks from the 47th brigade (Leo 2) and 10th mountain brigade (T-64BM/BV) have been seen, and were destroyed, near Avdiivka. Both brigades had only recently been mauled during their hopeless attacks at the southern front. It does not make sense to throw what is left of them into another battle without reconstituting them. The whole experience and knowledge these brigades had gained will be lost with them.
Yesterday, the Ukraine friendly Military Watch Magazine confirmed my opinion:
The Ukrainian Army’s elite 47th Mechanised Brigade stationed in the town of Avdiivka in the disputed Donetsk region has been surrounded and forced to contend with growing ammunition shortages, according to multiple reports from Ukrainian and Western sources. British reports indicate that the brigade was meant to attack a Russian column before it linked up with assault infantry on the northern flank of Avdievka, but failed to do so due to a lack of ammunition. The brigade’s efforts to stop the advance of Russian forces in Avdievka were described by The Times as “desperate,” fuelling perceptions of an “inevitable collapse” of Ukrainian positions, and diminished hope of preventing a Russian victory by the beginning of the New Year holidays. … A serviceman from the 47th Brigade, cited only as Sergeant Danylo, observing when interviewed over the past week “a shitty situation” as the shell shortage forced soldiers to make impossible life-and-death decisions.“We had 10 times more ammunition over summer, and better quality… American rounds come in batches of almost identical weights, which makes it easier to correct fire, with very few duds. Now we have shells from all over the world with different qualities, and we only get 15 for three days. Last week we got a batch full of duds.” Thus instead of firing on Russians as soon as they came within range, Ukrainian personnel increasingly had to wait to be sure the Russians were heading for their positions and to only engage large groups. Munitions produced by European states have very frequently been faulted for their quality, and at times been considered near useless, with Italian equipment being particularly notorious for its poor quality, in contrast to superior equipment either inherited from the Soviet era or produced in by the United States.
Now tell me again that these are “well-led and motivated” forces which are “husbanding equipment to prepare for shortfalls”. Neither rings true to me.
For the Kremlin dictator, a “compromise” would involve Ukraine’s subjugation and dissolution as an independent state. That would include regime change, with Zelensky in exile (or dead), as well as an end to Kyiv’s aspirations to join the E.U. or NATO. … If he is right, the timetable of that ending would be accelerated if Congress and the E.U. fail to approve fresh support. That would leave Ukraine’s government unable to maintain basic services, and its military increasingly short of artillery ammunition, air defense capability and other equipment. Ukraine’s already badly battered front-line forces would become more brittle. Russian territorial gains would be accompanied by murders, rapes, kidnapping of children and other Russian war crimes on a chilling scale.
That grim scenario would be a staggering blow to Western prestige and credibility, revealing that pledges to back Ukraine for “as long as it takes” were empty.
Amid a Republican standoff and polarizing politics that puts new aid to Ukraine at risk, President Joe Biden emphasized his administration’s willingness to support Ukraine, but the language was different. He said the US will be there for Kyiv “as long as we can.”
It’s a change in tune from previous messaging that the US would be a staunch and fierce ally to Ukraine, aiding it for “as long as it takes” to defeat Russia’s invasion.
The West can no longer support the proxy war it had started.
History will now follow its destined path.
Posted by b on December 14, 2023 at 10:59 UTC | Permalink
VIDEO: Ukraine Deputy Detonates THREE Grenades in Council Meeting
Reports and video are coming in from what is described as a local Council Meeting in Ukraine, where a Deputy pulled pins on THREE Grenades and tossed them throughout the meeting, causing three explosions, the final one likely killing the Deputy who threw them.
Video of the incident appears below and — WARNING — it shows pretty much everything.
The Deputy walks into the meeting room and closes the door behind him. He stands at the closed door. An argument is ongoing at the meeting and the Deputy tries to intervene, to no avail. With that, he pulls a grenade from his suit pocket, pulls the pin and tosses it. He then takes out another and repeats the process. He then pulls out a third grenade and apparently holds onto it after pulling the pin; perhaps to intentionally kill himself.
At this point, the name of the Deputy is not clear, and the type and location of the meeting is also not known.
What __is__ known is that numerous people in the tiny meeting room were either killed or injured seriously.
RUMORS abound over this incident, and several of the RUMORS claim the meeting was for people who want Ukraine to surrender and make peace with Russia.
WARNING: Graphic Video of three grenades exploding in a small council meeting room. Viewer discretion is advised:
DAMN! -MM
MM version of the video in MP4 format. Worth a watch. HERE.
43 Year Old Admits “The Movement” Is BS And Being A Carousel Rider Is NOT Empowering!
My son, who is mixed race, told me that another boy at school was calling him names and throwing lighted matches at him – some of which could have burned his clothing with dire results. I called the police. They sent a very large and imposing officer who told us “I’ll take care of this”, invited my eight year old son into the back of the police car and drove him to school – opening the door for him and escorting him to the principal’s office to deal with the culprit. My son was thrilled that he was the talk of the school for arriving in a police car and the bully was suitably scared out of his wits enough to never try such a thing again.
Global Supplier of Crucial Electrical Products Announces 20 Week DELAY in most-important parts!
SCHNEIDER Electric is the second largest manufacturer of electrical components in the world. The things they make are absolutely crucial to our daily lives: Crucial electrical infrastructure, industrial automation, Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC’s), etc. Without __any__warning, SCHNEIDER announced to its partners in the US . . .
. . . a TWENTY-WEEK DELAY for “Engineered-to-Order (ETO)” products for Quarter 1 next year! That’s almost a half a year delay ! ! ! ! !
Folks, ETO projects are major private and public infrastructure, power grids, etc. The grids are not readily able to deal with this kind of manufacturing delay.
Even more ominous, this ETO equipment, is the same gear the FBI recently issued warnings over, for expected CYBER-ATTACKS!
So FBI is warning about Cyber-Attacks targeting ETO gear like PLC’s and now, the second largest manufacturer of these exact components, is announcing twenty week delays for Q1 orders!
One industry insider told me “The reason this is so weird is this company is very good at planning. They supply billions of $ in critical components. They aren’t perfect but they usually have a plan when they announce something like this. Not this time. The plans behind the announcement letter (shown below) are very shallow. They got the note out WAY before anyone on their teams knew what is going on. MANY questions with no answers. That is very weird.” Here is the SCHNEIDER Letter to Partners in the USA:
ETO Orders DELAYED 20 weeks
His remark got me thinking: WHY?
Could it __really be__ that they simply cannot get parts via the supply chain, OR . . . is this wait and hold critical infrastructure so you can step in and replace damaged infrastructure after attacks happen? Is another possibility Critical redesign? Did they find holes in security and need to redesign . . . . and will stop projects to push an updated design out?
And if they are THAT confident that attacks are going to happen, then one wonders how it is they know? Did FBI tell them?
Over the past several weeks, media outlets have carried 24 assorted local stories about 24 sites that have been hacked. The ones discussed publicly are Hawaii water systems, Texas power grid, and west coast water systems near ports. All areas that will be critical to weaken for an invasion or conflict. Near borders.
War Preparation?
Preparations for a world War are clearly taking place in very many countries around the world.
For the first time, US citizens are likely to see the direct consequences of war on our own soil.
If people spent more time following world events and wars without being clouded by their own “normalcy bias,” they could piece together what is likely to happen.
In Ukraine, Russia crippled their power grid and attacked their ability to make the tools of war. Most all war materials have to come from outside.
Now imagine Russia striking US infrastructure and OUR ability to make tools of war . . . when our stockpiles have already been depleted by Ukraine.
Oh, and let’s not forget that Israel is toast without US arms support.
But, what is most concerning to me is that the US has made no real efforts to truly ramp up production of war materials. Lots of talk, very little tangible action.
It’s like the US is planning on just going straight to nuclear. But Russian Air defense systems are proven best in the world and their likelihood of survival is much higher than the US.
Contacts I have from my years in the Intelligence Community are telling me the US is too corrupted to survive what is coming.
But real companies with very smart people with analysists with real MBA’s see what is coming and are preparing.
The Intel guys I’ve talked to tell me bluntly: “USA has never been weaker than it is right now.”
I don’t know how it’s going to play out exactly but this is the most dangerous time we have been in up to this point in human history.
One would be very wise to put the pieces together and be willing to make the very hard decision on what is required to survive it.
Because another source (unverified) told me there are currently ~35,000 terrorists in country awaiting a go signal.
Imagine an Oct. 7th style attack all over the US, if all 35,000 operatives struck at once . . . as the much smaller cells did in the ‘Day of Wrath” that hit Israel.
Oh, and don’t forget that several months ago, we all found out there is also 60,000 lbs. of ammonium nitrate fertilizer that was taken off a train in Southern California, that has never been accounted for. Ammonium Nitrate is what Timothy McVeigh used to construct the truck bomb that detonated outside the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. That bomb was reported to be only 4500 pounds. So the amount of Ammonium Nitrate already missing, could make more than TEN such bombs.
This isn’t a tall tale… I once saw 3 guys in a pub start a fight with a bloke I worked with who’d been a pikey bare-knuckle boxer. My mate’s dad had forced him into fighting for money when he was a kid, but in his 20s he’d met a lass and decided he wanted a normal life so he walked away from his gypsy family, got a job and a house, and settled down. He was a really nice guy, a proper grafter, and good to talk to — he had a real philosophy about him and always gave great advice if you had any problems. He didn’t talk much about his old life, just every now and then he’d maybe open up a bit about how he’d hated it and couldn’t forgive his dad who’d beaten him if he didn’t fight and beaten him if he’d lost. None of what he said was bullshit, he was a sincere, honest guy who you could see had been in a lot of fights and just wanted some peace and quiet. He was also a really good husband and father, he was absolutely determined not to repeat the mistakes.
We were on a job in London, went out after work one night, and three locals did the old “you spilled my drink” routine on him. He tried apologising but one of them shoved him. I was sat at a table facing it and before I could even react, all three guys were dropping and he was stepping away. If you’ve ever seen a tarantula move faster than you blink, it was like that. Afterwards he said one of the things you learn as a bare-knuckle fighter is where and what angle to hit people.
Trades are valuable
Braised Beef, Shanxi Style
OssoBuccoBraisedBeefShanksRecipe2
Ingredients
1 pound (400g) lean boneless beef
1/2 g fennel seed
10 teaspoons (50ml) soy sauce
3 1/2 ounces (100ml) chicken or duck broth
4 tablespoons cornstarch (corn flour), dissolved in 4 tablespoon water
2 teaspoons rice wine
3 ounces (100g) scallions, chopped
1/4 teaspoon fresh ginger, chopped
3 1/2 fluid ounces (100ml) sesame oil
1/4 teaspoon MSG (optional)
Instructions
Wash the beef and cut into thin slices. Mix with the soy sauce and scallions.
Stir the cornstarch-water mixture and add.
Heat the sesame oil in a work add the fennel seeds. Heat to very hot or until the oil starts to smoke, and add the beef. Stir-fry until barely cooked.
Add the stock, rice wine and MSG (optional). Cover the wok, and boil rapidly for 1 minute.
When Chinese people get old, they hang out in the park. They form musical bands, dancing troupes, and gaming rings. They practice taichi for exercise and some even swing swords around. Many practice calligraphy on the pavement with a brush and a jug of water.
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Charming, right? I really like the sense of community between old people in China. Getting old doesn’t mean you can’t share hobbies with friends.
Now, of course this only refers to the old people lucky enough to have money saved up to provide for themselves or kids that help support them, but that’s a topic for another time. For now I’d like to keep this answer wholesome. 🙂 Happy Saturday everyone~
While serving as a detective, in Shetland, I received a notification that paramedics were attending a stabbing incident, in Scalloway harbour. The victim was fading fast, we were told. My colleague and I made our way there, some 5 miles from our offices, in Lerwick. We arrived quickly and paramedics rolled up at almost the same instant we did.
While they attended to the victim, who had been on board a yacht, moored in the harbour, one of them confirmed that it was likely to be life-threatening, and a witness stated that an older man and a youth had left the area, hurriedly, just before the victim had been found. We were given a very brief description and I recognised it as fitting two males, who I had seen walking away from the harbour area, as we had arrived. I passed a description of the men, and we checked the streets of the small village, without success. We returned to the seafront, where I wanted to check inside a local hostelry, just as the two walked out, having removed their jackets and hat (in the case of the younger man). I spoke to them both and they identified themselves as New Zealand nationals, a “respectable businessman” and his son, who were visiting Shetland on business. The son – still a teenager – looked like he wanted to throw up, but his Dad appeared entirely calm and unruffled, as if he had not a single care in the world.
I detained both men, on suspicion of aggravated assault, and – to much protest from them both – arranged to have them conveyed back to the station, separately, for later questioning and investigation. Having done so, we returned to the harbour, where the paramedics had realised the victim was suffering a single penetrating stab wound to the chest, which had caused a tension pneumothorax. They had aspirated him, with a needle and were conveying him to the local hospital, for urgent and critical procedures. We were advised he was not stable, at that time, having lost a lot of blood.
The victim was identified to us as a German national, and yachtsman, resident in Shetland, while the suspect was identified as being the older Kiwi.
We returned to the station, where the custody sergeant informed me that the older suspect had just volunteered under caution, during his detention process, that the German had been drunk and had attacked him with a filleting knife. There had been a struggle and Dad alleged that his son had grabbed the knife off the man, accidentally stabbing the victim with it. He would say no more (having blamed his own son, the brave soul that he was).
The son had made no comments, but had appeared stunned, the sergeant said.
I interviewed both, separately, as I was the senior – and more experienced – detective present, albeit only a Detective Constable, myself. This was, by now, an attempt murder enquiry, plus I was the better interviewer. Dad spent 45 minutes saying, “no comment” to every single question put to him, relating to the incident. He still appeared as unruffled and calm as if he was out for a Sunday stroll, showed no stress, no discomfort, and still claimed to be a respectable New Zealand businessman. Other than that, “no comment”.
The son said he was in Shetland with his Dad, who wanted to see about buying up an old inter-island ferry boat, which was being sold off. He told us that Dad had sailed around the world, many times, and knew that if a boat could handle the seas around Shetland, in a harsh winter, it could pretty much handle the seas anywhere else in the world, at their worst. He said Dad’s was a tourist-derived business, but declined further comment, when asked for more details – about anything else.
We were a small department – a detective sergeant and then two detective constables (a third was on annual leave), with five uniformed officers then on shift, all with their own duties. But as this was an attempted murder, we could direct them, in assisting us with our enquiries. Their interviews turned up some more details – the yacht was owned by Dad, but the German had arrived in Shetland, having sailed the yacht there, months earlier. Dad had arrived in mainland Scotland, and then onto Shetland, only days earlier, with his son in tow. He had spent time in the company of some locals, who had said he had shown “a nasty temper” and they “wouldn’t want to mess with him”.
So I went back into interview, with Dad. He was irked by this, now slightly testy and refusing to answer any question with anything other than “no comment”. I told him he was perfectly entitled to do so, however it wouldn’t stop me asking my questions. He grew louder and louder in his, by now, yelled, “no comment!” to every question and I could see I was getting to him. So I took another break, as we had now gone through another 45 minute tape.
I brought his son back in, put Dad in to his cell, and let them see one another – just a glimpse of son being led out, as Dad was placed in the cell. Dad started screaming at his son, “No comment, boy! You make no fucking comment!”
I told the son, honestly, that his father had already made a voluntary statement under caution, blaming him (the son) for the stabbing. I told this terrified 17 year old that the German was in surgery and still might not make it out, alive. In which case, with the absence of any further information, it was Dad’s word, weighed against his own son’s silence, that son was responsible. If he did not make any comment, at this time, his father’s account would be accepted, son would be arrested – either for attempted or actual murder (if the victim expired as a result of his injury) – and face the consequences. He would be unlikely to receive bail for such an offence and so would be held in custody, in prison, until such time as a trial would commence.
That was it. Son puked in the wastepaper basket and started crying. He immediately denied having stabbed anyone. He made plenty comments, thereafter. In fact, he said Dad and the German knew one another for years. The yacht was owned by Dad, although used by the German. The two men had argued, while they were all drinking onboard the yacht, about money owed the father, which Dad said the German was ripping off from him. This has escalated, the two had fought and Dad had grabbed up a knife, from the galley kitchen area . The German fell, son realised his father had stabbed the man, and then he and his Dad hurriedly left the yacht, his father disposing of the knife overboard, into the relatively shallow harbour waters.
Having received this information, I tasked a police unit to return to the harbour and see if the knife could be seen, and put into motion a request for a diving team, via my supervisor – a Detective Inspector 300 miles away, in Inverness. The uniformed cops thought they could see the knife, but would need the divers, to be sure.
I advised our local Procurator Fiscal Depute, of the case, and enquiries up to that point. He told me that, even if Dad copped to the stabbing, unless there was something else there, that could be evidenced, this “businessman” would be bailed, come Monday morning (this was now tea-time, Friday night). If I could arrest him, I had a weekend, no longer, to hold him in custody.
I told him that what bothered me was this guy was unfazed by having almost killed a man. He never even asked how the man – an alleged old friend – was doing, or showed any concern or regret. There was…. nothing. “He is too cool”, I told the Fiscal. “This guy makes the skin between my shoulder blades itch. He is dangerous.”
“Prove it”, I was told.
The hospital came on, to say the German had pulled through, but the stab wound was deep, and either well placed or accidentally almost-lucky, as it had just missed his heart, nicking his vena cava, instead.
Now, when I said this guy bothered me, I mean he really, really bothered me.
So I went back into interview with him, and took him for one of my “walks around the houses”, as an old colleague used to call them. Seeming unassociated chat and questions, almost like a free flow of investigative consciousness – of which I took a careful note, of course. Early on, he was testy. Then he became narked, yelling his “No comment! No comment!” again, to anything and everything I said. When I started talking about his business – I had Googled his given address, he got antsy and even more angry. He ended up yelling at my colleague, “Can you not make him shut! The fuck! UP!!” I was all sweetness and light, still talking about New Zealand, tourism and his business, as if I hadn’t heard. He put his head in his hands and at that point, I asked him why he had stabbed his friend, who was alive and now recovering. His head shot up and he went very still and didn’t answer – which I pointed out, for the tape, describing his demeanour for purposes of the recording. I asked why they had been arguing, and if Dad owned the yacht. He didn’t answer and I pointed this out, again, with his demeanour. I asked why he had wanted his son to take the blame. Same response. I asked why he had thrown the knife overboard and the skin around his weatherbeaten eyes went very white. I told him we had divers coming for the knife, that he was staying all weekend and that we would be talking again. He tried, unsuccessfully, to upend the table, at that point, lunging to his feet, face now stark white, other than two red spots on his cheeks. He whispered, surprisingly calmly, “I could kill you.” I repeated that statement, for the benefit of the tape. I think he recognised that as a mistake.
I spent three hours of my own time, after knocking-off time, that night, open source-searching this guy, on my work computer. He had an unusual name, and I used it in connection with “New Zealand” “kiwi” “yachtsman” “sailor” “round the world” and similar phrases.
Finally, I got a hit, and it was a good one. It was a front page story in a south east-Asian newspaper, about a corrupt justice minister who had been arrested and tried, having been taped, several years previously, whilst in a three-way call between the suspected head of the world’s largest Triad gang (no, really!), and a New Zealand drug dealer. The NZ dealer had also served time in an American federal penitentiary, it seemed, having once sailed a yacht packed with drugs into a harbour, there, and straight into the arms of US Customs. The reports said he was now (at time of publishing) linked to this Triad gang and the world’s largest “Shabu” factory, believed to somewhere in or around the Philippines. “Shabu” is how they refer to Crystal Meth, down there.
Real “I am the one who knocks!” material (no, really!)
I spoke to the PF Depute, at his home (before finally heading off to my own home), to be told that he would try and use this to hold Dad, in custody, as a flight risk, and was fairly certain he could get at least two weeks on a “lie-down”, out of it. He went on that I should get Dad’s prints off to our Interpol liaison, ASAP, with a request to have them prioritised. I had already done so, but was advised it would take at least three weeks for any hit to come back. Meantime, he was still a “respectable NZ businessman”, newspaper article aside.
I went home, head whirring but knackered. Three and a bit scant hours later, I was awoken by an urgent call from Force HQ, on my mobile, telling me that I had to be at my office desk within 30 minutes, as a call would be coming in for me. I asked if a message could be taken and the Detective Sergeant at the other end – our Force Intelligence Officer – laughed and said absolutely not. He had been woken up in the night, for this, and so I could face the same fate! He wouldn’t say any more, so I dressed and made my rather bleary way into the station, and my office.
Sure enough, almost bang on the hour, my phone rang. “Call for you”, said our unnaturally cheery Force Intel Officer, and with that, I found myself suddenly talking to a rough-voiced, blunt-spoken (i.e. he swore a lot) Australian gentleman, who identified himself as a Detective Superintendent in an international task force. He asked if I had (insert name of Dad, here) in custody. I confirmed that I had. He asked what for and I told him I planned on reporting Dad for attempted murder. He paused to yell, off-handset, “SHUT THE FUCK UP!!” then asked if it was “a good one”. I told him I believed it would be. I explained about the stabbing, about the son, the German, the yacht, the alleged “rip-off”, and that got him excited. He asked me to wait one, and I heard him yell out that he had a cop in “Shetland?”, (I confirmed this and next heard him cry, “Will some bastard find me Shetland on a fucking map!”) on the phone and this “inspector” had (insert Dad’s full name here) in custody, on an attempted murder – a stabbing, no less. There were a few more yells and swears, in the background, and he told me the prints had been flagged, and he had been notified of a hit, in Scotland, of all places. He explained they had been tracking Crystal Meth, arms and even people, all being smuggled out of SE Asia, into Australasia. His main target was a big-time Bad Man (with capitals), in Australia, but Dad was the means by which the drugs and other items were believed to be shipped there. He explained this guy, Dad, travelled around, using his sailing prowess – he was a genuine former competitive yachtsman – to buy up suitable boats. These were used to ship their cargos to their destinations. He told me that Dad had been implicated in several murders, directly, by witnesses – former colleagues in his ventures – always with a knife. He liked to get “up close and personal”, while dealing with these “rats”, having been in the military, once upon a time and even lied to underlings about being ex-Special Forces, to boost his legend. Upward rising knife thrust to the heart (missing the ribs), with a long thin blade, was his alleged preferred killing stroke. Unfortunately, any and all witnesses had subsequently disappeared. The task force believed Dad had either killed them, or else had them killed. “Watch your witness”, he warned me. He promised I would have an Intel file, via our Force Intel Officer, within 24 hours, for our Fiscal and the Crown Office. Their difficulty had been in identifying his travel. They had his NZ passport flagged, but there was no record of him having left the country, in years, other than the odd short trip once or twice. I asked about his Panamanian passport and, again, he went quiet. “His WHAT?!” I explained that I had noticed, at the custody bar, while his belongings were being processed, that he had two passports – one from NZ, one from Panama. I knew that, at that time, it was possible to effectively buy a Panamanian passport, if you had business registered there, sufficient capital and enough connections. This gave Dad dual nationality and, from his reaction, it seemed that the task force didn’t know about it. “Do you have it?” he asked, excitedly. “Yes, but it’s sealed in his belongings and can’t be opened unless he is present, without lawful authority”. He swore profusely until I told him I had photocopied both passports and their contents, in case they’d come in useful. He was fairly chuffed, by this, and when I read off some of the travel dates and destinations, he was even more so.
I arranged to send him all I had, in return for everything they had. He ended the call by telling me that I might even get a promotion to Chief Inspector out of this. I told him that might not be that likely, as I was a Detective Constable. He wouldn’t believe me, so I told him my details would be on the email, when he got it all. He ended by saying that Dad was number 6 on their 10 Most Wanted list, at that time, in Australasia, while his Aussie counterpart was #2. I told him I’d take 6 of 10, by their standards!
Anyway, I re-interviewed Dad, who was fairly crestfallen that NZ had been in touch, already. He hurriedly amended his story, alleging self-defence, but it was too late. He appeared in court, both passports were seized and he was placed in prison on that 14 day “lie-down”, while I carried out further enquiries.
And then…
He had the German “helped” out of the hospital and off the island, by two large men, posing as cops, to hospital staff, while Dad was on his “lie-down”, awaiting his first diet at court. We checked plane and ferry terminals (benefits of an island) and then passed info and photos, from ferry CCTV, to mainland police, who identified a hire vehicle, just too late to stop them leaving. The licence plate went into the National ANPR system and it was tracked headed for Newcastle and the international ferry to Holland, there. The German was retrieved, safe and well, and went on record, claiming that the two men had plastic sheeting and shovels in the hire car (they did) and had planned on killing him and burying his body over there, before returning, one man lighter.
We couldn’t pin that on Dad, as the two men wouldn’t cough to it, and the German wouldn’t press it, simply relieved to be “home”. He gave evidence against Dad, and then buggered off, sharpish. Never saw him again.
Dad got 3 and a half years for assault to severe injury, and I got a call from Force Intel, months later, that his calls were being intercepted (lawfully) and in one of those, he had asked an unknown male how much trouble it would cause, and how much it would cost, to “off a cop”. He had been advised against it.
That was the one and only time I worried about one of those clowns who swear they will find you and kill you….
So I repaid the favour, by continuing to keep in touch with my Australasian friends. They arranged for him to be met at the prison gates, on the day of his release, by plainclothes Officers, cuffed and conveyed to London. He was furious, as he expected to be free and clear to carry on about his business. They handed him off to New Zealand cops, who flew him home and locked him up. Turns out his wife/partner was an illegal immigrant and he was abusive towards her, and their son (who she now knew had been implicated in the stabbing, by his own Dad). The authorities offered her citizenship and she offered them all the info on his kiwi businesses and criminal dealings. I don’t know if they ever got the Aussie Bad Man, but Dad died, several years later, having served yet more time back home, and having been confirmed as HIV+, contracted whilst in prison.
One of the two best arrests I ever made.
As my sergeant noted, at my appraisal, that year, “not many cops your rank get a head on the wall like that one”. Of course, I still had to fight for a high assessment grading and then defend it to an outraged senior officer. I never got so much as a memo from my own force, related to that one. Several above me got promotions, though, funnily enough.
The last thing I’ll say (yes, there’s more) is that the first seizure of Crystal Meth in Scotland was recorded as being in Aberdeen, a few months after Dad’s arrest.
That’s not quite correct.
The first such seizure was albeit minimal, but was in Shetland, around the time Dad was here. But the powers that be sat on the info, rather than (they thought) make the place look bad (no, really!).
The info, from my task force chums, was that Dad had been seeking to establish a pipeline, for the drug, into the U.K., and rather than coming up through Europe, into the very heavily policed Dover, this switched-on and experienced sailor had planned on having boats packed with it, sail, first into Shetland, then down to one or more of the numerous remote inlets or bays, on mainland Scotland (of which there are thousands), from whence it could be distributed nationally – the latter part being what the OCGs were doing with Cocaine, at one time. Customs would need to check every single fishing boat, small ferry or able bodied sea-faring vessel, in order to defeat those tactics – and there was no Customs presence in Shetland, as there was no longer international travel to and from the port here.
That case gives me a warm glow. Drug smuggler. People trafficker. Murderer. Simply awful father! Man of the world, career criminal, tripped up, in sleepy wee Shetland, and now pushing up daisies (better him than me!!), while I get to write long-winded stories about his nefarious ways.
My favorites are the “I didn’t study so I asked someone to whisper the answer and I copied it hilariously wrong” answers.
A few samples:
What are elements with the same number of protons but different numbers of neutrons called?
Correct answer: isotopes
What a kid wrote: ice tubes
The amount of product you expect to make in a chemical reaction is called the ________
Correct answer: theoretical yield
What a kid wrote: the radical yield
The device we use to light a Bunsen burner is called ________
Correct answer: striker
What a kid wrote: tricycle
The digits that indicate the accuracy of an answer are called_______
Correct answer: Significant figures
What a kid wrote: stick fingers
What is the formula of sodium nitrate?
Correct answer: NaNO3
What a kid wrote: Any 3
I get mad when the kids leave questions blank that we discussed for weeks and weeks. But when the answers are like this, I contemplate a new career. After I stop laughing.
A symbol of a declining society
Canadian Journalist Who Pushed Vaccine Mandates and “Concentration Camps” for Un-vax’d, DIES at Age 33
A Journalist who advocated that those who were unvaccinated against COVID-19 be put in concentration camps, has died suddenly at the young age of 33.
Ian Vandaelle died after being hospitalized and “declared neurologically dead,” his family revealed.
Vandaelle was a business journalist who worked as a reporter and editor at the Financial Post.
He was also previously a producer at BNN Bloomberg for over a decade.
Vandaelle advocated for vaccine passports and mandates and called for the firing of anyone who refused the injections.
He also suggested that unvaccinated people should be arrested and taken away to concentration camps.
Hal Turner Editorial Opinion
Like so many other left-wing-ish / Liberal-ish people, this person seemed so smug and self-righteous in his (wrong-headed) belief in the new COVID-19 vaccine, that he seems to have ignored all the warnings put out by others, like me, who warned against taking the new, untested, unproven, mRNA “death dart.”
Yet as with so many others his age, He seemed to think, when it came to the COVID Vax, HE knew better. He seemed to think HE was so much smarter than the rest of us. HEseemed to look down his nose at those of us who raised very real concerns about this new technology. To HIM, the rest of us were just sniveling idiots; too stupid to embrace this new, life-saving, technology.
Looks to me like maybe he wasn’t so smart after all. It is my personal opinion that the vaccine he thought so much of, killed him.
I think his ego blinded him to the reality . . . . and now . . . . he’s dead.
It’s hard to feel sorry for someone so young, dying this way. After all, if he had HIS way, all of us might be facing a similar fate – or be locked away in a Concentration Camp — just so HE and his ilk, could feel better. No thanks.
This may turn out to be the new general epitaph for Liberals: “He thought he knew better than everyone else; now, he’s dead from what he thought.”
Japan is both overwhelmingly modern and traditional at the same time. This does not just apply to the amalgamation of skyscrapers and ancient Shinto shrines in cities like Kyoto, but also on a more sociological level. The matter of sexuality in Japan may not be one of the first things that come to mind but Japan is a country mostly free of religious morals.
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Traditionally a sexually open society
Sexuality in Japan developed separately from that of mainland Asia, as Japan did not adopt the Confucian view of marriage, in which chastity is highly valued. Monogamy in marriage is less important in Japan, and married men often seek pleasure from courtesans. Prostitution in Japan has a long history, and became especially popular during the Japanese economic miracle, as evening entertainments were tax-deductible!
The Art of Shunga
Historically, pornography in Japan may have begun at the start of the Edo period (1603–1868) as erotic artwork referred to as shunga that was typically done on woodblock prints. Shunga literally means “spring pictures”. “At its best shunga celebrates the pleasures of lovemaking, in beautiful pictures that present mutual attraction and sexual desire as natural and unaffected” Tim Clark, curator of “Shunga: Sex and Pleasure in Japanese art”
Mass produced during the Edo period shunga offered sexuality a shameless visual platform. Shunga depicted sexual pleasure that included both heterosexuality and homosexuality, each not only acknowledged but also encouraged. Surprisingly prior the Edo Period there was no Japanese word for female sexuality, and Shunga changed this with the depiction of female pleasure including lesbianism.
Shunga was an essential part of Japanese society
Shunga had functions beyond its aesthetic appeal. Its primary use would have involved viewing and sharing the paintings or books with close friend or sexual partners. Like the Indian Kama Sutra the Shunga images were also used to provide sexual education for young couples. While shunga was chiefly commissioned by men, it has been found among the dowry goods presented to a Japanese bride, suggesting that it was also highly valued by women.
Most shunga was created by woodblock artists from the popular school ukiyo-e, ‘pictures of the floating world,’ a genre of painting that mainly illustrated life’s pleasures that was mass-produced as prints. Surprisingly traditional painters also produced a large quantity of shunga including members of the Kano School, known for their innovative secular paintings.
Samurai were seen as the keepers of morality in Japan. Shunga was both commissioned and accepted by the samurai as a pleasurable cultural pursuit, and thus the whole of Japanese society enjoyed shunga.
There was also an element of humour to shunga, which sometimes referred as warai-e or “laughing picture”. Shunga works are artefacts of an era in Japan where attitudes about sex were freer. Sex was seen as an everyday natural activity without shame and often was the centre of amusement.
Sex and Erotic Art in early Japan
By the Edo period in the early 17th to mid 19th centuries, there had been a long history of erotic art and secular sexual expression in Japan, which meant that shunga was nothing new. Prehistoric societies had developed phallic worship in connection with their reliance on agriculture and Japan’s creation myths are based on human-like sexual procreation. Throughout the centuries, the phallus and phallus shaped objects (for example, mushrooms) had been prominent figures in carvings, could be found in shrines, festivals, and along roadways, and were traditionally and superstitiously related to good luck, health and longevity.
What allowed for such an openness of sexual imagery and expression was the lack of any strict religious code that controlled sexual behaviour. Unlike in the West, which was dominated by a strict Judeo-Christian ideology, there was no moral shame and stigma surrounding sex or the production of erotic images in Japan — only a stringent class system based on Confucianism that dictated deference to status and appreciation of personal space.
Sex in Japan did not take on any ‘mythical’ or religious significance as it did in India and China. Furthermore, humour and wit had developed over the centuries as a common part of sexuality and was incorporated in the broader culture via allusions, euphemisms, sexually related stories and poetry. These and other cultural and religious factors allowed sex to be seen as a more naturalistic, enjoyable experience between partners, which in turn has produced a wide array of acceptable sexual behaviours in modern Japan including same-sex partners, and sexually related products such as sex toys, manuals, and even a chain of sex stores.
By the time of the Edo Period, the normalcy and humour found in sex, highly developed forms of sexual expressions, and the lack of moral or religious control all translated into an early modern culture that allowed shunga to flourish as a genre of popular art and sex to be open, fun and easily available.
From sexual openness to repression
Japan’s sexual freedom was a revelation to Europe, particularly its artists. Painters such as Toulouse-Lautrec, Degas and Picasso found fertile ground in Shunga imagery. As Japan sought modernisation and to be in line with ‘modern’ western social norms, the Meiji Government banned shunga in the early 20th century, becoming taboo within Japan. As Japan sought sexual repression Europe sought sexual liberation!
When Shunga was flourishing in Japan, in Christian Europe at the time shunga would have been deeded pornographic. Shunga is an impressive, unique tradition of pre-modern erotic art. It serves as testament to a once uninhibited, open-minded society that offered artists opportunities to express originality and unbridled emotion.
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Celebrating Shunga Today
The history, humour and accomplishments of shunga are explored at the British Museum in Shunga: sex and pleasure in Japanese art. The exhibition looks at Japanese art like no other. Explicit and beautifully detailed the works on display are between the years 1600 and 1900, and such works continue today to influence manga, anime and Japanese tattoo art. The exhibition sheds new light on this sexuality explicit art form from Japanese social and cultural history. Parental guidance advised for visitors under 16.
The 48 Japanese sexual positions
If you have ever wondered how they do it elsewhere in the world, a recent Durex Ad may have caught your eye. It introduced some acrobatic positions within decidedly Canadian names: the ‘maple cinnamon twist’ and ‘the Niagara fall’ (the Canadian side, we are assuming).
There is not a lot of research on the top sex positions in different countries. Sex surveys tend to focus on other aspects of our time between the sheets (such as sexual satisfaction and frequency). That said, the Durex Sexual Wellbeing survey which questioned 26,000 people across 26 different countries does have some interesting insights into how different nations have sex. Overall worldwide less than 50% of people are sexually satisfied and as one gets older and has sex less often, dissatisfaction increases, particularly with males. The world has obviously become more sexually repressed.
The following images are illustrations of Japan’s 48 sexual positions — the “48 Ways” (shijuuhatte). These sex positions are inspired by sumo wrestling moves going back centuries. During the Edo period, the word 48 arms-hands started to be imbued with sexual meaning — “all the basic sexual techniques”.
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Below, Japanese Durex condom commercial teaches you 48 ways to have sex with a wrestler. It’s kinda a humorous play to watch, so enjoy it!
Choosing sexual partners in Japan
Most men are attracted to younger and good-looking women, since it is believed that the women will be fertile and prodigy will also be attractive. It’s human instinct, and only moral education can try to repress this instinct. East Asian religions (Confucianism, Taoism, Shinoism, Buddihism) do not teach strong moral principles or prohibitions regarding sex. In fact sexual restrictions and the associate shame or guilt with sex is typically a Judeo-Christian or Islamic characteristic.
In modern Japan the Western desire by males for big breasts and shapely hips may also be based upon a subconscious belief of greater female fertility but the overriding influence has been Western film culture. For women in Japan, and the world over, power has always been a significant element when choosing a male partner. Power and sexual desire often go hand in hand since a powerful male can easily support and protect a family.
The more targets the US spies on, the fewer friends it has — Chinese FM
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The US government has kept expanding its scope of surveillance, meddling in other countries’ domestic affairs and interfering in international affairs, which runs counter to international law and the fundamental principles of international relations, Chinese Foreign Ministry commented on the Section 702 of US’ Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) which allows the US intelligence agency to conduct unauthorized surveillance of non-US individuals abroad. The spokesperson added that “The more targets the US spies on, the fewer friends it has. The US needs a better sense of boundary and less obsession for control.”
During a press briefing on Thursday, media mentioned that US National Security Council member Joshua Geltzer said that Section 702 of the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), an important legal basis for US intelligence authorities to eavesdrop on non-US citizens overseas and step up international surveillance without authorization, will expire on December 31. It was estimated that nearly 60 percent of President Biden’s daily intelligence brief came from these “big ears.”
The warrantless government surveillance authority slated to expire in days is closer to lasting for at least a few more months after the US Senate on Wednesday local time passed an annual defense policy bill that included a temporary extension.
In response to that, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), adopted after Watergate, was originally aimed at preventing government authorities from abusing power and carrying out arbitrary eavesdropping.
However, Section 702, added in 2008, permit the National Security Agency to carry out eavesdropping and surveillance without obtaining an individualized court order, Mao said.
After that, the US government has been expanding the scope of eavesdropping and surveillance to interfere in other countries’ internal affairs and meddle in the normal course of international affairs. This practice runs counter to international law and basic norms governing international relations, Mao said.
“The more targets the US spies on, the fewer friends it has. The US needs a better sense of boundary and less obsession for control,” Mao added.
27 Years Ago This Animated Television Series “Duckman” SHOWED Men Are Going Their Own Way
A couple of months ago, we had an IT guy in our office who had just received his summons to serve in the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
It was a Friday and he had to appear at the military commissariat four days later, on Tuesday. Needless to say, the summons papers pretty much ruined his weekend.
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War is a dangerous affair: a wall in Kyiv that commemorates the country’s fallen heroes from 2014 till today. (Picture by the author of this post)
I have rarely seen a man who was more scared than this poor guy. He was literally sweating. He really wasn’t the fighter type: mid 30s but looking older, non-athtletic body type and a small beer belly.
There was nothing we could do for him. He should have seen it coming. There’s compulsory service in Ukraine and people like him are getting drafted every day.
In our office, most (male) workers have already bought proper body armor and helmets for themselves, some of them even got guns and regularly train on the shooting range. In addition, they help me and my friends to support the military with equipment. When these guys get their summons, they’ll be prepared.
So yes, some people are scared when they have to join the military.
Advice you NEED to hear in your 20s (not what you’d expect)
As far as Europe is concerned (as opposed to, let’s say Africa or the Middle East, for instance), body hair was left to grow until well into the 20th century.
Men typically shaved or trimmed their beards according to the fashion at the time, hair was cut , curled, bleached or dyed, equally accordingly but body hair was left to do its own thing.
This is valid for all strata of society.
Otherwise, in the absence of running water, both sexes usually washed in a bidet, which was filled with warm water and/or perfume/cologne/eau de toilette. Basically, just like you would with a wet wipe, you moisten a cloth or sponge with perfume and clean your entire body with it.
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Women using a bidet, by Willem-Joseph Laquy 1771.
So, basically, in spite of many claims to the opposite, there’s no reason to believe that people in the 1700’s would have been much dirtier than nowadays, although the mix of armpit smell and perfume would probably have been noticeable.
Lice is always a problem. However, just like nowadays, a variety of treatments were available, usually in the form of perfumes, what we now call essential oils, etc. They kill the eggs and you can get rid of the bugs themselves with a fine tooth comb.
And here it is…
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Women PANIC As They Realize Men Don’t Want To Marry Older Women
Man, the USA is so terribly fucked up. Take me “home”. Please!
Russia Warns If NATO Bases Used For Ukrainian Jets, Those Bases Could Be Targeted
With the Russia-Ukraine war now approaching the two year mark (in February), Americans might need reminding that the conflict remains a highly dangerous situation which could at any moment escalate into a WW3 scenario.
Zelensky’s visit to Washington this week was lackluster, and he left without securing what Kiev is hoping for – that Congress would quickly pass Biden’s $106 billion war funding request, which also includes defense funds for Israel. Of course, at this point Zelensky has complained publicly that the crisis in Gaza has taken the world’s focus off the need to defend Ukraine from Russia’s onslaught.
Though headlines in the West barely took notice, Russia early Wednesday launched a significant ballistic missile attack on the Ukrainian capital, which authorities said injured at least 53 people, including six children, with severe damage to a number of buildings.
But with Zelensky in Washington, making the rounds to the Oval office and the halls of Congress, the Kremlin issued a fresh warning saying that if Ukraine’s military is granted access to NATO airbases for sorties using western-made planes, in would respond while deeming Ukraine’s external allies as direct participants in the war.
The fresh warning was announced by Konstantin Gavrilov, head of the Russian delegation to the military security and arms control talks in Vienna:
“We already hear comments that, amid the significant destruction of Ukraine’s airstrip infrastructure, the F-16s handed over to Ukraine may carry out their missions from airbases in Poland, Romania and Slovakia,” he said during the OSCE Forum meeting on cooperation in security.
According to the diplomat, Moscow will view this as these countries’ participation in the conflict and will force Russia to resort to “response measures.”
Even though certain eastern European allies pledged F-16s long ago, it could still be a lengthy amount of time before Ukrainian pilots are fully trained, enough to be deployed in combat on the US-made warplane.
Western officials have in recent months admitted that Russia has the upper hand, and that Ukraine’s summer offensive failed, but everyone is now putting in place their ‘long war’ strategies. The Kremlin’s new warning and threat also seems part of this longer term planning from Moscow’s perspective.
(My answer contains information that some people might find offensive. Please be advised. I am just sharing an experience I had. Thank you!)
I don’t remember exactly which grade my daughter was in when this happened, but it was when she was in elementary school.
It was a sunny weekend afternoon, I asked her, “Do you want to go to the park?” – which was her favorite thing to do, she had never refused it. But to my surprise, she said no. “Why?” – I asked.
“I don’t want to turn to black!”, she answered. “What!?”, I asked, dropping my jaw. “It’s sunny. The sun will shine on me and make my skin dark”, she pointed to the sun. “Who told you that?!”, I was stunned. She then grabbed the map, and explained to me, “This is Africa. It’s near the equator. They have a lot of sun over there, they are outside a lot, that’s why their skin turns dark. Our intern teacher told us that.”
You have no idea how angry I got when I heard this.
The next Monday morning, I took my daughter to school. After dropping her off, I asked for a meeting between that intern teacher and the principal. I explained the situation and demanded an explanation. The intern teacher was scared, he said he was just “joking”. He wanted to tell the kids that they need to wear a hat and use sunscreen when they are outside in the sun, or else they will get tanned; that’s why he “joked” like that.
I could tell the “face-palm” from the principal’s look. She apologized to me and promised me she would give my daughter’s class a special lesson to “fix” this issue (And she did. My daughter later that day went home and told me they had a lesson about protecting our skin). But the damage was already done. It took a long time with a lot of reading and explaining for me to erase the thought that “dark skin” was equal to “a bad thing” from my daughter’s mind.
I don’t know what happened to that intern teacher, but I hope he learned his lesson.
Carousel Rider Has MELTDOWN After BF Dumps Her Upon Learning She Had “Relations” With Over 300 Men
Back in the 1990s, my former father-in-law (my then-wife’s father), who I’ll call Joe, was the one instigating our divorce. He was one of those macho cop types, kind of a good ol’ boy.
I found one of those subscription cards in a copy of Out magazine on the rack. Out magazine was for gay people who decided to come out of the closet. I put Joe’s full name and his nextdoor neighbor’s address on the subscription card and mailed it in. (I used a typewriter in a store so my handwriting couldn’t be traced back to me).
Imagine his shock and horror when his neighbor showed up at his door and said, “Hi Joe, your Out magazine came to my house by mistake.” 😂
Nowadays, I regret such a juvenile tactic, but I was a bit crazy at the time because it was a messy divorce.
In December 2023, 27-year-old Neusha Afkami had to go the airport in Austin, Texas. She got an Uber, and told the driver he to “make it fast”, as she had a plane to catch and she needed to be on it desperately. Much to her frustration, the driver wasn’t going very fast.
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Neusha felt she could go faster… so after berating the man, she took the driver’s phone… and threw it out the car window. He immediately stopped the vehicle to retrieve his phone and when he did, Mrs. Afkami jumped in the driver’s seat and drove off, leaving her Uber driver standing helplessly by the side of the road. Not only did she take the car, she also took the man’s wallet, which he left behind as he got out. While at the airport, she went on a 130 dollar shopping spree with the man’s credit card as she waited for boarding.
Of course, knowing his own car’s information like the back of his hand, the Uber driver immediately called the police. Before Neusha Afkami could even board her plane, she was located and arrested by Texas police, putting an end to her little bout of playing-GTA-in-real-life.
Knowing These Life Lessons After 40 is Like Cheating. Literally.
It was during a drug search warrant of a heroin dealer’s house. We executed the warrant and located the target of the investigation, a 40-year-old male at home. He also had a live-in girlfriend who, like her man, was an intravenous user of heroin.
His girlfriend had a two-year-old toddler whom we found crawling around the living room floor. The child was naked and dirty and crying. He was a good-looking child, but what would his future hold in that environment? We located drugs and drug paraphernalia all over the house. Most disturbing were the numerous uncapped needles lying on the floor and coffee table right near the toddler. Additionally, there were remnants of powdered heroin and cocaine on the coffee table, which could easily be reached by the child.
My sergeant flipped out on the woman — and asked if she was crazy, exposing her child to used uncapped needles and powered narcotics on the table. The woman just sort of smiled and almost in slow motion said it was her kid and it was none of his business. She was clearly in a drug-induced stupor.
My sergeant replied that he was not only seizing the illegal drugs but was also seizing the child. With that, he scooped up the child in his arms and walked out of the house. He instructed our evidence officer to photograph the living room to document the horrible and dangerous conditions.
My sergeant stood outside and called the division of family services. They didn’t want to respond until the following morning. He emphatically informed them that the child had been removed from this unsafe environment and either they would come and take the child or our next stop was the local newspaper.
They responded to the scene, witnessed the horrible conditions where the child was housed and took the child from the doped-up mother. Three days later they returned the child to the mother at the same house.
Moving that child back into a drug house full of used needles and drugs was the saddest thing ever I witnessed a parent do to their child. When I hear people speak of legalizing all drugs, I think back to that helpless innocent victim.
Marinade: Combine all ingredients in a bowl; mix thoroughly to ombine.
Place short ribs in a nonmetallic dish. Pour marinade over short ribs; cover and refrigerate. Marinate at least three hours or preferably overnight.
Florida Citrus Kimchi: Combine all ingredients in bowl; toss to combine. Reserve.
Drain marinade from short ribs; discard marinade. Grill short rib slices over medium-high heat for 1 to 2 minutes per side. Remove cooked slices from grill; place on cutting board. Slice short rib slices crossways into small, bite size pieces of meat.
Assembly: Heat tortillas over medium heat on the grill or in a sauté pan. Place a small amount of shredded cabbage in the center of each tortilla; top with 1/4 cup short rib meat and 2 tablespoons Florida Citrus Kimchi.
I was the arresting officer on a DUI case. I received a subpoena to appear in court. The man was so drunk he peed al over himself and other stuff in the intoxilyzer room. I thought it was for his guilty plea, but was wrong. He hired an attorney the day before trial and plead not guilty and had not viewed the tape. When the tape was played and everyone watched him pee and slip to the floor and splash his hands in his mess, the judge actually had an out loud laugh along with the rest of the court room.
As it turn out he was a regular drunk and was so out of it he had no idea he had done that. Needless to say, he changed his plea to guilty, the jury was dismissed and the judge imposed a very sever punishment on him. It was his 5th DUI in 5 years.
CHILLING NDE! What I Saw in Hell Will Change You Forever! (Near Death Experience Angie Fenimore)
I got home one night from work, and listened to a message from the State Police from a barracks three hours north of me. Curious, I called back to speak with the officer. He was off for the night so we spoke the next day. The questioning was interesting. He wanted to know if I had been in Bangor Maine the previous day, and if anyone else had access to my car. Puzzled, I asked why. It turns out that there was a bank robbery and they thought that I might be involved. WTF???
The officer was sure that I or somebody else had driven my car from the southern border of Maine to Bangor and back in under six hours without going through a toll booth. For those unfamiliar with the state of Maine that just isn’t possible. I explained that I had been at work all day, and my car was on camera and hadn’t moved. The officer was unconvinced until I send him pictures of my car, my registration, and license plates. The plate number they had matched a set of plates that I used to own, and they were on same make of car, but as it turns out a different year. Very clever.
I in turn called the local police and reported those plates as stolen. I met the detective at my house and his first words to me were “Kurt, so you’re robbing banks now.” He laughed. The detective lives three housed down from me and my wife had his kids in school.
A few months prior I came home at lunch to find a strange car at the end of my shared driveway, and my garage door open. I thought perhaps my wife or I had left the garage door open when we left for work. I grabbed a crowbar as a weapon and searched the house. I know not the smartest thing to do, but I don’t own a firearm. Nothing was missing, and nobody was in the house so I didn’t think much of it at the time. I went outside to get the license plate number strangely parked car , and to call the police. My neighbor came down the driveway and apologized for parking in my driveway and left. That’s where I thought the story ended.
A few weeks before this incident, I had just purchased my car off of lease and switched plates. In Maine we don’t need to turn our plate in and my old plates had been on the wall in my garage. I didn’t notice that they were missing. The neighbor that had parked at the end of my driveway? That neighbor had a previous conviction for Bank Robbery. The local detective and I put two and two together and we had a good suspicion about what had happened to the plates. He gave the information to the State Police and I never heard from that officer again.
High Powered (1945) ACTION ADVENTURE
Full movie. Free and fun. Film Noir.
In this two-fisted adventure tale, a high-rigger holds himself responsible after his brother is killed in an on-the-job accident. He gets a chance for redemption, when it looks as though the same accident is about to occur again!
When I lived in Tangxia; Danguan there was this twice-a-year event that is worthy of reporting. You see, I lived in a little city part of a bigger city next to Shenzhen. It is a small manufacturing city located North of Shenzhen in the Pearl River Delta. And being a manufacturing city, dating back many centuries, there were a lot of old buildings and old roads, and old sewer lines.
Well, twice a year, the local government would “fog” the underground sewers. This was a release of insecticide in a mist fog that would be sprayed by huge trucks all over town. The idea was to kill off the insects and rodents, and the city had been doing this for centuries.
But…
Let me tell you all that when that happened, a virtual carpet of huge (mouse-sized) cockroaches swarmed out of the sewers and carpeted everything. Some flew, many just climbed all over, including on shoes and trousers and woman’s legs. It was darn crazy!
If you saw it, you would not believe it. Not a scrap of concrete could be seen; three layer deep of swarming cockroaches everywhere. Wholly shit!
Last time it happened, my wife was so freaked out that I had to carry her two blocks back to our apartment. She was hysterical and had goosebumps all over her arms and legs. Jeeze! So imagine the scene, they were crawling, racking, flying, swarming, on everything. On our feet, the trees, the sidewalks, the store windows, the cars. They were buzzing, hopping and leaping, and my wife was in goosebumps and hysterical.
An experience that I do not want to relive ever again. Let me tell you what!
I was about 13 and was asked by a family friend to help her step daughter out by babysitting her 3 kids while she worked at a pizza parlor in town. It would be from the time I got out of school till 10pm, but Summer vacation would start in a couple weeks so I figured I could manage it.
I agreed to try it and see how it went. The day I was to start, I rode my bike to the house. I could smell some horrible smell from the yard. Went to the door and it was wide open. I yelled “hello??” and 3 of the cutest kids I’d ever seen came running! They were full of questions. I asked where their Mom was and the eldest said she was already at work. I was surprised, but I figured something had changed with our plans and she had to go in early.
I walked into the living room and the air was thick with stench. It was a combination of animal waste, rotten garbage and food. The living room had a couch, a chair and was literally 3 feet deep in clothes, garbage bags and dirty diapers. I was a kid and wasnt sure where to start, but i found a roll of garbage bags and we began. I say we because those babies were such a help!
The oldest was Michael and he proudly told me he was 5 and would be staring Kindergarten the following year. He was short and stocky with a mop of curly blonde hair. What I first noticed was his serious expression. He had an excellent vocabulary and was a chatter box. Next was a little girl named Jessica. She was 3 and absolutely beautiful. She was quiet but didnt miss anything. She was petite and had hair to her waist that was full of tangles. The baby girl was Grace and she was 2. She was very frail looking, although she turned out to be anything but frail. She was in just a diaper which was soaked, so I asked Michael to show me where the diapers were. We all headed into the girls room. It was filthy. I find a clean washcloth and get Grace cleaned up. She smiled the whole time. They were all hungry, so we head to the kitchen. I found a can of soup and some stale crackers, which they devoured. While they ate, i started on the kitchen. The sinks and counters were i overflowing with dishes. I turn the faucet handle and no hot water! So i start heating water after digging to uncover the stove. Theyve devoured the soup and want more. There was nothing more, so i grab my backpack and find a yougurt to split, some cookies and an apple which was all split between the 3 of them. I noticed there was no bickering. These 3 were accustomed to looking out for each other.
We started with the garbage and those kids really worked hard…..even the baby! We started by getting the garbage bagged up, and I started laundry. We worked for hours, and those kids didnt want to stop! They wanted a clean house. We got the living room mucked out, we found clean sheets and got beds made. The kitchen had a good start. I went in and cleaned the bathroom while they found jammies. I looked up from scrubbing and those faces were beaming. Got Grace in the tub and started detangling Jess’s hair. I know it had to hurt……but she never made a peep. Grace was clean and ready to get out. Water change and Jessicas turn. When she was clean, we changed water and gave Michael his privacy. I took the girls and checked the magical backpack. I found some nice lotion and they smelled lovely! They both had beautiful hair and kept touching it. Michael gets out and wants some lotion too. We decided to move Michaels bed in with his sisters (his “bedroom” was tiny, i think it was a.closet) We found some books and read. They were all asleep in minutes. As I detangled myself feom the sleeping babies, Michael asked if I was going to come back. I gave him a hug and said Id see him tomorrow. He grinned and it made my day. I waited for Mom to get home. It was almost 11 PM by the time she got home and I could tell she had been drinking. She introduced herself and looked around the room. She was shocked. She asked who had cleaned and i told her we all did. I see a car pulling up and its my Dad coming to see why Im so late. She says she had a meeting and was kept late. He ssaid”Look, we need her done at 10. Not 1001! If you cant be home at 10, she cant do this “ He loaded my bike up. He asked how it went. I didn’t want to tell him how dirty it was because I was afraid he would say I couldnt go back, and I had promised Michael.
And so it went. Every day, the kids and I would clean up a bit more. The cleaner the house got, the more time we had to walk to the park or go to the community pool. We had a great time and those 3 kids were all amazing.
I babysat the kids all that summer and into the start of school. It was just too much and I had to quit after Christmas vacation. I still watched them occasionally and we always had so much fun. This was in the early 70s. I still see the 3 kids who are adults now with families of their own. Michael went on to become an executive chef and works at a very trendy restaurant in the San Francisco area. He has a couple of kiddos and a lovely wife. Jess is an RN and works in the Lake Tahoe area. Shes a single mom of 2 boys and Grace is still local and keeps me in the loop with updates. She married a local guy and they have a daughter. She teaches at the local elementary school.
Its weird because it was such a short period of time, but it left us all with a bonding of the heart. Their Mom passed away last year and I went to her services and got to see all the kids (lol at KIDS!!) They introduced me as the best babysitter ever.
Filthiest house produced some wonderful humans. I was happy to be a small part of that. Sorry this was so long. Was a lovely trip down memory lane. Thanks for reading.
When my husband caught me cheating on him. There are no excuses, it was an incredibly stupid, selfish, and insane thing to do to someone who didn’t deserve it. The person I cheated on my husband with wasn’t worth it, that’s for sure.
After telling most of my friends and family what I did, my husband packed his bags and left. I spent a week on my couch contemplating suicide and hitting absolute rock bottom. My friends all took his side, understandably. Almost everyone I loved turned away. I fell physically sick with some sort of insane flue—the worst I’ve ever had in my life, probably from the stress.
I could’ve turned to the guy and tried to start fresh. New life, new boyfriend, new friends… Get that divorce and start over. Instead, I realized that what I had was worth fighting for, even if it took years to get it back. I ended the affair with that guy.
I wrote to each friend and family member who knew about this that I was going to do whatever it took to build my life back. I wrote to my husband. I begged him to come back. By some miracle… he did. We went to counselling, I went to therapy. I opened my life to my husband: no more privacy. He had access to everything, which I was completely fine with.
It took a long time, but eventually my friends came back. My husband’s trust slowly began to rebuild. Years and years later, our marriage is strong-full of incredible love, respect, and trust. I look back at what I did in complete disgust. I live everyday with that heartbreak, wishing I’d never put such an amazing person through that. Although that time was dark, it was the push I needed to wake up and stop living like a selfish idiot.
I wouldn’t trade the life I have now for the world. It took incredible pain and humiliation to get here, but it’s what led to my amazing life now. For those going through a dark time, take it day by day… one step at a time. I never thought I’d ever get here, but with hard work and patience, it will get better.
Not sure of the exact date, but it would have been mid to late ’80s in Bristol city centre.
Late one evening I was in a crew of 6 in a transit van when we saw a knackered looking Fiat 127 (they were never brilliant when new, let alone one that was 15 years old!). Half of the lights were out, smoke from the exhaust (and lots of noise).
Pulled the car over, and found it contained 2 adults and 3 children (all under 6 or 7 at a guess). Occupants were of obvious Asian descent (not unusual for that area of Bristol), so I started to ask the usual questions whilst a colleague looked over the car (which was found to have 3 bald tyres, no window wipers and a lot of rusty holes in the bodywork).
The driver and adult passenger were almost in tears, and trying to speak in English, which wasn’t that great. I established that they were Mauritian, and had only arrived in the UK that day. Once I spoke to them in French they looked relieved (my French isn’t brilliant, but was better than their English). He produced a Mauritian Driving Licence, and when asked for insurance and registration for the car (which they had purchased upon arrival at the airport), they produced a hand-written receipt showing that they had paid £1000.00 cash for the car! (it was worth about 20 quid scrap value, and certainly shouldn’t have been on a road). Even worse, he proudly produced another hand-written “Insurance Certificate” for which he had paid the car seller another £300.
They had come here to attend a family funeral, and had been royally ripped off by some scumbag near Heathrow as they needed to get down to Bristol as soon as possible.
Obviously, we couldn’t let them continue driving as it was unlikely to get them very far anyway, and was a liability to everyone else on the road.
I had no intention of getting my pen anywhere near to an official ‘ticket’, and explained the game to my Sergeant – who fully agreed with me.
All the time, the family were getting more and more upset as they started to realise the situation they were in and the trouble they thought they were in.
We took them back to our station (and a colleague drove their car), fed and watered them, spoke to relatives by telephone, and sorted out as much as we could at that time.
They were taken to a hotel for the night and agreed to surrender the car for destruction.
As the story spread throughout the night (between other colleagues, paramedics, fire-fighters, hospital staff and taxi drivers…. that was the way things were in the City at that time) offers of help came in.
By the time we went off duty at 0700 hours, the hotel bill had been waived, a taxi was ready to take them down to Exeter (their intended destination), and a collection had raised just under a grand in cash. Toys had been donated for the children, and small ‘gifts’ for the adults.
By the time they arrived in Exeter, the local police had found and purchased a small run-around car which wasn’t great, but had a few months of MOT and tax left on it, and was roadworthy… enough for their use whilst they were in the country.
We got a lovely letter from them once they were back in Mauritius, thanking us for the help we gave (and arranged) – but we only did what we could to help someone who needed it, and had been badly treated by opportunistic scum.
Edit:-
Thanks for the gramatical corrections – I try my best, but often fail!
I’ve never had a higher-rated answer on Quora, or received so many comments – Thank you, everybody.
It is not often that I bother to answer many questions, being a ‘reserved’ British ex-cop many situations just don’t seem worthy of reply, or have already got a few good answers.
I fully appreciate that probably 95% of the questions (and thus, answers) are posted from the USA, and whilst i find them interesting to read, are often so alien to a British way of thinking that I see no advantage in adding to them.
Anyone who reads my other (very few!) answers on Quora will see that I have some views and oppinions on some things – mainly to counter the critics and troll posters when it gets a bit ‘personal’, or to defend those who I feel need it.
I have no desire to be a “super user” on here, despair at many of the “questions” asked, but still feel that (every so often) even the British have something useful to add to this world.
I have to tell this story. I started writing song when l was about 15 years old. One of my biggest influences was Harry Chapin. I live in Los Angeles, and Harry played at the Greek Theatre every year. I went to see him four or five years in a row after getting my drivers license.
Harry played about 300 concerts a year. He gave about half the money he made to world hunger. After the concert, he sat and sold and signed T shirts for the cause and would stay until every person who wanted to buy a T-shirt was able to . His Security guys, always moved people quickly through, because they knew Harry would talk to everyone. After the first concert l stood in line to get a signed T-shirt, and when it was my turn l told him l was a songwriter. He smiled and said, “ Really ? I wish you the best of luck”. The following year l went to where he was signing T shirts, and to my surprise , he saw me and asked, “ How’s the songwriting going?” While he was signing T-shirts, I stood to the side and talked to him about songwriting. His security tried to make me leave, but he said, “. Leave the kid alone. He’s not hurting anyone.”
l did this every year, and the last time l saw him, l was 20 years old and had got my first job playing songs at a Shaky’s Pizza place. I told Harry that and that l played Taxi, but that there was a part l couldn’t figure out. He turned to one of his security guys, and said, “ Go get me one of the guitars out of the truck “. Pretty much all the people who were buying T shirts were done . The security guy said, “ Harry! It’s midnight man. We got to get out of here!” Harry said, “ Just do it.”
The irritated security guy did it and Harry showed me how to play the part. One thing l forgot to mention, was that l had brought me mom with me to see him. She was so happy for me and told that story to people that story unt the day she died. Harry Chapin was a very special man.
Galatoire’s Trout Meuniere Amandine
2023 12 04 17 16
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients
4 (6 to 8 ounce) trout fillets
Salt and pepper, to taste
1 cup milk
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
Oil
1 cup butter
1 cup sliced almonds
Juice of 1 lemon
1/2 tablespoon chopped parsley
Instructions
Sprinkle fillets with salt and pepper, dip into milk and roll in flour.
Fry in 3/4 inch of hot oil in a shallow skillet until golden on both sides.
Remove and keep warm.
In a separate pan, melt and whip butter until brown and frothy.
Add sliced almonds and lemon juice.
Place each fillet on a heated plate and pour sauce over it.
China has a system of Governance that is radically different to that in Western Countries
Thus it is imperative, if the West has to keep it’s “We are the guardians of democracy” model, they have to portray China as evil and the system as collapsing
Otherwise won’t the people ask how if the Chinese system is so bad, is the nation prospering so much?
My granddaughter and I were at a Denny’s. We ordered and ate lunch. The waitress came back and picked up the bill that she had left on the table. So we finished and waited for her to bring it back finally called to her as she went past.
We ask for the bill to be brought back and she said no it was paid for.
An elderly man sitting at the counter had paid for our lunch. When I asked her why she said he is a regular customer and told me that he always smiles at people and you and your little granddaughter were the only ones that ever smiled back at him.
My wife had a 6 month affair, when I found out I left her.
A number of people assumed I was the one who cheated on her. That bothered me. I corrected them.
Worse were all the people who assumed I must have done something wrong to deserve it and that I was still the bad guy. People told me I must have not paid enough attention to her, I must have some how drove her to it, etc. Some people refuse to believe that I somehow didn’t do something wrong to cause her to cheat.
All I can say is this – I loved her and treated her like a queen. When I’ve asked her why she did it, the response from her has always been that I was a terrific husband, that she loved me, and that she regrets it. The guy was nearly 20 years younger than her (he in his early 20s, she nearly 40), he was attractive and charming and started flirting with her and she found him irresistible.
So, that’s a double standard that I’ve lived through and find unfair; if I had cheated I would’ve been labelled a creep/jerk, when she has an affair I’m still somehow a jerks who is to blame??!
Back in 1997 in Canmore, Alberta, Sir Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin were in town filming The Edge. Mr. Baldwin decided one evening he wanted to eat at our local Chinese eatery.
I was an Eco-Tourism operator and frequented the establishment quite often. They had an orange chicken that I went bonkers for.
It was peak dining hour and the place was experiencing a 45-minute waiting period to get a table.
In strolls, cocky Baldwin and he demands a seat “NOW!”
The owner was this 5 ft tall fiesty Chinese woman and when she told Mr. Baldwin that he’d have to wait about 45 minutes he pulled the old, Do you know who I am?”
Man, if you could have seen this lady go into action it was an Academy Award for putting an arrogant prick into his place.
She yelled at him with her Mandarin accent, “I don’t care who you are, you get out of my restaurant and don’t come back!”
image 19
The rumours of his arrogance have always swirled in the tabloids and I got a front-row seat to see it in action.
And the winner is for putting the Douche BgAlec Baldwin in his place… The Owner of the Famous Chinese Restaurant, in Canmore Alberta.
I need do this anonymously, because it’s a sensitive subject.
I’m a father of two wonderful children, and my oldest, my son, has special needs. Due to his premature birth (roughly 30 weeks), he developed a condition called Periventricular Leukomalacia, or PVL for short.
PVL is essentially an under development, often by necrosis, of white brain matter near the ventricles of the brain. Read up on it a bit on wikipedia for more info if you interested: Periventricular leukomalacia – Wikipedia
We discovered this was case shortly after his first birthday, when doctors started noticing some developmental delays and some muscle stiffness on his left side. Some evaluations and scans, and it was confirmed what he has, and that it also the cause of his cerebal palsy. It was quite a shock.
Anyways, we start doing therapies and early intervention and it’s such a wonder watching him overcome it all in small steps, in his own way. You feel blessed at times to see his hard work pay off, to truly value life and love and family.
So what do I want to get off my chest?
It’s all bullshit. You know those parents who “wouldn’t have their child any other way because it taught us so much about ourselves and….” well fuck that.
I absolutely hate it. Hate. With a capital H.
I have other parents talk to me and they word things like “well, he’ll get past all this and so forth…”. Ummmm, no dumbass. His condition is chronic – forever. We can adapt to it, and work really hard and he’ll cope and be better off for it.
But while Johnny Awesome-Dad and Super Son are learning how to play catch, I’m helping my son learn how to alternate feet when climbing stairs, how to be aware of his raised arm at the elbow and to lower and swing while he walks, while that guy got to teach his son how to swing for the fences.
His mannerisms are collectively a huge brain capillary-exploding annoyance. From the non-sensical sounds that he repeats 100 times to the way he is so damn slow at e v e r y t h i n g.
Yeh, I hate being a special needs parent. On top of being one, I also have to be his political advocate, constantly representing other parents to our federal and state politicians to ensure kids like him get proper educations.
I really really hate all of it. I only love him – I just wish I could heal him. That’s probably the worst. Of all the things I can do and fix, I can’t make him better.
Fuck me.
(January 9th, 2019)
Edit: Wow, a lot of upvotes. Most I have ever received by far, my next closest has about 115.
Ok, to a few comments: Thank you for the kind words from most people, the support, sympathy, and empathy. I truly did not write this to receive that as I quite literally was getting something off my chest.
To those who think less of my answer, even angry at me for being so: Your opinion is valued and appreciated. My response to it though is simply a shrug and a “It is what it is.” I know my son didn’t choose to be this way, but understand I am not choosing to feel this way either.
I wish I was a better person in this regard but I’m not. However remember this: I don’t let him see it. Fuck, I don’t even mention it anymore to family because they’ll either blanket me with guilt statements and be angry at me (Fuck You btw) or keep telling me lies like “It’ll all be fine” (no it won’t) or “He’ll be fine” (no, you obviously don’t understand it at all).
How do I cope?
Weed. Makes me feel better.
Heavy bag – I punch the crap outta it. Actually split the first one and I’m on my second. Looking to buy a speed bag.
Bottle it up and get back to my life.
And lastly yes I have considered leaving because he deserves a better Dad. The problem with that is it would take a lot of time for my wife to find another person who wants to take this on. Secondly my other child would suffer the loss of Dad when they did nothing, or have anything, wrong. It wouldn’t be fair and life is unfair enough as it is – I don’t want to add to it.
Don’t be indecisive. Ain’t nobody gonna follow someone who can’t make up their damn mind.
Don’t be a two-faced snake. People can smell that crap from a mile away.
Don’t be a damn pushover. You gotta have a backbone if you want to make it in this world.
Don’t be lazy. If you’re the one in charge, you gotta put in the work.
Don’t be a know-it-all. You ain’t that smart, trust me.
Don’t be too proud to ask for help. We all need it sometimes.
Level 5 – Impossible
House of Blues Bayou Voodoo Smothered Chicken
2023 12 03 15 32
Yield: 4 servings; 1 pound Roux
Ingredients
Brown Roux
10 ounces all-purpose flour
1 cup vegetable oil
Chicken
1 pound butter, melted
2 pounds chopped onion
1 pound chopped celery
1 pound chopped red bell pepper
1 pound chopped green bell pepper
1 pound sliced mushrooms
2 ounces minced garlic
2 1/2 ounces all-purpose flour
4 cups red wine (chef suggests Burgundy wine)
2 quarts dark beer
2 quarts water
2 tablespoons beef base
4 tablespoons chicken base
1 tablespoon liquid smoke
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
2 tablespoons Tabasco sauce
1 cup Louisiana Seasoning
Instructions
Brown Roux
Place oil in a heavy stock pot and heat until it smokes. Slowly whisk in flour, 2 cups at a time, mixing well. Cook in oven at 350 degrees F for about 2 hours, stirring every 15 minutes. Roux is done when chocolate brown color is achieved. Allow to cool.
Chicken
In a large skillet or sauté pan, add butter.
Put onion, celery, red bell pepper, green bell pepper and mushrooms into the pan and sauté.
Add garlic and sauté for 1 minute.
Add flour and stir; cook for 1 minute.
Add red wine and reduce until thick.
Add dark beer, water, beef base, chicken base and bring to a boil.
Add liquid smoke, Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco sauce and Louisiana seasoning.
Whip some roux into the sauce. Bring to a boil then remove from heat.
Put some pre-made rice on a plate, put cooked chicken breast on top of rice and ladle voodoo sauce over the chicken and rice.
Ages ago in the late ’70s I worked in an engineering department for a huge manufacturing company – one of the big three in Detroit. A co-worker had about 30 years with the company and a ton of vacation time. He and his wife had a daughter late in life. She was about 8 at the time and daddy took vacation days every Friday and Monday during her summer vacation.
Big boss comes in one Thursday afternoon looking for the doting dad. We say he’s off until Tuesday, and reminded him of daddy’s schedule.
Keep in mind that all vacation had to be submitted and approved, by boss man, in January.
But in this moment he can’t have what he wants when he wants it.
Boss man hits the ceiling. We can’t have that. Everyone has to take vacation in full week increments.
The guy had a pretty specialized skill set, and no one else was really up to speed in his area of expertise. We could fill in in a pinch. Daddy could complete final draft when he got back on Tuesday.
the following summer, I had transferred to another department, but that department struggled when dad took his six-plus weeks of vacation consecutively!
it was a whole lot easier to cover his job for four days than six weeks.
It resulting in us trying for 6 months after ending the affair. To her cheating on me with another man to eventually leave me at the end of the 6 months. Tit for tat I guess. Lots of shame and heartbreak on my end but those are the consequences. Mostly life lessons though. Divorce was the anwser and we will both be happier in the long run.
Many years ago a young woman called me up one evening to ask some questions about insurance regarding the car accident that had happened between her car and mine that afternoon. Slight problem, I hadn’t been in a car accident. She had my name and license plate from the police report so I went out and checked the number of the license plate on the back of my car, and it wasn’t the same number. After a little more discussion I got my auto registration and that did match the number on the report – the license plates on the front and back of my car weren’t the same! After thinking about it I realized what must have happened: I had returned from a business trip a couple days earlier and while my car was parked at the airport parking garage someone had swapped the license plate on the back of my car with a different one and then put my license plate on the car that got in an accident (it was almost the same make and model as my car – they must have been casing the airport). Not surprisingly this turned into quite a mess to untangle, requiring multiple calls to insurance as well as a visit by the police officer to verify my car had not in fact been in an accident. The weird part that still bothers me to this day – the woman driving the car who’d gotten in an accident had the same last name as me. My last name isn’t an unusual one, but it’s not extremely common either. She told the police she was my niece (not likely – I’m white and she was black). How did that happen?
Have you noticed big brands dropping A, B & O from their signs and logos?
image 10
Most people who noticed the same, thought that it could be some malfunction but the real reason for the missing A, B, and O’s is something more serious and amazing.
image 9
NHS Blood and Transplant organization, along with PR agency Engine Group has launched the ‘Missing Type’ campaign. It has undertaken this campaign to make people aware the benefits of blood donation and its importance of saving lives.
image 8
Big brands and companies likeTesco, Mirror, McDonalds, Starbucks and Hardrock Cafe have agreed to be the part of the campaign to make people aware of blood donation.
As a part of this campaign, NHS has asked big brands to omit the letters that signify blood types from their logos and signs viz, blood types A, B, and O.
I watched a 90 lb female put a 235 lb guy in the hospital. This was a fight between 2 neighbors in my neighborhood. This guy harassed her for weeks then for some reason he decided to walk up to her front porch and knock on her door. I was sitting on my front porch when it happened. I was thinking this is not going to be good, and had my cell phone within reach.
She open her door and in a clear loud voice, she requested he get off her property. He said, what are you going to do about it. She said, I’ll call the police. He laughed at her and reached for the screen door. Before I could move she kicked him in the head twice, swept his legs out from under him, and he was down and bleeding.
I started to call the police, but again before I could dial the number a patrol car pulled up and the officer put the guy in handcuffs. I just sat there, drank my coffee and waited for him to come over and ask what I saw. I told him and signed the bottom of the form.
As he walked away he said you know the woman? I replied yes, she’s a former Marine. He chuckled and said. I guess the guy didn’t know that, and I laughed.
When I had an Amish girl come live in with me during the week to help take care of my three-year-old daughter and my brand new twin boys.My husband was in Vietnam.
The first night that I went out to play cards with friends I came home at 10:00 p.m. everybody was sitting in the dark. It was pitch Black and it had not occurred to me that she would not be allowed to turn on the lights or use the electric stove to heat formula.
From them and I would make sure everything was turned on before I left. I only played cards twice a month but they were never left in the dark again. I would heat formula and put it in the thermos bottle but I also showed her how to fill up pan with hot water from the tap to sit the bottles in.
EDIT due to the amount of people that think it was horrible to leave my newborn twins and 3-year-old daughter with a stranger I need to explain the Amish girl lived with me. I would take her home on Saturday morning and go pick her up on Monday morning. I even knew her family. She had helped raise 9 younger brothers and sisters.
When I was in high school I would get terrible menstrual cramps. I would leave school and go to the cab stand down the block. The dispatcher was a man that I’ll call Joe. He was blind.
I would walk in on a wooden floor and Joe would say hi Linda you need to go home? I would take a taxi and come in after school the next day to pay for it. This was in a small town about 15,000.
I grew up, graduated high school, moved away, got married and got pregnant. My husband was going to Vietnam and I went back home to stay with my parents. This was about 6 years after I had left home.
I stopped at a bakery before I went to my parents house. I took one step on a cement floor and a man standing at the counter buying some donuts said “Hey Linda when did you get home?”
I never understood how Joe recognized my one step on the cement floor and I was very pregnant. You would think the sound would be different but he recognized that one step immediately.
A guy I went on a first date with (set up by a friend) told me how his ex wife was having a breakdown and had messaged him that day, to say that she couldn’t cope and was going to call social services and have their two children placed in care. Shocked, I looked at him and said “Couldn’t you take them for a couple of weeks and give her a break?” I kid you not, his genuine, honest response was “Not a chance, I have them every other weekend, that’s enough for me!”. I don’t think I hid my horror very well. Ugly, ugly man. My own son was 3 years old and the time, and if he wouldn’t step up for his own kids, he was going nowhere near mine!
It takes about 66 days for an average individual to make something a daily habit.
Eye pupil dilates to 45% when an individual looks at somebody they love.
Food prepared by someone else tastes much better than your own preparation, even when you use the same recipe.
Hearing a single negative thing could damage at least five positive memories.
Studies have shown that consuming food without preservatives will increase I.Q by up to 14%.
Men aren’t more entertaining than women: they only make more jokes, they don’t care whether others like their humor or not.
Shy people tell others very little about themselves, but they do it in quite a manner that makes other individuals believe they know them better than they actually think they do.
People in blue rooms are also much more productive.
Being alone is harder for your health than you really believe.
Any relationship born between 16 and 28 years of age is more likely to be robust and long-lasting.
If we have a plan B, our plan A is less likely to succeed.
Being happy around people makes you happier.
Convincing yourself that you slept well tricks your brain into believing you did.
The sort of music you listen to influences the way you view the world.
A hug longer than twenty seconds will produce hormones into your body that makes you trust the individual who is hugging yo
Not so much amazing, as being extremely useful to me. I was on a European Standards Committee for several years. Members came from many European countries and it was customary to conduct all meetings in English.
Often the French and German delegates would speak to each other in the meeting in French or German to try and exclude the UK delegate from what they were plotting. This was on the basis that they assumed that the British could not speak other languages. It was advantageous to me for them not to know that I understood at least the gist of what they were saying.
However, when meeting in Dusseldorf the German delegated took us all out for dinner after the meeting. This was in a very German restaurant and the waitress approached me asking, in German, what I would like to eat. Not thinking, I blew my cover by replying in German.
The German delegate’s jaw dropped and said “you speak German!”. Trying to save myself I admitted that I could speak enough basic german to get by, but I couldn’t resist adding “ but my understanding is better”.
The Swedish delegate sitting next to me actually laughed and gave me a pat on the back.
A 26 yrs old with a decent job(in Indian Silicon Valley), beautiful girlfriend, about to be promoted, in short, enjoying my life.
But now,
A road accident(to save a little girl), which confined me to home for 4–5 months, had a kneefracture, operated, implanted with a metal plate inside(permanently).
Promotion aborted(as i m on Medical Leave for quite a longer period).
Cheated by my girlfriend when we were planning to get married, our parents accepted us.
My situation after surgery,
image 18
I was full of life. Travelling, working out in gym used to make me feel energized, lively, confident. But my eyes in the above picture are full of unnecessary thoughts, wandering with all the lively moments I had before.
Permanent Implant,
image 17
I was planning to call my parents to bangalore so that i can arrange some vacation for them and let them know about me and my girlfriend. But this was not the way i wanted them to come.
Even after accepted by my parents, she cheated on me. This was the time when i needed her the most. I know that,
“We should Forgive people in our life, even those who are not sorry for their actions. Holding on to anger only hurts us, not them.”
Also after one-by-one misfortunes, my self-confidence is f**ked like a Gangbang. So i’m not in a place to keep grudges with her and trying to move on, to forgive her and forget her.
Now they want me to settle downin an arranged marriage with a girl of their choice. And neither I am in position to ask for getting married with a girl of my choice nor in a position of getting married with any girl due to hindrances in my promotion, beautifully f**ked self-confidence.
I’m just trying to recover as soon as possible from the physical and emotional injury so that i can go back to my self made track of life.
Go ask Russians, nearly all western countries did the same as you mentioned to Russia, including the so called “nuclear option”: kicked Russia out of SWIFT, did Russian economy collapse?
Oh, maybe you don’t know the real world, just living in the “information cocoons”, you’re fed with selected information, which made you believe China is easy to win, like our beloved president 45 said, trade war is easy to win.
This is his easy to win:
image 2
Now, it is America who’s relying on China, not China relying on America. Say you to buy a Toyota and wait for over a month, sometimes you need to pay extra money, and its price is rising year after year, while in China, Toyota is to buy at will and drive away upon you paid, and its price is lower and lower. For example, RAV 4 in America starts from $29K, while in China, it starts from RMB 175,800, which is about $24.5K.
The problem is not China, it hides in America, destory China can’t solve your own problem.
The big heads are more informed and clever than you average Americans do. They know they can’t win, sanctions, trade wars, are just to slow down China’s pace, not to stop it.
Years ago, I was involved with a lawsuit against a tech company. Kind of “class action,” which meant a lot of people were there.
I noticed two levels of dress: casual and super-expensive suits.
As the process unfolded, I realized that those two levels of dress represented three levels of wealth.
The expensive suits were all worn by guys (and, yes, sorry, this was long ago, and everyone was a guy) who had high-paying jobs. Most would regard them as well off. They drove new, leased BMWs, etc. They were supercilious toward everyone because THEY were the only ones wearing expensive suits, shoes, and Rolexes.
The casual dressers represented two economic levels:
Those who could not afford expensive suits or Rolexes.
Those who had so much money they didn’t need to impress anyone.
At one point during the proceeding, I ended up in a room with four suits while I was dressed in jeans and wore a lightweight “Members Only” jacket. (You can tell this was long ago, right? Remember when those were cool?)
At first, they spoke only among themselves, treating the “obviously” poor guy like I couldn’t possibly matter. I let them go for a few minutes and then interrupted them for an important message on life. I told them how their expensive suits put them at a disadvantage because the only thing obvious in the room was that none of them were in the top tier financially.
They included me from then on.
To answer the question: The truly rich wear whatever they want. Only those who are still struggling to become truly rich are slaves to the “badges of honor” that they THINK demonstrate they are rich.
I was at a Home Depot and saw this lady trying to lift a 90lb bag of cement from a flat cart into the trunk of her car. I said let me help you with that and grabbed the bag and put it in her trunk. She said I don’t need your damn help. I said sorry and grabbed the bag and put it back on the cart. As I was pulling out of the parking lot I saw that she had dropped the bag and it broke open all over the parking lot. I honked and waved.
During the Vietnam war President Lyndon Johnson and Robert McNamara came up with “Project 100,000,” and the idea was to kill two birds with one stone by drafting men who were developmentally disabled or just too stupide to be left into the army. It was to provide more men for the war effort and give the less fortunate a chance at being productive members of society.
image 4
There’s typically an IQ minimum of 80 points to serve in the US military, but the rule was loosened, and they started allowing in men with mental disabilities. These men became known a “McNamara’s Morons” and died at 5 times the rate of other Americans in the war.
You had men turning up to basic training that couldn’t even tie their own shoes and couldn’t even understand the basics like dressing the bed. Some of these soldiers didn’t even understand why they were utterly exhausted at the end of a run when they were full of energy at the start of the run.
image 12
When in combat training, none of the men could pass their physical training because they couldn’t grasp the idea of throwing a heavy training grenade in a high arc to reach the target that was 90 feet away.
A lot of the men were protected from battle and kept safe by sergeants who took pity on them, but a lot were sent into dangerous battles on the front line. Not only were some of these men a danger to themselves they also put their fellow soldiers in harms way by not being able to grasp the seriousness of what they were involved in.
image 3
For example, in one platoon a dozen men were injured when a live grenade was tossed at them by another soldier as a prank. The soldier in question didn’t have the brain function to understand how dangerous a grenade was.
The word McNamara Moron’s was a derogatory term used by many of the sergeants to describe many of the men that fell under their care. Although the experiment was a disaster, not all of the men drafted under this new legislation failed to learn and grasp the fundamentals of combat. Many went on to have distinguished careers, and many were awarded the “Medal of Honour.”
image 11
The story of Forrest Gump was inspired by McNamara’s soldiers and the bravery some of these men showed when faced with impossible odds.
A quiet little boy was putting up with the abuse of a foot taller, loud mouthed girl. The girl was berating him for being a Nerd.
The teacher heard what the girl was saying to the boy, and admonished her, “Karen! You should be nice to Billy! He is a straight A student, and someday he just might be your Boss.”
Billy looked at the teacher and quipped, “But I don’t want to be a Pimp!”
When I had just turned 18, my mother came into my room with a birthday balloon. It was one of the nice fancy balloons. She was really happy to give it to me.
But I, being the selfish spoiled teenager reacted in anger.
“What! Is this it? I don’t get a cake or presents?!?!”
I will never forget the look of hurt and pain on my mother’s face. She turned around with tears in her eyes and quietly took the balloon from my room.
I knew instantly that I hurt her. I tried to run after her and apologize but the damage was already done.
I know she forgave me right away and gave me the balloon. But, you see, we were a low income family and balloons were rarely given. It was a gift I should have been proud of, but I turned it into something painful.
I learned a valuable lesson that day. You can’t take back words spoken in anger.
I will be 40 this year and my mother has been gone for 16 years and I can still see that look on her face as clear as if it had been yesterday.
I miss her.
I just do
Make America Go Away
The United States is like an abusive, narcissistic uncle that just knows that you will always need him; he is the indispensable uncle that just requires that you accept his authority by saying “uncle” otherwise he will sadly have to increase the level of abuse until you either “get the message” or die from the abuse. The vast majority of the world’s population understands this, whether it be the Latin Americans cheated out of democracy again and again, the Africans who had their post-independence dreams destroyed, the Middle Eastern modernizing and secular states that were eradicated, the Vietnamese that died in their millions to rid themselves of US occupation, the people of Gaza being murdered by US bombs and shells, or the Chinese, Russians and Iranians who face the wrath of the US for not understanding their place. The last thing they want is for the US to be “great” again, and they certainly do not see it as indispensable or a shining city on a hill, as the US political elite claim again and again in the form of religious-style mantras.
US politicians, policy makers and even international relations scholars accept this abusive, narcissistic narrative as they waffle on about a “Liberal International Order” where the US acts as the mafia-boss who makes the rules while not being subject to them, and bloviate about the decrepit “shining city” that must deliver its “gift” of liberal democratic capitalism to the world’s unwashed. Just as they did to the Amerindians in their three century war of extermination, ethnic cleansing and land theft, as they established the “new Jerusalem” of ethnic supremacy; personified by the racist bigot President Wilson who spun a good yarn about “freedom” while bringing the very opposite to not only many foreigners but also the US population. It was he who placed the velvet glove of sweet words about “Western culture” over the hard, racist fist.
So yes, the vast majority of humanity just want the US to go away and leave them to manage their own affairs. The problem with abusive narcissists is that they can turn into “family destroyers”, wiping out the rest of the family because they just know that the family (i.e. humanity) cannot survive without them. If they are to go away, then so must humanity. When those wanting a faster rate of change complain about the careful and patient diplomacy and actions of Russia, Iran and China, they must remember the dangerous lunatic that those nations are dealing with; one that can make humanity disappear with it if it so decides, in a global murder suicide. Anyone looking at the current psychopathic thrashings of the Israeli state must hold no flights of fancy about a US where a quarter of the population still believe in a heretical bible Armageddon fantasy, and its elite are wedded to their global dominance. Such lunatics have to be carefully managed and slowly subdued in order to reduce the possibilities of self-destructive and psychopathic rage-induced paroxysms.
Please Make America Go Away, as peacefully as possible.
The CORE FANTASY that drives women to ORGASM and WHY
I needed a “C” to pass my college communications course.
If I didn’t get a “C,” I would fail to meet my college major requirements setting me back an entire semester.
Here’s the problem: The semester was over, and I had a D+.
My only hope was to email the teacher asking for a bump in my grade.
I wrote an email to her explaining how my past school performance warranted a higher grade and that not passing me would only hurt an ambitious student.
When I hit send, I realized I made a HUGE mistake.
I addressed her using another teacher’s name.
I tried to calm down, but then I remembered we’d spent half the semester covering email etiquette.
Shoot!
What did I do?
Two days later, she emails back.
First, she addresses the glaring mistake then says she bumped my grade up to a “C” to never have me as a student again.
I went out for drinks that night.
This is by far the best mistake I’ve ever made.
US is Militarizing Itself to Death, While China Emphasizes Cooperation.
When I was in high school our physics teacher gave us a challenge that involved making a paper air plane of any shape. The only objective was to get it to fly as far as possible. I had some paper air plane making skills so I made the best plane I could and it flew pretty far.
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One guy made the greatest, yet simplest paper airplane of all time. He stood there at the starting line with a regular piece of paper. Some classmates scratched their head while silently chuckling to themselves. Moments later he took the flat piece of paper, crumpled it up, and threw it down the hall way.
He beat the class with ease.
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Some of the students got mad and said that he cheated.
The physics teacher said, “How so? I said it could be any shape. A paper ball is indeed a shape.”
He won the contest with flying colors.
“Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.”
When I graduated from nursing school 10 years ago, I was flush with cash for the first time in my life. Within the span of a month, I went from having an after tax income of $600/month to an after-tax income of $1200 every 2 weeks.
I felt rich. I was 21 years old. I didn’t want to just save. I would invest.
I read a couple of books, opened a brokerage account, and proceeded to buy and sell stocks and call options. I made a lot of money quickly.
I concluded that I was going to be a stock market genius.
So, when I started losing money, I of course knew that it was a temporary setback. So I played, er, invested some more, and some more, and some more.
After a while, I had to admit to myself that I had a problem. I stopped after a couple of years. I had maybe lost $30K by then.
I repeated the same experiment at the tail end of med school. I decided to borrow an extra $20K and invest. This time, I was going to be disciplined. I was going to focus on buying call options on companies that were going to spin-off part of their assets into standalone companies. The idea was that the market was mispricing the combined companies and that the sum of the parts would be greater than the whole, after a spinoff. It was not an entirely crazy idea. I’d made money that way before.
Anyway, my roommate started making a ton of money in penny stocks of companies involved in the marijuana business. I was jealous of how quickly he was making money. I joined in. I lost another $10–15K. I pulled out. He continued playing. He made money for a while. Eventually, he lost more than he had made.
I wouldn’t be surprised if I’d lost about $50K in the stock market over the past decade. That has been my worst financial decision. I see it as tuition money that I paid in order to learn that I am emphatically not a stock market genius.
I’m a physician. My mistakes are going to be relatively costless to me. Please don’t try this at home.
The U.S. has 2 choices. And Americans need to wake up to this reality to face the new world. China will always be independent from the U.S. in technology. In many cases it will from now onwards be ahead and with far better technologicallyDon’t than the US and the west. It is happy to share its benefits but it will never allow the U.S. and the West to ever threatened them again. Ever. Never Ever.
Don’t blame China. China were happy to play second fiddle till the despicable US foolishly thought that it can easily contain and control China in Chip technology for a generation. It took less than 3 years for China to catch up. It won’t look back. Now all the trillion of dollars shit it cost to do this shit will ll be wasted. If the U.S. never learnt then they can always lose more trillions. China don’t mind.
What does it mean for the U.S. government? It needs to know that the US has 2 choices. Either it work and I am cooperate with China and profit from China’s humongous market and manufacturing prowess or it loses it all including the access to the global south market representing som 120–150 nations around the world. The U.S. needs to make this decision. Americans need to learn humility and accept that it no longer can dictate to the world.
China will design its own chips, it will manufacture its own chips and it will sell to whoever wants to buy it and use it. It will do so at a faster rate and take less time, and make it a a lower cost and make it cheaper than the US and the west. That is what China always do and and the Chip Ban, the GPS threat and the ISS ban will simply motivate China to dominate all technology. Thanks USA
What do you like to ban, sanction, blockade from now onwards? I think China should stop the U.S. from using paper to clean their backside since China invented paper. Let the use their hands.
I worked at Apple in the 80’s and think the movie grossly underplays how much of an asshole he was.
I’ve worked with many billionaires in my career, and Jobs was the biggest asshole I ever met.
He would destroy people just for the fun of it. He would make it personal.
There were a few who managed to survive and even thrive, like Andy Hertzfeld.
Even on the original Mac team, there was a small number that Steve treated with respect, and the rest he treated like shit. It’s one reason the Mac team fell apart after the Mac shipped. Steve glorified about 10 of them; they were on the cover of Business Week IIRC. The rest he made clear were shit. They had worked their asses off and built a magical product, but Steve didn’t recognize them. So the glorified rock stars got big heads, and the others were deeply slighted. So the team fell apart.
It’s also true that at NeXT and then his return to Apple, Steve grew up and learned to treat people better. Steve v2 wasn’t exactly Mother Theresa, but he learned a lot of lessons and was much improved.
Yes, I still shiver 10 years later. My husband and I were thinking of buying a lot in a new intentional community in Belize (think semi-rainforest, not beach). We stayed at the guest house for several days to tour and explore the area. Activities included canoeing on the beautiful river, hiking, learning about the local culture, etc… Now, recall there’s a river, hence big rocky, sandy, soil-y hills that sloped down to it. Also, no paved roads yet. One day we decided to do a driving tour in our all-wheel drive rental (as opposed to a 4WD we had reserved). You can guess where this is going. We came to the top of a steep incline, and to continue, there was no choice but to proceed down the other side. Approximately 10 feet to our right was a cliff that dropped steeply into a gorge and the river. (I was driving because my husband isn’t crazy about manual transmissions.) Then, the brakes failed. As we gained speed, rocks began to bump us closer to the edge. Honestly, we were thinking that was it- the end of the road for us. But in a moment of something- not brilliance for sure- maybe instinct, I threw the car into first gear. It slowed, then came to rest about 4 feet from the edge. Finally I screamed, just to release the tension. Somehow I didn’t leave a puddle in my seat.
If that wasn’t enough, seconds after we got out of the car, we heard the screams of several women who were crashing through the dense forest to our left. When the three women reached us, they were completely out of breath but managed to yell, “Wild pigs! Wild pigs!”. Just as all of us squeezed into the car for (protection, not escape!), we heard the pigs retreating and running back where they came from.
“Snake” or sometimes “snakes”, Snakeye bombs. Mk-80 Series bombs of various weights fitted with a high-drag devise to provide rapid deceleration upon release.
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The special fins were held tight to the bomb casing until release, at which time they popped open to insure maximum horizontal separation between bomb and aircraft at detonation. Without the high-drag unit added, bombs could strike the ground and detonate under the aircraft. In some cases the explosion would bring down the delivering aircraft. At one time, this was called a “Low Blow”. Snakeyes were generally dropped at low to very low altitudes to enhance accuracy. Mk-80 series bombs without the decelerating tail unit were generally described as “Slicks”.
When I was 15 years old I made a decision that to this day still baffles me. I spent the weekend with my good buddy putting a hot motor into his car. We finished the work on Sunday afternoon and my friend told me he would come by my house and get me later so we could go celebrate the car and new motor.
When he got to my parents house that evening I walked out to the driveway and made that fateful decision by telling my buddy that I had “homework” to do and wouldn’t be going with him.
Later that night my friend and two others hit a tree going about a hundred miles an hour. It killed my friend and the other guy in the front seat and put the backseat passenger in the hospital for a month.
To this day I have no idea why I didn’t go with them. I really didn’t have any homework. It just came into my head that day and I said it and that was it.
I would have been the guy in the front passenger seat that night.
When I had a daycare I had a four year old who went through a terrible phase of pulling hair. He didn’t just yank; he’d get his fingers tangled in there and twist and pull with his entire body. It was extremely painful. He once got hold of my hair and pulled some out.
I tried everything to stop him. I watched him like a hawk. I stopped him when he got that look and lunged for someone’s hair. His mom acknowledged the problem she was having with him at home with his two older sisters. She tried everything; we both did, but nothing stopped him.
One day he got hold of this cute little two year old’s hair. She was screaming in pain as I tried to detach his fingers. And I finally had had it. I grabbed his hair and pulled just as hard as I could.
He let go immediately and started crying. And he never pulled hair again.
His mom thought he had finally grown out of his phase. I never told her what I did. I didn’t abuse the kids I watched; never spanked them or yelled at them. I still feel guilty for what I did. He probably would have stopped on his own.
My sister. It was the day of my mother’s funeral after a very fast illness and sudden, unexpected death. My husband had run an errand for Dad. He was gone about an hour. During that hour, one sister (older, middle one of three) cornered me as I sat at the dining table. She spent most of that time telling me what a horrible person I was, listing every perceived mistake I had ever made in my life, all the times I had disrespected her, etc. When my husband came home he found me sobbing, curled into a fetal ball behind the guest bed.
That afternoon and for the rest of that weekend I would not be in the same room with her. I spent my time composing a long email listing every claim she had thrown at me and why each was wrong (or blown out of proportion). It was all I could emotionally manage.
She never even acknowledged the email, let alone apologize for being such a bully. I waited two weeks and sent another email, asking if she got the first one. She acknowledged that she did. That’s all. Just a “yes I got it.”
I have not spoken to her since. And because my other older (oldest) sister just stood there, I have barely spoken to her. Their emails are automatically filtered to trash. They don’t even know my phone number in Spain, where I now live. I no longer have any sibling photos on the “photo wall” in the hallway. I consider myself an only child. I will not return to the US for either of their funerals when the time comes. They are not welcome to visit me in Spain and I don’t even want them notified when I die.
My daughter is a single mom, and once a week I help her out. I pick up her kids, aged 8 and 7, from school and watch them until their mother comes home around 8 PM.
The older one is a lot like me. Introverted, shy, a bookworm who goes through a couple of books a week. I never have a bit of problem with him. We understand each other. We’ll watch TV or play a game of chess together.
The younger one is the social butterfly of the family. She goes outside and plays with the other kids in her neighborhood.
She’s also stubborn to a fault. Just like her mother at that age.
And one evening about a week ago she started getting defiant. Refused to do anything I asked. I was losing patience.
Just then her mother came home and things escalated. I watched the two most stubborn human beings I’d ever met lock horns for about half an hour. I’d seen this behavior before — we got it from her mother, my daughter, when she was that age.
“Dad, I am so sorry for all the trouble I put you and mom through when I was her age,” she told me.
I laughed. “It’s OK. You grew up to be a pretty good kid and I’m sure she will too.”
But she was right. Everything she had put us through when she was young and stubborn was now coming back on her.
Thanks for the a2a. I have Chinese friends living all over the world. Some of them without fail ask me nearly every day if I have eaten yet. I have never thought it was anything other than kindness.
You see, I am from the Deep South in America. We Southern women show love and hospitality through our cooking. When I visit family, we’re having a meal and I have brought a dish. Or if they visit me, I’m feeding them and they probably brought something. I know my mother loves me because every time I visit, she makes tea exactly the way I like it. My brother knows I care because I make his favorite foods or desserts. My father is proud when I compliment his ability to grill a steak, and my sister requests my old-fashioned strawberry cake for her birthday. My daughter, she wants to make birthday cakes for everyone—whether it’s their birthday or not!
Food is a language, and that language expresses love, hospitality, kindness, care, and friendship. I believe Chinese people (as well as other cultures) understand this. I have always taken my Chinese friends encouragement to eat dinner or breakfast as a sign of their care for me, and I express the same care toward them. If they ever came to visit me, I wouldn’t let them leave my home without feeding them first. They don’t have to be fluent in English and I do not have to speak perfect Mandarin when it comes to sharing a meal together.
Americans foolishly screamed and shout that they are the leader of the free world without ever questioning if it is even remotely true or not! Please don’t be angry or upset if I help you guys since I understand you can pretend to be free or even dare says you are ordained by god to spread democracy and freedom but you Americans are one of the least free country on earth.
Let me help you good American. So first I like to explain how unfree you guys are.
35% of you cannot get health care when you fall sick! The most basic of freedom is the freedom to see a doctor and get cure when you fall sick. At least 100 million Americans don’t have this basic of basics of freedom.
Next 1 million Americans are homeless and don’t have another basic of basics of freedom. The freedom to have a roof over their head.! They have to live in makeshift tents on the streets.
20% of Americans don’t have 500 dollars to their name and don’t know where their next meal is coming from! Surely everyone must have the freedom to have a hot meal to stay alive!
USA with about 4% of world population has 25% of the worlds prisoners population! Think about this my American friends, prisoners are certainly. Not free. Many of them coloured people thrown into jail for the slightest reason. How on earth can you keep a straight face to say U.S. is the leader of the free world. No one know!
In many cities in the U.S. one cannot go to certain parts of the inner city like the Queens in New York. As crimes are rampant. So normal innocent and good Americans like you have to avoid that part of America! Surely freedom means you can go to anywhere or any part of America.
Kids and parents suffers the mental turmoils daily for just going to school. Many got shot to death in schools, public places, cinemas and even in Capitol Hill! Is that freedom? Even your kids are not free to go to school without a random mass shooter lurking with military grade weapons to murder them! Is this freedom?
If you are not fortunate to have a white skin you could be necked to death in the bright daylight of even driving a good car may be be shot to death just for suspected of stealing the car! Everyday you live in fear of a white policeman! Is that freedom to live? Freedom to avoid death at the racist inclination of the white racist? Surely not.
Freedom means you can choose who you really want to be your leader. Only 30% choose Biden. Or 35% choose Trump! Why are they your president? Your system allowed 0.8% of the richest and most influential people to choose your candidates! Surely this is not political freedom. This is far from democracy. How on earth can you call yourself the “beacon of democracy” who in a sane mind can claim that?
Oh today you country stop the Americans from having access to best 5G technology, Smartphone, best EV’s, drones and others for some geopolitical nonsense! Is this freedom? Freedom to be deprived? Let me help you understand. You are deprived from buying a 10 thousand bucks EV that need to be charged once a week but you are not allowed to! You cannot buy your Tesla like for half the price! Just to support your too big to fail auto industry paying 100 million bonus doing shit for good Americans!
But to me EVs and Drones are just the top of the iceberg of your draconian and suicide policies that takes away the freedom of Americans like you. Think about Jullien Assange, Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden! Freedom? American is anything but free.
I wasn’t fired, I just quit a job with a window replacement contractor after finding full time premanant employment. I called to inform the man and give him two weeks notice. He cussed at me and slammed the phone down. I called him right back and asked him to send me payment for the previous weeks work and he ratteled on about how I installed those last windows wrong and that he would not be paying me what was owed and told me never to call again followed by a loud “click”. So, I tallied all my hours plus all the OT I’d worked but was never paid more than a flat hourly rate. I took this document to the owners of the business he had contracted with, explained the situation and said “I just want to give you the opportunity to resolve this before I take the matter to the labor department” (they had a local office). The owner said “Thank you” and said they’d take care of it. The man was in a back office supposedly waiting for a meet so I said “Great! We will just need to come to agreement on what he owes me” The man said “Nothing to worry about there, whatever you say”. I asked when I might expect payment from him and the man said, if this amount on your records is good, I’ll cut you a check right now and we’ll just deduct the funds from his contract payment. I never saw the man again but he was a hot head all the same and I could feel the burn of his rage as I drove away.
As for my ability to install windows… The man had previously took me aside, giving me a raise because, as he said “You’re the only one I have who can read a tape measure”.
About 5 or 6 months ago, my girlfriend and I threw a little get together at our place for friends from work. I cooked dinner for everyone, and we just sort of made it buffet style. The whole affair was great fun and will make for great memories. After everyone had left Emily and I decided that we’d at least get the major stuff picked up, (the dishes and glasses into the dishwasher and the leftovers put into the fridge). While Em was finishing up in the kitchen I began moving things around in the front room, and there I found a pair of thong panties next to the couch. I picked them up and walk into the kitchen with them hanging on my finger. Em stood there looking at them and doing her best not to laugh. Because they were pink, I knew it wasn’t something that fell from the laundry basket by mistake. Neither of us likes pink.
To this day nobody has come forward to ask about them.
Best video Ever
Men, Listen up. It doesn’t matter (to anyone) if you win or lose. What matters is how you take it.
Yes. It’s 1986, I’m 9 years old and I come downstairs to get ready for school. My dad is reading the paper and he says, “Hey Corey, what do you know about comets?”
I immediately spout off everything a space-addicted 9 year old kid can/should know about comets. My dad beams at me and tells me bedtime will be postponed.
Night falls and my dad comes home early. We get into his Ford Escort and drive to K-Bee toys where he buys me a pair of GI Joe binoculars just as it is closing.
I can still remember what they looked like in the packaging.
We drive to a subdivision that is under construction and park on a mound of dirt that is now someone’s home.
We both lay on the hood of that car and look at the stars. We talk about space. We talk about life. He tells me that the next time this comet passes by Earth he will be long gone, but he hopes I will watch it and remember what it is like to be a child staring at the night sky with his dad.
We never saw Halley’s comet that night. Our binoculars were too cheap, the light pollution was too strong, the comet was too far away. To be honest, I think I prefer it that way.
Because what I want to remember about that day has nothing at all to do with a comet.
There’s a great many things I wanted for my life. Some of them have come to pass, others never will. But above all I hope that, one day, I will sit on a mound of dirt as an old man. I will sit with the great love of my life and our children and our children’s children.
And we, all of us, will look at the stars. And maybe we’ll see a comet and maybe we won’t.
But we’ll look regardless and we will think of the ones we have loved.
Your U.S. workers demand 5 times Chinese workers income, and 10 times more benefits and are willing to world half as hard and are 75% as smart or well trained and your CEO expects and demand 100 times more income!
As such if you produce here Apple 15 must be marketed and sold USD5000 instead of less than USD1500! Ask your local customers, friends and colleagues will they buy Apple 15 or save USD4000 and buy a Chinese phone this is faster, better and cheaper.
You decide. Tim Cook knows the answer! China knows Tim Cook knows the Answer and the 7.999 billion people except you and your 6 racist friends need to ask!
I had a coworker who disliked me the moment she saw me. Idk why, but it seems to occur to me a lot, “hate at 1st sight”, lol! I am a very friendly person who has found that if I treat an unfriendly coworker respectfully and don’t react to their nastiness, they will eventually grow to like me.
Well, after nearly 2 years of her passive-aggressive behavior and snide remarks, I finally grew weary of her abuse. FYI she was almost my doppelgänger in every way. Nearly identical facial features, hair color, style, figure and dress size Misses 0. Acquaintances usually couldn’t tell us apart.
So, one day she came to work wearing a very cute summer dress. I complimented her on it.
She smirked and said, “Thank you! I’d tell you where I bought it, but there are no extra large sizes left.”
About a decade ago, I got an Interview for a network administrator position. The phone interview went really well. I had a panel interview with an HR rep, some VP, and the manager I would have reported to. It goes great, and I get a conditional offer later that same day. They even offered me more than I asked for, though I suspect the recruiting agency may have padded my range to get a bigger commission (and I loved them for it). I sign the background check paperwork.
Two days later, I get a call from the recruiter saying that the offer was rescinded and that the recruiting agency can’t work with me any more. Ok, that’s really weird. My credit score is shot due to having been unemployed for a bit with bills piling up, but that’s not usually the kind of thing that gets a recruiting agency to drop you. I ask for details, but the recruiter will only say that I will receive communication by mail.
A couple weeks later, after I had finally accepted a lower-paying offer elsewhere, a letter comes in the mail with a copy of my background check. I read over it and see convictions for armed robbery, attempted murder, aggravated assault, and a bunch of other stuff I don’t remember … except remembering I’ve never been arrested or charged for anything like that, let alone convicted. Well, I look at the paperwork l, and what do you know. The first and last name are correct, but the middle name and date of birth are wrong. It’s almost as if they Googled my first and last name and just read the results of whoever popped up first.
I kind of wish they had done a bit more reading, because it would have been hard for him to attend interviews seeing as he was literally in prison while I was in their office.
I did point out the error to the recruiting agency … and never heard back.
Originally Answered: What is the best case of “you just picked a fight with the wrong person” that you’ve witnessed?
A woman called my newsroom crying. Nobody wanted to deal with her. So they sent her to me. She was crying and hard to understand, but the basic story went this way…
She had bought a used car. She needed it badly to get to the THREE jobs she held to support her children by herself. No husband. Less than two weeks after buying the car, it broke down. She called the dealer who had told her it had a 30-day warranty.
He told her he couldn’t help. But, she told him, you said it had a 30 day warranty. His response — too bad. When she complained, he told her — “lady, you’re dealing with the big boys now.”
She was crying as she told me this. I was — to put it mildly — angry. My response to her — let me call you back.
I called him. I explained the problem and when I did not get what I considered a good response, I “explained” things to him:
He needed to respond appropriately to her and solve the problem.
If he did not respond appropriately, I would have my entire investigative news team look into his operation.
He did not like that.
Cautionary note here: My response – YOU picked the wrong person to fight with, and no, NOW, you’re playing with the Big Boys, expletives to follow…
He took back her car. Gave her a slightly newer model without any problems. She called crying and thanked me. I may have cried a bit too.
PS – I didn’t do the story about him. I wonder if I should have?
Operation Bodenplatte, also known as the “New Year’s Offensive” or “Unternehmen Bodenplatte”, was a large-scale aerial offensive launched by the German Luftwaffe against Allied airfields in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg on 1 January 1945, during the Battle of the Bulge. The operation was intended to cripple Allied airpower and support the German ground forces in the Ardennes region.
Despite achieving some initial surprise and causing some damage to Allied aircraft, Operation Bodenplatte was ultimately a failure. The Luftwaffe suffered heavy losses, losing over 250 aircraft compared to Allied losses of around 130. The operation also failed to achieve its main objective of crippling Allied airpower, as the Allies were able to quickly recover from the attacks.
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There were several reasons for the failure of Operation Bodenplatte:
Poor planning and coordination: The operation was poorly planned and coordinated, with many of the Luftwaffe units involved not receiving their orders until the day of the attack. This led to confusion and delays, and the attacks were not as coordinated as they could have been.
Allied air superiority: The Allies had achieved air superiority over the skies of Western Europe by the end of 1944, and the Luftwaffe was no match for the combined strength of the Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Forces.
Adverse weather conditions: The weather on the day of the attack was poor, with low clouds and fog, which made it difficult for the Luftwaffe bombers to find their targets and for the Luftwaffe fighters to intercept Allied aircraft.
Allied intelligence: The Allies had broken the German codes and were aware of the planned attack. This allowed them to take evasive action and scramble their fighters to intercept the Luftwaffe bombers.
As a result of its failure, Operation Bodenplatte marked the beginning of the end of the Luftwaffe as an effective fighting force. The operation resulted in the loss of irreplaceable experienced pilots and aircraft, and the Luftwaffe was never able to regain its strength.
A top bunk is not “disrespectful”…. It is its own special fucking misery in a world of miseries…
Having to sleep in the top rack forces the occupant into constantly climbing over and disturbing the occupant of the lower bunk, denies the top bunk the use of “Privacy Curtains”, is fully exposed to the ventilation system which will always be too hot or too cold, is fully exposed to the lights, which can often be on 24 hours a day, prevents easy access to possessions stored under the bottom bunk, it forces the top bunk occupant into waking up the lower bunk every time he has to use the toilet or sink, and cuts down on the number of places the top bunk occupant can sit, since sitting on someones bunk without their permission is an act of disrespect…
I have seen more SERIOUS fights between cellies over “bunk territory” than any other issue… I’m talking about fights when one or both combattants require hospitalisation and a trip to The Hole…
My wife and I were out to eat with some friends. We were having a good time and enjoying ourselves when all of a sudden this horrific smell wafted towards us. The unmistakable smell of baby shit.
Eww, but whatever. Babies shit. It happens.
However, what happened next left us speechless and without appetite. The man with the baby was at a large round table with several other people. When they smelled it too, there was the standard, “Ooops, someone made a poopy” comments towards the baby.
The man picked the baby up, pushed some plates and glasses out of the way, and proceeded to open the offending diaper right there in the middle of the dining room. The smell was bad to begin with, but once he opened that thing up, it was nauseatingly bad. We had just received our meals, but there was no way we were eating anymore.
People around the restaurant were staring at the table, but no one at that table seemed to think anything of it. They were going about their conversations as though there wasn’t a shit-covered child on the table. One of the tables next to us went up to the bar to complain; the bartender said “That’s Jane’s family, she’s the manager. I’ll go get her.”
Jane came out of the back with an irritated look on her face. When the customer complained, she loudly said, “Oh, it’s not that bad. He’ll be done in a minute.” and walked over to the infant and made baby noises at it while the dad finished changing the diaper.
We and a few other tables all got up and headed for the door. “Hey, you didn’t pay!” was shouted after us. One of our companions turned and said to the manager, “You call the cops, I’ll call the health department. I’m sure they’d love to hear about this.” and we left.
I used to really like that restaurant, now I can’t even drive past it without gagging a little.
Seriously, how can people be so fucking disgusting?
Originally Answered: Have you ever stood up to a bully at the workplace and they back off?
Yes indeed. Two years ago, we had a hurricane. I had no food, no lights , no power. The next morning, I still went to work.
My manager raised his voice and was abusive. He wanted to push his work on to me, but I had no power, and didn’t see the email the night before. I spoke up to him and said he was totally unrealistic. He was stunned, like no one had ever spoken back to him.
The manager told the director, and the director texted me two hours later, getting harsh, saying “I know you have power supply issues, but the three of us need to meet“.
Ten minutes later, I sent a letter to HR complaining of harassment and abusive speech. I copied the email to an executive three levels above my director. The executive texted me back and said to keep him informed.
HR saw the executive’s email response, and the HR director called me within 40 mins of getting the email. I told her I wanted a management change. She switched me to a new set of directors an hour later. The new directors are professional and wonderful to work for.
The main point: Bully bosses don’t back down right away on their own. You must save yourself by contacting a boss two levels above your boss. Two levels, not one level. Use email letters to complain. Letters put everyone on notice, and they’re like a hand grenade.
When I was about 17 years old, my dad walked in on me and my then-boyfriend having sex.
The house I lived in at the time was located directly across from my high school. I was enrolled in a lot of sports, as was my boyfriend. Our practices often didn’t start until a half an hour or so after school ended, so most days we had a little bit of time to, um, kill. This particular day, I thought my dad would be at work. We raced to my house, went to my bedroom, and went at it. A few minutes later, without warning, my dad did the thing he always did – knock, then immediately open the door. Seriously? What was the point of knocking? I’ll never understand.
So there I was. His precious baby, naked with a boy. I did the only thing I could think of, which was to do a little *roll* off the bed, and then a second *roll* to hide myself underneath my bed. Leaving my bare-bummed boyfriend to the nightmare above me.
The only words my dad said was, “get dressed.”
I did not go to practice that day. Instead, I had to have dinner with my dad, alone. I couldn’t even look him in the eye. I was mortified.
We tried to have small talk???? “How was your day?” “Fine, yours?”
Two guys, college-age were yapping and I heard them say, it would be nice if the old f***er would let us go before him.
I looked up ahead of me in line and there were two young women, and then a man and wife and I didn’t see the advantage of them wanting to let these guys go before them, and they didn’t look all that old, then I realized that they were talking about me.
So I reached in my basket and took a shirt I was buying and pulled the tag off it, so when it was my turn and I didn’t let the sh**heads but in line, I left the shirt for last after taking my time unloading all the merchandise and striking up a nice conversation with the checker that always stalls a little and then she got to the shirt.
By this time the guys were really pissed. She said sir, your shirt doesn’t have a tag, let me call someone and get a price for you. I looked back with a grin. and said, you just got old f**kered.
I got married in 2008, my sister in 2009. My wedding was lovely and small but I felt like it meant a lot. My sister got married a year later. My Aunts bestowed upon her a family necklace (something borrowed and old) that was blue, and a simple flower bracelet for her something new.
They had done none of that for me.
I cried for 3 days. Like my marriage didn’t matter at all.
I was nearly killed in a multi-vehicular accident when I was 25. The first police officer on the scene pronounced me dead, but, luckily for me, there was a nurse on hand to confirm that, while I was gravely injured and in shock (which means that you don’t have a pulse in your arms and legs because your blood pressure is so low), I was actually alive.
By the time the ambulance got there, I was conscious and screaming from the pain of my injuries. I had broken both my legs, my pelvis and three vertebrae (they were not displaced), but the source of my agony was a dislocated knee joint. My knee-cap was 6 to 8 inches north of where it should be and my upper and lower leg bones over-lapped by 3 or 4 inches.
It hurt. A LOT.
So, they cut me out of my car and got me into the ambulance and rushed me to the hospital. I was in bad enough shape that they called ahead so an Orthopedist was waiting for me. Unfortunately for me, he was a newly minted doctor fresh out of his residency.
When he came into the exam room he:
did not ask my name
did not introduce himself
did not examine me
did not look at my chart
did not attempt to take the pulse in the ankle of the mangled leg
What he DID do was say, “Oh, that leg has to come off.” Those were literally the first words out of his mouth.
Now, my sister is a nurse and my mother wanted me to be a doctor, so I knew that he should have at least looked at my chart and attempted an exam. I was so angry at his utter lack of bedside manner that my immediate response was, “If I lose my leg, you’ll lose your license.”
Honestly, I don’t know who was more surprised, him or me. Admittedly I was having a REALLY bad day, but normally I would never say anything like that to anyone.
Now, what I didn’t know at the time was that in 95% of the cases where a person has a dislocated knee joint the way I did, the femoral artery that supplies blood to the lower leg is crushed beyond repair. But I was extraordinarily flexible, and luckily, my femoral artery was NOT damaged.
So after a short but pointed argument and a bit of malpractice (on the doctor’s part), my injury was reduced and I got to keep my leg below the knee. It has taken a lot of surgery to fix the damage and more than a decade of physical therapy to relearn how to walk but I can walk and 99% of people won’t notice my limp.
So that is how a split-second decision changed my life. If I had let the doctor amputate, no one would have known that my artery hadn’t been crushed and I’d have a prosthesis and be buying my shoes one at a time. I thank goodness every day that I said what I did to that insufferable jerk.
Women and their tests…
Heaven on Seven Chicken Voodoo Rigatoni
spicy rigatoni 3
Yield: 8 to 10 servings
Ingredients
2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
2 tablespoons plus 1/4 teaspoon Angel Dust Cajun Seasoning
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/2 cup diced yellow onion
1/2 cup diced red onion
1/3 cup thinly sliced green onion, white and green parts
2 tablespoons Roasted Garlic Puree
1/3 cup diced celery
1/2 cup seeded, diced green bell pepper
1/2 cup seeded, diced red bell pepper
1/2 cup seeded, yellow bell pepper
1/3 cup seeded, diced poblano chile
1/4 cup seeded, diced cubanella pepper
1/4 cup seeded, diced banana pepper
1 tablespoon seeded, minced Fresno chile
1 1/2 teaspoons seeded, minced habanero chile
1 teaspoon seeded, minced jalapeno
1/2 teaspoon minced serrano chile
1/2 teaspoon seeded, minced fingerhot chile
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
1 tablespoon light brown sugar
1 tablespoon dark brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon Hungarian paprika
1/4 teaspoon Spanish paprika
1/4 teaspoon chile powder
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1/4 teaspoon ground coriander
1/4 teaspoon ground turmeric
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/8 teaspoon ground white pepper
1/8 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1/2 cup peeled and diced ripe banana
1 (8 ounce) can tomato sauce
1 cup water
3/4 cup unsweetened coconut milk
3/4 cup pineapple juice
1/2 cup mango juice
1/2 cup papaya juice
1/3 cup freshly squeezed orange juice
1 tablespoon Key lime or regular lime juice
1 tablespoon Hot as a Mutha hot pepper sauce or habanero sauce
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, chilled and cut into pieces
2 pounds dried rigatoni pasta, cooked according to package directions
Instructions
Season the chicken with 2 tablespoons Cajun seasoning.
In a 5 quart Dutch oven, preferably enameled cast iron, heat the oil over high heat. When oil is hot but not smoking add the chicken and brown for 5 minutes, stirring frequently.
Stir in the yellow, red and green onions and the garlic puree cook for 2 minutes.
Add the celery, peppers, and chiles cook until vegetables are soft, about 10 minutes.
Add honey, sugars, paprikas, chile powder, allspice, coriander, turmeric, salt, black and white peppers, red pepper flakes, remaining 1/4 teaspoon Cajun seasoning, and stir for 2 to 3 minutes to coat meat and vegetables with the seasonings.
Mix in the banana, tomato sauce, water, coconut milk, juices and hot pepper sauce. Bring to a boil reduce the heat to medium low and simmer uncovered for 1 hour.
When ready to serve, stir in the butter until well blended and toss with rigatoni in a large bowl.
Attribution
Posted by Recipethyme at Recipe Goldmine 8/18/2001 5:26 pm.
Source: Chef Jimmy Bannos – Heaven on Seven Restaurant, Chicago
While we usually call it the “sixth sense”, the military term for this phenomenon is “premonition and intuition”.
Soldiers who fought for a long time on the battlefield have often developed sharper senses. Their bodies and minds are adapting to a survival situation:
After you have been away from any artificial light sources for a while, your night vision will improve. Being constantly exposed to enemy fire, your ability to see and recognize objects at a long distance increases.
You will be able to fine tune your hearing so that you’ll will be more perceptible to all “man made” sounds, for example tank engines or sounds of movement in the underbrush.
There are even soldiers who are capable to smell human feces from long distances away.
And some soldiers go even further: they develop an elevated state of mind, where their subconsciousness is able to connect the tiniest sensory inputs with the soldier’s vast experience. This way, soldiers can “foresee” future events on the battlefield, can “sniff out” ambushes and “know” where the enemy has put the mines.
This is not a new phenomenon, though there are many accounts from WWII and the Vietnam war where soldiers acquired extraordinary perception skills. Unfortunately, the military often dismissed them as “spooky stories”.
I was able to acquire a limited set of “extrasensory perception” skills myself. Interestingly, while I was fighting in the Bosnian war, I wasn’t really able to develop above average senses. As the war went on, I became better in anticipating enemy positions, or mined areas, but this was purely because of my ever growing experience and improved knowledge of our enemy’s tactics. When you’ve seen the enemy attacking a couple of times, always in the same way, it’s really not too difficult to figure out what their next steps will be.
During the war in Kosovo, however, I went one step further. I think this has a lot to do with the fact that we were nonstop in combat. There were no clear front lines (like in Bosnia) and everyday was a fight for survival that demanded from us to be 100% alert and sharp.
I remember one particular day: it was the third day of a massive enemy attack and I was manning a position together with a comrade. We were expecting that the enemy’s main assault would happen just in front of our position. We were in a small house and the moment I entered the building I felt that something was wrong. I couldn’t put my finger on it, though, but an inner voice told me: “this place is no good!”
We waited, but nothing happened. The fighting had started on our right flank, but in front of us, everything was still calm. All of a sudden, I told my buddy: “Let’s go somewhere else!” He trusted my word and didn’t argue with me and so we moved to another house that was a couple of hundred meters up the road.
On our way, we passed two of our comrades who were waiting in another position. I took a short look at their spot and told them to move fifty meters up the road to another place. I didn’t know why I said it, but they obeyed my order and moved immediately.
My new position was in a big three story house, only hundred meters to their right side, and so I was able to keep an eye on them. After an hour, the enemy attacked us with tanks. I shot twice with an RPG, but the enemy was still advancing. Our house had a very safe place in the basement and more and more soldiers came from other places to find refuge there.
image 15
Our last position, the “big house”, seen from enemy side. Picture taken after the war.
Outside the house, bullets and shells were flying from every direction. Suddenly my alarms went off again. I stood up and said: “Let’s go! Now or never!” and we all exited through a small window at the back of the house.
When I got outside the house, the air was red from the dust of the houses’ red bricks. Trees were hit by artillery shells and one fell just one meter in front of my feet. I waved and screamed at the two comrades that I had left nearby and told them to join us. Somehow we all made it to a safe place.
What I found out later was that an artillery shell had hit the exact place where I had my first position, just minutes after we decided to leave the place. The shell went straight through the roof and would have killed us immediately.
The two soldiers that I had asked to change their position came to thank me. They told me that only one minute after they were in their new position, an artillery shell had hit the old one.
And the last man who had left the big house from the small window told us that the moment he was leaving the building, a tank round had hit the room in the basement where we had stayed the whole time.
Of course we had a lot of luck that day, but there was more to it. After having spent a long time in combat, I was able to trust my instincts, my gut feeling, although it didn’t make any logical sense. From a military point of view, the positions that we had been using that day were carefully chosen and the best possible choices. Still, some inner voice told me to abandon them.
There were more occasions where my extrasensory perception skills (or those of my comrades) were either saving our lives or made us better soldiers. Especially during night combat, we often “knew” where each of our soldiers was positioned and what they were doing, without being able to see them. We were able to move without wasting time figuring out where everyone was left and we could shoot without hitting one of our own people. This made us better and more lethal soldiers.
Yield: about 8 to 10 gallons of gumbo. Can cut recipe in half to reduce.
Ingredients
2 cups vegetable oil
4 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups diced onions
2 cups diced celery
2 cups diced bell pepper
2 tablespoons minced garlic
2 cups chopped green onions
3 gallons water
1 pound fresh or frozen okra
1 (28 ounce) can Ro*Tel diced tomatoes or 2 (10 ounce) cans
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon black pepper
2 ounces crab boil
8 dashes Tabasco sauce
8 dashes Louisiana hot sauce
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper
1 ounce Paul Prudhomme’s Seafood Magic seasonings
1 ounce Cajun seasoning
1 ounce dried basil
1 ounce dried thyme
3 pounds peeled and deveined shrimp (70 to 90 count)
1 pound claw crab meat
2 whole crabs, cleaned and halved
1 pint fresh oysters
1 ounce file or to taste
Instructions
First, you make a roux. In a large, heavy stock pot on medium heat, add 2 cups vegetable oil and bring to temperature.
Add flour gradually. It will sizzle when it is at the right temperature. Using a whisk, stir roux constantly. Stir until it reaches a peanut butter color. When it reaches the desired color, add the onions, celery, bell pepper, garlic and 1 cup of green onions (in that order) until all ingredients are cooked down or caramelized.
Add water, okra, Ro*Tel tomatoes, seasonings and bring to boil. After it reaches boiling, reduce heat to low and let simmer for at least an hour.
Add seafood and continue to cook on medium heat for about 15 to 20 minutes.
Taste for seasoning and texture.
Add file to thicken.
Stir in the remaining green onions and simmer for a few more minutes.
It was older than I was. The biggest issue was, the floor pans were pretty rusted out (and the Flintstones jokes that came with it). I could see the road flow by if I looked down under my feet and pedals. Water would splashed up when it rained.
So I try to fix it. Some rolled stainless steel wouldn’t stay down right. Riveting just made more holes. And I gave it a break. Later that afternoon, I noticed my mom’s cookie sheet. It was almost the exact right size! And it wouldn’t roll up. A few clips with tin snips, and some epoxy, I had the floor of my car (on my side) waterproof!
Later that week, my mom wanted to make cookies. I, of course, had no idea where her cookie sheet was.
I think the worst part was me “helping” her look for 5 or 8 minutes.
A few summers ago, and 20 or so years later, I finally came clean about it. Time heals all wounds, and she wasn’t too upset.
I was quite a lonely boy, and longed for a relationship. On holiday, I met a girl who seemed interested in me, and we had fun: we walked, climbed, sailed together and did a lot of talking. At the end of the holiday, we exchanged addresses and corresponded for a year or so. I kept ALL her letters.
One day, she wrote to tell me about her new boyfriend. He was wonderful (apparently.) Being rather immature, I felt betrayed. I had no reason to feel this way, we were only friends and I should have felt glad for her, but hey. Teenage angst.
I took all her letters, threw them into my metal litter bin, and set fire to them.
IN MY BEDROOM.
I had the window open, and there was no-one else in the house, so that was cool. I remember the IMMENSE satisfaction watching those letters burn.
When the bin cooled, I decided to bury the ashes, and with them my heart. I lifted the bin – and there was a perfect bottom-of-the-bin shaped hole in the polyester carpet.
My father was fairly physical in terms of punishment, so my heart did not just sink: it scuttled itself. I knew that Armageddon would ensue were this to be discovered.
In panic, I looked around and realised that my room was a perfect oblong. The bin-shaped burn was in the left corner, my bed in the opposing right corner.
I have (up to this day!) never worked so hard or fast in my life. I removed the furniture from my room, managed to lift the carpet, desperately salvaging the carpet tacks, turned the carpet around, nailed it back down and replaced the furniture, with the bed covering the offending burn.
My parents wondered why I suddenly announced my decision to assist with the housework by taking responsibility for all upstairs vacuuming and cleaning. They were surprised but pleased: I was desperate to keep my crime concealed.
I am now 59. My father has passed away, but my mother still lives in the family home. And the burn is still under my old bed. 45 years later, my crime remains hidden.
1. Pretty people are automatically more acceptable by people. Average looking people have to do something above average to get accepted and ugly people have to do something extraordinary!
image 24
It is because the human mind appreciates physical beauty and repels ugliness because of immaturity of mind. But in the end what matters is inner beauty or ugliness and that wiseness comes with experience and time.
2. Leaving your girlfriend/boyfriend seems much tougher than leaving your friends.
image 23
It is because romantic relations induces strong pheromones secretions in your body that cause you to develop strong bonding feeling with your partner. It is not the case you have with friends and hence breaking a strong bond seems tougher.
3. People who get goosebumps frequently while listening to music have a special connection with it. These people listen to music very frequently and their work capacities and capabilities are partly dependent on it. If they are barred from listening to music for 1 month, their productivity will fall.
image 22
It is because the hormone adrenaline increases in their body while listening to the music and that causes more activation, more awakening and better functioning of their body. Plus, it keeps the mind calm.
4. The more attention you give to a person, the more attitude he/she will show you and the less crap he/she will give about you.
image 21
It is because as the humans get more attention, their minds tend to think that they are very important and good looking and the person who is giving them attention needs their company desperately and is not equal to them at all.
5. Money instils confidence and happiness in majority of people. It increases their desire to work.
image 20
It is because anything (money) that is able to complete every single desire of people is very much acceptable to them as human desire are insatiable.
In 5th grade I had a 1st year teacher, Ms. Craig, who was amazing and one of the reasons I went into education, but I digress. One day we were studying the United States and where all of the states were. I noticed that she had switched Missouri and Minnesota. I remember thinking – that is not right. you see my dad is from Minnesota and my family lived there for a short spell when I was 4. I decided, to ask her if that is really where Minnesota located. I will never forget her reply – You know Denise, I am not totally confident that it is let’s check. So in front of the entire class, she lifted the map she had written on to look at the map that contained all of the States written on it. Well, look at that Denise is correct, I made a mistake and mixed up two states!
Miss Jana Craig if you are out there and can read this, you made a very strong impression on a 5th grader in the very first class you taught. You were the BEST teacher ever! Thank you for making me love school.
The most important required secondary power is to be born in an upper class family. Most of those high IQ people who succeed, have born with silver spoon on hand.
The reason is trivial. Nobody makes it alone nor in a vacuum. To be successful, you need to get socialized with right people, to know the right people, to be encouraged, to have social support, you name it. The less you have those, the less likely you are to succeed.
Then there is the thrice-goddamned communication range. If you are a high-IQ person in a middle class environment, you are likely to be branded as a weird kid, a nerd, a geek, an egghead and bullied and ostracized. You learn very quickly to hide your intelligence to stay below the radar lest you are torn into pieces. And God help you if you are born in a working class family – you will be stampled as a weirdo, a misfit, an outcast, and eaten alive.
For a middle class and working class high IQ individuals, the best hopes are military and STEM branches. Military because militaries are meritocracies, and high IQ is an asset once you are past buck sergeant or lieutenant. STEM branches, because they are difficult and require brainpower, and you are likely to get networked with similar-minded youngsters.
Forget the rags-to-riches fairy tales. They are just that – fairy tales invented to deceive the gullible and to make the proles to blame themselves for their failures.
When I was a five year old boy, my father gave me a magnifying glass… set me on the curb near an anthill, and I spent the entire afternoon burning ants.
It was cruel.
But I had no idea about that during that time in my life. I mean, I was only five.
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I wonder how many times that I hurt others though ignorance, and a lack of compassion. I really do wonder.
Look guys, we cannot change the world, but we can alter our little piece of it. Let’s just strive to be a little bit better on a day to day basis. What do you say?
I’ve been teaching nearly 20 years and my favorite lie is still the one that I heard as a brand new teacher.
A student came to class with his hand bandaged, carrying a doctor’s note. He told me “last night, my computer blew up and the shrapnel injured my hand so I couldn’t complete the homework assignment that was due today.”
I took a look at his hand. The bandage was so loose it was falling off. There was no way that any sober doctor had done such a sloppy job. It looked like he had tried to apply it himself and been unable to do it properly one-handed.
Then I took a look at the note. It was from a doctor’s office and it said “[Student’s name] has been seen for a ___ hand procedure.” I took a closer look at the blank space between “a” and “hand”. The word “minor” had been erased (but not well enough that I couldn’t see it if I squinted). I was guessing he had a wart removed or something that morning.
I didn’t need to point out the holes in his story, though. I just told him, “I’m sorry to hear about your injury, but the assignment wasn’t due today. It was due two days ago- the day before your ‘accident’.”
He walked to his seat without a word. He looked like he was going to be sick.
China’s People’s Liberation Army – Navy ship “Longushan” is reportedly ablaze just off the coast of China tonight. The vessel is reported to be “China’s most advanced warship.”
No OFFICIAL word on what caused the fire. (There ARE rumors . . . .)
All mention of this is being rapidly scrubbed from China social media networks, and no official information is coming out of Beijing.
The vessel bears Hull Number 980 and is described as a Type 071 landing ship.
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China’s fifth Type 071 amphibious transport dock (LPD) Longhushan; with hull number 980) was commissioned with the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN or Chinese Navy) on September 12, 2018 in Shanghai.
Originally designed after the Taiwan Strait crisis in 1996, the Type 071, measuring 210 meters long and 28 meters wide, is capable of carrying an 800-man marine battalion and some 20 amphibious tanks.
During building construction in an Athenian suburb in 2014, a tomb of the classical period was unearthed. It was no big deal, it happens frequently in Athens. Archaeologists took over but the findings in it weren’t of much interest…until they assembled a ceramic wine cup (a skyphos) smashed in 12 pieces, this one:
image 13
The cheap cup belonged to a man named Drapetes (the name, inscribed at the bottom of the cup, indicates a slave) However, the big surprise came from the other six names inscribed on the cup:
Aristides, Diodotos, Desimos, Arrifron, Pericles and Efkritos. Could this Pericles be the famous general?
Archaeologists say yes! This is why:
One of its fragments is engraved with six names, including Arrifron — the moniker of Pericles’s grandfather and brother. “The name Arrifron is very rare,” said A. P. Matthaiou, secretary of the Greek Epigraphic Society
. “The mention of [Arrifron] over that of Pericles on the surface of the vase makes us 99% confident that they are the two brothers.”
The inscription of the name Aristides also points favorably to Pericles having used the cup. Aristides was a politician who acted in Athens between 488 and 478 BCE, while Pericles led the city-state from 460 BCE to his death from the plague in 429 BCE. The cup dates between 480 and 465 BCE when the two might have interacted in a social setting such as a symposium or tavern. As men commonly drank from the same skyphos, it’s possible they would have carved their names onto the cup as a token of their meeting. “[He] certainly was dizzy from the wine as it is clear that whoever wrote the name of Pericles made a mistake initially … and then corrected it,” Matthaiou said.
Drapetes kept the cup. We don’t know why or how, maybe he was flattered by the presence of the noble company in his tavern.
It’s always a little magical when archeologists turn up objects that place such mythic figures in real time and space, breathing the same air and walking the same ground we do today. It seems miraculous that 2,500 years after the orator’s death, an ancient cup just happens to contain six complete names evidencing a life that has evaded archeologists for centuries.
U.S. Army prepares for War with China and Congress is EXCITED about it
Sigh. You all afraid, yet?
Angelina’s Zydeco Creole Jambalaya
Angelinas Zydeco Creole Jambalaya
Ingredients
1/2 pound smoked sausage, cut
1/2 pound ham, diced
1 cup onion, chopped
1 cup bell pepper, chopped
1 cup celery, chopped
1 cup green onions, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 1/2 tablespoons Worcestershire Sauce
1 can whole tomatoes, drained (reserve liquid)
Pinch thyme
1 teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon salt
3 cups Uncle Ben’s Converted Rice
1 1/2 cups stock water
2 pounds fresh shrimp, deveined
Instructions
Place sausage and ham in very heavy Dutch oven and sauté until lightly browned. Remove from pot and set aside.
Sauté onions, bell pepper, celery, green onions and add meat drippings. Cook until tender.
Add tomatoes, thyme, pepper and salt. Cook for five minutes. Stir in rice.
Mix together liquid from tomatoes, stock and Worcestershire sauce equal to 2 cups and add to sautéed vegetables. Bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and add fresh shrimp, ham and sausage. Cook uncovered, stirring often for about 30 minutes or until rice and shrimp are done.
Loyalty
U.S. Marines shifting focus to China, threat is “real”: top general
The U.S. Marines view deterring China as their key focus and will strive to make sure a conflict in the Indo-Pacific does not “spill over” to Japan, the military branch’s top general Eric Smith said Monday, while warning that Beijing’s missile capabilities are “significant” and “real.”
The Marine Corps’ No. 2 officer, who has been nominated to become the next commandant, also said in an interview in Tokyo that a littoral regiment being formed in Japan for remote island defense is being designed to provide “advanced maritime domain awareness” to allies and partners, in order to better detect events in surrounding waters.
The United States and Japan announced in January that the existing 12th Marine Regiment based in the southern prefecture of Okinawa will be reorganized into the 12th Marine Littoral Regiment by 2025, making it the first MLR to be forward-deployed against China.
The regiments will possess advanced surveillance capabilities and will be armed with long-range fires. Consisting of about 1,800 to 2,000 personnel per unit, they will also be capable of flexibly deploying small groups of marines to remote islands in the South China Sea.
The forming of the regiments comes amid China’s increased military assertiveness around far-flung southwestern Japan islets and Taiwan, which has raised the risk of conflict.
The Commandant of the United States Marine Corps is hospitalized after a serious medical emergency. General Eric M. Smith suffered a medical emergency on the evening of October 29 and was taken to a hospital.
He is now in stable condition.
Per Statute Law 10 U.S.C. §8044, as the senior officer assigned to Headquarters, US Marine Corps, by date of rank, Lt. General Karsten Heckl, the Deputy Commandant for Combat Development and Integration, who is the Commanding General of the Marine Corps Combat Command, is serving as Acting Commandant of the Marine Corps, for the interim.
Wife Cheated On Me With Her Colleagues, so I Snatched Everything She Had – FULL STORY
“You didn’t dodge a bullet. 14 years with her, you got shot.”
I received a resume from someone who had recently graduated from high school. They had one job on the resume and their job title was Director in Charge of Company Morale at a prestigious local law firm.
The resume lacked all the things I was looking for, but the job title listed intrigued me. I set the interview and was waiting to hear a litany of lies.
On the day of the interview this cleancut sharp dressed young man showed up. After brief small talk I asked about the prior job and what it entailed.
Turns out his Director in Charge of Company Morale Position entailed him going out each morning and getting coffee for all the partners. He said without their morning coffee, morale was very low.
Best belly laugh in an interview ever. I hired him. And he worked out well because he found a way to place a positive attitude on everything he did, however menial the task.
Edit: I am honored that so many people like my answer. Thank you all.
Update: I’ve had several people suggest editing the gender from “they” to “he”. At the time I read the resume and set the appointment, I had no idea if the applicant was male or female. Gender was not a decision point in our hiring process. This is why I have left the answer unedited. Thank you all again for the overwhelming response.
I called and the automated machine said it would read back my last five transactions to check for anything weird.
“Video entertainment— $65. California.”
“Video entertainment— $10. Declined. France.”
“Video entertainment— $10. Declined. France.”
“Gas— $30. Colorado.”
“Gas— $30. Wyoming.”
I was pretty sure I hadn’t been to France or California recently, so I checked my account summary and noticed I had -$50 in my account.
I’m taking poor college kid to a whole new level. I’m negative poor right now.
So I called their fraud number and the woman on the other end walked me through securing my account and getting a new card. She asked a few questions, told me my card was on its way, and hung up.
The achievement was not that I got my card number stolen. It wasn’t that I managed to put my account $50 under.
It’s that I made a phone call.
That sounds awfully small and to everyone around me it is, but I have been known to have panic attacks when forced to make phone calls. I hate ‘em. They make me anxious and uncomfortable and incredibly stressed.
I struggle with hearing on the phone (and in general, really), which exacerbates my social anxiety and makes phone calls some of the worst interactions I can have.
But today, I did it. The woman even had an accent and I think I understood her and responded correctly.
It’s a small thing, but when it’s one of your biggest fears, it can feel like the greatest thing in the world.
I was 20 and dating a guy that I met in a 20s chat room. This was the year 2000. We went to a grocery store and was walking down the Easter candy isle when I spotted these malt eggs. I stopped and said, “eww! Do you remember getting these in the bottom of your Easter basket every year?!” He simply said, “No.” Stupid me goes on and on about how I hated them and that he MUST remember getting them… He finally says quietly, “No. I didn’t ever get an Easter basket. My parents didn’t have the money.”
THAT is why I’m an asshole.
FYI, I married that guy that same year and we are still together with 3 amazing kids.
The next Easter morning he woke up to his first Easter basket from the Easter bunny complete with malt eggs. 🪺
I was cleaning the coffee cart when a guest at the soup kitchen walked by me.
“You’re wearing Converse. Do you collect them?”
“No,” I tell her. “I just like my old black pair. They’re comfortable shoes.”
“They are. I have some pink ones that don’t fit me—I’ll bring them and if they fit you, you can have them.”
True to her word, I glanced out of the kitchen door today to see her holding them up, much to my coworkers’ confusion.
At work, I can’t walk two steps without someone stopping to talk to me.
One man spent all day poking fun at me about how sunburned my arms are.
Another gave us all breakfast burritos and promised sopapillas tomorrow.
I spent a good part of an afternoon with one of our volunteers trading fun facts and talking about theatre.
Sometimes strangers stop in the serving line to tell me their story.
I learned about Rainbow Gatherings and how they send positive energy into the world.
About powwows.
About brain injuries and single parenting and the best way to make spaghetti and bonnets purchased in Missouri and what chickens like to eat and how they make decaffeinated coffee.
About cancer and babies and sunburn cures and about how food is one of the greatest gifts known to man.
I took the job at the soup kitchen because it paid and because they called me back first.
But damn, my job fuels my artist’s brain more than anything else.
People. People are all that art is.
And if you can be in a room where veterans and drug addicts and businessmen and hitchhikers all sit at the same table for a meal—
You’ll find no better place to hear someone’s story.
Today, I got new shoes, and I don’t even know that woman’s name.
But I know her. I know them all, even if all I know is that one guy likes the comics in the newspaper and another always waits for his wife before eating.
You ask if I’m happy with my current life situation.
I’m poor. My pay is calculated at pretty much the poverty line for the local community, so I’m making fuckall in money.
I’m tired and I’m sunburned and I’m sore and I’m still excited to go to work every day.
It doesn’t feel like a job. I don’t dread it like I honestly thought I would.
I’ve been sleeping full nights and working full days and while the depression doesn’t just go away, it finds someplace else to be during the work day.
I wish I had the money to do everything I want to do, but I will honestly take full days at the soup kitchen over working fast food any day of the week.
I guess I’m happy.
I don’t know. I’m content. The days are flying by faster than I can count them.
If anything, this work strengthens my desire to work in nonprofits. I don’t think traditional schools are for me.
I’m excited to keep going, and that feels good enough for me.
I was very surprised with American attitude towards (partial) nudity. A couple of real-life examples from when I lived in NJ:
My kids were 2 and 3 years old and during the summer it’s very normal in Europe for small children to run around the house and yard naked. When they did that in the US however, I received several complaints from our neighbours and one of them put up a solid fence between our properties after that.
Two years later we went to a water park in Hope, NJ and our daughter was only wearing bikini bottoms. The top didn’t fit well, would only annoy her and there was nothing there to hide or cover up (so we thought). We received a warning from the park and had to cover her up or leave immediately.
When our daughter was in pre-school we (the parents) had to stop by the principal for a serious discussion: they noticed how our 4-year old daughter started undoing her pants before she got in the rest room with the door closed, which was apparently shocking to the other kids.
After that we started adjusting better to the local norms and didn’t have any incidents anymore. I’ve always wondered though why this was such a big deal and suspect it to be a nutty religious thing.
CHINA, in every respect, I know every yank will say the USA but I don’t think so, not anymore, mainly because of their debt, and growing daily, yes, the US have a very powerful navy, but SO WHAT? Ships can be sunk, and sunk quickly, missiles are the thing these days, and China is way ahead with their hypersonic missiles, double the speed of US ones. According to all reports. Also, they run rings around the US in speed and cost of manufacturing. Which also puts China in front.
Yes! Just recently my husband and I did this. We were visiting NY. Our hotel had a restaurant in it. We went down for breakfast. There was a menu just outside of the restaurant. The continental buffet was $29. The hot buffet was $45. A little steep, but we figured those were just NY prices.
When it was our turn to be seated, they but us at a high communal style table. I’m 5″2 and I HATE high tables! We sat down and looked around. We looked at each other. The kind of silent communication you can do with someone you’ve been with for years. Then we decided that we were not paying $100 for breakfast while we sat at an uncomfortable “display” table. I turned and looked out the window. I saw 53rd St. Grill across the street. We walked past the waiter as he was bringing our waters. The food at the grill was delicious, and cost about $30 for both of us. We ate breakfast there for the remainder of our trip.
I have several female friends that worked hard in school and then got prestigious jobs. But the thing about prestigious jobs is that they’re usually a lot of long hours of tough work. They made fairly good money but after a long, frustrating day at work they would sometimes joke “ugh, I need to find a rich husband so I can be a house wife.”
And then some of did. One of them moved to another country where traditional gender roles are more prevalent and she found herself a really rich husband. Then a few of the other girls moved too and, I kid you not, they also found rich husbands.
I’ve met a lot of girls that have jumped up the socioeconomic ladder through marriage. But guys? I haven’t met a single one. Generally speaking, girls still expect guys to make at least as much as them.
So what sucks about being a guy? The immense pressure to be financially successful. As much as we try to deny it, society is obsessed with financial status and will measure a man’s worth based on his wealth.
The current economic system is full of perverse incentives.
Ever heard of the phrase “identifying your customer’s needs”?
The thing is, creating or maintaining needs so that you know what people need is more profitable than trying to identify new needs every time.
Problems cause need, and so problems are encouraged.
Imagine there is a pothole in the street.
That’s a problem. It’s going to cause issues.
If you identify it, then you could set up a company to fix roads, and try to get paid to fix it.
But what would be even more profitable would be to lobby so that it doesn’t get fixed, and then open a shop next to it to fix people’s suspensions after they break, or to offer towing services.
Because then you have a repeated source of income.
And then anyone trying to fix the pothole becomes a threat to your bottom line.
People benefit from the existence of problems, because then they can be paid to provide a temporary solution.
And this impacts many areas of our lives.
The legal system currently is bloated, and overly complicated. But the lawyers have a job thanks to that, so they don’t want it to change.
Government officials are corrupted by bribes and lobbying, and their perverse incentive is to take the money instead of working for the good of people.
Planned obsolescence leads to people making items that don’t last a long time but break fast, and have to be replaced, because that’s an opportunity for profits.
We are scared of human labor being replaced by machines. A weird incentive to be against progress and automation, because our access to resources depends on our labor being needed.
Health insurance is a business that tries to deny as many claims as possible to increase profits.
The owners and workers of the factories producing bombs and munition rely on constant wars for their income.
Creating emotionally laden clickbait attracts more attention than rational discourse.
If you identify a problem somewhere, fixing it is not the most profitable thing you can do; letting it happen, and then swooping in is.
If you want maximum profits, and know that the housing market will crash, you don’t want to try and avoid that, you want to short the market and make billions. And then use the billions to buy up the low price property from the desperate people in need who just lost their life savings.
There are perverse incentives all around us.
The perverse incentive is to do the easy thing, for short term profits.
Doing the right thing, even when it’s hard, to reap the long term benefits? That’s what we should be aiming for.
I arrived for an interview and was asked to wait a few minutes as the interviewer was held up. A few minutes later he came out, apologised said he’d been called to an urgent problem. He explained that some of the stuff I’d be working on would highly commercially sensitive and while he finished up could I read through the pre-interview contract and sign it.
I read through it and though I’m no lawyer it read like they could sue for everything I owned from my house down to my underwear if I so much as said I’d been within a mile of the building. The I interviewer came back a few minutes later and asked if I was happy and had signed the paperwork.
I replied that I hadn’t signed coz it looked a bit iffy on the conditions and he replied
‘congratulations, you’re the first person out of 8 people who passed the first stage test’.
Apparently everyone else had skimmed through and signed and not bothered really looking at what they were signing off on.
A kid walked in late to my English class in 8th grade.
My teacher was really weird, and would go on these rants about how space doesn’t exist, reality is a figment of our imagination, and one person at google is taking over the world by deciding what search results google gives you.
This kid walks in and says “I’m not late because time doesn’t exist.”
He wasn’t marked late.
FIRST TIME HEARING Simple Minds – Alive & Kicking REACTION
I’m a retired cop, and most people think we are very conservative. My law enforcement friends think I’m a hippie.
I am for the legalization of recreational marijuana. I have never tried it, probably wouldn’t even if it was legalized, but it’s time for us all to grow up and see that Reefer Madness isn’t helping anyone.
I am opposed to the death penalty. I don’t like pedophiles or murderers, I just don’t think our government should be in the business of killing people. And I know first hand how flawed our criminal justice system is.
I support peaceful protests, even if I disagree with their views.
I think we (law enforcement) need to work with the media. Many of my colleagues think I’m nuts. It’s win-win when we do.
I think abortion should be legal. But I wish the last one performed was the last one ever performed.
). We need to put ourselves in each other’s shoes, and the best way to do that is to be around each other.
My grandfather’s first sight of America was the Statue of Liberty. I believe that monument is still relevant.
I vote for democrats. I vote for republicans. I vote for independents and green party and libertarians. I just think we need some good people in charge, and it makes me crazy when people vote straight party tickets.
I am a straight white male, married for 37 years. (Hi, honey.) But I am glad same sex couples can get married. I have 4 grandchildren. If they grow up with different preferences than most, I still want them to find love and happiness.
Trump is a disaster, and I’m going to wear out my rosary beads because of him.
I believe in the Second Amendment (actually am quite fond of them all), but I think it has gotten out of hand. Maybe we are not as self controlled as the Founding Fathers had hoped we would be. I am for reasonable restrictions on gun ownership.
I think everyone should have health insurance (at least as good as what members of congress give themselves), whether they can pay for it or not. Life is an inalienable right. Pretty sure health is too.
Not sure if that makes me liberal or not. I don’t like breaking rules or laws, but there are times when that is necessary. As long as you understand the consequences.
As that great philosopher Popeye once said, “I yam what I yam.”
Psychologist Explains Why MEN CARE about a WOMAN’S SEXUAL HISTORY: what women don’t understand
This is very interesting. I never looked at things this way.
“Paying twice as much for getting something ½ the value.”
…
“Well as a man, it doesn’t matter to me whether they have “grown” or got more wisdom, they still did the deeds, and as rude as it may sound to a woman, a good man will hold you accountable for your actions and your past. No high value man, as they put it, wants to pay new car prices for a used car.”
Management didn’t know what to do with Steven and it was their fault. Steven was a 28-year-old coworker and assistant project manager. We worked at a corporate construction company and project managers were our most important personnel.
Steven was smart and had stellar reviews, but when prompted about promoting to PM, he said, “No, no, I’m good.” It perplexed our CFO and COO, who didn’t know why a good employee wouldn’t want more money and responsibility.
I knew why. I was the budget manager at his division and sat in on many of their meetings. I saw the grueling pressure put on project managers and saw them yelled at on occasion. It wasn’t an easy job. Steven figured, he was young and enjoying his life and didn’t want that kind of pressure. And perhaps he thought he’d be bad at the job — which is wiser than most realize.
The Peter Principle was first proposed by psychologist Laurence J. Peters and was intended as satire. It proposed that competent employees will be continually promoted until they are incompetent in their new role. Then, they remain in that position for the remainder of their career. Consequently, every role is eventually held by an incompetent employee. His concept was unexpectedly hailed by researchers as having relevance and truth. Many firms now actively work to combat it.
I would wager any person reading this, who has been in corporate long enough, can think of at least one manager who was shockingly bad at their job. Yet they seemed untouchable.
It makes intuitive sense that as the demands and competition go up, your shine can easily lose its luster. For example, I was a good swimmer and the captain of my high school team. I felt like a god when I swam in local meets against kids who only swam a few months a year. But as I went up to districts, states, and then regionals, I felt increasingly less special.
Today, I’m a writer who sits on the other side of the corporate fence, living mostly free of hierarchal structures and constantly worrying about mistakes slipping through. I see my own partner, and friends, all angling for promotions and raises. This isn’t bad on its own as I admire ambition. But I’ve watched many of them take a hit to their life satisfaction.
The data reflects this: Employees are the unhappiest they’ve been in years, due to a lack of control, unreasonable workloads and not enough time off. You’d wonder why anyone would want to take on more if they are already drowning, but they do — by the millions.
It seems paradoxical. You work to be good at your job and gain respect, only to be promoted to a position that jeopardizes those perceptions. Being highly competent risks making you incompetent.
If you succeed enough, your high flying incompetence may introduce the Peter Principle’s brother, dubbed Peter’s Pinnacle, where you make a huge mistake and are paid to go away. It happened with the president of Disney, Michael Ovitz, who was fired after 16 months but made off with a $38 million severance.
The art of balancing
A few programmers I’ve known are good at dodging this responsibility paradox. My buddy Brian is a high flying coder, who is stiff-arming attempts by management to bring them into their fold and start managing people. He insists his goal is to be a skilled programmer and contribute to the company.
But beware of letting this mindset drag you to stagnancy. Don’t become the middle aged employee who has been in the same role for 10–20 years, just going through the motion and replying blandly to questions about their day with, “Living the dream.” The difference with Brian is that he is continually refining his programming, and is passionate about coding. There’s still a fire in him.
I’ve seen many falls from grace over the years, employees who were five star performers and thought highly of. Then, months after the company gleefully announced their promotion, the whispers started, “I heard he’s been struggling in his new role.” And, “He’s slipping.”
At a former employer, there was a corner room we called “The Death Trap.” The role for that office fell under a difficult manager and had sky-high expectations. They went through four people in 18 months. The company fired three managers who’d had great reviews in prior roles. One was saved by the skin of his neck by transferring to another department. It was the Peter Principle on full display.
Companies can do better too
Per a study by Dr. Ed Lazear at Stanford University, companies should account for the Peter Principle in any promotion decision because it’s an inevitable consequence. One solution is to inflate the original promotion requirements to smooth the transition. Put another way, ensure the candidate is an absolute star in their current role before leading them to deep waters.
Sometimes, you shouldn’t promote great employees at all. For example, in school, they often took our “Teachers of the Year” and offered them jobs in the administration. It’s tragic because it removed the teacher from working with students and making an impact where they thrived. Why not pay the teacher more to keep being an awesome teacher? To the managers seeing this, think long before hard-capping salaries by job title.
Parting thoughts
Think about your job well beyond compensation. Your motivation and job satisfaction are driven by feelings of competence, relatedness (feeling connected to coworkers), and autonomy. Every move up the ladder impacts those three things in unpredictable ways. If you do take a promotion, use that job to supplement your skills. Hire and surround yourself with smart people, and listen to what they have to say. That alone would save many from the clutches of the Peter Principle.
Everything is a tradeoff. I was keenly aware of that when I quit finance to be a writer. It was a conscious but difficult decision. I resolved I would probably never get wealthy. Upward mobility, outside of me writing a fluke hit book, would be limited. My health benefits would vanish. But I’d be doing something creative and that I loved doing, with minimal oversight and flexibility. Four years out, I’m still happy with this decision, but I am constantly doing status checks. Things can change on a dime.
My point is: Take a long view. Protecting your reputation and integrity gets harder as you carry more responsibility and teams to manage. Make sure the new role aligns well with your skillset, lifestyle, and has the support in place for you to thrive. If you make the decision solely for money, you may fall into an old and dangerous career trap.
For most of my life, my best friend was my sister. Then one day she called me and said that she didn’t want me to be part of her life anymore. I can’t tell you why because she didn’t say. That was five years ago and I haven’t heard from her since.
About two years ago I found out that she had moved to another state without even letting me know. I had some kind of emotional breakdown. Tears streamed down my cheeks for four straight days. I couldn’t sleep. My heart was broken.
The hardest thing about it is not knowing why. I’ve run dozens of scenarios through my mind but nothing seems to make sense. We have completely different political views but had made a pact years before that we just simply would never discuss politics. I had just been diagnosed with cancer for the second time just days before the phone call. She refuses to deal with anything “sad”; so maybe that was it.
After about four years of losing sleep and wondering what had happened, I realized that I don’t care so much about it any more. I guess that was the day that I cancelled our friendship. I consider her to be my ex-sister, now. I have lots of friends who do want me to be a part of their lives. They are my true brothers and sisters.
Blue Bayou Bananas Foster Shortcake
da482b66 8f8c 4a17 a8aa 7c33dbc7a653
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients
Biscuits
2 ounces (about 1/3 cup) brie cheese, diced
2 1/2 cups Bisquick
1/3 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup water
Sauce
1 tablespoon butter
4 large bananas, cut into 1/2 inch slices
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
1 cup plus 3 tablespoons brown sugar
2 cups heavy cream
2 tablespoons dark rum
2 tablespoons banana liqueur
Garnish
Whipped cream
Fresh mint sprigs
Instructions
Heat oven to 400 degrees F.
Biscuits
Add together the diced cheese, Bisquick and sugar, mix well. Add the water and mix thoroughly to make a wet batter. Drop the batter in 4 mounds onto a greased cookie sheet and bake on the top rack for 20 minutes or until cooked through (when wooden pick inserted in middle comes out clean).
Remove from oven and cool on wire rack.
Sauce
Melt the butter in a saucepan and sauté the bananas for about 3 minutes. Add the sugars and stir until melted. Add the cream and, stirring constantly, cook over high heat until it reaches a boil. Reduce the heat to low and cook for 10 minutes. Add the rum and banana liqueur.
To serve, cut the cooled biscuits from the top two thirds of the way down, open it up and pour the sauce into the center of the biscuit.
Garnish
Serve with whipped cream and mint sprig.
Promiscuous Women Have The LOWEST Standards | Pearl Daily
This is super interesting.
“My first experience with a woman in a typically male job, was in a campground at age 16. We worked as general labor, building things, cutting trails, planting trees and so on. Once or twice a week we would rotate an “easy day” while we rode the riding lawn mower, basically just sitting on our ass all day long. That ended when a girl started. She did nothing but ride the mower all day, every day. Somehow what was previously 1-2 easy days of work, became a full time job for her. And the rest of us no longer got any “easy days”. She never held a shovel, or a hammer, or an axe. But she got paid the same.”
“Hector, I retired before you were born,” he laughed.
Confused, I asked again, “Be honest, Dad, I mean, when will you stop working?”
His response was simple, “Working? What’s work? I don’t know what work is.”
“OK, Dad, forget about it,” I said as I assumed he wasn’t willing to talk about this.
“Hector,” he said, “what you know as my job is not work for me. I enjoy architecture so much that I could do this 24/7. This is who I am. Architecture is my life.”
So, to answer your question, why do rich people work even after they become rich? Why don’t they play?
My father lived to be 91 and worked until his body gave up on him. He was a passionate architect who found joy in his work. That’s what kept him active and full of joy every day. His passion for architecture was infectious, and it taught me this valuable lesson about work as a lifestyle.
So, if you ask me about retirement or work-life balance, I’d say it’s better to find what you love and make it a part of your life. When you find that, you’ll stop working and start living. We achieve a balance not by separating work from life but by integrating what you love into your lifestyle.
Today, this is how I see it: It’s not about working less; it’s about loving more what you do.
That’s the secret to a fulfilling life. As my father always said, “The day you find what you love is when you will stop working.”
So, go out there and find your passion. Make it your lifestyle.
And remember, it’s not work when you love what you do.
“Open marriage” appears to be an (American) acceptable way to turn a marriage into a fuck-fest. Sheech! I’m way too old for this bullshit.
I mention further down that there are races in China, where “open relationships” are the norm. But in the West, it turns out that an “Open Relationship” is but a code phrase to allow the female in a relationship to have multiple sexual partners, while the male sits at home watching the kids, the pets, and earns money.
Nine times out of ten, he never has an “outside relationship” even though officially he can.
…
The videos about “open relationships” are interesting and disturbing at the same time.
Sigh.
I find them very disturbing. After all, a “marriage” (prior to it being twisted into something different) meant a single monogamous family with shared emotions, shared sex, and shared responsibilities.
A core family unit.
Now, in the USA it is a freeway toward complete social discord and a breakdown at all levels of society.
Anyways…
As I get older my body changes.
I get shorter. No shit. My height gets smaller and smaller over time. Though, I will admit that my feet seem to get larger as a consequence of that.
Shorter in height, but bigger feet.
Not only that, but my hands seem to get slightly bigger, and my fingers are getting longer.
Big hands. Long fingers. Big feet.
Lordy!
…
Ugh. Why don’t women find big hands and long fingers attractive?
And a bald head… and a bot belly?
Not all of us can look like Adonis, don’t you know?
…
Balding, and fighting against a pot belly. Oh, the pain of aging!
But at least I have big hands and long fingers. LOL!
…
I don’t think that these body changes are attractive, but it is the price you pay to live to an old age. Perhaps, when I break 90, I’ll be a squat short man with big, big hand and feet and a bald head. Yucky!
Looking a little like Yoda.
I’d get a nice haircut, and some nice outfits if it mattered. But in my case, those are low on the priority scale right now. Smile.
Just smile. Accept yourself as it is, and as you change.
Americans foolishly screamed and shout that they are the leader of the free world without ever questioning if it is even remotely true or not! Please don’t be angry or upset if I help you guys since I understand you can pretend to be free or even dare says you are ordained by god to spread democracy and freedom but you Americans are one of the least free country on earth.
Let me help you good American. So first I like to explain how unfree you guys are.
35% of you cannot get health care when you fall sick! The most basic of freedom is the freedom to see a doctor and get cure when you fall sick. At least 100 million Americans don’t have this basic of basics of freedom.
Next 1 million Americans are homeless and don’t have another basic of basics of freedom. The freedom to have a roof over their head.! They have to live in makeshift tents on the streets.
20% of Americans don’t have 500 dollars to their name and don’t know where their next meal is coming from! Surely everyone must have the freedom to have a hot meal to stay alive!
USA with about 4% of world population has 25% of the worlds prisoners population! Think about this my American friends, prisoners are certainly. Not free. Many of them coloured people thrown into jail for the slightest reason. How on earth can you keep a straight face to say U.S. is the leader of the free world. No one know!
In many cities in the U.S. one cannot go to certain parts of the inner city like the Queens in New York. As crimes are rampant. So normal innocent and good Americans like you have to avoid that part of America! Surely freedom means you can go to anywhere or any part of America.
Kids and parents suffers the mental turmoils daily for just going to school. Many got shot to death in schools, public places, cinemas and even in Capitol Hill! Is that freedom? Even your kids are not free to go to school without a random mass shooter lurking with military grade weapons to murder them! Is this freedom?
If you are not fortunate to have a white skin you could be necked to death in the bright daylight of even driving a good car may be be shot to death just for suspected of stealing the car! Everyday you live in fear of a white policeman! Is that freedom to live? Freedom to avoid death at the racist inclination of the white racist? Surely not.
Freedom means you can choose who you really want to be your leader. Only 30% choose Biden. Or 35% choose Trump! Why are they your president? Your system allowed 0.8% of the richest and most influential people to choose your candidates! Surely this U.S. not freedom. This is far from democracy. How on earth can you call yourself the “beacon of democracy” who in a sane mind can claim that?
Oh today you country stop the Americans from having access to best 5G technology, Smartphone, best EV’s, drones and others for some geopolitical nonsense! Is this freedom? Freedom to be deprived? Let me help you understand. You can buy a 10 thousand EV. And need to be charged once a week but you are not allowed to! You can but your Tesla like for half the price but you are not allowed.
But to me EVs and Drones are just the top of the iceberg of your draconian policies that takes away the freedom of Americans like you. Think about Jullien Assange, Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden! Freedom?
According to a scientific research paper by the mainland military, the People’s Liberation Army has established the world’s first “Close Air Combat Command Force” (Near Air Command) equipped with professional hypersonic weapons and directly taking orders from the highest level of the People’s Liberation Army. It is responsible for executing “precise and ruthless operations” during wartime. ” attack mission. In addition, solar-powered drones and spy balloons are also possible intelligence-gathering devices.
Note: this answer only applies to the American Mafia as the Italian Mafias have repeatedly killed public officials of all persuasions and badges.
Because killing cops, judges or any form of law and order official invites heat and exposure.
A ‘secret society’
Despite the movies, the books, the podcasts, youtube channels and press stories, at its core, La Cosa Nostra (LCN) is supposed to be a secret society. A money-making secret society.
It is meant to operate in the shadows, a ‘brotherhood’ using codes of silence and modes of discretion to conduct legal and illegal activities that bring it great wealth.
It seeks to evade law and order and allow its members to not only profit from illicit means, but, more importantly, enjoy the fruits of their dishonest labour.
A whole load of pain
Law enforcement communities are also brotherhoods (and now sisterhoods too). Kill one of their own, and they want revenge. They go ‘all in’ to catch and make an example of the ‘cop killer’.
Killing law and order officials has even proven to be ‘game changer’ for some organized crime groups. For example:
In 1985, the Guadalajara drug cartel kidnapped, tortured and murdered US DEA agent Kiki Camarena. The DEA was enraged and flooded Mexico and the border regions; playing a major role in breaking said cartel apart (clearly others appeared to replace it)
In 1992, the Sicilian Mafia killed Judges Falcone and Borsellino in two separate car bombs. These attacks created a ‘sea change’ in the political and societal will to go after the Mafia, with the late ’90s being an era of significant prosecutorial success against the Sicilians
In short, killing a cop or any other law enforcement official places a target on your head – and indeed that of your organisation. The resulting attention inhibits your ability to earn, to operate, and even places your freedom or life at risk … far better to just not do it and keep on living your illicit life.
Forbidden Archaeology, Human Origins, and UFOs… Michael Cremo
Just once, but that was enough for the rest of my life.
It was 1993 or 94. Things started off just fine. He smiled at me from the window seat as I took my place on the flight from Philadelphia to Frankfurt, Germany.
Our ages must have been close. We shot the shit about sports and music and all those other harmless topics popular with early-30-something unmarried males.
He was impressed that Lufthansa (long ago) served him Johnny Walker red in his whiskey cola. He sure did like those whiskey colas…
Everything was amiable until just after the after-dinner drinks trolley finished serving.
He commented that he hated queers and he was pretty sure the male server was one.
I stared him in the eyes and said calmly and slowly, “nearly half of my best friends are gay … I think you need to rethink your attitude, the world is changing.”
Never have I seen someone transform so quickly from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde. “You’re an effin’ homo lover! … I ain’t sittin’ next to no effin’ homo! Eff! Disgusting I even talked to you…”
Standing up he yelled at the stewardess, “This guy is queer. I don’t sit next to queers.”
The looks on the faces of the other passengers ranged from amused, to angry, to sympathetic. Most just pretended not to notice.
I got up and went to the back of the plane and waited for the crew to sort things out. They reseated me about 15 minutes later in a business class seat.
I have no idea what happened to him, but I think we can be sure he didn’t get any more whiskey colas…
Business class served Johnny Walker black.
The Male Loneliness Epidemic – Is It Women’s Fault?
This is a MUST watch.
Western society is DOOMED.
The Eviction Notice Is Being Written, and Will Come in Four Languages
The Eviction Notice is being written. And it will come in four languages. Russian. Farsi. Mandarin. And last but not least, English.
A much-cherished pleasure of professional writing is to always be enriched by informed readers. This “eviction” insight – worth a thousand geopolitical treatises – was offered by one of my sharpest readers commenting on a column.
Concisely, what we have here expresses a deeply felt consensus across the spectrum not only in West Asia but also in most latitudes across the Global South/Global Majority.
The Unthinkable, in the form of a genocide conducted live, in real time on every smartphone in the third decade of the millennium – which I called the Raging Twenties in a previous book – has acted like a particle accelerator, concentrating hearts and minds.
Those that chose to set West Asia on fire are already confronting nasty blowback. And that goes way beyond diplomacy exercised by Global South leaders.
For the first time in ages, via President Xi Jinping, China has been more than explicit geopolitically (a true Sovereign cannot hedge when it comes to genocide). China’s unmistaken position on Palestine goes way beyond the geoeconomics routine of promoting BRI’s trade and transportation corridors.
All that while President Putin defined sending humanitarian aid to Gaza as a “sacred duty”, which in Russian code includes, crucially, the military spectrum.
For all the maneuvering and occasional posturing, for all practical purposes everyone knows the current UN arrangement is rotten beyond repair, totally impotent when it comes to imposing meaningful peace negotiations, sanctions or investigations of serial war crimes.
The new UN in the making is BRICS 11 – actually BRICS 10, considering new Trojan Horse Argentina in practice may be relegated to a marginal role, assuming it joins on January 1st, 2024.
BRICS 10, led by Russia-China, both regulated by a strong moral compass, keep their ear on the ground and listen to the Arab street and the lands of Islam. Especially their people, much more than their elites. This will be an essential element in 2024 during the Russian presidency of BRICS.
Even with no check out, you will have to leave
The current order of business in the New Great Game is to organize the expulsion of the Hegemon from West Asia – as much a technical challenge as a civilizational challenge.
As it stands, the Washington-Tel Aviv continuum are already prisoners of their own device. This ain’t no Hotel California; you may not check out any time you like, but you will be forced to leave.
That may happen in a relatively gentle manner – think Kabul as a Saigon remix – or if push comes to shove may involve a naval Apocalypse Now, complete with expensive iron bathtubs turned into sub-ocean coral reefs and the demise of CENTCOM and its AFRICOM projection.
The crucial vector all along is how Iran – and Russia – have played, year after year, with infinite patience, the master strategy devised by Gen. Soleimani, whose assassination actually started the Raging Twenties.
A de-weaponized Hegemon cannot defeat the “new axis of evil”, Russia-Iran-China, not only in West Asia but also anywhere in Eurasia, Asia-Pacific, and pan-Africa. Direct participation/normalization of the genocide only worked to accelerate the progressive, inevitable exclusion of the Hegemon from most of the Global South.
All that while Russia meticulously crafts the integration of the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea, the Baltic Sea (Finnish hysteria notwithstanding), the Arctic and the Northwestern Pacific Sea and China turbo-charges the integration of the South China Sea.
Xi and Putin are gifted players of chess and go – and profit from stellar advisers of the caliber of Patrushev and Wang Yi. China playing geopolitical go is an exercise in non-confrontation: all you need to do is to block your opponent’s ability to move.
Chess and go, in a diplomatic tandem, represent a game where you don’t interrupt your opponent when it is repeatedly shooting itself on the knees. As an extra bonus, you get your opponent antagonizing over 90% of the world’s population.
All that will lead to the Hegemon’s economy eventually collapsing. And then it can be beaten by default.
Western “values” buried under the rubble
As Russia, especially via Lavrov’s efforts, offers the Global South/Global Majority a civilizational project, focused on mutually respectful multipolarity, China via Xi Jinping offers the notion of “community with a shared future” and a set of initiatives, discussed in lengthy detail at the Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) Forum in Beijing in October, where Russia, not by accident, was the guest of honor.
A group of Chinese scholars concisely frame the approach as China “creating/facilitating global nodes for relating/communicating and platforms for concrete collaboration/practical exchanges. The participants remains Sovereign, contribute to the common endeavor (or simply specific projects) and receive benefits making them willing to keep on.”
It’s as if Beijing was acting as a sort of shining star and guiding light.
In sharp contrast, what remains of Western civilization – certainly with not much to do with Montaigne,
Pico della Mirandola or Schopenhauer – increasingly plunges into a self-constructed Heart of Darkness (without Conrad’s literary greatness), confronting the true, irredeemably horrifying face of conformist, subservient individualism.
Welcome to the New Medievalism, precipitated by the “kill apps” of Western racism, as argued in a brilliant book, Chinese Cosmopolitanism, by scholar Shuchen Xiang, professor of Philosophy at Xidan University.
The “kill apps” of Western racism, writes Prof. Xiang, are fear of change; the ontology of bivalent dualism; the invention of the ‘barbarian’ as the racial Other; the metaphysics of colonialism; and the insatiable nature of this racist psychology. All these “apps” are now exploding, in real time, in West Asia. The key consequence is that the Western “values” construct has already perished, buried under the Gaza rubble.
Now to a ray of light: a case can be made – and we’ll be back to it – that orthodox Christianity, moderate Islam and several strands of Taoism/Confucianism may embrace the future as the three main civilizations of a cleansed Mankind.
Yes, they do. Forget the so-called “combat footage” you see on TV or YouTube.
It’s important to spot your enemies before they see you. This will give you a big advantage over them because you can better fight them or you can use this info to plan your next moves:
You already have a good hunch where your enemy is located before any fighting starts. Where and when you move will depend on the (often assumed) location of your enemy.
While you are moving, you are always on the lookout. It is usually the side that spots the enemy first that will have the upper hand in a firefight.
It’s one of the most important qualities in an infantry squad leader to have “a good eye”, meaning to anticipate the enemy’s whereabouts and to spot the exact location of enemy forces, especially under fire. You want to know from where you get shot at!
Sometimes, you will see the enemy, but they are still out of range of your weapons. You may want to relate their location to combat support troops that will then execute an artillery attack or an airstrike.
If you have no artillery or air support, as is often the case for guerrillas or special forces, you can approach the enemy until they come into range of your weapons or you set up an ambush.
In combat, you have to see your enemies to be able to kill them. Shooting around without anything in your sights is a waste of ammunition.
image 155
On the lookout: A Kosovo Liberation Army soldier observing enemy territory
There are exceptions:
Suppressive or covering fire where you shoot to hinder the enemy from exposing themselves to your fire keeps them out of sight. Still, even when shooting covering fire, you usually have a very good idea where your enemy is located.
In a combat situation, targets often disappear quickly after the first shots are fired. Your enemy will take cover. It’s not a mistake to send a few bursts of automatic fire to the place where you saw your enemy drop down, but after that, it’s time for indirect fire options, like hand grenades or Multiple Grenade Launchers (MGL). You won’t see your enemy, but as you use fragmentation weapons, there is a good chance to cause some damage as long as your grenades hit close enough.
It’s not always necessary (and possible) to see the enemy, but:
The sooner and the more precise you are able to pinpoint the enemy’s location, the better.
One word about “firefights” we see on TV: Most of the shootings on those clips is simply a waste of ammunition.
On the other hand, you won’t have a GoPro or any other camera switched on for twenty-four hours a day. When you spot the enemy (or they spot you), you’ll first shoot them (or jump for cover) before you start thinking about filming. As visible targets disappear quickly in the first moments of a firefight, the chances of getting an enemy live on camera are very slim.
Television crews rarely film on locations where the real action happens, but are often sent to less active parts of the frontline. The mere presence of a TV camera often prompts soldiers to start shooting. This is why our news shows are full of soldiers firing away at an empty landscape.
I was headed in for a job interview several years back. As I’m walking in, two other men are approaching the door from different angles. One of them speeds up to cut off the other and get in the door first, and the other walks in, shaking his head in disbelief. As I walk in behind them, the first guy runs to the elevator and presses the button, not holding the elevator for the other guy and me. Again, the second guy just shakes his head and we wait for the next elevator. I say “Can you believe some people?” And we both chuckle a little bit.
As it turns out, we are headed to the same floor, so we get off the elevator together. As we walk into an office, there is guy #1 Mr Impatient, standing at the desk tapping his foot as the receptionist is finishing up a phone call. The receptionist asks him “can I help you?” And he says “I’m here to see Mr Smith for an interview at 3:30.” (it’s currently 2:50).
I think to myself “Great, this guy is interviewing for the same position I am and he will act like the sweetest guy during the interview.” I lean over and tell the receptionist “I am Mr Smith’s 3 o’clock interview.” Mr Impatient GLARES at me.
The other guy I walked in with (the one Mr Impatient cut off) then says “Hey gentlemen, I’m Mr Smith.” And turns to Mr Impatient and says “you don’t need to wait around. I’ve already determined you are not a good fit for our company. “
I don’t know if you’d count this as a “benefit,” but my first job was at Wendy’s, when I was 16 in 1994. When they hired me, the manager said “minimum wage is $4.25, but we like to start people at $4.26 to give you a little extra and show we care.” He was dead serious, no irony. That has occupied part of my brain for 30 years now.
I knew something strange was going on when a candidate with X-men hair was elected president.
Buenos Aires has always had one of the world’s highest number of psychoanalysts. Now the psychological issues have made their way out of the bedroom into national politics.
Cheesecake Factory Louisiana Chicken Pasta
deliciousv
Yield: 6 servings
Ingredients
Cajun Sauce
1 tablespoon butter
1 small yellow bell pepper, chopped
1 small red bell pepper, chopped
3/4 small red onion, chopped
3 whole garlic cloves, minced
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper
1 1/4 pints whipping cream
1 cup low-salt chicken broth
4 tablespoons fresh basil, thinly sliced
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
Chicken
6 skinless boneless chicken breast halves
3/4 cup bread crumbs
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 cup milk
2 tablespoons flour
4 tablespoons vegetable oil
Pasta
1 package bow-tie pasta
1 cup mushrooms, sliced
salt and pepper
Instructions
Cajun Sauce
Melt butter in heavy large skillet over medium-high heat. Add yellow and red bell peppers, mushrooms and onion to same skillet and saute until crisp-tender, about 4 minutes.
Add minced garlic and crushed red pepper to skillet and sauté 2 or 3 minutes.
Add whipping cream and chicken stock. Simmer until sauce reheats and thickens slightly, about 5 minutes.
Add basil and 1 cup grated Parmesan cheese to sauce, stirring to incorporate. Season sauce to taste with salt and pepper. Reduce heat to low, simmer. Sauce will reduce and thicken.
Chicken
Wash and drain chicken breasts. Pound until very thin, as thin or thinner then 1/4-inch thick (the thinner the chicken breasts the better).
Mix breadcrumbs, flour, and Parmesan cheese together. Place milk in dish for dipping.
Dip chicken into breadcrumb mixture and then into milk and then back into breadcrumbs.
Heat oil in skillet and fry at medium high temperature until golden, crisp, and cooked through. Add more oil as needed. Remove and drain chicken. Keep warm.
Pasta
Meanwhile, cook bow-tie pasta in large pot of boiling salted water until tender but still firm to bite. Drain and return to pot. Add sauce and toss to coat.
Place pasta with sauce on plate, and top with chicken breast.
Hello Allen, thank you for the question. Honestly, there were quite a few times I had the hell scared out of me. I’ve written at length about a few of them. I will provide a rerun of one of them now.
I was a in an FCI, a medium high prison with walls about 20’ high and rolls of razor wire 3 rolls deep at the base of the walls. There had been a lot of tension on the yard for weeks.
One morning as I was preparing for a Saturday, I noticed a group of 5–6 guys walk up to a bunk in a cell down a way. There seemed to be a bit of chatter and movement, sort of the thing a group might do if your team won a game. Talking, a bit of laughter, movement.
I walked by and went to breakfast, saw a couple guys I knew and we took a walk and discussed some important topic like that night’s dinner. A couple hours later I went back to my cell.
There were a couple CO’s and another guy in the cell where the group had been. They were standing over the bunk of the inmate.
there was something sticking out of his chest and the blood trails were in several areas.
It turned out this guy owed something to someone and wasn’t paying so the crew was sent to make an example.
The story was the weapon was a pencil, there were 9 wounds and the vic was rushed to medical and when he healed a bit was sent to a different prison.
The near murder right there was horrifying enough but the way the guys carried out the hit was nearly professional. It just seemed like a bunch of guys hanging out. All the while covering the scuffle, takedown and gigging.
In a flash you understand that if you cross an uncrossable line, even by mistake, it easily could be over before you realized what was happening.
It was a long time before I was comfortable in my cell, alone during open times or movements. Walking in a hall and coming across 4–5 guys of another race, you couldn’t show fear, but more than once I walked by waiting for a shank!
There is always a stress when you are inside. It is exponential when a high level yard is on edge.
On a summer’s day, as my wife Dorothy and I sat down to dinner, we thought we heard the sound of water being hosed onto a car. The front entrance was secured only by a screen door and we could readily hear neighborhood sounds.
Then Cocoa, our Seal Point Siamese, asked to be let in. When I opened the door, she fell over. And that noise was louder. I looked out; no car, no one hosing anything. And the noise was right below me, just off the porch. I looked down. A huge, very pissed off rattlesnake!
I called to Ralph, who had just stepped out of his kitchen, next door. “Rattlesnake!” I yelled. “Bring a rake!”
He did. And as Ralph pinned the snake with the rake, I tossed a large stone onto it, killing the serpent.
My wife took Cocoa to the vet, and while she was gone I decided to skin the snake, eviscerate it, and pan fry it. Rattlesnake meat was tasty, I heard, and the beast was as easily gutted as a bass.
But what do I do with the head? The fangs, the venom sacs?
Toilet.
I was unprepared for the surviving impulses of the snakes nervous system. Beheaded (and betailed, for the rattles) and completely stripped of the hide, I had in hand what appeared to be a section of a thick light grey garden hose, split down the middle. And when I ran this corpse under cold water, the spinal cord delivered one last discharge, causing the thing to writhe in my hands. It was alive! I threw the twisting monster into the freezer and slammed the door.
Dorothy and Cocoa came into the kitchen; the cat was recovering but Dorothy said I looked like I had just seen a ghost.
I explained. After a few minutes, I took the frozen snake from the freezer and let it thaw as I prepared a frying pan with melted butter and some salt and pepper. I cut the snake into sections as one might cut a sausage, and added the sections to the gently crackling pan.
In 5 minutes, the flesh had turned white and flaky. I removed all, divided onto 2 plates, and Dorothy and I sat down to eat.
And we tried. We chewed and chewed and chewed and chewed. But the meat had turned into some kind of weird plastic strands that refused to be swallowed.
I took all and tossed into a pressure cooker with some white wine, set all to max pressure and gave it a full 30 minutes. After decanting the vessel, there appeared the most perfect, delicate flakes, like carefully separated crab meat.
And we chewed and chewed and chewed and chewed. Next stop; snake to trash, hot dogs to grill.
I had this experience once. There was a Shawarma/Pizza place on the same block as a place I had newly moved into. So I (single mom) went in with my young kids to order a pizza.
They didn’t have a menu, the ’employees’ were a bunch of guys in expensive tracksuits, jewelry, and all looked like buff gym rats, with the perfectly lined up and gel thick hair – they looked initially very confused that I was actually ordering food there, and there was a bunch of arguing in (I think) Arabic. They insisted that I order a pizza there, it would just be a bit of a wait. One guy left, and came back with a bag of groceries. It took over an hour. I offered a few times to go elsewhere “You’re busy, so sorry..” but they insisted I wait. I chatted with the guy who was at the front counter a bit- he was pleasant enough, but it seemed like he was deciding whether or not my entering of the restaurant was going to be a problem for them. While my kids and I waited on the pizza, a few times some tracksuit guys came in, went to the back, then left with stuffed brown paper bags. His whole demeanor changed when I mentioned that my kids and I had left an abusive situation, and that’s why we’d moved into the area. He wanted to see a picture of my ex, and insisted I show the other tracksuit guys too.
The pizza was ok I guess, a little undercooked. I don’t think the pizza oven had ever been used before- I could see the pizza oven from the front counter, and they had a huddle around it to figure out how it turned on.
The guy at the front didn’t know how to work the register, so he told me it was on the house.
Before I left, the front counter guy told me I was part of the neighborhood now, and to let him know if anyone bothered me or my kids, and he’d “take care of it”.
Anytime I walked past that store after that I was greeted warmly by the tracksuit guys, and they always asked if anyone was “giving me trouble”. Never tried to order food there ever again though!
He surprised me. We were in our early 30’s and newly married. My husband said “ oh my , the freezer defrosted you better go look to see what can be saved”. I went to the kitchen and opened the freezer. Inside was a little box that said “ ice”. He had bought me a pair of diamond earrings. They weren’t the biggest and most expensive but they were beautiful. we are still married and I have worn them for the last 41 years.
I worked late one day so I talked to my boss and we agreed that I would come in late the following day. I had a funny feeling about this, as if she might try something. Thus, even though she agreed I should come in at 8:30 the next morning, I arrived on time and sat in the parking lot. She called me at 8:15 and asked me where I was. I reminded her that we agreed I could come in at 8:30, “but,” I said, “I’m parked right outside the office. Do you want me to come in earlier than we discussed yesterday?” She said no. That was in May.
In June, I got called in to her office and she wrote me up for being late that day a month prior as well as walking in 2 minutes late one morning. The write up skipped the initial verbal warning and first write up and stated it was a final warning.I was on notice that I could be fired for anything at any time.
One day in September she called me into her office and fired me for excessive tardiness. I filed for unemployment and won. The Judge laughed at her and told her “This lady was late by 2 minutes and you found that soooo agregious that you fired her for it, yet you waited 3 months to do it? You’re gonna pay on this one.” I ended up with 4k in back payments.
Several months ago I went to a hospital fearing that I was having a heart attack. I wasn’t, as it turned out, but I was admitted for what was really wrong: pneumonia.
I was in the hospital three days before being discharged, and during that time I questioned every single medication they brought for me. An antibiotic IV about to be hooked up? I’d ask the nurse to confirm what specific one it was. A couple of pills they want me to take? “Which pill is which specific medication?”
I did this partly to be sure they weren’t giving me a wrong medication, and also to be aware of every medication they actually administered and could thus bill me for. Good thing, too.
When I was discharged they gave me a stack of paperwork. Some it was warnings about what I should or shouldn’t do going forward; some outlined the tests they had conducted and the results of them; and one page was supposed to be a pair of new medications one of the doctors had told me he was prescribing for me to fill after discharge. That page was missing, so I had to wait a few more hours while they got hold of that doctor and got him to enter the order.
Turns out one of the drugs he prescribed was atorvastatin for the high cholesterol that came up on one of the tests. The thing is, I am allergic to all statins, a fact that was all over the medical records they got from my primary care doctor, and which I had told them on at least three occasions as well when they asked me to confirm any and all allergies. Obviously I didn’t fill that prescription.
Then I got the bill, charging me $1145 for atorvastatin administered during my inpatient stay.
Now I of course knew full well they had never given me that drug, not only because I had been checking all the meds they did give me, but because I never had the severe reaction to it that would have resulted if they had. So I called their billing department, explained the matter, and requested they amend the bill. They refused.
I called my doctor, and she suggested I write the request out and send it to them via certified mail. That would have been a pain in my ass, as my big truck would not fit in the parking lot of the kinds of places one can do that, and I was over 1000 miles from home.
So I instead called hospital administration and told them I wanted to report a dangerous medication error by that doctor. That got their attention.
I again related the whole matter, which they verified from the notes right there in my records as I went along through the narrative. They clearly saw the multiple notes about the allergy, they clearly saw that no such medication was administered during my stay, and they clearly saw that the doctor had only prescribed it hours after I had been discharged.
They apologized profusely and promised that they would attend to the matter using the legally prescribed procedures, which they did not explain. I pleasantly accepted their apology, then asked if that process would include striking this billing item for administering that drug they had just admitted I never received.
They refused again.
I said that was fine, then asked how I should go about reporting them for malpractice for administering a drug my chart clearly said I was allergic to? Response: but we didn’t administer that drug!
My reply, as long as they insisted on billing me for it, I could only assume that meant they really had administered it. So it could only be one of two things: malpractice for giving me the drug, or fraud for charging me for it after not giving me the drug. I said I would leave it for them to sort out while I called my insurance company and briefed them on the matter… which I then did.
Two weeks later a new billing statement arrived with not only that charge removed, but charges for two tests they had charged me for but apparently not actually done. I called the insurance company again, and they informed me that those tests had been ordered but never actually done, and they themselves had been the ones to uncover that after my earlier call to them. They had requested an audit of my treatment, which had then exposed the other errors.
The most absurd thing to my mind was their insistence on billing me for a drug after they knew that doing so was documented evidence of malpractice.
30 years ago a mate and I were heading off to the range to hit some golf balls.
It was his idea and he wanted to drive. I was saved by one thing and that was he didn’t have his wallet, so he went upstairs to get it and while he did that I thought I would take a quick look in the glove compartment in case it was in there.
It wasn’t but I found an exploding golf ball, still in it’s box, so I quickly swapped it with a real golf ball leaving the box exactly where I found it.
On the range we are smacking golf balls to oblivion trying to hit it further than the other can. After about 5 minutes my mate says, “Would you mind if we swap sides?”
Funny thing is, that was exactly what I was going to say in order to make him hit the exploding ball. Exploding golf balls don’t look or feel real so teeing it up for the victim is the only way for it to work.
So I said, “Sure. Just let me hit this one.” which I did and then while he watched it I quickly teed up the exploding one, which was loose in my pocket.
We then swapped sides where he then challenged me to a longest hit competition with our next shots. Of course I agreed and smacked mine as hard as I could and looked straight at him not where the ball went.
He was expecting my ball to explode but it didn’t and he looked quite confused about it. Then he had his turn. The whole thing just turned to dust in an instant. One huge dust cloud!
He spun around and looked guiltily at the range office like he had done something wrong and would get in trouble. If he was confused with my shot he was now flabbergasted with his own. His facial expression was priceless.
I’m laughing my head off as I can tell he can’t work out how any of this has happened. He told me later that in that moment he could not understand how it went wrong. He couldn’t figure out how the golf ball he took out the box and teed up for me got to the other tee.
I think there is nothing more satisfying in life than getting someone with their own practical joke.
My Wife Asked For An Open Marriage So I Hooked Up That Night And Dumped Her The Next Day
Stopped caring or giving a Fck about people who doesn’t care for me.
Their benifit, opinions and even existence. Caring is mutual, if you can’t. Sorry. I won’t take a minute to forget you. My family and people who love me is everything for me.
Stopped taking stress and overthinking.
Because which I can control, I can control. What I can’t. I can’t. Me taking unnecessary stress not gonna give me control on things I can’t.
Stopped crying.
Most importantly, doesn’t gonna change the situation. If something happened, it happened. Crying will not change reality. Move on. Think calmly and search for a solution.
Stopped giving Explanation.
If you are asking proper explanation and proofs every time ( once or twice is okay ), he doesn’t believes you and he won’t, no matter how many times you prove yourself. Just don’t waste your time.
Stopped seeking for outer beauty.
When it comes to relationship, I am so deeply wounded by people who looked attractive only from outside, my preference changed. I now seeks for behavior and personality more than skin colour aur figure. But yeah, they matter too but isn’t a vital deal-breaker. But, if I get it, I won’t mind.
Stopped seeking for people’s company.
I don’t know, the day I took drop, my outside life is cut short, and all I have is my books, and my computer screen, and a small cozy bedroom-cum-studyroom.Now, it’s more than half a year, and now I prefer not to interact with outside world and stay in my cave.I can stay like that, alone whole day, even I want to live like this in hostel in single room.
Stopped being in people’s life, where no body want me too.
“When to leave” is most important thing. Not everyone who care for you really care for you, maybe one is just intrested in you, but when they lose interest, they won’t. It’s better to leave these people’s life, before they kick you out.If you feel things aren’t same like it was before, but you aren’t the reason, don’t stay there to heal, it will just reduce your self respect. Just leave it. Hurting yourself is better than hurting your self esteem.
Stopped reducing my respect for someone’s ego satisfaction.
You first feel that it’s just small stuff, it doesn’t matter. Let’s do this or that, to cheer up. Naah, my self respect isn’t worthed to become someone’s entertainment.You will ignore once or twice, but then it will become a habit, and will end when you completely become someone’s hand puppet.
I stopped keeping expectations.
Expectations are the reason of being hurt. Just remove expectations, you will be satisfied and happy.If you keep absolutely no expectations from people, even their most basic gesture will make you happy, because it was more than what you expected and you will feel blessed.
As a youngster of 17, I worked for what was then (1965) known as the Maryland Department of Game and Inland Fish. (Today, the Department Natural Resources — DNR). My job was taking the census of the fish in Deep Creek Lake, located in Garrett County, the westernmost in Maryland, below Pittsburgh PA.
No, I did not knock on the surface of the water and then interview fish who answered the knock.
But what I DID do was interview anglers, fishing from docks or boats, asking them to pull up their stringers and show me their catch. And I asked what fish they had returned to the water and if those fish were dead or alive when returned. All of this went onto a data sheet. The data sheet itself was organized sectionally as to areas on the Lake, designated by name (such as Harvey’s Peninsula) and by a mark on a map.
Thus on any given day I would follow what appeared to be a a random walk from place to place, chatting up the fishermen, taking notes. I was the ideal employee because I lived on the lake during the summer and I knew every little inlet, peninsula, and tributary.
Now here are the parts that made the job especially interesting, occasionally hilarious, and sometimes mildly dangerous.
Illegal Anglers: The ones without a fishing license. My john-boat had state of Maryland Decals just aft of the bow, port and starboard, so as to identify me as “official.” And some of those who saw me approach assumed I was with “enforcement,” which I was NOT. Thus I heard all kinds of stories, ranging from the license being accidentally dropped overboard, to “I was just practicing fishing, I’ll buy the license tomorrow.” Some people actually untethered their stringer, to let the catch swim away. And one guy threw all his tackle overboard. Then there were those who had fish that measured less than legal for keeping; so full of apologies were they. I did my best to assure that I was with the State Biologist, NOT the enforcement division.
But one good thing…I learned where all the best fishing was and yes, I sure DID drop my line or trawl those areas.
Babe Watch: The Deep Creek Lake State Park has a sandy beach area.
When my lunch break had me near the park, I would beach the boat and sit on the grass munching my sandwich. And if I was lucky, I would make the acquaintance of some lovely lasses who might be receptive to a return visit from me when I was “off the clock.”
The Big Kill: In addition to the data I collected, the State biologist would stretch a net across an isolated inlet, and poison the water from the net to the shoreline. Hundreds; no THOUSANDS of fish floated to the surface, belly up. And some were trophy size walleye, pike and large mouth. I was in heaven. I was going to scarf up a basket or two, and have the ultimate fish-fry.
But no, said the biologist. Those fish would kill you.
Damn.
(You might wonder why all the fish outside the net weren’t killed. Some were. But the target inlet was NOT fed by a creek, so the water was fairly still —no current. Plus, the poison was short-acting.)
The Thermocline: There comes a point at which the water at the top half of the lake exchanges place with the water in the bottom half. Or, at least the temperature gradient does a flip-flop. I’m not sure why that mattered, but it was my job to transport the guy with the sample container to an area over the deepest place in the lake, where he would toss a brass container overboard, then jerk a cable to open the cylinder and let the bottom water flood the vessel. When he pulled on the cable again, that trapped the water inside, and he pulled the sample up to the boat.
There, we had various Erlenmeyer flasks arrayed in a wooden rack, into which flasks he drained enough bottom water to reach an index line on the flask. Then, he dropped in some power and watched the color. When he smiled, I knew it was time to take him and his chemistry set back to the dock.
Personal Use? You bet! The State’s boat had only an 18 HP outboard motor, so I wasn’t pulling any skiers. But yeah, when off duty I could use it as my personal ride, or to go fishing.
He was a teacher and in his school the principal made the rule that all teachers must have their lesson plans for each week on the principal’s desk by 8am Monday morning, and he’d read them, sign them and have them back to the teachers by the time school started at 9am. This was. of course, a hassle for teachers and my friend worked out that there was no way that the principal could read every lesson plan in that time, let alone understand them. So he decided to run a horticulture unit with his class of about 9 year old children, the project being to plant trees up the middle of the school assembly hall. Now obviously this was a ridiculous project and was never going to happen, but the plans came back each week duly signed by the principal.
The teacher taught and had the children research what sort of trees would be suitable, measuring temperatures, light, heights and widths of trees, and researching the best species, all of which was clearly documented in the lesson plans and came back duly signed and approved by the principal. Finally the day came when the locations for the trees were to be marked on the hall floor in preparation for cutting the holes, importing the soil and planting the trees. The teacher carefully chose a day when he knew the school inspectors would be arriving. Sure enough, the inspectors had a meeting with the principal after morning assembly and part way through this meeting, as specified in the signed lesson plan, the teacher politely knocked on the principal’s door and asked where did he want them?
“Where do I want what?” the principal asked.
“The trees in the assembly hall,” replied the teacher.
“Trees? In the assembly hall? What do you mean?”
“Well,” replied the teacher, waving the sheaf of lesson plans, all carefully signed by the principal, “As you know, I have been running a unit on horticulture in preparation for planting trees up the middle of the assembly hall, and today’s the day we mark out where to put them. So we need you to show us where you want them, as I specified in the lesson plans which you read and signed.” He waved the sheaf of plans once again.
Needless to say, no trees were ever planted up the middle of the hall, and the principal never again wanted lesson plans submitted for approval.
A few months ago, I noticed that my daughter smiled to herself a lot. I decided to “confront” her: “You have a crush. Haven’t you?”. She blushed and exclaimed: “How do you know that?!?!”. I played my cool poker face 😎 “Been there, done that. Tell me!”. Then she told me about the boy.
A couple days later, she asked me: “I noticed that during lunchtime, he finishes his lunch real fast then goes to the library to play chess. Should I go talk to him? I play chess too!”
I told her: “Why the rush? I think, you might want to practice playing chess a little bit better first, then ask him to play a match with you. You might win, or at the very least, not lose badly. And I tell you a secret: you can learn a lot about a person when they lose a game!”
For about 2 weeks, she played chess with me every evening.
One day, she came home and told me: “I un-crushed him. We played 2 games today. He won the first, I won the 2nd. But when he lost, he curse and stomped out. Not cool!”
That was the moment I felt like a warm hug. The feeling of being able to share with my daughter her stories, her feelings always warms me up.
My Fiancée Asked For An Open Relationship 3 MONTHS Before Our Wedding So I Kicked Her A** Out!
When I was being recruited by Nike in 1997 I was a little concerned about cultural issues, especially institutional sexism — I had heard that the place was something of a boys’ club.
I couldn’t travel for a few weeks so I was having a series of conversations with the general counsel in advance. We were arranging the logistics for my interview day. I’d basically see a different interviewer each hour from 9 am till 6 pm, including lunch with him and my predecessor in the job.
As we were discussing the plans I asked him if he could please include a woman who had been with the company for a long time.
I held my breath briefly for his reaction. Some male executives would have been offended. But he exclaimed, “What a good idea! I should have thought of it!” and immediately agreed to make it happen.
He was good for his word — my first interview that day was with Nike’s corporate treasurer, who was at least a 20 year veteran of the Swoosh.
I think it’s reasonable to state openly that you are eager to get a sense of the company culture, and ask the interviewer how they would describe it.
The Chinese YiChe race
China is home to many races, while Han is dominant, the other races are very interesting. This is a very interesting race. They have “open marriages”, wear miniskirts, and have a graduated system of Bride Prices.
Many, many years ago I received a letter in the post. It was a recorded delivery and I had to sign for it to confirm delivery. I was intrigued and opened it immediately. It was a summons to appear in our local small claims court. I was being sued for £6,000. There were no details about the charges or any explanation of what the case was about other than the name and address of the complainant. I was mystified as I didn’t recognise the name. Lets call him Mr Smith.
In the three weeks before the stated date I convinced myself that one of my sons was playing an involved joke on me. I quizzed them all mercilessly but nobody would admit to knowing anything about it. As the date drew closer I determined to go to court just to find out which of my boys was the perpetrator of this rather involved joke.
Court day arrived and I went into the court building and presented my summons to an attendant, still expecting to be told it was a forgery. I was wrong. I was politely directed to a small waiting room and told my case would be called in 10 minutes. I was stunned.
When I was escorted into the courtroom the Sheriff (a lay judge in Scotland) asked me if I had a legal representative. I explained how I thought that the summons was a joke and I had no lawyer. He said that I could ask for a deferment to get legal advice if I choose but he didn’t think that was necessary. I sat down still stunned and confused but by now rather scared.
The Sheriff now asked the other side to outline their case. I listened in stunned amazement as the story unfolded.
Apparently some 6 months previously I had sold Mr Smith a tenpin bowling ball and drilled the ball to suit his hand. I had explained to him the need to keep the ball clean of lane oil on a regular basis. Mr Smith had taken me at my word and had left his bowling ball soaking in a bathtub of hot soapy water overnight. Feeling that the finger and thumb holes were wet when he fished the ball out of the bath in the morning he had decided to dry out the ball. Fifteen or twenty minutes in the microwave should dry it out nicely.
Some time later the ball had exploded. The force of the explosion was enough to destroy the microwave and send the door of the microwave flying upward with enough energy to punch through the ceiling and the floor of the room above his kitchen. Unfortunately the room above his kitchen was his neighbours bathroom. The microwave door not only punched through the floor but punched through the actual bath. Really unfortunately the poor woman was taking a bath at the time.
She was suing Mr Smith for the damage to her bathroom from the flying microwave door as well as the water damage to her carpets from the bath full of water. She wasn’t suing for the shock of a microwave door suddenly puncturing her bath although it must have been a terrific shock.
Mr Smith was suing me for the same amount on the basis that I had sold him a bowling ball without specifically telling him not to put it in the microwave.
By this stage several people in the gallery were laughing and the sheriff was definitely smiling. I was still worried but feeling considerably less scared. We all sat politely until Mr Smith’s lawyer had finished. The Sheriff then drew himself very straight and without a trace of a smile said that he was here to apply the law of the land and not to educate idiots. Case dismissed.
It’s early morning, the sun is just barely visible in the edges of the sky.
The date is August 5th, 2001 and Richard Ankrom and several friends are preparing to commit a crime that is several years in the making.
Twenty years prior, Ankrom was driving north on the 110 freeway. He got ready to merge onto Interstate 5 North, another freeway but missed the exit.
A few years later, he officially moved to LA and found himself driving on the same stretch of road as before.
He glanced up at the sign and realized the I-5 exit wasn’t marked at all.
That was why he had missed the turn ages ago.
And on that day, he swore to himself he would never let another person suffer the same fate.
He began studying freeway signs, their exact color, size and make up. He balanced on the edges of bridges to get precise measurements.
He copied the existing signs to a T, even consulting the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices to make sure he got the width and height perfect. He even sprayed the sign to make it look more worn down.
From there, he disguised himself, cutting his hair and buying a hard hat and vest.
And on August 5th, 2001 he positioned his ladder and climbed thirty feet to reach the sign.
He and his friends rushed away, afraid of getting caught in the act.
Nine months later, one of his friends confessed, leaking the crime to a local newspaper.
However, instead of being taken down, it passed inspection and remained there for another 8 years and even then, they put up a new sign in its place.
I was 12 years old, and back then thought you teased girls you liked. I was infatuated with a girl in my neighborhood and would tease her on the school bus.
One day I meant to say “I’ve seen better, but I haven’t seen worse!”
It came out as “I’ve seen worse, but I haven’t seen better!”
I said this in front of all the kids on the bus. I stammered a minute, not believing what came out of my mouth! I never would have had the confidence to say something like that! She immediately smiled and hugged me. Suddenly I had my first girlfriend. I just went with it.
I had suspected my wife was cheating, so put a tracker in her car. When she claimed she was going to a friend’s house to watch his dog, I watched on the tracker monitor as she in fact drove in the exact opposite direction to a hotel to meet one of what I would later find out were several lovers. So, I grabbed her spare keys, took a Lyft to the hotel she was actually at, got in her car and drove it to the friend’s house she was supposed to be at, then took a Lyft home. When she called the next day, claiming her car was stolen, I asked her to use the friend’s Ring camera to see the culprit. Cornered, she confessed, and found her own way home, then shortly thereafter, her own home.
You’ve all seen this formation right? It’s rather famous.
Well, would you be surprised to find out it was not that commonly used? We have some records of it from Dio and a few other historians but it was not that common.
Typically this formation would be used during a siege where the infantry needed to close in on some high walls under missile fire. Otherwise, it was never really used that often.
The problem is that this formation makes units less maneuverable and less flexible and it makes hand-to-hand combat almost impossible. So in every battle, the Romans would just be in normal lines ready to fight.
2: The Romans had poor cavalry
Now the Romans truly did not produce great cavalry from their own ranks. However, the Romans most certainly used talent wherever they found it.
When they conquered a people that were great on horseback they would employ them as Auxiliaries to assist the legions.
This means the Romans had
Numidian Cavalry (ranked among the best on earth at the time)
Macedonian Cavalry
Gallic Cavalry
These were without a doubt the best horsemen on planet earth and they all fought for the Romans.
In fact, during the late Imperial period, the Roman military became very calvary-centric and did end up boasting some of the best trained and equipped cavalry on earth.
One thing to remember is that cavalry at this time was not all that great. Stirrups were not yet invented and this meant that cavalry were basically expensive scouts minus a few exceptions. Infantry won wars in the ancient world far more often than cavalry.
3: The Romans were brutal conquerers
Now the Romans could be brutal and there were many times where they were brutal. However, in terms of being conquered, you could do worse than Rome.
If you snuggled up the Romans as an ally and played the role of submissive ally Rome would defend you to the death and be extremely hands-off. You’d keep your rulers and laws and merely pay a small tax to Rome. You also got the benefit of protection from the legions which meant total safety for centuries.
Rome viewed every relationship (diplomatic or otherwise) as having the dominant patron and the submissive client. The role of the patron was to support, elevate, and protect while the role of the client was to submit, admire, and support. If a tribe submitted itself as the client, Rome was often a great patron.
The Romans were also extremely tolerant of others. There was some racism and xenophobia as there is in all peoples but Rome accepted all religions and cultures as valuable. The Romans often adopted cultural elements or even gods from conquered peoples.
Now if you betrayed the Romans or worse yet attack them, they could be extremely brutal. Any slight paid to Rome would be returned ten-fold.
Being conquered by Rome was not the worse fate in the world, but being an enemy to Rome was certainly a death sentence.
Copeland’s of New Orleans Stuffed Strawberry French Toast
strawberry
Ingredients
1 cup milk
3 cups heavy cream, divided
4 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 French baguette, sliced diagonally
1 cup strawberries, freshly cut
Powdered sugar for dusting
1/2 pound cream cheese
Instructions
Combine milk, eggs, vanilla extract, sugar and 2 cups heavy cream; mix well, then set aside.
Whip remaining 1 cup heavy cream until peaks form. Beat in cream cheese until smooth.
Heat skillet over medium-high heat; add butter.
Dip bread slices into batter, making sure to leave them long enough to absorb some of the batter without making them soggy. Place bread in skillet; brown on both sides.
Remove bread from skillet and place on a plate.
Scoop cream cheese mixture on top of each piece.
Top with another piece of toast to form a sandwich.
Top with fresh strawberries, dust with powdered sugar, and serve immediately.
For context: I’m 37. Married since 2017. One kid. Flat broke. Heavily indebted. Diagnosed with an incurable autoimmune disorder in 2016. Recently embarked upon a spiritually rewarding career as a helicopter pilot.
(Neither this nor what follows is an indictment of capitalism or Western society, as I hope you know. I’m flat broke because I have a toddler and am starting over from scratch career-wise, and I’m indebted because I borrowed heavily in order to attend flight school. It was my choices that got me here, nothing else.)
At this point in life, what excites me the most is:
1. Affording steak.
My wife and I usually have anywhere from $20 to $150 between paydays. My wife just got a job at a daycare center, so that’ll take some of the pressure off. But our debt is such that every spare penny should be spent paying it down. Frivolities like steak, good booze, fancy dinners out, and even trips to the zoo and aquarium with our daughter have gone out the window. My folks had to float us $1100 for snow tires earlier this month, and I’m having a hard time dealing with the shame of it. What excites me the most right now is making enough money to pay down debt and still have enough disposable income left over to treat myself and my family.
2. Supporting my girls on a single income.
In a year’s time, if I play my cards right, I could be the assistant chief flight instructor at my flight school. Or I’ll move on to a job in the helicopter tour or utility industries. Either way, I’ll be getting a fat raise. This has amazing ramifications for my little family. It could mean that my wife and I will be able to pay off a significant chunk of our debts, and we’ll have more disposable income. Far from merely being able to afford steak, I might be able to buy itregularly—and grill it on a grill I could then afford to purchase, while drinking beer I could afford to homebrew. It might also mean that my wife and I could afford to have a second child, accrue some savings and an emergency fund, and even scrape together a down payment for a goddamn house. (I’ve never bought or owned a home in my life, and I’m tired of renting.) But whatever the consequences of my pay raise, I’ll just be happy and proud to be providing for my family at long last. And not dependent on my folks.
3. Enjoying a proper autumn.
November up here in the Northland has been unseasonably warm, the locals tell me. Normally there’s a few inches of snow on the ground by now, and the temperature is below freezing every day. It was 50 degrees Fahrenheit yesterday. The leaves have already fallen, but the abundant sunlight and mild temperatures are making me feel like we’re getting an actual autumn instead of leaping straight from summer to winter. And I’ve been taking full advantage of it. I hiked to the top of Ely’s Peak in my shirtsleeves last Wednesday, and today I took my daughter to Hawk Ridge and Hartley Park.
4. Getting checked out in a turbine helicopter.
Speaking of shame, I have over 500 hours in rotorcraft and all of them are in Robinsons. Not that there’s anything wrong with Robinsons, but you can think of them as the tricycles of the helicopter world. Some people ride them for fun, and very few for work, but they mostly use them for training. Getting checked out in a different helicopter, especially a turbine-powered one, would be like learning to ride a motorcycle by comparison. I’d feel like a real helicopter pilot then. My school just happens to have an old Bell 206B that it uses to provide turbine transition training to students. I missed my chance to get checked out in it this fall—too low on the seniority list—but I’ll almost certainly get into it next summer. I’m stoked.
5. My daughter’s 2nd birthday.
I can scarcely believe that my girl is almost 18 months old, let alone that she’ll be two in June. Being able to say “she’s two” instead of “she’s XX months” excites me for some odd reason.
6. Reading, as usual.
Having a kid and becoming a flight instructor put a major crimp in my reading schedule. I’m currently 13 books behind, according to the tracker I use on Goodreads. Granted, I picked some doozies to read this year. It’s been a long, hard slog, reading Lewis and Clark’s journals and The Brothers Karamazov simultaneously. But I’m almost done, and I have a couple of new books waiting in the wings—a much-anticipated travelogue by Anton Chekhov (Sakhalin Island), and a horror novel by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child (The Relic), which I’d intended to read in October. That, and the rest of the books on my reading list (sketched out until the year 2031), have me excited. As they always do.
7. Making soup every weekend.
Classic dad move, right? I enjoy soups and stews immensely. And winter, of course, is soup season. To take full advantage of it, I made out a list of soups that I want to make this season and have been checking them off one by one, starting the weekend of my birthday in late September. I’ve done beef stew, French onion soup, pumpkin soup, fish-head soup, and chicken stew with dumplings. Tonight it’s beer cheese soup. I am super pumped.
8. Date night with the wife.
Due to various factors—lack of funds, a dearth of trustworthy babysitters, scheduling issues, the realities of having children, and general stress levels—my wife and I haven’t been dating each other like we should. In fact, we’ve gone on exactly three dates this year: in January, June, and October respectively. We’re trying to fix that. I’m securing a sitter for the night of Friday the 24th. My wife and I have plans to slip across the river into Wisconsin for burgers and brews at a much-beloved taphouse. I am beyond excited about this. It’ll be nice to sit across a table from my spouse, sip local brews, and discuss something other than poop and money.
Once upon a time I put in average speed cameras on a section of the A31 in UK. They were dropping the speed limit from 60 mph to 50 mph on this stretch. For those that don’t know these monitor your speed over a set distance and if you are 10% + 3 miles per hour over the speed limit you will get a fine, (or occasionally offered a Driver Awareness Course, based on the speed and if you have done one in the last 3 months).
Anyway, cameras go in, we do the testing phase and final commissioning.
2 weeks after they are commissioned, I went to a meeting to close the final account for putting these in, drove passed them on the way home at 62 mph, (as I had always done), and forgot they were now live and got a £60 fine and 3 points on my licence. All from safety cameras that I put in.
Four thousand and seven years ago, my father, who was a great man, one of the greatest men in history, he was born in Germany; he went into the real estate business. You have to be really, really smart to get into the real estate business. I inherited his smarts, and I got into the real estate business too. I have the best real estate. Everyone loves my real estate. But now we are engaged in a great civil war. The greatest civil war. Why are we engaged in it? Because my predecessor, President Bookananin, was a bad deal maker. If I had been President then, we wouldn’t have had a war because I would have made a deal, the best deal. I am the best deal maker ever. It’s true. If I had been President, I’d have made such a good deal that the North would be happy, the South would have been happy, the slaves would have been very happy; they would have been the happiest slaves you have ever seen. Just smiling and singing and picking cotton. Such happy slaves. But now we are here to bury the dead. But what we say here cannot honor them. Because they don’t deserve to be honored! I like soldiers who are so good that they don’t get shot. What good is a dead soldier? Dead soldiers can’t soldier any more because they are dead. All soldiers who die are just losers. If I had been a soldier, I would have survived, I guarantee it. Now let’s go play some golf!
I arrived for an interview and was asked to wait a few minutes as the interviewer was held up. A few minutes later he came out, apologised said he’d been called to an urgent problem. He explained that some of the stuff I’d be working on would highly commercially sensitive and while he finished up could I read through the pre-interview contract and sign it.
I read through it and though I’m no lawyer it read like they could sue for everything I owned from my house down to my underwear if I so much as said I’d been within a mile of the building. The I interviewer came back a few minutes later and asked if I was happy and had signed the paperwork.
I replied that I hadn’t signed coz it looked a bit iffy on the conditions and he replied
‘congratulations, you’re the first person out of 8 people who passed the first stage test’.
Apparently everyone else had skimmed through and signed and not bothered really looking at what they were signing off on.
For the same reason it takes three minutes to trace a phone call, firewalls have a progress bar on them, and all handguns regardless of caliber and design always make the same sound (unless they’re silenced, in which case they go “thwip thwip”):
Because Hollywood isn’t real.
In the real world, a phone call can be traced the instant the phone rings; you don’t even need to pick it up. In the real world, firewalls either block some bit of traffic or they don’t. In the real world, different firearms all make different sounds, and they’re heckin’ loud, even if “silenced.” Like loud enough you won’t be exchanging witty quips with anyone during a shootout.
And in the real world, antipersonnel mines detonate instantly, except some old bouncing mines that detonate about a second after they’re activated.
I woke up one morning after having a bizarre nightmare. I dreamt that called my boss and told him my youngest son was going to die. My son was only 10 days old at the time. A perfectly healthy beautiful little baby boy. When I woke up I felt nauseous from the dream and experienced the worst anxiety I have ever had. I knew intuitively that something was wrong with my son. He didn’t show any rare signs or specific symptoms, the only thing that was odd was that he slept a bit heavier than usual that night. I couldn’t ignore my anxiety and checked his temperature and was shocked when it showed 35,1 degrees Celsius. I immediately took him to the ER and soon found out that an entero virus (a normal winter season virus that gives you a cold) had affected his heart and the room was soon filled with doctors and me and my husband were asked to leave. 12 hours later the doctors informed us that the virus had caused our healthy baby a serious heart failure (dilated cardiomyopathy and myocarditis ) and that he probably wouldn’t make it. They called a priest and the rest is black for me. Our baby was put into coma in a respirator and was going to be put on an ECMO machine. We were transferred to the ICU for infants. After 2 months at the ICU he suddenly improved. The doctors told us that almost no children survive this virus on the heart – because there are no obvious clear signs so the parents don’t understand that something is wrong. They also said that what he survived is in theory impossible to survive (considering how ill he was). They asked me what caused us to seek help and I told them about my dream. I will never forget the doctors answer “there are somethings between heaven and earth that medicine can’t explain – your boy is a living miracle”.
He turns 5 next year and has almost recovered 100% from the heart failure expect for 1/8 of his heart that is permanently damaged.
They are not trying. They are. You are out of business due to you guys looking down and under estimating China. And all the shit about intellectual property theft and copying while in truth China overtook the U.S. and the world in EV technology. Global warming is caused by the U.S. and the west China resolved it.
Yes you guys are caught off guard but it is your fault. Today there are still many especially white Caucasian westerners who thinks the Chinese as no technology, no can only do T-Shirts and Cheap plastic toys. To me it is racism and served you guys right. China will out compete you in every sector including jet planes, rockets, quantum computers and AI.
Even this question is a racist and underestimating China nonsense. Even the great Tesla used Chinese engines and batteries. China makes 9/10 EVs on earth. And they are catching up! What a foolish statement.
When i was about 9 years old we lived acoss the street from a little store that had a paper machine out front. My mother would send me over with a quarter each morning and 3 on sundays to get a newspaper. One day an old timer was walking up and said, watch this. He put 4 pennies in the machine and much to my surprise, it opened right up just as if he had put a quarter in it and sure enough on Sunday, 12 pennies did the same thing. Not sure if the machines worked by weight or what, but this went on for a few years until we eventually just got it delivered. This was a time when 20 cent would buy 4 fireballs or lots of other smaller candies. I truly believe karma caught up with me as i had more than my fair share of cavities growing up.
My sister died 5 weeks ago. We’ve just got back from her funeral in the UK. She’d been in poor health for several years so it was no great shock, but sad as she was only 69. This (slightly edited tale) was read out by the celebrant plus several of her other exploits over the years. She was a force of nature. Don’t rest in peace Lynn, create all the mayhem you did when you were here.
My sister is extremely feisty. She was in hospital giving birth to her first child, who was a large baby and my sister is tiny, she weighed about 35kg. Anyway she needed an episiotomy for her son to be born. Anyway after the birth the midwife said the cut was so long it would need stitching. The doctor came in, agreed and gave her a local anesthetic into the area. Then he disappeared for 3 hours, by which time the pain relief had totally worn off and he began to stitch. When she cried out in pain he told her not to be such a baby and to quit whining.
He had a tray of instruments by the bed so she picked up a scalpel and rammed it into the back of his hand. While he was screaming she told him not to be such a baby and quit whining. They administered more local to finish her procedure, and found another doctor.
When I was in high school in New York, rumor was that my friend’s tough looking father was in the Mafia. One day, he hired a bunch of his son’s friends to attend an auction in the Bronx. He gave us an address and told us to be there at 8am.
The auction, selling off the assets of a bankrupt business, was going to begin an hour later. By the time the real bidders arrived, they were denied entrance by a bribed fire marshal because the room was already filled to its legal capacity by dozens of hired bodies like myself.
Clueless, we sat there and watched as my friend’s father and his buddies won every lot without competition.
A man and his wife are awakened at 3 o’clock in the morning by a loud pounding on the door.
The man gets up and goes to the door where a drunken stranger, standing in the pouring rain, is asking for a push.
“Not a chance” says the husband, “it is 3 o’clock in the morning!”
He slams the door and returns to bed.
“Who was that?” asked his wife.
“Just some drunk guy asking for a push,” he answers.
“Did you help him?” she asks.
“No, I did not, it is 3 o’clock in the morning and it is pouring rain out there!”
“Well, you have a short memory,” says his wife. “Don’t you remember about three months ago when our car broke down and those two guys helped us? I think you should help him, and you should be ashamed of yourself !”
The man does as he is told, gets dressed, and goes out into the pounding rain.
He calls out into the dark, “Hello, are you still there?”
“Yes” comes back the answer.
“Do you still need a push?” calls out the husband.
My daughter had married a guy I really liked. One fall we were discussing hunting and he mentioned an unusual shotgun he learned to hunt with. He really liked it, but had never seen another like it. It was a bolt action 20-gauge shotgun.
As he described the finger grooves in the plastic trigger guard, I realized he was describing a Mossberg Model 185K. I collected Mossberg firearms and had a decent specimen sitting unused in the back of my safe.
Over the next couple of months I refurbished the gun, rubbed the stock down with tung oil and restored as much of its 1950 beauty as I could. Having found a box for it, I took it by on Christmas day.
When he unwrapped it, his mouth fell open. Literally.
“Oh migod. THAT’S THE ONE! That is EXACTLY the gun I grew up with! How did you find this???”
My 6′7″ son-in-law picked me up and hugged me – with tears in his eyes.
Yes, China and India have border disputes, and border conflicts broke out in the 1960s and 1970s. There have also been conflicts in the Galwan region in the past few years.
But the relationship between China and India is not as bad as Western media renders it, nor is it as terrible as some Indian media render it.
2023 11 25 10 11
If we look at a world map, especially one with altitude. It can be seen that China and India are separated by the Himalayas. Although the two countries are neighboring countries, they are naturally separated.
Therefore, in the past thousands of years, the two countries developed independently without interfering with each other, and even little trade was carried out. The current China and India were only established after World War II. The contradiction between them originated from the division of territories by the British colonists, rather than the natural contradiction between the two nations. In the words of the Chinese, China and India “have no historical debt.” After all, the Chinese view history in terms of 100 years as the smallest unit.
If you ask a Chinese: Who do you think China’s enemy is?
The vast majority of Chinese people will answer: Japan. Maybe someone mentioned the United States, and maybe South Korea.
, some may even say Russia. But I have hardly ever heard the Chinese label India as their enemy. Even if I emphasize that “China and India had a war,” they will still think: “India is not an enemy” and regard the Sino-Indian conflict as “a quarrel between neighbors.”
In the eyes of Chinese people, couples also quarrel, let alone two neighboring countries. As long as the scope of cooperation is far greater than the scope of differences, then both parties are partners.
Of course, the results of this survey in India may be completely different, mainly due to the influence of Western and Indian media. After all, the media is very good at seizing on a certain local hot spot and then telling the audience that this is all.
The point I’m trying to make, though, is this. The two sides are not really hostile. The similarities between China and India outweigh the differences. They are all developing countries with huge populations and face problems such as poverty alleviation, public education and environmental pollution. Both countries are developing rapidly and are gradually coming into conflict with developed countries. The two sides have consistent interests on many issues, especially international trade, carbon emissions, human rights and other issues, and they jointly resist the squeeze of developed countries. On the issues of the Russia-Ukraine war and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, China and India basically have the same attitude.
China and India do not have much competition in business. China is developing high-end manufacturing and competing with developed countries. India is developing mid- to low-end manufacturing industries and can take over the production capacity transferred from China. India is a major agricultural exporter, while China is a major agricultural importer. There is a lot of room for cooperation between the two parties.
When the Sino-Indian border conflict occurred, there were already serious deaths of soldiers. No shots were fired. This shows that the agreement between the two sides outweighs the differences. The border dispute is not the mainstay of Sino-Indian relations. This point has a clear consensus among the elites of both sides. So the soldiers were severely restricted. The foundation of the relationship between the two countries will not change because of the advocacy of the Western media. There will be no war as the West expects.
After all, neither Chinese leaders nor Indian leaders are fools.
The Chinese build so much that they are used to such collapses and have extremely specialized rescue teams
Like in the Turkey earthquake recently
Their ability to use small drones to slip through the small holes, use positioning of living objects under vast structures and their ability to vertically drill and horizontally drill makes them the world’s best experts in rescue operations
image 158
This team rescued 319 people given up for dead in Turkey
image 157
They were HEROES
The victims were given up for dead
image 156
Plus the Chinese Tunnel building through Mountains makes Indian tunnels look like School Project work
This Tunnel in India is a straight cut
Chinese Guoliang Tunnel is at a 36 degree upward incline through mountain surface. They are masters at tunneling
image 13
The Chinese teams drilled 368 meters deep vertically against an EXPLODED SHAFT in a gold mine with fissure methane gas and still rescued 11 workers from certain death in 11 days
That was an explosion plus collapse plus methane pockets not just a collapse like in UK
Compared to that, this rescue is horizontal and can be done in their sleep
So why aren’t we calling the Chinese?
Simple
Ego and nothing else
Calling the Chinese would be a blow to our ego and would cause our politicians to lose face
I was patient for a few days but now it appears the NDRF team are morons and the Aussie in charge is a bigger moron
The Auger has been damaged four times now
The men have been stuck for 15 days with no hope as yet
Time to pick up the phone and call Beijing for help and rescue these men and send them home
Enough of this worthless ego
Enough of the learning curve
It’s clear the team members are dunderheads because the augers have been broken four times in four days
Today it was so likely that the men would be out and yet again the Auger broke
Last night my kids flooded the whole living room with slimy water.
“BEEEEEEEEN!” my wife hollered. “COME SEE THIS!”
I knew this was trouble because my wife is one of those people who never raise their voice.
When I stepped onto the scene, I saw my three kids plus a friend of my oldest son’s all belly-sliding from wall to wall with nothing on but underwear.
The sight was so perplexing, surreal, and unexpected, that I couldn’t help but laugh my ass off.
It was like the first time I ever got stoned as a teenager and every time a friend threw an M&M on me I giggled uncontrollably.
Every kid scooting across the gooey floor, his arms flailing, letting out screams of glee, had me laughing until my belly hurt.
They were like cute gremlins swimming through space.
Never mind that I was terrified of slipping because I just had my ACL operated on. Or that my youngest one started bawling after two of the others crashed into him at the same time. Or that my wife and I had to use all the towels in the house to soak up the gunky liquid later.
I hadn’t had such a good laugh in ages.
I’ve been punched in the balls. I’ve cleaned neon-yellow runny poo from across the floors of multiple rooms—why would you crawl across the whole house while pooing?! I’ve made elaborate date plans with my wife just for two of us to realize we fell asleep while reading to the kids.
And somewhere along the way, instead of getting angry every time, I discovered the humor in all of it.
Something of the maddening nature of having kids taught me to stop taking myself so seriously. Showed me that sometimes, life is so damn absurd that all you can do is laugh. That every single plan and intention can come boomeranging back to you and whack you in the face.
And before you feel the pain—or clean the slimy floor or the runny poo or make a new plan—you can take a moment, laugh it off, and then get to it.
I’m in Ghana and was invited to a Thanksgiving party, what the H3LL?
My neurologist asked me to wear an oximeter/heart rate monitor overnight. I told him it would be useless, as I was not sleeping much, but he had me do it. I got a call a few days later asking me how I coped on such little sleep. We never mentioned it again.
Then I got a bill for $14. For what?
I was being billed for the “use of the monitor.” Not by my neurologist’s office, by some 3rd party.
I called my neurologist’s office, they said that they don’t own the equipment, they rent it from the service that sends them the test results, which was not this company. They were like, fine, don’t pay, we don’t know who this company is. I called insurance – they said they had never heard of FBN Rental.
I called FlyByNight Rentals and told them to bill my insurance. They said they had. I said I had proof they never had. I told them I would not pay as they had no grounds to bill me.
I kept getting bills, which I ignored.
Finally I got a phone call from them. “You owe us $14.” “No. I don’t. Bill my insurance.” “We did.” No you didn’t. You’re a scam.” Rinse, repeat.
I had looked them up in the meantime. They apparently buy marketing lists of people who used pulse oximetry equipment and insert a minor charge. Something small and inconsequential that people will just pay to clear. But – and here is the key point – they don’t actually have any relationship to the test.
I kept getting calls threatening me with collections. Finally I picked one up. A lady confirmed that I was seconds away from going to collections. I had had it. I had already called and written to them to tell them to fuck off, multiple times.
I said, 1) that they were a scam, 2) I’d already reported them to my doctor, the insurance, the BBB and 3) if I ever heard from them again, they would hear from my lawyer with a bill for the time *I* had had to spend figuring out they were a scam and dealing with their bullshit.
I never heard from them again.
What a brilliantly awful idea. Make a teeny, inconsequential charge, something so small no one would care and collect on some or most of those charges. Multiply $14 by tens of thousands and presto, you have medical fraud that no one will ever notice.
A woman responds to “an open marriage”
A man suggests that instead of a open marriage, he gets a second wife.
This is a translated Chinese article pulled off the American platform Quora. Access to the article has since been "suppressed" and is not so easily found. Enjoy this article. -MM
Fact confirmed :
U.S. Navy’s 7th Fleet announced Thursday night that the Electronic Attack Squadron 136 (VAQ-136) on the “Carl Vinson” aircraft carrier (CVN-70) currently operating in the South China Sea Commander Lieutenant Colonel William Coulter was relieved of his duties on the grounds that he “lost confidence in his command ability” Paul Ritter(Another military high rank in US navy), who was originally scheduled to serve as the squadron commander in April 2024, immediately Take over.
image 474
William Coulter is temporarily transferred to the Electronic Warfare Wing, Pacific. William Coulter has only served as the commander of VAQ-136 in January 2023, but was suddenly dismissed a few days after the “Carl Vinson” entered the South China Sea.
Speculation :
image 473
The F-18 “Three Brothers” on the US aircraft carrier. In the top is the single-seat F-18E, which is used for air control. The one in the middle is the F-18F multi-purpose type, which is mainly used for anti-ship/anti-ship and close range. the one in the bottom is an EF-18 “Growler” electronic warfare attack aircraft.
The fired electronic warfare commander (William Coultier) of the USS Carl Vinson managed this type of electronic squadron.
The strength of electronic warfare capabilities is extremely important for the US military’s aircraft carrier strike group (different from battle groups). Failure to obtain “electromagnetic control” means that enemy fighters, warships and even land-based anti-ship equipment will have a high chance of successful penetration, The warhead charge of modern heavy anti-ship weapons is no longer RDX, but CL-20 explosive (hexanitrogen), its power is three times that of TNT. The equivalent of about one ton of TNT explodes inside the aircraft carrier (more advanced weapons are equipped with armor-piercing nose cones, which can easily penetrate the aircraft carrier) with more than 6 times Mach impact energy, although the probability of sinking if hit by one is low, severe damage and loss of combat effectiveness are certain!
image 472
It is said last week, the US military’s EP-3E “Aries” electronic warfare aircraft encountered our military’s Y-8 electronic warfare aircraft over the southern Taiwan Strait. The two aircraft conducted a complex electronic offensive and defensive battle. The US aircraft did not gain any advantage, Evacuated the premise.
EP-3E is not under the management of the commander of the VAQ-136 Electronic Warfare Squadron aboard the USS Carl Vinson, which has nothing to do with his dismissal, but it is likely that he was defeated when he commanded the EF-18 to confront our J-16D, which resulted in the “Carl Vinson” being exposed to the firepower of our military.
image 471
Our army’s J-16D may be the most powerful operational/tactical electronic warfare aircraft in the world. It is derived from a heavy fighter, while the E/F-18 is a medium-sized aircraft. With comparable levels of electronic devices and integration technology, The former has a larger fuselage, higher engine power generation and greater power. It has a slight advantage over the “Growler” in interference and burn-through capabilities (anti-jamming), and our military has geographical advantages. “Growler” “It needs to take off from an aircraft carrier, and it is also at a disadvantage in terms of range and fleet size. However, our military can launch more J-16Ds at the same time to implement spectrum suppression (which can interfere with the Aegis radar on the Burke-class destroyer). This is all It was the reason that led to the downfall of the E/F-18.
image 470
The J-16D cooperates with other electronic warfare aircraft to compete for electromagnetic control rights, and then the H-6K carries long-range hypersonic missiles to strike. This is a tactic that US aircraft carriers cannot crack at this stage.
Needless to say, the struggle between our country and the United States is intensifying. In the past three or four years, when American aircraft carriers have entered the South China Sea from the Bashi Channel, our military will organize large fighter formations to conduct simulated offensive and defensive battles against them!
image 469
With the improvement of our military’s technology, the US aircraft carrier battle group can no longer show off its power like it did during the “96 crisis”. It has more symbolic significance than military significance. the US military’s four EA-6D “Prowler” electronic machines were able to interfere with telecommunications signals in most areas of Fujian and Zhejiang.
Conclusion of the speculation :
William Courtier putting the aircraft carrier at risk from our forces, and was dismissed.
Author Note :
US often send their war machine to china’s sea. do you really think US submarine hit mountain in South China Sea?
image 468
if you see the damage in that submarine, you can clearly see it was not caused by a breeding box, why because the upper part was not damaged. it was caused by a Chinese underwater drone, the best speculation due to damage is in the middle of the upper part of your so called sophisticated submarine.
The MWI is real, and it is valid. However, the idea in the movie that consciousness is equally shared between the world-lines is a tad distorted. Instead the centering of consciousness on a given world-line is the actual REALITY within this universe.
At a tense meeting with IRS inspector Deirdre Beaubeirdre, Waymond's body is taken over by Alpha-Waymond, a version of Waymond from the "Alphaverse."
Alpha-Waymond explains to Evelyn that many parallel universes exist because every life choice creates a new alternative universe.
In the Alphaverse, the late Alpha-Evelyn developed "verse-jumping" technology, which enables people to access the skills, memories, and bodies of their parallel selves by performing bizarre actions that are statistically unlikely.
The multiverse is threatened by Jobu Tupaki (Alpha-Joy), whose mind was splintered after Alpha-Evelyn pushed her to verse-jump beyond her endurance; Jobu experiences all universes at once and can verse-jump and manipulate matter at will.
She has created a black hole-like "Everything Bagel" topped with everything,[18] which appears as a toroidsingularity[19] that could destroy the multiverse.
Evelyn is given verse-jumping technology to fight Jobu's minions, who converge on the IRS building.
She discovers other universes in which she made different choices and flourished, such as becoming a kung fu master and film star; she also learns of Waymond's plans with the divorce papers.
Alpha-Waymond believes that Evelyn, as the greatest "failure" of all Evelyns in the multiverse, has the untapped potential to defeat Jobu.
Gong Gong is taken over by Alpha-Gong Gong, who instructs Evelyn to kill Joy to stop Jobu from using her to enter Evelyn's universe.
Evelyn refuses and decides to face Jobu by gaining powers through repeated verse-jumping.
Alpha-Gong Gong, convinced that Evelyn's mind has been compromised like Jobu's, sends soldiers after Evelyn.
While they fight, Jobu locates and kills Alpha-Waymond in the Alphaverse.
As Jobu confronts Evelyn in her universe, Evelyn's mind splinters, and she collapses.
Evelyn uncontrollably verse-jumps alongside Jobu across bizarre and diverse universes.
Jobu reveals she does not want to fight at all, but that instead, she has been searching for an Evelyn who can see, as she does, that nothing matters, while killing the Evelyns that do not agree with her.
She brings Evelyn to the Everything Bagel, explaining that she wants to use it to allow herself and Evelyn to truly die.
Upon looking into the Bagel, Evelyn is initially persuaded, and behaves cruelly and nihilistically in her other universes, hurting those around her.
As Evelyn is about to enter the Bagel with Jobu, she pauses to listen to Waymond's pleas in her universe for everybody to stop fighting and to instead be kind, even when life does not make sense.
Evelyn has an existentialist epiphany and decides to follow Waymond's absurdist[20] and humanist[21] advice, using her multiverse powers to fight with empathy[22] and bring happiness to those around her; in doing so, she repairs her damage in the other universes and neutralizes Alpha-Gong Gong and Jobu's fighters.
In her home universe, Evelyn reconciles with Waymond, accepts Joy and Becky's relationship and tells Gong Gong of it, and talks with Deirdre after Waymond convinces Deirdre to let them redo their taxes.
Jobu decides to enter the Bagel alone while, simultaneously in Evelyn's universe, Joy begs Evelyn to let her go.
Evelyn tells Joy that even when nothing makes sense and even though she could be anywhere else in the multiverse, she would always want to be with Joy.
Evelyn and the others save Jobu from the Bagel, and Evelyn and Joy embrace.
It is a fantasy. Which is still a fun illustration.
So that is OK, don’t you know.
10947799
But what does the audience get from this movie?
That there is a multi-verse; and MWI.
That you can travel between different world-lines.
That the traveling consciousness can absorb simultaneous experiences that color the actions in the reality.
I personally view this movie as an entry bridge towards enlightenment of the true and really pertinent reality that we all experience.
World-line slides… shown in the movie.
everything everywhere all at once
The three key points above are all in alignment with MM’s MWI narrative.
Edward. We called him Crazy Ed. At 12 years of age during a family reunion he grabbed his dad’s shotgun and started shooting. He got mad at his parents over some little crap. Shot his ma, pa, aunt and was chasing his uncle but ran out of shells. In a juvenile prison, this was the 1960s, he tried to poison a few people. And beat another thug with a broom half to death before they hauled him off. He was a polite, fairly polished, soft spoken youth. Looked like a mousy little accountant, glasses and all. He told people when he got he wanted to be a hit man for the mob. He enjoyed killing. I have no doubt that’s what really became of him.
I was an IT director for a company that had been acquired by a much larger company. When I declined to move to their IT location half a continent away, I was laid off. by phone. (my whole group was effectively laid off because they moved my group’s functions to the parent companies group much larger group and they all refused the move).
This was not unexpected, but the knowledge transfer had not taken place yet between the groups. (it was just beginning)
I accepted the severance package and told them we needed to call my counterpart in the corporate group to make sure the transfer was done securely.
When they asked why, I said that as an IT directory I have all the adminstrator passwords and could literally shut down the business if I was upset about the termination. I want to make sure that any issues that come up will not be pointed back at me or my team.
They agreed to conference call with my counterpart so he could take the necessary steps to secure the system.
The call went like this:
Me: Hey! You need to change all the administrator passwords on our unix servers and close out some accounts:
Him: Why?
Me: My group and I just got terminated and you need to secure these servers to make sure everything stays copacetic. You need to terminate my accounts, all access, and those of my team laid off effective immediately to protect corporate and customer assets.
Him: <explodes>What Assh*t did that? We haven’t got anyone to manage those systems, There has been no knowledge transfer on what the systems are used for, <folornly>I’m screwed!
Big Boss: That would be me. Just do it.
Him: OK, OK. I am logging on to the servers. What is the command? Oh Sh*t, I can’t ask you can I….
Big Boss (to me): This is a surprise. Would you be willing to stick around for a couple of weeks….
Me: Sorry- Even though I don’t particularly have an issue about being laid off, Corporate Security Rules identify me now as disgruntled employee and I am not allowed access to secure systems or even the building spaces.
When I was about 17 years old, my dad walked in on me and my then-boyfriend having sex.
The house I lived in at the time was located directly across from my high school. I was enrolled in a lot of sports, as was my boyfriend. Our practices often didn’t start until a half an hour or so after school ended, so most days we had a little bit of time to, um, kill. This particular day, I thought my dad would be at work. We raced to my house, went to my bedroom, and went at it. A few minutes later, without warning, my dad did the thing he always did – knock, then immediately open the door. Seriously? What was the point of knocking? I’ll never understand.
So there I was. His precious baby, naked with a boy. I did the only thing I could think of, which was to do a little *roll* off the bed, and then a second *roll* to hide myself underneath my bed. Leaving my bare-bummed boyfriend to the nightmare above me.
The only words my dad said was, “get dressed.”
I did not go to practice that day. Instead, I had to have dinner with my dad, alone. I couldn’t even look him in the eye. I was mortified.
We tried to have small talk???? “How was your day?” “Fine, yours?”
Worst. Day. Of. My. Life.
Cajun Style Cube Steaks
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Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour, divided
4 (4 ounce) beef cube steaks
1 medium green bell pepper, chopped
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
1 (15 ounce) can no salt added tomato sauce
1 tablespoon of Cajun seasoning
2 cups hot cooked brown rice
Instructions
Place foil grilling bag on cookie sheet. Sprinkle 1 tablespoon of flour in bag.
Arrange steaks in single layer on top of flour; top with pepper and onion.
In a small bowl stir together tomato sauce, Cajun seasonings, and remaining 2 tablespoons flour. Spread evenly over steaks and vegetables. Seal bag by double folding open end, leaving room for expansion.
Coat grill rack with nonstick cooking spray. Heat grill to medium indirect heat.
Slide bag from cookie sheet onto grill rack. Cover and grill for 35 minutes.
Remove bag from grill. Use kitchen shears to carefully cut open bag.
We had a a couple of very dear and long- time friends coming over to watch a DVD a few evenings ago. I went into the living room to make sure the sofas were clear of books, newspapers, knitting etc, but there was still some clutter around. The odd grandkids’s toys sitting in a corner. A laptop my husband was fixing for someone In bits on the coffee table. I said to my husband “ Oh, it looks OK. It’s only Angela and Colin coming.” Then I thought that’s a horrible thing to say! But then it occurred to me – it was, in fact, a great compliment. They were like family. I don’t do a big tidy up, making it pristine, if my daughter is coming with her children. Like them, Angela and Colin are part of our lives. It’s clean and comfortable, but it doesn’t have to be “ visitor ready.” When they arrived I told them what has gone through my mind, and they agreed – they would feel the same about us.
Newlywed Has MELTDOWN After Husband Gathers Proof Of Her Cheating For Their “At Fault” Divorce State
All these stories are so sad. But this one seems to be really authentic. The human situation sucks. Ugh. I am sorry for all three people.
USA and Australia are clearly stolen nations or stolen continents after barbaric and phenomenally cruel slaughter of natives living in their land for centuries. These lands don’t belong to the present inhabitants and it must remind all humans in earth of what savagery and imperialism occurred during the 1600–1900 where rampant European colonialism and aggression happened throughout the world.
Australia and the Americas have to be seen as naked aggression and raped of land and destruction and real genocide whatever culture is a 200–300 years old remnants of these atrocities.
China and Japan has long history spanning thousands of years. It possesses history and philosophy of life and both nations were helped by Confucianism and its ethics of discipline, hardworking, respect for the elders and authorities and constant learning and meritocracy. Both are highly educated and very successful societies. For a while Japan was infatuated with western style colonialism. Not the Chinese as it sees that is wrong to steal other people land.
Nations that grew out of stealing land that belong to others naturally sees themselves entitled. Dominate its regions. The U.S. Latin America and Caribbean while Australia the Islanders and thinks they have a right to command South China Sea too. That to me is clearly wrong and high handed with a tinge of colonialism.
Both Australia and the U.S. benefits from the so called international rules based order that favours the west at the expense of the developing world. But that privilege is being stripped away bit by bit. And truly free competition is beyond them. Hence the huffs and puffs.
Only one word RESPECT. Without respect US will always think their way is always the right way. China is not trying to change the U.S. liberal democracy. That is the U.S. way the U.S. sees fit for the U.S. it is the U.S. that insist China must not practice Socialism with Chinese characteristics! There lies the problem.
As long as one thinks and believed that they and only they knows best no relationship can work. The U.S. must know that to each it’s own. And one man’s meat is another man’s poison. I dare say the problem in the entire 100 years passed us that the U.S. wanted every nation on earth to be submissive and subservient to them!
China is very mature. China wants a rich and prosperous USA to sell to and to go for holidays. It doesn’t want to change a thing. The U.S. wants to weaken China. It wants China to be split into a 100 bite size nation for the U.S. to chew on it! It sees itself as the standard, the authority and the god ordained nation to rule the world.
That disrespect cannot go on. It gets no where. A 5000 years responsible civilisation cannot accept a 247 years old rogue stolen nation of cowboys telling them what to do.
This is HOW MUCH My Vending Machines Made in 365 Days!
I have taken a while to collect my thoughts. Some things need to be said.
This will be a disturbing post. So let’s cling precariously to reason. Please.
Two things are obvious here. The first is that the actions by Hamas rip a new gash in the face of humanity. No thinking person can deny this. Generally reliable news agencies like Reuters [1] report:
“We’ve seen dismembered bodies with their arms and feet chopped off, people that were beheaded, a child that was beheaded,” a reserve warrant officer identified only by her first name of Avigayil told reporters.
She said multiple cases of rape were found by forensic examination of the bodies, which have been stored in refrigerated containers.
A large number of international journalists have viewed graphic footage [2] that documents these atrocities:
Other sequences showed a militant with an agricultural tool hacking at the head of a man lying on the ground, gunmen killing wounded female Israeli soldiers and a jubilant Hamas fighter calling his family: “I killed 10 Jews with my own hands. I’m using the dead Jewish woman’s phone to call you now.”
Only a really crazy conspiracy theorist with his underpants on his head would doubt that these terrible things are absolutely, shockingly real.∗
But there is one more thing …
The other obvious thing
Hamas planned this attack meticulously over months—almost certainly with Iranian support.
[3] Israeli intelligence failed comprehensively. But no, these are not that obvious, other thing. The second thing is the answer to the question “Why?”
One answer is “Because Hamas hate Israel, hate Jewish people, and want to erase Israel from the face of the Earth, as they have often declared”. This is almost certainly true, but it is too glib. It is not the answer. If you follow this reasoning, then Hamas are like a fox in a henhouse—ripping away until no living thing is left alive.
The problem with this glib answer is that it doesn’t make complete sense. Yes, of course those who killed 1400 Israelis and kidnapped many more did so with almost indescribable savagery. Yes, of course they went out of their way to document the bloodshed and atrocities. And yes, of course, this is a new low—by even the lowest imaginable standard.
But this is far less than half the story. Those who set up this atrocity surely knew how Israel would respond. They could predict that Israel would pummel Gaza. They invited a blockade, and an invasion by the Israeli army. So the correct answer to that “Why?” question is …
This is all going according to script
Hamas knew that this would result in a huge number of deaths of their own people in Gaza.
Hamas are hoping that thousands—or even tens of thousands—of their own people will die. They have planned for a bloody fight in Gaza, with civilians all around. They want this. They want large numbers of children to die in Gaza. This is part of the plan.
At least thirty Israeli children died. By 24 October 2023, two thousand three hundred and sixty children had died and over five thousand had been injured in Gaza. [4] This is precisely what Hamas want. It is part of their plan. It is surely what they predicted. They are malevolent—but they are not stupid. So then, why did they do this?
Why?
They knew that Benjamin Netanyahu would have no choice but to retaliate not just in kind, but on a vast scale. They knew that had he said something like:
We will not descend to their level. We will hunt down every single one of these terrorists, but we will do this in our own time. Not one will escape. We will move mountains to preserve international law, and protect innocent civilians …
… then he would have been labelled ‘weak’. He would have been out on his arse. The atrocities were so bad that people would have demanded an immediate military response from his successor. This is the main reason why the atrocities were quite deliberately so atrocious.
So thousands of children are dead, and thousands upon thousands of innocent civilians of all ages will still die. Quite according to the script that Hamas has laid out. They don’t care. In fact, it’s precisely part of the plan.
Now you asked:
Will people forget the massacre of innocent Jews by Hamas after seeing the Gaza attack?
No, of course not
That day will live in infamy. But it won’t matter.
Because the countries around Israel will also never, ever forget the vastly greater number of children who died. They will never forget Israel’s response. And here’s the truly terrible thing.
For every one who died, several more will spring up, their heart filled with hate for Israel. There are about two million people [5] packed into the Gaza strip. It’s like a vast kindergarten—and from this kindergarten, hundreds of thousands of people will emerge, and none of them will forget Israel’s actions.
Israel is running things entirely according to Hamas’ script. And when they deviate, they do so in the wrong direction …
A bonus for Hamas
Israel has even provided a few unanticipated bonuses that make things worse. For example, Israel’s UN envoy Gilad Erdan has accused the Secretary General of the UN as follows:
[6] The UN Secretary-General, who shows understanding for the campaign of mass murder of children, women, and the elderly, is not fit to lead the UN. I call on him to resign immediately. There is no justification or point in talking to those who show compassion for the most terrible atrocities committed against the citizens of Israel and the Jewish people. There are simply no words.
This was in response to his speech on 24 October, [7] that went as follows:
I have condemned unequivocally the horrifying and unprecedented 7 October acts of terror by Hamas in Israel.
Nothing can justify the deliberate killing, injuring and kidnapping of civilians – or the launching of rockets against civilian targets.
All hostages must be treated humanely and released immediately and without conditions. I respectfully note the presence among us of members of their families.
Excellencies,
It is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum.
The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.
They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced and their homes demolished. Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing.
But the grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the appalling attacks by Hamas. And those appalling attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.
Another perhaps unexpected bonus for Hamas is how Israel has cut off supplies…
Fuel
By far the most important supply Israel has cut off is fuel. No, not water. Not food. Fuel. [8]
This is because the hospitals with their thousands of bomb-injured and crushed people need fuel to run. And water cannot be pumped (or even desalinated) without fuel. Oh yes. The Israelis also supply one third of the water to Gaza. And this has been cut off, too.
They are allowing a few percent of the supplies needed. This will result in multiple deaths, particularly of vulnerable people—the elderly, and children, and the sick.
The most disturbing bit
In the video clip associated with this post, the Israeli defence minister describes Palestinians as ‘human animals’—and says that this justifies cutting off food, fuel and water.
This is from the international playbook [9] of dehumanisation:
During the Holocaust, Nazis referred to Jews as rats. Hutus involved in the Rwanda genocide called Tutsis cockroaches. Slave owners throughout history considered slaves subhuman animals.
In summary
So this is the way I see it. Israel has provided a knee-jerk response.
In consequence, their entire state may not survive. This will likely take a few decades to play out—but I think Israel has just signed its own death warrant in the blood of thousands upon thousands of the sick, the elderly, and children.
This is precisely what Hamas scripted. Israel has simply followed the script.
I find this all tragic beyond words.
My 2c, Dr Jo.
∗
It’s sad we even need to say this. But already the conspiracy nutters are out there in force.
Image was generated by Poe/StableDiffusion in response to the prompt “a fox in a henhouse with lots of feathers and blood”.
Based on my observations after having lived in most of the Anglosphere and in West Europe, I feel that many of the people from said countries would not consider Singaporeans “Native English Speakers”.
Which is pure snobbery, in my opinion. I guess they see themselves as the gatekeepers of who can or cannot be a native English speaker.
I have been to Singapore several times, and in the early part of my career, I was even seconded there.
While it’s true that there are many Singaporeans who grew up in a Chinese-speaking (or Malay-speaking, Tamil-speaking) household and might not have reached the level one would expect from a native English speaker, I also came across many Singaporeans (admittedly, I only worked with Chinese Singaporeans during my time there), the young ones, especially, who could only speak English.
Sure, they’re ethnically Chinese, but their Chinese is…. below even the rudimentary level. Like, if you ask them something very simple and basic like “Can you state the four cardinal directions in Mandarin?”… they can’t.
If they can’t even do something as simple and basic as that in Chinese, and their main language, the one they’ve been using since birth, is English – then how are they not native English speakers?
If you don’t consider them native English speakers – then the question becomes: So, what is their native language?
They can’t, or, to be generous, barely, speak or read Chinese. The only language they know is English.
Shouldn’t that, by definition, make them native English speakers?
Or is it really possible for someone to not be a native speaker of any language?
I would definitely consider this demographic of Singaporeans native English speakers, but, you know, I’m not one of the “gatekeepers” mentioned above, so my opinion might count for nothing.
Taking my morning shower, I felt a twinge of stomach pain. “Man, I’m really hungry!” I thought. “I’ve got to hurry up this shower and get some breakfast.”
Then I started to feel a little light-headed. I put my hand out and braced myself against the shower wall. I felt even more faint. “I could pass out and fall in here,” I thought. “I’d better get out.”
So I did, and as I was toweling off, I started to feel nauseated. I went to the toilet and threw up—blood! Holy shit! I called to my wife, “I’m vomiting blood.” She came and took a look; “You sure are!” It wasn’t a whole lot, about 30 ml of bright red blood and mucus, but it was scary as hell. I was hoping it was only an ulcer or something, but I couldn’t help thinking cancer, especially since a friend of mine had recently died of stomach cancer. It was mid-January and my daughter’s wedding was coming up in April. “I’m not going to make it to Nicole’s wedding,” I said to my wife.
The nausea passed. I finished drying off, laid down in bed, and fell asleep for 2 hours. When I woke up, I threw up more blood.
It turned out that it was in fact cancer. I had a rare type called GIST—gastrointestinal stromal tumor. There was a tumor in my upper stomach exactly the size of a billiard ball. But I’m writing this 7 years later. I lost very little stomach to the surgeon—only an area a little larger than a (U.S.) silver dollar—and I was eating at a fine Italian restaurant in Houston five days after the surgery, everything from red wine to tiramisu. I danced with my daughter at her wedding and I’m a grandfather now. I’ve been fine and very healthy since that surgery. Scared the hell out of me in 2010, though.
I hope never to have another bathroom experience as bad as that one.
Baby Poo
Huawei and Meituan announce collaboration to develop HarmonyOS ecosystem
Huawei and Meituan announced a comprehensive partnership to innovate industries, apply technologies, and develop businesses using HarmonyOS. Huawei will fully back Meituan in launching the development of native applications for HarmonyOS.
The announcement comes on the heels of Huawei’s HarmonyOS Next is expected to ditch Android app support as early as 2024. Several of Huawei’s self-developed OS concept stocks rocketed and hit the daily limit after the news was released, according to ChinaDaily.
Huawei partners with Meituan for HarmonyOS ecosystem
Meituan is a Chinese tech giant that offers a wide range of services, including food delivery, online grocery shopping, and ride-hailing. It is one of the most popular apps in China, with over 600 million active users.
Huawei’s confidence in its alternative ecosystem strategy on the mainland received a boost in late August when the company launched its Mate 60 Pro smartphone, its first 5G handset since the Mate 40 series was released in October 2020.
The Mate 60 Pro was met with strong public support, and Huawei became mainland China’s fastest-growing smartphone vendor in the third quarter of 2023.
Recently, multiple job applications in China have announced the launch of HarmonyOS app development. For example, 同程旅行_旅游_旅游线路_旅行_出国旅游_自驾游_周边游_旅游网站 (formerly known as Tongcheng) announced the launch of HarmonyOS native version App development, with plans to complete core version development by the end of 2023.
In addition, a number of internet giants, including Meituan, have listed several job openings related to HarmonyOS. For instance, Meituan publicized a variety of HarmonyOS-centric roles, such as Senior HarmonyOS Engineer and HarmonyOS Infrastructure Engineer.
According to data, as of August 2023, the HarmonyOS ecosystem boasted over 700 million devices and was supported by more than 2.2 million developers actively contributing to its development. By October 30th, the number of devices upgraded to HarmonyOS 4 had surpassed the hundred million mark.
The connection between “body count” and “cheating while married to a man”
They are still slowly trying to clean it up. The areas that were too dangerous are called Red Zones. Restrictions within the Zone Rouge still exist today. After the war, the French government declared a 460-square-mile area unfit for human habitation or development. It stretches roughly from Nancy through Verdun and onto Lille, with various non-contiguous zones so riddled with unexploded shells (many of them gas shells), grenades, ammunition, and human and animal remains that it was simply too dangerous to enter.
In the 1920s and ’30s, the government oversaw the planting of 36 million trees, mostly pine and spruce, in part of the Zone Rouge. This the Verdun forest.
The Department du Deminage, was created after the war. Over the decades, it has helped to reduce the extent of the Zone Rouge, destroying hundreds of thousands of munitions and chemical shells, and has returned some land to civilian and agricultural use. They calculate that they have 300 years work ahead of them before they have cleared the whole battlefield. French farmers collect a huge amount of unexploded ordnance, barbed wire, shrapnel, and bullets every year. It is called the “Iron Harvest.”
Some areas remain entirely off-limits, the soil so full of arsenic that 99 percent of all plants die. There is still the ever-present threat of unexploded shells. There are many ghost villages that were left abandoned after the war, deemed beyond repair. The bodies of roughly 80,000 soldiers whose bodies were never recovered are still there. The bomb depressions are still there.
I mean, that’s the simple, and charitable, way to put it.
The more complex answer is…less charitable.
Most people don’t have moral principles. They have a general set of guidelines they absorb from the society around them without really questioning too much. These guidelines are tribal in nature, and as often as not are more about marking in-groups and out-groups than about a coherent, consistent set of morals.
A great many people want to think of themselves as “good,” but aren’t particularly interested in thinking a lot about it, and particularly aren’t interested in sacrificing comfort or lifestyle for it.
And given that what passes for morality in many folks is actually a set of tribal signifiers, they most definitely aren’t willing to give up social standing for it.
In fact, I’ll wager you that more than a few people who truly consider themselves moral, scrupulous people willing to give up money for morals, will still toss their values aside the moment they involve loss of social standing.
We are social creatures. We need the support and approval of the people around us to survive. Not just in the sense of an income stream to keep ourselves fed and a roof overhead, but in the sense of a social group—without that, we suffer.
So yeah, confronted with social censure for not adopting the opinion of the people around them, most folks absolutely will surrender their values. Confronted with losing money for not adopting the opinion of the people around them, most folks absolutely will surrender their values. If you’re reading this, odds are pretty good you’re one social smear campaign or a few hungry days away from letting go of what you imagine to be your most cherished moral principles.
Originally Answered: What is the best case of “you just picked a fight with the wrong person” that you’ve witnessed?
Ooh yes this brings back the memories from the early 1980s.
A bunch of us went to the next town for a few drinks and a laugh. I seem to recall one of the lads (not me) was getting married so for reasons that won’t become apparent we trooped off to a bigger town 10 miles away instead of our own little town.
We walked into a quiet little pub, grabbed some drinks and sat down on a round table which perfectly suited our group of seven.
The pub was totally empty apart from us and the barman. It was very early in the evening.
A group of three guys walked in and one of them looked very angry. Big and mean he was too. They walked straight over to us and the angry guy looked directly at me.
Angry – You! You’re a big cunt. Let’s have a fight now. Outside!
Me – No thanks mate. We’re here on a lads’ night out and don’t want any aggro.
The lads – Nah come on mate. We just want a drink. Blah blah blah.
Angry – Come on you cunt. Let’s fucking fight now.
By now he’d walked around to my side of the round table. He was a big and very tough-looking guy and I really didn’t want a punch in the mouth off him. I was probably the biggest in our group at 1.90 metres and 110 kg but even so, I didn’t want to fight this big lummox.
Me – Listen mate…
Angry punched me in the side of the face so hard I thought my head had come off. Blood spurted out but no teeth. It hurt a lot and I just held my face thinking “what the hell do I do now?”
I didn’t have to do anything. Andy, who is a very slender and weedy and very sweet young friend of mine stood up.
Andy – No-one hits my mate. Big mistake.
Angry – Oh yeah. What you going to do about it you strip of piss?
Andy sent him sprawling across the next table with one perfect punch to the face. Angry got up and together with his two mates left the pub without another word being said.
The barman walked over and spoke to Andy.
Barman – Wow. That guy you just floored is the hardest guy in town!
Me – Not any more he isn’t. Cheers Andy.
My face hurt for ages but thankfully no serious damage. Andy was our new top mate of the group.
I was offered a $500/month truck allowance, by my employer, to use my own vehicle on service calls. I bought a used truck, for that purpose. I had to carry a $1 million liability insurance policy, due to some customer’s requirements, in order to drive on their property, too. Then, he changed the number to $250. I told him that wasn’t what he had originally told me. That Friday, he gave me a note, as I left to do service calls, and said to think about it. All it had on it was “$350”. Monday morning, I showed up early, and loaded EVERYTHING that belonged to me into my truck. When he showed up, I gave him my building keys. He wanted to know what was going on, and I said “I’m gone.” When he asked if that was how I negotiated, my reply was “I don’t negotiate with liars.”
I sent postcards to the customers I did work for, telling that I was no longer with that company, but was available to keep their equipment running. I was the ONLY one at that company who knew how the stuff worked, and all the repair business went to me. The company had to down-size, and then sold out to a competitor, so my old boss went from owning his own business, to being just another employee.
Too late! The U.S. allows South Korea to produce chips in China, and China is not doing it!
Too late for South Korea, the China ship has sailed.
On a regular basis? Taking a giant gas guzzling car and lifting it to make it even less fuel efficient.
The trucks you see here in America are so obnoxiously big and with callous disregard for global warming. It’s crazy when you drive around here in Florida: 70% or more of the cars are SUVs or Trucks. Literally, 70% or more.
It’s definitely a cultural thing but I wish it would go away. The guys in these lifted trucks are almost always the hyper aggressive drivers the push up behind you and lay on the horn and then flick you off as they go by.
But then, a few minutes later, I’ll see one of them pulled over by a cop. That’s always the most gratifying feeling.
US Supreme Court Tackles Game-Changing Social Media Censorship Case!
Well that’s exactly the thing. The point of attacking the harbor was so they could take on America. There are two reasons that Japan carried out the attack.
The Paper tiger
The Japanese referred to America as a “paper tiger.” What they meant by this was that their military was all bark and no bite, and if the fleet was destroyed there was no way America could come back. What the Japanese underestimated was America’s production capabilities. America was at the time of 1941 one of the largest and most efficient producers of the world, and while FDR was of the intention to stay out of the war, the factories of the United States were churning out tanks, rifles, planes, and ammo to the Soviets fighting the Wehrmacht in the Europe, and Britain fighting the blitz, the Italians and Germans in North Africa, and the Japanese in Burma, China, and Australia. US Shipyards were just as impressive, with destroyers and merchant marine ships built by the hundreds, sold to Britain to protect against the u boats tearing up the Atlantic trade. Japan made the mistake of underestimating the capabilities of US industry. When the US declared war on Japan in retaliation, production went towards building their own military, including the navy. The US navy numbered in the thousands, from the dozens of capital ships to the hundreds of destroyers and submarines, and all of the auxiliary ships and escorts included. In addition, right after the attack the navy raised most of the sunken ships in the harbor. Of the eight battleships we lost, five were raised and went back into the fight, one of them sunk on refloating, and only two of them remain there, USS Arizona and USS Utah. Pearl Harbor remains one of the greatest tragedies in US history, but because of America’s industrial might, it was not the end.
2. The target
From a tactical perspective, another reason for Japan’s attack was what they believed they would destroy and how it would impact the fleet. The Japanese’ main target was not the many battleships and destroyers that were stationed in Pearl Harbor, not the oil tanks, command, or airfields- These were very significant, and their destruction was all devastating to our efforts in getting in the fight, but the most important targets were but one part of the navy:
The US Carriers
It is often said by historians that Pearl Harbor was the end of the days of mighty battleships and battlecruisers and the dawn of the carrier. The six Japanese carriers, Akagi, Kaga, Soryu, Hiryu, Zuikaku, and Shokaku, were the most important part of the Japanese fleet, and carried out the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Japanese knew that the US would only have a chance against the Japanese carriers with the carriers of their own. Therefore, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor believing that the US carriers were there. Fortunately for the US, and the Allies as a whole, the carriers were at sea, safe from the carnage. As a matter of fact, the battleship USS Utah was painted to look like a carrier from the sky, to train US dive bombers, and because of this saw some of the heaviest bombardment of all of the ships, being one of the ships unable to be raised from the bottom. The assessment that the US carriers were essential to the US staying in the fight proved correct. The US launched the Doolittle raid the following year, striking Tokyo for the first of many times in the war from the carrier USS Hornet. The Shoho was destroyed in the following battle of Coral Sea at the cost of the carrier Lexington, but where we really see the tide turn in the Pacific is Midway. The carriers USS Hornet, USS Enterprise, and USS Yorktown crippled the Japanese fleet by destroying Akagi, Kaga, Soryu, and Hiryu. This would not have happened if it wasn’t for the stroke of luck we had with our carriers out at sea when the Japanese struck Pearl Harbor.
Admiral Yamamoto, the brilliant Japanese commander who was behind the attack, which I should say despite its failure to knock out America was still a well planned and impressive attack, astutely believed that a drawn out war with the United States would end in defeat, and despite his best efforts to prevent a drawn out war, he was correct. In the film portrayal of Yamamoto in Tora! Tora! Tora! He is quoted for saying:
“I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with terrible resolve.”
Yamamoto was killed in April of 1943, and with the carrier might have Japan gone as well, the rising sun was doomed to set.
Men are GIVING UP on Women and their hypergamy
There is such a serious problem with RELATIONSHIPS in the West.
Her department acquired a new department head, a newly promoted V.P.
One of his first actions was to identify all of the highest paid (and most productive) managers and terminate them as a cost cutting measure. At that point managers at my wife’s level were considered “at will” employees and, as such, could be terminated at any time with or without cause.
In any case, the V.P. then proceeded to fill the vacant management positions with much lower paid and less qualified staff. All of this happened within a matter of hours on a Friday afternoon. My wife was understandably quite distressed when she got home that evening.
Over the weekend, though, my wife received a call from the executive V.P. who oversaw her department. He called from his home in Southern France late in the evening so he could speak to my wife in the mid afternoon here in SoCal. He asked her to please report to work as usual on Monday morning.
When she got to work on Monday everything was back to normal and the new department head was gone. Fired for incompetence.
My wife stayed with the company more than a dozen years after that. She was eventually terminated permanently after her department had been sold to a different company. This time, though, she received a rather generous golden handshake — 32 weeks severance pay — as she left for the last time.
This is why men are no longer approaching women; Top 10 reasons WHY
I never experienced unconditional love until I got a dog.
Very likely. Their recent MOU to develop semiconductor lithography, naval shipbuilding, marine nuclear reactors are just another episode in that relationship. The glue that binds them is energy and technology. China needs energy and Russia needs technology. Trade between both countries are growing exponentially, currently at about 40% per year. Russia recently announced it would allow China to build a container port in Vladivostok, another indication China is preparing to use the Arctic belt road via northern Russia.
My opinion: There could be a day when Russia buys warships from China. It has already begun with Russia buying a Chinese frigate. It could also be possible that Russia and China will jointly develop gen 6 and gen 7 fighters and bombers, reducing non-recurring costs. Russia needs ‘China speed.’ China needs Russia’s energy from oil/gas to uranium. It is also likely that Russia and China will standardize military calibers and weapons between them so interchangeability and user knowledge will be compatible between both countries. The SCO makes the case for this standardization to increase to SCO members.
Both are BRICS and SCO members and both organizations are growing which gives them more world influence.
It wasn’t exactly on accident. I worked in the office of a commercial laundry business and they asked me to come in on a Saturday to mail out the monthly bills. During the time I was there the assistant manager came in and started hitting on me. He kept urging me to “go in the back and make out”. I refused and soon one of the drivers came in and he had to go talk to the driver. I finished up with the bills and went home. I told my boyfriend “Well, I don’t think I will be working there very ling”. Sure enough the next Tuesday I was let go for some “bookkeeping errors” that weren’t errors and I had been doing them for months without any problems.
What men and women want
Creole Meatloaf and Macaroni
2023 11 09 14 39
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients
1 onion, minced
1/2 green bell pepper, minced
2 tablespoons butter
1 (28 ounce) can tomatoes
1 1/4 cups elbow or broken macaroni
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 to 1 1/2 cups meat loaf, cubed*
Seasoned salt and pepper
Instructions
Cook onion and green bell pepper in butter for 2 or 3 minutes.
Add next four ingredients and 1 cup water. Bring to boil and simmer, covered, about 1/2 hour, stirring frequently.
Add meat loaf and seasoned salt and pepper to taste. Heat through.
Notes
* Use leftover meat loaf.
What will these snowflakes do when things get REALLY tough? We haven’t even started yet.
For a serf: It sure beats being a slave. You are treated as a human being, you have your law-encoded rights and responsibilities, your taxes usually were reasonable and your lord had the responsibility to protect you and provide a free access to the castle. He also had the responsibility to provide you work and livelihood, and if he abused you, you had the legal right to flee to a town.
For a freeman (franklin or yeoman): You had the right to your life, body and livelihood, you could freely carry weapons outside a town, you did not pay rent to a lord and you could choose your profession. And should things go sour, you could freely move to a town.
For a town dweller: Towns were semi-independent domains who often were subordinate to the king alone, and while working can give you living, trade will make you wealthy. Townspeople usually were richer than countrypeople, and towns were bastions of freedom.
For a clergyman: You are the subject of the Mother Church and Father Pope alone, and nobody else. You are no more a subject of the lord, the king or the emperor. You will learn how to read and write, and you are free to pursuit your intellectual tendencies. If you join the Cistercian order, there are good chances you become a great engineer.
For a civil servant: You are the subject of the King alone, and nobody else. Same as with the church on intellectual pursuits, but you also may marry and have kids.
For a nobleman: You are first and foremost a soldier. You practice martial arts and train for war, military skills, leadership skills, equestrian skills and anything needed to serve in arms. You are exempt of taxes because upkeeping a military lifestyle is expensive. Your life is likely to be violent, nasty, brutish and mercifully short, but you might become a knight and a lord one day if you avoid that.
For a lord: You are a semi-independent ruler of your domain, and you are the lord and the hidalgo. You owe allegiance to the King alone, and you either pay it in taxes or serve 30 days in his service. Your main profession is to be the supervisor of the peasants who work on your estate, and maintain the balance between overworking them and providing them decent livelihood. Sorry, no ius primae noctis – that is an Age of Enlightment myth.
For a King: Think positively. You do not have the same absolute power as the sultans and czars in despotism, but neither you will face the same chances of getting assassinated or ousted or mutilated as they experience, and you do not need to kill your little brothers to ensure the throne. It is a good idea to run the country as a family enterprise – give important tasks to your younger siblings – and use the most talented of the lords as civil servants. Just maintain the balance between Church, Lords and Commoners, and you will do just fine.
If you are asking me personally, what is my biggest regret, I would have to say that I regret not taking more pictures of things I did when I was younger, and not documenting the adventures I had.
I find that after 50+ years on this earth, I remember bits and pieces of my life, but there are big chunks of my life that I cannot recall, so having more pictures of those events and having a documented record of those activities would be something that would truly bring me joy, being able to remember more of the life I lived.
My international company failed to have routine office supplies at our US location. Entirely. No office supplies.
So one day I needed a new pen. There were, of course, none. But rather than going out and buying my own at a local store, I decided to order one just to be ornery.
So I filled out the formal requisition form for one pen. I justified it (I wrote stuff and my old pen was empty), then used the proper channels to submit the requisition. The form:
Traveled from my California office to the main US branch office in Boston.
Boston routed the form to their home branch office in London.
London sent the form to the main International headquarters in Paris.
Paris approved the req. then…
Cut out one layer of bureaucracy by sending the approved form direct to Boston (the Paris and London offices hated each other)
Boston sent the approved req. back to my office.
I was then able to go out and buy one pen at corporate expense from the local store.
I was tempted to ask for a sheet of paper next, but Boston eventually decided to fund a small office supply in our location.
Oh. The Internet was around, but I should add that the original requisition form was hard copy. A piece of paper. That form physically travelled from California to Boston to London to Paris back to Boston then back to my office before I bought my pen.
This is what the Nile looks like when it goes through Sudan
image 135
This is The Sudd. It’s Arabic for “barrier”. It’s also part of the Nile. It’s also much bigger than what you see here. It’s not much better even when it floods. Imagine you’re an explorer in, well, any time really and you come across this. The Ancient Egyptians tried to navigate past it for centuries. They utterly failed. Then the Romans decided to have a go at it. They failed too. Europeans tried in the 19th century. They had no better luck.
And where there’s swamp, there’s malaria. Good luck with that.
Europeans only found the source because they decided to avoid it entirely and attack it from the other direction, exploring into Central Africa. That’s not much easier.
image 134
Richard Burton decided to make a go of it. He started in lovely civilized Zanzibar and worked his way overland until he found Lake Tanganyika. “Eureka” he exclaimed, “I have found the source of the Nile”.
However, the guy he brought along with him, John Speke, told him he was nuts. Tanganyika was too low and too small to account for the fact that the Nile never ran dry. Burton told him was an idiot and they returned to England triumph…. no, wait, the scientific community wasn’t convinced.
So Speke got to go on his own expedition. He turned north instead and found the much larger and much bigger Lake Victoria.
He returned to England well, not triumphant, but with enough good data to get funding for another expedition to try to make it to the Sudd and not only did he do that, he found another source of the river that met up in the Sudd, what we now call the “White Nile” as opposed to the larger source flowing out of Lake Victoria, the “Blue Nile”.
So, Speke gets the credit, literally for “connecting the dots”.
Image: Me sitting on my porch at my home in the Central Valley of California.
Well as a disabled person, I am legally blind the cruelest thing, in my opinion, was not said with words.
Deeds speak out loud and clear.
I took a class on a subject of interest to me.
The teacher with a happy smile in her voice told me she had a special place in class for people like me.
It was the back corner, furthest away from all of the others in the class.
Total isolation. I could hear the other members of the class, I could see the shadows o of the other members of the class.
When the class had a pot luck of snacks at the last week of class, somehow I didn’t get the e-mail to ask me to take in something. So I didn’t.
Then no-one actually told me directly that there were snacks available nor did they come over and tell me about the pot-uck offerings.
Though they did make quite a bit of a racket, going back and too to the snacks tables and telling each other who had brought which items.
Another classmate came to the class in about the second week and was sat close by in the same corner. She only attended one week and disappeared. She was profoundly deaf. We could chat okay as she could lip read. But as for interacting with the class it was difficult.
Me being bloody minded as I am, finished the class. I paid good money so I wasn’t going to surrender to unspoken insults.
Biden Angry, Calls Xi ‘Dictator’, US Business Applauds Xi; US Isolated UN SC; Sullivan Sleepless
Very good, and clearly explains the Geo-political situation today.
I was fired on the day I was going to hand in my resignation.
I hated the company: boss played favorites, personnel feedback was nonexistent, and they were very stingy with vacation time, even if you earned the days.
The third point I found out too late. After earning 10 days of personal time, I requested for time off six months ahead. Not only was it declined, I also got a stern talking-to by the same boss who played favorites.
I was so pissed off that I started looking for a job that very same night.
Within two weeks, I got an offer from a company I interviewed the previous year who kept my résumé in the active bin.
I moved my vacation date to the next month, upped the number of days, and got a business class ticket. I printed a resignation letter once I signed the offer at the new job.
The next day, I cared not an iota at work. I was just waiting for 5:00 so that I can hand in my two weeks.
4:30pm came and I got an email from the boss. I was being let go. They didn’t really say why (not that I cared) but they were going to give me a full month’s pay to help me find a new job.
i cleared out my desk, gave a quick thanks to my boss (co-workers have left at this point), and screamed when I got to my car.
I got the final pay the week after, then collected unemployment for a few weeks, and had a bloody fantastic time on vacation.
Growing up in Florida, we used to play at the beach almost every day. At least once or twice a week, we’d be building sandcastles, or kicking the surf when we’d watch a tourist with wide eyes knowing what’s to come…
I’m an empath, and often tried to warn them. As a pudgy six year old however; I wasn’t usually fast enough. By the time I’d be close enough to yell “don’t touch that!!”, the elderly tourist or drunk college kid was already screaming in agonizing pain! The Portuguese man o’ war looks like a shiny blue balloon, or plastic grocery bag. The venom is insanely painful. I watched about a dozen people pee on each other by the time I was 8.
Pretending you are not hungry when going to an expensive restaurant with friends, because you can’t actually afford to order food there.
Acting like you don’t like after-school sports, because you have to bolt to your after-school job, so you have lunch money and bus fares.
Pretending that family commitments prevent you from going on the school trip. You know there’s no way you can pay for it.
Declining invitations to weddings because you don’t have proper clothes to wear and because you have no way of getting there either.
Spending an extra hour in the supermarket so you can make the best choices with the $28 you have for food for a full week.
Listening with horror as co-workers trash the boss who only gave each a $20 gift Visa card. You, on the other hand, are silent and also excited beyond words – you plan to get much needed shoes, a winter coat, and a backpack at the Goodwill store.
Having teeth pulled, which should instead be filled and capped, because it costs one-tenth this way.
Talking to supervisors in chain food stores to find out what they do with damaged food. (Poor people know these stores often have a place where you can go to collect it.)
Adding water to the quart bottle of milk to stretch it.
Taking home unused sugar packets, tea bags and napkins from the fast food place and feeling grateful for them.
These are my memories of being poor. Although I am no longer poor, these memories keep me grateful, and, more importantly, I will always understand the behavior of those whose actions are continually checked by empty pockets.
After Denmark surrendered to the Nazis in April 1940 the status of Iceland was ambiguous. Although Iceland was an independent state, it’s ‘personal union’ with Demark, and dependence on Denmark for its defence and foreign relations, potentially meant it could be occupied by Germany. Its strategic location astride Britain’s Atlantic supply route to the United States made it vital to the United Kingdom’s security.
Britain invited Iceland to join the war as any and, when they rejected this, plans were made to occupy the island. Four Royal Navy ships led by HMS Berwick (above) deposited 745 Royal Marines in Iceland who met no resistance from the Icelandic police force, who were the only permanent armed presence on the island.
Iceland was occupied first by a British Division, then by elements of two Canadian Divisions and then by a brigade of US Marines. The latter arrived in June 1941, a whole six months before the United States officially join the war. This was one of Roosevelt’s most partisan decisions and greatly helped the British war effort as the Canadians could be sent to Britain, where eventually they would take part in the Dieppe raid and the battle for Normandy. Roosevelt sent the Marines as, being part of the US Navy, they were under his direct control, whereas sending the US Army would have required the approval of Congress, which was uncertain. The occupation of Iceland was not always popular with the locals, but one benefit of it was the construction of Rejkjavik airport.
Although planes and ships based in Iceland saw action, the garrison itself saw no action. There were, however, casualties as a result of the Icelandic climate and terrain. A five man patrol of the Kings Own Yorkshire Infantry were lost to the elements, for example. Despite the cold though, there were definitely worse places to spend the Second World.
NOTE
A lot of people have asked why the US Army couldn’t be deployed before war broke out. The answer is complicated, but it’s due to a policy decision rather than an act of the Constitution. Here are the details:
“At the same time, the War Plans Division raised inquiry concerning the effect of the legal restrictions that prohibited the National Guard, members of the Reserve, and men drafted under the Selective Service Act from serving outside the Western Hemisphere and which limited their terms of military service to a period of twelve months. For purposes of naval defense the President had placed the Atlantic frontier of the western world, quite arbitrarily, along the 26th meridian, which excluded the whole of Iceland. [25] The question was one of policy, not geography; and if policy for the moment dictated a course of exclusion, circumstances at any future time might well prescribe a change in policy. Whatever concern was felt during these first days in June seems to have arisen over the time limit rather than the controversial geographical restriction. On this basis it was entirely rational for the Chief of Coast Artillery to observe that selectees would have to be used in constituting the harbor defense regiment proposed as part of the Iceland garrison. In any event the problems posed by the legal restrictions did not seem insuperable as long as the 1st Division was being considered for the nucleus of the force. Although 75 percent of the officers of that division had been drawn from the Reserve, it was presumed that most of them would volunteer for duty in Iceland. The problem, in this respect, was considered to be one of maintaining secrecy. As for enlisted men, only a “small percentage” of them were selectees, and only about 10 percent of the men of the two antiaircraft regiments-the 61st and 68th-were subject to the restrictions written into the Selective Service and National Defense Acts. “
We were once renting a house and saving money towards a down payment to buy, when the owner came and told us he had to sell and had already and we had to be out by the end of the week. We refused since our lease guaranteed us 30 days. The new owner said that lease was void and had our utilities turned off. So as a goodbye gift, we went to the store and bought some old fish and 10 cans of cat food. There was a fireplace in the basement built of brick and had come separated from the back wall. We dropped the fish behind that. The cans of cat food, we opened and placed in crawl spaces throughout both floors of the house.
Well, according to my ex girlfriend of 40 years ago, I am blind, because I didn’t notice that the hostess, had sat down next to me, leaned in close to talk in a loud room, laughed at my jokes (hey, I’m funny) and played with her hair.
My girlfriend said it was so obvious she was about to throw up. Guys are oblivious.
Steve Jobs sold all but one of his stocks in Apple when he left in 1985, when Apple stock was at an all time low. He founded NeXT and was the majority owner when Apple bought the company, though at that point he was almost out of money, on the brink of bankruptcy. He also bought Pixar and it has been rolling out blockbusters every other year for 20 years. He also invested in other companies. Toy Story alone made Steve Jobs a billionaire because Pixar was publicly traded company.
Woz on the other hand gave away a lot of his stock. He financed more than a few huge rock concerts that lost a lot of money. He started a company making remote controls that failed and lost money. He got divorced more than a few times. He helps old Apple employees that are out of luck and deal with sickness. He gives away a lot of his money. But you don’t need to worry about him, he still has a lot and he is according to everyone who actually knows him, a super nice guy. He was never in it to have money, he just wanted a computer that he could fiddle with.
China Warns US “Don’t Try THIS” As Biden Prepares To Hug Xi
Just develop the smart bombs to change the equation from MAD to MGD – i.e., from the “old-fashion-not-so-accurate assured” to the “IoT-satellite-guided guaranteed” way of mass destructure.
These are the AI-enabled hypersonic bombs that cannot be defended against and only a few hundred launched from a control center are needed to completely annihilate the entire country the size of Russia, China or the U.S. Then the 5,000-plus warheads in the nuclear arsenals of Russia and the U.S. would become redundant and useless.
Even the triad security concept of land, air and sea delivery system becomes redundant. No need for those expensive bombers and subsmarines to deliver nuclear warheads as backup when those smart ICBMs can do the job.
The calculus for disarmament becomes very straightforward and simple.
War can be so simple when you know its guaranteed and forever.
And isn’t it why Biden is trying to deny China our advanced chips?
We were in a beautiful relationship for about 3 years. And then suddenly she over texts, broke up with me. No explanation given. Like every other guy, I cried, pleaded for just one reason, and all she said was it’s over, I don’t want to be with you. She has changed her college a month before the break up. And like I suspected she fell out of love with me because there is new guy who approached her. Quite similar to everyone’s love story. Lol
Anyway, I was literally shattered, and broken. I couldn’t believe the girl I thought to be my future left me in such a dire condition.
It’s been three years since she is gone. Yesterday, I got a phone call from her at 2am. Basic points from the calls were:
She was unhappy, crying profusely over the phone. She said she don’t have anyone to trust and talk to, except me. And yes, I talked to her because pretty much I loved her too much.
She said the guy cheated her, and when asked him for a breakup, he said he will going to kill her, he abused and hit her off. And she thought everybody will leave silently like me.
I asked her to do a police complain, she said, she doesn’t want her parents to know, she is stucked.
After few minutes on call, she was laughing, talking to me as if we were never separated, I was wondering how easy the things are for girls.
Then she told me even before her father and brother, I am the person she trust and respect the most. I was flattered but I knew, it’s no more important.
I was again at ground zero, I felt happy talking to her, but the wounds were yet fresh.
I tried not to make her feel bad and bid her bye.
Today I Changed my phone number, and email id!
I do love her a lot, still? Yes. But I cannot give her the power to destroy me again.
One day, I had a woman come into my checkout line and wanted to buy ALL the $1.00 Bic cigarette lighters at the checkout stand.
Between the two sets of lighters, she was purchasing about 35–40 lighters.
I was then ringing up all the rest of the completely full shopping cart of stuff she got in line with. At the end, she then handed me a bunch of coupons.
I was already on guard because buying so many lighters was very unusual. I looked at the coupons and there was a whole stack of them that were for $4.00 off of a $6.00 Lady’s Bic shaver.
She never purchased any shavers, and I told her these coupons could not be used, as she did not have the item.
She said they were for the lighters. I told her, “No, this is for 4 dollars off the shaver, not the lighters.”
She insisted that it would accept, and scan for, the lighters, too. I agreed. I told her I knew it would, but it was because of an error in the coupon codes, and it was not deliberate. We had been made aware of the error and did not accept it. She persisted in telling me that if it scanned, we had to accept it.
“No, Ma’am,” I said. “The coupon has to be for the item the coupon is for, not something else.”
What she was attempting to do was get 4 dollars off a 1 dollar item, giving her a negative 3 dollar balance with every lighter purchased. With about 40 lighters, that would leave her total at -120.00 dollars, which then got balanced out with all the rest of the items in her cart. Had I not paid attention to the actual coupons and just blindly started scanning them, not only would she gotten 40 dollars’ worth of lighters free, she would have gotten over 120 dollars’ worth of other merchandise completely free without paying a single cent.
I told her that what she was attempting was theft. She got irate and claimed it was not theft because she was not trying to take the items out without purchasing them. I told her that was exactly what she was doing by running what she knew to be a scam.
She then did not want to buy any of it, and wanted me to void off all the items.
That is when I got rather devilish myself. I told her quietly that no, she was going to buy everything rung up, as-is, without the scam, or that I would be calling the police for her to be charged with theft of well over 180 dollars’ worth of merchandise.
Either she got charged with theft, or bought what she wanted to buy at the correct total. But, it was not getting voided.
She bought it all.
I never saw her in the store again. Before that, she had been a semi-regular customer, always holding up the checkout as she constantly scammed coupons for far more than what the coupons were supposed to allow.
can’t do the 15th,” John said. “Can we push it back two weeks?” I looked at my calendar, trying to align the dates with our friend Derrick. Then, after finding a great window, John came back with another complication. I rubbed my temples in frustration.
I’m 40 and most of my friends are married and buried in toddlers. They also live in other cities. I try to arrange a trip each year, but coordinating it feels like pushing a boulder up a mountain. Beyond the scheduling conflicts, I’m in competition for their PTO with grandparents and extended family.
As a kid, it was all so simple. The only prerequisite for new friends was the spirit of play. If the other person was down, and nice, they became friends. In college, it was all about who I partied with and saw the most frequently. Everyone was so social. Then, this blur of obligations pulled us all apart.
As social primates, friendships are central to our health and happiness. Yet so many of us are painfully lonely and it isn’t entirely our fault. Since the 1950s, sociologist have asserted that modern life makes it difficult to meet the three conditions for close friendships: proximity, repeated and unplanned interactions, and an environment that encourages people to confide in each other.
Which is why it feels so forced to be planning hangout trips months in advance. It feels like I’m scrambling to keep legacy friendships on life support. I can scarcely plan to meet for dinner with people without complications.
image 137
In school and college, it was so easy because there was endless time for socializing, and we were all on top of each other in dorms and classrooms. And, we didn’t have real bills and adult problems. So how can we make more friends as adults?
Converting new friends
Per one study, it takes 40–60 hours within the first six weeks of meeting someone to turn them from an acquaintance into a casual friend. It takes another 80 to 100 hours to elevate them to true friend status. Which feels like a ton of time as a career driven person. But these connections can be built up over longer stretches.
The obvious answer for me was work, back when I had an office job. But the people at my office weren’t necessarily the people I wanted to spend my time with. Sometimes, we just have to work with what is in front of us. It can even boost competency. Researchers found that doctor coworkers who became friends, performed better at their job. A personal connection and trust can boost performance in team environments.
In March of 2020, four teens were stuck on a boat in Cuba. They’d intended to fly back to the Netherlands. Then the pandemic struck and they decided to sail home. The intensity of spending weeks on the boat together, working to navigate as a team, turned them all from strangers into close friends. One friend said, “Being around someone 24 hours a day, you tell them everything. You don’t do that when you are home.”
My friend, who went to prison in his early 20s after being caught up with a bad crowd, said the same thing happened during his five year stint. Today, he is doing fine and in his late 40s, but is still friends with his former cellmates.
The challenge is that we apply more filtering mechanisms with age. We often filter people out by political views, social class, and do so without realizing it. It’s useful to be attuned to what you want in a friend, but beware of letting this turn into snobbish gatekeeping.
Getting a grip on potential friends
One study used Christmas cards in Western society to approximate social networks and estimated each of us have around 121 acquaintances. Other studies have found wide variances from this number. But it is exceedingly rare for anyone to have zero acquaintances.
These acquaintances are potential friends and not to be dismissed. Weak ties, as sociologists call it, are still great for mental wellbeing even if it is just a brief conversation. Today, I found out my beloved gym of seven years is closing. The owner, Joe, let me in for a final workout, even though the lights were off and they were cleaning up. We found time to chat about life and his decision to quit. I’ve always enjoyed talking to him so we exchanged phone numbers to potentially hang out. The other option is to reconnect with older friends you haven’t spoken to in years.
Accept that rekindling friendships is just more work in adulthood. Remember when your buddy got their first girlfriend or boyfriend and stopped hanging out? That’s everyone now. If you have a partner, it’s worth thinking through which potential friend has a partner who would vibe with them.
Also, practicing “self-disclosure”, or opening up about your life, is proven to boost connections with people. One study found three great insights about disclosing. One, people who give more intimate disclosures tend to be more liked than those who don’t. Two, people disclose more to those they like. And three, people like you more after you disclose. This comes with a caveat: don’t make it too personal, too soon. Avoid mud slinging from your divorce and giving play-by-plays from the bedroom.
The importance of maximizing time
My buddy has two kids and said he has one hour of total free time each weekday, and that when he finally gets that hour, he is desperate to decompress and have some time alone. Yet he also wishes we hung out more. This is a common theme around the country. People are lonely and crave more connection. Operate with this assumption, rather than starting from the assumption of someone judging or not liking you.
Remember to think about the places you frequent, and the potential friends you could make and maintain through those interactions. List out a few acquaintances and consider upgrading them. The key with any of these people is to also do things outside the place you regularly see them.
If you don’t see people on a regular basis, consider joining a club or taking up a hobby that involves other people. Then, get to work. Initiating doesn’t have to be heavy. Just something as simple as, “We should hang out some time.”
Lastly, be real and have conversations. Don’t spend 45 minutes talking about the weather. Vulnerability has a mutually boosting likability effect. You’ll both be happier in the end.
Don’t say “I am here if you need anything” when being more specific will truly help. “I am coming over tomorrow to drop off some soup” is way better.
Don’t glance over someone’s shoulder when they are in the middle of a story that matters to them.
Don’t look at your phone at all when you are spending time with someone.
On a plane if your seat is tight don’t recline it. Also, let the person squeezed in the middle seat use both arm rests.
Be extra nice if someone is serving you: giving you a manicure, bringing you food, preparing you a drink. Also please don’t hit on them. They are not charmed. They are serving you.
If anyone says “you hurt my feelings” the only correct response is “I am listening.” Not “I didn’t intend that” or “I was joking” or “wow you are sensitive.”
If you can make someone’s day a bit smoother, please do.
People want to feel heard more than they want advice.
People want to feel seen more than they want to be fixed.
People want to be sincerely complimented more than they want constructive criticism.
Say thank you a lot. Say it all the time. Add why you are saying it. “You always get my coffee just right. Thank you.” “You make my day sunnier. Thank you.” Thank you for reading, sharing and commenting on what I write. It encourages me. It makes my day.
American Couple React “America Compared: Why Other Countries Treat Their People So Much Better”
When I was first living with my (present) wife we were living in Nanshan. This is a suburb in Shenzhen, China. We had a little dog. She was a Bomei. The dog’s name was “yo yo”.
Well, my wife wanted to save some money and cut yo yo’s hair herself.
The only thing was… well… she was drinking alcohol when she did it.
Uh oh.
…
Poor yo yo.
She shaved it all off, and yo yo was so very, VERY pissed off.
She would go to the standing mirror, look at herself, sigh and then go back to her bed and sleep off her depression.
It was a long time ago. Maybe 2003 or 2004.
Poor little Yo Yo.
Trust me, everyone… a word to the wise… never cut your dog’s hair when you are drunk.
Europe had just emerged from a terrible Great War, and everyone wanted to cut the ties with the past. The World War One was simply a terrible disaster which cost the lives of millions of fine young men and destroyed gazillions worth of property. And the World War One effectively killed Christianity in Europe. The industrial mass carnage was simply too much.
Europe was wiped mentally and spiritually into a blank slate, and this also included fine arts and architecture. New Totalitarian ideologies, such as Communism, National Socialsism and Fascism had emerged, and the new generation hated anything bourgeoisie, anything hand-made, anything posh and cute, anything feminine. One of the most important men in the architecture of the era was Swiss-born Edouard Jeanneret aka Le Corbusier, whose pamphlet Towards a New Architecture was the start bang of the run of hideous, ugly and banal architecture.
Of course Corbu did not aim for hideous, ugly and banal. What he wanted was natural light, air, sanitation and effectiveness. The centuries old European cities had very little to speak about commodities – many did not have central heating, central water supply nor indoors loos. (They came only later.) And he wanted to make a total break with the 7000 years of architectural legacy. Not evolution, but revolution. this is how the box-arts architecture emerged.
According to Corbu, the problems of architecture are the same all around the world, and the solutions also are the same all around the world. Everything returns to the three basic forms – cube, cone and ball. Away with gabled roofs, decorations, ornaments, frizes, symmetry, anything unnecessary! Light! Warmth! Joy! Buildings are nothing but vertical streets! Sameness must prevail! Everything shall be the same from Arkhangelsk to Antofagasta!
Meanwhile in Germany, the Bauhaus sported similar ideas. While le Corbusier leaned towards Fascism, Bauhaus was a Communist hotbed. Everything shall be mass-produced! Away with pastel colours and genteel forms! Away with decorations and ornaments! Everything shall be standardized!
The new architecture – International Style– spred incredibly fast. Because the year 2000 was near. This was the future – and it did away with past. Everyone now waited for year 2000. It was to be a concrete milestone of the future. See, the odometre gears revolve and the new numbers set in. And the architects wanted to build bridge to the future.
Nazis and Fascists were enamored of the new style. Bauhaus was done away because it was a hotbed of Communists, but the Nazis adopted the Bauhaus style eagerly. Likewise in Italy, Futurism was the offficial style of Fascism in arts and Italian Rationalism in architecture. Not some kind of Neo-Classicism which one could expect.
Came the World War Two, and the cities in Britain, Netherlands, France, Germany and Eastern Europe were simply obliterated. They had to be rebuilt – and they were rebuilt in the new style. And a new technique of building – Plattenbau – had been invented. The large panel system-building revolutionized construction and made houses cheaper than ever.
But this meant also the revolution on architectural thinking. The old buildings had been built indefinitely, or at least as long as the razing craze, fire or aerial bombardment would destroy them. Now the concept of lifespan entered in architecture. Edifices would last 50 to 60 years after which they would be ready to be demolished and replaced. So there was no reason to build beautiful any more.
Two world wars had killed the artistic soul. The architecture must be true and honest. The world is ugly, so architecture must be ugly. The world is fragmented and broken, so the architecture must reflect it. The materials must be left raw and unfinished to be honest to them. Brutalism had been born.
And the future was closer than ever. The 1960s finally demonstrated the future was at hand. True, we didn’t know exactly what the future would be like, but we knew that it had to be one of a few alternatives. The future was a world with a distinct architecture. It had its own way of speaking. It had its own technology. It was for all intents and purposes a different land where people dressed differently, talked differently, ate differently, and even thought differently. It was where scientists were wizards, where machines were magically effective and efficient, where tyrants were at least romantically evil rather than banal, and where the crystal spires and togas would prevail.
Then the long-awaited Year 2000 (or rather 2001, if you prefer) came. The odometer wheels revolved and the numbers turned. Suddenly we realized we lived now in that future which we had built in the 1960s – and it was no different from the past. It is now 2023 – we are well in that future – and nothing has really changed. The world did not change by revolution, but by evolution. Meanwhile, the centuries- and millennia-old towns, cities and buildings had evolved by constructing modern age amenities within – without destruction, simply by building waterworks, sanitation and Internet connections within those buildings built centuries ago and made to last for centuries. Evolution 1 – revolution 0. “Building a bridge to the future” sounds just as corny as building a causeway to next Tuesday.
For people of the generations who had lived through the tarnished promises of the Atomic Age, the Space Age, the Computer Age, and the This That and Another Age, the year 2001 was a gateway. We waited twenty, thirty, forty years and some longer to pass though that gate into a time when spaceships the size of ocean liners plied between colonised planets, where cities were colourful collections of brand new towers without a single old building or blade of grass.
Turned out the future was hideous, banal, bland, ugly and simply terrifying. And it was not the future anymore. It was now. The future was now here, and had become the present. We no more had a past, and we no more have a future either – what we have is perpetual present, here and now. The years turn and nothing really changes. Or should I say, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
And now the lifespan thinking in architecture is bearing fruit – we are losing those futures now. The Brutalist and the Plattenbau buildings are now reaching the ends of their designed lifespans, and they are being pulled down. Every day we lose one or more of those futures. Most of us say good riddance – nobody except arts and history professionals will miss those ugly, hideous and banal buildings like we miss the destroyed beautiful buildings of the past centuries.
Here goes the Vesiputoustalo (Waterfall House) in my hometown. Built in 1985, it was abandoned in 2017 and demolished 2022. The house had a terrible mildew and internal air problem, and had a functional lifespan of barely 32 years. Another future becomes a heap of gravel.
So why our world is still plagued with ugly architecture despite having more architectrs now than ever in history? Because the doctrines of Modernism and International Style still prevail in all architectural schools and technical universities in the world. The students are still today indoctrinated to build that same hideous architecture as has been built during the past 90 years. Repeat styles are not allowed unless they repeat the past 50 years.
And yet, all futures have now been explored. The same has happened in architecture as what happened in the fine arts in the 1970s. All isms have been tried and all turned stale. Like Gollum, we have now explored all the roots and all the caves and they turned empty. This general disillusionment has now produced the spiritless and soulless Postmodernist architecture. Anything goes.
Most of all, it is all about money. Building ugly is cheap. Cutting corners and cutting away anything unnecessary is a way on saving money and on costs.
The dreams of le Corbusier and other Modernists turned out nightmares in the real life.
Leave The West! Move To China Now!
Like it or not, Russia and China are running circles around the USA. Better learn Mandarin and Russian. We love you Sabrina!
Creole-Style Pork and Red Bean Chili
On a spiciness scale of 1 (mild) to 5 (hot), this chili is a 3 with chaurice only or a 2 with pork tenderloin and chaurice combined.
creole style pork red bean chili
Prep: 15 min | Cook: 55 min | Yield: 6 to 8 servings
Ingredients
1 teaspoon vegetable oil
2 pounds chaurice sausage (or other spicy pork sausage, like chorizo), removed from casing*
2 cups finely diced yellow onion
1 cup diced celery
1 cup finely diced green bell pepper
3 cups cooked Camellia Brand Red Kidney Beans
2 teaspoons dried thyme leaves
3 (14.5 ounce) cans fire-roasted diced tomatoes
4 large cloves garlic, minced
1 to 2 tablespoons Chef Paul Prudhomme’s Pork & Veal Magic
1/4 cup tomato paste
2 cups thinly sliced green onion tops
Kosher salt, to taste
Fresh thyme leaves, for garnish
Instructions
Heat oil in a large Dutch oven set at medium-high. Add the chaurice sausage, and, using a wooden spoon, break up the sausage into bite-size chunks. Stir and cook until the sausage is fully opaque, about 8 minutes. (If also using pork tenderloin, do not add yet.)
Add onion and cook until translucent, about 6 minutes.
Add celery and bell pepper and cook until soft, about 5 minutes.
Add Camellia Brand Red Kidney Beans, dried thyme, tomatoes, garlic, and Pork & Veal Magic®. (If using diced pork tenderloin, add it at this time.) Bring to a boil, cover, reduce heat to medium-low and cook until slightly thickened, about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Add tomato paste and stir until thoroughly combined, taking care not to break up the beans. Bring chili to a boil, stir in green onions and add Kosher salt to taste. Cover, remove from heat and let stand for 20 minutes before serving.
Garnish individual bowls of chili with fresh thyme leaves.
Notes
* For a milder flavor, use 1 pound chaurice and 1 pound pork tenderloin, diced.
Me, wearing a Best Buy shirt and buying something from the 7–11 down the street: “Hello”
7–11 owner: “Oh hi, how are you today!”
Me: “Pretty good I guess. Best Buy isn’t giving me enough hours though.”
Owner: “Do you want to work here?”
Me: “…yes, actually.”
Owner: “Can you start tomorrow at 6am?”
Me: “…yes, actually.”
Owner: “OK, see you then.”
Now, to be fair, at that point I’d been in that particular 7–11 maybe 3 times a week for 3 years leading up to then, and I knew the owner and his family decently well.
But still. I went in to buy cigarettes and left with a new job. Pretty nice.
Russia-US security agreement. Conflict on two fronts w/ Jeffrey Sachs (Live)
We, fortunately, have not yet had a house fire, but some neighbors of my daughter did. The whole family was at a movie and arrived home to find their house on fire, and firemen already battling the blaze. The house was saved, but there was extensive and very expensive damage, making the house uninhabitable for months. The fire had started from a clothes dryer left running, and a blockage caused the motor to overheat.
Since then, I have two rules: Never leave the house with the dryer running, and also, clean, not only the dryer vent after every load, but also the dryer line to the outside on a regular basis.
I also, at one time, prevented a major fire at work when I smelled overheated electrical wires. I had a great deal of difficulty persuading the maintenance people to cut a hole in the ceiling where I could smell the wires, but they finally did, just as the flames erupted.
As on date there is an oversupply of 17.2 Million Homes in China
There are 17 Million homes built or being built without takers , built in anticipation of being sold for which developers have already borrowed loans
The Cumulative loans on them are around 3.4 Trillion RMB ($ 500 Billion) needing interest payments of around 165 Billion RMB a year
There are a further 35 Million Units built or being built with takers but which haven’t been concluded and with at least 50% payment pending
The Cumulative burden of these units is around 6 Million RMB ($ 813 Billion)
88% of these Homes are in the Top Cities – Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen etc
That’s $ 1.3 Trillion worth of homes waiting to be sold or fully sold
The Reasons for the lack of demand include :-
Very tough requirements to avail mortgage loans since 2018
Restrictions on Second and Third Home ownership since 2020 as part of Common Prosperity
Tier 2 and 3 Cities developing very fast and real estate much more affordable. In Chongqing City i can buy 143 Sqm for 1.625 Million RMB against a mere 52.5 Sqm in Shanghai
General lack of faith in Residential Property as a source of Investment anymore
Yes Chinas worst case scenario is a $ 1.3 Trillion HIT assuming China decides to burn the entire issue and pay for all these units and plug the hole
However since China won’t raise debt to pay off the hole like US or India would, it means Chinas strategy will be long term and that will take at least 6 years or until 2028 to absorb this amount effectively and cost maybe 1.5% a year in growth (Hence around 4–4.2% instead of 5.7% a year for the next few years)
China could raise 10 Trillion Debt and plug the hole fully tomorrow. It is the only nation on earth that can do so. Yet if it does, it begins to follow the US into a path of no return which China, a producer economy doesn’t want to do
Good news is today, there is no fresh problem
The old problem has to be sorted out and that will take a few more years
This Is Why So Many Women Are Single
” I’m loyal, but I am not monogamous” ” I’m loyal , but I am bisexual ” ” I’m loyal , but I have all my exes in my DMs to this day” ” I’m loyal , but I do OF ” To me , the reason why a lot of these ladies are single/ in pseudo relationships is because they don’t know what the word loyal means .
Two years ago, my son moved from the UK to the US (Texas). He works in IT (network engineer). His salary now is more than double of what he made in the UK. He got married last October and his wife works a minimum wage job. Yet, combined they make more now than me and my wife ever did.
So, you would think that he’s now better off than when he worked in Britain. Think again.
Healthcare costs a fortune. Last month, my daughter in law needed emergency dental surgery (root canal). Co-pay 3,000 USD.
Since he’s a recent immigrant, his credit score is not all that great. Meaning he can’t get a mortgage to buy a home. So, they’re paying 2K pcm in rent.
Since public transport in the US is either in a shocking state or non-existant, they both need cars to get to/from work. Cost of buying/running/insuring something decent is substantial.
Utilities are generally more expensive. The monthly electricity bill in particular is high (because living in Texas means you run the AC pretty much all of the time).
Food prices are about the same, though the portions are larger. Quality is a lot lower. Steaks in particular: all water and hormones. Sugar in everything.
So while is monthly gross pay is higher than this side of the Atlantic, his monthly disposable income (after all the bills are paid) is a lot less. It would be fair to say that they live paycheck to paycheck most months. When my son and his family want to come over for a visit, we pay for their trip. Whilst he’s a real go-getter and loves his job (and the opportunities he has in the US) my daughter in law is beginning to realise that they would enjoy a superior quality of life in Europe.
I worked n the restaurant business on and off for around 15 years. In all that time, I was lucky enough to work with good hard working people. There was only one person I will never forgive, a person who I worked with who I thought was a friend. We used to tend bar together on busy nights and we made pretty good money. There used to be a group of guys on a bowling team who would come in once a week a they always left us a large tip. I remember after they left I was cleaning up the bar and noticed there wasn’t their usual tip there. I asked “my friend “ if she took the tip off of the bar and she said no. I didn’t think much about it until the owner of the bar pulled me aside and told me my coworker told him I pocketed the tip. I’m many things , but I’m not a thief. She eventually admitted to stealing tips because she was in a lot of debt. She was fired
“Can you help us save him? the nurse asks. “He’s failing fast. Not responding to medication. We have nothing more here to keep him alive.”
“What do you mean?” I say. “ You mean the doctor can’t give him more drugs? Please, please.”
“Who’s at home? Does he have a favourite stuffy? What about a pet? Think about it and let us know.” The nurse is detached and unemotional.
And I’m falling apart.
It is a cold, blustery winter morning in January, 1984. Winters in Northwest Canada can be brutal and this week was especially miserable. The wind heaped the snow in large drifts around the house; not our house, mind you. Living at the in-laws. A devastating fire a short time ago. I say, “Good to remind us how the homeless live.” There is no time to feel sorry for ourselves.
“Shh, shh, baby, my baby, shh.” I sing as I rock back and forth to calm him down.
His arms flail. He lets out a piercing scream. Growls. Racks my face. Finds my eyes and claws at my eyeballs.
Our family physician writes on his prescription slip: Query spinal meningitis. Sends baby and me to a paediatrician. “This is an acute emergency,” he says calmly. “Your appointment’s made.”
Hysteria rises in me. My legs turn to jelly. The sound roaring in my ears is deafening.
And baby son lies still. Pale. Too still. Pale. Deathly still.
Another race against time. I remember a small crowded room of bored patients. I remember a nurse calling my son’s name. And I also remember rushing down a flight of stairs, throwing open a door, and racing into a crowded street.
My husband looks wide-eyed at us.
“Go. Go. Go. He’s dying. Oh my God, he’s dying. Hurry to the General.”
We screech to a halt in front of the hospital. I stumble awkwardly nearly blinded by tears flowing freely now. The specialist, just seen, races by with his doctor’s bag in hand.
I run into the hospital and a front desk clerk gestures towards the elevator. “Run. They’re ready.”
We call for the resident priest.
“Please baptize him.” I choke on my words then. “And give him the Last Rites if need be.”
Life stands still at times like this. Husband and I huddle together, entwined branches of a single tree. We sit in parallel, silent prayer begging God for mercy. We’ve waited thirteen years for our little boy, a son who will carry on a dying family name. We can’t bear the thought of losing him today.
Hours later, after his abdominal surgery, the attending doctor walks towards us. We search his weary face, but find no answers. His words come haltingly.
“The fight’s just begun. Your son is critically ill. “
He quickly describes our son’s diagnosis, surgical procedures, present condition.
Intussusception. Bowel blockage caused the small intestine to telescope into the large intestine. There was total blockage. The surgeon made an incision in his belly and removed eighteen inches.
Tells us finally that our son’s odds of survival: ten percent.
Ten percent? We prop each other up, slump over in our chairs, cover our faces, and cry.
The next week is a blur. I call my mom and beg for prayers. She phones everyone she knows. Holds prayer gatherings at her home a couple times weekly for a month. Attends Mass and asks the priest if she can address the congregation at each of four Sunday Masses. Continues to give updates to her various support groups.
There are new developments daily. Our tike is a fighter. He is watched around the clock by rotating nurses who hang over his crib. When he starts yanking out tubes, his hands are tied together with cotton restraints. The staff won’t listen to my pleas. “I’ll sit here all day, all night holding his hands, but please don’t tie him up.”
They send me home. “You’ve got to sleep. You can’t save him all by yourself. Trust us.”
But he gets worse. Lies listless.
Still. Pale. Too still. Pale. Deathly still.
Then, without warning, cardiac arrest.
Husband and I pass a crash cart on the way back from the cafeteria. Not for a moment do we think it comes from our son’s room. We are oblivious to the gravity of his condition until the doctor intercepts us. “Your son’s heart stopped. But he’s fine. We did our job.”
Suddenly our son is floundering once more. The medical staff run out of answers and I can see the troubled look in their eyes.
“Any suggestions, folks?“
Our daughter is three. She loves her brother as if he were one of her precious Barbie dolls. Packs him around like a sack of flour. Lines up stuffies in his crib and makes up plays which make him giggle. Helps me change his cloth diapers, even the poopy ones.
And I think, she’s one hell of a trooper, too. Held her baby brother in a freezing car a month ago while I alerted the neighbours to call the fire trucks.
Sister leans over his crib and says, “Hi, little guy! “ Simply that.
And he cocks his head and listens.
Three simple words from a protective big sister makes all the difference.
He starts fighting. And wins his battle.
………….
Son’s life and health have been a challenge over the years; however, as difficult as circumstances might be, our mighty fighter perseveres.
Three days ago his big sister’s “little guy” turned thirty-six.
When I was a kid, a truck dropped off a huge box at our house that was addressed to my mother.
According to the paperwork, it was an automatic dishwasher, something that had just been invented, and we had no idea why we suddenly had one.
It took a few phone calls to figure out that, months earlier, my mother had entered a free sweepstakes at Zayres department store and the appliance was a prize.
She was scared to death of the newfangled device and never even hooked it up.
Yeah. It was funny as hell. I got a call from my counterpart at corporate. He has gotten laid off and he called me before they could escort him out to tell me we were getting laid off in three months. I confronted my boss and she turned ashen white but in the end she was honest with me.
Scott Ritter – “Palestine and Hamas have won.. Israel is in BIG TROUBLE!..”
In the United States, do not argue with the police. They are armed and they are jumpy because so many other people in the US are armed, including a lot of people who should not be.
Several years ago an Italian professor attending an academic conference in California crossed a street at a location other than a designated crosswalk. It would not occur to an Italian in a million years that this might be a crime. A cop saw him and shouted at him. He, being Italian, questioned the officer. The officer hurled him to the ground, tore his clothes, roughed him up and took him to jail for refusing to obey a lawful order given by a police officer. (He was eventually released without charge.)
The fact is, if the police are violating your civil rights, or even if they are breaking the law, there is nothing you can do about it at the time. Resisting them risks your being shot. Obey without question.
I was on a date with a veterinarian. She was a beautiful brunette with big eyes. She was a bit crazy too.
It was our second date and we were drinking a beer at a restaurant and somehow, we got to talking about how kids were growing up too fast, which is code for them sleeping around at too young of an age.
Just as I was drinking a sip of a beer, she said, “Yeah, I mean, I guess I get it. Kids are curious and going to experiment. When I was 6-years-old I stuck a pen in my p#ssy.”
I choked on my beer really hard and starting coughing. She immediately turned red, blushing with embarrassment for having been so candid and said, “Are you ok? Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
I was also red at this point from my brief oxygen shortage. I waved it off, still coughing, and said, “No worries at all! Kiiiids these days.”
MOBS SWARM US NUKE BASE, LEBANON/ ISRAEL ON BRINK, NUCLEAR SUB NEAR IRAN, IRAQ MOBILIZING
“President” Biden distributed 100 nuclear warheads all over the world. WTF?
I was a teenager. It was a temporary job. They had this big mail machine that folded letters, put them into envelopes and sealed them.
My job? It was sit stand between three of these machines and to squirt some water on the brushes every few minutes. The auto wetting water tank was broken and it was cheaper to hire me as a teenager (this was before UK minimum wage so it was about 30p an hour) until they could replace the water tank. You had to give it 3 sprays for it to be in the sweet spot anymore and the envelopes would be too wet, any less and too dry.
It drove me absolutely spare as the machines would beep each time a letter went through it. You had three machines beeping and you were stood there with a bucket of water and a couple squirty bottles. You’d hear the beeps in your sleep.
An actual wood burning fireplace. I got my first one in 1986, and every place has had one since. Unlike a wood stove, I can have a fire three seasons a year, without overheating my house.
When the first fluffy flakes of winter start falling, my wife and I start a fire. We might have a glass of wine, possibly a hot rum toddy, maybe mulled wine, brandy, or maybe peppermint schnapps and hot chocolate.
We sit in front of the fire, eating Brie and crackers, maybe some other snack. Possibly popcorn.
When it gets close to Christmas the Christmas music is playing. Two puppies at our feet.
Every Christmas when family comes over, we have the fire burning in the background, the tree is center of attention, but everyone loves hearing the pine snap crackle and popping in the fireplace.
The restructed events of the disaster have been pieced together over the years.
Mount Vesuvius was a known volcano in Roman times but it had not erupted in several centuries. No one knew why some mountains erupted and no one could predict when they would. However, due to the nature of fault lines in this region geologists now believe smaller earthquakes and eruptions simply relieves the pressure along the fault line that runs along Italy.
The Latins had no way of knowing that. All they know was volcanic soil grew good crops and volcanic ash was a key ingredient in Roman concrete. Italy was also the world’s factory at the time, so the area around Vesuvius centered around the city of Pompeii who was a big exporter of wine and metal tools. This was a pre-industrial society, so most people rarely went outside walking distance of their homes and for most residents this was their whole world.
In the days before the blast, many minor quakes were reported in the area around Vesuvius. No one knew what this meant, but Roman academics would later take this as the sign of potential eruption.
The exact moment of the blast was witnessed by the historian Pliny the Younger. He was reading Livy while his father governor Pliny the Elder was eating lunch. Indeed, the blast occurred during the lunch hour, as the most common find in Pompeii were tables set for lunch that were buried in ash and partially preserved. Pliny’s mother called them over to the window urgently and they looked and saw Mount Vesuvius’ summit turned into a tower of ash. Explosives didn’t exist in this period, and Pliny tried his best to explain how it appeared the force of the hot gas inside the mountain blown away the summit. The danger this caused was lost on no one, and Pliny the Elder gathered his soldiers to travel down across the Bay of Naples and rescue as many as he could while his family went away.
This was the worst kind of eruption. The lava is actually the least dangerous part of a volcano. Safe enough to be a tourist attraction at a distance and safe enough geologists is firefighting gear collect lava samples directly. The second most dangerous is the ash and rock because it tends to fall out of the sky and/or form hot avalanches Earth called pyroclastic flows. The hot gas is the most dangerous as it both suffocates and burns. Common gasses are CO2 and HS that are commonly disolved in solutions underground but bubbles up like a soda fountain inside the mountain. This causes volcanic explosions and pyroclastic flows.
The residents of Pompeii went outside and it was soon raining ash and rock as Vesuvius vented its contents into the sky. Evacuations started immediately, and anyone who wanted to stay was quickly convinced to leave with the first pyroclastic flows that nearly reached Pompeii. As Vesuvius lost pressure it stopped being able to support a column of ash and rock and this collapsed forming the flow. However, that simply restricted the throat of the volcano, allowing pressure to build up again in a cycle that only got worse as the day progressed. The first victims found in the bottom layer of ash in Pompeii were all killed by falling rock.
Travel was a big deal in a pre-industrial world as you would be gone for days and it was quite strenuous. Among items victims were carrying included bread, coins, and housekeys. The latter back in those days was a heavy iron thing that didn’t easily fit in a pocket. Most of the dead from Pompeii were persons unable to flee including a soldier with a bad toothache, a near term pregnant lady and her husband, and an old bedridden man and his teenaged grandson among others. Most of these people were not buried with their houses as the ash levels rose, but were killed lady by hot gas. Indeed, this is how we know the pyroclasic flows got worse through the afternoon, as the victims closer to the mountain are typically buried deeper in ash. The final pyroclastic flows killed the most people including Pliny the Elder who stayed behind after his men loaded up a boat of refugees in order to organize the evacuation.
This is also how we know there were a lot more victims than we find buried in ash because Pliny the Younger recounts how these bodies were all recovered and given proper funerals. Likewise, we know there are many more bodies that have not been found as much of what we know of is concentrated in the city itself when the majority of this region’s population was dispersed in the countryside. However, country folk were much more dispersed so finding said bodies is far more difficult and more is discovered every decade.
All that said, the bulk of the population managed to escape. The eruption only effected the immediate area of the blast and once out of sight of the mountain people survived and later returned to find a volcanic plain where the city had been. The layer of ash and pummice stone was roughly 20 feet deep and it simply wasn’t worth it to unbury the homes, many of which had collapsed under the weight. The whole city was effectively homeless and Emperor Titus personally arrived to survey the damage. Titus directed both state funds and his personal money to rebuilding Pompeii, and within two decades a planned city emerged. However, no one in Italy ever forgot how on one day that was otherwise like any other a mountain simply exploded for no reason and that most of the victims simply happen to be downwind of the disaster.
You likely seen those sculptures of Pompeii victims, but those are not bodies. The bodies rotted away leaving voids in the ash, and archeologists simply filled the voids with plaster to reveal the Pompean’s final moments, most clearly dying in agony.
Brian Berletic: War is COMING as China Rejects Dangerous US Maneuvers in Taiwan
“Let’s be frank about the Taiwan issue, where the US is involved. The US cares next to nothing about the well-being of Taiwanese people, who are Chinese in race and ethnicity. Why should they? Look at the way the US government treats Asians in their own country, many of whom are citizens. So what about other nationalities? Yea, that somes it all up in a nutshell.”
I’ma be honest, it’s fucking nerve racking. I had to give the period talk when I dont even know the period talk. I had to be the one to wake her up at 2am when she was 8 with police behind me to tell her that her mother overdosed and died. I get up everyday and makes sure she gets to school, leave work, pick her up and take her to excuricculer/home/friends/wherever the fuck, then go back to work and finish my 12 hour shift. Pick her up if not at home. Cook/order/figure out dinner, spend some time with her try to get to laugh at least once a day, make sure she gets her shower in, hug her tight kiss her forehead tell her I love her and goodnight, then go lay down and try to sleep myself …to wake up and do it all again.
Wanna know what I can’t do? Break down and cry. Blame her mom. Blame my mom. Blame the world for putting me and her though what we been through. And some days, that is all I wanna do. But when I feel tears in my eyes I’ll walk back to her room and look at her sleeping, usually her back to me.
I remember then why I keep getting up every morning
I’m in my 70s and retired now, but years ago, worked as the President’s assistant for an accounting firm.
Many times over the 4 years that I worked there, he would say, “I need this done by Monday.”
I would jump right on it and work all weekend if necessary. The reason being, he and the other owners of the small company treated me like gold.
I was a single Mom. When I first started working there, I was separated from my alcoholic husband, heading to divorce. I had no money to pay the mortgage or car insurance. I confided in one of the owners and the next thing I knew, they handed me a check to cover everything past due. They deducted a small amount each week from my paycheck to pay them back.
There was no problem if I had to stay at home with a sick child. If my work for the day was done, they had no problem if I hit the road early to avoid rush-hour traffic. My hours were flexible because they knew if they needed me to work late or on the weekend, I would cheerfully do it. They gave me great raises. They valued me as an employee and I never took advantage of it.
Not all small business owners are horrible people. I was lucky to work for such a great team. The only reason I left was to remarry and move out of state. I heard later they sold the company.
World at end of 200 yrs of North Atlantic rule: Sachs
I’ve worked with Chinese tech companies. Their engineers and scientists are devoted to their families, employers and country.
China has the capacity to leap frog the US in many different technologies. Take your pick, they are on it.
The Chinese government places a high value on a highly educated population. Engineering and scientific professionals are leading a revolution in advancing scientific innovation in China.
Their current leader, Xi, was a chemical engineer before becoming involved in his political career. In fact, many Chinese politicians are former engineers, refreshing thought isn’t it?
The motivations for innovation in the US and China are a key point in China leap frogging the US. Both countries reward success in innovation with financial incentives.
But, the Chinese have a greater sense of pride in their country and it’s future.
The US is presently extremely divided politically, current leadership is seeking short term monetary goals over the advancement of scientific innovation.
China may take the lead in further technological and scientific breakthroughs in this environment.
I had this scenario happen to me. A group of us were on a whitewater rafting trip and we went to dinner. All of us got the buffet, which was huge and had everything you could imagine (including prime rib). One of the couples both ordered the prime rib dinner off the menu, with appetizers, desserts and extra sides. When the waiter came to check on us and see how we were doing and if we were ready to pay, I spoke up and said “separate checks for all of us, please”. The waiter winked at me, other couples smiled, the couple that ordered the dinner had a fit. “We agreed we would split ALL costs! We can’t afford this unless we do”. I just smiled and said “we agreed that we would split costs, that was before we realized we would be taken advantage of. It’s separate checks for us from now on”. The other couples instantly said “agreed!” and “I didn’t agree to split the cost of a $125 dinner for you two when ours was $30!” I got the death glare, and neither of them spoke a word to me after that. When we got home I noticed I was blocked on everything. Oh well. They weren’t friends of mine and I found them to be not team players-not someone I would choose to be friends with.
I have a relative that I thought was a wonderful person and mother. Her spouse died suddenly when their daughter was 13 or 14 (they live in a different state than I do).
About a year after her spouse died, I start getting phone calls from her daughter in the evenings. I discovered her mom would go to her boyfriend’s house and cook he and his daughters dinner, while her daughter ate cereal for dinner at home.
Over the next several years, I spent a lot of time talking the teen through issues, concerns and challenges that mom wasn’t around to address.
Mom didn’t even know her daughter was taking college courses in her senior year of high school because she wasn’t there when she attended the classes in the evenings.
When it was time for the teen to go to college, she got into a great school. Mom told her she couldn’t go to it because they didn’t have the money. When the daughter went off to the lesser expensive and prestigious college, mom married the boyfriend, bought a larger home with a pool in the backyard, bought a facelift, and a luxury car. The daughter had only 2 pairs of jean to wear at college.
At the end of the daughter’s freshman year, she calls mom to let her know when she’ll be home. Mom tells her it would be better for her to stay at college over summer break.
Her daughter explains that she lives in a sorority house and it closes in the summer. Mom didn’t care, she told her to find somewhere to live… during final exam week.
The daughter calls me crying and I take her for the summer to live with me. I got her a job at the company I worked at and we made the best of it.
The insensitive and cruel things my relative has done to her daughter over the years is more than I can list.
By the way, the daughter went on to get a doctorate, despite her narcissist mother who I have zero respect or affection for.
Humans started using their own feces as compost pretty much as soon as agriculture was invented. The practice continued in many places well into the 20th century.
However, the practice soon proved to have a lot of drawbacks. Humans in the early agricultural era didn’t know about bacteria, and crops fertilized with human dung often caused outbreaks of disease because those gut bacteria persisted in the soil until they found a new human host.
As such, people learned that although it was fine to plant cereal crops, or any plant with a long stalk in such fields, and not to plant carrots or other root crops for at least a year. By that time pathogenic bacteria had usually died out.
Because horses, pigs and cows don’t share a lot of gut flora with humans, it was soon found using animal dung had the same effect with fewer drawbacks. It was perfectly safe to use a few acres of land as cattle pasture for a year, then plant the following year.
I’ll tell you something about Jim who doesn’t want to come to the company parties. He thinks if he does a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay, that is all he owes you. He doesn’t think having a job means the company owns him, body and soul. Even if he knows that not attending the parties means a black mark against him, he still won’t go.
I’ll tell you something else. Before I retired, I worked for a lot of different organisations, some large, some small, and there were always some Jims. They got along well with their co-workers. They did their jobs and did them to the best of their ability. They were often prepared to go above and beyond the call of duty at work. But that was where it stopped.
Here’s the thing though. In every organisation, for every Jim, there are at least 25% of your staff who are Jim wannabes. They all wish they had the nerve to say no, but they don’t want to risk their jobs or their pay raises or their promotions, or even just the disapproval of their co-workers. They won’t tell you this because, as we can see by your question, in your mind this is not somebody exercising their right to say no to a social event. It is a problem that needs to be “handled”.
They don’t go home from the company party and say, “Wow, what a blast.” They walk in the door limp with exhaustion and say, “Thank god that’s over!” They probably put on a convincing act while they were there, but they didn’t want to spend their private time with a bunch of people they are already spending at least eight hours a day with. If they want to party, they want to do it with family and personal friends.
If you want to “team build” either with parties or other activities, do it within regular working hours. Jim probably still won’t like it very much, but at least he is getting paid for it. And it will not be breaking into the precious free time he needs to recharge his batteries so he can be an effective employee for you.
You’re going to need a bank of fryers and I wouldn’t fry them from raw. Frying them from raw will break the oil down really quickly and force you to either shut down the operation to change the oil or serve crappy wings. You don’t want to do either of those.
So, get your wings and brine them overnight in a simple solution of water, salt and sugar. Then drain them and bake them until they are cooked through. Cool the wings and package them in batches that will fill a fryer basket. Say 2.5 pounds per plastic bag and refrigerate them until it’s time to cook them.
On site, set up your fryers, your cold boxes of wings, a station for hot holding and saucing and a table for serving them to the customer. The cooks fry the wings, dump them into the hot holding units from one side and the service workers pull an order from the bin, place it into a bowl, toss the wings in sauce and then serve them to the customers. You can use heat lamps overtop of the wings to keep them hot, which you can rent, along with deep fat fryers that run on propane.
I worked a few summers at a home for children who’d experienced abuse and neglect. Their caseworker had just dropped them off; two beautiful little girls with big, blue eyes that swallowed their faces. They were two and four years old and they were very quiet for children their age. I looked them over, and immediately noticed several things: they had rope burns around their ankles, matted hair, and both were underweight and wheezing like they had the croup.
On closer examination I noted that the older of the two had bitten the insides of her mouth so hard that not only were they bleeding, but infected. I could not hold back my tears. They came with barely any clothing or personal effects, but many children in foster care share that experience. And later that evening when they were settled and I read over their file I knew they had lived a nightmare.
There had been an older sister, but she had died, thus prompting a welfare investigation in the first place. They found a woman addicted to drugs with a boyfriend who cooked meth—and they tied their children up in ropes to keep them out of their way. That was eighteen years ago and memories of those two girls still make me teary eyed. Questions like this immediately bring them to the forefront of my mind. I hope they finally found peace.
I had gotten out of the Army in 1971 (was drafted) and working my old job in a drugstore. I was growing a beard and letting my hair grow. A older customer came in and started criticizing my hair and beard (this was in the deep south). He said I was a disgrace. I let him know I didn’t need his permission or approval . He went to my boss and said the same thing. My boss basically said “He spent 2 years defending this country, he can wear his hair any way he wants.” . The customer left and my boss winked at me.
A 42 year old lady came in with severe abdominal pain and nausea. She wasn’t vomiting. No other symptoms or problems, except for multiple prior visits to the ER with the same problem.
Many doctors had tried and failed to diagnose and treat her. She had been to all the specialists at all the regional Universities. The famed Cleveland Clinic even took a crack at her.
All the tests were negative including blood work, poop samples, X-rays, scopes in both ends, the camera pill (a camera that the patient swallows, it takes pictures as it traverses the gut), and various scans.
She had CT scans, MRIs and various nuclear scans. There were scans with and without IV contrast and oral contrast. There were scans of her arteries, and scans of her gallbladder. Her gallbladder was a little weak, so a weak surgeon jerked it out without any benefit.
She had every blood test for cancer known to man. Multiple biopsies were always negative. I thank God that no tired pathologist ever imagined any cancer cells under the microscope. This lady already suffered so much at the hands of her healers.
X-rays were done many times with and without Barium. Some of the X-rays were done as videos. She might have had enough radiation to kill any tumor!
And the scopes! Multiple scopes down the throat and into the stomach and duodenum. Another scope down the throat through which a catheter is passed into the bile duct and pancreas to inject contrast that highlights the ducts for more X-rays. A urologist even scoped her bladder!
She saw stomach specialists, liver specialists, gastrointestinal surgeons, kidney specialists, urologists, neurologists, and even psychiatrists.
There’s an old saying in Medicine, if the only tool you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail. This poor lady had been beaten with every specialist’s hammer in 3 states!
When they couldn’t diagnose her, they just skipped straight to the cure. She failed multiple curative procedures and dozens of medications. There were medications to neutralize acid, coat the stomach, decrease acid production, anti-spasmodics, anxiolytics, antidepressants, antibiotics, anti seizure, antifunguals, and plain old pain medications.
She learned to refuse the pain medications, because she was smart enough to realize that she would be written off as an addict, that doctors stop trying if they think you just want opioids.
She has been put on every dietary restriction, and treated with every fiber supplement. She knew it all because she had tried it all!
The first night I saw her, I just told her that she had already seen many doctors much smarter than myself, working in a low level ER. But I did what I always do in these difficult cases.
I sit down and shut up and listen. I talk about weather, sports, hobbies and family; anything but medicine. But mostly I listen and observe. I try to get the patient talking more than myself. It’s an attempt to make a brain-to-brain connection for a two-way flow of truth. It is engaging the patient’s mind as the powerful problem-solving machine that it is.
Two minds together are more than 1+1=2. It’s more like 1+1=4. And it doesn’t really matter much that the other mind has limited medical knowledge. In fact, this process can sometimes work better if at least one of the minds is unspoiled by medical dogma.
So there we were, in the middle of a hectic ER night with several people trying to die. I talked with her for a few minutes until a nurse convinced me that another patient was closer to the next world than this one.
I grabbed the patient’s hand and begged her to be patient. I promised her that if she would wait for me, that I would give her my best shot. She was obviously in pain, but she attempted a smile and closed her eyes as I left to find something easier to do, like make a room look like an axe murderer walked in on a meeting of hemophiliacs anonymous, by saving a trauma victim.
That night was one of those nights that leaves me feeling a bit PTSD. I just wanted to crawl into my hut for a couple days. Yes, I have an actual stick-and-grass hut in the woods for this purpose.
But I have a soft spot for kids. The nurses all say that kids like me, and I am a pediatrician. I hate to leave a kid at the end of my shift, knowing that the next doctor may not feel as comfortable with kids.
I picked up the last chart in the rack (this was years ago), and saw that it was a 3 year old girl with abdominal pain. She was on the other side of the curtain from my 42 year old patient whom I had completely forgotten, or I would have spent the end of my shift with her as promised.
I took a deep breath and switched my brain from high pressure ER doc mode to easy and relaxed pediatrician mode. I walked into the room and quickly recognized a familiar problem. I explained to the worried mother that it was a simple stomach virus, that young children can’t tell the difference between pain and nausea. I explained that I was going to treat her pain with a tablet called “Zofran” for nausea, that dissolves in the mouth. I told her that I would be back in a few minutes and I left to give my order to a nurse.
By this time it was well after the end of my shift. The nurse I found said, “There you are! We thought you left! Did you forget about the 42 year old woman with abdominal pain? She’s been lying in there for hours!”
Of course I had totally forgotten her, but I remembered fast and said, “No! Of course not! I promised to spend some time with her if she would wait until the end of my shift!”
At that the nurse winked and nodded her head knowingly. I said, “No! Not like that! Look, can you give this little girl 2 mg of Zofran?” And I turned back to see my forgotten patient.
She was still in obvious discomfort but was waiting patiently. I walked over and placed my hand on her shoulder. Before I could say a word, she said, “That was great!” I didn’t know what she meant until she said, “You’re so good with kids, you should have been a pediatrician.”
She did not seem surprised when I said, “Well, as a matter of fact, I am!”
She joked, “No wonder I’m no better, my doctor is a pediatrician!”
I laughed. She tried to laugh. I poked my head around the curtain and asked the mother if it was okay to open the curtain? This violates protocols and is probably illegal, but I was too tired to care. I was simply trying to create an atmosphere to promote dialogue. A pleasant mother-baby dyad seemed the perfect antidote to the chaotic night this lady witnessed.
So now we had three minds working together. We talked to the little girl. She was smiling and feeling better already and asking for food. We talked about little girl things like toys, birthdays and sisters.
The mother thanked me. The Zofran trick worked wonderfully, despite her doubts. Then she looked at my patient and said, “He’s a wonderful doctor; listen to whatever he says.”
I asked her for permission to share her case and then I explained to the mother with a smile how that she had no idea, that this poor lady has some incurable ailment that has stumped all the specialists at all the Universities.
And then my patient and the mother began to talk about her case. As soon as the mother realized that it was a case of chronic abdominal pain and nausea, she drew an analogy to her daughter’s simple acute stomach virus.
I shook my head at the absurdity of it and was about to interrupt this conversation that was quickly getting off track. And then I remembered my rule for difficult cases (shut up and listen!).
My patient said, “Believe me, I have tried every stomach medication and even some herbs. Zofran does nothing for me.”
But my mind was zipping through all my experiences with chronic pediatric abdominal pain. I thought of the episodic nature of my patient’s condition. I asked her weird questions l usually reserve for pediatric cases like, “What part of the world did your ancestors come from? Any children in your family with health problems? How old is your house? Do either of your parents get migraines?”
She said, “Nobody has ever asked that question. My mother and father have both had migraine headaches their whole life. My brother gets them, too!”
And then I knew the diagnosis, even though I had assumed it was impossible and had never heard of an adult case. There is a condition called “abdominal migraine” that affects young children. There is usually at least one parent with migraine headaches, but most of these kids will get better by age 12. Their abdominal pain just stops. A certain portion will develop migraine headaches about the same time their abdominal pain goes away.
But I had my doubts. Pediatric abdominal migraine is easy to treat with simple medications that had failed to help this lady. But what if I gave her a common adult migraine treatment such as a vasoconstrictor? The pain of migraine is caused by too much blood flow to the head. Medicines that constrict blood vessels can be curative.
These medications work best if given very early in an episode. My patient was hours into this episode. As expected, the first dose in the ER that night did not relieve her pain, but it did do something much better: it gave her hope.
I gave her a prescription and sent her home, still in pain. But she was so grateful and she thanked me profusely. I felt a little anxious that maybe I was giving her false hope, for surely it could not be this simple? Surely the specialists thought of this?
Several months later she was in the ER with a sick family member. She was beaming and radiant. When she saw me she said, “That’s him! He’s the one who cured me!”
Tears were rolling down both our faces that night.
COVID-19. I have had several conversations here in the US with people who teach. They have all pointed to how awful the current batch of kids are when it comes to classroom learning. They can’t sit still nor pay attention because they lacked the classroom environment at that formative age to reinforce those skills; learning is nearly impossible. Meanwhile China adapted quickly to initial lockdowns, and by April 2020 normality had returned. My niece serves as my personal data point for what happened, and she has had no significant interruption in her education as online instruction was brief.
The haphazard lockdown strategy of the US combined with a retreat to virtual teaching will have a major effect on the labor force come 10 years from now. China’s strategy of strong, nationwide lockdown at onset followed by an elimination strategy allowed the country to more or less weather the storm more gracefully. One can have criticisms about how the country left COVID, but the end result is that the period of normality from spring 2020 through fall 2022 was the right target to reach, and the impact will play out in the coming years.
The current seemingly higher economic growth rate of the US is unsustainable and superficial because the inflation rate in the United States is much higher than that in China.
Since the 1980s, although the US has pioneered technological revolutions such as information technology, the Internet, and life sciences, and revolutionary technologies have brought new markets, services, products, and high-tech companies, it stands to reason that total factor productivity growth should be very high, but the new rounds of technological change have not prevented the gradual decline of U.S. productivity.
Statistics show that the average annual growth rate of total factor productivity in the United States has dropped to about 1% in the past 40 years, and even less than 0.7% in the past 10 years. The third industrial revolution did not bring about a substantial increase in total factor productivity growth in the US like the second industrial revolution that occurred during the industrialization process. Economists call this phenomenon the productivity growth paradox.
Forecasting a country’s potential growth rate is very important for judging its economic direction, but it is not easy. In 2022, China’s GDP may be 72% of that of the United States. Assuming that the U.S. economic growth rate would be 2.2%, China’s economic growth rate would be 5%, and the U.S. dollar and RMB remain at the current real exchange rate, based on this calculation, China would catch up with the United States in 2029. However, potential growth is not actual growth. A country’s ability to achieve its potential growth rate depends on whether sufficient demand exists. In the past three years, China had mainly relied on investment and exports to create demand. Thus, China must increase domestic consumption to create sufficient demand.
An important reason for China’s economic success lies in the close integration of a competent government and an efficient market. The invisible hand of the market and the visible hand of the government play a positive role in promoting economic and social development. The Chinese government focuses on key industries that promote national economic growth through five-year plans, industrial policies, and allocation of financial resources. Technological changes that occur in node industries are transmitted and amplified through the production network, forming a spillover effect, driving the emergence of a large number of upstream and downstream market entities, and producing a multiplier effect on the overall economy.
The closer an industry is to a node (the area with the highest density in the production network), the greater its impact on the economy. Empirical research also shows that investment projects with longer industrial chains generally bring more jobs, tax revenue and growth to the local economy.
Total factor productivity growth is a decisive factor in a country’s economic performance. Since the Industrial Revolution, no country or economy has been able to maintain a total factor productivity growth rate of more than 2.5% for a long time after completing the industrialization process. Since for advanced economies, sustained high productivity growth is the exception rather than the norm because when the share of the service industry increases significantly, it becomes more difficult to maintain rapid growth in total factor productivity.
The real estate industry is a long-chain industry and is of great significance to boosting domestic consumption. Putting all factors together, the consumer market can be expected to recover in 2023. Before the epidemic, consumption growth was above 7%. If China wants to achieve a potential growth of 5.5%, consumption growth of 5.4% will be enough. It is now no longer appropriate to call the Chinese economy an investment-driven economy.
In many areas, China has reached the global frontier in mid-level technologies, and hidden champions have emerged in almost every industry. For example, China was originally a latecomer to the electric vehicle industry, but it has become a leader within 10 years. Relying on development and innovation, China is becoming the largest contributor to the global clean economy.
The Chinese government has successfully prevented and resolved major financial risks through active and prudent deleveraging efforts. Money only generates value when it is used in the real economy. Serving the real economy has become a priority for financial institutions. The negative impacts of aging in China are actually overstated, at least for the next 10 years because over the next 30 years, artificial intelligence and automation will replace more workers than will be lost due to aging.
China has a large state-owned industry with a net capital stock of 60 trillion yuan. The central government has begun transferring state-owned shares to social security funds. These shares will generate enough dividends to support the social security system for the aging population.
In the long run, the economic growth rate of China will be higher and better than that of the US.
When our son was around 3,(he’s now 48) I took a parenting class where it was recommended that you give your child a choice of 2 things that were both acceptable to you, so the child felt that he or she had some control over their actions. One night we had company for dinner. One of our guests was a psychologist who frequently lectured both in the US and abroad.
When it was bedtime, my son said he didn’t want to go to bed, so I gave him a choice. “Do you want to go to bed in your own bed or mommy and daddy’s?” He answered by saying “I want a Coca Cola”. I repeated the bed options, his bed or ours. He repeated his desire for a Coke. We went back and forth like that a few times, then he put his hands on his hips and said “I want a Coca Cola! Will you pour it or shall I?” He was using my parenting method on me!
Our psychologist friend fell off his chair laughing. I scooped up my son and put him in his bed. Our friend told us years later that he told that story in all his lectures from that time on, until he retired.
Back in the day, when physical mail was still delivered to companies, I executed my quiet sabotage. The CEO was a weird one. He would open all the mail, read it, write his comments directly on each piece of mail and then distribute it to the appropriate person. Mind you we had roughly 50 office staff and 100 factory employees, so we weren’t a tiny operation.
The CEO instituted 2 cost savings. We were not allowed to purchase staples or paper clips. We were all given some little device (as a replacement stapler) that folded corners of papers and then perforated that corner so that the papers couldn’t separate.
And his feeling was that enough paper clips that came with the mail so we should just reuse them. It was ridiculous and impractical.
I khew that I was going to be fired at the end of the week in the afternoon and decided to annoy him. I went to Staples and bought all the office employees 2 boxes of staples and 2 boxes of paper clips. Sure enough Friday afternoon, I’m let go and then the CEO left right immediately. The wuss didn’t want to see how much of impact my dismissal would be on morale.
I was given the opportunity to say goodbye to everyone. So I walked desk to desk and gave each person staples & paper clips. I heard, the next week, that the CEO went bonkers seeing everyone having them. Lmao
The Duran: Neocons DESTROY Themselves as Russia and China Forge New World Order
The Duran discusses the failures of the neocons to maintain the US-led unipolar order amid Russia and China’s global rise.
Huawei and Xiaomi are both Chinese technology companies. This is true.
But essentially, Huawei and Xiaomi are Chinese technology companies with completely different natures, so their treatment is also completely different.
To accurately distinguish the differences between the two companies, we must start with the history of world globalization and the changing role of Chinese companies.
Before the 1980s, China was one of the poorest and backward countries in the world, almost isolated from the modern economy.
When China opened its doors in the 1980s, the Western world discovered that this was such a special country.
It has a huge poor population, but most of them have basic education.
It has a sound industrial foundation, but its technology is very backward.
He has huge territory and rich resources.
It has relatively complete infrastructure, including roads, railways and electricity.
At this time, the West had just carried out the first round of globalized industrial transfer, moving low-profit, polluting and risky manufacturing industries to Asian countries such as South Korea, Indonesia, and Thailand.
However, these countries have limited population and scale, and limited capacity. As industries increase, salary levels increase rapidly and become less cheap.
Moreover, the education level of the population in these countries is limited, the infrastructure is limited, and there are many restrictions.
At this time, China was like an endless pasture. No matter how many cows the cowboys threw in, it could quickly accommodate them.
As a result, China quickly became the new continent for Western manufacturing.
Throughout the 1990s and the first decade of the 20th century, China was like a magnet attracting manufacturing industries from around the world, and countless companies developed in China.
They all follow the model of Western hope:
Version 1.0 Chinese Company: Processing and Manufacturing
1. Design, technology and standards provided by Western companies
2. Western companies provide key components
3. Chinese companies are responsible for cheap raw materials, cheap labor, and completion of assembly and production.
4. Western companies are responsible for sales
In this stage, Chinese companies shouldered the heaviest and hardest work, but could only obtain 10% of the profits, while Western companies took away 90% of the profits.
The Nike sneakers we wear, the French bags in women’s hands, and the various toys children play with are all products of this model.
The Chinese produce these things, but they cannot afford to consume them.
Of course, although the profits of the Chinese are meager, the total amount is huge. Therefore, during this period, they achieved a large amount of wealth accumulation, and gradually accumulated knowledge and talents.
Some companies are beginning to try to enter a new stage.
Version 2.0 Chinese company: independent production
1. Chinese companies purchase designs, technologies and standards through joint ventures or introductions
2. Western companies provide key components
3. Chinese companies are responsible for cheap raw materials, cheap labor, and completion of assembly and production.
4. Chinese companies are responsible for local sales
During this stage, the share of Chinese companies expanded. They got rid of the pure processing industry and began to focus on technology, trying to build their own brands and market capabilities.
However, during this period, the product quality of Chinese companies could not be compared with that of their foreign counterparts, and they mainly relied on low prices to compete in the local Chinese market.
Haier Electric, Chery Automobile, Lenovo Computer, etc. are all Chinese companies that have risen during this period.
Their degree of autonomy has been greatly improved, but most of their profits are still taken away by Western companies through patent licensing and the import of key parts, and they can only compete in the Chinese market. There is no pressure on foreign counterparts.
Version 3.0 of Chinese companies: independent production, global competition
1. Chinese companies solve most technical and quality problems through independent research and development
2. Western companies provide key components
3. Chinese companies are responsible for cheap raw materials, cheap labor, and completion of assembly and production.
4. Chinese companies are responsible for global sales
Around 2010, Chinese companies grew further. They have more technologies and knowledge systems, and the quality of their products has also improved rapidly. began to threaten Western counterparts in the global market. Especially in the fields of household appliances, kitchen appliances, electronic products, mobile phones and other fields, it has achieved rapid success.
Xiaomi, VIVO, Oppo, Transsion, Haier, Lenovo and other companies are representatives of this stage.
They have mastered the complete design, manufacturing and quality management capabilities of products, and established a good brand and reputation. During this period, products made in China began to be famous around the world and can be seen everywhere around us. Their low prices and high quality put traditional Western and Japanese brands to shame.
But they still have an Swelling of Achilles: key components and technologies are in the hands of their Western counterparts. For example, the Qualcomm chip and Android system of Xiaomi mobile phones; such as the Intel processor and Windows system in Lenovo computers;
Through control of these key technologies and components, the West still takes away most of the profits of these companies.
Take Xiaomi mobile phone as an example. Its core processor comes from the United States, its memory comes from South Korea, its screen comes from South Korea and Japan, its camera comes from Japan, its key communication chips and sensors come from Europe and the United States, and even the tempered glass on the screen surface is a product of an American company. . Chinese companies can only supply low-value accessories such as casings, speakers, and interfaces. According to media statistics, 70% of the value of Xiaomi mobile phones comes from Western suppliers.
Therefore, although Xiaomi has squeezed out the share of traditional peers such as Nokia, Ericsson, and Sony, for every mobile phone it sells, Western companies make the most profit, and the Chinese still take away a small part.
Version 4.0 Chinese companies: disruptors
1. Chinese companies master core technologies and solve all problems
2. Chinese companies provide key parts themselves
3. Chinese companies are responsible for cheap raw materials, cheap labor, and completion of assembly and production.
4. Chinese companies are responsible for global sales
After entering 2015, some Chinese companies have grown further. They began to get involved in core semiconductors, operating systems, precision sensors, databases and artificial intelligence algorithms. It began to seize the most profitable industrialization in the world and the last economic position of Western developed countries.
Huawei, DJI, Hikvision and other companies are representatives of this stage
They have all the features of a 3.0 enterprise and are beginning to replace Western suppliers. Not only do they make excellent products, but they also use core components and basic software developed entirely by themselves. They intend to completely take away the fattest piece of meat in the mouths of Western companies.
Before Huawei was sanctioned by the United States, it had surpassed Samsung and Apple to become the world’s largest mobile phone manufacturer. It is completely different from Xiaomi. Almost all the core components of Huawei’s mobile phones are provided by Chinese companies, and they have even begun to develop basic operating systems in order to kick Google out. In the field of communications, it holds the most 5G patents in the world and develops all high-value semiconductors and antennas on its own.
The essence of the above 3 versions of Chinese enterprises, 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0, is the same.
In the chain of globalization, Western companies take the best parts of food, and Chinese companies get the remaining food scraps. The difference between 1.0 and 3.0 is just the amount of residue obtained.
Therefore, whether it is Lenovo or Xiaomi, although they are technology companies from China, their positioning is within the scope of this rule and is allowed by the West.
But 4.0 Chinese companies are different. They are trying to subvert the rules of the game that have existed for decades.
They still embrace globalization, but they think, why are companies from Western developed countries always at the top of the food chain?
This involves the issue of economic competition between developed and developing countries.
Why do Westerners enjoy the most vacations, the best benefits, and the highest salaries and rewards? And people in developing countries work hard and overtime, but can only get meager pay and struggle to feed their families? Are people in developed countries inherently smarter and harder-working? The Chinese believe that this is not the case and that something is wrong with the rules.
Chinese companies like Huawei are determined to subvert this rule.
In the end, their appearance caused tension in Western countries: the subversives have occupied the entire country, their athletes have come to the king’s castle, and Huawei is the champion at the forefront.
Kings and nobles discovered that they could no longer defeat the subversives through “civilized rules.” How can he maintain a comfortable life in his castle and continue to rule and plunder the entire world in the future? The behavior of subversives must not be allowed!
So they shouted: They are thieves, liars, and traitors, don’t believe them!
While silently picking up the gun in his hand, he aimed at the one running at the front.
Creole Artichoke Bisque
2023 11 10 15 27
Ingredients
16 ounces butter
8 tablespoons all-purpose flour
6 cup beef stock
2 ribs celery, finely chopped
3 large onions, finely chopped
1 bunch green onions, finely chopped
2 bay leaves
1/4 teaspoon thyme
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 (14 ounce) cans artichoke hearts, undrained
Salt and black pepper to taste
1/4 teaspoon Tabasco sauce
1 cup dry white wine
4 ounces light cream
2 tablespoons parsley, minced
Instructions
Melt the butter in a heavy pot and add the flour. Over low heat, cook for 5 minutes, stirring constantly.
Slowly add the stock and when well mixed, add the celery, onions, green onions, bay leaves, thyme and garlic. Let this simmer for 45 minutes.
Chop the artichoke hearts fairly fine and then add to the pot, along with the artichoke water. Cook at a low simmer for another 30 minutes.
Add salt and pepper to taste, the Tabasco, wine and cream and bring to a simmer. Do NOT boil.
The bisque is now ready to serve.
Sprinkle a bit of parsley over the bisque in each bowl.
Tell the truth,but , it wont make any difference, no one will believe you.
I was having drinks after work with my coworkers, and the waitress got off work and joined us. She had been our waitress for over a year and we had no spark in that time. Though she was attractive. When I said I was going home, she asked if I could give her a ride. I dropped her off, and didn’t think anymore about it.
The next day I swapped vehicles with my girlfriend, as she needed a truck to help her sister move something.
She found a brown paper lunch bag in the back seat. It had a lacey bra, panties and unused condoms in it. I was totally at a loss. Then I remembered giving the waitress a ride home. So on Monday I handed the bag to her, and asked if it was hers, and it was. She gave no explanation of how it got in my backseat, or even why she was carrying it.
I asked her to explain to my girlfriend, and she declined, saying she didnt want a whole bunch of drama over nothing. So I got a whole bunch of drama from my girlfriend.
I couldn’t even blame her, or come up with a plausible story. We broke up shortly after that
NOT POSSIBLE: Why US Can’t Compete with CHINESE Monster Drones?
“China also has many AI drones such as the amphibious Nezha that can fly and dive to 23ft under water; shark/dolphin/stingray undersea drones; and an anti-air/land defense system called the Hornet’s Nest that can launch 10,000 explosive drones rapidly each will auto lockon enemy vehicles. People have no idea how secure China’s borders really are today.”
After my mother died, I spent a few months living in her (our) house and taking care of it, and arranging probate issues. It was a difficult time, as my second wife (the wife from Hell, and BTW…the person who worked for MAJ to “retire” me), demanded that she gets the entire estate “or else”.
So, I’m dealing with all these stressers.
Those in the “know” also know about this point in time. My fate forecast; I am entering my “triple black” inauspicious time, and I lost my job, my wife, my mother… and soon (though I didn’t know it yet) everything else.
But at this moment in time, I was in the house, and my brother came over with a close friend of his (ours).
We were all in the kitchen drinking. My mother had collected all sorts of wine that sat in racks in the kitchen / dining area, and they decided to open them up and start drinking.
And I stepped out to go onto the “sun room”.
After the first bottle, my brother said “corked”.
If a wine is “corked”, it means that it has been tainted by the cork, or rather a chemical compound which can be found in natural corks. This contamination gives off a very distinct smell and taste, which can be described as musty, earthy, wet cardboard, wet newspaper, or even wet dog. The term ‘corked wine’ refers to a wine contaminated with cork taint, which can happen if the wine is bottled with a TCA-infected cork.
Which means that the wine had been sitting too long, and somehow the wine went bad. Now, this might be a term used by aficionados, but for us “regular folk” (and I know, I drink one FUCK of a lot of wine) it was just fine.
I tasted the wine.
It was fine.
I was in the other room, and when I went into the kitchen, imagine my horror when I watched my brother and his friend draining out about 35 bottles of (very expensive) wine down the sink. Claiming that it was “corked”.
wine down the drain
They weren’t “corked”. Not in the least.
Sheech!
…
As a wine lover, and as a wine aficionado, I still remember that moment with aghast horror. Such a pity! Such a waste. And what is really horrific, is that he has no idea… none… not one iota what he did.
Everyone… what ever you do, don’t though out wine unnecessarily. Even if corked, it can still be used for cooking! Sheech!
Don’t know about my “best” friend but I remained close with an ex. She didn’t like my partner for (mostly) racist reasons. But they were civil together when we met up.
I didn’t tell her we were expecting. But at 20 weeks my partner experienced severe pain and was hospitalised for 4 days. This came up in conversation. She deduced that we were expecting.
She pushed me to ask for an abortion.
She then posted it on Facebook to around 2000 followers, asking for advice about persuading someone to get an abortion. To a group I was a member of.
I blocked her on all meeja and we haven’t spoken since.
She did send a message apologising. Not for the sentiment, but for taking it public. That really doesn’t address the core issue, which is that she wanted my beautiful daughter – the love of my life – executed because of her hatred of my partner. It’s going to be difficult to remain friends after that.
Copeland’s of New Orleans Crawfish Etouffee
2023 11 13 06 55
Yield: 6 servings
Ingredients
6 cups water
2 bay leaves
1 teaspoon lobster base
1 pound fresh crawfish tail meat
Pinch black pepper
Pinch white pepper
Pinch cayenne
1 tablespoon paprika
1 teaspoon peanut oil
1 cup chopped yellow onion
4 teaspoons all-purpose flour
Salt to taste
1 cup chopped green onions
1 teaspoon minced garlic
3 tablespoons finely chopped parsley
6 cups cooked white rice
Instructions
Prepare a stock by bringing the water to a boil. Add bay leaves and lobster base. Allow to boil for about 20 minutes or until the water has reduced to 5 cups of stock. Hold aside.
In a mixing bowl, combine the crawfish tails with black, white, and cayenne pepper.
Add the paprika and stir together well.
In a medium-size pot, heat the peanut oil at a near high setting. Oil should be hot but not smoking.
Add the chopped yellow onion and stir until translucent.
Add the crawfish tails and stir until they are heated and cooked through and have attained a good bond with their fat.
Add flour and mix well.
Pour in stock gradually, stirring constantly, until sauce achieves a substantial thickness and consistency.
Season with salt to taste.
Add the green onions, garlic, and parsley. Reduce the heat to a medium setting and simmer for about 10 minutes more.
Serve over a bed of cooked white rice.
Notes
If desired, you may stir in 2 to 3 tablespoons of butter to completed etouffee for added richness.
Attribution
Posted by GayleL at Recipe Goldmine 9:17:49pm 4/19/03.
The New Thai Tax Law that EVERYONE is Talking About
Big news in Thailand. This new tax law has everyone talking, and a bit scared. I will detail the rules and how it might affect you. So if you’re ever considering relocating to Bangkok, Phuket, Chiang Mai, Samui or anywhere else in Thailand, there’s lots of information in this video.
Years ago I bought a USB “dongle” for Internet access, through a company called Orange.
It was a pay monthly arrangement.
The bloody thing never worked, their customer services eventually admitted that the area I was in had very poor access and it wasn’t going to improve soon.
I said let’s just cancel.
They said no, you signed up for a year.
I said fine, and cancelled the regular payment, after sending them a letter explaining why, with my contemporaneous notes from a series of calls.
They kept sending demands. I said jyst take me to small claims court, we’ll see what the judge says. My view was, if the thing doesn’t work I ain’t paying for it. Contractual obligations go both ways.
Eventually they gave up, but clearly sold the debt (iirc around £250) to some agency.
The agency got in touch, but their phone number was a premium rate one. I sent a letter explaining my side, inviting them to small claims.
At around 6 month intervals for 2 years, different debt agencies tried- presumably these guys sell debts on?
Eventually, a reslly aggressive debt agency agreed to try it in small claims. They were based in London, I live 180 miles north.
I turned up, they didn’t. Well, not on time- some flustered legal junior arrived as I was leaving, and got a proper bollocking off the judge.
Judge awarded me, and my expenses/lost day’s pay, were to be covered by DebtTwat ltd.
I wasn’t expecting them to ever pay up, but i certainly wasn’t expecting them to send me a demand for flustered legal bloke’s train fare, taxi, and fee.
Obviously i tore this up and sent it back without a stamp.
We once took my son and his family out for a meal. The bill was £150, and I paid it with a card. I asked the waiter if I could add a tip and he proffered the card machine to let me do so. I added £20 and paid and we left.
As we got to the car park I glanced at the receipt and realised I’d actually given him a tip of 20p, clearly defining me as tight-arse, so I proceeded back into the restaurant, spotted our waiter, in a group of two or three of them at the bar, apologised for my mistake and gave him a £20 note. Smiles all round. I’d clearly done the right thing.
However as I left for the second time, I couldn’t resist adding “By the way, I’ll take my 20p back next time I’m here”
This caused a roar of laughter, and on subsequent visits has made us memorable and very well looked after. As I pay – more carefully with the tip – I am asked “Will you take your 20p now, Sir?”
The Standard Female Delusion Chart – a tool to reduce dating drama
Technology has enabled countless millions of desperate and morally bankrupt men to constantly shower mediocre women (there’s nothing wrong with being mediocre — most of us are) with attention. Naturally, women assume that this attention is higher-quality than it actually is, because “why wouldn’t people like me?” It’s an understandable mistake. We all want to believe we are “worth it.”
Simply put, a huge wave of sleazy, short-term, hookup-level interest from men is being mistaken – by the women who receive it — as akin to marriage proposals, and they are subsequently developing deeply emotionally and ego-rooted beliefs that they are all 9s, which is mathematically impossible. They then proceed to reject men who are far more likely to treat them well and pursue men who see them as nothing but cheap conquests, resulting in avoidable emotional damage, which they then take out on men in an intensifying cycle of resentment.
I must stand against this, and all I have is a voice. The only power that a man has to stop this cycle is to stop playing the game of letting women think he wants to be with them for real, when he knows he doesn’t. Shame on you. Stop that.
The only power that a woman has to stop this cycle is by being realistic about her actual value and finding men who are most likely to give her the maximum return for what she offers. Stop letting yourself believe that users love you.
That’s a delusion.
These diagrams are only roughly based on non-scientific data, but they are heavily rooted in real-life experience that proves itself true again and again.
I am confident that if women use them to identify the correct men and get to know them, they will have better luck starting relationships that last, and that will cause much less drama, heartbreak, confusion, and wasted time.
Also, my content does and always will contain humor to clarify and intensify the points that I’m making. Try to not take my content as being in competition with formal science, but rather as evidence-and-experience-based advice to avoid common dating problems. I tripped over a lot of rocks so you don’t have to. Best luck out there.
I had scheduled a young woman for a very long (easily 12+ hour) surgery on a deep-seated brain tumor right next to her brainstem. Having explained the risks and benefits of the surgery at length like I usually do (including significant risks of death, coma and stroke), she was more concerned about how much of her hair I would remove to do the surgery.
The night before surgery, I got a terrible flu – fever to over 103, malaise, joint and muscle pains, the works. In the end, I had no choice but to cancel her surgery and schedule for another day …
… expecting she would understand … I mean, who would want to undergo such a massive and dangerous surgery if the surgeon were that ill?
Well I was wrong. The patient became furious, hostile, angry, blamed me for inflicting emotional distress … demanded that I immediately find another surgeon to do the surgery that morning (not possible) … later lodged complaints up and down the hospital system … filed complaints with the medical staff … threatened to sue me … it took weeks to calm her – and our hospital – down.
It was the first time I had ever canceled a surgery in >20 years.
It’s what you get in a society that demands more than it understands. A society in which people live their lives in imaginary worlds conjured up by media (including doctor stereotypes) far removed from any sense of real humanity.
ADDENDUM:
A few Comments made me realize that not everyone understood my Answer, and I should perhaps clarify a few things:
the tumor was not near any part of the brain that would affect intellect or emotions
this patient was not “dying of a brain tumor;” while the surgery was going to be long and dangerous, it was far from urgent
I gently passed her care on to another neurosurgeon (it’s never a good idea to operate on someone who lacks faith in you), who operated on her a few weeks later; I heard she did well (though her attitude remained problematic)
there are no “back-up surgeons” waiting in the bullpen in case a surgeon gets sick: nowhere in the U.S., nowhere in Europe and nowhere in the world. Not like TV.
this is especially true of small sub-specialties like Neurosurgery
the all too common 60+ hour neurosurgical work week is packed full of patient responsibilities, and it is unrealistic to expect a colleague to abandon their own patients just to fill a gap like that at the last minute
no patient would want to undergo a huge brain surgery by someone they just met that morning – nor would most surgeons want to do a “surprise surgery” at the last minute. Neurosurgeons must do a lot of preparation before embarking on big, complicated cases. It’s not at all like you see on TV.
of course the hospital and its committees understood my situation completely (any reasonable person would understand that doctors can get sick), but they are obliged to investigate every complaint – hence a whole lot of unnecessary time and effort
To be honest, what I found most disconcerting about some of the negative Comments was how easily some people could make major assumptions about this story instead of simply asking me questions to clarify the situation.
Such Comments are just another example of: “demand more than understand.”
Why I’ll Never Move Back To America…
The American Dream… Is it dead or alive? In this video, I share THREE reasons why I don’t foresee myself ever moving back to America and why moving to the Philippines was potentially the best decision my family has ever made. Enjoy!
At the age of fifteen, thirteen days after my fifteenth birthday to be exact, I went out on my first real date. He came to my door and picked me up and we walked to a party. We had so much fun. He walked me home and he kissed me goodnight and he asked me to be his girlfriend. This felt like the greatest night in the whole world. Nothing could bring me down from my giddy and excited teenage crush!
….except for what happened the next morning.
I was awoken by my mother shaking me gently but urgently saying, “Honey? Erin. You need to get up now sweetie. Daddy’s going to die today…”
Those words ripped me out of any dreams I was having and back into the waking nightmare that had become my life for the last two years. I lived in constant fear that I was going to lose the bravest, strongest, most honourable, incredible man this world had to offer, but never really truly believed in my heart that it could happen. For me, to believe that he was really dying would be a betrayal to my hero. I would be giving up on him, and you never give up on your hero, not ever.
I learned that day that no amount of wishful thinking or prayer can change your circumstances.
The hardest thing I’ve ever had to do is to tell my dad that it was okay for him to die. He was hanging on with everything he had but it was time for him to go. I told him out loud that it was okay to let go, that we would be okay. We all told him that he had permission to die and to stop struggling so hard. And as soon as we said those things to him he passed away.
I held his hand as he took his last breath.
I watched my hero lose a terrible battle with cancer and I didn’t really know if I would be okay. I may have just lied to the person I loved most in this world. But I still believe I did the right thing. Setting my dad’s mind at ease was the most important thing to me that day, not wondering whether I’d be okay.
And to tell the truth I’m not sure I ever have been okay since that day. Something inside of me changed forever and I haven’t been able to get the old me back.
But I let my dad believe we would be okay because that was what he needed to move on. And I’d do it for him again in a heartbeat.
I had an uncle who was mildly retarded. It wasn’t Down Syndrome, it was probably lack of oxygen at birth, but people could tell just by looking at him that he was different.
That may be why 3 18 or 19 year old teens thought that they would jump my uncle and my grandmother while they were walking through their neighborhood in Bridgeport, Connecticut. What could an old lady and a 30 year old “retard” do to them?
I haven’t mentioned it yet, but my uncle was the youngest of 11 children. 9 of those kids were boys. So even though his brothers had taken it a little easier on him because of his mental disability, he was still used to playing rough and fighting. A lot. So when these teens threatened him and his mother he snapped. He hospitalized all 3 kids. He wrapped one of the kid’s arms around a tree backwards, the opposite direction of the kid’s elbow.
When the first officers showed up they put my uncle in cuffs, thinking he had initiated the carnage. My grandmother set things straight. My uncle had just defended his mother and himself.
The American Child vs The Chinese Child || 美国孩子 vs 中国孩子.
A student got sassy with a teacher about a grade and the teacher kicked him out of the room. The student grabbed a pencil and stabbed the assistant teacher in the room. Just in the hand, but still.
So the teacher goes rage mode and physically marches the student down to the deans office. Everyone is initially furious at the student, he’ll be expelled for sure. Assistant teacher is shaken but fine.
Daddy was a big donor to the school and the kid was on the state championship bound Football team. Daddy argued with the school, who reverses the expulsion and instead fires the teacher for “laying hands on a student.”
There were walk outs, several other teachers quit, the local news picked it up, the whole nine yards. Nothing changed. The school kept the little asshole to keep Daddy happy and fired a very, very good teacher.
When I was a cocky, long-haired punk and could get girls just by walking up and talking to them, I saw what I thought was two women getting in a car. I went up to the driver’s side and said something to the girl behind the wheel involving the word “ladies”. The long-haired dude in the passenger seat leaned over and said “Ladies?” he was annoyed I had tried to hit on his GF, but we laughed it off.
Entitled Women Make First Date List, And It BACKFIRES
I’m 61. My husband is 69. We can’t figure out how to use the kiosk. This morning, we added what we wanted to our order, but couldn’t figure out how to check out. The only icon that looked like it was a possibility was “Review Order” and it was greyed out. So, we were stuck. We backed out of it and left the restaurant. Also, when we saw the “login” prompt, we thought we might have to create an account which we don’t want to do. It’s just one more login and password we would have to remember. Nobody was at the counter to provide assistance. I’ll be diplomatic here. McDonald’s doesn’t sell weed. They sell shitty fake food. There’s nothing in their stores that I can’t live without…for the rest of my life. So, if they’re not willing to assist an old couple by taking their order, we won’t go into their restaurant(s) anymore. We went home and made a veggie omelet, hash browns, and cantaloupe. It was superior to anything on the McDonald’s menu and cooking it was less stressful than trying to figure out that fucking kiosk. Fast service that’s easy is basically all McDonald’s has going for it these days. And, they won’t even do that anymore. Plus, they’re using these non user friendly machines to phase out workers. Fuck ‘em.
I was going to download my banks, banking app, I always read the fine print. They want control of my camera, and they want permission to edit my contacts list.
I said “No” they said that the app wont work without access. I access my bank over the Internet, through their website directly, without going through the app. It works fine. Yet they don’t have access to my camera or contacts, funny about that.
I was on a subway train in DC. I had my five year old son with me, plus a few bags. I’m sitting on one end of the car, paying attention to the stops because I really don’t want to miss ours. A young black man grabs a seat on the other end of the car. I’m thinking gang member. Bandana. Gold jewelry. Baggy pants. Mind you, there were enough people on the train I certainly wasn’t concerned… that was just the impression I had. Anyway, we’re approaching our stop. My son has fallen asleep. The car isn’t jam-packed but it is kind of full. I’m wondering how I’m going to pick up my son and our stuff and make it to the door before the doors close.
As I struggle to get to my feet and head for the door, I see a foot casually hooked around the door, so it can’t close.
Yep. The black kid with the bandana and jewelry. As I look over, he flashes a smile.
We got off the train with no problem. A few people moved out of our way, but I didn’t see anyone else attempting to actually help.
Was he a gang member? Who knows. Who cares. At that moment, he was kind and helpful to a stranger. That’s all that mattered.
I went to apply for a job one time, and when I got there, the lead hand introduced himself to me while shaking my hand.
I had never been to this place before.
As he was shaking my hand this other guy jumped out from behind a machine, and in a gleeful, boisterous tone yells out to the lead hand, as he’s pointing to me, “There’s the guy! There’s the guy right there, that’s going to show you how to work that machine!”
It was a guy that I worked with at a previous job. He was a helper that was assigned to me whenever necessary.
I couldn’t believe it.
The lead hand looks at me, and that second I knew I was in.
I was in an elevator on a cruise ship. Some wiseacre saw my polka-dot suspenders.
He smirked, “Nice suspenders. You from Wisconsin?”
I replied, “No. Ever since my cancer surgery, I can’t wear a belt.”
His smirk instantly evaporated. The elevator doors opened on my floor, and I got out.
Soft tissue sarcoma caused by Agent Orange in Vietnam, They took out 1–3/4 pounds of me from my groin to my beltline. It left a notch where a belt would sit, so I can’t wear a belt comfortably.
The Legendary Mao in 1954 felt that any party member whose kids studied in Missionary Schools run by Western ideology , could not be trusted
In 1964, he felt such party members were Collaborators and Enemies
Thus every CPC member wisely decided to ensure his kids studied in Local Chinese schools and so the Party built more and more and more and more Schools all across China
Since their own members kids would study in these schools, the quality of these schools were higher and the subjects better
In 1996, Jiang Zemin after 42 years decided to repeal this old rule from Maos time and allow CPC members to send their kids to private schools
Then they discovered something
They discovered that Private School Quality was LOWER than Government School
Nobody wanted to send their kids to Private School.
Math, Science, Physics was of a tougher standard and teachers were the best
Thus even if it was due to fear of being branded a Collaborator, the fact is due to Mao – Chinas Education System became one of the best and it’s Government run schools became top notch
Indias misfortune was India never had a visionary like Mao or Deng
We did have Kamaraj but he was too localized
In India, Children of Politicians studied in the finest schools and later typically in UK Or US or Canada and foreign Universities
As a result there was NO REASON for Politicians to focus on quality education
India is a cesspit democracy
Long term vision was replaced by Short term election strategies
As a result, India focused on the BARE MINIMUM for State Or Centre sponsored Education
China and India were both equally pauper nations in the 1970s , in fact India was a tad bit richer
Yet China spent more on Education due to it’s long term vision , spent more on training teachers, spent more on sending teachers to foreign countries for enhancing their knowledge
India?
Politicians lined up their pockets
They duped the public
They openly stole public money and lined their coffers
Still even in 1992, there was some hope
Reservations destroyed it
The principle that a Moron Dullard was entitled become a Neurosurgeon or Doctor merely because Great Grand Daddy was oppressed a few decades ago
Plus the fact that this system was exploited even further when the genuinely oppressed weren’t at all given the chance
Instead a handful of wealthy persons took advantage of loopholes and drove quality into the Ground
China meanwhile had Crisp, Lovely, Meritocracy
A Son of a Sweeper could become an Engineer if he had merit, or a sweeper if he didn’t. Only Ability mattered.
By 2014, China was at a place India couldn’t reach with a hundred ladders
Then under Modiji, we all hoped things would improve
That at last we would have an AFFORDABLE EDUCATION ACT
That at last Modi would set a National Education Program and do what Mao did in 1954
Didn’t happen
Private Education raping the average Indian family with absurd tuition fees
Modiji focusing on Language policies, Sanskrit, Vedas and changing India to Bharat and removing Chapters on Mughals
The Average Chinese focusing on Python and Technology. The Average Indian on Ram, Laxman and some made up lies about how Modi is a superhero
It’s why, the Top 5% or 10% Chinese and Indians are similar
Yet the Average Chinese can swallow the Average Indian for breakfast, lunch and dinner
The Below Average Chinese os more than a match for the Average Indian
The Below Average ‘Educated’ Indian is on the lowest rung
Plus Indias biggest problem is the AVERAGE INDIAN
He doesn’t realize there is a problem at all
Realizing there is a problem means needing to work on a Solution and needing to recognize failure
Sorry. We are India. We are the best. We have no weaknesses.
Our Education system is flawed
Most refuse to agree. Some who agree make excuses including blaming Manmohan Singh. Some talk ‘Practically’ and say India needs to do nothing but everything will magically happen
Like I said, India is heading to a point where it would end up as a hotch potch, mish mash of uneven growth, a kind of Tumor rather than a crisp engine of growth with a Vision like China or even Vietnam
The $ 10 Trillion India would be a Huge Tumor rather than a nice neat rocket
Unless India buckles up and begins basic structural reform of Education, Healthcare and Liberal Laws
1. Everyone is insecure about something. It’s not just you.
2. You will never be 100% sure about decisions you made. But always make a decision because it’s better to go back and fix it than to never make it at all.
3. There is always someone better than you. So there’s no point to compare.
4. There’s nothing in life you can really control except your own thoughts and actions. So always hope for the best and prepare for the worst.
5. Nothing lasts forever. Things change, people change. And YOU can change anytime too.
6. Life is not a fairy tale. That’s why it’s always exciting and you’ll never be bored.
7. Hard work doesn’t guarantee success. But that’s what makes it challenging.
Going anonymous on this one, sorry about it, I just don’t think I can face being associated with the story I am about to tell. It will be a bit long-winded but one of the weirdest encouters ever happened in my life. And as it happened in a date, so…
Here it goes:
I signed up for a free dating site and started chatting to several guys. One of them, seemed like a nice and decent person.
When we started talking, it was about usual topics, interests. The conversation was flowing, as they say. I gave him my mobile number and he sent me texts every day, just some niceties. One of them was “I think we are on the same wavelength” “I hope so” I responded. I haven’t the slightest known yet, how wrong I was on assuming so…
After a week of talks, we set up a real life date.
He lived around an hour train ride from me and came to the station to pick me up. When I entered his car, he looked up to the sky and said: “do you find those clouds a bit weird?” There were no clouds, only condensation trails from airplanes. I said: “these are not clouds”
To which, he responded: “exactly” and had an expression on his face as if he just had said something really meaningful. Bit of an odd exchange, but I shrugged a shoulder and we did not mention the “not-clouds” again.
To my surprise, the date he set up was not the usual movie or restaurant combo with drinking, instead he took me to the riverside on a boat ride. I was enjoying it a lot, we both did a bit of rowing, it was sunny, we chatted nonchalantly.
We were talking about building styles in the UK (I am a foreigner) and I told him my impressions about buildings and differences to my home country. I also added that my dad is a bricklayer, so I have seen many houses being built.
To this, he said: “I have built something too” I asked: “What did you build?” “It is very unique. You will see it once, I hope.” – he said mysteriously. “What is it, a bunker?” – I joked and we laughed out loud.
The first date was over. I thanked him for the pleasant time and laughs. There was not much chemistry between us but I thought, what the hell, I will give another chance. So, when the next day he asked me for a second date, a dinner in his house, I said yes.
We drove to his house, where he lived alone. A nice and big family home. He had a wine chilled and invited me to look around. Everything was tidy, clean and stylish. I was impressed. We settled and he poured me some wine.
Out of the blue, at one point, he told me to go outside and check his car.
The following conversation happened:
“Do you see the scratches on the side?” – he pointed on the side, where large, faint scratches were running. “Of course I can see them” “What do you think caused them?” – he asked again. “I suppose branches or grass, or other cars, maybe some metal objects, a key maybe?” – I said hesitantly unsure where this conversation is going. “Let me tell you: Satan did these scratches…” – sounded his response. “Pardon?” “Satan scratched my car.” – again that sort of meaningful expression. “You mean figuratively I think, mean people maybe with evil motivation?” – I tried to deter the distrubing turn. “No, literally, the Satan itself.”- he said dead serious.
Uh.ooo….
Do you know the feeling, when suddenly the world seem like upside down and the fear hits you momentarily to make you nausetic and words froze inside you? I had that, combined with one of the biggest WTF moment.
“Is this guy crazy or what?”
We went back inside, my alarm bells were set off after this, I tell you. I was like a hawk, watching for little signs of anything unexpected. Little did I know that the real fun starts later….
He suggested we go to the kitchen and eat dinner. At least something normal, right? Right. You would think that someone inviting you over would prepare something. This was not the case. He suggested we eat soft boiled eggs. I happen to like boiled eggs very much, so ate 4 of them with bread. No problem, I am not fussy. So far so good.
After dinner, we went back to the living room and I relaxed a bit as Satan and scratches, the weird clouds and non of this crap was mentioned again. However, around a half hour later, again without any transition he says:
“Let me blindfold you, so I can show you what I built”
My mind went screaming: NO.F**.WAY! Adrenaline rushed through my blood I could sense it. Right then, I became concerned that this guy wants to kill me. In the same time I decided he won’t have an easy task to do so as I will fight like hell. I am not timid and rather strong and quick, so I was sizing up my options to run to the kitchen, grab a knife and defend myself if it comes to that. At this point, I’m wondering who was crazier, me or him?
Amazingly this is what I responded to him without even thinking:
“You know what? You are not going to blindfold me. Reason is, I think you are plotting to kill me. I know. And I also want you to know that you are not going to succeed. I will fight until my last breath.” – I sounded very calm, which amazed me even further.
His eyes opened wide and seemed genuinely surprised.
“Ok, ok, I can see you are nervous. Calm down, I am not planning anything. Just wanted to surprise you. I can see it backfired, so let’s just go as we are. No blindfold, I promise!” – he said.
Even though I was scared, I was also curious, so I responded:
“Right. I will take a look, under two conditions. First: You go in front of me and Second: I will take a knife from the kitchen and walk behind you. One bad move and you are dead. Did I mention I do martial arts?”
He agreed to my conditions. So, here we are, walking out the backdoor into the dark garden. The wind is blowing, trees and bushes rustle ominously as we walk the path. Him in the front with a light, me behind him, armed with the biggest kitchen knife I have ever seen. Just a perfect picture of two batshit crazy lunatics. As a matter of fact I have never fought in my life, I’m absolutely terrified, I lied about the martial art thing as well, I don’t know what I’m doing here, who is this insane person with me, not a single soul knows I am even here – I think about my life, my family far away, my stupidity.
We reach the shed in the back, well away from the house. There is only me and him, the bushes, and complete silence. Around us and as in front of us, as much as I can tell, just some woody areas and meadows and… a garden shed.
“This is it” – he says standing in front of the shed. Just a normal wooden shed, with 6 locks on the door. “This is what you built? Well, good one, now we can go back” – I am almost relieved. “No, the one I built is inside. Do you allow me to open it?” – I realise he must be scared of me a bit too. I nod.
He removes the locks and opens the door. The first thing I saw is a big ass axe on the floor! I jump away and pull the knife in front of me defensively.
“I knew it! Is this your murder weapon?!” – I shout. I can feel my heart beating so fast.
“Sorry, sorry! This is not meant to be here, I will put it away, ok? There.”-he says quickly.
“Give me that axe. Handle first.” – I order. He did.
“Now, look inside” – he asks and steps aside.
Very slowly, keeping an eye on him, I look inside the shed. Nothing. No rotting corpses, no torture chamber, just a few gym equipment, gardening tools, completely normal. I sigh… maybe I imagine too much into this…until.. from the corner of my eyes I notice something on the floor.
This!!!!!!!!!!!!:
A submarine hatch door. Holy crap, like a bloody rollercoaster! My gut is churning again.
“You really built a bunker…” – this is all I can say. What? How? Why? Words would fail to describe my thinking processes. “Yes” – he says bluntly and asks me to allow him to open the hatch door.
Next thing I know is we are looking down into a hole with concrete stairs, thick concrete walls, going down few meters. A nuclear bunker.
I am thinking, “if he kills me now and closes the door, nobody will ever find me”
Let me tell you the end quickly.
I did went down and looked around in the nuclear bunker of his design. He wanted to know what I think of it. I pointed out that no air filtration, pollution measurement equipment and surveillance system was installed so I was not sure if it is of any use (apart from hiding dead bodies). He agreed it needs improvement.
After the tour, we went back to the house. As you can guess, I was exhausted and weary from the whole evening but a bit calmer as I was still alive.
I thanked him for everything and requested to leave. He cried and told me he never met such a cool person as I am…
I was happy I only met a lunatic and not a serial killer.
TL:DR
A guy took me for a second date and showed me the nuclear bunker he built driven by his ideas on an upcoming doomsday fight between evil and good.
Is refusing to be submissive and subservient to the U.S. threatening the U.S.? To you it may be, but to the rest of the world it is call standing up to their right!
Lets defined threat. If Iran say it will bomb Washington, LA, New York, Miami or Hawaii, that will be considered a threat. Did Iran do that? So far it is the U.S. that funded and supported Saddam Hussein to fight a war with Iran in the 1980’s and murder General Solameini an Iranian scientist by a drone in Iraq! That is threatening. But it is the U.S. threatening Iran!
Seriously unless you are blind, deaf or dumb could you asked such a ludicrous question! Come on man be real. The U.S. ought to know that, Americans must surely know that. And you by asking this question is seen by 7.5 billion out of 8 billion or world inhabitants as a fool to even ask this question.
The U.S. threaten Iran and half the world to be bomb into smitten daily. And anyone that refused to be submissive and subservient to them is their enemy. Such behaviour belongs to Ghengis Khan or Atilla the Hun, or the Vikings not a 21st century nation! Call a spade a spade! Make the world a better place.
In my opinion yes, but not now. I looked at the numbers about this. As I suspected, the main reason why China extracts and processes this much rare earth metals is its industry demands it. It is not because of low labor costs or lax environmental regulations.
Few relevant numbers:
Chinese mine production was 210,000 tonnes in 2022, limited by Chinese law for environmental reasons.
Global mine production was ~300,000 tonnes. Which means the Chinese share of global production was 70%.
China’s share in the processing of rare earth ores was 85%. This means around half of the non-Chinese production was imported to China for processing. We can conclude from here that China processed around 255,000 tonnes of rare earths in 2022.
China’s export volume was 48,000 tonnes in 2022. For the value of this trade, the last data is from 2021. And it is 653 million USD. Completely insignificant for China, especially when you consider that it is coming at an environmental cost. When you look at the volume, you see that China’s exports are barely higher than its imports (in terms of weight after the processing of the imported ores). China’s own industry uses almost as much as China extracts from its own soil. Really, it looks like this monopoly only emerged because the scale caused by domestic demand resulted in much lower prices compared to the rest of the planet.
If this monetarily insignificant trade is this important for countries who are trying to kill entire sectors of the Chinese industry, then China should stop this trade. Let them deal with years of shortages. But it is not a good time to do this now. Export controls should be timed so that non-Chinese shortages should coincide with the emergence of Chinese products that compete with the products of Western companies (primarily US, SK and Japan) suffering from the shortages. This is important because commodities are rarely irreplaceable.
When I moved into my first apartment, it was one of those fancy newer buildings that offered incentives on move-in. In my case, it was a low deposit and a free month of rent! Because I was signing for a mid-month move-in, they pro-rated their amounts. At this stage was when I started eating the big bucks working crypto-forensic analysis and scam tracking jobs for Coinbase.
I wrote my check, moved in, and all was well for about 2 years.
A few weeks after I got tossed a notice about the building’s management being changed, I received a new notice taped to my front door. It told me I owed the front office <insert blank> amount within 3 days or they would begin eviction proceedings.
I’ve paid rent on time my entire life so I couldn’t imagine what on earth I would owe. Then I read the amount typed into the <insert blank>.
$0.01.
Yes. One cent. One one-hundredth of one dollar. One penny, and they wanted it NOW or they were going to evict me. What the hell?!
I went down and talked to the nice people in front of the computers in the leasing office. They looked through the files and told me that the new management was going through the books and making the final debt collections in order to start the new term on solid bookkeeping. They were rounding up all the outstanding fees and demanding payment. My fee, it appears, had been hanging around for two years. Yep: a rounding decision on that pro-rated rent amount.
asked them why they didn’t waive it. They said they couldn’t. I wasn’t about to lose my home over a rounding error, no matter the principle. I dug into my pocket to get the damn coin and hand it over. They held up their hands.
“I’m sorry, we don’t take cash.” I am sure the look on my face was comical but inside I was boiling with baffled rage.
They made me write a check. In order to keep my apartment, I used a $0.10 sheet of specially coded paper to hand over to salaried employees to collect in a deposit bag to go into a bank to cover a rounded calculation that had been irrelevant for 2 years but was now suddenly the difference between shelter and the streets.
Once upon a time, I was a stay at home mother. My home was spotless, my daughter taken care of, dinner was ready when her father walked in the door. I was happy and felt fulfilled. I truly loved giving of myself to my family.
Until I found myself alone and I had to find work. I did what I had to. I work long hours. Some say I work too many hours. But they aren’t responsible for me or my daughter, so their opinion is irrelevant. That responsibility falls on me, and even if I ever did remarry, I would never expect anyone else to be responsible for her, other than myself.
I prefer to do all of the “domestic arts” myself. I enjoy them. But the hours I work and the responsibilities I carry outside of work necessitate that I delegate some things to others. I don’t mind paying someone to clean if it means it’s one less thing for me to worry about.
Well, for this, we have to go back to the closing years of World War II. Although Germany and Japan were still fighting, it was clear they were going to lose, but that meant cleaning up the economic mess that had been created by the war.
Now, historically, the British Pound Sterling had been the most common reserve currency due to its stability and the ability to convert paper money into gold. However, the British government had to go heavily into debt for the war and suspended conversion of paper money into precious metal. However, it hardly mattered as British gold reserves were under pressure as it borrowed more and more money.
Now, the United States was in debt too, but back in 1933 they had already suspended the ability to convert paper currency into gold (you could convert it to silver until 1964) and had made the ownership of gold illegal. They then consolidated all the gold held by the various regional Federal Reserve banks and all the private gold they confiscated (and gave paper money for) into a single depository next to Fort Knox in Kentucky. Moreover, most countries had finance their debt int he United States as their own markets collapsed. In other words, the United States was swimming in gold.
So in July 1944 all 44 allied nations met at a hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire and worked out the new world monetary order. At the top of the agenda was avoiding expensive and potentially destabilizing transfers of large amounts of gold which would allow nations devastated by war to have capital to rebuild.
The scheme essentially took gold entirely out of the market and fixed it to the U.S. dollar, with $35 U.S. being the equivalent of 1 ounce of gold. Nations in the compact, called “Bretton Woods”, would agree to buy all the gold they had at that rate. Each nation would be able to fix the value of their currency against the U.S. dollar (for example, 5 francs to the dollar) but would have to guaranteed that exchange rate for intercountry transfers (i.e. the U.S. could buy all the francs it wanted for dollars at that rate). Countries could change that rate (Canada did in the 1960s when it dropped the rate from $1.00 U.S. for $1.00 Cdn. to $0.975 U.S. to $1.00 Cdn.) but had to stand by it. In other words, gold would not routinely change hands, U.S. dollars would.
There was a catch. Even though people couldn’t exchange dollars for gold, countries could. Most countries held U.S. dollar reserves, which were largely from surplus exports to the U.S. If they wanted to, they could “take delivery” of gold, assuming they wanted to securely transport it from Fort Knox themselves.
As such, the U.S. dollar standard replaced the gold standard, as the U.S. dollar became the common currency for all the countries in the compact.
Of course, this only lasted until 1973 when Richard Nixon pulled the United States out of the agreement. From that point forward, there was no fixed rate between currencies and they traded on the open market. The U.S. also ended the prohibition against owning gold and started selling some or theirs on the open market.
A Golden Eagle, a roughly 1 ounce gold coin that the U.S. government sells at the current market price of gold, plus a small premium.
Most countries still use the U.S. dollar as their “reserve” or “exchange” currency, but that’s changing. For example, Argentina just moved from the dollar to the Chinese yuan, which is also quite stable because the Chinese government manipulates its value
I am 21 years old. When I was in 10th grade there was a girl A in school. Just like typical teenagers she had many rumours surrounding her. I ignored those and went ahead and made friends with her.
In some months we started dating. We were head over heels for each other. We had everything going great so shown in movies. One day when we were on a date, after coming out from washroom she gave me her phone. There she had written something which changed all my views on her. She wrote that she was raped at the age of 14 by a guy who forced her to be his girlfriend so that other people won’t suspect a thing.
Fearing society and her parents, she didn’t tell it to anyone. But had to undergo therapy. Her parents were totally unaware to real reason behind her behaviour. She lost a ton of weight and was living on medicines. This was really shocking for me. Then I had flashback of all the times when she had certain insecurities and why she required so much time to trust a person. She also had intimacy issues because of this. And that person had told her to shut her mouth or he’ll leak the tape which he had recorded. This rumour was spread in our school by her friends isolating her.
But now she’s a healthy person pursuing her career in engineering and I am a proud boyfriend.
America Warns China To Obey As US Debt Auction GOES BAD
I didn’t think I was a poor student until I arrived at USC for my MBA program. I had worked hard and saved up $150K, which was to last me exactly through the $100K in tuition for two years and $50K for basic living expenses. I had a 9 year old Lincoln and thought I was set. My naïveté lasted for about 10 minutes.
As soon as I pulled into the student parking lot, I could see all the late model cars, many of them luxury marks. This was the undergrad parking area. One blond undergrad roared her shiny white Cadillac Escalade down the ramp as I looked for a spot.
During our casual meeting time with fellow students, productively labeled as networking, I heard about the kind of massive homes in exclusive neighborhoods that were the norm. Many of my classmates had gotten new luxury cars just for school and had fancy upscale condos for partying during school. But, that was just stuff. What really blew my mind was their attitude about money on a daily basis.
Many would invariably go to night time parties two or even three times a week, all during some very intense course work. While I looked for ways to stick to my $25 daily food budget, they had no problem splurging a few hundred dollars a night each time they were out. At the same time, I knew they were taking out massive student loans to fund their gratuitous consumption, along with tuition and basic living expenses.
Their lack of concern about repaying an extra $50K just surprised the heck out of me. I wasn’t dead broke and could tag along, but I just didn’t see the benefit of such free spending. Eventually, I settled into a more middle-class normative life-style and was comfortable.
Then I saw how naive I truly was.
One of my classmates had gotten to attend the MBA program on a merit and needs-based scholarship. He didn’t have any money. While his tuition was waived, he still needed to pay for daily expenses.
Instead of a fancy high floor condo or even a modest downtown condo, he lived in one of the roughest neighborhoods just off campus. I lived nearby and can hear the police patrols and random gun fire where he lived. My place wasn’t much but at least it was secure. He lived on a couch in a shared room right in the middle of regular gang and drug activity. Running water wasn’t always available, but it was cheap, just a few hundred bucks a month.
Obviously, he didn’t have a car and relied on brisk walks to get anywhere. He didn’t have many friends as he couldn’t afford to go hang out with anyone. When we hung out, I made sure we didn’t need to spend any money.
He couldn’t even afford food, so he worked part time at university food service to make a few dollars and grab leftovers for meals. While others dined in fancy Beverly Hills and Hollywood hot spots, he was scraping pots for a bite. But, he never complained about the squandered money of our fellow students. He knew his values and was content on focusing on his goals.
He certainly kept me grounded as I felt like a spoiled brat using money so freely and buying myself a burrito whenever I felt hungry.
So, here I was moping ridiculously about my relative paucity; he showed what real determination and pride in the midst of deprivation looked like.
And, even at the MBA level, there’s a bias to spend money. My freespending classmates all got six-figure jobs right out of school from their “networking” efforts and were able to quickly pay off their huge student loans. Meanwhile, my poor friend is still struggling financially.
Cheating Wife Stories, Husband’s Cruel Revenge For Cheating
“It doesn’t matter if she ” started to fall back in love with you “…SHE’S HAD ANOTHER MAN’S BABY !!! …that’s it…its over , no if and or buts it’s over…any man who’d accept that is NOT a man , he’d be a lil bitch , I don’t think I could have been with her the 9 months and not starting IMMEDIATE divorce proceedings could cost him child support…remember some sick states automatically declare a husband the ” father ” …even if you have medical proof and D.N.A proof…you must also have written statements by the mother and possible father…if mother can’t find other guy or he refuses to get involved you owe that affair baby 18 yrs of child support.. ( disgusting they’d punish a innocent man just to save a few percentages of tax rates for business and the rich…yet they have the harshest anti- abortion laws…total scum…but then again any man stupid enough to still marry in those states is criminally ignorant and brings it on himself…so no sympathy for those or this idiot..no one or no law forced him to marry…he put himself into his predicament….so keep lining up to sign up for marriage…I get a kick out of your pain and suffering”
According to CIIE organizers, this year’s expo has attracted a record 289 Global Fortune 500 companies and industry leaders, with over 3,400 exhibitors and 394,000 professional visitors registered for the event.
Now read carefully the name for the expo – it’s an IMPORT EXPO meaning the exhibitors are EXPORTERS from all over the world traveling to China to meet Chinese IMPORTERS to buy from them.
This is not about these people investing in China. This is about exhibitors interested to sell to the world’s largest consumer market.
I received a text addressed to him and asking him to call back the very next day after I activated it.
“Who’s this?”
“Mom.”
“I think you have the wrong number,” I answered. “My mom’s half way across the planet.”
“Sorry.”
“Hope everything is okay with your son/daughter!”
“Thanks! All the best!”
The messages didn’t stop there.
Reminders to pick up his car from the mechanic’s, friends wanting to get beers over the weekend, or talking sports and venting about frustrating relationships.
A woman he used to see asking if they can reconnect.
And I diligently replied saying that it’s no longer his number.
Except the more I replied, the more I felt some inexplicable connection with Michael. As if every message I received made me understand him a bit better. Identify with him. Even root for him as he navigates through the challenges of life.
Then things went quiet and I thought he must have let everyone know about changing his number and I almost forgot about the whole thing.
Until I started getting a different kind of messages.
And then it was spelled out in one message: “I heard your mom got diagnosed with cancer.”
The same mom who sent me my very first message on that phone.
I wrote back to one person saying that even though it’s not his number, I’m deeply sorry about the news and that I’m sending healing prayers.
He/she was so touched they said the kindness of a stranger brightened their day and restored a little bit of faith.
And I felt even closer to Michael.
Like we have something greater in common than just having shared a number. I’ve *been* through shit with him. I’ve thought about his problems and commitments.
And now his mom has cancer.
Michael, I don’t know you and we’ve never spoken, but I want you to know that I *am* there for you. That you *are* in my thoughts. That I *do* care.
That I love you and your mother and I hope you all get through this.
China can do manufacturing and the U.S. cannot. China is the global supply chain hub. China is the one with the perrenial trade surplus with the U.S. Militarily, China has the world’s largest naval fleet while we can’t construct any new naval assets while those “active” assets spent more time in repair than out on duty.
Yesterday in the Charlotte, NC airport I decided to spend my last few dollars on a beer before my flight to Munich.
Before me in line stood a man well into his seventies. He ordered two red wines.
The server asked him for his ID and that of his equally aged wife who was sitting at a table with a cane propped between her knees.
He thought it was a joke. So did I.
It wasn’t. He had to walk back to the table and fetch his wife’s ID.
This was not only strange, it was the stupidest rule I’ve ever seen.
Sixty-year old me was next. And yes, I needed to prove I was twenty one.
Edit: I keep getting comments about how this is normal and the server is just doing their job. I understand and don’t hold it against the server, their management or even the legal system that makes them so careful.
All that said, the rest of the world finds it very strange (and a bit sad perhaps) when 80-year old people must be carded to prove they are 21.
If you are 100% sure you know who did it, and the peaches were all inside the boundaries of your yard, you have several options – none passive.
Coming from compassion – Offer to share some – not all – if they “need” some.
Let “all” neighbors know you have plans for the fruit this year. Request everyone stay out of your yard unless invited.
Put up a Beware of dog sign – even if you don’t have one.
Put up No Tresspassing signs. Warn that anyone caught tresspassing is subject to being arrested.
Get security cameras on your place – yard and front and side areas.
And if they get caught trying to do it again have an estimate for value of the crop and press charges for theft. If it’s over $500 it’s a felony in many or most states. Tresspassing and theft could mean jail time. Those peaches better be worth it to them.
Growing up we had grapes along our back fence. Three different neighbors over 25 years all asked first before taking the grapes poking through to their side. Every year my family told them to take any on their side of the fence.
Point is good neighbors “ask.”
Something is weird with your neighbors.
China’s Growing NAVAL POWER Can Destroy the USA in 30 Seconds
Technological advancement is a cornerstone of China’s naval dominance. From the development of cutting-edge submarines, such as the Type 095 and Type 096, to the deployment of advanced naval aviation capabilities, China has demonstrated an unyielding dedication to innovation. Its naval prowess is complemented by a formidable array of anti-ship missiles, naval defense systems, and electronic warfare capabilities, placing it at the forefront of maritime technology.
I was enjoying a meal of spaghetti with marinara sauce in a pleasant Italian restaurant. I noticed two women, around 40, eating at the other side of the small restaurant, conversing and eating heartily. When they had finished, the waitress came to take their plates, and asked if they wanted anything else. They said no, and she asked “If you are ready, I will bring your bill.” The ladies said, no, they would not pay because the food was very bad. They claimed the spaghetti was undercooked, the sauce was thin and salty, and the rolls were not fit to eat. Their coffee was much too strong, too. They were not rude or really loud, but were adamant they did not think they should pay for such bad food. The waitress said, “Why didn’t you tell me? I would have taken the food and gotten you a better meal. And besides, why did you eat it all and then tell me it was so bad?” The ladies realized the sense of the waitress’ words, accepted the bill, and paid.
Early during my intern year in San Francisco in 1973, I took over care of a comatose alcoholic patient. I discovered her electrolytes and metabolic tests were all out of wack.
I corrected them and she woke up.
The first thing she asked upon awakening was “Who’s taking care of my cats?”.
She was in a panic.
I called her contacts and got a neighbor to get her cats and care for them.
I then told my patient that if she kept drinking, the next time she ended up in the hospital she would surely die and there would be no one to look after her cats. They would die a terrible death of thirst and starvation.
I remember her looking at me with grave concern.
About a week later she was discharged and I didn’t see her again until very near the end of my internship. I saw her walking in the corridor of the hospital going for a clinic visit. She looked like a different person, well dressed and made up.
She told me that she hadn’t had another drink in almost a year because her cats depended on her.
It was one of the most rewarding moments in my long career and one of the rare times I succeeded in getting a hard core alcoholic to get and stay on the wagon.
Cheesecake Factory Cajun Jambalaya Pasta
pasta jambalaya 4 1 of 1 1463×2048 1
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients
4 ounces butter
2 teaspoons Cajun spice mix
1 pound boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into small pieces
1 pound fresh linguini pasta
1/2 cup clam juice
2 ounces green bell peppers, cut into thin strips
2 ounces red bell peppers, cut into thin strips
2 ounces yellow bell peppers, cut into thin strips
4 ounces red onions, cut into thin strips
1/2 pound fresh medium shrimp, peeled, deveined, tails removed
1/2 cup diced tomatoes
Instructions
Place the butter into a sauté pan. Allow the butter to melt slightly. Add the seasoning into the pan and stir together with the melted butter. Add the chicken into the pan and continue to cook until the chicken is about half done.
While the chicken is cooking, carefully place the pasta into boiling water and cook until al dente.
Pour the clam juice into the pan. Add the peppers and onions. Cook for another minute, making sure the vegetables are heated through and the chicken is almost done.
Add the shrimp into the pan. Toss the ingredients together and continue to cook until the shrimp are almost done.
Add the tomatoes into then pan. Continue to cook mixture until both the shrimp and chicken are thoroughly cook through.
Place some pasta into each bowl. Spoon equal portions of the jambalaya mixture into each bowl over the pasta.
My dad was 22 years older than my mom and in his mid-fifties when I was born. He retired while I was in elementary school which meant I essentially had two stay at home parents as my mom didn’t work. My dad never showed his age and was as active and involved as any of my friends dads but more so because he didn’t have work. When I was younger my dad would come to elementary school and eat lunch with me. He helped with boy scouts and came camping with me. He attended all sporting events and school activities. In the summer we would spend full days at museums or going on trips; he was a regular chaperone on school field trips. When my bus stop was far away he’d come pick me up every day.
I was always sadly hyper aware that he was older and losing him was a regular fear; I lucked out and had him with me until he almost hit 97 and I was 42; my mom passed 15 months before him. I just had my first child at 43 and have no idea how my dad managed 4 kids, with my brother and I just two years apart, and not complain or show any signs of age at all. I wouldn’t say I ever wished for younger parents as it is all I ever knew.
My dad was 57 when I was born and my mom 43. My mom passed away 2 days after I was born. My dad was my world. He learned to cook to make me my favorite meals. I was a picky eater as a kid.
He woke me up each morning with fresh squeezed orange juice which I love until this day. As I got older, he would play tennis with me and taught me to play softball. He had played baseball in Cuba and he was a great hitter even in his sixties. I did everything with him.
When I was 5, he was on his way to pick me up at day care when he got into a terrible car accident where an ambulance was called to treat him. He was less than a a tenth of a mile from the day care, he told the ambulance workers he had to pick up his daughter before he could be taken to the hospital. He walked and picked me up with a head injury and took me to a neighbors house before being transported to the hospital. I will always remember this day.
When I was 10 he retired from work and started picking me up from the bus stop every day after school. He always had a snack ready for me and we sat and talked about our day.
At 15 he taught me to drive. He was patient and made sure I knew the rules of the road. For my 16th birthday, he took me to get my drivers license. A few days later he bought me a car. We were poor and I had no expectation of a car. He had put aside money to buy me a 3 year old Toyota Camry. He drove a 13 year old car.
A few months after my 16th birthday he was not feeling well and I thought it was a cold. He passed away 20 days later of a double pneumonia and acute leukemia. My world was shattered. I didn’t know how to pick up the pieces and keep going. To this day, I think about him every day.
Did I wish he was younger? No, I wouldn’t change him but I do wish I had more time with him.
He’s never run any commercials promoting his podcast. Never bought any billboards, any print ads. He never went on any late-night shows to promote his podcast.
I’ve always known about him from watching UFC’s, so I knew he had a podcast.
But eventually – he began popping up more and more on my YouTube suggestions. I figured – can this podcast really be any good? I know he’s a decent comedian and a great fight commentator.
Steadily – over years, he continued plugging away at his podcast, getting more and more guests.
Finally, I gave in – and I’m hooked – along with millions of other people.
The podcast is a blend of funny/smart and is just people having conversations. No acting, no-nonsense.
Just humble, intelligent conversations with a wide variety of people from all walks of life.
Joe now has one of the most popular podcasts in the world and he just did it by being his authentic self and enjoying conversations with people.
He was a Navy SEAL serving in Afghanistan. During a mission in 2007, he went into a room first, leading his team. Unfortunately, it had insurgents in it, waiting with automatic weapons.
He was shot 27 times. While 11 rounds were blocked by his body armor, 16 rounds managed to hit him in the torso, arms and legs. He was also hit by a grenade which exploded and sent shrapnel through his body.
And then, he managed to kill three enemy fighters near him with a pistol and without killing any of the women and children in the room.
His recovery took two long years.
And he later became an advocate for wounded warriors and those living with PTSD—because he had it bad.
Sadly, he was haunted by the things he went through in war. This past March, he couldn’t bear it anymore and was found hanging in his room.
He cheated death narrowly for 16 years, but the demons were the ones Mike couldn’t escape. Rest in Peace warrior.
The Admiral Kuznetsov was and actually still is the flagship of the Russian Navy.
Yes, she’s not seaworthy, but it doesn’t matter. This is really a matter of national pride. If the Russian Navy can’t keep their flagship in service, that does not look great.
As a side-note, the Kuznetsov was built at the Black Sea Shipyard in what is now Ukraine. Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last few years, you’ll know why docking it in Ukraine is not exactly an option. Russia lacks any shipyards large and capable enough to properly service or build something this big, which is why they’re having so much trouble refitting the ship.
It may happen now and then but I have never heard of of a big box company buying out the little guy. They usually just open up a store and drive the little guy out of business – maybe. Read on. Sometimes a smaller chain will be bought out but seldom a single store.
Mom and pop hardware stores tended to do better than, say, grocery stores because of the expertise offered.
In 1976 I got a position in Rochester NH as a bank trust officer and we bought a beautiful cape cod with a center chimney built in 1853.
A neighbor chatted to me and asked me if I had experience with working on houses. Our previous home we had bought brand new so I had to confess that I had not. He told me I should expect this home to require endless work. He suggested to me that I should patronize Warburton’s Hardware just down the road from me. He said I would go in for a dollars worth of nails and come out with ten dollars worth of advice.
He was right on both counts and I took his advice.
Brownie Warburton retired and it was bought by the Boucher family and they are still there. It was a happy day for me when he invited me to call him Brownie. The locals were not usually that accepting of blow ins.
So the mom and pop hardware stores can compete.
Now just about anyone will be familiar with this logo
ACE Hardware
You might think that Ace is a chain but you would be wrong. Ace stores are individually owned or parts of small chains – a bit liked McDonald’s. The big difference is that Ace Corporation is owned by the store owners – it is a cooperative. Ace started up in 1924, long before big box hardware stores and they seem to be thriving. They do so in the same way that Brownie Warburton did: by providing service and expertise. Edit. I did not intend this to be an ad for Ace but it sure resonated with readers. Read the comments.
This is not to say that big box stores have no place; they clearly do but so do smaller, locally owned stores.
I’m a Christian and would change it to God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform “ as an old hymn says.
When I was younger, I was asked at the last minute to delay my holiday as someone else wanted to go to the Henley Regatta and we couldn’t both be away from work at the same time. I was furious!
When I arrived finally on holiday, this vision in a blue dress appeared. She also not only shouldn’t have been there that week, but shouldn’t have been there at all. She had been going to Switzerland earlier but developed appendicitis and couldn’t go and some weeks later was invited to join her sister and some friends and so we met.
We married a year later and remained together for 63 years until her death.
I used to work for a large rehab company. I was a licensed occupational therapist. One year, we had a new girl start there, who was from Europe. She was also also a licensed therapist, but had two years of additional training. She was also on a work visa. At first she was friendly and agreeable, but soon began to show her true colors. She started making snide comments about people behind their backs, and then proceeded to say them to their faces. She told me that where she came from, I wouldn’t be considered a real therapist, because I had only studied for two years.
We had a few Rehab assistants that she proceeded to lord over, because she had a college degree and they did not. But they worked hard and did their jobs. One day she sat with us at lunch; myself, and two rehab assistants. She proceeded to make rude comments about certain ethnic groups in the company, claiming that they had chips on their shoulders. I told her that her remarks could be construed as racism, and that she had better knock it off. She scoffed, and went on making rude comments. When she left the room with a big smirk on her face, one of the aides told me that she had been making unflattering comments behind my back, too. I decided that she needed to be taught a lesson. I contacted our clinical director and reported her behavior, especially the racist comments.
An hour later, she came walking down the hall, smirk replaced by copious tears. She had been warned that if she continued with her behavior, she would be shipped right back to Europe.
In 2019 exactly ONE MONTH before CNY and the launch of the COVID-19 bioweapon I received a call.
A Irish “company” wanted to interview me for a COO position.
They would pay me 500,000 yuan per month!
They were “supposedly” a billion dollar company and were interested in me.
So, of course, I had a zoom meeting with the HR manager.
…
But, there wasn’t an HR.
Instead it was a contractor who interviewed me for the CEO directly.
The CEO was “too busy” to chat with me himself.
Don’t you know…
…
As it was explained to me, the company was located in Shenzhen, made consumer products, billions of dollars in revenue, and wanted some basic questions about me, how I worked, and what I was doing.
They wanted to know my background…
RED FLAGS GALORE
There are no consumer appliance companies with billions of dollar revenue in my particular specialty area. I worked at the largest int he world. Multi-million dollar companies, sure. Billions. Nope.
I did a check on the company. Doesn’t exist in Ireland, and nothing inside of SZ or China.
They had a slick webpage. Lots of computer renderings of a office building… that did not exist. A leader profile of a bunch of guys in their 30’s. No one over 40.
No one could tell me what specific type of product that they dealt with.
No return or follow up calls. E-mail address were dead ends.
After the interview…. nothing.
No follow back, no rejection, no next steps. Etc.
I had three interns try to dig up information on the company. All failed. The company simply did not exist in any form, not even under a trade name.
…
The “Five Eyes” conducted an interview of myself prior to the release of the Covid-19 bioweapon. They must have done it exactly one week prior to the release.
They just wanted to know where I was, and what I was doing…
…figured that I was inert, and nothing of concern…
…and ignored me and let me be.
…
Life is funny, don’t you know. Especially if you are ME.
The U.S. don’t need any bad mouthing at all. It stands out clearly and vividly as a very barbaric nation that bullies most nations in planet earth. Everyone on earth knows there are only 3 types of allies the U.S. has. The US slave vassal states that has no choice of their own, their fellow despicable former colonial masters that needs to keep its loot sand plunder and perpetuate their crimes and small and weak nations that like to poke Russia in the eyes and then hide under the U.S. skirt.
These facts are so obviously clear to the entire world even though the U.S. has the best propaganda machine that has a full time job of demonising nations the refused to be submissive and subservient to them. This the U.S. has carried out for a full century. Hence there are some portion of west that buys into these like gospel truths.
China don’t need to do a thing to influence their people. Firstly the Chinese are highly influenced by Confucianism whose ethics and mantra include thinking for itself and seeking out the ultimate truths. The Chinese media has very few opinions. It doesn’t make judgements. They News are short precise to the point on facts, truth, accuracy and with proofs and evidence. Sort of it Chinese people refused to believed.
Western media ignores facts and propel set narratives that demonise China. As a default mode. It is opinionated and opinion filled. Chinese people don’t buy any of these shit. In fact almost no one buys any of these shit apart from some portion of the U.S. cronies. These represent no more than 5% of the world’s population and a mere dozen nations or so mainly Caucasians and Anglo Saxons.
I sincerely feels it don’t helped the U.S. and in fact hurt the U.S. image as most societies in the world don’t take kindly to lies innuendos and misinformation. It showed the weakness of the U.S. At best some nations fear the U.S. but almost no nation respects the U.S. I am here in QUORA to provide as much obvious truths mainly to them for their own good.
You Won’t Believe what Anthony Blinken Said !!
Anthony Blinken recently delivered a speech at John Hopkins University on the emerging new world order. I was astounded at some of the things he said. Here i give my thoughts and opinions
You know what’s a really big question that a lot of people are asking these days? It’s whether China’s economy has reached its peak or not. Whether China has run out of steam or still has some gas left in the tank. Whether China is facing a hard landing or a soft landing. Whether China is doomed to stagnate or destined to thrive.
Well, let me tell you something. That question is based on a false premise. A false premise that assumes that China’s economy is somehow close to its limit or its ceiling. A false premise that ignores the facts and the evidence that show otherwise. A false premise that overlooks the potential and the opportunities that lie ahead for China.
Because the truth is, China’s economy still has a lot of room to grow. A lot of room to grow and a lot of potential to unleash. And there are three main reasons why.
The first reason is that China has a massive and dynamic domestic market. A domestic market that consists of 1.4 billion people, which is the largest population in the world. A domestic market that boasts a fast-growing middle class, which is projected to reach 780 million by 2025. A domestic market that is becoming more diverse and sophisticated, as consumers demand higher quality products and services, and more personalized and customized experiences.
This means that China has a huge consumer base that can drive domestic demand and consumption, as well as innovation and entrepreneurship. This means that China has a huge market for new business models and sectors to emerge and flourish, such as e-commerce, digital entertainment, health care, education, green technology, and so on.
The second reason is that China has a strong investment in infrastructure, technology, and human capital. An investment that builds and upgrades its physical infrastructure, such as roads, railways, airports, ports, power grids, and so on. An investment that develops and enhances its technological capabilities, especially in areas such as artificial intelligence, biotechnology, quantum computing, 5G, and so on. An investment that improves and expands its human capital, by providing access to education, health care, social security, and so on.
This means that China improves the connectivity and efficiency of its economy, as well as the living standards of its people. This means that China increases the productivity and competitiveness of its economy, as well as the innovation potential of its society. This means that China boosts the skills and well-being of its workforce, as well as the social stability and cohesion of its nation.
The third reason is that China has an active participation in global trade and cooperation. A participation that makes it the world’s largest trader of goods and services, accounting for about 13% of global trade in 2020. A participation that makes it a major source and destination of foreign direct investment (FDI), attracting $163 billion of FDI inflows in 2020, and investing $133 billion of FDI outflows in 2020. A participation that makes it a key player in regional and multilateral economic initiatives, such as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI), and so on.
This means that China can access new markets and resources, share its development experience and best practices, and contribute to global economic growth and stability. This means that China can benefit from trade liberalization, infrastructure connectivity, policy coordination, and mutual benefit among participating countries and regions. This means that China can pursue win-win cooperation and multilateralism with its partners around the world.
Now, this is not to say that China’s economy does not face any challenges or risks. It does. It faces challenges such as slowing down of population growth and aging of society; rising environmental costs and pressures; increasing income inequality and social discontent; intensifying trade frictions and geopolitical tensions; and so on.
But these challenges are not insurmountable. They are not impossible to overcome. They require China to adopt appropriate policies and strategies to address them effectively and proactively. Policies and strategies such as accelerating economic restructuring and transformation; promoting green development and ecological civilization; enhancing social justice and welfare; pursuing win-win cooperation and multilateralism; and so on.
These policies and strategies can help China overcome its difficulties and achieve high-quality development. Development that is balanced and comprehensive. Development that can benefit itself and the world.
So, to answer your question: No, China’s economy has not peaked or is close to peaking. Yes, China’s economy still has room to grow or potential to unleash.
And if you want to learn more about this topic or ask me any follow-up questions or comments, please feel free to do so on Quora.
My sister’s friend interned for a company over the summer.
Being a poor college student, she could not afford to rent furniture for the three months she spent living in the town of her internship.
She had just a blanket, a pillow, and a suitcase of clothes in her flat. She also had a plate, a glass, a mug, a pan, and a cookie sheet.
It was shocking to walk into her apartment, as a well-paid engineering intern, to see absolutely nothing but a blanket and a pillow in her apartment. It was empty.
One day, she invited the neighbor kid over to make some cookies. He was about ten years old.
He came into her apartment and made cookies with her and left back home after their stomachs were full.
The very next day, my sister’s friend heard a knock on the door. She opened to see her neighbor kid and his dad standing in front of her with an armchair. The kid had told his dad that her apartment did not have single thing in it.
They said, embarrassedly, “We’d like to donate this armchair to you.”
They carried it in, and set it down in her room as the sole piece of furniture in her entire apartment, and never spoke of it again.
She said she never appreciated an armchair more than that summer.
Spam came out in 1937, a product of Hormel Foods .The name Spam is said to have derived from Spiced Ham but that is not proven yet. It is made mostly with with pork shoulder, a cut not so much used at the time; a cheap cut of meat. Made of pork and ham, salt, sugar, potato starch water and good old sodium nitrate which I’m sure will be banned from foods in the future. The meat is ground up and the mixture is put into cans, vacuum sealed and cooked inside the can. After cooling, the cans are ready for sale. It is claimed by Hormel that 13 cans of SPAM are sold every second. I am one of those buyers.
It was invented because they were looking for a way that meat could be preserved not having to be refrigerated but kept on a shelf in the home. It could be eaten right from the can, baked or fried and was an inexpensive meal especially toward the end of the depression.
Later 100 million pounds of the stuff was consumed by Allied soldiers during WWII. Nikita Khrushchev stated that SPAM saved the Russian Army during the war. SPAM was sent to Great Britain from the US through the Land Lease plan and was used by many house wives the same as every where else. With the British and Canadian Armies it was tins of corn beef that they survived on. Spam was also eagerly devoured by the US military during the Korean and Vietnam Wars. Along with C rations of course.
I love both canned corned beef (from Brazil) and Spam and have tins of the stuff in the pantry. When I feel like some Spam, I will place one in the fridge for awhile, take it out then open the tin. I will either make a sandwich out of it or cut chunks and put them on a plate then slather relish and mustard over the Spam and gulp it down.
Same with the corned beef. I either make a sandwich or again, cut chunks and put them on a plate and with a fork, dip the meat pieces in mustard and again, gulp them down along with a pickle and slice of bread. Delicious.
The ten-year-old Belt and Road Initiative is not a concrete-pouring binge, at least not anymore. China is encouraging private enterprises to take a more active role and participate in projects labeled as “small and beautiful.” Some attribute the shift to China’s economic headwind and take it as a sign that the BRI is losing steam. This argument lacks a basic understanding of the rationale behind the China-proposed development initiative. The shift indicates the BRI has run its natural course and entered a new phase.
To expound it, one must go back to the central question: why did China put forward the BRI in the first place? Some clichés include: it is a geopolitical strategy designed to expand China’s sphere of influence; it is an ambition to counter the U.S-led global order; it is a series of investment projects to transfer domestic overcapacity and import raw materials; it is a charity program attached with political strings.
None of these arguments is close to the real picture. In essence, the BRI aims to bring the global value chains to the digital era. It is a globalization proposal that seems ahead of its time. Consider the following scenarios: a New York City resident and a villager from a remote town on the African continent browse the same TikTok videos on their cellphones (yes, both of them own more than one cellphone). A Chinese car buyer can purchase the latest Tesla model entirely built in China and cheaper than American consumers. A young person can get a postgraduate diploma from a UK university via remote study and be employed by the local branch of a UK-headquartered multinational without the necessity to set foot on British soil. Globalization in the digital era is disrupting the hierarchy of traditional value chains and blurring the boundaries of producers and consumers. In a word, this round of globalization is reshaping how factors of production are being distributed and utilized.
All this means the efforts to vitalize the newfound or hidden factors of production will be generously rewarded. It is common sense that most of these factors can only be found in developing economies. The promoters of the BRI are aware that the approach toward shared prosperity is to vitalize these factors of production and put them in the right places with a set of catalysts, such as transport and information connectivity, better education, poverty reduction, and empowerment of digital literacy.
From the perspective of China, the sustainability of its economic prosperity lies in how long and to what extent its economy will intertwine with the global value chains. As an economy at the middle end of these chains, it will take long and arduous efforts to climb up the established ladder. At the same time, it is inevitable to move away from merely being the world factory. All this has left China with little choice but to explore new foreign partners through new non-disruptive arrangements to the existing system, from which it has benefited a lot since reform and opening up, particularly since its accession into the World Trade Organization in 2001. More importantly, these new arrangements must also bear enough potential to create new opportunities for the new partners. It does not work if these projects only benefit China. This is the primary rationale of the Belt and Road Initiative.
Research shows that the private sector has proved to be more effective in creating and fine-tuning value chains compared with their government-led counterparts. Private companies, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises, are the eventual driving force in this cause. In the beginning phase of the BRI, large and state-owned contractors took the lead in building basic infrastructure. Those projects helped to nurture political goodwill and energize local business partners. Thanks to them, private Chinese companies now feel more comfortable doing business in BRI countries.
Now, a paradigm shift is taking place. The private sector is catching up quickly and encouraged to play a more prominent role. An increasing number of big projects have adopted the Build-Operate-Transfer models, which emphasize the participation of local partners and the sustainability of the projects. More market players now prefer indirect investment, which has also proved more efficient and sustainable in maintaining the value chains. Besides, the Chinese government encourages projects labeled as “small and beautiful,” which refers to the smaller projects directly connected with improving local livelihoods. New investment favorites include businesses in sectors such as new energy, healthcare, mobile communication, and e-commerce.
The Belt and Road Initiative is entering a new phase, an intentional adjustment in line with its original missions, and it will provide more benefits to the private sector and local participants.
China SHOCKED US Yet Again With $3 Billion 6th Generation Fighter Jet
In the ever-evolving realm of aerial warfare, the stage is currently commanded by the formidable 5th gen stealth fighters like the mighty dragon Chengdu-J20 or the famed F-35 raptor. Eyes now remain fixed upon the emergence of 6th generation stealth fighters. Today’s episode will uncover China’s upcoming 6th generation stealth fighter jet that has shocked the entire world.
When the recession hit in 2007–2009, the owner of the company I worked for made a grand speech about how tight things were and how he was doing his best to keep from laying anyone off, so everyone needed to work really hard and go the extra mile. This was one of those “be happy you have a job” speeches that meant raises and bonuses were going to be absolute shit, which might be justifiable if the company were in dire straits, but we weren’t. The recession went on and we kept growing, but management was all doom and gloom. At some point after the recession was over, somebody that had access to the CFO’s bonus spreadsheet printed it out and accidentally left it on the printer. Another employee found it and brought me a copy. The owner gave himself a $22M bonus that first year of the recession and the next few years were similar. I knew at that point they couldn’t be trusted.
. Industry observers cited by the publication believe that the contract maker of chips anticipates stricter sanctions from the U.S. and is stockpiling the materials it needs. There could be other reasons, too.
The buzz in the industry suggests that SMIC has recently approached its partners in Taiwan, placing substantial orders equivalent to around two years’ worth of materials supply. Some believe that this move is to ensure a steady supply for its 7nm chip production, hinting at the company’s forward-thinking approach.
The larger question revolves around SMIC’s motivations for such significant stockpiling. Some think it could be a proactive measure against potential new restrictions from the U.S. Others feel it could be an effort to raise their inventory, anticipating a surge in client requirements.
Huawei has high hopes for its Mate 60-series smartphones and expects to ship as many as 20 million units this year if supply remains intact. But these smartphones will keep shipping next year, and their sales will only increase. Furthermore, the company will likely introduce other smartphones based on its chips, significantly increasing its requirements for SoCs. As a result, it makes sense for SMIC to increase procurement of raw materials pure enough for its 7nm production.
SMIC and other Chinese chipmakers are not novices when it comes to stockpiling. In anticipation of U.S. sanctions and restrictions, they have imported virtually all chip-making equipment from Europe, Japan, and the U.S. they could lay their hands on in recent months.
The BEST Retirement Advice EVER From Retirees + MORE FUN!
Things to know before retirement, top tips to plan your time to retire, things you must know before retirement. These ideas come from people who have actually done it. It’s what they recommend along with the ideas you need to know in your early retirement years. If you’re thinking about retiring soon, then you’re in for a real treat! In this video, we’ve gathered some of the best advice from retirees about their personal retirement. Aside from giving you some great advice, this video is also packed with helpful retirement stories and tips. If you’re ready to retire soon, then this is the video for you!
People on the internet think I am a blind supporter of China. Some even think I am paid by Chinese propaganda department to write pro-China answers! (Hell! It would be great to get paid for narrating facts, but sigh … so far, no payment. Not even a job offer :p).
For reasons unknown (and probably very biased) stating plain and simple historical and current facts offends a lot of people. Comparing the actions of countries offends people.
Here are a few examples.
Example 1. Hong Kong Riots
Last year (in 2020) Quora was overflowing with certain people expressing their support for Hong Kong rioters, claiming they are fighting for “freedom” and that secession is a right of people.
I wrote a couple of answers stating the plain fact that at least Indians should stop expressing their “deep concerns” for Hong Kong rioters, considering how India is handling the freedom movement in Jammu and Kashmir: no internet connectivity (since more than 8 months now) for the region, curfew almost daily, and lots of reports of rapes committed by the military. A lot of people were “offended” because of my comparison.
I also compared Hong Kong rioters with American civil war. The northern states of USA refused to let the southern states break free of the union. If “freedom” is the right of people, northern states should have allowed the southern states to break free.
Similarly, UK should have allowed Ireland to be free.
Somehow, when India, USA and UK does it, it’s all justified and acceptable. But when China does it (and on top of that, China didn’t even use lethal force against those rioters), suddenly China is at fault! I don’t understand the logic here.
Example 2. China’s Island Building In SCS
I wrote that every nation has a right to defend itself and no nation has a (moral) right to display aggression and policing at other nation’s borders. This too, offended a lot of people. People mentioned “freedom of navigation” and whatnot. I pointed out that USA has not ratified UNCLOS and therefore has no right to implement it on others.
There was a long debate about how USA and western powers have “freedom” to roam in their warships close to Chinese shores, but China has no right to install weapon systems on islands in South China Sea.
Some US guy went on a long argument with me in that answer, claiming that although USA has not signed UNCLOS, it still has the right to implement it on others. The most remarkable thing is that he claimed he was not even being biased and was completely transparent and morally fair in his claim!
Example 3. China – Australia Trade Dispute
I wrote that a customer is not and should not be forced to purchase from any seller, therefore China is not forced to purchase ore and food products from Australia, considering that Australian government went on a smear campaign against China (proposing to find Covid-19 origin only in China) and banning Huwawei.
Some people got offended, and claimed that China should be forced to buy from Australia, but Australia is “free” to not buy from China. Some people also claimed that China is “weaponizing trade” and that they must be “put to their place”.
All I can say about it is that their logic is incomprehensible for me.
Example 4. China – US Trade War
I wrote in an answer that if US is so concerned about trade deficit, they have all the right to stop buying from China and shift their imports to some other country. Similarly, China has the right to stop buying from USA and start buying food products from South America.
Similarly, I wrote that both countries have the right to place as many tariffs as they want, on their imports. Both are free in what they do within their borders.
This offended a lot of people. They claimed that it is China’s “legal responsibility” to avoid placing tariffs on US goods but USA is “free” to place as many tariffs as they want on Chinese goods.
Example 5. Chinese Loans And Investments In Africa
Someone asked if Chinese loans and investments in Africa were attempts by China to colonize Africa. I posted some pictures of African colonialism and showed what colonialism really looks like.
Some guys started arguing in the comments that China is “exploiting” Africa with their loans and whatnot. I simply stated that nobody is forcing African countries to get loans from China. They are free to get loans from IMF and World Bank if they want. If they are getting loans from China, they know the conditions. They are written clearly in front of them. If African countries and China, both agree on the terms and conditions, why is someone else trying to run around amok with arms flailing and crying foul?
They claimed that Africans are “simple minded” (yes, they were indeed simple minded, or else they would not have been enslaved by the western powers for centuries) and do not “see through” the traps. I asked if their countries have better loan offers for African countries, they should present the offers. Somehow that further offended them and they quit in rage, claiming I work for China’s propaganda department.
In 2017, China created a new instrument called Debt backed Govt Guarantee to their Private Players and Corporates and SOEs to allow them to borrow money from US Banks and EU Banks
I wondered back then why would they need to do that? Why would they gurantee the debt of their companies and what were they using to guarantee this debt?
Turns out they are guaranteeing these Debts using US Treasury Bonds and US Corporate Bonds.
Long story short, a huge chunk of US Treasuries are pledged by China against massive borrowings from European or American Banks
So if US defaults on its Debt to China
China laughs and defaults on its huge bank debts from US and Europe guaranteed against US Treasuries and Corporate Bonds
So either US redeems these bonds fully or Banks in US and EU collapse and a bailout could cost 3.5 times more or around 2.1 Trillion Dollars
More printing money, more debt, more. Inflation and a certain guarantee that nobody will buy US bonds anymore
China maybe loses 15% or around $ 120–130 Billion
So China would not be too unhappy if US tried such a move. It would be another nail in the US coffin
FIRST TIME REACTION TO AC/DC – WHOLE LOTTA ROSIE | SPEECHLESS…
Huawei’s mobile devices consumer division was kneecapped and decapitated through sanction, suffering a 90% drop in shipped volume in the last 4 years.
That’s a 100–200b dollar swing in revenue, just for handsets. To put that in perspective, that’s equal to 1–2 Boeings at its 2018 peak.
The US was trying to kill Huawei, and bury the telecoms business by bleeding revenue off its high margin consumer division.
That’s way grander than “stop Huawei from doing research innovation”.
Huawei is still under sanction, and Bloomberg’s recent name and shame of Taiwanese companies helping Huawei/SMIC with foundry infrastructure is a thinly veiled attempt at threatening companies not to deal with Huawei, even though the contracts they have entered into do not fall under current sanction.
Gina is free to suggest sanction escalation and fix Huawei like America did to Russia and Russian oligarchs, but Beijing will retaliate this time. And there is ~1 trillion in annual S&P 500 revenue generated from the mainland to aim for. The Chinese don’t have a significant presence stateside.
Personally, I think the ship on Huawei has already sailed. I won’t be surprised if Huawei breaks 100m phones shipped annually in the next 18–24 months. I also won’t be surprised if Huawei introduces new WIFI and telecoms standards in the next 5 years that end up being adopted in Apple phones. Neither Apple nor Google are capable of driving hardware standards revolution.
I can’t think of any easy-to-implement/low cost cards that the Department of Commerce can still deal when it comes to Huawei.
Do you even know that there is no such thing as “50 cents”party? This is a western media concoction and western media made up slur.
You are right China do not care about polishing their opinion for few reasons. One, if you understand the Chinese people, the Confucianism characteristics in them do not wish to listen to or read chest beating about themselves. In fact the Chinese psyche prefers people to underestimating them. Hence they prefer to hide their strength.
Two, Chinese government do not need to be popular at all. There political system is not a popularity contest like the west. They last thing they would do it’s to pay for compliments. They don’t need it. They don’t want to. And Chinese people are highly intelligent. They know the Chinese people cannot be easily fool.
Chinese people are highly pragmatic and very honest about themselves about where they really are. Hence China calls 1850–1950 as the “century of humiliation” because that is what it is. They don’t sugar coat.
Now let me explain the many positive writings in the social media about China and the Chinese people. I am very qualified to explain this not only because I am of Chinese origin but because I am guilty of writing positively about China.
So why do I do it?
I do it to counter the barrage of Anti China and Chinese haters writings by the westerners in the social media. Worst many who wrote these garbage are naively and ignorantly made to hate the Chinese people due primarily to the U.S. and western media and their government. I actually and honestly feel very sorry for them.
I am a 66 years old Singaporean living in Malaysia who is sadly fully English educated. At my ripe old age, I thought I want to do my part to balance the view about China and the Chinese people. And since I write in English. It can reach to the westerners particularly the Anglo Saxon group. My target is to talk to those who hate China and or the Chinese people. You can call this voluntary global social service.
I have never received a cent from China and Chinese authorities or from anyone ever! But there must be at least 10 thousands disgruntled western Caucasians who accuse me of being paid by CCP or that I am working for China. How I wish these 10 thousand haters give me a million each to shut up! Hahaha. I guarantee you I will. And I will glorify the West everyday for the rest of my life!
I am joking. My mind is not for sale!
Why are there many people like me? My guess is that we are here because we are forced into this by the lies, innuendos, fabrications, half truths, the lies, the misinformation, the demonisations about China and the Chinese people. Yes we stood up. And I am here in QUORA to call out racist, xenophobic, white supremacist, China and Chinese haters. I don’t hate them, nor do I want them hurt. I guaranteed you I don’t have a single hate bone inside me. But I want the truth out to you.
Yes particularly you!
I think there are many who speak well about Chinese because there are at least 7.5 billion who thinks well about China and the Chinese out of the world’s 8 billion population! If you think otherwise it is due to your western media reporting as though the world is thinking lie the very small proportion of mainly white, conservative, less read and less travelled older westerners is the world! It is not.
These 7.5 billion have been quiet until your media and you went over board. Hence this nonsense about 50 cents army! It a figment of your imagination.
China Did This After US Blacklisted Three Chinese Companies
The United States is a country defined by extreme violence, where people are threatened by both violent crime and violent law enforcement, and their safety is far from being guaranteed. Prisons are overcrowded and have become a modern slavery establishment where forced labor and sexual exploitation are commonplace
There was a 1979 movie starring Peter Falk titled “The In-laws”, and for some strange reason I just remembered this movie. I tried to download the torrent, but it is taking forever. It is just a goofy and funny comedy, but for some reason… it came to mind.
The premise of this film is really simple: if two families are about to enjoy the union of their children in a marriage, is it not likely that the in-laws involved can come to depend and help each other out in times of need? Most of us would probably say no, or want to know the extent of the help. However, when Vincent J. Ricardo (Peter Falk) asks Dr. Sheldon Kornpett (Alan Arkin) to assist him in retrieving something from a safe in Ricardo’s office, Kornpett is willing (if somewhat suspiciously) to do it.
The reason that Kornpett is suspicious is he is not quite certain what to make of Ricardo. They only met at Kornpett’s house the night before, for a dinner party introducing the families of the bride (Kornpett’s) and groom (Ricardo’s) to each other. Ricardo acted…well oddly. He told tales of his business travels in Central America, including how in one country babies are being carried off by huge bats that are protected by the Guacamole Act of 1917. Kornpett hears this with a blank face, although his eyes do bug out a little in disbelief. Later, when Ricardo gets testy with his son over a comment about the former not being home enough, Kornpett can’t believe the near rage that Ricardo demonstrates at the table. So his suspicions about his future in-law seem well based.
Shortly, after being chased and nearly killed by two men who are after the items that Kornpett picked up, the suspicions seem confirmed. Ricardo explains to him, over pea soup in a restaurant, that he actually is not a successful salesman but a C.I.A. operative (a photo in Ricardo’s office confirms this: it is of President Kennedy, and the autograph refers to the Bay of Pigs Invasion). He is in the middle of a critically important mission in Latin America dealing with international finance and a conspiracy against the richest nations. Kornpett hears him out, and is upset to hear that there is more material that Ricardo hid in Kornpett’s home the night before. He wants no part of it, and leaves to go home – only to find the police there. He flees, and does evade capture – at the cost of having his car repainted in a way he never would have wanted it to look.
Soon Kornpett is forced to join forces with Ricardo, and enters the deadly serious but (here) quite farcical world of international espionage and intrigue. At the end of the road is the ringleader of the conspiracy, General Garcia (Richard Libertini) who has a special little friend that makes Al Pacino’s little friend in SCARFACE lethal but sensible in comparison.
THE IN-LAWS is funny. Arkin with his tight-ass repressive personality works well against the free-wheeling, anything goes Falk. Libertini appears only in the films last twenty minutes, but he does equally nicely as the ultimate in screw-ball dictators. Well supported by a cast including Nancy Dussault, Arlene Golonka, Penny Peyser, Michael Lembeck, and Ed Begley Jr. the film is just a laugh fest until the happy ending. As mentioned elsewhere in these comments Arkin and Falk should have made several films together. They have only done one other movie together since THE IN-LAWS. Pity.
‘If you lose this baby, you could always have another one’. The comment above was made by the doctor who my husband and I had a consultation with. I was roughly 10 weeks pregnant with our first child. I was in my mid 30’s while hubby was in his early 40’s.
An elderly man in his fifties, he barely looked at us, ignored me, said hello to my husband, looked at my file fleetingly, a file with tests and scans which showed I had fibroids, looked directly at my husband and said to him, ‘She will be fine’. I was furious that this man was clearly sexist, ignoring me as if I was invisible. I responded by asking what that meant, what was the cause of the bleeding as he had not told us at this point about the fibroids. ‘You do not need to bother about it. That is why we are here’. This statement was addressed again to my husband who he was still looking at while still ignoring my presence.
At this point, something in me snapped and I snapped at him, ‘Look at me and tell me what is causing this bleeding. It is my body and I need the details’. He then slowly turned to look at me as if seeing me for the first time and emotionlessly said, ‘you have fibroids. They are not massive and do not pose a danger to your baby’. ‘But I am bleeding. Is that not dangerous? ‘ I worriedly asked.
That was when he looked at the file and without lifting his head, retorted ,Not really. However, if you lose this baby, you could always have another one ’. I almost cussed the insensitive idiot out but my husband who knew I was fuming at this point, got up and ushered me out of the office while the doctor was still talking about ante natal visits at their hospital. We had heard enough. I went on to another hospital where I met the amazing doctor who delivered my daughter without complications and went on to have a son after that.
She is now a healthy, happy 10 year old who is pure joy and always a little mama to her 7 year old brother.
London Broil
London Broil is a favorite recipe from the Iowa Beef Industry Council.
delish london broil horizontal 1546553273
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients
1 (1 1/4 to 1 3/4 pound) beef flank steak
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 clove garlic, crushed
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
Instructions
Combine vegetable oil, lemon juice, garlic, salt and pepper for marinade.
Place steak in plastic bag and pour marinade over it.
Close bag securely and refrigerate 4 to 6 hours or overnight, turning occasionally.
Pour off and reserve marinade.
Place steak on grill and broil at moderate temperature for 5 minutes.
Turn, brush with marinade and broil 5 minutes or to desired doneness (rare or medium).
To carve, slice diagonally across grain in thin strips.
10 STOIC LESSONS TO HANDLE DISRESEPECT (MUST WATCH) | STOICISM
Learn something important.
ASML
Here is the reason why ASML CEO said a few years ago that if ASML gave China the blueprint for the EUV machine China would not be able to make it.
This is because all of the core technologies is NOT owned by ASML. ASML is the system integrator that was allowed by the US government to participate in the US government project to create an EUV light source.
This project pulled together many US national labs including Lawrence Livermore Labs, Sandia Nation Lab, Brookhaven National Lab, Lawrence Berkely National Lab, IBM, Intel, AMD, etc. And it took over 10 years to create this laser light source.
This was considered a national security project so Japanese companies like Nikon and Canon were not allowed to join.
The difficulty of this light source and the engineering problems that had to be overcome was as difficult as the first atomic bomb.
So I have to admit that I was wrong in my speculation about using a Rube Goldberg device to generate EUV. They didn’t have a choice. This was the best possible source at the time. It took literally the US, Germany, and some other nation’s best experts to create this light source.
The other parts are relatively easy in comparison.
The problem is that China has also created this light source and using another method so it isn’t so Rube Goldberg machine. Not that it was simple to make. But it is more reliable and you don’t have to worry about residue removal that will mess up your mirrors and the inside of the your machine which has to remain at clean room levels.
The Answer is yes. Yes indeed the U.S. and the west has been propagating that only western liberal democracy works. Nothing else. Either be a liberal democracy or die says the US. That is of course simply not true at all. And the real truth is simply that the West wanted to install liberal democracy so that the west can easily manipulate it and install a government that surrender its sovereignty to the west in order to manipulate and steal it’s resources to enrich the former colonials.
Now that China proved beyond reasonable doubts and against all odds that it could grow phenomenally and economically dwarfed every other nation, this fear and worry the U.S. mightily. Failure to contain China means failure to perpetuate this lie!
This is indeed worrisome for the west since they the west in general has essentially collapsed in a huge pile of debts. And law and order disintegrates through the western world. With high inflation and a looming recession with countless millions of homeless people living in the streets while their government finance and orchestrate wars. Based on printing money without basis and rampant money creation.
China U.S. out innovating the U.S., it U.S. out thinking the U.S., out growing the U.S. and out influencing the U.S. growing even its military and wealth and out manipulating the U.S. government everywhere on earth. The U.S. wants to stop the truth from being revealed to the world.
It’s Not Just You: American Jobs Didn’t Used To Be This Terrible
My Dad’s Union IBEW is the reason we went from lower middle class to solid middle class in 10 years. Unions are one of the most important checks for capitalism.
Government promise something. Give it a few years and it happens.
Some bigger projects like Mao wanting to borrow some water from the south took a bit longer.
OTOH governments like the UK one I lived under… they promise shit, then they say haha you sucker you actually believed me? Fuck you!
Gordon Brown’s QC literally said that election pledges and promises were not subject to legitimate expectation.
Here? Here in Hong Kong? The government construction projects shaved 20 minutes off my commute.
25 years ago they shaved an hour off the commute for the villagers by widening the dirt track that lead to my village and paving it. Then offering a bus franchise nearby so it was connected with the world.
Most people my age would either be listening to music, watching some TV show/movie in their smartphones/tablets. A very few would be reading a newspaper or book.
I was one of them. I always had music on. I can’t read/watch anything because of motion sickness while traveling on road.
The older generation- they do nothing. They don’t use phones, they don’t talk, don’t read, nothing. They just sit and look around.
I wanted to try this and coincidentally my earphones broke down.
Now it has been over six months. I travel in the metro for 3 hours everyday and do nothing, just look around. This has helped me so much. I observe people, their behaviours. I look around to see what’s actually happening.
It may sound weird but there’s something weirdly enjoyable about it. It feels like living life the old school way. This has helped me reduce the screen time as well.
I have even started recognising the regular commuters. I am sure they don’t recognise me.
Unbreakable (2000) | *First Time Watching* | Movie Reaction | Asia and BJ
Still one of the top 10 best comic films of all time. Its really the first one that showed what the comic genre could do when taken seriously.
This is one of my top, and most favorite movies. It is so meaningful to me. Seriously people. I can relate to this movie. So very much!
When my daughter was about 9 or 10 years old, whenever she got a scolding from my wife, I would annoy her by doing a chicken dance and do so in a way that ONLY she sees it.
“Mommy! Dad is making fun of me!” she would always complain.
When my wife turned around, I would stop and act normal and go on with my stuff. This went on for a while till it became a game of HER trying to catch me in the act and prove it to her mother.
She would learn to very quickly take out her mobile phone and try to snap a picture of me doing it. I would tease her by dancing until the moment the phone was almost pointing towards me, then I would stop and behave normally.
“I will get you someday,” she said.
“No, you won’t! I am too fast for you,” I replied.
On a particular day, I again did the ridiculous chicken dance, she was rolling her eyes and her hands move slowly towards her phone. I continued dancing and mentally calculating how fast she could key in the pass-code and turn on the camera mode.
Something didn’t feel right, her action was slower than usual, by the time she pointed the camera at me, I had stopped. But she started laughing loudly.
“Guess what daddy? THIS isn’t my phone. I switched the phone cover with mum. MY PHONE is behind you, just above the cupboard, ON VIDEO TAKING MODE.”
Ouch! A full two minutes of myself being ridiculous caught on video!
NOT genius smart, NOT intellectual smart, perhaps a little STREET SMART!
The gay and bisexual men are not as common in China as they are in the West. It is difficult for MPOX to become an epidemic in China.
From June 2 to June 30, 2023, 106 new confirmed cases of monkeypox were reported in mainland China (excluding Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan), including 48 cases reported in Guangdong Province, 45 cases reported in Beijing City, 8 cases reported in Jiangsu Province, 2 cases reported in Hubei Province, 2 cases reported in Shandong Province, and 1 case reported in Zhejiang Province. There were no severe cases or deaths.
The epidemic presents the following characteristics:
One is that the vast majority of cases are mainly transmitted through male homosexual sexual contact.
Secondly, the risk of transmission through other forms of contact is low, and the vast majority of close contacts, except for sexual contact, have not experienced infection.
The third is that most cases were found during medical treatment, while a few cases were found through follow-up screening of close contacts.
The fourth is that the vast majority of cases have typical clinical manifestations, mainly symptoms such as fever, herpes, and lymph node enlargement, with no severe or fatal cases.
An American Reacts to Why America Sucks at Everything – THIS ONE HURT
This is very good. Really.
It is a MUCH watch. This is the real truth about the United States.
“I’m so glad you made this video because my conservative mom watched it and now she’s starting to wake up. I got screwed over by the “in network out of network” bullshit recently. My employer changed our healthcare coverage, and I had to find a new neurologist and start the “prior authorization “ process for a particular drug that I take all over again”
The sheer power of Xi Jingping is the fact that QG has been buried away and cut off in a matter of seconds and China and it’s foreign affairs moves without a single blip
Thats power
Had Xi been weak, a rival faction would have lobbied immediately within the CPC but the fact that China has simply chosen to forget QG and not talk about him shows the power of Xi Jingping
China and CPC knows that today in the hostile atmosphere with the West — Only XJP is the right man to lead China
Hu JINTAO would have kowtowed in seconds
Li Keiqang would have kowtowed in maybe a month
Bo Xilai would have kowtowed in nanoseconds
Xis power is at its peak now
Had QG defected to US and been declared a mole for CIA then yes , Xi would have been finished politically
Yet QG is in China and safe and under the Partys safe hands 😁
My father-in-law did. He was moving some tools around in his garage and suddenly had a strong urge to move one of the cars, a Subaru, out into the driveway. He tried to ignore this feeling, because the car was not in his way and it seemed like a needless waste of time. But he couldn’t shake it, so he went and got his car keys and backed the car out of the garage.
Just as he had done so and was getting out of the car, a speeding Tesla flashed past him a couple of feet away and crashed into the open garage, then burst into flames. If he’d stayed in the garage working, he would most likely have been killed.
The resulting fire destroyed the entire garage and his other car. It was 9 months before he and his wife were able to move back into the house. But he was alive, and they still had their Subaru. There was no good explanation for the “little voice in his head” that told him he needed to get himself and his car out of the garage.
By the way, the Tesla driver, who was pulled out of the burning car by a neighbor, was uninjured but was convicted of DUI and had to pay restitution and perform community service.
He was suffering from pancreatic cancer at the time, but from that moment his desire to oversee the restoration of the house gave him a new determination in life. It was a very busy and stressful time, during which he and his wife lived in rental housing. At last they were able to move back into the house which had been perfectly restored to its original state, including a new garage of course, new roof, new heating & a/c, new paint and flooring, and every item inside the house had been removed, professionally cleaned, and replaced. It was beautiful. However, his condition declined rapidly after that and he passed away in August 2018, not quite a year after the fire.
The US Plan to KILL Second Citizenship
“As a Venezuelan born in the 90s (post oil-golden era for that country), I know first hand what he means when he says it’s important to have options. I saw how my mother and her siblings were unable to get their second citizenship by descent from Trinidad and Tobago, once things got terribly bad in my country. My grandparents had both US residency and Caribbean citizenship, but because things were going so well in Venezuela in the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s, they didn’t work on securing and passing along those other options; and their children never thought things would get this bad. It only took less than 30 years to see things turn around for the worst.”
For many years now, the USA has been classified as a “flawed democracy”. Events such as the Capitol Hill riots – intended to disrupt the inauguration of your elected President – did not help. A significant proportion of Americans themselves believed that the last election was rigged and “stolen” from them. So how can the USA be said to be the “very embodiment of democracy”? This strikes me as an extremely grandiose and indefensible claim.
As for freedom, the USA comprises 5% of the world population but holds about 20% of the world’s prisoners. With so many Americans literally locked up behind bars, how can the USA claim to be a “free” country? Furthermore your 13th amendment legalises the enslavement of prisoners – and the USA heavily exploits these slaves/prisoners in ways that your own civil liberty lawyers have described as an abuse of fundamental human rights. (Eg US prisoners can be forced into hazardous jobs – such as fighting wildfires – for as little as zero to fifty cents per hour of work). Errrr, seriously, you think that the US is the embodiment of freedom?
What hope does the USA bring to the world? In the past 40 years, the USA has dropped more bombs, fired more missiles and killed more people in other countries, than any other country in the world. In the past 40 years, the USA has killed people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Grenada, Bosnia, Somalia and Uganda. Because of US sanctions, the world was afraid to send even vaccines, masks and ventilators to Iran during the covid–19 pandemic. This is how the US brings death and destruction to the world.
Please stop watching your Hollywood movies where the USA is always the one to save the world from invasions by aliens from outer space. Open your eyes and look at the real world. At least look at your own country. Your people are dying from drug overdose at the highest rate in the world. Your people are getting shot to death at the highest rate among all developed countries. Your policemen are shooting citizens for minor offences. Your cities are littered with homeless people living in tents. Your national literacy rate is collapsing together with your average life expectancy. Medical bills are the biggest cause of personal bankruptcies in the USA; your infrastructure is crumbling and aged water pipes are leaking lead into the drinking water for your public schools. To lead your country, you are choosing between a criminal octagenarian and a senile otagenarian. Your income inequality is vast, with the top 1% controlling more wealth than the middle 60% – let’s not even discuss the sufferrings of your bottom 20%.
The US is the embodiment of … HOPE, you say?! Hopelessness is more like it. The USA is no example for the world – unless we are talking of negative examples.
I used to work for a major mail order company; as tech staff I could be sent out anywhere in the country, for which the company would pre-pay for accommodation and pay 40 pence per mile for fuel costs (which was tight-arsed of them, as other companies paid 65ppm).
They also supposedly insured us for using our private cars this way.
People who regularly went out for long trips had a company card to pay for hotels with.
One day they decide they are cutting the fuel payment to 25ppm, and back-dating it SIX months, and also cancelling the company cards – people would have to pay with their own money and claim it back.
This latter move caught a few out who were already out on trips – one guy was unable to pay his bill at a London conference centre, and the staff there were threatening to call the Police.
We also discovered at the same time, that the company HADN’T been paying for the extra car insurance policy, so we were all using our cars effectively with no insurance.
Next day, everyone parked 1/2 mile away and walked into work. “Sorry, can’t go on that job, no car” was the story from every member of the technical staff.
Every senior manager was made to turn over his company car for us to drive around. Even the CEO’s chauffeured Bentley was pressed into service, but it still wasn’t enough; by the end of the first week the taxi bill was running into the high hundreds, and everyone was refusing overnight jobs on the basis they couldn’t afford to pay for the hotel.
It took a MONTH for the suits to cave, and god only knows how much it cost them, in money, customer relations, and the lost goodwill of the tech staff.
Why the American Dream is a Myth
“It’s expensive to be poor” Just…. damn man!
Mediterranean Steak and Pasta with Tomato-Olive Sauce
Whole-wheat pasta is served with beef Sirloin Tip Center Steaks and a tomato and olive sauce. This one will please the adults and the kids in your family.
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Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients
8 ounces uncooked whole grain fettuccine
4 beef Sirloin Tip Center Steaks, cut 3/4 inch thick (about 4 ounces each)
1 (26 ounce) jar pasta sauce with olives*
1 teaspoon dried oregano leaves, crushed
1/4 cup finely shredded Italian cheese blend or mozzarella cheese
2 teaspoons chopped fresh parsley leaves
Instructions
Cook fettuccine according to package directions; drain and keep warm.
Heat large nonstick skillet over medium heat until hot. Place beef steaks in skillet; cook for 11 to 13 minutes for medium rare (145 degrees F) doneness, turning occasionally. (Do not overcook.) Remove from skillet; keep warm.
Combine pasta sauce and oregano in same skillet; heat until hot. Return steaks to skillet; turn to coat with sauce.
Place steaks on fettuccine; spoon sauce over all.
Sprinkle steaks with cheese, allowing cheese to melt. Sprinkle with parsley.
Notes
* You may substitute 1 (26 ounce) jar pasta sauce with olives for 1 (26 ounce) pasta sauce plus 1/4 cup chopped olives.
US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said she was “upset” when China’s Huawei Technologies released a new phone with an advanced chip during her visit to the country last month but noted that the US has no evidence China can make these components “at scale,” Bloomberg reported. She also said the US is trying to use every single tool at its disposal to deny the Chinese the ability to advance their technology in ways that can hurt the US.
Raimondo’s words are nothing new, but saying that China’s technological advancement “can hurt the US” is a stupid and ridiculous line of thinking. Many American elites refuse to accept that the Chinese have broken through the technological blockade. Radical lawmakers are calling for efforts to strangle Huawei and SMIC, which is not only hegemonic but also an evil way of thinking.
Whether it is ASML, the Dutch manufacturer of lithography machines, or the American chip giants, they do not believe that decoupling can stop China’s progress in semiconductor technology. They believe that China can find alternative methods and its own technological path. However, a large number of American elites are non-technical and refuse to face reality, blindly believing that Huawei’s breakthrough is because the US export controls on technology to China are “still too loose.”
It should be said that Huawei’s breakthrough has to a certain extent undermined the credibility of the US’ technological blockade against China and shattered the collective confidence of the West in this regard. Washington’s current investigation into the origin of Huawei’s chips and attempts to tighten the noose on the blockade against China will only isolate itself.
Because Washington clearly lost the first round, it has to bet even bigger and risk losing the Chinese market for many Western semiconductor companies. Imagine the result of continuing technological restrictions if Huawei makes further breakthroughs – can ASML’s lithography machines still enjoy their current glory? Where will the US-controlled chip production factories find their next market? Just look at the panic faced by Japanese and German automotive giants today in the face of the rise of Chinese electric vehicles. If the current semiconductor leaders are cut off from the Chinese market, who can guarantee that their future situation will be better?
Huawei’s Kirin 9000s is a breakthrough that it was forced to make by the US sanctions. If the US exerts even greater pressure, it will turn this breakthrough into a systemic breach, promoting a highly integrated and strong production chain in the Chinese semiconductor industry. Chips produced in China will also be much cheaper than those produced in the US.
If the US semiconductor industry loses the Chinese market, it will not be as lucky as Google and Facebook. The latter have software advantages that some Chinese internet companies do not have, including the application ecosystem they established by being the first movers. However, semiconductors are hardware, and when Chinese companies like Huawei can provide a cheaper alternative, the situation will be completely different.
A crucial crossroads has been reached. If the US forces China to achieve complete independence in the semiconductor industry, it will have no further cards to play in blocking China’s progress. Moreover, the technological landscape of the world will undergo a rewrite. China now possesses the capital, and we will continue to progress no matter what. It is now the US’ turn to make a choice: continue gambling or change course and resume cooperation?
Expat’s THAI WIFE disappears and so did his fortune $$. Then it got WORSE!
I have a salesman in the UK who used to live in the ‘States.
Once, when he visited me here in China, he reflected on what he observed about the United States.
He told me that the United States is a pendulum. (Well, he referred to it as a meter.) It swings from one extreme to the other over a decade, but the over all effect is that (in the long view) it seems that the pendulum seems to stay centered.
Hum…
Sort of like this…
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…
Maybe.
I view it quite differently, however, let’s give his observation some credit.
Following his observation, to me, it seems that the pendulum swung so hard to one side that the meter broke, and the needle (pendulum) is stuck in the region of broken glass. The USA has entered totalitarian dictatorship of the most basic historical norms; serf and peasants toiling for the mega-wealthy.
The needle is broke.
The meter needs to be replaced.
It simply cannot be repaired.
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It needs to be pulled out of the wall, and completely thrown in the trash, and a nice new digital one put in it’s place.
…
That’s my opinion, folks. Yours might be different.
“The popular conception is that companies come to China because of low labor costs. I’m not sure what part of China they go to, but the China stopped being the low labor cost country years ago. That is not the reason to come to China from a supply point of view. The reason is because of the skill.”
I just searched around and found that no one pays attention to Ukraine anymore, neither the Western media, nor the Western governments, who have turned their attention to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
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And the Russian army is in high morale and has now captured Avdiyevka, But nobody in the Western world cares about Ukraine anymore.
Putin is right. The Yanks are treating Ukraine as an “expendable“.
Ukraine needs help now, so the American people should donate money to Ukraine!
Talk is cheap. Don’t just shout slogans in the media, support Ukraine with real action. Do you understand?
Americans hope that Taiwan will become Ukraine 2.0, but Taiwanese people do not want to become toilet paper that Yanks throw away immediately after use.
What Taiwanese want is for American soldiers to rush to the front and become cannon fodder. 😅 Stop the cheap’s talk, The Taiwanese are waiting for Americans to sacrifice their children for the cause of “Taiwan independence”.
In response to the current world situation，Bulletproof vest manufacturers in Yiwu, Zhejiang Province, China, have received a large number of orders, and workers are working overtime to catch up.
image 70
DJI’s newly released drone-mounted LiDAR adds Arabic language and Hebrew language to the original Russian language.
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These are civilian items, not weapons, and it won’t explode.
Whether it is the Russian-Ukrainian war or the Palestinian-Israeli war, the Chinese Government has always called on both sides to exercise restraint and engage in peaceful negotiations. Why is no one listening?
The US once invaded Iraq, ignored the opposition of China, overthrew the Saddam regime, and supported a pro-American Iraq government.
The US spent $3 trillion in subsequent Iraqi governance, which was borrowed from China. The US military did not make Iraq more peaceful, but created the monster ISIS.
The Iraq government in Iraq later realized that the US military could not help Iraq’s reconstruction, US companies do not have the capacity for large-scale reconstruction, so it approached China for cooperation.
Today, most of Iraq’s oil extraction rights are vested in China, far surpassing the US, Britain, and Russia.
Later, the US Secretary of Defense mentioned in his speech that the US owed China a lot of money during the Iraq War, and all interests belonged to China. The US’ Iraq war was fought for China! This is an unexpected ending for the US government.
Stupid Yanks! A state that has no history and knows only the use of barbaric violence can only perish.
In addition, Saudi Arabia requires all ministerial officials to study the ancient Chinese classic “Zhan Guo Ce”.
Don’t underestimate this book, it may change the future landscape of the Middle East.
3 trillion US dollars, the Americans should pay off their debts to China quickly!
44 days left in the US government shutdown!
The economic growth rate of China in the second half of the year is estimated to be over 6%.
1/4 cup finely chopped fresh cilantro (coriander) leaves
Salt, to taste
Instructions
In a medium saucepan, preheat the olive oil to medium-high. Sauté the onion in hot oil until transparent. Add the garlic, curry powder and coriander; continue to sauté for another minute or two.
Stir in the canned and fresh tomatoes; bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to medium-low and cook gently until the sauce has thickened, stirring occasionally.
Stir in the okra and chicken-style broth; return to a boil over medium-high heat, then reduce heat to medium-low and cook gently for about 10 to 15 minutes, or just until the okra is tender.
Just before serving, stir in the cilantro. Add salt to taste.
Serve promptly for best color and freshest taste.
Hip-Hop Fan REACTS To Oliver Anthony – Rich Men North Of Richmond
When they met my dad was studying for becoming a doctor. His main passions were video games and music. He’s always been kind of a genius academically. He is very reserved and does not talk a lot at first.
My mom, on the other side, was a high school student. She was the president of the Students Council, a gymnast and a photo model. She was always surrounded by many friends, she liked parties and having fun. Despite being skilled, she wasn’t a top student, her sassy behavior didn’t help either.
My dad was supposed to meet a girl for a date. The girl asked my mom to go with her just to check that everything would go smoothly and well. However, it was love at first sight between my parents. They dated for seven years, for a period of time they even lived in different cities, but their love never ceased. They married in 1994, one year later my older sister was born.
So, my parents got married for love. They are so different from each other, yet so perfect. They complete one another.
Mandarin learning boom in the Middle East
Saudi Arabia is the latest country to mandate Chinese language education in schools as the region embraces closer ties with Beijing.
While interest in learning Mandarin declines in the West, Middle Eastern children are attending classes in China’s official language as part of a geopolitical shift in the region.
Last month, Saudi Arabia, the largest Arab country in the region, mandated Mandarin lessons in all public and private secondary schools, which are expected to extend classes to second-year pupils during this academic year. The extension of Mandarin education in Saudi secondary schools follows a 2019 agreement, struck during the Crown Prince’s visit to Beijing, to have Mandarin lessons at all levels of school.
The long-standing US ally is looking to bolster its ties with China beyond the oil trade to technology, infrastructure, and even arms, in an economic diversification blueprint backed by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Last month, Saudi Arabia, together with Iran and the UAE, were among six countries invited to join Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa in an expansion of the BRICS association of leading emerging economies.
The United Arab Emirates – with a population of 9.3 million and the world’s seventh-largest oil reserves – was the first Gulf state to include Mandarin in its national education system. With Beijing’s help, the UAE started a Chinese language program in 100 schools in 2019 that expanded last year to 158 public schools, according to figures from the Chinese embassy in Abu Dhabi.
In 2020, Egypt signed a memorandum of understanding with China to adopt Mandarin as an elective for a second foreign language subject at primary and secondary school levels. Later that year, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi endorsed a law adding Mandarin to the list of foreign languages that can be taught in middle and high schools across the country.
In my late teens I worked as a school cook. It was a private boarding school mostly for military and diplomatic families, it gave the kids stability as the parents were posted all over the world. Part of the job was to supply lunch to the board of governors once per month. A guy came into the kitchen, said he was the chairman of the board of governors and asked if he could have more pudding. Lucky for him there was some left so I filled his bowl and off he went a happy chap. The following month he came back and every month I worked there he would come into the kitchen for more pudding. I started to call him Oliver as he was asking for more. He was particularly fond of the steamed jam rollypolly so always filled his bowl. He told me that he had told his cousin and her family about my puddings and how nice they were. His wife came in once to tell me not to give him so much as he was putting on weight!
A few years later I was visiting my parents who lived next to the lifeboat shed and a new lifeboat was being presented and dedicated. I saw “Oliver” in the crowd and shouted him over. Asked what he was doing there, seems he was with the RNLI (Royal National Lifeboat Institution) and he was there to present the new boat. Later my dad asked if I knew who I had been talking too. So I told him the above. Then dad told me that the man I knew as Oliver was a Duke and cousin to the queen!!
Edit :
It’s over forty years since these events I don’t follow royal circles and memory gets vague with time! I have been told that the man I knew as “Oliver” died sometime in the late eighties so have changed the answer in response to this sad news, he was a nice bloke.
It was a regular day at the bank. I was speaking to one of our high-net clients, AH. He needed help with his account and I was explaining some transactions to him. Suddenly we heard a loud retching followed by a thud.
Both of us looked towards the source of the sound and saw a guy sprawled on the floor just inside the branch entrance. People rushed towards him. The branch wasn’t crowded, thankfully. There were just a few customers present at that time.
As I neared the guy, I realised that he was a regular visitor… an office boy who used to come in almost daily to deposit cheques and for other mundane chores. I called out to our support staff and requested him to get water. The guy had fainted after vomiting, perhaps due to the extreme heat outside. While I gently tapped his shoulder and called out his name to wake him, one of my colleagues attempted to manoeuvre his way to figure out how to pick him up.
AH, who had been observing us all along, coolly walked to the prone figure (without bothering about the messy floor), bent down and cradled the collapsed guy’s head. He gently raised him, supported his arms and helped him to the seating area. The guy, who was regained consciousness by then, looked at us numbly. While our staff handed him a glass of water, AH removed a pristine white handkerchief from his pocket and gave it to the guy to wipe his vomit stained face. After ascertaining that the guy didn’t need any more immediate help, AH excused himself and discreetly asked to be directed to our washroom where he could clean his hands.
As I sat down with AH after some time, I couldn’t help but marvel at the complete ease with which he helped out a stranger in a situation that would make most people balk. His nonchalance towards the mess was at complete odds with his concern for another fellow being. And while others were either panicking or fumbling, he handled the matter with maturity and an ease that spoke volumes about him! When I gushed over his actions he shushed me down with a simple logic. ‘I would like to be helped should I ever face some issue like this. What I expect, I should be ready to offer as well.’
AH didn’t remain a mere high-net client from that day on. He became a highly respected one too!
Actions speak louder than words they say. In this case, they did more… they revealed and taught!
Achieved Mass Production Achieved in 180 Days! China Breaks Foreign Monopoly in the Chip Industry！
I was given full and sole conservatorship (read “custody”) of my daughters after my wife of 20 years walked out on us for someone else.
About 3 years later, my ex managed to scrape together enough money to engage a lawyer to challenge the custody order. I was totally freaked out, tbh. I sold a car and borrowed a couple thousand dollars from my brother to get my own lawyer. I had gathered evidence and my daughters were prepared for private conferences with the judge. As they were only 11 and 14 at the time, you can imagine their stress and upset as well.
When the day of the hearing rolled around, however, my ex’es lawyer turned out to be a dud. An exceptional dud, at that. He stood before the judge and basically argued for a change of custody based on the fact that my ex really, really wanted the order to be changed. The judge left the custody order intact.
I can only assume that my ex was victimized by a predatory lawyer who made promises he could never keep. I had new ulcers and was 3000 dollars in the hole…but my kids stayed safe with me. It was the sheer ineptitude of the lawyer that amazed me. My lawyer just had to shake his head and laugh.
I’ve been alone, single, and heartbroken. And I’ve been in the most amazing intimate relationships imaginable.
I’ve traveled the world, made friends, lost friends, and tried things I never thought I would.
At the end of the day, I’ve realized that living a good life is a lot simpler than people try to make it out to be.
And here are my 15 best tips for achieving it.
1. Sleep 9 Hours a Night
Plain and simple. You’ll feel better, look better, be more productive, be happier, and be less likely to suffer from obesity and chronic diseases.
Sleep isn’t a weakness. It’s a necessity.
Get 7.5–9 hours a night and I promise your life will change.
2. Be Happy Now
Happiness is a choice (even though we’d like to think otherwise).
So stop trying to achieve happiness and just decide to be happy. You can make the most out of terrible situations and learn to find joy and gratitude in even your darkest times.
Your life is better than 99% of the human beings who lived on this planet before you.
So be happy now.
3. Create Passive Income Asap
It’s worth 10x working income and creates ultimate freedom in your life.
If you can build a website, write a book, or launch a product that generates $5,000 a month semi-automatically, your life will change forever.
4. Exercise Everyday
There’s no reason to go a day without exercise. You don’t have to lift heavy everyday, but you must MOVE.
You’ll be happier, stronger, smarter (literally), and more productive.
It takes less than 30 minutes to get a good sweat on and it can add years to your life. No excuses.
5. Prioritize Lifestyle > Money (But Money Also)
Money is great. But living a life of freedom is better. Prioritize living a great life and embrace minimalism. Make money, sure. But don’t make money at the expense of living your life.
6. Stop Eating Sugar
It’s basically poison and has no nutritional value. A cookie here and there isn’t a big deal, but the less of this crap you eat, the better you’ll feel and the more effectively you’ll perform.
7. Do The Things YouWant to Do
Life is too short to live for other people.
So your parents want you to be a Doctor? So what! They don’t have to live your life or shoulder your regrets.
Do what you want to do and remember that life is too damn short to follow other people’s dreams.
8. Only Take Advice From People You’d Trade Lives With
If someone doesn’t have the life that you want or at least a life that you’d want. Don’t take their advice.
This includes me.
If you want to be a billionaire mega investor and rule the world, don’t listen to a word I say.
If you want to have a life of happiness, financial freedom, and lifestyle independence, I might have a thing or two to teach you.
9. Travel More and Travel Longer
You’ll never regret it. It will open your eyes to new ways of living, thinking, and being and will be the most transformative experience of your life.
If you have the opportunity to travel somewhere new, always say “Yes.”
10. Make Time to Think
Don’t get so caught up in doing things that you forget to make time to think.
Ponder deep questions, ask yourself what you really want out of life, figure out innovative solutions to your problems.
Make time for deep thought and you’ll be amazed at how your life will change.
11. Quit Complaining
It doesn’t help you, it pisses off the people around you, and makes you less attractive.
Remind me again why you think it’s a good thing to bitch about traffic all the time?
12. Stop Lying
To your friends, family, and most importantly… Yourself.
Live in truth. Be authentic. Stop making crap up and pretending you’re ok to make other people happy.
You can only change your life from a place of truth.
Be honest about your reality, desires, and obstacles and you’ll find that the solutions come easier.
13. Read as Much as You Can
Never pass up an opportunity to expand your mind and broaden your horizons. Read about everything.
Science, psychology, self help, business, history, biographies, fiction. You name it.
The more you read, the more well rounded you’ll become and the better your life will be.
14. Be Nice to Yourself
You’re the only person you have to live with for the rest of your life. So try being nice to yourself.
Watch the negative self talk. Believe in yourself. Treat yourself with love and respect.
Before you do, say, or pursue anything, ask yourself, “If a close friend was in this situation, how would I respond or what would I encourage him/her to do?”
15. Don’t be a Dick
Seriously…
Life is too short to yell at the Verizon customer support agent over a payment dispute. The poor gal wasn’t the one who double charged your account, so don’t take it out on her.
Life has a funny way of reprimanding mean people.
So be nice to people and stop being a dick, m’kay?
Hope this helps
Stay Grounded, Andrew
ALIEN WAR and The Horrors of Dulce Underground Base
It’s the 14th century. John the Blacksmith comes home from the forge to find his wife crying in the kitchen.
“What ails ye, wife?” he asks.
“Our son,” she wails. “He’s been taken, John!”
John runs to the bed chamber, his stomach churning with fear. Young Luke… gone… he’d have the whole village up and searching within the hour, and damn the darkness. Except, when he opens the door, he finds the child standing in his cot, staring at the walls and singing nonsense to himself.
“What nonsense is this, woman?” he shouts back to the kitchen. “He’s right here!”
“It’s not him,” she sobs. “A mother knows. It’s not him!”
John frowns. He’s heard the stories, of course, but he never believed they were actually true. He walks up to young Luke, calls his name. Luke looks up, then looks away. He doesn’t smile, just carries on singing the same tune over and over.
John returns to the kitchen, and holds his wife as she cries.
“I told you,” she said. “It was the faeries, John. They’ve taken our son, and left a changeling in his stead.”
John nods. His grandmother’s stories were true. She’d said once that his own uncle had been taken by the faeries, that the child they’d left behind grew up… strange. He’d lived by himself in the woods for many a year; the village left him be, and he left them alone in turn. Granny had said the faeries would come back to the same family again. He’d brought this curse upon them.
“What do we do, John?”
He shook his head. “We have to raise him, wife, as though he were our own. Sometimes… they bring them back. Sometimes. But they won’t unless we raise theirs in return.”
“And if they don’t?”
He had no answer for that.
A lot of autistic children seem normal in their early years – one reason why diagnosis is unreliable when they are very young. It’s been suggested before that the myth of the changeling – a faerie child swapped for an identical human one – could derive from those small children seeming “different” to their parents as they get older. It would be nice to think that they were still raised by their parents and found a place in society, even on the fringe of it – however, given the high rate of infant mortality back then, it’s entirely possible that a lot of them were abandoned or even killed.
It’s also quite plausible that a lot of them were given to the Church. What better way to drive out any demons that may possess them? And a monastic life would probably suit many autistic people – minimal distractions, a set routine, limited social interaction…
The point is, autism has been around as long as humans have. We just didn’t know what it was. Those who were high functioning enough to be part of the village were considered a bit weird but generally tolerated. Those who weren’t, if they survived, would be outsiders. And those that couldn’t function were entirely reliant on their families to survive – if those families were willing to help them.
Brian Berletic: China DESTROYS US War Plans as Europe Rejects Taiwan Independence
USA : Please help us to end the Ukraine War so that we can concentrate War in the island of Taiwan with you.
I was about eighteen, shy, thin, poor, and an artist. I was living in a factory town that did not appreciate anyone who didn’t fit in and I didn’t.
I was raised to be a gentleman and to be nice to everyone. This is not a popular thing when you are young and it is often misunderstood.
I was getting gas for my vehicle and I was dealing with rejection a few hours earlier from a girl that I really liked. She had just told me that I was too polite and nice.
I paid for my gas and walked to the convenience store doorway. I was on the cusp of deciding to stop being polite and nice.
I stepped out and noticed an older black man, who was likely in his eighties, dressed as if he was coming from church was coming up to the door. Without thinking, I held it open for him, nodded, and smiled.
So much for my tough guy plan.
He doffed his porkpie hat to me and said the words that changed my life. With a twinkle in his eyes, he said, “You sir, are a gentleman.”
I beamed. Yes, he’s right. That is who I am, and as importantly, who I want to be.
He probably never knew just how important his kind words were to the man that I would become.
I remember him and the gas station, but don’t even remember the name or even face of the woman who had told me I was too nice.
Life is grand when we treat everyone with kindness and care.
This is it. The roadmap & Plan for the post-American-led global world order. This document, is lengthy, but is being followed by MOST OF THE WORLD outside the West. -MM
Trump Latinos Charles J. Jones & Forgiato Blow – America Uncanceled
This one is really great. A bit “red neck”, but I really like that people are trying to fight back from the insanity of Washington DC. But it’s gonna take more than singing…
The new announcements from Huawei just keep on coming:
Huawei announces new 5.5G wireless standard which is already implemented on the Huawei Mate 60 Pro family;
Tencent, owner of WeChat, announces full support for Huawei’s HarmonyOS. WeChat has more than 1B accounts in China alone
Significantly, Huawei is going ahead with its new technology announcements without seeking approval through tech standards committees which are dominated by western tech companies.
In 2024, many new chip fabs which were hiding will start going into production for chips over >5nm. These fabs will be coming online at the same time, and there will be a price war as they fight for sales.
Qualcomm, based in San Diego, is a leading maker of wireless transceivers, and has announced the layoff of 1,200 personnel in December 2023.
Leading American tech brands will be hit badly as Chinese makers eat into their business.
China WARNS Neocons of Consequences as Biden, Blinken Sink to New Low
In the 1980s my Dad bought a complete set of Encyclopedia Britannica, including the children’s version. My Dad passed away in 2002 and my Mom has held on to them. Last year she was cleaning house and she asked me if I wanted them for my kids. I told her that my kids would have no use for them. She tried giving it to a local orphanage in Nairobi (Kenya) and they, too, declined to take them. They did ask if we could donate a computer instead. So in 2023, encyclopedias are pretty much worthless even for orphanages in developing countries.
Because people are willing to pay a lot for a hamburger.
This is a fundamental rule of economics a lot of folks don’t get. With the exception of some commodity goods, price of a good or service doesn’t depend on the cost of making it. You don’t set the price by taking the cost of production, adding some amount for profit, and then using that for the price.
In technical terms, the input price is disconnected from the output price.
You set the price as high as the market will bear. You do everything you can to drive the cost as low as possible. You keep everything in between.
Suppose people will pay $15 for your burgers. Why would you set the price at $10? You’d have to be a moron to do that. If people will pay $15, you sell for $15.
If the burger costs $8 to make and people will pay $15, you sell for $15.
If the burger costs $6 to make and people will pay $15, you sell for $15.
If the burger costs $2 to make and people will pay $15, you sell for $15.
the real price of the American Dream for Black women & why I gave it up
There is a reason you don’t see other countries “buzz” the carriers. They will buzz destroyers and spy planes, but not the carriers. At least not too closely. Shadow? Sure, but from a fair distance.
If you start interfering with something that expensive containing 5,000+ American lives, the stakes get much bigger much quicker. The carrier and its escorts will absolutely destroy anything they believe to be a threat to the carrier and its operations, even in peace time. Everyone knows this. We are talking about the crown jewels of the US military here, most of the USN is tasked almost exclusively with defending them at all costs.
Carrier escorts will literally throw themselves in front of torpedoes in order to protect the carrier if they have to. In WWII, the Royal Navy was stunned to learn the US planned to do exactly that even with capital ships like battleships if necessary. I am not joking, even today there are protocols where escorts will criss-cross through the wake of the carriers to act as a physical shield against wake homing torpedoes.
The point of “buzzing” isn’t to be an open threat though, its to harass and to voice a general displeasure at your presence.
The problem with harassing a carrier is that the line between harassment and threat is very blurred due to the sheer value of the carrier in both people and treasure. What the CO of an American carrier views as a threat might be very different to what a Russian or Chinese fighter pilot may believe is simply harassment, especially when you have active flight operations on an already chaotic and dangerous floating airport.
It is best to tread carefully near them for all involved. There are plenty of other lesser targets to annoy. You don’t want to get any closer than this for the most part:
“Poor Men South of Portland” by Jon Reep
It’s a massive play on words for a subject that needs attention.
Let me tell you China will 100% not allow the U.S. and the west to ever freely manipulate China, Chinese laws, Chinese systems and policies and Chinese rules and regulations in China.
To China, they have a more effective and efficient democracy and democratic process that has stood the test of time. To the Chinese people and many others in the world we find the U.S. political systems highly ineffective and inefficient and unsustainable. Hence China will never ever adopt the western political system if that Is what you are asking.
China will be as free as it makes sense. For example in China you are free to drink on the street. In the US you can be arrested for drinking on the street. But in China you cannot even carry or have possession of a knife linger that 15 cm in the Public. Weapons of any kind Is totally not allowed by anybody! To us it makes PERFECT sense!
In the West and US you can shout obceneties and curse politicians. But Chinese people prefer cultured respectful dialogue.
Burkina Faso Sacks Chief Of Staff After He Was Caught Selling Out His Country
I was tapping a parking meter with my credit card, and looked down, and saw, not a wallet. But the contents of a wallet. A credit card, a health insurance card, a rewards card, and a debit card.
Since it was a busy pay station, it hadn’t been there for long. I picked it up, ran into my meeting, and looked at the cards. They had an unusual name, so I googled it, and found two people with that last name in the city, and a food critic article, about a new chef, starting a new restaurant, and he had the exact name. So I called the restaurant, and left a message, that I found something of his, and if he could tell me what he was missing, I would return it to him. There was no reply, so I phoned the person with a different initial and the same last name, and left a message, that if they knew the other guy, to have him call me.
Nothing. The next day I left another message at the restaurant, and got no reply. The next day, I left a message saying I was going to drop it off at the police station, and he could do what he wanted, as I was done stressing over it.
I figured, that had I called the restaurant within 5 minutes of the card being lost, and if he was close to where he lost it, he could have it back in ten minutes from the time he lost it, and not have to cancel his cards, so I was trying hard to get it to him, but afterwards, I figured he would have already cancelled the card.
The next day he phones me and tells me that his wife lost the cards, and she only uses them maybe once a week, and never knew that they were missing.
It was only when the police phoned him, that she checked. He figured I was a scammer, and didn’t return my call. He said he had words with his wife, because she had no idea that anything had happened in those three says. Both the credit card and debit card had tap, I probably could have bought $500 bucks a day worth of stuff, for a week, before his wife noticed.
I never got an apology or a thank you, just an explanation.
But despite that, I will continue returning lost wallets, because I once left $200 in a bank machine, and and a young lady chased me down, a half block to return it. So I know there are other good people out there.
Declining US Empire vs Rising China
These two guys are GREAT. Love watching them.
A Global Community of Shared Future:
China’s Proposals and Actions
The State Council Information Office of
the People’s Republic of China
September 2023
Contents
Preface
I. Humanity at a Crossroads
II. An Answer to the Call of the Times and a Blueprint for the Future
III. Deep Roots in History and Cultural Traditions
IV. Direction and Path
V. China’s Action and Contribution
Conclusion
Preface
In the universe there is only one Earth, the shared home of humanity. Unfortunately, this planet on which we rely for our subsistence is facing immense and unprecedented crises, both known and unknown, both foreseeable and unforeseeable. Whether human civilization can survive these has become an existential issue that must be squarely faced. More and more people have come to the realization that rather than amassing material wealth, the most pressing task is to find a guiding beacon for the sustainable development of human civilization, because we all care about our future.
Ten years ago President Xi Jinping propounded the idea of building a global community of shared future, answering a question raised by the world, by history, and by the times: “Where is humanity headed?” His proposal lights the path forward as the world fumbles for solutions, and represents China’s contribution to global efforts to protect our shared home and create a better future of prosperity for all.
To build a global community of shared future, all peoples, all countries, and all individuals – our destinies being interconnected – must stand together in adversity and through thick and thin, navigating towards greater harmony on this planet that we call home. We should endeavor to build an open, inclusive, clean and beautiful world that enjoys lasting peace, universal security, and common prosperity, turning people’s longing for a better life into reality.
The vision of a global community of shared future bears in mind the wellbeing of all humanity. It is based on both observation of the present and visionary planning for the future. It lays out goals, charts the path, and offers action plans to achieve them. It concerns the future of humanity and the destiny of every human being.
President Xi Jinping first raised the vision of a global community of shared future when addressing the Moscow State Institute of International Relations in 2013. Over the past decade it has been steadily enriched. He fleshed it out with a five-point proposal [The five points are: We should build partnerships in which countries treat each other as equals, engage in extensive consultation, and enhance mutual understanding. We should create a security environment featuring fairness, justice, joint efforts, and shared interests. We should promote open, innovative and inclusive development that benefits all. We should increase inter-civilization exchanges to promote harmony, inclusiveness, and respect for differences. We should build an ecosystem that puts Mother Nature and green development first.] in his speech at the General Debate of the 70th Session of the UN General Assembly in 2015. He further proposed five goals for the world [The five goals are: We should build a world of lasting peace through dialogue and consultation. We should build a world of common security for all through joint efforts. We should build a world of common prosperity through win-win cooperation. We should build an open and inclusive world through exchanges and mutual learning. We should make our world clean and beautiful by pursuing green and low-carbon development.] in his speech at the United Nations Office in Geneva in 2017. This represents the steady increase in the depth and scope of the vision.
The past decade has seen steady progress in implementing the vision. From bilateral to multilateral and from regional to global dimensions, ground-breaking results have been achieved on every front. The Belt and Road Initiative, the Global Development Initiative, the Global Security Initiative, and the Global Civilization Initiative have taken root and borne fruits, bringing prosperity and stability to the world and creating substantive benefits for the people.
Over the past decade, the vision of a global community of shared future has gained broader support. More countries and people have come to the understanding that this vision serves the common interests of humanity, represents popular calls for peace, justice and progress, and can create the greatest synergy among all nations for building a better world. It is now widely recognized in the international community that the vision has nothing to do with self-interest and protectionism. Instead, by presenting China’s vision of the course of human development, it confronts the hegemonic thinking of certain countries that seek supremacy. It is therefore of great significance to promote solidarity and cooperation among all countries and create a better future for humanity.
The Chinese government is publishing this white paper to introduce the theoretical base, practice and development of a global community of shared future. We hope it will improve understanding and expand consensus in the international community, and reinforce the global effort to realize this vision.
I. Humanity at a Crossroads
This is an era of promise, and an era of challenges. At yet another crossroads in history, we have to choose between unity and division, between opening up and closing off, between cooperation and confrontation. With the overall interests of humanity at stake, this choice tests the wisdom of all countries.
1. Interdependence is the prevailing trend throughout history
In its history, humanity has progressed from primitive society to the Agricultural Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, and now the Information Revolution. While this process has seen a steep increase in productivity, one fundamental reality has remained unchanged: The Earth is our one and only home. All countries bear responsibility for the safety of this planet and the future of humanity. If the pursuit of power and profit escalates to vicious competition or even armed conflict, self-destruction will be the certain outcome.
Throughout history, peace and development have been the primary aspirations of humanity. Having experienced the ravages of wars and conflicts, especially the two world wars, people around the globe have built a keener awareness of cherishing peace, expanding cooperation, and seeking common development. The idea that “we are all one human family” is gaining traction, and the desire for a global community grows stronger than ever.
Globalization has improved the allocation of production factors worldwide, including capital, information, technology, labor and management. As if connecting scattered lakes and creeks into an uninterrupted expanse of water, it draws nations out of isolation and away from the obsolete model of self-reliance, merging their individual markets into a global one and combining their respective experiences into world history.
As information technology advances with every passing day, most prominently in the fields of Internet, big data, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence, human exchanges have become deeper, broader, and more extensive than ever before, and countries are more interconnected and interdependent than at any point in the past. Globalization is not an option; it is the reality and the way of life. The global village is getting smaller – the longest distance between two places on earth has been reduced to a flight of no greater than 24 hours, and our planet is becoming flat – one tap on a mobile phone connects us to the other side of the world in a split second. This is an integrated world. Those who turn their back on it will have no place in it.
Living on the same planet, all countries, adjacent or distant, large or small, developed or developing, are members of an emerging community of shared interests, responsibility, and destiny, whose wellbeing and security are interrelated. Only when appropriate attention is paid to the collective future of humanity is it possible that the wishes of every country, people and individual come true. Whatever we may encounter on our journey ahead, the only right choice is to work together for the benefit of all.
2. Global challenges call for global response
Our world is undergoing change on a scale unseen in a century. Various problems old and new and complex issues are converging with and compounding each other, posing unprecedented challenges for human society. Instability, uncertainty, and unpredictability are now the norm.
The peace deficit is growing. Though human society has largely maintained peace since the end of World War II, threats to world peace continue to amass. War has returned to the Eurasian continent, tensions are rising, and a series of flashpoints are emerging. The shadow of the arms race lingers on, and the threat of nuclear war – the Sword of Damocles that hangs over humanity – remains. Our world is at risk of plunging into confrontation and even war.
The development deficit is ballooning. The global economic recovery is sluggish, and unilateralism and protectionism are rampant. Some countries are turning to a “small yard, high fence” approach to wall themselves off; they are pushing for decoupling, severing and “derisking” supply chains. All this has caused setbacks to globalization. At the same time the Covid-19 pandemic has reversed global development, exacerbating the North-South gap, development fault lines, and the technology divide. The Human Development Index has declined for the first time in 30 years. The world’s poor population has increased by more than 100 million, and nearly 800 million people live in hunger.
The security deficit is glaring. Due to more intense global strategic competition and a lack of mutual trust between major countries, the Cold War mindset has re-emerged, and calls for ideological confrontation have resurfaced. Some countries’ hegemonic, abusive, and aggressive actions against others, in the form of swindling, plundering, oppression, and the zero-sum game, are causing great harm. Non-traditional security challenges are on the rise, including terrorism, cyber-attacks, transnational crime, and biological threats.
The governance deficit is more severe. The world is facing multiple governance crises. The energy crisis, food crisis, and debt crisis are intensifying. Global climate governance is urgently needed, and the transition to green, low-carbon development requires dedicated efforts over an extended period of time. The digital divide continues to expand, and sound governance of artificial intelligence is lacking. The Covid-19 pandemic is a mirror through which we have observed that the global governance system is falling further behind the times and keeps breaking down on issues requiring resolution. It has to be reformed and improved.
In the face of global crises, the 190-plus countries in the world are all in the same big boat. Only big boats can withstand battering winds and crashing waves. No country, however strong it may be, can do everything on its own. We must engage in global cooperation. Only when all countries work together, only when we align individual interests with the interests of all, and only when we truly build a global community of shared future, can humanity tide through the crises confronting us and sail towards a better future.
3. The new era calls for new ideas
This is an era when the world is undergoing rapid changes almost every day. We can no longer interpret the reality we are living in or find satisfactory solutions to the conundrums we are facing by means of traditional approaches to international relations. It is increasingly obvious that the idea that “all strong countries will seek hegemony”, the obsession with superior strength, and the zero-sum mentality are in conflict with the needs of our times. Humanity is in great need of new ideas that generate positive developments and conform to positive historical trends.
There is no iron law that dictates that a rising power will inevitably seek hegemony. This assumption represents typical hegemonic thinking and is grounded in memories of catastrophic wars between hegemonic powers in the past. China has never accepted that once a country becomes strong enough, it will invariably seek hegemony. China understands the lesson of history – that hegemony preludes decline. We pursue development and revitalization through our own efforts, rather than invasion or expansion. And everything we do is for the purpose of providing a better life for our people, all the while creating more development opportunities for the entire world, not in order to supersede or subjugate others.
The strong preying on the weak is not a way for humans to coexist. If the law of the jungle is imposed on human society, and the idea that “might makes right” prevails, the principle of sovereign equality will be fundamentally undermined, and world peace and stability will be severely endangered. In the age of globalization, all countries are interdependent and interconnected. Therefore the law of the jungle and the winner-takes-all mindset will lead nowhere – inclusive development for the benefit of all is the right path forward. China has consistently championed equity and justice, and remains committed to friendly cooperation with other countries, on the basis of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, in order to advance democracy in international relations.
The zero-sum game in which one wins by causing others to lose is doomed to fail. Nevertheless, certain countries still cling to this mindset, blindly pursuing absolute security and monopolistic advantages. This will do nothing for their development over the long run; it will simply create a major threat to world peace and prosperity. No country should hope for others to fail. Instead, it should work together with other countries for the success of all. China consistently aligns its development with global development, and aligns the interests of the Chinese people with the common interests of all peoples around the world. When the world thrives, China thrives, and vice versa.
II. An Answer to the Call of the Times and
a Blueprint for the Future
Standing at a crossroads, humanity is faced with two opposing options. One is to revert to the Cold War mentality that deepens division and antagonism and stokes confrontation between blocs. The other is to act for the common wellbeing of humanity, strengthen solidarity and cooperation, advocate openness and win-win results, and promote equality and respect. The tug of war between these two options will shape the future of humanity and our planet in a profound way.
To build a global community of shared future is to pursue openness, inclusiveness, mutual benefit, equity and justice. The goal is not to replace one system or civilization with another. Instead, it is about countries with different social systems, ideologies, histories, cultures and levels of development coming together to promote shared interests, shared rights, and shared responsibilities in global affairs. The vision of a global community of shared future stands on the right side of history and on the side of human progress. It introduces a new approach for international relations, provides new ideas for global governance, opens up new prospects for international exchanges, and draws a new blueprint for a better world.
1. Introducing a new approach to international relations
The current international order is facing a myriad of challenges. Some countries, holding to the notion of might makes right, willfully engage in bullying, plundering and zero-sum competition. The development gap is widening and the deficit in security is growing. The isolationist and exclusive practice of alliance-based confrontation runs counter to the trend towards multipolarity and the evolution of international relations in the post-Cold War era. Especially with the rise of a large number of emerging market and developing countries, the current international order is increasingly out of step with the changing times. “What kind of world we need and how to build such a world” has become a vital question with the future of humanity at stake.
China’s answer to this question of the times is to build a global community of shared future. It means that with their futures closely interlocked, all nations and countries should stick together, share weal and woe, live together in harmony, and engage in mutually beneficial cooperation. The idea is based on a reasonable design for state-to-state relations. It reflects the general consensus and common expectations of the international community, and demonstrates China’s sense of duty as a responsible major country.
In this global village, all human beings are one big family. With their interests intertwined and futures interlocked, countries are turning into a community of shared future. Such a vision rises above the exclusive rules of bloc politics, the notion of might makes right, and the “universal values” defined by a handful of Western countries. It conforms to the trend of the times, echoes the call for global cooperation, and contributes to a more just and equitable international order.
2. Highlighting the new features of global governance
The concept of a global community of shared future holds that all countries share a common future, and envisions a world characterized by openness and inclusiveness, equity and justice, harmonious coexistence, diversity and mutual learning, and unity and cooperation.
– Openness and inclusiveness. Countries should not draw lines based on ideology, target specific countries, or gang up to form exclusive blocs. The ocean is vast because it admits all rivers. To build a global community of shared future, countries should advance democracy in international relations to make sure that the future of the world is determined by all, that international rules are written by all, that global affairs are governed by all, and that the fruits of development are shared by all.
– Equity and justice. The world needs justice, not hegemonism. No country has the right to dominate global affairs, dictate the future of others, or monopolize development advantages. Countries should safeguard the international order based on international law, uphold the authority of the international rule of law, and ensure equal and unified application of international law. The practice of double standards or selective application of law should be rejected.
– Harmonious coexistence. Countries should strive to achieve peaceful coexistence and common development by seeking common ground while reserving differences. Planet Earth is not an arena for wrestling between countries, but a stage for human coexistence. Despite their differences and diverse features, countries can develop together in harmony and unity, and it is precisely such diversity that gives strength to global development.
– Diversity and mutual learning. Different histories, national conditions, ethnic groups, and customs have given birth to diverse civilizations. Diversity of human civilizations is a basic feature of our world. Mutual learning among civilizations provides important impetus to human progress. Countries should respect one another and jointly pursue common development through exchanges and mutual learning.
– Unity and cooperation. Countries should act for the greater good. Pursuing development behind closed doors can only result in poverty. Viewed from a “country-first” perspective, the world is small and crowded, and locked in “fierce competition”; viewed from the perspective of a shared future, the world is vast, and full of opportunities for cooperation. No country can overcome global development challenges on its own. Cooperation among all countries is the only viable option.
3. Opening up new prospects for international exchanges
China has made a five-point proposal for building a global community of shared future in the areas of partnerships, security environment, development, inter-civilization exchanges, and ecosystem. This has opened up new prospects for international exchanges.
We should build partnerships in which countries treat each other as equals, engage in extensive consultation, and enhance mutual understanding. The principle of sovereign equality runs through the UN Charter. All countries are equals. The big, the mighty and the wealthy should not bully the small, the weak and the poor. We should uphold multilateralism and reject unilateralism. We should replace the outdated mindset of winner takes all with a new vision of seeking win-win outcomes for all. We should forge global partnerships at both international and regional levels, and embrace a new approach to state-to-state relations, one founded on dialogue rather than confrontation and that seeks partnership rather than alliance. In handling their relations, major countries should follow the principles of no conflict, no confrontation, mutual respect, and win-win cooperation. Big countries should treat small countries as equals and take the right approach to friendship and interests, pursuing both friendship and interests and putting friendship first.
We should create a security environment featuring fairness, justice, joint efforts, and shared interests. In the age of economic globalization, the security of all countries is interlinked, and each has an impact on the others. No country can maintain absolute security on its own, and no country can achieve stability by destabilizing others. The law of the jungle leaves the weak at the mercy of the strong; it is not the way for countries to conduct their relations. Those who choose to oppress will invite harm to themselves, like lifting a rock only to drop it on their own feet. We should reject Cold War mentality in all its manifestation, and foster a new vision of common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security.
We should promote open, innovative and inclusive development that benefits all. Development is meaningful only when it is inclusive and sustainable. To achieve such development requires openness, mutual assistance and mutually beneficial relations. Long-term global development cannot be founded on one group of countries becoming increasingly prosperous while another group of countries remain chronically poor and backward. Development should be placed high on the international agenda, and efforts should be made to reduce inequality and imbalance in global development, leaving no country or individual behind.
We should increase inter-civilization exchanges to promote harmony, inclusiveness, and respect for differences. There are more than 200 countries and regions, over 2,500 ethnic groups and a vast number of religions in our world. Such cultural diversity is what makes the world colorful. Diversity breeds exchanges, exchanges lead to integration, and integration brings progress. Only by upholding the equality, mutual learning, dialogue and inclusiveness of civilizations, and working for mutual respect, experience sharing, and harmonious coexistence while preserving diversity, can the world maintain its diversity and thrive. We should respect all civilizations, treat each other as equals, and draw inspiration from each other to boost the creative development of human civilization.
We should build an ecosystem that puts Mother Nature and green development first. Humanity may have the ability to utilize nature and even transform it, but it is still a part of nature. We should care for nature and not place ourselves above it. We should reconcile industrial development with nature, and pursue harmony between humanity and nature to achieve sustainable global development and all-round human development. We should respect nature, follow its ways, and protect it. We should firmly pursue green, low-carbon, circular and sustainable development.
4. Outlining a new vision for building a better world
China proposes to build an open, inclusive, clean and beautiful world that enjoys lasting peace, common security, and common prosperity. From “the five-point proposal” to “the five goals”, the concept of a global community of shared future has gained a broader historical perspective and deeper meaning, and set a clearer goal and drawn a clearer blueprint for the future of humanity.
We should build a world of lasting peace through dialogue and consultation. It means beating the swords of war into the plowshares of peace. The stone wall at the entrance to the UNESCO headquarters carries the inscription of one single message: “Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed.” Throughout human history, obsession with power and hegemony has led to frequent wars and loss of lives. The lessons are painful and profound, and we need to remove the fuses of war from our minds. Big countries should treat the smaller ones as equals instead of seeking unilateral dominance or imposing their will on others. No country should open Pandora’s box by willfully provoking turmoil and armed conflict or undermining the international rule of law. Countries should respect each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, respect each other’s core interests and major concerns, and respect the development path and social system chosen by other peoples.
We should build a world of common security for all through joint efforts. It means turning absolute security for one into common security for all. There is no place in the world that enjoys absolute security, and a country cannot build its security on the turmoil of others. Threats to other countries can turn into a challenge to one’s own country. When neighbors are in trouble, instead of reinforcing one’s own fences, one should extend a helping hand. As challenges often take on global dimensions, it is all the more important for countries to cooperate in addressing them, turning pressure into motivation and crises into opportunities. Unilateral action or blind belief in the use of force cannot address the complex international security threats. The only solution lies in cooperative and common security. It is normal for countries to have differences, and they should be properly addressed through dialogue and consultation. As long as we show sincerity, goodwill and political wisdom, no conflict is too big to resolve and no ice is too thick to break.
We should build a world of common prosperity through win-win cooperation. It means bidding farewell to the winner-takes-all mindset and sharing development achievements. In this day and age, the international community has evolved into a sophisticated and integrated apparatus, as the removal of any single part will cause serious problems to its overall operation. We must keep to the correct direction of economic globalization, and oppose any attempt to set up technological blockades, cause technological divides, or seek development decoupling. While we should make the pie of the global economy bigger, it is even more important to divide it well, so that development achievements can benefit people of all countries more equitably, and bring about true cooperation and win-win results.
We should build an open and inclusive world through exchanges and mutual learning. It means bidding farewell to the mindset that one civilization is superior to another and starting to appreciate the strengths of other civilizations. Our world can fully accommodate the common growth and progress of all countries, and success for one country does not mean failure for another. There is no universally applicable development path. A development path that continuously benefits the people is the most viable one. Countries and nations should respect their differences and seek harmony without uniformity, and civilizations should draw strength from each other and make progress together. Exchanges and mutual learning between civilizations should be a driving force for human progress and a strong underpinning for world peace.
We should make our world clean and beautiful by pursuing green and low-carbon development. It means bidding farewell to the destructive exploitation of resources and preserving and enjoying the lush mountains and lucid waters. Humanity coexists with nature. Any harm we inflict on nature will eventually come back to haunt us. We often take natural resources such as air, water, soil and blue sky for granted. But we could not survive without them. Industrialization has created a level of material wealth never seen before, but it has also inflicted irreparable damage on the environment. We must not exhaust all the resources passed on to us by previous generations and leave nothing to our children, or pursue development in a destructive way. Lush mountains and lucid waters are invaluable assets. We must follow the philosophy of harmony between humanity and nature and observance of the laws of nature and pursue a path of sustainable development, so that everyone is able to enjoy a starry sky, lush mountains and fragrant flowers.
Building a global community of shared future is China’s proposed strategy for reforming and improving the international governance system. This does not mean that the international system should be dismantled or started afresh. Rather, it means promoting greater democracy in international relations and making global governance more just and equitable. This important vision reflects the broadest common aspiration of the peoples of all countries in pursuit of peace, development, and stability, and the broadest consensus among countries with different cultural backgrounds and at different stages of development. It transcends outdated mindsets such as zero-sum game, power politics, and Cold War confrontations. It has become the overall goal of China’s major-country diplomacy in the new era, and a great banner that leads the trend of the times and the direction of human progress.
III. Deep Roots in History and
Cultural Traditions
The concept of a global community of shared future has deep roots in China’s profound cultural heritage and its unique experience of modernization. It carries forward the diplomatic traditions of the People’s Republic of China and draws on the outstanding achievements of all other civilizations. It manifests China’s time-honored historical traditions, distinct characteristics of the times, and a wealth of humanistic values.
1. Inheriting the best of traditional Chinese culture
China’s fine traditional culture epitomizes the essence of the Chinese civilization. It provides inspiring insights to help understand and shape the world and address current challenges, and contains elements of the vision of building a global community of shared future.
Harmony is the core concept of Chinese culture, which values the primacy of harmony and harmony within diversity, pursues the ideal of harmony and solidarity towards common progress, and embraces cultural diversity and global harmony.
The Chinese nation believes all nations together are one community, advocates fraternity among all peoples and peace for all countries, follows the principle of interstate relations that the strong do not bully the weak and the rich do not insult the poor, and pursues a world of fairness and justice for the common good.
The Chinese nation champions universal benevolence, holding that the virtuous are never left to stand alone, endorsing good neighborliness with good faith and good will, and pursuing both friendship and interests while putting friendship first.
The Chinese nation observes the rule that “to establish oneself, one must help others to establish themselves first; to succeed, one must help others to succeed first”, believing that helping others is helping oneself. It also upholds the principle that “do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself”, and never imposes its will upon other nations.
The Chinese nation acts on the belief that humans are part of nature and follows the old adage: “Fish with a line but not with a net; when fowling, do not aim at a roosting bird.” It reveres the laws of the universe, loves nature, and pursues harmony between humanity and nature.
2. Showcasing the global vision of the Communist Party of China
Always championing a global vision is part of the valuable experience accumulated by the Communist Party of China (CPC) in its century-long history. Over the past one hundred years and more, the CPC has always sought happiness for the Chinese people and rejuvenation for the Chinese nation while pursuing progress for all of humanity and the common good of the world. It succeeded in leading the Chinese people onto a distinctively Chinese path to modernization and developing a new form of human advancement. These successes have laid a solid foundation for building a global community of shared future, charting the course and opening up broad prospects for this great endeavor.
The CPC is committed to seeking progress for China while benefiting the wider world, bringing a good life to the Chinese people and also helping other peoples to prosper, and contributing more to humanity. The report to the 20th CPC National Congress in 2022 drew a great blueprint for rejuvenating the Chinese nation on all fronts by pioneering a uniquely Chinese path to modernization, and pointed out that striving to build a global community of shared future is one of the intrinsic requirements of Chinese modernization, affirming the close bond between the future of China and the future of all humanity.
The CPC leads the Chinese people in blazing and expanding China’s path to modernization based on both China’s distinctive conditions and other countries’ common approaches. Chinese modernization is the modernization of common prosperity for a huge population, coordinated material and cultural-ethical advancement, harmony between humanity and nature, and peaceful development. All these features have provided useful experience for other developing countries and a more robust and sustainable option for jointly building a global community of shared future.
3. Promoting the fine diplomatic traditions of New China
Over the past 70 years and more, China has made notable progress, established fine traditions, and forged a tenacious character and unique strengths in developing foreign relations. The initiative of building a global community of shared future builds on the PRC’s diplomatic philosophies, strategic thinking and traditions, and opens up new horizons for major-country diplomacy with Chinese characteristics.
After the PRC was founded in 1949, China committed itself to an independent foreign policy of peace and put forward the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, the Three Worlds theory and other principles, policies and ideas. This allowed China to find its place, win respect, and expand its reach in the international community. After the launch of reform and opening up in 1978, China asserted that peace and development are the underlying trends of the times. It advocated multipolarity and greater democracy in international relations, promoted a harmonious world, and achieved significant progress in China’s diplomacy around the world.
In the new era, championing peace, development, and win-win cooperation, China has advanced its major-country diplomacy on all fronts and formed a multifaceted, multilevel, and all-dimensional diplomatic strategy. China has initiated a range of visionary initiatives, including a global community of shared future, a new type of international relations, the common values of humanity, the Belt and Road Initiative, the Global Development Initiative, the Global Security Initiative, and the Global Civilization Initiative, and promoted a set of approaches to global governance, to friendship and interests, to security, to development, to cooperation, and to the eco-environment. All these carry distinctively Chinese features, style and ethos.
4. Incorporating the outstanding achievements of other civilizations
The concept of a global community of shared future incorporates the best of the cultures of enduring appeal and impact that have transcended time, space, and national borders in human history. It crystallizes the shared values of people from different regions, cultures, ethnic backgrounds and with different religious beliefs. It draws on the outstanding achievements of cultural integration between diverse civilizations. It embodies the common aspiration of all humanity.
All civilizations around the world have manifestations of the concept of a global community of shared future. Ancient Greek philosophers conducted primary research on this concept based on city-states, believing that humanity as one community should act in concert to pursue common interests and thus must live in harmony. Ancient Indian literature records the motto of “Under Heaven – one family”. The African philosophy of Ubuntu holds that “I am because we are,” emphasizing interdependence of humanity.
The concept of a global community of shared future reflects the common interests of all civilizations – peace, development, unity, coexistence, and win-win cooperation. A Russian proverb holds, “Together we can weather the storm.” The Swiss-German writer Hermann Hesse proposed, “Serve not war and destruction, but peace and reconciliation.” A German proverb reads, “An individual’s effort is addition; a team’s effort is multiplication.” An African proverb states, “One single pillar is not sufficient to build a house.” An Arabian proverb asserts, “If you want to walk fast, walk alone; if you want to walk far, walk together.” Mexican poet Alfonso Reyes wrote, “The only way to be profitably national is to be generously universal.” An Indonesian proverb says, “Sugarcane and lemongrass grow in dense clumps.” A Mongolian proverb concludes, “Neighbors are connected at heart and share a common destiny.” All the above narratives manifest the profound cultural and intellectual essence of the world.
In building a global community of shared future, all countries should observe the widely acknowledged norms of international relations. Since the advent of modern times, a fair and equitable international order has been the long-standing goal of all humanity. From the principle of equity and sovereignty established by the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, to international humanitarianism established by the Geneva Conventions in 1864, then to the four purposes and seven principles established by the Charter of the United Nations in 1945, and later to the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence proposed at the Bandung Conference in 1955, these norms of international relations have evolved into widely recognized principles and become the essential foundations of a global community of shared future.
IV. Direction and Path
The vision of a global community of shared future is the outcome of China’s wisdom in handling contemporary international relations from the perspective of world peace and development – a Chinese plan for improving global governance, and a Chinese proposal to address various challenges in the 21st century. Vision guides action and direction determines the future. The international community should work together to turn the grand blueprint into a roadmap, and a beautiful vision into reality step by step.
1. Pressing ahead with a new type of economic globalization
Economic globalization is an irreversible trend of global economic development, and is in line with the desire for development and cooperation held by people of all countries. Economic globalization has greatly facilitated trade, investment, flows of people, and technological advances, making an important contribution to global economic development.
However, problems and drawbacks also accumulated in the process, and there are attempts at retreating from it. The current model of economic globalization fails to reflect the demands or represent the interests of developing countries. The law of the jungle, zero-sum game, and the “win-or-lose”, “winner-takes-all” mindset have exacerbated the divide between the rich and poor, as evidenced by the widening gap between developed and developing countries, and that within developed countries. Some countries blame their problems in domestic governance on economic globalization or other countries, and resort to unilateral, protectionist, and bullying actions. This has damaged global industrial, value, supply and consumption chains, and caused turbulence and even conflict in the current international trade order.
Promoting a new type of economic globalization is essential for building a global community of shared future. Countries need to pursue a policy of openness and explicitly oppose protectionism, the erection of fences and barriers, unilateral sanctions, and maximum-pressure tactics, so as to connect economies and jointly build an open world economy. Countries should strive to build a system of fair, reasonable, and transparent international economic and trade rules, press ahead with trade and investment liberalization and facilitation, and promote further global economic openness, exchange, and integration in order to form an economic globalization that is open, inclusive, balanced and beneficial for all, so that people of all countries can share the fruits of economic globalization and world economic growth.
Opening up should be a two-way journey, not a one-way street; one cannot demand the opening of other countries while closing its own doors. Some countries are seeking to decouple from and break chains with China, enclosing themselves in “small yards, high fences”, which will ultimately only backfire on themselves. Some people overstate the need to “reduce dependence” and “derisk”, which is essentially creating new risks. Risk prevention and cooperation are not mutually contradictory, whereas non-cooperation is the biggest risk and non-development is the biggest threat to security. Pursuing de-sinicization in the name of derisking and reducing dependence undermines opportunities, cooperation, stability, and development.
The current revolution in science and technology marked by artificial intelligence will have a profound impact on the new round of economic globalization and social development. Relevant rules and standards should be established to support scientific and technological innovation and guard the red line of human security. The interests of all countries, especially developing ones, should be taken into account in a balanced manner, to ensure that technological innovation is placed under the rule of law and internationally recognized norms, and ensure that innovation is steered by and works for humanity, and is consistent with human values.
2. Following a peaceful development path
History tells us that for a country to develop and prosper, it must understand and follow the trend of global development; otherwise it will be abandoned by history. The trend now is the pursuit of peace, development, cooperation, and win-win results. The old path of colonialism and hegemonism leads to a dead end and those who follow it will pay a heavy price, whereas the path of peaceful development is the right one for the world to follow.
The pursuit of peace, amity and harmony is deeply rooted in the cultural realm of the Chinese nation and runs in the blood of the Chinese people. For a long time in the past, China was one of the most powerful countries in the world, but it does not have any record of colonization or aggression against other countries. China’s adherence to the path of peaceful development is an extension of the millennia-old cultural tradition of the peace-loving Chinese nation.
China always adheres to an independent foreign policy of peace and has always emphasized that the goal of China’s foreign policy is to maintain world peace and promote common development. China opposes all forms of hegemonism and power politics, and does not interfere in the internal affairs of other countries. It will never seek hegemony or engage in expansion. These principles are stated in China’s policies, incorporated in its systemic designs, and always adhered to in its practices.
The world needs peace, just like a human being needs air and living things need sunshine. The path of peaceful development is beneficial to China and the world, and we cannot think of any reason not to stay on this path. China follows the path of peaceful development, and hopes that other countries will take this path as well. Only by working together to pursue peace, safeguard peace, and share peace can countries achieve their development goals and make greater contributions to the world. Only when everyone follows the path of peaceful development can countries coexist peacefully, and can there be hope for building a global community of shared future.
3. Fostering a new type of international relations
The new type of international relations is different in that it has created a new path for interactions between countries, opened up a new chapter of world history where different civilizations and countries with different systems coexist in peace and seek common development, and paved the way for building a global community of shared future.
A new type of international relations should be built on the principles of mutual respect, equity and justice, and mutually beneficial cooperation. Mutual respect means treating people with sincerity and equality, and opposing power politics and bullying practices. In upholding equity and justice, countries must discard extreme materialism and overemphasis on competition, and ensure that all countries have equal rights and opportunities for development. Mutually beneficial cooperation means that countries should reject the maximization of self-interest, address the legitimate concerns of other countries while pursuing their own interests, and promote common development of all countries alongside their own development.
The foundations for building a new type of international relations lie in broader and deeper global partnerships based on equality, openness, and cooperation. China adheres to the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence in pursuing friendship and cooperation with other countries. It works to reinforce coordination and positive interaction with other major countries in order to build major-country relations featuring peaceful coexistence, overall stability, and balanced development. Acting on the principles of amity, sincerity, mutual benefit, and inclusiveness, and the policy of forging friendships and partnerships with its neighbors, China strives to increase friendly ties, mutual trust, and converging interests with its neighboring countries. Guided by the principles of sincerity, real results, amity, and good faith and with a commitment to the right approach to friendship and interests, China endeavors to strengthen solidarity and cooperation with other developing countries and safeguard the common interests of the developing world.
Major countries are key actors in building a new type of international relations. The international status of a country is measured by its openness of mind, breadth of vision, and sense of responsibility rather than its size, strength or power. Major countries should direct their primary efforts to the future of humanity and assume greater responsibility for world peace and development, rather than wielding their power to seek monopoly over international and regional affairs. Major countries should strengthen coordination and cooperation, respect each other’s core interests and major concerns, consider the perspectives of other parties and value mutual understanding, and treat smaller countries as equals. By building a global community of shared future, emerging countries and established powers can avoid falling into the Thucydides trap, find the right way to get along in mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation, and build common ground and achieve common development for different civilizations and countries with different social systems.
4. Practicing true multilateralism
Building a global community of shared future requires practicing true multilateralism. Building cliques in the name of multilateralism is no more than bloc politics. Seeking supremacy in the name of multilateralism is still unilateral thinking. “Selective multilateralism” is practicing double standard. The world should be fair and free from domineering practices. China opposes all forms of unilateralism and the formation of camps and exclusive cliques targeting specific countries, and opposes actions that undermine the international order, create a new Cold War or stoke ideological confrontation in the name of the so-called rules-based order.
China firmly upholds the purposes and principles of the UN Charter, as well as the authority and status of the United Nations. The various confrontations and injustices in today’s world do not arise because the purposes and principles of the UN Charter are outdated, but rather because these purposes and principles are not effectively followed. China maintains that for the world, there is only one system, which is the international system with the United Nations at its core, that there is only one order, which is the international order based on international law, and that there is only one set of rules, which is the basic norms governing international relations based on the purposes and principles of the UN Charter.
China actively participates in and leads the reform of the global governance system. It follows the vision of global governance featuring extensive consultation and joint contribution for shared benefits, that is, global affairs must be discussed by all, governance systems built by all, and benefits of governance shared by all, so that every country is a participant, contributor, and beneficiary of world peace and development.
5. Promoting the common values of humanity
China advocates peace, development, equity, justice, democracy and freedom, the common values of humanity. With an open mind, China understands that different civilizations have different understandings of the nature of these values, and respects the efforts of people in different countries to explore their own development paths. It goes beyond the narrow historical limitations of the so-called universal values, and promotes the common values of humanity embedded in Chinese civilization. These are the values embodied in pursuing a global community of shared future.
Peace and development are a common cause. A tree of peace cannot grow on barren land, nor can it bear the fruits of development amidst the flames of war. The fundamental solution to various global challenges lies in seeking peace and achieving development. Equity and justice are common ideals. No country should act as it pleases, or ride roughshod over others. Democracy and freedom are the common goals of humanity. There is no single model of democracy that is universally applicable, far less a superior one. Democracy is not Coca-Cola, tasting the same across the world as the syrup is produced in one single country. Democracy is not an ornament, but a solution to real problems. Attempts to monopolize the “patent” of democracy, arbitrarily define the “standards” of democracy, and fabricate a false narrative of “democracy versus authoritarianism” to provoke confrontation between political systems and ideologies are practices of fake democracy. Promoting the common values of humanity is not about canonizing the values of any particular country, but about seeking common ground while reserving differences, harmony without uniformity, and fully respecting the diversity of civilizations and the right of all countries to independently choose their social systems and development paths.
The more advanced human society becomes, the more important it is to strengthen exchanges and mutual learning among civilizations. All countries should treat each other with respect and as equals, discard arrogance and prejudice, deepen understanding of the differences between its own civilization and others, and promote dialogue and harmonious coexistence between different civilizations. Every country should value its own civilization, appreciate others, and facilitate their common progress. We should keep our own civilizations dynamic and create conditions for other civilizations to flourish. Together we can make the garden of world civilizations colorful and vibrant. All countries should be open and inclusive, promote mutual learning, strive to remove all barriers to cultural exchanges, and seek nourishment from other civilizations to promote the common development of all civilizations. All countries should progress with the times, explore new ground in development, take in the best of the present age, and sustain the development of civilizations through innovation.
V. China’s Action and Contribution
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Over the past decade, China has contributed its strength to building a global community of shared future with firm conviction and solid actions.
1. Promoting high-quality Belt and Road cooperation
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a vivid example of building a global community of shared future, and a global public good and cooperation platform provided by China to the world. Since introducing the BRI ten years ago, based on extensive consultation and joint contribution for shared benefits, China has pursued open, green, clean, and high-standard cooperation to promote sustainable development and improve people’s lives, and advanced high-quality Belt and Road cooperation. It has laid the groundwork and set up the frameworks of BRI cooperation, delivering tangible results and achieving sustainable progress. Together, participants in the initiative have jointly advanced “hard connectivity”, “soft connectivity” and “people-to-people connectivity”, setting up an important platform that has enabled wide participation, built international consensus and pooled the strengths of all parties.
Policy connectivity continues to deepen. By July 2023, more than three-quarters of countries in the world and over 30 international organizations had signed agreements on Belt and Road cooperation with China. China has successfully hosted the first Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in 2017 and the second in 2019, and will host the third this year, maximizing synergy for advancing high-quality Belt and Road cooperation. Infrastructure connectivity continues to strengthen. A general connectivity framework consisting of six corridors, six routes, and multiple countries and ports is in place. The overall layout of land, sea, air and cyberspace connectivity continues to improve, centered on economic corridors such as the New Eurasian Land Bridge, supported by routes like the China-Europe Railway Express and the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor and the information expressway, and underpinned by major railways, ports, and pipelines. Trade connectivity continues to increase. According to Belt and Road Economics, a report released by the World Bank, the BRI, when fully implemented, will increase intra-BRI trade by 4.1 percent. By 2030, the BRI will generate US$1.6 trillion in annual global revenues. Financial connectivity continues to expand. The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the Silk Road Fund have been set up, providing financing support for hundreds of projects. People-to-people connectivity continues to strengthen. Roads, bridges and development belts that lead to a happier and better life are constantly emerging in participating countries, and solid progress is being achieved in Juncao, wells, hybrid rice and other small projects that work faster in improving people’s lives, giving local people of BRI countries a stronger sense of gain and fulfillment.
The BRI originated in China, but the opportunities and achievements it creates belong to the whole world. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, since its launch ten years ago, has lent strong impetus to the economic and social development of Pakistan. The China-Laos Railway has realized the long-cherished wish of the Lao people to convert Laos from a landlocked country to a land-linked hub. The Jakarta-Bandung High-speed Railway has become the first railway in Southeast Asia to reach a speed of 350 kilometers an hour. The Mombasa-Nairobi Railway has added more than two percentage points to local economic growth. Malawi’s 600 wells built with Chinese assistance have become “wells of happiness” serving 150,000 local people. The China-Europe Railway Express serves as a “steel camel fleet” between China and Europe. Luban workshops help young people in Tajikistan and other countries acquire vocational skills. Cooperation in the fields of health, green development, digital economy, and innovation is thriving.
The BRI is an initiative for economic cooperation, not for geopolitical or military alliances. It is an open and inclusive process that neither targets nor excludes any party. Rather than forming exclusionary cliques or a “China club”, it aims to help China and the rest of the world to seize opportunities and pursue common development. Rather than a private route for any one party, it is a broad path that can be joined by all interested countries to work together for shared benefits.
The international community speaks highly of the BRI, praising it not simply as some random road or economic belt, but as an initiative to achieve common progress for humanity, an initiative that has opened up new paths for the common development of all countries. The BRI has facilitated the modernization drive of developing countries, leading the world into a new era of transcontinental cooperation.
2. Implementing the three global initiatives
It is widely recognized that peace and stability, material sufficiency, and cultural-ethical enrichment represent the basic goals of human society. Development serves as the material foundation for security and civilization, security acts as the fundamental prerequisite for development and civilization, and civilization provides the cultural-ethical support for development and security. The Global Development Initiative, Global Security Initiative, and Global Civilization Initiative proposed by China guide the advance of human society across these three dimensions. Resonating and complementing each other, they have evolved into a crucial cornerstone for building a global community of shared future, offering China’s solutions to major challenges pertaining to peace and development for humanity.
– Through the Global Development Initiative, China has issued a resounding call for commitment to development and reinvigorated cooperation, and made its contribution to resolving challenges to development and advancing global development. The fundamental aim of the initiative is to accelerate the implementation of the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Its core requirement is a people-centered approach, its foremost philosophy is united, equal, balanced, and inclusive global development partnerships, and its pivotal measure entails results-oriented actions to bolster stronger, greener, and healthier global development and jointly build a global community of development.
China has hosted the High-level Dialogue on Global Development and presented 32 major measures to implement the initiative, such as creating the Global Development and South-South Cooperation Fund totaling US$4 billion, launching the China-FAO South-South Cooperation Trust Fund (Phase III), and strengthening support for the China-UN Peace and Development Fund. Over the past two years, the international community has extensively responded to the initiative and jointly tackled prominent issues including food security, poverty reduction, and energy security as the implementation mechanism steadily improves and practical cooperation delivers progress. The Global Development Promotion Center is running smoothly, and the library of the Global Development Initiative projects is expanding, with over 200 projects achieving good results. At the same time, China has issued the Global Development Report, and established the Global Knowledge Network for Development, contributing Chinese wisdom to the resolution of developmental challenges. Currently, more than 100 countries and international organizations have expressed support for the Global Development Initiative, with over 70 countries participating in the Group of Friends of the Global Development Initiative established at the UN.
China is committed to propelling global development through its own development. It has thoroughly applied the new development philosophy, with a focus on promoting high-quality development to foster a new development paradigm. Modernization of the more than 1.4 billion Chinese people will create a market rivaling the aggregated size of all developed countries. This will open up more opportunities for all countries and stakeholders to partake in China’s huge market. China has also pioneered major expos and fairs, exemplified by the China International Import Expo, China International Fair for Trade in Services, China Import and Export Fair, and China International Consumer Goods Expo. It has encouraged all countries and stakeholders to share the opportunities presented by China’s institutional opening up and steadily expanded institutional opening up with regard to rules, regulations, management, and standards. It has enforced the Foreign Investment Law and its supporting rules and regulations, implemented the new catalogue for encouraging foreign investment, continued to remove items from the negative list of market access for foreign investment, advanced high-quality development of pilot free trade zones, and accelerated the development of the Hainan Free Trade Port.
China is committed to win-win cooperation and common development. As the largest developing country in the world and a member of the Global South, China has made every effort to aid other developing countries and help recipient countries expand their capacity for development. China is actively engaged in international exchanges and cooperation. It has cooperated with almost 20 international organizations, including the UN World Food Programme, the UN Development Programme, the UN Children’s Fund, the UN Refugee Agency, the World Health Organization, and the International Committee of the Red Cross, and executed over 130 projects in nearly 60 countries including Ethiopia, Pakistan, and Nigeria. “Small but beautiful”, these projects span fields such as poverty reduction, food security, Covid-19 response, and climate change, and have benefited more than 30 million individuals. China worked actively for the adoption of and has comprehensively acted on the Debt Service Suspension Initiative of the Group of Twenty (G20), contributing more than any other G20 member to its implementation. China has signed agreements or reached understandings on the suspension of debt repayments with 19 African countries, helping Africa alleviate debt pressure.
China is committed to building an open world economy. It has become the main trading partner of more than 140 countries and regions, and signed 21 free trade agreements with 28 countries and regions. It has worked for high-quality implementation of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, actively worked to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Digital Economy Partnership Agreement, and expanded its globally-oriented network of high-standard free trade areas. It has also promoted the internationalization of the Renminbi, and reinforced financial standards and its level of internationalization, thereby converging its interests closer with other countries.
– Through the Global Security Initiative, China seeks to work with the international community in upholding the spirit of the UN Charter, and calls for adapting to the profound changes in the international landscape through solidarity, addressing traditional and non-traditional security risks and challenges with a win-win mindset, and creating a new path to security that features dialogue over confrontation, partnership over alliance, and win-win results over zero-sum game.
In February 2023, China officially released The Global Security Initiative Concept Paper. The document further elaborates the core concepts and principles of the initiative, elucidates its key avenues for cooperation, and presents recommendations and ideas concerning its cooperation platforms and mechanisms. This has demonstrated China’s awareness of its duty to maintain world peace and its firm determination to safeguard global security. As an international public good, the Global Security Initiative serves the interests of and maintains peace for people throughout the world.
China is a pillar in maintaining world peace. It is committed to handling disputes with relevant countries over territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests through negotiation and consultation. It has settled land boundary issues peacefully with 12 of its 14 neighbors along its land borders through negotiation and consultation, and delimited the maritime boundary in the Beibu Bay with Vietnam. China has faithfully fulfilled its responsibilities and missions as a permanent member of the UN Security Council. It is the second largest contributor to the UN regular budget and peacekeeping assessment, and the largest contributor of peacekeeping troops among the permanent members of the Security Council. Over the past three decades and more, having sent more than 50,000 personnel to UN peacekeeping operations in over 20 countries and regions, China has become a key force in UN peacekeeping. China has dispatched more than 100 naval vessels in 45 taskforces to the Gulf of Aden and waters off the coast of Somalia to provide escort for over 7,000 Chinese and foreign ships.
Facing constant flare-ups of hotspot issues, China has been committed to fulfilling its role as a responsible major country, pushing for the resolution of international and regional flashpoints, such as the Korean Peninsula, Palestine, the Iranian nuclear issue, Syria, and Afghanistan. On the Ukraine issue, China has actively promoted talks for peace, put forth four key principles, four things that the international community should do together and three observations, and released China’s Position on the Political Settlement of the Ukraine Crisis. China has dispatched the Special Representative of the Chinese Government on Eurasian Affairs to engage in extensive interactions and exchanges with stakeholders on the political settlement of the Ukraine crisis.
Through the mediation of China, Saudi Arabia and Iran have achieved historic reconciliation, setting a fine example for countries in the region to resolve disputes and differences and achieve good neighborly relations through dialogue and consultation, and catalyzing a wave of reconciliation in the Middle East.
China has actively cooperated with other parties in non-traditional security domains such as anti-terrorism, biosecurity, and food security. It has proposed the International Cooperation Initiative on Global Food Security within the framework of the G20, and pushed for the adoption of the Strategy on Food Security Cooperation of the BRICS Countries. It has also officially launched the China-Pacific Island Countries Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Cooperation Center, representing yet another robust action to help developing countries tackle non-traditional security challenges within the context of the Global Security Initiative.
– Through the Global Civilization Initiative, China calls for jointly advocating respect for the diversity of civilizations, jointly advocating the common values of humanity, jointly advocating the importance of continuity and evolution of civilizations, and jointly advocating closer international people-to-people exchanges and cooperation. The Global Civilization Initiative makes a sincere call for the world to enhance inter-civilization exchanges and dialogue, and promote human progress with inclusiveness and mutual learning, inspiring the building of a global community of shared future.
China has hosted gatherings including the CPC in Dialogue with World Political Parties High-level Meeting, the CPC and World Political Parties Summit, and the Conference on Dialogue of Asian Civilizations. It has engaged in extensive bilateral and multilateral activities for political party exchanges and cooperation, and promoted diverse forms of civil diplomacy, city diplomacy, and public diplomacy. China has continued to deepen cooperation with the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the UN World Tourism Organization. It now has 43 items inscribed on the intangible cultural heritage lists of UNESCO.
China has celebrated over 30 large-scale cultural and tourist “years” (festivals), such as the China-Italy Year of Culture and Tourism, the China-Greece Year of Culture and Tourism, and the China-Spain Year of Culture and Tourism. It has promoted the steady development of 16 multilateral exchanges and cooperation mechanisms, such as the meeting of BRICS ministers of culture, as well as 25 bilateral cooperation mechanisms. It regularly hosts cultural activities at home, such as the Arabic Arts Festival and the Meet in Beijing International Arts Festival, and has held “Happy Spring Festival” celebrations outside China for more than 20 years in a row. It hosted approximately 2,000 events across over 130 countries in 2017, and has organized activities around the world under such brands as “Tea for Harmony” Yaji Cultural Salon. It has advanced cultural and tourism exchanges under the Belt and Road Initiative, carried out the Cultural Silk Road program, and established the Silk Road international theater, museum, art festival, library, and art museum alliances. It has also established approximately 3,000 pairs of sister cities or provinces with various countries, and launched the “Nihao! China” inbound tourism promotion program.
The international community has spoken highly of these three global initiatives, acknowledging that they reflect China’s global vision and growing international influence and provide comprehensive solutions to the challenges confronting humanity. The Global Development Initiative is highly compatible with the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and resonates, in particular, with the aspirations of developing countries for greater development. The Global Security Initiative upholds the principle of common security, emphasizes comprehensive approaches, pursues sustainable security through cooperative efforts, and makes a valuable contribution to addressing international security challenges. The Global Civilization Initiative calls on all countries to respect the diversity of civilizations in the world, which is conducive to facilitating exchanges and mutual learning among different civilizations.
3. Working with more countries and regions
China has proposed a range of regional and bilateral initiatives on building communities of shared future, and is working with stakeholders to build consensus and expand cooperation, thereby playing a constructive role in promoting regional peace and development.
The China-Africa community of shared future was the first regional proposal. It values sincerity and equality, pursues both friendship and interests and puts friendship first, takes a people-oriented approach in pursuing practical and efficient cooperation, and follows an open and inclusive approach to cooperation. It has set a good example of China and African countries building a community of shared future. The China-Arab community of shared future, China-Latin America and the Caribbean community of shared future, and China-Pacific Island Countries community of shared future have all made swift and steady progress. They are vivid illustrations of solidarity, cooperation, and common progress among developing countries.
The community of shared future among neighboring countries has taken firm root. As the China-ASEAN community of shared future continues to make advances, China-ASEAN cooperation has evolved into the most fruitful, dynamic, and substantive cooperation in East Asia. The two sides have seen a steady increase in mutual trust, engaged in frequent high-level exchanges, and established dialogue and cooperation mechanisms in nearly 50 domains and institutions. The community of shared future of Lancang-Mekong countries continues to make progress. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization community of shared future has yielded substantial outcomes. The building of the China-Central Asia community of shared future has made solid steps forward. The first China-Central Asia Summit was a success and a meeting mechanism at the heads-of-state level between China and Central Asian countries has been established. These efforts have contributed to enduring peace and shared prosperity in the region and the wider world.
At the bilateral level, China is building communities of shared future with an increasing number of partners in different forms. China and countries including Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Pakistan, Mongolia, Cuba and South Africa have published action plans, released joint statements, or reached important agreements on building bilateral communities of shared future. China has also implemented the vision of building a global community of shared future on a bilateral level with all the five Central Asian countries. As this vision gains greater traction among the people, substantial outcomes have been delivered, significantly boosting local development and improving people’s lives.
The global community of shared future is a dynamic, open, and inclusive system. However different countries may be in geographical location, history, culture, social system, size of economy, and development stage, alignment with the core idea of a global community of shared future enables them to seek common ground while shelving differences, achieve harmony in diversity, reinforce cooperation, and pursue win-win outcomes. China will work with more and more regions and countries to build a global community of shared future and contribute to the development of all countries and the progress of human civilization.
4. Boosting international cooperation in all areas
The vision of a global community of shared future addresses the deficits in peace, development, security, and governance facing the world today. As China’s unique contribution to solving global problems, it also offers solutions which have been translated into concrete actions in areas such as health, climate change, and cybersecurity.
Confronted by the rampant Covid-19 pandemic, China proposed to build a community of health for all. It has stood in the frontline of international anti-pandemic cooperation, carrying out global emergency humanitarian relief and providing assistance and support to more than 150 countries and international organizations. China has advocated that vaccines must first and foremost be a global public good, and was among the first countries to make a commitment to supply Covid-19 vaccines as a global public good, to support waiving intellectual property rights on the vaccines, and to start joint production with other developing countries. It has also played a pioneering role in the equitable distribution of vaccines, contributing China’s strength to the global health cause through firm commitment and practical actions.
To address disorder in cyberspace governance, China has proposed the concept of a community of shared future in cyberspace. It actively participates in UN cybersecurity processes and supports the UN in playing a core role in global cyberspace governance. China has hosted the World Internet Conference and established the World Internet Conference Organization as a platform for global internet sharing and governance.
To advance the development of a set of rules for global digital governance, it has launched the Global Data Security Initiative, and released the China-LAS Cooperation Initiative on Data Security together with the League of Arab States and the Data Security Cooperation Initiative of China + Central Asia together with the five Central Asian countries. To ensure that rights and responsibilities are shared among all countries, it promotes the improvement of governance rules in the deep sea, polar regions, outer space, and other new frontiers. Efforts are made to ensure that in formulating new rules for governance in new frontiers, the interests and expectations of emerging market countries and developing countries are fully reflected.
Concerning the fundamental issues in global nuclear security governance, China proposes to build a community of shared future on nuclear security. It firmly safeguards the international nuclear nonproliferation regime, promotes the peaceful use of nuclear energy, and upholds a rational, coordinated and balanced approach to nuclear security. In response to the increasing risk of nuclear conflict, China has pushed for the conclusion of a joint statement among the leaders of the five nuclear-weapon states, reaffirming that “a nuclear war cannot be won, and must never be fought”. China actively advocates the complete prohibition and thorough destruction of nuclear weapons, and it is the only nuclear country that has publicly committed to no-first-use of nuclear weapons, and not using or threatening to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapon states and nuclear-weapon-free zones.
Faced with increasingly complex maritime issues, China has proposed to form a maritime community of shared future and has always been committed to peaceful resolution of territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests disputes through dialogue and consultation. China has signed and fully and effectively implemented the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea with ASEAN countries, and continues to advance consultations on the code of conduct in the South China Sea. China has proposed to jointly build a partnership on blue economy and strengthen maritime connectivity. It adheres to the path of pursuing joint development while setting aside disputes, and actively explores joint resource development with maritime neighbors at sea.
Faced with the severe and growing global climate challenge, China has proposed important concepts such as building a community of life for humanity and nature and a community of all life on Earth. China actively promotes economic development and transformation, and undertakes to strive to achieve peak carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and carbon neutrality before 2060. It has introduced a “1+N” policy system for carbon peaking and neutrality. China has built the world’s largest clean power generation network, contributed 25 percent of the world’s newly added green area since 2000, and enabled an annual economic growth rate of over 6 percent with an average annual energy consumption growth rate of 3 percent. It has the largest installed capacity of hydropower, wind power, and solar power in the world. It actively participates in global environmental governance, advocates the comprehensive and effective implementation by the international community of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement, and adheres to the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities”. China tries its best to help developing countries improve their ability to address climate change, and vigorously supports their green and low-carbon energy development. It has inked 46 South-South cooperation documents with 39 developing countries to address climate change, and trained approximately 2,300 officials and technical personnel in the field of climate change for more than 120 developing countries. Holding the presidency of the 15th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (COP15), China made every effort to ensure the success of the meeting, taking the lead in funding the establishment of the Kunming Biodiversity Fund and contributing to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.
Whether dealing with the current crises or creating a better future together, all countries need to unite and cooperate. Faced with profound changes unseen in a century, China has proposed the building of a global community of shared future, calls on all countries to uphold the concept of a shared future, fully communicate and consult with each other, share governance responsibilities, and form broad consensus and take concerted actions to address global issues, so as to inject confidence and momentum into humanity’s drive towards a bright future.
Conclusion
All good principles should adapt to changing times in order to remain relevant. A broad consensus of solidarity and cooperation has developed in the international community behind the proposal and the implementation of the concept of a global community of shared future to address the challenges facing humanity. Looking to the future, it is bound to shine as a pioneering thought with the power of truth that transcends time and space, opening up a beautiful prospect of common development, long-term stability, and sustained prosperity for human society. The future of humanity is bright, but it will not come without effort. Building a global community of shared future is both a salutary vision and a historical process that calls for generations of hard work.
To realize this goal, confidence and determination are of foremost importance. The trend of our times for peace, development and win-win cooperation cannot be halted. Building a global community of shared future is the way forward for all the world’s peoples. However, it is not a goal to be accomplished overnight, and there will be no plain sailing. We need to make unremitting efforts and forge ahead with perseverance. We should never give up on our dreams because of harsh realities; we should never stop pursuing our ideals because they seem out of reach.
To realize this goal, a broad mind and a global vision are central as we live in great times. In the face of common challenges, no person or country can remain isolated. The only response is to work together in harmony and unity. Only by strengthening coordination and cooperation, and ensuring that the interests of the people of every country will be kept in line with those of all others, can all countries move forward towards a global community of shared future.
To realize this goal, a sense of responsibility and a will to act hold the key. The key to success is simple and boils down to action. Building a global community of shared future depends on the joint actions of all countries. All countries should take a sense of responsibility that treats the task as a bound duty, and take concrete actions instead of being bystanders. We should strengthen dialogue, build consensus, promote peace and development, improve governance, and carry out global actions, global responses, and global cooperation.
Our journey ahead will be a lengthy and arduous one. But as long as we press ahead with perseverance, there will be much to expect. Successes and setbacks await us, but hopes abound. When all countries unite in pursuing the cause of common good, plan together, and act together day by day towards the right direction of building a global community of shared future, we can build an open, inclusive, clean, and beautiful world of lasting peace, universal security and shared prosperity, and jointly create a better future for all of humanity.
Cheese Scalloped Zucchini
Italian Cheese Scalloped Zucchini
Ingredients
4 cups diced zucchini, cooked until tender (6 to 8 minutes)
This is a gay sailor sign to ward off Russian submarines.
In 2013, Sweden submerged a Neon sign depicting a gay sailor in its waters to ward off Russian submarines from entering their waters. Below the sailor the neon sign reads;
“Welcome to Sweden-gay since 1944.”
Using sonar the sign omits the message “This way if you are gay” in Morse code.
There have been no reports of Russian submarine sightings ever since.
Even the US is a bit stunned at this announcement and i am sure this 24 hour deadline will be ignored by the Israelis
The Israelis operate on the presumption that they work on credible intelligence when it comes to bombing terrorist targets in the Gaza and it is the Hamas which is placing civilian targets in their way as a kind of collateral damage
That presumption goes to pieces, That narrative goes to pieces if Israel starts bombing and openly killing Civilians, especially in such mass quantities
Even the Nazis didn’t do things so brazenly
.
2023 10 14 07 29
Like they say in Tamil
“Oru flow la sollitaan”
Israel, flushed with a war haze made a statement, they have to necessarily scale back on
Believe me, Netanyahu will be HANGED if he tries this
Not even the US can save him
The EU and US and UK, their entire rhetoric is that Israel is eradicating the Hamas from that area
They equate it to 9/11
Killing Civilians used as collateral is one thing but openly killing civilians could lead to a huge backlash in Europe
You have millions of muslim migrants in these nations who could snap at a moments notice
No way would EU nations go so far as to support this
By now the US would be flooded with phone calls from EU, UK and even India who have almost 20 Crore Muslims
Blinken would talk to Israel and inform them to TAKE IT EASY and not follow through on hitting Civilians openly
The US Military Industrial Complex wants to make money from War
However allowing Israel to directly hit Civilians without a military pretext is a new level of crime
The US can’t recover from such a mistake
Already losing trust, they will lose trust with every muslim in the world
Hell, a Muslim cop who’s never been to Palestine could fire three shots into the chest of Ursula Von Der Leyen and grin as she chokes on her own blood
So No
I doubt Israel will follow this through
2023 10 14 07 30
Even Jaishankar would be calling them and saying “You are going too far you stupid b*******”
EDIT:-
2023 10 14 07 31
There
EXACTLY LIKE I TOLD YOU.
The US have stepped in now and already the deadline is over and will be forgotten
How Starbucks Surpassed by Luckin Coffee? | LKNCY ( China’s Largest Coffee Chain )
Analysis of Luckin Coffee’s extraordinary comeback from its accounting scandal and how it subsequently surpassed Starbucks as China’s largest coffee chain.
Comeback? Yeah. One year ago, all of the Western “news” were making fun of Luckin Coffee. Claiming that it was a sign of “China’s collapse”. LOL.
Never happened.
BTW, I tried this Baijiu version. Pretty tasty, I’ll tell you what.
When I was out of my “retirement” from Arkansas, I was permitted to live in my home State in my home town, provided I had a sponsor.
This could be an ex-wife, a friend, a family member, or a civic institution.
Well, my ex-wife wanted to take me in, but she was diagnosed as “mentally ill”, and did not quality.
I only had two friends remaining back in the home town where I grew up. One was dead, and the other was in Jail.
My father agreed to take me in, but his (new) wife … my step-mother kicked me out.
So, I need a place to stay, and I was placed in a rehab complex for addicts, people with mental illnesses, and other issues. Initially, I stayed at a monastery, but eventually, I moved to a community that wasn’t so isolated, and I managed a group home there.
There was some six of us men living in an old Victoria style home, and working at low wage jobs to get back on our feet. We shared the budget and the responsibilities together, and it really wasn’t a bad deal.
I want to relate a story from that time.
…
We all agreed to pitch in $100 to $300 a month for food, and in so doing we would have a monthly run to the supermarket for supplies.
We sat down, and wrote what to buy, which consisted of vegetables, fruits, meats, eggs, breads… you know the basics with an emphasis on “make it yourself” rather than “frozen; pop in the microwave food”. Staples. Rice. Corn. Tomatoes. Flour. Butter. Cooking oil. Things like that.
We gave the list and the money to one of our housemates. This fellow was a “strange cat”, but you know, all of us were a bit odd, don’t you know.
And off he went.
When he returned, he arrived without the groceries he was supposed to buy. Instead, had something like $800 worth of pork chops, and three cases of diet Pepsi. Nothing else. And he laughed about it.
He argued that the money was his; his responsibility, and that he could do anything he wanted with it. And he wanted pork chops.
Well, I like pork chops as much as the next guy, but not at the expense of salads, orange juice, eggs, toast, butter, and spaghetti. Not at the dearth of cereals, milk, asparagus, peppers, spaghetti noodles, and rolls. Not at the expense of coffee, and sugar. Not at the expense of peanut butter, and salad dressing.
He had quite the smug look on his face, and laughed. Then, as if that wasn’t enough, behind our backs, he related to everyone how crestfallen I was, and the others in the house was.
…
Bummed us all out, and I was pretty damn pissed. What the Hell was I going to eat?
After talking with the head of the organization we held a in-house meeting.
Long story short; yeah, we kicked him out.
I was nice about it, and I helped move him out.
…
However, I learned a serious lesson. Never underestimate what a crazy, or mentally deficient person is capable of of. He was obviously selfish, narcissistic, and had no sense of belonging.
So we removed him.
This type of action, I believe, must be replicated at the highest levels of “leadership” in the collective Western nations. Don’t you know.
Today…
Blue Cheese Stuffed Steaks
2023 09 23 11 31
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients
4 beef tenderloin steaks
2 tablespoons cream cheese, softened
4 teaspoons crumbled blue cheese
4 teaspoons plain low fat yogurt
2 teaspoons minced onion
Dash of white pepper
1 large clove garlic, halved
1/2 teaspoon salt, divided
2 teaspoons chopped parsley
Instructions
Combine cream cheese, blue cheese, yogurt, onion and pepper; reserve.
Rub each side of beef steaks with garlic.
Place steaks on rack in broiler pan so surface of meat is 2 to 3 inches from heat. Broil for 5 to 6 minutes.
Season with 1/4 teaspoon salt.
Turn and broil for 3 to 4 minutes.
Season with remaining salt.
Top each steak with an equal amount of reserved cheese mixture.
I was just 18, and working part-time at a local gas station, a Merit gas, with the little fishbowl in the middle of the pumps. I was in nursing school, so worked a couple nights a week.
Now, let me preface this by saying I was not by any means raised to be shy and retiring. My dad was streetwise, and made sure we were too. I knew how to defend myself and was not worried about working nights.
One night about 2am this drunk comes in, puts two crumpled up ones in the drawer, and says “put 20 on pump 3”. I yelled that he had only given me $2 but he was too far gone. I made a note of the make and model of his car, and was going to call the police about him as he was absolutely sloshed.
He comes back to the drawer and says “It only took 2$. Gimme my change”.
I explained that I did not get 20 from him.
He went back to his car and came back with a tire iron, and started to try to smash the windows. I pushed the alarm, then left the booth with a chain wrench in my hand.
image 104
Very useful as a weapon if you know how to use it, and I did. At least, I figured I did.
I went to him as he smashed the windows, and yelled some obscenities…. he turned on me with the tire iron. Just as I caught his hand with the chain wrench, and pulled the tire iron out, 4 motorcycles pulled in.
They were fully patched 1%-ers, members of a well-known motorcycle club not known overall for their sense of patience with morons.
One of the guys walked up to the drunk and said “what’s your beef?” and the drunk said “she kept my change!” I said “He gave me $2, he thought it was 2 tens, it was 2 ones”. Just then the drunk grabbed his tire iron and swung at me, but was so drunk he hit MC-Man 1. MC-Man proceeded to punch the man even more senseless than he was.
While MC Man 2 peed in his car, MC Man 3 went into the guy’s wallet and took out his driver’s license.
Just then, Drunk man gets up, and tries to hit MC Man 1. Next I know, the drunk is naked and upside down in a trash bin; he was wearing only his shoes, which had their laces tied together. MC-Men are busting a seam laughing.
Just then the Police showed up, and seemed disappointed when I explained it was not the bikers who were the problem, but the upside down naked man who had attacked me, smashed the windows, etc. The MC Men helpfully gave their version of events, with four-part harmony focused on how they had been as abused and brutalised, being as defenseless as they were, as I was.
The Police dragged off upside down naked man, and MC Man 3 said “I found his wallet, this fell out” and handed the cop his driver’s license.
Just as he was being escorted to the cruiser, he spat on one of the bikes, and was accidentally tripped by the bike’s owner, and landed right on his face. He was filth-fouling his way all the way to the cruiser. The cop told the guy he would turn him over to the bikers if he didn’t shut the f_ up. That seemed to sink in, and he went calmly from there… until the cops said a tow truck was taking the car.
Upside down drunk yelled “You C—t” at me through the open cruiser window (there were bars) but as one of his teeth came flying out when he did, it was actually kind of funny.
After the cop left, I told the bikers they could fill up on me, whatever they needed, oil, gas, cigs, anything. MC Man 1 said “No, trust me, we can pay for our own stuff, and after all the fun you don’t owe us anything….” and they proceeded to use the guy’s own tire iron to smash the glass in his car.
It wound up in court, the guy was sent to jail for a year and ordered to pay for damages.
All 4 MC Men were called as witnesses. They showed up clean shaven, in nice suits, looking like they had walked out of a Wall Street firm, and spoke about how afraid they were of “that violent man”.
You could just see they enjoyed it.
He complained in court that someone kept breaking his car’s windscreen… the Judge actually said “you better think better who you pick fights with, but I suspect after you’ve paid your debt to society, you might find your windscreen lasts a bit longer. Right gentlemen?” The MC Men just laughed…
I, like a few others, was patiently waiting in line on an early Friday nite in a little village on top of a mountain. The pompous guy behind me, dressed in the full attire as dictated by his religion, evidently thought that by hitting me in with his cart, I would be so indebted to him that I would give him my spot.
The first time he hit me, I turned around and asked him not to do that again. He waited a minute and then hit me again with his cart. When I confronted him again, he said “women in my religion know their place and it is behind all men”. I laughed and loudly said “and in my country, women know that they don’t have to stand behind any asshole”.
Needless to say, he hit me again. This time I said “ you’re right. You belong in front of me. Just back up your cart so I can back out my cart so you can get in frin of me”. So after he backed up his cart, I grabbed his cart and shoved it down an aisle….he had to chase after it and was pissed.
The other customers all laughed including an off duty cop. When the asshole threatened to hurt me, the off duty cop arrested him and escorted him out.
I understood that his religion required him to be home by sundown. Had he asked me nicely, I would have let him in front of me. But when my first contact with him is him deliberately hitting me, he can wait your turn. If observing the tenets of his religion was that important to him, he should have gone shopping earlier.
The assault charge was dropped and he was banned from the grocery store, which happened to be the only one in a 15 mile radius, off the mountaintop
I remember when I was a young man, still largely broke but I wanted to get into PCs because while I understood computers very well and had years of experience on them, it was experience on Commodores, Ataris, Apples, and even z80 based systems. But at that point, the writing was on the wall, and it was clear the IBM PC standard with DOS/Win was winning decisively and the PC XTs I had access to, couldn’t run…
So anyway, PCs were not cheap, so I went with building my own. When I was done with the initial build, it was, like our health care system, a frankenstein’s monster. It had a slowish motherboard 286–12mhz, the best sound card at the time(original soundblaster), and an 8bit VGA card which was very middle of the road at the time. It had a 40MB hard drive which was quite decent at the time. It was good enough that I could run Dos/Win, at least enough to gain familiarity with it and sell my knowledge to employers. Which was the point.
However, it was not a good system. It was nobody’s first, second, or third choice of system. but it had a couple of good parts. There was no better sound card at the time, the hard drive wasn’t the top drive available, but was considered among the better ones available.
It was, like our health care system, a collection of best I could do at the time compromises to achieve an objective, but unlike our healthcare system, it did achieve its objective. It enabled me to get into higher paying jobs(hell, that whole trajectory launched my pretty decent career), which I promptly used to upgrade the lesser parts to the point that it ended up a pretty damned good system.
A few world class hospitals in a nation of 360 million people does not make the system good, anymore than my good sound card and good hard drive made my computer system good. They were positives of it, to be sure, but it was not a very good system as a whole.
A system is a collection of parts that work together, by definition, and the quality of it is determined by the overall quality of all the parts and most importantly – How well they work together to achieve the objective of the overall system. Our health care system is not very good, overall, despite that it has some quality parts here and there.
They’re making him a HOOD LEGEND
After former US President Donald Trump turned himself in to Fulton County Jail in Georgia, the Trump Mugshot went viral on social media. But now it appears the Republican POTUS is actually gaining massive support in the most unexpected ways. Which could lead to an epic backfire for the Democrats and the liberal news media.
A dinner guest picked away at the back of one of my mahogany dining room chairs and lifted a piece of the scrollwork decorations carved in the back of the chair next to her that her husband was sitting in.
When she finally succeeded in picking it off, she placed it on the table and acted like she didn’t realize what she had done, and done deliberately. She started saying “oh they don’t make furniture like they used to”, she was so sorry, blah, blah. Yeah, right, my solid mahogany Pennsylvania House dining room set was cheaply made.
It killed me to say “oh that’s ok, I’ll take care of it” like a good hostess as I attempted to retrieve the piece she had gouged out so I could glue it back in later, but she kept flipping it around in her fingers like it was a toy. I finally told her to give me the piece of wood so I could use it to attempt a repair. She acted offended at my request and to my tone of voice.
Never invited her back, but she went to the same church I did. Her name was Sondra and she would get really agitated with anyone who pronounced her name as Sandra. So of course everytime I saw her from then on I called her Sandra instead of Sondra. Many, many times. Petty I know, but I didn’t care. Still don’t.
Mike taught me real selfless love time and time again.
When my parents learned about him they took my phone and almost all means of communication, treated me like garbage and threatened me with many things. They came to me and said “you’re an idiot if you think he’ll still be with you after things got serious. He was just toying with you”. I just had to rely on my faith in him. And one month later he was in Kuwait to see me and my family.
When I was hospitalized for my mental breakdown he called everyone in my family and constantly asked about me.
He paid thousands and thousands of dollars to come visit me every couple of months and for all the attorneys trying to bring us back together.
When we were looking up all sort of solutions to reunite. He seriously said “what if I bring you to NewYork then drive from Ontario to there everyday to spend the night with you?”. I was flabbergasted and told him “you would do that?”, he said “of course I would. That way I’ll get to see you everyday”. And I was astonished but told him I would hate that sort of situation.
When he said he’s looking for other jobs since I can’t seem to enter Canada. I know very well that he’s never had a job better than this, great pay, great people, great company and a nice environment. Yet he is willing to give it all up for me.
Every time I had an episode and started fighting violently over something very stupid, driving him up the wall, he stayed on the phone with me for hours until I calmed down and we reached a conclusion.
When my parents refused to meet him and travelled to Egypt on purpose to avoid him when he comes to Kuwait. But he booked another ticket to Egypt and said wherever they go I’ll meet them.
When he decided to start waking up at 5 a.m everyday and chat with me in the morning because that’s what works best with our time difference.
When he told me “you know Salma, other than my daughters I never called anyone but you “my sweetheart”. And he said “aside from being a father, nothing ever compares to being with you”.
I can only hope I give this man as much happiness and warmth as he gives me.
America’s NEW Tax Plan is Frightening
As General Patton said it, “We defeated the wrong enemy”.
I can’t say that what I found after my father’s death completely changed how I viewed him, but it did have a profound impact.
My father vehemently opposed my decision to transfer out of an engineering program and instead pursue writing as a career. For 25 years, until his death, he had nothing positive to say about it, despite my receiving grants, fellowships, and publishing books. His rejection of me as a writer took our relationship, which wasn’t warm before that, to absolute zero.
After he died, I found an old cassette tape recorder he had repaired. In it was a tape labeled “Al in a Pensive Mood.” He made the tape in 1978, shortly after he’d had heart surgery. In it, he reflected on many aspects of his life, but the part that most affected me was this: “I sort of miss the fact that David is in New York, but I hope that he will succeed, that he will become a famous writer, that his books will be accepted, because this is what David seems to want to do.”
He died in 1994. How different our relationship might have been if he’d shared those sentiments while he was still alive.
I was born in a family of drama queens and philandering womanizers. Everyone in my immediate and extended family divorced at least once. Everyone in my family is either upper class overeducated elitist hypocrites (on my father’s side) or greedy under-educated peasant opportunists (from my mother’s side). Everyone of them has a story to tell, everyone wanted something more out of their lives or nobody was happy. I mean,seriously, as a child, I don’t think I knew one single happy couple who actually loved each other or a happy person who was satisfied with their life.
My parents were absent ones who were too focused on their rather successful careers and their dramas. They divorced,then both remarried and both had affairs. My dad didn’t divorce because my stepmom pretended that nothing happened. My mom divorced two other times and finally settled down with some young movie director and that’s the last I heard of her back in early 2000s.
I grew up with my grandma, who had her own juicy skeletons (yes, plural) in the closet. She suffered from major depression, but she wasn’t diagnosed until much later. So there was me, isolated with my depressed grandma, watching the fabulous lives of my father and mother unfold each on their own and which I was never part of any of it. And like most absent and successful parents, they eased their guilt by giving me the best life money can buy.
As a child, I never felt the absence of anything. I had the best clothes, the best books and the best toys. I was the first in my class to own a pager, a Walkman, a PC, a cellphone or a car… I was signed up in all of the after school interests classes. I played two instruments poorly.
My family sure had high hopes for me. And I sure disappointed them in every possible way. My dad used to lament how I didn’t get my mother’s looks or his brain. All I got was stubbornness, which wasn’t a good character trait for a girl.
The irony was, being part of such a chaotic and passionate family of love and hate,romance and sex, I ended up being an introverted asexual person who wasn’t really interested in relationships or sex.
Like all good daytime TV, my family lost much of its financial means. We weren’t poor. But we were no longer filthy rich. My parents actually had to budget and buy stuff when there was a sale! Oh,the horror!
We moved to the US in 2000. I went to college and against my father’s wishes, decided to study art. I’ll have to give it to my dad, being an Asian father, he wasn’t happy that I studied such a useless subject, but he was supportive (as in he didn’t cut me off). He told everyone I studied graphic design, as if that somehow made it better than “art”.
I was never a good student to begin with. I didn’t go to the Ivy Leagues. My art degree didn’t get me anywhere, neither did art history, theater or 3D animation. I was often the best in my class, but best in a regional university is mediocre when put on a global scale. Despite being a mediocre student, I did enjoy learning new things. I still do. Learning about random things I didn’t know before often brings me great joy.
Learning things and creating things are my greatest joys in life. All that art school didn’t really make me a competitive artist. I was, as I said, mediocre at best. As an artist I was (and still am) willful, which is a bad characteristic for the commercial artists… disastrous for mediocre commercial artists. I only draw portraits. I only draw stuff I like. I do poorly with commissions. I can’t keep simple commitments.
Suffice to say, I was doomed to make a living with art. But that wasn’t my only worry at the time.
As you can imagine, growing up in such a dysfunctional family I had a lot of baggage. I went into counseling for a period of time during graduation school, that really helped me a lot. I started to grow (a bit late, I know) into my own self instead of trying (and failing) to be the person my father wanted me to be, or, more precisely, who I thought my father wanted me to be. In reality, I don’t think my dad had any expectations from me since high school.
Out of some weird turn of events, I was involved in the BDSM community for a few years. Had my one and only “serious” relationship and decided it just wasn’t worth my time.
By 2008, I was a mess. I was well into my late 20s. Other people my age would get married, have children and steady jobs and probably already bought their first house… while I was ridiculously overeducated and absurdly unemployable. I lived with my parents, I was laid off from my previous dead end job, I had one failed, completely dysfunctional relationship which I pretended that never happened, I sent out 20 email job applications every day and I didn’t know what to do with my life.
In early 2010, I finally landed my first gaming industry job. Of all the degrees and skills I earned in my nearly 10 years of college education, I landed this job because I was bilingual.
It turned out I was actually a pretty good project manager. My stepmom didn’t believe it. She had always seen me as this messy absent-minded loser who couldn’t organize anything. But I was good at organizing things, budgets and schedules. I never learned project management, but somehow it all came naturally to me. It just made sense. I mean, after all, project management really is just common sense. So… out of all of the exciting things you can do in video game industry, I ended up doing the most boring thing, basically middle management nobody likes and who doesn’t really contribute anything solid to the development.
Still, I love my job. I love what I do.
I’ve worked for big publishers,start-ups,on console titles and PC titles,web games and Facebook games (yes,I did).
Somewhere along the way, I published a book about Renaissance Italy, which… rated poorly on Douban because I pissed off a lot of people with my “white-lefty” sentiments. I’m not saying my book is any good. But judging from the comments left on my book page, obviously most of them never read it. They just came to give my book a 1 star (out of 5) because they don’t like how I talked about feminism…. and give out spoilers about Murder on the Orient Express.
Now I live in San Diego with my cat Jonesy.
I’m translating a book (which I should be working on right now instead of procrastinating on Quora). I continue to write my renaissance story (I don’t think my publisher would publish any more of that story, but I must finish it). I’m planning another story (in English).
My life so far has been pretty uneventful, especially compared to my parents and all my relatives. But perhaps I could write interesting and exciting stories, even if I myself would most likely live out my life in peace and solitude.
A book, my cat and San Diego city lights. This is my life now.
Back in the 80’s in my hometown, if a teenage girl got pregnant in our high school, she was immediately pulled out of school and they provided her with a home tutor. My mom was one of the tutors.
Mostly it was pretty basic, my mom would ignore the girl’s “condition” and the girls did their work. I should add that our town was insanely small, so my mom had known most of these kids since they were in preschool, so I imagine that it was super awkward.
During one of these tutoring sessions, one particular girl was prattling on about how she and the baby’s father were going to get married, he’s going to be a doctor, and they’ll be rich in no time. My mom is not one for flights of fancy, she is a firm believer in cold, hard reality, so she couldn’t keep quiet.
She very calmly explained how much money a baby can cost, then added in the prices of rent, utilities, food, a car & insurance, daycare, college tuition, and books. This girl did not believe her at all. My mom also let her know the failure rate of a teen marriage, as well as the adult rate. This girl obviously had never learned basic household management because she didn’t even know how to turn on the stove.
My mom never pushed the subject again, and the girl continued her lessons, until she delivered the baby. My mom never followed up with the girls, unless the school needed her to. Shortly after that, we moved to a different part of the state and mom took a job with a bank.
About 10 years ago, we were at a mall when this woman came over to my mom to say hello. My mom was confused and asked the woman who she was. It was the girl! She wanted to thank my mom for being honest with her about the harsh realities of life and had taken what she said to heart. The girl broke up with the boyfriend who got her pregnant, gave the baby up for adoption, finished high school, went to college, the medical school and now she’s an OB/GYN. She told my mom that no one had ever told her how the world works and how you have to pay for everything; she was kind of embarrassed when she said that she just always assumed that there would be food in the fridge because it had never been empty.
Now she was close to 40 and she had gotten married, was pregnant and was finally going to able to give her child the life that she couldn’t for her first (she did receive photos of the baby that she placed). My mom just looked baffled because she insisted that she hadn’t done anything special.
Walking through Cities of Europe in 700 AD: What would you have seen?
A recruiter got in touch with me through Linkedin regarding an opportunity to work for a luxury car brand. I gave her my number and asked her to call after 4 pm because I didn’t want to take the call at work.
She rang that evening, we went through my work history and I emailed her my CV. In the morning she rang back to say that the hiring manager liked my cv and wanted to schedule a phone interview.
The following day, I received a call from a gentleman who introduced himself as my interviewer. I went through my work history once again.
I answered his questions, gave examples to support my answers and explained the gap in my CV. I also asked questions about the role and the company.
“You have the skills and experience required, I like your attitude, you are very straightforward and assertive but I’m hesitant. If we hire you, once you get bored of the job you’ll probably leave just like you are doing with your current employer.”
It rubbed the wrong way and I thought it was very presumptuous of him to assume that I was leaving because I was bored. I was looking for new opportunities because I wanted to get out of a toxic workplace, I agreed to interview for the position because I already worked in the field. I had the skills and experience, they were also offering better pay and benefits.
He spoke to me for a few minutes and assumed to know the reasons I was leaving my then current employer, I guess in his entire career he never left a job for better opportunities.
“Thank you for considering me for the role but I’m no longer interested,” I said to him and ended the call.
Hiring managers are so full themselves they don’t even realise that sometimes people just leave bad bosses and toxic work environments. I can’t see myself working for someone who is so quick to jump to conclusions.
Breaded Steak Cutlets
2023 09 23 11 32
Ingredients
1 1/2 pounds round steak
Salt
Pepper
Eggs
Water
Cracker crumbs
1 (8 ounce) can tomato sauce
Instructions
Cut 1 1/2 pounds round steak into serving pieces, removing all fat. Cube with a tenderizing hammer and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Dip each piece into 1 egg beaten with 1 teaspoon water. Dip into cracker crumbs and coat well. Fry in hot grease until brown on both sides. Drain.
Pour off grease and add 1 (8 ounce) can tomato sauce to pan and de-glaze pan.
Serve tomato sauce with cutlets.
Fed Predicts: Americans Will Run Out of Money By October 2023
https://youtu.be/MQSgLJfsepA
Confession of the Day
I have been married for 15 years. I have known my wife since I was 8. We have 3 daughters together. 17, 14, and 11.
I’m tired of feeling like I’m an outsider in my relationships with all of them. I’m just an ATM and taxi service to my kids. My wife hasn’t kissed me in 6 months. She has not said that she loves me in 1.5 years. No matter how much I communicate, try to plan anything or do anything it is always shot down, forgotten, or dismissed. I don’t get angry in don’t yell. I don’t get physical.
I like to splurge during birthdays and mothers Day. I throw parties and give gifts and try to show how much I love them. I get a lukewarm, thanks, and if I’m lucky, a side hug that lasts .0001 seconds.
This week was the breaking point. Father’s Day. I wake up to an empty house. Odd. No note, nothing was written on the calendar, and nothing said beforehand. I send a text, and I get back. “I took the girls out for a spa day, don’t wait up.” Then nothing, literally nothing. Dinner time comes around, and they get home. How their say was (it was fine). I ask what they would like for dinner. “Nothing we already ate at [one of my favorite restaurants].” Cool, whatever. There is no mention of it being fathers Day. No, I love you, how are you. Nothing.
Fast forward to Wednesday. Which was my birthday. Nothing. Literally again, nothing. I suggested plans. They get shot down. I suggested food. Nope, shot down. Ask about watching a movie they are all too busy (they just sat on their phones doing nothing).
Now to Thursday night. I’m in bed. My wife is next to me. She rolls over and says in a crappy tone. “Oh, your birthday was the other day. I guess you expect to have sex.” That broke something in me(best of my memory of how it went down)
I said “no I don’t expect sex. At this point, I don’t expect anything anymore.”
Her “what is that supposed to mean?”
So I started asking her questions
When was the last time we shared a kiss? (Like a week? Nope, it was in December, and it was during her parents’ holiday party)
When was the last time we had sex? (The beginning of the year? Nope, wrong it has been over a year. She was adamant that we did it in February. I was dealing with my moms health and her passing. So I said something like, “You may have had sex but it wasn’t with me.”)
When was the last time you said you love me? (“I say it all the time.” Not to me, check your messages/you don’t say it to me face to face. “Well, you should just know I do.”)
When was the last time we went on a date? (LONG pause)
Her: You’re being unfair.
Emotions turned on fully. I was crying and raising my voice at this point.
It asks her how? She can’t answer. I asked her how wanting any sign of love from anyone in the house is unfair. If expecting anything for my birthday or Father’s Day was unfair. (She got an oh shit look) Yeah, you forgot that as well. I’m not an ATM, I’m not a taxi service, I’m not a punching bag.
She asked why this was coming up “out of the blue.” It didn’t. I have tried to talk to my family and again get dismissed or ignored. I brought up examples. I got an “I didn’t know you were serious.” “I didn’t know it was such a big deal.”
I left saying something to the point of “If you want to pretend that I’m invisible and don’t exist fine, you don’t have to pretend anymore.”
I left the house at almost midnight. On Thursday/ Friday morning. Haven’t been home since. I’m not sure what to do now. I’m finally sober enough to think, but I don’t know what to do(first time drinking in over 15 years BTW, and i’m not going to drink anymore)
I love my family. But I can’t keep this up. I don’t know what more I can do. I think they would be happier without me. They already act like I don’t exist. I can’t be the one who is blamed for everything. If I truly am the problem then me not being there should fix it. I can’t do it anymore.
I have tried to be a good provider, a good partner, and a good dad. Never missed an event of our kids. Never prioritize work. I kept good hours so I could see them more. Took on more responsibility to better our life and future. But, it is never appreciated. It is never enough. I am never enough.
I only have one message from my wife “I’m sorry for making you feel that way. We all love you, and we are here for you when you want to come home and talk.” That is it. No other messages. No calls. Nothing from the kids. I feel like if they really wanted me there, they would try reaching out more. All of the kids have their own phone. I don’t know what she told them. I’m sure they heard me raise my voice. Me raising my voice would have definitely got their attention since i never do. I’m sure they heard me leave. I just don’t know.
I watched the grilling of the Commerce Secretary by Congress about Huawei.
The anger was thick. And the compensate measures were astounding. There was an open hostility and a degree of frustration on the “representatives” faces.
The Commerce Secretary recovered herself and exclaimed… “well, maybe I was “bushwhacked” by Huawei while in China, but China cannot make to scale.”
Not true.
But it is a hope. They wish to be true.
Let that sink in.
The USA threw EVERYTHING at China, discovered that it is resilient, and decided to “take a step back” and try to “compete”.
That competition is OVER.
Huawei’s actions were an open alert. China, and it’s national companies are immune, inoculated, from the USA, and far more powerful than anyone in Washington is willing to consider.
You can see it on their faces.
It is the realization that you just drove your car into a tree because you drank too much, and your girlfriend is dead. Now you are going to jail.
That was the expression.
A feeling of utter hopelessness.
It’s all over. The only thing left is global thermonuclear war, and the Pentagon already briefed these “Senators” on what that means…
…
The “Commerce Secretary”.
I have some words about this person.
This is the person who implemented the switch from manufacturing to service industry.
This is the person who assisted in the “hollowing out” of the United States.
This is the person who permitted the demise of unions.
This is the person who permitted to demise of company sponsored health care.
This is the person who allowed unemployment benefits to atrophy.
No grilling on those things.
Not so important, eh?
…
The United States is FUCKED.
We all have realized this, but slowly the Senators in Congress have gotten the message. And they do not like it. It’s a grim day at the start of a very grim century.
The only people who have anything to fear about in China include :-
Persons who have received funding from an organization perceived as favouring internal destabilization in China (WEF, NED for Instance)
Persons who are belonging to groups favouring Taiwanese Independence. Not everyone. Only members of specific Groups
Persons who are members of Falun Gong, offshoot groups of Falun Gong & specially funded groups of Falun Gong
Persons who encourage or organize protests without prior permission of authorities that call for counteractive measures instead of pro active measures
Persons who participate in above protests
Persons who spy on China or commit active treason against China
That’s it
That’s all
The above categories, these people will be dealt with brutally
Many of them will never be seen again and exiled to remote regions
However apart from that if you stand in the middle of the road in Beijing and scream “Xi Jingping is a Coward” in your loudest voice
A Cop will come, pull you to the side and ask you not to create a public ruckus and go on his way
If you continue, you will be fined 800 Yuan and spend 24 hours in detention for PUBLIC DISTURBANCE
At worse, there is an older law still in statutes where ridiculing the Supreme Leader carries 6 months to 2 years jail but it’s unlikely Xi will enforce it because according to Xi only Mao is the supreme leader
So insulting Mao in China is more serious than insulting Xi
If you keep talking nonsense, someone will investigate you to see if you belong to the above categories
If you dont, they will simply ignore you like they ignore a madman
If you do, you disappear
Li Keiqang is one man who criticized Xi in 2012
He was Xis premier for 10 years
Xi only cares about Corruption and how close you are to the West
He knows his power is very strong to fear criticism and challengers
Cracked Pepper Steak
cracked pepper steak step finished plate
Yield: 2 servings
Ingredients
1 tablespoon cracked black pepper
1/2 teaspoon dried rosemary
2 (4 to 6 ounce) beef tenderloins, 1 inch thick
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
1/4 cup brandy or dry red wine
Instructions
Combine pepper and rosemary in a large bowl. Coat both sides of the steaks with the mixture.
Heat butter and olive oil in a skillet until hot.
Add steaks and cook over medium to medium-high heat for 5 to 7 minutes or until a thermometer inserted in the center registers 160 degrees F (for medium). Remove the steaks from the skillet and cover to keep them warm.
Add brandy to skillet and bring to a boil over high heat, scraping particles from the bottom of the skillet. Boil for about 1 minute or until liquid is reduced by half. Spoon sauce over steaks.
I worked at a factory making furniture. Every night I would leave the gate with a wheelbarrow full of sawdust and every night the factory guard checked through the sawdust as I left, looking for what I might be stealing… but I was too cleaver, he never found anything!
After 20 years, the guard was retiring. He pulled me aside and said”Look, I know you’ve been stealing SOMETHING for the past 20 years and it’s driving me crazy not being able to catch you. I’m retiring and, I swear, I’ll not tell anyone – I just need to know… just what have you been stealing?“ “Wheelbarrows”, I said.
US pleads with China to re-purchase chips as chip supply chain collapses!
Welcome to VOC – Vision of China,In recent years,”In today’s episode, we delve into the United States’ supply chain crisis caused by the loss of chip orders to China. The China-US chip war, intensified by the launch of new Huawei smartphones, has raised concerns among American lawmakers.
Join us as we explore the implications of this conflict and its impact on the global semiconductor industry. Discover how U.S. sanctions against China’s semiconductor market may have unintended consequences, affecting not only the U.S. economy but also global stability. We discuss the challenges the United States faces as it strives to maintain its technological dominance and competitiveness.
Donald the Orange upended the supply chain with the cluster bomb dropped on Huawei.
That was pre-covid.
It caused a scramble within the industry as players stockpiled on existing supply, especially mainland corporations.
When covid and lockdowns hit, the canceled chip orders were diverted to domestic mainland players, only too glad for the padded security. The rumor is mainland orders hijacked the queue and tied up production for months or even years. Honda’s million vehicle swing in recent years is one of the unfortunate fallout victims.
As mainland production ramped up to sidestep the stop-gap measures, there appears to be a chip glut developing ex-China, with the economic downturn due to monetary contraction and rising rates squeezing demand, exacerbating the fracture in the fragile and temporal equilibrium.
It is hard to forecast such a market, especially with the growing fog of war surrounding mainland players who are going dark and playing among themselves as a matter of survival.
I don’t think TSMC, Glofo, Samsung, AMD, Nvidia and Intel will be able to retain their market share in the coming years.
The Reason why Men are Walking Away from Dating (Ep. 411)
When my husband and I got married, my cousin gave us what I perceived to be a very bizarre gift. He bought us a red toolbox filled with many tools. I have to admit that I just looked at it and thought to myself “What a weird gift for a wedding!”
Well, my husband and I have been married for over 34 years and I have to say that this turned out to be one of the best gifts that anybody ever gave us! We still use it regularly and if you think about it, it’s very expensive to buy a lot of tools. This ages well, it doesn’t go out of style, it doesn’t break and you don’t have to worry about if it matches your decor! How many wedding gifts can anyone say they still use regularly after 34 years?
The Terminator – all deleted Scenes
Confession of the Day
$300k in debt (no mortgage). $297,677.49 to be exact.
$215k law school debt, $40k graduate school debt, $25k credit cards, $11k car loan, and a personal loan.
After 5 years of deep denial- I think I’ve finally accepted how badly we fucked up. I feel like I’ve gone through the stages of grief multiple times this year.
We paid for very expensive degrees that didn’t need to be. We racked up a shit ton of credit card debt by spending money like entitled a**holes and not using a budget. I wish I could go back in time, slap 23 year old me (and my husband) and ask, repeatedly- what the hell are you doing??
We would go out to bars and dinners every weekend with friends. insert Discover card. We would regularly order takeout. insert Amex card. We went on yearly vacations. insert Jet Blue card. We financed furniture???? Not to mention we walked right into the “prestige” private school bullshit.
We ate that shit up.
And for what? To impress people? To prove that we’re worth something? All the above? It’s so normalized to be in debt as a millennial.
Everyone had credit cards, everyone was going out, everyone had student loans. We were super normal! You’re only young once- amiright?!
I found Dave last year, when I was hitting rock bottom. My debit card was getting declined at the gas station and the grocery store regularly.
After listening to The Ramsey Show for a couple weeks, I realized how screwed we were. I remember the first time he talked about the borrower being a slave to the lender.
That’s exactly how I felt.
I couldn’t breathe. I had a mental breakdown. I haven’t really been able to relax since. My husband and I spent all last year fighting about money and almost got divorced.
We’re on BS2 right now. We should bring in around $170k this year before side gigs. We have paid off $12k since June. We started FPU last week. We’re throwing everything at the debt. I’m working my ass off. Husband is working 65+ hrs a week and donating plasma.
We dropped more than half of our “friends.” It’s a humbling experience to say the least. My mother in law makes us dinners a couple days a week to help out.
Family and friends ask why we’re not having kids or buying a house yet. The whole situation is embarrassing, but we deserve it.
I don’t blame anyone but myself. I’m not expecting anyone to “forgive” or payoff our dumpster fire. We were extremely stupid and entitled, but we need to get out of this ourselves. I just need prayers that we can make it out of this. We will. Hopefully better than who we were before.
Just trying to “embrace the suck” and keep up the motivation.
Tony Soprano | A Conflicted Man
This is why the Sopranos is the best tv show ever.
I did the small-town-to-big-city move in 1998, for college. I lived in a dorm my first year here, and didn’t have a car. But, my second year, when I was just 19 year old, I got my first studio apartment and brought my car with me from my small hometown.
One of the biggest adjustments I remember was getting comfortable with parking my car on the street overnight. In my small hometown, everyone had driveways. Most people parked their cars in their back yard or garages. And all of the businesses had parking lots. There were only a few streets in my small hometown that had parallel parking spots on the sides of them, and those spots were huge, clearly marked, and largely optional. They were for people who didn’t want to walk about a block from the nearest parking lot, just in the downtown part of my hometown.
But here in Chicago, driveways for people’s houses are rare. Most people park on the street or, if they’re lucky, in a garage. Street parking doesn’t have marked spots. You just squeeze in where you can.
It took me a few weeks to get used to the idea of just leaving my car on the side of the street all of the time. I remember my first night with it here, waking up several times in the middle of the night to look out the window and confirm that it was still there. Sure, there were cars bumper-to-bumper on both sides of the street, and mine was a cheap car that no one would want to steal anyway. Still, it took me about two weeks to get completely comfortable with the concept of just leaving a car parallel parked on the street overnight.
It took a while to get used to driving down a street next to parked cars as well. In my small hometown, since most streets didn’t have parallel parking, you didn’t need to worry about clipping people’s mirrors when you drove past them, or them opening their doors as you drive past, or someone stepping out from between cars, in front of you while you’re driving. The sides of the streets in my small hometown were usually clear of everything.
But, here in Chicago, you can easily be driving 50+mph down a 4-lane street, inches away from parked cars on the side. It’s kind of weird if you’re not used to it.
Mandatory Paternity Test Law Passed – No More Paternity Fraud From Single Women
Just imagine, the strongest, toughest school bully, out of jealousy-turned-into-fury-then-to-desperation, mobilized all possible means, together with his allies, and wanted to kill his most challenging competitor.
At the high-time when he thought and believed he was to succeed and gonna to celebrate with champagne, and when some schoolmates are waiting to watch the tragedy of the competitor, while some other schoolmates are considering which side to take, and of course there are also others wishing for the competitor to survive, though inevitably with bruises and bumps……
All of the sudden, the competitor came back, with a beautiful, ace-trumping, and formidable hitback, standing even higher, better and firmer!
If you happened to be one in the school and witnessed all these, how would you feel?
Shocked, whoever you are, whichever side you are with, right?
China offers subsidies to their EVs in battery making and other areas, heavy subsidies in taxes and waivers to ensure that EVs are produced at a final cost that is 20% cheaper
This makes Chinese EVs deliver lower cost at better quality than many European EVs
Second complaint is that most of the world pays a premium for Chinese EV batteries but BYD and other players pay 45% lower costs for the same battery due to the fact that the batteries are made in China
This is alleged as unfair competition
They want either the batteries at lower costs or a 20% mark up on Chinese EVs that eliminates the subsidy effect
It’s Classic Protectionism 101
Soviet Style rather than Adam Smith
China didn’t do this
When Volkswagens and Citroens and Mercedes Benz and Toyota and Mitsubishi dominated the vehicle markets of China a decade or so ago:-
China didn’t impose extra tariffs on them nor make it unfair for them to import custom made parts by imposing 60–260% tariffs
China told BYD and SAIC and Great Wall to either make similar quality cars or go out of business because the customer needs the best
Thus these companies formed partnerships and purchased technology and leased technology and made a living with limited market share
Yet this competition helped them prepare a lead in EVs and dominate today
However the West isn’t prepared to do the same thing and ask Renault and Chevy and Volkswagen to COMPETE or go out of business
They want to protect their companies
Like US , Germany, France
They talked of free trade when their products were much superior and Asian nations imposed protectionism
Today when they are being left behind, they scream and yell and whine about tariffs and duties
China has many weapons here
China sells 61.5% of the EV Batteries in the world and 86% of EV Batteries today are made by Chinese players with only Tesla having it’s own supply chain and making it’s own battery for it’s own cars
If you want EVs – you need the Chinese Battery, Electric System and Motors and Chargers
The Chinese make the world’s best and most cost efficient products
Even Tesla battery technology is inferior to CATL and it’s latest batteries
It’s only in Autonomous driving that Tesla has an edge
So frankly China for the next 15 years at least can simply ban the export of batteries or impose a 80% tariff on EV exports and ensure European and US EVs simply can’t compete with ICEs
It throttles the EU green initiative
China loses the EU market but critically ensures Russia & Saudi gains a major leverage as EU and US become more dependent on Oil
That is one card
The Bigger card is
China can play it’s own protectionism
China has a huge market for European Cars with Eight Brands having their largest market in China
That’s 157,000 Jobs
China could simply ban the imports tomorrow and that would finish these companies revenue and share wise
Like the Iphone
Intel & Qualcomm openly said if China forced them to choose between the Chinese market and the Commerce Department restrictions, they would have to choose China for the sake of their US stockholders
If China banned Qualcomm entirely today and said “Okay. We will live with inferior phones but you B******* won’t sell or get a fifty cent piece from us”
Qualcomm would be brutally mauled
The Entire smartphone industry will be brutally mauled
The Entire Semiconductor industry will be brutally mauled
The Chinese are VERY PATIENT PEOPLE and they will play their cards very slowly
They thrive on competing
If China simply decides to close its markets to Foreigners except it’s Russian and Global South friends who will sell it all the Energy and Food it wants
Then most of the Tech firms will be brutally mauled
It was predicted that if Apple was banned entirely from China – $ 1.02 Trillion of it’s market share would never come back
The Total hit on the entire industry could touch $ 7–12 Trillion
Who will take up the slack?
India is expected to touch 40% of Chinas present market in 17–21 years (2040–2044)
Nobody else can take up even 3% of this slack
So China has a lot of Brahmastras to use
There will be no more Huaweis
Huawei was a blow
Nobody expected the West to be so brutally lawless and act like a mafia state , like a land with zero laws
Today China is ready
Every US attack has a party from China including the biggest Brahmastra
CUT OFF ACCESS TO PHARMA APIs & Cut off all components needed for Medical Equipment
Devalue US Debt by suddenly pegging an exchange rate of 2 Yuan to 1 USD. China will lose 17 Trillion Yuan and after the peg is removed the rate could reach 10–11 but US will lose 160 Trillion Yuan ($ 25 Trillion) , 8 times worse than the 2008 Crisis
Here’s Why They’re Coming For Russell Brand
Back when he was a hard-partying movie star, Russell Brand was the darling of the mainstream media.
But ever since the British comedian started turning hard against the establishment, exposing the mainstream narrative on COVID, the Ukraine War and empire, the knives have been out for him. And now we know how they plan to get him, with a series of questionable rape allegations emerging from anonymous sources in his distant past. Guest host Craig “Pasta” Jardula and Americans’
Comedian Kurt Metzger discuss why the establishment would have determined that Brand had to be disappeared from the discourse.
My dad is the best mechanic, I’ve seen him pull apart motors, transmissions, put them back together with no problem. Cars pull better, the knocking sound gone from the motor, take a test light and track down a short in a ticket making brake light system.
He can lay boards to a deck or floor and they fit perfectly everytime.
Make a brace for a wobbly door that hides from view, eyeball a fence line to be exactly lined up post to post. Watching my dad work is like watching an artist paint a masterpiece or craft a sculpture.
After school I would fly through my homework so I could start dinner and be ready when dad got home.
Some nights I would be doing my homework and trying to make dinner simultaneously and dad would come in. “Let’s have a look” or “let’s knock this out”.
But when I started junior high school, dad stopped helping with my homework, he started stirring the pot or watching the oven. He still watched me do my homework and was certainly right there but he didn’t offer to read or assist. Then I caught him.
One hot humid night I couldn’t sleep, my oxygen machine was drying my throat, but I’m sweating bad (I know not sexy for a girl but I have high metabolism) and I get up for some water.
Dad is sitting at the table with one of my school books. He jumped when he saw me, like he was stealing something or about to get in trouble.
He was saying sorry and mumbling about not having permission to go in my backpack.
I didn’t care it was just a school book and I have nothing to hide from my dad so being in my backpack was no big deal. But what he said next floored me; “I wanted to understand the lesson, I couldn’t understand what you were doing earlier and I hoped I could figure it out. I know I’m not very smart but I don’t want you to think less of me.”
I was shocked, me think less of the greatest person in my life, why would he, how could he ever think that?
This was when I started to learn of dad’s disability, he has severe dyslexia.
Now I know people will say that’s not a disability or several people have that but it’s the way it affects the individual.
My dad graduated high school on what is now considered a 9th grade level, and then just barely. He is a hands on learner, because he doesn’t trust himself to read and comprehend instructions, words plainly written on a page seem like a foreign language to him.
Numbers to a simple math equation would make him basically stop thinking and just have a blank mind. I was beginning to see why dad couldn’t balance the bank account, why he only had oral agreements with clients, and hated texting.
People had called him dumb, lazy and stupid until he believed it himself and he was afraid the person he admired most would think less of him.
Russell Brand – sinister demonetisation attempt by MP
Big major changes all over the collective West. Sheech!
I grew up and was mostly raised in “the inner city.” So that’s my experience with being poor. I don’t know what it’s like to live rural poor.
I don’t live there anymore. Right now I’m pretty comfortably middle-class.
One way that I am marked out as “different” compared to many of my peers, is that I am very, VERY cynical when it comes to the treatment of the poor. It is one of the few big things I am not really partisan or ideological over.
Poverty is a burden, and it’s a burden that most people will hate, despise, and pity you for carrying. This is regardless of party, race, color, or creed. I am amazed and saddened to know just how much easier life gets when you are not poor, and how much more people will like you.
Life really is pay-to-win. And with that realization, I see that my poverty was really nothing more than a hinderance. My life would’ve been much easier, in virtually every way, had I not been poor growing up. I see no glory in coming out of it, no special mindset for having been in it — other than cynicism. I can’t find any narrative for myself to have made the sheer unfairness of being born into poverty mean something. It just happened. Like getting hit by a bus.
Although, one way I suppose it’s affected me, is that I don’t hate or blame the poor for their poverty. This isn’t to say that some poor people don’t make disastrous choices. But I went to an expensive college. I’ve been around rich people. They make plenty of disastrous choices; they just have the money to mitigate the fallout. Humans make bad choices. The poor are expected to be superhumans and are blamed for failing.
*sigh*
Another way it has affected me is that it’s made me much less sympathetic to the middle-class, and I am middle-class. The middle-class complains endlessly, about everything. They are constantly sucking all of the air out of the room. Politicians dote on them regularly. Middle-class this, middle-class that. The middle-class even has this theory where they are the defenders of democracy and without them everything would fall apart. And on and on and on.
Let me tell you, the middle class is spoiled. The gulf between the poor and the “middle class” is so enormous it would make you cry if you lived it — as I have lived it. But the middle-class get to complain constantly about their property taxes (imagine owning property!) and how college scholarships don’t help them because they’re “at the cutoff” and blah blah blah.
And the poor? They get a swift kick and are told to “work harder.”
Sometimes you have to laugh…
4 Airplane Outburst More Terrifying Than Tiffany Gomas
JP MORGAN CEO SOUNDS ALARM – Dark Winter for Banks
Yesterday, speaking at an industry event organized by Barclays, CEO Jamie Dimon sounded the alarm on a slew of headwinds that will hit the U.S. economy hard in the next couple of months, and pointed to several risks that could deal heavy blows to consumers, investors, businesses and banks.
On Monday, he weighed in on how new regulation by the Fed will impact customers in the coming months. The changes will certainly not make them happy. Dimon explained how plans for new capital rules in the United States could damage the attractiveness of bank stocks, and make banking costs go even higher for consumers.
He argued that the Fed’s “’Basel III Endgame’ reforms” would make loans even more expensive, and would force banks to reduce the amount of money they lend, which could drive banking activities into less regulated sectors. Dimon stressed that more lenders could run into problems just like Silicon Valley Bank did this spring. “Any crisis that damages Americans’ trust in their banks damages all banks — a fact that was known even before this crisis,” he wrote. “Even when it is behind us, there will be repercussions from it for years to come,” he emphasized.
He also said that it is “a huge mistake” to think that the U.S. economy will boom “for years” given that there are so many risks out there. With interest rates still going up, conditions will become even more recessionary, and “you are going to see more people out there with problems”.
It is for that reason that JPMorgan has just reiterated its bearish stance on the stock market, urging its clients to stay defensively positioned. Analysts at the firm also adjusted the bank’s investment strategy in response to rising commodity prices and the potential spike in inflation. JPMorgan strategist Marko Kolanovic also noted that the increased potential for bank turbulence, an oil shock, and slowing growth is poised to send stocks back toward their 2022 lows, as reported by Bloomberg News.
We still have three more months to go before this year is done, and a lot more can happen in financial markets. One of the biggest concerns right now is the real estate sector. Warren Buffet’s investment partner and vice president of Berkshire Hathaway, Charlie Munger recently observed that hundreds of banks are exposed to commercial real estate loans that are at risk of going into default. He thinks there is trouble ahead for the U.S. commercial property market. “A lot of real estate isn’t so good anymore,” Munger said. “We have a lot of troubled office buildings, a lot of troubled shopping centers, a lot of troubled other properties. There’s a lot of agony out there.”
These are the very early chapters of this crisis. But when even the head of one of the biggest financial institutions on the planet is worried about growing risks, we should definitely brace for pain because much worse is yet to come. Although it may take a while for all the dominoes to fall, we won’t be able to avert a decline that is already in motion. The clock is ticking, and time is running out for the U.S. financial system.
They promoted meritocracy and hired thousands of people of ability
Including hiring 3 Colored Women in Texas well before the Civil Rights Act
It’s because THEY DIDN’T SANCTION THE USSR
They COMPETED
They used their resources and advantages and competed aggressively and took advantage of the fact that USSR had the worst leadership from 1966 onwards
That’s all they need to do
Compete and allow Economic forces to decide markets rather than the Congress or Politicians
Take Alipay and Wechat
Amazing Apps
If we bring Alipay and Wechat to India today, they will compete one on one with Phone Pe and Google Pay
That will lead to fierce competition and lead to one superior product evolving or a market resolution
Instead if we keep protecting US Apps from competition, the Chinese will build their apps and compete ferociously in their own markets and evolve their apps on a far superior level than US Apps as is already happening today
Chinese Apps like JD or Meituan or Alipay or Wechat or SHEIN are far superior to US equivalents and of course Tik Tok which has launched ecommerce functions in US
Meanwhile because of Chinese protectionism, Google wasn’t allowed in China and due to no direct one on one competition, Baidu has never reached the level of penetration and functionality of Google
The US today have a sense of entitlement that is unbelievable
Anyone develops some product that could compete with their licensing of core technology, and they invent some trumped up security threat and sanction the product and threaten anyone who uses that product
It may work against small players
Against China, a Nation of tremendous talent and intelligence plus a superb merit based system – It is a huge axe blow on your own feet
US has abandoned free economic forces and fair competition
That signs their death warrant
China had decide to embrace both. That means they will win.
Ultimately Economics is always the same
RESPECT THE ECONOMIC FORCES
The US must abandon all sanctions and go for free trade and competition with China including full access to each others markets.
Oh my gosh. I’m still getting over this one. I travel a lot on business and, when I do, I usually try to find someone to come in and house sit for me. Well, I met a woman whom I thought would be great for house sitting. Because she was going to be taking care of 3 dogs, 5 cats, and 4 horses, I told her that I’d pay her $150/day, which she agreed to.
I told her that she could sleep in the guest room (which is decorated very nicely with a new bed, sheets, blankets, etc. I showed her how to use the big screen tv, etc — and I told her that she could eat any food in the house with the exception of a certain coffee and also to please not do anything illegal on my property.
When she came over, I was very specific and left written instructions so she wouldn’t be confused. The specific rules were for the protection of my animals.
Feed the horses in the feeders and don’t move the feeders.
Fill up the water trough daily so they have fresh water and, because it was winter and freezing, make sure that the water de-icer was left on.
Put the dogs in the house before going out the gate, then go back and let them out. If you open the gate, the dogs will run out and you’ll have a difficult time getting them back.
Do not allow the cats to go out. They’re indoor cats and 1 is a female that I just adopted — she’s not spayed yet so under no circumstances can she go out.
She agreed to everything and I was happy that I’d found someone who could take care of my house and animals.
During my business trip, I called several times to make sure things were going ok and she said they were so I was happy that I didn’t have to worry about things.
When I returned from my trip, I was absolutely shocked. I walked into my house and couldn’t breathe. The house was completely filled with pot smoke. (And I have a BIG house). I thought she’d spent the entire time getting stoned. But that wasn’t all. She had gone through ALL my cupboards and closets and taken everything out and rearranged things. NOTHING was where it had been. All the furniture was changed around. My bedroom had been completely changed, including my bed — which she’d been sleeping in and had stained the bed and sheets — not sure with what but it was disgusting.
She had also thrown all the cats outside — because “cats don’t belong in the house.” I’m not sure what she’d done to the dogs, but they were terrified of her. I do know that she had left the gate open and they got out and it took her hours to find and get them back in. (I live in a rural area where people shoot stray dogs so they were in danger.)
I also found out that she’d just dumped the feed for the horses in a completely different area than where they were supposed to be fed AND it was where there was a lot of sand — so essentially the horses were eating feed mixed with sand (which can be deadly.) She’d pulled the de-icer out of the watering trough and pulled the plug so the trough was empty and the horses had no water.
The back of the remote control for the tv had disappeared — and I found it a month or so later hidden in the back of my closet. She’d ripped out plugs from my desktop computer and taken all the ink out of my printer.
I had a brand new washer and dryer. She pulled them out and the hoses and plugs were disconnected. I had a beautiful handmade wooden bowl was on my fireplace mantel. She took it off the mantel, took it into the bathroom and poured liquid soap into it, then put it into the shower so the wood had warped beyond saving. It was ruined.
I collect art and she’d moved all my pictures around and turned them upside down.
My best friend had died a few years before, and he had given me a ceramic angel before he passed. It had a lot of meaning for me and I loved it — it was so precious to me. It had disappeared. I found out later that she’d thrown it away — I found it in the trash in a bag of dirty cat litter.
Oh, and my coffee that I’d specifically asked her not to use (there were at least 5 other kinds there) — what she didn’t use, she dumped out in the trash.
There were a lot of other things that she’d done, but you get the idea. I was freaked out and horrified, and honestly, she scared me.
I asked her why she’d done all this and she said got belligerent and told me that she had every right to do it because it was HER house and she could have it any way she wanted to. She told me that my dogs were too spoiled and they deserved to be “trained”. Part of that training was making them sleep outside. (Imagine a Basset Hound being made to sleep outside with no shelter, in the middle of February when the temperatures were down to 0 degrees F.) The same with the cats. (Oh? and that female cat? Let’s just say that there are now two more kittens here. ::::sigh:::::)
When I asked why she’d say that she’d house sit if she didn’t want to follow my instructions, she said that she came from a family with 6 sisters and she was the youngest. She hated it when they told her what to do and so she ALWAYS did the OPPOSITE of what anyone “ordered” her to do.
Then she said that NOBODY orders her around. She got more and more angry and upset and I was actually afraid that she would become violent. She started screaming at me and daring me to call her a “F’ing C*** B****”. (Sorry, I don’t use that kind of language.)
I did pay her, because I just wanted her gone. I did tell her that she was never to set foot on my property again or I’d have her arrested. After she left and had given me back my keys, I noticed that one of the door keys was new so she’d obviously had extras made. The next day all the locks were changed, including the locks on the gates.
The next day the texts from her started. She told me that she’d thrown away my angel but I didn’t need anything from a dead friend and SHE’D be my new best friend. The texts continued to get creepier and creepier.
I responded that if she ever texted, called or tried to contact me again, I’d have her arrested for stalking. Then I blocked her. She totally freaked me out.
I haven’t seen her since. But I did get a new mattress. :::::shivers::::::
Combine garlic salt, chili powder, pepper and cinnamon. Use your fingers to press mixture onto both sides of each steak portion.
In a large skillet cook steaks in hot oil over medium heat to desired doneness, turning once. Allow 8 to 11 minutes for medium rare or 12 to 14 minutes for medium.
Transfer steaks to a serving platter, reserving drippings in the skillet. Keep warm.
For sauce, add white onion, leek and shallots to skillet. Cook and stir over low heat for 5 minutes or until onions are tender.
Add beef broth and Worcestershire sauce. Cook and stir for 1 to 2 minutes more or until broth is slightly reduced.
For a while, right before I was “recovered” by MAJ at China Lake Naval Weapons Systems, I found myself in California and making ends meet. I knew that I had to be in California, but where? And how to contact my “up-line handlers”?
I hadn’t a clue.
So I parked myself in various cities, and waited for their actions.
Right before they “found me”, I was working as a breakfast cook at a restaurant called “Louse’s place” in the beautiful town of San Louis Obispo. This town, a college town, was nestled in a nice area, surrounded by mountains, and built upon a network of streams. It was, at that time, quite lovely.
2023 09 26 11 42
I wore a short sleeved shirt, a white apron, and a chef’s hat, and performed my cooking rituals in front of the customers. Basic stuff, really. Bacon and eggs, gourmet omelettes, and specialty sandwiches.
I lived off the small salary, and the tips that I would get.
SAM 2073
I worked a 5am to 3 pm shift. And it wasn’t bad at all. I got a free lunch, and could take home leftover “blue plate specials”. And I did just that, as I would walk the distance to our broken down van, that was parked at the edge of a obscure parking lot until we could get enough money to get an apartment and leave.
We would eat the food in the front seat. And just pretty much lived a transit lifestyle.
img 8469 79312
This was in the 1980’s. I can only imagine how bad it must be today. Back then, We were a rare sight. Today, we would be just a ripple in a massive wave of homeless. Gosh! Can you even imagine?
…
I have a lot of compassion of others (homeless in California) who suffer through this plight. It’s difficult, and hard. Housing, utilities and expenses are outrageous, and they do not have to be that way, it is just the super greedy that this created this impossible situation.
If you ever get a moment, give some food to the homeless. Maybe they will accept, maybe not. But show some compassion.
North Korea will participate in a number of Far Eastern Projects and establish a Russia DPRK Labor Commission to engage upto 200,000 workers who will live in Far East for 10 years and could be Prospective migrants
DPRK and Russia will jointly modernize the Air Force of North Korea, Drones in North Korea and Air Defence of North Korea
DPRK and Russia will sign a Trade Pact
Putin has committed around 1 Trillion Rubles investment in North Korea
China will play a key role but China will remain hidden behind the scenes because it’s not a Sanctioned state like DPRK and Russia
They can’t sign an official agreement due to existing UN sanctions that Russia can’t break or violate
Yet they can unofficially make a no limits friendship which they just did
In exchange
DPRK promises assistance to Russia against ROK (South Korea) and Japan as a strong piece on the Chessboard
A Nuclear power with 50 Nukes minimum is a strong powerful deterrent
That the governments of Saudi Arabia, Russia, Venezuela have ordered their government officials to stop using Apple iPhones and switch to Mate 60 Pro for security reasons.
Chicken Fried Steak with Mashed Potatoes and White Gravy
2023 09 25 11 49
Ingredients
6 cube steaks
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon pepper
1 tablespoon chicken bouillon
1 tablespoon chili powder
3 tablespoons seasoned salt
3/4 tablespoon celery salt
1 tablespoon onion powder
1 tablespoon garlic powder
1 tablespoon oregano
4 to 5 eggs
Instructions
Add the seasonings to the flour. Stir it all together.
Crack the eggs in a separate dish and mix them together.
Lay the steak in the flour and then dip it into the egg. Place it back in the flour.
Repeat with the rest of the steaks.
Lay the steak in hot oil. Let it cook for a couple of minutes at 350 degrees F.
Repeat with the rest of the steaks.
Plate the steak and serve with garlic mashed potatoes and gravy.
If I were a superhero, I want my superpower to be “involuntary empathy.” I have the power to make people feel what others are feeling. The process is simple: I mark a person as a “target,” and choose a “recipient,” and link them together. The selection can not be random. The recipient’s action must directly impact the target; otherwise, the connection will not work. Both the target and recipient maintain their independent thought and free will. They can go about doing their own thing. However, the recipient will experience the target’s emotions that directly result from the recipient’s action (and nothing else). The recipient can go kill the target if they are willing to experience death. On top of the obvious murder change, the recipient will suffer a mental breakdown and never recover. And if a person has multiple victims, the effect will compound.
For example, if a man abuses his wife, he will experience the physical pain, fear, desperation, anxiety, and shame… that directly result from his abuse. But he doesn’t get to experience the love and joy his wife felt when she was with her family or playing with her children.
I want to be able to walk up to a youth pastor who abuses children and make him experience the anguish, desperation, sense of isolation, shame, guilt, and self-loathing his victims felt while they were being molested. I want him to feel the pain that drove these poor kids to self-harm or even commit suicide. I want to make murderers feel the pain of the families of the victims. I want to make the billionaires feel the pain of their workers.
I want those pearl-clutching “concerned moms” to feel the fear and anxiety and isolation of trans kids who just want to use the fucking bathroom.
I want the shitty parents to feel the pain of the children they abuse.
I want the racists to feel the fear and anger of minority people they bully and harass. I want the KKK members to feel the pain of their victims. I want them to feel every single minute when the victims are beaten and tortured.
I want this pain and suffering to stay with these people for the rest of their lives. And the only way they can reduce their suffering is through genuine remorse and making actual amends.
I want Jeff Bezos to feel the exhaustion of his delivery guys and distribution center workers, the discomfort that they had to hold their bladder, the shame of having to pee in a bottle, the fear of being sick and missing work, the anxiety of doing full-time work and not making a living wage. I want him to feel it every day, every night, every minute of his life on his fucking 500 million dollar yacht. He won’t be able to enjoy any luxuries in life until he changes his company policy.
Of course, the recipient would experience positive feelings from the target as well if that’s the direct result of their actions. So if Jeff Bezos decided to pay his workers fair wages, give them sick leave, and some bonus, he would experience immense joy no 500 million dollar yachts would bring. If the billionaires want to experience incredible joy, they can donate to disaster relief and build schools for underprivileged children. I would be happy to connect them to the children they helped. I mean, actually helped, instead of using their charity organization as a tax haven.
I feel that I could actually make the world a better place if I had this power.
Even MOBILE HOMES Are No Longer AFFORDABLE
Today I am finally showing you around a mobile home park here in California. However, there is a caveat…Its quite expensive to own a mobile home here. However, I was able to speak with one of the residents and get you the details on what its like to live and own in a mobile home park.
I had ridden motorcycles, ATVs, dirt bikes, etc on & off since I was 5. I met a guy on line who was a biker and agreed to meet for a ride & lunch. At the time, I didn’t have a bike so I was to be his backseat “princess”.
Before the ride, I questioned him a lot about riding, how long he had been riding, where all he had ridden to, what bikes he had owned, etc to make sure he was legit. I’m not putting my life at risk with a poser. He came off as legit.
We meet, start the ride and I realize that I was in trouble….he was dangerous with his riding skills. Tailgating, splitting lanes when there was no need to, cursing out car drivers, braking too late, taking curves too fast…. basically he was dangerous. I admit to being scared shitless. He refused to stop to let me get off his bike until we got to the restaurant.
Inside the restaurant, I went from being an emotional wreck to being all out “Irish-Redhead” pissed but presented a calm and exterior. After ordering, I excused myself to go to the ladies room. While in there I called for an Uber to pick me up in 1/2 hour. I rejoined him, ate my meal, including a stiff drink to calm the nerves and thanked him. Then I just went outside and got in my Uber to go home. Be damned if I was getting back on the lunatic’s bike. And of course, I blocked him.
Huawei was once the world’s top smartphone vendor, shipping over 200m phones in 2018.
Last year, under a de-facto embargo by the US, it shipped 28m, an eight-, almost nine-fold decrease from its peak.
The volume has been cannibalized by Apple, Samsung, and other Chinese brands.
Apple, in particular, now sell more iPhones in Greater China than stateside, all thanks to Huawei’s demise.
That’s “national security” and “clean networks” for all you Apple fans.
How bad were the curbs applied on Huawei? Phone assemblers froze assembly lines overnight and refused to fulfill their contractual obligations, components on order were canceled, Google withdrew Android licensing and design license agreements were ripped up.
Huawei had no OS, a completely disrupted hardware supply chain, a deficient set of highly specialized software design tools and its CFO under house arrest in Canada.
It would not have surprised anyone had Huawei announced its withdrawal from the consumer device space.
Amazingly, Huawei the 5G telecoms champion sold off Honor, its sub-brand, and issued 4G phones under the Huawei brand, weathering a gut-wrenching revenue drop off a cliff. It conducted an internal review of the entire supply chain, from its core telecoms equipment business to consumer devices, and began the painful and expensive task of de-Americanization. Any component that had even the hint of American IP was marked for domestic substitution. The process was completed for its telecoms equipment earlier, but the device side lacked two pieces—a capable GPU for AI-assisted gestures, payments and the camera, and a 5G modem, which was protected behind Qualcomm’s giant patent wall.
Huawei found hacks around EDA restrictions, and designed its own GPU. It also introduced novel transistor geometries to boost the performance of 7nm to the 5nm node. It rapidly upgraded its inhouse Hongmeng OS to 4.0, turning it into a polished platform with large language AI and IOT capability baked in. Its software ecosystem is coming along nicely, and the platform is well beyond the market share needed to ensure survival.
To add icing on the cake, the flagship Huawei phone of 2023 can make satellite calls, showcasing its space comms tech maturity and the bandwidth/coverage of the Chinese commercial satellite network.
In field tests conducted by a Hong Kong user, the Mate 60 Pro matched the iPhone 14’s 5G network speed, demonstrating Huawei’s 5G modem was a match for Qualcomm’s implementation. Not a bad milestone for a first effort, eh?
Huawei had no need for GPS, Qualcomm’s 5G, LG’s OLED, Samsung’s storage, Micron’s memory, or even upstream chip design tools that were vulnerable to US sanction. In fact, even if we took the best in class features from Apple, Google and Samsung and put them into a hypothetical hybrid champion, the Mate 60 Pro can still stand shoulder to shoulder, because it has a couple of industry-first or performance leading features. It is truly worthy of a 2023 flagship designation, earned fair and square.
Huawei did all these in less than 4 years, a remarkable turnaround despite becoming a corporation targeted for destruction by the US government, probably a historic first.
Huawei is finding its mojo again on way firmer footing, and it will sell every Mate 60 pro the production lines can churn out this year.
The NEW American Dream: GETTING OUT!
We grew up during the 1970s and 80s in the Midwest back when the American Dream was still the goal and attainable for most people in the middle class. If you worked hard for a loyal employer (they were still loyal back then) or at your own business, you could expect to have a shot at freedom, prosperity, a house, a car, a better life for your kids, etc. Sadly, that is no longer the case for several reasons we discuss in this video. Now, the NEW American Dream is about something most people never thought they would do: Leaving the United States.
(a) If you can produce your own food and supply your own food
(b) If you have a Product that has tremendous Global Demand and its deficit would lead to significant losses
(c) You are a net exporter
Then You are immune from Most Sanctions on a Long term basis.
Its why Iran and Iraq have also survived Sanctions.
They have OIL.
Thats Why Afghanistan is likely to be roasted under Sanctions. Because they dont have the above merits.
How Will The Biden Administration Cope With Its Loss In Ukraine?
While this piece will touch on the war in Ukraine it is more about the U.S., and the Biden administration, and how they will cope with their defeat in their war on Russia. Please keep that in mind when commentating.
Washington’s moment of recognizing the defeat in Ukraine, and its consequences, has yet to arrive.
In his latest piece (archived) Seymour Hersh reports on the state of the war and of significant differences of opinion between the U.S. intelligence services:
There are significant elements in the American intelligence community, relying on field reports and technical intelligence, who believe that the demoralized Ukraine army has given up on the possibility of overcoming the heavily mined three-tier Russian defense lines and taking the war to Crimea and the four oblasts seized and annexed by Russia. The reality is that Volodymyr Zelensky’s battered army no longer has any chance of a victory.
The war continues, I have been told by an official with access to current intelligence, because Zelensky insists that it must. There is no discussion in his headquarters or in the Biden White House of a ceasefire and no interest in talks that could lead to an end to the slaughter. “It’s all lies,” the official said, speaking of the Ukrainian claims of incremental progress in the offensive that has suffered staggering losses, while gaining ground in a few scattered areas that the Ukrainian military measures in meters per week. … The American intelligence official I spoke with spent the early years of his career working against Soviet aggression and spying has respect for Putin’s intellect but contempt for his decision to go to war with Ukraine and to initiate the death and destruction that war brings. But, as he told me, “The war is over. Russia has won. There is no Ukrainian offensive anymore, but the White House and the American media have to keep the lie going.
“The truth is if the Ukrainian army is ordered to continue the offensive, the army would mutiny. The soldiers aren’t willing to die any more, but this doesn’t fit the B.S. that is being authored by the Biden White House.”
The differences between the current CIA and the more neoconned Defense Intelligence Agency extend to their view on China:
A byproduct of the Biden administration’s neocon hostility to Russia and China—exemplified by the remarks of Secretary of State Tony Blinken, who has repeatedly stated that he will not currently countenance a ceasefire in Ukraine—has been a significant split in the intelligence community. One casualty are the secret National Intelligence Estimates that have delineated the parameters of American foreign policy for decades. Some key offices in the CIA have refused, in many cases, to participate in the NIE process because of profound political disagreement with the administration’s aggressive foreign policy. One recent failure involved a planned NIE that dealt with the outcome of a Chinese attack on Taiwan.
I have reported for many weeks on the longstanding disagreement between the CIA and other elements of the intelligence community on the prognosis of the current war in the Ukraine. CIA analysts have consistently been far more skeptical than their counterparts at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) on the prospect for a Ukraine success. The American media has ignored the dispute, but the London-headquartered Economist, whose well-informed reporters do not get bylines, has not. …
The DIA is still saying that the Ukrainian army has a chance, a small one though, to break through the Russian lines. The White House still seems to believe in that. The CIA knows that the Ukraine is done.
Alastair Crooke, in a talk (vid) with Judge Napolitano, says that the moment of truth will only arrive in November.
But what will happen when everyone recognizes and acknowledges, if silently, that the war on Russia has failed?
Ukraine, today, has suffered huge losses of even greater (proportional) magnitude [than the German Wehrmacht in the Battle of Kursk], without achieving any significant territorial gains, unable even to reach the first layer of the Surovikin Line. That will clear the road to the Dnieper and beyond for the 600,000 strong Russian army equipped with weaponry the equal of what the West has given Ukraine. Hence, Moscow is poised to exploit its decisive advantage to the point where it can dictate terms to Kiev, Washington, Brussels et al.
The Biden administration has made no plans for such an eventuality, nor have its obedient European governments. Their divorce from reality will make this state of affairs all the more stunning — and galling. Bereft of ideas, they will flounder. How they will react is unknowable. We can say with certainty one thing: the collective West, and especially the U.S., will have suffered a grave defeat. Coping with that truth will become the main order of business.
Here is a menu of options for handling it:
Redefine what is meant by defeat, victory, failure, success, loss, gain. There is a new narrative that is scripted to stress these talking points: … … This narrative already has been given an airing in speeches by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Acting Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland. Its target audience is the American public; nobody outside the Collective West buys it, though — whether Washington has registered that fact of diplomatic life or not.
Retroactively Scale Back the Goals & Stakes … Cultivate Amnesia … Next: China …
It is likely that the administration will use all four options to make the pain and memory of defeat go away. Declare victory over Russia because Russia was stopped at the border with Poland. Then forget about all the details and consequences and move towards war on China.
That could end catastrophically.
The focal shift from Russia in Europe to China in Asia is less a mechanism for coping with defeat than the pathological reaction of a country that, feeling a gnawing sense of diminishing prowess, can manage to do nothing more than try one final fling at proving to itself that it still has the right stuff — since living without that exalted sense of self is intolerable. … The U.S. was fortunate, in the case of Vietnam, that the United States’ dominant position in the world outside of the Soviet Bloc and the PRC allowed it to maintain respect, status and influence.
Things have now changed, though. The U.S. relative strength in all domains is weaker, strong centrifugal forces around the globe are producing a dispersion of power, will and outlook among other states. The BRICs phenomenon is the concrete embodiment of that reality.
Hence, the prerogatives of the United States are narrowing, its ability to shape the global system in conformity with its ideas and interests are under mounting challenge, and premiums are being placed on diplomacy of an order that seems beyond its present aptitudes.
The U.S. is confounded.
Major offices in the CIA, according to Hersh, have recognized the danger of such plans. It may well be the reason why the CIA’s informal spokesmen, David Ignatius, and others wrote that Biden should step down.
If he doesn’t the neoconservatives around him will have a great incentive to move on China as fast as possible. As Biden will have difficulties in winning next year’s election he needs some objective that can unify the country. A war that he can claim the U.S. will win is one. Some hostile naval exchanges with China will follow.
(Please don’t use the comments of this thread for details from the war in Ukraine. The current thread for such is here.)
Posted by b on September 21, 2023 at 17:05 UTC | Permalink
Dangerous
On topic we are at a dangerous inflection point. Ironically it is the potential of war with China that is preventing WW3 from starting, in my view. Maerica doesn’t know how to accept loss and animals are at their most dangerous when cornered.
Posted by: Doctor Eleven | Sep 21 2023 18:22 utc | 29
China’s foreign policy towards the U.S. is very simple indeed Allow the U.S. to commit suicide and give them a long rope to hang themselves since they choose ignorance, naïveté and hubris over knowing the real China.
This policy is highly effective cost almost nothing and hurt the U.S. beyond recognition. And it is the US doing to themselves. Take the Chinese response to US thinking they could knee cap China on supposed technological superiority on semi conductor. Over China.
China don’t wish to start a fight now wants to hurt snd harmed China but the US insisted. Hence China chose the precise response that will totally destroy the U.S. that cost China nothing and cost trillions upon trillions of losses in the U.S. chips industry.
But this is not the first time nor will it be the last. The last nation to threaten is one that helped you enjoyed a 30 years inflation free economy. But the U.S. started a trade war against China for no reason except it is popular for politicians. Today the U.S. is paying for a high inflation and looming recession.
Their policy as usual is sustainable, practical and pragmatic while the U.S. policy towards China hurts and harm the U.S. to no end. It is neither sustainable nor effective against China.
China Slams And Issues A Massive Warning To Europe | Sparks Tensions Over EV Exports
“Just like their master, the E.U. resorts to tariffs to try to slow down the growth of Chinese EV’s in its market. In other words, when they can’t compete, they employ dirty tricks to get what they want. How can the E.U. go about the accusation of government subsidies when the same eletrict car costs nearly twice the one in the Chinese domestic market? The madness is beyond belief.”
China can make life really bad for European car manufacturers if it wanted to.
Stanley Praimnath, was working on the 81st floor of the South Tower of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.
He was a vice president at Fuji Bank, a prestigious Japanese financial institution. He had a nice office with a view of the Statue of Liberty and the Hudson River.
He had a good life, a loving family, and a strong Christian faith.
But everything changed in an instant when he saw a plane flying straight toward his building.
He later recalled:
Depiction of the plane.
“I saw this giant airplane coming towards me eye level, eye contact. I’m looking at the cockpit of the plane and I see the red markings on it and I realize it’s an American Airlines plane.” He instinctively ducked under his desk and prayed: “Lord, I can’t do this! You take over!”
The plane crashed into the building between floors 77 and 85, just above Stanley’s office.
The impact was so powerful that it tore a hole in the wall behind him and sucked out everything in his office except his desk, which shielded him from the flames and debris. He was trapped in a small space with no way out.
Meanwhile, on the same floor, another man was looking for survivors. His name was Brian Clark,
a Canadian executive at Euro Brokers, another financial firm.
He had escaped from his office on the 84th floor, which was at the top of the impact zone, and was heading down Stairway A, the only one that wasn’t destroyed by the plane.
On his way down, he heard a faint voice crying for help from behind a wall of rubble.
He followed the sound and found Stanley’s hand waving through a hole. He shone his flashlight and saw Stanley’s eyes staring back at him.
He grabbed his hand and pulled him over the wall.
Stanley was overjoyed to see Brian. He kissed him and said:
“I’m Stanley! We’ll be brothers for life!” Brian agreed and said: “Let’s go home.”
The two men made their way down the stairs, dodging smoke and debris along the way. They reached the ground floor at 9:55 am, just five minutes before the South Tower collapsed.
They ran out of the building and hugged each other in relief. They had just become two of only four survivors from above the south tower impact zone.
Stanley later said that he owed his life to God and Brian. He said: “God sent an angel to save me.” Brian said:
“I don’t know why I survived when so many others didn’t. I guess God had other plans for me.”
After 9/11, Stanley became a Pentecostal pastor and a popular inspirational speaker with religious groups and churches. He also remained close friends with Brian, who he calls his brother for life.
In short answer, Cambodia used to be a prosperous country. After the end of the Indochina War (1945–1954), under the leadership of King Norodom Sihanouk (1922–2012), the economy of Cambodia rapidly went up for the next twenty years, with remarkable achievements. In 1960, the GPD per capita of Cambodia was US$ 111,34 and it was even higher than both North and South Vietnam at that time (with US$ 51 and US$ 105, respectively).
During the 1960s, while Vietnam was stuck into a devastated war, the economy of Cambodia continued to develop rapidly. The capital of Phnom Penh was among the “pearls” of the oriental, where notable figures of the world such as French President Charles De Gaulle (1890–1970) and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1929–1994) had their visits.
However…
The fate of Cambodia was sealed on 18 March 1970, after the coup d’état against King Norodom Sihanouk, which was sponsored by the United States. Since then, Cambodia was stuck into a bloody civil war during the next five years (1970–1975), with hundred thousand deaths.
Unluckily, the end of the Cambodian Civil War in 1975 did not mark the beginning of the new peaceful era for Cambodian nation. On the contrary, it subsequently marked the beginning of the Maoist genocidal regime of Khmer Rouge, as one of the most brutal dictatorships in 20th century. “Comrade Pol Pot”, the supreme leader of Cambodia at that time once said:
“In the concrete revolutionary struggle of our country, we creatively and successfully applied Mao Tse-tung Thought.”
(Peking Review (北京周報), Vol. 20, No. 41, 07 October 1977, p. 25)
With Chinese Maoism in his mind together with strong military supports from People’s Republic of China, in just four years Pol Pot rapidly transformed his country into a massive “killing field”, where 2.0 to 3.0 millions of “counter-revolutionaries” or 1/3 of Cambodian population were exterminated! Historically, it was called the “Cambodian Genocide”, in which the whole country of Cambodia was returned to the “Year Zero” (Année Zéro). From a prosperous country during the 1960s, Cambodia became a constant famine-stricken and also one of the poorest countries in the world under the rule of Khmer Rouge regime.
The whole economic structure of Cambodia was totally bankrupt to the root when Pol Pot decided not to use the paper money anymore! The city of Phnom Penh subsequently became a “ghost city”. There were no more French-style coffee shops, no more luxury cars, no more beautiful lights of neon at night, but only the so-called “people’s communes” located around the country, where people were forced to work until their last breath. These below pictures were about the city of Phnom Penh under the rule of Khmer Rouge.
The “Cambodian Genocide” was finally ended on January 1979, when the Cambodian national uprising together with the Vietnamese offensive finally overthrown the rule of Pol Pot and his henchmen. During the next twenty years (1979–1999), together with the Vietnamese military assistance, the new government of Cambodia under the leadership of Hun Sen continued the fight against the remaining Khmer Rouge guerrillas until the death of Pol Pot in 1998 and the total disband of the Khmer Rouge faction in 1999.
Since 1993, Norodom Sihanouk officially returned as a King of Cambodia. Meanwhile, all of the former leaders of Khmer Rouge regime were charged with their crimes against the humanity.
Nowadays, although Cambodia is not a rich country, but the revival process is going on, the whole country of Cambodia is again going up rapidly from zero and obtains average GDP growth about 7.5% annually.
How to LEAVE AMERICA FOR GOOD and escape the rat race in the United States
If you’re thinking that America sucks and is going to hell recently, you’re not alone and lots of people are wondering how to set up an escape plan and get out of the USA permanently before it falls apart.
Or, you might simply be thinking that it would be better to live in another country, regardless of how well the United States is doing, because you’re trying to escape the rat race that we’ve built.
Whatever your motivations for wanting to leave the USA and travel the world full-time, this video will breakdown how to make money while traveling, different jobs available to foreigners, how to work online, how to find jobs in a foreign country, a few countries that I think are good first-time tryouts for anyone who is considering living the digital nomad life full-time, and much more.
“Digital Nomad” is a very highly hyped occupation, but in actuality, it doesn’t really work out that great.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has already answered this question.
Taiwan is part of China.
Since 1956, Mao Zedong proposed the “third cooperation between the KMT and the CPC” to complete the mission of peacefully reunifying Taiwan, and proposed the policy of “One Program, Four projects”, the predecessor of “One Country, Two Systems”.
It is the hypocritical Yanks who have been blocking China’s efforts to unify Taiwan.
The United States has always been the main culprit in dividing China. Without the overt and covert support of Washington, the DPP would not be able to gain power in Taiwan.
We record everything the United States has done to China.
When service economies slow down; they resort to financialization.
This means that they create cash flow by creating debt instead of producing anything.
This is what has happened to the US economy. Most Americans are deeply in debt, and spend a significant portion of their monthly income paying interest on their debt.
It is NOT productivity.
Debt is a necessary part of life, but it should only be spent as an investment for future productivity, not for paying off daily expenses.
Frugal Living Is The Only Way To SURVIVE The Cost of Living Crisis
My father was an engineer. He was a metallurgical engineer. Which was a guy that tests the composition of steel. He made sure that it was pure and the alloying elements were in the right percentages. It was a very important job.
You need this, you know.
No one would buy a cake if pickles were substituted for eggs, and salt was substituted for sugar. Right?
Anyways, being older than me, he had his old work clothes that I inherited, and throughout the 1980’s and 1990’s, I used his old safety glasses at work.
LOL.
They were God-awful! Horned rimmed, ugly. Like a scene from the movie “falling down”.
2023 09 18 10 59
Now…
The funny thing was that EVERYONE knew that those were MY glasses. Everyone wore contemporaneous safety glasses, and not those old things.
So, sure as shit, if I misplaced my glasses, after an hour or so, I would find them on my desk at work. They would magically appear out of nowhere.
Not only once.
Not twice…
But every single time! I couldn’t give them away.
i even threw them into the trash bin…
Sure as shit, they walked back to my desk. I’ll tell you what!
…
What do you know?
Life is funny sometimes.
Today…
Thought considerations…
2023 09 18 10 48
War as desirable outcome
The Army War College’s John Deni (Wall Street Journal, 12/22/21) urged the US to take “a hard-line stance in diplomatic discussions,” because “if Mr. Putin’s forces invade, Russia is likely to suffer long-term, serious and even debilitating strategic costs.”
The fact that US officials pushed for a Ukrainian counteroffensive that all but expected would fail raises an important question: Why would they do this? Sending thousands of young people to be maimed and killed does nothing to advance Ukrainian territorial integrity, and actively hinders the war effort.
The answer has been clear since before the war. Despite the high-minded rhetoric about support for democracy, this has never been the goal of pushing for war in Ukraine. Though it often goes unacknowledged in the US press, policymakers saw a war in Ukraine as a desirable outcome.
One 2019 study from the RAND Corporation—a think tank with close ties to the Pentagon—suggested that an effective way to overextend and unbalance Russia would be to increase military support for Ukraine, arguing that this could lead to a Russian invasion.
In December 2021, as Russian President Vladimir Putin began to mass troops at Ukraine’s border while demanding negotiations, John Deni of the Atlantic Council published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal (12/22/21) headlined “The Strategic Case for Risking War in Ukraine,” which laid out the US logic explicitly:
Provoking a war would allow the US to impose sanctions and fight a proxy war that would grind Russia down. Additionally, the anti-Russian sentiment that resulted from a war would strengthen NATO’s resolve.
All of this came to pass as Washington’s stance of non-negotiation successfully provoked a Russian invasion.
Even as Ukraine and Russia sat at the negotiation table early in the war, the US made it clear that it wanted the war to continue and escalate.
The US’s objective was, in the words of Raytheon boardmember–turned–Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, “to see Russia weakened.” Despite stated commitments to Ukrainian democracy, US policies have instead severely damaged it.”
OLIVER ANTHONY – 90 SOME CHEVY REACTION
Again, any postings of Oliver Anthony is not about his music. It is about the reactions to his music. It appears that for many Americans, they have a voice. Finally.
Todays reaction REALLY BROKE ME! Anthony’s “90 Some Chevy” really hit home for me!
Their phones are likely to work better with the network equipment than other phones on their network.
But for satellites, they don’t make satellites but they do make network base station equipment. So they might have better knowledge than building to a spec on paper.
You can see with Apple trying to build their own 5G modems and failing. Apple’s 5G modem won’t debut again until 2025. They need time and experts and a lot of testing to make sure that it is going to work in all situations instead of just in the lab. Which was what happened when their modems didn’t work right.
So I would guess yes. But any company can hire experts who have experience to make sure that their equipment works well.
Southern Karo Syrup Chicken
2023 09 16 15 14
Ingredients
1 broiler-fryer chicken
2 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup Karo corn syrup
1/2 cup orange juice
3 tablespoons lemon juice
Instructions
Cut up chicken.
In skillet over medium heat, cook chicken in butter about 30 minutes or until tender. Drain off fat.
Mix remaining ingredients and pour over chicken. Cook over medium heat, turning often, for 5 to 10 minutes or until glazed.
I didn’t ‘see’ a doctor do this… I was the doctor doing this to a father in a pediatrics emergency room.
Many staff reported this as terrifying, horrifying and other descriptions. I went to many meetings following my actions. If I had to do it over again, with my experience and age, I would have chosen different actions that day and we are outside the statute of limitations for assault and battery.
I’ve never written this one down, so here it goes:
I was the on-call anesthesia provider at the hospital, a children’s hospital. I was moonlighting and doing routine things when I was called to the emergency room to consult. (Moonlighting is when a doctor does his regular job or a lesser medical job, for an hourly wage but usually not at his normal hospital or setting.)
When I came out of the elevator they asked me if I was anesthesia?
I nodded and I was led quickly to a trauma room. There was no trauma but a bunch of people in hazmat suits! They dressed me quickly. I apparently had no choice in the matter. I then was led to another room where a small five-year-old boy was having visible stress and very labored breathing. They were assisting him with oxygen, a bag and mask but his color was just, off. Blue, maybe a little green grey. I had never seen this color for a human before, at least not one alive.
People were screaming at me through their suits. We could hardly hear one another. Unknown poison. Unknown toxin. They told me this patient’s brother is in the next room and fading fast, as well. They then ask me what drugs I want to give to intubate this child.
Holy oral board question from hell!!!! For those of you who are not inside the anesthesia world, the oral-board exams for an anesthesiologist are notoriously difficult. They boast a high failure rate for first-time takers because they are designed to scare the ever living crap out of you so you will be a perpetual student of anesthesiology for life. When you have three minutes to figure something out, you cannot hit the books or even ask “Watson.”
“I don’t want to give him anything!” I thought and said simultaneously.
I am a large male… so… I chose physically to intubate the child without any drugs. I managed not to break any teeth also… always a bonus in my job. I did reason they are baby teeth and if he lived he would be more grateful to be alive than to have all his baby teeth.
I then proceeded in rapid succession to the 7-year-old’s room. He was bigger, stronger and was spasming much worse than his brother, especially his jaw. They could not open it. I thought about man-handling the intubation. Broken teeth, I could break his jaw, but, no, so I ending up choosing and using an older drug to completely paralyze the child to attempt to undo the spastic jaw. This choice of drug was not as fast as some of the modern drugs in the anesthesia arsenal. It was among the most stressful four minutes of my clinical career!
“Please be right. Please be right. Please be right.” In my mind over and over again. I slid my hand to his wrist and felt for a pulse. It was there. Weak, fast, but there.
His color was off, too. Similar to his brother. Our oximeter was not picking up a signal. I was terrified in that moment I had chosen incorrectly and would kill the child. Utterly terrified. Tube in, first time, done. The boys were moved to the ICU.
Had to get out of the small room. Very hot. Hard to breathe myself. Am I poisoned? Did I get exposed?
I threw up.
I was soaked head to foot in sweat and ripped off the headdress.
Yes, you read that correctly. I threw up and THEN I got the stupid headdress part of my isolation bunny suit ripped off. Cold air felt great!
I heard screaming and commotion from the other room.
I’m now pumped with adrenaline. Really pumped. In retrospect, I should probably have not gone to investigate, but I did. An older anesthesiologist would have likely gone back to his on-call duties or hit the call room and slept. I was young.
Nope. Not me. What is happening?!?
I marched in. My bunny suit flapping. The headdress still attached to the back of my neck pulling uncomfortably on the front zipper at my neck. I reached up with my hand and pulled it down away from my throat.
Once in there, I see two police officers, a half a dozen nurses, a pediatric ER doc who was about 4′11″ in shoes and they are screaming at everyone to just stop it!
I am a large male… so… I bellowed, “What the fuck is going on?” Yes, I am a good doctor. Yes, I am human.
Everyone looked and the ER doc said looking at me in the eyes, “the father just drank the poison.”
WTF. WTF. WTF. WTF. WTF.
Toxicology? Still no hit on what the substance was from the poison center but they had said to someone it was likely not transmitted through touching or breathing.
Good to know. It’s ‘not likely’ I’ve exposed myself to God knows what.
I knew one of the nurses standing there, she was holding a nasogastric (NG) tube and the nurse next to her had a charcoal drink and a funnel.
The NG tube goes from the nose to the stomach and allows the ‘forceful’ introduction of liquids such as charcoal to neutralize things, the poison in this case.
The man, for all his abject fright and stupidity, blurted out at me, “None of them know what it is so I drank it to find out, use me to find out, use me!” He pleaded, tears streaming down his face. He was just being a parent. He was just being human. That’s when I saw the small fasciculations in his facial muscles. Fasciculations are involuntary small portions of muscle that ‘fire’ on their own without neural impulses. Have you ever had just one part of your muscle move, twitch and do it over and over again without you consciously controlling the movements? That is fasciculations and both boys had them all over their tiny bodies when I first saw them.
“Nurse.” I said in my ‘Superman’ voice. When I was an intern, some of the staff, younger females mostly, nursing mostly, referred to me as Superman because I always got everywhere so fast in the hospitals and, oh yeah, I am a large male with dark kind of curly longer hair at the time. I used to get that one thick curl on the forehead naturally.
She did not speak but began moving toward the father of the boys. The other nurse followed lock step behind her.
“Fuck no! You’re not sticking that thing in me!” The man backed away reflexively animal like in speed and suddenness. He ran into the wall behind him. His back to the wall, literally.
Not. My. Finest. Medical. Moment.
I used a somewhat unorthodox medical maneuver. I hit, or struck, or punched with the my full force in the father’s face. I caught him with the hand I punched him with and pinned him up against the wall. He semi-slumped, in shock, I believe more than for the blow. Not too certain though.
“Tube.” I reached out with my left hand but did not take my gaze off the man.
I looked at his nose and the one side began bleeding. Well, there are two cops standing behind me. I sighed loudly, I may even snorted a bit. They can write my statement for me at this point. Definitely, battery, maybe assault and battery, and with many witnesses, great. I wonder what jail is really like?
Blood is a lubricant. The NG tube slid down that bloody side quickly and completely. The man bucked hard at me. I let go of the tube and ‘pushed’ well, perhaps thrust with nearly full force upon his chest with both open hands and very physically slammed him the two inches back onto the wall.
The nurse(s) got the tube and out of my peripheral vision I saw a funnel and charcoal pouring down the tube very quickly.
The man made noises. I interpreted that as him having an Airway, he was obviously Breathing and clearly he was Circulating blood as he was semi-conscious. ABC’s checked off. He’ll live long enough to sue me probably.
As the man made a fast grab for the NG tube, I was slammed into and from behind and on either side forcefully.
The two cops grabbed either arm and held them back, pinned tightly on the wall.
I love cops. Even when they pull me over and give me a speeding ticket. Even then.
I let go and slowly slid back a bit. Maybe I was two feet from the man’s face.
… and he threw up charcoal all over me. Along with the ‘poison’ so…
I froze. Kept my eyes shut and my mouth shut. I was led a bit away and then someone poured water over my head several times. I cleaned off with a towel. Several towels, actually.
The man was a farmer. He had left fertilizer of some sort, or perhaps it was a pesticide/fertilizer combo in a mixing jug, an old white plastic milk jug. Some years later, he poured diesel fuel into this same white jug. Years after that, the boys found the jug in the barn and it had brilliant blue crystals in it and some opaque grey liquid. Stunning, they looked like hard candy. The boys shook the crystals out and put them in their mouths.
The reason I told you this story was that it was horrifying to watch. That word was used in reports describing my actions. ‘Terrible. Terror. Unprofessional. Shocking. Disturbing. Ugly. Dysfunctional. Chaotic.” All used in reports to describe the event.
One of the nurses who knew me told me her heart just ‘throbbed’ at the whole surreal situation. Your wording in your question triggered the whole event for me.
Doctors are people, they are human, they make mistakes. It was a mistake striking that man. I know that, now. I was afraid in the moment. My fear and anxiety got the best of me and the human animal part of me reacted, poorly.
Some of you may say what I did is fine. Others will condemn any physical attack or action, especially from a doctor to a civilian in an ER setting.
Everyone lived. They did finally identify the culprit. It was a semi-paralytic chemical. Onset of symptoms in minutes. Spasticity, followed by slow paralysis and then asphyxiation from breathing ceasing with one to two hours in an adult.
What do you think?
~Chris
Dr. Christopher Yerington
Columbus, Ohio
Bio: Retired from clinical anesthesiology by a disability in 2010, Dr. Yerington has turned his love of teaching and service to others to his family, medical colleagues and community. He speaks and educates medical groups and residency programs about the importance of great disability insurance and having an income protection plan. Having attended law and business schools, Chris is a perpetual student, currently working on his financial certifications.
Russia Uncovers US Plot to Eliminate Niger Coup Leaders
“You may not know what must be done but many people like me do. It’s time to start down the road towards ending all of the theft of Africa’s god given wealth. Nationalize all of Africa’s resources and perform all value adding operations in Africa, unless it truly messes up the environment to do so. Doing this will uplift the lives of the people and in the end make Africa the best place to live on earth.”
Not me, my mother. She is Cuban and when she was on her first year of teaching, she was teaching first grade and had a kid that was held back. The teachers called him a bad kid. He found it hard to sit down and pay attention, so he still could not read. My mother made him her “helper” and whenever there was free time she would sit alone with him to go over lessons. He passed first grade and actually did great!
Later on, after the Castro regime took control, my mother left Cuba. She met my father, had children, and moved on with her life.
Years later we were traveling in Florida and a man and his wife came up to her. It was the student! He said he recognized her right away because he never forgot her. He introduced her to his wife as the teacher that did not give up on him.
She is my inspiration!
Oliver Anthony – Rich Men North Of Richmond | Singer Reacts & Musician Analysis
UK girl reacts. Very interesting.
All over the West, the “people” are seeing just how bad and corrupt the American-style of “democracy” actually is. This is the moment in time when quiet people, in secret back rooms, start planning on how to hang people, and burn down their edifices of power.
At a family gathering. It was a birthday party for one of my SIL’s kids. It was a nice day and we were all outside while the kids played with all of their friends and cousins, having a great time while we adults caught up and enjoyed the music and weather.
Then we all hear the terrified scream of a small child. One of the kids ran up and said “Sean is hurt!” We all ran over and there he was with blood pouring from a gash on his head. He had stumbled while running and went head first into the fence and an exposed nail.
Every single adult starts freaking out, running around and NOT HELPING this 4-year-old child who was screaming in fear and pain. WTF did they do when their own kids got hurt??!!
Husband and I were surrounded by not only idiots but dithering, panicking, hand-flapping, weak stomached idiots.
Husband and I picked him up and took him in to the bathroom and we were able to calm him down while we cleaned the approximately 1+″ wound and looked for non-existent bandages (really? in a house with four kids?!) and told him how brave he was and that he was going to get stitches but that it would only hurt a little bit, etc. and that sweet little boy just nodded and said “I’m brave.” We just wanted to adopt him on the spot.
When we brought him out he would not let go of me so husband and I just held him and some paper towels to his wound until his grandmother picked him up to take him to urgent care. Then MIL and BILs start freaking out about all the blood on our clothes (yes, head wounds bleed like stuck pigs) and their biggest concern was that it wouldn’t come out in the wash. IDIOTS!
The next time we saw Sean he showed us his scar and said “I was brave!” Yes he was and much more so than about 12 grown ass adults.
Oh SH*T, America Moves To Counter China!
The US has no (real) money and no railways to speak of…and yet they want to build and finance a new multicountry rail network 10,000 km away from home.
How is the USA going to cough up the money?
Five Russian “Doomsday Planes” in the air 0300 Russia time- Shut Off Transponders mid-flight
Five Russian “Doomsday” aircraft are in the air over Russia or have landed after shutting off transponders near the Ural Mountains, including Aircraft PA-96024, ID RSD309, which is the Presidential plane.
While no one can be sure who – if anyone – is actually on these government evacuation aircraft which took off out of Moscow, and having shut their transponders off, we cannot know the exact landing site, it is very disconcerting to see this type of military aircraft activity inside Russia at this ungodly hour.
In particular, the Presidential aircraft shut its transponder off after crossing over the Ural Mountains.
Did they then make a U-turn to land at Mount Yamantau?
MOUNT YAMANTAU
Mount Yamantau, along with Kosvinsky Mountain (600 km to the north), are claimed by the United States of being home to a large secret nuclear facility or bunker, or both. Large excavation projects have been observed by U.S. satellite imagery after the fall of the Soviet Union, as recently as the late 1990s during the government of Boris Yeltsin.
During the Soviet era two military garrisons, Beloretsk-15 and Beloretsk-16, and possibly a third, Alkino-2, were built on the site. These garrisons were unified into the closed town of Mezhgorye (Russian: Межгорье) in 1995, and the garrisons are said to house 30,000 workers each, served by large rail lines.
Repeated U.S. questions have yielded several different responses from the Russian government regarding Yamantau, including it is a mining site, a repository for Russian treasures, a food storage area, and a bunker for leaders in case of nuclear war.
Responding to questions regarding Yamantau in 1996, Russia’s Defense Ministry stated: “The practice does not exist in the Defense Ministry of Russia of informing foreign mass media about facilities, whatever they are, that are under construction in the interests of strengthening the security of Russia.”
In 1997, a United States Congressional finding, related to the country’s National Defense Authorization Act for 1998, stated that the Russian Federation kept up a “deception and denial policy” about the mountain complex after U.S. officials had given Cheyenne Mountain Complex tours to Russian diplomats, which the finding stated “… does not appear to be consistent with the lowering of strategic threats, openness, and cooperation that is the basis of the post-Cold War strategic partnership between the United States and Russia.”
So why are these Russian military Government evacuation aircraft in the air over Russia at this strange hour? Why have they shut off their transponders mid-flight?
MEDVEDEV MAKES OMINOUS REMARKS “Nuclear 9/11”
On Sunday, Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Federation Council (Senate), made a post to his official Telegram account, calling it “a few words on the eve of [9/11].” In it, he derided the U.S. for what he called its “arrogance and disgusting narcissism” among Western nations and its “universal arrogance on any issue.” Near the end of the post, he also made the ominous prediction that the U.S. would suffer “another 11/09/2001-style attack, but with a nuclear or biological component,” without suggesting outright that Russia would be the nation to launch the attack.
This “mindset” is a direct result of of the “organ of misinformation” funded intentionally to “drum up” anti-China sentiment. This effort is funded in the many billions of US dollars. And it is working.
So…
The question is (better worded) …
“With the American people ripe with rage against China and ready for war… how is China going to respond?”
Oh…
You haven’t noticed?
The value of the USD is approaching that of toilet paper.
The American economy is in tatters, and it is only going to get worse; much worse.
Geo-politically, the “friends” of the United States are slithering away and making arrangments in favor of China.
The American people; uneducated with lofty degrees, a work ethic that resembles a lazy hound-dog on a hot August day, legalized looting at every level, and a media of crazy disinformation are about to ignite a civil war.
Organized crime, mental illnesses, collapsing infrastructure, and crazy levels of inflation, all aggravated with massive drug abuse…
And you (the questioner) somehow thinks that China is worried about the United States and what the American people think?
It’s not even on “the radar screen”.
…
The United States is in CHECK MATE.
Everything that it does; any action it takes, any movement in any direction is a lose move for the nation.
In the slight chance that the United States actually makes a military move against a united China-Russia-North Korean-Iran-BRICS+ axis, the result would be very bad.
Bad as in nuclear bad.
…
Do not go there.
Accept your life and do the best you can for you and yours. Do not worry about things that you have no control over.
I am optimistic about the future.
I really am, but there are many in the West that will have to adjust to a much lower standard of living than they have become accustomed to.
Merkules – ”Rich Men North Of Richmond” Remix (Veteran Reaction)
Here I am doing a reaction to Merkules – ”Rich Men North Of Richmond” Remix. Thank you for taking the time to watch this and for helping me on my journey to 50k subscribers.
Again.
Small Americans are getting a voice. This is the point in time when pitchforks and torches start to get lit.
In fact Francis Ford Coppola deleted a key scene in the movie Apocalypse Now which explains in two minutes what the New York Times couldn’t explain in millions of words in their twelve years of biased reporting.
The United States Office of Strategic Services- the OSS, the precursor to the CIA- invented the Viet Minh to fight the Japanese in wwii. The Viet Minh moved south after the first Indochina war against the French and became known as the Viet Cong. The fact was the U.S. was aware of Ho Chi Minh since he tried to get a meeting with Woodrow Wilson while he was president to elicit U.S. help in his opposition to French colonialism. When war broke out U.S. intelligence agents picked Ho to organize armed resistance against the Japanese and their Vichy French allies in Indochina.
After the Japanese left Indochina in 1945 the British and the French decided that they wanted their respective empires back and instead of holding elections the next year to settle the political situation in Indochina the French battled Ho and General Vo Nguyen Giap for eight years until their ignominious defeat in May, 1954 at a remote valley named Dien Bien Phu.
The United States, which had been bankrolling the French in their losing war at a cost of a million dollars a day continued the war against what was now communist North Vietnam. The United States began it’s war slowly by first setting up military advisory groups in Saigon. Commando missions were initiated from ships at sea to destroy coastal military objectives in the north and naval batteries were used to shell targets up to ten miles inland from the coast. In 1964 the U.S. started launching sorties from aircraft carriers in the Tonkin Gulf to destroy power plants and other targets of high value in the north. The U.S. landed a marine expeditionary brigade (MEB) on the coast of South Vietnam in March of 1965 to provide additional security around the U.S. air base at Da Nang. The marine landing was followed in the next two years by the largest military build up in history with an occupation force eventually totaling over half a million U.S. army troops.
Coppola had to delete the scene at the French plantation because in 1979, four years after the war ended, the truth about the war in Vietnam and how the United States created the conflict and had at various times assisted, armed and bankrolled each side would have been just too much for the American public. Ironically characters in the movie telling the truth about the war in Vietnam would have removed any perceived veracity from Coppola’s film. It was far easier getting the American public to swallow lies about an imaginary ‘Gulf of Tonkin Incident’ or a fictional ‘Domino Theory’ or even that Vietnam was a ‘winnable’ war then it was to get the public to believe actual facts about a long running conflict.
I was going through treatment for cancer back in 2005, and in addition to a surgery I was receiving radiation treatments. There are restrictions on people who receive internal radiation treatments (in my case, it was a large dose of radioactive Iodine 131) and then being sent home after taking the dosage. In the past, I had been kept in the hospital for the treatment in a special hospital room that was lined with lead panels, and the toilet sewer system was sent to a specific tank, where it was kept before being sent to the public sewage system.
At any rate, after taking the treatment I was told to spend three days in isolation, and a few extra days staying away from small children and pregnant women. (It was a a different time, and perspectives on cancer treatments and radiation.)
Anyway, I came home and met my pregnant neighbor near the front door to the building. I stepped away from her and told her I was going through radiation treatment and that I didn’t want to harm her or her baby. She smiled, went in, and a few minutes later I went to my apartment.
About 2 hours later, I heard a knock at my door. It was around 5 o’clock in the afternoon, and I went to the door and asked who is it, but got no answer. I opened the door, and on a tray was a meal of beef tips and noodles, some home baked bread, a single flower in a vase, and a note. The note was from my pregnant neighbor, and she had written something like my mom had cancer and I wanted you to know that I am available to talk if you need anything.
Nicest response I got from anyone who ever found out that I was a cancer patient.
China STRIKES BACK at Neocons as Biden ‘Disappointed’ Xi Skips G20 w/ Carlos Martinez & Ken Hammond
This conversation is so good, unbiased and informative.
Southern Shrimp and Grits
Southern Shrimp and Grits is a cheesy delight, and the bacon and green onions add a ton of flavor!
2023 09 16 15 12
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients
2 slices bacon, chopped
3 cups water
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup instant grits
1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese
1 pound medium shrimp, peeled, deveined
4 green onions, thinly sliced (about 1/3 cup)
1 clove garlic, minced
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
1 tablespoon lemon juice
Instructions
Cook bacon in large skillet over medium-heat heat until crisp.
Drain on paper towels; set aside.
Bring water and salt to boil in medium saucepan.
Slowly stir in grits. Reduce heat to medium-low; cover. Cook for 7 minutes or until thickened. Stir in cheese; set aside.
Add shrimp, onions and garlic to skillet; cook and stir 3 minutes or until shrimp turn pink.
As I write this, the latest typhoon is making landfall. In this case, it is typhoon Saola. ZH and GZ self-defense forces are on alert, and for the population it is “all hands on deck” in readiness. It is a “Super Typhoon” of level 17. Could be brutal. (Of course, by the time you all read this, the event will be long over.) We are braced, and all of our activities are in postponement mode.
…
I found out why all the emails to laobangbh@163.com never reached me.
It seems that I was a victim of numerous “saturation attacks” where thousands of emails spam my inbox. The objective of these kinds of attacks is to render your email system inert and useless, as most email accounts have a limit on how many emails can exist.
I have been trying to erase the emails. The 163 software only allow batches of 10 to 20 emails at a time (page by page). I have 73,652 pages of attack emails interspersed with an occasional email of value.
I figure that it will take me half a year to clean out the mails if I devote about 20 minutes a day to erase the emails manually. I am thinking about contacting the 163 server for assistance, but my Chinese is shit in specialized situations such as this, and I am not VIP on this account. Ugh!
…
Back in the 1990s my wife and I had some friends that we used to “hang out” with. We would drink beer and play video games or watch a movie or two. They also had a cat.
It was one frigid Winter night in January while we were inside, and their cat was in heat. It was driving “Misty” our friend, bonkers. But outside was a howling blizzard, and the temperature was -20F, hardly healthy, and quite dangerous. But, I well remember, while the cat was standing at the door howling… she opened the door and let her out saying “go out and have fun, you slut”, and then slammed it shut.
I don’t know what happened to the kitty. Knowing cats, it probably found some kind of shelter. But, still…
For me, I greatly lament what happened. Why didn’t I stop her?
Well, it happened too quickly. It occurred and was over long before I could react.
And there, somewhere in the swirling snow, and darkness, the kitty went to follow her instincts. Right or wrong.
…
We all have to be more aware of the things going on around us. More mindful. More careful and more compassionate.
Todays…
The results of the BRICS summit are great, isolation as a weapon of the USA has been defeated forever — Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova
2023 08 25 21 34
“It is not BRICS that threatens the United States of America, it is the state of the USA, its liberal economy, the neoliberal model. I think that the expansion of BRICS will not be some kind of cold shower for the USA, Great Britain and the EU. I think it is too soft and too light a term. It will become a new reality for everyone, and it will be a demonstration of this new reality that they hide and do not show on American channels,” she said.
WOW!! OLIVER ANTHONY I WANT TO GO HOME (EMOTIONAL)
BRICS has very few advantages to countries that aren’t a direct threat to the WEST and are thus ignored by the WEST
2023 09 01 18 49
It’s why Indonesia wasn’t very keen to join BRICS
It enjoys a relatively nice and non aligned foreign policy and isn’t a threat to any one and enjoys business with China and the West equally
Thus no advantages in joining BRICS and a lot of disadvantages including joining a group consisting two nations bitterly opposed to US Hegemony
2023 09 01 18 49e
Same reason why Nigeria is unlikely to join BRICS
Nigeria is already a member of the BRI and has very good trade relationships with China but also has a good relationship with the West who doesn’t really care much about Nigeria because today it’s irrelevant
So it’s joining BRICS is irrelevant
2023 09 01 18 5f0
Today the only nations that can have huge advantages in joining BRICS are those nations which are :-
Directly in the sight of the Western Nations and are at risk of being caught out by sudden cut off from access to the West and it’s financial systems like RUSSIA, SAUDI ARABIA, CHINA and IRAN
Have Non Democratic Stable Rule that is deemed as Dictatorship by the West who will meddle for subservience – Saudi Arabia, Iran, China etc
Have experienced the high handedness of the West and realize the safety in joining an Alliance that offers an alternate route to avoid chaos and disaster that could arise from a western retaliation – UAE, IRAN, SAUDI ARABIA, RUSSIA
Want to have a foot in two camps to avoid being completely dependent on either side – BRAZIL, INDIA
Have been so badly destroyed by the Western Financial System despite having lots of resources that they HAVE to join an alternate alliance for some stability and development – CUBA, VENEZUELA, ARGENTINA
BRICS is a protection from the West in case the West decides to pull a Russia again
Thus it’s not for 90% of the nations of the world
Algeria, Myanmar, Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, Libya, Turkey are other countries who would have tremendous advantages
This rises a question
Does India have any advantages?
Yes
A Foot in both camps
India is a member of QUAD and SCO
India is a member of BRICS and G20
It offers options and high leverage
However I don’t see a future for India in BRICS+ for very long
It’s basically becoming a “Anti Western Group” and India and Brazil and South Africa will find fewer common ground items than China, Russia, Saudi and Iran
Au Jus Beef and Noodles
OIPv
Yield: 6 servings
Ingredients
2 pounds stew beef meat
2 (7 ounce) cans sliced mushrooms, undrained
2 cups beef broth
1 (1 ounce) package dry au jus gravy mix
Worcestershire sauce to taste
Salt, pepper, garlic salt to taste
Hot cooked noodles
Instructions
Place stew meat in slow cooker.
Add beef broth and mushrooms.
Add seasonings to taste and sprinkle in au jus gravy mix to taste.
Cover; cook on LOW for 7 to 8 hours.
Serve over hot cooked noodles.
Notes
Store any leftover gravy mix in a cool, dry place in an airtight container.
My mother lived and worked in Shanghai from 1945 – 1949. She kept a diary during the time she was there. You can read about it here: An interesting diary
My mother came from a privileged family in late Qing and Republican China; she grew up in a famous hutong home in Beijing, and her father was the controller of the Peking – Hankow Railway when it was built, owned and managed by the French following the Boxer Rebellion. She went to missionary schools and spoke English from an early age.
She lived and worked in Shanghai after the Allies, including the Republic of China (the People’s Republic did not yet exist) defeated Japan. She worked with the United Nations Refugee Relief Association (UNRRA) office in Shanghai.
The thing to remember about Shanghai is that it was, until 1942, a foreign treaty port, which was organized into something called the Shanghai International Settlement. After 1942, the Unequal Treaties which made the treaty port system possible was abolished, and it became part of the Republic of China.
The interesting thing about the Shanghai of that time is that a horse-racing track occupied the city center, which was called the 跑馬汀。If you go to Shanghai now, it is called People’s Square. The racetrack was abolished by the Communists after 1949.
The two best-known universities in Shanghai were St. John’s for men, and St. Mary’s for women. These were founded by the British, and were Anglican.
This may surprise you, but there actually were Chinese who had grown up and lived in Shanghai who were so westernized that they DID NOT SPEAK CHINESE, but only English. My mother had several cousins who were like this. They did not fare well under the Communists after 1949.
I have not had the time to go through all of my mother’s diaries, but I read one entry where she mentioned going dancing one evening at a nightclub called Argentina.
Sometimes I think about tracking down where that nightclub once stood.
Reacting to Oliver Anthony – “Rich Men North of Richmond” | Wilson Brothers
It’s not difficult to use chopsticks at all. And it certainly isn’t an art form. Using chopsticks is just the most efficient, most practical way for many Asians (not all Asians, of course) to consume our meals.
My niece started using chopsticks when she was about 3 years old. She might not have held them the “proper” way, but as long as she could eat with them, it was all good. She was a 3-year-old kid – expectations were quite low.
How hard can using chopsticks be if a 3-year-old can do it? Come on now.
There is a place called Jigokudani Hot Spring in Japan, where there is a kind of “Snow Monkey”. Every winter, snow and snow. It is very cold, and the temperature will drop to about 30 °C.
Fortunately, there are many hot springs in that place. Hot springs can reach about 40 degrees, so the monkeys there learned how to soak in hot springs. The view of a group of monkeys leisurely taking a leisurely dip in the hot springs is very good to many people. Therefore, this place has gained fame as a special tourist destination.
Some people may feel very warm looking at these photos, but they are like both sides of a coin. Tourists only see the warm side.
In fact, not all monkeys can take hot springs. There is a strict hierarchy among monkeys. Only high-grade monkeys can take hot springs, and low-grade monkeys cannot take hot springs no matter how cold they are. They cannot tolerate the cold, but once in the water, they will be bitten and expelled by high-level monkeys, so they can only shiver in the air and snow.
There is a temperature difference of about 70 degrees inside and outside the hot spring. Sometimes that’s the difference between life and death. Moreover, this system is “hereditary”. Low-grade monkey-producing monkeys are also not eligible to take hot springs. In other words, some monkeys naturally belong to the vulnerable group, which is unfair.
NATO CROSSES RUSSIA’S RED LINE | SCOTT RITTER ON CHINA’S WARNING TO BIDEN | PUTIN VISITS XI + MORE!
Russia is not stupid, neither they will not forget. They will retaliate.
Sotria Kritsornis was standing waiting for the bus to take her to school. The snow was coming down hard, and she was stood in the cold for an hour. As she stood waiting, a car pulled up beside her and rolled down his window. “I’ve come down Rainer Avenue, and that’s a long way, and there’s no bus in sight. Would you like a Ride?”
22-year-old Sotria didn’t feel anything off with the man. He was polite and charming, and they were the same age. Everything seemed relaxed as the guy driving began talking about school. When she suddenly realised he was going in the wrong direction, the man’s demeanour changed.
He suddenly began shouting at her, “Why did you take this ride? Why did you even think about getting in this car? You’re never going to make it to school.”
Sotria knew there and then that her life was in extreme danger. She thought about jumping from the moving car, but when she went for the door handle, it was gone. She sat in the car terrified as he continued to scream at her. There was no doubt in her mind that she was in the presence of evil, and it was only a matter of when.
Suddenly the man’s demeanour changed again, he almost seemed disappointed. Sotria had just gotten a haircut and was wearing a hat since it was snowing out. The man driving seemed distracted by her hat and suddenly asked her to take it off.
She was reluctant and when she did take it off the man was surprised. She suddenly realised the man must have been watching her before she got the haircut. He continued to drive for about an hour, before stopping outside her school.
He shoved her out of the car and onto the ground with some force before turning to Sotria and telling her she was lucky.
About a year later, Sotria was at home watching telly. A news report flashed across the screen and her blood ran cold. A picture of a man and his “Volkswagen Bug” appeared on the telly. A man who went by the name Ted Bundy was being charged with multiple murders and it was to her shock she realised she almost became one of his victims.
Because unlike normal porn, you can share food porn with anyone, even your aunt.
Food photos are among the most popular posts on Chinese social media.
We can tell others about this or that dish – where you can find it, what it tastes like, whether it comes with an interesting backstory, we can recommend this or that food establishment to others, share recipes with others, be inspired so that we can try out some cool new tricks with our own cooking, etc.
In my experience, few people dislike food porn. Those who do tend to view food more as “fuel” rather than something to enjoy and delight the senses.
I’m more than happy to share food porn with others.
Here is a picture of some 喜洲粑粑 (Xǐzhōu bābā).
Xizhou is the name of a lakeside village just outside Dali’s old town in China’s Yunnan province. Baba is the local slang for bread.
Baba is a type of thick, round, heavy bread that comes plain or with various fillings – and the fillings can be either sweet or savory.
A savory filling could be pork mince + spring onion + spiced salt. A sweet filling could be brown sugar + rose petal jam + red bean.
It is a popular street food and makes for great breakfast nosh.
So, when people say stuff like “Oh, Chinese don’t eat bread you know!”, take that claim well salted.
main qimg 0326409f7fb1befa9b59d1a011ef14bb
THIS IS OLIVER ANTHONY’S BEST SONG YET! “I Want To Go Home” REACTION
My friend Lisa was in her early 40s, and had congestive heart failure. She was a trooper despite her physical struggles. She grew up in a ‘tough’ city environment, and had the attitude to boot. She was typically a bit high strung, but on this afternoon she was the most mellow I had ever seen her.
Her daughter was at my house playing with my daughter. Lisa came to pick her up after she had stopped at the drugstore to pick up her monthly supply of heart and related medications. Her meds filled a small paper bag. Mellow Lisa proceeded to tell me what went down at the drugstore 10 minutes earlier.
Lisa legally parked her car in the handicapped spot just outside the store’s door. She joked with the pharmacists inside, telling them that if it weren’t for her they’d be out of a job (LOL). She left the store and proceeded, medicine bag in hand, to her car in the handicapped parking space.
A woman was loitering in and out of the store most of the day. When Lisa left, she was hanging around not far from Lisa’s car. As Lisa went to unlock her car door, the woman jumped Lisa and attempted to steal her purse and medications.
Lisa went ape-shit on her ass and flattened her. Lisa ended up sitting on top of the woman and smacking her in the face, much like little Ralphie did to Scut Farcus on ‘A Christmas Story’. She screamed at the woman while giving her the smackdown, “You think you can come here from the city and mug people? Well I’m from the city, too! You picked the WRONG BITCH to fuck with!”.
Just then, a police officer showed up. He happened to be an acquaintance of Lisa’s. He kept saying, “Lisa get off her…I got this!!”. He finally pulled Lisa off the mugger and sent her on her way as he arrested the mugger.
It was ten minutes later that Lisa showed up at my house, mellow as could be. I told her she should buy herself a punching bag for daily use since she felt so much better! She said, “Wow, I haven’t felt this relaxed in a LONG time!”.
I was pretty impressed. A heart patient requiring a handicapped parking space takes out her would-be mugger! Gotta love it!
Sadly, Lisa passed away in 2008 when her big old heart finally gave out. I never knew a more hilarious woman in my life.
I miss you girl!
BEATBOXER REACTS! I Oliver Anthony-Rich Men North of Richmond
The situation around Taiwan and the ongoing territorial disputes in the South China Sea are forcing the PRC to invest in defence capabilities. From 2024 to 2028, the authorities intend to spend a crazy $1.4 trillion to modernise the People’s Liberation Army. The average annual growth rate will be 6.6 per cent.
The defence strategy emphasises the formation of a dominant navy. To achieve this, China plans to implement several forward-looking programmes. In particular, to acquire a fourth aircraft carrier, as well as destroyers of the Type 055 class and frigates of the Type 054A class.
China also wants to commission a Type 096-class nuclear-powered submarine armed with ballistic missiles. The submarine will receive JL-3 intercontinental ballistic missiles with a launch range of up to 9,000 kilometres, capable of carrying three nuclear warheads.
US policy slowing down China’s economy w/ Jeffrey Sachs
About 8 years ago, my dad, aged about 70 at the time, is driving my son aged about 4, and myself into a nearby town. We are driving through the outskirts, in a 40 zone and slowing down as we are about to enter a 30 zone. A hundred yards up ahead are about 6 ‘youths’…aged late teens, possibly up to 20 yrs, all messing about on mountain bikes…doing wheelies and doing skids into the middle of the road. Dad slows down and they move a little to one side, still farting about. One loses control and the bike shoots over and skids in front of my dad’s car, the rider coming off and sliding over the bonnet (hood) of the car, and up the windscreen before sliding off the other side.
Dad hurtles out of the car, closely followed by me, expecting to see some mangled mess of a teen on the floor. Luckily he was fine, getting up, dusting himself off. We’d barely let out a breath of relief when he turns onto my dad – yelling abuse at him, calling him a ****ed up retard…old ****er etc etc. Then his mates drop their bikes to the floor and start advancing on my dad…’come on old man, ready to be ****ed up?’…
Now my dad, back in his day was pretty good at karate….something he did weekly for about 15 years. He is also a very fit man – from that generation of wily, hands-on men who just get on and do things…..breaking up concrete with a pickaxe or sledgehammer – knocking down walls, building walls and so on. So these 6 or so youths start to circle in on dad, I step back a bit to lock the car doors…the first lad, the one who’d slid over dad’s bonnet makes a lunge for my dad, fist punching out towards his face. Dad grabs his wrist, yanks it down and before I could say a single word, has got this kid on his knees, on the road, arm bent back, hand folded back in a somewhat unnatural position. The kid is screaming…’let me go!! Get off!! You’re breaking my hand!!! Get off!!!’
Still holding him by one hand, dad makes a small step towards the other boys….drops the kid’s hand and takes up a karate pose. The kids just turn tail and run…the other boy gets up and legs it after them. Dad just giggles in delight and with an almighty yell….hurtles down the road after them, yelling like a maniac. If the boys were running 5 seconds ago, now they are really running like Usain Bolt with an axe is chasing them, and I am doubled up laughing. Eventually, I pick up the boy’s bikes and lean them against a garden hedge and wait for dad to saunter back having run a hundred yards or so after them.
We still laugh about it – I’m not sure what those boys thought they were going to do to my father, but they really didn’t see that coming. They definitely picked on the wrong person :)))
Beef Burgundy
beef bourguignon 3 1048×1572 1
Ingredients
2 slices bacon, chopped
2 pounds sirloin tip or round steak, cut into 1 inch cubes
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon seasoned salt
1/4 teaspoon marjoram
1/4 teaspoon thyme
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 clove garlic, minced
1 beef bouillon cube, crushed
1 cup Burgundy wine
1/4 pound fresh mushrooms, sliced
2 tablespoons cornstarch (optional)
Instructions
In large skillet, cook bacon several minutes. Remove bacon and set aside.
Coat beef with flour and brown on all sides in bacon mixture.
Combine steak, bacon drippings, cooked bacon, seasonings, bouillon, and Burgundy in slow cooker.
Cover and cook on LOW for 6 to 8 hours or until meat is tender.
Turn control to HIGH. Add mushrooms; cook on HIGH for 15 minutes.
To thicken sauce, if desired, add cornstarch (dissolved in 2 tablespoons cold water) with mushrooms.
I had an employer try that crap with me once (kind of)—only I was given a heads up from a dear friend that I was being RIFed, so I had already cleared out my entire office. I had even locked myself out of a system I administered prior to my RIF meeting. When they were going through the separation checklist and told me I could only take with me what I had with me at the time, I said, “Okay, no problem.” When they asked me about scheduling a time to retrieve the rest of my stuff (I’d worked there almost 20 years, so there WAS a lot of stuff), I told them I didn’t have anything else to retrieve. They were shocked. When they had someone quickly verify that my office was indeed cleaned out, they started insisting that I review with them what I had already taken, reveal to them who tipped me off, etc. I simply handed them my pre-prepared ziplock with my ID, proximity badge, building keys, and wiped work iPhone, and left. They insisted that I walk out a particular door. I walked out the door closest to where I was parked that day (with them threatening me the whole time). They were LIVID and could barely see straight. My confidante still works there! It’s hilarious and extremely satisfying.
Scott Ritter clip on what the Pentagon Generals told the White House.
Stop the provocations with China. In any conflict with China, the USA will lose, and lose badly.
Clip segment pre-set at the position in the long video.
Russia legally can’t extradite Snowden, because there is no bilateral extradition agreement between Russia and the USA. America doesn’t extradite our criminals either. Also, Snowden is not a criminal from the Russian legal point of view.
Because his American passport was annulled, Russia was unable to send Snowden to any other country without some kind of special arrangement. So, the choice was between forcing Snowden to stay in the international airport in Moscow indefinitely, or providing him with asylum. After some deliberation, Putin chose the latter.
Snowden actually wanted asylum in Hong Kong (China) or South America, but nobody was really willing to take him in. It made sense for Russia to show its ability to challenge America without getting bombed, but it was not an easy decision for Putin. Because Snowden wasn’t a Russian agent or asset, and Russia had no obligation to protect him. Also, Putin’s opinion about Snowden is rather low. He doesn’t condone his actions. And Snowden doesn’t like Putin either. He openly says that in his interviews.
Russia can’t use Snowden because his access to secrets is long gone. We have IT experts of his caliber of our own, and nobody will trust him with access to our secrets and security networks. Really, he is a burden. But a relatively light one.
Snowden doesn’t work with Russian security services because he wants to return to America at some point. This is technically possible, as long as he stays just a whistleblower and not a traitor. Because the CIA and its ilk have some access to Russian state secrets, they would know when and if he would start cooperating with the FSB and its ilk.
This one is easy, sadly. My “mother” called CPS on me last year. Just because I wasn’t talking to her. My world was turned upside down with one phonecall.
One day a sheriff came to my house. I was surprised because I’m not one to get into trouble or piss anyone off. He said he was there to check on mine and my children’s welfare. I was confused. He said my mother had called and said I hadn’t talked to her in over a year, my husband was abusive and holding me captive, and I was doing heroin and meth. I looked at him and said, “you’ve got to be kidding me!” He assured me it was for real. I told him I spoke to her about 2 months ago, there’s no ball and chain behind me, and I damn sure ain’t doing heroin or meth. He actually laughed. I told him she’s got issues and I don’t want nothing to do with her. He said, “well you look healthy, you’re not locked in a cellar, and your kids are at school where they should be so I’ll be on my way.” I thanked him for his time and off he went. I was steaming pissed that day. I wondered what is wrong with that woman. Now I really won’t talk to her.
The next day, during the afternoon before the kids got home from school, there was a knock on the door. I open the door and there is a sheriff and social worker. Dumbfounded, I ask if I can help them. They tell me someone has made a report to CPS and they’re there to investigate. I was floored to say the least. So we sit down and the social worker begins to interrogate me. She then begins to list the allegations. She tells me I’m supposedly mentally ill, doing heroin and meth, being manipulated and abused by my husband, my children run around unsupervised, the kids aren’t adequately cared for, etc. I broke down and sobbed in disbelief. I asked who made this report and was told it was “anonymous”. I knew by the heroin and meth and husband abusing me bit exactly who it was. The show had just begun.
Another sheriff arrives shortly after. They ask if they can search my home. I said “for what”, and was told if I didn’t consent they would take my kids away. Reluctantly, I said “fine I have nothing to hide.” As the sheriff’s are upstairs searching I’m still being interrogated downstairs by the social worker. My husband arrived and was very upset about the situation, naturally. He’s even more angry seeing me a mess in tears having to be asked appalling questions. Next thing you know, there’s a knock at the door. Lo and behold it’s another sheriff. He waltzes in and I ask what the hell he’s here for. The sheriff’s come downstairs with an empty box that my husband had under our bed from a gun he purchased. They asked where the gun was and he replied it was in the car. They asked to see it and he refused. He’s not a felon and it’s registered and completely legal. That seemed to piss them off but they had no grounds to take it or see it.
So here we are. Sitting in the living room with the social worker and sheriff while another one is in the kitchen and one in the dining room. Why, I couldn’t even tell you. The sheriff had a brown paper bag and said there was some “evidence” in it. He pulled out some pill bottles. He asked me what they were for. I told him I suffer from depression and anxiety. I also take something for an opiate addiction. I’m in recovery and take a preventable medicine. Well, they thought they got me there. Mentally unstable and a drug addict. Perfect ammunition to use against me. They looked at me as though I was despicable. Scum. I could feel the judgement through my bones. The social worker asked my husband and I to accompany her to the kitchen.
That’s when she pulls out the drug tests. She asked if we were willing to take a voluntary drug test. We said absolutely. He went first, then I went. There we were in our home with 3 sheriff’s and a CPS worker peeing in a cup to prove ourselves not to be drug addicts. I felt completely violated. The tests took a few minutes to come out but they were negative. Almost disappointed, she let us see them and told us they were clean. I felt validated, but still so angry. My kids come home from school and ask what’s going on. I didn’t even know what to say. I just told them to get a snack and go to their room and I’d be with them shortly. The social worker said we could wrap up for now, but she’d be in touch. I kindly led them out. My husband and I just looked at each other and didn’t even say a word. We were both too upset to even talk. Every aspect of our privacy and humanity had been stripped of us. Then we had to explain to the kids what was going on. After that we had to clean our home because when the sheriff’s went through our belongings they had just thrown things about and had no respect for our things.
The next day the kids informed me after school that a social worker had come to visit them to ask them questions about mom and dad. They were scared and upset. I told them it would be okay. As long as they told the truth everything would be fine. We’ve got nothing to hide. The social worker paid me a few more visits. Each time I was cooperative and willing to do whatever was needed. Anything to get them to go away and stay away. Turns out my mother had called the principal at school asking him questions about my kids. “Were they stinky, dirty, did they look well fed”, things like that. Then someone who claimed to be an uncle called and did the same. The principal got so uncomfortable he called the social worker and told her he was being harassed and didn’t want to deal with it. She finally said without saying in certain words it was my mother who filed the report. She admitted that the situation was very unusual. She paid me a last visit to let me know that not one claim could be substantiated. She apologized for the intrusion. She told me the case was closed and she would report back to my mother that all is well.
Only after having our house ripped apart, taking drug tests, having my children interrogated at school, calling my psychiatrist, pharmacy, family and friends were we deemed fit enough parents. I can’t begin to tell you what this situation has done to me. You’re probably wondering if I confronted my mother. I sent her a text message after all was said and done and asked her if she had any idea what she had done. I asked what she was thinking. I know what she did. To not only me, but her grandkids. Well, she had nothing to say about it. So I left it there. If she ever comes to her senses and wants to explain herself and apologize profusely I will give her a chance. But never will I go out of my way to have any kind of relations with her. As far as the kids, they want nothing to do with her. That is their choice. I told them they are free to talk to her and see her if they wish they should not suffer anymore. They said they would rather not. So be it.
That is the cruelest thing a parent has done to me. I could give more stories believe me, but I think I’ve said enough for now.
Let’s continue on some Geo-political stuff. We are in the middle of a global “turning” which is centered in the United States.
I am optimistic, though the entire world is spinning, and spinning.
When things seem to be really hard, and my emotions are crushed, I calm myself by remembering two things…
[1] A very bleak and bad time that I went though.
Followed by…
[2] A wonderful and happy time that I experienced right after it.
The world operates in cycles, so please do not get too caught up in all the many, many things going on. It’s like scenery out the window. Just watch it go by.
And spend some time relaxing with friends and family.
…
One thing that I like to do when I am stressed is watch cat videos.
Another thing is go on Pinterest and look at “food porn”.
FUN FACT: when I had pictures of food on my desktop, I was a much more relaxed person. However, for some reason, I seemed to start taking on a lot of weight. Who’d figure, eh?
Moving on and getting a much better job where my passion, skills, ethics, knowledge, fortitude, and integrity are appreciated.
My first job as a chief of police sent me to NE Colorado to a police department that had been neglected by their previous chief for nearly two years. Chief’s wife got a job in WY and Chief couldn’t stand being apart from her. He decided to live in his RV in one of the city parks for three nights a week. He would come to town…work 40ish hours as quickly as he could in three or maybe four days…and leave to go back to WY to be with wifey. Big issue is that he’d rarely answer phone calls from his employees and they didn’t get the help they needed. EVENTUALLY, the city council got tired of hearing the noise and let the chief go.
I was lucky enough to be hired. I was crazy enough to want to go into the chief business and thus, took a job at the first place crazy/wise enough to hire me. I went from nearly $90k a year to $55k a year for the opportunity to start my administrative career.
Longest story told short, there had always been conversations about “what if council tells you to fire someone?” It wasn’t hypothetical… it had happened before. My answer was, “If there’s a reason to fire someone, they will be given due process and they will be fired at the end of due process.”
One of my cops’ wife started a stir. Sadly my cop didn’t do the right thing by his career. This resulted in an internal affairs case where the writing of “employment ends” was in large letters on the wall.
Council demanded I fire “right now.”
I couldn’t. Due process was required.
Tried to explain the cost of wrongful termination suits etc. They didn’t get it.
I was agenda item #2 at the very next city council meeting. After hours of executive session, the board came out and voted 5–1–1 to terminate my employment.
They had the interim chief fire the guy the very next morning.
That guy did not sue the department…I’ll never know why. Sadly, I would have been a plaintiff witness instead of a defense witness and would have had to tell the truth about the lack of due process. I can see a check with four or five zeros before the decimal point.
The interim chief lasted a while. But guess what. He decided that tending to his cattle and going to his kids’ sporting events were MORE important that serving his community and guiding/coaching his police officers. He was absent while still in town for 18months…not showing up on urgent calls, not taking calls from his police officers when they needed guidance, not… not…. Shades of the guy I replaced. It took council 18months of this before they separated his employment.
Meanwhile, 4 months after being let go by that council, I was hired to serve in NW Colorado.
Here, my focus on community service, equal protection under the law, fair play, integrity, delivering more than necessary in MOST aspects of my job… being involved in the community and actually caring for people is appreciated.
I make more here than I could have EVER made there and I come home every day knowing that my work was appreciated and understood.
That, my friends, is SWEET revenge.
And, it pays every day!
Oliver Anthony – Rich Men North Of Richmond Reaction | She’s Crying From The Pain
2023 08 20 17 46
Blue Cheese Stuffed Steaks
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Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients
4 beef tenderloin steaks
2 tablespoons cream cheese, softened
4 teaspoons crumbled blue cheese
4 teaspoons plain low fat yogurt
2 teaspoons minced onion
Dash of white pepper
1 large clove garlic, halved
1/2 teaspoon salt, divided
2 teaspoons chopped parsley
Instructions
Combine cream cheese, blue cheese, yogurt, onion and pepper; reserve.
Rub each side of beef steaks with garlic.
Place steaks on rack in broiler pan so surface of meat is 2 to 3 inches from heat. Broil for 5 to 6 minutes.
Season with 1/4 teaspoon salt.
Turn and broil for 3 to 4 minutes.
Season with remaining salt.
Top each steak with an equal amount of reserved cheese mixture.
Because it is based on the false assumption that rich people would automatically create more and better jobs if they are just given more money. If there is no profit to be made with creating more or better jobs and you give the rich more money, they will simply pocket it. That’s what has been happening for half a century now.
During one of the school years, a classmate became pregnant. The weekend before the final exam, she “popped.”
(The way that I got a text saying Alison* popped to convey that she conveyed her child was in itself a shock however that is unimportant)
Clearly, she was in the emergency clinic and couldn’t go to the tests. She decided, however, that it would be prudent to leave her newborn in the hospital for a few hours so that she could attend the university and take the wheelchair test.
Our professor was clearly concerned by her plans. As a result, he called her, wished her well, talked to her, and persuaded her that she would be able to take the exam “anytime” she was ready. Her progress throughout the semester would not be impeded by her absence.
I must admit that this surprised me. For a student, that much freedom, respect, and flexibility? This was so foreign to me.
Because the principal would not allow it any other way, my friend in India, who lost her father on the morning of the midterm exam, was compelled to arrive at school covered in tears.
Concentrating on in the US was certainly a much needed refresher. A beneficial encounter!
Bloodthirsty like many others, he proposed something that no one had dared to imagine: dismantle the pyramids of Cheops, Kefren, Menkaure.
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It was 1830 and he came up with this brilliant idea to reuse that already pre-cut material in other construction operations. Luckily, someone in his right mind opposed this massacre.
The chief engineer, in an attempt to save the pyramids, submitted false cost reports , managing to prevent their demolition.
BLACK LIBERAL REACTS TO Oliver Anthony – Rich Men North Of Richmond & Virginia REACTION
Assuming I didn’t have the knowledge to run a business, or any high-paying job skills, I’d do the following:
Quit whatever part time meant-for-a-high-school-student job you’re doing where you’re only making $104 a month and get a real full-time job earning at least minimum wage.
Put at least $1,000 per month aside from your income to invest in growth stock mutual funds earning ~8% annually, and only live on the rest. If that means getting a roommate or three, so be it.
In ten years, the value of the invested dollars will be be worth about $183k.
Buy a house for cash in a low tax state. If I liked my roomies, maybe I invite them to start paying me rent instead, maybe not. Either way, no more house payment.
Continue to invest, adding the portion that used to go toward the house payment. By this point, you should have advanced enough in your career path to be able to put more than $1,000 per month aside, and if you’ve kept your expenses low, you should be able to invest $2,000 per month.
That $2,000 per month invested over the next 20 years will be $1.18 million.
If you started with step one at age 20, you’d have a paid off house by 31 and be a millionaire by 50, never doing anything but working at your regular job. At that point, you could retire early and start taking the annual return on your investments as a $7,333 monthly payout for the rest of your life – which is plenty when you have no house payment. And when you die, your $1.1 million will still be there for your kids.
Pirates are a serious threat to the safety of cruise ships and their passengers, especially in some regions of the world, such as the Gulf of Aden, the Somali Coast, and the Strait of Malacca. Pirates often use small boats, guns, rockets, and grenades to attack and hijack ships, either to rob them or to hold them for ransom. According to the International Maritime Bureau, there were 195 incidents of piracy and armed robbery against ships worldwide in 2020, with 135 crew members kidnapped.
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Cruise ships are aware of this danger and have taken various steps to prevent and deter pirate attacks. One of these steps is to carry guns on board, but not in the way you might think. Cruise ships do not have their own guns or armed guards, as this would violate the laws and regulations of many countries they visit. Instead, they hire private security contractors who are licensed and trained to use firearms and other weapons.
These contractors are usually former military or law enforcement personnel who have experience in dealing with pirates and other threats. They board the cruise ship before it enters a high-risk area and disembark after it leaves. They also follow strict rules of engagement and only use lethal force as a last resort.
Another step that cruise ships take is to install non-lethal anti-piracy devices, such as water cannons, electric fences, razor wires, nets, slippery foam, foul-smelling liquid, long-range acoustic devices, and anti-piracy lasers. These devices are designed to create physical or psychological barriers that make it difficult or unpleasant for pirates to approach or board the ship. They can also alert the crew and passengers of an impending attack and give them time to take evasive actions or seek shelter.
A third step that cruise ships take is to cooperate with international naval forces that patrol the pirate-infested waters. These forces include NATO, the European Union, the United States, China, India, Japan, Russia, and others. They provide escort services, surveillance, intelligence, communication, and assistance to cruise ships and other vessels that are under threat or attack by pirates. They also conduct anti-piracy operations to capture or deter pirates and disrupt their networks. Cruise ships can contact these forces through radio or satellite phones if they need help or guidance.
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These are some of the main ways that cruise ships carry guns and other weapons to fight pirates. It is important to note that pirate attacks on cruise ships are very rare and unlikely to happen. Cruise lines have prepared for many challenging scenarios and have implemented various safety protocols and procedures to ensure the security and well-being of their guests and crew members. They also monitor the situation closely and avoid sailing through known hotspots or during peak seasons of pirate activity. You can rest assured that your cruise vacation will be safe and enjoyable.
WARRP Reacts to Oliver Anthony…Rich Men North of Richmond
Yes. I have. We went on a school trip to Barcelona for the week when I was around 15 years old. Whilst in an art gallery there, I had had my purse stolen from out of my handbag and didn’t even notice until I needed to go in my bag in the bathroom. Luckily, I had heeded my fathers warning and only taken out my daily amount of money with me. I reported it to the security staff and the found my actual purse, empty and dumped in one of the gallery rooms.
Whilst walking back to our hostel with my friends, we witnessed some smaller, older women in headscarves and children bustling into people and then the child would reach into a pocket/bag and take what they wanted. We couldn’t stop them but managed to catch up to the people to inform them they had been robbed.
We didn’t want it to happen to us again, so, in our wonderfully weird teenage brains, we hatched a plan! We stole (I know!!) one of the glow in the dark emergency exit signs from the wall in the hostel and put it in a handbag! We put all our purses underneath (at the bottom of the bag) and the sign was on the top to form a barrier. And it worked! Whilst out a few days later, we were in a huge crowd of people when my friend Emma, who was carrying the bag at the time, heard someone make a noise behind her. There was a 10/12 year old child looking a bit flummoxed. She couldn’t get her hand in to steal our things. This made the older women of the group really mad and they started shouting at us (in Spanish so I have no idea what she was saying – probably something about how unfair it was that they couldn’t rob us!). We laughed and walked off, leaving them all arguing amongst themselves.
Last month I was medevac’d from my local hospital on the Big Island of Hawaii to Straub Hospital Critical Care Burn Unit, which is on the island of Oahu.
This is the actual bill I received in an email before I was discharged.
There are two flights listed. Why, you ask? Because five minutes into the first flight, the pilot told the two nurses caring for me, that there was something wrong with the plane, “it didn’t feel right.”
I am being charged $38k for a flight on a plane that wasn’t in top shape?
Bear in mind that in December 2022 a medical flight crashed into the Pacific Ocean on its way from Maui to Oahu killing all four souls on board.
When the crew told me that we needed to return to the airport, I immediately asked for a life vest.
As the plane began to turn back to the airport, it started making loud groaning noises and metal scraping against metal sounds.
Thankfully we made it safely to Hilo International Airport. I am grateful for the pilot’s skill in landing and for noticing whatever it was that was wrong with the plane.
Ohhh… that life jacket I asked for? I never got it. Because the crew could not find any. I’m not saying there were none aboard the plane. I’m saying they could not find a single life vest.
I have only been home a few days now, but you can be assured I am contesting the cost of my first flight. Why should I have to pay for a plane that wasn’t sound enough in the first place.
main qimg 5612c8c452b1e400582418b9c6d43367
Here’s a picture of the first plane and pilot before I was boarded on to it.
There was a two hour wait on the tarmac for a new plane and crew to take me. Here’s a snap of how crowded and dark the inside of a life flight plane is. However that’s no excuse for not being able to locate a life jacket.
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PIC ANGRY RANT To Oliver Anthony | Rich Men North Of Richmond | NPR #354
Whenever you see an Old English word or name with an AE ligature in it, the ae is pronounced like the A in cat.
Whenever you see some fake archaic sign like “Ye Olde Coffee Shoppe”, the first word is actually “the.” Old English had a letter called “thorn” [þ] which typesetters sometimes represented with a Y, often with a crossed stem. At the time, every literate person knew to pronounce that Y as TH. But as TH took the place of the thorn character, people forgot that the sound used to be represented by a modified Y, and started pronouncing it like a regular letter Y.
Did you know that the Appalachian Mountains are way older than the Atlantic Ocean?
If she does not find these facts remotely interesting, then I know she’s not going to enjoy my company or conversation for long.
It is. If the prison’s administration didn’t know their relation when they assigned them to be roomies, they should’ve known later when the brother claimed he had informed them and requested for a different cell.
2021. Washington State Prison. Shayne Goldsby, then 26, was serving time in prison.
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His cellmate, 70-year-old Robert Munger, was sentenced to 43 years in prison for child molestation and possession of child pornography. Odds are, this garbage would’ve died in prison anyway.
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I can’t find out how long Goldsby’s term was, but his crime was stabbing someone, stealing a police car and injuring a state trooper.
He killed Munger. One of Munger’s victim’s was apparently his sister.
Goldsby said he had no intention of killing Munger, and would rather see him rot in prison. He also said Munger tortured him with details of how he molested his sister, who was a minor.
That’s why he snapped.
He hit Munger in the face multiple times, stomped on his face, and kicked him. This happened in a communal area of the prison, year 2020.
Munger died three days after the attack.
A year later, Goldsby was sentenced to almost 25 years after pleading guilty to murder.
If Goldsby’s claims are true, why did the old fart keep provoking him?
Perhaps he was sadistic and got off on emotionally torturing him, or perhaps he didn’t want to live the rest of his miserable life in jail and wanted a quick exit, who knows?
Why did the prison ignore his request?
I don’t understand this. They claimed they didn’t know of Goldsby’s connection to Munger’s victim as Goldsby and his sister used different last names.
I believe they didn’t mention anything on his request to be transferred. Maybe it was genuine incompetency.
Goldsby claimed it was done intentionally; corrections officers had set him up for injuring a police officer and making the police look stupid during his wild car chase.
He said, “This stuff doesn’t happen. You’re talking the same institution, the same unit, the same pod in the same cell as this dude. That’s like hitting the jackpot in the casino seven times.”
He gave Munger what he deserved, but was it worth it?
An exploding U.S. debt bomb affects disastrously all the countries of the world.
Take the 2008 global financial meltdown. What caused this were predatory mortgage lending, unregulated markets, a massive amount of consumer debt, the creation of “toxic” assets and the collapse of home prices. All exclusively by the U.S. And the rest of the world suffered for these U.S. excesses.
This 2i008 meltdown was the foretaste of a 1,000-year storm that is now pouring down every 5 years because of the unrestrained U.S. debt flooding the global financial market and exporting U.S. inflation overseas to everyone. Expect this to be cyclical and as predictable as trump farting a lie every 5 seconds.
On the other hand, China’s debt bomb is domestically contained.
China’s Evergrande Group — once the country’s second-largest property developer — filed for bankruptcy in New York last week. Others followed – including equally major developers like Kasia, Fantasia and the Shimao Group.
All these were “fiscally precipitated”, coming off Beijing’s crack down on excessive borrowing by developers in an attempt to rein in soaring housing prices. China’s banking system is owned and controlled by the CCP and they can micro-target specific companies in the greater attempt at preventing an uncontrolled explosion of the property market’s bubble that could easily implode the wider economy for which China’s real estate sector accounts for 25.4% of the country’s GDP.
And nary a repercussion overseas in the international financial market.
The Male Loneliness Epidemic
This is another puzzle piece of the collapse of Western society.
We have a tendency to get all caught up within our own “little worlds”. We don’t realize all the great stuff “out there”, and when we do, we discover just how much we have missed. And it’s horrible.
In the Arkansas ADC prison, there was a guy who was doing some “20 some”big time” years for telecommunication fraud. He was a “sparky”; an engineer with a great talent for telecommunications and the hardware, and software behind it. But he was locked up after some fifteen years when I met him.
We would go on, and on about how he had this great improvement on telephone land line modems, and how he could double the speed of the transmissions. Sheech!
Fifteen years had passed. We were using satellite, wifi, and cable. No one would even bother touching modems tied to land-lines. But he was locked up for so long that he was; his knowledge was, obsolete. And he did not realize it.
Being prison; the ADC, there was no way that he could subscribe to magazines, or periodicals to be caught up on the news. It was a purposeful isolation bubble. He was unaware.
I tried to tell him, but he wouldn’t listen. Brilliant, and stupid at the same time.
Don’t be like him.
Get out. Experience life. Enjoy some fine food, touch the bark of a tree and pet a cat.
I believe in you.
We start today on a happy note. Please watch this video…
Hungry Cat Went to a Store with a Leaf to Buy Fish, Then the Seller Did Something Unbelievable!
What a great story.
Joe knew a lot of the people that came to his fish store. Many of his customers were regulars who had been buying fish from his family for years. But when one customer started coming around more often he was surprised. A cat came into the shop and checked out what everyone was doing. Then he eventually came back and sat on the counter with a leaf in his mouth. It took a while but they figured out that he was trying to use the leaf to buy fish like he saw people using money. What the seller did next is unbelievable.
Once upon a time, there was an auto repair shop. They had about six bays and a good average turnaround rate. They were doing pretty well. One day when the new manager was walking around, however, he noticed something shocking.
There was a guy… reading a magazine! He wasn’t working on a car or helping customers. He was just sitting behind a counter, eating up profits with his hourly rate.
He knew full well who this guy was. This was the “parts guy”. When the mechanics needed a part—an oil filter, a water pump, brake pads, etc.—they’d go to the parts counter and request it. The parts guy would retrieve it from the shelves and give it to them. If the part didn’t work out, they’d give it back to him and ask for a different one. If they didn’t have the requisite part, he’d order it. He’d also order commonly used parts when they started getting low. He kept the parts shelves nice and tidy.
But here he was in the middle of the work day, just sitting there! How often was he just sitting there? The new manager determined to find out.
So, over the course of the next week, the manager tracked how much time the parts guy “worked” and how much time he just spent sitting around, chomping away at profits. He determined that 80% of the time, the parts guy did no work! He just sat there, reading a magazine or other material. Profitless!
So he fired the parts guy and told the mechanics that now they were in charge of getting their own parts. There was some moaning and groaning, but they complied. What else could they do?
Over the next month, the manager noticed a frightening trend. Their average turnaround time went up, way up! A repair that normally took a few hours now took a few days. A simple oil change went from less than an hour to half a day. Hell, even doing a simple tire plug could take half a day! And they were—gasp—losing customers!
He determined to find the root of the plummet in productivity.
To make a long story short, it was the missing parts guy. When the mechanics got their own parts, they’d grab them off the shelf and try them in their repair. If they didn’t work out or they grabbed too many, they’d just put them back any which way. They didn’t always put them back in the right place, or in the right box.
So that made it harder for them to even find the stuff they needed. Nothing was in order anymore. Plus, no one ever ordered anything, so they were always out of what they needed; they’d order it when they needed it, instead of beforehand. Then they had to wait for parts delivery to get them the stuff they needed, which could take half a day.
So, instead of eating away at profits, the guy who only “worked” 20% of his time allowed the rest of the staff to be more productive. His absence actually killed profits by a wide margin. He was hired back.
China has now de-risked from the possibility of the freezing of their USD assets, including:
a significant portion of their trade is now in currencies other than USD. Trade with MANY countries are now in Chinese RMB or local currencies including trade with Argentina, Iran and Russia. This will continue to increase in the future.
A significant portion of China foreign reserves is now in Gold or other foreign reserves. China has been decreasing its USD foreign reserves and this in itself is causing significant issues for the United States
China has now completed an alternative to SWIFT with its own CIPS and this will allow it to continue trade with other countries
for critical products – like corn, wheat, oil, etc – China has diversified its supply chains. Therefore, it’s economy will not be disrupted by whatever the Americans does
BIGGEST advantage is that China is an economic powerful house producing most things that the United States and the west needs. All it has to do is stop the exports of critical inputs, machineries and or finished products AND it will shut down the economy of those countries. Given this possibility, it is doubtful that the United States will freeze Chinese USD assets.
Star Trek Next Generation – Withdraw Understood !
My Goodness!
Not MM-MM.
This was me today.
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Exactly 12 hours ago, I had a moment I am still processing. This stretch of highway has been paved so badly that every Fireman, EMT, and police officer on the scene said, “This happens constantly in this spot.” A short summer downpour caused the road to become so slick, that turning a corner at 20–25 mph caused the vehicle to lose control. I tried to correct the turn and brake, which caused the back end of the vehicle to face 180 degrees in the opposite direction. Everything was in slow motion as I watched myself fall off the road. I can still see the disorienting view turn sideways as I felt the impact of hitting the ditch. The passenger glass blew out and I realized that my head was hanging upside down near leaves and dirt. I began to shake. I’m shaking now. I’m not a dedicated seat belt wearer, but today, without thinking, I had clicked on the seatbelt before I began my drive. I could feel the adrenaline surge as I realized the only reason I was alive and not thrown under the vehicle was because I had unconsciously made that decision.
A lady and three teenagers had walked over to peer in through the drivers side window. She asked me, as I saw that her hands were shaking from the sight, if I was ok. And to my shock, I was. I broke down crying as the first thing I said was, “This seatbelt saved my life.” She reached her hand through the drivers window and held my hand, rubbing it for security as she called for assistance. I must have hung there for 20–30 minutes before the firefighters cut me out of the tightly locked seatbelt. But I am so thankful for the lady who had selflessly held the hand of a crying stranger until they arrived.
I was able to climb out on my own. I was assessed by paramedics and allowed to tow the truck home. I don’t know what tomorrow is going to bring. We are a middle class family who is down one vehicle in an economy that has not been kind to us. But I can still hear the ladies voice as she said, “You can always get another vehicle, but you can’t get another life.” We will all expire at some time. There are no exceptions. I have been reminded of this today. But it’s not today.
Have you ever wondered what that bar on the backs of trucks is for? Called the Mansfield bar, it was made mandatory after a horrifying accident involving actress Jayne Mansfield.
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On June 29th 1967, Jayne, her driver, lawyer and three kids were driving from Mississippi to New Orleans. The road was dark and visibility was poor as the drove in the early hours of the morning, and was unable to see the large truck in front of them. The 1966 Buick crashed into the back of the truck, slicing off the top of the car.
The three adults including Jayne died on impact, but luckily the kids in the back survived. One of those kids is well known “Law and Order” actress “Mariska Hargitay.”
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As a result of the accident, the national highway traffic safety administration ordered all semis to have the bars installed.
Years ago in the early 90s I had a job in customer service for a telephone company. We had a girl start that was from somewhere down south and she had moved up into the Midwest because her husband got a job in the cattle industry. His job wasn’t normally a traveling job, but his first 2 years he had to do a lot of it to learn about the different livestock auctions, plants, etc. Just normal new hire stuff learning the industry.
She wanted to go home for a long holiday weekend, but her husband couldn’t go because of her work schedule, so she asked one of their mutual friends if he wanted to go with her. He also worked there with us. (Totally innocent, this isn’t a cheating story.) She was always funny, down to earth, well dressed but not anything expensive. Think Younkers clothes instead of KMart, but not high end designer stuff. She had a nice new car but it was a low end base model compact. Everyone loved her and her down home southern attitude.
Forward to next week, they had returned. The friend she took let us in on her secret.
Her family was LOADED. They got to the city they lived in, Nashville I think. Her parents compound was walled, had live security on duty including the gate guard you see in movies. Garage full of Italian sports cars. A Rolls Royce with a chauffeur. In the front hall there was a hand-written check framed and signed by Jimmy Hoffa for 1mil. Uncashed.
Turns out her grandfather had invented something to do with reefer units and was in the trucking industry. All the trucks with their family name I saw on the road were hers, but I didn’t know because she was married and had taken her husband’s last name.
She chose to live a normal life with her husband and struggle like any other young couple instead of living off of her family’s wealth. She was just a sweet normal girl.
China’s Next Generation Laser Weapons To Destroy US in 2.5 seconds Shocked The World
Back in the 70’s, there was a HUGE war in the food industry. It was fat vs. sugar, and in the end, sugar came out victorious. I mean, to fight fat, don’t eat fat, right? Makes sense!
NO.
The science wasn’t complete and the sugar manufacturers raised a lot of capital to get their message out… I mean, of course, “to buy politicians”.
ALL of the evils perpetrated on the American people for as long as there have been any is due to political money. You can make anything a social issue if you buy the right congresspeople.
So sugar was in and fat was out. Bacon was bad, but “diet candy” was good. This was all bullshit because no matter the form it’s in (glucose, high fructose corn syrup, molasses, honey, etc…), it’s all carbohydrates. If you have an excess of carbs and you’re not burning those empty calories, guess where that ends up?
Plain and simple, if you have too many calories and you’re not using them, they will turn to fat. Any developing nation out there will tell you that rice, potatoes, and bread is the easiest way to get calories. Sugar just packs these calories more densely, but we’re programmed for it to taste good, so we just suck it up.
Meanwhile, poor bacon, ham, and fried chicken are out here going, “NOO! We’re made with fat and protein! You can get calories from us, too!”
Even salad is having a tough time of it. Go grab any random, name brand dressing off the shelf. I’m willing to bet within the first 5 ingredients will be either sugar, or something that ends in “-ose” (which is also sugar). Fuck, even our bread is unable to be labelled as bread in other countries because of the sugar levels. Subway in Europe sells sandwiches on cake.
There’s something called “essential fats”. There is no such thing as “essential carbohydrates”.
Penn and Teller had a show a while back called “Bullshit” that debunked all sorts of things. One episode was about weight loss. They had a stagehand who had recently lost a ton of weight. They pulled him out from backstage and said, “Tell the audience how you lost all that weight.”
Dude looks straight into the camera and says, “I stopped eating so fucking much.”
“Not the first and not the last” China-Russia joint naval patrol near Alaska — Global Times
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China and Russia’s third joint naval patrol that allegedly reached international waters near Alaska last week has touched the nerves of US media, which hyped the voyage as “highly provocative,” ignoring the fact that the US constantly sends warships and warplanes to China’s doorsteps for close-in reconnaissance and military exercises under the so-called freedom of navigation.
11 Chinese and Russian vessels approached the Aleutian Islands and have since left without entering US territorial waters, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Sunday, citing US officials.
Four US destroyers and a P-8 maritime patrol aircraft shadowed the combined Chinese and Russian naval force, the report said.
While the WSJ report quoted a US Northern Command spokesperson who said the patrol remained in international waters and was not considered a threat, it also quoted US experts as saying the voyage “is a historical first” and “highly provocative.”
announced on July 26 that China and Russia would soon launch their third joint naval patrol, which would see both sides’ warships sail into West and North Pacific waters following the Northern/Interaction-2023 joint exercises in the Sea of Japan.
The operation is not targeted against any third party and is not related to any international or regional situation, the Chinese Defense Ministry said in a press release at the time.Two Type 052D guided missile destroyers, two Type 054A guided missile frigates and a Type 903 comprehensive replenishment ship of the Chinese Navy are included in the flotilla, while the Russian Navy is represented by vessels including large anti-submarine ships and corvettes, according to media reports.
The Northern/Interaction-2023 joint exercises and the subsequent joint naval patrol fully reflect the level of the strategic mutual trust between the two countries and further enhanced the traditional friendship between the Chinese and Russian militaries, said Senior Colonel Tan Kefei, a spokesperson at China’s Defense Ministry, at a regular press conference on July 27.
China is willing to continue to boost pragmatic communication and cooperation with all parties and contribute positive forces in safeguarding regional peace and stability as well as deal with all kinds of security threats, Tan said.
Despite that China and Russia announced the joint patrol, US media are attempting to hype the “China and Russia threat” theory, Zhuo Hua, an international affairs expert at the School of International Relations and Diplomacy of Beijing Foreign Studies University, told the Global Times on Monday.
The China-Russia joint patrol in international waters in the North and West Pacific marks a positive force that helps safeguard regional stability and security of strategic routes in the Asia-Pacific region at a time when the US is enhancing combat readiness, rallying allies and partners in the region to change defense policies and expand militaries, which escalated regional tensions, Zhuo said.
‘Not first, not last’
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This is not the “historical first” that a China-Russia joint naval patrol flotilla has reached waters off Alaska as US media has claimed, as a similar case took place during the second joint naval patrol between the two countries in September 2022.
At that time, only a lone US Coast Guard cutter was on the scene, compared to the USS John S. McCain, the USS Benfold, the USS John Finn and the USS Chung-Hoon destroyers and a P-8 maritime patrol aircraft deployed this time, the WSJ said.
The US media linked such an escalation in US reaction to the Ukraine crisis and the Taiwan question, but such speculation is purely groundless and is aimed at throwing mud at the normal military cooperation between China and Russia, analysts said, noting US’ hegemonic mindset and its double standard are the true reasons behind its anxiety.
The international waters in the North Pacific including the Bering Sea are important because from here ships can access the Arctic, Fu Qianshao, a Chinese military expert, told the Global Times on Monday.
With the global warming, the Arctic shipping routes could become key passages for civilian ships to carry out commercial activities, Fu said.
While the joint patrols by China and Russia aim to safeguard the security of key strategic routes, the US wants to control the passages out of its hegemonic mindset, experts said.
The US is nervous because the Bering Sea is close to Alaska, but the US should not forget that it frequently sends warships and warplanes to other countries’ doorsteps for so-called freedom of navigation operations, including to the South China Sea and the Taiwan Straits, sometimes alone and sometimes together with other countries’ forces, Fu said.
While the China-Russia joint flotilla did not enter US territorial waters, US warships have in many occasions trespassed into Chinese territorial waters in the South China Sea.
It is ironic that all US forces involved in shadowing the China-Russia joint flotilla have provoked China on Chinese doorsteps, observers said. The USS John S. McCain, the USS Benfold, the USS John Finn and the USS Chung-Hoon destroyers and a P-8 maritime patrol aircraft have all made transits in the Taiwan Straits in the past, while the USS John S. McCain, the USS Benfold and the USS Chung-Hoon have records of being expelled after trespassing into Chinese territorial waters in the South China Sea.
It exposes the US’ double standard that only allows its military presence near other countries and not accepts other countries’ military presence near it, observers said, urging the US to reflect on itself.
From a military perspective, the four US destroyers and a US patrol aircraft could only monitor the China-Russia joint flotilla of 11 warships, and were not capable of doing anything more than that, analysts said.
“In the future, the Chinese Navy could conduct more far sea patrols like this, either alone or together with other countries. The Americans should get use to it,” Fu said.
Before the China-Russia joint naval patrols, Chinese naval warships had already reached international waters near Alaska.
Once such case was in August 2021, in which a four-ship Chinese naval flotilla led by a Type 055 10,000 ton-class large destroyer was reportedly spotted by the US Coast Guard in the US Exclusive Economic Zone, off the coast of the Aleutian Islands in Alaska
.
In 2015, five PLA Navy ships transited expeditiously and continuously through the Aleutian Island chain in a manner consistent with international law, the US Naval Institute News reported at the time. It was an “innocent passage” within 12 nautical miles of the Aleutian Islands, the report said.
Chinese experts said this kind of far sea exercise serves as a countermeasure and a signal against the US hegemonic actions of frequently making provocations near China in the name of freedom of navigation.
the GIRLS REACT to *Alien (1979)* IT’S SO SCARY!! (First Time Watching) Horror Movies
On June 3rd 2022, 3-year-old Ryker Webb went missing from his home in Montana wearing just his onesie. The area was in the middle of the wilderness, inhabited by Mountain Lions, Bears and on the evening he went missing, there was a severe thunderstorm.
His distraught parents feared the worse until they got the call that he had been found. He was discovered two days later on the Sunday, and 2.5 miles from his house.
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A couple heard whimpering from their shed and found Ryker wrapped in a lawnmower-bag to keep warm in the nearly freezing temperatures. When they first found him they said he was hungry and tired, but for his circumstances he was a pretty up-beat mood.
When they questioned him he said that he went for a really long walk and got tired. It is believed he seen the shed and took shelter during the thunder storm and stayed there for 2 days worrying about ever seeing his parents again.
John Chau, 26-year-old American evangelical missionary.
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He was unalived* by an isolated tribe he was trying to convert to Christianity.
The islanders are notorious for being hostile for outsiders to even visit, let alone throw Bibles at, yet John clearly wasn’t one to apply self-preservation.
One of the very few photos taken of the natives of the tribe, 1970s.
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It is illegal under the Protection of Aboriginal Tribes regulations to visit without government permission – John did not obtain this. He seemingly had no respect for the law of the land.
Two local fishermen would take him partway to the island and no further. They let him approach the island on a canoe by himself.
For several days, he persistently made several attempts to communicate with the tribe from the safety of his canoe.
He documented in his journal that they laughed at him, they stared at him, and yelled words he didn’t understand.
On his second-last day a boy shot an arrow through his Bible. He didn’t take for the warning it obviously was.
On his final day, he told the fishermen to leave without him.
The next day they saw his body on the shore. Cautious attempts were made to retrieve his body but no one ever did.
John was an adventurer.
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He was known among his friends for being a thrill-seeker. Throughout his youth he indulged in camping, hiking, et.c.
My point being he went there for himself. Not just religion.
There’s a reason why the government needs to give permission for outsiders to visit. There’s a reason why even the surrounding locals won’t set foot on that island.
John ignored all the rules.
He went there for himself, to fulfill his thrill-seeking, adventurist desires.
I moved to the U.S. 5 weeks later, COVID happened.
All the dreams about off-roading trips, going to places, exploring America went out the window.
Social distancing; lockdown. People went crazy buying hand soaps; toilet papers. There was a time even flour and yeast also shortage
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One afternoon, I was at the grocery store, suddenly I felt something hit my back. I turned around. It was a woman threw a toilet paper bag at me. She yelled: “Go fucking back to your country! You Chinese fuckers! You brought that fucking virus here!”
I picked the toilet paper bag, put it back on the shelf, then I told her: “First of all, I am not Chinese. Second, in case you don’t know, airlines are shutting down, it’s quite difficult to travel right now. Third, you should apologize to me, because I think what you did is on tape” – I pointed at the camera. She ran away.
I’m not sure when I will be able to forget that memory.
NEOCONS ADMIT DEFEAT | BRIAN BERLETIC ON UKRAINE’S STALLED OFFENSIVE | BIDEN BLASTS CHINA
Yes. As a Captain and Company Commander in the Army Reserves I was running an errand in the rural south with one of my high-ranking NCOs, a Sergeant First Class. We needed to stop for lunch, so I pulled up to the sort of small country diner at which I like to dine from time-to-time in the countryside.
My Sgt was African-American. Let’s call him “SFC T.” We were wearing our camouflaged combat fatigues.
SFC T said, “I don’t think we should stop here, sir. This is the local KKK hangout.” I chuckled and said, “Sgt T, this is the 1990’s, not the 1960’s. What are you talking about?” And he replied, “Sir, look at the sign. See how it says ‘Karla’s Kountry Kitchen?’ See how they spell it ‘Karla’ with a ‘K,’ ‘Kountry’ with a ‘K,’ ‘Kitchen’ with a ‘K?’ And see how the ‘K’s are painted different colors than the other letters? It’s the local KKK hangout.” I laughed and dismissed his concerns, saying lightheartedly, “Sgt T, you are totally full of shit. Now get out of the car, we are going in for lunch.”
Understand, I was an officer who ALWAYS very strongly respected, listened to, and relied upon my NCOs. But this was not a military matter and, although I knew racism still existed, it simply was beyond my comprehension that overt, hostile, potentially violent KKK shit could still exist in the 1990’s. In our area? Right out in the open amongst everyone? With a sign above the door? It was as if someone was telling me the earth had two moons.
I opened the door to the cafe and took about three big steps inside, with SFC T right behind me. The place was packed. Immediately, all conversation ceased. Stone cold silence. Simultaneously, every single head in the entire restaurant turned to stare at us. And although no movie soundtrack of impending doom started playing in the background, my mood immediately shifted, from happy-go-lucky Captain anticipating a great country meal with one of my best NCOs, to fight or flight mode anticipating danger and potential violence.
I needed go no farther. I looked over my shoulder and said quietly, “Sgt T, let’s get the f__k out of here.” So we turned, walked straight back out out, and jumped in my car. I cranked it up and drive off at high speed.
Of course, I felt absolutely terrible. Terrible for not believing SFC T or listening to his concerns. Terrible for placing us, and particularly him, in a potentially dangerous situation. Terrible for being so incredibly naive as to have no idea that such bullshit still existed.
I apologized profusely to SFC T as we were driving away. Frankly, he seemed more amused than anything, watching my eyes open and the light bulb go on in my brain.
The more I thought about it, however, the more I found it a very valuable experience. Because I witnessed first hand how two intelligent people, coming from two different backgrounds and, particularly, races, can view exactly the same situation but see two totally different realities. Or, more precisely, one complacent fiction and one harsh reality. And I’ve never forgotten it.
So 30 years later, when I hear people dismiss BLM protests, or fail to see as victims black men who die at the hands of police in questionable circumstances, I think of SFC T and Karla’s Kountry Kitchen. And I marvel at how many people still need to open their eyes.
REACTING to *Aliens (1986)* THE GREATEST SEQUEL?? (First Time Watching) Sci-fi Movies
Originally Answered: What are some mind-blowing facts that sound like ‘BS’, but are actually true?
Liquor and wine are illegal in the U.S. unless they are radioactive. When tested, drinking alcohol is required to have at least 400 radioactive decays per minute for each 750 ml.
Explanation: The United States government has decided that alcohol for consumption must be made from “natural” materials, such as grains, grapes, or fruit. That rules out alcohol made from petroleum. Such alcohol is chemically identical to natural alcohol and just as safe – there’s no difference in taste — so why this rule? The reasons have to do with history (keeping alcohol more expensive, a goal of the anti-alcohol lobby) and minimizing competition (a goal of the liquor lobby).
How can you tell the difference between natural alcohol and alcohol made from petroleum? There’s no chemical difference. The United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, charged with enforcing the natural alcohol rule, has only one reliable test: check for radioactivity. Natural alcohol gets its carbon from plants; the plants got the carbon from atmospheric carbon dioxide. As explained on the previous pages, atmospheric carbon dioxide is radioactive because of the continued bombardment of cosmic rays – particles coming from space that collide with nitrogen molecules and turn it into C-14, radiocarbon. Only one atom in a trillion carbons in the atmosphere is radiocarbon, but that’s enough to be detectable. (One of the authors of this book, RM, invented the most sensitive way to detect C-14, called “Accelerator Mass Spectrometry.”)
Petroleum was also made from atmospheric carbon, but it was buried hundreds of millions of years ago, isolated from the radioactive atmosphere. Radiocarbon has a half-life of about 5700 years, and after a hundred million years, there is nary an atom of C-14 left.
True, bootleggers could get some C-14 and add it to illegal liquor. But that’s beyond the skill set of most of them.
Yeah, on May 30, 1989, although my mom was with me.
It was my birthday. Ever since I was a kid, I had wanted to see Cats on Broadway, so my mom decided to take me for my 16th birthday. She picked me up from my dad’s house, we made the hour-long drive into Manhattan… and saw the big “SOLD OUT” sign outside the Winter Garden Theater. I was bitterly disappointed — sold out on a weekday??
Mom said, well, let’s get lunch and go to the movies instead, and asked if there was anything in particular I wanted to see.
Actually, yes, I told her. Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure.
My mom was awesome. She didn’t even ask what it was about or anything. We went to the diner and got some burgers and milkshakes, then to a movie theater in Peekskill, New York.
We were the only ones there, but we didn’t care. I loved it, and Mom loved it, too. My mother had this fantastic, loud, goofy laugh, and it echoed through the empty theater. I’m not sure which of us enjoyed Bill and Ted’s historical anticsmore, and by the time the credits rolled, I wasn’t so bummed that Cats had been sold out.
That would be the last movie I’d ever see in the theater with my mom. She had 4th stage breast cancer, see, that had metastasized to the brain, and early the next year, they’d find her 3rd brain tumor. She died in November 1990, when she was 54 and I was 17.
Thinking about that day makes me miss my mom something fierce, and especially that big, goofy Kay Truex laugh, echoing in a theater that we didn’t have to share with anyone else. I’m glad we were the only ones there, and that we spent that day in a crummy movie theater alone, rather than on Broadway with a crowd of people.
It was just for us.
Me and my mom on her 54th birthday, March 1990. I’m not sure it’s the last photo ever taken of us together, but it’s the last one I still have. Was she a historical babe or what?
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Scott Ritter: China is Ready for WAR Over Taiwan as Blinken’s “Diplomacy” Fails
As to Gold, I am certain China has more than 2300 Tonnes as Reserves
Yet 7000 is ridiculous
Nobody can acquire so much Gold without a market shock
In 2015, a very reasonable analysis predicted that China’s actual reserves would amount to 98.8 Million Troy Ounces or 3073 Tonnes
This was based on buy patterns of Gold by China’s private players increasing 219% between 2009–2015 while China revealed it’s reserves to grow only by 62%
So many experts reliably predicted China’s Gold Reserves were actually close to 3073 Tonnes and not 1658 Tonnes as claimed by China
From 2015–2023 based on buying patterns China purchased directly through the Central Bank around 661 tonnes
Private players purchases remain confidential and Gold purchases in Yuan with Russia and UAE remain confidential
Assuming 25% of the buying by private players compared to 2009–2015 and 15% of the quantity of gold from Russia and UAE in Yuan than they did in Dollars
That’s around 398 Tonnes roughly
Thus China’s estimated real reserves could be = 3073 + 661+ 398 = 4132 Tonnes
So China may have around 4132 Tonnes of Gold in its reserves
Likewise China’s real reserves may be between $ 4–4.6 Trillion
That’s because this 28nm DUV Lithography machine is FULLY INDIGENOUS and has come to the commercial line in 3 Years and 10 months
There are 15,800 components in this machine and everyone if them is MADE IN CHINA
The Wafer layering is also Chinese
The Final Tested 28nm Chip had a 94.1% yield which is only 1.7% lower than the 95.8% that a 28nm chip made with Western equipment delivers
Even 7% was acceptable by the Chinese (88.8% Yield) so a 94.1% yield was OUTSTANDING
The Chip is estimated to be priced at 4840 Yuan for a stack compared to 5410 Yuan for a stack of 28nm chips that use Western Equipment and are made in China
That’s a 12.50% price cut
Experts estimate that the same 28nm chips being made in Taiwan or Korea using Western equipment would cost 7200 Yuan or almost 50% higher than China’s price
This Machine is now commercial which means by 2027 it will replace existing western DUV equipment completely and also have enhanced quality
This means China have gained full Independence in their 28 nm Chips from any Western Control and technology
Until now it was possible only for 90 nm Chips and above
Thats not why the US is mad though
This was something that was expected by the US the minute the same equipment passed protocol stage in 2018 May with a 59% Yield (Now 94.1%)
It entered Commercial phase in 2019 December
The US is mad because China can use these 28 nm Chips and stack them and get the equivalent of 14 nm and even 7 nm chips
China has made massive strides in stacking
It means China can now have fully Indigenous 14 nm Chips at 89% of the quality that the West delivers and Indigenous 7% Chips at 70.1% of the quality that the West delivers
Now these stacked chips cannot be used commercially as their price would be too high (A 28 nm Chip stacked as a 14 nm would cost 91400 Yuan a stack against a mere 11260 Yuan that it would cost for a Western Equipment made 14 nm Chip in China and 16220 Yuan for a stack made in Taiwan)
However they can be used in Defence applications and National Security related applications where China won’t mind the higher price in exchange for more flexibility
Better to have 71% Quality home chips at 11 times the price for Defence Equipment than have none at all and have a 100% disadvantage with the West
Thats why the US is hopping mad
A Senator named Tom Cotton said this was all Bidens fault and he was too slow and gave too much time for China to catch up
China still has a long way to go
China is around 3/4 the way there
It still needs the last 25% of the race against the toughest of circumstances
9 things Australians are not being told about US military deal
No, the astonishingly expensive tie-up between Australia and the US military deal is NOT about defense of the country, nor is it about bringing stability to Asia. The opposite is true, and Asians know it. The Australians stand to lose a great deal, not just in terms of money, but in the great relationships that they have built with the rest of Asia over many decades, and in the world’s understanding of the Australian character.
THE TRUTH! Oliver Anthony Reaction – Rich Men North of Richmond
Today, while driving, I saw an accident on the road.
A “garbage granny” (one of those old ladies that are in their 90s or so that collect garbage for coins) was “hit” by a truck in the middle of a busy intersection. Now, you all must know that these folk have a reputation of driving and waking in busy highways with the intention of getting hit, and then being awarded free medical care, and financial reimbursement.
Now, this particular granny looked fine. But she just sat there in the road next to her pile of garbage with this expression… “I’m waiting. Come get me and give me my money”.
Meaning; “Everyone knows what is going on, and why I meander in the middle of six lanes of traffic. This driver was the fool that hit me. He will now fund my life, and there isn’t a damn thing anyone can do about it.”
Ah. I shit you not.
China.
Love it, or hate it. But it is 100% unique, that’s fer sure.
The mother left her 1-year-old child in an abandoned house, but after 10 years she returns there and discovers something that makes her cry
Residents of the Russian city of Yaroslavl will never forget an incident that took place more than 10 years ago.
However, it started when a neighbor heard a baby, crying in a nearby house. He didn’t think much about it and continued with the things he had to do that day. But the next day, the baby kept crying.
No neighbor didn’t see anyone in the house where the crying came from, and the lights were never on, not even in the evening.
But at that point, the neighbors started to worry and called the police.
They came and when they entered the house, it was completely empty inside. Those who had lived there had taken everything and disappeared. The only thing they had left behind was their own child!
The one-year-old girl was found on the dirty floor and it was clear she had been there for several days.
An investigation showed that the girl’s name was Liza Verbitskaya, and her parents seemed to have entered the ground, no one could find them.
Liza was taken to hospital, where she recovered in a few days. In the same hospital was a woman, Inna Nika, who was taking care of her sick son, her mother was sitting at his head day and night, but one day she heard a scream from the next room and went to see what it was all about.
She saw Liza and her motherly instincts asked her to protect and take care of her. From that day on, Inna visited Liza daily and brought her clothes, toys, food.
One day, Inna visited the little one and noticed that she was no longer in her hospital room, then found out that she had been taken to an orphanage. She also went to the orphanage to see her, but then it was clear to her that she had to adopt her!
When the adoption documents were completed, Liza was two years old and still had problems with chewing and was traumatized, she could not stand the loud noises. While growing up, Liza had darker skin than her relatives, but now she is beautiful. She became a model and, thanks to her story and modeling career, she became known throughout Russia. People who laughed at the way she looked bit her tongue when they saw her win, as a teenager, more talent contests.
Now that she has become famous, her biological mother tried to contact her but was not allowed. Liza received the woman’s phone number, but she’s still wondering if she wants to meet the one who left her. Our respect goes to Inna, an adoptive mother who turned out to be the hero in the life of this abandoned child, but with such a special destiny!
Well seeing that they’ve built their own bank, for transactions without using the dollar, using concrete, bricks, steel and glass, that looks fairly concrete to me,
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It’s certainly big enough for every member to have a representative office in the building, you can see even the building next door is connected. So it’s very big,certainly plenty of concrete,
First Time Reaction to Oliver Anthony – I Want To Go Home
In this video, TNT reacts to Oliver Anthony – I Want To Go HomeOliver Anthony – I Want To Go HomeOliver Anthony – I Want To Go HomeOliver Anthony – I Want To Go HomeOliver Anthony – I Want To Go HomeOliver Anthony – I Want To Go HomeOliver Anthony – I Want To Go HomeOliver Anthony – I Want To Go HomeOliver Anthony – I Want To Go HomeOliver Anthony – I Want To Go HomeOliver Anthony – I Want To Go Home
What is actually happening in California is actually an interesting case study.
First, the state of California is enormous – close to 40 million people. Most of them are pretty urban, concentrated around the coastal cities (Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, San Diego), with a growing number of large and mid-sized suburban and exurban areas (especially spreading east and north of Los Angeles).
For the first time in its history as a state, California lost a US House seat in the 2020 census, and has actually seen a net-net decline in its population. Many of those leaving are middle class people who, despite the plentiful jobs here, find the cost of living too daunting. I live in San Francisco, where the median price of a house recently got close to two million dollars. And for that money, you are not going to get one of the picturesque Victorian homes overlooking Alamo Square. You are going to get (most likely) a 1300–1500 square foot house that was pretty cheaply constructed in the 1940s or 1950s with three small bedrooms and a bathroom, maybe a half bath.
If you have kids, then you are most likely going to have to choose between putting them in a poor to terrible public school or shelling our more for private school (we were lucky – our son scored high enough on the tests to be admitted to Lowell High School, a ‘magnet’ school which is among the best in the state).
It’s a city where a family of four with an annual income of $150,000 qualifies for low income housing. If they can get on the list.
People are not leaving California because of the liberal politics (we could of course argue the role that those politics play in the current situation) or the taxes. They are leaving because the cost to live here – including the ambient and rising crime – is not worth it.
Some (the largest share) are actually leaving the cities for other parts of California – Sacramento, the central valley, the deserts east of LA – where a family that is solidly middle class can still (sort of) afford a traditional, middle class life. Still more are going to Oregon or Washington or Texas. Recently, many more have moved to Florida, to the glee of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
(NB: One of the answers incredibly remarks that Californians are not going to move to “Cleveland or St Louis or other MAGA strongholds,” which of course is true. The comment is laughably wrong because, of course, few Californians are moving to the midwest, because they are moving to places that economically are growing; they are not moving due to politics. And Cleveland and Saint Louis are not “MAGA strongholds.”)
They are not taking “their jobs” with them, mind you. They are taking their tax dollars and the electoral power.
But here is the hidden truth:
this is not really “new.” In fact, for close to 30 years, net domestic migration in the state has been negative.
Net-net, there are more than a million more people who have left California for other states than the other way round. Most are going (as stated) to Texas or Arizona. The outflow of middle income Californians (and Californians with families) has been hidden for two decades by waves of foreign immigration. So despite the gap of (in some years) more than 100,000 people, the state continued to grow.
Due to COVID and other factors (the growing economies of Asia, for example), this is no longer the case.
Without foreign immigration, California is going to see a significant drop in population.
What does it all mean?
First, if trends continue, what we are going to see is growth in the top (many people moving to California are doing so chasing high-end jobs, like AI engineers or medical researchers) and at the bottom (a large number are also low and unskilled workers coming to take entry-level jobs). That is going to make California’s already terribly skewed wealth inequality even worse. There will be more wealthy enclaves that can afford private security, private schools, privately funded infrastructure. There will also be more crowded sub-standard housing, crowded, poorly-performing schools, and deteriorating public infrastructure.
It’s not really too much of an exaggeration to say that the economy in California more and more looks like a third-world country, with a few super wealthy people, a lot of poor people barely hanging on, and a small number of people in the middle who struggle to justify staying here.
With such wealth and capital inequalities, I strongly suspect that the social fabric here is going to fray. The wealthy, insulated from the problems of the poor, will carry on thinking that everything is fine. Crime – especially property crime like car break-ins and home robberies – will grow, but will not really affect the rich and powerful.
The “Hollywood elite” (and other super-wealthy) will be just fine.
The other truth is, life in California is very nice if you can afford it. The weather in the coastal cities is close to perfect. The geography – coastal mountains, beaches, redwood forests – is beautiful. The diversity of people gives us incredible choices in food and culture. The state is home to the UC system (the best public schools in the country) as well as Stanford and CalTech. The knowledge industry is driven out of Silicon Valley, and the entertainment capital of the world is in Southern California.
Originally Answered: What are things you shouldn't do in life?
Don’t abandon someone suddenly after giving them attention. It kills them.
Don’t waste your time by stalking your ex on fb or checking people’s ‘last seen’ on WhatsApp. If they want to talk to you, they will. If they don’t, they won’t, even in a hundred years.
Don’t compare yourself with anyone. You and the rest are so different, that when you realize it, a comparison won’t even be possible.
Don’t ignore your body and health.
Don’t miss out on important engagements – Birthdays, weddings, your child’s first performance, your dad’s retirement party, reunions – its these events that make the fondest memories.
Don’t take things personally. Even if you know its personal, don’t take it personally. Then you win.
Don’t be rude to your parents. Or siblings. When everyone else will run for cover, its your family that will stand with you as you drench in your storm.
Don’t force someone to be in your life. Let them go, if they want to.
Don’t find reasons to be unhappy. It doesn’t pay to be sad. It pays to be joyous.
Don’t underestimate the power of people. Network.
Don’t let anyone make you feel badly about yourself. Always know your good things and your flaws. Accept them. Correct them. Or don’t correct them. But don’t let anyone else capitalize on them.
My fiance suddenly stopped breathing, went into a coma and remained that way for 10 days; after numerous hospital tests we found out there was no blood flow to his brain. We removed his life support and donated his organs.
Since he was only 35 years old when he died, and a former DJ popular in the Chicago and Detroit areas, the funeral home was packed full of people for his wake. One of his childhood friends, we’ll call him “Jack,” was in need of a kidney transplant and VERY sick, and we were able to directly donate his kidney to Jack. Due to the organ donations, autopsy and other things that had to happen prior to the funeral, the wake was scheduled a week after my fiance passed away. During that week Jack received the transplant and was able to make it to the wake.
He stood in front of my fiance’s red casket and spoke of his health issues and how he had given up hope, believing he wouldn’t be around much longer. Now, my fiance had given him another chance at life and Jack would be able to watch his 4-year-old son grow up. Jack’s son was there too, and walked up to him and held his hand during the speech.
I was already an emotional wreck, but through my tears I glanced around long enough to see that there was not a single dry eye in the funeral home at that moment. Though I questioned how I would go on living without my best friend and my lover, Jack provided a ray of sunshine during the wake that day and reminded us all that my fiance would live on in all the people he helped save with his organs.
Awesome Beef Stroganoff
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Ingredients
6 cups uncooked egg noodles
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 pounds beef sirloin steak, cut into thin strips
1 package onion or roasted garlic gravy mix for steak
8 ounces fresh mushrooms, quartered
1/4 cup tomato paste
1 (10 ounce) can beef broth
1 cup sour cream
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley (for garnish)
Instructions
Cook noodles according to package directions-keep warm.
In a large heavy bottom pot, heat the oil over medium high heat. Add meat and brown.
Sprinkle gravy mix over meat.
Add mushrooms; sauté for 5 minutes.
Stir in tomato paste and broth. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for about 10 minutes, or until thickened, stirring occasionally.
Remove from heat, and stir in sour cream.
Top with parsley and serve over hot cooked noodles.
I remember my grandfather telling me the story of buying his first home, and how stressful it was. He was working as a teacher making $2,500 per year, and was trying to figure out how to budget so he could afford to make the payments on the $5,500 house he just bought.
If he had managed to get his hands on $50,000 back then, he probably would have thought he was set for life — a mere 5% return would have matched his annual salary, and he would never have to work another day.
Obviously that plan wouldn’t have worked out — what he made in a year back then is less than most people make in a month today.
Right now, $1 million is about equivalent to what $50,000 was in his day, where a 5% return would put you right at the median income. And, just like in his day, that won’t be enough for someone in their early 20’s to make it to retirement age. In another 50–60 years, one million dollars will be the median household income. Minimum wage will be $200k a year, and it still won’t be enough to support a family.
The only way $1 million will be enough to retire on is if you don’t plan on living that long.
If you think that’s impossible, just remember the story about a how a teacher from Massachusetts once mortgaged a $5,500 house on a $2,500 annual salary — a house that today would fetch about $950,000.
AMERICAN RAPPER REACTS TO -Oliver Anthony – Rich Men North Of Richmond
By “see around them,” I’m literally talking about the people I see here in Chicago. I’m not talking about global poverty or people I don’t literally see with my own eyes.
Compared to the majority of people in my city (Chicago), my family is doing very well for ourselves. Yet there are entire zip codes in this city where practically everyone lives in poverty.
My wealth and their poverty are unrelated. I didn’t steal my wealth from them. I’m not the one failing them. Their political leaders—none of whom I’ve ever supported or voted for—have been failing them for generations now. The concentrated poverty in parts of Chicago is the completely predictable result of political policies enacted by politicians who get almost universal support from those same areas.
There’s been a huge increase in the number of homeless people, beggars, and refugees in the parts of Chicago I travel through on a regular basis. I am actually about to run my Sunday morning errands, and I already know which intersections will have which beggars. I’m not exaggerating when I say that literally every single major intersection (where two two-lane roads meet) has at least one beggar now. Some of one at all four stops at the intersection.
Again, my relative wealth and their poverty are unrelated. The system has failed them. I am not the system.
One intersection near me has a man who begs on the street, while his wife and child sit nearby on the sidewalk. According to his sign, he is a refugee from Guatemala. Assuming he got here via the normal refugee channels, his family has been failed by the governments of at least three countries (Guatemala, Mexico, the USA), two states (Texas and Illinois), and now one city (Chicago). I did not fail this man and his family. Several dozen politicians did. My wealth, or lack of it, would not have changed anything for this man.
I give food to the homeless sometimes. I donate to my church’s food pantry on a regular basis. I never give cash directly to the homeless.
I also have A LOT of money taken from me via taxes which, in theory, should be used to help those in need. The problem is, of course, that, unlike when I give food to the homeless directly, the taxes which are taken from me go through the hands of politicians on its way to help the needy. Shockingly, very little of it ends up helping the needy.
And a lot of the “help” the needy get from the government is designed in such a way as to create dependence on that help. I’m not saying that’s intentional. I’m not saying it’s not intentional, either.
I’m just saying that when I see this:
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But I also see scenes like this increasing all around Chicago:
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And I think about how much the government takes from me in income, property, and sales taxes every year, I realize pretty quickly that I’m not the problem here. I should feel no shame for my lifestyle.
Taking all of my family’s wealth away wouldn’t help poorer people at all. In fact, it would likely make things worse for them, at least here in Chicago. Chicago needs all of the upper-middle class taxpayers it can get. The single worst thing that can happen to a city is for it to lose most of its wealthiest citizens.
Just ask the citizen of, say, Gary, Indiana, or Detroit how well that worked out for them, when anyone who could afford to leave town did so.
This house went viral last year. The highway was located in Zhuhai in Guangdong province. It seems the government had offered the owner 8 million RMB (around 1.4 million USD) to move. The owner refused. Rumor had it the owner thought the government would give him 10 million. But the moving cost has actually exceeded the cost of the (section of the) highway itself. So the designers revised the design to build the highway around this house.
It seems that the owner had eventually moved out of this house to a government-provided location. But the highway was already built.
My First time hearing Oliver Anthony – Rich Men North Of Richmond
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Chinese mainland suspends mango imports from Taiwan
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The Chinese mainland has decided to suspend the entry of mangoes from Taiwan starting Monday, according to a mainland spokesperson.
In accordance with relevant laws, regulations and standards on the mainland, the decision by the General Administration of Customs was taken as a scientific and reasonable biosecurity precaution, said Zhu Fenglian, spokesperson for the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council on Monday.
The mainland had informed the Taiwan side of the decision, Zhu said, adding that Taiwan is urged to further improve its phytosanitary quarantine management system.
Since 2023, customs authorities on the mainland have detected Planococcus minor, a quarantine pest, in mangoes from Taiwan. This pest could pose a serious threat to agricultural production and ecological security on the mainland.
This is Cobalt-60, the most emissive radioactive isotope currently known. As far as I know, it’s also the only one with a label that says “Drop and Run.” It’s used to sterilize medical equipment and can quite easily sterilize you within just a minute or 2 if you held it in your hand.
There is a stand-up sketch by Ricky Gervais, in which he overhears two morbidly obese American women sitting in a plane. One of them is eating a bucket of KFC chicken, and tells the other:
“This is the best chicken I had all day.”
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We just spent some time in the US, and on one of the last days, we grabbed a movie in a dine-in movie theatre in Las Vegas. (The Meg 2 — don’t ask.) When a waitress came to take our order, we asked for the smallest size of popcorn they had. She had a hard time understanding the question (“why order the smallest size ?”).
She kindly explained that they only had one size, and that was a bucket.
With the three of us, we managed to eat about a quarter of the bucket, but we saw other people finish an entire bucket on their own.
I think this is one of the main reasons of America’s obesity problem: Americans eat by the buckets. In many restaurants, the portions of the food are so grossly exaggerated that it is hardly a mystery why so many Americans are (morbidly) obese. Same for soda drinks and the like.
And besides that, American food is in general much less healthier than your average European or Asian food, due to less strict food regulations and the enormous amounts of added sugar in virtually everything.
Add to that the fact that Americans stopped walking altogether (so to speak), and that more and more, the obesity pandemic is embraced instead of fought. In the places I have lived in mainland Europe, I have never seen a morbidly obese person ride around in a trolley (such as in the picture), but you see them on a daily basis in the US.
Instead of actively losing some weight, such people simply step into a trolley because walking has become too hard. The woman in the image is twenty-three, by the way.
So there you have it: Buckets, Trolleys and Sugar.
The problem is BTS.
For the People! Oliver Anthony – Rich Men North Of Richmond- Reaction
China hopes to do so, China is trying to do so, but it’s no longer an easy task for China to do so now.
There is an old Chinese saying, 树欲静而风不止, which means “the trees may prefer calm but the wind will not subside”, or “the trees long for peace but the wind will never cease”.
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Just like the picture I took in the Summer Palace in a windy day, if the wind is too strong, how could the tree stay calm? Just impossible.
The smear campaigns initiated by the US and followed by some other Westeren nations, are the wind, getting stronger recently as Joe Biden has indeed rallied them once again.
China is the tree. Its roots are still stable in the soil, its major branches are still steadfast, but it really can’t hold all its smaller branches and leaves still. And sometimes, it has to even sacrifice some of its smaller branches and leaves if the winds are way too strong and turn into storms.
But, as long as the roots and main branches are still healthy, strong and steadfast, new branches will sprout out next year!
My grandma passed in 2022, my father had passed in 2020. In her will she had it to where my 2 brothers and I inherited my dad’s 3rd. We were also to be included in any decisions on her property. My 2 uncles thought since they were co executors that everything was now theirs and they didn’t have to say anything to us. They gave away and took a lot of her belongings before I found out. I went to a lawyer and told him what was going on. I then called my uncles and told them they HAD to include us. They said “well, our lawyer says we don’t have to.” I called their lawyer and told him what they said. He immediately went and called them and said they were wrong. My 1 uncle gave his stepchildren first dibs over us and any of the actual grandchildren. The stepchildren who wanted NOTHING to do with my grandma or our family got first dibs. Then they tried to auction off my grandma’s house and 200 acres without telling us. I found out and called lawyers, everyone knew I wanted the house and 10 acres. They were trying to sell it behind my back. Grandma did not have any debt. So they were just being stupid. In the end, they were granted to sell 190 acres. We bought the house. 114 years of family history in this house. I have not heard an apology from any of them. Our trust in them was broken. At this time, they are not allowed at my house.
A man in China has been using a club as a nutcracker for 25 years, until he realised what it was actually used for. A man living in the Shaanxi Province in China was given a gift by a friend and for 25 years he didn’t know what it was.
The mans favourite treat was Wallnuts and the gift was perfect for cracking open the shells. He figured his friend know off his love for nuts so gifted him a club to crack them open, and for 25 years he used the club thinking that’s what it was intended for.
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It wasn’t until he seen the nutcracker on a Government flyer identifying dangerous, prohibited explosives when he realised the club wasn’t in fact a nutcracker, but a Chinese type 67 hand grenade. The grenade which was a nicknamed the Potato masher, was invented by the German Army during World War 1.
The hand grenade had a explosive device at the top with a pulling string running through it to a cap at the bottom. Pulling the string lights the fuse before being thrown at the enemy, but in this case it was used as a nut cracker for a quarter of a century.
The Man Who Discovered a Lost Ancient City In His Basement
A man from Derinkuyu, in the Nevsehir province of Turkey was renovating his basement. Using only a sledgehammer, he broke through one of his walls; and felt cool air coming in from the other side. Inside he found a small room-sized cave. This area of Turkey has complex cave systems so he thought he accidentally stumbled into one. He didn’t. That first small room — was only the beginning.
I was 17 years old. I was driving drunk, with five other kids in my car. It was 1970. We had bought two cases of beer (illegally, of course) and it was pretty much all gone. It was about 1 AM.
We came to the main intersection in the small city nearest to where I lived. There wasn’t a single car in sight. Oddly, there was a cop in the intersection, presumably directing whatever traffic there was. Perhaps the stoplight was not working; I have no recollection.
I stopped at the light (working or not). At which point my friend Ralph, who was 15, leaned out the back seat window, yelled out “Fucking cop,” and threw an empty beer bottle at the policeman. It landed at his feet, where it smashed into pieces.
The policeman calmly walked over to our car, at which point Ralph started yelling “I didn’t do it,” which was rather obviously a lie. The policeman had me pull over. He told all of us to get out of the car. As he did this, one of the passengers, Denise, started explaining to him that she was from another planet. The cop ignored her. He told us to take all the beer bottles out of the car and place them on the hood of the car. When we ran out of room there, we put them on the roof. There were 46 empty bottles and one full one. Ralph asked if he could please drink the full one. The cop said no. Then he had us take them all to a nearby garbage can and dispose of them.
Then came the truly amazing part. He talked to us. For about five minutes. He explained that when he was our age, he also did stupid things. But he never drove drunk. He explained how dangerous that was. He did not tell us to swear we would never drive drunk. He simply told us that he was going to let us go. He did not even say how much trouble we could be in for underage drinking and drunk driving. He did not have to.
Finally he asked if there was anyone among us who was sober and had a driver’s license. My older brother did. He had us get back in the car, handed my brother the keys (which he had taken away when he first stopped us), and told my brother to take us home.
And that was all.
Even then, I realized the officer was an exceptional cop. He gave us a second chance when he could have ruined our lives. I never properly thanked him. So if, by some miracle, Officer Roger Strickland of the Freehold, New Jersey police force is still out there—thank you from the bottom of my heart. I think you would be proud of how my brother and I ended up (I have not seen any of the others in my car that night for over 50 years). All the best to one of the best.
Bacon-Wrapped Filet Steaks Topped with Roasted Garlic Butter
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Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients
12 large garlic cloves, peeled
1/4 cup olive oil
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into small chunks
Kosher salt
3 1/2 teaspoons chopped chives
1/2 teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme leaves
4 (6 to 7 ounce) filet steaks, about 1 inch thick
4 very thin slices of lean bacon
6 inch wooden skewers or toothpicks, soaked in water for 10 minutes and patted dry
Instructions
Heat oven to 400 degrees F.
Place peeled garlic and olive oil in 1-cup, ovenproof ramekin, soufflé dish or custard cup. Cover dish tightly with aluminum foil and place in oven. Roast on center rack until garlic is golden and very tender and soft when pierced with knife, about 30 minutes (start checking cloves after 20 minutes and then every 5 minutes until done).
With slotted spoon, remove garlic from bowl and reserve oil. Place garlic, 1 1/2 teaspoons of the reserved oil, butter and 1/8 teaspoon salt in food processor or blender and process, pulsing machine on and off for 30 seconds or less until garlic is coarsely chopped and blended with butter and oil. Transfer garlic butter to small bowl and stir in 2 teaspoons of the chives. (Garlic butter can be prepared 1 day ahead. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate. Bring to room temperature 30 minutes before ready to use.)
When ready to cook steaks, oil a grill rack and prepare grill.
In small bowl, stir together 1 teaspoon kosher salt, coarsely ground black pepper and thyme. Rub both sides of each filet with some of this seasoning. Then wrap each steak around its sides with 1 slice of bacon. Skewer bacon in place with wooden skewer or with 2 to 3 wooden picks.
Grill steaks until lightly charred on the outside and until bacon is cooked, about 5 minutes per side for medium-rare.
When done, remove steaks from fire and place on warm serving plate. Remove toothpicks.
Top each steak with 1 generous pat of roasted garlic butter and sprinkle with some of remaining chives. Butter will start to melt and season the steaks.
I am from India and recently visited China. In india we use to blame the population for all our problems. But China had no issues of it. Atleast not in its urban areas. The people there respected rules and have high value about their culture. They take care of their health and have a proper diet. I don’t know what you mean by uncivilized. But if there are uncivilized Chinese I am sure it’s because they are exposed to western culture and those who embraced west including Indians are certainly uncivilized.
OLIVER WHAT THE F**K!!!!! | First Time Reacting To Oliver Anthony – Rich Men North Of Richmond!
I put in an order for tools for work. The order was for myself and two coworkers. Hundreds of dollars worth of tools, including getting one of our newbies set up with good kit so he didn’t have to scrounge for tools like myself and the other senior tech.
Toolup split the order into two shipments, which is fine I guess. The first package arrive with one wire stripper and one screwdriver. For weeks the other shipment showed “in processing”. Finally I called asking where the hell my tools were. They had no idea. After several days of calls they figured out that six weeks prior the shipper had been unable to locate a fucking Air Force base and sent the order back. Toolup refunded the purchase, but made absolutely zero meaningful contact with me about it. I’d been deluged with promotional crap, but I double checked. The last contact I had about my order was “in processing”. This meant that I missed the purchase window and funding got pulled so I can’t reorder my tools for at least a year.
So in the end they literally tripled the amount of paperwork I had to do by forcing me to amend all my prior paperwork and also process the return credit, and I still don’t have my fucking tools because they utterly failed to do any sort of meaningful follow up communication.
Personally or professionally I’m never doing business with them again.
My ex boyfriend and I dated for three years through college. He had been abusive, emotionally, physically and sexually. We had broken up many times. We finally broke up for the final time when he punched me and the RA had found out and told the college officials. It was his last year of college. I was brought into the deans office. It was up to me if he should be kicked out of college. This was a private college and in the early 90’s.
I told them not to kick him out of college. I knew if I had, he would have killed me. He graduated. One morning I woke up to find that someone had broken into my house, and my earrings that he had given to me were gone. Nothing else was touched. Then the phone calls started. Mind you he had supposedly left town to move back with his parents until he left for grad school. “Hey, I liked that flowery dress you were wearing last night.” Yes, I was wearing a flowery dress the night before. Or .”I can see you wherever you are at all times of the day.” Or “ I am sorry to hear about your cat.” Wait, what?? Only to find out my cat at my parents house was missing. And never found.
I started dating someone else. Then it was, “please tell ____ that I know all about him, and I am watching.”. We found out from friends that he would be coming to the area to fly out of LAX to go to grad school at Harvard. By this time the police had been notified of everything that had happened, and they told me that bc he hadn’t harmed me physically, there was nothing I could do, but it would be a good time to get out of town for the weekend. This is how I met my new boyfriends family. I was in hiding. They lived in Northern California.
We came back to school. The phone calls stopped and then the letters started. The anger, was now put into writing. How dare I hide away from him .He went out and bought a gun and he was looking for away to use it, etc..
I started to work as a nanny that fall. One time as I was getting the kids ready for school on a Monday, the kids went outside to wait so I could walk them to school, I had to get something for the baby inside. I came outside and as we were all walking to school the little girl who was in the 4th grade said, oh your friend says hi. I was like what friend, who knows I work here. I said oh, did this person have a name, no, he just said a friend. I immediately went into that place of panic. I kept my cool, and I asked what he looked like, and yes it was him, he had found me.
Not a lot happened to me after that. I did find out that he had gotten kicked out of grad school for raping someone, and he had been fired from a few jobs. Karma?
Oliver Anthony Rich Men North of Richmond Reaction Video
Not only one time, but every time all of my children are over for a family get together. I don’t consider myself dumb, I graduated high school with honors, I have worked hard all of my life so far, was taught to use common sense by my parents and married a wonderful, smart, and hard-working lady, and we have four children. As they grew up and progressed through school, they have each chosen their own path.
Our oldest son is an I.T. computer “nurd” and works from his home running the I.T. help line for a division of Sony helping any embedded I.T. techs solve problems they cannot solve themselves.
Our oldest daughter just received her Doctorate in Nuro-psychology from Yale University and is proving to be an innovator in the field with her front-line work to advance innovations in Alzheimer’s research.
The youngest Son is a 2018 honors graduate from The United States Military Academy at West Point, Captain, and Company Commander, in the U.S. Army, Working on his master’s degree in military history.
Any our youngest daughter just graduated with honors with a degree in teaching drama and starts her first teaching position next week.
All four are extremely intelligent and found vastly different careers, and when they are together the conversations are so far above my head I can only sit there and smile.
I smile because I look around and think to myself “How in the world did I get so lucky?” And then I realize “it is all thanks to my wife, and God.”
A few months ago I was in the Liaoning province in northeastern China. We met the CEO of a smart city there who was offering us rent-free premises for 3 years, a low interest loan [2%] and cheap electricity if we choose to build our robots there.
Chinese governments really believe that industrialization is crucial to mass employment and need to woo not just large companies but SMEs too.
In contrast, Indian general public attitude towards industrialization is often poisonous. The bureaucrats are too slow to move, the politicians often careless and the common public think “industrialists” make a lot of profits, who just needs to be taxed high.
It is far harder to start a factory in India and the interest rates are substantially high. Land prices near major cities are through the roof and the infrastructure abysmal. Thus, industrialists are not able to fully tap into India’s lower wages.
Indians often moan about the low rate of innovation in India. We moan that very few things are made in India. To really make in India, the society has to put industrialization at the highest priority. It cannot be seen as lower priority compared to agriculture and other sectors.
WHAT IN SOULFUL PAIN IS THIS?! (ADHD Reaction) | OLIVER ANTHONY – RICH MEN NORTH OF RICHMOND
People! We are at peat transition. I have no idea how long this plateau will last but we are most certainly at peak.
Consider Africa. Niger is kicking the colonial powers out, and they refuse, and so the rest of Africa bands together to throw the bums out. Three nations, under proxy control, plan to invade Niger. What happens? Grass roots military coups though the “puppet masters” out.
Consider Oliver Anthony and how his music resonates.
Consider what is going on in Ukraine right now. Not the narrative. But the actual happenings. Where the EU went to Putin and started to make demands, and he dismissed them. They are P-O-W-E-R-L-E-S-S.
Consider the strange “fire” in Hawaii and the conspiracy theories behind it. And the fact that the entire area is now under wraps and fully blocked off doesn’t help the speculation. WTF is going on?
Japan radiation from the power plant. The cheapest solution, my ass. This water can be purified. But it isn’t. Some one (read USA) wants a conflict and wants a lot of Asians to die.
Look at San Francisco. First the orgy of riots. Then the store closures. Then the tenants move out. Followed by a ghost town. Now the “town counsel” has plans to bulldoze all the historic buildings down town and put up a gigantic football stadium surrounded by parking lots.
The insanity is off the charts!
Meanwhile China plugs on and on. Huawei P90 is coming out. 7nm chips. All Chinese made and manufactured. Full 5G capability, and the West loses out…
Genocidal, Zionist Israhell has expunged all historic Arabic names in Palestine for a reason.
Algeria is removing French from all their street signs.
Russia and China are switching English signage to phonetic and Pinyin, respectively.
Words are powerful things.
Jeff
Police have revealed that devices like the one pictured above, designed to derail trains, have been found — and are being found — on railroad tracks all over the United States.
Police warn that they could lead to train derailments and the death of passengers. The devices have been found all over the country, from the West Coast to the East.
It now seems self-evident that America is literally under attack – from within.
More details as they become available.
UPDATE 7:53 AM EDT —
Additional information has come in regarding the device shown above. What is pictured is a standard railroad siding derailer. It is designed to derail a car with dangerous materials from going on the main line and becoming a run away (bomb).
While it is good to hear this is a known safety device, this explanation does NOT address why police are reporting finding these devices on mainline tracks all over the USA. This would seem to indicate people within the railroad industry, with ready access to such devices, have begun misusing them.
Sitting out side talking to a friend of mine and all of a sudden a loud bang made me jump. Turned to see a van had run straight into this little car. I was able to catch the plate number. I ran inside asked for a pen and paper quickly and jotted it down. Cashier looked so confused. The woman whose car it was was at the counter finishing checking out. She went outside and came back in saying someone hit her car. I was able to give her the plate number and bought her a coke. Waiting with her till her husband and then the cops showed up. Her whole frame was bent couldnt open the driver side door. The cops were able to ID the guy very quickly and this wasn’t his first accident in the year. Not his second either. The husband was so grateful for how I treated his wife during the incident he insisted on giving me twenty bucks. That twenty went to into getting my Mother a Christmas present. Caught up with them a few months later. She thanked me again and his insurance ended up paying for a new car for them. He (the driver) had to pay his insurance back.
I am an American who resides in the United States.
I defend China because of history. The United States, England, France, Japan and Europe colonized much of the planet between 1800 and 1960. China was a victim of this aggression.
China continues to be a victim of American aggression. Since 1949, the United States has provided weapons and military support to the losing side in the Chinese Civil War, i.e. Taiwan. This is a continuation of 200 years of colonialism.
The United States is aided and abetted in its WAR against China by the Western media. Like others posting here, I view the Western media as propaganda, created by persons in the United States who want to sell weapons at the expense of China, Russia and the Middle East.
I believe that it is important to stand up for the truth, and to put an end to America’s endless wars for profit. The United States should not be a nation of endless war.
The present leaders of the United States have tarnished the nation, and caused it to be condemned in the eyes of the world. This is a very dangerous situation, for the United States. America is dependent upon credit and imported goods from the rest of the world.
I recognize that unchecked power in China could be a problem, when the United States is weakened due to its debt. However, the United States brought that problem upon itself, by closing two-thirds of its industrial base. The balance of power will correct itself.
Hopefully, America’s leaders will wake up soon. Power is about to be taken from their hands.
The Origins Of The Neocons And Their Lunatic World View
Linda’s Easy Lasagna
This is my favorite lasagna recipe because you do not cook the lasagna noodles first. I have always disliked cooking the lasagna noodles, so this is a great solution for me. This turns out perfect every time.
2023 08 12 17 52
Yield: 12 servings
Ingredients
1 1/2 pounds ground beef or turkey or Italian sausage*
1 jar spaghetti sauce or homemade sauce
1 can tomato sauce
1 tomato sauce can water
2 pounds ricotta or cottage cheese, mixed with 4 eggs
12 ounces lasagna noodles, UNCOOKED
4 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
Grated Parmesan cheese
Garlic powder
Salt
Instructions
Brown meat. Drain.
Add sauces and water.
Spoon a small amount of sauce onto the bottom of a lasagna pan or a 13 x 9-inch baking dish.
Place a layer of UNCOOKED noodles (overlapping slightly), one-third of the cottage cheese mixture, a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese and one-third of the shredded cheese.
Pour about one-third of the sauce over the top.
Repeat twice more. Cover with more cheese.
Bake, covered and sealed with foil (DO NOT LET THE FOIL TOUCH THE CHEESE), at 350 degrees F for 1 hour.
Uncover and bake 15 minutes longer to brown the top.
Let stand for 15 minutes before cutting.
Notes
* Remove Italian sausage from casings and crumble as it cooks.
I usually make this with Italian sausage, but I have also used sliced cooked meatballs. It’s yummy whatever you decide to use! Of the two spaghetti sauce options, if you have time, go with the homemade sauce!
You can also bake for 1 hour without the cheese on top, then put the cheese on top and bake 15 minutes longer uncovered.
Friend, who works for a financial broker, calls me, says she needs a break from work. Could I come in and be a receptionist for a week so she can take a break? I would be on the payroll.
OK. So, I do the week.
Then she says that I’m doing great, can I stay the month? Hmmm, OK. The extra money is nice.
At the end of the month. she says, “I am off on vacation for the next three months. Have fun.”
I didn’t know this, but she does NOT tell the broker. It is only a two-person office, and the broker is a sweet guy who does not deserve to be dumped on like this.
She never comes back.
I worked there two years until he sold the company and retired.
China’s cancellation of Germany’s $100 billion car order sends Europe into a panic!
https://youtu.be/tfqgWibM71g
Dear America – You Are Delusional, and Failing at Everything You Undertake
Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan, Russia sanctions – “All of these harebrained schemes, hatched in Washington, have backfired grandly.”
“Those who have pushed for them are now reduced to just two face-saving maneuvers: blaming their political opponents; and blaming Russia. And these two maneuvers are set to backfire as well.”
Back in the days when I was still trying to do the corporate thing, I regularly found myself in a bit of a tight spot simply by failing to keep my mouth shut.
I seem to carry some sort of gene that makes me naturally irrepressible. I can keep my mouth shut for only so long before I have to blurt out what I really think, and in a corporate setting, where thinking isn’t really allowed, this causes no end of trouble. It didn’t matter that I often turned out to be right. It didn’t matter what I thought; it only mattered that I thought.
American involvement in the middle-eastern project is now limited to Putin’s sporadic courtesy calls to Trump, to keep him updated.
Of all the thoughts you aren’t allowed to think, perhaps the most offensive one is adequately expressed by a single short phrase: “That’s not gonna work.”
Suppose there is a meeting to unveil a great new initiative, with PowerPoint presentations complete with fancy graphics, org charts, timelines, proposed budgets, yadda-yadda, and everything is going great until this curmudgeonly Russian opens his mouth and says “That’s not gonna work.”
And when it is patiently explained to him (doing one’s best to hide one’s extreme irritation) that it absolutely has to work because Senior Management would like it to, that furthermore it is his job to make it work and that failure is not an option, he opens his mouth again and says “That’s not gonna work either.” And then it’s time to avoid acting flustered while ignoring him and to think up some face-saving excuse to adjourn the meeting early and regroup.
I lasted for as long as I did in that world because once in a while I would instead say “Sure, that’ll work, let’s do it.” And then, sure enough, it did work, the company had a banner year or two, with lots of bonuses and atta-boy (and atta-girl) certificates handed out to those not at all responsible for any of it. Flushed with victory, they, in turn, would think up more harebrained schemes for me to rain on, and the cycle would repeat.
It is probably one of the main saving graces of corporations that they do sometimes (mainly by mistake) allow some thought to leak through. The mistake in question is a staffing error in promoting those constitutionally incapable of keeping their mouths shut or shutting off their brains. Such errors create chinks in the monolithic phalanxes of corporate yes-men and yes-women.
Trump is too old to be a reformer or a revolutionary. He is of an age when men are generally mostly concerned about the quantity and consistency of their stool and how it interacts with their enlarged prostates.
The likelihood of such mistakes increases with the agony of defeat, which causes attrition among the ranks of qualified yes-sayers, creating holes that can only be plugged by promoting a few non-yes-sayers. However, this only seems to work in the smaller, hungrier corporations; the larger, better-fed ones seem to be able to avoid experiencing the agony of defeat for a very long time by moving the goal posts, outlawing any discussion of said defeat or other similar tactics. Eventually the entire organization goes over the cliff, but by then it is of no benefit to anyone to attempt to inform them of their folly.
It is much the same with governments, except here the situation is even worse. While the smaller, hungrier governments, and those blessed with a fresh institutional memory of extreme pain, do not have the luxury of lying to themselves, the larger political agglomerations—the USSR, the EU, the USA—have the ability to keep themselves completely immunized against the truth for historically significant periods of time.
The USSR clung to the fiction of great socialist progress even when it was clear to all that the cupboard was bare and there were rats gnawing through the rafters. The EU has been able to ignore the fact that its entire scheme is one of enriching Germany while impoverishing and depopulating eastern and southern Europe, neglecting the interests of the native populations throughout. And the amount of self-delusion that is still currently in effect in the USA makes it a rather large subject.
Regardless of how great the lies are and how forcefully they are defended, a moment always comes when the phalanx of truth-blocking yes-men and yes-women stops marching, turns and runs. This event results in a tremendous loss of face and confidence for all involved.
It is the crisis of confidence, more than anything else, that precipitates the going-off-a-cliff phenomenon that we could so readily observe in the collapse of the USSR in the early 1990s. I have a very strong hunch that similar cliff-diving exercises are coming up for the EU and the USA.
But for the time being I am just another disembodied voice on the internet, watching from the sidelines and periodically saying the unfashionable thing, which is: “This isn’t gonna work.” However, I’ve said this a number of times over the years, on the record and more or less forcefully, and I feel vindicated most of the time.
Internationally, for example:
• Carving the Ukraine away from Russia, having it join the EU and NATO and building a NATO naval base in Crimea “wasn’t gonna work.” The Ukraine is a part of Russia, the Ukrainians are Russian, and the Ukrainian ethnic identity is a Bolshevik concoction. Look for a reversion to norm in a decade or two.
• Destroying and partitioning Syria with the help of Wahhabi extremists and foreign mercenaries supported by the US, Saudi Arabia and Israel while Russia, Iran, Turkey and China stand idly by “wasn’t gonna work”; and so it hasn’t.
• Giving Afghanistan “freedom and democracy” and turning it into a stable pro-Western regime with the help of invading NATO troops “wasn’t gonna work,” and hasn’t. Western involvement in Afghanistan can go on, but the results it can achieve are limited to further enhancing the heroin trade.
• Destroying the Russian economy using sanctions “wasn’t gonna work,” and hasn’t. The sanctions have helped Russia regroup internally and achieve a great deal of self-sufficiency in energy production and other forms of technology, in food and in numerous other sectors.
All of these harebrained schemes, hatched in Washington, have backfired grandly. Those who have pushed for them are now reduced to just two face-saving maneuvers: blaming their political opponents; and blaming Russia. And these two maneuvers are set to backfire as well.
In the meantime, the world isn’t waiting for the US to shake itself out of its stupor.
The fulcrum of American influence in the Middle East is Saudi Arabia and the petrodollar. In turn, Saudi Arabia rests on three pillars: the Saudi monarchy, Wahhabi Islam and the petrodollar. As I write this, the next king, Mohammed bin Salman, is busy hacking away at all three: robbing, imprisoning and torturing his fellow-princes, working to replace the Wahhabi clerics with moderate ones and embracing the petro-yuan instead of the now very tired petrodollar.
Not that any of these three pillars were in good shape in any case: the defeat of ISIS in Syria was a defeat for the Saudi monarchy which supported it, for the Wahhabi clerics who inspired it and, consequently, for the petrodollar as well, because Saudi Arabia was until now its greatest defender.
The new guarantors of peace in the region are Russia, Iran and Turkey, with China watching carefully in the wings. American involvement in the middle-eastern project is now limited to Putin’s sporadic courtesy calls to Trump, to keep him updated.
And so here’s my latest prediction: Trump’s goal of “making America great” “isn’t gonna work” either.
The country is so far gone that just taking the first step—of allowing the truth of its condition to leak through the media filters—will undermine public confidence to such an extent that a subsequent cliff-dive will become unavoidable. It’s a nice slogan as slogans go, but Trump is too old to be a reformer or a revolutionary. He is of an age when men are generally mostly concerned about the quantity and consistency of their stool and how it interacts with their enlarged prostates.
Perhaps he will succeed in making America great… big piles of feces, but I wouldn’t expect much more than that.
France, ECOWAS Armoured Vehicles Land In Nigerian Port As They Move To Invade Niger
We’ve all said the wrong thing at times, leaving our kids feeling angry, hurt, or confused. Words can be eternally damaging, especially coming from parents who are supposed to be safe and supportive figures in their child’s lives. “Parents’ support and approval are essential for kids’ well-being,” says Jill Whitney, LMFT, who practices in Old Lyme, Connecticut and blogs about relationships. “The words you use can be constructive or destructive to kids’ developing sense of self. If they’re negative, they can negatively color our self-image for decades.” Find out the worst offenders and what to say instead.
“Hurry up!”
Your child may be slow as molasses getting dressed in the morning when you’re trying to head out the door to school and work. Pushing her to get a move on, though, will only make her more stressed. And while you may be making her feel guilty about running late, your screaming won’t motivate her to move any faster. Instead, look for calm ways to speed things up, like making getting out the door a game by racing to see who can get dressed first. “By making it into a ‘we event,’ you’ll teach your child the importance of collaboration,” says Paul Hokemeyer, PhD, a clinical and consulting psychotherapist and author of the forthcoming Fragile Power: Why Having Everything is Never Enough.
“Leave me alone”
Every parent needs a break at times. Yet, you shouldn’t be telling your kids that, otherwise, they’ll think that you’re brushing them off and that there’s no point in talking to you. “Kids like to be acknowledged and heard; in fact, it can help cut down on meltdowns and tantrums,” says Jennifer Trachtenberg, MD, a pediatrician, the creator of Pediatrician in Your Pocket, spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics, and assistant clinical professor of pediatrics at The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. “Answer in a way that is age-appropriate and give them specific tasks to do while they wait for you,” she says. You may instead say, “I have to finish one thing. I need you to play with your cars for just a few minutes. We can play outside as soon as I’m done.” “Just make sure you then follow through with whatever you promised you would do together afterward,” says Dr. Trachtenberg. Some compliments can actually be hurtful to kids, too.
“Why can’t you be more like your brother or sister?”
It’s natural to compare your kids, but you shouldn’t let your kids hear you doing it. When you ask kids why they’re not more like their sibling, it promotes unhealthy competition and kids may not feel like they’re good enough. You’re implying that you wish your child was someone else when you compare him to his sibling. Besides, the comparisons aren’t likely to change the behavior, says Dr. Trachtenberg. You’ll only be pressuring a child to do something he doesn’t want to do or isn’t ready for, undermining his self-esteem. Instead, encourage and inspire your child about what he can do and praise him when he does something good, such as, “Thanks for telling me you had to use the potty” or “Wow, you zipped your coat up all by yourself.” “Each child is an individual with his own strengths and weaknesses,” says Dr. Trachtenberg. “Positive reinforcement is a powerful tool to help shape other wanted behaviors. Remember to encourage and praise the child for the actions they succeed at instead of harping on what they can’t do.” Besides, you’ll want to stop sibling rivalry before it starts.
“Practice makes perfect”
“There is no such thing as perfect; being perfect isn’t a good goal as it doesn’t exist,” says Betsy Brown Braun, child development and behavior specialist, author of two best-selling parenting books, and founder of Parenting Pathways. “You’re sending the message that she didn’t train hard enough if she made a mistake.” Instead, acknowledge how frustrating and hard practicing can be and give some examples of things she practiced and did improve. “I like to give the example of babies learning to walk. They try and try, fall down, and try and practice, over and over,” she says. “Then they become good walkers, just like you did.” Explain that doing something repeatedly teaches you how to do it, says Brown Braun. “Nobody can do something well unless she has done it a lot,” she says. “Some things take a lot of work; some take less.”
“Let me help”
It’s natural to want to give your child a hand as he is finishing a puzzle or building a tower; after all, you don’t want to see your child struggle. But if you jump in too soon, you can undermine his independence. “Allow your child to complete a project to build his self-esteem and core competence,” says Fran Walfish, PsyD (aka Dr. Fran), a child, couple, and family psychotherapist in private practice in Beverly Hills and author of The Self-Aware Parent: Resolving Conflict and Building a Better Bond with Your Child. “Each disappointment is a golden opportunity for your child to develop frustration and build coping skills to deal with life’s inevitable daily ups and downs.” Constantly helping prevents him from getting the satisfaction of learning to do it for himself and teaches him to always look to others for answers. Instead, wait for him to ask for help first. Then, ask him questions to help him solve the problem. “Should the big piece go here? Why? Try it yourself.” Is your child faking illness to stay home? Here are some of the most common reasons why kids hate school.
“I’m on a diet”
If you’re watching your weight, keep it to yourself; talking this way about physical appearance can lead to your child developing an unhealthy body image. If they see you’re struggling with how you look, they may feel that they need to look a certain way, too. “Obsessing about your weight or appearance isn’t delivering a good message,” says Elizabeth Berger, MD, a child psychiatrist and author of Raising Kids with Character. “Children need to feel that their parents are in control of their own lives.” Instead, say “I’m eating healthy because I like how it makes me feel.” Promoting positive body image like this is one of the tiny ways you can encourage your kids every day.
“Don’t cry”
When you tell a child she’s fine as she’s bawling over a scraped knee, you’re invalidating and discounting her feelings. Kids will think they have to brush off their emotions and that can lead to more explosive outbursts. Dr. Walfish suggests you say instead, “You got hurt and scared. It’s okay to say ‘Ouch! That hurts!’ Mommy sees you’re scared and hurt, and I’m right here with you.” Or give her a hug, acknowledging and verbalizing her feelings. “That was a scary fall.” That can help give her the words to express herself. “This is what I call empathic narration,” says Dr. Walfish. “This style of compassionate attunement to your child’s feelings will help her feel seen, acknowledged, validated, and accepted—flaws and all. The attuning narration also teaches your child to be a kind and empathic person to others.”
“I could do that when I was your age”
Kids all develop at different rates. So expecting your son to ride a two-wheeler by age seven as you did will only make him feel like he disappointed you. “Parents are under a lot of pressure to make sure that their children meet a long list of expectations, and some of this anxiety tends to be passed on to children,” says Dr. Berger. Still, you as a parent should appreciate your child’s efforts, regardless of what they are. “A calm attitude towards ‘success’ helps children get over their own sense of shame when they haven’t met their own—and social—expectations,” says Dr. Berger. Dr. Berger says you can say, “Wow, I can see you’re making a lot of progress; keep it up!” or “Don’t worry—you’ll get there.”
“Because I said so”
When you’re in a rush, it can be easy to fall back on this clichéd parenting phrase, but avoid this empty phrase in favor of one that’s more thought out. “As parents, one of our most challenging tasks is to convince our children to do something they don’t want to do,” says Janie Feldman, PsyD, a licensed psychologist in New Jersey. You can say something like, “I know you want to play outside today. But you have to finish your homework first. How about we play outside after?” Dr. Feldman says you can offer an incentive to promote interest in completing the task. “It would be a great help to the family if you raked the leaves. If you rake them for us, you’ll earn ___.” It’s not guaranteed they’ll help, but they may be more interested. “In our society, we do work for incentives such as our salaries, vacation time, and other benefits,” says Dr. Feldman. “Offering an incentive can not only motivate our children but also socialize them to recognize the value of their efforts.” Beyond your children, find out more things you really shouldn’t be saying to the people in your life.
“I do everything for you”
You may feel like you do everything for them—cooking, cleaning, and chauffeuring them. But you know this isn’t true. “Do what you do for your kids with an open, generous heart or don’t do it,” says Eileen Kennedy-Moore, PhD, a psychologist based in Princeton, New Jersey and author of Kid Confidence: Help Your Child Make Friends, Build Resilience, and Develop Real Self-Esteem. “Don’t expect that you’ll be repaid with effusive gratitude or even good behavior,” she says. She says you can help teach your child gratitude and good manners by mirroring them yourself with your spouse, family, friends, and others. Say something like “What a delicious dinner! Thank you so much, Daddy!” “Your kids will probably pipe in with their thanks,” she says. Or point out someone’s efforts made on their behalf, along the lines of, “Grandma went to three stores to find the yellow paint you need. Remember to thank her when you see her tonight.”
“It’s not that big of a deal”
It may not be a big deal to you that your daughter wasn’t invited to Mary’s party, but it’s a big deal to her. Telling her you disagree with her invalidates how she’s feeling, making her ashamed or embarrassed. “When our kids are upset, we want to reach for empathy,” says Kennedy-Moore. She says that a useful formula is: “You’re feeling ___ because __.” “It bothers you when___.” “It’s hard for you when ___.” “You wish___.” “Don’t interpret or judge, just describe the feelings you see,” she says. “We adults tend to want to skip the feelings and go straight to the solution. But when kids don’t feel heard, they tend to get louder. Wrapping kids’ feelings up in words makes them seem more understandable and more manageable.” When your child feels heard and understood, it will do wonders. Beware of these other things parents say that ruin kids’ trust, too.
“You’re a liar”
Even if your child did take money from your wallet, that tone will only make him feel like he’s being personally attacked. Find out why he lied instead of being accusatory; then start an open dialogue about why it’s not okay to lie. Edward Kulich, MD, is a pediatrician who provides house calls in the New York area with his practice KidsHousecalls. He says you can say something like “Hey bud, I just wanted to let you know that I’m always here for you if you need anything or if you have a problem. I noticed some money is missing from my wallet. I’m not mad but I think we need to talk about this.”
“Be careful”
These words can have the opposite effect, making your child more likely to fall as she’s attempting the monkey bars. You’re distracting her from what she’s doing, so she’s losing focus. Instead, quietly spot her in case she falls. Dr. Kulich says you can say something like “You got this.” He says if your child is more hesitant, you can say, “I saw you do this yesterday. I know you can do it.” These compliments your kids really need to hear also help to build self-esteem and foster a loving relationship between the two of you.
US Forces Combat in Niger is a Nightmare
Talk WITH People, Not AT Them
Talk WITH not AT Header 2
One of the insidious things about trying to judge our own social skills, is that if an interaction went well for us, then we assume the other person thought it went well too. While you’ve probably never consciously thought about it, if you had a good time talking to someone, you think they felt the same. But this just isn’t the case. It’s very possible for you to walk away from an interaction feeling grand, while the other person walks away feeling annoyed, bored, or burdened.
What usually happens in these lopsided engagements is that you talked a lot about yourself and your interests, an act which is enjoyable and makes humans happy. We like to talk about ourselves! But, the other person didn’t get to talk much about him or herself, and thus left the conversation without a corresponding level of elevation.
While dominating a conversation simply by talking a lot is almost guaranteed to be a charm-killer, the worst kind of one-sided interaction is when you talk at someone, rather than with them.
Talking At Vs. Talking With
Valerie White and (former AoM podcast guest) Ann Demarais, doctors of psychology and authors of First Impressions, define the “talking at” dynamic as “forcing others to react rather than interact.” It manifests itself when one party takes on the role of teller/entertainer, and the other is forced into the role of audience.
While being part of an audience can be enjoyable when that is what one is expecting and desiring (e.g., watching a movie), people do not expect to be an audience member during face-to-face social interactions. Feeling like a spectator in this context is dull and irritating, because the role is so passive. A conversation is a cooperative, almost artistic endeavor — much like symphonic music — in which each person gets satisfaction from engaging, contributing, creating. They don’t want to watch and clap.
Demarais and White describe 4 common forms that “talking at” takes, each of which can be flipped in a way that gets you “talking with” your social partner:
Lecturing
When you’re in lecturing mode, you’re imparting facts in a very one-sided way. You want to tell someone something, but you’re not expecting or eliciting a real response. They’re the passive audience for your knowledge dump. Lecturing feels great for the lecturer — you’re amped up on the status you get from feeling in the know, and sharing information you hold as uniquely yours. But your listener is likely to see you as boring and self-important.
How to share knowledge with your social partner. Talk about subjects in which you and your partner are mutually interested, and watch for signs that they’re engaged — “Uh-huhs,” nodding, saying things like “That’s interesting.” In the absence of such cues, stop your monologue. And even when they are manifested, pause intermittently to see if the other person wants to respond, or add something, or has a question. If they don’t interject anything, you should probably wrap it up and change the subject.
Additionally, how you introduce a subject matters, as Demarias and White explain:
“A hallmark of a lecture is the speaker’s implicit ownership of the information.
When you present something as your own, you may intend to appear smart but actually may appear bombastic and egotistical. On the other hand, when you mention where you learned your information—as in ‘I read an editorial in the paper that said…’—or the genesis of your idea—as in ‘I saw something on TV, and then thought…’—you show an open mind and a more modest assessment of your own intellectual value.”
When you say, “I heard/read X the other day,” people don’t feel like you’ve already fixed your opinion about it, but rather that you’re opening up a dialogue on the subject, making them more likely to offer their own thoughts and engage with you.
Storytelling
The great paradox of stories is that they can be both the most compelling and the most boring form of communication. A good story can entertain, engage, and build connection. But as Demarias and White observe, stories can easily go wrong when they’re “long, detailed, and about people your conversational partner doesn’t know.”
How to share stories with your social partner. Bad storytelling is an easy trap to fall into, because the characters and plots in our anecdotes seem so interesting and salient to us. We know our friends, and children, and boss — they loom large in our own lives, and we can vividly picture their facial expressions and have all the context to understand why their behavior is so adorable/comical/outrageous. It’s subconsciously difficult to realize that other people, who lack this context, won’t find these people and places equally compelling.
But they don’t. The difference can be likened to the way you’re interested in a story about your favorite NBA player, but have no interest in news about a professional Chinese athlete you’ve never heard of. Unless a story connects to universal aspects of the human experience (training for a race; dealing with an incompetent boss; getting in an accident) or intersects in some way with the other person’s life, it’s going to be Dullsville.
Even if a story does include those elements (touches on shared human experience; connects with the other person’s life), you should still keep it short and to the point. Dole out the story in small chunks, watching to see if the other person shows interest and asks things like, “What did you decide to do?” or “How did he respond to that?” before continuing the tale.
When a story of any kind goes on too long, you turn your social partner into an audience member who passively spectates instead of actively engages.
Sermonizing
Sermonizing occurs when you’re trying to persuade someone to your point of view. The subject matter is usually something around morality, religion, or politics, and while this kind of conversational mode can be okay in the company of long-time friends and family who enjoy spirited debate and verbal jousting, it’s a turn-off for new acquaintances who don’t know you well enough to put your opinions into context and to realize there’s more to you than a zeal for some particular issue. They’re likely to get defensive or disgusted or just plain annoyed.
How to have a weighty discussion with your social partner. You don’t have to rigidly follow the old adage about avoiding talk of politics, religion, and money, even with new people, as long as you follow a few guidelines we’ve offered here, the gist of which is to strive to have adiscussion rather than an argument. A wise writer put the distinction this way:
“in discussion you are searching for the truth, and in argument you want to prove that you are right. In discussion, therefore, you are anxious to know your neighbor’s views, and you listen to him. In argument, you don’t care anything about his opinions, you want him to hear yours.”
When you’re aiming a sermon at someone, Demarias and White note, “The implicit message is ‘you’re wrong and I’m right.’” When you’re having a discussion with them, in contrast, you seek to understand how they’ve arrived at their convictions, where your positions differ, and the common ground you share.
Telling Jokes
A great sense of humor is one of the most charming of qualities. But too much humor reaches a tipping point where it stops adding to the collective “music” of the conversation and becomes a one-sided performance, turning the speaker into an entertainer and the listener into an audience. Instead of getting to interact, the latter is forced to simply react to the constant stream of quips and witticisms — a role for which they soon grow bored.
How to share humor with your social partner. Jokes serve better as the seasoning of a conversation, rather than its main dish. Instead of interspersing everything you say with a quip, just pepper them in here and there between sustained stretches of neutral talking and showing sincere interest in the other person.
When it comes to being socially adept, Demarias and White note that “how you talk about topics matters more than what you actually talk about. You can make a fascinating ethical issue boring if you simply lecture someone about it. On the other hand, you can turn your model airplane hobby into a stimulating conversational topic if you talk about it in a fun and engaging manner.”
To avoid your conversations turning into one-sided monologues where you simply talk at people, toss out subjects of reciprocal interest and see what people bite on; like volleyball players, hit the ball back and forth over the net. Show that you’re curious, open-minded, and interested in other people’s experiences and perspectives. Interact rather than making the other person solely react to what you say and do; create a little theater/dialogue/symposium/comedy together, rather than having them watch you from the gallery.
Create something special with the people you meet.
China’s Dumping Dollars For Gold & They Won’t Stop!
China just ramped up their gold purchases, buying for a 9th straight month! As the world gets de-globalized, we are seeing an acceleration of de-dollarization towards alternative stores of value like gold. Even JP Morgan is calling for record gold prices in 18 months. Here’s what you must know about this historic monetary shift.
The More Options You Have, The Happier You Are
Over the years, I’ve experienced a direct correlation between the number of options I have in life and my happiness.
The more options I have for my career, the better work I can do. The more options I have for spending my free time, the less I cling to people and activities.
In short, if I can choose what to do with my time at any given moment, I’m happy. It doesn’t necessarily matter what I do. What matters is that I have a choice.
The importance of this concept is one of the most important lessons I’ve learned about happiness in the modern age.
I recently read Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart by Gordon Livingston, who was a seasoned psychiatrist. In that book, he talked about why it’s so important to have options:
“Mental health is a function of choice. The more choices we are able to exercise, the happier we are likely to be. Those who are most unwell or discouraged suffer from a sense that their choices have been limited, sometimes by external circumstances or illness, most often by the many ways we restrict ourselves.”
Fewer options restrict us. That gives us a sense of dread. We feel like there’s not much we can do in life. And that makes us unhappy. But you can turn that around by creating options for yourself.
The paradox of risk
The most important thing about career options is that there’s a paradoxical relationship between risk and reward we need to understand first. Before I came to terms with this, I never had many options.
Here’s the issue. As humans, we’re naturally risk-averse. We fear loss more than we desire a potential gain. That force usually keeps us where we are. That’s why most people remain in the same job or industry until they get fired or retire.
The paradox is that most people assume it’s risky to change. But in reality, the reverse is true. The more stagnant you are, the more you’re at risk of loss.
When I pursued a career as a full-time writer, I had to take risks. I left my well-paying corporate job in London, left the city, moved back in with my parents, and took a step back from our family business.
I went from earning about $80K a year to almost nothing. My blog and online courses generated about $5,000 of income in the first year. The risk is wasting your time and the loss of your salary when you make a move like that.
Livingston recognized the importance of getting comfortable with risk as well. He said the following about the relationship between options and risk:
“The primary variable in this regard is tolerance of risk. If we take counsel of our fears, particularly our fear of change, it is hard to choose a life that makes us happy. Is it anxiety or lack of imagination that restricts us?”
This is hard to accept. Unless you get comfortable with your fear of change, you will not have a happy life that consists of many options.
Remember that no matter how dire your circumstances are, you’re never out of options. You can always do something. This is the most important belief in human hope and progress. As long as we’re alive, we have a choice.
How I create career options
Let’s look at how you can create more career options. Since your work takes up the majority of your time, it’s important to get this straight. When you have options and happiness in your career, you automatically become a better person.
How many of your personal problems are related to work? How often do you allow the stress of work to change your mood? And how often does your mood create problems at home?
To say that your career is important is an understatement. Work is not just something you do on set hours. It’s the single biggest factor that determines what your life looks like on a macro level.
So how do you make sure you have a good career? Not by having a great job. This might sound weird to you if you’ve been raised thinking every person needs to have one job.
That’s an old model that no longer works. We don’t need jobs. We need skills that we can apply to multiple jobs and industries.
Here’s how I approach that. I always prioritize learning over short-term goals like money, bonuses, status, or any other benefits that I can get in my career.
The more universal skills I have, the more opportunities I have. For example, if you’re good at persuasion, you can work as a copywriter, account executive, stockbroker, recruiter, or work at a retail store.
If you know how to code, you can work at any company that develops software, in any industry.
Another thing I focus on is building good relationships with experienced people. I’m not a fan of networking with hundreds of people or forming “mastermind” groups with people who are not top-performers. On a social level, it’s wonderful, but professionally, you won’t learn much.
If you do want to network, at least connect with people who are more established in life and don’t have much to prove anymore. Professionals like that can point you in the right direction if you don’t know what to do. They can help you to see options you didn’t see before.
Be willing to pay the price or move on
I was once talking about this concept of career options with someone in their twenties. The person said they also wanted to be in a similar position as I am today.
And I said, “Look, I’ve given up a lot of things when I was your age to be where I am today. I sacrificed relationships and leisure. But I don’t see it as bad because I’ve always been happy to pay that price for happiness. And I still am.”
And the person said, “I don’t think I can do that.”
That’s the end of it. “Then you should accept your life the way it is and that you’re always at the disposal of other people,” I said. If some people are not willing to pay the price, they should just accept whatever is and not complain about being unhappy.
The truth is there are always options. We just can’t expect that they come for free. Everything in life has a price. If you’re willing to pay, you won’t get disappointed.
Every Nation has a certain threshold beyond which it’s rise can’t be contained
The Threshold is Economic and Political and Military based
I believe that China could have easily been contained or throttled in 2010 or even 2012
Luckily the 2008 Crisis helped China and gave it 6 years or so beyond which throttling it became tougher and tougher
Today?
Economically China is a giant not just because of the $ 19 Trillion GDP but because of an Industrial Output that exceeds US,UK and Europe combined
Militarily they can sustain a war for almost 4 years without cracks in their economy. They have enough food and energy independently for that.
Hence attacking China would result in worse weakening of the West especially by US
So all US can do is OPTICS or PR
Make it look like it’s containing China
Use their media to exaggerate every one of Chinas failures by 1000 and suppress all of Chinas achievements by either not publishing it or using the narrative “BUT AT WHAT COST”
Riling up neighbors of China
Essentially acting like a Pimp Bully instead of a Direct Head on Face to Face talk with China
And Why?
Why is the West so alarmed with China’s Rise?
Because they feel China will invade and conquer the US?
Nonsense
Because they feel China will become the numero uno hegemon
Nonsense. The US hegemony is too well entrenched to be removed in a year or two. It will take 30 years minimum. Well after the current leadership has been dead and buried
Because China would become wealthier?
Naah. Luxembourg and Singapore are wealthier than US and US doesn’t give a damn
It’s because China isn’t a democracy and it’s proof that a One Party Meritocracy System can do better than a Democracy if the vision and policies work to that effect
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That breaks the so called “Democracy is God model” that the West has been floating for nearly 100 years
That’s why the West is so terrified of China’s rise
The First and Only Photos From Titan, Saturn’s Largest Moon – What Did We See?
This is the best selling vehicle in the United States
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The Ford F Series. Currently, the F-150 is the production model.
Not the best selling “truck”. The best selling “vehicle”.
In Canuck speak, it uses anywhere from 11–15 liters of fuel per 100km travelled. By contrast, a Honda Civic uses about 7.1–8 liters of fuel to travel the same distance.
Vehicles like this are rarely used to haul cargo or for towing. They’re mostly used the same way other vehicles are used – commuting and errands. If cycling were safe in the United States, which it mostly isn’t, about 50% of trips taken by an F-150 could be done by bike.
It’s not even a good pickup truck. It has a pitiful amount of cargo room.
Vehicles like this make it difficult for people to travel by any other mode of transit that doesn’t use petroleum, like walking and biking. Heck, this behemoth even makes it impossible to get around in vehicles like the Civic which could do 99% of the trips this thing can because in a collision between this and a Civic the Civic owner is probably in for a bad experience.
It it safe? For the occupants, yes. For anyone not in it, no. You can’t see a 5 foot tall child standing directly in front of it for one thing.
America Tells Saudi Arabia To Keep Using Dollars – You Won’t Believe This!
The U.S. is pushing back against BRICS and China with a deal for Saudi Arabia. However, the terms will include the continued usage of the US dollar in oil sales. Will MBS take the bait and is this a win for America? Here’s what you must know!
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Linda’s Pepper Steak
I’ve been making this delicious pepper steak for about 50 years.
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Cook: 25 min | Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients
1 pound round or flank steak
Kosher or sea salt and pepper to taste
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
1 green bell pepper, diced large
1 red or orange bell pepper, diced large
3 beef bouillon cubes, dissolved in 1 cup hot water
1 can diced tomatoes
1 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch
2 teaspoons soy sauce
1/4 cup water
Instructions
Cut the steak into thin slices (this is easier to do if the meat is semi-frozen).
Sprinkle with salt and pepper.
In a large skillet heat the oil.
Add the steak and onion and cook until meat is browned on all sides.
Add the bell peppers and bouillon water. Cover and simmer for 10 minutes.
Add the tomatoes and simmer for 5 minutes.
Mix the cornstarch, soy sauce and water and stir into meat mixture. Cook, stirring, until the mixture has thickened.
We talk about US presidents all the time — Obama did this, Trump did that, blah blah blah. But really it’s never the president doing those things, it’s the empire. The president is just the face of the operation, the name they put on the door that they change every few years to create the illusion that the US government is responsive to the will of the electorate.
Really if you look solely at the raw data of the US power structure around the world (where the weapons are going, where the resources are going, where the money is and isn’t going, where the diplomats are and aren’t going, etc), you can’t tell from year to year when the White House is changing hands. You can’t tell from that raw data what political party the current president belongs to or what platform he campaigned on, and you can’t tell when he’s replaced by someone from the other party with another platform. The raw data of the empire keeps moving in basically the same way without any meaningful interruption.
So it’s not really true to say “Obama did this” or “Trump did that”; really they’re just the face that happened to be on the operation when it was time to kill Gaddafi or begin the Pivot to Asia or sanction Venezuela or start arming Ukraine or whatever. They’re not leaders leading the US government in various directions based on what they think the best policies are, they’re empire managers who are responding to whatever the needs of the empire happen to be each day — using whatever justifications or partisan leverage they can muster in that moment.
And Americans don’t get to vote on any of that stuff. They don’t get to vote on what will have to be done to facilitate the needs of a globe-spanning empire, or if there should be a globe-spanning empire at all. The behavior of the empire is never on the ballot. The only things that are ever on the ballot are issues which stand no possibility of ever interfering in the operation of the empire, like whether the president will appoint Supreme Court justices who oppose abortion or support gun control. And the voting populace is continually kept at a 50/50 split on as many of those issues as possible to keep both sides tugging on the rope with all their might so they don’t look up and notice that the real large-scale behavior of their government is completely unaffected by the small back and forth gains and losses of the tug-o-war game.
Really the only reason to talk about US presidents in terms of “Obama did this” and “Trump did that” is to highlight this point. To highlight the fact that Obama continued and expanded all the most malignant policies of his predecessor, and that Trump continued and expanded all the most malignant policies of his. To disrupt all the dopey partisan narratives about things getting better under Biden or worse under Trump or that Obama was a progressive or Trump was a peacemaker.
By pointing out the horrible things that happened under each administration, regardless of party affiliation or platform, the illusion that Americans are controlling the behavior of their government using their votes can be worn away. You can in this sense use the illusion to fight the illusion — use people’s intense interest in presidents and electoral politics to draw them into the insight that it’s all a performance designed to keep the eyes of the masses away from the inner workings of the machine.
And then the possibility for real change opens up. The longer Americans are convinced that they can vote their way out of problems they never voted their way into in the first place, the longer they can be dissuaded from using the power of their numbers to force real material changes by real material means.
EPIC FAIL: Why Most US Weapons Systems Are Worse than Russia’s
Two reasons: complexity, and too much money
Lately we have seen some good analysis on the limits and vulnerabilities of the American military in light of events in the former Ukraine and especially Russia’s demonstrated competence in Syria.
So we have the “what” of the issue, but how about the “why”?
As a U.S. Army veteran and a longtime resident of the Beltway—including four-and-a-half years living on Crystal Drive in Arlington, Virginia, which has probably the densest concentration of “defense” contractors anywhere in America—I think I understand what is fundamentally wrong with the U.S. military-industrial complex (MIC.)
First and foremost, the MIC has long been incapable of producing durable, efficient, versatile weapons.
We don’t even have to look to the F-35 on this one.
My field experience with this piece of junk is that it runs into problems in the presence of even a small amount of sand. When enough sand gets in to the chamber and mixes with the lube oil on the bolt assembly, the grit thus formed results in up to every second round misloading.
God forbid you should brush an oiled open breach against the side of your foxhole—you are out of commission. In the absence of air or artillery support or sheer overwhelming numbers on your side, you are dead meat against anyone with a gun that functions in a sandy environment. And why? Because, as I was told in boot camp (whether it’s true or not), this thing is perfectly built to have zero fault tolerance.
Supposedly, just about every metal component in the M-16 is cast and/or machined to perfection rather than stamped. Contrast this with Russian or Chinese weapons that are said to be built like can openers to spray lead under any conditions. In other words, the M-16 is so sophisticated that it doesn’t work well.
It is now acknowledged that the M-16 with its 5.56mm rounds is insufficiently lethal beyond a couple of hundred meters, making it unsuited to long-distance firefights over open terrain (again those deserts, or perhaps shootouts between mountain ridges.)
The M-1 Abrams tank
Another great example – this can be a real dog. The engine is a gas turbine, like with an aircraft, except that it is being driven around in deserts and even sandstorms, making it extremely finicky and high-maintenance. (Would you fly your Boeing into a sandstorm?) Of course, the Abrams was designed to fight in Germany where sand is not an issue. But during the Iraq adventure, sand so tore up the turbine fans (or whatever) that over 1000 of these million-dollar “power packs” had to be removed and sent up for depot-level maintenance or refurbishment stateside.
Yes, that’s right—these things cannot even be fixed in the field. All you can do is pull them out with a crane and ship them back to the civilians at enormous expense. At the height of the Iraq adventure, around 2007, the maintenance backlog was so bad that even the national media got wind of it.
Of course, when you have the world’s reserve currency, you can afford all that and more—the entire world is paying for your wars.
But the waste and inefficiency are a fact.
The Basic Problem : Excessive Complexity
I think the problem here is that American war planners and logisticians prefer originality, complexity, and/or expense-for-the-hell-of-it over versatility and ease of use and maintenance. This is no surprise given America’s wealth and the longtime generous funding of its armed forces. After all, every military reflects its own society.
Unfortunately for Uncle Sam, what he gets is equipment that may work very well in one environment but not another.
But so much for American equipment per se. Let’s talk about Crystal Drive (a neighborhood in suburban Washington where many defense contractors have offices – edit.) —or more broadly, the MIC.
The Military Industrial Complex (MIC) is failing on a massive scale
It is clear now that the MIC cannot build anything for less than 200 percent of its original planned budget (and that’s being extremely conservative.) Nor can anything it cranks out nowadays meet performance or survivability expectations. Besides the never-ending supersonic train wreck known as the F-35, we have other boondoggle failures such as the Littoral Combat Ship, which by all accounts is less capable and more vulnerable than the 20 to 30 year-old vessels it was supposed to replace.
Or, going back a few years, we see the Army’s “Commanche” helicopter, an intended replacement for the Apache, which blew through $6.9 billion—in 1983-2004 dollars, probably over $10 billion today—before the entire program was scrapped. That’s right, over $10 billion for nothing—not one Commanche was ever delivered for permanent use to an Army operational unit!
Where did that money go, if they didn’t actually manufacture anything besides a few prototypes? Did they spend $10 billion on PowerPoint presentations?
My brain cannot even wrap around this. Can you imagine what Russia or China could do for $10 billion?
However, even that pales before the Army’s cancelled Future Combat Systems program, which burned through an estimated (no one knows exactly) $20 billion from 2003 to somewhere between 2012 and 2014 (depending on what termination milestone you go by), with almost nothing to show beyond a few prototypes, a lot of concept art, and a 29-pound toy robot made by iRobot of “Roomba” vacuum cleaner fame. In fact, I can’t think of one big new U.S. weapons system that has succeeded in the last 25 years, other than perhaps the Stryker armored car (though some have argued that point, and I just don’t know enough about it.)
As pointed out by many other observers, part of the blame lies with our political system, where MIC corporations buy politicians and then receive favors in the form of contracts, whether or not the contracts make any sense. However, I think this is not the only problem, nor even necessarily the biggest.
Fundamentally what I think we have is systemic over-complexity resulting in nothing getting done, or done well anyway.
US intelligence agencies have the same problem
This is akin to the deep systemic crisis in Uncle Sam’s intelligence agencies, where from 9/11 to the Arab Spring to Crimea to the ISIS conquest of Mosul to Russia in Syria, the word is always “we didn’t expect…” In this case, we have numerous agencies—some of them with overlapping functions—that are drowning in paperwork and garbage data (or too much data) and are almost totally useless.
As some readers will remember, it got so bad that in April 2014 the State Department released a photo collage aiming to prove that (among other things) a bearded Chechen battalion commander going by the name Hamza, who appeared in Russian TV footage of the 2008 Olympic War, was none other than the bearded, overweight Slaviansk militiaman going by the call-sign “Babai”—in other words, Russian special forces have invaded the Donbass. (The New York Times ran with this and was then oh-so-vaguely and gently reproached by its own ombudsman.)
Shouldn’t this awful joke have been prevented by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which is supposed to promote info-sharing among agencies and centrally vet all claims and conclusions—especially those being trumpeted on the State Department’s website or at its briefings? Apparently not!
Bureaucratic bloat
On the other hand, what the U.S. lack-of-intelligence complex is very good at—besides hiring way too many buxom, flirty young things straight out of college and with no language skills or any experience at all (DIA and NGA, you know your ex-military managers like to beautify their offices)—is providing employment for tens of thousands of its own staff as well as tens of thousands of grotesquely-overpaid contractors, including those who build and run billion-dollar eavesdropping centers that have proven incapable of picking up anything useful, perhaps because when you try to listen to everything, you end up hearing nothing.
The lesson here is that the more offices and agencies, the more managers and political appointees who will seek to justify and expand their turf and budgets by shoveling out as much money on as many contracts as possible, as quickly as possible, in many cases even paying contractors to do little more than just sit around (sometimes at home) waiting for the next contract. (I have seen this many times in Washington.)
Then you get so big that people simply trip over each other and the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.
The US MIC worked great 50 years ago because less money and people were involved
So I think this is what’s going on not only in the intelligence apparatus, but in the MIC as a whole. We have hundreds of thousands of staff and contractors as well as military officers assigned to liaise with them, all kinds of project managers and “six-sigma black belts” and other buzzwords, juggling millions of PowerPoints across the river from Washington and throughout the country, and they can’t field a helicopter after spending $10 billion on it.
Really? How did this great country ever defeat the Japanese Empire?
Go to the National Air and Space Museum in Washington; you will see the most amazing things—e.g. generators designed to operate on the surface of the Moon, drawing electricity from the heat of plutonium decay—that were developed when there was no Crystal Drive, no Tysons Corner, etc.
Then go to the museum’s extension near Dulles airport and check out the SR-71 “Blackbird”, the fastest and highest-flying airplane ever built (this was about 50 years ago.)
How did they do it?
Although there were more men in uniform back then, the MIC itself (or should I say the Military-Industrial-Intelligence-Homeland-Insecurity-Complex (MIIHIC)) – had but a fraction of today’s civilian workforce. Luckily, most of those paper-pushing “systems integrators” and PowerPoint rangers did not exist. Blueprints were drafted with pencil and paper.
Today, Uncle Sam can’t even build a heavy rocket engine, not to mention a good helmet or ejection seat for his F-35.
No hope for change going forward
So it seems that as a technical civilization we are degenerating.
Sure, there are constant advancements in microelectronics (a.k.a. integrated circuits) and the programs they allow, but in terms of heavy engineering—of which the MIIHIC and other government initiatives like the space program were at the forefront since WWII—it seems that the U.S. is tapped out.
And you know what? Throwing more money at it is just going to make it worse.
The organizations with their budgets and their perfectly reasonable-sounding arguments for ever-greater budgets will grow, their workforces will grow, the contracting sector will grow, more shiny office buildings will go up, but the result will be an ever-increasingly-negative marginal return.
John McCain and all the other broken records in and out of the Pentagon will say we still don’t have enough funds to counter a pointless Russian invasion of parasitic, inconsequential Lithuania (currently headed by a longtime communist) or any other 1990s-era speculative wargame training scenario that somehow carried over into the public consciousness and morphed into the Greatest Threat to World Peace.
Of course, as long as the U.S. has the money to send gazillion-dollar armies and armadas against illiterate natives armed with sharp sticks and coconuts, this may not visibly threaten its hegemony. Almost any problem or mistake can be papered over with money, for a long time anyway.
But eventually, even if the money spigot does not constrict, we will get to the point where the military really can’t be used as anything more than a façade or a gunboat road-show, hoping no one calls the bluff, because the stuff just doesn’t work like it’s supposed to, or else is too vulnerable (witness the evacuation of the U.S. aircraft carrier from the Persian Gulf after Uncle Sam found out that Russia has cruise missiles with a range of at least 1500km, or the ridiculous sail-around of China’s little islands which had the sense to infringe only very slightly and briefly on that country’s imaginary territorial waters), or the natives can devise their own countermeasures.
In fact, I would say we are at that point already. Not to mention, the U.S. Army and the Department of Veterans Affairs are still so tapped-out after Iraq and Afghanistan that another major ground operation is unthinkable. (At this point, Washington is more likely to launch nukes at somebody than risk another ground war.)
So you can anticipate a lot of hand-wringing and a lot more money being thrown into the breach. That’s simply what the machine does; there is no chance to reform it, nor will the Hegemony dissipate willingly (although lately it’s done a good job of dissipating unwillingly.)
But all that money may as well be flushed down the can.
The threshold has been reached and it’s all downhill from here.
Pluto Really Is a Weird Place! These Are the Strangest Things Found on Its Icy Surface
Successful Kids and 10 Habits of the Parents Who Raise Them
We’re always checking out other people’s parenting skills in an effort to raise successful kids. Should we make their bedtime earlier? Should we insist on piano lessons? We rounded up the parenting moves that do seem to spur kids on to greatness.
Give children chores
When children are made to complete chores, they are shaping a work ethic from early on. Not only does this give them a chance to contribute to family life, but it also demonstrates that they play an integral role in the successful day-to-day functioning of their family. Chores for kids also teach them valuable skills that will be necessary when they head off to college and start their adult lives.
Set high expectations
Parents of successful kids set high expectations for their children as well as themselves. More often than not, it encourages children to rise to the occasion. If college is the expectation, students will work toward that goal more readily than if a parent doesn’t bother mentioning it. What’s more, parents help their children succeed by modeling high expectations of themselves and demonstrating how to work hard to meet goals. It’s important to make sure that your expectations of your kids are realistic, however—they shouldn’t be led to believe they have to qualify for the olympics, graduate as valedictorian, or even keep their rooms clean 24/7—as the pressure to meet overly lofty goals can cause anxiety and ultimately backfire.
Get yourself educated
Statistically speaking, parents who have completed high school or college are more likely to have children who do the same. Parents who have not achieved higher levels of education might consider pursuing these educational goals in order to provide a good example for their children. As a bonus, studies show that higher education lowers blood pressure.
Show them the good life
If you want your child to follow in your footsteps—getting a steady job, making a nice home, and having a family—it’s helpful to make it look appealing. That doesn’t mean never ever complaining or hiding the truth about real life from your children, but there’s something to be said for modeling a life that motivates your children to want to achieve success. If they see your hard work is paying off, and that it seems meaningful, they will be more inclined to invest in their own futures. Avoid these things that parents say that ruin their kids’ trust.
Make friends with numbers early
Teaching math at an earlier age is not only an indicator of later success in mathematics but also in reading. Preschool now places a stronger emphasis on math skills in order to prepare students for the rigorous math expectations of elementary school and beyond. Giving your child a leg up on these skills will set them up for later success. We did an algorithm to ensure that these math jokes will make you smile (just kidding).
Make time for bonding
Children who have a secure foundation with their parents are more successful than those who do not, regardless of socio-economic status. That doesn’t mean you have to take them to Disney World or to the movies every week, but you’d do well to read a book together at bedtime, share meals whenever possible, and generally make yourself available when they need you. By nurturing a strong bond with your children from birth, you’ll help them feel grounded and secure—and secure children are more likely to become successful adults.
Teach troubleshooting
Parents of successful children give their kids the tools they need to solve problems, whether it means asking them how they think a word is spelled before dictating the answer, or prompting them to suggest solutions when problems arise. These moves help children develop the habit of trying to solve problems themselves, which leads to feelings of competence and confidence—invaluable skills for navigating adult life. These quotes about parenting are sure to make you laugh.
Accept and recognize their feelings
Emotions are tough for a lot of people, especially kids. So it can be particularly helpful to teach kids how to recognize and verbalize their emotions. When children are young, attach names to their feelings, so they can speak about them intelligently. You might say, “I see that you’re feeling very frustrated,” or “I know it must be disappointing to have to miss your friend’s party.” Giving children the space to explore their emotions and helping them process those emotions will contribute to their becoming successful adults. Don’t miss the signs you’re raising an emotionally intelligent child.
Try to chill out a little
Stressed out parents make for stressed out children. Learn to manage your own stress levels in order to provide a stress-free home for your children. Stress is contagious—don’t pass it on.
The impoverished West African state of Niger is the latest flashpoint in the struggle by the imperialist powers for a redivision of the world. The issues involved in the NATO-Russia war in Ukraine—a fight for territory, strategic resources and regime-change—are erupting all over the globe, in China and Taiwan, and now in the Sahel region of Africa.
Though stalled for the moment, what would be a devastating war led by the most powerful country in the region, Nigeria, to oust the coup leaders in Niger and reinstate President Mohamed Bazoum is under active preparation. At a summit of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in the Nigerian capital Abuja Thursday, leaders agreed to activate a standby military force and threatened that “no option had been taken off the table.”’
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They agreed a new round of sanctions on Niger, which has been plunged into blackouts by electricity cut-offs and seen food prices rise 60 percent amid a blockade and the freezing of assets and trade.
A conflict would draw in the entire region. Senegal, Benin and the Ivory Coast have already pledged to send troops to aid Nigeria. Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea have declared for the military coup leaders in Niger.
Behind the proposed ECOWAS action stand the imperialist powers, who are intent on blocking Russia and China from further penetrating a continent whose strategic significance is growing rapidly. The long-term decline of France’s economic position in its former West African colonies—culminating in the last three years in a dramatic collapse of its military presence in Mali, Burkina Faso and now perhaps Niger—has thrown open the Sahel region to intense geopolitical competition.
Bazoum was considered an important Western ally. The US and the European powers have responded to the coup against him by cutting aid to Niger supposedly provided on “humanitarian” grounds—on which it relies for 40 percent of its annual government budget. They are determined to secure their interests whatever the cost.
Speaking Tuesday after “difficult” talks with the coup leaders, US Acting Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland—veteran of the US-backed 2014 coup in Ukraine—threatened, “We’ll be watching the situation, but we understand our legal responsibilities and I explained those very clearly to the guys who were responsible for this and that it is not our desire to go there, but they may push us to that point.”
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Caution over a proposed military intervention by ECOWAS has centred on concerns that such action has not been properly prepared and would spark mass opposition throughout the region. A misjudged war could explode the social powder keg in Nigeria, where the US and Britain are heavily invested politically and economically.
A great deal is at stake. The United States currently has 1,500 soldiers of its 6,500-strong declared African deployment stationed in Niger across two bases—one of which is the regional hub for drone missions. France has 1,100 troops in the country, Italy 300 and Germany around 100.
Niger is a major uranium producer, providing a quarter of Europe’s supply. It is due to start exporting oil and plays a central role in policing migration out of Africa to Europe. It has become a frontline state in a battle for economic and military pre-eminence in West Africa and across the whole continent.
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Africa is home to an estimated 30 percent of the world’s mineral wealth, including 90 percent of its chromium and platinum—crucial to the green energy transition. Another such mineral is cobalt, of which 70 percent of the world’s supply is produced in the Democratic Republic of Congo. By the end of the century, Africa could also account for a fifth of the world’s lithium supply.
The continent also produces 65 percent of the world’s diamonds and is home to 40 percent of its gold reserves, 12 percent of its oil and 8 percent of its natural gas, while Morocco alone is home to 75 percent of the world’s phosphate rock, crucial for fertiliser.
In terms of markets, Africa’s consumer expenditure is on track to grow from $1.4 trillion in 2015 to $2.5 trillion in 2030.
The US and Europe are concerned not to let Niger be another loss to the claims made by China and Russia on these riches and opportunities.
Russia’s Wagner group (headed by Yevgeny Prigozhin) is operating in Mali, to Niger’s immediate West, Libya, to its North East, the Central African Republic (CAR) and Sudan—providing armed forces for their governments in conflicts with local rebel groups. In the CAR and Sudan, Wagner also runs private gold and diamond mines.
Russian President Vladimir Putin inaugurated a Russia-Africa summit in 2019 promising to help push back against “an array of Western countries [that] are resorting to pressure, intimidation and blackmail of sovereign African governments.” The second, far less well attended, summit held under conditions of anti-Russian sanctions and the war in Ukraine, took place last month, where a special effort was made to court Burkina Faso’s “interim leader” Colonel Ibrahim Traoré.
Russia has sought to leverage its relatively meagre resources to gain allies and the occasional lucrative venture, but China is throwing enormous economic weight behind securing control of Africa’s resources markets. It has controlling stakes in large swathes of the continent’s mining industry—including the bulk of uranium mines in Niger, plus its oil industry—forming part of a total FDI (foreign direct investment) stock of $43.4 billion in 2020, a 100-fold increase in 17 years.
China is Africa’s largest bilateral lender, loaning $153 billion in the two decades to 2019, and its second largest trade partner after the European Union, bigger than any other single country.
Both Russia and China are also major arms suppliers to sub-Saharan Africa, accounting for 26 and 18 percent of sales respectively in the last five years, above third-place France at 8 percent, and the US at 5 percent.
In 2019, US Africa Command (AFRICOM) launched a five-year plan to “deter” what it called “Chinese and Russian malign action.” Former head of AFRICOM, Marine Corps Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, told Congress that year that both were after “access and influence to our detriment,” and that, within the decade, China could gain the capability to inhibit US military access and operations. The policy has remained unchanged since Trump’s Republicans were replaced by the Democrats under Biden.
Colin P. Clarke, former RAND analyst and current director of research at the global intelligence and security consultancy The Soufan Group, bluntly explained to Newsweek the implications of the Nigerien situation.
“This could take on the dimensions of a regional proxy war, with Western countries supporting ECOWAS and Russia supporting Niger—and Burkina Faso and Mali, if they joined in—with muscle from the Wagner Group.
“What’s happening in the Sahel is not a sideshow to great power competition, it is great power competition. The events unfolding are not doing so in a vacuum. The US, France, China, and Russia each have their own vested interests in Sahelian countries.”
Workers and the rural poor in Niger and West Africa are confronted with the catastrophe warned of by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) at its 1991 Berlin Conference of Workers against Imperialist War and Colonialism, held in response to the Gulf War.
The manifesto announcing that conference explained: “This ongoing and de facto partition of Iraq signals the start of a new division of the world by the imperialists. The colonies of yesterday are again to be subjugated. The conquests and annexations which, according to the opportunist apologists of imperialism, belonged to a bygone era are once again on the order of the day.”
Based on Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution, the statement warned that the struggle “against imperialist oppression cannot be waged successfully as long as the working class remains under the political domination of any wing of the national bourgeoisie.” It is inseparable from a fight against national ruling classes which have overseen the continued gruelling exploitation of the African masses, kept in power by militaries trained and funded by the imperialists.
Niger must above all serve as a warning to the working class all over the world of the urgent need to oppose the predatory war aims of the imperialist powers. As the ICFI and the International Youth and Students for Social Equality insisted in calling for the building of a worldwide movement against the NATO-Russia war:
The war in Ukraine is not an episode that will soon be resolved and followed by a return to “normalcy.” It is the beginning of a violent eruption of a global crisis that can be resolved only in one of two ways. The capitalist solution leads to nuclear war, though the word “solution” can hardly be rationally applied to what would amount to planetary suicide. Thus, the only viable response, from the standpoint of securing the future of mankind, is the world socialist revolution.
USA will not allow it to happen. Why do you think all 3 Taiwan candidates needs to appear in US for an interview. They will be questioned on this issue and make their pledges this will not happen.
Scott Ritter will survive. But over 400,000 Ukrainian soldiers have not survived the carnage that is a direct result of YouTube’s censorship of omission and commission.
In his interviews, Le Tissier comes across as a nice, well-balanced guy, who exudes the abundance of confidence which he himself admits made him such a formidable spot kicker for Southampton FC, which he loyally served for an impressive 16 years, despite getting much better offers from Spurs and other big clubs.
Retiring from football, Le Tissier became a successful pundit before being blackballed over his views, which he continues to express in the most moderate of terms, on censorship and overall state repression. Even more to our point, Le Tissier said that, as a pundit, he described the action from the point of view of a spectator and not as a manager or, in his case, a lethal forward, and that he left the complex strategic analysis and accompanying diagrams to others. In other words, even as a pundit, Le Tissier was a team player, who could see the overall picture and the best role he could play there.
The point here is that, whether we are looking at football or at NATO’s Ukrainian war, we should try eliciting views from many informed quarters, those like Ritter, with a modicum of relevant experience, included.
Although NATO would agree with that, they insist that military pundits must only express the views of Team NATO and no one else, as all else is mis-information, Putin propaganda and so on. Because Ritter not only differs from NATO’s narrative but actually admits to sometimes working in consort with informed Russians, NATO must have him gagged, for what possible benefit could there be for NATO in giving a Russian, any Russian, a fair hearing? As someone who wouldn’t go out of my way to listen to Ritter’s punditry or, for that matter, that of Le Tissier, that is still fundamentally wrong and, in the case of Ritter, dangerous.
It is dangerous because listening to echo chambers on Ukraine or any other war zone is not only dangerous but potentially lethal as well. This can now be seen in the case of Ukraine where, following the collapse of the much-vaunted Ukrainian Army that Ritter, Douglas Macgregor and other informed pundits long ago consistently predicted, MI6 agent Zelensky, a term I borrow from Ritter’s prior excellent work, is now pretending to clean up Ukraine’s rampant corruption, which Ritter repeatedly previously drew attention to.
Not only has NATO lied to us about every aspect of their Ukrainian war, just like they have lied to us about every single other of the countless wars they have waged since their inception but they want to muffle and ban every authoritative voice that might present us with a contrary view.
This is not to say that all views are equally valid and legitimate. They are not. Le Tissier was a pundit because he was an excellent and articulate player and Ritter, as he constantly reminds us, was a senior officer in the U.S. Marine Corps, which I would put on a par with Hitler’s Wehrmacht, many of whose generals, such as Erich von Manstein, provided valuable post-War insights and more of whom, such as Franz Halder, who served as Chief of Staff of Nazi Germany’s High Command from 1938 to 1942, was subsequently showered with medals and awards of appreciation by President John F Kennedy for perpetuating the myth of the “righteous war the clean Wehrmacht” fought against the Red Army’s Soviet Homeland, whose civilians remain NATO’s primary military target to this very day.
NATO has, of course, countless other targets, many of whom are like Gonzalo Lira, where Ritter has singularly missed the mark. Lira is, or rather was, our man on the spot, just as Nazi Party member John Rabe was our much better informed man on the spot during Japan’s Rape of Nanking for which NATO relentlessly pilloried investigative journalist Iris Chang until she suicided.
Scott Ritter, like Matt Le Tissier before him, is strong and resourceful. He will survive. But over 400,000 Ukrainian soldiers have not survived the carnage that is a direct result of the censorship of omission and commission YouTube and other NATO mis-information portals have spewed out. Though each of those soldiers had a story to tell, many of them, who could not afford to bribe their way to safety, came from the poorest strata of society, from mountainside hovels without even a window, never mind any semblance of what we might regard as the barest comforts of life. Instead of letting them be, Zelensky’s thugs kidnapped them and threw them into the meat grinder where they died unlamented, except by those who loved them and depended on them for their subsistence.
When we take Ukraine’s dead, wounded, orphaned, widowed, trafficked and abandoned into account, Zelensky and his YouTube and other NATO censors must have destroyed the lives of well over 4 million Ukrainians and that is without even looking at the Russian side of the lines.
But, because Lira and even Ritter may be our current men on the spot, historians in future years will probably thank them, just as the more honest amongst them previously thanked Rabe, for giving posterity the first draft of why so many millions of lives had to be blighted so low life porno actor Zelensky could accumulate his portfolio of mansions to house his impressive stable of mistresses.
Ritter and Lira, like Rabe before them, might well be just very minor footnotes to all this carnage. But the main authors of this carnage, criminals like Victoria Nuland and John Bolton, are not. Their self-serving threats against the International Criminal Court notwithstanding, all NATO curs like them have very serious questions to answer, the sort of charges Frank, Frick, Jodl, Kallenbrunner, Keitel, Ribbentrop, Rosenberg and Streicher all swung for in Nuremberg.
These NATO curs have repeatedly said that rough justice is for others, for those like their former Iraqi ally Saddam Hussein whom they lynched in 2006, or Gadaffi, whom they sodomised and murdered in 2011. But then there is also Stepan Bandera, who met his Maker in 1959 to settle, in part, vendettas these NATO gangsters continue to this day. And, though Ritter, Lipp, Lira and Assange are immaterial to settling such scores, until they are settled, there can be no justice and no peace because justice demands that NATO’s war criminals pay with their lives for their crimes and, as even the blind can see, as long as Nuland, Bolton and the rest of NATO’s swamp creatures remain uncaged, there definitely can be no peace.
15 Months On Mars: Ingenuity Finds Eerie Spacecraft Wreckage
WTF? Cool.
Through the Western lens
Through the Western lens means 3 things:
Ideological bigotry — liberal democracy is superior; China’s political system is evil, autocratic, repressive.
Western projection — Western colonialism has dominated the world for the last 500 years; therefore, China will also try to dominate the world similarly, either militarily or economically.
Fear of losing hegemony — China threatens the global hegemony of USA, UK and EU. China must be stopped.
Viewing China through this lens yields:
Anti-China propaganda to smear China’s reputation, turn world opinion against China and hopefully cause the world to decouple from China.
Economic and tech sanctions against China, depriving China of 5G market, semiconductors, FDI.
Military intimidation — naval exercises in Taiwan Strait, adding more military bases, selling arms to Taiwan.
The Western lens is blind to 3 facts:
China has fought no wars in over 40 years, since 1979, making China the most peaceful world power to have ever existed.
Outside of USA, UK and EU, the rest of the world holds a favorable view of China. The University of Cambridge published a study in October 2022 called, “A World Divided: Russia, China and the West.” It surveyed 137 countries representing 97% of the world’s population to uncover the favorability of Russia and China to these countries. It found that 70% of the world, excluding the Western countries, had a favorable view of China. Only 23% of Western countries thought well of China.
Evil, autocratic, repressive China has the most trusted and satisfactory government in the world. According to the 2023 Edelman Trust Barometer, 89% of Chinese trust their government compared to 56% for France, 51% for Canada, 47% for Germany, 46% for Italy, 42% for USA, 37% for UK, 36% for Spain, and 33% for Japan.
A November 2019 Ipsos survey shows that 94 percent of Chinese believe their country is on the right track.
According to the Global Happiness 2023 survey from Ipsos, China is the happiest country in the world at 91% compared to 76% for USA, 74% for Canada and France, and 70% for UK.
According to Ash Center at Harvard Kennedy School in 2020, 95.5% of Chinese are satisfied with their government.
A 2019 UC San Diego study shows a high level of satisfaction among the Chinese across a range of aspects up to 95 percent.
According to Latana’s Democracy Perception Index 2023, China is the 6th most democratic nation on earth, well ahead of Germany, Spain, Canada, Italy, UK, USA, France, and Japan.
Use Google search to verify all of the above. Don’t take my word for it.
Western democracy is a failed model. US democracy has degenerated into a plutocracy. UK democracy is a mess. Indian democracy is a mess.
We have bozo leaders like Biden, Trump, Trudeau, Johnson, Truss, Sunak, Scholz, Modi, Zelensky, etc.
Western democracy allowed millions of people to die needlessly from the pandemic.
Western democracy allowed UK and EU to f*ck up their economies thanks to Russian sanctions.
USA is in very sad shape because of a totally incompetent government…
$32 trillion national debt
crumbling infrastructure
homelessness
unaffordable health care
rampant gun violence
mass incarceration
fentanyl crisis
increasing poverty
The list is endless.
India can’t get a handle on ethnic strife and human rights issues. It has poor education and poor infrastructure. China’s economy is 5.2 times larger by nominal GDP and 2.5 times larger by purchasing power parity when, by rights, India’s economy should be roughly on par with China’s. Thank India’s democracy for this.
The West is a waking up…
The US obsession with China is 100% a “they hate us cuz they ain’t us” situation.
Forty years ago, the Chinese were living in rice fields. Now, they’re all super rich and living in cities that look like the Mars Base from Total Recall.
Last time I was there, I was so shocked by the affluence of the general population that I literally made this face:
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They had to give me tea to relax.
But seriously, I’m thinking of making a trip to China and making a documentary proving that it is a much better country.
A Chinese friend invited me. He’s not even really rich, and he was like “yeah – you can stay at my place. You can sleep on the couch. It’s not a problem – I have 200 couches.”
A Litany of Lies
by Arch Bungle Lifted from an off-topic comment.
Being a catalogue of the lies I have imbibed through by means of torturous exposure to Anglo-American Newspapers and the rumor mills of Continental Europe.
See the examples below:
The Russian MIC cannot manufacture semiconductors. All their semiconductors are obtained via the black market from western sources. Or Iran. Or China. Or North Korea (all of whom are themselves under sanctions!).
The Russian microchip industry doesn’t exist (But the Russians can build things with black market American chips that even the Japanese can’t build)
The Russian microchip industry has collapsed (How something that doesn’t exist “collapses” I am not sure, but there you are)
Putin is a Dictator. He micromanages every single aspect of Russian Society up to the frontline battles (The Surovikhin Line should actually be renamed the “Putin Line”. But russian military bloggers and even military staff are criticising him on a daily basis without apparent consequence, and outspoken media figures are allowed to hurl an endless stream of criticism against Putin and his conduct of the war).
Putin is Russia and “Russia is Putin” (And that one aging bureaucrat alone is enough to terrify the West )
Russia / Putin is Isolated from the global community (Because everyone knows the “International Community” consists of white folks plus some honorary members like the Japs and South Koreans (whose membership may soon be up anyway))
The Russian economy is insignificant and smaller than Italy/Texas/France/etc. (it’s only the biggest economy in Europe by PPP, and nobody cares about PPP)
The Soviet Union was an Empire and Russia is seeking to restore it’s imperialism
Putin is a “Thug” and a “Murderer” (Because he bombed all those Afghan weddings, blockaded the starving people of Yemen and stated publicly that 500 000 Iraqi children were a worthy sacrifice to Mammon)
Russian military operations are at a disadvantage at night due to inferior night vision (The AFU on the other hand has access to the best NATO night vision technology)
Russia is starving the world by withdrawing from the grain deal
The Oil Price Cap, defying all laws of economic gravity, has been surprisingly effective in strangling Russian oil revenues
Russia is running out of artillery/drones/tanks/men Russia is salvaging microchips from dishwashers
Putin is dying from Alzheimers/Parkinsons/Cancer
Russia is stealing millions of Ukrainian children and abducting them to Russian territory
Putin eats brains cooked by Prigozine
Prigozine was Putin’s Chef (literally)
Russian army is demoralised and bordering on mutiny
Putin’s inner circle is plotting a coup against him (It’s going as slow as the SMO because they also believe in the slow grinding approach)
[Counter-Narrative character assassination] Putin was responsible for the Moscow Apartment Bombings
Russian army is incompetent and poorly trained
Russian satellite coverage of the battlespace is poor, so poor large swathes of Ukraine are completely invisible to them
Russian army has poor targeting precision. So bad that even a large CEP and a salvo won’t help
Russia is deliberately targeting civilians
Ukraine is not targeting civilians (deliberately)
Putin is preparing to colonise Africa (The Africans will be given a choice of Russia, China, The EU or the US for their new colonial masters)
The Wagner group is involved somehow in the coup in Niger
Russia has been making extensive use of cluster munitions since the start of the SMO (Extensive evidence of this to be found in Bucha, Mariupol and Kherson)
Ukraine has an artillery advantage over Russia (July/June 2023)
NATO tactics are superior to Russian battlefield tactics (Specifically the training provided by the Brits, those eternal masters of battlefield tactics going back to the charge of the light brigade)
Putin has a poor grasp of strategy (As compared to Biden, Sunak, Boris Johnson, Olaf Scholtz, Jens Stotenberg, Milley, Von der Leyen and Borell who are strategic geniuses)
The Sanctions Are Working (Just like they worked against Iran, Cuba, North Korea, the Houthi, China, Vietnam …)
The HIMARS Missile system will be a “game changer” (It’s impossible to shoot down a hi mars round, and not a single Himars system has been destroyed)
American drones will be a “game changer” (especially the little spy ones)
The AFU has “semi-encircled” the Russian forces in Bakhmut/Artyomsk
Byraktar will be a game-changer (Because somehow the Turks managed to evolve from kebab makers to advanced drone manufacture. Who do they think they are, Iranians?)
F16s will turn the tide of the battle in Ukraines favour
X wonder weapon will “turn the tide against Russia” (I thought the tide was already in Ukraine’s favour from the start?)
X general/commander has been fired/sacked/discipled
X and Y generals have a personal rivalry that is affecting Russian battlefield performance
The Russian army is dependent on decrepit Soviet-era equipment (e.g old Soviet Hypersonic missiles)
There’s nothing special about Ukraine’s neo-nazi problem since neo-nazism is a worldwide problem.
There are no weapons bio-labs in Ukraine operated by the Pentagon
The weapons labs operated in Ukraine by the pentagon are not a threat to Russia
Russia Attacked Ukraine Unprovoked (The bombing of civilians in donbas was no reason to go in guns blazing. R2P is the divine right of Europeans only)
NATO made no commitment (written or otherwise) to not advance on Russia’s borders (Gorbacheff was drunk and hallucinating at the time)
The SMO has nothing to do with the NATO advancement in Eastern Europe
The SMO has nothing to do with the 8-year killings of ethnic russians in donbas
Cluster munitions are acceptable in Ukraine’s case since they’re in dire straits
The Russians invaded Ukraine in 2014 (“Little Green Men”)
Russian tanks are inferior to American tanks (Even Shermans.)Russian tanks are inferior to German tanks (Even WW2 tiger tanks)
Russian tanks are inferior to French tanks (Especially in reverse)
The Russian army is the second most powerful one in the world (Second most powerful in Ukraine, which means the AFU is the most powerful army in the world)
Putin is a Crypto-Jew (Because there are some photos of a Putin-looking dude wearing a weird cap)
Ukraine cannot be a NAZI state because it’s president is Jewish
[Counter-Narrative Character Assassination] Alexander Mercouris is a convicted criminal
[Counter-Narrative Character Assassination] Scott Ritter is a convicted paedophile
“X” pro-russian commentator has never been right (non of his predictions has come true)
“Y” pro-Russian commentator is a convicted x,y,z (character assassinations)
The sanctions will work if we only apply enough rounds of sanctions!
The Russian economy is in tatters!
Putin is losing the political support of his people: Protests breaking out all over Russia with a possible cooler revolution brewing
The Ukrainian Counteroffensive (June/July/August 2023) is/was/will be successful
Russia is firing S300 missiles into Poland (over Ukrainian airspace)
The Russo Ukraine war started in 2022
The Russian Army is using Human Wave attacks (wagner’s HR department must be the most efficient on planet earth – a revolution in HR affairs for sure)
The Russian Army is targeting civilians (And yet the Russians have poor targeting ability?)
The Russian army is using cluster munitions since the start of the war (with not a single mention in the media until the US decided to suggest using them?)
Putin wants to expand the Russian empire into Europe (including such useless basket cases like the Greeks, Italians, French and Spaniards and those malevolent psychopaths the Germans)
Ukrainian Grain is key to solving world hunger (But the EU frequently rejects the grain due to toxins?)
‘International Law’ says x , y , z about the SMO (the same international law that has no enforcer or single legislative body acknowledged internationally)
NATO is a defensive organisation (Except when it comes to brown people in non-european countries, or yugoslavs, who may be bombed with wild abandon)
NATO is limited to the “North Atlantic” (Libya is a north atlantic country of course, everybody knows THAT)
NATO has greater military power than Russia (An organisation made up mostly of countries who got their asses kicked by the Wehrmacht or paid Russia to do their fighting for them are now suddenly the most powerful military force on earth)
Putin is in league with the Russian Oligarchs and therefore targeting the Oligarchs harms Putin (which explains why they’re fleeing Russia for London)
Ukrainian attacks on civilian infrastructure are justified (but Russian attacks on civilian infrastructure are not. All Ukrainian attacks on civilians are unintentional, including the couple killed on Kerch bridge orphaning their daughter)
The Russian Tank Autoloader is inferior to the manually loaded western tank loader (Because a meat-bag on captagon can outperform automation in any era)
The Ukrainian offensive is stalling because NATO is drip-feeding weapons to the regime’ (But still Ukraine is winning!).
Current hostilities between the AFU and the RF are “stalemated” (Even in Kupyansk)
Current hostilities between the AFU and the RF are “stalled” (but Ukraine is making ‘incremental gains’, but Russia is not making ‘incremental gains’)
The Tochka missile attack on the Kramatorsk train station was perpetrated by Russians using an old Soviet missile from Ukrainian stocks.
The Russian people are collectively responsible for Putin’s war on Ukraine (So they need re-education and De-Russification)
The Ukrainian Industry is continuing as normal despite the war. It’s glorious industrial machine pumps out tanks, shells, missiles, semiconductors, fuel and grain at impressive levels, supplying The World and their own army with important commodities (Motorsich is running fine producing tanks for the AFU, jet engines for the Ukrainian Airforce, the neon/argon production facilities have not been captured by Russia, oil reserve facilities are untouched).
Life in Ukrainian cities is continuing as normal despite the war. All is well. Pool parties and street celebrations are commonplace. (Millions of Ukrainians have not fled for Europe, it was merely the tourist high season, hospitals are not filled with the casualties of war, funeral hearses in their thousands are not seen in the streets, WW2 cemeteries are not seeing a capacity problem …)
If the west only gets rid of Putin Russia will collapse and the West will be victorious. (This short, balding, 70-year old bureaucrat is the only one standing between Victoria Nuland and “World Domination”).
The use of nuclear weapons by Russia will end the war and the world will be at peace thereafter (or some variation thereof).
Ukraine should be grateful to the West for supplying the Ukrainian Army (But the West owes Ukraine nothing for fighting their wars for them?)
General Gerasimov was killed on the battlefield.
Putin is dead and what we’re seeing is one of his many body doubles (The body double is somehow as worthy of hatred as the original and as capable of running Russia as the OG Putin (anybody watched Foundation Series lately?))
Russia is the last bastion of the “white, straight, christian male” and is fighting this war in the name of White Christendom (not the chechen muslim, tengrist buryat, buddhist tuvan, shamanist Yakhut … no they’re all just immigrant labour shipped in for their “white” masters)
The Ukrainians should never have surrendered their USSR nuclear weapons (the ones they never had control of to begin with)
If you were against the invasion of Iraq by the USA you should be equally against the invasion of Ukraine by Russia (During which Vasiliy Nebenziya stood up in the UNSC waving a vodka bottle filled with Novichok as evidence the Ukraine was using chemical weapons against “it’s own people”)
The Ukrainian Counteroffensive (June/July/August 2023) is/was/will be successful
The USA is able to fund the Ukraine war on Russia indefinitely (because “infinite money printer capacity” = “infinite manufacturing capacity” and all this manufacturing capacity can be restored to the US in the space of a few months, just like 9 women can birth a single baby in 1 month if working in parallel)
The Ukrainians are winning because they’ve taken back 50% of the territory Russia took from them in a fraction of the time Russia took to take it (at the cost of more than 50% of the Ukrainian army, and just not the part Russia truly cares about. The other 50% of the land will cost another 50% of the AFU probably)
The Wagner Coup’ (Because a 10 minute speech by Putin is enough to stop a coup right in the tracks)
the Wagner Mutiny (Because somewhere there was a ship involved)
The Wagner Protest (Minus the protest placards)
The Wagner Insurrection (Because a couple of clowns barreling down the road with some stolen artillery can take on the entire Red Army)
The Wagner Invasion of Poland (Because “why not”?)
The Russian people would rise up and overthrow the Putin regime if they could only just receive CNN, BBC, MSNBC (Because they’re all nostalgic for a repeat of the 1990s)
The West has unparalleled media freedom (as long as you don’t watch RT, Sputnik, Iranian Opress-TV, Al-Manar because those are obvious propaganda, because we think so)
Putin intends to invade Moldova (skipping on right past Lvov because “Stretch goals: we can do better!”).
Putin is “weaponising” hunger by forcing the West to impose grain sanctions on Russia (“I made you hit me in the face to hurt your hand”).
The Wagner ‘insurrection’ left Putin weakened politically (So weak he had to deliver an entire 10 minute speech including pauses to shut the whole thing down completely).
US Patriot missiles in Kiev shot down Russia’s hypersonic Khinzal missiles without sustaining significant damage.
Ukrainian Air Defences are capable of shooting down Khinzal hypersonic missiles (but by their own admission cannot defend against Onyx, probably because Onyx beats Dagger in trading card games)
…
Posted by b on August 14, 2023 at 17:45 UTC | Permalink
To add a handful more on top of my mind…
108. Journalist Julian Assange raped women and it’s only normal this journalist is locked up in high security prison Belmarch rotting away with psychopaths and murderers 109. The West is not a party to the Ukraine conflict 110. Putin/FSB bombed Nord Streams, Kerch, Kashovka dam in a 5D chess move 111. Putin/FSB murdered Darya Dugina/Vladlen Tatarsky in a 6D chess move 112. Russia would never use nukes against the West so there’s absolutely no risk in ever escalating the war 113. Russia would only use nukes against Ukraine, never the Western war participant so never mind upping the ante 114. The Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 case was carried out by Russians and directing the flight route over the most active war zone of that time as well as lowering the flight altitude from the usual 10 km to 8 km is just imagination 115. To let the war finally end, more weapons payed for by Western tax payers are necessary… war is peace 116. RT, Sputnik News and so many more information streams need censoring to protect our freedom… ignorance is bliss 117. Europe is now totally free of Russian hydro carbons 118. …
During his tenure as president of (what remains of) the Ukraine, Zelensky has wrecked the Ukraine, but has achieved many great things… for Russia. Here are his main achievements in no particular order:
• By being elected with the promise of ending hostilities, then immediately proceeding to escalate the conflict in the east, he thoroughly compromised what was left of Ukrainian democracy. He further demolished the Ukraine’s civic realm by banning all public media except for one government channel, banning all opposition and all Russian news sources and, in effect, establishing a totalitarian dictatorship.
• By relentlessly shelling the civilians in the now Russian Donetsk and Lugansk regions, then, in the spring of 2022, threatening them with a genocidal assault, he provided Russia with an ironclad reason to start the Special Military Operation: to save civilian lives. By so doing, he helped to expand Russian territory by four very valuable provinces (Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporozhye and Kherson) and set the stage for the eventual addition of, among others, Nikolaev, Odessa, Kharkov, and Kiev regions.
• He squandered $150 billion in foreign aid (much of it by the simple expedient of stealing it), expended a huge amount of military equipment and ammunition with nothing to show for it, and killed off 350 thousand Ukrainian soldiers (many of them Nazi war criminals), with possibly twice as many wounded.
• He shrunk his country’s population by almost half, some of it moving to Russia, becoming Russian citizens and integrating productively into the Russian population while rest went to the European Union, becoming a major burden for the welfare budgets of EU countries.
• By ordering Ukrainian troops to shell schools, kindergartens, hospitals and apartment buildings in universally recognized Russian regions such as Belgorod and by launching drone attacks directly on the Kremlin, he declared his government to be a terrorist organization, foreclosing any possibility of forcing Russia to negotiate a peace that would not be entirely on its own terms.
• He demonstrated the superiority of Russian weapons and military technique over NATO’s, most recently with Russia’s destruction of one of the Patriot missile batteries provided by the US. Almost every bit of equipment the West has been able to provide to the Ukrainians has been shown to be inferior to its Russian counterpart.
• He gave the Russian army ample opportunities to perfect their techniques for defeating NATO forces, venturing into new areas of drone warfare and battlefield surveillance from geostationary satellites. This will no doubt be very useful both in opposing NATO and in boosting future weapons sales to non-Western nations that wish to be free from Western oppression and meddling.
• He sold some of the weapons he received from the US to Mexican drug cartels, leaving US officials with no other choice than closing their eyes and pretending that this did not happen. Perhaps they will also be forced to look the other way as these cartels make use of these weapons to take over more and more of US cities and towns.
• He played host to many high-ranking Western officials, whom, on their to visit to Kiev, he presented with lavish presents such as suitcases of foreign aid money he had laundered, which these officials then brought home in diplomatic baggage, thus collecting blackmail material on all of them.
• He set an example for other Russian Jews whose bad luck had caused them to end up in the Ukraine rather than in Russia by resettling his parents in a posh neighborhood in Israel. But he kept his wife by his side, where she did a good job demoralizing the Ukrainian population by squandering more money on a single European shopping spree than most Ukrainians see in several lifetimes, all paid for by the US taxpayer. She also worked hard to gaslight Western officials by making them accept at face value and repeat ridiculous tales, such as the one about Russian troops being issued viagra, for them to better rape Ukrainian women.
• Zelensky is sometimes incautious; for instance, he got caught appointing operatives from Russia’s Federal Security Service (former KGB) to sensitive posts within the Ukrainian defense establishment, although it is unclear whether what’s left of the Ukrainian judiciary will be capable of prosecuting him.
• One of his greatest achievements was in placing the US and NATO in a zugzwang. This is a chess term for a situation in which a player has a choice of several moves, all of which lead to defeat. The US and NATO can either continue supporting the Ukraine, or they can stop supporting the Ukraine; in either case, they will lose.
• Perhaps his greatest achievement of all was in helping Russia turn away from its hostile neighbors in the West and toward friendly countries in Asia, Middle East, Africa and Latin America, cutting its economic, financial and cultural ties to the West and freeing itself from Western influences. His unwavering support for Ukrainian Nazis, whose emblems, insignia and slogans are styled after Nazi Germany and whose heroes are Nazi collaborators, coupled with the lavish support they received from the West, whose leaders chose to turn a blind eye toward their fascist proclivities, cemented in view of the Russians the view of the West as their existential enemy: a fascist, racist entity determined to destroy Russia but too weak and cowardly to do the job themselves.
All of this begs a question: Whom does Vladimir Zelensky serve?
Only 15% of the world’s population dislikes China; they make up the G7. They dislike China because it is a threat to what they think is their monopoly on global influence.
They call themselves “the world” because western-owned media has global influence.
The other 85% of the world either likes China or doesn’t care.
Hi, SJ-Z . Thanks for your very interesting question!
I guess Italians would be super surprised at just how much the Chinese spoil their pets.
Recently, 网易天成 (NetEase Tian Cheng), a subsidiary of 网易 (NetEase, the Chinese internet technology company) that specializes in medium-to-high-end pet food, partnered with 必胜客（Pizza Hut) to come up with a “Chinese-made dog pizza” that is safe to be consumed by dogs (and cats!).
The dog pizza is the brown disk thingy in the picture below:
This is what the “Chinese-made dog pizza” looks like in promotional material:
In the close up below, you can see that on the top of the pizza box, written in Chinese:
宠物零食 冻干生骨肉珍享比萨
This translates to:
Pet Snack Freeze Dried Raw Bone Meat Premium Pizza
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To be honest, to me, it doesn’t look at all appetizing.
But then again, it’s made for dogs and cats.
Maybe dogs and cats don’t take visual aesthetics into account when it comes to their choice of nosh:
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This pizza is part of 网易天成 & PizzaHut‘s “人宠同吃” (Pets eat together with us) promotional marketing campaign.
Basically, you buy a package deal at Pizza Hut that includes:
– a set meal for the humans – the “Chinese-made dog pizza” – Pet items/plushies
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More marketing collateral from the campaign:
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So, SJ-Z , at the end of the day, I guess it’s whether the dogs (and the cats) are actually going to eat this “Chinese-made dog pizza”.
I mean… you know how fussy some dogs and cats can be with their food…
I checked out Chinese social media platforms, and it appears that there are dogs (and cats) out there who will consume a “Chinese-made dog pizza”.
I guess, while it may look unappetizing to me, it’s tasty enough for them:
Many, many years ago I received a letter in the post. It was a recorded delivery and I had to sign for it to confirm delivery. I was intrigued and opened it immediately. It was a summons to appear in our local small claims court. I was being sued for £6,000. There were no details about the charges or any explanation of what the case was about other than the name and address of the complainant. I was mystified as I didn’t recognise the name. Lets call him Mr Smith.
In the three weeks before the stated date I convinced myself that one of my sons was playing an involved joke on me. I quizzed them all mercilessly but nobody would admit to knowing anything about it. As the date drew closer I determined to go to court just to find out which of my boys was the perpetrator of this rather involved joke.
Court day arrived and I went into the court building and presented my summons to an attendant, still expecting to be told it was a forgery. I was wrong. I was politely directed to a small waiting room and told my case would be called in 10 minutes. I was stunned.
When I was escorted into the courtroom the Sheriff (a lay judge in Scotland) asked me if I had a legal representative. I explained how I thought that the summons was a joke and I had no lawyer. He said that I could ask for a deferment to get legal advice if I choose but he didn’t think that was necessary. I sat down still stunned and confused but by now rather scared.
The Sheriff now asked the other side to outline their case. I listened in stunned amazement as the story unfolded.
Apparently some 6 months previously I had sold Mr Smith a tenpin bowling ball and drilled the ball to suit his hand. I had explained to him the need to keep the ball clean of lane oil on a regular basis. Mr Smith had taken me at my word and had left his bowling ball soaking in a bathtub of hot soapy water overnight. Feeling that the finger and thumb holes were wet when he fished the ball out of the bath in the morning he had decided to dry out the ball. Fifteen or twenty minutes in the microwave should dry it out nicely.
Some time later the ball had exploded. The force of the explosion was enough to destroy the microwave and send the door of the microwave flying upward with enough energy to punch through the ceiling and the floor of the room above his kitchen. Unfortunately the room above his kitchen was his neighbours bathroom. The microwave door not only punched through the floor but punched through the actual bath. Really unfortunately the poor woman was taking a bath at the time.
She was suing Mr Smith for the damage to her bathroom from the flying microwave door as well as the water damage to her carpets from the bath full of water. She wasn’t suing for the shock of a microwave door suddenly puncturing her bath although it must have been a terrific shock.
Mr Smith was suing me for the same amount on the basis that I had sold him a bowling ball without specifically telling him not to put it in the microwave.
By this stage several people in the gallery were laughing and the sheriff was definitely smiling. I was still worried but feeling considerably less scared. We all sat politely until Mr Smith’s lawyer had finished. The Sheriff then drew himself very straight and without a trace of a smile said that he was here to apply the law of the land and not to educate idiots. Case dismissed.
So there I was, sitting in traffic court to plead for a reduced fine and or a payment arrangement. The courtroom was packed, it would appear there were many traffic law criminals in the small town I was appearing in.
So I sit and wait my turn.
And wait…
and wait…
After most of the morning had passed, there were only 15–20 of us left. The judge however stopped calling cases. He was busily doing his after-court paperwork for a good ten minutes. Finally, he looks back out to the courtroom and asks “Why are you all still here?”
The response from more than one of us was we had tickets and were here for our day in court. The judge looked quite unhappy as he side-barred with his clerk. When the conversation was over he looked out at us and said “It would appear my office was not prepared for you all to come today. Since the city cannot see fit to be ready for your legally required court date I am dismissing every one of your cases. Please give your name to the clerk as you exit. Also please accept my apologies for the City’s inability to do its job.”
I am of course paraphrasing, it was long ago, but that is the gist of what happened. As we all filed out we were entertained by the Judge’s not-so-discrete chewing out of his staff.
We begin today with a discussion on what the United States actually is.
It is a bully, and a liar, that is based on a system of deception; a shadow play of puppets. All supported by the largest propaganda system in history. And all of it; MM included has (up until very recently) believed it all lock, stock and barrel.
So it is fitting to begin with today’s brilliant podcast by Neil Oliver.
Who knows what will come next for the West…
HEXAGON
In April 1972, when a “data package” sank into the Pacific Ocean, the U.S. Navy dispatched the Trieste II Deep Sea Vehicle I (DSV-1), its most advanced deep sea submersible at the time, to recover the item. In reality, it was “part of a film capsule from an American photoreconnaissance [spy] satellite codenamed HEXAGON.”
According to the Freedom of Information Act Electronic Reading Room, a malfunction was responsible for the incident. A parachute was supposed to deploy once the film capsule, or “bucket,” having reentered the atmosphere, was over the primary reentry zone near the Hawaiian Islands. Instead, the parachute broke off, and the bucket fell into the ocean, sinking on impact to a depth of about 16,400 feet (5,000 meters).
NO ONE HIT WONDER HERE!!! OLIVER ANTHONY – I WANT TO GO HOME (REACTION)
I think people are getting upset because he’s waking people up and they don’t want to be woken. It’s time guys. We can’t keep living like this and accepting it. It’s happening around the world and we need to make a change.
IMF Just Shocked The World And The U.S With This Move!
It wants to overtake and dominate the Chip industry within a decade and it will. No perhaps, not may be, not hopefully. It will. Meanwhile it will take over the low and medium end market for chips in 3–5 years and totally bankrupt the U.S. and its cronies chip outfit.
Let me give you 2 perfect example of never ever doubting and never try to cut China out act by the U.S.
One, The U.S. the congress in the most childish and hubris behaviour, decided to bar China and Chinese on its U.S. space station in the 90’s. In that in one single racist act it motivated China to build its own space station and it did within 15 years.
And today the Chinese space station is a fully functional and well developed space station that is better, build faster and using far less resources. It uses better and more advance technologies and it is open for the entire world including the US for the betterment of humanity. For me shame on the US. The US coincidentally will retire the US space station within 5 years leaving the Chinese Space Station as the only one for the coming decade.
Two, The GPS. The US threaten the US that it can and will cut out nation that refuse to be submissive and subservient to the US in not too many words. That statement and threat itself motivated China enough to developed its own GPS within a decade of the US threat. Today the Chinese Beidou has way higher resolution, and accuracy up to a meter compared to the GPS functional up to only 10 meter! Today 150 out of 195 nations use Beidou. Instead or with the GPS. All within a decade.
Marked my word. Within a decade the US will lose so much in Chip business, market share and profits that it will forever regret the nonsense and ludicrous Chip policy under President Biden. To me China was willing to share a loaf of bread with the US but it is the US that wants to deprived China. So China should say fine, they will dominate. The entire Chip industry. In a decade. I will bet every cent I have on China winning.
I had a boss who was a narcissistic D-bag. Everyone knew it.
I finally had enough after yet another useless meeting set up just to stoke his ego. At that point somebody decided to jack him up a bit.
Somebody hung around his office until they saw him leave for a meeting with the company president. They knew it would take a while and he would leave his precious laptop open on his desk.
No they didn’t hack into it or delete any files. They did one better.
They had a firecracker set aside for this specific opportunity.
Somebody cut the firecracker open and sprinkled a bit of gunpowder lightly on his vowel keys and between the keys on his keyboard. They then lightly wiped it clean to hide the evidence.
I heard that the next time he took a flight he was flagged by TSA screening. Something about explosives in his laptop.
He missed his flight and had to replace his laptop.
I have always wondered who that “somebody” might have been. Certainly not me writing on an open forum like Quora.
OLIVER ANTHONY – I WANT TO GO HOME (REACTION)
He’s so authentic with angst, pain, confusion and he’s fed up like soooo many of us!!
Brisket in Coffee-Barbecue Sauce
867f0f8a8b65b137dcca1c34ce969057
Yield: 10 to 12 servings
Ingredients
3/4 cup vegetable oil
1 large Spanish onion, minced
5 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1 tablespoon tomato paste
7 tablespoons light brown sugar
5 cups brewed coffee
1/2 cup cider vinegar
1 (28 ounce) can peeled, chopped tomatoes
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 (4 pound) brisket
Instructions
In a medium pot, heat 1/4 cup of the oil over medium heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring, until soft and golden brown, about 7 minutes.
Add the garlic and cook, stirring, until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Stir in the red pepper. Add the tomato paste and cook, stirring frequently, about 1 minute. Stir in the brown sugar. Pour in the coffee, vinegar, and tomatoes; bring to a boil; and then lower to a simmer. Simmer for 10 minutes. Set aside to cool.
Working in small batches, transfer the tomato-coffee mixture to a blender and puree. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Set aside.
Heat the oven to 275 degrees F.
Season the brisket with salt and pepper. In a Dutch oven with a tight-fitting lid, heat the remaining 1/2 cup oil. Brown the brisket on both sides. Drain off the oil, leaving the brisket in the Dutch oven. Turn the brisket so that the fat side is facing up and then coat it with the pureed tomato-coffee mixture. Cover the Dutch oven and place it in the oven. Bake for 3 hours, basting frequently.
Remove the lid and bake uncovered until the brisket is glazed and very tender, about an hour and a half more.
Remove the brisket and set it aside to rest for 10 minutes, covered with foil, before slicing thinly across the grain.
Compilation of the #1 Song in America!!! Oliver Anthony – Rich Men North Of Richmond
Post a harsh criticism against a political leader, any leader not just Modi
Compare him to some clownish character or demand that he step down
Under your real name
I am a very ordinary lawyer, yet I promise that unless you are an MP, MLA, Civil Servant, Minister or Wealthy Industrialist/Businessman, Military Man or Senior Cop :-
I can get a simple complaint with some influence filed through a specific lawyer and you will be arrested and you will be humiliated in front of your family and workplace
I guarantee it
All I need is a friendly cop and once he knows you are an ordinary commoner – he will happily file an FIR
He then writes to the passport office and you don’t get a passport
He can place you on the blacklist through a friendly SP Or State Home Secretary and you can’t get a US Visa or Schengen Visa or Singapore Visa for life
You would spend the next 6 months to 3 years in horror before a High Court quashes the case
I will come and look sheepish and say I got emotional while giving the PCR and the judge will admonish me and fine me ₹10K
You would have spent ₹3–6 Lakhs, maybe more
And I am an ordinary enrolled lawyer who doesn’t even actively practice
Imagine a powerful practising lawyer or a powerful cop if you antagonize one
Imagine if this is done in Begusarai Or some random place in Kerala
Imagine working in Infosys and two cops arrive and haul you out in front of your friends and drag you into a waiting jeep
Their response if questioned will be
We got a complaint we followed it up
So a simple malicious connected official can destroy your life if you are a commoner even if you earn ₹20 or ₹30 LPA
Your company will drop you like a hot potato
NOT IN CHINA
No Malicious officer or lawyer can try anything like this
The law is black and white
Evidence is specific and very strictly specific
So even if a case is registered, it will be dismissed in seconds if it doesn’t violate the laws
The official or lawyer would be roasted
So you understand?
In India the Law reads fairer
The System is utterly and totally loaded against the innocent average man
In China the Law is harsher
Yet the System protects the innocent average man
So the next time someone on Quora says he can post criticism freely in India
Ask him to do it under his own name and ask him if he is willing to test the fairness of the Indian system against a malicious prosecutor or entity
In China – the Law is very fair
It’s very harsh yes but very fair
No malicious person except high ranking CPC officials can come after you or spoil your life with lies
Evidence counts for a lot
1:45 / 14:42
‘We’ve all been watching the longest-running show of modern times. But it might soon be all over’
Neil Oliver: We’ve all been watching the longest-running show of modern times. But soon the show might soon be over, as more and more of the audience, especially in the cheap seats, are becoming restless, aware of how uncomfortable their seats are.
The US spends way too much time and effort looking out into the world, not nearly as much looking in the mirror at what the US has become.
The result: hard outside, rotten core
No longer able to keep running the marathon while the tank is on ‘E’.
Americans are far more focused on countering the other major political party in America whenever we are looking in.
We want our team—our little tribe—to be victorious.
Countering China’s rise?
We failed at rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan…after more than 10 years and how many billions upon billions dollars spent? thousands of lives lost?
Americans are so disconnected from reality that even that experience hasn’t shaken us from our delusions of grandeur.
What will? who knows—maybe the next great Recession will offer a bitter dose of reality.
But even then perhaps we will still go on believing in our triumphalism, with all our rags, evictions, foreclosures, abandoned properties, and pink slips
America today is more divided than I have ever seen it.
Individuals and companies and our own government are swimming in an ocean of debt with—until recently—out of control inflation.
Countering China’s rise?
Maybe we should check the plumbing and wiring in our own house first?
This is why this hit a nerve… Oliver Anthony – Rich Men North Of Richmond (Reaction)
I have a cousin who was passioned by Japan since a very early age. He subsequently studied Japanese culture and language at university, and then decided he had to go after his big dream — live in Japan and become a part of Japanese culture.
But my cousin was used to living in The Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and France — the Western Burgundian world in a nutshell. And that also translated into the fact that he loved to enjoy life, far above enjoying work, and succeeding in it.
In fact: he even enjoyed to be unemployed when it suited him back in those Western days.
In the big city in Japan though, that kind of non-philosophy did not work out.
Although he was embraced in the very beginning, his way of “interpreting life” was spit out and on by his Japanese company, because he simply could not follow the exuberant pace by which Japanese people were living — are rather: working.
And after a while, he was excluded from the city society as an outcast.
In the old Western world he came from, he would have been helped, but now he was considered as a lost case, as if he was diseased, and no one would touch him — afraid to be infected.
In the end — in the most embarrassing episode of my cousin’s life — his dad and younger brother travelled to Japan, and got him out of there. By then, he was living in an almost depraved way in an apartment the size of a closet.
He suffered from a major depression when back, and had to leave his Japanese dream for good.
Because now he understood, that he didn’t understand.
Neocons CRUMBLE as China DESTROYS the US-led Unipolar Order
I remember I once opened the mail box and saw the electricity bill and the first thing I noticed was the paper was a different color.
Not the envelope, the bill. And poor people know what the means…notice of disconnect.
main qimg e6c06b18dc1d51de356c6f6c67b485bd lq
(Google)
As I held the bill in my hand, I could feel my anxiety ramping up as I frantically searched my mind and counted backwards to the last time I paid. I could swear I just paid it.
But it’s a bill, we always feel like we just paid it! Because we did! Right?! Then there’s the fear of checking your account to find, not only do you have no money, but less than no money. Your account is negative and you haven’t paid that particular bill in months.
It wasn’t purposeful. You just spaced it.
I sit the bill on the bar and pace back and forth, for hours before I finally get the nerve to open it.
Then I snatch it up and rip it open like a present. Very unlike my normal polite, trimming of one end and shaking the letter out.
And I was right!! The bill is red! Not just red numbers on a white page. A red sheet of paper! I just about have heart palpitations.
I unfold it through half squinted eyes and read.. “Happy Holidays to you and yours! From our team and we would like to Thank You for being a valued customer for all these years.”
After years of abuse, poverty, homelessness and then stability. Christmas Greetings can send me spiraling at the hint of a different color inside the envelope.
Poverty traumatizes on so many different levels.
BRICS DEFEATS The WEST
2023 08 23 15 38
https://youtu.be/0jKQcw-b0-I
British Guy Reacts to Oliver Anthony “Rich Men North Of Richmond” REACTION!
Adolphe Sax had earned the nickname “Little Sax the Ghost” due to the abnormal amount of accidents he was in. Even his mother believed he wasn’t meant to live, and all she foresaw was a tragic end to his life.
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He was plagued by an unusual amount of misfortune from a very early age. At just three years old, he drank a mixture of white lead, copper oxide, and arsenic, believing it to be milk. A few months later, he fell down three flights of concrete stairs and hit his head on a stone below, both times he was lucky to walk away.
Then he swallowed a very sharp needle that he was able to pass without puncturing any vital parts. As he got a bit older, he fell onto a red hot stove and suffered third-degree burns down one side of his body.
When he was ten, he fell into a river and barely escaped drowning. When a container of gunpowder exploded in his father’s workshop, he was blown across the room.
On several occasions, he nearly died from accidental poisoning and asphyxiation due to sleeping in a room where varnished furniture was drying.
His last known brush with death happened when a tile fell from a roof, hitting him in the head and causing him to fall into a coma.
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Despite all this misfortune, Adolphe went on to invent some notable musical instruments, the most famous being the Saxophone.
HE’S SPEAKING TO US! Oliver Anthony – Rich Men North Of Richmond
2023 08 21 08 46
Mustard Glazed Brisket
Starts on the stove top, finishes in the oven for tender Mustard Glazed Brisket every time.
2023 08 21 09 00
Yield: 6 servings
Ingredients
1 (3 to 4 pound) boneless beef brisket
2 cloves garlic, peeled
1 large onion, sliced
2 stalks celery
8 black peppercorns
4 whole allspice
1 bay leaf
3/4 cup brown sugar
3 tablespoons prepared mustard
Instructions
Place brisket, garlic, onion, celery, peppercorns, allspice and bay leaf in a large soup pot. Cover with water. Simmer covered 3 to 3 1/2 hours until tender, adding water as necessary.
Remove brisket and place in a roasting pan with 1/2 cup of the cooking liquid.
Combine brown sugar and prepared mustard. Salt and pepper brisket and spread with the mustard glaze.
Bake for 15 to 20 minutes at 350 degrees F until glaze bubbles and is browned.
Pegasus spyware
According to declassified documents, Alejandro Encinas, Mexico’s Undersecretary for Human Rights, advised President Lopez Obrador that Pegasus spyware had been found on Encinas’s own cellphone and those of two others in his office. Encinas had been investigating the mysterious “disappearances of hundreds of people,” a New York Times article explains, which occurred during the “Dirty War” that the Mexican military conducted in the 1960s and 1970s against a left-wing insurgency.
Initially, U.S. officials considered the Mexican crackdown to be understandable, Kate Doyle reports in her 2003 article “Human Rights and the Dirty War in Mexico.” And the U.S. assured Mexico that it “had no intention of pressing [Mexican President Luis] Echeverría about it.”
However, this stance changed in 1978, when U.S. President Jimmy Carter ordered the White House to conduct a sweeping review of U.S.-Mexican relations and learned that “the White Brigade and other security force elements… sometimes ignored [both] the human rights of [terrorist] suspects and Mexican judicial procedures,” torturing and executing such individuals, with the results that “200-300 persons [had disappeared] over the last decade.”
Only now, three decades later, is Mexico beginning to come to grips with the fact that the government was responsible for “torturing and murdering its own people.”
Chris Webby – North Of Richmond (Remix)
What Makes Certain Wine Unbelievably Expensive?
The price gap is supply and demand, for certain prestigious brands.
So first of all, wine comes from grapes; and grape quality is dependent on many factors. Weather of course, but also soil, water, light, heat, and grower skill/decisions. AND of course, the actual grape vine.
Old vines produce less fruit – thus, smaller production, BUT generally more concentrated and intense. Younger vines produce more fruit, but you have to prune them – the amount of pruning affects the concentration and quality of the juice you get. If your options are ‘n’ cases of wine at $60/case (wholesale) or ‘n/3’ cases at $120, you’re probably going to prune sparingly to get as much juice and wine as possible, without creating garbage. On the other hand, if you can make truly great wine and have a name for yourself, then the options are ‘n/3’ cases at $1000, or ‘n’ cases at $1000 – for a year or two, and then the price per case drops down to $100 because nobody trusts you anymore.
Then you factor in the slope of your land and composition of the soil (acidity, water retention or runoff), the light, the use of pesticides, mulch, etc..
So now you have some amount of good-quality grapes. How do you make wine? Do you make wine that’s going to mature over 10-50 years, or wine that’s going to be drinkable about the time it hits the market, late next year (like about 90% of the wine sold)? The former leads to more expensive wine, and is harder to sell – BUT if done well, can establish you over time as a top-notch winemaker. Or drive you into bankruptcy even sooner.
So this pretty much determines the pricing for most wines between $8 and $80. Above that, things get…complicated.
If you’re in Bordeaux for instance, your vinyard is likely ranked by the government. Your wine has to meet certain standards of quality and composition, and much of it is historical. There are, for instance, only five first-growth houses, and only one of them was not defined as such in 1855. (Chateau Mouton-Rothschild, which got promoted in 1973). If you’re one off those, or one of a limited few others who have a similar cachet, you can pretty much name your price. The thing is, most of their wine is sold on futures at auction, so basically it’s “as much as someone is willing to pay.”
HE DONE DID IT AGAIN!! | OLIVER ANTHONY – I WANT TO GO HOME
One of my first cars was an AMC Pacer. It was like driving in a large greenhouse. It had windows all around, and it rode pretty smooth. My particular vehicle was yellow; a nice 1970s yellow.
amc pacer
I used a lot of scrap shag carpet to line the floors at which my grandmother, and her girlfriends all thought that I had a great car to drive about in.
Man, that was a long time ago.
My friends drove other cars, of course. But I was forced to drive this after my GTO was lost while driving at speed along the dark curvy roads of wooded Pennsylvania.
GTO OIP
In those days, the price for gasoline was cheaper than today. But it was still high. It was 65 cents per gallon. So we would fill the tank and go a crusin’. Maybe stop at the local burger joint and grab a burger and drink some beer.
e40635876e97d579deeb190586da819b bob s nostalgia
Today, my life is very different.
Here we have to worry about psychos wanting to set the world on fire, instead of grooving and jamming to some tunes.
Sigh.
Gonzalo Lira Update and the Doom Loop Tour
So Gonzalo is alive. Yay!
Money
Large sums of money are a real HEADACHE. You do not want a large sum of money, and all those ideas that you might have about what you would do with it are just fantasies.
Hollywood is not reality. So get over it.
In today’s world, any amount of money over that which you can fit in your wallet is suspect. And if you are an American, it is subject to seizure as “potential criminal gains”. Which is, by the way, how this question was written. In the USA, the police really do not need a warrant, or an excuse to seize your money. They will just do it, so it’s really not in your best interests to have a lot of money on you.
But, I live in China, and the rules on money use, obtainment and storage are really strict. If you have a lot of money, then you will have a lot of headaches.
TRUE STORY TIME
I had an affirmation about getting a large; an enormous sum of money. And sure as shit it materialized, just not like I expected. I wrote about this event HERE.
in 2020 one of my clients approached me. And they had an interesting “project” that they wanted me to help them with.
Outside of Guangzhou were four warehouse complexes filled with 3.4 billion dollars in USD. These bills were in $100 denominations, counted and wrapped, and shrink wrapped on pallets. The owner of the bills, the warehouses, obtained the money over a span of many, many decades though various legal businesses, and just accumulated the money as he believed that the USD was a guaranteed hedge against the ups and downs of the Chinese political scene.
Well, things changed a lot since the 1980s.
He just kept on collecting the money, and not really using a bank to store the money. So the money was transparent to the Chinese government. Hidden really.
Around 2013, China started to crack down on this kind of activity, and so he registered the amount with a bank in Guangzhou. So now the money is recognized as his, and as legal tender. However, due to the laws inside of China, he can spend no more than $50,000/year of it inside of China. Nor can he take more than $50,000 out of China in any given year.
The warehouses are not really hidden, but non-descriptive and distressed, and patrolled by his security guards. He’s not worried about thieves. How would anyone haul away any of the money? Five million trips in a van?
Any kid could easily climb though the rusted chain link fence, and walk in and around the complexes. But they don’t. He has a very good reputation in the local area, and everyone knows him, respects him and loves him. He’s a very down to earth kind of fellow.
What he wanted me to do was figure out some legal way to use the cash (hard cold cash) to buy assets or something; like businesses, hotels, investments, minerals, etc. Without breaking any laws or rules. As for certainly, the government is now absolutely tracking his actions with his cash.
So, I and some of my staff met him at a hotel, had lunch and he drove us out in the countryside where he took use to one of the warehouse complexes.
The guard waved us in, and it was just a big complex of huge vine covered old warehouses and peeling paint. And he opened up the big sliding hanger doors and we went into the complex. It was stacks and stacks and stacks of shrink-wrapped pallets of cash one on top of the other as far as the eye could see.
And this was true for all of the warehouses. I have never seen so much paper in my life.
The owner told us that his biggest problem were local field mice and rats that liked to gnaw on the pallets and get into the money to eat it, as well as an occasional leak or two in the roof that might seep into the bundles of palletized cash.
He was tired of spending money to protect all this money that he could not spend, and he wanted an out.
We left, and went back and came up with some ideas and solutions. He was willing to pay us 10% on whatever we could “free up”. So for every 1 million that we can de-paper, he would give us $100,000 USD. Though, according to the law, it would have to occur over two years before we could get the money.
Of the various ideas that we came up with, none of them were acceptable to him. And so, after a few months of “wracking our brain” we gave up. Too much of a headache.
End of story
Now, that client is doing well. More money than he knows what to do with. Four girl-friends that he supports, plus a wife. And being older, in his 80s, I’m sure that the gals are more for company than for any “exercise”. But all this money is a big waste. He cannot spend it. He cannot give it away. The most he can do is give one person $50,000 that’s it. And he cannot move it.
It is the proverbial “white elephant”.
You do not want piles of cash. You do not want the hassles that come with it. You want freedom from worry, a roof over your head, and some delicious food and fun. But over and above that becomes more and more problematic as times moves on.
Same with fame. But that’s another story for another time.
Another idea
I’d amend Jon Mixon’s #1 to say “pay for some necessities and bills, then save the rest”. On paper, you’d just look like a very frugal person, but the savings would be essentially laundering the money very slowly.
If you’re living comfortably in a middle-class or professional job, maybe you’re saving $1–2k a month or more with this method. That’s $12–24k in a year, which you can easily turn around into small legitimate investments that can then enjoy compound interest.
People get away with embezzlement this way for decades at a time, and the only way they ever get caught is that an accountant *at the place they’re embezzling from* catches them. Since you’ve already got the $1,000,000 in hand, and no one’s looking for it, there’s relatively low risk of getting caught.
The trick is to spend your paycheck on everything that you’d use a credit card for: TVs, car note, gas and insurance, modest groceries, airline flights, etc. The practical rule is that “if it’s going to be sitting around your house when the IRS comes around, use your paycheck on it”.
Everything else? Use the dirty cash! Eating out, babysitters (already traditionally paid in cash!), subway tickets, beer money, and so on. If the IRS is too concerned with checking your bank records to make sure you DID buy that TV with a credit card, and that checks out, they won’t think you’re worth investigating how often you’ve been eating out.
One last thing.
I’d keep a storage unit, paid for out of a separate bank account in my name. Every month, like clockwork, I’d personally make a cash withdrawal from my paycheck, and a cash deposit in this bank account, in order to pay the storage fees.
And all I’d do is store my old junk in it. None of the $1M! The practical reason is, of course, very smart: if the IRS ever decides to audit you, you want something that *looks* suspicious on paper, maybe even borderline stupid in that way that most people get caught on “something very stupid”, but is an absolute nothingburger upon any closer inspection. It distracts people and makes them figure nothing else is wrong with you.
Plus, I’d just love to see that look on the IRS agent’s face when I rolled up the garage door and all he smelled was SOCKS.
Blinken’s accusation on China a disrespect of Tonga as sovereign state
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Upon arrival at Tonga’s capital Nuku’alofa on Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken wasted no time throwing mud at China.
This time, he called Beijing’s engagement in the region “problematic behavior” and Chinese investment “predatory” that would hurt the local economy.
Behind the China-bashing cliche, Blinken, the first U.S. state secretary to visit Tonga, was actually asking the island nation to take sides and making the region a new arena of rivalry, but he should understand that smearing others’ normal cooperation is a real problematic behavior. His accusation is not only an attack on China, but also unwise questioning of Tonga’s judgment on choosing partners as a sovereign country.
At a joint press conference after his meeting with Blinken on Wednesday, Tongan Prime Minister Siaosi Sovaleni told the U.S. guest that his country had no concerns about its relationship with China.
When Tonga was faced with multiple challenges, including volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, and the COVID-19 pandemic, China often rushed to its assistance. As facts have proven, China’s friendship has always been based on deeds rather than words, Tongan King Tupou VI has said.
In the broader Pacific islands, China has carried out a large number of assistance projects that meet the actual needs of the countries it tries to help. These projects have strongly promoted local economic development and improved people’s livelihood. While offering help, China always fully respects the sovereignty and independence, as well as the will and the cultural traditions of the countries assisted.
Based on its own development experience, China has conducted mutually beneficial cooperation with other developing countries by upholding justice and pursuing shared interests, and provided assistance without attaching any political strings.
Such cooperation has greatly promoted economic and social development as well as people’s livelihood in relevant countries. The Mombasa-Nairobi Railway financed and built by China has created nearly 50,000 jobs for Kenya. By the end of 2022, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor has brought 25.4 billion U.S. dollars in direct investment to Pakistan and created 236,000 jobs. The list goes on.
If Washington really cares about the development of the Pacific islands, it should first apologize and fully compensate for the damage caused by its over 60 nuclear tests in the region, address the islands’ pressing challenges of climate change with concrete actions, and focus on the real needs of local people, rather than sending senior officials to stage a runway-show-like diplomatic campaign.
And if the United States is truly committed to a better future and the well-being of the people in other parts of the world, it should stop slinging mud at China, and instead join hands with China to help countries in need.
A country that offers very little help, but tries very hard to obstruct other countries’ helping hands, and even pursues its own interests at the expense of others’, does not measure up to the image of a respectable major power.
Geopolitical INFERNO: Victoria Nuland’s South African Visit Sparks Fear and Fury!
Dive into the fiery world of geopolitics as we dissect Victoria Nuland’s enigmatic trip to South Africa. Uncover the deep-seated anxieties and justified fears that arise from her actions. Could her visit be a menacing threat to South Africa’s sovereignty? Is she secretly aiming to sabotage the BRICS’ new currency? Brace yourself for a no-holds-barred exploration that leaves no stone unturned!
“Amazing” is the buzzword in Chengdu, Sichuan province, the venue for the FISU World University Games.
Athletes and officials participating in the biennial Summer Universiade, which opened on Friday, said they are deeply impressed by the games facilities in the provincial capital, and underlined that Chengdu has set the bar high for future hosts.
The organizing committee of the games has taken recommendations from all sides into consideration and made sincere efforts to include them in the preparations, which has set a perfect stage for athletes to shine on, Leonz Eder, acting president of the International University Sports Federation, said in an interview with China Daily.
A total of 6,500 athletes from 113 countries and regions are competing in 269 events across 18 sports at the Chengdu games, which will run until Aug 8. Thirteen new venues have been built for the competitions, while 36 existing ones have been upgraded and renovated to meet international standards.
Athletes echoed the FISU acting president and said that they were also touched by the warm welcome accorded to them.
Elavenil Valarivan from India, who won the women’s 10-meter air rifle gold at Chengdu Shooting Sport School on Saturday, said the competition venue and its services are excellent. “What they have done here is so good, I mean, so much better than many of the places where I have competed before. … I’m really happy to be in Chengdu,” she said.
Brazilian basketball player Caio De Souza Pacheco said the smooth organization of the event is helping him focus on his game.
“I’m very happy to be here. We’re very excited. … What you guys have been doing in Chengdu, in China, has been amazing,” Pacheco said.
Jonathan Larsen, coach of the German badminton team, said that all athletes received a warm welcome at the Shuangliu Sports Center Gymnasium. “The venue looks absolutely amazing. And we are looking forward to competing in it,” Larsen said.
The badminton venue, which has a floor area of 14,626 square meters, boasts 14 courts and a warm-up area.
Sofus Rasmussen, head of the Norwegian delegation, said he is very impressed with how things have been organized. “From the moment we’ve arrived, we’ve been taken such good care of. … Things have been handled very efficiently. I think this organizing committee has set the bar really high for the next committee.”
Rasmussen said the opening ceremony on Friday was so splendid that it has been the most-discussed topic among athletes and officials over the weekend.
“It was incredible and nothing like (any ceremony) I’ve ever been to before. I was expecting it to be spectacular, but not on that level. And the audiences were fantastic. The athletes were so touched. For these young people, it was something they will never forget,” he added.
Mainly because China is a major challenge to the West and is the only Eastern Nation which is coming closest to pipping the West from its supremacy that was established nearly 400 years ago
So the smallest rainfall becomes a deluge ,a two man protest becomes a major massive million man protest and a minor confrontation at a bank ends up being a major run on banks
Likewise a normal cyclical economic problem where China should have been hailed for 6.3% growth despite all negative factors is being treated as a major economic crisis
Tomorrow if China convinces the West that it will allow western hegemony, purchase $250 Billion of US T Bonds and defunds it’s investments in AI and Defense and appoints someone like Hu Jintao as President and Secretary — then suddenly every media will be pro China and hail China as a modern miracle
India?
India is way way below anyone’s radar today
Zero core technology today
Heavy reliance on the West
Relatively low economic power
No major military threat to anyone
Parliamentary Democracy as per Western Norms
So why focus on India
They will instead focus on RRR & Leo & Diwali as a holiday & all the superficial stuff and rate India’s 7.2% growth as rocket like while China’s 6.3% in a six times larger economy as huge crisis
If India comes close to say 50% of Western GDP (US) and looks like it may be of some significance and a threat to Western Hegemony, then India will face its own share of horrors and fake stories
Within India?
That’s how Indians are most of the time
Always short term and Always burying problems under the carpet
Typical Democracy sadly !!!!!
Whatever wins votes will be what’s discussed
The Lowest Cost Airline You Can Imagine | The Carol Burnett Show
Look guys…. US is growing exponentially with whooping ONE POINT ONE PERCENT. It’s a lot you know? So awesome. America numba ONE. Best country in da world!
China is suffering horrific growth of mere 6.6%. So pathetic! China is going to collapse in 10 days!!
Another headline for this post is: ”Western media fail at math”.
I Visited a Chinese Factory…What I Saw Shocked Me!
This is what the Mars landing looked like from the perspective of the Perseverance rover about 10 km above the surface. We are in the middle of the descent phase into the atmosphere, and that disk in the center is the heat shield, just released, that protected the probe from the intense heat as it plummets toward the ground.
It’s all real! Human ingenuity is extraordinary!
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Mama’s Family – Don’t call Mama while she’s at work
Today, ‘John’ was bragging to me about how good he is with chess. He kept rambling on and on about how nobody he met in real life could beat him.
So to shut him up, I challenged him to an online game of chess.
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And I completely utterly thoroughly destroyed him, while taunting him in the chat at the same time.
I also made my moves super-fast, like within a few seconds after he finished his moves. More than once during the game, he exclaimed, “Wow Shanks, how do you play so quick?”
Unbeknown to him, during the game, I had another tab open where I was playing Chess against an AI set to ‘insane’ difficulty.
I played as Black against John, but white against the AI. This meant that John started first against me, while I started first against the AI.
All I did was mimic each of John’s move in the match against the AI and mimic the AI’s move against John. In other words, while it appeared that I was playing two chess matches at the same time, I wasn’t actually playing at all — John was playing the match against the ‘insane’ AI.
To top it off, I’ve only played like 5 chess matches my whole life. I barely know how to move the pieces!
Suffice to say, John wasn’t very pleased when I told him.
24 hours back in America from China | American China Expat’s Thoughts
24 hours back in the USA from China. What do I think about it here? What are my first impressions? Expectations?
In this case , these were orders placed by China before the so called Export Ban
There is no provision in the Export Ban asking for cancellation of existing orders and thus ASML happily exported $ 650 Million of Equipment to China
It’s no coincidence that before the ban, China placed almost $ 1.7 Billion of orders with Tokyo Electron and ASML for advanced semiconductor equipment and
NEITHER JAPAN NOR NETHERLANDS included any clause which called for cancelling existing orders in their legal notifications
Basically the Japanese and Dutch told their companies
Sell as much equipment as you guys want and we will turn a blind eye but before we pass the export ban
Experts estimate that Chinese plans for semiconductors will remain uninterrupted at least until January 2025 thanks to these small loopholes which I believe were deliberate
Meanwhile only one Moron blindly agreed to all the export bans and included cancellations of orders for the Chinese worth $ 1.46 Billion
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SAMSUNG & SOUTH KOREA!!!!!!!
Everyone else,even the Japanese used simple common sense
Sure they hate China but they like money and they know , nobody else will pay $ 1.7 Billion for that equipment
Ultimately it’s why Politics never succeeds against Economics
It’s why Donald Trump never suggested an Export Ban but an extra Tariff on Exports to China from Japan or Netherlands or S. Korea. A Tariff would have increased Chinese costs and made them uncompetitive
Trump said “Develop your AI but PAY THE PRICE FOR IT”
Luckily Bidens win has given China four years to combat the situation and hopefully before Trump comes to power, China would have made the preparations to battle the onslaught
Development to come up near JB-Singapore rail terminus
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Hong Kong will join Malaysia in developing an economic hub in southern Johor, near the Singapore border, as Malaysia looks to tap the land development potential near the site of an upcoming cross-border rail link.
signed a memorandum of understanding to develop a six-acre land for mixed use in Bukit Chagar on Friday, as part of Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee’s visit to Malaysia.
The development, worth 3 billion ringgit ($660 million), will come up less than one kilometer from the Malaysia-Singapore border. The location is also the site of the under-construction Bukit Chagar terminus station that’s part of the Johor Bahru-Singapore Rapid Transit System.
The intended mixed development is expected to transform the area into an attractive investor destination, for local and international investors.
The RTS project, which is expected to serve up to 10,000 commuters per hour in every direction, is due for completion in 2026. It is expected to ease traffic congestion at Malaysia and Singapore’s land border crossing, one of the world’s busiest. The four kilometer transit has two stations — Bukit Chagar in Johor and Woodlands in Singapore.
Nouriel Roubini in a talk said that China growing by 6.3% against the worst geopolitical and trade climate showed the strength and power of the country’s resilience
He also said China’s internal debt was something that could be infinitely restructured and be an ASSET to the Nation rather than a liability
He said their 2% inflation was also a huge positive against reeling inflation in the West
What Roubini says isn’t rocket science
Anyone who understands 101 of economics knows this
Still the West is rooted by SO MUCH PROPAGANDA that even something so basic , appears like some form of huge redemption for China
Not that the Chinese give a damn
They simply do their job and do their best for their country and people
The Best line of Dr Roubini was
Ten years from now, China would have moved on , solved it’s problems and be on its way as a developed economy
We (The US) would still be reeling with debt and inflation because we are so damn afraid of facing the truth and for once putting common interests over politics and ideology
My teenager went to a very diverse Chicago public high school. I knew she, as a white girl, was in the minority at her school. I didn’t realize just how much so until her graduation a few weeks ago.
I watched her and about 400 of her classmates walk across the stage. Between their names, skin tones, and outfits (about a dozen girls wore hijabs), I’d bet that there were at least 50 different nationalities/ethnicities/races represented in her graduating class. That type of diversity was intentional… it was an International Baccalaureate (IB) school. My daughter was one of just a handful of students that represented what is actually the majority demographic in most of the country: white, born in the U.S., Christian, and straight.
Naturally, the parents in the audience were just as diverse as the students on the stage. Except, most of us had something in common. It wasn’t our skin tone or the way we dressed or even the language we spoke… it was that most of us, the parents, were noticeably overweight.
I’m a really big guy. I don’t lie to myself about it. I notice when people are as tall as I am, because it is rare. I notice when people are as big as I am, because it is rare. Well, it used to be rare. Now it’s becoming common.
When I sat in my seat for the ceremony, I expected to be cramped and uncomfortable. When you’re my size, you just get used to that whenever there’s side-by-side seating. But I noticed that it wasn’t just me. Every single person in the row in front of me looked cramped. Everyone in the row in front of that one look cramped. A few people were standing on the sides, unable to fit in the seats at all.
There was nothing unusual about the seats. They were the regular size you might find at any stadium. But so many of the adults in the room barely fit in them, because so many of those adults were overweight.
And that’s my “only in the USA” moment: hundreds of people, representing dozens of demographics from all over the globe, gathered in one place to celebrate our children’s accomplishments and transitions into adulthood, and most of us carrying at least 50 extra pounds on us.
Have you heard of Arnold Abbott? He was a 90-year-old man with a big heart and an unwavering belief in helping those who were less fortunate. He lived in Florida, where there was a growing problem of homelessness and he was concerned about this issue and wanted to do something to help.
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So he decided to start feeding the homeless in his community. He set up a table in a public park and began serving food to anyone who was hungry. Soon it became a regular fixture in the park, and many homeless people came to rely on him for a hot meal.
However the city council of Fort Lauderdale had recently passed a law making it illegal to feed the homeless in public spaces. The law was intended to address the problem of homelessness in a different way, but it made it difficult for people like Abbott to provide much needed help to those in need.
Abbott was undeterred. He believed that it was his moral duty to help the homeless, and he continued to feed them despite the new law. Soon, other volunteers joined Abbott in his efforts to help the homeless. They set up tables in other public spaces and began serving food to those who were hungry.
The city of Fort Lauderdale was not happy about this. They began to issue citations and fines to Abbott and the other volunteers who were feeding the homeless. But he remained resolute in his belief that feeding the homeless was the right thing to do and many others agreed with him as well.
Despite the legal challenges, Abbott and the other volunteers continued to feed the homeless. Their actions inspired others to join them, and soon a movement was born. People all over the country began to speak out against the criminalization of acts of compassion, and many cities began to repeal their laws banning the feeding of the homeless!!
The case of Arnold Abbott raises the question of what is truly ethical and what is legal? In some cases laws may conflict with our sense of right and wrong. In such instances, it is up to individuals to decide whether to follow the law or follow their conscience.
China doesn’t just lend the money. It also builds the projects. Yes it gets its hands dirty in the actual work, and its Chinese architects and civil engineers and construction workers are right there on the sites working as well.
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(This, by the way, is another reason why the US “Build Back Better” project will fail. White Americans are not going to move to Africa and stay there for 5 years working alongside their ex-slaves. But I digress.)
The point is – Chinese construction companies always get involved in the construction, which means that they are making money out of the work they do, which also means that basically part of the Chinese loans are recouped as profits for the construction company.
Commentators are often so wrapped down in the politics that they forget the business side of things. Chinese construction companies are the best in the world – they have a tremendous amount of experience and expertise. When they go overseas and build things, they are just exporting their experience and expertise in the form of their construction work. It’s their business. Building things is how they make money.
Why The U.S. Gave Up On Public Transit
VIDEO: Ukraine Troops SURRENDER en-masse; WHITE FLAGS on Tanks
Hundreds of Ukrainian troops, displaying white flags on their tanks and infantry vehicles, surrendered en-masse to Russia today. More and more common as troops see with their own eyes, it is hopeless to continue fighting.
Video from the battlefield shows the mass surrender:
Star Trek Next Generation – Sentient Starship
China’s Chip Production Soars with Arrival of 6 Lithography Machines, US Blockade Falters!
In recent years, China has made tremendous breakthroughs in the chip field, while the United States, in order to maintain its dominant position in the chip industry, has attempted to curb China’s development in this field and use a series of measures to suppress China.
However their Impact is much lesser than what was expected by the West.
The West threw their entire financial might at Russia and the Sanctions against Russia are perhaps the worst Sanctions against any Nation ever.
Yet Russia stands , survives and even grows
Its like say the difference between blowing up a house with Dynamite and burning a house with a slow fuse and kerosene.
Russia stands to lose around 34% of its Export Volume and Revenue by 2023 which translates to 55,000 -75,000 Jobs
This in turn translates to around $ 34 Billion Contraction in GDP
Add to this Russia stands to lose around 14% Industrial Productivity due to Restriction of Spares by the West. This translates to around $ 44 Billion Contraction in GDP and around 45,000 – 60,000 Jobs
Add to this Russia stands to lose around 41% Service Industry temporarily for minimum 12–18 months. This translates to around $ 21 Billion Contraction in GDP and around 14,000 Jobs-21,000 Jobs
Adding we get around $ 99 Billion GDP Contraction or around 5.45% Contraction of GDP
Adding we get around 186,000 Jobs
This means we can add around 279,000 Auxiliary Jobs
So Yes. It Definitely isnt a Walk in the Park. It would require a lot of hands on work for Russia
However it could have been far worse
The West expected a far higher impact. Around 15% Contraction. Around 1.5–2 Million Jobs etc.
Russia can make this up by 2025 easily
Why did the Sanctions not make things as bad as the West expected?
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China primarily boosted the Russian Economy. They almost replaced 70% of all Car Parts , purchased Car Factories, Building Plants, Took over other financial projects – and you know the speed of the Chinese….they are very fast
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The Dragon may be the Elder brother but the Elephant India – too played a role here as Chota Bhai.
The Huge Orders of Oil, Coal, Diamonds and the Cooperation for Alternate Mechanisms and best of all indicating that the Hachet of Galwan can temporarily be buried by trading and purchasing Yuan for the FIRST TIME EVER.
Add to this China and India both refused to delist Russian Bonds and Russian Instruments and have accepted payment for these instruments in RMB & Rubles. Another big concession from India.
For example Indian Investors who were to get $ 15 Million in Interest can now get 750 Million Rubles paid by Russia into SBI Kathmandu who will in turn swap for Chinese Yuan and use the Yuan to buy more Coal and Oil and Gas.
So Russia is far better off than the West believed. It will Survive and Grow much Stronger.
Especially if the SINO-RUSSO-INDO-IRANIAN Alliance clicks off
Will Sanctions deter Putin from Continuing the War?
In March 2022 – there was a 50% Chance that Putin was looking for a Face Saving Off Ramp and was deeply worried about Economy and Militarily
Now – Not the Smallest Chance
The West had their shot. They could have forced Putin to the Table, forced much smaller concessions and ended with a Strong “Victory”
Now Putin calls the Shots
Star Trek Next Generation – Ancient Battle Cruiser
Trucking giant Yellow collapsed on Sunday, ceasing operations immediately and leaving some 30,000 workers without jobs.
The closure is the biggest in terms of jobs and revenue in the U.S. trucking industry.
The company, which received $700 million in federal COVID relief funds in 2020, is preparing to file for bankruptcy and is in talks to sell off all or parts of the business.
The nearly 100-year-old firm is known for its competitive pricing and has more than 12,000 trucks shipping freight across the US for brands including Walmart and Home Depot.
At this time, it __appears__ that all of Yellow’s subsidiaries may be GONE too:
YRC Freight reflects the Yellow Transportation (founded in 1924 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma) purchase of and subsequent merger with Roadway (founded in 1930 in Akron, Ohio).
YRC Freight is the largest subsidiary of Yellow with corporate headquarters in Overland Park, Kan.
Other Yellow subsidiaries include Reddaway, Holland and New Penn.
HAL TURNER OPINION
I am just guessing, but given the sheer size of Yellow, ad some of its subsidiaries like Roadway and New Penn, this could trigger “supply-chain disruption” that would make COVID look like child’s play.
Think about this. Yellow is an LTL carrier. That stands for “Less-Than-Truckoad.” They handle things like skids (pallets) of shipments.
They have 12,000 trucks. Each day, each truck handles about ten pick-ups, and ten deliveries. (Average)
That means tomorrow, about 120,000 deliveries — won’t come. Another 120,000 pick-ups, won’t be made.
Stores won’t get products.
Factories won’t get raw materials or parts. They also won’t be able to ship finished products out.
Do the math. How long before this becomes an actual catastrophe in the supply chain?
Are there other truckers? Yes. Can they just step-in and take up the slack? NO!
Trucklines must carefully balance their equipment to their actual need. There simply isn’t enough capacity within the rest of the system to absorb a sudden change like this.
Moreover, certain truck lines only service certain geographic areas. In some places, where maybe YELLOW was the only carrier, shippers simply may not be able to get a trucker to come to them! No service. At all.
I cannot even begin to guess the impact this is going to have on the US economy and supply chain. And I suspect it will show itself within a matter of days.
Julius Caesar was once kidnapped by pirates, who would go on to regret that decision. In 75 BC, 25-year-old Caesar was traveling to the Island of Rhode’s to study oratory when he was captured by Cilician pirates, who infested the Mediterranean, but were usually left alone because they provided wealthy Romans with slaves.
Although this was about ten years before Caesar would start to make a name for himself, according to the biographer Plutarch, he didn’t act like he was a captive.
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When the pirates informed Caesar he was going to be ransomed for the some of 20 talents, he burst out laughing in their faces, telling them they clearly didn’t know who they had captured and should raise the sum to 50 talents.
Caesar only had a few friends in captivity and Cilician pirates were known to be particularly blood thirsty, but this didn’t stop him from sending his friends to tell the pirates to shut up because they were making too much noise as Caesar tried to sleep.
It’s also recorded that Caesar would recite poetry and speeches to the pirates and should they not be impressed he would openly call them illiterate savages and threatened to have them crucified.
Eventually, the ransom was paid and Caesar was released, probably to the relief of the Pirates, who were sick of him. However, the now free Caesar wasted no time in having the Pirates hunted down and crucified, which he over seen personally, making good on the promise he made when the pirates didn’t enjoy his poetry.
Sen. Feinstein’s Brain Melts Down DURING A VOTE!
By now everyone knows that 90-year-old California Senator Dianne Feinstein has no business holding public office — everyone except Dianne Feinstein, that is. Her most recent episode: attempting to pontificate about the importance of defense spending during a Senate vote when all that was required of her was to say “aye.” An aide came to her rescue but not before the awkward episode had made everyone in the room cringe.
When sperm whales need a nap, they take a deep breath, dive down about 45 feet and arrange themselves into perfectly-level, vertical patterns.
They sleep sound and still for up to two hours at a time between breaths, in pods of 5 or 6 whales, presumably for protection.
No one knew whales slept vertically until a 2008 study documented the behavior.
And no one captured really good photography of it in the wild until 2017. French photographer Stephane Granzotto was documenting sperm whales in the Mediterranean for his book on the creatures when he came across these sleeping whales…
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Factory Owner Reveals the Truth About Chinese Manufacturing
The world has trusted Chinese manufacturing for decades, but recently many politicians are stating Western countries must decouple from China. Will Chinese manufacturing continue to play a vital role in our global economy? Today I travel to Wuxi, China to visit a Chinese textile factory to see how Chinese factories make clothes.
Most American movies are written and produced by wealthier, trendier people who live in major cities. Thus, many of them are set in major cities. If all you knew of America was what you saw in movies, you may think things like:
Most young, single adult Americans live in nice apartments or condos in trendy areas of major cities and have “fun” jobs like museum curators or tour bus company owner/operators.
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In fact, very few young, single people live in places like that and have jobs like that. Most young, single people can’t afford that lifestyle, and work “regular” jobs which they may enjoy, but aren’t really “fun.”
While there are some major cities in the United States, and a lot of people live in them, the majority of people do not.* For the average American, a scene like this is something they will only experience while watching it on a screen themselves:
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Taking public transportation from your condo or apartment, then walking down a crowded city sidewalk on your way to your job in a high-rise office building? That’s the exception, not the rule for most Americans. For most of us, it’s leaving your single-family home and driving your own personal car to your job in a building that’s two or three stories tall, max. And you park your car in the parking lot next to the building.
I live in Chicago, which has a good public transit system, but I only know two people who actually use it to get to work. Everyone else just takes it on special occasions, like when they want to take their kids downtown to act like tourists for a day. Actually, that’s also one thing my out-of-town guests always want to do when they visit me in Chicago, too: ride the subway. Why? Because it’s so rare here… it’s something that most Americans only experience in movies.
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*A lot of people are commenting that the majority of Americans do, in fact, live in “urban” areas. “urban areas” and “trendy parts of major cities” are two different things. According to the Census, an “urban area” is any town with over 50,000 population. That includes literally tens of thousands of places most people would just call small towns.
Robot Chicken – Channel Flip Compilation Part Five
He sacked a colleague the day my colleague was leaving for a family holiday. My boss (and owner of the business), Paul, just liked to show people he had the power. He was often petty and a micromanaging control freak. He seemed to like me, so most of the time he left me to do my thing.
My colleague, Ian, had become a friend, and we’d hang out after work. He had been planning an overseas family trip for some time, and had been talking about it for a couple of months in advance of the date. He had requested leave, which was approved, before making the booking. He was a friendly, genuine guy, and most of us in the office shared his enthusiasm for his holiday. We could see he was looking forward to taking his family away.
He was due to fly out on a Saturday. On the Friday, Paul called Ian into his office and told him he had changed his mind, he was revoking the leave. Ian tried to argue that the tickets were non-refundable, everything was booked, his wife had taken leave, and they had permission to take their children out of school. Paul wasn’t swayed. He made it clear, cancel or be fired.
Ian asked what was so important that he needed to stay, Paul didn’t give a real answer. He just shrugged and said, “it’s my company, my call.”
Ian called his wife, and then decided to do the holiday. He didn’t want to lose the money or let his family down.
He came and told me just before lunch what had happened, and suggested we go for a farewell lunch.
I was incensed!
I immediately wrote a handwritten resignation, left it on Paul’s desk, packed my things, and went to lunch. I told Ian and some other colleagues at lunch that this was also MY farewell.
As lunch wrapped up, the others drifted back to the office, and it was just Ian and me, commiserating over a beer, when Paul came in, in a fluster.
I had never seen him in such a state (I later realized it was because he was no longer in control). Paul loudly tried to convince me to stay, offered me everything (other than more money!). I just said no, calmly. He left saying something like “you’ll be back when you can’t find another job.”
I called in on another friend on my way home, and had a job offer that afternoon.
Pepe Escobar: Russia-Africa Summit a GAME CHANGER as NATO Isolates Itself
Pepe Escobar discusses the significance of the Russia-Africa Summit and what it means for the ongoing move toward a multipolar world led by Russia and the Global South.
Heavenly Chicken Garlic Soup
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Ingredients
1 whole chicken, disjointed
2 carrots, minced
2 stalks celery, minced
1 large whole yellow onion
Chopped fresh parsley
Salt and pepper to taste
5 cloves garlic, chopped
4 tablespoons softened butter
2 tablespoons flour
Instructions
Make the chicken broth by simmering chicken, carrots, celery, onion, garlic, parsley, salt and pepper in enough water to cover. When the chicken is thoroughly cooked, remove it and skim the fat from broth.
Simmer broth, reducing it until it is very rich. Add the flour and butter to a small amount of broth and mix with a wire whisk until velvety. Pour this mixture into the remaining broth.
Tear chicken into bite-size pieces and add to the soup.
Assembling the car requires a complex number of steps where hundreds of parts are put together. Each part is worth very little on its own, but when everything is together, the finished product has amazing value.
This is how I pictured college:
All my years of education assembled together to come to this very moment.
I felt like the world was telling me, “Congratulations! You are a complete product.”
So, imagine that moment… yes, it called for a victory fist pump!
Well, my educational “assembly line” took soooo… sooooo… long that my expectations had built up.
I felt like a top-of-the-line fully equipped Tesla Model S!
I felt entitled.
I thought that by just getting out of the “assembly line” with my degree in hand made me valuable like the Model S pictured above.
“Hey world! I’m an Engineer!” I would say with arrogance and pride, “You want some of my knowledge? It’s going to COST you!!!”
Haha!
Please don’t laugh at me…
I felt that my time had value, so whatever work I did, I felt I deserved to get paid.
I WAS WRONG!
My father taught me this lesson the hard way.
After I had spent one week working at his office, I demanded a late Friday evening, “Pay me, Dad!”
“Son, you’re not entitled to a payment.”
“I’m an engineer, Dad! Pay me as an engineer!” I said with pride.
“I pay for results!” my father said.
“But I’m working hard on this project! I have invested hours into this. Pay me!” I angrily said.
“No results, no pay!” he said firmly.
You know what happened?
He eventually changed my mindset!
He helped me understand that in this world I’m NOT entitled to anything simply because of my credentials or for sitting at the office all day long.
He helped me understand that if I don’t deliver results to others, my fancy college degree hanging on the wall might look nice, but it won’t pay my bills.
So, to answer your question: What is one small thing that you can do differently to make your life better?
Learn this truth: Life pays only for results.
The world doesn’t care for your credentials, or how hard you work, all it cares is for how much value you DELIVER!
It’s in giving which makes us deserve something in exchange.
There’s no secret formula.
The only thing that works is work!
We do not deserve what we want, we only deserve what we do.
Embrace this small truth, and it will radically change your life.
You could ask this women. Caron McBride had no idea she was wanted for a felony for 21-years. She only found out when she went to update her married name at a Texas DMV, in April 2021 and they told her she was wanted for felony embezzlement.
She was charged after falling to return a VHS tape of Sabrina the Teenage Witch, from a Oklahoma video store, back in 1999. The shocking part is she had no memory of renting the tape or ever seeing the show. Its likely someone else rented the tape under her name, leaving her with a felony, that thankfully has been dismissed.
Cambodia’s Controversial Election: U.S. vs. Russia & China!
Cambodia is celebrating a new election of leader Hun Sen from the Cambodian People’s Party but the U.S. says: Not so fast. The U.S. says that it will announce punitive measures because it does not consider this to have been a “free and fair” election. They claim that the opposition was threatened and harrassed. But the U.S., E.U. and other Western countries did not send observers to the elections. Russia and China did. Is this U.S. posturing or something else?
Why is it the US’s business what happens in Cambodia?
“Your checking account is overdrawn. There’s a $35 NSF fee.”
When my ex-wife and I first started dating back in 1988, we got a bank account at a bank that no longer exists (after multiple mergers it’s now part of Bank of America) called Citizens & Southern.
So it turns out they hit on a great money-making idea. If you had money in your bank account, and write a check so that after it was cashed there would be less than $35 in your account, hit you with a $35 fee and say “See? Your account balance is negative!”)
Say you had $110 in your account and you wrote a $100 check. They’d hit you with a $35 NSF fee and say “See? You’re overdrawn by $25! Your balance is -$25! That’s why we charged the fee!”
You might think this is illegal, but…
…you’d totally be right.
Eventually someone hit them with a class action lawsuit for doing this, and years later they refunded us all the NSF fees they’d ever charged plus a couple hundred bucks on top.
Arizona teen missing for nearly 4 years shows up safe at Montana police station
An Arizona teenager who vanished without a trace nearly four years ago is safe after walking into a police station in Montana, authorities said Wednesday. Alicia Navarro, 18, of Glendale showed up alone this week in a small town about 40 miles from the Canadian border and identified herself, according to police in Glendale, a Phoenix suburb.
The worst nuclear disaster in North American history was discovered by accident. In 1983 a hospital in Juarez Mexico had a Radiotherapy unit dismantled and sold to a scrap yard for just nine dollars. However, the person responsible for getting rid of the waste spilled an un-marked cylinder of 6000 cobalt pellets contaminating the entire junk yard. The metal was than sent to two foundries that produced 6600 tons of rebar and 30,000 contaminated restaurant table legs.
It was only by chance that a truck transporting some of the metal took a wrong turn and drove passed the Los Alamos National Lab where the first atomic bomb was developed and their sensers detected the radiation. By that time the metal had already been shipped around Mexico and the U.S, hundreds of people were exposed to the radiation making it one of the worst Nuclear disasters in American History.
ALMOST UNWATCHABLE: Kennedy Will Not Stop Listing Reversals Of Judicial Nom’s Decisions To Her Face
At today’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) grilled Judge Karoline Mehalchick, nominee to be United States District Judge for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, about the several reversals of her decisions.
The average age of Congress is rising. That’s unlikely to change soon.
The current class of lawmakers is one of the oldest in history, with an overall median age of 59. The median age of senators is 65, the highest on record. In the House, the median age has hovered between 57 and 58 for the past decade, higher than in any year before that period.
AA1erLcJ
How is the experience of riding a subway in America Vs. China
Counter-Revolution – ‘Do You Know What Time It Is?’
Both the U.S. and Europe have stalked brazenly into traps of their own making, Alastair Crooke writes.
To be blunt, both the U.S. and Europe have stalked brazenly into traps of their own making. Caught in the lies and deceit woven around a claimed inheritance of superior cultural DNA, (vouchsafing, it is said, almost certain victory), the West is awakening to a fast-approaching disaster to which there are no easy solutions. Cultural exceptionalism, together with the prospect of a clear ‘win’ over Russia, are draining rapidly away – but exiting delusion is both slow and humiliating.
The coming devastation is not just centred around the failed Ukraine offensive and NATO’s weak showing. It comprises multiple vectors that have been building over the years, but which are reaching culmination synchronously.
In the U.S., the run-up to momentous elections is underway. The Democrats are in a fix: The party has long since turned its back on its old blue-collar constituency, engaging instead with an urban ‘creative class’ in an exalted, world-shaping ‘social engineering’ project of moral redress, in alliance with Silicon Valley and the Permanent Nomenklatura. But that experiment has run off into the weeds, becoming ever more extreme and absurd. Push-back is building.
Predictably enough, the Democratic campaign is not gaining traction. Team Biden has low, low approval ratings. But Biden family pressure insists that Biden must persevere with his candidature, and not yield to another. Either way – Biden staying or going – there is no ready solution to the Party’s conundrum of a non-performing, non-platform.
The electoral landscape is a mess. Heavy ‘lawfare’ artillery is intended to break the Trump defences and drive him off the field, whilst an attrition of disclosures of Biden family malfeasance are intended wear down and implode the Biden bubble. The Democratic Establishment is spooked too by the flanking manoeuvre of the R. F. Kennedy candidature, which is snowballing rapidly.
Put simply, the Democratic wokish ideology of historical redress is separating the U.S. into two nations living in one land. Divided not so much by ‘Red or Blue’, or class, but defined by irreconcilable ‘ways of being’. The old categories: Left, Right, Democrat or GOP are being dissolved by a Cultural War that respects no categories, crossing the boundaries of class and party affiliation. Indeed, even ethnic minorities have been alienated by the zealots wanting to sexualise children at age 5 years, and by the pushing of the trans agenda on to school children.
Ukraine has served as the solvent to the old order and has become the Albatross hanging around the neck of the Biden Admin: How to spin the looming Ukraine debacle as somehow ‘mission achieved’. Can that be done? Because the escape route of a ceasefire and a frozen line of contact is unacceptable to Moscow. In short, ‘Biden’s war’ cannot continue as it is, but nor can it do ‘other’ without facing humiliation. The myth of American power, NATO competence and the reputation of U.S. weaponry hangs in the balance.
The economic narrative (‘everything is fine’) is poised, for somewhat unconnected reasons, to turn sour too. Debt – finally – is becoming the sword suspended above the economy’s neck. Credit is being tightly squeezed. And next month, the BRICS-SCO bloc will take the first strategic steps to disentangle up to 40 countries from the dollar. Who then will buy Yellen’s $ 1.1 trillion Treasuries – now and in the future – that is needed to fund U.S. government expenditure?
These events ostensibly are disconnected, but in reality, they form a self-reinforcing loop. One leading to a ‘run on the political bank’ – that is to say, the U.S.’ credibility itself.
Faced with many questions – and no solutions – the mood amongst sectors of the electorate is driving a radical and increasingly iconoclastic mood. A counter-revolutionary spirit, perhaps. It is too early to say whether it will sweep a majority, but it may – for the radicalism is coming from the two wings: GOP grassroots and the Kennedy ‘camp’.
One strain of GOP voters separates conservative leaders into two camps: those who “know what time it is” and those who don’t. That is the catchphrase on the Right that has become increasingly important to a significant wing of the Party who see a country weakened and corrupted by ideology; who hold that there is almost nothing left to ‘conserve’. Overturning the existing post-American order, and re-establishing America’s ancient principles in practice, is advocated as a sort of counter-revolution – and the only road forward.
That aphorism for ‘knowing what time of day it is’ refers to an emerging sense of urgency and appetite for sweeping action, not dragging and dull academic debates among more populist-minded conservatives. “The premise is that the struggle against wokish cultural power is existential, and that extreme tactics that would shock an older generation of conservatives need to be the norm”.
In fact, if a leader is not shocking in his conduct and proposals, he or she probably “doesn’t know what time it is”.
The second key feature of this us-against-them mentality is that any policy consensus, ipso facto, triggers suspicion and becomes a focus of attack.
“When you realize this, what looks at first like a hodgepodge of different ideas seems more unified. Covid health policy, disgust about Jan. 6, the Pentagon budget, immigration, support for Ukraine, promoting racial diversity, trans rights — these are all issues that enjoy a measure of élite bipartisan consensus. But for the Tucker Carlson wing – Republicans who embrace these things simply – don’t know what time it is”, Politico explains.
What is salient in this formulation is that just as unreserved support for Covid regulatory practices was a ‘marker’ of ‘correct-think’ in pandemic time, so support for Ukraine is defined as ‘a marker’ of correct liberal-think (and being in the Team) in the in the post-pandemic era.
This suggests that – already and as the election nears – Ukraine will be no-longer bi-partisan in terms of support, but rather will become a sword used against the hated Uni-party establishment, and any hint of a major f*ck-up will become centre-piece in this counter revolutionary war.
The GOP’s sense that U.S. culture has gone off-track: Legislation was snarled in Congress earlier this month, when the formerly sacrosanct Pentagon Defence Bill became the target of culture-war amendments on abortion, diversity and gender that could scuttle its passage. Speaker McCarthy was forced to accept the far-right rebellion against the Defence budget bill and push it through, without the usual widespread bipartisan support.
The measures stripped funding for diversity initiatives in the military and added restrictions on abortion and transgender care for service members. GOP lawmakers said they acted because liberal ideology was weakening the military. But the amendments endanger the bill’s path in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
The heightened feelings on both sides are reflected in a poll that found that about 80% of Republicans believe that the Democratic agenda “if not stopped, will destroy America as we know it.” About the same share of Democrats had the same fear of the Republican ag.
Col Macgregor: NATO’s FRIGHTENING Plan For Russia
Absolutely. The United States is in the hands of someone who is mentally unstable.
https://youtu.be/k1TwoB1mGOk
What’s the most impressive thing you’ve ever seen a doctor do?
My daughter was 13 years of age and something was very wrong. She is a nonidentical twin. This information only matters because her illness is genetic and hopefully her twin will never have it.
We went to a new doctor at the practice we had been to before. He was just downright off in behavior. I had been a teacher about 20 years at this point and one of my Master degrees was in special education. I immediately saw him for what he was. Autistic.
I had twin daughters in the exam room. He could not function until we were all seated and all 6 feet flat on the floor. He paced silently in that tiny room until we were exactly as he felt we should be. He seemingly ignored all questions until he was leaving and would turn his head to the side and in a rapid fire voice, answer all questions. There were many more indicators but those were very telling. It was really odd but I saw it for what it was and shushed my daughters comments.
He took one look at her and gave a devastating diagnosis. A thirty year life span with a very low quality of life until then. I was not about to have that. Oh no.
I went home and Googled of course. Life became more grim. I realized she had all the classic physical signs. No doctor in our 200,000 population was taking a pediatric with her disease. The nearest was Dallas Texas which was a six hour drive each way.
As a working single Mother this seemed impossible.
Three days pass. I receive a phone call from a local specialist who is willing to take her at 6:30 am in the morning. She tells me that when one of her patients die, we can have their later slot.
She also tells me that the ONLY reason she is taking our case is because of the doctor who called her. The doctor who could not speak until we were all seated properly. The doctor who could not speak until he was leaving the room. This doctor meant so much to her that she was willing to take my daughters case.
As the next few years progress I learned many things. I learned that our autistic doctor was the doctor that all the other doctors, nurses and medical personnel went to. I also learned that this man saved my daughter’s life at this time and that she was very near a critical time in her disease. I learned that he gave her more quality and more meaning in the years ahead of her. When one of her many specialists were being hostile, he believed her. He LISTENED to her. He stayed with her through many trials in her health.
We continued to see him three times a year. He began to relax around us. My child held a special place in his heart and he began to joke and speak a bit differently. Not a great deal but enough for us to notice.
For those of us who have a loved one who is terminally ill, a doctor can be ambivalent, an asshole, or one such as this “A Jewel”.
This is impressive.
Italian Style Pot Roast Soup
leftover pot roast soup 500×750 1
Ingredients
1 (3 to 4 pound) chuck roast with bone, cut into pieces
1 (16 ounce) box acini de pepe (very small pasta)
8 carrots, peeled and cut into chunks
2 large yellow onions, sliced
5 stalks celery, cut into pieces
3 -5 cloves garlic, chopped
2 (15 ounce) cans diced tomatoes
1 (15 ounce) can tomato sauce
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
6 quarts water
Freshly grated parmesan cheese
Instructions
Place meat, vegetables, garlic tomatoes and tomato sauce in a large pot with the 6 quarts of water. Season with salt, pepper and red pepper flakes. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 2 to 3 hours until meat is tender.
Toward the last half hour cook the pasta until al dente. Drain pasta add a little bit of butter and set aside.
With a slotted spoon remove meat. Trim fat, remove bone and shred the meat. Place meat back into pot.
Place some pasta in a bowl and ladle in the soup. Top with lots of parmesan cheese.
The Chase (1946, Film-Noir)
Todays treat; full movie. Film Noir.
Hunted … Haunted … Hounded … Chuck Scott gets a job as chauffeur to tough guy Eddie Roman; but Chuck’s involvement with Eddie’s fearful wife becomes a nightmare.
It seems that the re-posturing is in process, right on a schedule established decades ago. One; mind you, without any allowance for change in the Geo-political situation.
Todays…
You know, I was watching Babymetal the other day, and it occurred to me that the entire band is the embodiment of a cat.
Yes. Seriously.
The elements of [1] hard, and fast along with [2] the very cute.
It’s one manifestation of a cute kitty cat. Then it gnaws on your hand… and draws blood.
Seriously. Check this one out with that thought in mind.
BABYMETAL – メギツネ – MEGITSUNE (OFFICIAL)
Though… it is about a FOX (which is a human female embodiment of a feline).
Walmart My friend, 5″10″ 185 was walking out of the store on an Friday night. There were several high school boys horsing around with each other. As my friend walked past the biggest one, he went into a Rocky boxing stance behind him.(The store cameras caught the whole thing). He push punched my friend’s right shoulder enough to almost unbalance him. When my friend turned and saw a large figure in a fighting crouch, he continued his turn and placed the point of his elbow on the far side of the kid’s jaw.
Resulting in the kid flying backward to land flat of his back unconscious, with a broken jaw. Took about 2 seconds start to finish. The jaw was unintentional.
In the past 40 years, Chinese have worked hard, and the government has continued to invest in soft infrastructure (education, etc.) and hard infrastructure including transport and manufacturing.
In the US, Americans have voted to cut taxes and the size of government, which meant that there has been no investment in hard and soft infrastructure.
The “rise of China” is simply the result of those different policies.
According to the United States constitution, the purpose of the Government is as a vehicle to serve its people.
Are they being served?
Is inflation under control?
Are the streets clean, and safe?
Are people happy, employed in useful productive activities.
Is the nation as a whole, healthy mentally, physically and emotionally?
Does the future look bright?
Is food, and shelter affordable?
Is medical care cheap and easy to obtain?
Is the government meeting the needs of the individual?
As I see it, the most basic, of basics is neglected.
This is not only unhealthy, but completely unsustainable.
You do not need a nuclear conflagration to destroy the United States, it is already destroyed. It is torn up and sitting in the garbage swill of past glories.
The American society is dead. DEAD. Gone, and slaughtered.
There are ZERO vibrant and healthy cities in the United States today. The downtowns are boarded up, squalor rat and rodent infestations exist, and tent cities abound. Those that exist fumble and mumble in their drug haze like the zombies they are. Today, the United States (though there are a handful of “pockets” of normalcy) is simply a ghost-nation.
Hollowed out.
Void of any real and actual leadership.
Inept, incompetent, and runs a well produced “clown show” in front of green screens, reading well produced scripts to keep the rabble in line.
No.
A nuclear war will not kill the United States.
It is already a carcass.
Pick it up off the side of the road, and start fresh. It’s the only thing that is left to do.
…
Remember…
Nuclear weapons are designed to destroy large functioning cities, and masses of military. That are their targets. If the cities are just crumbling, and the only strategic targets are a warehouse here, a factory there, or a government building over there, then it makes far more sense to use conventional munitions in “surgical” strikes.
As the United States stands today, a nuclear war would have very little effect on the nation.
A dead dog is still a dead dog. To shoot it full of holes will not change anything. It doesn’t matter if you use a .22 caliber revolver, or a 10 gauge shotgun.
Thus, to hasten the demise of the United States (as it is already post-collapse) is to target the few remaining assets that keep it alive;
The factories that make the bombs and missiles.
The “leaders” that run the remains of the nation.
The transportation hubs that distribute goods and services.
That is the true and real reality of the situation.
…
The United States is a carcass.
Any action by the rest of the world would be to add lime to it and advance the decay.
SHOCKING PRE BIRTH EXPERIENCE! I Saw Why I Chose a Life of Suffering!
Please enjoy my interview with Betty Guadagno about he Near Death-Like Experience and pre-birth memories!
No, why would China invade Taiwan now when Chinese sovereignty over Taiwan was restored and recognised in 1945? The only question is whether or not the rival PRC and ROC governments which do not recognise the right of the other to govern China, intend to finally finish the Chinese Civil War. Admittingly, it does not take a genius to realise that at this point, if the fighting does resume, it is but a matter of the PRC finishing off the last remnants of the ROC rump on Taiwan, since the ROC forces have no chance of reconquering the entire mainland by now (though they did hold on to this desire as late as the 1970’s).
And the answer to whether or not the fighting should resume is a resounding ‘no’ on both sides as well. Everyone on both sides of the strait is Chinese, and quite frankly most of the irreconciliable points of contention in ideological dogma and political doctrine between the KMT and CCP have long since become obsolete.
What most Chinese wish for is to find a peaceful long term resolution to the civil war which does not involve bloodshed, and most people from across the Chinese World regardless of political affiliation recognise or are at least willing to trust that those advocating for ‘Taiwanese Independence’ are but a small albeit vocal minority on Taiwan. Meanwhile, no one finds writing systems or pinyin romanisation standards to be worth fighting and dying over. My own hometown is somewhat inland but not entirely remote from Xikou, where Jiang Jieshi himself grew up. There are plenty of people in Xikou nowadays who in principle do not object at all to the prospect of welcoming the remains of the KMT leader back for a proper burial when the situation permits it (which was his own dying wish).
Of course, negotiations will not be straightforward, and it is completely understandable that ROC officials will have concerns about their specific status within a reunified Chinese state, and what protections and guarantees will be offered for the specific particulars of their own way of life. However, almost everyone of political prominence in the 1930’s and 1940’s is either dead or rather senile, so most understand there is no concern of anyone being dragged away to a public trial by the people.
The only reason why there would be a motivation to achieve reunification by force would be if something drastic happens, such as if the MJD attempts to change the ROC’s name and contitution, or the US uses ROC territory as a base for attacking other parts of China.
Is China–Russia Alliance is Likelier than we think?
On 4FEB22, it was formally announced that China and Russia formed a new “national structure” together. In short, they joined together into one singular “state” of a type never before seen on the planet. This nation state is tighter than any kind of individual nation, and stronger economically than any other singular nation in the history of the globe.
Since today is late July 2023, this new “nation-state”; a unified Asia, has been in force and operating now for a goodly one and a half years. And we have seen some amazing changes take place.
Both the paramilitaries of China and Russia integrating together.
Joint leadership in the various national organizations.
A wide selection of free trade and energy activities.
Massive infrastructure projects.
Of course, NONE of this is reported in any of the Western “news”. You have to be able to read Chinese, Russian, or Persian to keep abreast on the massive big changes going on in the world today. The English reporting is absent, and if reported, it is distorted beyond recognition.
For instance, take the joint Naval exercises with Russia and China around Japan last week. Western reporting equals zero. Or, the new rail lines connecting Western Russia to China, the Western reporting is yet again; zero. How about the new manufacturing plants in Russia? Zero. Or the trade corridors from the Middle east into the Heart of Russia, via the China “bridge”? Reporting is zero.
And so, with the West living in this bubble of ignorance, it can be expected that those in the West are unaware that China and Russia are one.
It is a united Asia.
To a person in the West, it is almost like waiting to get an invite to a big party. And you wait and you wait and you wait. Then you find out that the party came and went, and no one told you. Yeah. It’s like that.
So to answer the question;
Is China–Russia Alliance is Likelier than we think?
It happened a year and a half ago. It is more than an alliance; it is a new global superpower. If the USA is considered to be a superpower, then the new Russia-China “new national form” is a Super-Duper-Supreme-power. And that is how things stand today.
Which is why…
The people; the citizens, worry about war, Taiwan, nuclear bombs.
The multinational companies, are all renewing investments in China and Russia independent of any American-led sanction efforts.
The nations are all abandoning the USD in favor of a BRICS “basket of currencies”.
So do not be confused by the dearth of actual “news” reporting. Watch what people, companies and nations are actually doing. Not what they are saying.
For instance, as an example…
Thailand elected, via color-revolution, a pro-USA leader. However, just this week the Thai Navy spent all week drilling with the Chinese Navy, and the the BRI projects are proceeding that connects Thailand to China, and Laos without any interruption.
Pay attention to what is physically going on. Not, what is being “reported.”
Fluffy Dumplings
unnamed
Ingredients
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2/3 teaspoon salt
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 egg
1 tablespoon melted shortening or oil
2/3 cup milk
Instructions
Sift flour, salt and baking powder into mixture of beaten eggs, shortening and milk.
When ready to serve, drop by teaspoonsful into boiling gravy (about 4 cupsful), cover and cook gently for 8 to 10 minutes or until done.
The Hunter Biden plea deal appears to have collapsed. The so-called ‘Sweetheart deal’ on tax and gun charges seems to have fallen apart in a stunning twist after prosecutors said president’s son could STILL be charged with other crimes.
During his appearance in front of a judge in a federal court in Delaware the president’s scandal-hit son said ‘yes, your honor’ when asked by the judge if he was going to plead guilty, and admitted he’s been to rehab six times in 20 years for addiction to drinking and drugs.
But then the Judge demanded a recess when an agreement between prosecutors and attorneys for the president’s son appeared to fall apart.
Hunter’s attorney Chris Clark said the agreement was ‘null and void’ after top prosecutor Leo Wise said the president’s son could still be charged with other crimes – including violations related to representing foreign governments.
He was a party guy who hated school and got really bad grades. One day, two men savagely attacked him and robbed Jason outside a bar, leaving him with a severe concussion.
This damage turned him into a math genius and made him learn fractal geometry, which he had never learned before. He then became a renowned mathematician.
Derek Amato
2023 07 25 16 1y9
At 39, he hit his head after diving into a pool. He was diagnosed with a concussion and 35% hearing loss. After that Derek started seeing black and white keys on his head and out of nowhere started playing the piano like an expert and eventually became a composer.
Ben McMahon
2023 07 25 16 20
He was in a car accident in 2015 and was in a coma for a week. When he woke up, he spoke perfect Chinese, even though he had only learned the basics in childhood.
Tony Cicero
2023 07 25 16 20fd
He was struck by lightning while making a call in a phone booth. Within days, he became addicted to music, which wasn’t the case before. After experimenting with the piano, he became a musical artist who composes his own music.
I may not call them superpowers, but they are definitely powers for the uninitiated.
NDE: Woman is Shown Pre-Birth Plan and is SHOCKED to see she Did Not Accomplish her Life’s Purpose
Please enjoy my interview with Norma Edwards about her Near Death Experience!
2023 07 25 15 41
The CIA
an ALL powerful organization unlike anything the world have ever seen
far more powerful than the Illuminati, the Free Masons and all powerful Men like Kim Jong-un
this organization had, thru mission creep, amassed GREAT POWERS for itself and now control the most powerful nations on earth
in a demonstration of its power, it had also made possible the Presidency of Joe Biden. It was in Ukraine that the CIA co-opted Hunter Biden as it fund bio labs. It also suppressed critical information that allow Joe Biden to win the 2020 election
2023 07 25 15 51
What most Americans are NOT aware is that the CIA:
is the largest drug smuggler in the United States and in many parts of the world. It also arms Narco trafficker in Latin America which destabilized MANY countries
the slush funds created from drug smuggling enable it to fund activities outside state control
throughout the world, it is responsible for the death of tens of millions of people as it funds wars, mayhem and overthrow governments
overseas and in the United States such as in Fort Detrick, it operates bio.chemical labs that conducts research into bio weapons designed to kill and eliminate whole races of people
In the United States, the CIA:
spies extensively on Americans
control pedophile rings such as those run by Jeffrey Epstein which allows it to control American business and political elites (Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Bill Gates were just some of the individuals who were frequent visitors to Epstein’s island). This control allows it to direct America’s domestic and foreign agenda
thru its funding of American and foreign media and think thanks, it promote hate in the United States against China, Russia, Muslims and others distracting Americans from what it is doing and the governing Plutocrats openly stealing from the country and its people
it CENSORS books in the United States and fund major Hollywood movies in order to manipulate Americans while funding studies on thought control experiments
it’s involvement in the opiate trade has led to the death of millions of Americans devastating lives and communities.
From an organization which was created to gather intelligence from foreign countries, the CIA have evolved to spy on and manipulate Americans as it wage wars and inflict death and chaos which affect millions around the world while controlling bio-chemical weapons. Most of all, it now controls American political and business elites.
What is the CIA up to? As we have seen, the CIA is involve with much nefarious activities. If Oliver Stone is correct, this could also include the assassination of an American President
It has now united the countries of Europe and Japan – countries with a long and bloody history of waging wars of racial domination – after triggering the Ukrainian crises by funding neo-Nazis Ukrainians and triggering the Maidan revolution
for it is clear that the CIA objective is world domination and to set the world alight triggering an orgy of death, chaos and destruction
more than anything else, the CIA represent the physical and spiritual manifestation
of the Dark Angel himself where it has now found a HOME
always seeking power and domination while sowing death and chaos in its wake
it is now in the cusps of accomplishing its objectives of lighting the world on fire
in this world, in a country that is big and small, haven is preparing its favourite son
for that epic confrontation against Evil itself
in order to save the world from a fiery end
Most DETAILED Near Death Experience Ever Recorded; Woman is given TOUR of the Universe! Venia Hill
Please enjoy my interview with Venia Hill about her incredibly in-depth Near Death Experience!
2023 07 25 15 45
These Humorous Stinker Station Signs Helped to Provide Comic Relief for Motorists in Idaho During the 1950s and ’60s
0 12
When traveling to distant places, it is well to remember where you come from. If you come from Idaho, chances are you are familiar with the Stinker gas stations, which used to put up gag signs along the roads. Those bright yellow Stinker Station signs all with black print truly were an “Idaho only” institution. The Stinker gas stations used to break the monotony of traveling through southern Idaho’s miles of sagebrush with their comic signs.
“BALLISTIC MISSILE LAUNCHES” UPDATED AGAIN 1:13 PM EDT — Major Air Strikes Against Ukraine
2023 07 27 10 25
Reports are coming in that Russia has launched 12 TU-95 aircraft carrying missiles for Ukraine
If each aircraft is carrying a full load, that is up to 96 cruise missiles.
Air Raid Sirens are sounding throughout the red shaded areas of Ukraine shown on the map above. Explosions likely to follow.
Check back.
UPDATE 11:31 AM EDT —
13 Russian Tu-95MS and a number of Tu-160M Strategic Bombers are currently noted Airborne across Western Russia heading towards “Launch Zones” over the Caspian Sea.
A Large Missile Attack on Ukraine _SEEMS_ Imminent.
UPDATE 11:34 AM EDT —
Preliminary launches of X-101/555 missiles from Tu-95 from the Caspian direction.
CONFIRMED! Initial Detection by the Ukrainian Air Force of Cruise Missile launches by at least 12 Russian Tu-95MS Strategic Bombers over the Caspian Sea; the Missiles should be entering Ukrainian Airspace within the next hour.
UPDATE 11:38 AM EDT —
ADDITIONAL MISSILE ATTACKS NOW TAKING PLACE! High-speed missiles entering Ukraine from the north, Ukraine’s air force says.
These are DAYLIGHT launches, not something the Russians usually do.
UPDATE 11:40 AM EDT —
Cruise Missiles Flying towards Kharkiv, Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk .
Possible direction – Kremenchuk, Kropyvnytskyi!
Explosions are reported in Berislav district of Kherson region and in Kharkov.
UPDATE 11:43 AM EDT —
Right now, Ukrainians are in a panic that has long crossed the line of hysteria.
Rockets over the Kirovograd region towards Kiev;
More missiles in the direction of the Vinnitsa region;
Apparently, the Russian Air Force took significant steps to deceive the Ukrainian air defense; today’s missiles are constantly changing course in mid-flight!
Russian cruise missiles are flying to Vinnytsia, Mykolaiv and Odesa regions, — Ukrainian Air Force.
Explosions reported in Dnepropetrovsk region.
The second wave of Russian missiles is entering from the East.
Cruise missiles on the approaches to Vinnytsia, Mykolaiv, and Odesa regions!
MORE:
Explosions Reported in Dnepropetrovsk and Kirovograd Regions
It appears that a portion of the Iskander missiles have successfully struck their intended targets.
The activation of the air raid alert following the initial strikes indirectly confirms the accuracy of the hits on these targets.
Moreover, there are indications that a ballistic missile strike targeted an assembly shop in Kharkov, which was allegedly involved in the production of drones.
As for the cruise missiles launched from the Caspian region, they have not yet reached their intended destinations.
There is speculation that these missiles could potentially target certain sites belonging to the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Khmelnitsky and Vinnitsa regions.
NEW: A group of missiles is moving along the border with Moldova in the direction of Khmelnytskyi region!
UPDATE 12:13 PM EDT —
Multiple explosions heard in Khmelnytskyi region
UPDATE 12:25 PM EDT —
Missiles entering Lviv.
Lviv region advised to take cover immediately, missiles inbound.
Volyn and Rivne regions. Missiles also fly towards you.
COURSE CHANGES – AGAIN: Several RU cruise missiles turned from Lviv to Volyn region NOW! Some rockets in the Ternopil region made a 180-degree turn.
A group of missiles from Ternopil Oblast changes course to Zhytomyr Oblast, another group in the direction of Lviv Oblast and Volyn Oblast.
UKRAINE authorities in panic, now hysteria: screaming to citizens “Missiles constantly change their flight path. Stay in shelters!”
UPDATE 12:46 PM EDT —
Russian “Dagger” missiles heading in the direction of Kyiv!
(NOTE: Today’s ongoing missile barrages appear to be the largest and longest-sustained attack since the Russia-Ukraine conflict began. Ter for months, we were all told “Russia is running out of missiles.” HMMMMM. Looks like the people telling us that were . . . ahem . . . wrong.)
AT LEAST FOUR (4) HYPERSONIC “KINZHAL” MISSILES HAVE BEEN LAUNCHED AND APPEAR HEADING TOWARD KIEV.
MORE:
Iskander missiles have JUST BEEN launched from the Bryansk region Russia.
***** FLASH *****
Multiple reports coming in claiming land-to-land BALLISTIC MISSILE LAUNCHES have taken place inside Russia, heading toward Ukraine.
UPDATE 12:57 PM EDT —
Explosions heard once again in the City of Khmelnytskyi in Western Ukraine.
UPDATE 1:13 PM EDT —
The attack seems to have subsided. No additional missiles are being tracked in, or toward, Ukraine.
Unconfirmed Reports that Starokostiantyniv Air Base in the Khmelnytskyi Region of Western Ukraine has been struck by at least 5 Russian Cruise Missiles. This Base is Home to the 7th Tactical Aviation Brigade who operate Su-24 Tactical Bombers which are claimed to be the __ONLY__ Ukraine aircraft capable of utilizing “Storm Shadow” Air-Launched Cruise Missiles provided by the UK and France.
If this base and its planes have been put out of commission, then Russia achieved multiple wins; knocking out more Ukraine air power and HALTING the ability of Ukraine to use STORM SHADOW missiles, anywhere in the country.
Reports are that this is attack was focused on NATO Assets, Supplies, and Command Centers inside Ukraine, which would explain the daylight strikes.
THIS ENDS ONGOING UPDATES
Cajun Pork Chili
2023 07 27 11 25
Ingredients
2 pounds ground pork
2 large onions, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 sweet red bell pepper, chopped
1 sweet green bell pepper, chopped
3 stalks celery, chopped
1 (28 ounce) can tomatoes
1 (28 ounce) can kidney beans, drained
1/4 teaspoon hot pepper flakes
1 teaspoon dried oregano*
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
Dash of hot pepper sauce
Salt and pepper
Instructions
In a heavy saucepan, cook the pork over medium heat, stirring to break up the meat, for about 5 minutes or until browned. Pour off the fat.
Add onions, and cook until tender. Add garlic, red and green peppers and celery. Cook, stirring occasionally, for 5 minutes or until vegetables are softened.
Add tomatoes, breaking them up with the back of a spoon. Stir in kidney beans, hot pepper flakes, oregano, cayenne pepper, hot pepper sauce and salt and pepper to taste. Bring to a boil; reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes.
Notes
* If you prefer a more traditional chili flavor, use cumin instead of oregano, and add chili powder to taste.
Originally Answered: What is it like to live on a small island?
I’ll answer for an island of 300 in the Maldives.
Enjoy? Things get boring very quickly unless you LOVE water sports or fishing. After we exhausted these options, cabin fever set in really quickly. Chess is a favorite pastime for locals.
Lizards and spiders galore, bats hanging in trees all day. Mosquitos are everywhere and the sand fleas are worse. Locals seem to have developed a tolerance for both though.
Translucent crabs COVER the edges of the island closest to the ocean from dusk to dawn.
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Biggest swimming pool ever
2023 07 25 16 2r9
The reefs are absolutely magnificent
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Fantastic visibility
Supplies come once and sometimes twice a week – you miss everything and if you don’t order it or get it on the day or even hour it’s delivered, you’re out of luck that week.
There is one small general store that has a regular refrigerator for Kit Kat ice cream cones and bottled water/soda (only Holstein’s that I can’t even find online) – while they last.
Most mosquito coils in the general store are so old they won’t light
More coconuts and fresh fish than you could ever begin to try to eat
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The boat that brings the supplies
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Waiting to board the boat – yep, you can go for free but you’re gonna ride with the bananas, pineapples, bread and orange juice headed for the resorts
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Knocked out on the floor of the ship. There wasn’t an open spot left anywhere.
It smells like ocean, sand, coconuts, fish, and musky people – no deodorant, obviously
Air conditioning and heating don’t exist – ditto for heated water.
2023 07 25 16 31g
We caught all these fish using fishing line and a hook tied to a water bottle. We just let the line drop and our “captain” drove around until one of us got a bite. No more than five minutes and usually less than a minute. I’ve never fished so easily in my life.
Sometimes fish is cooked by gutting, covering with salt, spearing with a freshly picked palm frond and roasting lightly over a coconut husk fire
2023 07 25 16 328
Cooking on the deserted island across the atoll from where we stayed
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Yeah, there were plates on the deserted (read: private party) island. They get rinsed in the ocean.
Everyone eats with their hands. All the time.
Everyone knows everything about everyone – this cannot be underestimated. You have ZERO privacy
Even though everyone knows everything, there are still drug (heroin) and alcohol abuse problems – they are isolated enough that they protect each others privacy from the rest of the world.
You can walk from one side of the island to the other in under 15 minutes if you go slow. 10 minutes for a nice, brisk pace.
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One of the two main “streets”
Most furniture is made from wood and rope – withstands the sand and wind quite well
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Finishing off another coconut in my favorite chair
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Pretty cool six seater chair
There is a plane ambulance for major health emergencies – it has to fly to the island and fly back out
There is a speedboat ambulance within the atoll that will take you to another, slightly larger island with doctors for less major medical emergencies
There is one doctor from India who lives on the island part time for basic checkups and minor health care needs
There’s a large soccer (football) field that is used nightly, an open air mosque, and an open air two room school house
ZERO automobiles, a couple bicycles, a motorbike (maybe 50cc) every local rolls their eyes at because it’s so ridiculous (I think they’re waiting for him to accidentally ride into the ocean), and a couple carts for hauling what comes in on the boats
Two plastic lawn chairs at the end of one lane that faces the nearby resort island. On a good day, you can pick up the wifi from across the ocean. Spotty, but workable. Some days, people wait in rotation for a chair.
Hope that helps. Perhaps you’re looking for details about a bigger island, but some stuff should be similar. Good luck!
US Begins Draw-Down of ACTIVE ARSENAL to Give to Ukraine
The US is giving another $400 MILLION (Corrected) of Military aid to Ukraine but this time, the weaponry is coming out of the ACTIVE ARSENAL and NOT coming from reserves or excess inventory! The Active Arsenal exists to defend the USA itself.
The US confirmed a new aid package to Ukraine valued at up to $400 million. It comes direct from Department of Defense stocks.
The capabilities in this package include:
1. Additional munitions for Patriot air defense systems and National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS);
2. Stinger anti-aircraft systems;
3. Additional ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS);
8. Javelin and other anti-armor systems and rockets;
9. Hornet Unmanned Aerial Systems;
10. Hydra-70 aircraft rockets;
11. Tactical air navigation systems;
12. Demolitions munitions for obstacle clearing;
13. Over 28 million rounds of small arms ammunition and grenades;
14. Night vision devices and thermal imagery systems; and,
15. Spare parts, training munitions, and other field equipment.
This latest gift of military aid is now directly impacting the ability of the United States to defend ITSELF.
It’s almost as if someone in government is deliberately doing things to the country to make us vulnerable to invasion!
Smoky Pasta and Bean Soup
Warm up with this hearty soup. Serve with warmed bread sticks and a salad.
68e34c05d98c7e4635fa7ee0ba9b663c pasta dinner recipes recipe pasta
Ingredients
6 slices bacon
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 rib celery, finely chopped
1 medium carrot, peeled and grated
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/8 teaspoon hot red pepper flakes, crushed
2 cups canned crushed tomatoes
2 1/2 cups canned white beans, drained
6 cups chicken broth
3/4 cup macaroni or other small paste shape
Fresh Parmesan cheese, grated (optional)
Instructions
In a large deep skillet, sauté bacon until some fat is rendered; add onion, celery, carrot, garlic and red pepper to skillet and sauté until vegetables are softened, about 10 minutes.
Stir in tomatoes, cook and stir occasionally for 10 more minutes.
Stir in beans; add broth and bring to a gentle boil. Add macaroni (or other small pasta) and continue cooking until pasta is tender, but still firm, about 15 minutes.
Serve immediately with Parmesan cheese if desired; or cover, refrigerate and reheat gently to serving temperature.
Right now, as of 2023, the “adversaries” against the United States is roughly about 85% of the global population.
The United States is a tiny part of the globe, and getting smaller each day.
So, who is the United States, and it’s allies, that the Mainstream Media like to refer to as “most of the world”…
American proxy nations.
These nations will do what the United States say. The methods of control vary from nation to nation, but they are not independent at all. It is extremely unlikely that these nations would do anything without asking the United States for permission first.
Canada
UK
Minor European states
Japan
American friends.
These are proxy nations that might have the ability to “break away” from the United States if conditions are favorable. Each nation operations under their own unique conditions. Some desire to be United States proxies, but Geo-political realities prevent full engagement, others wish to be more distant, but again, Geo-political realities prevent that as well. These nations are in a sort of limbo, and political expedience results in a default abeyance to American dictates.
Israel
Germany
Poland
France
Switzerland
Sweden
Finland
Neutral
These nations are trying to walk the razor-thin line of neutrality. There are internal elements that are dividing the ruling leadership. The issues involved in these nations are complex. Yet, their actions suggest that they are trying to “play both Geo-political blocks”.
Australia
Philippines
South Korea
The Global South.
These are the current “enemies” of the United States “Western” ideological block.
Some are codified, and formalized, such as Russia. Some are not formally engaged, such as China. Some are considered to be “American easy lays” such as South East Asia, though they are anything but that.
Russia
China
North Korea
Iran
Pakistan
All of the ‘Stan’s
South East Asia
Much of Africa
Brazil
South Africa
Argentina
Much of South America
Neutral but leaning with the Global South
These nations are currently picking sides. Most intel suggest that they are strongly leaning towards the Global South and rejecting the “American way of life”.
Mexico
Most of Latin America
India
Turkey
Bulgera
And that is pretty much the entire world. So, if you look at the list above, you can see the reality of what the world has fractured into.
A “West”; led by the United States. It promotes “American values”, “American democracy”, and woke progressive ideology. They use the USD as the dominant trade currency, and are referred to as the “English speaking world”. (Though that is NOT an accurate statement.) It’s an “American rules” order. It represents 15% of the world
An “East”. Led by the China-Russia-Iran-Saudi Arabia- Brazil-South African nexus. It’s a “multi-polar” order. Organized fundamentally under the UN charter. It is further subdivided into sub-blocks such as G20, BRICS+, and SEO. They use a basket of currencies based on hard tangible resources to trade. And combined, represents 85% of the world.
No.
It is unlikely that the United States can fight the entirety of the rest of the world and win. How likely or unlikely, is dependent on your personal point of view, and the intelligence or “news” that you (personally) consume.
American neocon = Likely that the United States will win, because it is blessed by God.
Typical proxy nation citizen = Tough call. Maybe the United States can persevere.
Global South Citizen = We are constantly underestimated. The United States cannot win.
Road to Bali (1952, Adventure) Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Dorothy Lamour | Full Movie, Subtitles
Today’s treat. Full movie. Great background movie.
The United States is in absolute LATE STAGE collapse.
The society is destroyed, and there isn’t a middle class left. Businesses still operate and manage under the few pockets of commerce that still exist, however the labor force is unemployed, unskilled and have “checked out”. Nothing much remains outside of the enclaves.
The American “leadership” are fixated on war, and profits from that war. More war they demand, and now they want really BIG wars so that they can make really BIG profits.
They are absolute idiots.
China is aptly dancing around these Bozos, but how long can this charade keep up? No one knows, not indefinitely. There’s gonna have to be some bitch-slapping sooner or later. I’ll tell you what.
Enjoy these videos. Must watch all. As they describe the true measure of what we all can expect…
Allow me to say something crazy that you haven't heard elsewhere.
While Putin may have foolishly believed in Minsk 2, and now Russia is in a shooting war with a neighbor and kin that it cannot afford to lose (and as a nuclear armed nation, will not lose). Strategically, it will be weakened whatever the outcome.
On the other hand, America has committed an even more grievous mistake.
It is the greatest blunder since the establishment of the empire. You can trust something like this will happen because the empire is now run by morons and imbeciles. America has made the Ukraine War an existential conflict for the empire.
It has now committed the entire empire and all its vassals in a total war against Russia. There are no negotiations, no cease fire, no peace, only unconditional surrender (the chance of Russia surrendering is zero).
The US could afford to lose to Vietnam and Afghanistan, but it cannot afford to lose this war to Russia.
When that happens, guess what the vassals will do. This is the last war of the empire, folks. Meanwhile, China and BRICS+ will continue to attack the USD, with or without India (I'm guessing the BRICS currency will be a trade instrument like the SDU rather than a sovereign currency like the EURO, it will be designed to compete against the USD in trade, particularly among BRICS+ nations, no one will be forced to use it, but one can circumvent the USD ecosystem with it). Let's see how long the empire and its fake economy can hold out on this two-front war.
"You fool, you fell victim to one of the classic blunders. Never get involved in a land war in Asia (or with Russia)." -- Vizzini the Sicilian (Princess Bride)
-PM
American “democracy”
The thing you need to understand is that it’s not just how much influence a billionaire has. It’s also how trivial it is for them to exert it.
A billionaire can pay the equivalent of a nickel to a team of lobbyists that he never even needs to see or hear from, who will work relentlessly to accomplish that billionaires desires.
An average person needs not only to vote, but donate far greater sums across huge groups of people, they need to call legislators and go to protests and organizations.
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1940s USA – Fascinating Street Scenes of Vintage America [Colorized]
This is totally cool!
Immerse yourself in the vibrant atmosphere of bustling cities and charming small towns that defined the American landscape during this transformative decade.
Witness the stylish attire, iconic automobiles, and timeless architecture that painted the backdrop for everyday life.
From the shimmering lights of New York City to the laid-back charm of small-town America, each image tells a story of a bygone era.
When I was in grade 6, I was bullied everyday by this idiot at the back of the bus. I tried telling the bus driver, but he didn’t care. One day, I was wearing a sweater that my mom got me when she went to England for my grandmother’s funeral. The back of the bus idiot had a water pistol filled with grape juice and was spraying other kids, and of course he started spraying me. By this time I had had enough of this idiot and trying to ignore him everyday wasn’t working. I was mad he got grape juice on my new sweater, so I stood up, went to the back of the bus and told the idiot to stand up, he asked why he should and I told him I wasn’t going to beat the shit out of a guy who’s sitting down. Then I yelled at him to stand up, he went all quiet and wouldn’t look at me, so I told him if he ever bugged me again, I’d beat his ass, then I went and sat down again. I heard his friend ask him “who you going to pick on now?” and he replied “shut up”. The next day I got on the bus, this guy called me to the back of the bus as he saved a seat for me. I never did like that guy but we now had an understanding. The main thing I learned from that was to stand up for myself, a lesson I have carried with me to this day. Bullies really are cowards.
Young Gals Are In DISBELIEF As Men Are No Longer Attending Singles Events
We begin after a view of the past to notice TRENDS of what is going on in the present. These are AMERICAN trends. Nothing like this even remotely resembling this in China.
Pyongyang has dismissed a US proposal for negotiations, saying the country’s nuclear program cannot be stopped.
North Korea has dismissed a US proposal for peace talks as a ploy, accusing Washington of provoking conflict in the region while holding out false hope that it can persuade Pyongyang to halt its nuclear weapons program by temporarily easing sanctions or suspending military exercises.
Kim Yo-jong, North Korea’s foreign policy chief and sister of leader Kim Jong-un, said on Monday that the best way to ensure peace and stability on the Korean peninsula is for Pyongyang to amply display its military might, “rather than solving the problem with the gangster-like Americans in a friendly manner.” She called Washington’s latest offer of peace negotiations a “trick” to buy time.
Kim made her comments one day after US President Joe Biden’s national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, told reporters that Washington was willing to negotiate with North Korea “without preconditions” concerning its nuclear weapons program. He said the Biden administration is closely monitoring the threats posed by North Korea’s missile launches and is concerned that Pyongyang will conduct its seventh nuclear warhead test.
Similarly, Kim said the US and its allies could easily renege on diplomatic concessions. “It is as easy as pie for the US political circles to exclude the DPRK from the list of ‘sponsors of terrorism’ today but re-list it tomorrow.” She claimed that tensions in the region have escalated on Biden’s watch to the point that “the possibility of an actual armed conflict and even the outbreak of a nuclear war is debated.”
Why do you think Iran wants to go the same way? Its insurance for them. Once 20–25 countries have these nukes, it would be a multipolar world all by itself.
Well done NOKO!
$32.1 Billion Chinese Chip Order Canceled, China Installs First Domestic Lithography Machine!
Amid U.S. chip limitation rules, the Chinese chip sector is undergoing a dramatic shift. China has responded by moving decisively in the direction of reaching self-sufficiency. China is giving local chip production top priority with the lofty goal of achieving a 70% self-sufficiency rate in chips. The increased research and development efforts Shanghai Microelectronics has made in the area of lithography machines are a noteworthy development in this endeavor. Chinese businesses have successfully accepted the first lithography machine made locally, which is a significant achievement and an indication of this growth.
Roasted Asparagus with Feta
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Ingredients
2 1/2 pounds medium asparagus, trimmed
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
2 ounces feta cheese, crumbled (1/2 cup)
Instructions
Put oven rack in lower third of oven and preheat oven to 500 degrees F.
Toss asparagus with oil, salt, and pepper in a large shallow baking pan and arrange in 1 layer.
Roast, shaking pan once about halfway through roasting, until asparagus is just tender when pierced with a fork, 8 to 14 minutes total.
Serve asparagus sprinkled with cheese.
RICHARD WOLFF ON CHINA, BRICS, AND THE DECLINE OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE
Economist Richard Wolff joins the program to discuss his latest work analyzing the rise of China, BRICS, and how an emerging new world economy is putting an end to the delusions of the US empire.
Swiss parliamentary commission will classify the results of its investigation into the collapse of Credit Suisse for 50 years, Reuters reports, citing commission documents. Typically, such documents are out of the public domain in Switzerland for 30 years.
“After the completion of the investigation, the files should be transferred to the Federal Archives and should be subject to an extended period of protection of 50 years,” the parliamentary commission decided.
The president of the Swiss Society for History, Sacha Zala, expressed concern to the head of the commission, Isabelle Chassot, about the decision to classify documents for such a long period.
“If researchers want to scientifically investigate the 2023 banking crisis, access to the CS files will be invaluable,” Zala said.
The parliamentary committee, on the contrary, believes that the disclosure of data is detrimental to the credibility of the commission and may have “negative consequences for the financial center of Switzerland.”
Credit Suisse, Switzerland’s second largest bank, found itself in a difficult position after the collapse of U.S.’s Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank and Silvergate Capital. Shares of Credit Suisse on the Swiss Stock Exchange (SIX) on March 15 reached a historical low. Price collapsed by 30.8% to 1.55 Swiss francs, which was the biggest drop in one day. At the close on March 15, the fall was 24.2%, to 1.7 Swiss francs.
In addition to the situation with U.S. banks, the decline in price was affected by the refusal of the largest shareholder of Credit Suisse, Saudi National Bank, to buy more of the bank’s shares. They said they would not buy more shares so as not to violate regulatory requirements.
After that, Credit Suisse turned to the Swiss National Bank (SNB) and the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) for support, the Financial Times reported, citing sources. As a result, the Swiss National Bank approved the plan to rescue Credit Suisse: the country’s second bank was to be absorbed by the UBS group. The merger of the two largest and oldest Swiss banks took place on March 19. The transaction took place on the terms of 0.76 Swiss francs per CS share, that is, the total amount was 3 billion francs ($3.24 billion).
In the spirit of true openness and transparency, Switzerland, a mature democracy, classifies information about what happened to its second largest bank for 50 years. Totally unlike those closed opaque authoritarian countries of China and Russia!
Back to the Future Mall (Puente Hills) is completely dead no business
Today I went to the Puente Hills mall in the city of commerce. The mall is best known for the 1984 movie back to the future. They filmed right in the parking lot of Coors. I had to match up pictures from the movie back to the future afterwords I walked into the mall and I was completely shocked. The inside is totally dead. Barely any people only a few shops are open. It’s really sad to see that. What once was an awesome mall is now almost like a graveyard.
When travelling around New Zealand a few years back I purchased an old BMW 325i coupe as it was cheaper than a rental for the 6 months i was there for. It was a South African built car that had been brought over when the owners emigrated to NZ.
Anyway. I was driving in the South Island when a car driven by German tourists slid across the road and hit me head on causing a major accident, the airbags went off and I was knocked unconscious.
When I awoke I was being treated in the car and the police were asking me where had the gold kruggerands come from?
I was baffled and then I saw that they were everywhere and the police were picking them up from the floor of the car, on the seats and outside.
What had happened was there was a large stash of the coins hidden in the car when it went to New Zealand as it was illegal to take out so much currency when you left South Africa and they had been behind the dash board for some 8 years.
The police were unable to find the original owners of the car when it was imported as they had moved to Australia so after 3 months I was deemed to be the rightful owner as they were found in the car i owned.
It was a tax free windfall that netted me just over $250,000 NZD which I used to buy a beach house in New Zealand in sunny Northland where I still live to this day.
China Public Toilet vs India Public Toilet – This is truly shocking…
There are a lot more machines than lithography in a fab. You also need ion implanters, ovens, cleaning machines (don’t discount this. Cleaning is needed after every step. And it uses ultra pure water which is difficult to do. The water must be 99.9999% pure H2O.), epitaxy machines, photo resist at the nm level that you want to create circuits at, metrology (measurement and testing. How do you know your chips works?), packaging (we don’t use chips by themselves. They have to be put into a package and connected to external pins.), etc.
And China has everything down to 3nm except for lithography machines. Photo resist is at 7nm, it will hit 5nm next year, maybe 3nm. Lithography machine is still at 48nm. And will go into mass production soon. 28nm machine will be done by next year and will be tested either next year or the year later.
EUV machines require 3 core technologies. One is the light source. China has a couple that works. They need to do reliability and then shrink the package down as much as possible.
The second one is the stage. This is the thing that carries the wafer and moves it into place for the lithography to happen. It has to be precise at the nm that you want to make.
Third is the lens and coatings to ensure proper light transmission and reflection. The light must be directional and collimated to a high degree. If any of the light is traveling not in a straight line, then your image on the photoresist will be smeared. China also has done this.
The only thing left is to put it all together and then do testing. This will take 3–5 years. Then test in a production facility, which will take another 6 months to year. Then they will adjust the design, finalize the design, and go into production. So anywhere between 4–7 years.
But China is the only nation that has the entire industrial chain for producing micro chips. No other nation has this. If they want to build a fab, it requires technology from a bunch of countries.
Graham Hancock on What Could Be HIDDEN In Antarctica
I finally got around to adopt another cat. My home is set up for 2 cats. I have two of everything, two food bowls, two litter boxes, two cat perches by the window, etc., etc. Looking at two of everything and yet only one cat just makes me feel miserable.
So I went to the local shelter and adopted a new cat.
Introducing the new cat.
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Her name was Cinnabun at the shelter, but I hadn’t thought of a name yet. I figure since Newt never really warmed up to his name, and with Jonesy’s death, I want to do away with “Alien” themed names. Maybe I’ll go with food-themed names, like Bean Bun, or Dumpling, or Putting, or Boba.
Cinnabun was a 4-month-old rescue (hence the docked ear). She was playful and very curious. Love to explore and purrs like a diesel engine.
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Newt is doing OK so far. I think he’s more confused than hostile. He hissed at the new girl a few times and mostly just watched her from his high perch (places the new cat isn’t able to go). I haven’t observed any other aggressive behavior from Newt other than the occasional hissing. I hope they become good friends, the way Jonesy and Newt never were.
I feel a lot better now I have a new kitten to keep me busy. She is a handful, always climbing around and sneaking into places.
I hope Cinnabun, Newt, and I have many happy years to come.
Poverty in America is by design
Poverty in America is intentional.
Centipede, Spider And Other Creepy Animal-Inspired Handbags Created By A Japanese Artist
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How does a giant centipede sound to you? Or a giant spider? Or maybe a football-sized flea? Would you wear one of these creepy-crawlies as an accessory? Well, if your phobias hadn’t kicked in yet, we’ve got something interesting for you. Japanese artist Amanojaku to Hesomagari creates eerily lifelike handbags and accessories inspired by all sorts of insects and animals that not only look cool but are also a great way to give your friends a nice scare.
I was waiting at the counter for an order and a homeless man asked one of the employees to please fill his half gallon, plastic milk carton with water. The worker said “what are you going to use it for?”
Now I’m jumping the gun in my head, thinking he was going to say that if he wanted it for drinking he has to buy a bottle blah blah blah…
The man said “to drink”, the employee told him to “please go over to the cooler and get whatever size water he’d like.”
He then filled up the milk carton as requested. The man thanked the employee for the water but said he was really hungry and could use a meal.
The worker Benny said “no problem! What would you like?”
The man gave him his order and he got to it with a smile on his face.
I then went over to the register to ask Kathie (who is AMAZING) if I could give her money for him, to use a credit for a few meals.
She replied “Janessa, that is so kind, but we feed him whenever he is hungry. He always has a meal here, when he needs.”
They’ve been doing it for years!!!
Another reason for me to love them over there. I was really moved by the whole situation.
I felt the need to share this because when businesses give from the heart, when they are hurting the most, they deserve a shout out BIG love shout to Mike, Katie, and the whole crew at Bagels n Buns.”
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Russian Airstrike Annihilates Ukraine’s Drone Control Centre, Starlink Station In Kherson
Not reported elsewhere. But I have been wondering when Russia would get around to this…
Ukraine’s UAV control centre and a Starlink communication station have been destroyed in a fresh Russian airstrike.
The Starlink Centre was located on the right bank of the Dnieper River in the Kherson Region.
Russia also claimed to have destroyed 25 Ukrainian soldiers in an SU-35 airstrike on the command post of the 222nd separate battalion of the Ukrainian armed forces. Watch this video to know all the latest from Russia-Ukraine war.
Russia is developing its most advanced air defence system, the S-550. The formidable weapon system is able to eliminate intercontinental ballistic missiles at a longer range as well as satellites. According to TASS, the S-550 could be commissioned as early as 2025.
Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoygu cited the statement of President Vladimir Putin about the necessity to “deliver the air defence systems S-550 to the Russian troops”. It implies that Russia has successfully developed an undeniably unknown weapon and is about to deploy it.
This announcement took the public by surprise, yet the military circles have not unveiled any details about this new machinery nor have they agreed on giving any relevant commentaries. Also goes by the name 55R6M “Triumfator-M”, S550 is a Russian surface-to-air missile/anti-ballistic missile system created to replace the A-135 missile system presently in service, and to also provide support for the S-400.
The S-500 was developed by the Almaz-Antey Air Defence Concern. According to the Pravda report, due to its characteristics, S-550 is unrivalled by any other similar system in the world, being the top of its classes of space-defence weapons. Still citing the same report, it is known that the weapon shares similarity with the US Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) system in that it will be synthesized into a single network of assets of defence in aerospace.
I’m actually from Ohio, the good old Buckeye state with all those (American) Indian
[1] burial mounds, covered bridges, and the most natively born US presidents (*shifty eyes at Virginia*). We’ve got Dayton and the beginnings of flight, Neil Armstrong, canals and railroads, and a lot of hogs.
Ohio is, at best, quaint. It’s as “middle” as it gets for America (*shifty eyes at KC, MO*) and incredibly American in the most understated, fact-of-the-matter way. Ohio doesn’t seek respect nor deserve it, and it is the butt monkey of the US as a result. It isn’t even unknown enough to fade into the background like those more gracious and wild plains states — being the proverbial fat kid on the playground, it is just impossible to miss, even though everyone wants to miss it.
Everyone knows the joke; round on the outside, high in the middle. Or for the younger folk, it means “hello” in Japanese (*shifty eyes at the Japanese*). Yes, we make fun of ourselves too — haha, welcome to Ohayocon , the local anime convention.
Shockingly high amount of decently sized cities, at least for American standards.
You also will not care for most of them and that’s okay. The state always surprises people with how many electoral votes it gets. And while it’s not iconic with its niceness like the rest of the Midwest (and especially those southern Canadi- I mean, Minnesotans), we still embrace that niceness like we belong. Even if the rest of the Midwest keeps giving us the side eye when roll call happens.
I just described the Ohio of 20 years ago.
Ohio today is so much more desperate than back then. To put it simply, Ohio is what America abandoned — railroad, industrialized, cooperative USA brimming with heavy industry and evenly distributed urban centers.
It is a free state that doesn’t act like one anymore. It is a place of extreme brain drain, where the Ohioans who could amount to something have long moved away. Those who remain pick up the dregs and make do with one of the rustiest parts of the rust belt.
Ohio is a place of the past.
If you have plenty of wealth and want a nice, quiet place to just exist in, then Ohio is your game. If, however, you are young, not rich, ambitious, or otherwise eager to meet interesting people, Ohio is a death sentence.
China is basically the exact opposite.
It’s a dynamic, roiling mass of chaos that will leave you in the dust if you don’t keep up. Everything there is couched in hurry up and wait, yet things happen super fast far too often so there’s no way to really relax. Ambitious people are everywhere important and will screw the honest, gullible ones, but even the country as a whole seems to be changing that. You can’t say anything you want on the internet, but shooting the shit and talking politics with a beer on the street is incredibly easy and liberating.
China is abandoning the countryside while also featuring the lives of rural folk 24/7 on state television. It has a lot of really patriotic young people who do not see eye to eye with the older folk who tend to think that everything the US does is great and everything the Chinese government does is foul and misguided. Again, the exact opposite of Ohio — the kids are all disillusioned, while the older folk cling to former glory (at least they also think the Chinese government is foul and misguided!).
There is no honest way to get an image of China.
The whole place is so big and diverse, each place proves your ignorance, as if you’ve never been around. Ohio can do that too, but it won’t shove your ignorance in your face. The place is more content to be ignored. Such is the curse of suburbia — every corner looks the exact same.
China is too unpredictable. Ohio is too predictable. There’s no clear answer.
If I had to give a preference, probably China. I’m an introvert, and there is something truly magical about being able to disappear into a dense city behind anonymity and just be alone among a sea of people. Also I enjoy walking, and there are plenty of places in China that meet the 15 or even 10 minute walkable city standard.
Ohio? You better have a car. There’s not even a subway system in the entire state, and only a couple places have light rail.
Wang Yi, director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Thursday on the sidelines of the ASEAN-China Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Jakarta, Indonesia. The two sides agreed to maintain high-level exchanges and enhance cooperation amid a turbulent world.
The meeting came amid reports of reported visit of Russian President Vladimir Putin to China within this year, which experts said shows a growing mutual trust despite Western attempts to sow discord between the two sides, and that the trip is expected to yield more results in multilateral and bilateral pragmatic cooperation.
One day before their meeting, the Kremlin confirmed on Wednesday that a visit by Russian President Vladimir Putin to China was on the agenda, and the Kremlin noted that now was a good time to maintain high dynamics in the development of relations between Russia and China.
In the face of profound changes unseen in a century, China and Russia firmly support each other in safeguarding legitimate interests, adhere to the path of harmonious coexistence, cooperation and win-win development, and jointly promote world multi-polarization and democratization of international relations, Wang noted, according to the Chinese Foreign Ministry.
Wang called on the two sides to follow the important consensus reached by the two heads of state, maintain high-level exchanges, strengthen strategic communication and coordination, demonstrate the responsibility of major countries, defend their respective national interests and national dignity, and maintain international fairness and justice.
Russia and China have maintained high-level exchanges, and the successful meeting between the two heads of state this year has injected strong impetus into bilateral relations, said Lavrov. He noted that the Russian side is willing to work with the Chinese side to implement the important consensus reached by the two heads of state, further strengthen strategic coordination, and deepen cooperation in various fields.
Russia is also willing to promote the process of multipolarization in the world, oppose all powers and hegemonies, and jointly support the centrality of ASEAN, Lavrov said.
The exact date of Putin’s trip will be announced when it is finalized, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told a news briefing, according to Reuters on Wednesday.
Former Russian Ambassador to China Andrey Denisov said on Tuesday that the Chinese side was getting ready for a visit by the Russian president in October in order to participate in the Third Belt and Road Forum.
Currently, both China and Russia are facing a complex international environment against the backdrop of a deteriorating security situation, with tensions growing in both the Eurasian and Asia-Pacific regions and posing serious challenges for both countries, Yang Jin, an associate research fellow at the Institute of Russian, Eastern European and Central Asian Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Thursday.
Economically, there is also an urgent need for China and Russia to cooperate when the world economy has become more volatile and fragile in the post-pandemic era, Yang noted.
Yang stressed that the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for a new era is an established, long-term relationship that will not be affected by issues of the day, and it is not engaged in any political or military alliances or confrontations against third parties.
“After the Ukraine crisis, the US-led West has been trying to morally coerce China into pressurizing Russia. However, this coercion has failed. This reflects the advancement in the level of mutual trust between the two sides,” Li Yongquan, director of Eurasian Social Development Research at the Development Research Center of the State Council, told the Global Times on Thursday.
Peskov said that during Putin’s expected trip to China, the two presidents will focus on bilateral trade and economic cooperation and on global issues.
“Based on the similarity in Moscow and Beijing’s vision of the essence of international relations… we have very, very good prospects for further discussions and, most importantly, for constructive interaction,” Peskov noted.
In addition to reaching new consensus within the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative, there may also be new cooperative projects signed, including the development of the Far East as proposed by Russian experts, as well as cooperation in previously challenging areas such as transportation and agriculture in Siberia, which had faced various obstacles in the past but now the obstacles are now largely removed, Yang noted.
Li explained that the similarity in the two countries’ perspectives on international issues lies in their common belief in a multipolar world and opposition to hegemony, and rejection of the use of sanctions in handling international relations.
He noted that the two sides’ stance in respecting the UN Charter and international law as the basic norms of international relations has received support from the majority of countries around the world.
The Ukraine issue will likely be on the agenda for Putin’s expected visit, experts said, and China will continue to make efforts to promote peace and dialogue because, given the current situation, it will be difficult to resolve these issues if China’s proposal for a peaceful solution is not followed.
This is James Harrison.
When he was 18, he learned that his blood contained an antibody that could treat a rare blood disease in infants. He donated blood every week for the next 60 years.
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By the time he was done, he’d saved more than 2.4 million lives.
Before I divorced my husband, but while we were still living in California, I used to adore going to thrift shops. One day, while visiting a shop in Venice beach, I saw, in the “odds and ends” bowl, a very peculiar earring. It was a sort of ‘seashell’ design, hand made, with a pendant black pearl dangling from it. From the shape of the shell, it would only go “frontways” on the left ear. It was obviously a shop project, but was *so* unusual, I decided I had to have it! I could always take it apart and use the pearl for something… so I bought it for maybe $0.25. That was in 1979.
The earring went into my “scraps” box. Years passed. I divorced, found my new love, we moved to Hollywood, then in 1988, to Albuquerque. One day, while walking to the book store I saw a sign “GARAGE SALE!” … well… I love garage sales, so I went to the house and looked around.
The lady had a big wooden bowl set out with beads, rings, bits and bobs… and as I sorted through the jumble I saw… a very peculiar earring… with a stylized “seashell” and a dangling black pearl! And it was hand made and fit the right ear! I immediately showed it to the lady “I have an earring at home… that looks exactly LIKE this!”
The lady looked perplexed “Well, dear… I don’t think so… my boyfriend made those for me in Shop… and I lost one of them many years ago.”
I froze. “Where?”
She smiled “Oh a long way from here… it was in California… I’ve forgotten the place… a beach… named like a place in Italy.”
“Venice Beach?” I said, feeling a bit dizzy.
She nodded eagerly. “Wait here!” I said, somewhat illogically… after all it WAS her home… and when I came back with the matching earring, they were a PERFECT match!
I offered to give my earring back to her so she would have the completed pair again, but she refused “I never liked him very much. You keep them, Dear.”
So I still have them, a handmade pair, separated by hundreds of miles and nine years, and reunited completely by chance.
Cream Cheese-Chive Sauce
chive cream cheese radishes 2
Ingredients
8 ounces cream cheese, cubed
1/2 cup milk
1 tablespoon chopped chives
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon garlic salt
Instructions
Combine cheese and milk in saucepan; stir over low heat until smooth.
Stir in remaining ingredients.
Serve over hot cooked potatoes, green beans, broccoli or asparagus.
Years ago I used to work for BMW as a mechanic. Eventually I ended up working on a Z4 Roadster and found a curious hollow tube running alongside the engine and securing to the firewall with a grommet.
Inspecting the tube, it appeared to be a factory installed device, but had no conceivable mechanical purpose, which I could find. What made it even more curious is that none of the other shop mechanics knew what this was either.
I finally asked one of the older mechanics, who had worked with BMW for some time and he correctly pointed out that the purpose of the hollow tube was to collect and resonate some of the engine sound back through the firewall so the driver could hear and feel the engine. It’s hard to believe, but it was true. An engineered piece to literally increase the engine noise inside the cabin…
This is not simply political hyperbole. It is the simple truth.
There is no evidence that the United States is a functioning nation-state in any way aside from a media that says so. The society has completely collapsed. The industrial manufacturing base, aside from a handful of industries, is gone. The cities are pictures of boarded up businesses, poverty, homelessness, and rat infested squalor.
What remains of the Untied States is evident in the many many overseas military bases, and the grandiose political class that films itself in front of green screens, reading scripted lines, and promotional staged events lauding the fictions of “democracy” and “freedom”.
In a world where (formerly) impoverished Laos, and Indonesia have High Speed Trains and free 5G wifi access; where (third world nations such as) Zambia, Nigeria, and Bangladesh have new hospitals, and affordable medical care, and where immediate bank transactions are conducted electronically…
…there is no actual evidence that the United States can ever achieve what these poorer nations currently possess.
To think that “somehow” the United States can regain what it has long since squandered is an exercise in futility. The United States has been looted and now it is an empty vessel; a land of the impoverished. Where feral dog-like packs of “things” (transgen, fluid-gen, and non-binary) prey on what remains of American society.
It is open knowledge that the rest of the world is running away from the USD as fast as it can. And no wonder. There no longer is any gold left in the treasury. As Ron Paul discovered in hearing with the Federal Reserve, there is no longer ANY gold held in reserve.
The United States is dead; and there is no inheritance left for its children.
They will move forward into the 22nd century impoverished; a “has been” nation, one that showed so much promise, but one that was doomed to die. Killed by its very notion; the belief that everyone is equal on paper, but unequal in governance.
Keanu was born in Lebanon. His parents split when he was three and he grew up with three different stepfathers.
As a kid he
was diagnosed with dyslexia and dreamed of becoming a hockey player. He played goalie for a junior league team in Canada but quit after breaking his leg to focus on acting.
He lost his best friend, River Phoenix, in 1993 due to an overdose.
He got married in 1998, experienced a miscarriage with his daughter in 1999, and ultimately lost his wife as well due to a car accident in 2001.
In 2002, Keanu put the Matrix sequels on hold to care for his sick sister. He sold his house to move nearer to his sister, while also helping by cooking meals, cleaning her house, and preparing medication. He also donated 70% of the money he made from The Matrix to leukemia research.
In 2006, when he was filming the movie “The Lake House,” he overheard the conversation of two costume assistants, one crying as he would lose his house if he did not pay $20,000 – on the same day, Keanu deposited the necessary amount in his bank account.
In 2010, on his birthday, Keanu walked into a bakery & bought a brioche with a single candle, ate it in front of the bakery, and offered coffee to people who stopped to talk to him.
To this day, Keanu is often seen wandering around New York City, riding the subway, and interacting with people.
Biden has lost his way,” Kennedy tweeted, arguing that the president should focus on America’s domestic problems instead of trying to achieve “global military dominance.”
“I want people to understand what this troop mobilization is about. It’s about preparing for a ground war with Russia,” he said.
The idea of defeating Moscow in its conflict with Kiev is a “futile geopolitical fantasy” of the Biden administration, the Democratic presidential candidate added.
Thousands of Ukreenions have already lost their lives because “America’s foreign policy establishment manipulated their country into war… Now, rather than acknowledge failure, Biden admin prepares to sacrifice American lives too,” Kennedy said.
Biden signed an executive order mobilizing 3,000 members of the US military’s Selected Reserve to boost the ranks of Operation Atlantic Resolve, which Washington launched in Europe in 2014 after Crimea rejoined Russia following the Western-backed coup in Kiev.
The leading Republican presidential candidate, former President Donald Trump, also had some harsh words to say about Biden’s decision to send more American troops to Europe. The “reckless escalation in Ukreen” pursued by the White House is “straining the US military to the point of disaster,” he said.
“Joe Biden can’t even walk up the steps of Air Force One without tripping. The last thing this incompetent administration should be doing is pushing us further toward World War III.”
Trump reiterated his earlier claim that if he becomes president again, he would end the conflict in Ukreen in 24 hours. “Not one American mother or father wants to send their child to die in Eastern Europe. We must have peace.”
I was a very good student in school. I was the house prefect, class monitor, vocabulary champion, General knowledge quiz champion, basically an overachiever. I put a lit of pressure on myself to maintain my academic rank and put lot of hard work in extra curricular activities.
I finished college, got a job but this overachiever in me wasn’t satisfied. I used to put extra hardwork in everything that I did. My job was very stressful. I would live and breathe work. I would stay late everyday to work.
As a result I started getting headaches on a regular basis. I developed backache at a very early stage (29). But old habits don’t change easily. I continued my workaholic ways.
I wanted to be the best at everything I did. The headaches continued and with time became nastier. I got a heamoragic stroke when I only 31 which paralyzed my right hand side. My speech was gone and I could barely walk. I couldn’t use my right hand.
Though I have recovered 95% but it took me 2 years. I can’t see myself in a stressful environment now.
Its like nature put a stop to my busy life. Now I have all the time in the world to sit and think, play games. I have started my own business. There is work but I do it at my own convenience. I take breaks and rest.
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I wish someone would have told me that the unhealthy competition and rat race that we learn from an early age be it in school or at home is not good. It can seriously harm your physical and mental health.
Take care of yourself. Health is the biggest asset we have. We should take care of it.
I was 17 and just out of highschool, having been kicked out of home at 16 and moved to a new town to be closer to my girlfriend. I thought I’d planned everything out - rent, gas money, etc. but learned that my new job paid only twice a month and withheld the first week.
That meant I had very little money and had to make groceries last 3 weeks. Not knowing how to cook, I bought rice and tomato paste, thinking I could make something palatable.
My new job was at a hospital laundry. I had to gather dirty laundry from all the floors in the hospital and bring them to the laundry. I was the only white guy.
The man who ran the machines must’ve noticed that I never ate lunch.
On the third day, he complained that his wife had packed one sandwich too many and asked if I would eat it so he wouldn’t have to throw it away.
Well, I must’ve wolfed it down pretty fast, because the following days she packed 2 sandwiches ‘too many’!
I was a stupid teenager and just felt lucky for his wife’s “mistakes”.
I wish I could tell him today, how much those sandwiches meant to me.
It is normal to malign an enemy before you attack it.
Presently, the NED has funded (along with the NSA funding) a hate-China narrative designed to galvanize the American people, and the rest of the world against China.
This narrative has multiple components. However, for reasons of brevity, we will concentrate in one specific narrative; “China has a weak, inexperienced military” narrative.
Of course, it is wrong, erroneous and deceptive. It is generated to convince soldiers, and the population to go to war, and NOT to expect consequences.
China has the oldest military in the world. Over 6000 years worth. The Chinese were conducting long organized campaigns with thousands of soldiers at a time when the Europeans were still living in caves and discovering fire.
China has the oldest Navy in the world. The first formal Chinese Navy was laid down around 1160. And was fighting huge naval engagements that involved hundreds of ships and thousands of men long before the British Navy in 1546 under Henry VIII was even a dream.
China is a military nation of warriors. Just because China prefers peace, does not mean that they are afraid of war. The first recorded military campaigns in China can be traced back to the Xia Dynasty (c. 2100–1600 BCE), which was followed by the Shang Dynasty (c. 1600–1046 BCE) and the Zhou Dynasty (1046–256 BCE). Some of the most significant military campaigns in Chinese history include the wars of the Qin Dynasty (221–206 BCE), which united China under a single emperor, the campaigns of the Han Dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE), which expanded China’s territory and influence, and the conquests of the Tang Dynasty (618–907 CE), which established a powerful empire that controlled much of Asia.
Everyone in China is given military training. But the active duty forces are volunteers. One of the great joys that I have is watching my little girl line up in her camouflage fatigues and calling off roll call. Inside of China, it is the law that military training starts in first grade, and continues in every single year of school.
China has an enormous military. Unlike the United States which is spread out everywhere, and filled with a large proportion devoted to logistical concerns, China has a massive CONCENTRATED military. And it is larger that what the United States IS ABLE TO FIELD in battle.
China’s military is not only state-of-the-art but ABOVE peer to the USA. China has stealth bombers, fighters, drones, and submarines. It possesses weapons such as hyper-velocity delivery systems, search-and-destroy flying hand grenades, invisibility attire, platoon-level rail-guns, and suicide robot dogs. And that is just some of the impressive technology that is fielded by China.
China’s military is merit driven. In fact, the entire Chinese society is merit-driven. On the battlefield this makes all the difference between victory and defeat and life and death.
So the reason why “people” say that China is weak is due to complete ignorance. They are simply regurgitating NSA / NED talking points and believing them.
Overall, I advise people never to step into a boxing ring with someone who you know nothing about and with whom you never sparred with. You can get clobbered. Sure as shit.
This is why you do not want to be involved in a war with China…
Yes. My (ex) wife took the kids to the store to get groceries. On the way a drunk driver hit them. They were lucky to be alive.
She called me because it was only 2 miles from the house and the guy was trying to leave (his car was disabled).
I drove over there and immediately arrested him. We lived in The country of a farming rural area. State officers arrived not long after.
Most of the time I would just call incidents in and be a good witness if I didn’t need to intervene. I have called in crimes in progress and then just got into a position to watch safely. Like the time I saw a naked young Hispanic male doing karate moves on the side of the road in the middle of the day.
I parked down the street and called the local agency. I described what I was seeing including that he was a young Hispanic male adult.
When I was asked what he looked like I couldn’t resist. I said, “like a naked guy doing karate, it’ll be hard to miss him.”
The dispatcher laughed and said, “you’re a cop aren’t you?”
I watched a 90 lb female put a 235 lb guy in the hospital. This was a fight between 2 neighbors in my neighborhood. This guy harassed her for weeks then for some reason he decided to walk up to her front porch and knock on her door. I was sitting on my front porch when it happened. I was thinking this is not going to be good, and had my cell phone within reach.
She open her door and in a clear loud voice, she requested he get off her property. He said, what are you going to do about it. She said, I’ll call the police. He laughed at her and reached for the screen door. Before I could move she kicked him in the head twice, swept his legs out from under him, and he was down and bleeding.
I started to call the police, but again before I could dial the number a patrol car pulled up and the officer put the guy in handcuffs. I just sat there, drank my coffee and waited for him to come over and ask what I saw. I told him and signed the bottom of the form.
As he walked away he said you know the woman? I replied yes, she’s a former Marine. He chuckled and said. I guess the guy didn’t know that, and I laughed.
I was ringing up a lady’s stuff. Belt was to my left. I was going pretty quickly.
Lady behind her: thats MY stuff
The other lady apologized but i told her the things behindher werent her responsibility. She leaves. I tell the next lady to just use a red divider next time.
Lady: WHAT… 3 FEET OF SPACE ISNT ENOUGH SPACE FOR YOU TO KNOW THE ORDER ENDED?!
Grrrrr not today. Id already had people pushing all my buttons for hours. That was it
Me: I DONT KNOW WHAT SCHOOL YOU WENT TO, BUT THIS (holds hands about 4 inches apart) IS NOT “3 FEET”! THATS WHY WE HAVE DIVIDERS! HER STUFF, YOUR STUFF. HOW DO I KNOW? ITS DI-VI-DED! NOW I KNOW 3 SYLLABLES MIGHT ME KIND OF DIFFICULT FOR YOU…
I sat there absolutely berating the woman the entire time i was ringing her up. As she was walking away after i had finished, im still on fucking FIRE. HEY! IM NOT DONE WITH YOU YET! and i audibly growl as i turn to the next person in line.
Next person, terrified: I used a divider
2nd person: i used a divider
3rd person: i used two!
It was really hard not to laugh right then, as furious as i was. No idea how a manager or supervisor didnt hear me putting this woman in her place.
well LOLOLOLOLOLOL I can’t believe it took over a week for a single “Karen” to find this post and tell me that she would’ve gotten me fired. I am glad the rest of you had a good laugh.
My mother died. The administrator of her estate began closing down her various accounts and sending checks to all her kids. My first check was $31,000. I took it to my bank (Bank of the West) where I had been banking for about 25 years, expecting them to tell me it would take a week to clear. Instead they told me that they couldn’t accept it. Then they said they could accept it tentatively and that I couldn’t have the money for 30–60 days and there would be a $40 charge to process it. I went down the street to Chase, opened a new account and they accepted the check and it cleared in 6 days.
When I went back to BoW to close my account the manager said “I’m sorry you feel that way” and I replied “I’m sorry you made me feel that way”.
I read it as $ 6.8 Billion — $ 3 Billion from IMF , $ 2 Billion from the Saudi Royal Bank , $ 1 Billion from the Emirati Central Bank and $ 800 Million from Oman
$ 7 Billion is 11–12 months of Imports and that would make Pakistan quite comfortable again
Pakistan claimed a loss of PKR 6 Trillion due to floods and earthquake ($ 30 Billion)
However the real figure is closer to PKR 500 Billion ($ 2.5 Billion)
So Pakistan has been given QUITE A BIT MORE
$ 100 Billion is almost 6 years of Imports
Unless Oil was discovered in Pakistan
Anyway Pakistan is rescued for now
They will get $ 333 Million a month from IMF for 9 months
They have got $ 3.8 Billion from Saudi and UAE and Oman
They now have Russian Oil and pay for it in Yuan. In the last 2 months, they only spent 26% of their last USD reserves & 74% of their Yuan reserves
Two CPEC Projects declared a 15% profit for the first time and AFTER PAYING INTEREST TO CHINA
Bad news for Imran Khan
My guess is the West were so worried about Imrans return and a complete cut off with the US and the West that they decided to give the loans and agree to Status Quo with China and Russia
However there is another reason
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The US are VERY ANGRY with India and Mr Modi because he didn’t bite on a single temptation offered by the US
They thought he would be firmly in the US Camp and sign orders for those Hornets (F18) and Predators and turn down those Migs
Instead Modiji (Deeply appreciative of him) maintained his advise from Jaishankar and rightly signed with a more reliable partner France
He also agreed to continue the contracts for those Migs
The IMF bailout was proforma signed a few days before Modi’s visit
My guess is if Modi had done what US wanted, the IMF would have walked back and said SORRY PAKISTAN. WE NEED ANOTHER YEAR
However strategically MBS and UAE walked in with their $ 3.8 Billion Loan (Around 6 months imports , 9 months with the Yuan) and IMF had no choice. Either say yes or risk complete alienation with Pakistan
Plus Modi didn’t bite
The IMF signed the final bailout agreement barely 24 hours after Modi’s visit ended (23/6/23)
WHERE HAVE ALL THE CARPENTERS GONE?
The growing trade labor shortage is a crises that has not quite struck home yet…but it’s about to. This short video from The Honest Carpenter discusses how the generational decrease in trade participation is hitting the entire construction industry. But it’s affecting some trades more than others…
Must watch.
(Why The Trade Labor Shortage Is Only Beginning…)
For what it’s worth, I think that the trade labor shortage is a reflection of a true paradigm shift.
A hundred years ago, nearly every job in the world was primarily physical.
For that reason, physical labor was considered cheap, because everyone engaged in it to some degree.
You had your choice of workers to pick from.
Now, so many of our jobs are intellectual in nature.
There are so many places to go and work that aren’t really physical at all.
When these jobs were fewer, and fewer people were qualified to do them, they were considered high-value.
But as they have multiplied, their relative value has decreased overall (except for certain positions).
But at the same time, people have maintained their view that trade labor is not very valuable.
And yet, they completely neglect the fact that FAR FEWER people are doing it now, and it is in EXTREMELY high demand.
In a way, I think that blue collar jobs will slowly become sort of the next steady white collar jobs, as the general population is forced to adjust, slowly over decades, its understanding of the value of these jobs.
When you can’t find a carpenter anywhere, a good, independent carpenter will suddenly seem very high value.
And I believe that this should be reflected in their pay.
Mike Rowe explains why more workers are ‘quietly quitting’
Yes. This is a trend int he United States. Why work when the lazy makes more than you? Paid to do nothing.
I met him when he was 39 and I 33. He had never been married and I had been. I had three children ages 7 to 12. I thought “he won’t commit” but I was still intrigued. A year later, we were living together. Five more and we were engaged. He had all the assets and I had all the liabilities when we met, but he never held it against me. He was supportive and took to the kids like they were his own. He took my son to little league and my daughter to ballet. He ferried kids around including their friends and made dinner for all of us when I had to work late. Whenever they got in trouble, he kept his cool. We survived and thrived.
Now, whenever an opportunity arises, I tell him he has already given me the most wonderful present a woman could want. A great husband, and the best father my children ever knew. Their natural father was a deadbeat dad who moved away and didn’t support them either financially or emotionally. My husband is the man they think of as their father. They are all in their late 40s and early 50s and they let him know how much he means to them. If they need help fixing something, he will go and help even though it means travel and inconvenience. They call him as often as me.
He has told me many times, he would do it all over again. That’s nearly 40 years of a commitment to me and my three children. Not only is he a good husband, he is a good father and a phenomenal human being. I am the luckiest woman in the world.
China Bans Exports Of Word’s Thinnest Hand Torn Steel To U.S And Europe!
I was a financial analyst at a large construction company and sat in on production meetings to track progress on high rises and analyze risk.
I could fill a book with the stories of what happened at this company. Large-scale construction isn’t for the faint of heart. So many things can go wrong and you can get fired on the turn of a dime. The pressure of deadlines and tight budgets has the toughest guys sweating.
We were in a routine group meeting. There were six of us in the room discussing a construction project we were working on. We gathered around the table to review the details of the project.
Suddenly, the manager, Steve, gets a call. He holds his hand up to pause us and says, “Hang on, it’s the customer.”
Steve puts the phone to his ear and right away, you hear right through his cell phone, “IT’S F%#KING EMBARRASSMENT. NONE OF THE GOD DAMN REFRIGERATORS WORK. NONE OF YOUR TEAM KNOWS WHAT THEY ARE DOING.”
We could hear it clear as day, going through Steve’s skull and into the conference room.
Everyone froze and looked at each other.
Steve stands up and slides out of the room as the customer continues yelling through the phone.
For 2 minutes, we can hear the customer yelling as Steve paces up and down the hallway.
About 5 minutes later, Steve steps back into the room and sits down in his chair. The room is silent.
Then, one of our more sarcastic engineers says to Steve,
“So Steve — was he mad?”
It got a few chuckles out of the guys. Steve looked up, smiled, and said, “No. Not mad at all.”
Sometimes — doing the opposite of what seems logical in a dire moment can be the exact thing you need.
A friend of mine is a military trauma surgeon who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. He saw the absolute worst things come through his operating room doorway each day. He spent years putting mangled people back together and saving lives. Consequently, it was the ultimate trauma surgeon training ground (if you end up needing urgent surgery, these veterans are the ones you want).
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I asked him, “How did you deal with the horror show that kept replaying each day?”
He said he and the other doctors had several mechanisms, but they always maintained their sense of humor with each other. Specifically, they had a gallows humor. They stared directly into the abyss and it became an odd sense of relief.
For the record, these jokes were between each other — not to patients, but this was my favorite he told me:
A patient wakes up from surgery and the doctor tells me, “I have good news and bad news, which would you like first?”
The patient pauses for a moment, then, looks up at the doctor and says, “How about you give me the bad news first, and then the good news so it brings me back up.”
The doctor says, “Well, the bad news is, I had to amputate both of your legs.
The patient sighs in dissapointment. Shrugs and says, “And the good news?”
“The guy down the hall wants to buy your shoes.”
If it doesn’t hurt anyone, find humor when you can. Be tactful. Don’t make a joke after someone just found out their mother died.
Can you believe this is China? Inside my new apartment Part 2
The best revenge I ever heard of was not mine, but a friend of my father’s. There was a bar owner in Astoria who received an enormous rent increase after the landlord noticed how profitable his bar was. The landlord was certain that he would not want to move such an established and profitable business and start over again in a new location.
After giving him the bad news, the landlord demanded to know again and again whether he would renew the lease. The bar owner kept mum. On the very last day of the lease, with a bar full of patrons, the bartender announced to all that he had rented the spot across the street from his old place and offered everyone free drinks on the house in exchange for helping him move.
They all grabbed tables and chairs and equipment and moved it across the street, piece by piece. Before the day was out, he was moved and without losing a single customer. The landlord got an empty space and the loss of a few month’s rent.
Most MASSIVE military bill EVER just announced by U.S. Congress
The House of Representatives passed a new defense budget for 2024 that comes in at $886 billion.
Even though this is a military bill, it has some hidden social policies included such as limiting abortion access for service members and a ban on transgender procedures such as cross-sex hormones and surgeries on military health plans.
The bill also includes a 5.2% raise for troops as well as a new branch of the military called the Space National Guard. The Senate is working on its own version of this bill before some version of it goes to President Biden to sign.
Attacked? Yes, you will be attacked if you plan to parade like this in Asia
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Some Asians do not take lightly to such actions, just like Jews not taking people parading Hitler Germany in their face. These some Asians aren’t weakling if they work with their hands everyday. They are simple and honest people who aren’t afraid to show you their fists. Doesn’t matter if you are Mike Tyson, 200 men come at you, you will be Mike Mincemeat.
This is probably the only time a foreigner will face violence in Asia (outside of random crime spree). But hey, I heard China is incredibly safe. Even women aren’t afraid to walk alone at night. So you will be ok.
About American controversy…
Are Chinese always right? Not really. China has 1.4 billion people. Who knows what everyone thinks? Chinese has a fair share of lunatics, conspiracy theorists, Falun Gong cultists, scam artists, murderers, rapists, drug dealers, kidnappers…
I will not jump to a Chinese person’s defense without first finding out what’s going on. I can tell you that much.
However…
If you truly live in the West, especially America, you would be used to the frenzy political atmosphere of America. Pro-gun, anti-gun, pro-life, pro-choice, pro Trump, anti-Trump, Go Brandon, Black Lives Matter, All Lives Matter, etc…. You know not to discuss politics with coworkers and strangers, especially not antagonizing them.
I always say “let’s leave politics for the politicians” when someone tries to get political. Not because I am not passionate about politics, but because these debates in real life will often get out of hands. No benefit, all risks.
Why is it any difference in China? Don’t go arguing with local Chinese, whether you think you are right or not. If you trust them, you can let them in for a friendly and respectful discussion. Otherwise, do not instigate politics discussion anywhere you go, with taxi drivers, shopkeepers, people you met on the trains, security guards at the mall. Keep your fancy politics to yourself!
This advice is good for everywhere you go in the world!
If you are a CIA agent who wants to instigate troubles, then do the opposite of what I said.
Will Chinese attack me?
Just for being an American? Highly unlikely. Chinese aren’t violent in nature. And Chinese cares about face a lot. Chinese people do not want foreigners to think they are rude, violent, and unreasonable. Most Chinese anyway.
If one Chinese angrily charges at you, you yell out “Don’t be unreasonable. What did I ever do to you?”
He will stop and think twice about his reckless action. At least he will shout out his reasons for wanting to attack you. You will get a chance to reason with him. You can go “I am not American government. I cannot control what they do. But they also do not control what I do and think”.
Pause 3 seconds and say: “I am in China because l like China enough to be here. Don’t you see?”
This will perplex most brutes. Then he will feel embarrassed. He will offer to treat you for a meal and some beer. And there you go, you will have turned an ass whooping incident into a friend making opportunity. Who knows, you two will be good friends.
Most brutes are honest and straight forward people. They mean what they say. They are very dependable friends. Far better than those friends of yours who only show up when they want something from you.
Chinese has an idiom: 不打不相识
(Bù dǎ bù xiāngshí)
Meaning: [sometimes] we make friends through initial conflict. Because of a misunderstanding, we get into a fight with them. Through conflict resolution, we get to know them and become good friends.
Hahah, I think I got carried away writing stories. But seriously, most Chinese are law-bidding citizens who find no benefit in senseless violence. They will lecture or curse the hell out of you though.
So be a smart person and avoid politics. You will get along with Chinese just fine. If you ever hear someone say “go back to America, you are not welcome here”, let me know. Because this is a one in a million story. Time to buy lottery.
In this article / post we will chat a little bit about extraterrestrials, and mysteries. Mainly by posting a few videos up, and some associated articles. The idea behind this post is to show some of what it “out there” in internet land, and to state that they tangentially touch on things that I have so painfully explained. Often they are just blind people in the dark trying to figure things out through disinformation…
So enjoy the videos and the articles. Do not get too caught up.
Now, at the end of the article is the “The Black Knight” mystery spacecraft. And the “reports” all take a few NASA images and “run with them”.
Totally oblivious to the fact that China is in space, has a huge space presence, and has also been filming and videoing these various objects.
Yes. China has been very active in filming UFOs and other strange things.
And I will be putting some of this stuff on MM in the future.
At the very end of this article / post, is my Chinese video taken of what The Black Knight” seemingly is. I am convinced that you all will find it very interesting.
Not available on any American or English Speaking websites, eh?
Imagine that.
Just the same old regurgitated bullshit, endlessly discussed, and theories bantered about, but with no new information of value.
Except here on MM.
Have fun guys…
First a daily dose of geo-political, and some other stuff…
His name is Duterte and he is the current president of the Philippines.
(A little background about the Philippines – The country of Philippines can be called ‘Mexico of Asia’. It is plagued by drug dealers. It is almost a normal occurrence in the Philippines for drug lords to kidnap citizens for ransom. Watch drugs in Philippines-2014 documentary Al Jezeera)
It is a normal custom for the president of the Philippines to issue Christmas greetings message to the citizens, every year. Duterte got elected in 2016. Following is his 2016 Christmas greetings message.
“I’m only human. So let me say ‘Merry Christmas’ to all the thieves, drug lords, drug pushers, corrupt and whoever made the life hard for Filipinos (People of Philippines). By the way, if you don’t cease and still continue your brutality, this will be your last Merry Christmas’
And this man ain’t kidding.
Within a few months of this message, two mayors who were caught in corruption were killed during the operation. 3600 drug lords were killed during the operation and 1.3 million drug addicts surrendered.
Duterte told his cops, ‘Go and hunt them. If possible arrest them. If he/she attacks you, just shoot him first.’
And all this happened in just 6 months after the message. In an interview with CNN, Duterte quoted, “We Filipinos are poor and our kids are our wealth. When we get old, we depend on our kids to pay for our medicine and even for burial. Drug lords and users, I warn you ‘Do not destroy the lives of young Filipinos with drugs. If you do so, I will surely kill you’.
The self-proclaimed moral consciences of the world (Read West) condemn Duterte for his ‘War on drugs’. President Obama condemned Duterte and Duterte had this following thing to say…
‘You bomb Syria and you kill thousands of innocent civilians, yet you have guts to call me? You bomb schools and hospitals and kill hundreds of innocent kids. You went to Iraq with an excuse of ‘Weapon of mass destruction’ and slaughtered thousands of innocent civilians, yet you found nothing. In your country, policeman shoots a handcuffed Black man for he is simply a Black. At least in my country, I shoot criminals. So Obama, _______ yourself’
And by the way, Duterte’s approval rating as of 2019 is 87%
Personally I don’t like him using ‘Colorful’ languages in public, cause he is seen as an inspiration by many young people, so it is good if he stops using those words, but this man really introduces a new unconventional political style.
Note; For those commenting, ‘Duterte jokes about rape’ and other bunch of crazy stuff you better come up with video evidence. After Duterte refused to be the American puppet, Western media has been spreading this propaganda and sadly many fell for it. Any comment accusing Duterte with out video proof will be deleted.
Note 2: WESTERN MEDIA HAS A HABIT OF TAKING DUTERTE’S QUOTE WAY OUT OF CONTEXT. IT IS EASY TO DO SO CAUSE DUTERTE SPEAKS MOSTLY IN HIS NATIVE LANGUAGE. Any comment accusing Duterte with out video proof will be deleted.
China is not USA or India or Russia. Try any tricks and we will castrate you
Ant Group has been playing with capitalism hard and fast
First is their following the US mode of creating monopolies and throttling smaller entities. Jack Ma had this bad habit of identifying any potential business and shackling it under Alibaba . Later suppliers and vendors were squeezed because Alibaba and Ant controlled their markets
Second is their brazen credit lending without actual substance or collateral. They would lend a lot of money belonging to banks with minimal compliance and without a tenth of the assets and collateral.
Third is their valuation models and their repeated ability to keep using investments to float value. The sort of thing Byjus does in India.
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China and the CPC in 2019 began to realize that if companies like Ant group were allowed to do things so rampantly ,China would be floating and bloating with paper values in a matter of years (Like India will be by 2025)
So they began squeezing on all the players including Ant Group
First they ended credit lending without a minimum 40% asset backing.
Next they ended the monopoly by providing a 120 day period to all suppliers and vendors to counter with their own price bid
Next they ensured that bloated valuations would have no role in China by linking valuation to technology development and profits
The Fine of $994 Million is just the culmination of all the excesses that Any Group has enjoyed all these years
China simply says “No Illusions and No fast bucks. You want to grow, grow the right way and benefit society and yourself. Develop Technology along the way”
The message is for all other Tech Companies and other companies in China
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Had this been 2017, Ant could have scoffed and shrugged and left China and gone to US or UK
Sadly this is 2023
Chinese Entities have no other way to go but into the Chinese economy and market which gives them more than two thirds of their revenues
So it’s a message at the end of the day
Do things right and we are always with you. Try to fool people and line your pockets at the expense of the Chinese people and we will destroy you
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Jack Ma for instance made the cardinal mistake of becoming too capitalist and putting his pocket above that of the people through ruthless monopolies and blind valuations
So he has been neutralized and the message has been very strong indeed
It’s why no other Tech CEO since 2020 violated the Tech Laws set in place by the Chinese Government
Always the message with the Chinese
They always deliver a message through such actions
The Moon Revealed: It’s a Hollow Spaceship, so who built it and why?
Ah, sort of.
But don’t get too caught up. I wrote about this earlier. Fun view, though. Enjoy.
so I decided to walk over to them and I asked her ” how was the meeting today darlin? ” she looked at me and said ” it was good, I’ll tell you more about it when we get home in a few “. I replied with ” wonderful I’ll pick up your favorite for dinner”.
The two guys left in a hurry and she told me ” you have no idea how much that meant to me …. thank you.” I said “you’re very welcome ma’am …. you can never be too careful. “
I made sure the guys left before I walked back to my car and as I was walking back all I could do was think ” I hope a man does that for my future daughter one day”.”
~ Cody Bret
City School Pizza
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Yield: 24 servings
Ingredients
French-Style Pizza Crust
2 packages dry or cake yeast
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
3 1/2 cups lukewarm water
9 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon salt
Topping
1 pound ground beef
1 tablespoon instant minced onion
1 (8 ounce) can tomatoes, drained and chopped
1 (6 ounce) can tomato paste
3/4 cup water
3/4 teaspoon oregano
Salt
3/4 teaspoon dried sweet basil
3/4 teaspoon garlic powder
3/4 pound ground or chopped luncheon meat
1 1/2 cups grated Parmesan cheese
Instructions
French-Style Pizza Crust
Dissolve yeast and sugar in water.
Add flour and salt. Knead until smooth.
Cover and let rise until doubled in bulk.
Cut into 2portions. Let rest 15 minutes.
Pat or roll to even thickness in 2 (15 1/2 x 10 1/2-inch) jellyroll pans. Set aside.
Topping
Brown ground beef and onion in a large skillet.
Add tomatoes, tomato paste, water, oregano, salt to taste, basil, garlic powder and luncheon meat. Sauté until mixture comes to a boil. Simmer for a few minutes.
Spread sauce on prepared French-Style Pizza Crust in pans. Sprinkle each crust with cheese.
Bake at 400 degrees F for 30 to 35 minutes or until cheese layer is bubbly and browned.
Do you think Corruption doesnt exist in China or Singapore or South Korea?
Of course it does. Corruption exists everywhere and wherever there is position of power.
It is when Corruption and Development become Mutually Exclusive that trouble starts.
Lets take the Chinese and Singaporean Example:-
The “Golden Rule” of Deng Xiaopeng (Later emanated by Lee Kuan Yew) was that Corruption is inevitable.
So Deng developed his golden rule.
The Rule was called the “Bridge on the Village River” rule – where Deng would instruct his ministers
I want a Bridge on the Village River. It should be strong and it should be durable for 20 years and should not break or develop any problems or issues. I estimate the budget to be 100000 Yuan (Purely arbitary number) so i will sanction 120000 Yuan – so that 20000 Yuan can be used for miscellaneous purposes. I dont care how this money is going to be spend or who gets what portion. I will turn a blind eye to it BUT if the bridge collapses due to shoddy construction – i will personally crush any and all persons who were responsible for it.
That is the BOVR rule followed by China or Korea or Singapore.
End Results are all that matter. This way – the Nation gets the best product and the Nation develops and moves forward. People get enriched but Chinese or SIngaporeans regard this as a sort of Service Charge rather than Corruption or Bribes or Graft.
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The Hong Kong police consisted of Chinese Nationals upto the rank of Sergeant and Britishers from the ranks of Inspector and above.
Every Chinese National would get at least 100% of his salary amount from Graft (Bribes) from Nightclub owners, Businessmen etc etc.
The Result – Hong Kong was almost completely crime free. The Triads did not touch common man. Not a single pistol could be brought into HK without consequences.
A Contractor who can get a superb building made within budget – takes a 10000 yuan commission will not be penalized until the building collapses in which case he is finished as are the party officials who chose him in the first place.
In Singapore – to ensure corruption does not exist – Lee Kuan Yew established measures like Huge Salaries to Ministers and Bonuses to Officials. A $ 100 Million contract into Singapore – would mean a bonus of $ 200000 for the Officials at the concerned ministry. With such incentives – why would anyone turn to corruption????
Check out the Chinese Ministers – Each one wears a $ 12000 – $25000 Suit – tailored in London or New York or by Expats living in Shanghai. They have Rolls or Bentleys and the big ministries have exclusive helicopters.
They earn between 70% to 450% higher than the Median Base Pay for College Graduates.
Conclusion:-
A. Corruption Exists in China or Korea – but the Corruption is regarded as a Service Charge as long as the End Result is not harmful to the public or is not defective or of poor quality – NOBODY CARES. Imagine a Agent who is able to bring a 100 Helicopter Deal to China – he takes a kickback of $ 1 Million. As long as the Helicopters are top notch – nobody in China will care.
B. These countries pay commissions, incentives and higher salaries (Like Singapore) to ensure that Corruption is kept out or at least minimized completely. Imagine you get $ 10 Million a year as Minister – would you be stupid enough to accept or coordinate a bribe?
Gifts like Rolex Watches, Works of Art, Jewelry are commonplace and wont generate a huge public controversy.
Now lets see India and Pakistan and Bangladesh
Thats where the Hypocrisy starts
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Our Leaders pretend to be simple people. They Wear Khadi in the peak of summer, the Gandhian Caps, They balk at gifts which exceed over Rs. 5000/- and our Newspapers go on and on about a Chief Minister who accepted a $ 10000 Watch (Siddaramaiah) as a gift and he has to prove that he gifted the watch to a museum.
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Yet 60% of the Politicians Ministers all have assets exceeding Rs. 50 Crores with allegations of exceeding Rs. 1000 or even Rs. 5000 Crores.
The Simplicity is a Deception on the People of India (Some people like Lal Bahadur Shastri were born simple but most of them are deceiving the people).
Poor Christian Michel gets thrown in Jail for bribery whereas the people on both sides are scot free.
CBI pursue a small time Havildar who took Rs. 1000/- bribe on Diwali
And we claim to be Tough on Corruption
And in our case – since unlike China or Singapore or South Korea – Our Leadership is Illiterate or Semi Literate in most cases – the Corruption affects our Quality very badly
Roads that get Potholes with 2 days of rain , Bridges that Collapse regularly, Structures that are rarely steady and would not receive certification by the blindest Quality Engineer anywhere outside India or Pakistan or Sri Lanka or Bangladesh, Poor Quality Manufactured goods etc.
The Gandhian Mentality is solely responsible for why our Leaders pretend to be simple yet why they become richer and richer while the country gets zero or near zero quality products or infrastructure.
Had we been China – we would have offered a 1.5% flat commission to the Officers who got us the Rafale Deal. This would have eliminated corruption since the bribe money would have come in the form of incentives and service charges.
Had we been Singapore or Korea – we would have ensured that Christian Michel would be regarded as nothing more than a Commission Agent and we would not have even glanced in his direction considering his “Payments” as nothing more than “Service Fees”
Instead our System is a Gigantic Hypocrisy – as is the case of Pakistan or Bangladesh or Sri Lanka.
Pretence, Pretence, Pretence
Punish the small fry and ignore the huge sharks and whales
Ensure that corruption has a direct and total impact on the quality of products
Ensure that Rhea Chakraborty is sent to jail with the whole nation clapping and cheering while Ministers who ordered Bridges to collapse or Contractors responsible for building roads which kill due to potholes – end up getting more contracts.
That is why – while the Asian Countries like China or SIngapore grow – India is doomed. It is the system that is corrupted completely and totally.
JRE: What Scientists Just Discovered At The Grand Canyon TERRIFIES The Whole World
Just a reminder that the “powers that be” control what you know and what you do not know.
This is a fun video.
However, why would Egyptians be in Arizona, or New Mexico without any Egyptian communities on the coasts for their ships to travel to? A lack of infrastructure is troubling.
So do not get too caught up.
The “missing pieces” might be trivial or alarming, but they are still MISSING.
China has the reserves and the procedure to extract the elements profitability and purify them profitably
China is able to deliver a processed product at lowest cost ($ 2400/PTK) and make a 17% Profit
It’s estimated the US can deliver the processed product at lowest cost of $ 8900/PTK and make a 35% Loss which needs subsidy
Thus instead of $ 2400/PTK with 17% profit , the raw material and base material now costs $ 8900/PTK and the US Govt or Taxpayer has to pay $ 3080/PTK as subsidy
That’s $2400 vs $11980
Unless US manages to import slaves again and manufacture the machinery on its own — US can’t lower costs
Because GUESS WHAT?
CHINA CONTROLS THE ENTIRE EXTRACTION MACHINERY FOR RARE EARTHS!!!!!!
You have a Lithium mine?
Without China, you can’t extract a nano gram of Lithium because the machinery is theirs and they control the market
Plus Environment is a big big thing here
The Green party will hate any processing foundry or extraction mine for Gallium or Germanium or Lithium in US due to pollution that is almost guaranteed
Solution?
Start making extraction machinery in India and Vietnam and ship them to US along with 100,000 migrant workers
And maybe in 20 years , US can take up around 30–40% of the market share of Gallium or Germanium
It’s a headache but US are idiots and that’s exactly what those stubborn fools will do
I got divorced 12 years ago. After that, I stayed single for almost 7 years. Well, 1. I was too busy, and 2. I was hurt.
After that, I decided to start dating again. Man, it was so difficult. I had a few first dates, and either they escaped from me or I escaped from them.
Then I saw him.
The way he smiled was like this:
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You know what I mean? The smile that makes you want to smile. The smile that makes you feel all the stresses you are carrying get lighter a little bit. I knew I wanted to be around him.
He asked me out, I told him I was busy and didn’t have much time. He said then we could date the busy way: he showed up at my lunchtime to have a sandwich that I prepared; sometimes just a small walk before bedtime late at night. He understood my priorities and supported me.
Sometimes, I got a text from him saying, “I know you have an important meeting today, try not to kill anybody.” Sometimes, I “escaped” from the office to go to a coffee shop with him next to me. We both worked on our laptops, didn’t talk to each other the whole time; we just enjoyed the feeling we were together.
I smile more and live fuller with him in it. I truly feel that the pain I had in me, turned into the memory, it’s not hurt anymore. Is he complementing my life? I think so. Because he healed me.
12 ALIEN CRAFT In US Custody, Per Intel
From “The Hill” which is a MAJOR political organization in Washington DC.
OK. Whoop! Whoop!
Now what?
Stupid Jackasses. At the end of the day, nothing will change. The reality of what is going on is far too dangerous to expose.
I remember this quote, I think from Neil Gaiman, about fairy tales and stories. It goes something like this. Fairy tales didn’t tell children there were dragons. We already knew dragons existed. Fairy tales tell children that dragons can be defeated.
Books don’t tell children sex or violence or gay people exist in the world. They already know. Books tell them how to deal with these complicated things. Books and stories allow them to explore uncomfortable ideas and situations in a safe environment. It helps them process their emotions.
My family didn’t believe in “age-appropriate” books. As long as I could read it, every book on the bookshelves was open for grabs. The community library right next to our house did not have special library cards for children. Everyone has the same type of cards and has access to the same collections of books. I was reading The Decameron in middle school. In case you didn’t know, it’s a collection of stories, including some pretty graphic sex scenes and gore.
You know what my grandma did? We talked.
I remember telling her about this story I read from Decameron, about this priest and bread and oven. It’s a sex joke. It took me quite some time to figure it out, and I talked to my grandma about it. We all laughed, not because of the sex innuendo but rather because of the hypocrisy of the whole situation. And that’s the whole point of the story, the hypocrisy of the catholic priests during the 14th century. I got that in middle school. Children aren’t stupid. They understand things if you take the time and help them figure it out.
I talked to her about the books I read, the parts I don’t understand, and/or make me uncomfortable. Whatever dysfunctions my family had, we could always get together and talk about books.
That’s what being a parent is about.
I always suspect parents who want to ban books don’t really want to “protect” their children, but rather, they don’t want to or don’t know how to have difficult conversations with their children about the books they read. Either they themselves do not read books and don’t understand how to discuss literature and narrative. They don’t know how to apply lessons learned in books to real life. They don’t understand the importance of stories. Or they simply don’t give a shit. They would rather put off these conversations and wait until the kids are old enough and have them figure it out themselves.
There’s no such thing as a dangerous book. Ideas do not “corrupt” children. Not if they have good parents to talk to. When children are “corrupted” by the internet or social media, or books, it’s not because the materials are dangerous. It is because they are isolated, they’re confused, and there are no adults in their lives they can rely on to guide them.
Banning books is never about “protecting children.” It is always about shitty parents who couldn’t be bothered to be proper parents.
I started to get conservative comments that defended the book ban, and I got a common theme from these comments that they seemed to believe that there are books in school libraries or public libraries that contain graphic depictions of extreme pornographic/fetish content.
One comment talks about how they don’t want their children to learn about sex fetishes that involve human feces from books in school libraries. Another comment says they don’t want their children to learn about blow jobs from books containing young boys giving each other blow jobs, other comments talk about “government teaching my son how to give a hand job.”
… like… I’m so confused. Like… have you been to a library?! What kind of books do you think they have?!
Seriously people, stop watching Fox News, and go visit a public library.
In 2016, Abdullahi Abdisalam Borleh was a suicide bomber with a laptop full of explosives who boarded a plane from Somalia, Daallo Airlines.
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He had embarked as a disabled person and claimed to be on a trip for a medical check-up.
Twenty minutes after takeoff from Mogadishu, Somalia at an altitude of 14,000 feet, an explosion occurred inside the aircraft. There were 74 passengers and 7 crew members on board.
The explosion created this opening.
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He was the only one to be sucked into the opening.
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His intention was to kill all the passengers of the plane but according to fate, he had to be the only one to die.
The plane’s controls were not affected by the explosion, allowing the pilot to return the plane to Mogadishu safely.
Karma sometimes works… as if by magic.
The evidence we are living in a Simulation is everywhere. All you have to do is look.
As on date China doesn’t see value in a Sino Indian Trade Alliance
China isn’t like US or UK , a nation that makes decisions in a hurry
China is evaluating India and has decided that as on date India is not valuable enough for China to seriously offer a trade alliance and make some serious concessions
China is more impressed with Vietnam which follows China’s own building strong bases, building a workforce and then slowly layering to the top
China isn’t impressed with India’s hotch potch ‘Cant manufacture a Ball point pen fully but sure let’s build 2 nm chips’ method
Today India’s entire manufacturing is because of the fact that Indian government says unless you manufacture in India, we won’t buy your product (or assemble)
That was never the Chinese model
The Chinese were always about “Manufacture in China, we will give you land and labor and you give us jobs and development”
So as on date this Make in India is a gimmick meant for elections and to impress gullible people into making them think India is heading to becoming a superpower
China knows too well the real state of India manufacturing
The real state of regressive taxation
The horrible political system
The atrocious labor laws
The greedy and inefficient manufacturing environment
China knows India hasn’t made 0.0001% effort to improve any of them
So China knows all this Indian manufacturing is just a gimmick like everything else for headlines and some random numbers
Simple example is Vietnam makes 11% of all Smartphones on earth and India makes around 17%
Yet scale and size wise India is around 6.65 times the trade scale of Vietnam
India needs to be making around 77% of its smartphones by now to be equivalent to Vietnam in manufacturing
Plus India assembles smartphones on a 69:31 basis
Vietnam does so on a 38:62 basis
It shows how much superior Vietnam is to India
And if Vietnam is like M.Sc first year then China is like five years post Doctorate
So frankly China isn’t impressed much with India
Sure it will make noise here and there but there is no serious view of India managing anything remotely significant in the next few years without serious reforms and serious changes in national policy towards manufacturing
The Day India is serious about manufacturing and we see laws changing and tax laws changing and separate jurisdictions and liberal policies and judicial reforms
Then China definitely will make offers to India including potential concessions on Arunachal or Ladakh
Until then it’s not worth it
A Sino Indian Trade Alliance with Today’s India in exchange for giving up claims on Ladakh or Arunachal is a bad bad deal for China
Today’s India is 90% Talk and 10% Actual Progress
When it’s 60% Talk and 40% Actual Progress, China will handle the issue differently
One recent example is a 34-year-old Japanese mathematics professor who decided to host his lectures on… Pornhub.
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His earnings of €250,000 per year stem from the fact that even though many may not be interested in the subject, they are nonetheless curious about his presence and attempt to watch the video, generating views.
A Buddhist monk seeking religious advice from a Taoist.
If it’s hard to understand how unusual this is, imagine a Catholic priest seeking religious teachings from an Islamic cleric or vise versa.
Chinese religions (Buddhism was localized after settled in China) are very tolerant to each other. It’s pretty hard for Chinese to understand why there could be centuries of hatred and violence just because of different beliefs.
Michio Kaku JUST LEAKED China’s SHOCKING Discovery On The Moon!
This is a fun and interesting video.
Keep in mind a date of 11,000 – 13,000 years ago. Notice that this date disagrees with my own beliefs, but please pay attention to their argument. Have a good time. Enjoy.
Cafeteria Cole Slaw
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Ingredients
1 head cabbage, chopped fine
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 or 3 tablespoons mayonnaise or salad dressing
Instructions
Mix all ingredients well until cabbage is completely coated.
Let one is about China’s moon project. China Lunar Exploration Project was announced in Feb 2004, and it was already in implementation stage. China was planning to have a moon orbiting satellite within 3 years, a soft-landing on the moon in 6 years, and have moon dirt sample taken back by a robot before 2020.
By the end of 2020, in December, Chang-e 5 returned with 1731 gram of moon dirt. China barely kept its words, due to delays caused by rocket making.
On the right, it was moon projects announced by the US, Russia, Japan, and India.
The US was going to land on the moon again in 2015, and establish an international moon base no later than 2020.
Russia was going to have a test launch of its latest moon landing ship.
India was going to launch its first unmanned moon ship Chandrayaan-1 in 2008.
Japan was going to eastablish its moon base in 2025, and send robots there.
Chinese newspaper reported moon projects from 5 countries in 2004.
So far, only China managed to keep on schedule.
So when China says that it’s people will land on the moon before 2030, it’s highly possible that it knows exactly where it is now, and how fast its moon project will go.
I’m a retired US citizen who moved to Uruguay in 2015 after spending my entire working career in “Corporate America”.
It’s entertaining to read discussions about the possibility of implementing Universal Healthcare in the United States.
It will NEVER happen. It’s 1000% impossible. The reason? Health insurance companies.
The concept of Universal Healthcare does not involve insurance companies. There is no need for a bloated middleman.
There are 563,366 Health & Medical Insurance Employees in the US, costing approximately $50 billion annually.
These companies would have to be closed, freeing up all this cash for actual medical care, instead of bloat.
The main problems with the US Healthcare system are listed below. None of these problems exist with Universal Healthcare.
a. Greedy Health insurance companies run by highly-paid executives.
b. High-paid pharmaceutical & insurance company lobbyists.
c. Greedy congressmen who take millions of dollars in bribes annually.
d. Expensive TV commercials pushing expensive drugs.
e. Doctors who earn outrageous salaries to pay for outrageously expensive college educations with insane education loans.
f. Outrageous malpractice lawsuit settlements, requiring doctors to carry outrageous liability insurance.
g. People with no medical knowledge make decisions about whether a patient can have a medical procedure, overruling the attending physician.
Now, with the outsourcing of call centers, people with no medical knowledge in Jamaica, India, and Pakistan make those decisions.
Here are some typical costs in Uruguay:
Office visit: US $8.00
ER visit: US $ 10.00
House call: US $12.00.
Electrolyte blood analysis: US $7.11.
Cerebral CT Scan: US $23.29
If you call an ambulance, it arrives with a full-fledged MD, not an EMT.
Before I turned 70 years of age, I paid around US $55 per month for health coverage.
Now I pay around US $70 per month. For that, I get totally free hospital stays and all costs are free, including hospital stay, surgery, medications, doctor care, and nursing care. When you check out, regardless of what was done or how long you were hospitalized, you pay nothing.
The monthly cost for my cancer medication is around US $2.50. The same medication in the US is around $500.00.
China just takes purchase orders and supplies, be it from a rich country or a poor one. You should rather ask this question to those countries, why they go to China to get cheaper things.
However, the point of “destroy” is interesting, indeed. Chinese cheap products have destroyed industries in the higher-income countries like Europe and America. And those developed countries deliberately did this to save cost, but eventually ended up at the cost of their own citizens’ unemployement. Surely they had a vision, though probably a wrong one. But they would know it better.
But China’s “cheap” products helped the poor countries a lot, particularly those who did not yet have industries. For example let’s talk about Bangladesh where the vast majority people are poor. They could not afford to buy Europe/Japan/America-made products even they were in a dire need. But they can manage to get the similar peoducts from China at their afforable price. Thus, life has become much easier and even safer when they got this products-support from China.
Takefew essential products for example:
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This mosquito killer racket helped save millions of lives from life-threatening Malaria and Dengue fever in Bangladesh.
energy-saving bulbs:
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These bulbs from China lit up millions of households in Bangladesh where electricity cost is rocket-high.
Then this:
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Thousands of commuters have benefitted from this cheap motorbike in Bangladesh where public transports are rare and nightmare.
Now, let’s talk about the other, even life-changing benefits gotten from these imported products. Bangladeshis acquired the technical knowhows, bought cheap machineries and raw materials back from China and now have started making them in their own country. Means, now they have established their own industries, providing employment to their own people and altogether contributing to the national economy. And gradually this country is climbing the ladder of self-industrialization. I think such transformation is taking place in many other poor countries as well.
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Bangladesh recently started making its own motorbikes
Then, how are you going to blame China? Or thanking China, instead?
Sunman-Dearborn School Chili
This very popular Sunman-Dearborn School Chili was always served with cornbread and butter on the side.
2023 07 09 08 58
Ingredients
1 pound ground beef
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon brown sugar
2/3 cup ketchup
1/2 cup tomato paste (6 ounces)
4 ounces spaghetti, broken into thirds
3 tablespoons onion
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
2/3 cup tomato sauce (8 ounce can)
2/3 cup pinto beans (15 ounce can)
Instructions
Brown ground beef and onion. Drain off extra fat.
Add remaining ingredients, except spaghetti. Add one quart water. Bring chili to boil. Add spaghetti.
50 Cent gave her son’s mother $500,000 a year (about $40,000 a month) as child support, and she said it wasn’t enough.
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So, she turned to the family court to ask for an increase in maintenance. To his disappointment, the court said 50 cents would have to reduce the amount to just $6,700 a month.
Most of the money given before the court decision was used to maintain a lifestyle for the mother and not for the maintenance of the child.
Let’s say you grew up in Lander, Wyoming — a decent-sized town at about 7,500 people.
Unless you’re Catholic, there are no colleges in your town. So when you graduate high school, you can either:
Go into a trade
Get a minimum-wage job
Move to another town
In this case, you want to go to college so you move.
Fortunately, Wyoming has about 6 community colleges to choose from. You choose the second-largest town in Wyoming at 55,000 people, Casper. You do your two years and when you’re done, you realize you’ll need a Bachelor’s to further your career.
Now you have 4 options:
Give up on your degree and move back home
Move to Laramie to attend the University of Wyoming — the state’s only 4-year public institution
Stay in Casper and finish through the UW/CC program
Move to another state
As many kids find, the program you want isn’t even offered at UW (or what they do offer is really, really poor).
If you give up on your degree, you won’t have many job prospects, so you relocate again to Colorado where you can choose from ~14 4-year schools — actually, those are just the public ones. There are ~14 more private 4-year schools you could attend, too.
After graduating, you have a bunch of new job connections down in Colorado. You look online and see jobs in Boulder, Denver, Fort Collins, Colorado Springs, and elsewhere — so you can live virtually anywhere in the state you want. And, most of those cities are near smaller towns, so you can feel like you’re back home while reaping the benefits of city living.
Or, you can go back to Lander — population, 7,500 — which is a 4-hour drive to the nearest cities (both Fort Collins and Salt Lake City).
So your options are:
Stay in Colorado, where you have tons of work options
Move back to Lander, where the few local businesses might have job openings that might be in your industry, and you have no option to commute to larger cities if opportunities open up
You stay in Colorado. Because that’s where the work is.
This is what a lot of kids who grew up in rural Wyoming end up doing. They move for school — often to Laramie, which is right on the WY/CO border — then when they need to find a job they migrate where the work is: cities.
Brain drain is a huge problem and it’s one Wyoming, in some ways, is trying to combat. You can go to college for free at any community college and get cheap tuition at UW if you’re a Wyoming resident. They very, very actively promote the community colleges and UW to Wyoming high schoolers, hoping that if they go to college here, they’ll stay after they graduate.
But a lot of people are still flocking out of the state for college because of the opportunities. Because Wyoming has no major cities, the opportunities you get in cities are inaccessible to Wyoming residents.
It’s why I left. Why my whole family left. Because we like having job options, and going to concerts, and eating new foods (have you ever had Ethiopian? WOW). And while Wyoming is wonderful in many ways… it doesn’t have that.
One reason rural life is dying is that people want to do things. They want options.
And you don’t get that in rural areas.
Ancient Craft Watching us From Orbit | The Black Knight Satellite
This is fun.
Spending a little bit more time on this that what I normally do with these kinds of you-tube videos. It is important and holds some clues.
Keep in mind of a date of 11,000 years ago.
EPSILON BOÖTIS REVISITED.
by Duncan Lunan (Analog, 1998; revised August 2013).
In January 1974 Analog published my article ‘Space Probe from Epsilon Boötis?’1, which caused such a stir that I’m still asked about it every time I appear in the magazine. It was based on the mystery of long-delayed radio ‘echoes’ (LDEs), first reported in the 1920s.
Actually, the ‘echoes’ were much too powerful to be simple reflections of signals from Earth. Experimenters studying round-the-world propagation of radio waves found their outgoing pulses were being returned to them with a delay of three seconds, as if they were being amplified and returned by something at the distance of the Moon – but definitely not the Moon itself. In later experiments the delay times began to vary upwards from three seconds, in increasingly complicated sequences, but with no variation in intensity – still indicating a single source amplifying and returning the pulses.
Prof. Ron Bracewell of Stanford suggested in 1960 that the ‘echoes’ might have been rebroadcast by an unmanned probe from another civilisation, trying to attract our attention, and in 1972 I worked out a ‘translation’ of the 1920’s echo patterns. The variations of delay times appeared random; but Prof. Bracewell himself had suggested the first signal from such a probe might be a star map, and the stars are spaced at random in the sky. I tried plotting the delay times against the order in which the echoes were received (fig. 1(A)), and at only the second attempt I found what looked like a star map – in which it appeared that the probe had come from the double star Epsilon Boötis, in the constellation Boötes, the Herdsman (fig. 1(B)). Arcturus, the brightest star in the constellation, seemed to be out of place in the map; but on checking, was shown at its place about 13,000 years ago.
Other parts of the supposed message seemed to give the scale of their planetary system, orbiting Epsilon Boötis A, and seemed at first to make sense. Epsilon Boötis A is an orange giant star, and the translation indicated that the probe makers had evolved on its second planet, emigrating later to the sixth when their sun began to expand. But there was a problem: the companion star (Epsilon B) was bright blue, apparently a short-lived sun of spectral type A2. It emerged that the distance given for the star in most reference books was too low, and at the true distance of 203 light-years, Epsilon B really was an A2 star and the orange giant Epsilon A had been an AO, like Sirius – too massive and with too high a radiation output to sustain habitable planets, too short-lived for life to have evolved there. At the same time, more accurate 1920s records were located, and most of the ‘star map’ translations were ruled out – not the ‘Epsilon Boötis’ one, but it too had to be treated as suspect. I withdrew the entire translation,2 but now it seems I may have gone too far.
Dropping it didn’t rule out the space probe suggested by Prof. Bracewell (though he himself has abandoned the idea).3 James Strong suggested that the probe could be located in either the ‘Lagrange 4’ or ‘L5’ point, also called ‘Trojan’ or ‘Equilateral’ points, equidistant from the Earth and Moon.4 The dates and times of the 1920s LDEs showed that the L5 point was at least one source of the effect.5 Anthony Lawton of the British Interplanetary Society suggested that in ideal conditions the Trojan points could form temporary, stable ionospheres of their own which would generate LDE’s;6 it was reported that I accepted that, but scientists I consulted replied that such clouds would be disrupted by currents in the Earth’s magnetosphere, or at other times of the month by the Solar Wind, the constant outflow of charged particles from the Sun. In any case, as the Lagrange points have no gravitational fields of their own, a cloud of charged particles would be scattered by their mutual electrostatic repulsion – unless there was a powerful magnetic or electrostatic field to hold them in place. If this was produced by a spacecraft, I suggested, Lawton might have hit upon the method by which the Bracewell probe generated LDE’s – by accident!
Many books and articles said that Lawton conducted an active radio search for LDEs, but in reality he stopped after getting an initial ‘reply’, on the grounds that further transmissions “would constitute a biassed experiment”. Optical searches of the Lagrange points failed to find anything as large as the Skylab space station, or, in a later search, as large as the Pioneer 10 space probe.7 Meanwhile, however, Epsilon Boötis just would not lie down.
There are several real or suggested Zodiacal star maps, laid out on the ground, which centre on Boötes. That’s just because the constellation lies near the pole of the Ecliptic, perpendicular to the Earth’s orbital plane around the sun, so any Zodiacal map will be centred near it. But also, we are in Boötes as viewed from Tau Ceti, one of the nearest stars like our Sun, and at relativistic speeds, Epsilon Boötis would be a prime navigational reference on the journey here.8 And there was an even stranger development.
After my book “Man and the Stars” came out,9 I was contacted by Alan Evans, who was then a British Army Captain. He liked the analysis I’d made of Erich von Daniken’s claims, where I concluded that Earth had not been visited more than four times, at most. Alan suggested we jointly attempt something still more systematic: if the Earth had ever been visited, our aim would be to find proof. He stressed that his was purely a personal interest, which had to remain confidential, but as he’s since left the Army that no longer applies.
We tightened up my approach into four categories of possible evidence. Category A would be our objective, an artifact of unquestionably extraterrestrial origin. Category B would be optical or electromagnetic anomalies pinpointing such an object (like the Tycho monolith in 2001); Category D would be the ‘von Daniken material’ of legends, drawings etc. which were no use except in suggesting areas to search for other types of evidence. But Alan pressed me to include a new category, C, which would be anomalous astronomical alignments in man-made structures – anomalous because they revealed knowledge which the builders should not have had. For example, on high-resolution photographs of Stonehenge, he had identified markings which seemed to indicate galactic alignments.
I wasn’t impressed at first. I had studied megalithic astronomy under a leading expert, Prof. Archie Roy, and seen nothing unusual; there was no correlation even with Category D; and when I did the calculations, the markings Alan had found didn’t seem to be galactic. At the time when he put this to me, circa 1975, it was supposed that Stonehenge I was built in 1800 BC, near the end of the Stone Age in Britain (not many people realise that Stonehenge was one of the last megaliths), with Stonehenge III, the inner circle, still later in the Bronze Age. Soon afterwards, however, Archie Roy himself published an article from which we learned that the radiocarbon dating scale had been revised, pushing Stonehenge I back from 1800 BC to 2700 BC. Further revision made it c.2840 BC, and that radically changed the whole position.
Archaeoastronomy at Stonehenge.
Fig. 2A shows the celestial sphere as viewed by an observer in the northern hemisphere. The altitude of the pole above the northern horizon is equal to the observer’s latitude, and the heavenly bodies circle around it, parallel to the equator, with the daily rotation of the Earth. The altitude of a body above the horizon, and its azimuth measured along the horizon from the north point, change constantly as the Earth turns. Apart from the circumpolar stars, which are too near the pole to rise and set, everything else rises in the east and sets in the west at a position which is determined by the declination of the object, measured from the equator (Fig. 2B). Where the declination equals the observer’s latitude, the star passes overhead once a day.
Horizon positional astronomy was all the Stonehenge builders could do (Fig. 3). Stonehenge I incorporated the ditch, bank, Avenue, Heelstone and Station Stones; what most people think of as ‘Stonehenge’ are the great sarsen archways of the inner circle, Stonehenge III, erected in the early Bronze Age. It’s universally agreed that the Stonehenge Avenue and the later structure both mark the midsummer sunrise. But few archaeologists agree with Gerald S. Hawkins that the ‘Station Stones’ of Stonehenge I mark the extreme positions of the Moon’s 18.6 year cycle;10 and still fewer with Prof. Alexander Thom, that the megalith builders had a sophisticated programme of lunar observatories, spread over the British Isles.11 Personally, I’m convinced; I’ve even built a modern megalith, under the auspices of Glasgow Parks Dept., to compare its performance with the prehistoric sites, and demonstrated that high precision could have been achieved by naked-eye observations.12
When it comes to star alignments, the position is more complex. Because the Earth’s equatorial plane doesn’t coincide with the Ecliptic, nor with the orbit of the Moon, the combined pulls of the Sun and Moon on Earth’s equatorial bulge cause the Earth’s axis to ‘wobble’ around the Ecliptic Pole with a period of 26,000 years (Fig. 4). 13,000 years ago the north pole star was Vega in Lyra, and 5,000 years ago it was Thuban in Draco, at the time of Stonehenge I. The pull makes the equator move around the Ecliptic, constantly changing the position of the Vernal and Autumnal Equinoxes (Precession of the Equinoxes). As a result a star’s declination is constantly changing – likewise its Right Ascension, which is measured from the Vernal Equinox along the equator, in the same direction as the Sun’s motion on the Ecliptic shown by the arrows in Fig. 2(B).
Astronomers can partly get round the problem of coordinate change by giving star positions in Ecliptic Latitude, which remains constant, and Ecliptic Longitude, which changes smoothly with time. But for coordinates which are fixed over human time-spans, even the spans of civilisations, we have to use Galactic Latitude and Longitude, whose zero point is the Galactic Centre and whose pole lies on the perpendicular to the plane of the Milky Way (Fig. 5).
On the high-resolution photographs of Stonehenge Alan Evans pointed out a curious horseshoe-shaped marking on the northwest, cutting the bank and overlying Station Stone 93 (Fig. 3). It’s not on official plans and may not be significant: the photos were taken in 1966, eight years after one of the fallen trilithon archways was re-erected, and the ‘horseshoe’ coincides at least in part with the tracks of the heavy machinery used then. We have located a smaller version of it in a prewar aerial photo, but it’s still historically suspect. Still earlier photos, taken by balloon, show a similar but different pattern.10 But the relationship the horseshoe pointed out to us was real enough.
As Fig. 3 shows, the orientation of the horseshoe is to the rising point of the Galactic Centre, and of the Galactic Equator’s intersection with the Ecliptic, c.2840 BC. Even more extraordinarily, it turns out that the declination of the North Galactic Pole was then equal to the latitude of Stonehenge. Consequently, when the Galactic Centre was on the horizon, the Galactic Pole was in the zenith and the Galactic Equator coincided with the horizon (Fig. 6).
It would be remarkable if that was a coincidence, but if it’s not coincidence, it’s an extraordinary finding. The Galactic Centre is 27,000 light-years from us and hidden behind dense clouds of absorbing dust in the inner regions of the Milky Way, so its location cannot be pinpointed visually, only with a radiotelescope. Until you know exactly where the Centre is, you can’t determine the true plane of the Galactic Equator and the true positions of the Galactic Poles. At the Moscow General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union in 1958, new values for the positions of the poles and the Centre were officially adopted, based on the distribution of neutral hydrogen in the inner Milky Way and study of the radio source Sagittarius A. Previous optical studies had suggested the Centre was in Scorpius, so it was a big change. Maps using the old galactic coordinates were still on sale as late as 1963, with addenda giving corrections to the new system.13 Yet apparently the builders of Stonehenge knew exactly where the Galactic Centre was, or took their cue from something or somebody or who did.
In this context, why are galactic coordinates so important? Imagine a spacecraft travelling between the stars. Its attitude sensing platform might be oriented to its home world – its own Right Ascension and declination – or its home planetary system, its own Ecliptic coordinates. But neither will be relevant when it enters our Solar System: the only coordinate system common to its system and ours is the galactic one. In any manoeuvres or landings it made here, you would expect it to navigate in galactic coordinates; and if it chose a landing site on the declination of the galactic pole, then once a day the azimuth and altitude of any star, measured from the rising point of the Galactic Centre, would correspond to its galactic coordinates, like B’s in Fig.6. If the spacecraft’s attitude-sensing platform was fixed, built into its structure, it would still be correctly lined up with the sky once a day.
So if the horseshoe marking is modern, its ‘prehistoric’ alignment might be a curious coincidence. What looks more likely, on Fig. 3, is that there was something in the centre of Stonehenge I, which was gone by the building of Stonehenge II and III. In fact, after Stonehenge I was built, around 2700 BC the site was abandoned for over 200 years while the same neolithic people built the much larger complex of Avebury and Silbury Hill, due north of Stonehenge itself.14
What would annoy archaeologists, who don’t even admit most ‘conventional’ archaeoastronomy, is the suggestion that the Stonehenge orientation is galactic at all. I looked for an optical marker, something which would have let the builders create Stonehenge without knowing about galactic coordinates or even without a spacecraft necessarily being there. And I found one, but it didn’t exactly make the alignments less controversial. The star which had the same declination as the North Galactic Pole in 2840 BC, equal to the latitude of Stonehenge, was Epsilon Boötis itself.
It was so hard to believe, when I’d abandoned the Epsilon Boötis ‘translation’ of the radio patterns, that I arranged to see for myself, twice in the planetarium of the Jewel & Esk College in Musselburgh, then all over again at the much larger one in Armagh. It feels extraordinary to see such findings, worked out with long pages of calculations, simulated on the planetarium ‘sky’ overhead. With the date set for 2840 BC, at the Stonehenge latitude, the Milky Way really does line up with the horizon once a day and Epsilon Boötis really does go through the zenith as well, earlier each day.
The Ecliptic and the Pyramids.
But Alan Evans has a strong intuitive grasp of spatial relationships, and he had found another which he wanted me to verify. Projected north, the alignment of Station Stones 94-91, and 93-92, meets the Arctic Circle at a tangent (Fig. 7). As the Earth turns, when the Ecliptic Pole comes overhead at that tangential point, those stones mark the Ecliptic Meridian passing through Stonehenge. And when that line is projected south, it meets the equator due south of the Egyptian ‘Memphite Necropolis’, containing the great pyramids of Giza. Putting it another way, the Ecliptic meridian through Stonehenge meets the prime meridian of Giza at the equator. And Alan realised this created another extraordinary relationship: at midsummer sunrise at Stonehenge, the one alignment there which even the sceptics recognise, the Vernal Equinox was on the prime meridian at Giza.
That one can’t be verified optically in a planetarium with the same certainty, because the tilt of the Earth’s axis to the equator is not constant, varying between 22 and 24 degrees.15 In 2840 BC it was near maximum, and has since declined by over half a degree. None of the planetaria we’ve used could allow for that, but the relationship is extremely close, even today. I had my calculations confirmed by Paul Benson, then curator of Airdrie Observatory; and more recently Alan had it all done from scratch by Peter Tyler, (of the Positional Services Dept. of GECO-PRAKLA, Oslo, a leading international seismic survey company), who confirmed that around 2700 BC the alignment was close. In his calculations the margin of error was less than one-fifth of a degree; my own put it even closer.
The oldest features of all at Stonehenge lie over the brow of the hill, northwest from the circle. The ‘Car Park Post Holes’ held huge vertical tree trunks or totem poles, and radiocarbon dating has them as old as 8000 BC.16 Even that was a mystery: it was believed that the first mesolithic settlers reached Britain long after the Ice Age, around 6000 BC,17 but now we know that people returned to Britain as soon as the glaciers retreated. It’s possible that the weathering on the Bluestones of Stonehenge II, which were brought from the Prescelly Mountains in Wales, makes them older and perhaps once erected elsewhere; that could have been any time after they were first exposed to the atmosphere around 12,000 BC.18 The ice sheets never covered Stonehenge and Prescelly, even at their greatest extent in 20,000 BC.15
As Alan Evans pointed out, the Ecliptic Meridian passes through the line of Post Holes,19 on the line of stones 92-93 (fig. 3). If there really was a spacecraft, and its attitude sensing platform was relating our ecliptic and celestial co-ordinates to the galactic ones, then if galactic alignments determined the latitude of the touchdown site on Salisbury Plain, then the ecliptic ones show an intention to go to Egypt afterwards, which determined the longitude and brought it down at the future site of Stonehenge I – which raises the interesting speculation, were the Posts still standing at that time, as if to mark the landing place? Below, we’ll see some reason to think that might have been their intended purpose, at least.
The next question is, are any of the Stonehenge galactic alignments repeated at the Old Kingdom Egyptian pyramids? The Step Pyramid at Saqqara, whose longitude is one-tenth of a degree east of Giza’s, was the first stone building in the world, created around 2650 BC by the architect Imhotep for the pharaoh Djoser (Fig. 9). Imhotep changed the design several times during construction, and some archaeologists suggest that he filled in the steps with rubble and faced them with limestone, to give the illusion of a true pyramid.27 (The next two, intended to be true pyramids, were partial failures before the Great Pyramid’s builders got it right.)
And if the Step Pyramid was originally faced in that way, then as nearly as we can measure it, a perpendicular line up the north face met the prime meridian at the declination of the southern intercept between the galactic equator and the ecliptic, marked I2 in Fig. 3 – one of the same alignments we’d found at Stonehenge. But, extraordinary as all this was, we were still a long way from our goal; we knew what we wanted to do next, but it was beyond our financial means. So we withheld publication, until April 1996, when a whole new situation developed.
The Pyramids and the Sphinx.
Archaeoastronomers are in some ways remarkably conservative. Their own ideas about science in ancient society are rejected by many astronomers and most archaeologists; in consequence, they refuse to entertain any more controversial notions, such as a previously unknown civilisation on Earth, or extraterrestrial visitors. I suggested to the 1996 Edinburgh International Science Festival that we organise a seminar on ‘Heresies in Archaeoastronomy’, examining the ideas that were too controversial even for archaeoastronomers to consider. Prof. Archie Roy gallantly agreed to introduce it, and not surprisingly it drew a capacity audience. Naturally, Alan Evans was there to present his paper on the Ecliptic meridian.20
Another participant was Robert Bauval, whose book “The Orion Mystery”21 suggested that the three giant pyramids of Giza not only incorporated star alignments in their so-called ‘air-shafts’ (Fig. 8), but represented the stars of Orion’s Belt mapped on to the landscape. When Alan Evans checked their findings, he found that the same shaft which marked the meridian transit of Alnitak, the left-hand star of Orion’s Belt, also marked the transit of the Galactic Centre. So of the two galactic alignments marked at Stonehenge, one was incorporated into the Step Pyramid and the other into the Great one.
Robert had now collaborated with Graham Hancock on a new book, “Keeper of Genesis”, based on the possibly great age of the Sphinx. The apparent evidence of water erosion suggests that the Sphinx and its flanking temples were built as long ago as 10,500 BC, when Egypt last had a wet climate towards the end of the Ice Age.22 The Vernal Equinox was then in the constellation Leo, and Robert and Graham suggest that the Sphinx was built to face its counterpart in the sky. Furthermore, the orientation of the Belt stars to the Milky Way corresponds to the Pyramids’ in relation to the Nile – not when they themselves were built, but when the Sphinx was carved out 8000 years before.
In 10,500 BC, as far as we know, the Nile delta was inhabited only by hunter-gatherers, wholly lacking the technology to carve out the Sphinx and build the temples in 200-ton blocks. In a previous book Graham Hancock tried to get round this by suggesting a world-spanning civilisation, unknown to us, which lasted over 8000 years and was based on the coast of Antarctica.23 It used to be thought that the Antarctic coast was ice-free during the Ice Age in the northern hemisphere; however, that idea had been attacked by the early 1980’s15 and more recent Antarctic surveys continue to stack up evidence against it. And it’s very hard to believe that such a world-spanning, long-lasting civilisation would leave so little evidence behind.
Graham couldn’t attend the Edinburgh seminar, but he and Robert were both in Glasgow three weeks later and I was able to arrange a continuation, in which we went to the planetarium at the College of Nautical Studies. First I showed them what Alan Evans and I had discovered, and when they saw the galactic alignment at Stonehenge I, Robert Bauval made an extraordinary remark, which I’ll come back to in a moment.
Then, holding the date c.2700 BC, we shifted to the latitude of Giza, and verified Robert’s calculations for “The Orion Mystery”. It had never occurred to him to do so in this way, and he was as moved as I had been at seeing the layout of the ancient skies for himself – especially since everything he had calculated was confirmed. So too were the “Keeper” calculations for 10,500 BC, Leo, Orion and the Sphinx, when we moved the setting back to that date. When the Sun rose below Leo at the Vernal Equinox in 10,500 BC, Orion was on the meridian, and the orientation of the Belt stars to the Milky Way matched that of the Giza pyramids to the Nile 8,000 years later. Whatever its significance, that claim is true: we saw it with our own eyes, re-enacted.
But when I showed the galactic orientation of Stonehenge I, and explained what it might mean in terms of an ET landing, Robert’s show-stopping remark was, “It’s the same at Giza in 10,500 BC, we just didn’t know what it meant.” Now the time had come to verify that. Once again, if it was true at all, it would be true once a day, every day, at that latitude and date. So, just by letting the stars wheel on, we verified it at once. At Giza, in 10,500 BC, due to the effect of precession, the same galactic relationship existed as at Stonehenge c.2840. Once a day, the sky took up the same Fig. 6 configuration, with the galactic pole in the zenith and the plane of the Milky Way coinciding with the horizon. We saw it for ourselves: like a galactic ‘compass rose’ at each location, but separated by eight millennia in time.
But in that case, what was happening then at Stonehenge?
We kept the date at 10,500 BC, and the custodian took the planetarium ‘back up’ to the latitude of Stonehenge. Having no idea what to look for, once again we just let the stars wheel freely around, through a normal day. And Epsilon Boötis went through the zenith! It was doing that daily in 10,500 BC, when the galactic alignments were in force at Giza, and the effect of precession on it, over the next 8000 years, was to bring it back to the Stonehenge zenith, as an optical marker for the same galactic alignments at Stonehenge itself when Stonehenge I was created. Unless it’s all coincidence, it can only mean that the events of 2840-2500 BC represented a return to both sites. And the first, 10,500 BC date goes along with the ‘approximately 13,000 years ago’ given by Arcturus’s position in that first map of my 1973 ‘translation’, fig. 1(A). If that map meant anything, it would have to be as a time marker, not a navigational reference as I thought.
It still isn’t Category A evidence, the artefact of indisputably extraterrestrial origin, nor the Category B anomaly that leads us to it. In this context, Category C might stand for ‘circumstantial’. But I can’t believe that all those circumstances are coincidental; these multiple high-tech astronomical alignments are, in my opinion, the best evidence for Past Contact ever put forward. The synergistic combination of our research with Bauval and Hancock’s has convinced me that we’re on the track of something big.
It left two questions to answer:
1. What about the Green Children?
In the September 1996 Analog I suggested Past Contact in 12th century England. Is there a connection? There’s one I pointed out in that article. The latter half of the 12th century AD featured the most violent solar activity since the Bronze Age, indicated by aurorae, carbon-14 ratios, tree-rings etc.24 And that previous peak was a triple one, between 2700 and 1800 BC, covering the building of Avebury, the Pyramids, Stonehenge II and Stonehenge III. It may be coincidence; but it’s interesting that it was the case in both historical periods which I’d consider candidates for Contact events.
Even more remarkably, however, Alan Evans discovered that during the crucial years of the 12th century, between the Second Crusade and the fall of Jerusalem to Saladin, Jerusalem too had the same galactic alignment as Stonehenge I and Giza in 10,500 BC. At that point, the three enquiries – in the three very different areas of ancient positional astronomy, mediaeval history and the 1920s radio echoes – are actually three aspects of the same enquiry. It’s still circumstantial, all of it, but it looks as if it may add up to something very significant.
2. So what about the Space Probe?
Optical searches of the Lagrange points in the late 1970s found nothing. But in April 1995 Dr. Duncan Steel drew attention to the discovery, at Kitt Peak in Arizona, of a most unusual asteroid designated 1991 VG. In December 1991 it passed Earth at a distance of only 485,000 miles. Its diameter was estimated at 9-19 metres, assuming that it was made of one of the more common asteroidal rocks. However, observations at closest approach suggested “strong, rapid brightness variations which can be interpreted as transient specular reflections from the surfaces of a rotating spacecraft”.25
During the space age 1991 VG would have passed only twice before, in February-March 1975 and in mid-1958 – possibly 1959, if the 1975 approach altered the orbit. Nothing that big was launched in 1958-59, nor in 1975; the European Helios 1 was launched in December 1974, but its carrier’s upper stage did not escape from the Earth into orbit round the Sun. Perhaps, instead, 1991 VG was orbiting Earth then, until it was ‘discovered’ and moved away before anything more serious happened.
But when it comes backin 2017, let’s hope that a major attempt is made to look at it. The solar-sailing ‘Comet-chaser’ Gordon Ross and I suggested here would be ideal,26 but it can be done by conventional means: NEAR, the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous, is to orbit the asteroid Eros shortly, and Europe’s Rosetta probe is to do the same with a short-period comet after 2000; NASA’s Deep Space 4 will reach Comet Tempel in 2006, and a Japanese probe will reach asteroid Nereus the same year. 1991 VG should be next on the list.
References.
1. Duncan Lunan, ‘Space Probe from Epsilon Boötis?’, Analog XCII, 5, 66-84, January 1974.
2. – , ‘Long-Delayed Echoes and the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis’, Journal of the Society of Electronic and Radio Technicians, 10, 8, 180-182, September 1976.
3. Ronald N. Bracewell, ‘Manifestations of Advanced Civilisations’, in John Billingham, ed., “Life in the Universe”, MIT Press, 1981.
4. James Strong, “Flight to the Stars”, Temple Press, 1965.
5. George Sassoon, ‘A Correlation of Long-Delay Radio Echoes and the Moon’s Orbit’, Spaceflight, 16, 7, 258-265, July 1974.
6. Anthony T. Lawton, Sydney J. Newton, ‘Long Delayed Echoes: the Search for a Solution’, Spaceflight 16, 5, 181-187, May 1974.
7. Robert A. Freitas, Jr., Francisco Valdes, ‘A Search for Natural or Artificial Objects Located at the Earth-Moon Libration Points’, Icarus 42, 442-447 (1980); ‘A Search for Objects near the Earth-Moon Lagrangian Points’, Icarus 53, 453-457 (1983).
8. James R. Wertz, ‘Interstellar Navigation’, Spaceflight, 14, 206-216, June 1972.
9. Duncan Lunan, “Man and the Stars”, Souvenir Press 1974; US editions “Interstellar Contact”, Henry Regnery Co., 1975, “The Mysterious Signals from Outer Space”, Bantam, 1977.
10. Gerald S. Hawkins, “Stonehenge Decoded”, Souvenir Press, 1966.
11. A.Thom, “Megalithic Sites in Britain”, Oxford University Press, 1967; “Megalithic Lunar Observatories”, OUP, 1971; (with A.S. Thom), “Megalithic Remains in Britain and Brittany”, OUP, 1978.
12. Duncan Lunan, ‘Solar Events at Sighthill’, Griffith Observer, 50, 6, 2-11, 20, June 1986.
13. J. Gall Inglis, Arthur P. Norton, “Star Atlas”, 14th edition, Gall & Inglis, 1959.
14. Dates for the various construction phases at Stonehenge remain in some dispute; Aubrey Burl, “Prehistoric Avebury”, Yale University Press, 1979, puts the earliest construction around 2800 BC, as do the Thoms (ref.19), with no further work until c.2150 BC. Some recent reports compress the building into one continuous process; yet there seems to be clear evidence for an interruption, during which the Stonehenge I ditch silted up, although its discoverer put the event strangely far back, dating it at 3100 BC, well before the starting dates given elsewhere. (Christopher Chippendale, ‘Life around Stonehenge’, New Scientist, 101, 1404, 12-17, 5 April 1984).
15. Fred Hoyle, “Ice”, Hutchinson, 1981.
16. Sean O’Neill, ‘Totem Poles Give Pointer to Siting of Stonehenge’, The Daily Telegraph, 28 June 1996.
17. Robert Dawson Scott, ‘Silent Power from a Time of the Ancients’, The Daily Telegraph, 10th January 1997.
18. Nigel Hawkes, ‘Stonehenge Dating Dispels Icesheet Theory’, The Times, 5 December 1994.
19. A. Thom, A.S. Thom and A. Thom, ‘Stonehenge’, Journal for the History of Astronomy, 5, 13, 71-90 (June 1974).
20. A.C. Evans, ‘The Three Dimensional Grid’, paper presented at ‘Heresies in Archaeoastronomy’, Edinburgh International Science Festival, 16th April 1995.
21. Robert Bauval & Adrian Gilbert, “The Orion Mystery”, Heinemann, 1994.
22. Robert Bauval & Graham Hancock, “Keeper of Genesis”, Heinemann, 1996.
23. Graham Hancock, “Fingerprints of the Gods”, Heinemann, 1995.
24. John A. Eddy, ‘The Case of the Missing Sunspots’, Scientific American, 236, 5, 80-88 & 92, May 1977; ‘The Maunder Minimum’, Science, 192, 4245, 1189-1202 (18th June, 1976.)
25. Duncan Steel, ‘SETA and 1991 VG’, The Observatory, April 1995; ‘Of Asteroids and Aliens’, The Skeptic, 15, 1, 9-10 (1995).
26. Duncan Lunan, ‘Keep Watching the Skies!’, Analog, CXIV, 12, 70-84, October 1994.
27. I.E.S. Edwards, “The Pyramids of Egypt”, Penguin, 1947.
In 2016, Kanye West had a $52 million debt and everyone turned their backs on him. His wife Kim created a game called Kimoji that generated 80 million dollars, with this transferred 52 million to her common account cleaning up her husband’s debts.
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Today Kanye, thanks to the sales of his Yeezy product line, has a fortune of more than almost 2 billion dollars.
A man also needs an intelligent and strong woman who will stand by his side, regardless of the situation at the time. What would Kanye be without his wife’s support?
Raw Feed of the Dark Knight from China
This is RAW feed from a Chinese satellite used for land surveying. The image is NOT captured by camera. Only the background is captured by the camera. Instead, the “collision avoidance radar” captured the 3D object in the foreground and rendered it in this clip. Thus you have a rendered 3D object overlay over the satellite camera background.
The clip is a Chinese commentator discussing the object and its features.
It is part of a much larger video clip which also includes other anomalous objects captured by an array of Chinese satellites.
The Black Night is the conventional name for this object that is believed to be an extraterrestrial vehicle in orbit around the earth for the last 11,000 years.
There are clearer photographs of this object in great detail, but they only show one singular side. This clip is unique as the entire shape is rendered and we can observe how it travels in orbit around the earth, though without the photographic clarity that the NASA photo has.
"To long winded, I find myself scolling fast and deleting"
Short attention span. Likes bright colors.
We’ve all been there.
In our youth.
…
Today, we open with this video from REDACTED…
NATO and U.S. issue red alert against China and Putin
It’s a slow-motion train wreck. The kind where you are sitting there and watch yourself get disemboweled in slow-mo.
Jesus.
H.
Christ.
Sorry about the middle of the segment commercial, but someone has to pay his bills. Aside from that it’s a great video.
Russia and China ganging up against the USA at the UN…
Russia AND China Demand UN Investigation Into Nord Stream Bombing
The USA bombed Russian Energy pipeline. That is an act of war.
If you are not convinced, then check this out here…
China condemns ‘US hegemony’, war crimes, CIA coups, 400 foreign interventions
It’s called “information warfare”.
China will have no choice but to engage with the US in a hostile way, this is like a final warning to the US that China will NO longer put up with all its obnoxious and rogue behaviour anymore, also make it clear China firmly stands against US/Western imperialist hegemony.
Now, let’s look at some things that you’ll never read about in Western “news”…
China’s Submarines: A Deadly Threat in 30 Seconds
https://youtu.be/s0wXq6GiOgQ
AH, but the United States has it’s own submarines, don’t you know, and they are “stealthy”.
That’s the narrative, but sure as shit, China has decloaked them. Now they run into mountains, and need an entire fleet to pick up a scrap F-22 from the ocean floor. Don’t you know.
I have a video… somewhere… showing one of these Chinese boomers launching all of it’s missiles in under 30 seconds. This is amazing. I have NEVER seen or heard of a US submarine doing this.
Anyways…
It’s not just submarines…
China’s Top Secret Space Plane: Leaving NASA Technology in the Dust
Something you never hear about.
https://youtu.be/mE2d04t7_Es
Which is pretty cool. And how would it be used? Well…
Check this out…
Discovering China’s City-Sized Space Station on the Moon
Every country is welcome to the moon vase that China is going to build, except one specific country.
https://youtu.be/9ptB3BSOblE
But that’s not all.
Then there’s Mars.
China’s Mars Mission: A Look Into The History-Making Technology
Something you never hear about.
https://youtu.be/rw6lD1VURG0
So…
Which nation is looking towards the future? And which country is just playing the same old 19th century squabbling over resources?
Ok, so what is going on inside of the United States?
OH SH*T, Now they can’t even sell their homes in Ohio
Fiasco! OMG!
Remember…meanwhile in China.
China’s New Super Technology: America Offers $50 Billion
At an air show in China Saturday, the Chinese Air Force displayed their J-20 Stealth Fighter Jet capabilities. I’ve never seen an American fighter Jet be able to do some of these maneuvers! Utterly amazing. Video below . . .
Lazy Slow Cooker Creamy Chicken Noodle Soup
“Adapted from Semi-Homemade Cooking with Sandra Lee, this is easy with yummy results. Put it on in the morning and come home to a soothing, comforting dinner. Crackers or bread and a salad finish off this meal.”
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Ingredients
4 cups cooked chicken, chopped (from a store bought chicken?)
Put the chicken into a slow cooker with the onions, celery, carrots and peas.
Stir in broth, mushroom soup, and fines herbs. Season with salt and pepper.
Cover and cook on high for 3 to 4 hours or low for 8 to 9 hours.
When soup is finished, stir in egg noodles.
Season to taste and serve. Enjoy!
How do people that manage to escape North Korea/Russia/China react when they learn what the rest of the world is like today?
How do they deal with the shock of learning what their government is really like as opposed to how they portray themselves?
They would be shocked to see this comparison.
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What are the economic consequences of authoritarian rule in China?
The consequence is:
The fastest improvement of living standard in human history.
In 1949, Chinese GDP per capita was around 45 dollars. That number grew to 12500 dollars in 2021, an almost 280 times growth.
What does that translate into people’s lives? In 1949, life expectancy was 35 years in China. Slavery and drug addiction was rampant. Famine was always around the corner. Many people living in the countryside shared one pair of pants amongst the whole family. There was no public medical system to speak of. 85% of the population was illiterate.
70 years later, in just one life time, China grew to become one of the greatest world power of our time. People no longer worry about starvation but obesity, and are rich enough to send their children to universities in other countries, or take vacations overseas, while watching the country’s rovers roll on the moon and Mars.
In the province of Taiwan, authoritarian rule also worked wonders. The Taiwanese military dictatorship built the island’s economy and single-handed created companies like TSMC that we all respect today.
TD550 unmanned helicopter
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A bad experience with a guy at a bar…
I went to a club in new york and a guy at the bar offered to buy me a drink. I politely declined.
He insisted again, and I knew it was a scam to get me to hang out with him. before I could order my drink for myself he buys both of us a round, which was, you know, “the nice thing to do”.
I immediately got weird vibes from him and didn’t think I owed him anything for the beer and shot.
I made up an excuse to get away from him.
I didn’t want to leave the club because I spent a hefty cover so I got my friend to come save me. my friend was 30 mins away so this guy kept following me around the club calling me a b***h for not being interested in his little game.
I told the bouncers and they didn’t really care about the situation and just brushed it off.
I was so furious with this guy I stuck my finger down my throat and threw up all over him and said, “here’s your drink back, now leave me the f**k alone”. byyyeeeee ya f****n nerd.
J-20’s three tricks stunned everyone! Chinese stealth fighter shows off new moves in Zhuhai Airshow
This video showed us that the airplane can fly and turn. WOW MIND = BLOWN.
Don’t do this…
A random guy held my crutches for me as I walked down some stairs at uni. He seemed nice and joked about how he once broke a foot, it’ll get better, etc etc. We get to the bottom and he asks if we could get some coffee. I thank him, but tell him I’m seeing someone so he just drops my crutches on the floor and walks away…
creepy nice guy stories 5 635a969e47bd1 700
WJ-700 unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)
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The Fremont Troll—Seattle, Washington
In so many old folktales and fairytales, we hear of mysterious, troublesome, or mischievous trolls who live under bridges. Often asking for a toll or price for passage, they cause a nuisance and, in some cases, can be quite frightening and creepy.
Well, luckily, they’re a work of fiction. That is unless you’re wandering through underpasses in the Fremont area of Seattle. Here you’ll find a huge stone troll holding up the underpass on their broad shoulders. If you’re not expecting it or are walking in bad lighting, it’s a creepy and surprising sight to behold.
The result of a local art competition in 1989 to revamp the area that had become an unsafe and dirty place, the Fremont Troll towers 18 feet (5.5 meters) and even has a shining metal eye that glints in the light. It’s not uncommon to see a horde of tourists standing around and even climbing up onto the troll’s shoulders for the perfect photo op. Keep an eye out for the Volkswagen Beetle that’s been crunched up in the troll’s hand…
China’s J-20 Fighter in Massive Rare Action that you’ve never seen before
J20s is the world first twin seats Stealth fighter that can command 3 or more loyal wing man drones to help attack its enemy in the sky. Something the F22, F35 cannot do.
I constantly forgot to breath while watching it making those magnificent moves, very impressive.
https://youtu.be/zAVYy9x0Kdc
I certainly have seen U.S. fighter jets be able to vertically “hover” with their nose pointed straight up, but I have never seen the reversal of direction in flight that these Chinese jets perform. It shocked me as to the skill of the pilots, AND as to the maneuverability of the jets.
I kept waiting to see one of them just fall out of the sky with the maneuvers they were doing, but that didn’t happen.
US will build small modular nuclear reactor in Ukraine
WTF? I mean is President Biden pushing buttons, or what? -MM
The United States will build a small modular nuclear reactor in Ukraine, the decision has already been taken, said the Ukrainian Ambassador to Washington Oksana Markarova.
Washington and Kiev have launched a pilot project to build a small modular reactor in Ukraine, US State department confirmed in a statement. The place where this reactor will be located, has not been reported yet. The participating partner from the United States is the Argonne National Laboratory, which is the research center of the US Department of Energy. The participating partners from Ukraine are Energoatom, the NSDC and the State Scientific and Technical Center for Nuclear and Radiation Safety. A number of American companies will also participate as partners.
“Today, within the framework of the 27th UN Climate Conference, the Special Envoy of the President of the United States for Climate John Kerry and the Minister of Energy of Ukraine German Galushchenko announced the launch of a pilot project for the construction of a small modular reactor in Ukraine”, Oksana Markarova announced on Facebook.
Small modular reactors are smaller than standard reactors and have less power, but have one advantage – they can be installed in hard-to-reach places where it is impossible to build a conventional nuclear power plant.
In 2021, Ukrainian president Volodimir Zelensky announced that Ukraine plans to manufacture the latest SMR-160 nuclear reactors, developed by the American company Holtec under the control of the US Department of Energy. At the same time, he stressed that “the Ukrainian industry is capable of manufacturing such systems as small modular reactors.”
Oddporium—Arden, Delaware
Sometimes you just want to wander around somewhere downright weird with a friend or loved one, pointing out old dolls, vintage medical equipment, or pig remains in a jar, cringing back and laughing. Whether you get grossed out easily or have a dark sense of humor when it comes to curios, consider checking out the Oddiporium on your next trip through Arden, Delaware.
If you’re traveling through in the evening, the Oddporium also screens horror films in the outdoor portion of the venue. Especially if you’re checking out the place around Halloween, you can expect plenty of spooky goings on. The perfect creepy combo: nighttime horror films and weird paranormal things in jars![HERE]
Zhuhai Airshow 2022 !! Awesome China J 20 well done !! Landing, Take off, sound, Maneuvers
Don’t Poke The Panda!
https://youtu.be/E7B9TrGosr8
Maybe we’ve been out-classed by China?????
Maybe we shouldn’t be picking a fight with them over Taiwan?
Maybe we’re not as good as we think we are?
Saudi Arabia Reiterates Commitment To China, Regardless Of U.S. Concerns
Apparently confirming the view of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) that the U.S. is now regarded as just another one of its partners in a new global order that would see Beijing and its allies share the leadership position with Washington, Saudi Arabia last week reiterated its commitment to China as its “most reliable partner and supplier of crude oil,” along with broader assurances of its ongoing support in several other areas.
That MbS seemingly now sees the U.S. as a partner just for its security considerations, with no meaningful quid pro quo on Saudi Arabia’s part, whilst regarding China as its key partner economically and Russia as its key partner in energy matters, should not surprise the U.S.Back in March last year it was made clear enough at the annual China Development Forum hosted in Beijing, when Aramco chief executive officer, Amin Nasser said: “Ensuring the continuing security of China’s energy needs remains our highest priority - not just for the next five years but for the next 50 and beyond.”
And yet, the U.S. is surprised by the apparent finalization of the transition of Saudi Arabia away from Washington and towards China, which effectively marks the end of the 1945 core agreement between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia that defined their relationship up until extremely recently. This transition has
Satellites discovered two “dark ships” near Nord Stream before the explosions
Just a day before the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines two unidentified ships were spotted in the area. The private satellite data monitoring firm SpaceKnow discovered two vessels with their transponders turned off in the area of the explosions. The vessels’ automatic identification systems were not working at the time they were passing the pipelines.
According to the analysis of satellite data, two “dark ships”, each 95 to 130 meters long, passed within a few miles of the Nord Stream 2 leak, the Wired media outlet reported. Jerry Javornitsky, SpaceKnow CEO, claims they discovered two dark ships of significant size, that were passing through the area of interest. They had their transponders switched off, meaning that there was no information about their movement, and they tried to hide information about their location and general information from the world,” adds Yavornitsky.
This information and all satellite images have already been sent to the countries involved in the investigation.
The U.S. Navy also carried out numerous maneuvers near the explosion site around Nord Stream 1 and 2 days before the gas leaks. On September 2, an American helicopter with an FFAB123 call sign carried out multiple flights in the area. According to flight tracking websites, that day this call sign was used for 6 flights of a Sikorsky MH-60S helicopter. Such flights near Nord Stream were also detected on 12 September.
A U.S. Navy expeditionary unit led by the USS Kearsarge was in the Baltic Sea few days earlier and was spotted entering the North Sea. According to maritime traffic data, it was located 30 kilometers from the site of the alleged sabotage of the Nord Stream-1 pipeline and 50 kilometers from the Nord Stream-2 pipeline.
Egypt’s 45 billion US dollars to build a new capital, why only choose China to build it?
"I was in shanghai in 2017 and my accommodation was in the Marriott hotel overlooking a big re-development . So when I left in March of that year , only the foundations were laid . I came back to shanghai in July of the same year and was astounded to see 5 tower blocks were built up to the 17th floors . Eventually it was completed in a record time of 18 months .So I can see why America was not chosen .The world trade center was destroyed in September 2001 and the replacement one world trade Center officially opened in November 2014 . Taking 9 times longer to build than the Chinese".
Traditional vaccines like Sinovac may prevent severe disease in Covid-19 patients: Study
Duh! -MM
SINGAPORE – Though often considered inferior due to their induction of a lower antibody response compared with their mRNA counterparts, inactivated virus vaccines can play a role in preventing the development of severe Covid-19, a recent study has found.
This could mean that a combination of the two vaccine types may offer better protection against the coronavirus, researchers said, noting each had its own advantages.
The study by the Duke-NUS Medical School found that inactivated virus vaccines such as Sinopharm and Sinovac, which were used extensively in Asia, and mRNA vaccines – which include Pfizer-BioNTech’s Comirnaty and Moderna’s Spikevax – trigger different T-cell responses in fighting the coronavirus.
Inactivated vaccines – an older technology used in the polio and influenza vaccines, among others – are made up of dead viruses, unlike mRNA vaccines, which use just parts of the virus’ genetic material to stimulate an immune response.
While mRNA vaccines induce T-cells – a type of white blood cell – targeting the spike protein of the coronavirus, inactivated vaccines elicit a broader immune response against different proteins on the virus.
This means that while inactivated vaccines might not be as good at preventing Covid-19 infection, they can play a role in preventing the development of severe disease, said the study’s senior co-author Anthony Tanoto Tan, a senior research fellow with the Duke-NUS’ Emerging Infectious Diseases programme.
Earlier studies had shown that mRNA vaccines help patients produce a far greater number of antibodies, compared with their inactivated virus counterparts. However, newer variants have proved to be more adept at evading the antibody response, Dr Tan said.
J-20, Loyal Wingman Drones & Chinese Reaper UAV in 2022 Zhuhai Air Show Reviewed
Damn china looking good.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE:
Some people who *think* they know it all, are claiming these are Remote Control model jets. They are not.
The audio alone proves they are actual fighter jets, with actual jet engines – you can HEAR them for cryin out loud! Full-throated jet engines!
This story is accurate. The jets are real, although I am now told they are J-16’s and not J-20’s.
Anyone who tells you otherwise does not know what they’re talking about.
WATCH: The latest China weapons displayed at Airshow China 2022
Very advanced level weapons.
Many missed the point. This video is a catalog for weapons FOR SALE by Norinco. What PLA uses are going to be even more advanced.
All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy
Despite their temperament, Vikings took time out to play and make merry. They would often celebrate achievements by throwing parties. These parties they threw depended on the rank and wealth of the person or people hosting. The parties created not only an opportunity to make merry but also a “pissing contest” to display wealth and stature.
The wealthier a Viking or a group of Vikings were, the bigger the party would be and the longer they could hold it down. As archeological evidence suggests, Vikings were robust men and women. Considering their body size and way of living, one can easily conclude they could eat and drink a lot. Hosting a Viking party, therefore, was a noteworthy achievement. An achievement that earned the host a distinguished position in the community.
Did you know that Vikings found skiing amusing as well? They did, in fact, find it fascinating. One would be forgiven for assuming they did not have what it took to ski back in the day, considering how advanced the equipment we use today is. Archeological evidence points to the fact that they had wooden boards that they used to ski. They used to ski for fun when hunting and as a way of general movement.
Chinese Military Power 2021 – Dongfeng Mengshi Armored troop Carrier
Trainloads of Armor and other NATO Military Gear in Poland, Moving Toward Kaliningrad
Video has emerged of trainloads of NATO armor and other military gear moving through Poland, toward the Russia enclave of Kaliningrad.
The video, below, shows one of the trains moving through Gdynia, Poland:
The scalable map below shows Gdynia, Poland in relation to Kaliningrad:
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Each day, NATO moves more and more military gear either toward Russia or Ukraine, and toward the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. It doesn’t stop.
Today, the Russian Ministry of Defense ORDERED manufacturers to DOUBLE the production of hypersonic missiles.
It won’t stop unless or until citizens in NATO countries, get their governments back under control — and fast — or else World War 3 is on the menu.
Funny Failed Test Answers
So it’s exam day, you’ve forgotten to study, and you’re staring blankly at the test in front of you wondering how on earth you’re going to pass. What are you going to do? Well, you’re going to fail, that’s what. But that doesn’t mean you can’t fail in style! Take a look at this collection of funny exam answers to see how to do just that!
test answers14
test answers9
test answers6
test answers4
test answers3
test answers22
test answers15
test answers26
test answers8
test answers7
test answers5
test answers25
test answers10
China launches New Type 20 rifle, will become the next generation most powerful rifle
Looks like a sexy gun. From what I’ve heard, it’s a righteous beast and even Americans are drooling and wish they had this gun. All China’s newest equipment is making USA jealous. Like type 055 destroyer which they decided to copy with their next gen destroyer.
Duh! American soldiers fighting Russian soldiers directly. -MM
Many have been asking “What is happening in Kherson and why is Russia pulling out?” It’s complicated. One thing is now certain: Americans have entered Kherson.
This is no longer Ukraine versus Russia. This now appears to be Russia VS NATO…Ukraine is just the battlefield.
The video below comes from inside Kherson. Note the flag on the backpack first aid kit and note the language being spoken:
According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, they have had to bring their troops back to across the Dnieper River for several reasons:
1) Bridges are mostly out on the Kherson City side of the river which makes it logistically very hard to bring ammunition and supplies to those troops, AND;
2) American HIMARS Rockets have been so horrifically precise, the Russian Army cannot set up Ammunition Dumps because HIMARS takes them out.
So they cannot bring large amounts of ammo (just yet) and they cannot store large amounts of ammo (for now) and that makes their forces incredibly vulnerable.
Therefore, the Russians say they took their troops out of one side of Kherson, had them cross the river to the other side, where the logistics problems will not exist and will not endanger the lives of Russian forces.
Kherson city is now Russia. Russia will not give up that territory permanently, they say. But a strategic fallback was necessary.
Now, as seen in the video above, we see Americans in Kherson.
If Russia can show that American soldiers have invaded Russia territory, that makes American territory subject to Russian attack. It’s that simple.
China’s New Military Laser Weapon That Shocked The US | China Technology
https://youtu.be/eSvPZANKgzw
Gentle Paintings of Girls by Huaishen J
We know nothing about Huaishen J’s gender or any other orientation. All we know is that Huaishen J lives in the United States and paints fantastically gentle and charming young ladies. And that’s all we need.
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Foreigners Won’t Believe What China is Building
Great video. You should add Beidou was born out of necessity. In 1990s, US used / blocked GPS to disable a Chinese ship in an incident. And China joined Europe’s Galileo program but was blocked repeatedly. Beidou was born after China realized Europe’s true intension (and wasted time and money on Galileo.
UKRAINE “MILITARY AID” FROM USA — WAS INVESTED IN CRYPTO “FTX” BY UKRAINE!
The sudden collapse of crypto exchange “FTX” and its Bankruptcy filing today, has revealed that FTX presently suffers from $10-$50 BILLION in liabilities with almost ZERO assets . . . and among those liabilities, are “investments” made by . . . . UKRAINE . . . .
At this early hour, it __appears__ that tens-of-billions in American “Military Aid” to Ukraine, which was allegedly to be used to fight Russia, was cash that Ukraine DID NOT use to fight Russia, but instead invested into FTX!
And, as you might guess from the Bankruptcy filing . . . . it now seems that all the money . . . is gone.
Yes, you read that correctly: Instead of using US Military Aid to fight Russia, Ukraine “invested” part or all of it, into FTX, and right now, it looks like all the money is gone.
Democrat Donations
Also at this early hour, it now also __appears__ that the Chief of FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, was the #2 donor to the Democrats. He was only outspent by Soros himself!
It __seems__ Ukraine was receiving money from the US, Ukraine sent it to FTX, and FTX sent it to Democrats, who originally voted to send it to Ukraine. At this hour, it __appears__ to some observers, to be pure, criminal, money-laundering, and a criminal conspiracy to violate campaign finance laws.
It now seems to closely-watching observers that the kid (Bankman-Fried) burned his own company — and his own ass — just to make sure the Dems won the mid-term elections, and seems to have done it by pulling the rug out from all those that had funds there in FTX.
So the collapse of FTX is now linked not only to Ukraine, but also to US Democrat politicians who got money from Sam Bankman-Fried, to campaign for the just-ended elections!
Here. Learn:
From wiki
Sam Bankman-Fried was born in 1992 on the campus of Stanford University into a family of academics. Born and raised to an upper-middle-class Jewish family in California, he is the son of Barbara Fried and Joseph Bankman, both professors at Stanford Law School.[2] His aunt Linda P. Fried is the current dean of Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.[15] His brother, Gabe Bankman-Fried, is a former Wall Street trader[16] and the director of the non-profit Guarding Against Pandemics.
Politics
Sam Bankman-Fried was the second-largest individual donor to Democratic causes in 2021–2022 election cycle with total donations of $39.8 million, only behind George Soros.[59][60][61] Of this, $27 million was given to Protect our Future PAC, bankrolled by Bankman-Fried.[62]
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And the funniest bit of all? Who is handling the bankruptcy??? None other than Jon J Ray III who just happened to be in charge of the liquidation of….. ENRON!
Then too, there’s this:
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The US Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission are looking into whether FTX.com mishandled customer funds. Bankman-Fried is also being investigated by the US Securities and Exchange Commission for potential violations of securities rules.
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UPDATE 11:34 AM EST –
Sam Bankman-Fried used the money to bankroll DEMOCRATS!
$10,000,000 PROTECT OUR FUTURE PAC 4/14/2022
$9,000,000 PROTECT OUR FUTURE PAC 2/4/2022
$6,000,000 HOUSE MAJORITY PAC 4/4/2022
$5,000,000 FF PAC 10/7/2020
$4,000,000 PROTECT OUR FUTURE PAC 6/13/2022
$4,000,000 PROTECT OUR FUTURE PAC 3/15/2022
$2,000,000 GMI PAC, INC. 1/18/2022
$1,000,000 AMERICA UNITED 4/18/2022
$500,000 SMP 5/19/2022
$500,000 DNC SERVICES CORP / DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE 5/5/2022
$400,000 DEMOCRATIC GRASSROOTS VICTORY FUND 8/31/2022
$350,000 VOTE TRIPLING PAC 9/24/2020
$300,000 OPPORTUNITY FOR TOMORROW 4/22/2022
$300,000 AMERICA UNITED 6/13/2022
$250,000 SMP 8/2/2021
$250,000 SMP 8/16/2021
$250,000 DMFI PAC 5/25/2022
$220,000 CENTER FOR ESSENTIAL INFORMATION 10/13/2020
$109,500 DNC SERVICES CORP / DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE 5/3/2022
$109,500 DNC SERVICES CORP / DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE 5/3/2022
$109,500 DNC SERVICES CORP / DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE 5/3/2022
$109,500 DCCC 6/22/2022
$105,000 ALABAMA CONSERVATIVES FUND 6/10/2022
$104,000 DCCC 6/22/2022
$50,000 BIDEN VICTORY FUND 10/23/2020
$50,000 HEARTLAND RESURGENCE 9/23/2022
$36,500 DNC SERVICES CORP / DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE 5/3/2022
$36,500 DCCC 6/22/2022
$36,500 NRCC 7/22/2022
$35,500 DNC SERVICES CORP / DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE 10/23/2020
$30,000 DSCC 3/21/2022
$30,000 DSCC 3/31/2022
$22,000 ACTIVATE AMERICA 9/1/2021
$20,800 STABENOW VICTORY FUND 1/13/2022
$20,800 MAGGIE HASSAN VICTORY FUND 7/29/2021
$10,800 GILLIBRAND VICTORY FUND 6/20/2022
$10,000 NEW HAMPSHIRE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 7/31/2021
$10,000 MICHIGAN DEMOCRATIC STATE CENTRAL COMMITTEE 2/2/2022
$8,500 NRCC 7/22/2022
$6,500 DSCC 3/31/2022
$5,800 RICHARD BURR COMMITTEE; THE 8/2/2021
$5,800 BILL CASSIDY FOR US SENATE 8/2/2021
$5,800 JEFFRIES FOR CONGRESS 7/24/2021
$5,800 COLLINS FOR SENATOR 10/2/2021
$5,800 BOOZMAN FOR ARKANSAS 1/21/2022
$5,800 CITIZENS FOR BOYLE 5/9/2022
$5,800 HOEVEN FOR SENATE 6/13/2022
$5,800 HOEVEN FOR SENATE 6/13/2022
$5,000 LIMITLESS HORIZONS 10/17/2022
$5,000 GRANITE VALUES PAC 7/31/2021
$5,000 SUMMITT PAC 9/28/2022
$5,000 GREAT LAKES PAC 2/9/2022
$5,000 GUARDING AGAINST PANDEMICS PAC 4/27/2022
$5,000 HEARTLAND VALUES PAC 2/8/2022
$5,000 JERSEY VALUES PAC 1/24/2022
$5,000 GREATER TOMORROW POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE 7/22/2022
$5,000 THE NEXT 50 PAC 3/31/2022
$5,000 PRAIRIE POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE 3/19/2022
$5,000 BFB PAC 5/9/2022
$5,000 OFF THE SIDELINES PAC 6/20/2022
$5,000 AXNE PAC (AMERICANS X-PECT NEW ENERGY) 9/28/2022
$5,000 SERVING OUR COUNTRY (SOC) PAC 9/28/2022
$4,000 ACROSS THE AISLE PAC 10/19/2022
$2,900 ALESSANDRA BIAGGI FOR CONGRESS 3/31/2022
$2,900 MANCHIN FOR WEST VIRGINIA 7/24/2021
$2,900 MANCHIN FOR WEST VIRGINIA 7/24/2021
$2,900 JASMINE FOR US 3/31/2022
$2,900 FRIENDS OF DICK DURBIN COMMITTEE 3/19/2022
$2,900 CONOLE FOR CONGRESS 3/31/2022
$2,900 TINA SMITH FOR MINNESOTA 3/30/2022
$2,900 TINA SMITH FOR MINNESOTA 3/30/2022
$2,900 COLLINS FOR SENATOR 8/3/2021
$2,900 COLLINS FOR SENATOR 9/2/2021
$2,900 BILL CASSIDY FOR US SENATE 8/2/2021
$2,900 JEFFRIES FOR CONGRESS 7/26/2021
$2,900 MAXWELL ALEJANDRO FROST FOR CONGRESS 6/10/2022
$2,900 PETE AGUILAR FOR CONGRESS 7/24/2021
$2,900 PETE AGUILAR FOR CONGRESS 7/24/2021
$2,900 COLLINS FOR SENATOR 9/2/2021
$2,900 COLLINS FOR SENATOR 8/2/2021
$2,900 GILBERT VILLEGAS FOR CONGRESS 3/31/2022
$2,900 SHONTEL BROWN FOR CONGRESS 3/31/2022
$2,900 QUARTEY FOR CONGRESS 4/27/2022
$2,900 JAKE AUCHINCLOSS FOR CONGRESS 3/10/2022
$2,900 JAKE AUCHINCLOSS FOR CONGRESS 3/10/2022
$2,900 ALEX PADILLA FOR SENATE 7/24/2021
$2,900 ALEX PADILLA FOR SENATE 7/24/2021
$2,900 PEOPLE FOR PATTY MURRAY 7/24/2021
$2,900 PEOPLE FOR PATTY MURRAY 7/24/2021
$2,900 JOSH GOTTHEIMER FOR CONGRESS 1/24/2022
$2,900 ROBERT GARCIA FOR CONGRESS 3/31/2022
$2,900 JOSH GOTTHEIMER FOR CONGRESS 1/24/2022
$2,900 CORY BOOKER FOR SENATE 10/18/2021
$2,900 FOUSHEE FOR CONGRESS 3/31/2022
$2,900 GILLIBRAND FOR SENATE 6/20/2022
$2,900 GILLIBRAND FOR SENATE 6/20/2022
$2,900 GALLEGO FOR ARIZONA 3/31/2022
$2,900 GALLEGO FOR ARIZONA 3/31/2022
$2,900 STABENOW FOR US SENATE 2/11/2022
$2,900 STABENOW FOR US SENATE 2/11/2022
$2,900 JIM COSTA FOR CONGRESS 7/11/2022
$2,900 HALEY STEVENS FOR CONGRESS 3/31/2022
$2,900 BRITTANY PETTERSEN FOR COLORADO 3/31/2022
$2,900 FRIENDS OF LUCY MCBATH 3/31/2022
$2,900 TORRES FOR CONGRESS 3/31/2022
$2,900 WELCH FOR VERMONT 3/31/2022
$2,900 MAGGIE FOR NH 7/31/2021
$2,900 MAGGIE FOR NH 7/31/2021
$2,900 MENENDEZ FOR CONGRESS 4/27/2022
$2,900 CARRICK FLYNN FOR OREGON 3/31/2022
$2,900 BOOZMAN FOR ARKANSAS 1/21/2022
$2,900 CITIZENS FOR BOYLE 5/9/2022
$2,900 MORGAN MCGARVEY FOR CONGRESS 5/16/2022
$2,900 SEAN PATRICK MALONEY FOR CONGRESS 6/17/2022
$2,900 MAX ROSE FOR CONGRESS 3/31/2022
$2,900 SEAN PATRICK MALONEY FOR CONGRESS 6/17/2022
$2,900 JOSH HARDER FOR CONGRESS 9/28/2022
$2,900 NIKKI FOR CONGRESS 3/31/2022
$2,900 LOU CORREA FOR CONGRESS 9/28/2022
$2,900 CHUY GARCIA FOR CONGRESS 6/10/2022
$2,900 HOEVEN FOR SENATE 7/1/2022
$2,900 SALUD CARBAJAL FOR CONGRESS 10/19/2022
$2,900 BECCA BALINT FOR VERMONT 6/10/2022
$2,900 SALUD CARBAJAL FOR CONGRESS 7/2/2022
$2,900 SANFORD BISHOP FOR CONGRESS 7/2/2022
$2,900 LISA MURKOWSKI FOR US SENATE 8/2/2021
$2,900 LISA MURKOWSKI FOR US SENATE 8/2/2021
$2,900 ANGIE CRAIG FOR CONGRESS 7/2/2022
$2,900 SYDNEY KAMLAGER FOR CONGRESS 6/10/2022
$2,900 GILLEN FOR CONGRESS 4/27/2022
$2,800 BIDEN FOR PRESIDENT 10/23/2020
$2,800 CORY BOOKER FOR SENATE 10/18/2021
$2,500 CHC BOLD PAC 3/31/2022
$1,000 BENNET FOR COLORADO 10/27/2010
$1,000 DEMOCRATIC STATE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF MARYLAND 4/27/2022
$1,000 ACROSS THE AISLE PAC 7/18/2022
$780 ARIZONA DEMOCRATIC PARTY 10/23/2020
$780 PENNSYLVANIA DEMOCRATIC PARTY 10/23/2020
$780 NORTH CAROLINA DEMOCRATIC PARTY – FEDERAL 10/23/2020
$780 COLORADO DEMOCRATIC PARTY 10/23/2020
$780 MINNESOTA DEMOCRATIC-FARMER-LABOR PARTY 10/23/2020
$780 DEMOCRATIC PARTY OF VIRGINIA 10/23/2020
$780 OHIO DEMOCRATIC PARTY 10/23/2020
$780 NEBRASKA DEMOCRATIC PARTY 10/23/2020
$780 DEMOCRATIC EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF FLORIDA 10/23/2020
$780 GEORGIA FEDERAL ELECTIONS COMMITTEE 10/23/2020
$780 DEMOCRATIC PARTY OF WISCONSIN 10/23/2020
$780 TEXAS DEMOCRATIC PARTY 10/23/2020
$780 NEVADA STATE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 10/23/2020
wBWo1je
This doesn’t include “donations” by two other principles from FTX, the total is almost $80 million dollars, THIS CYCLE.
Imagine knowing your crypto money was stolen to pay for liberals to import illegals from 3rd world countries that are there to replace you!
Tom Brady is rumored to have lost $650,000,000.
UPDATE 6:45 PM EST —
Want to know how high this corruption goes? Look who attended an FTX Event in the Bahamas, THIS PAST APRIL (2022):
Bill Clinton and former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, seen in the photo below, sitting on-stage with Sam Bankman-Fried!!!!!
FTX Event April 2022 Bahamas BillClinton TonyBlair
Not only are the two former officials at the event, the event marquis clearly says “This Session is OFF THE RECORD.” Here. Look:
FTX Event April 2022 Bahamas BillClinton TonyBlair OFF THE RECORD
Now, aside from the obvious millions of dollars in campaign donations shown above, the much bigger question is: How much cash ended-up in Politicians PRIVATE Crypto Accounts ?????? Many observers believe “Billions” got siphoned-off the Ukraine “Aid” and other “Foreign Aid.
Kittencal’s Perfect Prime Rib Roast Beef
“NOTE…THE INTERNAL TEMPERATURE NOT THE TIME IS YOUR BEST GUARANTEE FOR DONENESS so for a perfectly cooked prime rib roast invest in a meat thermometer and you will never go wrong with this recipe!
— if desired you may omit the au jus and just serve the roast, I prefer to make the au jus especially if I am serving this at a holiday table
— Use nothing else but only fresh garlic, a little salt and lots of fresh ground black pepper for this or you could use 1 teaspoon garlic salt, using any other spices will take away the flavor, nothing else is needed
— Cooking on very high heat then reducing the temperature will seal in all the meat juices to produce the most tender and flavorful prime rib, this actually is the method that a lot of the higher end restaurants use to make there prime rib and is the method I always use when I make prime rib roast at my home
— The cooking time stated on the recipe is for a 3-4 pound prime rib, you can use this method for a larger prime rib and increase the cooking time please see bottom of directions
— For a perfectly cooked prime rib roast a meat thermometer inserted in the roast should read about 140 degrees for medium-rare doneness, it is advised not to cook prime rib more that medium-rare
—– Using more that the specified amount of salt will draw out the juices from the roast, you could add a little more but it is best to salt the meat after it is cooked, using a minimum amount of salt will insure a juicy tender prime rib roast, 1 teaspoon or less of salt will be fine, remember to remove your roast from the fridge about 2 hours before cooking
2022 11 14 17 19
Ingredients
3 -4 lbs center-cut prime rib roast, nicely marbled, and trimmed, but leave a layer of fat on top of roast for flavor
8 fresh large garlic cloves, sliced in half (or use many as desired)
2 cups beef stock (or use a good quality beef broth)
Directions
Using a knife, poke small holes all over uncooked roast, and insert a half of a clove of fresh garlic in the hole (as many holes and as much garlic as desired).
Cover roast, and refrigerate overnight.
The next day, remove the roast from fridge and uncover; let sit out at room temperature for about 2 to 2-1/2 hours (this is an important step to relax the meat fibers, it will make for a more tender juicy roast, the length of counter-time will depend on the size of your roast).
Set oven to 450°F and allow the oven to preheat for a minimum of 15 minutes.
Season the roast with only a small amount of salt but lots of fresh ground black pepper pepper (that’s all nothing else but a little salt and fresh ground black pepper, using any other spices will take away the flavor from the prime rib!).
Place the roast fat-side up on a rack in a shallow-sided pan, then insert a meat thermometer in the middle of the roast but not touching any rib bones.
Roast uncovered at 450°F for 20 minutes (a few more minutes won’t hurt at 450°F).
After 20 minutes of high heat cooking reduce heat to 350°F and continue to roast for 1 hour to 1 hour and 15 minutes OR until the meat thermometer reads 130°F for rare doneness OR 140°F for medium-rare doneness, that is the way a prime rib really should be served, check your roast after 1 hour cooking time.
*NOTE* It is strongly advised to remove the roast slightly before desired degree of doneness is achieved as the roast will continue to rise in temperature several degrees after removing from the oven.
Remove meat to a carving board.
Cover loosely with foil and allow let rest (DO NOT CUT INTO ROAST for at least 20 or more minutes or all juices in the meat will flow out).
While the roast is resting prepare the au jus; place the roasting pan on top of the stove over high heat.
Add in the wine; cook for 8-10 minutes, stirring and scraping any brown bits.
Add in the beef stock; cook and reduce the juice by half (this might take about 20 minutes).
Add salt and pepper to taste.
Slice roast (just before serving!) and drizzle with some of the juice.
*NOTE* if desired you can cover the roast loosely with foil the first hour and then uncover and cook for the remaining time.
——————————————–.
APPROXIMATE COOKING TIMES for the prime rib cooked at 350°F after the 20 minute cooking time at 450°F.
Rare; cook 12-13 minutes per pound or to 130°F.
Medium-rare; cook 14-16 minutes per pound or to 140°F (I would not recommend cooking a prime rib any more than medium-rare).
Since every oven cooks differently cooking times are only approximate.
SUGGESTED SERVING PORTIONS PER PERSON —-for a generous serving of prime rib roast you should figure on 2 people per rib, that means if you plan to serve 6 people you should be able to do so with 3 ribs/ eight people with 4 ribs/ do not bother with less than 3 ribs anything less than that is not a roast but rather a steak and would be better treated as such.
Zhuhai Air Show 2022: Aircrafts, Missiles & UAVs Built By China Reviewed
The aerobatic flight show conducted by four J20s yesterday was absolutely exhilarating even in relatively imperfect weather conditions. People on site were so obsessed with it that most still kept their eyes fixed on J20s after their landings, talking about their shows and nobody realized that a J16 has already taken off and performed several amazing maneuvers.
TSMC 7nm process capacity utilization falling rapidly
This report coincides with an earlier report that China has already begun to mass produce the 7nm chipset.
Biden policy NOW helps to hand over the world biggest chip market exclusively to Chinese chip makers.
The end result is all other chip makers will lost economic of scale, and become noncompetitive.
Capacity utilization rates for TSMC’s 7nm process platform and its process variants N6, N7 have fallen below 50%, according to industry sources.
Many IC design customers are cutting orders and delaying pull-ins of TSMC’s 7nm process. Companies that have had the biggest impact include MediaTek, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Qualcomm, Apple, and Intel, as well as Chinese companies like Unisoc, which have been restricted by bans. TSMC has not responded to market rumors.
Despite the market downturn, TSMC recently expressed confidence. However, TSMC’s utilization rates for its 7nm and 6nm processes have fallen and are not expected to return to previous levels until the first half of 2023, according to sources.
The largest application for 7nm and 6nm is smartphones, PCs, servers, and other high-performance computing (HPC). High inventory levels in the mobile phone and PC supply chains, combining with performance pressures, have led to order adjustments, even at the risk of affecting long-term relationships with TSMC.
Qualcomm and MediaTek have both warned about the seriousness of smartphone inventory levels and have taken conservative views of the near future.
MediaTek has high levels of entry-level and mid-range smartphones, and has been more affected by the weak market. It expects fourth-quarter performance to fall by 20% sequentially. Sources pointed out that MediaTek is one of the largest players in this wave of foundry order cuts.
Sources revealed that the utilization rate for the 7nm family at Fab 15B in Taichung is lower than expected. It has reportedly dropped below 50% and is expected to worsen in the first quarter of 2023. Plans for Fab 22 in Kaohsiung have been shelved indefinitely, according to sources. TSMC is expected to revisit the plans depending on future production capacity requirements.
Construction progress of Fab 12 P8 in the Hsinchu Science Park is also unknown, sources said.
According to sources, Intel was previously expected to expand its outsourcing strategy with a large order using TSMC’s 7nm process, but reduced its order as a result of weak market conditions and lower-than-expected PC and server shipments. Intel’s Arc A series of GPUs are built using TSMC’s 6nm process node, while its Xe-HPC architecture Ponte Vecchio uses the 7nm process node.
Despite the continuous launch of new products, pull-in momentum is weak, sources said. TSMC’s top 10 customers have all made order adjustments, including the return of new orders from Nvidia for 7nm A100 chips and 4nm H100 chips, as well as adjustments and pull-in delays for the RTX 40 series. Intel has also made significant changes to its 4nm and 3nm orders.
Regardless, TSMC remains the leader in advanced processes. Order visibility for 5nm and below is still relatively high. Not only does AMD’s newest Zen 4 architecture Genoa server and RDNA 3 architecture GPU use TSMC’s 5nm process, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 uses the 4nm process.
Starting in 2023, TSMC will take a large order for Apple’s latest Mac series, which has an annual shipment scale of 20 million units, sources said. Orders for iPhones and iPads will be stable.
Sources noted that once inventory has been cleared, global IC design customers including Broadcom, Marvell, and MediaTek will expand their orders with TSMC.
DHS Censorship Agency Strange First Mission: Banning Speech That Casts Doubt On Election
Very long. Bored me to no end, but important for Americans to read. -MM
Unfortunately, this country is headed for a horrible outcome. No self-governing society can suffer the strain to civil society that comes from loss of regime credibility. This overt and actual illegal censorship, in violation of the First Amendment, must be brought to a halt. How that takes place, really doesn’t matter anymore.
The US Department of Homeland Security is actively engaged in the deprivation of American’s constitutionally protected free speech rights. They are using our own tax money to strip away our rights. The full report, done by the Foundation for Freedom Online, appears below:
DHS Censorship Agency Strange First Mission: Banning Speech That Casts Doubt On Election
SUMMARY
Network throttled millions of posts ahead of 2020 election, blocked “emerging narratives” from reaching “virality threshold.”
Censors boast on video of getting tech companies to ban entire categories of election speech under threat of “huge regulatory pressure.”
Months before the 2020 election, censors systematically targeted all speech categories that could challenge a future “red mirage, blue shift” election scenario.
Last week, The Intercept published a set of leaks that drew broad interest in perhaps the most under-covered scandal inside the US government today: the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) quiet move to establish, for the first time in US history, an explicitly inward-facing domestic censorship bureau.What The Intercept glimpsed, however, is just the tip of a much larger iceberg.The size, scale and speed of DHS’s censorship operation are vastly larger have been reported. Based on our investigation, below are seven bottom-line figures summarizing the scope of censorship carried out by DHS speech control partners, as compiled from their own reports and videos:
22 Million tweets labeled “misinformation” on Twitter;
859 Million tweets collected in databases for “misinformation” analysis;
15 tech platforms monitored for “misinformation” often in real-time;
<1 hour average response time between government partners and tech platforms;
Dozens of “misinformation narratives” targeted for platform-wide throttling; and
Hundreds of millions of individual Facebook posts, YouTube videos, TikToks, and tweets impacted, due to “misinformation” Terms of Service policy changes that DHS partners openly plotted and bragged tech companies would never have done without DHS partner insistence and “huge regulatory pressure” from government.
The citations above are from just the DHS censorship network’s impact on the 2020 election cycle alone. That was two years ago, when the narrative management machine referenced by The Intercept was first getting formed. Even the above figures, however, just scratch the surface of the full story.
While The Intercept rightly noted that DHS’s “truth cops“ now take on a range of other topics – such as Covid-19 and geopolitical opinions – it all started from, and grew out of, DHS’s speech control infrastructure set up to censor speech about elections.
That started with the 2020 election. But it continues, importantly, with the 2022 midterm elections, which are ongoing this week.
The whole story, however, has not all been published in one place. In this report, we seek to provide a comprehensive history and network map of DHS’s public-private censorship network, as told through a deep dive into its first mission — the censorship of the 2020 election.
Along the way, we will highlight the network’s role in censoring the ongoing 2022 midterm elections.
In the final section of this report, we will cover a particularly disturbing aspect of this story — DHS’s pre-censorship of speech that could “cast doubt” on a so-called “red mirage, blue shift” election scenario, months in advance of such an exact sequence playing out.
Background History & Cast Of Characters
In this background section, we will present a history and overview of the key players participating in DHS’s extended censorship network, with special attention to its formation in the run-up to the 2020 election.
This story has two main institutional sides: the government within DHS and the non-governmental side consisting of a web of like-minded private sector and civil society partners. Together, this network forms the DHS public-private censorship network that is the subject of this report.
The Government Side: Chris Krebs’s CISA
The key coordinating hub for the government side is an “obscure government agency” named CISA, which is tucked within DHS, and was created by act of Congress in November 2018, nominally to defend America against cybersecurity threats from hostile foreign actors (e.g., Russian hackers).
CISA’s longform name, the “Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency” has none of the Orwellian overtones of the “Disinformation Governance Board”. CISA took great pains to cloak itself as just a simple, security-focused cybersecurity directorate. CISA’s founding director, Chris Krebs, was fond of telling audiences that CISA was just “The agency that cares so much about security, it’s in our name twice”.
CISA’s mission was supposed to be cyber security. Not cyber censorship.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the 2020 election.
First, on January 6, 2017, outgoing Obama Administration DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson designated “election infrastructure” as being “critical infrastructure” under the purview of DHS protection.
This designation, born out of unsubstantiated claims that Russia had just stolen, hacked or otherwise materially interfered with the 2016 election, tasked DHS with protecting election-related structure, such as polling places, voting machines and computer systems.
CISA’s Internet censorship power grew out of interpreting “critical infrastructure” beyond its hard physical meaning to apply to meta-physical concepts. By 2019, “foreign disinformation” on social media was increasingly framed as a “cyber threat” to election infrastructure.
Through this framing mechanism, CISA’s “cybersecurity” authority morphed into a “cybercensorship” authority. However, this move was initially limited to CISA only targeting “foreign disinformation”, through DHS’s Countering Foreign Influence Task Force.
But when the 2016 election-era “Russian interference” Special Prosecutor’s probe ended in July 2019 with former FBI Director Robert Mueller’s failure to find “collusion” between then-President Trump and outside Russians, DHS and CISA began to change their tunes.
The entire “countering Russian disinformation on social media” apparatus that had been constructed before July 2019 to censor, throttle and identify “foreign disinformation” was quietly, but entirely, pivoted to focus inward on “domestic disinformation.”
This “Foreign-To-Domestic Disinformation Switcheroo” on censorship was never widely conveyed beyond DHS doors out to the American people. It was plotted on DHS’s own livestreams and internal documents. DHS insiders’ collective justification, without uttering a peep about the switch’s revolutionary implications, was that “domestic disinformation” was now a greater “cyber threat to elections” than falsehoods flowing from foreign interference.
This meant that, henceforth, any US citizen posting what DHS considered “misinformation” online was suddenly conducting a cyber attack against US critical infrastructure. That was the legal framework under which DHS – and CISA particularly – drew their jurisdiction.
To illustrate this, we’ve put together a supercut of DHS censorship network partners switching from a “foreign” to a “domestic” predicate for censorship between the 2016 election and the 2020 election:
o CISA’s self-invented censorship powers against “foreign disinformation” went from being pointed outward against supposed Russian bot accounts to being pointed inwards at tens of millions of US citizens simply talking lawfully about their own elections.
The main character in the CISA side of this story is its then-director in 2020, Chris Krebs. After the 2020 election, CISA’s leadership baton was handed to current head Jen Easterly, covered below.
Since this is a story about government censorship and abuse of power, Chris Krebs’s public statements on censorship issues provide insight into the founding intent of the government censorship operation that first grew out of Krebs setting it up. Here are eight data points useful to bear in mind:
Krebs said in April 2022 that the Hunter Biden laptop still looked like Russian disinformation and that Krebs didn’t care whether it was or wasn’t Russian disinformation; the important positive thing, he stressed, was that news media did not cover the laptop during the 2020 election cycle.
Krebs, who administered the federal side of the 2020 election after DHS effectively nationalized election infrastructure on January 6, 2017, said that every lawyer who represented conservative clients on claims concerning 2020 election irregularities should be permanently disbarred and banned from legal practice for life.
Krebs has repeatedly said on record that “misinformation” is the single biggest threat to election security. Note that Kreb’s role in government was not supposed to be as arbiter of truth; he was supposed to be a cybersecurity expert from Microsoft. Yet US domestic citizen opinions on social media became, in Kreb’s estimate, the top “cyber” security threat facing the US, replacing foreign hacking and malware.
After leaving CISA, both of Krebs’s two new jobs in January 2021 were outgrowths of the very CISA censorship network Krebs established with outside partners while in government.
First, shortly before President Biden’s inauguration, Krebs started a private consulting firm with former Facebook executive Alex Stamos, simply called “Krebs Stamos Group.”
a1
Stamos, covered extensively below, was perhaps the top figure overseeing the entire private sector side of the public-private censorship enterprise that Krebs and Stamos jointly built to censor populist political voices during the 2020 election.
It was Stamos who, according to his own group’s report, pitched the idea in July 2020 for DHS to even create a government censorship apparatus in the first place. Although, as we will cover, there is reason to believe such plans between Krebs and Stamos may have started considerably earlier than that reported date.
We will cover this Krebs-Stamos government-academia censorship relationship further below.
Krebs’s other role right after leaving CISA was becoming chair of the Aspen Institute’s “Commission on Information Disorder,” to galvanize a stronger “ whole-of-society” approach to censoring rumors and misinformation on the Internet.
Thus, Krebs – the original government censor – transitioned seamlessly through the revolving door of industry, into lucrative partnerships with private sector censorship professionals and prestigious civil society groups whose stated goal is decreasing the freedom of US citizen speech on the Internet.
Today, Krebs’s seat at the head of CISA is now occupied by Jen Easterly, a former military intelligence official who was deputy director of the National Security Agency (NSA) for counterterrorism. She appears to be taking her military intelligence experience squashing foreign terrorists from Tehran and using it to squash American populists on Twitter.
In October 2021, Easterly and Krebs held a 30-minute taped discussion for CISA’s “Cybersecurity Summit 2021: Continuity of Excellence” summit, in which they mutually agreed that Krebs’s construction of a “counter-misinformation” conglomerate with the private sector was among the top structures to preserve and expand at DHS going forward.
Easterly’s inheritance of Krebs’s censorship machine appears to be corroborated in the ongoing State Attorney General “big tech collusion” lawsuit versus the Biden Administration. There, the court recently ruled that Easterly can be deposed because of her “first-hand knowledge” of the censorship “nerve center” run out of CISA, her seeking “greater censorship… done by federal pressure on social media platforms”, and her reported statements that CISA’s “most critical infrastructure is a cognitive infrastructure.”
Before discussing the private sector side, it should be noted that the government apparatus at DHS is now larger and scattered beyond just CISA. As we have previously reported.
Let’s now move on to the private sector side of the equation. To whom did Chris Krebs and CISA outsource the task of mass social media censorship of the 2020 election? Who runs the private sector side and how is it all structured?
The Election Integrity Partnership
The main institutional character on the private sector side we will focus on in this story is a “counter-disinformation” collective called the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP). EIP is made up of four of the most powerful and politically well-connected social media monitoring and mass-reporting groups in the world. Their respective directors were all early industry pioneers in the rise of the censorship industry after the 2016 election.
The four entities comprising EIP are two universities, an influential foreign policy think tank, and a private social media analytics firm. They are, respectively:
Stanford Internet Observatory;
Washington University’s (UW) Center for an Informed Public;
The Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research Lab; and
Graphika.
One common thread connecting these four entities is that each of their directors were involved in aggressively alleging (unsubstantiated) claims from January 2017 through early 2020 that Russian interference had helped Donald Trump win the 2016 election by using inauthentic bots and troll accounts on social media.
Each of the four entities comprising EIP is also deeply connected to the US military and foreign policy establishment. These four institutions further came into the 2020 election cycle with deep pre-existing connections to the major social media companies’ content moderation teams, having worked together on censorship issues since the field first began developing in 2017.
It is very helpful to understand EIP’s network and operations in depth, because it was through EIP that DHS built the infrastructure for its current role as government coordinator of takedowns and throttling of US citizen speech online.
Just to make this all perfectly clear up front, below is EIP leader Alex Stamos explaining the whole DHS-EIP partnership was set up to outsource censorship through EIP, “to try to fill the gap of the things that the government could not do themselves” because the government “lacked both kinda the funding and the legal authorizations”:
Things are advancing very rapidly. Very rapidly. I made up a video yesterday and the next two videos are explaining what is going on…
Check out these two videos. Both are important.
Putin’s historic speech finalizes referenda, infuriates Collective West
EMERGENCY! This is heading for ALL OUT WAR and Putin knows it.
How to get drunk
Ernest Hemingway, one of the 20th century’s most famous drinkers, once quipped, “I drink to make other people more interesting.” Perhaps you have found yourself thinking something similar when you’ve been stuck in an awkward conversation with a stranger at a bar, or when you’re out on a date which is filled with painfully long silences. Your immediate reaction might be to reach for the nearest bottle of wine until you can escape. But is there a better way to enjoy drinking? While alcohol should always be consumed in moderation, you can also get just the right amount of buzz so you can enjoy your evening, but won’t feel a sickening hangover in the morning.
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I suggest that everyone enjoy your moments this October with your family, pets and loved ones. Buy a good bash of food, and tie a good one one. Make this evening a notable one.
The U.S. is now involved in more than 130 wars or none, depending on your definition of ‘war.’ Or it is involved in one worldwide “War Against Terror,” that successive U.S. Administrations, with Congressional support, have used to justify U.S. military operations in at least 134 countries, where they are engaged in direct combat operations, conduct special covert missions, act as military advisers, or train foreign troops or militias.
The problem is that our traditional definition of “war” is outdated, and so is our imagination of what war means.
World War II was the last time Congress officially declared war. Since then, the conflicts we’ve called “wars” — from Vietnam through to the second Iraq War — have actually been congressional “authorizations of military force.”
And more recently, beginning with the War Powers Act of 1973, presidential war powers have expanded so much that, according to the Congressional Research Service, it’s no longer clear whether a president requires congressional authorization at all to engage in war.
The recent US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will likely be the last time, in the foreseeable future, that the United States wages war in the way that’s most familiar to us: a lot of combat troops on the ground in a foreign country with lots of money and support and an ostensibly achievable objective.
US troop presence in Iraq peaked at 187,900 in 2008. In Afghanistan, it peaked in 2010 at 100,000.
On paper, it looked like the United States was fighting two wars. But the reality was much more complicated, and it’s only gotten more complicated. So how many wars is the US fighting right now?
Somewhere between zero and 134+.
Here’s the rationale:
Total # of wars: 0
Congress hasn’t declared war since 1942 so there is no war right now.
Okay, that makes no sense.
Look at a funding profile over time. It’s very clear.
x
From this graph, we can CLEARLY see that American spending on weapons and military are clearly indicative of America waging active wars.
To ignore that outrageous and obvious “tell tale” is to act the fool.
Total # of wars: 6
This maybe sounds more reasonable.
Consider the definition of war put forth by Linda Bilmes (Harvard Kennedy School) and Michael Intriligator (UCLA), who defined war in a 2013 paper as “conflicts where the US is launching extensive military incursions, including drone attacks, but that are not officially ‘declared.’”
By that definition, the United States is at war in six places right now:
Iraq
Afghanistan
Pakistan
Somalia
Yemen
Ukraine
Total # of wars: 8
If you include nations that have American military, American military uniforms, weapons and systems, and is led with / by American generals. This then, adds two additional nations to the list above.
South Korea
Taiwan
Total # of wars: 134+
Whoa! Surprising, right?
In 2013, the US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) — one of the nine organizational units that make up the Unified Combatant Command — had special operations forces (SOFs) in 134 countries.
The American military were either involved in combat, special missions, or advising and training foreign forces.
Since most of what SOFs do is classified, all we know about them is what we get told about them. Here’s what we’re told by the Joint Chiefs of Staff: What are SOFs?
“Special operations forces (SOF) are small, specially organized units manned by people carefully selected and trained to operate under physically demanding and psychologically stressful conditions to accomplish missions using modified equipment and unconventional applications of tactics against strategic and operational objectives.
The unique capabilities of SOF complement those of conventional forces.”
And what do they do?
“Joint special operations (SO) are conducted by SOF from more than one Service in hostile, denied, or politically sensitive environments to achieve military, diplomatic, informational, and/or economic objectives employing military capabilities for which there is no broad conventional force requirement.
These operations may require low visibility, clandestine, or covert capabilities.
SO are applicable across the range of military operations.
They can be conducted independently or in conjunction with operations of conventional forces or other government agencies and may include operations through, with, or by indigenous or surrogate forces.
SO differ from conventional operations in degree of physical and political risk, operational techniques, use of special equipment, modes of employment, independence from friendly support, and dependence on detailed operational intelligence and indigenous assets.”
Examples: These tasks include;
special reconnaissance (SR),
direct action (DA),
unconventional warfare (UW),
foreign internal defense (FID),
counterterrorism, counterproliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
SOCOM admited to having forces on the ground in 134 countries around the world (in 2014).
That doesn’t mean its forces are carrying out capture or kill raids in every country, but it’s almost impossible to know where and when different operations are taking place.
That’s especially true when it comes to the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), an operational command within SOCOM that operates with an enormous amount of autonomy and secrecy — and, some would say, little accountability.
Founded after the failed mission to rescue American hostages in Tehran in 1980 and designed to handle similarly complex operations in the future, JSOC was a classified and little used command on Sept. 11, 2001.
Since then, it’s more than tripled in size, received an ever-increasing share of funding, and has conducted operations in dozens of countries.
(Journalist Jeremy Scahill wrote in depth about JSOC in his 2013 book, “Dirty Wars.” That’s where the following information comes from.)
JSOC was introduced to the world on May 1, 2011, when Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden in a nighttime raid on his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
The raid was a collaboration between the CIA and an agency almost nobody had heard of: JSOC. “We’re the dark matter,” a Navy SEAL told the Washington Post of JSOC in 2011. “We’re the force that orders the universe but can’t be seen.”
We know more about JSOC now, thanks to investigative reporters like Scahill and Mark Mazzetti. JSOC’s core is made up of three acknowledged “Special Missions Units” (SMUs).
You know these folks from TV and movies:
Army’s 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment (Delta Force),
the Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVRGU or “Seal Team Six”),
the Air Force’s 24th Special Tactics Squadron.
In addition to the SMUs, JSOC has its own intelligence division, the Intelligence Support Activity, and often oversees the 75th Ranger Regiment, the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (the “Night Stalkers”), and other special operations forces. JSOC, along with the Special Activities Division at the CIA, have been the leading edge of counterterrorism.
Journalists Dana Priest and William Arkin found that JSOC has carried out counterterrorism operations in…
Iraq,
Afghanistan,
Algeria,
Iran,
Malaysia,
Mali,
Nigeria,
Pakistan,
the Philippines,
Somalia,
Syria,
Ukraine,
Taiwan,
Yemen.
An anonymous source with close ties to JSOC gave Scahill an even more expansive list that included those countries along with Indonesia, Thailand, Colombia, Peru, and several countries in Eastern and Central Asia.
“The world is a battlefield and we are at war,”
The source told Scahill of the logic that drives JSOC.
“Therefore the military can go wherever they please and do whatever it is that they want to do, in order to achieve the national security objectives of whichever administration happens to be in power.”
Add such nations of Iran, Bolivia, Kenya and more to the list and it seems really hard to keep track of all the killing, and wars that the United States is involved in.
Total # of wars: 1
“The world is a battlefield” isn’t just a vague, hawkish worldview — it’s a legal understanding of military force in the age of a single, global war: the War on Terror.
The world is a battlefield thanks in large part to the Authorization for Use of Military Force, which Congress passed on Sept. 14, 2001 and which gives the President of the United States broad power to fight terrorism around the world.
It reads in part:
“The President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determined planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2011, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.”
A video that discusses what is next
Yuppur. The USA has Taiwan in it’s sights. Please check out this “must see” video…
Conclusion
So how many wars would you say the United States is now fighting?
Here is a short blurb of an article about a mystery. Please take a moment and enjoy the mystery presented here. Savor it. It will make good conversational discussion with some friends at the pub, or at the water fountain at work.
…
Stories of ghost ships adrift in the vast expanses of ocean have survived since man first took to the sea. Legends about ships like The Flying Dutchman, which was lost under the leadership of Van der Decken near the Cape of Good Hope as they traveled toward the East Indies, continue to spring up in reports given by sailors claiming to see the cursed vessel ever continuing on its voyage.
Another famous ship, the Mary Celeste, was found adrift in the Atlantic Ocean in 1872, completely unharmed and in good working order, but missing its crew, a lifeboat, and the captain’s logbook. All of the crew’s possessions remained on board, as well as its untouched payload of 1500 barrels of alcohol, prompting a number of theories ranging from mutiny to poisoning to sheer madness.
The two-thirds of our planet covered by water has always been ripe with mysteries, thanks in large part to its ability to swallow ships, airplanes, survivors, and wreckage into its depths, never to be seen again. Without any evidence left behind to help us to understand what happens on ships like the Mary Celeste, the mystery proves enduring, and like a fine wine, mysteries often get better with age. But not every ghost ship is lost at sea. Some ghost ships, in fact, are of the airborne variety.
Nazi U-Boats proved to be a significant threat to allied naval efforts throughout World War II, prompting a number of novel approaches to spotting and combating submarines before they could sneak up on our ships. One such approach was the use of L-Class blimps, which could float above the ocean and spot submerged enemy vessels.
On the morning of August 16th, 1942, Lieutenant Ernest Cody and Ensign Charles Adams climbed aboard their L-8 Airship, a former Goodyear Blimp that had been procured by the Navy in April of that year to deliver equipment to the carrier USS Hornet (CV-8) while at sea. Their mission was simple: head out to sea from their post on Treasure Island in California and look for any signs of enemy submersibles.
Prior to the August flight, Lt. Cody had flown the L-8 out to the Carrier Hornet to make one last delivery as the ship, and sixteen B-25 bombers, headed across the Pacific, bound for Tokyo. (National Archives) .
“We figured by that time it was a submarine,” said Wesley Frank Lamoureux, a member of the Navy’s Armed Guard Unit who was aboard the cargo ship Albert Gallatin. “From then on, I am not too positive of the actions of the dirigible except that it would come down very close over the water. In fact, it seemed to almost sit on top of the water.”
According to his testimony, the blimp dropped two flares and circled the area, which was in keeping with protocol when investigating the possibility of a German sub. The Albert Gallatin cargo ship, believing the blimp could have located a U-Boat, sounded the general alarm, manned their guns, and made a hasty exit from the area. It would be the last time anyone would see the L-8 operating under the controls of its crew.
A few hours later, the massive air-ship approached the quiet town of Daly City, California. The sagging blimp eventually came to rest after getting snagged in power lines and crashing onto Bellevue Avenue. Crowds quickly amassed in the chaos and a number of people approached the wreckage in hopes of saving the crew… only to find the cabin empty.
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The pilot’s parachute remained where it had been stowed before the trip, the lifeboat was still there as well. The pilot’s cap sat atop the instrument panel, and its payload of two bombs was secured. A briefcase containing confidential documents the crew had orders to dispose of if compromised also remained on board. The only things out-of-place were the blimp itself, and its missing crew.
Like the Mary Celeste, the L-8’s crew had seemed to vanish without a trace, prompting its own slew of theories.
Some assumed both the pilot and ensign had simply fallen out of the vessel, though it would have been nearly impossible to do so without both crew members leaving the cabin of the ship while it was still airborne. If there was something damaged that required both men to address on the external hull of the vessel, there was no evidence to suggest what it was in the wreckage.
The blimp finally came to rest atop Richard Johnston’s freshly waxed car in Daly City, Calif. just South of San Francisco. (National Archives) .
Another theory postulated that the two men, were taken prisoner. They supposed that in the course of investigating the oil slick, lowered their blimp enough to be taken prisoner by the crew of the U-Boat or a Japanese vessel.
Still, others postulated that the two men were embroiled in a love triangle that drove one to kill the other and then escape by diving into the sea.
Other suppose a UFO was involved and either Reptilians or other dangerous extraterrestrials abducted them for heinous experimentation.
Despite a thorough investigation, no conclusion could ever be drawn.
It’s war over Taiwan just like RAND specified. This comes at the heels of the great proxy war loss in Ukraine.
What has been made perfectly clear:
1. Taiwan is part of China. This is internationally recognized and has been since all the way back to soon after WWII.
2. China does not want Pelosi to "visit", and certainly not for her publicly expressed purpose of sedition and promises of military support from the US for such a purpose.
3. China will act in its sovereign interest on this and every other matter and if it so wishes it will be with any degree of violence of its choosing.
4. China repeatedly and consistently states points 1 to 3 and has done so every since the "one China" policy came into force a long time ago.
Simple, unambiguous, and clear.
There is nothing to not understand in the above.
-Sunny Runny Burger
Big changes everywhere, and I am smack dab in the middle of a big move. I will be quiet on all platforms for about a week. Do not fret. I am well, and I am safe.
America has decided to pick on China. And they are pushing towards this end with aggression.
[1] Biden calls Xi Peng
First up. Watch this very telling description of the talk between President Biden, and Xi Peng of China…
About 16 minutes. Well worth the watch.
Now,
[2] Check out this stuff from Hal Turner…
China Armor Headed To Fujian – Across from Taiwan; Navy Starts Live Fire Drills in Taiwan Strait
China is extremely displeased with the potential trip by USA Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, to Taiwan, and they are openly warning of military action if the Speaker dares to try landing in Taiwan without approval from, and transiting through, Beijing.
Pelosi is reported to have begun her Asia trip yesterday, with stops in various countries. One potential stop may be into Taiwan.
In the past, if any high ranking political official from any country, wanted to go to Taiwan, that official asks for permission from Beijing, then travel TO Beijing, and later heads to Taiwan. This is the way it has always been given that the world has a “one China” policy and that Taiwan is part of China.
Last year, however, U.S. officials began flying directly into Taiwan. To China, this was like getting a finger stuck in their eye. It was insulting and demeaning that the island was being treated as if it were its own country, which it is not.
So when it became public knowledge that Speaker Pelosi was planning an Asia trip, with a stop in Taiwan, China decided they’d had enough.
It was made known in China official state media that Beijing will not tolerate direct flights by foreign officials into Taiwan. The U.S. basically ignored those challenges.
China’s “Global Times” newspaper, then began running a series of stories with accompanying editorials making clear a direct flight by Pelosi would not be tolerated.
In response, the Pentagon made known that the US Navy is setting-up concentric circles of “protection” for Pelosi’s plane!
Not only does Pelosi plan to enter Taiwan without getting approval from, or transiting through Beijing, now the US military is saying they will provide military protection for here to actually do it! It’s almost as though the U.S. no longer acknowledges that China is its own sovereign country, and it makes the rules.
The Pentagon announcement of military protection for Pelosi’s plane caused even more backlash. Just yesterday, the top Editor of the ‘Global Times” which is the mouthpiece of the China Communist Party, said the following:
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Yes. From the Chinese point of view, it is a MILITARY INVASION.
While some may say “He’s just an Editor giving a newspaper opinion” readers must understand that media in China is tightly controlled by the Communist Party. Absolutely nothing appears in China media unless it is approved by – or speaks for – the Communist Party. So while the remarks above appear in a newspaper, they are very much the actual positions of the China government.
In addition to that very blunt and direct warning of having Pelosi aircraft FIRED UPON, China’s army began moving trainloads of Armor into Fujian Province, which is in mainland China, precisely opposite Taiwan:
Even more ominous, China’s Navy announced sudden, unscheduled, LIVE FIRE naval exercises in the Taiwan Strait:
x
It is therefore clear that China has had quite enough of the US thinking it can do whatever it wants. There very well may be a serious confrontation over Pelosi’s trip . . . if she tries to enter Taiwan.
UPDATE 8:58 AM EDT —
CONFIRMED! Pelosi has taken off in a US Air Force C-40 aircraft, headed out toward the Pacific Ocean, as of early Saturday morning:
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UPDATE 10:39 AM EDT —
Pelosi’s plane made a landing in Hawaii around 9:00 AM EDT:
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“If Pelosi tries to visit Taiwan, the Chinese will respond militarily.
Asked to comment on a recent Financial Times report which suggested Beijing would respond military should the speaker of the House visit Taiwan, China’s government confirmed the contents as true:
‘We are seriously prepared,’ Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said in regards to the article.
‘If the US side is bent on going its own way, China will take strong measures to resolutely respond and counteract. The United States should be held responsible for any serious consequences’” the official added.
We do not know what kind of military response, but at the moment, the American aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan and its strike group, including a guided missile destroyer and a guided missile cruiser, set out from Singapore on Monday heading northeast towards the South China Sea, according to ship-tracking information provided by Beijing-based think tank the South China Sea Strategic Probing Initiative. The US military has not disclosed its final destination, but the route would bring the carrier group to the Taiwan Strait if it continues in the same direction.
The US administration fears that China could introduce a no-fly zone over Taiwan ahead of a possible visit by Speaker of the US House of Representatives
These provocations are a threat to the whole world, as are the provocations to Russia. Yet, the US and its cronies have failed to overthrow Hong Kong, they have failed to create an economic disaster in Xinjiang to destabilize this crossroad on the Belt and Road, and they failed in the Tibet Autonomous Region which is now a thriving region with no abject poverty or slave ownership of serfs and with protected religious and social mores, they failed the Trump trade war, and they will fail in Taiwan. They are failing in Latin America, they are even failing in Panama to safeguard their neoliberal democratic ‘free world’.
While failing everywhere, American politicians live in virtual reality and most seriously believe that the world belongs to them…”
UPDATE 10:52 AM EDT —
Video has just been sent to me from minutes ago, showing part of the LIVE FIRE drill being conducted by China military off the coastline of Fujian Province, opposite Taiwan:
UPDATE 10:56 AM EDT —
China has just CLOSED the Taiwan Strait:
Closed.
PLA Helicopters in Fujian Province take-off for “exercises.” A group of Z-10 attack helicopters of the People’s Liberation Army of China takes to the range on the shores of the Taiwan Gulf during a large-scale live-fire exercise.
x
UPDATE 11:10 AM EDT —
Taiwan is now deploying Air Defense Missiles, including at Taoyuan International Civil Airport!!!!!
UPDATE 1:00 PM EDT —
U.S. Navy vessels in the area of Taiwan have begun their own, unscheduled, LIVE FIRE Exercises.
UPDATE 1:30 PM EDT —
Video from a US Navy source aboard fleet nearing Taiwan. Look what shows up at 23 seconds into the video . . .
UPDATE 2:00 PM EDT —
From early this week, Taiwan has been engaging in actual Civil Defense Drills, with Sirens and evacuations, so people of the island know where to get into shelters when China attacks.
UPDATE 3:00 PM EDT —
The Editor of China’s “Global Times” has tweeted the official position of China’s Communist Party:
"If Pelosi really visits Taiwan as planned, the Tsai Ing-wen authorities are accomplices.
The mainland will definitely carry out severe punishment actions on Taiwan at the same time.
The unbearable consequences will fall on Tsai authorities." -
Hu Xijin 胡锡进
@HuXijin_GT China state-affiliated media
UPDATE 4:00 PM EDT —
From earlier in the day, video now emerges of China moving a division of the HQ-22 medium-range air defense system of the People’s Liberation Army of China toward the coastline of Fujian Province. (This is a CORRECTION from previously mis-identified hardware)
UPDATE 4:35 PM EDT —
China’s military is still engaged in LIVE FIRE Exercises in Fujian Province, now firing missiles out to sea:
The Russian Wikipedia page for Pelosi has been updated to show her death date as 31st July, 2022.
UPDATE 5:34 PM EDT —
The map below may be helpful for readers to grasp the potential theater of war in and around Taiwan:
x
[3] Nuclear armed B-1 with four fighter wing escorts
Clearly, America is flying a nuclear armed B-1 bomber alongside the American leadership with four squadrons of support fighters into Chinese national territory.
This is obviously a war move, and technically an invasion.
American invasion of Taiwan.
[4] Russia and China hold High-level discussions
Not reported in the Western “news” media.
Conclusions
I will be going silent for the next week. Not so much because of geopolitical issues, but due to personal reasons. Do not worry.
…
On the Geopolitical front, the United States is run by pure maniacs and they are doing more than “just” provoking China.
"If US fighter jets escort Pelosi’s plane into Taiwan, it is an invasion.
The PLA has the right to forcibly dispel Pelosi’s plane and the US fighter jets, including firing warning shots and making the tactical movement of obstruction.
If ineffective, then shoot them down"..
-Hu Xijin, Chinese state journalist and the former editor-in-chief and party secretary of the Global Times. From HERE
They are flying military aircraft with American leadership into China.
China will respond.
…
American “news” media will go full-on bullshit. “Proud and just America fighting for democracy against the evil ruthless vile Chinese. With America winning battle after battle… Yada. Yada. Yada.”
You won’t know anything. The truth will be hidden.
Keep in mind that China DOES NOT PLAY GAMES.
I do not know what they will do.
But I do know that it will HURT.
Life will be forever changed (for all of us) within the next 48 hours.
I often remember the embarrassing events in my life. I suppose that all of us have these memories. Mine are deep scars. The memories are just painful. Sorry. And though from time to time, I feel a need to tell my story (s) I find it difficult to do so. The embarrasment is just too severe.
But you know… I learned form them. As we all have.
We are going to continue on our mish mash of articles here today to describe a world in turmoil and one on fire with hidden wars, secretive plans, mind control, bioweapons, and a total luntic-ruled Western society.
We start with Truth
2022 04 21 21 05
Mistakes in judgement part 1
1440173410311491587 png 700 1
Chinese media: 2 British fighting for Ukraine captured by Russia
One is widely available on the Saker Website, and Graham Phillips Youtube channel. The other is at the RT.com website, posted as “interview”.
I’ve seen both. The critical question was not asked: Did you kill anyone? As mercenaries, both know that they could be subject to the death penalty and aren’t protected by international prisoner of war law….a bit of an oversight when looking for employment…
They don’t seem to be Azov Nazi types, just soldier of fortune types who didn’t think hard enough about what they were doing in Ukraine. But they don’t seem much stupider than most Western supporters of the coup regime.
If you live in most any Western country, your government’s support for Ukraine, including sending weapons and imposing sanctions on Russia, can give the impression of a united global response to President Vladimir Putin’s invasion.
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But that isn’t the case. Most of the world’s 195 countries have not shipped aid to Ukraine or joined in sanctions. A handful have actively supported Russia. Far more occupy the “messy middle,” as Carisa Nietsche of the Centre for a New American Security calls it, taking neither Ukraine’s nor Russia’s side.
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“We live (Americans) in a bubble, here in the US and Europe, where we think the very stark moral and geopolitical stakes, and framework of what we’re seeing unfolding, is a universal cause,” Barry Pavel, a senior vice president at the Atlantic Council, told me. “Actually, most of the governments of the world are not with us.”
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India and Israel are prominent democracies that ally with the United States on many issues, particularly security. But they rely on Russia for security as well and have avoided arming Ukraine or imposing sanctions on Moscow. “In both cases, the key factor isn’t ideology but national interests,” says my New York Times colleague Max Fisher, who has written about Russia’s invasion.
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India is the world’s largest buyer of Russian weapons, seeking to protect itself from Pakistan and China. India joined 34 other countries in abstaining from a United Nations vote that condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. And India appears to be rebuffing Western pleas to take a harder line.
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Israel coordinates with Russia on Iran, its chief adversary, and in neighboring Syria (with which Russia has a strong relationship). Russian-speaking émigrés from the former Soviet Union also make up a sizable chunk of the Israeli electorate. Israel’s prime minister has avoided directly criticising Putin, and although its government has mediated between Ukraine and Russia, little has come out of the effort.
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Several Latin American, Southeast Asian and African countries have made similar choices. Bolivia, Vietnam and almost half of Africa’s 54 countries declined to support the UN resolution condemning Russia. Some rely on Russian military assistance, said Bruce Jones, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Others don’t want to risk jeopardising trade relations with China, which has parroted Russian propaganda about the war.
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Those countries “might be more accurately described as disinterested,” Fisher says, unwilling to risk their security or economies “for the sake of a struggle that they see as mostly irrelevant.”
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Some countries, citing the West’s history of imperialism and past failures to respect human rights, have justified opposing its response to Ukraine. South Africa’s president blamed NATO for Russia’s invasion, and its UN ambassador criticized the US invasion of Iraq during a debate last month about Ukraine’s humanitarian crisis.
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Other countries, including some that voted to condemn Russia’s invasion, accuse the West of acting counterproductively. Brazil’s UN ambassador has suggested that arming Ukraine and imposing sanctions on Russia risk escalating the war.
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“There’s nothing intellectually incoherent between viewing Russia’s actions as outrageous and not necessarily fully siding with the West’s reaction to it,” Jones told me.
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Autocratic leaders — including in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Nicaragua — may also feel threatened by Ukraine’s resistance and the West’s framing of the invasion as a struggle between democracy and authoritarianism, experts said. “They’re concerned that this could inspire opposition movements in their own countries,” Nietsche said.
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China, with all its economic and military might, has seen the war as a chance to enhance its own geopolitical standing as a counterweight to the United States while still maintaining ties to Russia. The countries recently issued a joint statement proclaiming a friendship with “no limits.” But China has struggled with the delicate balancing act of honoring that commitment without fully endorsing Russia’s invasion: Beijing has denounced Western sanctions but has not appeared to have given Russia weapons or economic aid.
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“China’s support for Russia, while very important, is also carefully hedged and measured,” Fisher says.
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Four countries — North Korea, Eritrea, Syria and Belarus — outright voted with Russia against the UN resolution condemning the invasion of Ukraine. Belarus is a former Soviet state whose autocratic leader asked Putin to help suppress protests in 2020 and allowed Russia to launch part of its invasion from within Belarus.
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Russia intervened in Syria’s civil war on behalf of the Moscow-aligned government there, and Syria is sending fighters who may aid Russian forces in Ukraine.
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It’s not unusual for countries to avoid picking sides on big global issues. Several stayed neutral during World War II; dozens sought to remain free of both United States and Soviet influence during the Cold War.
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But if the war in Ukraine drags on, Jones said, neutral countries could come under stronger international pressure to condemn Moscow. And for countries with close ties to Russia, even neutrality can be an act of courage.
Mistakes in judgement part 2
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The Russian military says it has successfully performed the first test of a new intercontinental ballistic missile.
President Vladimir Putin said the weapon would make the West “think twice” before harbouring any aggressive intentions against Russia.
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(note: Sunzi: the art of war 不战而屈人之兵，crippled the enemy war intention without war is the highest form of war strategy. China often opening released new weapons whenever she perceived a possible US aggression, apparently, putin is doing the same thing. )
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The test launch of the Sarmat missile came amid soaring tensions between Moscow and the West over the Russian invasion of Ukraine and underlined the Kremlin’s emphasis on the country’s nuclear forces.
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The RS-28 Sarmat, colloquially known to the West as the “Satan II”, is a Russian liquid-fueled, MIRV-equipped super-heavy intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) under development by the Makeyev Rocket Design Bureau since 2009. It is intended to replace the R-36M ICBM (SS-18 ‘Satan’) in Russia’s arsenal.
The Sarmat is one of the six new Russian strategic weapons unveiled by Russian President Vladimir Putin on 1 March 2018. The RS-28 Sarmat was expected to make its first test flight in 2022, and enter service later this year.
The RS-28 Sarmat is capable of carrying about 10 tons of payload for either up to 10 heavy, or 15 light, MIRV warheads, as well as an unspecified number of Avangard hypersonic glide vehicles (HGVs) or a combination of warheads. It also carries several countermeasures against anti-ballistic missile systems. The Russian ministry of Defense said that the missile is Russia’s response to the U.S. Prompt Global Strike system.
Sarmat has a short boost phase, which shortens the interval when it can be tracked by satellites with infrared sensors, such as the U.S. Space-Based Infrared System, making it more difficult to intercept. It is speculated that the Sarmat could fly a trajectory over the South Pole, completely immune to any current missile defense system, and that it has the Fractional Orbital Bombardment (FOBS) capability.
According to various sources, RS-28’s launch sites are to be equipped with the “Mozyr” active protection system, designed to negate potential adversary’s first strike advantage by kinetically destroying incoming bombs, cruise missiles and ICBM warheads at altitudes of up to 6 km.
Russian President Vladimir Putin remarked today “The missile will provide food for thought for those who try to threaten Russia.”
UPDATE:
Russia SAYS THE TEST WAS SUCCESSFUL.
“All calculated characteristics are confirmed. Training warheads arrived in a given area in Kamchatka” according to the Ministry of Defense.
The agency recalls that the Sarmat is the most powerful missile in the world with the longest range of targets. It will greatly enhance the military power of the country.
Japan approves ban on luxury car exports to Russia
Japan approved Tuesday a ban on exports of luxury cars and other items to Russia as part of economic sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine. The Cabinet of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida revised a relevant ordinance to implement the embargo on April 5 that will also cover jewelry and artworks.
Do you want something good, quick and tasty for your family? Try this.
2022 04 20 20 34
2022 04 20 20 3a4
Directions
In a bowl, combine the cornstarch, brown sugar, ginger and garlic powder. Stir in broth until smooth. Add soy sauce and molasses; set aside.
In a nonstick skillet or wok, stir-fry steak in oil for 4-5 minutes; remove and keep warm. Stir-fry peppers, celery and onions until crisp-tender, about 5 minutes. Stir broth mixture and add to the vegetables. Return meat to the pan. Bring to a boil; cook and stir until thickened, about 2 minutes. Stir in lemon juice. Serve over noodles if desired.
Germany says Serbia should align with EU policies if it wants to join bloc | Reuters
It’s from Reuters. It’s hard to tell if this is actual reporting or just another narrative out of the West.
It looks like Ukrainian officials are not blowing smoke on this. During the past 24 hours Russian military operations in the Donbas and in Western Ukraine have increased markedly.
I want to share with you some videos from the Intel Slava Z channel on Telegram. While there always is the possibility these are staged propaganda pieces, they appear legitimate.
First up is the shootdown of a Ukrainian combat jet. Thermal footage shows Ukrainian Su-25 attack jet firing flares, in vain, trying to escape an incoming Russian missile. The jet was shot down on 15th of April by Russian Air Defense units.
The second video shows a Chechen in Mariupol inside one of the buildings at Ilyich plant where elements of the Azov battalion hid. This is probably from Saturday, 16 April. It did not turn out well for the Azov thugs:
Chechens Inspect bodies of AZOV battalion in Ilyich Plant in Mariupol
The Russians are busy on several fronts. Let’s start on the southern coast of Ukraine:
Mariupol is under the control of Russia, only a small element of the AZOV battalion is holed up in the Avostol steel plant with their backs to the sea.
The Russians have secured Berdyansk, which is 60 miles west of Mariupol.
There are explosions in Kherson, which is 220 miles west of Berdyansk.
The night sky over Nikolaev (aka Mykolaiv) is on fire with a barrage of airborne explosives. From Nikolaev it is only 80 miles to Odesa.
At present, Russia is controlling the southern coast of Ukraine with a combination of naval and ground forces. Once Odesa falls (and it will fall), Russia will have completely cut off Ukraine from its southern ports. (There is no commercial activity now because it is a war zone.)
Then there is the action in the west along the border with Poland. Russia is destroying the military equipment that the United States and NATO are sending to Ukraine. Here is a remarkable video showing three weapon collection sites being hit in Lviv (I do not think this is from a video game because even Fox News reported the strikes). According to Intel Slava Z:
Aviation strikes with high-precision missiles at the 124th Joint Logistics Support Center of the Logistics Command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine near Lviv, – Defense Ministry
The logistics center and the large consignments of foreign weapons that were delivered to Ukraine over the past 6 days from the United States and European countries were destroyed.
But center stage for Russian military operations is to the east in Donbas. Popasnaya sits halfway between Luhansk and Kramatorsk (the site of the missile that killed civilians at the train station a week ago). Russian tanks reportedly are bombarding Ukrainian positions:
If the Ukrainian Army still had intact artillery it would be firing counter-battery rounds at the Russian tanks. That is not happening. When you are fighting a comparable force, doctrine dictates that the tanks fire and then move. (Counter battery fire means that the unit being shelled can fire back and hit the position where the shell originated.) I add the caveat that this video could be an elaborate propaganda production, but comments from Zelensky and his toadies indicate the offensive is underway.
There also are press reports that Russian artillery is firing on Ukrainian units around Kharkov (which is a 160 miles northwest of Popasnaya). The limited ability of the Ukrainian forces to respond in kind means the units are hunkered down and taking a brutal beating. If they poke their heads out of their bunkers they are likely to lose their noggin.
Besides physically killing the Ukrainian soldiers, the Russian sustained bombardments are also killing the will to fight among some of the units. Significant numbers are surrendering to Russian units. The first video shows more than 80 Ukrainians who are now under Russian control:
Here is another group of more than 300 Ukrainian soldiers who gave up:
If Ukraine was succeeding on the ground I am sure we would be seeing daily briefings from the Ukrainian generals touting their latest triumph over Russian forces. The absence of such reports is not the product of some clever Ukrainian plot to deceive the Russians into complacency. The inability to maintain robust lines of communication with the front line units and ensure they are fully supplied with ammunition, weapons and food is a death spiral for any military organization.
Recent new reports in the west state that there are limitations on what the United States and NATO can supply. Here is Bloombergs “rosy” picture:
America is following an “arsenal of democracy” strategy in Ukraine: It has avoided direct intervention against the Russian invaders, while working with allies and partners to provide the Kyiv government with money and guns. . . .Yet as the war reaches a critical stage, with the Russians preparing to consolidate their grip on eastern Ukraine, the arsenal of democracy is being depleted. . . .General Mark Milley, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress that the West has delivered 60,000 antitank weapons and 25,000 anti-aircraft weapons to Kyiv. The Pentagon is now laying plans to rush additional artillery, coastal defense drones and other materiel to Ukraine. The White House on Wednesday announced a new $800 million package including helicopters and armored personnel carriers. . . .Pentagon officials say that Kyiv is blowing through a week’s worth of deliveries of antitank munitions every day. It is also running short of usable aircraft as Russian airstrikes and combat losses take their toll. Ammunition has become scarce in Mariupol and other areas. This is presenting Western countries with a stark choice between pouring more supplies into Ukraine or husbanding finite capabilities they may need for their own defense.
What the Bloomberg reporter forgot to mention is that Russia is blowing up many of those munitions in western Ukraine even before they can be sent to the front.
In writing this hard truth I am frequently accused of simply passing on Russian propaganda. Not true. If you have the videos of the Ukrainians wreaking havoc on the Russians please let me know. I have not seen it.
And as I noted above, I do not doubt for a minute that U.S. news media would be showing these videos if they existed. This may be a decisive week for the continued existence of organized Ukrainian military operations. The Russian military appears to be following Putin’s directive–demilitarize Ukraine.
Australia among biggest new Cold War economic losers
By Rod Tyers and Yixiao Zhou
If tensions between the Western world and China and Russia led to a split into two separate financial and trading systems, Australia would be among the countries most hurt. Proportionately, the hypothetical negative effect on Australia would be larger than on the world as a whole, due to Australia’s relative affluence and dependence on trade
Today it appears that the triumph of our adversaries is total. I want to post this column saying that I don’t believe for one second that this is true. All I want to do today is explain why. Thus, just to make clear to those alternatively gifted, this is not a comprehensive analysis and I will be leaving many things out.
So, here we go:
First, notice how totally paranoid our adversaries are! Depending on how you count and whom you ask, they had 25k to 65k folks in arms “defending” them. Of course, the primary goal of this nonsense is to make it appear as if there was a terrible domestic terrorist force out there, ready to take over DC and open Gulags for minorities. This, in turn, will make it easier to sell a massive crackdown on civil liberties under the guise of “protecting” the (supposed but, in reality, already defunct) “democracy”. But the fact that they had to engage into a witch hunt even to carefully vet every national guardsman (and probably even more people) shows that they are truly afraid. I think that they are wrong, there is no credible domestic terrorist threat in the USA, other than the government itself, of course. But what matters here is not what I think, but what they think, and they seem to have developed a serious case of paranoia.
Second, while I don’t believe in the existence of US domestic terrorists, I do believe that millions of US citizens are convinced that the vote was stolen. These people are understandably disgusted and angry. Many might be desperate or even despondent. Let’s call them the “deplorables” and consider it a badge of honor. Well, these deporables won’t take DC by force, but they will never trust a Dem or GOP politician again, and neither will they ever trust the corporate media. One of the blessings in disguise of this stolen election is that the GOP and Fox News have shown their true faces, and their faces are evil, stupid and ugly. 4 years ago millions of US citizens did not so much vote for Trump as much as they voted against Hillary whom they (correctly) saw as a symbol and metaphor for the entire “deep state”, or “swamp” or “ZOG” or whatever other expression you prefer. These deplorables first trusted Obama (“change we can believe in”) and, later, Trump (MAGA). Now they know that both sides are equally evil and false.
In the past, both factions of the Big Money Party had safety valves (Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street, Rand Paul, Tulsi Gabbard, Bernie Sanders, etc.). I think that now the two parties are literally standing naked and boy is that an ugly sight!
Third, and this point I primarily address to my readers in the USA and that will force me to make a sidebar primarily directed at them:
…
[Sidebar: the planet can be divided into 2 rough parts: ZONE A full controlled by the AngloZionist Empire (Unipolar United States led and it’s proxy naitons) and, ZONE B, which includes everybody else. The vast majority of US Americans are only really aware of Zone A.
Zone A = The West – USA and it’s proxy nations.
Zone B = The East – Russia / China / India / Africa, South America, Middle East
Why? For the following reasons:
Most US Americans have never traveled outside Zone A.
Those US Americans who have traveled outside Zone A typically did so without speaking the local language, thus cutting themselves off the locals and the local media.
Most US Americans get their news from US-based outlets, often combined with a few from elsewhere in the Anglosphere (UK, AUS).
US media outlets lie even more about what happens in Zone B than they lie about Zone A.
US schools have pretty much stopped teaching history, and when they do, it is all propaganda about the “city on the hill” and all the rest of the imperialist claptrap about how exceptional the US is. As a result, when most US Americans are exposed to factoids about Zone B they are not equipped to understand their meaning or importance.
Most US Americans simply assume that people in Zone B are very similar to those in Zone A. Most US Americans also assume that most governments in Zone B are even more evil than Uncle Shmuel.
Most US Americans also believe in what I call the “immigration fallacy”: the belief that people come to the USA from all over the planet because they prefer the USA to their home country and people. Anybody living in the USA and speaking Spanish knows that totally false this belief is, of course. But few non-Hispanic US Americans ever speak in Spanish to the Hispanics in the USA (FYI – I do). Anglos generally seem to have a hard time with languages…
Sadly, most US Americans are not educated by their parents, their religious leaders, their communities, or their schools. Most US Americans get most of their education from watching TV. Since all the US TV channels offer almost the exact same mix of vulgar entertainment, propaganda and commercials, this “education” resulted in a huge amount of massively dysfunctional families and communities. This addiction to a flickering screen (be it the Idiot Tube or You Tube – same difference) gives them a very short attention span and a limited ability to process large amounts of written information, which is what is needed to be able to analyze a situation]
As a direct consequence of these factors, most US Americans live in a “mental space” where Zone B simply does not exist, and when it is mentioned, it is invariable in the “same old clichés” mode.
Finally, considering all of the above, it is truly a miracle that the deplorables completely ignored a massive brainwashing campaign (waaaay worse than anything the Commies or the Nazis ever came up with!) against “Trump the New Hitler” and still voted for him twice, both in 2016 and 2020! It really goes to show that most US Americans quietly but passionately hate the regime in DC and that they use every opportunity they get to at least to try to change their country and their lives by means of voting. Makes you wonder what these “disobedient” deplorables will do the next time around now that voting became clearly a waste of time, don’t it?]
Now here is the good news: Zone B does exist! In fact, it is huge, rich, truly diverse and it has long figured out that both the AngloZionist Empire and even the USA as we knew them have basically died, all that’s left from it is some residual momentum and many bad habits by ignorant, arrogant and delusional US politicians.
Why is that so important?
Because if we allow the Great Satan (actually a very good and exact expression, I think that it fits the new regime perfectly, I will use it more often) to convince us that reality is all contained in Zone A, we could really fall into despair. Yeah, the USA is screwed, and so is all of the EU.
As for US colonies like AUS or NZ, not only are they screwed (say by siding with the USA against a much, MUCH more powerful China), they also seem to have a morbid desire to outstupid even the USA in terms of crazy laws and insane ideological positions (say on COVID, for example).
But all this in ONLY true inside Zone A. Very few people in Zone B still believe that the USA matters a great deal. Most of them already know otherwise, even if this is never reported by Zone A media.
There is even more good news: neither the (rump) AngloZionist Empire nor the (rump) USA represent any credible threat to most countries in Zone B.
Oh sure, US politicians can call Russia a “gas station masquerading as a country” or a “regional power”, the truth is that the united West has completely failed to break, or even meaningfully hurt Russia, despite 46 sanction packages (that’s just by Trump, not counting the “change we can believe in” crook).
Heck, even COVID only marginally hurt Russia (which, unlike the flag-waving pseudo-patriotic crap spewed by western politicians took COVID seriously, very seriously in fact, as early as March and prepared the country for no less than two major outbreaks, both which happened, and both which Russia successfully dealt with; this is why the EU is now in full COVID-hysteria mode, while Russia does not bother to impose any lockdowns at all!).
Now let’s place two US propaganda items side by side and take a look, ok?
The USA has the most powerful economy on the planet.
Russia is the #1 adversary of the USA (at least according to the Dems, the GOP places China as #1 and Russia only as #2)
Do you see the problem?
If the USA is so powerful, how is it that it failed to crush Russia? What about Iran? Or, in extremis, Venezuela? Yet, even the the last case, the “best” this supposed World Hegemon did was send a few clueless ex-special ops to get caught and give case of hysterical laughter to the entire Latin American continent!
And these folks want to take on China or Russia?!
Peuhleeze!
So here is the other very good news: Zone A presents no real threat to Zone B!!!
Yes, of course, the USA can still nuke China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela or some other country. But let’s look at the consequences of such a strike:
Against Russia: the USA simply vanishes as a country. Completely and forever.
Against China: the USA as a society completely collapses for a very, very, VERY long time.
And then we have…
Against Iran: the USA gets stuck in a major regional war it can only lose with massive geostrategic consequences (still, the new regime might try to pull this one off, never say never, no matter how stupid this idea can seem to you – always remember that the ignoramuses in DC are as delusional as they are ignorant!)
Against North Korea: the USA gets stuck in a major regional war it can only lose with massive geostrategic consequences.
Against Venezuela: the USA gets stuck in a counter-insurgency war it can only lose. The comprador regime in Bogota will not survive such a war and Colombia will also “fall”.
Against any other Zone B country: the US successfully nukes this/these country/countries only to find itself being treated like a pariah by the entire planet (including quite a few US colonies), including the real military powers. NATO and the EU will also collapse is that happens (the US being their cornerstone).
The bottom line is that while the US triad is still fully functional and capable of waging a full-scale nuclear war against any adversary (including Russia and, even more so, China), the truth is that all this triad really achieves is making it impossible for another nuclear power to use nukes against the USA.
Which is not minor or irrelevant, the problem here being that the US nuclear triad provides with exactly zero help when trying to deal with any adversary not using nukes (either because this adversary choose not to use nukes due to the effective deterrence of the US nuclear triad or simply because it has no nukes in the first place).
As I have mentioned in the past, the US submarine force is, along with the nuclear triad, the other truly effective and powerful force which the US can count on in case of war.
However, other than launching large numbers of outdated and, therefore, easily countered cruise missiles there is little this force can do to assist a US ground (or, for that matter) air operation against anything but a very weak adversary.
The problem with so-called “sub-peer” adversaries is that they have relatively few lucrative targets to strike with cruise missiles (think Venezuela here). Most of these subpeer adversaries do not have the air defenses needed to deal with any halfway determined US missile and bomb attack and the US can quickly destroy whatever air defenses such “sub-peer” countries have.
So yes, I admit it.
If tomorrow the USA wants a “short and triumphant war”, say to boost morale or distract from internal problems, they could still attack countries like, say, Antigua and Barbuda or Santa Lucia, but such a farce will hardly would qualify as “brilliant victory” of the “best armed forces in the galaxy”, now would it?
Or maybe would, who knows?
If the united propaganda machine wants to present that as a triumph for US forces, like they did with the Grenada invasion (one of the worst military operation in history!) they can do that, of course.
But that would only serve to further ridicule that propaganda machine since 2021 is not 1983, there are now millions of deplorables out there who will never buy this kind of silly nonsense.
Besides, considering how the joint efforts of the USA, Israel and Saudi Arabia (the “Axis of Kindness”) completely failed to deal with the Houthis, my money would not be on any US invasion force in the Caribbean (with the possible exception of a re-invasion of Haiti or the Dominican Republic, but these are already US protectorates, what would be the point?!).
Why does all that matter so much?
Because the Democrats are clearly up to no good.
Next, not only will we see a wave of repression against free speech internally, but the Dems are already making noises about, you guessed it, China and Russia (again!) and, when that inevitably yield exactly zero results, they will turn to “hate on” Iran and Venezuela again.
But even these comparatively weaker countries are now very much capable of making Uncle Shmuel pay an immense price in blood and hell to pay in terms of political blowback on too many fronts to count.
The “power” of a nation (or a coalition of nations) can be measured using very many different type of metrics, but the three most common ones would probably be: economic power, military power and political power. If we use those three to compare Zone A to Zone B, it would be reasonable to posit the following:
Economic power: more more or less equal, with Zone A quickly going down and Zone B quickly rising. Zone A still has A LOT of comprador regimes willing to defend it not only at the UN, but in most international bodies (including non-government ones like the IOC for example, or WADA).
Military power: Zone Avery much weaker than Zone B (just think RU+CN+IN for starters!)
Political power: Zone A still stronger, but that is also changing fast. You can say that most world rulers are still serfs for Zone A, but most people worldwide have long switched their support for Zone B countries. The recent triumph of the people of Bolivia over their oppressors is a very telling sign of this trend.
And here is the key factor to keep in mind: there is nothing, absolutely nothing, the Biden/Harris Admin can do to change these trends. It is simply too late and when the initiation of the internal collapse of the USA, these trends will only accelerate.
===>In other words, there is hope!<===
Yes, the bad guys did win, but only over Trump and his clueless pseudo-allies (did they betray him faster than he betrayed them, or was it the other way around?), but they only won one a battle against the deplorables and they have won exactly nothing against Zone B.
They also relish in humiliating Trump and those who dared to support him. This is the political equivalent of torturing people in basements, not winning glorious battles. But they don’t realize that, they are too vain, too ideologically hateful, and too cowardly to understand that.
Still, brainwashing, like torture (including mental torture!), is real.
In this case, this is a battle for the minds of the deplorables who now have to be beaten down into a catatonic state of total submission and compliance. The Dems are using lies, their favorite weapon, but their assault is real, nonetheless. And this is the battle which we, those who opposed imperialism, have to fight – the battle for the minds of the people in Zone A: we need to show them that the pseudo-reality of Zone A has no real existence outside the Idiot Box and the vapid rhetoric of US decision makers.
We have to mentally prepare for a sharp increase in the amount and scope of the lies the US propaganda machine will be telling us (if you thought the last 4 years were bad, prepare for much, much worse; good example here).
And, of course, expect LOTS of false flags, especially to demonstrate the reality of the alleged danger coming from the “domestic terrorists”. That will all go down against a background of a full-spectrum attack on free speech, dissent and any form of actual (as opposed to pretend) thought, really.
The irony is, of course, that the coming witch hunt (it will be way worse than Salem or McCarthy) will be waged in the name of diversity and ostensibly against “hate”. In reality, of course, what the regime wants is to crush real diversity because the leaders of the US Nomenklatura absolutely hate everything besides their sorry selves.
Like all ideologues, what these folks want is 1) total power and 2) total uniformity. All those rejecting these modern dogmas will be branded as criminals, terrorists, heretics, racist and, of course, Russian and Chinese agents.
And that is why this regime will also fail.
Conclusion: diversity WILL win. The REAL diversity, of course!
Our planet is wonderfully diverse, especially outside the uniformity sector of Zone A. There IS a Zone Bout there, and the leaders of Zone A will be defeated by our real common and shared humanity (and their hatred for us!).
Somewhere between Obama and Trump, the world has moved on, and it is now very busy dealing with the immense challenges and opportunities facing it in Zone B.
And no, neither Russia nor China is busy trying to sabotage or undermine the USA – US leaders are doing that much better job of that than any Russian or Chinese ever could. So why even bother (and nevermind the risks!)?
We cannot predict what will happen next, there are simply too many variables to do that. But what we can do is predict with a great degree of confidence that the new regime in power in DC will do no better than all the other regimes which came to power by means of color revolutions in the past couple of decades.
There is no hope left for the Empire.
As for the USA people, there will be plenty of hope left for them, but only after a long and painful process of collapse and rebirth (both of which are inevitable by now).
The truth is that US is not that unique as empires go.
Sorry, it is just your typical arrogant and narcissistic empire. An empire which will collapse just as all the other arrogant and narcissistic empires in history have collapsed. That being, mostly under their own obscene weight.
And those poor souls who sincerely believe that China (or Russia) want to replace the USA simply don’t understand that these two countries already have been empires, it was a disaster, thank you very much, and they have no desire to repeat their past mistakes.
This desire for non-exceptionalism and normalcy will, with time, also become the object of a large social consensus in the USA.
And, with time, the USA will finally be welcomed into a truly free Zone B or, should I say, a Zone-free world.
The Saker
Mistakes in judgement part 4
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Britain’s elite SAS reported back “on the ground” in Kyiv
British Special Air Service (SAS) troops have reportedly been on the ground in Kyiv for the first time since the war with Russia began, Ukrainian commanders have told The Times.
Officers from two Ukrainian battalions stationed in and around the capital said they had undergone military training from serving British special forces, one last week and the other the week before.
Captain Yuriy Myronenko, whose battalion is stationed in Obolon on the northern outskirts of Kyiv, said that military trainers had come to instruct new and returning military recruits to use Next generation Light Anti-tank Weapons( NLAWs) British-supplied anti-tank missiles that were delivered in February as the invasion was beginning.
Since February, the United Kingdom has delivered more than 3,600 NLAWs to Ukraine, with Kyiv requesting more following reports that they had proven highly effective against Russian armour.
The United States announced this week that it would also resume training by American troops, however the Pentagon said explicitly that the training would not be conducted on Ukrainian territory.
German Industry Fears Immediate Russian Gas Ban | OilPrice.com
Moron leadership is a threat not only to world peace but to the wellbeing of its own economy and people.
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One way thinking and zero sum mentality resulted in Europe being the most war monger, aggressive continent in human history. EU and NATO is nothing more than a mafia organisation designs to bully the world and smaller European nation member state. Such organisations should be dismantled for the well being of the world.
This landed on my desk from <redacted> sources. Content is detailed and extensive. I’d suggest downloading it and keeping it in a safe place. It’s heavy with names, dates and activity.
How about a nice and special meal for the family this Sunday. Try this…
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Directions
Mix first six ingredients. Cut roast in half; sprinkle with salt and pepper. In a large skillet, heat oil over medium heat; brown roast on all sides.
Transfer to a 5-qt. slow cooker. Pour pineapple mixture over top. Cook, covered, until a thermometer inserted in roast reads at least 145°, 3-4 hours.
Remove roast from slow cooker; keep warm. Transfer cooking juices to a saucepan; bring to a boil. Mix cornstarch and water until smooth; stir into cooking juices. Return to a boil; cook and stir until thickened, 1-2 minutes. Serve with roast.
Mistakes in judgement part 5
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Americans; Things Are Bad Now, But You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet
At this moment, food prices all over America are at incredibly low levels. I know what many of you must be thinking. You must be thinking that I have lost my mind, because food prices have been rising at a very rapid rate all over the country. But when I say that food prices are at “incredibly low levels”, I am not comparing them to where they were in the past. Rather, I am comparing current prices to where they will be in the future. Yes, things are bad now, but food prices will be much higher a year or two from now.
The global fertilizer crisis certainly isn’t going anywhere. If anything, it is only going to intensify.
The same thing could be said about the war in Ukraine. Peace talks are absolutely dead, and so it looks like fighting between two of the most critical breadbaskets in the world will continue for months to come.
Meanwhile, the bird flu pandemic continues to wipe out millions of chickens and turkeys all over the globe all over the United States.
We have never seen a “perfect storm” quite like this, but of course some of the factors that will be driving up food prices are entirely self-inflicted.
For example, the Chinese government didn’t need to lock down nearly 400 million people in a desperate attempt to prevent the spread of COVID. The past two years have provided ample evidence that such lockdowns are quite foolish, but the Chinese went ahead anyway.
China is participating in the decoupling from the United States, and that includes food, and farming materials.
As a result, there are now hundreds of commercial ships waiting impatiently off the coast of Shanghai.
Shanghai is one of the largest manufacturing centers in China, with heavy concentrations of automotive and electronics suppliers. It is home to the largest container port in the world and a major airport that serves inbound and outbound air cargo. Exports produced in Shanghai account for 7.2% of China’s total volume and about 20% of China’s export container throughput moves through the port there, according to the BBVA report.Most warehouses and plants are closed, nine out of 10 trucks are sidelined, the port and airport have limited function, shipping units are stranded in the wrong places, and freight is piling up.
Needless to say, many of our major retailers simply could not operate without the goods that they import from China.
So we better hope that this potential nightmare gets resolved very soon.
Here in the United States, food prices have been moving higher for months. Just check out these numbers…
The average price of butter grew 11.9% in the last year.
Meat has been especially affected by supply chain issues, with 100% meat frankfurters jumping 35.2% since March of 2021 to an average price of $5.18 per pound.
Ground chuck, pork chops, and whole chicken showed year-over-year price increases of 11.3%, 15%, and 11.7%, respectively.
Those figures may look bad to you, but the truth is that they only represent the very early chapters of this crisis.
Things are going to get much worse, and here in April anecdotal reports seem to indicate that food price increases seem to be accelerating.
Earlier today, my attention was drawn to a thread on a popular Internet forum where people were discussing recent price increases that they had seen at their local stores. The following are a few examples that I pulled out of that thread…
-“$10. for 1 lb. Bacon”
-“5.19 for one pound of land o lakes butter”
-“a 34 oz can of coffee was $6.99 now is $9.99”
-“$1.09 for a single avocado”
-“$2.31 for a head of iceberg lettuce”
-“I shop for my elderly parents they buy Butterscotch Krimpets every week. Were 2.49 a box now 4.49.”
-“I saw 15.99 per pound for ribeye steak at a grocery store in northeast Tennessee.”
-“Paid $12.95 for a pack of raw chicken thighs a few days ago. Normally they are $3.00 – $4.00”
And thanks to the horrifying bird flu pandemic which is sweeping the nation, the price of eggs is going completely nuts…
The losses to egg-laying flocks have led to producers desperately racing to meet market demands for eggs and egg products, with egg prices increasing as a result. The average price of a dozen eggs is now close to $3.00, up from $1.60 at the beginning of the year, according to the USDA’s national egg report.
If you think that these prices are wild, just wait until they double from their current levels.
All over the world the United States, a great battle for food resources has begun. The Chinese saw this coming in advance, and so they have been engaged in the largest stockpiling program that any of us have ever seen. I wrote about this back in December, but back then most people didn’t understand the true significance of that article.
At that time, the amount of food that the Chinese had already accumulated was already extremely impressive…
Less than 20% of the world’s population has managed to stockpile more than half of the globe’s maize and other grains, leading to steep price increases across the planet and dropping more countries into famine.The hoarding is taking place in China.
Has the U.S. been doing something similar?
Of course not.
When things get really bad in this country, you will be on your own.
So I hope that you have been preparing for that.
Since the war in Ukraine started, nation after nation has started to implement export restrictions, and a global scramble for agricultural commodities has steadily pushed up prices.
Nobody wants to be caught empty-handed when the music stops, and so there is a race to secure precious supplies while it is still possible to do so.
Sadly, the poorest parts of the world will end up suffering the most as the wealthy countries grab what they can. The dramatic spike that we will soon see in global hunger will be absolutely heartbreaking.
But nobody can say that we weren’t warned in advance. This sort of collapse has been coming for a long time, and now it has arrived.
I would encourage you to stockpile food at these “relatively low prices” while you have the opportunity to do so, because they are only going to go higher from here.
Build a Woodworker’s Toolbox
Build a Woodworker’s Toolbox: If you’re a mechanic, finding a toolbox is no problem – there are dozens on the market, from huge roll-around shop cases to small metal boxes. Framers, plumbers and electricians are well served, too, with everything from pickup-truck storage to tool…
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Be the Rufus
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Mistakes in judgement part 6
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Russia says Kiev regime employed 6,824 foreign mercenaries since special operation started – Military & Defense – TASS
Most mercenaries came from Poland, Russian Defense Ministry Spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said
MOSCOW, April 17. /TASS/. Russian Defense Ministry Spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov on Sunday said Kiev employed more than 6,800 foreign mercenaries from 63 countries since Russia started its special operation.
"The Kiev nationalist regime has employed a total of 6,824 foreign mercenaries from 63 countries since the start of the special military operation," he said.
Most mercenaries - 1,717 people - came from Poland, about 1,500 from the US, Canada and Romania, the spokesman said. Up to 300 people arrived from the UK and Georgia each while 193 people came from the areas of Syria that are controlled by Turkey, Konashenkov said.
As a mother who works full-time, I’m always looking for quick, easy meals to prepare. This is a timeless recipe. —Lorie VanHorn, Waddell, Arizona
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Directions
In a large skillet, cook beef and onion over medium heat until meat is no longer pink; crumble meat; drain. Stir in the pasta, contents of seasoning packet, salsa, water, chili powder, salt and cayenne.
Bring to a boil. Reduce heat; cover and simmer until pasta is tender, about 15 minutes, adding more water if necessary. Stir in tomatoes; sprinkle with olives and cheese. Cover and simmer until heated through, 3-4 minutes. Serve with sour cream if desired.
Duck Duck Go gone with the wind..
“Can we not just have ONE thing that isn’t actively working against us?”
Restore your old doors into a beautiful DIY headboard. Recondition your old door, like remove the hardware from it, gunk and ugly scratches, and simply add it up with a top mantle. Paint it in your favorite color and install the hardware to fix it as the decorative head of your bed. Full guide and tutorial here infarrantlycreative.
2022 04 21 20 32
How to decorate your cubicle
Done with style.
Russia’s military is on full display in Google Maps satellite view
The satellite images may be a boon to open source intelligence analysts.
The ex-deputy of the Rada showed Zelensky’s Russian passport. Screen
Marina Fedorovskikh
April 20, 2022 at 12:23 pm
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Former deputy of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Ilya Kiva showed the Russian passport of the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky. Kiva believes that this should help in initiating a criminal case against him.
“The Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation should prosecute and put on the wanted list a citizen of Russia – Zelensky V.A. For his terrorist activities and as a suspect in committing terrorist attacks and killing thousands of citizens of Russia and Ukraine,” he said in his telegram channel.
Kiva also mentioned the possible dual citizenship of the Ukrainian leader. “Zelensky had no right to be admitted to the presidential elections with dual citizenship and his tenure as president is illegal,” the ex-deputy added.
The Investigative Committee of Russia has already begun checking against the Ukrainian president . The reason was the words of the latter about preparing for a war with Russia. Zelensky himself gave the interview to the American television channel CNN. During the conversation, he made a number of controversial statements. thus, Zelensky abandoned his promises about the status of Donbass. Kiev does not want to recognize the DPR and LPR as independent territories in the eastern part of the country in order to put an end to disputes with Russia, Nation News notes . In his opinion, the chances of successful negotiations with Russia are declining “every day,” the Federal News Agency adds .
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a special operation on the territory of Ukraine on February 24 . The actions of the Russian troops are aimed at the demilitarization and denazification of the territory, as well as the protection of the civilian population, including those living in the DPR and LPR. The military hit the objects of the military infrastructure, equipment and weapons of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the national battalions with high-precision means.
Greens say China isn’t a threat | Sky News Australia
The Greens do not see China as a threat to Australia and have no reservations over its security pact with the Solomon Islands. The party’s Peace and Disarmament spokesperson Jordon Steele-John told The Australian newspaper the government’s concerns over the Solomon Islands-China deal were racist…
China’s space station first to be open to all UN member states
China is implementing its first batch of international cooperation programs on board the Tiangong space station, and will hopefully upload those experiments by the end of the year. Foreign astronauts are welcome to Tiangong to make greater contributions to the shared future of mankind, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said on Monday.
The Shenzhou-13 crew safely returned to Earth on Saturday after staying 183 days in orbit, doubling the previous record set by Shenzhou-12 to become the country’s longest single-flight space mission.
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Wang said that the mission was a breakthrough journey with many highlights and firsts. These achievements suggest that China’s space station has completed its key technology verification stage, laying a solid foundation for the next phase of in-orbit construction.
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During their six-month stay, the Shenzhou-13 crew for the first time carried out a radial rendezvous and docking with the space station’s Tianhe core cabin that verified the station’s capability to receive visiting spaceships in different positions.
We all sense the global order has cracked. The existing order is breaking down on multiple fronts.
Those who have benefited from this arrangement are doing everything in their power to patch the cracks, while those who chafed under the old order’s chains seek a new order that suits their interests.
The task now is to make sense of this complex inflection point in history. Two statements summarize the transition from the existing global order to the next iteration:
1. Finance dominated resources in the old order. Now the roles will reverse and real-world resources will dominate finance. We can’t “print our way” out of scarcities.2. Reshuffling currencies and credit will not stop the breakdown of the global order’s “waste is growth” Landfill Economy Model.
Playing financial tricks has extended the life of an unsustainable economic model that glorified “growth” from wasting resources. By expanding credit “money,” the current global order fueled unsustainable consumption driven by unsustainable speculation.
Stop expanding “money” and credit and the global order of “growth” implodes.
Unfortunately for all those who benefited from soaring wealth and income inequality, the trick of expanding “money” and credit has reached systemic limits. The dam holding all the toxic debt, leverage and fraud is finally cracking.
The dominance of resources over finance leads to a multipolar global order, an order that has the potential to be far more stable and sustainable than the unsustainable, destabilizing “waste is growth” model that depends on financial fraud to maintain the illusion of “growth.”
As I explain in my book Global Crisis, National Renewal, scarcity leads to either social disorder or rationing. This article explains how government’s role will shift from boosting demand (the Keynesian Cargo Cult) to limiting demand in ways that maintain the social contract.
Nations that fail to adapt to the end of financialization and globalization will unravel. Every nation has a choice which path it takes:
Cling on to the doomed existing order of financialization, globalization and the “waste is growth” Landfill Economy or embrace a multipolar world and a degrowth model of doing more with less and incentivizing efficiency and durability rather than the shoddy planned obsolescence of the debt-dependent Landfill Economy.
Free Money Is the Solution
Under various guises, labels and rationalizations, “free money” has now been established as the default policy fix for any problem. Stock market falters? The solution: free money! Economy falters? The solution: free money! Bankers face collapse from ruinously risky bets? The solution: free money! Infrastructure crumbling?
The solution: free money!
Inflation raging? The solution: free money! Ruh-roh. We have a problem free money won’t fix. Instead, free money accelerates the conflagration. Dang, this is inconvenient; the solution to every problem makes this problem worse. Now what do we do?
Despite the apparent surprise of the policy-makers, pundits and apologists, this was common sense. Create trillions of dollars out of thin air and spread the money around indiscriminately (fraudsters and scammers getting more than the honest, of course) after global supply chains were disrupted and shelves were bare, then open the floodgates of speculative gambling in stocks, cryptos, housing, used cars, bat guano, quatloos, etc., and what do you think will happen?
Supply can’t catch up with free-money-boosted demand, prices rise, people instinctively over-order and over-buy, and “don’t fight the Fed” speculative betting begets more betting: the inflation rocket booster ignites, wages soar as workers try to keep pace with rising expenses, speculative bubbles inflate to unprecedented extremes, and all this “wealth without work or productivity” gooses spending and gross domestic product (GDP).
“Once the Bubbles Pop, GDP Crashes and the Ratio Blows Out”
Forty years ago, the total debt-to-GDP ratio was 1.6: debt was $4.8 trillion and GDP was $3 trillion. Then the policy solutions of fiscal “borrow and spend” and Federal Reserve “balance sheet expansion.” a.k.a. free money, became the policy default.
The ratio rose to 2.76 in 2000 and has wobbled around 3.7 for the past decade, a decade that just so happened to see the stock market quadruple and the housing bubble reinflate to new heights as the Federal Reserve kept interest rates near zero as part of the “free money” policy:
If we’re going to borrow tens of trillions of dollars to squander, we need near-zero interest rates to keep costs of borrowing down.
Though no one in a position of power or influence dares admit it, the ratio of debt to GDP hasn’t blown out for one reason: speculative bubbles have pushed GDP higher in a massive, sustained distortion of “wealth effect” and winner take most gains for those who knew how to extract the majority of gains from the bubbles.
Once the bubbles pop, GDP crashes and the ratio blows out. The belief that adding trillions in debt magically adds GDP will be revealed as delusional fantasy.
Two Paths
Completely forgotten in the era of Free money as the solution to all problems is the discipline of frugality, which can best be defined as discipline over spending as a means of building long-term financial stability and general well-being.
Financial discipline (frugality) has been set aside as a needless discomfort: why make difficult tradeoffs and sacrifices when the solution is just to borrow/create more free money? Indeed. Along the same lines, why bother with all the hassles of healthy food and fitness? Just pig out and swallow a couple handfuls of “free” (heh) meds.
Discipline isn’t just about limiting waste. It’s about investing capital and labor wisely to secure future gains in productivity which is the only real source of income and wealth. Creating “money” out of thin air and spreading it around to satisfy every constituency doesn’t increase productivity. It destroys productivity by incentivizing waste – the waste is growth Landfill Economy – and speculative bets on bubbles never popping.
Alas, all bubbles pop, and now that creating free money only makes costs rise faster, there is no solution other than – oh, dear, dear, dear – the unforgiving discipline of frugality and investing for productivity gains rather than for speculative bubble “wealth.”
Which path leads to doom? Free money. Which path leads to revival? Frugality and discipline.
That’s not what everyone wants to hear, but clinging to delusional fantasies of “free wealth” won’t lead to positive outcomes, any more than swallowing handfuls of meds leads to “free health.”
Be the Rufus
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Document reveals $14 billion backlog of US defense transfers to Taiwan
Pandemic-related acquisition issues have sparked a backlog in the U.S. delivering $14.2 billion worth of military equipment to Taiwan that the island has purchased since 2019.
With much of Washington’s attention focused on how to rapidly deploy a steady stream of military aid to Ukraine, some lawmakers are concerned the Taiwan delay is undermining its ability to deter a potential Chinese invasion….
Russia says it will no longer disclose the names of organizations that use its alternative to the SWIFT payment system
Russia’s central bank will stop disclosing the names of those participating in its alternative to the SWIFT payment system, according to Reuters.
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Russia has been touting its alternative payment system — the System for Transfer of Financial Messages (SPFS), which was set up in 2014.
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Most Russian banks, as well as 52 foreign organizations from 12 countries, have access to SPFS, Russian Central Bank governor Elvira Nabiullina said on Monday, per Reuters.
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Banks from the Germany, Switzerland, France, Japan, Sweden, Turkey, and Cuba were among those connected to SPFS, according to a March report from Coface, a French credit insurer.
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“Until there was such a threat of being cut off from SWIFT, foreign partners weren’t in much of a rush to join, but now we expect their readiness to be greater,” Nabiullina said of SPFS, according to Bloomberg.
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The Indian government was considering a Russian proposal to use the SPFS for payments in rubles, Bloomberg reported in March. India has been buying cargoes of cheap Russian oil amid international sanctions and boycotts of products from the energy powerhouse. Russian oil accounted for just 2% of India’s total imports in 2021.
Biden made sanction demands on G-20 nations. He hit a BRIC+ wall.
Map of G-20 countries.
2022 04 20 14 20
G-20 Pressure Failing
The G-20 members are Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Republic of Korea, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the European Union. Spain is also invited as a permanent guest.
The Biden administration wants to increase pressure on Russia, but finds increasing resistance to do more.
Brazil, Russia, India, and China widely known as BRICs have not bowed to US pressure. Nor have Mexico, Saudi Arabia, or South Africa.
The 2022 G-20 meets in November but those nations are also at an IMF summit right now.
Treasury secretary Janet Yellen plans to avoid Russian officials at meetings this week, while engaging with countries that haven’t joined in sanctions.
Janet Yellen Faces Challenge to Keep Pressure on Russia, While Addressing Global Consequences
Hanging over gatherings of finance ministers from around the world at the International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings in Washington this week will be Russia’s war in Ukraine, as well as the sanctions campaign the U.S. and its allies have waged in response. As those sanctions efforts have brought the U.S. and its allies closer together, they are also laying bare deep differences in the broader Group of 20 major economies, which includes Russia, China and India, as well as European allies.Ms. Yellen is expected to boycott some G-20 meetings this week that include Russian officials, and she last week warned countries against deepening their economic ties with Russia after the sanctions, singling out China.In addition, Ms Yellen’s attempts to build support for an international tax agreement that was the focus of international economic diplomacy last year may not gain traction. Agreement on the deal still faces hurdles both in Congress and among European countries.
US Boycott
Yellen will IMF boycott meetings this week that include Russia. But what does that say about the G-20 summit in November. Will the US even go?
On March 22, Biden proposed booting Russia from the G-20. Reuters comments on the difficulty.
"It's impossible to remove Russia from G20" unless Moscow makes such a decision on its own, said an official of a G20 member country in Asia.
"There's simply no procedure to deprive Russia of G20 membership."
With Spain there are 21 G-20 nations so a US boycott would get the group size correct.
Pretty Chinese girl
I guess that I am offending people by posting attractive ladies of China. Tough titties. If you don’t like it … LEAVE.
Brent crude, the international benchmark for crude oil prices, rose to $130 a barrel on Tuesday, after the U.S. and U.K. announced a ban on Russian oil imports and the EU said it would cut its dependency on Russian gas by two-thirds this year. West Texas Intermediate crude futures, the U.S. marker, rose to around $125 a barrel.
Global oil prices have risen 58% since the beginning of the year, initially amid concerns about inflation. Russia is the world’s third-largest oil producer, supplying about 7% of global demand. Europe is Russia’s main market for oil and natural gas and bought roughly 25% of its oil from Russia in 2021. Gas prices in the EU have already risen by more than 70% since the last week of February. About 8% of U.S. oil imports came from Russia last year.
The International Energy Agency agreed to release 60 million barrels of oil from its members’ strategic reserves, which is equal to the amount of oil the U.S. consumes in three days. Large Western oil companies like BP, ExxonMobil, and Shell have halted operations in Russia. European refiners are also looking elsewhere for supply, in places like Saudi Arabia. To compensate, Russia is trying to sell crude oil to refineries in China and other Asian countries at a discount.
Chinese girl
She has a very beautiful face. I love how the eyes complement her hair. This would be a wonderful face to paint, as the proportions are all there, and the color contrasts are stark. video
This week is the deadline for millions of U.S. taxpayers to pay their taxes. According to IRS data on income taxes in 2019, U.S. taxpayers paid $1.6 trillion in income taxes — and 96.9% of the taxes were paid by half of American taxpayers. The top one percent — Americans who earn $546,434 or more — earned one-fifth of all total adjusted gross income and paid 38.8% of all federal income taxes.
The share of income taxes paid by the high-income earners (the 1%) has increased over time. From 2001 to 2019, the 1% share rose from 33% to 38.8%. Over the same time period, their share of adjusted gross income also increased, from 17.4% to 20.1%.
The top 50% of taxpayers paid 97% of all income taxes, while the bottom 50% paid the remaining 3%. The bottom half of taxpayers — who earn below $44,269 a year — paid 3%, or slightly over $48 billion, of all federal individual income taxes. Their share of reported income decreased from 2001 to 2019, from 14.4% to 11.5%.
Sixty-eight percent of Americans approve of labor unions, the highest level of approval in over 57 years, according to Gallup’s annual Work and Education poll. Americans’ approval of unions has been increasing over the last few years and is now at its highest point in more than half a century.
Gallup has been conducting surveys on labor unions since 1936; this year, Gallup measured the highest level of support since 1965 (71%). On average, more Americans approve of unions than disapprove — 2009 was the only year that approval for unions fell below majority level (48%).
Support for unions is highest among Democrats (90%), union members (86%), younger Americans between the ages of 18-34 (77%), and people with incomes under $40,000 a year (72%). Over half of Independents favor unions (66%), and Republicans are least likely to approve of them (47%).
Despite this approval rating, only 9% of U.S. adults report they are part of a union. Another 8% of U.S. adults say they live with a union member. Union members are more likely to have higher incomes than non-union workers: one in 10 adults with household incomes of $40,000 or more are union members.
Like night and day
Some people argue that wearing makeup is deceptive and a big lie. But I do not. I think that it is like having two different women. One is warm and loving, and the other is cool and tough. video
Ukrainian officials took Germany to task this week for not leveling an energy embargo on Russia, six weeks into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The EU has leveled sanctions against Russia in response to the conflict, but it has yet to sanction Russian oil and gas, which comprised 45% of the EU’s gas imports last year. Since the start of the conflict, the EU has paid Russia about 20 billion euros ($22 billion) for gas, according to German economic adviser Veronika Grimm.
Germany is one of Russia’s main energy consumers; last year, one-third of its gas imports came from Russia. Other sources estimate that 55% of the country’s gas came from Russia in 2021. Russia also supplied Germany with 34% of its crude oil and 53% of its hard coal last year.
The German government has already implemented a national gas emergency plan that could lead to the rationing of natural gas. Gas is primarily used in industry (36%), by households (31%), and by trade and commerce (13%). Industry will be the first to feel rationing, followed by households, and lastly, hospitals and other public sector institutions.
France’s sitting president Emmanuel Macron won the first round of the French presidential elections, with 28% of the vote. However, right-wing candidate Marine Le Pen came in a close second with 23%. Left-wing candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon came in third with a surprisingly strong 22% of the vote, but not enough to qualify for the runoff. Since no candidate won the majority of the vote in the first round, the elections will head to a runoff on April 24.
The results from Sunday night set up a repeat of the 2017 runoff between Macron and Le Pen, when Macron won the presidency. But opinion polls show that Le Pen is closer to Macron in this election, with only a few percentage points difference between the two candidates. The two traditional French political parties, the Socialists and the Republicans, got less than 10% of the vote, showing the continuing rise in the popularity of more extreme parties on the left and the right.
The French presidential election results will have a significant impact on European politics, as EU leaders respond to Russia’s continued attacks on Ukraine. Macron has backed sanctions against Russia, while Le Pen has raised the impact they have on the rising cost of living.
Pathetic Chinese Apparently Cannot Even THINK, Nevermind Question What’s Being Done to their kids
This is what happens when American writers believe the narrative that Covid is a hoax, and are completely unaware that China is under bioweapon assault. Read this article to see, how ignorance, plus distortions fuel a narrative. - MM
We here in the West have finally come to the realization that the whole “COVID” thing was a gigantic scam. Much ado was made of a virus that turned out to be not much worse than a nasty Flu. COVID has a 99.7% survival rate. It was not and is not a “Pandemic.”
Entire countries were shut down over the fuss about this illness. People were literally locked in their homes. Some businesses were deemed “non-essential” and forced to close on the mere speculation that someone, somewhere, MIGHT spread COVID by visiting those businesses.
The economic destruction from such government over-reach has destroyed countless businesses and ruined the income of many families.
People were encouraged to wear masks when out in public, even though masks are completely, totally, unable to prevent the spread of a virus. The pores on even the finest masks are four microns wide for air to get through the mask. The novel coronavirus which causes COVID-19, is only 0.04 microns in size; one hundred times smaller than the pores on the masks. As such, they are totally incapable of reducing or halting the spread of this virus.
Did those facts matter? No.
Government told people to do it anyway, and most obeyed, like good little drones.
Citizens in western nations, still slightly anchored to the reality of individual liberty, started questioning what was being demanded by government. They started suing in court. Worse for the government, people started ignoring the ridiculous demands by so-called public health officials. Lo and behold, COVID went away.
Not in China.
Look at what the Communist Party government is requiring of school children in that slave-state-nation, and observe how parents do not even question the absurdity:
2022 04 21 11 27
The people in China, appear to be insane.
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So says Hal Turner.
Obviously he is unaware of the bioweapon carpetbombing of China because the USA warned China; “You WILL sanction Russia, or face the consequences!”
China said no.
Two days later, all up and down China were major outbreaks of COVID. The worst hit areas were those with the highest percentages of expats. Curious fact.
Jack!
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Ah, that’s it for now. I hope that you enjoyed this little mix of contemporaneous life. Now go back to what you all have been doing, and remember… always be the Rufus.
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
It’s an easy question, actually. Over the last few weeks, the World has polarized into two halves.
One side “The West” is uni-polar. They want the world ruled by the United States; a “rules based order”; it’s a world where the United States makes the rules and the changes them as it sees fit. Those in this camp consist of North America, Europe, and Australia / Japan.
The other side; “The East” is multi-polar. It follows the rules set forth by the UN; the community of nations. Russia, China, India, and most of Asia, including Africa, and South America fall into this camp. They believe that all nations, and all societies are equal, and that no singular nation, or block of nations, should determine the course of human societal evolution.
This situation could well exist for some time.
The only way for it to end would be for the complete collapse and annihilation of the United States. That’s probably not going to happen. (Well, unless the American leadership are so absolutely incompetent that they allow it to happen. Which is, after all, a realistic possibility.)
So we have a world divided into two halves, and a mighty “cold war” is starting to emerge. This currently includes energy, soon to include currency. but should eventually result in trade as well. And at that, the West, will probably suffer dearly.
As everything that The Westuses and consumes comes from The East.
The West, ruled by the United States, will continue to make and break rules as it deems fit. The fact is that the United States has been flaunting the resolutions by the UN for many decades. And this codification into a formalized “The West” will be the death blow to that organization; the UN. It will become superannuated by the nations of the West. For, after all, all the member states in the West are proxy nations.
Out of practicality, aside from eventual necessity, the UN will need to move in one of the geographical regions of The East. It is, after all, a most logical conclusion. In fact, the 4FEB22 joint declaration of Russia and China during the Winter Olympics precisely alluded to exactly this; a New reborn UN.
This article discusses that.
But before we get too involved here in these details, let’s throw in some contemporaneous pockets of “news”, some pretty girls, some cats, food, and other subjects as well. A fine smorgasbord of topics. They all really do a fine, fine job in messing up the computer algorithms that assign trolls, ‘bots, and attacks on the MM website. I’ve got to tell youse guys, I mean, it drops to ZERO.
My life has never been so easy.
I’ll tell you what.
Peter has some things to say…
Russia has the world’s largest land mass with all the wealth in the ground and all the water they need who can grow more food than they can ever eat and armed to the teeth to repel any brain-f*cked dickweed that thinks they can dictate their will to Mother Russia because of economic sanctions.
What a joke! Why would a country like Russia need paper lies from the Empire of Lies to prove that they have a good economy?
If China had what Russia has, China would have told the Empire to go stick their head up their butt long ago. But that day is coming sooner than later. When the Dollar Hegemony goes, the world will have peace.
By the way, I don’t see any pundits noting that the current geopolitical situation is highly favorable to China.
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1. China is “hands off”. While the fight with Russia is ongoing, no one wants to start a second front with China, empty threats notwithstanding. Hence, all quiet on the eastern front.
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2. Lies will be exposed. The lies of the Western politicians and Western mainstream media will be exposed when Putin’s boys burn the Neo-Nazis as an offering to the souls of those who had died in the struggle against the German Nazis. That’s when the lapdogs realize they better not pin their hopes on the Empire of Lies.
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3. New Economic structures. Any country with a foreign reserve needs to figure out how to protect its assets from being taken by a lawless overlord. People should learn by now if they hadn’t known before that you do not own anything you cannot defend or hide. By this time, almost everyone must realize that the USD will be going down. It’s time to get on a lifeboat. Thanks to the Empire, which is exposing its own lies.
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4. A lesson for Taiwan. The destruction of Ukraine, as unfortunate as it will be unless a surrender is forthcoming, is an object lesson for the Taiwanese authorities. While China would not want to, nor would it need to take such a drastic military action in Taiwan, the threat of doing so is very potent. Taiwan is also an island; people have nowhere to go. China is in a very advantageous position to press for unification negotiations. There are more and more people in Taiwan wanting to start unification negotiations.
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5. China and India are together. Wonders of wonders, China and India find themselves on the same front, defending Russia against the Empire of Lies. All those virulently anti-China channels from India have turned around and directed their vitriol against the Empire. Sure is fun to watch.
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6. China the peacemaker. Eventually, China will have to be a guarantor of peace for the Russia-Ukraine conflict. The Empire of Lies and its lapdogs have shot their wad. Why should anyone trust them?
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7. China will help rebuild Ukraine. The West, seeing that they won’t be selling weapons to Ukraine, will walk away. Good riddance!
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PM
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Princess Bride – Battle of Wits
This classic scene is from the 1980s movie “The Princess Bride”. It is well worth watching.
Stuffed Peppers
One of my all-time favorites. It’s also something that can only come from the household kitchens. Yum! Stuffed peppers with ground beef and rice are topped with a seasoned tomato sauce. Making classic stuffed bell peppers is easier than you think. You’ll find the full recipe below, but here’s a brief overview of what you can expect:
Stuffed Peppers.
Prepare the Rice and Beef
Cook rice until tender in a covered saucepan. Meanwhile, cook ground beef in a skillet until browned and crumbly.
Stuff the Peppers
Hollow the bell peppers by cutting off the tops and scooping out the seeds and membranes. Arrange the peppers in a single layer in a baking dish. Stuff the peppers with a prepared filling of rice, ground beef, tomato sauce, Worcestershire sauce, garlic powder, onion powder, salt, and pepper. Top each filled pepper with a mixture of tomato sauce and Italian seasoning.
Bake
Bake until the peppers are tender, basting with sauce every 15 minutes.
How Long to Cook Stuffed Peppers
These stuffed peppers use cooked ground beef, so they should be fully baked within an hour. You’ll know they’re done when the peppers are tender. The whole recipe, including prep time, should come together in about 90 minutes.
How to Store Stuffed Peppers
Store leftover stuffed peppers in an airtight container in the fridge for three to five days. Make sure they’re completely cooled before storing to slow bacteria growth.
Can You Freeze Stuffed Pepper?
Yes! You can freeze stuffed peppers — and you should if you don’t plan to eat them within five days. Frozen stuffed peppers taste great when thawed and reheated, so this is a great way to meal prep. To freeze baked stuffed peppers: Wrap each completely-cooled stuffed pepper individually in storage wrap, then follow it with a layer of aluminum foil. Store the peppers in the freezer for up to three months.
Thaw frozen stuffed peppers in the fridge overnight. Reheat them in the oven at 350 degrees F for 15 to 20 minutes, or until heated through.
2022 04 11 11 30
Japan pushes India to denounce Russia — RT World News
India has come under increased Western pressure to distance itself from Moscow and sever its economic ties, after it abstained from a United Nations General Assembly resolution condemning Russia's military action in Ukraine, choosing instead to remain neutral alongside China, Pakistan, South Africa, and 30 other countries.
India is also facing criticism for buying Russian oil, available at discounted prices as some countries have been avoiding it in fear of retaliatory sanctions from the US. The Indian government, however, has reportedly adopted a pragmatic approach and was “exploring all possibilities” to ensure the country's own energy security.
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a “special military operation” in Ukraine on February 24, with a stated goal to “demilitarize and denazify” its government, ensuring that its NATO membership aspirations no longer pose a threat to either Russia or the newly recognized Donbass republics, which have suffered seven years of siege by Kiev forces. The US and its allies have accused Russia of starting an “unprovoked” invasion to occupy Ukraine.
It should be located inside one of the major nations of The East. That goes without saying. If you look at things from this perspective, a number of candidates present themselves…
China (Manufacturing & Technology hub)
Russia (Resource hub)
India (Population and technology hub)
Iran (Oil and Energy hub)
Kazakhstan (BRI hub)
Brazil (South American hub)
South Africa (African hub)
Most people would “knee-jerk response that China would be the location, but I argue “not so fast”. If there was one singular location, then yes, China makes sense. However, the impression that I am getting is that United Nations Part Two might be more “mobile”. Perhaps periodically cycling between hosing nations. Much like the Olympics are today.
Yes. Indeed, it’s a new world that is evolving and manifesting. And the ways of the old are falling away to the wayside like the skin of a dinosaur-sized snake.
How old are you?
limewire laffy taffy kids dont get
TWICE “SCIENTIST” Choreography Video (Moving Ver.)
Yes. The West is undergoing collapse. But the East is doing just fine. Here is the latest video that my little daughter is learning the dance moves to. It’s pretty representative of the mood in Asia these days.
China makes semi-secret delivery of missiles to Serbia
BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Russian ally Serbia took the delivery of a sophisticated Chinese anti-aircraft system in a veiled operation this weekend, amid Western concerns that an arms buildup in the Balkans at the time of the war in Ukraine could threaten the fragile peace in the region.
Media and military experts said Sunday that six Chinese Air Force Y-20 transport planes landed at Belgrade’s civilian airport early Saturday, reportedly carrying HQ-22 surface-to-air missile systems for the Serbian military.
The Chinese cargo planes with military markings were pictured at Belgrade’s Nikola Tesla airport. Serbia’s defense ministry did not immediately respond to AP’s request for comment.
The arms delivery over the territory of at least two NATO member states, Turkey and Bulgaria, was seen by experts as a demonstration of China’s growing global reach.
“The Y-20s’ appearance raised eyebrows because they flew en masse as opposed to a series of single-aircraft flights,” wrote The Warzone online magazine. “The Y-20′s presence in Europe in any numbers is also still a fairly new development.”
Serbian military analyst Aleksandar Radic said that “the Chinese carried out their demonstration of force.”
By Pepe Escobar, posted with the author’s permission and widely cross-posted
Vast swathes of NATOstan have been corralled into behaving like a Russophobic lynch mob. No dissent is tolerated.
By now it’s abundantly clear that the neo-Orwellian “Two Minute Hate” Russophobic campaign launched by the Empire of Lies after the start of Operation Z is actually “24/7 Hate”.
Vast swathes of NATOstan have been corralled into behaving like a Russophobic lynch mob. No dissent is tolerated. The full psyops has de facto upgraded the Empire of Lies to the status of Empire of Hate in a Total War – hybrid and otherwise – to cancel Russia.
Hate, after all, packs way more punch than mere lies, which are now veering into abject ridiculousness, as in U.S. “intelligence” resorting to – what else – lies to fight the info war against Russia.
If the propaganda overdrive has been lethally effective amidst the zombified Western masses – call it a “win” in the P.R. war – in the front where it really matters, inside Russia, it’s a major fail.
Public opinion support for both Operation Z and President Putin is unprecedented. After videos of torture of Russian POWs that caused widespread revulsion, Russian civil society is even bracing for a “Long War” lasting months, not weeks, as long as the targets of the Russian High Command – actually a military secret – are met.
The stated aims are “demilitarization” and “denazification” of a future neutral Ukraine – but geopolitically reach way beyond: the aim is to turn the post-1945 European collective security arrangement upside down, forcing NATO to understand and come to terms with the concept of “indivisible security”. This is an extremely complex process that will reach the next decade.
The NATOstan sphere simply cannot admit in public a series of facts that a military analyst of the caliber of Andrei Martyanov has been explaining for years. And that adds to their collective pain.
Russia can take on NATO and smash it to bits in 48 hours. It may employ advanced strategic deterrence systems unmatched across the West. Its southern axis – from the Caucasus and West Asia to Central Asia – is fully stabilized. And if the going gets really tough, Mr. Zircon can deliver his hypersonic nuclear business card with the other side not even knowing what hit it.
“Europe has chosen its fate”
It may be enlightening to see how these complex processes are interpreted by Russians – whose points of view are now completely blocked across NATOstan.
Let’s take two examples. The first is Lieutenant General L.P. Reshetnikov, in an analytical note examining facts of the ground war.
Some key takeaways:
– “Over Romania and Poland there are airborne early warning aircraft of NATO with experienced crews, there are U.S. intelligence satellites in the sky all the time. I remind you that just in terms of budgets for our Roscosmos we allocated $2.5 billion a year, the civil budget of NASA is $25 billion, the civil budget of SpaceX alone is equal to Roscosmos – and that is not counting the tens of billions of dollars annually for the entire U.S. feverishly unfolding the control system of the entire planet.”
– The war is unfolding according to “NATO’s eyes and brains. The Ukronazis are nothing but free controlled zombies. And the Ukrainian army is a remotely controlled zombie organism.”
– “The tactics and strategy of this war will be the subject of textbooks for military academies around the world. Once again: the Russian army is smashing a Nazi zombie organism, fully integrated with the eyes and brain of NATO.”
Now let’s switch to Oleg Makarenko, who focuses on the Big Picture.
– “The West considers itself ‘the whole world’ only because it has not yet received a sufficiently sensitive punch on the nose. It just so happened that Russia is now giving him this click: with the rear support of Asia, Africa and Latin America. And the West can do absolutely nothing with us, since it also lags behind us in terms of the number of nuclear warheads.”
– “Europe has chosen its fate. And chose fate for Russia. What you are seeing now is the death of Europe. Even if it does not come to nuclear strikes on industrial centers, Europe is doomed. In a situation where European industry is left without cheap Russian energy sources and raw materials – and China will begin to receive these same energy carriers and raw materials at a discount, there can be no talk of any real competition with China from Europe. As a result, literally everything will collapse there – after industry, agriculture will collapse, welfare and social security will collapse, hunger, banditry and chaos will begin.”
It’s fair to consider Reshetnikov and Makarenko as faithfully representing the overall Russian sentiment, which interprets the crude Bucha false flag as a cover to obscure the Ukrainian army torture of Russian POWs.
And, deeper still, Bucha allowed the disappearance of Pentagon bioweapon labs from the Western mediasphere, complete with its ramifications: evidence of a concerted American drive to ultimately deploy real weapons of mass destruction against Russia.
The multi-level Bucha hoax had to include the Brit presidency of the UN Security Council actually blocking a serious discussion, a day before the Russian Ministry of Defense struggled to present to the UN – predictably minus the U.S. and the UK – all the bioweapon facts they have unearthed in Ukraine. The Chinese were horrified by the findings.
The Russian Investigative Committee at least persists in its work, with 100 researchers unearthing evidence of war crimes across Donbass to be presented at a tribunal in the near future, most probably set up in Donetsk.
And that brings us back to the facts on the ground. There’s a lot of analytical discussion on the possible endgame of Operation Z. A fair assessment would include the liberation of all of Novorossiya and total control of the Black Sea coastline that currently is part of Ukraine.
“Ukraine” in fact was never a state; it was always an annex to another state or empire such as Poland, Austria-Hungary, Turkey, and crucially Russia.
The landmark Russian state was Kievan Rus. “Ukraine”, in old Russian, means “border region”. In the past, it referred to the westernmost regions of the Russian Empire. When the Empire started expanding south, the new regions annexed mostly from Turkish rule were called Novorossiya (“New Russia”) and the northeastern regions, Malorossiya (“Little Russia”).
It was up to the USSR in the early 1920s to jumble it all together and name it “Ukraine” – adding Galicia in the west, which was historically non-Russian.
Yet the key development is when the USSR broke up in 1991. As the Empire of Lies de facto controlled post-Soviet Russia, they could never have possibly allowed the real Russian regions of the USSR – that is, Novorossiya and Malorossiya – to be again incorporated to the Russian Federation.
Russia is now re-incorporating them – in an “I Did It, My Way” manner.
Vamos a bailar in European Puerto Rico
By now it’s also quite clear to any serious geopolitical analysis that Operation Z opened a Pandora’s box. And the supreme historical victim of all the toxicity finally let loose is bound to be Europe.
The indispensable Michael Hudson, in a new essay on the U.S. dollar devouring the euro, argues half in jest that Europe might as well surrender its currency, and go on like “a somewhat larger version of Puerto Rico.”
After all, Europe “has pretty much ceased to be a politically independent state, it is beginning to look more like Panama and Liberia – ‘flag of convenience’ offshore banking centers that are not real ‘states’ because they don’t issue their own currency, but use the U.S. dollar.”
In synch with quite a few Russian, Chinese and Iranian analysts, Hudson advances that the war in Ukraine – actually in its “full-blown version as the New Cold War” – is likely to last “at least a decade, perhaps two as the U.S. extends the fight between neoliberalism and socialism [meaning the Chinese system] to encompass a worldwide conflict.”
What may be seriously in dispute is whether the U.S., after “the economic conquest of Europe”, will be able to “lock in African, South American and Asian countries”. The Eurasia integration process, rolling in earnest for 10 years now, conducted by the Russia-China strategic partnership and expanding to most of the Global South, will go no holds barred to prevent it.
There’s no question, as Hudson states, that “the world economy is being enflamed” – with the U.S. weaponizing trade. Yet on the Right Side of History we have the Rublegas, the petroyuan, the new monetary/financial system being designed in a partnership between the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) and China.
And that’s something no puny Cancel Culture War can erase.
Let’s see how old you actually are…
cassette tape pen pencil
China calls for ‘objective’ analysis of Russia’s claims about US biolabs in Ukraine
A “fair, objective and professional” assessment is needed for the materials Moscow has provided, the Chinese Foreign Ministry says
The international community should provide a “fair, objective and professional” assessment of Russia’s allegations regarding alleged US military laboratories in Ukraine, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said.
In March, Russia shared evidence obtained from laboratories across Ukraine that apparently confirms that Pentagon-funded labs were working on “biological weapons components,” and may have been connected to suspicious outbreaks of dirofilariasis, tuberculosis, and avian flu over the past several years.
According to the latest data revealed by military spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov on March 30, Kiev was planning to use drones to deploy pathogens against the Donbass republics, as well as Russia itself.
Speaking at a regular press briefing on Friday, Zhao said the US has still not come up with a “constructive response” to Russia’s statements, and called on the international community to give serious consideration to Moscow’s claims.
He said, as quoted by TASS, that China
“would welcome a fair, objective and professional assessment by the international community of the documents provided by Russia on the basis of the UN mechanisms and the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on Their Destruction.”
China has consistently encouraged the US to make public all information about its biolabs. Two weeks ago, China’s permanent representative to the UN, Zhang Jun, told the UN Security Council that following the revelation by Russia of the newly discovered documents,
“the party concerned should respond to questions, and offer timely and comprehensive clarifications to remove the doubts of the international community.”
Several days prior to that, Beijing disclosed for the first time the alleged number of US-controlled biolabs.
Saying that laboratories in Ukraine are just the
“tip of an iceberg,” Zhao revealed that the Pentagon “controls 336 biological laboratories in 30 countries around the world.”
Noting that the US
“has been exclusively obstructing”
the establishment of an independent verification mechanism, the Foreign Ministry spokesman called on the US to
“publish the relevant details as soon as possible, including which viruses are stored and which research has been carried out.”
The US has long claimed that allegations about military-funded biolaboratories in Ukraine are ‘Russian disinformation’.
In March, however, US diplomat Victoria Nuland testified before the Senate that
“biological research laboratories in Ukraine”
did exist, and that Washington was working with Kiev
“to ensure that the materials of biological research do not fall into the hands of Russian forces.”
How you know you are getting old…
home alone mortgage kids dont get
John Lear In Memoriam, 1942-2022 (80 yrs)
John Lear died this year. He was an active member of the UFO community, and was instrumental in providing substance to a story, that was up until then, was peopled with Grade B science-fiction fantasies. He got many things wrong, but he was spot on in regards to United States involvement in the extraterrestial “issue”.
Lear passed away in his sleep Tuesday night [March 29, 2022] at his Las Vegas home, according to his daughter Allison. Lear is the son of Bill Lear, who developed the Lear Jet.
Here is an interview that he had that I was able to collect. Please enjoy.
John Lear, a distinguished pilot and ufologist, discusses specific encounters with UFOs in an interview with investigative journalist George Knapp. Lear discusses alleged abductions by UFOs and government coverups of UFO encounters. This is an episode of On The Record, a 30 minute TV show broadcast on KLAS TV in Las Vegas in 1987.
George Knapp: Hello and welcome to On The Record. Flying saucers, extraterrestrials, monsters from outer space. The government has been telling us for years that they’re not real. They’re weather balloons or swamp gas or reflections from the sun or the ravings of lunatics. But serious UFO researchers say a breakthrough may be very close. Some of the government scientists who worked on the top-secret Project Blue Book are ready to talk. What’s more, a series of revealing government documents have trickled out of the federal files, documents that paint a much different picture of the UFO phenomenon. One of the most dedicated UFO researchers lives right here in Las Vegas. His name is John Lear, and he is my guest today. Mr. Lear, thanks for being here.
John Lear: Okay George.
Knapp: To begin with, you’re a pilot, an airline pilot, captain, you have held 17 different world speed records at one time or another. You’re a member of the famous Lear family that all Nevadans are pretty much familiar with, a former State Senate candidate. You don’t sound like the kind of guy who would get hooked up in something that a lot of people would say as a bunch of nonsense.
Lear: No, it’s just by coincidence that I got really interested in this about two years ago. My father saw a UFO and my brother did, and they were very interested, but there was really no proof as far as I was concerned to really look into it until about two years ago.
Knapp: Your father and brother saw them. Can you give details?
Lear: My brother saw one when he was flying a P-38 from Phoenix to Los Angeles at night. It just appeared in front of them. He made two turns, 90 degree turns, it stayed in front of him and then disappeared, and my father was flying at night, I believe over the Arizona desert and saw one too.
Knapp: So you started, you got an interest because of the other members of your family. How did you start out?
Lear: I had an interest but there was really nothing I could put my finger on. And like I say, two years ago, a friend of mine came through town, we had flown in Southeast Asia together and he was retiring from the Air Force. He came over and we started talking about where he had been for the last 15 years and he mentioned that he had been stationed at Bentwaters (Royal Air Force Base) and I said, oh, Bentwaters, that’s where the flying saucer supposedly was in 1980. He said, “No, John, not supposedly. It was,” he said. “I don’t care if you believe me or not, it landed. I didn’t see it because we were confined to quarters. But I know people who did and I’ll give you the names and if you ever see them, tell them you know me, and they’ll tell you the whole story.” Since then, I ran into one of the security police, who was within 10 feet of the saucer and actually saw the three aliens get out and go up to General Gordon Williams, who was the Wing Commander at that time.
Knapp: There was quite a bit of documentation regarding this Bentwater incident. Why don’t you go into that a little bit?
Lear: There’s the Colonel (Charles) Halt memo that came out under the Freedom of Information Act, and it told about the mysterious lights and beaming down and everything that happened in the forest, except the actual alien landings, that wasn’t in the memo. There was also the tape Colonel Halt tape, forest tape, that he made over a period of eight hours. And there’s a 20-minute segment that we’ve been able to get a hold of that you can hear him running through the forest and, and being worried saying the thing’s after us.
Knapp: Now why do you suppose that hasn’t come out? I mean, this particular incident. Why hasn’t it come out if so many people, and you’ve told me about this before, have seen it, or seen these aliens? Why haven’t some of them come forward?
Lear: A lot of them have come forward, but they’re just not getting any press. It’s something that people just don’t want to deal with. The press doesn’t want to deal with and people aren’t going to listen to something unless Dan Rather or any of your big press people are going to tell them about it and they’re just too spooked. The Air Force has made an art form of ridiculing people who have talked about this thing. They’ve done an excellent job of covering it up for the last 40 years. George basically what we’re dealing with here is, I’ll give you the bottom line.
Knapp: Okay, I want to hear your thesis.
Lear: I’m not trying to sell a book and then trying to promote a lecture. This is based on what I’ve come across after intense research in the last year. And I have found out that the government has retrieved between 10 and 15 actual flying saucers, three of which have been in perfect condition, one of which they tried to fly. They have between 30 and 50 alien bodies in cryogenic storage. We even have the name of the person whose job it is to show these bodies to the heads of state and the people who are authorized to see them. They represent at least five different civilizations.
Knapp: I can’t imagine Dan Rather or Tom Brokaw, if that were to come to their attention, a story of that magnitude, that they wouldn’t do something with it.
Lear: Well, I can’t I can’t answer that question. I don’t know why they don’t do it. There certainly is enough evidence based on what I’ve looked at. For instance, the Linda Moulton Howe documentary in Denver for the CBS affiliate there called A Strange Harvest. Since 1975 to 1980 when she made the documentary, there’s at least 9,000 cattle mutilations. Now, the government said that the mutilations were normal, your desert predator did these. But they weren’t. They were mutilations.
Knapp: I think we have a picture of these somewhere. Maybe we can see that as you’re talking. Well, that’s the next picture. There we are.
Lear: This is the mutilation New Mexico State Police did the research, or the investigation on, and they cut out certain parts. The cut was made with a laser beam far sharper than anything we have. As a matter of fact, they were able to determine that they cut between the cells and didn’t cut the cells themselves. We presently don’t have this kind of technology.
Knapp: Well, we don’t know that we have this kind of technology, or you and I don’t know that we don’t, but that doesn’t prove necessarily that it’s ET.
Lear: No, except that there’s usually a visual sighting of a flying saucer or a light, a strange light, at each one of these sightings.
Knapp: Okay, you mentioned the saucers and the bodies. Now what kind of proof do you have that that is true? How do you know that?
Lear: Well, let me take a look. Let me read to your first what the Air Force says about the bodies. First of all, I’m going to read from the introductory space science Volume Two Department of Physics, United States Air Force. This is Chapter 13, Unidentified Flying Objects. Now this is what the Air Force has the students at the Air Force Academy read and it says, “The most commonly described alien is about three and a half feet tall, has a round head, arms reaching to or below his knees and is wearing a silvery spacesuit or coveralls. Other aliens appear to be essentially the same as Earth men, while still others have particularly wide wraparound eyes, and mouths with very thin lips. And there was a rare group reported to be about four feet tall, weight of around 35 pounds and covered with thick hair for clothing. Members of this last group are described as being extremely strong.” Now I’m not making this up. This is an Air Force, you can pick out an Air Force physics book and read this stuff. At the end of the chapter, they go on to say, this leads us to believe in the unpleasant possibility of alien visitors to our planet or at least of alien-controlled UFOs. Now the picture that we have of the big head that the Air Force describes, this picture was drawn by an army surgeon. These are one of the bodies that was recovered in the famous Roswell incident of 1947.
Knapp: Tell us about that.
Lear: It was the first flying saucer that crashed and was recovered by the Army. It was covered up. There have been several books about it, they recovered four beings, and one of the surgeons that was responsible for the autopsy drew that picture and came up with some of these interesting things in the autopsy. I’ll just read a couple lines; three and a half to four and a half feet tall, two round eyes without pupils, no ear lobes, nose is vague, neck described as being thin, arms described long and thin reaching down to the knee section, you can see that there’s a web portion in the hands, no teeth, no apparently reproductive organs. Brain capacity unknown, colorless liquid prevalent in the body without red cells, no lymphocytes. And there’s more in that particular report.
Knapp: This is an autopsy report and you said the government goes to great lengths, the Air Force in particular, to discredit this kind of stuff. Where did this come from? How did you get this?
Lear: That came in the private, that came from the private collection of Leonard Springfield, who was one of the premier researchers. He worked for the Air Force in the early ‘50s in a secret project reporting UFOs, then as a civilian he continued his private research, and this is out of his collection.
Knapp: Why does the government want to hide this? Why doesn’t the Air Force just come forward? What doesn’t, you know, why don’t they level with us if this is all true?
Lear: Well, there’s not really much they can say based on what I’ve been able to find out. George, they’re really … you know, what could they say about it? They’ve been researching it for many, many years. And based on my information, let’s say that the president decided to make an announcement. This is if he made it today, this is what I think that he would say: “My fellow Americans, I come before you tonight with an announcement of great importance. Despite all our denials, flying saucers do, in fact exist, where they come from we do not know, who is in them we do not know, where they are from we do not know, nor do we know how they got here or what they want. We are unable to duplicate any of the metals found on the several craft we have recovered, nor are we able to figure out how they are propelled. We have hidden these facts from you over the past 40 years, in hopes that we could give you more answers. Unfortunately, we are no closer to answers today than we were 40 years ago. God bless you all.”
Knapp: In other words, you find it highly unlikely that the president would ever make a statement anything like that.
Lear: No, it’s just, it’s too big, it’s massive. The problem is not only just the fact that there are five and as many as 10 different civilizations visiting us. Apparently, and this is from the research that I’ve done, at least 90% of them are hostile. And when I say hostile, if not hostile, they have a completely different set of morals than we do.
Knapp: Okay, I’ll tell you what, we’re going to come back to the president and aliens because there have been some statements made by presidents including President Reagan. We’ll be right back.
Knapp: Welcome back. UFOs, are they real? We’re talking with John Lear on the subject. Mr. Lear mentioned a couple of minutes ago about what the president might say about UFOs. Do you believe that various presidents have been informed about what you believe to be the truth on UFOs?
Lear: Each president has been informed up to and including President Reagan. I’m not sure to the extent they are informed. Privately, I don’t believe they are given the full briefing. The people that control this information is an organization that we know of as MJ-12. They’re a top group of military and scientists. I do know that when the president becomes president, it takes at least three or four months before he actually gets the clearance to know everything there is. And that doesn’t mean they tell him, but it does take three or four months to get it. Now talking the president … let’s talk about what the president has actually said, has he mentioned anything about aliens?
Knapp: President Reagan?
Lear: President Reagan on Dec. 4, 1985. This is a copy of the speech from the White House, just before he went over to Iceland. He says, “I couldn’t but one point in our discussions privately with Secretary General Gorbachev, when you stop to think that we’re all God’s children, wherever we may live in this world, I couldn’t help but say to him, just think how easy his task and mine might be in these meetings that we held, if suddenly there was a threat to this world, from some other species from another planet outside in the universe. We’d forget all our local differences that we have between our countries and we would find out once for all, that we really are all human beings here on this earth together.”
Knapp: He couldn’t be just making a supposition for purpose of making a point? You’re saying he’s trying to tell us something?
Lear: Well here, one week ago at the 42nd General Assembly in front of the UN, Sept. 21. He says, “In our obsession with the antagonism of the moment, we often forget how much unites all the members of humanity. Perhaps we need some outside universal threat to make us recognize this common bond. I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world and yet, I ask you, is not an alien force not already among us?” Now, this is right out of a White House speech. I’m not making this up.
Knapp: What did he mean by this alien force? I mean, does it say, does he go on to say something?
Lear: Yeah, he says, what could be more alien to the universal aspirations of our people than war and the threat of war. But the point is, why would he even bring up aliens? I mean, it’s pretty far out for the president of the United States to mention threats from outer space.
Knapp: Okay, what about President Carter?
Lear: President Carter, we have the quote from Carter when he was during his election campaign. If I become president, I’ll make every piece of information this country has about UFO sightings available to the public and the scientists. I am convinced that UFOs exist because I have seen one.
Knapp: Jimmy Carter says he saw one?
Lear: That’s Jimmy Carter. He saw one in 1973
Knapp: But he didn’t, he didn’t tell us, did he?
Lear: He didn’t. The pressure is enormous on these people to cover this stuff up.
Knapp: How can that be? Are they afraid of a panic, that people would panic?
Lear: There’s the panic problem and there’s also the problem that, in fact, in Cro-Magnon Man, there may have been some tinkering to make us what we are today. That’s been borne out by several researchers, that we couldn’t have developed, exactly, there’s the missing link. Something had to happen to get us going. Between 4,000 and 8,000 BC, we had just been going along and for hundreds of thousand years not doing anything. All of a sudden, bang, we started making pottery, invented the wheel, invented fire, and everything took off. What was the key that did that? I don’t know. But it causes one to think.
Knapp: You mentioned a couple of minutes ago before the break that you think 90% of these visitors are hostile. What makes you think that? That doesn’t fit with what we think of as ET, you know.
Lear: If you read some of these books that are on the newsstands, one is called Intruders, one is called Communion. They apparently come down, and when I say apparently, this is taken from 300 hypnosis cases. A friend of mine has done 140 of them. And the people are abducted, they’re taken up into a saucer, usually lasts about an hour. They do all kinds of experiments, they give them shots, they poke them, they cut them, they do all kinds of things and wipe out their memory and send them back. Only after several months of some psychological problems do they end up going to a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist on trying to find out what the problem is, in the use of hypnosis, finds out that this person has been abducted.
Knapp: What’s the reason for that? What are they trying to learn?
Lear: There’s three things that they’re trying to do with these abductions. The first thing is they’re trying to monitor us. It started in the early ‘40s and they’d put a little unit, very small bb type object way up in the back side of the brain and they’d leave it there for about 18 years. They’d pick them up and put it in about 4 years old. 12 years old, they would pick them up and monitor it, then about 18, they’d take it out. The second thing they did is they put a post hypnotic suggestion, according to many of the people that have been hypnotized, and we found out what they’ve told them, apparently, within the next two to five years, there is going to be a big event, something enormous is going to happen and these people who have been abducted, and there’s probably over 100,000 of them, have been given some place to go and something to do but under our best hypnotic techniques, we cannot find out what it is.
Knapp: So how do we know that that’s true?
Lear: Because they said where they’re going to do something, they know that they’re going to do something, but under the hypnosis, they can’t find out exactly what it is. The third thing that they do is genetic experiments. They’ve been cross breeding. There’s a very good book out now called Intruders written by Budd Hopkins and it’s about a cross breeding experiment with a girl in Indianapolis. They actually, the big head, which we call the big head in research, the little three and a half foot tall with a big head. They cross breed that with this girl in Indianapolis, and there were seven children. Just last fall, before the book was published, they brought the oldest and the youngest to show to her, and they let her name all seven. Now this book has been thoroughly researched by Budd Hopkins and although it sounds strange, believe me when I tell you, you may not find out in a month, a year, five years or 10 years. But you’ll look back at what I’m telling you now, and you’ll say to yourself, “Oh, my gosh, the son of a gun was right. “
Knapp: Well, where’s this girl? Now, she’s just living?
Lear: She lives in Indianapolis. She lives in town, or just outside of town. She just got married. Budd went to her wedding. We all know who she is. She gets along, you know, just fine. It doesn’t mean just because she was abducted and gave them children doesn’t mean it was the end of the world. It was just a part of her life.
Knapp: Why don’t we see a lot of photographic evidence as many cameras and video gear. Why don’t we see a lot of that?
Lear: There are a lot of …
Knapp: Before you go on, the pictures that we showed in the beginning of this program, you say they’re baloney, they’re phony.
Lear: That’s right. The pictures you showed at the beginning were called the Meiers Incident. It’s called the visitors from Pleiades, and any ufologist worth his salt knows, and who has researched that case, knows that he cannot back it up with the negatives and the essential information to prove that something like that happened, so we look at that as suspect.
Knapp: So in other words, you run into your share phonies as well in your research.
Lear: Absolutely, there’s not that many, but there are a few out there. There are so many people that have real stories to tell that we’re just so busy with those. For instance, let’s take the November 17 Japan Airlines incident.
Knapp: I’ll tell you what, we’re going to take another break and we’ll do that when we come back. Stay with us.
Knapp: Welcome back. We have a few minutes left with John Lear. We’re talking about UFOs. You’re about to tell me about the Japanese Airline Incident. It’s probably something that’s still in the memory of our viewers.
Lear: Yeah, the Japanese Airline Incident was a cargo 747 that had taken off from Iceland flying to Anchorage. And as he passed over the United States border and the northern part of Anchorage, he was intercepted by a UFO that was twice the size of an aircraft carrier. And he was followed about 40 minutes. He made a complete 360-degree right turn, he made a descent of 5,000 feet and the thing stayed with him. Regardless of what you hear, the FAA did have him on radar and so did the Air Force. If you have a picture there. This is a 26-page document made by Bruce Maccabee who’s a physicist employed by the Naval Surface weapons laboratory and one of the most respected figures in ufology.
Knapp: I don’t think we have that picture. So go ahead.
Lear: Okay, I’m just going to hold it up here and you can see the size of the 747 to the UFO. Now the UFO was not brightly lit like that. It’s just made like that for reference. It was dark, but this is what he saw beside him.
Knapp: Whose rendition is this?
Lear: This is the captain’s. This is from the captain’s rendition when he was debriefed by the FAA. Now, certain UFO de-bunkers have said what he saw was the planet Jupiter. Well, this is an insult to all transport category captains around the world. I mean, the guy knows a difference between something that’s twice as big as an aircraft carrier and the planet Jupiter.
Knapp: I’ve also heard that it’s the reflection of his own plane.
Lear: What the, the radar?
Knapp: Yeah.
Lear: That was an attempt to describe it. You can’t imagine what pressure these people are under to cover this stuff. It’s tremendous pressure. It really is.
Knapp: Okay. You’re going to tell me that the church, did you want to go further into the JAL Incident?
Lear: No, that’s it. I just want to say it has a 26-page report, it had the captain and the ATC conversation. It had the radar plots, and it had the Air Force plots and the FAA radar plot. There was no question about it. The thing followed him.
Knapp: The church, what do they think about UFOs?
Lear: Well, here’s a copy from the London Evening News, July 21, 1987, and says, “Prepare to meet thine aliens. Vatican theologians have acknowledged that there could be life on other planets. Now they plan to train missionaries capable of working in space and meeting aliens. Jesuit scientists at the Vatican Observatory in Prescotti near Rome have reported moving lights and other identified phenomena in the sky. Starting in September, the Vatican university will have a special UFO section.”
Knapp: You’ve said before you thought that a lot of their intentions were hostile and you’ve mentioned before that a lot of the sightings around the military bases. Why don’t we see them here? Las Vegas, we’ve got a lot of military bases here.
Lear: Well, the in fact there have been a lot of a lot of reports of UFOs in around Las Vegas, not specifically over the Air Force bases. We have the Test Site and of course, we don’t know what’s going on there, and we have Nellis Air Force Base. But there have not really been a lot of sightings over there. The main Air Force sightings were in 1975. And the UFOs descended on every Strategic Air Command base guarding the perimeter of the northern United States. They hovered over the nuclear weapons storage area and they stayed there with impunity for up to two and three hours over a period of three days.
Knapp: And nobody heard about it?
Lear: Well, there were a few reports, but you really don’t, I have a I have a report 150 pages long of the F-106s that were sent out to chase them. And the helicopters, and notifying the Canadian authorities and the security patrolman that were sent down to actually see what was going on and they’d come up on these things and they’d say, “I’m not going any further.”
Knapp: You think maybe it’s a top-secret area if the Air Force actually does have them, maybe they’ve got them here?
Lear: I’m certain they do. Up at the Test Site there’s a report that of the three that they’ve got in perfectly good condition, at least one is up at the Test Site and has flown and one was being flown as of 1981.
Knapp: By us?
Lear: By us.
Knapp: We mentioned at the top of the show that perhaps a breakthrough might be coming. That some of these people from MJ-12 or from the Project Blue Book who are in on the government’s research and saw some of the stuff might be ready to talk we got about a minute left. Why don’t you tell me about that?
Lear: It’s our information that half of, part of MJ-12 wants to release it, part of it doesn’t. We’re hoping that we can do this but of course, as researchers we’re not aware of all the ramifications, we just know of what we’re looking at, so we would like to see them release it but we really don’t know if they are.
Knapp: Okay. John Lear. It’s been very interesting. You keep us posted.
Lear: Sure will.
Knapp: Thank you. We’ll see you next week with more of On The Record.
Now I know that I am getting old…
floppy disc kids dont get
China ‘Decodes’ An Orbiting US Satellite
To protect its space assets, China has devised a new cyber defense.
China has developed a new cyber defense infrastructure that can automatically detect security flaws in orbiting satellites, according to military experts participating in the project
There are thousands of satellites in orbit, each with hundreds of components that could be vulnerable to hackers due to software or hardware flaws.
As launch prices have decreased, there are now more satellites rotating in low earth orbits in 2022, opening the frontier of space to big private sector launch projects. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, there were 4,852 satellites in orbit at the start of 2022.
We have all felt the pangs of hunger. Going for a few hours or most of a day without food, we are aware of the keen signal that our body gives our mind that we are hungry–a sharp ache or pang that can drive out most other thoughts. But what is severe hunger like over a longer period?
This is really unknown to most of us.
Detailed information about people that have to go without food for long periods due to causes such as conflict and drought is not readily available. Yet it is important to get some idea of what long term hunger is like to help us understand people whose hunger is more acute and gone on much longer than that which we have experienced.
I can tell you that I and my wife experienced severe hunger for weeks at a time, and the longest that we went without food was five weeks.
You all have no idea how desperate and angry a hungry person can get. Do not underestimate this situation.
To help us understand hunger existing not for a day, but many weeks, we present, in abridged form, a description provided by Tony Hall (formerly a Congressman from Dayton, Ohio and ambassador to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization) in his 2006 book, Changing the Face of Hunger (pp. 74–89). He undertook this fast to protest an action of Congress. He fasted from April 4 to April 26, 1993–three weeks and one day.
Being hungry for three weeks, in Hall’s words:
Physically and psychologically, the first week of the fast was the hardest. I was horribly hungry–I could say ‘in agony’ –and getting weaker by the day. I thought constantly about what I would like to eat–that last meal of fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and Caesar salad; some future meals with some of my favorite foods, such as steak, roast beef, and key lime pie….
Family mealtimes were the worst.
I couldn’t go to the table because the food would be too tempting, and not being able to eat it would be agonizing. Janet, Matt, and Jyl would try to hide from me when they snacked between meals….. I followed Dick Gregory’s advice to fill up on water. I really poured it down. Since it was the only thing I was consuming, I paid a great deal more attention to it than I ever had before. I really noticed the difference in taste when drunk from the tap at home, the office, or someplace else. My sense of smell also heightened throughout the fast. I could tell what people had eaten because their bodies gave off aromas that I had never noticed before….
The hardest day of the fast came on Easter, which was my seventh day without eating. Janet and I had gone on a retreat in Maryland with some friends, and our friends prepared a typical big American holiday dinner–turkey, potatoes, dressing, pie, cake. It drove me nuts. I had to leave them, go outside and take a walk, to get away from those wonderful aromas. I decided that if I could get through this day, I would be over the hump.
I did, and I was.
Just as Dick Gregory said, the sensation of hunger faded in about a week. It’s as if the body gives up on getting food and stops demanding it. From then on, I could join my family at mealtimes and not be bothered a bit . It was a revelation about the poor and the hungry, to whom I came to feel exceptionally close as the fast went on. I now fully understood, in a way I never had before, a strange phenomenon I had witnessed during famines: starving children who refused to eat when food was finally offered to them.
The absence of hunger pangs did not mean I wasn’t feeling the physical effects of the fast, however. I’d wake up in the morning feeling fine. My head would be clear. I would think I had lots of energy.
But after noon, I would fade.
The energy would desert me and weakness would take over. I’d need to nap. Then, when I woke from the nap, I’d feel like I couldn’t get up because I was so tired. Lacking the fuel of food, my body temperature apparently dropped, and I felt cold all the time. It also seemed my brain slowed down in the afternoon; I felt “dull.” I thought of poor children who don’t do well in school, who fall asleep in the afternoon, who become poor students because of poor nutrition. Remarkably, some of my vital signs–blood pressure, the results of blood tests–actually improved.
[On April 26, Hall ended his fast.] Because the fast had been a very public endeavor, I thought the breaking of it should be as well. I invited some reporters to my office…and had a V-8. I hadn’t eaten for twenty-two days, and that thick, salty vegetable juice tasted exceptionally good…Unfortunately I could only sip a little bit. Because my stomach had essentially been shut down for three weeks, I would have to coax it gradually back to use, maybe not being able to enjoy a full meal till the end of the week. I had lost twenty-three pounds–dropping from a robust 180 to a gaunt 157….
Now imagine some very large urban youth with guns and a fierce hunger. How would you be able to deal with them?
Food storage tips: Stock up on foods in gallon buckets
More stuff for my friends in the United States. Now is not the time to buy a new car. Now is the time to change your eating habits, and start being more conservative; grandparent-like in the creation of a larder. -MM
In a long-term survival scenario, storing food in gallon buckets is a good way to stock up on beans and rice, which can be used to make different dishes. These ingredients also pair well with other items you may have in your stockpile, such as canned meat and vegetables.
If you don’t have buckets yet, look for five-gallon buckets that are also food grade. If you can’t find food-grade buckets in stores near your area, line the buckets with Mylar bags instead to keep the food clean.
If you prefer something lighter, ask for four-gallon buckets from the nearest bakery. These buckets will be lighter and easier to carry. As a bonus, four-gallon buckets are often free, or only a couple of bucks.
If you can’t decide between the four- and five-gallon buckets, get whatever’s easier for you to lift and move around your stockpile.
What to store in gallon buckets
While bulk foods go well with gallon buckets, other items suit different storage methods like cans or Mylar bags. These items include more expensive foods that spoil quickly with exposure to air or moisture, or items that you don’t use often.
Keep items like dehydrated and dried foods, freeze-dried foods, milk and powdered eggs in cans or their original packaging.
Foods like beans, flour, pasta, rice, sugar and wheat go well with gallon buckets. Generally, each bucket will hold about 25 pounds of food. This will vary slightly depending on the shape of the food you want to store.
Most buckets are usually 12 inches wide and are HDPE (#2) buckets. You can also use PP (#5), which also have gasketed lids like the HDPE buckets.
When filling buckets, tap the sides to help the contents settle down so that you can fit more in. You need to pack the food compactly and get as much air space out as possible so the oxygen absorbers can work properly.
You can only pack 25 pounds of food in a bucket, even if the bucket isn’t filled completely. However, it’s better to fill the bucket completely before adding the oxygen absorbers so that all the oxygen can be removed once the buckets go into storage.
For optimal long-term storage, line the buckets with Mylar bags. Next, fill the Mylar bags with food, add the appropriate number of oxygen absorbers, then seal.
You can skip the Mylar bags if you regularly rotate your food supplies, you’re using food-grade buckets and if you plan on using up your beans, oats, rice and wheat within five years. (Related: Food supply 101: How to store rice properly.)
Here are some tips on how much food you can store in five-gallon buckets and the oxygen absorber capacity needed. Note that the data below provides estimates for the amount of food that will fit in each bucket.
The actual results may vary depending on how much you are able to tap your buckets and settle the contents.
Black beans – 37 pounds (lbs.) of food, (3,000 oxygen absorber capacity)
Once you have buckets of food, you have to figure out a way to store them in your stockpile. Since the buckets won’t last forever, you need to keep them away from sunlight.
Putting excessive weight on the buckets will deteriorate plastic buckets. Note that 5 gallon buckets should only be stacked three to four buckets high, with the heaviest buckets on the bottom.
You can stack buckets higher only if those on top contain very light items like medical supplies. At most, the buckets on top of your pile should not exceed two pounds.
While there are other ways to store bulk foods, buckets are one of the most efficient methods to use because they can keep out moths and are rodent-resistant. Buckets are also waterproof.
Note that since plastic is not completely impermeable, buckets should not be stored directly on concrete. Just place some 2×4 boards underneath the buckets so they’re above the concrete.
Get food-grade buckets and stock up on bulk foods like beans and grains before SHTF.
So… Beijing’s Dynamic Zero Policy Does Not Work Fighting Omicron Variant? Eh?
A pretty good video. Well worth watching.
High Value kitty
Just another day at the job.
Notice the guy in the orange vest. He is NOT the owner of the ship. he is the community government health official. He employs a “ratter”; a kitty cat, to go forth and secure the premises from rats and mice. China; it does not play.
An oldie, but goodie. Placed here for my friends in the United States. These are 'round out your storage items, and most are extremely cheap. For instance, we bought a load of 100 disposible lighters for under USD $3. -MM
Stockpiling necessary supplies is at the very core of prepping. Most of us start out by trying to build a stockpile of food to see us through an emergency and will probably still be stockpiling food when the SHTF. But stockpiling food isn’t all there is to be ready for a disaster. There are many other things we need and use on a day-to-day basis.
Stockpiling food, without bothering to stockpile these other necessary items might not guarantee our death, but it will sure make our lives more uncomfortable. Too much of that discomfort could lead to death; perhaps not directly, but by permitting weakness and disease to bring us to an end.
There are literally hundreds of things that we could use in a post-disaster world; more than can fit in this list. But the items I’ve listed below are probably the most important things to include in your stockpile, either for your own personal use or to use as barter goods.
Disposable Butane Lighters – Fire is one of the things we use the most in a survival situation. Even though it is not considered one of the top three survival needs, it is useful for all three of them. It’s much easier for people who aren’t skilled at starting fires to start them with a disposable lighter than to try and do it any other way.
Waterproof Matches – The waterproof match is the standard fire starter for use in a survival situation. While many people have switched over to butane lighters, matches are still useful. Be sure to get the strike anywhere kind.
Fire Accelerants – Commonly referred to as “fire starters,” chemical fire accelerants or tinders work to get the fire from your matches or lighter into the larger kindling, so that your fire can keep burning. Make sure you have a good stock, as this is essential with damp wood.
Water Filters – Water purification is essential to survival, as water that has microscopic pathogens can spread disease and even kill us. If you use a filter for purifying water, be sure to have plenty of them.
Firewood – Many preppers are planning on heating their homes and cook with a wood fire in a post-disaster world; but few have enough firewood to do that. It takes four to six cords of firewood to heat a home through the winter.
Salt – Salt is not only essential for survival, it’s nature’s number one food preservative. Yet it can be extremely hard to come by. if you’re going to preserve food in a post-disaster world, you’d a better plan on having plenty of salt on hand.
Canning Jar Lids – I’m assuming you have canning jars; but how many lids do you have? They’re not considered reusable, so you’d better have plenty.
Batteries – Ok, batteries aren’t really a survival necessity; but we’ve got lots of things we use every day, which are battery operated. Stocking batteries, especially AA and AAA sizes, will make your life in a post-disaster world much better.
Toilet Paper – If you want to see something that people will kill for in a post-disaster world, I think this is it… especially women. Do you have any idea how much TP your family goes through?
Personal Hygiene Supplies – While we’re talking about TP, we don’t want to forget things like soap, toothpaste, and shampoo. Cleanliness in a post-disaster world is important as a means to help combat the spread of disease.
Plastic Bags – Nobody is going to be making plastic, let alone plastic bags in a post-disaster world. Yet they are something we use all the time. If you are planning on using a bucket toilet, you’re going to need a lot of bags just for that. But you’re going to need them for a lot of other things too.
Ammunition – This is probably one you’ve already thought of, but it’s so important, it bears mentioning. Make sure you’ve got enough for all the calibers you use, as well as the most common calibers out there. Ammo Storage Tips Every Prepper Should Know
Alcohol – Probably the best barter item there is.
Tobacco –The second-best barter item there is.
Antibiotics – If you want to keep your family healthy, I’d recommend putting in a good stock of the most common antibiotics. You can buy these over the counter in Mexico, without a prescription. Make sure you print out information on dosages and to tell you which antibiotics are the best to use in different situations.
Over the Counter Medicines – Self-diagnosis and treatment is dangerous; but sometimes it’s all we have available to us. Having a good assortment of over the counter medicines will make it possible to treat at least the symptoms of common ailments.
Prescription Medicines – If you have family members that need maintenance doses of prescription medicines for chronic conditions, you need to have a stock of those on hand for them. If you can’t get that stock, then look for natural alternatives which will keep them going.
First-aid Supplies – If you ever want to see an environment ripe for injuries, just look at any place that has been hit by a disaster. You and your family will be doing things you normally wouldn’t do, many of which can lead to serious injuries. Be prepared for more than scraped knees and cut fingers; be prepared for treating major injuries. DIY Dollar Store First Aid Kit
Seed – If the situation continues, you’re going to have to start producing your own food. That means growing a vegetable garden, amongst other things. Have lots of seed on hand, so that you can plant a big garden.
Gardening Chemicals and Fertilizer – There are a number of common chemicals used for gardening, as well as common fertilizers. You’ll need all of that if you’re hoping to get a bountiful harvest.
Fishing Gear – Fishing is probably the easiest way of harvesting food from nature. There’s just one problem with it, I have yet to meet a fisherman who doesn’t lose hooks, lures and other gear on a regular basis. So that means you’d better have plenty, so that you can keep on fishing, even after losing your favorites.
Fuel – Ok, this one is a bit tricky, as gasoline doesn’t store easily. It tends to lose its potency pretty quickly. But then, even less potent gasoline is better than no gasoline. And there are additives you can get, which will help that gasoline to last longer.
Repair Parts – If you’ve got gear that you are going to use to survive, you had better have some way of repairing it. That includes parts for just about anything you are planning on using as part of your survival. For example: If you’ve got some of those old Coleman lamps, which can burn gasoline, you should have rebuilt kits for the air pump.
Hand Tools – We are so used to using power tools for just about everything, that many people don’t have hand tools anymore. Do you have a crosscut saw? How about a hand-crank drill? You’re going to need them, if you can’t connect your power tools.
Honing Stones – To keep knives and other sharp tools sharp.
Rope – Always useful. We tend to stock paracord, which is excellent; but you might want some heavier rope as well.
Sewing Supplies – There probably won’t be any shortage of clothing lying around in a post-disaster world, but there will be of sewing supplies. You’re going to need to be able to fix clothing, as well as taking it in as you lose weight.
Sturdy Shoes – Good shoes are important, and by good I mean something that is rugged and will hold up, giving your ankles support. Most of the shoes we wear today won’t do that; they’re more decorative than anything else.
Rugged Clothing – Rugged jeans, flannel shirts and other work clothing are going to be useful as well. The stuff you wear to the office just isn’t going to make it when you’re chopping wood.
Work Gloves – This is one thing you don’t want to try sewing yourself. Nor do you want cheap work gloves to try and do hard work in. Get several pair for each member of the family, especially those who do the hard physical work of survival.
Vitamins – Your diet probably won’t be well-balanced in a post-disaster world. It will be mostly carbohydrates and fats, with a little bit of protein thrown in. The micronutrients that nutritionists tell us we need will be notoriously absent. Good vitamins can help overcome this problem, helping you to remain healthy.
Reading Glasses – Even if you don’t wear glasses now, that doesn’t mean you never will. Keeping a variety of reading glasses around, in different magnifications, may help you to be able to do things as you age, that you wouldn’t otherwise be able to do. (You can get a wide selection really cheap at a Dollar Store or other such bargain place.)
Antibacterial Hand Cleaner – This is a good one to help prevent the spread of disease. Clean hands aren’t going to contaminate food or contaminate other people.
Spices – One of the best ways of getting the most out of the food that you do have available to you is to change its flavor. This can be especially good when you have children, who can be notoriously difficult when it comes to unfamiliar foods. Disguising what it is and making it taste similar to something they like is one of your best ways of dealing with this.
Bullion (also known as soup stock) – Anything can be turned into a soup or a casserole, if you have soup stock to go with it. Generally speaking, having beef and chicken flavors is enough, as they go with everything else. (Stock up on lots and lots of chicken bullion.)
Flashlights – There’s no such thing as enough flashlights. They don’t last forever and you really can’t fix them.
Leather and Leather Stitching Supplies – Our ancestors used leather for a wide variety of things, like making shoes and harnesses. We’ll need it for making a variety of repairs, like resoling shoes.
Lime – This is one of those things that people forget about. Lime is used in outhouses to help keep the odors down, as well as reducing the population of insects.
Wicking – If you’re going to make candles, you’re going to need wicks for them. While just about any cotton string can be used for that, a cotton string isn’t all that common anymore. A few yards of wicking doesn’t cost all that much and it will allow you to make your own candles.
Candles – Speaking of that wicking, it would be a good idea to have a bunch of candles, already made, on hand.
Oil-burning Lamps – A good oil-burning lamp will work off of just about any flammable liquid, providing you with light. The best is oil, of any sort; but if you have something else, they’ll burn that too. Just try it outside first, to make sure it’s not going to blow up the lamp.
Insect Repellant – Nobody likes becoming the mosquito’s dinner. Yet there are more of them in the world than there are of us. Good idea to be ready to deal with them and keep them off your body.
Pest Control – Speaking of dealing with insects, it’s a good idea to be able to kill them too, as well as trapping mice and other pests. Don’t skimp, as you won’t be able to run back to the local store for more.
Cleaning Supplies – Yeah, who thinks about stockpiling cleaning supplies? But if you want to keep the cockroaches and ants out of your home, you’re going to want to have the necessary cleaning supplies to keep your home clean. This is important for fighting disease as well.
Aluminum Foil – We talk about using aluminum foil for cooking in a survival situation and most people include it in their survival kit. But how many of us have extra aluminum foil back home, to use for cooking food in the wake of a disaster?
Charcoal or Propane – Whatever fuel your barbecue grille runs on, be sure to have plenty on hand. That grille is going to be your first alternate stove. You may move to a fire pit later; but in the first month of surviving in the post-disaster world, that grille is it. Medicinal Uses for Activated Charcoal
Cast-iron Pots – Okay, this really isn’t a supply; it’s more like gear. But if you’re going to cook on your barbecue grille, it would be a good idea to have cast-iron cookware on hand. That grille is going to be a bit rough on your Teflon cookware.
Wind-up Mechanical Clock – Maybe you won’t care about what time it is in a post-disaster world and maybe you will. Either way, it might be a good idea to have a clock that you can count on running when there aren’t any batteries to run it.
Chlorine Bleach – Not only is bleach good for cleaning, it’s the easiest means of purifying water. Just add 8 drops of standard (non-scented, non-color safe) bleach to a gallon of water, stir it and allow it to sit for 20 minutes. That will kill all the microscopic pathogens, making it safe to drink.
Hard Candy – Everyone likes something sweet; but unless you’re keeping bees, that’s going to be pretty scarce in a post-disaster world. Hard candies will keep for a long time, can be eaten slowly, extending the enjoyment and can also be used to soothe a sore throat.
So, there you have it; my “top 50” list. However, much you think you need, try to stockpile more; lots more. If you don’t use it yourself, you can use it as barter goods, getting things that you need.
Nuclear War Between U.S. and Russia (2019 Simulation)
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Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
The Ukraine invasion has set forth a domino effect; a chain of events that is reshaping the globe. And it is all to plan. It’s a plan made by China, Russia, India and Iran.
The (so called) petro-dollar; the USD is starting to fall apart, and with it, the economies of those that have been propped up by this fiat “currency”.
Whether or not Russia is “losing” or “winning” in the Ukraine is of no concern.
What is of concern, and what is actually happening is that a new world order has arisen from the ashes of the old. It’s an East and a West. And the West is collapsing in real time, while the East is rising.
Here, in this article we will cover a section of topics that cover these events in chunks. Not comprehensive, but enough to give you all an idea of what is actually going on.
Key Points
As you read this article, you need to keep in mind a few key points…
The world is undergoing a geopolitical realignment.
This alignment is dividing into two separate entities (East and West).
The two sides have a very different view of how the world should be.
The West is trying to maintain a uni-polar single world government ruled by the United States.
The East is trying to maintain a multi-polar world of equals of various unique social structures.
Key to this manifestation is the control of the currency of exchange.
The West is trying to maintain the USD, or an electronic version of it.
The East is trying to use commodity-based currency by labor, materials and products.
Issues about Ukraine or Taiwan are simply the desperate plans of the West in a plan to maintain a uni-polar world.
Do not get sidetracked from what is REALLY going on.
The technical definition of money is “something generally accepted as a medium of exchange, a measure of value, or a means of payment.”
For most people this has always meant the legal tender of their homeland.
Until fairly recently, this was a coin with the face of the king on it.
Thus, the better the reputation of the king, the more valuable his coin, because traders were more likely to accept it. A good king made sure his coins had a consistent amount of gold or silver in it.
The reason for that is precious metals like gold and silver were always the world’s reserve currency.
Everyone in the world would accept gold and silver for payment, even in places that restricted the use of the metals. You could always take the metal to the king’s mint and exchange it for his coins.
Granted, he took a fee for himself and you were charged the cost of minting the coins, but that was predictable.
In the end, all currency was measured in gold and silver.
…
But, we no longer use gold coin for money.
Every country in the world uses what the economist call fiat currency.
This is a government-issued currency that is not backed by a physical commodity, such as gold or silver.
Instead, it is backed by the “full faith and credit” of the issuing government.
That dollar = faith in the government issuing the paper.
Money is now an expression of the government power behind it.
The US dollar is the reserve currency of the world largely due to the fact the American government was the most trusted.
…
Hard money enthusiasts assume this means the United States can print as much money as it needs, but this is not exactly true.
The international monetary system that evolved after the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in the 1970’s is a framework that controls the exchange rate of the major currencies.
Every major currency is based on the dollar, just as oil and gas are priced in dollars.
The petrodollar was created in the 1970’s when the Bretton Woods system collapsed.
The dollar was replaced by the Petro-dollar.
What the current system does, in effect, is link currencies to the supply of crude oil through the dollar.
How much oil you can buy with your home currency is dependent upon how many dollars you can buy with it.
It is not a direct link, as oil production rises and falls and the supply of dollars rises and falls, relative to other major currencies like the Euro or Chinese Yuan.
In effect, America controls the world by controlling the price of commodities like crude oil and natural gas.
American dollar = global use of oil and gas commodities.
…
In the old days, minting coins was a profit center for the king.
A strong king would restrict the use of other coins in his domain.
His people had to take their foreign coins, gold and silver to his mint for conversion to his coin.
In addition to the cost of production, he tacked on a profit for himself. This is called seigniorage and it works the same for fiat money as it does hard money.
This profit from controlling the global currency is one way the United States has grown so rich.
The USA uses this petro-dollar as a mechanism to make debt.
One of the consequences of this system is the world has an insatiable appetite for US government debt.
Because it is denominated in dollars and considered the safest of financial bets, it makes the ideal collateral.
This has allowed the United States and other Western countries to run massive trade and spending deficits.
The world wants the debt and the world wants to sell the West their products.
US debt was 30% of GDP in 1980 and now it is 127% of GDP.
…
This is the subtext of the Russo-Ukrainian war.
Russia and China, especially China, are tired of this arrangement.
They correctly see it as to the advantage of Washington at their expense.
This is (partially) why China is backing Russia’s play to demand rubles for its energy and agricultural products.
This would pave the way for China demanding yuan for its products and the right to pay for energy in yuan.
India is also quietly supporting what the Russians are doing for the same reasons.
…
This is (partially) why Washington is in no mood to strike a deal over Ukraine.
It is not the only reason, but it is a big part of the plan to protect the dollar.
It is believed that if Washington can break the Putin government through financial war, China and India will drop their plans to buck the dollar in the global economy.
A century after the Great War, the new global war is being mainly fought in finance.
The West, led by America, is now at war with the world over control of the global currency system.
…
…
It is probably a war that the West cannot win.
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…
The reason is the same reason the king would put his face on his coins.
Money is the physical expression of power.
The strong king could enforce his monetary policy in his domain and his money had a predictable amount of gold and silver.
In effect, his money was the representation of his people and the cultural that defined them.
The legal tender of a country is the measure of that country’s wealth and power relative to the world.
…
The West no longer makes or invents anything useful.
The power of the West is the legacy power to control the financial system.
It is a system arranged by Mercurian people in order to control the Apollonians.
The former are the people who operate as middlemen and service providers, while the latter are the people who grow the food, make the goods and keep the gears properly lubricated.
The former operates in the West, while the latter exist in the East.
…
Reality is the thing that does not go away when you stop believing in it.
And reality says that growing and making things counts for more than thinking about things.
The reason Washington has not crushed the Russian economy is the world needs the stuff Russia pulled out of the earth.
In this economic war of attrition, Russian can feed itself and keep its homes warm, while Europe will have to hope America can provide the food and energy at a reasonable fee.
…
The most likely outcome of this global conflict is something people have suspected for quite some time.
The global currency will become a basket of commodities like natural gas and crude oil.
Maybe agricultural products will be in the mix.
The reason for this is the world runs on energy and food.
Bretton Woods III, as some are calling it, will be a new set of currency arrangements whereby money is based on its purchasing power for the agreed upon basket of products.
…
What this means in the short run is that the West is about to get poorer as governments are forced to cut spending and debase the currency to get out from under domestic debt obligations like pension payments.
It also means the end of globalism as has been defined by Washington for three decades.
Trade will continue, but between countries rather than independent global enterprises.
Thirty years after the Cold War the world is about to start healing and return to something close to normal.
The Emotions “Don’t Ask my Neighbor”
Yeah. By mixing up topics such as food, hobbies, movies and pretty girls in my articles I have completely ZEROED out all the trolls, ‘bots and DDos attacks. Man, I’m telling you. It friggin’ works!
About this song…
Throughout my Senior year in High School I fell in love with soul and funk. I added it alongside my love of hard rock, and it greatly shaped my absorption of the culture of the 1970s at that time.
One of my favorites (in regards to soul) at that time was this group that has passed into obscurity known as “The Emotions”. It’s a trio of three attractive ladies with real heart.
Here’s one of their classic songs.
What is a “Blue Blood”?
This term has come to define the ruling oligarchy that operate the United States from behind the veil. But from whence did this term originate?
The blue bloods... arises from eating from a silver spoon and drinking from a silver cup. Silver accumulates in the system and turns the skin blue. Literally. No doubt the blue blood class have moved to gold these days for their eating utensils though the Americans seem to like their grow light suntans.
Ukrainians to use American weapons, and American tactics.
It’s a core principle behind the RAND operational study.
"Since the US-engineered 2013-14 coup in Ukraine, American forces have taught Ukrainians, including neo-Nazi units, how to fight in urban and other civilian areas. Weaponizing Ukraine is part of Washington’s quest for what the Pentagon calls “full spectrum dominance.”
Chinese scientists at the Xian Institute of Optics and Precision Mechanics have developed a fully functioning prototype of the “ZKZM-500 laser assault rifle.”
The 15mm caliber weapon is being compared to an AK-47 because of its similar 6.6-lb weight, but it’s firepower capabilities sound like something straight out of a sci-fi movie.
According to researchers who wish to remain anonymous, the ZKZM-500 fires an energy beam undetectable to the human eye that can pass through glass and cause the “instant carbonization” of human flesh from half a mile away.
“The pain will be beyond endurance,” one researcher said. “[It can] burn through clothes in a split second. If the fabric is flammable, the whole person will be set on fire”.
“Nobody will know where the attack came from,” another anonymous researcher added. “It will look like an accident.”
2022 04 05 08 25
Each will cost $15,000 to manufacture at large-scale production and can fire 1,000 “shots” on a single charge from a lithium ion battery.
In the event of a hostage situation it could be used to fire through windows at targets and temporarily disable the kidnappers while other units move in to rescue their captives.It could also be used in covert military operations. The beam is powerful enough to burn through a gas tank and ignite the fuel storage facility in a military airport.The lasers cannot kill a target with a single shot, but if fired at a person for long enough the weapons would start to burn a hole in their body, cutting through them like a surgical knife.
Anti-terrorism squads in the Chinese Armed Police will likely be the first to test these laser guns in the field.
Frank Black – Headache
This is from sometime in the 1990s. I love it because the video is done in retro 1940s theme and the subject matter was meaningful to me back then. In those days, I worked in cubicle farms as engineering drones.
Do you remember this one?
Americans should budget an extra $5,200 this year to cover rising prices, Bloomberg economists estimate
“Americans haven’t had to worry too much about factoring inflation into their budget for the past four decades. That’s changing in 2022.
The red-hot inflation expected to last throughout the year will leave the average US household spending $5,200 more compared to the year prior, Bloomberg economists Andrew Husby and Anna Wong said in a Tuesday article. That boils down to an extra $433 per month on the same goods and services as last year.”
The S.O.S. Band | Just Be Good To Me (1983) | Extended HQ version
Another of the songs that was big right after I joined MAJestic and was set loose on the world on my own. Actually, this song was very big in the dance club scene at that time. Not so much on the music charts then, but in the clubs, well yeah.
And this singer. Well, wow! So hot! Look at her smile. Her moves. Her hair. She’s so, so chocolate fudge on waffle topped with whipped creame. And brandy. In a glass with ice. Big cubes, not little ones.
She’s such a treat.
Events Like These Only Happen Once Every Century (Sergey Glazyev)
“Events like these only happen once every century”: Sergei Glazyev on the breaking of an epoch and the change of ways.
Is it possible to stabilize the ruble in three days? And why are the Ukrainian ‘zombies’ not giving up?
“After failing to weaken the People’s Republic of China head-on through a trade war, the Americans shifted the main blow to Russia, which they see as a weak link in world geopolitics and economics.
The Anglo-Saxons are striving to realize their age-old Russophobic ideas of destroying our country, and at the same time weakening China, because the strategic alliance of the Russian Federation and China is too tough for the United States.
They have neither the economic nor military power to destroy us together, and not separately,”
- Sergey Glazyev, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, former adviser to the President of the Russian Federation.
About what opportunities are now opening up for the Russian economy, whether the Central Bank panders to the enemy and whether a new world currency will replace the dollar, Glazyev spoke in an interview with BUSINESS Online.
The new world economic order is socialist in ideology
“The new world economic order is socialist in ideology”
– Sergey Yuryevich, commenting on today’s tragic events.
Q: Sergey wrote in your Telegram channel that we should have read your book about the “last world war”, written about 6 years ago. How did you manage to predict everything so accurately?
A:The fact is that there are long-term patterns of economic development, the analysis and understanding of which makes it possible to predict the events that are taking place at the present time.
We are now experiencing a simultaneous change in the technological and world economic structures, while the technological basis of the economy is changing, there is a transition to fundamentally new technologies, and the management system is also changing.
Events like this happen about once a century.
However, technological structures change about once every 50 years, and their change is usually accompanied by a technological revolution, depression and an arms race.
And world economic structures change once every 100 years, and their change is accompanied by world wars and social revolutions.
This is due to the fact that the ruling elite of the countries of the core of the old world economic order impedes changes, does not take into account the emergence of more effective management systems, tries to block the development of new world leaders using them, and tries to maintain its hegemony and its monopoly position by any means, including military and revolutionary ones.
Say, 100 years ago, the British Empire was trying to maintain its hegemony in the world.
When it was already losing economically to the combined resources of the Russian Empire and Germany, the First World War, provoked by British intelligence, was unleashed, during which all three European empires self-liquidated.
I am talking about the collapse of tsarist Russia, the German and Austro-Hungarian empires, but here we can even put a fourth – the Ottoman Port.
As for Britain, for some time it retained global dominance and even became the largest empire on the planet. But due to the inexorable laws of socio-economic development, the colonial world economic structure, based in fact on slave labor, could no longer ensure economic growth.
The two fundamentally new political models that emerged – the Soviet and the American ones – demonstrated a much greater efficiency of production.
This is since they were already organized on other principles: not on private family capitalism.
They were organized on the strength of large transnational corporations with centralized structures for regulating the economy and with limitless monetary emission of credit through fiat money (paper or electronic means – ed. note).
They enabled the mass production of products much more efficiently than the administrative systems of the colonial empires of the XIX century.
The emergence of social states in the USSR and the USA with centralized control systems made it possible for a sharp jump in their economic development.
In Europe, the corporate governance system was formed, unfortunately, according to the Nazi model in Germany, and also not without the help of British intelligence.
Hitler, relying on the support of the British intelligence services and American capital, quite quickly deployed a centralized corporate management system in Germany, which allowed the Third Reich to very quickly capture the whole of Europe.
With God’s help, we defeated this German (more precisely, European – taking into account today’s realities) fascism.
After that, two models remained in the world.
Which I attribute to the imperial world economic structure: Soviet and Western (with the center in the USA).
Soviet model
Western model
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, (which could not withstand global competition due to the fact that the directive system of government was not flexible enough to meet the needs of technological progress), the United States seized global dominance for a while.
Better-Than-Ever Meatloaf
American meatloaf.
Meatloaf is an American favorite, right up there with Mom’s freshly baked apple pie. And while we know that everyone has a favorite way they like to make their meatloaf, we think our Better-than-Ever Meatloaf is sure worth a try.
What You’ll Need
2 pounds ground beef
1 1/2 cups fresh bread crumbs
2 eggs
3/4 cup water
2/3 cup ketchup, divided
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
What to Do
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Coat a large baking pan with cooking spray.
In a large bowl, combine all ingredients except 1/3 cup ketchup; mix well.
Place mixture into prepared baking pan and shape into a loaf. Spread remaining 1/3 cup ketchup over top.
Bake 1 hour or until done.
Notes
If you want to cook this in the microwave, simply combine the ingredients as above, then place the mixture in a 2-quart oblong microwaveable baking dish and shape into a loaf. Microwave, uncovered, on High (full power), turning the dish occasionally, for 25 minutes or until done. Remove from the baking dish and let stand, covered, for 5 minutes before serving.
Want to try a lighter version of this meatloaf recipe? You can use very lean ground turkey or chicken instead of ground beef!
The end of the unipolar moment
Q:But now this period of “American unipolar loneliness” is already ending, and, probably, not only thanks to Russia, but primarily to China and the Asian regions as such. Is it not?
A:Indeed, the hierarchical vertical structures characteristic of the imperial world economy turned out to be too rigid to ensure continuous innovation processes.
They lost their comparative effectiveness in ensuring the growth of the world economy.
On its periphery, a new world economic order has been formed.
It was one, which is based on flexible management models.
As well as a network organization of production, where the state works as an integrator, uniting the interests of various social groups around achieving one goal – raising the public welfare.
The most impressive example of such an integral world economic structure today is China, which for more than 30 years has outpaced the growth rate of the American economy by three times.
At the moment, China is already surpassing the United States in terms of [1] output, [2] exports of high-tech goods, and [3] growth rates.
Another example of a model of a new world economic order, which we called integral (due to the fact that the state in it unites all social groups of different interests), is India.
It has a different political system, but it also has the primacy of public interests over private ones, and the state seeks to maximize growth rates in order to fight poverty.
In this sense, the new world economic order is socialist in ideology.
At the same time, it uses market mechanisms of competition, which makes it possible to provide the highest concentration of resources for making a technological revolution with goals to ensure economic leaps based on a new advanced technological order.
If we look at growth rates after 1995, we see that the Chinese economy has grown 10 times, while the US economy has grown by only 15 percent.
Thus, it is already obvious to everyone that at present the pace of world economic development is shifting to Asia: China, India and the countries of Southeast Asia already produce more products than the US and the EU.
If we add to them Japan or Korea, in which the management system is similar in its principles to the integration of society around the goal of increasing public welfare.
Then we can say that today this new world economic structure already dominates the world, and the center of reproduction of the world economy has moved to Southeast Asia.
Of course, the American ruling elite cannot agree with this.
Q:To come to terms with it, I would say…
A:Yes. They, like the British Empire once, seek to maintain their hegemony in the world.
The events taking place today are a manifestation of how the US financial and powerful oligarchic elite are trying to maintain world domination.
It can be said that for the past 15 years it has been waging a world hybrid war, seeking to chaoticize countries beyond its control and restrain the development of the People’s Republic of China.
But due to the already archaic system of governance, they cannot do this.
The financial crisis of 2008 was such a transitional moment when the life cycle of the outgoing technological order actually ended.
And the process of massive redistribution of capital into a new technological order began.
The core of which is a complex of nanobioengineering and information communication technologies.
All countries began to pump up their economies with money.
The simplest thing a modern government can do is to give all businesses access to cheap long-term money so they can adopt new technologies.
But, in America and Europe such funds went mainly into financial bubbles and covered the budget deficit.
While, in China this colossal money emission was completely directed to the growth of production and the development of new technologies.
There were no Chinese financial bubbles.
And the ultra-high monetization of the Chinese economy did not result in inflation either.
Instead, the growth of the money supply was accompanied by [1] an increase in the production of goods, [2] the introduction of new advanced technologies and [3] an increase in public welfare.
Today, economic competition has already led to the fact that the United States has lost its leadership.
If you remember, Donald Trump tried to contain the development of China through a trade war, but nothing came out of it.
Man-Eating Sex Queen of Great Neck, New York, Dorothea Matthews
201 Clent Rd Great Neck NY
This English Tudor house, located at 201 Clent Road, Great Neck, New York, may not look like much of a love nest. But in 1948, its chief female resident, Mrs. Dorothea Matthews turned this house into something approaching the Playboy Mansion, East. It wasn’t until Mrs. Matthews’ divorce proceedings from her husband Mark Matthews in 1948 that we began to see that wanton sexual escapades did not begin in the groovy Sixties. According to court documents, Mrs. Matthews racked up a large number of sexual partners.
Mrs. Dorothea Matthews 1948
As a slim, shapely 28 year-old woman with plenty of time on her hands, Dorothea had many sexual options beyond her husband Mark, and she took advantage of so many of them. Mrs. Matthews was a very forthright individual; or, to put it in the words of the New York Daily News , she was “socially minded.” Mrs. Matthews managed to bed down a good number of men and women in Great Neck, Upstate New York, trains in transit to Florida, Manhattan, and probably lots of other places.
Mrs. Dorothea Matthews January 7 1950
Yet her taste in sexual partners was not indiscriminate. A doctor, art historian, student, actor, secretary, and her husband, who was a Ping-Pong champion and owned a messenger service, filled her sexual roster, and those are only the ones we know about. And of course, a murderer would be one of her conquests.
All in all, I would say that she lived a FULL life.
“The Americans have opened a biological front of war by launching the coronavirus in China”
Q:Why? Did Trump, accustomed to taking risks and going all-in, lack the determination?
A: And even Trump (of all people) couldn’t get (the United States) out (of it’s situation), because China has a more efficient management system that allows you to concentrate the available production resources to the fullest.
At the same time, effective money management keeps money emission in the contour of expanded reproduction of the real sector of the economy, focusing on financing investments in development.
China has the highest savings rate of any country, with about 45 percent of GDP invested, compared with 20 percent in the United States or Russia. This, in fact, ensures the ultra-high growth rates of the Chinese economy.
In short, the US was doomed to lose this trade war because China could produce more efficiently and finance development cheaper.
The entire banking system in China is state-owned, it works as a single development institution, directing cash flows to expand production and master new technologies.
In the United States, the emission of money goes to finance the budget deficit and is redistributed into financial bubbles.
As a result, the efficiency of the US financial and economic system is 20 percent – there only every fifth dollar reaches the real sector, and in China almost 90 percent (that is, almost all the yuan that is created by the Central Bank of the PRC) feeds the contours of the expansion of production and ensures ultra-high economic growth.
Trump’s attempts to limit China’s development through trade war methods have failed.
At the same time, they boomeranged at the United States itself.
Then the Americans opened a biological war front by launching the coronavirus in China, hoping that the Chinese leadership would not cope with this epidemic and chaos would arise in China.
However, the epidemic has demonstrated the low efficiency of healthcare and has created chaos in the United States itself.
The Chinese system of government has shown much greater efficiency here as well.
In the Celestial Empire, the mortality rate is significantly lower, and the pandemic was dealt with much faster there.
Already in 2020, they even reached economic growth of 2 percent, while in the United States there was a decline of 10 percent of GDP (analysts noted the largest drop since the Second World War – ed. note).
Now the Chinese have restored the growth rate of about 7 percent per year, and there is no doubt that the PRC will continue to develop confidently, expanding the production of a new technological order.
In parallel with the trade war against China, American intelligence services were preparing a war against Russia.
This was because the Anglo-Saxon geopolitical tradition considers our country the main obstacle to establishing world domination of the US and British power and financial elite.
It must be said that the war against the Russian Federation unfolded immediately after the annexation of Crimea and after the American special services organized a coup d’état in Ukraine.
It can be said that they tricked Russia into agreeing to the American occupation of Ukraine, considering it as a temporary phenomenon.
However, the Americans took root on ‘Ukrainian Independence’, created not only [1] strongholds, growing Nazis under their wing, but also [2] trained the Nazi armed forces.
This gave the Nazis the opportunity to receive a military education, trained them in their academies, ‘sewed together’ all the Armed Forces of Ukraine with them.
And for 8 years they have been preparing the Armed Forces of Ukraine for the fight against the only enemy – Russia.
While the mass media, which in Ukraine are also completely controlled by the Americans, formed the image of the enemy in the public mind.
In addition, the United States used the monetary and financial front of the hybrid war against the Russian Federation.
Already in 2014, they introduced the first financial sanctions and knocked out a significant part of Western loans from the Russian economy.
Now we are witnessing the next phase, when they have actually disconnected Russia from the world monetary and financial system, which they dominate.
However, I predicted all this 10 years ago.
I did so based on the theory of changing world economic structures and the specific logic of the US ruling elite.
A logic which was focused on world domination.
Anglo-Saxon geopolitics is traditionally oriented against the Russian Empire and its successors, the USSR and the Russian Federation.
This is because, since the days of the British Empire, Russia has been seen as the main opponent of the Anglo-Saxons.
All the so-called geopolitical science that was being written in London came down, in fact, to a set of recommendations on how to destroy Russia as the dominant force in Eurasia. I mean all sorts of speculative constructions like “countries of the sea against countries of the land” and so on.
Q: How did Russia get in the way of the ‘sea countries’ that much? After all, geographically with the UK, we have never bordered.
A: In this regard, a formula was invented: whoever controls Eurasia controls the whole world.
Actually, applied developments have already gone further.
Zbigniew Brzezinski’s theorem is known that in order to defeat Russia as a superpower, Ukraine must be torn off from it.
All this political dogma, which, it would seem, has long gone down in history, is nevertheless reproduced today in the thinking of the American political elite.
I must say that there are still courses in geopolitics of the past 19th century at Harvard and Yale University, sharpening the brains of future American politicians against Russia.
So they, in fact, jumped on this old and time-tested Russophobic stream, which has always been characteristic of Anglo-Saxon geopolitics.
And, considering Russia as the main opponent of their dominance in the world, in accordance with the proposal of Brzezinski.
Thus, they used Ukraine as an outpost, more precisely, as a tool to undermine Russia, weaken it and, in the long run, destroy it as a sovereign state.
So, what is happening today was easily predicted based on a combination of long-term patterns of economic development.
This, actually doomed the world to a hybrid war, and the traditional Russophobia of the Anglo-Saxon political elite.
After the weakening of the PRC did not work out through a trade war, the Americans transferred the main blow of their military and political power to Russia.
It was a logical step as they consider to be a weak link in world geopolitics and economics.
In addition, the Anglo-Saxons seek to establish dominance over Russia in order to realize their age-old Russophobic ideas of destroying our country, and at the same time weakening China, because the strategic alliance of the Russian Federation and China is too tough for the United States.
They have neither the economic nor the military power to destroy us together, neither separately, which is why the United States initially sought to quarrel us with China.
That didn’t work for them.
But they, using our, I would say, placidity, and seized control over Ukraine.
And thus today they are using our fraternal republic as a weapon of war to destroy Russia, and then to seize control of our resources in order.
I repeat, to strengthen their position and weaken China’s position.
In general, this is all obvious, like two plus two equals four.
Q: “The Americans will not be able to win, just as the British did not succeed in their time”
A: Probably, this is obvious, but not for everyone. Among the Russian elite there are many opponents of an alliance with China. At least, before the special operation in Ukraine, it seemed to these people that American and Western culture is more understandable and closer to us than hieroglyphic Chinese wisdom, and that we will always find a common language with our “Western partners”.
You know, back in 2015 I wrote the book “The Last World War. The USA is Starting and Losing”, which you mentioned at the beginning of the conversation everything was thought out and justified there.
The United States embarked on a worldwide hybrid war.
It started with the Orange Revolutions to disrupt regions of the world it did not control.
It did this in order to strengthen its position and weaken the position of geopolitical rivals.
After the famous Munich speech of President Putin (February 2007 – ed. Note), they realized that they had lost control over Yeltsin’s Russia, and this seriously worried them.
In 2008, the financial crisis broke out and it became clear that the transition to a new technological order was beginning.
And with this, the old world economic order and the previous management system no longer ensured sustainable economic development.
China was now leading the way.
Well, then afterwards the logic of deploying of a world war happens, only not in the forms that existed 100 years ago, but on three conditional fronts…
monetary-financial (where the United States still dominates the world),
trade-economic (where they have already lost superiority to China) and
information-cognitive (where the Americans also have technologies that are superior to ours).
They use all three of these fronts in an attempt to keep the initiative and maintain the hegemony of their corporations.
Well and finally, the fourth front is the biological one, which opened with the advent of the coronavirus from the US-Chinese laboratory in Wuhan.
Today we see that a whole network of biological laboratories existed in Ukraine.
So the United States has long been preparing to open the biological front of the world war.
The fifth, and most obvious, front is, in fact, the front of combat fighting – as the last tool for forcing the states that they control into unquestioning obedience.
Today, the situation on this front is also escalating.
That is, active operations are underway on all five fronts of the world hybrid war, and the result can be predicted.
The Americans will not be able to win, just as the British did not succeed in their time.
Although Britain formally won World War II, they lost politically and economically.
The British lost their entire empire, losing more than 90 percent of the territory and 95 percent of the population.
Two years after World War II, where they were the winners, their empire collapsed like a house of cards, because the other two winners – the USSR and the USA – did not need this empire and viewed it as an anachronism.
Now today, the world will not need American transnational corporations.
They will not need the American dollar.
They will not need the American monetary and financial technologies and financial pyramids.
All this will be a thing of the past in the near future.
Southeast Asia will become the obvious leader in world economic development, and a new world economic order will be formed before our very eyes.
Q:To paraphrase [Erich] Remarque, we can say that changes have finally come on the western front. But what signs do you see of this powerful global system soon becoming a thing of the past?
A: After the Americans seized first [1] the Venezuelan foreign exchange reserves and handed them over to the opposition, then [2] the Afghan foreign exchange reserves, before that [3] the Iranian ones, and now [4] the Russian ones, it became completely clear that the dollar ceased to be the world currency.
Following the Americans, the Europeans also committed this stupidity – the euro and the pound ceased to be world currencies.
Therefore, the old monetary and financial system is living its last days.
After American dollars that no one needs are sent back to America from Asian countries, the collapse of the world monetary and financial system based on dollars and euros is inevitable.
Leading countries are switching to national currencies, and the euro and the dollar are ceasing to be foreign exchange reserves.
Q:How do you see the world after the disappearance of the dollar monopoly?
A: We are currently working on a project for an international treaty on the introduction of a new world settlement currency.
It will be pegged to the national currencies of the participating countries and to exchange commodities that determine real values.
We won’t need American and European banks.
A new payment system based on modern digital technologies with blockchain is developing in the world, where banks lose their importance.
Classical capitalism based on private banks is fading away.
International law is being restored.
All key international relations, including the issuance of world currency circulation, begin to form on the basis of agreements.
At the same time, the significance of national sovereignty is being restored, because sovereign countries are coming to an agreement.
The basis of global economic cooperation is joint investment in order to improve the well-being of peoples.
Trade liberalization ceases to be some kind of priority, national priorities are respected, each state builds such a system for protecting the internal market and its economic space that it considers necessary.
That is, the era of liberal globalization is over.
Before our eyes, a new world economic structure is being formed – an integral one, in which some states and private banks lose their private monopoly on the issue of money, on the use of military force, and so on.
Pretty Chinese girl
I just cannot let a post go without a pretty Chinese girl, don’t you know. video 4MB
Sergei Lavrov: Russian FM hails China as part of emerging ‘just world order’ – The Economic Times
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrovon Wednesday said Moscow and Beijing are leading the way towards a fairer world order, as he makes his first visit to the key ally since Russialaunched its invasion of Ukraine last month.
“The third scenario is catastrophic. Destruction of mankind”
Q: Why did you call your book “The Last World War”? What feeds your hope that this global war is really the last one?
A: I called this world war the last one, because we see that there are several scenarios of movement out of today’s crisis.
The first scenario, which I have already talked about, is calm and prosperous.
It consists in overcoming the US monopoly.
In order to do this in the financial sector, you need to abandon the dollar.
In order to overcome the monopoly in the information and cognitive sphere, it is necessary to isolate our information space from the American one and switch to our own information technologies.
Creating their own contours of the reproduction of the economy, but without the US dollar and the euro and relying on their information technologies for managing money, the countries of the new world economic order ensure high rates of economic development.
They do this while the Western world is collapsing.
There they have a situation of collapse of financial pyramids, disorganization and a growing economic crisis, aggravated by growing inflation due to the uncontrolled issue of money over the past 12 years.
The second scenario of a possible development of events is similar to the one that Hitler wanted to realize during the period of the change of previous world economic structures.
This is an attempt to create a world government with a superhuman ideology.
If Hitler conceived the German nation as superhumans, then the current ideologists of world domination impose on humanity the transition to a post-humanoid state.
In contrast to the post-humanism of the West, the core countries of the new world economic order are characterized by a socialist ideology.
This means respect for private interests, protection of private property and the use of market mechanisms.
In China, India, Japan, and Korea, socialist ideology dominates.
Or rather, a mixture of socialist ideology, national interests, and market competition.
It is this mixture that forms a fundamentally new power-political elite, focused on economic development and the growth of the well-being of nations.
It is very different for Western politicians, intellectuals and businessmen.
What we see today in the West is an attempt to form a certain image of a new world order with a world government at the head.
And, where people are driven into an electronic concentration camp.
You can see by the example of restrictions during the pandemic how it happened: all people are given tags, access to public goods is regulated through QR codes, everyone is forced to walk in formation.
By the way, in the scenario of the Rockefeller Foundation back in 2009, the pandemic and, in fact, everything that happened in connection with it, was amazingly sorted into pieces – they actually predicted the future.
This scenario was called Lock Step, that is, “Walk in formation”, and the Western world followed it.
Sacrificing their own democratic values, they try to force people to obey commands.
International organizations, including the World Health Organization, are used as a kind of stronghold for assembling a world government that would be subordinate to private capital.
But, I must say, Donald Trump greatly interfered with these plans.
This is because he stopped the signing of agreements on Transatlantic and Trans-Pacific partnerships.
In those partnerships, where all countries participating in the agreements sacrificed national sovereignty in all disputes with big business.
And you need to understand that today any transnational corporation can act as a foreign investor, including in the United States.
According to these agreements, if there is foreign capital in the business, then in a dispute with the national government, some kind of international arbitration court is formed, it is not clear how and by whom it was drawn up.
And these unelected judges, appointed, in fact, by big international business, these disputes are resolved.
In fact, it was about the fact that the state was losing all sovereignty in regulating relations with big business.
However, Trump stopped the agreement – the United States never signed it.
Thus, the process of forming a world government was stopped.
This is the second alternative, and it is now in crisis due to the collapse of the idea of globalization and the gradual abandonment of ‘pandemic’ restrictions.
It must be understood that the option of a world government is incompatible with sovereign Russia, with our independence and role in the world.
Within the framework of the globalist scenario, the Russian Federation is viewed as a territory that is intended for exploitation by Western transnational corporations.
The “indigenous population” must serve their interests.
Under such a scenario, Russia disappears as an independent entity, just like China, by the way.
The Western world government may incorporate some of our oligarchs into its version of the future, but only in second and third-rate roles.
Another pretty Chinese Girl
They are everywhere in China, don’t you know. video 2MB
The third scenario is catastrophic. The destruction of humanity…
Q:That same apocalypse which everybody talks about?
A:Well, not everyone… But everyone, of course, is afraid.
By the way, about the American biological laboratories that are engaged in the synthesis of dangerous viruses, it was mentioned in my other book, which was published a little later: “Plague of the XXI century: how to avoid disaster and overcome the crisis?”
I remember back in 1996, when I had to work in the UN Security Council, I proposed to develop the concept of national biological security.
Because even then, almost 30 years ago, genetics was a sufficiently developed science to synthesize viruses directed against people of a certain race or a certain gender, a certain age.
This has been possible for a long time.
It is possible to make a virus that will only work against whites, or vice versa, only against blacks, only against men, or only against women.
Now the Americans are going further – you see that, data which agrees with our Ministry of Defense, they announced the day before, that American biological laboratories were developing viruses targeted against the Slavs.
Apparently, it is possible today – to make a virus against some ethnic group that has its own genetic code.
What is happening in Ukraine today is an echo of the agony of the US power elite, which cannot come to terms with the fact that they will no longer be a world leader.
This becomes clear to everyone – at least to those who are not connected with the Americans by their own interests and are not subject to their cognitive influence.
I’ll give you an example.
When the US imposed sanctions on Russia in 2014, I asked my Chinese colleagues: “Do you think the Americans can impose sanctions with regards to China?”
They were certain that they can’t.
They said that it was impossible, because the US depends on China just as strongly as China depends on the US.
That is, America will be more expensive for itself.
Two years had passed, and Trump launched a trade war against China.
And Beijing now understood that America is an enemy that will drown the Chinese economic miracle by any and all means.
Prior to this, my reasonings with my Chinese colleagues were not very convincing, just as, however, my book you mentioned did not greatly influence our political and economic elite.
My arguments were dismissed.
Although we have been saying for many, many years that the dollar should be refused.
Foreign exchange reserves should have been removed from dollar instruments, from the euros-to-gold.
It is necessary to switch to ones own monetary and financial systems.
Nations should have developed our own settlements in national currencies with partners.
We have been offering all this since the 2000s, when it was already clear what the world economic development was leading to. And now, finally, everyone has seen the light.
Another Pretty Chinese girl
Here we have yet another view inside of China. video 10MB
“The Americans zombified Ukrainians and turned 150-200 thousand people into a fighting machine that works without thinking”
Q: Judging by the heart-rending howl that comes from the camp of the liberals, as well as the events in Ukraine, not everyone has seen the light yet.
A: Yes, we are faced with the fact that in 8 years the Americans have managed to fool the Ukrainian people so much that the people who resist the Russian army, the so-called Armed Forces of Ukraine, look simply zombified.
They are manipulated like puppets.
It is not Zelensky who commands the Ukrainian Army, not even the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine and the General Staff – but the Pentagon.
It commands very effectively from the point of view in the fight of “to the last Ukrainian soldier”, because these zombie guys do not give up.
But they are in an absolutely hopeless situation.
All experts have already acknowledged that Russia won the military special operation, that the Ukraine has no chance of resistance, that the entire military infrastructure has been destroyed…
The Armed Forces of Ukraine is only left with surrendering in order to minimize human losses.
However, Ukrainian officers (and especially, of course, nationalists) act like zombies controlled from the outside – they follow instructions from the Pentagon that come to their personal computers and special tablets.
Moreover, the Americans command their marionettes from the Armed Forces of Ukraine, breaking them into the appropriate units.
Each unit is assigned a number, and every number is given artificial ‘military intelligence’ with tasks every day.
They really turned 150-200 thousand people into a fighting machine that works without thinking, only stupidly follows all their orders.
For 8 years, they have achieved that they forced a significant part of the youth of Ukraine not only to stand up against Russia, but through brainwashing made them their weak-willed tools.
Not just cannon fodder, but controlled cannon fodder.
Being in an absolutely hopeless situation, surrounded, deprived of any supply at all, they still continue the senseless war, dooming themselves to death, and dragging the surrounding civilians with them to the grave.
This is a clear example of how modern American technology works.
We must understand that in front of us, we have a very powerful force.
You know, before [the war], we have heard from Russian experts and politicians that the Ukrainians themselves will suffocate economically and then crawl to us, and in general where will Ukraine go without us?
After all, it will not be able to ensure the reproduction of the economy without our resources and cooperation with us.
Indeed, Ukraine has entered a state of economic catastrophe, as we expected, as we explained to our Ukrainian colleagues.
The Ukrainian republic has become the poorest state in Europe along with Moldova.
Due to the fact that Ukraine has terminated ties with Russia, its losses amount to more than 100 billion dollars.
Nevertheless, this did not prevent American and British political strategists and instructors from forming a 200,000-strong army of thugs and murderers who completely inadequately imagine reality and are an obedient instrument of American interests.
Q: Aren’t there equally obedient American marionettes in Russia? Is it only Ukrainians who were zombified?
A: Yes, and here it should be noted that practically the same thing is happening with the Central Bank, but only on other issues.
Q: Before we move on to the Central Bank, let me clarify. You said that you are working on introducing a new currency. And in what format and with what team?
A: We have been doing this for a long time as a group of scholars. 10 years ago, at the Astana Economic Forum.
We presented the report “Toward sustainable growth through a fair world economic order” with a project for the transition to a new world financial and monetary system.
There, we proposed to reform the IMF system based on the so-called special drawing rights, and on the basis of a modified IMF system – to create a worldwide accounting currency.
By the way, this idea aroused great interest then: our project was recognized as the best international economic project.
But in a practical sense, none of the states, represented by the official monetary authorities, was interested in this project.
Although it was followed by Nursultan Nazarbayev’s publications, which proposed a new currency. If I remember correctly, he offered Altyn.
Q: Altyn? That is interesting.
A: Yes, the publication of his article on this topic even took place in Izvestia.
But the matter did not come to negotiations and political decisions, and to this day it is rather a proposal of experts.
But I am sure that the current situation is forcing us to create new payment-settlement instruments very quickly.
This is because the dollar will practically be impossible to use.
And the ruble, due to the incompetent policy of the Central Bank, which, in fact, acts in the interests of international speculators, cannot find sustainability.
Objectively, the ruble could become a reserve currency along with the yuan and the rupee.
It would be possible to move to a multi-currency system based on national currencies.
But we still need some equivalent for pricing…
Now we are working on the concept of the exchange space of the Eurasian Economic Union, where one of the tasks is the formation of new pricing criteria.
That is, if we want metal prices to be formed not in London, but here in Russia, just like oil prices.
Then this implies the emergence of some other currency.
This is especially true if we want to act not only within the Eurasian Economic Union, and in Eurasia in a broad sense.
Were Eurasia would be at the center of a new world economic order, to which I include China, India, Indochina, Japan, Korea and Iran.
These are large countries, all of which have their own fundamental national interests.
After the current stories with the confiscation of [Russia’s] dollar reserves, I think no country will want to use another country’s currency as a reserve.
So a new tool is needed.
And from my point of view, such a tool, for a start, can become some kind of synthetic settlement currency, which would be built as such an aggregated index.
Q:Can I have some examples? What it is?
A: Well, let’s say, ECU ₠ (European Currency Unit) – there was such an experience in the European Union.
It was built like a basket of currencies.
All countries that participate in the creation of a new accounting currency should be entitled to the presence of their national currency in this basket.
And the common currency is formed as an index, as a weighted average component of these national currencies.
Well, to this we must add, from my point of view, commodities: not only gold, but also oil, and metal, and grain, and water.
Its a sort of commodity harness, which, according to our estimates, should include about 20 goods.
They, in fact, form world price proportions and therefore must participate in the basket for the formation of a new accounting currency.
And an international treaty is needed, which will determine the rules for the circulation of this currency and create an organization like the International Monetary Fund.
By the way, 15 years ago we proposed reforming the IMF, but now it is already obvious that a new monetary financial system will have to be built without the West.
Perhaps someday Europe will join it and the US will also be forced to admit it.
But so far it is clear that we will have to build without them.
For example, on the basis of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
However, these are just expert developments, which we will submit to the authorities in the coming month.
Q: And at the level of the government or at the level of the president?
A: We will first send it to the departments that are responsible for these issues. We will hold discussions, develop some kind of common understanding, and then go to the political level.
Russia abandons the ISS space station
Without Russian rocket engines, there is no American/EU space station. No space X. So it really doesn’t matter. My guess is an earlier than planned retirement of the space station for “fiscal reasons” (wink. Wink.)
One of the many reasons why I love living inside of China. Beauty abounds. So sexy cooking food. video 4MB
“The Central Bank continues the policy of pandering to the enemy”
Q:In your Telegram channel, you write that all that remains is to nationalize the Bank of Russia. Why hasn’t it been done yet? For example, there is a point of view that Elvira Nabiullina remains at her post as a screen, but will no longer manages anything serious. Can you refute or confirm this?
A: You know, I don’t want to engage in conspiracy theories.
Q:This is a conspiracy theory?
A: Yes, we can talk about the American Deep State in conspiracy terms.
In this case, conspiracy theories are a very appropriate direction of thought, because in America, behind the screen of presidents and congressmen, there are some deep forces – special services.
And in our Fatherland, everything is simple.
We have a president, a head of state who has built a vertical form of power.
It is absolutely clear in our country how the parliament and the judiciary are formed.
Here, no conspiracy theory, in general, can be applied.
The same goes for the Central Bank.
Let me remind you that, according to the law on the Central Bank, all its property is federal property.
Therefore, the Central Bank is a state structure, there is not the slightest doubt about it.
Q:And they always said that the Central Bank was separated, as if on the sidelines.
A: The Board of Directors of the Central Bank is appointed by the State Duma on the proposal of the President.
I served for many years as its representative on the national banking board, which oversees the activities of the Central Bank.
I can say that there is no doubt that the Central Bank is the state body for regulating monetary circulation, and it is also the main financial regulator in the country.
But there are nuances.
The Constitution stipulates that the Central Bank conducts its policy independently, that is, it is independent of the government.
But this does not mean that it is independent of the state.
This is a state-owned agency.
Here the judicial system in our country is also officially independent of the government.
Therefore, being an independent body, the Central Bank is nevertheless formed as a state regulatory body and must perform the tasks that are necessary for the development of our economy.
To do this, it is necessary to involve the Central Bank in strategic planning.
The classics of monetary circulation stipulates that the main goal of the monetary authorities, that is, the Central Bank, should be to create conditions for maximizing investment.
That is what the banking system should be doing – maximizing investment.
Because the more investments, the more production, the higher the technical level, the lower the costs and the lower the inflation, the more stable the economy.
It is possible to achieve macroeconomic stabilization in the modern economy only on the basis of accelerated scientific and technological progress.
Attempts to target inflation (such a buzzword), which the Central Bank has been practically imitating for the past 10 years, by manipulating the key interest rate against the backdrop of a freely floating ruble, is short-sighted, primitive and counterproductive.
Usually these measures are recommended by the IMF for underdeveloped countries that themselves do not know how to think.
What is inflation targeting in practice?
This is an extremely primitive and internally contradictory set of measures, the application of which drives the economy into a stagflation trap.
The Central Bank threw the ruble into free float, which is absurd from the point of view of inflation targeting in an open economy, where the exchange rate directly affects prices.
And we see how the devaluation of the ruble periodically accelerates prices.
In addition, they reduced monetary policy to only one absolutely primitive tool – the manipulation of the key interest rate.
But the key rate is the percentage at which the Central Bank lends money to the economy and withdraws money from the economy.
Its attempts to suppress inflation by raising the interest rate cannot succeed in today’s economy, because the higher the interest rate, the less credit, the less investment, the lower the technical level and competitiveness.
The decrease in the latter entails the devaluation of the ruble in 3-4 years, after they raise the interest rate, supposedly to fight inflation.
Having let the ruble exchange rate float freely, they, in fact, gave it at the mercy of currency speculators.
The Americans really like these politics, so they praise the leadership of our Central Bank and the Ministry of Finance in every possible way.
After all, what is important to them?
So that everything is tied to the dollar, so that the ruble is a ‘junk’ currency that is unstable.
And this is a paradox, because the amount of foreign exchange reserves of the Russian Federation has recently been 3 times more than the ruble money supply!
This means that the Central Bank could have stabilized the exchange rate at any level. But it didn’t do that.
And who are the speculators to whom the Central Bank actually threw the ruble to be torn to pieces?
The main speculators are American hedge funds, which actually shape the ruble exchange rate by manipulating the market.
But the Central Bank does not notice this, or rather, pretends to not notice.
In order to keep them in the foreign exchange market by raising the interest rate, the Central Bank kills credit and makes our economy dependent on foreign sources of credit, and the foreign exchange financial system dependent on the interests of speculators.
This is in whose interests the Central Bank works, hiding behind cool buzzwords like ‘inflation targeting’, which has shamefully failed in these past years in terms of real price dynamics.
So in our country the weakest point of the entire national security system in general is the Central Bank.
Its leadership is hit by the enemy’s cognitive-weapon, in other words, zombified by it. In fact, our monetary authorities are doing what the enemy needs.
By the way, I proved mathematically and chronologically that the first wave of sanctions was imposed against Russia only after the Central Bank prepared the ground for this.
Namely, it let the ruble exchange rate float freely and announced that it would raise the interest rate, if inflation would start in the country.
As soon as the Central Bank moved to this strange policy, the Americans immediately imposed sanctions.
Their speculators ensured the collapse of the ruble exchange rate, this caused an inflationary wave, and the Central Bank, on the instructions of the IMF, raised the interest rate, which completely paralyzed our economy.
The total damage from this policy today has already reached 50 trillion rubles of non-produced products and about 20 trillion rubles of unfinished investments.
Now you have to add to this the 300 billion dollars invested in foreign assets, which are now frozen – that’s the damage.
Therefore, when we talk about the nationalization of the Central Bank, we are not talking about formally nationalizing it (it has already been nationalized), but about bringing it into a policy of conformity with national interests.
Right now, its policy is contrary to national interests.
And there is no conspiracy here.
We see in whose interests such a policy is pursued.
The Central Bank raised interest rates to 20 percent, giving the bankers a dominant position in the economy.
Possessing the most expensive and scarce resource, money, they determine which enterprise will survive, and which enterprise will die, go bankrupt, and so on.
Rising interest rates are holding the entire Russian economy hostage to a handful of bankers.
This is the first.
Secondly, the leadership of the Central Bank allowed another collapse of the ruble exchange rate and closed the currency exchange.
As a result, today banks have become the main currency speculators: they buy currency for about 90 rubles per dollar, and sell it for 125. The difference settles down for them as excess profit.
Q:But why, in your opinion, does the Central Bank of the Russian Federation pursue a policy in the interests of the enemy?
A:As I said, it does this on the recommendation of the International Monetary Fund.
But its interests are also shared by our large banks, which objectively like this policy, as well as our monetary and financial structures, which are also involved in manipulating the ruble exchange rate.
Therefore, an influential lobby is formed around this policy, which supports this policy based on its own private interests.
These interests run counter to the interests of the country, they are directly opposite to them.
And, if you look at what the Central Bank is doing today, I have no doubts that it continues the policy of actually pandering to the enemy.
It undermines macroeconomic stability by allowing international speculators to manipulate the ruble exchange rate and does not control the foreign exchange position of banks that have become currency speculators.
Although the Central Bank could easily withdraw banks from the foreign exchange market by fixing their foreign exchange position, forbidding banks to buy foreign currency.
And secondly – by raising the interest rate, the Central Bank actually killed investments in the development of the Russian economy.
Which are very much needed right now.
Primarily for import substitution and for the restoration of economic sovereignty.
While our leadership says that we should not be afraid of sanctions, because they create conditions for economic growth, for import substitutions…
Look, about a third of EU imports have left our market. These are huge opportunities for import substitution.
If we assume that our enterprises begin to develop these markets, then we will develop at a rate of 15 percent per year.
But this requires loans.
Import substitution cannot arise without loans.
We need loans to set up production facilities, to master new technologies, to load idle production capacities.
We have long developed such a strategy of advanced development at the Academy of Sciences, and we are promoting it.
But, unfortunately, the insane, from our point of view, policy of the Central Bank has quite specific influential structures which it likes and supports. That is why the policy is so stable.
Veteran diplomat warns against Australia being a US proxy in war against China
Watch “CITIZENS INSIGHT – Veteran Australian diplomat speaks out against war danger – John Lander” on YouTube
Here’s another fine Chinese girl. I think that pretty girls are everywhere, but you know, there are a lot of them inside of China. video 2MB
“It is possible to stabilize the ruble in three days”
Q: Sergey Yuryevich, if this is not conspiracy theory, then why does the Central Bank continue to pursue such a policy? Only based on the interests of lobbyists?
A: To whom is the war, and to whom is the mother dear.
Commercial banks earn a 40% profit on currency speculation.
You bought 90 rubles per dollar – sold it for 125. 35 rubles – nothing is easier!
As a result, we have inflation, imports are becoming more expensive, everyone sees this insane rate.
Prices for all goods are rising, but the banks are making super profits.
Again, a very influential lobby has formed around this policy, and admitting the failure of such a strategy for many people means, in fact, admitting their incompetence and even sabotage.
And speculators with large banks are quite influential structures in our country that influence decision-making.
Q:Well and what, does this information not reach the first person (Putin), is it blocked?
A: When I was an adviser, I communicated this information.
Q:Were you listened to?
A: Yes, there were discussions, discussed at the Economic Council, then it was closed so as not to irritate the officials.
Now I don’t want to comment on it.
We see today that if we do not change the monetary policy, then it will simply be impossible for us to survive in this hybrid war.
We now need to counter economic sanctions with a serious increase in domestic production.
There are production facilities for this, people, raw materials, brains – too, but there is no money.
Right now, the simplest thing that the state can give people is money.
Q:What is your feeling? Is there an understanding at the top?
A: I think that you need to directly address this question to them.
Q:But many people call you almost the Number 1 person in the current situation – a public figure who can save Russia.
A: Thank you for this review. I try my best.
Q: I just want to understand: if before there was no prophet in our Fatherland, now has he appeared? Is this a temporary situation with the Central Bank?
A: It is so protracted, I would say, for 30 years.
If we had carried out a competent monetary policy in accordance with the requirements of the new world economic order, the integral system, we would have developed like China – by 10 percent a year.
There were such possibilities.
And we basically been stomping in the same spot for these past 30 years.
So the point is not even whether they listen or not, you just need to look objectively and see how China and India are developing and how we are developing.
What prevented us from developing in exactly the same way?
Moreover, the control system of the new world economic order, which I describe in my books, is universal.
She worked successfully in Japan before the Americans broke the Japanese economic growth.
And even in Ethiopia, where they also began to form this management model (and achieved growth by several times).
That is, this universal management model of the modern economy, focused on the growth of social welfare through investment in a new technological order, needs to be implemented.
At the same time, of course, the targeted use of money implies a high responsibility.
Throwing money from a helicopter – is not our thing.
Q: It’s not our path.
A: We are talking about targeted credit emission based on modern digital tools with a strict control system focused on investments in new technologies.
We know how to do this, how to minimize the human factor through the introduction of digital technologies, including the digital ruble.
But this is disadvantageous for those who still adhere to the old strategies.
They made a cash cow out of Russia, they sucked out 100 billion dollars from it abroad to offshore companies.But now the Americans have closed offshorization for us. There is a real opportunity, we must use it.
Q: What would you advise people? Now the main query on the Internet search engines is where to invest money in an era of turbulence. What should people do?
A: First of all, do not make sudden movements, I would say that.
In any case, what certainly is not necessary – to run after dollars or euros.
Because we do not know what will happen next with these currencies.
If our system is disconnected from the Western system, then our banks cannot effectively invest dollars and euros anywhere except in currency speculation.
But I hope that our authorities will still curb the foreign exchange market.
In this context, what the banks did, raising the interest rate on foreign currency deposits sharply, turned out to be a clear overkill, which spurred panic.
I think the ruble will stabilize if, of course, speculators are removed from the foreign exchange market and foreign currency is sold only for importers and people who transfer money abroad within reasonable limits to relatives or are going on a business trip in accordance with the regulations.
The rest is to block the channels of currency leakage.
Then our foreign exchange inflow will normalize again.
You know, we have a very positive trade balance.
Mandatory sale of 80% of foreign exchange earnings has been introduced.
If this revenue is sold on the stock exchange, then the amount of currency will be more than what importers need.
We will have a surplus of currency.
This means that the ruble will strengthen, that is, it will return to the old indicators – 80 or even 70 rubles per dollar.
But until the Central Bank removes speculators from the market and allows commercial banks to become such, the ruble exchange rate will not stabilize.
So, unfortunately, the monetary authorities have not yet come to their senses and have not begun to implement the correct policy of macroeconomic stabilization, I can’t give any advice other than investing in gold if possible (especially since the government removed VAT from gold).
There are no other real assets and no safe haven.
Q:So, buy gold?
A: Buy the essentials.
Or invest in real estate, in something reliable.
As for investments in dollars and euros… They have ceased to be a currency for us.
This is no longer a currency, but some obligations of other countries that may or may not be fulfilled.
So we need to look for other possibilities.
But I would like to emphasize once again that with the right policies, we can very quickly stabilize the ruble and even restore its purchasing power.
Q: And in what perspective, after all?
A:It can be done even tomorrow, you understand? The Primakov government and [Viktor] Gerashchenko did it in one week.
Q:Is the government capable of doing this?
A: Of course it can.
To do this, in general, two decisions need to be made: to fix the currency position of commercial banks and introduce the norms for the sale of foreign currency for non-trading operations, to keep the freely convertible foreign exchange market only for trading operations.
That’s all.
This can be written in 15 minutes and announced within a day, introduced within three days – and the ruble will stabilize.
Now the USA is trying to “Strong Arm” Pakastan
After a recently failed NGO backed coup.
Statecraft | Pakistan PM Imran Khan Insists on Foreign Conspiracy With Alleged Threat Letter .
US seek to overthrown Pakistan PM:
Olivia Newton John – Magic (live on the midnight special)
After I left the Navy, but before I was sent a searching, I was in this “in-between” funk. I was between two worlds and perhaps a bit lost. It was a phase that I had to grow though. And I did, don’t you know.
I believe that everyone goes through this period of “void”. Where they feel out of sorts, and without aim, direction, purpose or meaning. For me, it was a new experience, and very uncomfortable.
I was, though events, able to regroup and seek out my next phase in life. We all do. But when you are in this funk, it’s a road and path that is difficult to define and impossible to get help with.
I will tell you that this is the song that was topping the radio tops at that time, and the song that I exercised to the most. I well remember doing arm curls and sit-ups to this song. To you readers it is just an old song. But to me… well, it represents that strange period of time that I went though; a time of great uncertainity and confusion about who I was, and what my purpose in life was.
Give the song a spin…
Blinken says Russia has already seen a ‘strategic defeat’
Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday said Russia has already experienced a “strategic defeat” in its invasion of Ukraine.
“If you step back and look at this, this has already been a dramatic strategic setback for Russia, and I would say a strategic defeat,” Blinken told co-anchor Dana Bash on CNN’s “State of the Union” when asked about additional sanctions the U.S. may impose on Russia.
Blinken said Russia has already failed in the three main goals it had at the start of its invasion of Ukraine.
“They had three aims going into this. One was to subjugate Ukraine to Russia’s will, to take away its sovereignty and independence. The second was to assert Russian power. The third was to divide the west and NATO. On all three fronts, its already lost,” Blinken said.
Actually, those three things were not the Russian objectives. The objectives were all clearly stated by Putin himself.
So either [1] Biden is lying, [2] he is being advised by idiots, or [3] he's confused Ukraine with another nation. -MM
Cinnamon-Raisin Bread Pudding
All that I can say is yum!
Who doesn’t love making bread pudding in the slow cooker, and this Cinnamon-Raisin Bread Pudding is no exception! Butterscotch chips and pecans add an extra-special touch that’s sure to please. It’s fast. It’s easy. It’s tasty. Just why aren’t you making it?
What You’ll Need
3 large eggs
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 cup milk
1 cup whipping cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup butter, melted
1 (1-pound) cinnamon-raisin bread loaf, cut into 1-inch cubes
1/2 cup butterscotch chips (see Note)
1/2 cup chopped pecans, toasted
Sweetened whipped cream (optional)
What to Do
Whisk together first 3 ingredients in a large bowl; stir in milk and next 3 ingredients. Add bread cubes, stirring until moistened. Stir in butterscotch chips and pecans. Pour into a lightly greased 4-quart round slow cooker.
Cover and cook on LOW setting 2 hours or until center is set. Carefully remove slow cooker insert from heat element. Let stand, covered, 30 minutes. Serve pudding warm with whipped cream, if desired.
Notes
For more cinnamon flavor, you can substitute an equal amount of cinnamon chips for the butterscotch chips. Cinnamon chips tend to be a seasonal item — available only during the holiday months — so, if you love ’em, stock up.
20 Facts About The Emerging Global Food Shortage That Should Chill You To The Core
A very alarming global food shortage has already begun, and it is only going to get worse in the months ahead. I realize that this is not good news, but I would encourage you to share the information in this article with everyone that you can. People deserve to understand what is happening, and they deserve an opportunity to get prepared. The pace at which things are changing around the globe right now is absolutely breathtaking, but most people assume that life will just continue to carry on as it normally does. Unfortunately, the truth is that a very real planetary emergency is developing right in front of our eyes. The following are 20 facts about the emerging global food shortage that should chill you to the core…
#1 One of France’s most important government officials is telling us that we should brace ourselves for an “extremely serious” global food crisis…
France’s Foreign Affairs Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said the EU must get to grips with the prospect that the war in Ukraine could prompt an “extremely serious” global food crisis.
#2 Joe Biden recently admitted that food shortages are “going to be real”, and his administration is now openly using the word “famine” to describe what is coming…
The Biden administration is worried Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will cause famine in parts of the world, White House Council of Economic Advisers Chair Cecilia Rouse told CNBC on Friday.
#3 It is being reported that food prices at German supermarkets will soon go up between 20 and 50 percent…
Just days after Germany reported the highest inflation in generation (with February headline CPI soaring at a 7.6% annual pace and blowing away all expectations), giving locals a distinctly unpleasant deja vu feeling even before the Russian invasion of Ukraine broke what few supply chains remained and sent prices even higher into the stratosphere…… on Monday, Germany will take one step toward a return of the dreaded Weimar hyperinflation, when according to the German Retail Association (HDE), consumers should prepare for another wave of price hikes for everyday goods and groceries with Reuters reporting that prices at German retail chains will explode between 20 and 50%
In Spain, the country started experiencing sporadic shortages of different products like eggs, milk and other dairy products almost immediately following the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. In early March, major supermarkets like Mercadona and Makro began rationing sunflower oil.
In Greece, at least four national supermarket chains have started rationing food products like flour and sunflower oil due to critically low supplies caused by the crippled supply chains coming out of Russia and Ukraine.
On Tuesday, BlackRock Inc. President Rob Kapito told an audience in Austin, Texas, hosted by the Texas Independent Producers and Royalty Owners Association, that an entire younger generation is quickly finding out what it means to suffer from shortages, according to Bloomberg.“For the first time, this generation is going to go into a store and not be able to get what they want,” Kapito said. “And we have a very entitled generation that has never had to sacrifice.”
#7 Since this time last year, some fertilizer prices have gone up by as much as 300 percent.
#8 Many farmers in Africa will not be able to afford fertilizer at all this year, and it is being projected that this will reduce agricultural production by an amount capable of feeding “100 million people”…
With prices tripling over the past 18 months, many farmers are considering whether to forgo purchases of fertilizers this year. That leaves a market long touted for its growth potential set to shrink by almost a third, according to Sebastian Nduva, program manager at researcher group AfricaFertilizer.Org.That could potentially curb cereals output by 30 million tons, enough to feed 100 million people, he said.
Russia is a key global player in natural gas, a major input to fertilizer production. Higher gas prices, and supply cuts, will further drive fertilizer prices higher. Russia is one of the biggest exporters of the three major groups of fertilizers (nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium). Physical supply cuts could further inflate fertilizer prices.
#10 In a typical year, Russia and Ukraine collectively account for approximately 30 percent of all global wheat exports.
Armenia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan and Eritrea have imported virtually all of their wheat from Russia and Ukraine and must find new sources. But they are competing against much larger buyers, including Turkey, Egypt, Bangladesh and Iran, which have obtained more than 60 percent of their wheat from the two warring countries.
#13 One Russian official is warning that his nation may soon only export food to “friendly nations”…
A Russian government official has threatened that Russia will limit its vital food exports to only nations it considers “friendly”.Dmitry Medvedev, a senior Russian security official who previously served as the nation’s president, has threatened that Russia may soon cut off the West from food exports.
#15 The death toll from the bird flu in Iowa alone will be pushed beyond 13 million as a result of this latest incident.
#16 Overall, this is what the total national death toll from the bird flu currently looks like: “22 million egg-laying chickens, 1.8 million broiler chickens, 1.9 million pullet and other commercial chickens, and 1.9 million turkeys”.
#17 China’s agricultural minister has announced that the winter wheat harvest in China could be “the worst in history”.
#18 We are being warned that the winter wheat harvest in the United States will be “disastrous” due to severe drought.
#20 The head of the UN World Food program says that what the planet is now facing is unlike anything that we have seen since World War II…
“Ukraine has only compounded a catastrophe on top of a catastrophe,” said David M. Beasley, the executive director of the World Food Program, the United Nations agency that feeds 125 million people a day. “There is no precedent even close to this since World War II.”
Like I said at the beginning of this article, I hope that you will share this information with as many people as possible, because this crisis really is going to affect every man, woman and child on the entire planet.
In my entire lifetime, I have never seen anything like this, and conditions are getting worse with each passing day.
Stomu Yamashta – Go (Full Album)
I came across this album in the discount bin at the local music store in Butler Pennsylvania when I was a Junior / Senior in High School. I think that I bought it for a dollar. Which was a good deal, as at that time a single album of maybe fifteen songs cost $20.
Crazh huh?
Aside from just loving the high quality artwork of the artists eating at a table with bread and wine, the music itself was haunting and melodic. It really stood apart from the funk, soul, rock, and country and western music that i was getting into at that period in my life.
I suggest you all give it a spin…
Stomu Yamashta’s supergroup Go, and their self titled album. This album shows such great musicianship and I wanted to share it with everyone. This album is legendary, and I believe it should be listened to in it’s entirety.
Good news for the world: the United States led Western DNA countries are beginning to feel the pain after bullying, threatening, and looting Russians foreign reserve, bank account, investment, and private assets.
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There are mass protests across Europe against inflation. Germany is just an example of how sanctioning of Putin the great affect food prices:
Paper models are cheap and fun. You pay perhaps a few dollars, and you down load a PDF file. Then you print out the PDF. Once printed, you cut out the patterns and glue or tape together.
62BD6C5C BFF1 442D B7E9 6C649311549A scaled 1
There are all sorts of these operations on the internt. Some a just fun with silly little items, while others are quite serious and very detailed. How about a 440 automotive engine, perhaps?
This operation; AXM Paper Models, specializes in modern and contemporaneous spacecraft. They are serious with scale and detailed drawing and patterns. In this installment, I am just going to provide a gate way to their inexpensive models of Chinese space station components. It’s all pretty nice.
All in all, no matter what the “news” says, you need to keep in mind a few key points…
The world is undergoing a geopolitical realignment.
This alignment is dividing into two separate entities (East and West).
The two sides have a very different view of how the world should be. That should be quite clear by now, and everyone seems to agree on these points. Including the leadership of the two sides.
The West is trying to maintain a uni-polar single world government ruled by the United States. It wants the work to choose sides. You are either freinds or you are enemies. There is no in-between.
The East is trying to maintain a multi-polar world of equals of various unique social structures. They want to strengthen the UN charter, and empower it, and cut out and gut the legacy corruption that was built internally to it.
Some people, as the articles above state, consider a five point plan. WHile others jsut consider the plan to be some kind of “hybrid war”. I argue that a war is a war, irregardless as to what you call it.
But everything, right now, boils down to the purchase of energy and how that purchase comes about. Key to this manifestation is the control of the currency of exchange.
The West is trying to maintain the USD, or an electronic version of it.
The East is trying to use commodity-based currency by labor, materials and products.
Issues about Ukraine or Taiwan are simply the desperate plans of the West in a plan to maintain a uni-polar world. Sure they are important, but nto as important as the “news” would lead you to believe.
Do not get sidetracked from what is REALLY going on.
Keep clear headed. Keep focused. Keep frosty. I believe in you.
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Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
Not reported that way in the West, eh? But, yeah. That’s exactly what has happened.
This article is VERY IMPORTANT.
I am configuring it using my MM "huge smorgasbord technique". Thus, it includes food, girls, and other things. It's fun, interesting, and it absolutely stops Trolls and 'Bots. You will find these little green comment boxes throughout the article, and I welcome you all to comment using them. Because if you wait until the end of the article, you will have forgotten much of the various, diverse content provided.
The comment boxes look like this...
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Warning: A lot of videos here. To watch them either reload the embedded video (most are under one minute long) or click on the link above the video. They are well worth the time to watch.
I came across this excellent TASS article summarizing the 4 February 2022 Russia/China Joint Declaration. It’s a helpful reminder, on just how far-reaching the Declaration is and the principles it’s based upon.
These are some the many, many key paragraphs, although there are more:
"This declaration formalizes the de facto established union of Russia and China. We have been talking a great deal about strategic interaction. This is a real embodiment of this interaction," Maslov said.
Given the rejection by the West of everything Russian and Chinese, it actually seems probable that the Declaration went unread by American “high officials”, meaning Blinken, Austin and Sullivan, since they already had formalized their escalation plans.
The American “leadership” are still following their check-lists and scripts.
But the reality is something very different. Russia and China have unified. They are as one singular nation, and they coordinate as one singular nation.
It’s not just a treaty. It is the de facto union of Russia and China together.
It is the formation of a new POWER BLOCK.
It is equivalent to when the 13 American states formed the “United States” of America in 1776. It is equivalent to when the European Union was formed, and NATO was created. It is really, really BIG news.
Yet…
The entire West is pretending, or unaware, of the reality. They still are treating Asia as separate nations. They think there’s Russia. They deal deal with Russia. Then once dealt with, they “pivot” to China. Then they deal with China. Then once, Russia and China are done with, they take on India. Then, once India is finished, the “mop up” with Iran.
That’s the plan.
And it relies on a world that does not exist any longer.
Let’s look at how important this unification of Asia is. We will do so through the lens of history.
The formation of the United States
The 13 colonies were the group of colonies that rebelled against Great Britain, fought in the Revolutionary War, and founded the United States of America. Here’s the 13 colonies list:
Connecticut
Delaware
Georgia
Maryland
Massachusetts Bay
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New York
North Carolina
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
South Carolina
Virginia
In late 1774, a group of Patriot leaders at the Continental Congress meeting set up their own government to resist Great Britain, and, on April 19, 1775, the first battles of the Revolutionary War were fought at Lexington and Concord. During the war, each of the 13 colonies formed a Provincial Congress to lead them, now that they no longer accepted the laws of Great Britain.
On July 4, 1776, the thirteen colonies declared themselves free and independent states at the Second Continental Congress by signing the Declaration of Independence. This document unified the thirteen colonies into one nation known as “The United States of America”.
In many ways, this is exactly what has just occurred in Asia.
There are two nations;
Russia
China
On February 4, 2022, a very signifigant document was signed that unified the two nations into one solid singular nation. The treaty and agreements are tighter and stronger, and more substantive that the US Constitution that binds the United States together. The agreement if far stronger than the EU that bonds Europe together. It is a new kind of agreement. Better. Stronger. More detailed, than anything ever seen on this planet previously.
Russia-China Partnership Agreement
On February 4, 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping have signed a joint statement in Beijing before the Winter Olympics opening ceremony held in China.
This statement was accepted as a bold declaration of the “New World Order” and the partnership between the two states without any limitations.
The statement can be divided into four parts:
the manifest on the new world order,
Grand Eurasian Partnership,
the United States (US) aggression, and
cooperation against US aggression.
It should be noted that it is much more than just an inclusive agreement and it will change the balance of power in world politics.
About the New World Order, the sides believed that a new period has started in international relations, and global society demands a new international order based on development in a multi-polar world. Also, the sides suggested that multi-lateral ties have been quite significant in foreign policy and aimed at developing global governance. In addition to that, they offered a powerful United Nations is needed to provide multi-polar in international relations. In addition to that, the G20 format was supported instead of G7 since it is much more inclusive. Also, China and Russia believed that they played and will play an active role in the WTO.
On Grand Eurasian Partnership, the sides have declared that the relations between the two countries are much stronger than it was in the Cold War Period. Also, China’s continuing economic and political project is known as the “Belt and Road” Initiative (BRI). In the statement, it was claimed that following the BRI, a new Grand Eurasian Partnership would be established, contributing to cultural, economic, political, and historical relations of the region.
Russa and China against NATO. China and Russia have declared that they are against the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as it approached the Black Sea region and started to try to contain Russia in the latest Ukraine-Russia conflict. The sides believe that NATO is following the mentality of the Cold War period; however, as mentioned before, the world order is changing, as they suggested. Besides NATO, the sides indicated that the policies of the US in the India-Pacific region are dangerous and threatening the peace-building attempts in the Asia-Pacific region. They claimed that Russia and China are concerned about the trilateral security partnership between Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom (AUKUS), which provides for deeper cooperation between its members in areas involving strategic stability, in particular their decision to initiate collaboration in the field of nuclear-powered submarines.
Against the United States. On the other hand, the most crucial element of the joint declaration was the alliance against the US. The sides declared that the US could escalate the colorful revolutions in the region and stand against that. Also, the sides have put their views on contrasting against terrorism, that they will not let politicization of terrorism, and using terrorism as a tool of interrupting the domestic politics of any country. The two countries highlighted that they would stand against the sanctions of the US by struggling with economic inequality.
Responses
Some responses were given after the declaration of that Joint Statement.
United States. It says (paraphrasing) “It’s a trivial attempt to circumvent our power and influence.” The US officials stated that, with the Joint Statement, that it was of no real consequence. They said that, China’s Xi Jinping could not protect Russia from sanctions. That, in their mind, was the sole purpose of the agreement.
Australia. The Australian Minister of Foreign Affairs Marise Payne criticized the Agreement. Australia stated,
“The joint statement lays out a vision of the world that differs from Australia’s and our allies’ and partners’, and I’m convinced it includes all of our Quad partners.”
Also, in an interview with the ABC on Wednesday, she claimed that the tight security situation at the Russia-Ukraine border did not overshadow the importance the US places on the Indo-Pacific region. Further, Russia and China have slammed the United States’ Indo-Pacific Strategy, rejecting the establishment of closed bloc structures and opposing camps in the Asia-Pacific region. She said Australia is very worried about the Russian military build-up along the Ukraine border and called for a reciprocal conversation to de-escalate the situation.
United Kingdom. The chair of the UK’s parliamentary defense committee, Tobias Ellwood, also claimed that “Russia provides oil, gas and military hardware. China, in return, provides advanced technology,” he wrote, adding that:
“Today, we are seeing the birth of a potent anti-democratic alliance. It is on track to see the world shear into two spheres of competing influence. And we have let it happen.”
Which has me scratching my head. has this Bozo Tobias Ellwood actually read the document. It actually clearly states…
"The sides believe that democracy is a means of citizens' participation in the government of their country with the view to improving the well-being of population and implementing the principle of popular government."
Joint statement by Russia, China formalizes bilateral alliance — analyst
"This declaration formalizes the de facto established union of Russia and China."-Maslov
In their joint statement two countries described the principles they would rely on in developing global cooperation, Alexey Maslov notes
MOSCOW, February 4. /TASS/. The joint statement Russia and China adopted on Friday outlines the principles of new global cooperation and formalizes their bilateral alliance, the director of the Moscow State University’s Asia and Africa Institute, expert of the discussion club Valdai, Alexey Maslov, told TASS on Friday.
“This declaration formalizes the de facto established union of Russia and China. We have been talking a great deal about strategic interaction. This is a real embodiment of this interaction,” Maslov said.
He stressed that in their joint statement Russia and China described the principles they would rely on in developing global cooperation.
“These principles are absolutely not new ones,” he remarked. “In fact, the statement heralds a return to the original UN principles that were laid down back in the 1940s and 1950s.”
The expert believes that the document is a clear sign the countries “share common values, a common understanding of democracy and the idea of the national nature of this democracy, pool together many international projects, the EAEU and the One Belt-One Road and also discuss interaction in the Arctic.”
Maslov stressed that the security issues mentioned in the statement were the most important of all. “A whole list of new types of security was determined there, including cybersecurity, on which the countries will cooperate,” he said.
The analyst stressed that the countries respected each other’s positions. “China does not threaten the interests of Russia and avoids intervention in Russian affairs. Likewise, Russia does not meddle in China’s affairs,” Maslov said.
New era of international relations
"This declaration formalizes the de facto established union of Russia and China."-Maslov
Maslov explained that the “new era” of cooperation was characterized by the need to restore trust in the broadest sense: in world trade, in the military field, in the economy and so on.
“The countries propose if not a program, then at least a declaration of principles a future world is to be based on,” he added.
The expert stressed that this statement “formalizes polarization of forces, and not a confrontation,” because the countries merely declare the principles they rely upon. Maslov stated that other countries were free to join in.
“If some other countries, not necessarily Western ones, for instance, countries in Southeast Asia are prepared for joining the statement or beginning discussions, they will find that this declaration as such is not a closed one for the simple reason other countries may pledge to adhere to the same principles,” he stated.
Maslov sees no risk this statement might cause an escalation of tensions in relations with the West, because it concerns an absolutely parallel process.
“In this respect the document will by no means trigger an escalation. On the contrary, it will rather show that the issue has another side to it. At least, the fact that Russia and China adhere to a different stance,” Maslov concluded.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday arrived in Beijing and held a meeting with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping. This is Putin’s first visit to China since the beginning of the novel coronavirus pandemic. The Russian-Chinese summit level negotiations ended with the adoption of a joint statement on international relations that were entering a new era and on global sustainable development…
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This massive document outlines a framework for unity between Russia and China. It does the EXACT SAME THING as what the document which unified the thirteen colonies into one nation known as “The United States of America”.
Old-Fashioned Patty Melts
Sure everyone has eaten a thousand hamburgers, but how many patty melts have you eaten?
Patty Melt done properly.
Everything about these Old-Fashioned Patty Melts is perfect, from the beef patty smothered in cheesy, oniony goodness, to the toasted and buttery rye bread. This sandwich is sure to have you saying “Ooh, it’s so GOUDA!”
What You’ll Need
2 tablespoons butter, divided
1 small onion, thinly sliced
3/4 pound ground beef
Salt to taste
Pepper to taste
4 slices rye bread
4 slices Gouda cheese
1/4 cup Thousand Island salad dressing
What to Do
In a large skillet or grill pan over medium-high heat, melt 1 tablespoon butter; saute onion 6 to 8 minutes, or until it starts to brown. Remove to a bowl and cover.
Shape beef into 2 oval patties; sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste.
In the same skillet over medium heat, cook patties 5 to 7 minutes per side, or until no longer pink in center. Remove from skillet and keep warm.
Spread remaining butter over one side of each slice of bread. Place in skillet buttered side down, and toast until lightly browned.
To assemble a sandwich, place a slice of cheese on a piece of toast, top with a beef patty, half the onion slices, and half the salad dressing. Top with another slice of cheese and piece of toast; repeat with second sandwich, then serve immediately.
Notes
We love some coleslaw as a go-along to this delicious sandwich, so why not make your own by whipping up a batch of some delicious Country Coleslaw!
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Read this. This is the actual document and translated…
Joint Statement of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China on the International Relations Entering a New Era and the Global Sustainable Development
February 4, 2022
Background
At the invitation of President of the People’s Republic of China Xi Jinping, President of the Russian Federation Vladimir V. Putin visited China on 4 February 2022. The Heads of State held talks in Beijing and took part in the opening ceremony of the XXIV Olympic Winter Games.
The Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China, hereinafter referred to as the sides, state as follows.
The Statement on the New Union
Today, the world is going through momentous changes, and humanity is entering a new era of rapid development and profound transformation.
It sees the development of such processes and phenomena as
multipolarity,
economic globalization,
the advent of information society,
cultural diversity,
transformation of the global governance architecture
and world order;
there is increasing interrelation and interdependence between the States;
a trend has emerged towards redistribution of power in the world;
and the international community is showing a growing demand for the leadership aiming at peaceful and gradual development.
At the same time, as the pandemic of the new coronavirus infection continues, the international and regional security situation is complicating and the number of global challenges and threats is growing from day to day.
Some actors representing but the minority (on the international scale) continue to advocate unilateral approaches to addressing international issues and resort to force;
they interfere in the internal affairs of other states,
infringing their legitimate rights and interests,
and incite contradictions, differences and confrontation,
thus hampering the development and progress of mankind, against the opposition from the international community.
The sides call on all States to pursue well-being for all and, with these ends, to
build dialogue and mutual trust,
strengthen mutual understanding,
champion such universal human values as
peace,
development,
equality,
justice,
democracy and freedom,
respect the rights of peoples to independently determine the development paths of their countries
and the sovereignty and the security and development interests of States,
to protect the United Nations-driven international architecture
and the international law-based world order,
seek genuine multipolarity with the United Nations
and its Security Council playing a central and coordinating role,
promote more democratic international relations,
and ensure peace, stability and sustainable development across the world.
I
The sides share the understanding that democracy is a universal human value, rather than a privilege of a limited number of States, and that its promotion and protection is a common responsibility of the entire world community.
The sides believe that democracy is a means of citizens’ participation in the government of their country with the view to improving the well-being of population and implementing the principle of popular government.
Democracy is exercised in all spheres of public life as part of a nation-wide process and reflects the interests of all the people, its will, guarantees its rights, meets its needs and protects its interests.
There is no one-size-fits-all template to guide countries in establishing democracy.
A nation can choose such forms and methods of implementing democracy that would best suit its particular state, based on
its social and political system,
its historical background,
traditions and unique cultural characteristics.
It is only up to the people of the country to decide whether their State is a democratic one.
The sides note that Russia and China as world powers with rich cultural and historical heritage have long-standing traditions of democracy, which rely on
thousand-years of experience of development,
broad popular support and
consideration of the needs and interests of citizens.
Russia and China guarantee their people the right to take part through various means and in various forms in the administration of the State and public life in accordance with the law.
The people of both countries are certain of the way they have chosen and respect the democratic systems and traditions of other States.
The sides note that democratic principles are implemented at the global level, as well as in administration of State.
Certain States’ attempts to impose their own ”democratic standards“ on other countries,
to monopolize the right to assess the level of compliance with democratic criteria,
to draw dividing lines based on the grounds of ideology,
including by establishing exclusive blocs and alliances of convenience,
prove to be nothing but flouting of democracy and go against the spirit and true values of democracy.
Such attempts at hegemony pose serious threats to global and regional peace and stability and undermine the stability of the world order.
The sides believe that the advocacy of democracy and human rights must not be used to put pressure on other countries.
They oppose the abuse of democratic values and interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states under the pretext of protecting democracy and human rights, and any attempts to incite divisions and confrontation in the world.
The sides call on the international community to respect cultural and civilizational diversity and the rights of peoples of different countries to self-determination.
They stand ready to work together with all the interested partners to promote genuine democracy.
The sides note that the Charter of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights set noble goals in the area of universal human rights, set forth fundamental principles, which all the States must comply with and observe in deeds.
At the same time, as every nation has its own unique national features, history, culture, social system and level of social and economic development, universal nature of human rights should be seen through the prism of the real situation in every particular country, and human rights should be protected in accordance with the specific situation in each country and the needs of its population.
Promotion and protection of human rights is a shared responsibility of the international community.
The states should equally prioritize all categories of human rights and promote them in a systemic manner.
The international human rights cooperation should be carried out as a dialogue between the equals involving all countries.
All States must have equal access to the right to development. Interaction and cooperation on human rights matters should be based on the principle of equality of all countries and mutual respect for the sake of strengthening the international human rights architecture.
II
The sides believe that peace, development and cooperation lie at the core of the modern international system.
Development is a key driver in ensuring the prosperity of the nations.
The ongoing pandemic of the new coronavirus infection poses a serious challenge to the fulfilment of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
It is vital to enhance partnership relations for the sake of global development and make sure that the new stage of global development is defined by balance, harmony and inclusiveness.
The sides are seeking to advance their work to link the development plans for the Eurasian Economic Union and the Belt and Road Initiative with a view to intensifying practical cooperation between the EAEU and China in various areas and promoting greater interconnectedness between the Asia Pacific and Eurasian regions.
The sides reaffirm their focus on building the Greater Eurasian Partnership in parallel and in coordination with the Belt and Road construction to foster the development of regional associations as well as bilateral and multilateral integration processes for the benefit of the peoples on the Eurasian continent.
The sides agreed to continue consistently intensifying practical cooperation for the sustainable development of the Arctic.
The sides will strengthen cooperation within multilateral mechanisms, including the United Nations, and encourage the international community to prioritize development issues in the global macro-policy coordination.
They call on the developed countries to implement in good faith their formal commitments on
development assistance,
provide more resources to developing countries,
address the uneven development of States,
work to offset such imbalances within States, and advance global and international development cooperation.
The Russian side confirms its readiness to continue working on the China-proposed Global Development Initiative, including participation in the activities of the Group of Friends of the Global Development Initiative under the UN auspices.
In order to accelerate the implementation of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the sides call on the international community to take practical steps in key areas of
cooperation such as poverty reduction,
food security,
vaccines and epidemics control,
financing for development,
climate change,
sustainable development,
including green development,
industrialization,
digital economy, and
infrastructure connectivity.
The sides call on the international community to
create open, equal, fair and non-discriminatory conditions for scientific and technological development,
to step up practical implementation of scientific and technological advances in order to identify new drivers of economic growth.
The sides call upon all countries to strengthen cooperation in
sustainable transport,
actively build contacts and share knowledge in the construction of transport facilities,
including smart transport and sustainable transport,
development and use of Arctic routes,
as well as to develop other areas to support global post-epidemic recovery.
The sides are taking serious action and making an important contribution to the fight against climate change.
Jointly celebrating the 30th anniversary of the adoption of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, they reaffirm their commitment to this Convention as well as to the goals, principles and provisions of the Paris Agreement, including the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities.
The sides work together to ensure the full and effective implementation of the Paris Agreement, remain committed to fulfilling the obligations they have undertaken and expect that developed countries will actually ensure the annual provision of $100 billion of climate finance to developing states. The sides oppose setting up new barriers in international trade under the pretext of fighting climate change.
The sides strongly support the development of international cooperation and exchanges in the field of biological diversity, actively participating in the relevant global governance process, and intend to jointly promote the harmonious development of humankind and nature as well as green transformation to ensure sustainable global development.
The Heads of State positively assess the effective interaction between Russia and China in the bilateral and multilateral formats focusing on
the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic,
protection of life and health of the population of the two countries and the peoples of the world.
They will further increase cooperation in the development and manufacture of vaccines against the new coronavirus infection,
as well as medical drugs for its treatment,
and enhance collaboration in public health and modern medicine.
The sides plan to strengthen coordination on epidemiological measures to ensure strong protection of health, safety and order in contacts between citizens of the two countries.
The sides have commended the work of the competent authorities and regions of the two countries on implementing quarantine measures in the border areas and ensuring the stable operation of the border crossing points, and intend to consider establishing a joint mechanism for epidemic control and prevention in the border areas to jointly plan anti-epidemic measures to be taken at the border checkpoints, share information, build infrastructure and improve the efficiency of customs clearance of goods.
The sides emphasize that ascertaining the origin of the new coronavirus infection is a matter of science.
Research on this topic must be based on global knowledge, and that requires cooperation among scientists from all over the world.
The sides oppose politicization of this issue. The Russian side welcomes the work carried out jointly by China and WHO to identify the source of the new coronavirus infection and supports the China – WHO joint report on the matter. The sides call on the global community to jointly promote a serious scientific approach to the study of the coronavirus origin.
The Russian side supports a successful hosting by the Chinese side of the Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games in Beijing in 2022.
The sides highly appreciate the level of bilateral cooperation in sports and the Olympic movement and express their readiness to contribute to its further progressive development.
III
The sides are gravely concerned about serious international security challenges and believe that the fates of all nations are interconnected.
No State can or should ensure its own security separately from the security of the rest of the world and at the expense of the security of other States. The international community should actively engage in global governance to ensure universal, comprehensive, indivisible and lasting security.
The sides reaffirm their strong mutual support for the protection
of their core interests,
state sovereignty and territorial integrity,
and oppose interference by external forces in their internal affairs.
The Russian side reaffirms its support for the One-China principle, confirms that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China, and opposes any forms of independence of Taiwan.
Russia and China stand against attempts by external forces to
undermine security and stability in their common adjacent regions,
intend to counter interference by outside forces in the internal affairs of sovereign countries under any pretext,
oppose colour revolutions, and
will increase cooperation in the aforementioned areas.
The sides condemn terrorism in all its manifestations, promote the idea of creating a single global anti-terrorism front, with the United Nations playing a central role, advocate stronger political coordination and constructive engagement in multilateral counterterrorism efforts.
The sides oppose politicization of the issues of combating terrorism and their use as instruments of policy of double standards, condemn the practice of interference in the internal affairs of other States for geopolitical purposes through the use of terrorist and extremist groups as well as under the guise of combating international terrorism and extremism.
The sides believe that certain States, military and political alliances and coalitions seek to obtain, directly or indirectly, unilateral military advantages to the detriment of the security of others, including
by employing unfair competition practices,
intensify geopolitical rivalry,
fuel antagonism and confrontation, and
seriously undermine the international security order and global strategic stability.
The sides oppose further enlargement of NATO and call on the North Atlantic Alliance to abandon its ideologized cold war approaches, to respect the sovereignty, security and interests of other countries, the diversity of their civilizational, cultural and historical backgrounds, and to exercise a fair and objective attitude towards the peaceful development of other States.
The sides stand against the formation of closed bloc structures and opposing camps in the Asia-Pacific region and remain highly vigilant about the negative impact of the United States’ Indo-Pacific strategy on peace and stability in the region. Russia and China have made consistent efforts to build an equitable, open and inclusive security system in the Asia-Pacific Region (APR) that is not directed against third countries and that promotes peace, stability and prosperity.
The sides welcome the Joint Statement of the Leaders of the Five Nuclear-Weapons States on Preventing Nuclear War and Avoiding Arms Races.
And believe that all nuclear-weapons States should abandon the cold war mentality and zero-sum games, reduce the role of nuclear weapons in their national security policies, withdraw nuclear weapons deployed abroad, eliminate the unrestricted development of global anti-ballistic missile defense (ABM) system, and take effective steps to reduce the risks of nuclear wars and any armed conflicts between countries with military nuclear capabilities.
The sides reaffirm that the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons is the cornerstone of the international disarmament and nuclear non-proliferation system, an important part of the post-war international security system, and plays an indispensable role in world peace and development. The international community should promote the balanced implementation of the three pillars of the Treaty and work together to protect the credibility, effectiveness and the universal nature of the instrument.
The sides are seriously concerned about the trilateral security partnership between Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom (AUKUS), which provides for deeper cooperation between its members in areas involving strategic stability, in particular their decision to initiate cooperation in the field of nuclear-powered submarines.
Russia and China believe that such actions are
contrary to the objectives of security and sustainable development of the Asia-Pacific region,
increase the danger of an arms race in the region, and
pose serious risks of nuclear proliferation.
The sides strongly condemn such moves and call on AUKUS participants to fulfil their nuclear and missile non-proliferation commitments in good faith and to work together to safeguard peace, stability, and development in the region.
Japan’s plans to release nuclear contaminated water from the destroyed Fukushima nuclear plant into the ocean and the potential environmental impact of such actions are of deep concern to the sides.
The sides emphasize that the disposal of nuclear contaminated water should be handled with responsibility and carried out in a proper manner based on arrangements between the Japanese side and neighbouring States, other interested parties, and relevant international agencies while ensuring transparency, scientific reasoning, and in accordance with international law.
The sides believethat
the U.S. withdrawal from the Treaty on the Elimination of Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles,
the acceleration of research and the development of intermediate-range and shorter-range ground-based missiles
and the desire to deploy them in the Asia-Pacific and European regions,
as well as their transfer to the allies,
…entail an increase in tension and distrust, increase risks to international and regional security, lead to the weakening of international non-proliferation and arms control system, undermining global strategic stability.
The sides call on the United States to respond positively to the Russian initiative and abandon its plans to deploy intermediate-range and shorter-range ground-based missiles in the Asia-Pacific region and Europe.
The sides will continue to maintain contacts and strengthen coordination on this issue.
The Chinese side is sympathetic to and supports the proposals put forward by the Russian Federation to create long-term legally binding security guarantees in Europe.
The sides note that the denunciation by the United States of a number of important international arms control agreements has an extremely negative impact on international and regional security and stability.
The sides express concern over the advancement of U.S. plans to develop global missile defence and deploy its elements in various regions of the world, combined with capacity building of high-precision non-nuclear weapons for disarming strikes and other strategic objectives.
The sides stress the importance of the peaceful uses of outer space, strongly support the central role of the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space in promoting international cooperation, maintaining and developing international space law and regulation in the field of space activities. Russia and China will continue to increase cooperation on such matters of mutual interest as the long-term sustainability of space activities and the development and use of space resources.
The sides oppose attempts by some States to turn outer space into an arena of armed confrontation and reiterate their intention to make all necessary efforts to prevent the weaponization of space and an arms race in outer space. They will counteract activities aimed at achieving military superiority in space and using it for combat operations.
The sides affirm the need for the early launch of negotiations to conclude a legally binding multilateral instrument based on the Russian-Chinese draft treaty on the prevention of placement of weapons in outer space and the use or threat of force against space objects that would provide fundamental and reliable guarantees against an arms race and the weaponization of outer space.
Russia and China emphasize that appropriate transparency and confidence-building measures, including an international initiative/political commitment not to be the first to place weapons in space, can also contribute to the goal of preventing an arms race in outer space, but such measures should complement and not substitute the effective legally binding regime governing space activities.
The sides reaffirm their belief that the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction (BWC) is an essential pillar of international peace and security. Russia and China underscore their determination to preserve the credibility and effectiveness of the Convention.
The sides affirm the need to fully respect and further strengthen the BWC, including by institutionalizing it, strengthening its mechanisms, and adopting a legally binding Protocol to the Convention with an effective verification mechanism, as well as through regular consultation and cooperation in addressing any issues related to the implementation of the Convention.
The sides emphasize that domestic and foreign bioweapons activities by the United States and its allies raise serious concerns and questions for the international community regarding their compliance with the BWC.
The sides share the view that such activities pose a serious threat to the national security of the Russian Federation and China and are detrimental to the security of the respective regions.
The sides call on the U.S. and its allies to act in an open, transparent, and responsible manner by properly reporting on their military biological activities conducted overseas and on their national territory, and by supporting the resumption of negotiations on a legally binding BWC Protocol with an effective verification mechanism.
The sides, reaffirming their commitment to the goal of a world free of chemical weapons, call upon all parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention to work together to uphold its credibility and effectiveness.
Russia and China are deeply concerned about the politicization of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and call on all of its members to strengthen solidarity and cooperation and protect the tradition of consensual decision-making.
Russia and China insist that the United States, as the sole State Party to the Convention that has not yet completed the process of eliminating chemical weapons, accelerate the elimination of its stockpiles of chemical weapons.
The sides emphasize the importance of balancing the non-proliferation obligations of states with the interests of legitimate international cooperation in the use of advanced technology and related materials and equipment for peaceful purposes.
The sides note the resolution entitled ”Promoting international Cooperation on Peaceful Uses in the Context of International Security“ adopted at the 76th session of the UN General Assembly on the initiative of China and co‑sponsored by Russia, and look forward to its consistent implementation in accordance with the goals set forth therein.
The sides attach great importance to the issues of governance in the field of artificial intelligence. The sides are ready to strengthen dialogue and contacts on artificial intelligence.
The sides reiterate their readiness to deepen cooperation in the field of international information security and to contribute to building an open, secure, sustainable and accessible ICT environment.
The sides emphasize that the principles of the non-use of force, respect for national sovereignty and fundamental human rights and freedoms, and non-interference in the internal affairs of other States, as enshrined in the UN Charter, are applicable to the information space.
Russia and China reaffirm the key role of the UN in responding to threats to international information security and express their support for the Organization in developing new norms of conduct of states in this area.
The sides welcome the implementation of the global negotiation process on international information security within a single mechanism and support in this context the work of the UN Open-ended Working Group on security of and in the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) 2021–2025 (OEWG) and express their willingness to speak with one voice within it.
The sides consider it necessary to consolidate the efforts of the international community to develop new norms of responsible behaviour of States, including legal ones, as well as a universal international legal instrument regulating the activities of States in the field of ICT.
The sides believe that the Global Initiative on Data Security, proposed by the Chinese side and supported, in principle, by the Russian side, provides a basis for the Working Group to discuss and elaborate responses to data security threats and other threats to international information security.
The sides reiterate their support of United Nations General Assembly resolutions 74/247 and 75/282, support the work of the relevant Ad Hoc Committee of Governmental Experts, facilitate the negotiations within the United Nations for the elaboration of an international convention on countering the use of ICTs for criminal purposes.
The sides encourage constructive participation of all sides in the negotiations in order to agree as soon as possible on a credible, universal, and comprehensive convention and provide it to the United Nations General Assembly at its 78th session in strict compliance with resolution 75/282. For these purposes, Russia and China have presented a joint draft convention as a basis for negotiations.
The sides support the internationalization of Internet governance, advocate equal rights to its governance, believe that any attempts to limit their sovereign right to regulate national segments of the Internet and ensure their security are unacceptable, are interested in greater participation of the International Telecommunication Union in addressing these issues.
The sides intend to deepen bilateral cooperation in international information security on the basis of the relevant 2015 intergovernmental agreement. To this end, the sides have agreed to adopt in the near future a plan for cooperation between Russia and China in this area.
IV
The sides underline that Russia and China, as world powers and permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, intend to
firmly adhere to moral principles and accept their responsibility,
strongly advocate the international system with the central coordinating role of the United Nations in international affairs,
defend the world order based on international law,
including the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations,
advance multipolarity and
promote the democratization of international relations, together create an even more prospering, stable, and just world, jointly build international relations of a new type.
The Russian side notes the significance of the concept of constructing a ”community of common destiny for mankind“ proposed by the Chinese side to ensure greater solidarity of the international community and consolidation of efforts in responding to common challenges.
The Chinese side notes the significance of the efforts taken by the Russian side to establish a just multipolar system of international relations.
The sides intend to strongly uphold the outcomes of the Second World War and the existing post-war world order, defend the authority of the United Nations and justice in international relations, resist attempts to deny, distort, and falsify the history of the Second World War.
In order to prevent the recurrence of the tragedy of the world war, the sides will strongly condemn actions aimed at denying the responsibility for atrocities of Nazi aggressors, militarist invaders, and their accomplices, besmirch and tarnish the honour of the victorious countries.
The sides call for the establishment of a new kind of relationships between world powers on the basis of mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and mutually beneficial cooperation.
They reaffirm that the new inter-State relations between Russia and China are superior to political and military alliances of the Cold War era.
Friendship between the two States has no limits.
There are no ”forbidden“ areas of cooperation, strengthening of bilateral strategic cooperation is neither aimed against third countries nor affected by the changing international environment and circumstantial changes in third countries.
The sides reiterate the need for consolidation, not division of the international community, the need for cooperation, not confrontation.
The sides oppose the return of international relations to the state of confrontation between major powers, when the weak fall prey to the strong.
The sides intend to resist attempts to substitute universally recognized formats and mechanisms that are consistent with international law for rules elaborated in private by certain nations or blocs of nations, and are against addressing international problems indirectly and without consensus, oppose power politics, bullying, unilateral sanctions, and extraterritorial application of jurisdiction, as well as the abuse of export control policies, and support trade facilitation in line with the rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO).
The sides reaffirmed their intention to strengthen foreign policy coordination, pursue true multilateralism, strengthen cooperation on multilateral platforms, defend common interests, support the international and regional balance of power, and improve global governance.
The sides support and defend the multilateral trade system based on the central role of the World Trade Organization (WTO), take an active part in the WTO reform, opposing unilateral approaches and protectionism. The sides are ready to strengthen dialogue between partners and coordinate positions on trade and economic issues of common concern, contribute to ensuring the sustainable and stable operation of global and regional value chains, promote a more open, inclusive, transparent, non-discriminatory system of international trade and economic rules.
The sides support the G20 format as an important forum for discussing international economic cooperation issues and anti-crisis response measures, jointly promote the invigorated spirit of solidarity and cooperation within the G20, support the leading role of the association in such areas as the international fight against epidemics, world economic recovery, inclusive sustainable development, improving the global economic governance system in a fair and rational manner to collectively address global challenges.
The sides support the deepened strategic partnership within BRICS, promote the expanded cooperation in three main areas: politics and security, economy and finance, and humanitarian exchanges.
In particular, Russia and China intend to encourage interaction in the fields of
public health,
digital economy,
science,
innovation and technology,
including artificial intelligence technologies,
as well as the increased coordination between BRICS countries on international platforms.
The sides strive to further strengthen the BRICS Plus/Outreach format as an effective mechanism of dialogue with regional integration associations and organizations of developing countries and States with emerging markets.
The Russian side will fully support the Chinese side chairing the association in 2022, and assist in the fruitful holding of the XIV BRICS summit.
Russia and China aim to comprehensively strengthen the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and further enhance its role in shaping a polycentric world order based on the universally recognized principles of international law, multilateralism, equal, joint, indivisible, comprehensive and sustainable security.
They consider it important to consistently implement the agreements on improved mechanisms to counter challenges and threats to the security of SCO member states and, in the context of addressing this task, advocate expanded functionality of the SCO Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure.
The sides will contribute to imparting a new quality and dynamics to the economic interaction between the SCO member States in the fields of
trade,
manufacturing,
transport,
energy,
finance,
investment,
agriculture,
customs,
telecommunications,
innovation and
other areas of mutual interest, including through the use of advanced, resource-saving, energy efficient and ”green“ technologies.
The sides note the fruitful interaction within the SCO under the 2009 Agreement between the Governments of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization member States on cooperation in the field of international information security, as well as within the specialized Group of Experts. In this context, they welcome the adoption of the SCO Joint Action Plan on Ensuring International Information Security for 2022–2023 by the Council of Heads of State of SCO Member States on September 17, 2021 in Dushanbe.
Russia and China proceed from the ever-increasing importance of cultural and humanitarian cooperation for the progressive development of the SCO. In order to strengthen mutual understanding between the people of the SCO member States, they will continue to effectively foster interaction in such areas as cultural ties, education, science and technology, healthcare, environmental protection, tourism, people-to-people contacts, sports.
Russia and China will continue to work to strengthen the role of APEC as the leading platform for multilateral dialogue on economic issues in the Asia-Pacific region.
The sides intend to step up coordinated action to successfully implement the ”Putrajaya guidelines for the development of APEC until 2040“ with a focus on creating a free, open, fair, non-discriminatory, transparent and predictable trade and investment environment in the region. Particular emphasis will be placed on the fight against the novel coronavirus infection pandemic and economic recovery, digitalization of a wide range of different spheres of life, economic growth in remote territories and the establishment of interaction between APEC and other regional multilateral associations with a similar agenda.
The sides intend to develop cooperation within the ”Russia-India-China“ format, as well as to
strengthen interaction on such venues as the East Asia Summit,
ASEAN Regional Forum on Security,
Meeting of Defense Ministers of the ASEAN Member States and Dialogue Partners.
Russia and China support ASEAN’s central role in developing cooperation in East Asia, continue to increase coordination on deepened cooperation with ASEAN, and jointly promote cooperation in the areas of public health, sustainable development, combating terrorism and countering transnational crime.
The sides intend to continue to work in the interest of a strengthened role of ASEAN as a key element of the regional architecture.
…
It’s very straight-forward. This document lays out the actions and behaviors of the two nations (Russia and China), their interaction with the rest of the work, how the two nations interact with each other, and areas where they will jointly work together.
It is, a de facto. constitution for a unified Asia.
Now, let’s see how this document was presented to Americans. My guess is that they are far too stupid to understand what is going on.
My guess is that they will interject the article with boilerplate negatives, distortions of the text, and gloss over the actual content and meaning behind it.
They will also include disparaging comments, and attempt to detrail the content.
Russia and China Unveil a Pact Against America and the West
In a sweeping long-term agreement, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, the two most powerful autocrats, challenge the current political and military order.
In their matching mauve ties, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping last week declared a “new era” in the global order and, at least in the short term, endorsed their respective territorial ambitions in Ukraine and Taiwan. The world’s two most powerful autocrats unveiled a sweeping long-term agreement that also challenges the United States as a global power, NATO as a cornerstone of international security, and liberal democracy as a model for the world. “Friendship between the two States has no limits,” they vowed in the communiqué, released after the two leaders met on the eve of the Beijing Winter Olympics. “There are no ‘forbidden’ areas of cooperation.”
Agreements between Moscow and Beijing, including the Treaty of Friendship of 2001, have traditionally been laden with lofty, if vague, rhetoric that faded into forgotten history. But the new and detailed five-thousand-word agreement is more than a collection of the usual tropes, Robert Daly, the director of the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States, at the Wilson Center, in Washington, told me.
Although it falls short of a formal alliance, like NATO, the agreement reflects a more elaborate show of solidarity than anytime in the past. “This is a pledge to stand shoulder to shoulder against America and the West, ideologically as well as militarily,” Daly said. “This statement might be looked back on as the beginning of Cold War Two.” The timing and clarity of the communiqué—amid tensions on Russia’s border with Europe and China’s aggression around Taiwan—will “give historians the kind of specific event that they often focus on.”
Beyond security, the declaration also pledged collaboration on space, climate change, the Internet, and artificial intelligence. Politically, the document claimed that there is “no one-size-fits-all” type of democracy, and heralded both forms of authoritarian rule in Moscow and Beijing as successful democracies. “It’s a pretty striking step closer to an alliance and shows that they’re very much aligned in their vision of the world order in the twenty-first century,” Alexander Vershbow, a former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, told me.
Putin described the broader strategic partnership with China as “unprecedented.”
Xi said that their joint strategy would have a “far-reaching influence on China, Russia, and the world.”
U.S. experts described the lengthy statement, which was riddled with false and accusatory language, as startling. “I’ve never seen a joint statement from both leaders using this kind of language.
She described the communiqué as “quite Orwellian” and called it an “inflection point” in which Russia and China are challenging the balance of power that has defined the global order since the Cold War ended, three decades ago. “We could be at the beginning of a new era as the Russian relationship with the West deteriorates and China’s does as well.”
The agreement puts Washington and its key allies “in a terrible bind,” she added. “The fact is, whatever we do to counter what Russia is doing only reinforces its reliance on China.”
The joint statement is, at least for the moment, a diplomatic boon for Putin amid his showdown with the United States and Europe over Ukraine. For the first time in any of Russia’s recent aggressions, Putin has won the open support of China’s leader. China did not back Russia’s war in Georgia in 2008, or its invasion of Ukraine in 2014, nor has it recognized Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Now Moscow and Beijing, which both have the ability to veto any resolution at the United Nations, have declared their opposition to further enlargement of NATO and to the formation of other regional security alliances. “Russia and China stand against attempts by external forces to undermine security and stability in their common adjacent regions, intend to counter interference by outside forces in the internal affairs of sovereign countries under any pretext, oppose colour revolutions, and will increase cooperation,” the often unwieldy statement declared. “This is where they pledge their troth,” Daly said.
Washington had been pressuring Beijing, including in a call last month between Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, in an attempt to keep China neutral or out of the Ukraine crisis. Now, at least on paper and in public voice, it has budged, Andrew Weiss, a former National Security Council official who is currently at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told me. “Russia now has China as an endorser of the egregious and inflammatory position that Putin has staked out on Ukraine.”
Hints of China’s shift have been emerging in the past two weeks, as the Ukraine crisis began spilling over onto already tense U.S.-China relations. President Biden’s foreign policy had hoped to steer relations with Beijing toward stable and manageable competition.
Instead, China, which is normally discreet in its diplomacy, is visibly pushing back.
After his conversation with Blinken last month, the Chinese foreign minister said publicly that Russia’s security concern about NATO expansion is legitimate and must be addressed. The Biden Administration countered last week with an admonition. The State Department warned that the West has “an array of tools” to deploy against foreign companies—including in China—that help Russia evade punitive sanctions.
In the new agreement, Russia, in turn, reaffirmed its support for Beijing’s One China policy that Taiwan is “an inalienable part of China, and opposes any forms of independence.” The joint communiqué also supported Beijing’s ruthless crackdown on dissidents in Hong Kong in the past two years. The bold assertions in the joint statement follow deepening military ties between the two nations in the past decade, Weiss noted. Russia and China have conducted dozens of joint exercises and war games that have involved as many as ten thousand troops to hone tactical and operational capabilities.
Russian officials have boasted that the growing defense partnership was designed to warn the United States and NATO not to pressure Moscow. The naval operations have included mock seizures of islands, patrols by long-range bombers over the Sea of Japan and the East China Sea, and surface-to-air missile targeting.
Last summer, Putin and Xi both witnessed military exercises in China. In October, they held joint naval exercises off Russia’s far-eastern coast. “The frequency, complexity, and geographic scope has steadily increased, reflecting the growth in the overall bilateral defense relationship,” the U.S. Naval Institute reported last year. As two nuclear-armed countries that span Europe and Asia, the more muscular alignment between Russia and China could be a game changer militarily and diplomatically. “They want this to be as threatening as a formal alliance to the West, but don’t want to formally commit to mutual defense,” Daly said. “They don’t have to. The spectre of their mutual aid will serve as a deterrent.”
The joint announcement reflects a shift in the balance of power between Russia and China as well. “The Russians for the longest time were condescending in their view of China as an uninteresting rural society,” Weiss said. “Now China looks at Russia and says, ‘What are you good for?’
China’s ambitions do not run through Moscow.” China has become “canny” in exploiting Russia’s neediness, he said. “It uses Russia as a cat’s paw to disrupt the U.S. pivot to Asia. The fact that we have to keep coming back to Putin, as the neighborhood bully, is beneficial to China.”
Putin was the highest-profile leader to show up for the opening of the Winter Olympics in Beijing. The U.S. and other major powers opted not to send high-profile delegations, to protest China’s human-rights abuses, particularly against its Uyghur minority. Russia had received a two-year ban from officially sending teams to the Olympics after conducting a years-long, state-sponsored doping scheme. Russian athletes—who are not supposed to carry their nation’s flag, wear the Russian insignia, or play the national anthem—instead compete as part of the Russian Olympic Committee. After his meeting with Xi, Putin applauded the team during the opening ceremony’s Parade of Nations on Friday. But his visit clearly had another purpose.
The question now is how far Russia and China will take their agreement. “Words are one thing,” Vershbow, the former Ambassador, said. “We still have to see if the statement will translate into greater tangible Chinese support for Russia’s aggressive behavior—or whether they’ll say, ‘We’re with you, good luck,’ and then turn the other way.” The Chinese have different and sometimes more pragmatic interests in their relations with the U.S. and Europe, which are vital to their economy. “They don’t want to burn all bridges for the sake of a relationship with Russia.”
Oh, fine and dandy, but…
Let’s stop playing around.
The United States set up identical conditions for war in both Ukraine and Taiwan simultaneously.
This began in 2014 under President Obama.
This action was planned long before that. Perhaps as early as 2004.
The USA set up pro-United States governments in 2014 by NED sponsored activity.
The USA has since poured billions of dollars in weapons to those areas.
And has established bioweapons labs in both areas.
Both governments possess a hatred of their larger neighbor.
And both will try to provoke their neighbor according to the RAND directions.
The United States WILL create a contexual reason to drag China into a terrible and long-duration conventional war on the border of China identically to what has occurred in Ukraine.
So stop pretending.
Right now Russia is in complete control of the Ukraine situation, no matter what the Western “news” says, and a “false flag” event is scheduled to drag the USA and NATO into the conflict. With NATO being a light-weight serrogate for the USA battle forces.
Then the USA will “pivot to Asia” and take out China.
So the conflict in Taiwan will be similiar.
It is planned to be a long drawn out conventional war, and a “false flag” will be a justification for invasion by Japanese, Australian and United States forces.
…
Now, I’m not too swift a Geo-Political strategist. However, if I can see this, then you can well expect that China and Russia see this as well.
Do you think that they have plans, and are aware of the big and larger plans that are in place and the systems that are set in motion?
.
And with that understood, please keep in mind that…
"This declaration formalizes the de facto established union of Russia and China."-Maslov
With this understood, now let’s see what is going on today.
The United States demands that China sever economic ties with Russia or else!
Now, consider the reality about the domestic situation inside of America right now…
A White House account of the call on Friday said that the US president “described the implications and consequences if China provides material support to Russia as it conducts brutal attacks against Ukrainian cities and civilians”.A senior administration official said there would be consequences “not just for China’s relationship with the United States, but for the wider world”, but would not give more details on whether Biden had gone into specifics on possible sanctions, other than to point out what had happened to Russia as an example.
There was nothing specific. Just warnings of “serious consequences” if China and Russia maintain their close relationship.
Obviously, the United States is acting like a pentulant child that is hold his ears and shutting his eyes and screaming as he tries to force the world to go away.
It appears that the United States does not recognize the agreement just forged last month between Russia and China.
Just a reminder to the reader that you now understand thngs far better than the American “leadership” does;
"This declaration formalizes the de facto established union of Russia and China."-Maslov
China is READY
China and Russia are BOTH aware what is going on. They know that the United States plans to destroy both nations and then pick over the carcass like vultures. It’s very clear. It’s very plain. So let’s stop playing games. Let’s stop pretending.
The United States and its allies are getting ready to go full-spectrum war when they are ready to “pivot to Asia”.
It will begin [1] with crossing one of China’s “RED LINES”, just like the USA did with Ukraine. [2] China will react, then [3] a “False Flag” will be tripped, and (of course, to plan, [4] the United States will use it as an excuse to engage in a full war on Chinese soil. Becuase, after all, Taiwan is de facto Chinese soil. No matter what propagandized narrative the West wishes to create.
But… you know…
China is ready.
Video 1– China knows that America wants a war. – Adults
The pretext will be Taiwan. Just like it was with Ukraine. And China considers it an American invasion of it’s land. They will fight to the death, and employ great weapons of mass, mass, destruction.
You all had wish you were not on the recieving side of this onslaught of rage. I can tell you, and so can other expats inside of China, the Chinese are very quiet and studious, but when they get angry… when they get angry… they will unleash a rage that is indescribable. They will unleash… slaughter.
Video 2 -First grade military training – 5 / 6 year olds
Inside of China, very first grade, and many Kindergardens begin their day with roll-call, and reporting. Such as this. video 5 MB
Video 3 – Elementary school training – 9 year olds
Hey! Do you notice that these are not cheap AK-47 clones. They do not exist in China. REAL GUNS exist in China.
These are real deal full-auto Chinese military weapons. These are fourth grade kids. Nope. They probably couldn’t take on American SEALs or Green Berets. But that is not the point. The point is everyone in China is trained to fight. It is the law. And they are merit driven and they work together as one. Everyone in a town or villiage acts as a fully managed army unit. Let that soak in. All 1.4 billion of them.
That’s 1,400,000,000,000,000 people.
How many military forces do you think that the United States can throw together to invade China? 60,000? 90,000? Even including Japan and Australia? Watch the video. This is all over China. video 31MB
Video 4 – EVERYONE in China has combat training – 17 year olds
Oh, you don’t beleive me, eh? What, you think that this is basic training, huh? No. It isn’t. It’s High School drills. High School drills. Let that sink in.
While the United States has “pepe rallies”, diversity training, ebonics, and soft subjects like fund-raising, China teaches basics, drills and trains over and over and over. They train with real weapons with real live ammo. video a must watch. Know the context. Filmed at their High School complex. video 11MB
Video 5 – Middle School exercises. 14 year old kids
Every Summer, the middle school students go on training exercises. Some resemble “Boot Camp”, while others are “actual maneuvres” and “War Games”. Here’s one such event.
Sure, they cannot take an American Green Beret one-on-one or an SAS fighter. But what about 20-to-1, or 200-to-1, or maybe 2000-to-1. How do you think the United States invasion of Taiwan will work out?
Video 6 – Middle school (14 year old) target practice
Using real government issued weapons, and ammo. Tell me about the firearm training that the United States, the UK, or Australia provides in middle school. I would like to hear it.
Video 7 – China hasn’t forgotten, and they haven’t forgiven.
All of China remembers the “great humiliation” inflicted on them by Europe and America, and they well remember the atrocities of Japan, as this video clearly show.
I can tell you truthfully, if Japan engages China, Japan will become radioactive waste.
Video 8 – What the start of world war III might look like
You know, Hollywood has been glorifying war for decades. And China is always considered an enemy and an easy target. Ever watch the latest “Red Dawn” remake?
Here we see a mashup with Hollywood movies, and Chinese movies trying to suggest what the start of world war III looks like when the United States places a Naval Battle Group between the mainland and Taiwan.
What we are witnessing is truly the beginning of the end. In recent months I have focused a lot on the economic implosion that is now taking place, but what we are facing is so much broader than that.
Our society is literally falling to pieces all around us, and now World War 3 has begun. Many regard the war that has erupted on the other side of the globe as just a conflict between Ukraine and Russia, but the truth is that it is really a proxy war between the United States and Russia. And since neither side seems much interested in diplomacy at this point, this proxy war could eventually become a shooting war between the two greatest nuclear powers on the entire planet.
Before the war started, events were already starting to accelerate substantially. Inflation was out of control, a new energy crisis had flared up, and global food supplies were getting tighter and tighter. But now we are truly in unprecedented territory. If you doubt this, just look at what is happening to the price of fertilizer.
2022 03 28 09 47
That chart should chill you to the core, because it clearly tells us that food shortages are coming.
In fact, even Joe Biden is now publicly admitting that food shortages are coming. On his show the other night, Tucker Carlson broke this down in a way that only Tucker Carlson can…
Before the war, some fertilizers had doubled in price and some had tripled in price.
In the video that you just watched, we are told that some fertilizer prices are now four to five times higher than they were a year ago.
Here in the western world, most farmers will simply bite the bullet and pay the higher prices. In turn, we will pay higher prices for food at the grocery store.
But in poorer parts of the globe, many farmers will use a whole lot less fertilizer or none at all. As a result, global food production will be way down in the months ahead.
To turn this crisis around, what we really need is for the proxy war in Ukraine to end. Unfortunately, both sides just continue to escalate matters instead.
For example, on Saturday Joe Biden shocked the entire world when he stated that Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power”…
President Joe Biden on Saturday said Russian leader Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power,” ratcheting up international pressure and further uniting NATO allies against Putin over his invasion of Ukraine.“A dictator, bent on rebuilding an empire, will never erase the people’s love for liberty,” Biden said at the end of a sweeping speech in Poland. “Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia, for free people refuse to live in a world of hopelessness and darkness.”
That was a call for regime change in Russia.
Russian leaders were already paranoid about western intentions before, and now their paranoia is going to be off the charts.
Biden administration officials are trying to walk back Biden’s comments, but the damage has already been done.
Meanwhile, we just learned that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov have not spoken at all since February 15th…
Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov have not spoken since February 15, over a week before Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine on February 24, the State Department told Antiwar.com on Friday.Earlier this week The Washington Post cited US officials who said Blinken hasn’t attempted to speak with Lavrov since the start of the conflict. When asked to confirm the story, a State Department spokesperson said, “We can confirm that the last time Secretary Blinken and Foreign Minister Lavrov spoke was on February 15.”
Even during the darkest days of the Cuban missile crisis, U.S. officials always kept talking to the Russians.
So this is something that should alarm all of us greatly.
On top of everything else, Joe Biden just told U.S. troops in Poland that they will see what conditions in Ukraine are like “when you’re there”…
According to The Associated Press, Biden’s remarks were given in front of U.S. troops who “had been sent near Poland’s border [with Ukraine] to assist with the humanitarian emergency and to bolster the U.S. military presence on the eastern flank of NATO.” The words, “and you’re gonna see when you’re there,” were spoken right after the president mentioned the bravery of Ukrainian citizens. Later, the White House once again told reporters that U.S. troops would not be deployed to fight in the war in Ukraine.
Every time Biden opens his mouth, he makes things even worse.
President Joe Biden is abandoning a campaign vow to alter longstanding US nuclear doctrine, and will instead embrace existing policy that reserves America’s right to use nukes in a first-strike scenario, according to multiple reports.As Russian forces continue their bloody assault on Ukraine, Biden is under pressure from NATO allies not to abandon the right to use nuclear weapons to deter conventional attacks.
Many had thought that the war in Ukraine would help to unite America and would provide a boost to Biden’s extremely poor approval ratings.
And in the initial days of the war, that seemed to happen.
President Joe Biden’s job approval ratings keep falling in his second year in the White House, with just 40% of Americans approving of the job that he is doing, a new NBC News survey finds.That is the lowest rating Biden has seen in his presidency.
We were warned that 2022 would be a very troubled year, and we are still in the very early chapters.
If the Biden administration continues with all of this insanity, things are going to get a whole lot worse. I really like how Gerald Celente summarized matters during his recent interview with Greg Hunter…
“We are headed for an economic calamity the likes of which we have never seen in our lifetime. They are getting our minds off it with the war in Ukraine. . . . You know, I wrote in the magazine in the beginning of the year, we said that the Covid war would wind down by late March and mid-April. It’s winding down. . . . So, now, as we said in the magazine, we went from the Covid war to the Ukraine war, and now to world war. We are headed to World War III. . . . There is not a peep about a cease-fire. Biden is only bragging about more weapons being sent in. Biden says we are going to defeat the Russians. We are not backing down. No one is talking about a cease-fire, and no one is talking about peace. If we don’t unite for peace, we are all going to die in war.”
But right now Biden administration officials apparently don’t even see any point in talking with the Russians.
We are steamrolling down a road that leads to nuclear war, and meanwhile the global economy is starting to implode at frightening speed.
If you are still delusional enough to believe that everything will work out “just fine” somehow, then I really feel sorry for you.
Taiwan
Keep in mind again…
Taiwan is part of China. China thinks so, The UN thinks so, and even Taiwan thinks so.
But that does not matter.
The Untied States NEEDS a war and is going to have one. They are going to “pull a Ukraine” on China, and they are almost ready. And you know what? Just like Russia, China is going to move befor the United States can “make its move”. It’s probably going to be undercover, and hidden, but I’m not sure.
One thing that we are learning right now is that the “government” of the Ukraine is just a robot entity. It is a bought-for, and paid-for actor that the Untied State put in charge of things so that it could move it’s military, and it’s forces, and it’s systems onto the border of Russia. It is NOT an independent, democratically elected, goverment. It is a proxy puppet; bought and owned by the United States.
We have to assume that that exact thing is going on in Taiwan.
There is no “government in Taiwan”. There are instead American robots who do whatever Washington DC tells them to do.
So stop all the nonsense and fact the facts.
And China knows this.
Maybe not exactly as I have described, but yeah, they get the picture. In fact, I would arge that they understand the nuiances far better than MM here.
Of course, you would NEVER hear about this in the Western “news” media. China has a military force that is peer-capable, and lethal. And if you are Japanese or a cocky Australian American-lover they will decapitate you. The Chinese DO NOT PLAY.
The Chinese have two things that are found nowhere else in the world; [1] Social unity. They work in groups together as one organism, and [2] They are merit-dren and always do their best.
If you take those two things, and then organize it towards military action. From an early age, then the formation of military actions; defensive actions all become automatic. That is China.
Video – More Chinese elementary schools students video 8MB
Video – Rifle disipline.
Taught with “training weapons”. Lighter, and firing a low recoil projectile instead of a full cartridge. Second and third grade students. China. video 6MB
Video -They fight for family. They fight for survival.
Unlike the American and British “soy-boys” that went to the Ukraine to plink at Russians, and ran home crying after one simple missile barriage, the youth of China are disiplined, and prepared. They will fight to the death. All for their family; their parents and their friends. video 4MB
Video – Chinese youth training
Resembles American Green Beret and SEAL training. Yeah. They get it starting in first grade.
Because the flat slobs in the West, in their easy-chairs, coffered hair, riding their nice cars, and making royal decrees like some kind of bloted evil and corrupt spoiled brat are planning on causing hardship, hurt, turmoil to THESE PEOPLE. And I am here to tell you that is will not work. Instead, it will make them very, very, VERY angry.
There is a reason why China is considered THE DRAGON. And no, it’s not just public relations. China will slice you up and spit you all out. Do not poke the dragon. video 7MB
Video – But it’s the military that China has that is peer capable and lethal
You do not want to fuck with them. All state of the art. Peer capable, or better than what the United States fields, and they love, just love their AI-guided missiles and rockets. Do NOT FUCK with them. video 3MB
Now keep in mind that if it comes down to the Chinese having to use these systems, they will do so with their enemies cites in radioactive rubble. The Chinese do not play around. They are lethal and they will go after enemies with everything they have.
You don’t want to poke the dragon.
Why does the United States want to anger the dragon?
Why?
Because the American “leadership” are psychopaths. They have no understanding of the world, and ideological monsters that are following a dangerous script that will eventually result in the absolute shredding of the Untied States, and a tumble into poverty for all the the West. video 7MB
Ok. Enough of this. Let’s calm down a tad.
Cute Chinese Girl
I think that she is pretty. Nice girl with an umbrella. Video 2MB
Fake UFO video
It’s fun to check out UFO videos. You find them all over the internet, and many are very interesting, but most have no context and thus provide zero information.
The following video is filmed near the “fisher girl” statue here in Zhuhai next to my house where I live. It takes me about seven minutes to walk to it from my front door.
Nothing beats Old-Fashioned Roast Beef the way mama used to make it!
With this roast beef recipe you can bet there’ll be lots of good eatin’. Just remember to let it rest, slice it thinly across the grain, and finish it off with the pan drippings – that’s what makes it absolutely perfect. Oh, and add some potatoes and gravy.
What You’ll Need
1 (4-pound) beef bottom round roast
1 teaspoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon onion powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
A beef bottom round roast.
What to Do
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Place roasting rack in large roasting pan and coat with cooking spray. Place roast on rack, fat side up.
In small bowl, combine remaining ingredients; mix well. Rub spice mixture over entire roast, covering completely.
Roast 30 minutes. Reduce oven to 300 degrees and continue roasting beef 70 to 75 minutes, or until a meat thermometer registers 135 degrees for medium-rare, or until desired doneness beyond that. Let stand 15 to 20 minutes before slicing.
Notes
To make a tasty sauce for your roast beef, just add 1 cup beef broth to roasting pan and heat over high heat, scraping the bottom to loosen any brown bits.
And sandwiches…
Open Faced Reuben Sandwiches
It’s an awfully delicious sandwich.
Ever find yourself wondering how to make a Reuben sandwich with some style? Some of the biggest and best delis serve their Reubens open-faced, just like in this recipe that we got from a deli in Central New York. We loved these Open Faced Reuben Sandwiches and we had to pass along the recipe for you to enjoy! There’s something about this sandwich that just makes your mouth water.
What You’ll Need
1/2 cup mayonnaise
2 tablespoons ketchup
2 tablespoons sweet pickle relish
1/8 teaspoon garlic powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon black pepper
8 slices rye bread
1 pound sliced deli corned beef
2 (14-ounce) cans sauerkraut, rinsed and well drained
8 slices (6 ounces) Swiss cheese
What to Do
Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F.
In a medium bowl, combine the mayonnaise, ketchup, relish, garlic powder, salt, and pepper; mix well.
Arrange the bread on two baking sheets. Spread dressing mixture on each slice. Top each with corned beef, sauerkraut, and a slice of Swiss cheese.
Bake for 6 to 8 minutes, or until heated through, and the cheese is melted. Place 2 pieces on each plate and serve open-faced.
Test Kitchen Tips
You might want to use only half of the Thousand Island dressing on the sandwiches before baking them. Then just top each slice with a dollop of dressing before serving. Our mouths are already watering!
China is a major force
If you are in the West, it’s easy to get overwhelmed in the lies and bullshit about China.
China is advanced, a manufacturing powerhouse, run on merit and disipline. They are successful and they “ain’t stopping for shit”. If you take them on, they WILL FUCKING SLAUGHTER YOU.
The rest of the world appears lazy in comparison. Chinese are hard drivers. video 4MB
China military. Don’t be so sure that they would be an easy nation to conquer. video 4MB
And this fool, in Hong Kong, obviously influenced by the Pro-Democracy NED “color revolution” decided to harass the Chinese guards. The Chinese DON’T PLAY. Down and drawn in 1.5 seconds. video 3MB
China is fighting to exist. Just like Russia. And if you think , and believe that they are not taking the THREATs from the United States seriously, you are deluded. It’s no mistake that they have a mass production of hyper-velocity nuclear missiles all with the United States targets plastered on them.
Oh, you think that I am kidding? Oh, you think that I am being alarmist? Look at this quote out of the Kremlin directly from President Putin…
PUTIN:
"I am now instructing our 4 combat regions that if USA and NATO dare to provoke us (around the Black Sea) and try to hit us with even ONE guided missile then you must hit them back as hard as possible.
Hit them fiercely until they kneel down for mercy.
If they retaliate, I command you to use nuclear weaponsto hit their countries.
No need to think about the consequences.
I will be solely responsible.
Your duty is just to hit them hard until they kneel down begging for mercy.
Once the war has started I expect you to subdue Europe within 5 days.
No need to think... just take over the 8 capitals of Europe.
From now on our Air, Land and Navy armed forces are on full alert.
I want the world to know who is the leader of the world.
What is USA... I am telling them they will be trembling in front of us.
They have been belittling and making fun of many countries but don't they dare to try us.
Go to hell.
My view is that if the Russians have to live under USA's mercy then what good is there left in this world!!"
-Kremlin
[This link is blocked in the usa, france, hungary, serbia, moldova, switzerland, and singapore. Heck, even the russian language website is blocked.]
.
In June 2020, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree stating,
“The Russian Federation reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in response to the use of nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction against it and/or its allies…
...and also in the case of aggression against the Russian Federation with the use of conventional weapons, when the very existence of the state is put under threat.”
Clearly, the United States has pushed Russia to a state where they beleive this is the case.
Clearly, though not reported in the Western media, both Russia and China are at a high state of military readiness.
Russia is at the highest state; DEFCON 1. (Open Warfare)
China is at second highest state DEFCON 2. (Full readiness; no open warfare).
No American pre-emptive nuclear strikes are possible without immediate unleashing of MAD upon the entirety of the West.
Out of necessity, Russia and China have banded together and created a new nation. It’s a United Asia. Other nations are drifiting towards it. For now, you can consider it to be similiar to the USA, or the EU in unity.
Presently, the comprehensive document is only between Russia and China. However, Iran is interested in generating similiar agreements, and India is working towards joining the block as well.
That’s 70% of the world’s population.
85% of the world’s manufacturing.
65-70% of the world’s energy resources.
All of the rest of the nations in Asia are moving towards this group.
It’s a new nation.
And the Untied States (and it’s proxy nations) are pretending that this is not the case. They are pretending that they can treat China separately from Russia, India from Russia, Iran from China, and so on and so forth.
They cannot face the reality; the truth.
So, without plans and “expert” guidance from RAND, the United States (leading the West) are still following the same tired-old “take over the world” script written decades ago, and implementing the plans set forth. (Follow the links for the RAND plans to initiate war. When you read them, you will discover that the US government has been following them to the letter.)
These plans have been telegraphed, and well understood by the Russian and Chinese leadership. And since the United States is following that old script, they are easy to anticipate and handle.
However, the unifed Russia and China block was unexpected, and it doesn not fit in with the plan. So the way that the United States has decided to handle this issue is to IGNORE IT and pretend that this reality does not exist.
They will continue their assaults and probing actions.
Now it’s Russia. Russia has issued strike orders, and telegraphed them to the West, but you know, eventually they will engage China, and when that happens, China WILL ENGAGE THEM RIGHT BACK. Unlike Russia, China will not telegraph any warning.
It will be on American soil, by the way. It will not be so nice.
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
I just spoke this morning with a Russian friend in Moscow. He is more optimistic about the future of Russia than I have ever heard him to be in the past.
He says good riddance to all the U.S. companies, and sees this as a real opportunity for Russia to further develop their economy and restore their culture from Western cultural imperialism.
The devaluation of the Ruble has little effect on the economy except for imported goods.
Since 2014 Russia has been becoming self-sufficient.
The lower Ruble will protect home industries and be a defacto tariff against imports.
He and others are talking about a welcome return to an economy similar of the Soviet Union.
I hope he is right because for the past 20 years that I have been going to Russia I saw a troubling trend to neoliberalism and austerity.
Many Russians did to and were not happy about it.
It cost Putin a lot of lost popularity including from my friend who I spoke to today. My wife and I are hearing similar stories from others inside Russia.
-David
Good news if you are Russian. Good news if you are Chinese. Bad news if you are part of the collapsing United States Empire. But you would never know this by reading the daily “news” feeds.
By gosh! The propiganda is thick.
Really. It’s thick like tar.
I need waders to trudge through the muck. It is think, stinky and relentless. And then interspersed in all the grime are the oily “experts” who have a thing or two to say about everything. You pretty much can tell from which basket of USD they are paid from. How can you sort everything out? Well, this article is my attempt.
I’m a simple guy and I look at things simply. So let’s look at the big-picture overview.
Major Geo-political realignments happen every 70 to 85 years.
This one is on time and on schedule.
It’s always the same template; the same pattern. Oh, there might be some new twists; mostly technology, but it’s pretty much a well understood process.
In this Geopolitical shake-up it’s a new beast of sorts. It has a new “twist” to the old template. And this new feature is critical to understanding what is going on.
Russia is not alone. It is not “isolated”.
China is not alone.
Russia and China have created a unified block; an “Asia”.
And now, India has joined this block officially (and distanced themselves from QUAD).
Asia = Russia + China + India.
.
So, what are we witnessing? What is all the “hubbub” on the Internet and in the “news” all about? Is it about Ukraine?
No. It’s not. It’s about something else.
Keep your focus.
It’s all about a much larger Geo-Political realignment. And the wars, color revolutions, strife, inflation, battles, wars, revolutions, and all the rest are just confusion and smoke during this period of change.
Keep focused.
The former global leader; The United States is collapsing.
A united Asia is rising (Russia plus China with India).
Normal expected death thrashing by the USA is in process.
The death throes are at all levels. This includes International as well as domestic. Big changes at all levels.
But, people say, “it seems so spontaneous and out of control”. To which I argue. “No it isn’t”.
Instead the collapse is being managed.
The collapse of the West is being MANAGED.
It is being managed by Russia and China, with some help by our friends (wink – wink).
None of this managment is being written about. None of it can be seen, as the dying empire has flooded all “news” with complex and detailed lies, and nonsense. And if you get caught up in the lies, and fabrications you will read about the failure of Russia to take over the Ukraine, and how Putin is on the way out, and how China is going to collapse any day now, and so on and so forth.
It’s just noise. Tune it out.
In this article, I will take some hand-picked articles to help direct the reader through the swampy muck of lies. Each article has strengths and weaknesses, and I will do my best to help describe what’s going on through them.
In these articles, read them not for the specific points that they are trying to point out, but rather for how they fit within the much larger picture. Keep in mind that larger picture.
The death of the existing world power results in…
High inflation resulting in money becoming worthless (within the dying empire).
A retraction of actual military action, but an uptick in military threatenings.
A change in the dominant global reserve currency.
Economic, social, and other “bubbles” all popping in the dying empire.
A confused state of Geo-political alignments as the empire dies.
We begin with some excellent stuff from MoA. In this article, “b” argues that the dying United States empire is impotent. That both Russia and China (Asia) have played the Geopolitical chess game, and has the empire “boxed in”. No matter what it does, it will make losing (no-win) moves…
[1] To Punish Russia The ‘Liberal Order’ Attempts To Suicide Itself
Russia understood Zelensky's remark in Munich as a threat by Ukraine to acquire nuclear weapons. It already has the expertise, materials and means to do that.A fascist controlled government with nukes on Russia's border? This is not about Putin at all. No Russian government of any kind could ever condone that.I believe that this credible threat, together with the artillery preparations for a new war on Donbas, was what convinced Russia's government to intervene by force.
The ‘west’ had failed to understand Russia’s need to act. It has failed to make the necessary commitments, and accept Russia’s reasonable demands, to avoid the struggle. In consequence it will now fall apart. The knee-jerk reaction to Russia’s ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine will, as Alastair Crooke writes, lead to the end of the ‘liberal order’:
So Biden, finally, has his foreign policy ‘success’: Europe is walling itself off from Russia, China, and the emerging integrated Asian market. It has sanctioned itself from ‘dependency’ on Russian natural gas (without prospect of any immediate alternatives) and it has thrown itself in with the Biden project. Next up, the EU pivot to sanctioning China?Will this last? It seems improbable. German industry has a long history for staging its own mercantile interests before wider geo-political ambitions – before, even, EU interests. And in Germany, the business class effectively is the political class and needs competitively-priced energy.Whilst the rest of the world shows little or no enthusiasm to join with sanctions on Russia (China has ruled out sanctions on Russia), Europe is in hysteria. This will not fade quickly. The new ‘Iron Curtain’ erected in Brussels may last years.But what of the unintended consequences to last Saturday’s ‘sanctions Blitzkrieg’: the ‘unknowable unknowns’ in Rumsfeld’s famous mantra? The unprecedented switch-off affecting a key part of the Globalist system did not download into a neutral, inert context – It developed into an emotionally hyper-charged atmosphere of Russophobia.
Now reality comes back to bite the inept minions who attempt to rule over us.
In sum, the changes set out by von der Leyen and the EU, with surging crude oil costs, could potentially tip global markets into crisis, and set off spiraling inflation. Cost inflation created by energy costs spiraling higher and food disruptions are not so easily susceptible to monetary remedies. If the daily drama of the war in Ukraine starts to fade from public view, and inflation persists, the political cost of von der Leyen’s Saturday drama is likely to be European-wide recession.“Since well before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Europeans have been struggling under the weight of runaway energy bills”, OilPrice.com notes. In Germany, for some, one month’s energy costs the same as they used to pay for a whole year; in the UK the government has raised the price cap for energy bills by a whopping 54%, and in Italy a recent 40% domestic energy cost hike could now nearly double.The New York Times describes this impact on local businesses and industries as nothing short of “frightening”, as all kinds of small businesses across Europe (prior to last week’s events) have been forced to cease their operations as energy costs outweigh profits. Large industries have not been immune to sticker shock either. “Almost two-thirds of the 28,000 companies surveyed by the Association of German Chambers of Commerce and Industry this month rated energy prices as one of their biggest business risks … For those in the industrial sector, the figure was as high as 85 percent.”
And it is not only Europe. Energy prices are based on global markets. As are the prices for many other minerals and metals which have suddenly become rare:
2022 03 14 10 44
The U.S. will be hit just as much as Europe. Early today oil prices in Europe hit $139 per barrel, well above last week’s market close. They will increase further. Gasoline prices in the U.S. will soon hit $6-7-8 per gallon.
The attempt by the U.S. to rush towards a new Iran deal to get Iranian oil flooding the markets has failed. Russia, together with Iran, has successfully blocked that move. Sanctions on Russia mean that Iran can not export its enriched uranium to Russia to be turned into nuclear fuel. No Iranian export of enriched uranium means no JCPOA deal. Secretary of State Blinken has failed to understand that. The supposedly ready to be signed return to the nuclear deal is now in jeopardy.
Some U.S. refineries at the south coast are designed to only process heavy oil variants. Since 2019 the U.S. has blockaded heavy oil imports from Venezuela and replaced them with imports of heavy Ural variants from Russia. It has now send too officials to Caracas to try to get Venezuela’s oil flowing again. That would of course require to lift all sanctions off Venezuela and to return all confiscated companies and the gold that is owned by that country. It is not going to happen anytime soon.
High end German cars are build with aluminum from Russia. Boeing needs Russian titanium to build planes. These manufacturers will soon start to lay off people. All this while food, heating and mobility costs will increase dramatically. A deep recession combined with strong inflation will rip social cohesion apart. I do expect strong anger in the streets of Europe and the U.S. There will be riots and in consequence a strong political move to the right. The mid-term elections will destroy the Russophobic Democrats.
Michael Hudson notes the immense strategic damage the U.S. has done to itself:
The recent escalation of U.S. sanctions blocking Europe, Asia and other countries from trade and investment with Russia, Iran and China has imposed enormous opportunity costs – the cost of lost opportunities – on U.S. allies. And the recent confiscation of the gold and foreign reserves of Venezuela, Afghanistan and now Russia, along the targeted grabbing of bank accounts of wealthy foreigners (hoping to win their hearts and minds, along with recovery of their sequestered accounts), has ended the idea that dollar holdings or those in its sterling and euro NATO satellites are a safe investment haven when world economic conditions become shaky.So I am somewhat chagrined as I watch the speed at which this U.S.-centered financialized system has de-dollarized over the span of just a year or two. The basic theme of my Super Imperialism has been how, for the past fifty years, the U.S. Treasury-bill standard has channeled foreign savings to U.S. financial markets and banks, giving dollar diplomacy a free ride. I thought that de-dollarization would be led by China and Russia moving to take control of their economies to avoid the kind of financial polarization that is imposing austerity on the United States. But U.S. officials are forcing them to overcome whatever hesitancy they had to de-dollarize.
This will not just happen with China or Russia but the whole world will over the next years turn away from the dollarized U.S. system:
Nobody thought that the postwar 1945-2020 world order would give way this fast. A truly new international economic order is emerging, although it is not yet clear just what form it will take. But “prodding the Bear” with the U.S./NATO confrontation with Russia has passed critical-mass level. It no longer is just about Ukraine. That is merely the trigger, a catalyst for driving much of the world away from the US/NATO orbit.The next showdown may come within Europe itself as nationalist politicians seek to lead a break-away from the over-reaching U.S. power-grab over its European and other Allies to keep them dependent on U.S.-based trade and investment. The price of their continuing obedience is to impose cost-inflation on their industry while relinquishing their democratic electoral politics to subordination to America’s NATO proconsuls.These consequences cannot really be deemed “unintended.”
All the consequences of the ‘west’s’ reaction to Russia’s move were foreseeable. It is pure recklessness and stupidity that have allowed them to take place. The ‘west’ will now get punished for the bad movie it has launched.
Too bad that I don’t speak Russian … It is now the place to be.
Jimmy Salford @1Fubar - 7:06 UTC · Mar 6, 2022Russia has already been cut off from CNN, Pornhub and Facebook. The US is now working on depriving Russians of MacDonalds and CocaCola. If they keep going with these sanctions, Russians will soon be among the healthiest, well adjusted and best informed people on the planet.
…
Next up is this piece from the UK tabloid “Dailymail.com”.
Now this tabloid is all gung-ho about how great the West is, and all of that. They have written tons of articles that are a just lies. And that includes starvation in Shenzhen, slave trade in Xinjiang and all the rest. fun reading science fiction, but not actual reporting.
This here is it’s the first “reasonable” article that isn’t full of lies and fantasies. The comments in the article are interesting, and the vast bulk of it’s readership must welcome a more “level-headed” viewpoint.
Read this article, and note the idea that Russia is managing a threat vector from the West. Not tht an evil Putin dictator is going to invade Europe. What is so surprising is that this article is from the shrill-mills of the UK.
[2] Putin is NOT crazy and the Russian invasion is NOT failing.
The West’s delusions about this war – and its failure to understand the enemy – will prevent it from saving Ukraine, writes military analyst BILL ROGGIO
Wishful thinking has the upper hand in the battle to shape Western perceptions of the war in Ukraine.
Sympathy for the outnumbered and outgunned defenders of Kyiv has led to the exaggeration of Russian setbacks, misunderstanding of Russian strategy, and even baseless claims from amateur psychoanalysts that Putin has lost his mind.
A more sober analysis shows that Russia may have sought a knockout blow, but always had well-laid plans for follow-on assaults if its initial moves proved insufficient.
The world has underestimated Putin before and those mistakes have led, in part, to this tragedy in Ukraine.
We must be clear-eyed now that the war is underway.
Yet even the professionals at the Pentagon are letting sympathy cloud their judgement.
Just two days into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, U.S. Department of Defense briefers were quick to claim that failing to take Kyiv in the opening days of the war amounted to a serious setback.
DoD briefers implied that Russia’s offensive was well behind schedule or had even failed because the capital had not fallen.
But U.S. leaders should have learned to restrain their hopes after their catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Once again, U.S. and Western officials are falling into the trap of failing to understand the enemy and his objectives.
2022 03 05 09 00
Allegedly, Putin believed that the Ukrainian government would collapse once Russian troops crossed the frontier and pushed to Kyiv, and that the operation has failed because the Ukrainian government remains in place.
Putin certainly hoped for a swift victory, but he clearly was not relying on his opening salvo as the only plan for success.
Rather, the Russian military was prepared to take the country by force if a swift decapitation strike fell short.
This kind of plan should be familiar to Americans who remember the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
In the first hours of the war, the U.S. Air Force launched its ‘shock and awe’ campaign in an attempt to kill Saddam Hussein and other key leaders and bring down the government. Saddam survived, but the U.S. military was fully prepared to follow up with a ground assault.
A look at the Russian military offensive demonstrates there was a plan for a full-scale invasion, which Russia is now executing.
Conventional, mechanized warfare is a time and resource consuming enterprise, and an operation of this scope isn’t cobbled together in days.
The Russian offensive is taking place on four separate fronts. On a fifth front, in eastern Ukraine, which Putin declared independent last week, Russian forces are tying down Ukrainian troops that are needed elsewhere.
The bulk of the Russian forces are advancing southward from Belarus to Kyiv.
Russian advance forces, including air, mobile and reconnaissance troops, have been engaged with Ukrainian troops outside of Kyiv since the start of the war.
A massive column of Russian troops, estimated at over 40 miles long, is just 20 miles north of Kyiv, and is likely assembling to surround the capital.
If Russian forces can take Kyiv and push southward to link up with forces on the Crimean front, thus splitting Ukraine in two, it would be a major blow to the Zelensky government.
What matters more than a handful of setbacks is that Russian forces have pushed 70 miles into contested terrain in less than a week and are on the outskirts of the capital.
2022 03 05 09 01
This is not a sign of a disorganized, poorly assembled, and failed offensive.
The southward push from Belarus to Kyiv is supported by another Russian column, launched from the east in the vicinity of Kursk.
If this column can link up with Russian troops near Kyiv, it will envelop Ukrainian forces in most of Chernihiv and Sumy provinces, depriving the Ukrainian military of much needed soldiers and war material needed elsewhere, and cutting off the government from two northern provinces.
Further east, Russian forces have launched a broad offensive aimed at Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, which is now under siege.
In the south, Russian forces, supported by amphibious assaults from the Sea of Azov, have poured into Ukraine from Crimea.
On this front, Russian forces have branched out along two main axes, one northwest along the Pivdennyi Buh River, and another northeast along the coast and inland towards the Donbas region, which Russia declared independent shortly before the invasion.
If Russian columns from either southern front can link up with forces further north, they would cut off many Ukrainian troops from reinforcement—one of the two columns has already advanced roughly 160 miles.
Russian generals have often chosen to bypass towns and cities that are putting up stiff opposition and isolating them to deal with later.
There are reports that Russian forces have escalated attacks on civilians, particularly in Kharkiv.
At the moment, the artillery and rocket attacks there have been limited, perhaps to send a message to the citizens as a warning of what may come.
Putin appears to want to take Ukraine intact, but will not hesitate to increase the level of brutality if needed.
The systematic nature of the Russian assault is at odds with speculation that Putin has lost control of his senses.
Nobody knows for sure, but Putin’s actions appear to be that of a cold and calculating adversary.
Dismissing his decision to invade Ukraine as a form of madness is effectively an excuse to ignore Putin’s likely motivations and future actions.
Strategically, Putin’s advance on Ukraine began well over a decade ago, when he invaded and Balkanized Georgia by recognizing the Kremlin’s puppet regimes in the regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
2022 03 05 09 05
In 2014, Putin occupied and annexed the strategic Ukrainian region of Crimea, which served as a launchpad for the current invasion.
Putin paid little price for either action.
The United States and Europe imposed limited sanctions but continued to engage with him on the Iranian nuclear deal and other top issues.
Today, Putin has calculated that taking Ukraine by force is in his and Russia’s interest.
He no doubt anticipated that the West would impose diplomatic and economic sanctions, which U.S. and European leaders threatened beforehand.
Putin may have miscalculated Ukrainian resistance and the intensity of the West’s opposition, but it doesn’t mean he is crazy, or didn’t consider the possibilities and chose to invade regardless.
It remains to be seen if Putin’s plan will succeed or fail, but what is clear is that there was a plan to invade Ukraine in force, and that plan has been executed since day one.
Ukrainian troops are putting up a valiant fight facing long odds and difficult conditions. Russia holds most if not all of the advantages.
It can, and has, attacked Ukraine from three different directions. The Russian military holds a decided advantage in manpower, as well as air, naval and armor superiority.
It has vast resources to draw on. While Ukraine has the support of much of the international community, which is providing weapons, Ukraine is fighting alone.
Believing Russia’s assault is going poorly may make us feel better but is at odds with the facts.
We cannot help Ukraine if we cannot be honest about its predicament.
…
I suppose that the author is trying to say to his fellow journalists;
"look, guys, our propaganda must be subtle. Not so obviously false, and easily disproved. Tone it down some"...
Next up is this item. Here, we see that all the “news” onslaught is just that. Nonsense, and that the truth is that very little that the United States, and NATO does has any effect on Russia.
It’s like a screaming child having a tantrum, and the adult closes the door and locks it. Meanwhile the child has a fit. Louder and louder it cries. But the adults, go eat a nice dinner, drink some wine. Sing, dance and have sex. And the child still has the tantrum oblivious to the reality going on…
[3] Russians don’t care what American opinions are
It would be childish to assume that ‘when we are beaten, we get stronger.’ Although we have indeed strengthened our national sovereignty in the economic sphere under the influence of American sanctions, but not to such an extent that we do not pay attention to them at all. The damage from sanctions, of course, is there and it is significantly enhanced by the passive policy of the monetary authorities.
Permanent intimidation of Russia with new ‘sanctions from hell’ has long ceased to excite Russian public opinion. I remember how in 2014, like others in the first list subjected to US sanctions, I was interviewed and we all assured journalists that we were proud of such recognition of our services to Russia. Since then, the number of individuals and legal entities sanctioned by the United States and its satellites has increased many times and has not had any noticeable impact on our country. On the contrary, the retaliatory measures introduced by our Government in terms of restricting food imports from these countries significantly contributed to the growth of domestic agricultural production, which has almost completely replaced the import of poultry and meat.
Defense and energy industry enterprises have learned to circumvent these sanctions by refusing to use the dollar, and at the same time American banks, in favour of national currencies and banks of partner countries. The next step is the development of digital currency instruments that can be used without resorting to the services of banks which are afraid of falling under sanctions. The Russian people are following with interest the return to the country of the capital exported by the oligarchs and themselves, who are afraid of confiscation and arrest in NATO countries.
American sanctions have affected not so much Russia as third countries which have been subjected to pressure from Washington. First of all, our European neighbours, who have curtailed most of the cooperation projects in the scientific, technical and energy spheres. They also affected Chinese commercial banks operating in the dollar zone, which preferred to stop servicing Russian customers. Russia’s trade turnover with the EU and the United States has naturally decreased, while with China it has grown. In the period 2014-2020, in monetary terms, Russia’s trade turnover with China increased by 17.8% from $88.4 billion to $104.1 billion. The share of APEC [Asia Pacific Economic Conference] and SCO [Shanghai Cooperation Organisation] countries in the external trade turnover of the EAEU [Eurasian Economic Union] increased during this period from 29.6% to 36.4% and from 16.3% to 24.1%, respectively. The share of the EU in the external trade turnover of the EAEU, on the contrary, decreased from 46.2% in 2015 to 36.7% in 2020. Trade turnover with the United States during the period under review decreased by 18.1% from $29.1 billion to $23.9 billion.
In fact, with the help of sanctions, the United States is trying to oust Russian goods from the markets of its satellites, replacing its own. This was most clearly manifested in the European natural gas market, where the US share has increased sharply, although it has not yet been possible to displace Russia in the European natural gas market.
The main result of the US-European sanctions was a change in the geographical structure of Russian foreign economic relations in favor of China, the expansion of cooperation with which fully compensates for the curtailment of trade and economic relations with the EU. European consumers have to switch to more expensive American energy carriers, and their producers simply lose the Russian market. The total losses of the EU from anti-Russian sanctions are estimated at $ 250 billion.
Another important result of the US sanctions was the fall in the share of the dollar in international settlements. For Russia, as for other countries which have been subjected to US sanctions, the dollar has become a toxic currency. By tracing all dollar transactions, the US punitive authorities can block payments, freeze, or even confiscate assets at any time. For 8 years after the sanctions were imposed, the dollar’s share in international settlements decreased by 13.5 percentage points (from 60.2% in 2014 to 46.7% in 2020).
Sanctions have become a powerful incentive for the transition to settlements in national currencies and the development of national payment systems. Thus, in the mutual trade of the EAEU states, the share of the dollar decreased by more than 6 percentage points (from 26.3% in 2014 to 20.0% at the end of 2020).
I remember how ten years ago, when considering the risks to the Russian banking system at the National Banking Council, I asked the then head of the Central Bank: ‘Is the risk of disconnecting Russian banks from the international SWIFT banking transmission system being considered, as Western partners did in relation to Iran?’
To which I received the answer: ‘We cannot consider the risk of an atomic bomb hitting the Bank of Russia.’
However, the management of the Central Bank has taken measures — today Russia has its own system for transmitting electronic messages between banks — the Bank of Russia’s Financial Message Transmission System (SPFS), as well as its own payment system for Mir bank cards, which is interfaced with the Chinese Union Pay system and can be used for cross-border payments and transfers.
Both of them are open to foreign partners and are already widely used not only in domestic, but also in international settlements.
Disabling SWIFT is no longer seen as a large-scale threat — it will benefit the development of our payment and financial information systems.
However, it would be childish to assume that ‘when we are beaten, we get stronger.’ Although we have indeed strengthened our national sovereignty in the economic sphere under the influence of American sanctions, but not to such an extent that we do not pay attention to them at all. The damage from sanctions, of course, is there and it is significantly enhanced by the passive policy of the monetary authorities.
Since 2014, when, with the connivance of the regulator, currency speculators brought down the ruble exchange rate by manipulating the market, the latter has been used by sanctions as a fail-safe fuse of macroeconomic stability. At the same time, it was in 2014, on the eve of the already announced US sanctions, that the Bank of Russia switched to a free-floating exchange rate regime.
And only after that, the United States introduced their sanctions, being sure that speculators would multiply their negative effect.
When the ruble fell by almost half, Obama was pleased to say that ‘the Russian economy is torn to shreds.’ As a result of this manipulation of the Russian currency market, ruble incomes and savings depreciated, and speculators received over 35 billion rubles.in profit. But this happened not because of sanctions, but rather because of the complicity of the Bank of Russia, which left the exchange rate formation at the mercy of international speculators on the recommendation of Washington financial organizations.
Only very naive people can believe in the formation of an equilibrium ruble exchange rate in the free-float mode. The Bank of Russia’s exclusion of itself from ruble exchange rate regulation means that international currency speculators are engaged in this. On the rocking of the ruble exchange rate, which has become one of the most unstable currencies in the world with a threefold provision of foreign exchange reserves, international speculators receive multibillion dollar profits, and Russians, the depreciation of their ruble savings and income together with bursts of inflation. At the same time, the investment climate is hopelessly deteriorating — the instability of the ruble exchange rate creates uncertainty about the main parameters of investment projects using imported equipment and export-oriented products.
Thus, the damage caused by US financial sanctions is inextricably linked to the monetary policy of the Bank of Russia which is the ideal one for them. Its essence boils down to a tight binding of the ruble issue to export earnings, and the ruble exchange rate to the dollar. In fact, an artificial shortage of money is being created in the economy, and the strict policy of the Central Bank leads to an increase in the cost of lending, which kills business activity and hinders the development of infrastructure in the country.
Sanctions restrictions have caused an extremely high demand for corporate financing in the domestic market. Against the background of a relatively low key rate and access to cheaper funding, large banks consistently keep a net interest margin above the average market level, 5.4% to 6%; whereas for the largest banks in China, the USA, Germany, France, Great Britain and Japan, the net interest margin ranges from 0.8% to 2.3%.
However, these windfalls are not directed to financing infrastructure projects, but to the acquisition of disparate non-core businesses that are combined into ecosystems. Most of these businesses remain unprofitable even at the EBITDA [earnings] level. Despite this, billions of rubles are still spent on their development.
These figures are quite comparable to the volume of investments in a major infrastructure project in the real sector of the economy, which can bring both job growth and contribution to the development of the economy. But such projects (as well as filling the budget) are still left to the raw materials companies, while the largest financial corporations prefer to direct their income to the creation of chimeras.
In fact, it was the connivance of the Central Bank which led to the fact that Russia and its industry were drained of blood and unable to develop.
If the Central Bank fulfilled its constitutional duty to ensure the stability of the ruble — and it has all the possibilities for this due to the threefold surplus of the currency reserves of the monetary base — then financial sanctions would be nothing to us. They could even be turned, as in other sectors of the economy, to the benefit of the banking sector, if the Central Bank replaced the loans withdrawn by Western partners with its own special refinancing instruments. This would increase the capacity of the Russian credit and banking system by more than 10 trillion rubles.
Also, it would fully compensate for the outflow of foreign financing of investments, preventing a decline in investment and economic activity without any inflationary consequences. Thus, it would be possible to avoid a long period of decline in real incomes of the population caused solely by the peculiarities of the monetary policy pursued in Russia, which ensured the effectiveness of sanctions in the monetary and financial sphere.
Assessing the consequences of anti-Russian sanctions, it is impossible to ignore the consequences of severing economic ties with Ukraine. The mutual abolition of the free trade regime and the imposition of an embargo on a wide range of goods led to the rupture of cooperative ties that ensured the reproduction of many types of high-tech products. Blocking the work of Russian banks led to the depreciation of multibillion-dollar Russian investments. The refusal of the Ukrainian authorities to service the debt to Russia caused several billion dollars’ more losses. In total, their volume is estimated at about $100 billion for each of the parties. This is really significant and in many ways irreparable real damage, which we ourselves have aggravated with retaliatory sanctions.
To date, the outcome of the economic consequences of anti-Russian sanctions is as follows. Ukraine suffered the biggest losses relative to GDP, in absolute terms — the European Union. Russian losses of potential GDP, since 2014, amount to about 50 trillion rubles. But only 10% of them can be explained by sanctions, while 80% of them were the result of monetary policy. The United States benefits from anti-Russian sanctions, replacing the export of Russian hydrocarbons to the EU, as well as China; replacing the import of European goods by Russia. We could completely offset the negative consequences of financial sanctions if the Bank of Russia fulfilled its constitutional duty to ensure a stable ruble exchange rate, and not the recommendations of Washington financial organizations.
Consider the threats of American and European Russophobes against the new ‘sanctions from hell’. It has already been mentioned above that the threat of disconnecting Russian banks from the SWIFT system, widely discussed in the media today, although it will interfere with international settlements at first, will benefit the Russian banking and payment system in the medium term.
The threat to ban transactions with Russian bonds will also benefit us, since their issue in a budget surplus is nothing more than a source of profit for foreign speculators.
And their profitability is overestimated three times in relation to the market assessment of their riskiness. The termination of the self-serving [самоедской] policy of the monetary authorities, who are borrowing money which is objectively unnecessary to the budget at exorbitant prices, will allow us to save billions of dollars. If the sanctioneers try to prohibit the purchase of the foreign currency bonds of Russian corporations, then it will be possible to compensate for the missing financing for the purchase of imported equipment by buying them out at the expense of part of the excess foreign exchange reserves. If foreign loans are cut off to them, then the risk of their default will fall on the European and American banks themselves.
There is also a potential risk of seizure of Russian state assets. But we can respond to this symmetrically by imposing an embargo on servicing debt obligations to Western creditors and also arresting their assets. The losses of the parties will be approximately equal.
There remains, in fact, one threat – to take away foreign assets from Russian oligarchs. For all its popularity among the common people, this will stimulate the return of capital exported from the country, which will also have a positive effect for the Russian economy.
At the same time, we need to protect ourselves as much as possible from the expected escalation of US-European sanctions.
The most vulnerable place for our economy is its excessive offshoring.
Up to half of the assets of the Russian industry belong to non-residents. There are more than a trillion dollars of capital exported from the country abroad, half of which is involved in the reproduction of the Russian economy.
The simultaneous freezing of these assets can really dramatically worsen the situation of a number of strategically important enterprises dependent on the external market.
The Americans showed how this is done using the example of Rusal, establishing their control over it under the threat of stopping foreign trade activities. We could respond to this by nationalizing at least the giant hydroelectric power plants transferred to this corporation for a song and on dubious grounds, on the operation of which the lion’s share of its profits is based. But for some reason, they did not protect this one of the structural branches of our economy from the raider seizure by the US Treasury.
…
So, then Russia is cautious, aware and has plans in place. The harsh slap of American sanctions fell like a wisp of a feather on a pillow. Now, let’s see how it will actually happen.
Next up… what REALLY going to happen…
[4] Follow the money: how Russia will bypass western economic warfare
The US and EU are over-reaching on Russian sanctions. The end result could be the de-dollarization of the global economy and massive commodity shortages worldwide.
So a congregation of NATO’s top brass ensconced in their echo chambers target the Russian Central Bank with sanctions and expect what?
Cookies?
What they got instead was Russia’s deterrence forces bumped up to “a special regime of duty” – which means the Northern and Pacific fleets, the Long-Range Aviation Command, strategic bombers and the entire Russian nuclear apparatus on maximum alert.
One Pentagon general very quickly did the basic math on that, and mere minutes later, a Ukrainian delegation was dispatched to conduct negotiations with Russia in an undisclosed location in Gomel, Belarus.
BOOM!
Expecting to lay economic warfare with Russia's Central Bank, Russia responded with the full force of hard, physical nuclear weaponary. Oh, so you want to play "hard ball" eh? You want to deal with us? You want to see what the flash or light, and hard gooey blood on your chest looks like? Do you?
Meanwhile, in the vassal realms, the German government was busy “setting limits to warmongers like Putin” – quite a rich undertaking considering that Berlin never set any such limits for the western warmongers who bombed Yugoslavia, invaded Iraq, or destroyed Libya in complete violation of international law.
While openly proclaiming their desire to “stop the development of Russian industry,” damage its economy, and “ruin Russia” – echoing American edicts on Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Cuba, Venezuela and others in the Global South – the Germans could not possibly recognize a new categorical imperative.
They were finally liberated from their WWII culpability complex by none other than Russian President Vladimir Putin. Germany is finally free to support and weaponize neo-Nazis out in the open all over again – now of the Ukrainian Azov battalion variety.
To get the hang of how these NATO sanctions will “ruin Russia,” I asked for the succinct analysis of one of the most competent economic minds on the planet, Michael Hudson, author, among others, of a revised edition of the must-read Super-Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire.
Hudson remarked how he is
“simply numbed over the near-atomic escalation of the US.”
On the confiscation of Russian foreign reserves and cut-off from SWIFT, the main point is “it will take some time for Russia to put in a new system, with China.
The result will end dollarization for good, as countries threatened with ‘democracy™’ or displaying diplomatic independence will be afraid to use US banks.”
This, Hudson says, leads us to “the great question: whether Europe and the Dollar Bloc can buy Russian raw materials – cobalt, palladium, etc, and whether China will join Russia in a minerals boycott.”
Hudson is adamant that “Russia’s Central Bank, of course, has foreign bank assets in order to intervene in exchange markets to defend its currency from fluctuations.
The ruble has plunged.
There will be new exchange rates.
Yet it’s up to Russia to decide whether to sell its wheat to West Asia, that needs it; or to stop selling gas to Europe via Ukraine, now that the US can grab it.”
About the possible introduction of a new Russia-China payment system bypassing SWIFT, and combining the Russian SPFS (System for Transfer of Financial Messages) with the Chinese CIPS (Cross-Border Interbank Payment System), Hudson has no doubts “the Russian-China system will be implemented.
The Global South will seek to join and at the same time keep SWIFT – moving their reserves into the new system.”
I’m going to de-dollarize myself
So the US itself, in another massive strategic blunder, will speed up de-dollarization. As the managing director of Bocom International Hong Hao told the Global Times, with energy trade between Europe and Russia de-dollarized, “that will be the beginning of the disintegration of dollar hegemony.”
It’s a refrain the US administration was quietly hearing last week from some of its own largest multinational banks, including notables like JPMorgan and Citigroup.
A Bloomberg article sums up their collective fears:
“Booting Russia from the critical global system – which handles 42 million messages a day and serves as a lifeline to some of the world’s biggest financial institutions – could backfire, sending inflation higher, pushing Russia closer to China, and shielding financial transactions from scrutiny by the west. It might also encourage the development of a SWIFT alternative that could eventually damage the supremacy of the US dollar.”
Those with IQs over 50 in the European Union (EU) must have understood that Russia simply could not be totally excluded from SWIFT, but maybe only a few of its banks: after all, European traders depend on Russian energy.
From Moscow’s point of view, that’s a minor issue. A number of Russian banks are already connected to China’s CIPS system. For instance, if someone wants to buy Russian oil and gas with CIPS, payment must be in the Chinese yuan currency. CIPS is independent of SWIFT.
Additionally, Moscow already linked its SPFS payment system not only to China but also to India and member nations of the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU). SPFS already links to approximately 400 banks.
With more Russian companies using SPFS and CIPS, even before they merge, and other maneuvers to bypass SWIFT, such as barter trade – largely used by sanctioned Iran – and agent banks, Russia could make up for at least 50 percent in trade losses.
The key fact is that the flight from the US-dominated western financial system is now irreversible across Eurasia – and that will proceed in tandem with the internationalization of the yuan.
Russia has its own bag of tricks
Meanwhile, we’re not even talking yet about Russian retaliation for these sanctions. Former President Dmitry Medvedev already gave a hint: everything, from exiting all nuclear arms deals with the US to freezing the assets of western companies in Russia, is on the table.
So what does the “Empire of Lies” want? (Putin terminology, on Monday’s meeting in Moscow to discuss the response to sanctions.)
In an essay published this morning, deliciously titled America Defeats Germany for the Third Time in a Century: the MIC, OGAM and FIRE conquer NATO, Michael Hudson makes a series of crucial points, starting with how
“NATO has become Europe’s foreign policy-making body, even to the point of dominating domestic economic interests.”
He outlines the three oligarchies in control of US foreign policy:
First is the military-industrial complex, which Ray McGovern memorably coined as MICIMATT (military industrial Congressional intelligence media academia think tank). Hudson defines their economy base as
“monopoly rent, obtained above all from its arms sales to NATO, to West Asian oil exporters and to other countries with a balance-of-payments surplus.”
Second is the oil and gas sector, joined by mining (OGAM). Their aim is
“to maximize the price of energy and raw materials so as to maximize natural resource rent. Monopolizing the Dollar Area’s oil market and isolating it from Russian oil and gas has been a major US priority for over a year now, as the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia to Germany threatened to link the western European and Russian economies together.”
Third is the “symbiotic” Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE) sector, which Hudson defines as
“the counterpart to Europe’s old post-feudal landed aristocracy living by land rents.”
As he describes these three rentier sectors that completely dominate post-industrial finance capitalism at the heart of the western system, Hudson notes how
“Wall Street always has been closely merged with the oil and gas industry (namely, the Citigroup and Chase Manhattan banking conglomerates).”
Hudson shows how
“the most pressing US strategic aim of NATO confrontation with Russia is soaring oil and gas prices. In addition to creating profits and stock market gains for US companies, higher energy prices will take much of the steam out of the German economy.”
He warns how food prices will rise “headed by wheat.” (Russia and Ukraine account for 25 percent of world wheat exports.)
From a Global South perspective, that’s a disaster:
“This will squeeze many West Asian and Global South food-deficient countries, worsening their balance of payments and threatening foreign debt defaults.”
As for blocking Russian raw materials exports,
“this threatens to cause breaks in supply chains for key materials, including cobalt, palladium, nickel, aluminum.”
And that leads us, once again, to the heart of the matter:
“The long-term dream of the US new Cold Warriors is to break up Russia, or at least to restore its managerial kleptocracy seeking to cash in their privatizations in western stock markets.”
That’s not going to happen.
Hudson clearly sees how
“the most enormous unintended consequence of US foreign policy has been to drive Russia and China together, along with Iran, Central Asia and countries along the Belt and Road initiative.”
Let’s confiscate some technology
Now compare all of the above with the perspective of a central European business tycoon with vast interests, east and west, and who treasures his discretion.
In an email exchange, the business tycoon posed serious questions about the Russian Central Bank support for its national currency, the ruble,
“which according to US planning is being destroyed by the west through sanctions and currency wolf packs who are exposing themselves by selling rubles short. There is really almost no amount of money that can beat the dollar manipulators against the ruble. A 20 percent interest rate will kill the Russian economy unnecessarily.”
The businessman argues that the chief effect of the rate hike
“would be to support imports that should not be imported. The fall of the ruble is thus favorable to Russia in terms of self-sufficiency. As import prices rise, these goods should start to be produced domestically. I would just let the ruble fall to find its own level which will for a while be lower than natural forces would permit as the US will be driving it lower through sanctions and short selling manipulation in this form of economic war against Russia.”
But that seems to tell only part of the story.
Arguably, the lethal weapon in Russia’s arsenal of responses has been identified by the head of the Center for Economic Research of the Institute of Globalization and Social Movements (IGSO), Vasily Koltashov: the key is to confiscate technology – as in Russia ceasing to recognize US rights to patents.
In what he qualifies as “liberating American intellectual property,”
Koltashov calls for passing a Russian law on
“friendly and unfriendly states. If a country turns out to be on the unfriendly list, then we can start copying its technologies in pharmaceuticals, industry, manufacturing, electronics, medicine. It can be anything – from simple details to chemical compositions.”
This would require amendments to the Russian constitution.
Koltashov maintains that
“one of the foundations of success of American industry was copying of foreign patents for inventions.”
Now, Russia could use
“China’s extensive know-how with its latest technological production processes for copying western products: the release of American intellectual property will cause damage to the United States to the amount of $10 trillion, only in the first stage. It will be a disaster for them.”
As it stands, the strategic stupidity of the EU beggars belief.
China is ready to grab all Russian natural resources – with Europe left as a pitiful hostage of the oceans and of wild speculators. It looks like a total EU-Russia split is ahead – with little trade left and zero diplomacy.
Now listen to the sound of champagne popping all across the MICIMATT.
…
And you all must see how this collapse of the USD will fit into the big picture with what is happening inside of the United States right now…
[5] WILL THERE BE A 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION?
“All tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but once the fraud is exposed, they must rely exclusively on force.”― George Orwell
The smell of tyranny is in the air.
The level of propaganda, disinformation, and mistruth has reached astounding heights, as the ruling oligarchy/Deep State/globalist cabal are thrashing about violently because their frauds are being exposed on a daily basis.
This shift to the tyranny of force has massive implications for everyone on the planet.
When every quote from Orwell’s 1984 applies every day to everything swirling around us, you begin to realize we are in the midst of a dystopian nightmare which gets more ghoulish by the day.
The last two years have been a fraud of epic proportions, conducted by a cadre of evil money titans, their financial, media, and medical apparatchiks, with the objective of tearing down our existing social and economic structure…
…and “resetting” the world where they own everything and you own nothing, eat bugs, and provide the slave labor needed to keep society functioning.
Of course, this will be after they dispose of tens of millions of useless eaters through their Covid/Vaxx scheme, global war, and mass starvation.
The past two weeks have denoted a remarkable transformation in the pushing of the fraudulent fearmongering narrative about a relatively non-lethal flu…
vaccine mandates,
masking and shaming those with the common sense to rely on their immune systems,
to trying to provoke a world war over a border dispute with absolutely no relevance or strategic value to our country, other than to further enrich the military industrial complex and
the parasites and leeches in government, finance, media and war making industry who live for and love war.
The shift has been effortless because the ruling Party, over the last two years, learned they could make the willfully ignorant and indoctrinated masses believe the most absurd story-lines with broadcast propaganda, social media influencing, and using highly compensated “experts” to lie, obfuscate, and say whatever they were paid to say.
And just like that, the pandemic was over and a war the U.S. and NATO provoked has shifted the focus of the willfully ignorant to a new boogeyman – Vladimir Putin (aka the unhinged madman Hitler reincarnation).
Again, the plotline is eerily reminiscent of Orwell’s Two Minutes of Hate.
The members of the Party participated in a public setting to watch the enemy of the state (Emmanuel Goldstein) on a film screen and loudly express their hate for the enemy du jour.
I can’t help but recognize the similarities to the last six years here in our very own dystopian empire of lies and propaganda.
From 2016 through 2020 the face of Trump was on that screen, with the hatred of Hillary, her Deep State coup co-conspirators, the fake news media outlets, and the brain-dead liberal sycophants reaching historic levels of vitriol.
Once Trump was eradicated, the Covid virus became the enemy on the screen, but the masses were infused with fear and incited to hate those who refused to fear this Fauci created flu.
“The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretense was always unnecessary.
A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledgehammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. A
nd yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp.”– Orwell – 1984
The Party needed a human face to hate.
Once they began to rollout their Big Pharma clot shots, after falsifying their safety trial data and suppressing proven safe therapeutics like ivermectin and hydroxychloquine, the face of hate became everyone who refused to be the research in this despicable medical experiment which has been an epic failure thus far, with the long-term deadly consequences only beginning to be revealed.
The un-vaxxed (aka pure bloods) have been treated like dirt, hated, de-platformed, banned, fired, and ridiculed.
The two minutes of hate has extended for a year.
But our overlords have decided the time has come to change the channel of hate towards Putin, Russia, Alex Ovechkin, Russian vodka, Russian dressing and anyone who points out the U.S. and their NATO lapdogs have provoked this conflict by surrounding Russia with military bases and missiles.
A simple map shows why Putin felt it necessary to make a stand and confront his adversaries with a punch in the mouth.
NATO signed a treaty with Russia pledging NO WESTWARD expansion. They violated it 14 times, as the map clearly shows.
Thus far the sanctions are toothless because neither Europe nor the U.S. can stomach the pain of being cut-off from Russian gas and oil.
So, for the time being they will settle for their media mouthpieces conducting two minutes of hate on a grand scale until someone does something stupid and hell on earth is unleashed across the globe.
The timing of this Ukraine conflict has been impeccable for Biden, his Covidian Cultists, their hapless discredited media lapdogs, and all the authoritarian state and local politicians whose destruction of lives and businesses has been complete.
Now that everything the “conspiracy theorists” have been saying for two years has been proven right, these soulless goblins must distract from their criminal acts by using their power of media propaganda to lead the same clueless low IQ saps who believed their bullshit about masks, lockdowns, social distancing, vaccines, and vaccine mandates into believing we should go to war with Russia over an historical border dispute 5,000 miles from our shores.
The same dumbasses riding alone in the car with a mask on are the ones calling for the banning of Russia vodka as a patriotic gesture to support those brave neo-Nazi Ukrainians.
I find it endlessly amusing to see Maddow and the rest of the MSNBC left wing loonies supporting people they would classify as red neck white supremacist Trump supporters if they lived in the U.S.
They wear their hypocrisy and imbecility proudly, while foaming at the mouth at whoever they are paid to attack.
It’s as plain as the vacant look on Biden’s face during a press conference that Biden, his handlers, and his pollsters decided two weeks ago to Wag the Dog, scrap the covid farce, rally the country around the flag, and pretend their policies have not unleashed raging inflation, destroyed our economy, shattered the lives of millions, and unleashed an ongoing and long-term death sentence for the millions of trusting souls who believed their safe & effective narrative – injecting themselves with a DNA altering experimental drug which has already killed and maimed millions.
Amazingly, even though Covid cases have plummeted, they are still at the same levels as November 2021 – when mandatory masking, vaccine mandates, and heavy restrictions were in full effect, with Biden and his cronies committing un-Constitutional acts, in coordination with mega-corporations and mass media, to force supposedly free Americans to participate in their warped failed experiment.
2022 03 05 09 33
It’s funny that Walensky and her corrupt CDC cohorts now are sure it is safe to go maskless, even though, according to their own statistics, covid deaths are now 65% higher than they were in November 2021.
If I recall, senile Joe was warning us about the dark winter ahead for the unvaccinated.
Another bogus narrative proven false.
After witnessing his brilliant prediction, I’m a little worried about his judgement on matters of nuclear war.
Fauci told us to trust the science, and he was the science.
But now he is completely on-board with rolling back everything he said was essential for society to function just a month ago.
His profile is being quickly diminished.
He has proven to be a Big Pharma hack, who sold his soul to Satan, and will go down in history as a sociopath mass murder.
Let’s face it, this was never about medical science, but political science.
Masks have never worked. Social distancing was a farce.
Lockdowns did not stop the virus.
The vaccines have failed on an epic scale.
The vaccines are killing and maiming people.
Vaccine mandates and passports are nothing more than a control and punishment mechanism.
The critical thinking resisters have been proven right on every front. Even the gullible masses began to realize they were lied to and manipulated for political purposes.
This is where political science overrode the faux medical science sold by Fauci and his Big Pharma puppeteers.
The polls show Biden and his party of far-left wingnuts are going to experience YUGE losses in the November midterms.
And just like that, Democrat governors and mayors are lifting mask mandates and vaccine mandates faster than the Biden vote count increase at 3:00 am.
They are reversing everything they never had the authority to implement in the first place.
They want you to forget how they destroyed the lives of millions, bankrupting hundreds of thousands of small businesses, demolishing our civil liberties, and permanently wrecking the lives of our children.
Their plan is to switch the narrative to Russia hate and expect the ignorant masses to forget what they have done and how they severely damaged the social fabric of our society.
They have supreme confidence in the foolishness and witlessness of the suckers who swallowed their scamdemic scheme, and after a week of observing the complete transformation of the fearful mask/mandate brigade to the “I Hate Putin” army, it appears the Bernays’ propaganda machine is running like a finely tuned fake news propagator for the globalist new world order cabal.
Orwell’s observation that every war needs to be sold as self-defense against a homicidal maniac has been duly noted by those pulling the strings of society, as they have enlisted Vladimir Putin to be that “homicidal maniac” in their ongoing quest to destroy the world and reinvent and reset it as a techno-gulag.
Once they can force everyone into a cashless society, we will all be wearing digital slave chains, enabling them to control our behavior by cutting us off from the ability to conduct commerce, eat, or have opinions contrary to the government narrative.
Does the daily ebb and flow of one crisis after another, requiring greater government control of every aspect of our existence, have a Truman Showfeel to you?
The usurpation of our civil liberties, human rights, freedoms, and liberties had been gradual and almost undetectable to the indoctrinated sheep who have been distracted by their iGadgets, counting their likes and followers on social media, professional sports bread and circuses, and the filth that passes for Hollywood entertainment over the last couple decades.
The last two years have seen a precipitous acceleration in the lawless disregard for any and all Constitutional rights, bodily rights, and human rights.
The illegal and heavy-handed enforcement of lockdowns and vaccine mandates reveals a desperation in the actions of our globalist oligarch controllers.
The question is whether this acceleration is part of the master plan, or an acknowledgement the endgame is approaching, and they need to gamble it all in an effort to reconfigure and reset the world to make it great for oligarchs and hell on earth for the rest of us.
I’m convinced Orwell and Huxley were the two most prescient minds of the 20th Century when it came to understanding the human condition and how power-seeking psychopaths would always rise to the top of society and inflict their psychosis upon the masses.
The mass formation psychosis (aka madness of crowds), which has overtaken a large swath of the population over the last two years, did not happen naturally, but was purposely initiated by propagandists who know how to manipulate the minds of the already willfully ignorant masses using mass media, social media, and parading of paid “experts” and “influencers” to sell their narrative.
The power of groupthink is overwhelming when it is driven by fear, hatred, and the power of psychopaths like Fauci willing to lie, mislead and cover-up facts that do not support the narrative. Huxley’s description of “herd poisoning” perfectly fits how the mindless, frantic, lunacy of the Covidian Cult overrode all of the critical thinking rational non-sheep in a stampede of idiocy, engineered by those pulling the strings of society.
“Groups are capable of being as moral and intelligent as the individuals who form them; a crowd is chaotic, has no purpose of its own and is capable of anything except intelligent action and realistic thinking.
Assembled in a crowd, people lose their powers of reasoning and their capacity for moral choice.
Their suggestibility is increased to the point where they cease to have any judgment or will of their own.
They become very excitable, they lose all sense of individual or collective responsibility, they are subject to sudden accesses of rage, enthusiasm and panic.
In a word, a man in a crowd behaves as though he had swallowed a large dose of some powerful intoxicant.
He is a victim of what I have called “herd-poisoning.” Like alcohol, herd-poison is an active, extraverted drug.
The crowd-intoxicated individual escapes from responsibility, intelligence and morality into a kind of frantic, animal mindlessness.” – Aldous Huxley – Brave New World
The same men who engineered the covid plandemic hysteria, are now making a segue directly into provoking a World War 3 scenario and urging the Covidian Cultists to rally around the Ukrainian flag and their brave patriot army to fight off the evil psychopath despot of Russia.
It doesn’t matter that a week ago these dupes couldn’t find Ukraine on a map, had never seen their flag, didn’t know the comedian president of Ukraine’s name, and had no idea about the CIA coup that overthrew the actual president of Ukraine in 2014.
Animal mindlessness is their specialty.
And those trying to cause global destruction in order to build back better are wallowing in the apparent success of their plan thus far.
Global disorder and chaos are proceeding with reckless abandon, as an already teetering, debt saturated, global economy was in danger of spinning out of control with raging inflation, rapidly decelerating GDP, and stock markets which peaked in early January and had begun to fall.
Now you add the first real war in Europe in 77 years into the mix and you have a combustible environment threatening to blow our modern world back to the stone age.
The world continues to spiral towards the bloody climax that mark all Fourth Turnings.
What happens between now and then is guaranteed to be tumultuous, try men’s souls, test the mettle of freedom minded patriots, push the world to the brink, and clearly demarcate the frontier between good and evil.
Current events related to this confusing conflict in the Ukraine may seem confined for now, but as the sanctions and countermeasures are inflicted by all sides, the unintended consequences will begin to rear their ugly head.
The current heads of state and their trusted advisors are not intellectually competent, morally superior, or capable of analyzing the long-term impact of their emotionally driven actions, which will lead to a much broader conflict and disastrous consequences for the citizens of this world, who are nothing more than pawns in this global game of chess being played by shadowy oligarchs attempting to checkmate our freedoms, livelihoods, and ability to live our lives free from their authoritarian mandates.
Everything we’ve been put through over the last two years has been pre-planned by Schwab, Soros, Gates, the Davos World Economic Forum crowd, and their acolytes positioned in governments across the world.
They have been testing how far they could push their citizens before getting pushback. Lockdowns, masks, vaccines, electronic vaccine passports, social credit scoring, and conspiring with Big Pharma, Big Media, and Big Corporations to force a fake vaccine into the veins of hundreds of millions has all been part of the plan.
Trudeau’s totalitarian crackdown on peaceful protestors, declaring dictatorial emergency powers, stealing their donated funds, freezing their bank accounts, beating them, imprisoning them, seizing their property, and trying to ruin their lives by publicly releasing their names and addresses, was just another test run by one of Schwab’s young global leader graduates.
The same has been done in New Zealand and Australia. These actions are a prelude to what comes next. Orwell was right.
Once they have seized power, they have no plans of relinquishing it and the object of power is power.
The next chapter in this dystopian Truman Show is how this conflict in the Ukraine will be used to further the aims of Schwab’s Great Reset.
You can be absolutely sure it will be used to further restrict our freedoms, rights, and free speech.
Anyone not participating in the daily two minutes of hate will be declared a Russian asset.
Anyone not toeing the anti-Russia narrative will be penalized financially, just as they were for not getting the jab.
Joe Biden was a low IQ angry gaffe machine as senator and vice president. He is now a dementia ridden husk, who can barely read what his handlers tell him to say on his teleprompter.
His weakness has led to emboldening Putin in pushing back against the US and NATO placing missiles on his border, by attacking Ukraine.
Economic sanctions are acts of war.
Cyber-attacks are acts of war.
Sending arms to participants in a conflict are acts of war.
It was economic sanctions which led to the rise of Hitler.
It was oil sanctions by FDR that created the desperation of Japan’s leadership, leading to the attack on Pearl Harbor.
If this conflict drags on, the measures and countermeasures are likely ignite a wider conflagration.
With real inflation already at 15%, GDP at 0.0%, oil now up 20% in the last two weeks, the Fed backed into a corner and about to end QE and raise rates, and the supply chain in a shambles, these economic sanctions are going to create havoc and extreme economic pain for billions across the globe.
Incompetent leaders, with mediocre minds, who have been installed because they will do as they are told by the globalist puppeteers, are steering the world into World War 3.
At this point virtually no one believes we will not have a presidential election in 2024.
Candidates are positioning themselves, pundits are calculating odds, pollsters are taking the temperature of the populace, and the media is spinning their web of lies.
But there are multiple scenarios which could result in no presidential election in 2024. With inflation already at 40-year highs, these accelerating levels of sanctions will surely give inflation a further boost, making it impossible for Powell and his cronies to pretend it is transitory.
They will be increasing rates and withdrawing liquidity as we enter recession, making the chances of a depression the highest in decades. This will absolutely cause the stock market and housing market to crash.
A large swath of the population is already outraged and irate at being abused and victimized by their leaders for the last two years and told it was for the common good.
Trucker convoys are converging on DC. to voice their displeasure. Seeing their 401ks vaporized once again and going back underwater on their recent mortgages will not be accepted without a violent reaction.
Civil unrest has been purposely generated by the controllers over the last few years but is poised to go kinetic in the near future.
The party that weaponized the flu to complete the coup they started in 2016 against a duly elected president and stole the 2020 election through mail-in ballot fraud and voting machine rigging, is not going to willingly relinquish power by losing the 2022 mid-terms and 2024 presidential election.
Will they roll-out the next variant in the fall, just in time to force mail-in voting once again, so they can steal enough seats to retain power? Seems unlikely.
If the GOP takes Congress in November, that essentially leaves Biden with executive orders to force his left-wing agenda down our throats.
An attempt at using illegal means to enforce his agenda could meet violent resistance.
They have already gated off their Swamp and posted the military to protect the vermin crawling around the halls of Congress.
They have already thrown the selfie-insurrectionists into their dungeons with no due process for their “crimes”.
What makes you think Biden and his Obama handlers will not use some excuse or false flag to declare martial law and suspend the elections?
The more likely scenario will be driven by war scenarios. As already documented, with inflation raging across the globe, the supply chain disintegrating, the world retreating into competing camps, a declining American empire desperately trying to fend off China, and a nuclear power run by a ruthless, serious, intelligent, “Russia First” dictator, the chances of the current level of global disorder to spiral out of control are high.
Politicians, when confronted with domestic issues they cannot solve by PR and throwing money at it, need a foreign confrontation to distract the masses from their failures.
Biden and his bevy of like-minded EU political hacks have gladly jumped on the anti-Russia bandwagon like a pack of rabid wolves.
Watching corporations and the media likewise go on the attack is eerily reminiscent of their extreme reaction to the un-vaxxed.
Covid has disappeared from the daily lexicon just in time for Biden’s State of the Union and the fast-approaching November elections.
Revisionist history is in process by the left-wing media. It was Trump’s fault.
Someone somewhere is bound to do something stupid, whether it be a dictator, president, prime minister, general, assassin, soldier, or just a pissed off parent, which sets off the fuse for the bloody portion of this Fourth Turning.
Once this war goes global and countries choose sides, anything can happen, and it will. Picture the domino scene in V for Vendetta.
Once it starts it can’t be contained until there are clear victors and clear winners. The difference between this Fourth Turning and previous Fourth Turnings is the ability of several countries to initiate thermonuclear war which would end life as we know it.
Even use of tactical nukes, EMPs, or cyber-attacks taking down crucial systems could transform our modern world into the 3rd world.
So, a global conflict could also create an atmosphere where our ruling junta couldn’t possibly allow Donald Trump to be re-elected president.
This, of course, would lead to civil war in the streets. It’s almost as if an orange fireball rising up above the Swamp would be preferable.
Just remember, the current scenario was placed into motion by Schwab, Soros, Gates, and the Great Reset billionaire cabal. If we get out of this alive, you know who to hang from the lampposts.
“Remember that all through history, there have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they seem invincible. But in the end, they always fall. Always.” ― Mahatma Gandhi
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So, we now know that the United States is ripe for revolution or Civil War. It’s ready. It’s ripe, and it’s amazing to me that it hasn’t yet ignited.
All five articles so far has absolutely indicated clearly that the United States, as well as it’s “allies” are in late-stage collapse. It’s looking like any day now a switch will be flicked and a new day will begin…
Ukraine may be many things … but a ‘gospel of democracy’?
We all know that the western media’s Ukraine coverage has been highly charged, playing on western feelings of sympathy for (some) underdog ‘victims’, and directing feelings towards a moral outrage that insists – even demands – retribution and punishment for the perceived perpetrators.
David Brooks in the New York Times elevates this feeling of guilt to higher planes:
“The creed of liberalism is getting a second wind [and has] reminded us not only what it looks like to believe in democracy, the liberal order and national honour; but also to act bravely on behalf of these things. They’ve reminded us how the setbacks [may] have caused us to doubt and be passive about the gospel of democracy. But despite all our failings, the gospel is still glowingly true”.
Ukraine may be many things … but a ‘gospel of democracy’?
Every serious crisis, of course, is also an opportunity for mythopoesis – especially at a time of anomie, when a dispirited less than half of a society believes that their country is notinvested in them and “that the economic and political systems (and the people who run them), are stacked against [them] – no matter what you do”.
The Anglo-American Establishment has proved adept at intuiting: that owing to such anomie and erosion of our ‘sacred canopy’, a ‘noble lie’ can be used to give a rules-based order a last gasp.
Its’ inherent power can be harnessed to generate the outrage as casus belli for global liberalism.
After all, what better unifying force than the ‘grand American project’ of war to energise one’s desire for a reappropriated national significance.
The West has taken dominance of the ‘information space’ to new heights: consolidating the media; tightening its hold on information; marginalising the few investigative journalists that remain; and nullifying scepticism as examples of appeasement, or of “Putinism”.
Freedom of online thought is disallowed; selective broadcast perspectives are removed or allowed (for example, pro neo-Nazi sympathies and politically-charged violence against Russians and Russia); and a monopoly over truth is established.
So that when caught in falsehoods, any errant intrusion simply is algorithmically ‘disappeared’.
There is no doubt that the West has refined this mode of battle-scape to the highest degree, but its very success also diffuses its own pathogens throughout the western capillaries.
Once set in motion, it possesses all the addictive power of online gaming.
Write the script for a new scenario; direct its production; and then stage it on video.
Many may disbelieve the resulting piece, but there is nothing for them to do, except to watch it in mute, frustrated silence.
Game over.
You have ‘won’.
Except you don’t.
This game generates its own momentum.
There is always another, at hand, to trump the last player’s taunt at Putin; to hail the victim’s new act of selfless bravery; to speculate about yet more foul deeds planned against him.
And so the demand for retribution and punishment is invested with unstoppable momentum. The logic to its structure makes it almost impossible for any political leader to stand against the swelling tide.
That’s where we are: Three realities that are so severed from each other that they do not touch at any point.
There is the reality of PsyOps that bears almost no resemblance to the reality of the military situation on the ground.
“News” of the Ukraine conflict = PsyOps
Actual events and battles in the conflict.
Indeed, they manifest as polar inversions of each other. PsyOps: A heroic resistance versus a failing, demoralised and hobbled Russian army.
Whereas the reality is that “Putin is NOT crazy and the Russian invasion is NOT failing”.
Then there is the clashing realities of a Europe and U.S. conjoined in ‘an economic, moral enterprise of social power and fighting morale’ (albeit at certain self-sacrifice/self-flagellation to themselves) to punish Russia.
And the other reality that a ‘world at war’ – whether kinetic or financial – will be a disaster for Europe (and America).
War is inflationary.
War is contractionary (and inflationary too).
Everything – oil, gas, metals – the lot – are going up vertically, and the whole production chain for food is under pressure from every side.
But this situation clearly is less disastrous for a super food and commodity supplier like Russia.
The third set of severed realities are, on the one hand, the contextless, exclusive focus on the Ukraine events, which effaces this moment of global political and economic inflection, and – on the other – the elephant-in-the room which is the Russia-China mega project to force a withdrawal and containment of the entire ‘rules-based’ hegemonic order.
There are other severed realities out there (such as the one about Russia isolated and shunned versus the reality that much of the planet does not support U.S. and European punitive sanctions) – but never mind that.
The point here is not just what happens when these realities collide, but what happens when one or other ‘reality’ that already holds a hyper emotional, moralising charge is forced into full consciousness as having been WRONG?
This is the pathogen inherent in taking the battle-scape of information dominance to an extreme: It begs the question: in what way will emotions turn if all the hype falls flat, and the ‘bad guy’ wins the game?
Will people turn against their present leaderships, or opt to double-down, demanding more ‘war’ as instincts rebel against any the realisation of failure inflicted upon settled quasi-religious convictions?
The outcome to this psychic dilemma may determine whether we are heading to escalation and extended war, or not.
U.S. intelligence officials claimed on Tuesday that Putin is ‘desperate’ to end the conflict over Ukraine, with some privately suggesting he could even set off a tactical nuclear weapon in a Ukrainian city to get the job done.
Fuelled by his disappointments, Putin could resort to using a small nuke:
“You know, Russian doctrine holds that you escalate to de-escalate, and so I think the risk would rise, according to the doctrine,”
-CIA Director, and former U.S. Ambassador to Moscow
There it is … the next stage of escalation.
This now is being attributed to Putin, but the point is that it has been put ‘out there’ very publicly by the CIA.
Is this ground preparation?
An escalation to this level is likely not on the cards, so long, and only so long, as the option of sticking Russia into a Ukrainian quagmire remains firmly on the cards.
If the PsyOps narrative – on which so much hangs – doesn’t stand up to the ground reality, the public will demand answers.
The setback to the ‘sacred canopy’ would be immense.
Biological labs have been found in Ukraine that reportedly have a U.S. connection:
When asked about them, Victoria Nuland surprisingly admitted their existence, but said “she’s worried Russia might get them and that she’s 100% sure if there is a biological attack – it’s Russia”.
On Thursday, the UK media led with the headline, “Putin plotting chemical weapons attack in Ukraine”.
Plainly, the fear factor is being ramped to sustain a long-term insurgency/quagmire strategy for Russia in western Ukraine. It is, as David Brooks hinted, the last gasp in the defence of the liberal world order.
Can all this hype – small nukes, bio and chemical weapons – really take us to war? James Carden, in his piece says it can – and has. He quotes one instance:
“In a private letter written in 1918, the recently deposed German chancellor admitted that in the run-up to the Great War, “there were special circumstances that militated in favour of war, including those in which Germany in 1870-71 entered the circle of great powers” and became “the object of vengeful envy on the part of the other Great Powers, largely though not entirely by her own fault.”“Yet Bethmann saw another crucial factor at work: that of public opinion. “How else,” he asked, “[to] explain the senseless and impassioned zeal which allowed countries like Italy, Rumania, and even America, not originally involved in the war, no rest until they too had immersed themselves in the bloodbath? Surely this is the immediate, tangible expression of a general disposition toward war in the world.”
Against the prospect that Putin may achieve his aims, short of general war, how might Europe and America react? They might react very differently.
Firstly, we must recall that one object of this ‘war fever’ always was to bind Europe to the U.S., and into NATO, and to prevent Russia-China co-opting Europe into the Great Asian Heartland economic integration project – thus leaving the U.S. as an isolated maritime ‘island’, strategically speaking.
The hardcore Neo-cons have had positive results: Nordstream 2 is cancelled – leaving Europe without a cheap secure source of energy.
From the outset, the European project was conceived as a marriage of Russian resources to European manufacturing capacity.
This option is now over.
The EU has fully bound itself into the ‘fever’, and into U.S. sphere.
And it has erected an ‘iron curtain’ against Russia (and by extension China).
It has ‘sanctioned itself’ into a high-cost energy and commodity paradigm and made itself a captive market for the U.S. energy majors and American technology.
The EU has been fond of imagining itself as a liberal imperium.
But that surely is gone now.
Its’ Davos-style ‘re-set’, designed to steal a march on America, is defunct.
The four key ‘transitions’ on which Brussels was depending to lift its reach from the national-level, to the global supra-national level, are defunct: Global ‘green pass’ health regulations, Climate, automation and monetary regulatory frameworks – for one reason or another – have failed and are off the agenda.
The EU was counting on these transitions as the peg to print a huge amount of money.
They need it in order to liquefy an over-indebted system. Absent this peg, they are mulling a (highly inflationary) slush fund (ostensibly for defence and Russian energy substitution), financed by euro-bonds. (It will be interesting to see whether the so-called ‘frugal four’ EU states buy into this ploy for mutualised debt).
Yet inflation – already high and accelerating – is at the root of the crisis Brussels is facing. There is little to be done about this in light of the sanctions which the EU has enacted on Russia – with prices of everything going up vertically.
And as for the other lacuna, there’s no way Europe can find 200 billion cubic meters of gas anywhere else to replace Russia, be it in Algeria, Qatar or Turkmenistan – not to mention the EU’s lack of necessary LNG terminals.
Europeans face a bleak future of soaring prices and economic contraction. For now, they can offer little political dissent to the controlling élites. The frameworks for genuine (as opposed to token) opposition in Europe, largely have been dismantled in the zeal of Brussels to suppress ‘populism’. EU citizens will bear the prospect in sullen anger (until the pain becomes unbearable).
‘Populism’ in the U.S. however, is not dead. Some 30 GOP Congressmen have opted to retire at the coming midterms.
We may well witness an upsurge in the American populist sentiment in November.
The point here, is that American populism traditionally is fiscally conservative.
And it seems that Wall Street is shifting in that direction too: i.e. they may be getting ready to ditch Biden, and to support more fiscal rigour.
This potentially is huge. This week the Federal Reserve head said that whilst a part of the record U.S. inflation may be put down to Fed responsibility, Congress however was responsible too.
This translates roughly as ‘stop the Big Spend, Biden!’.
The Fed needs the space to raise interest rates. The head of Citibank spoke in a similar vein.
Will Wall Street swap horses (they backed Biden at the last election), and thus magnify the margin to the likely Republican majority in Congress? If so, with a big enough majority – anything may (politically) become possible. Republican conservatism traditionally (i.e. before the flirt with neo-con hawks) is highly cautious of foreign adventurism.
‘Whether it be BLM, Coronavirus, or now Ukraine, every single issue is talked about in apocalyptic terms and with gargantuan fear. But, as for all these frights:“The deplorables are done”’. (paraphrased)
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Next up…
[7] The Great Decoupling: How Western Sanctions Are Pushing Moscow East
By seeking an economic divorce from Russia, US President Joe Biden and his European allies ignored the time-tested saying, “Keep your friends close but your enemies closer.” In doing so, they have enabled the complete economic decoupling of Russia from the West. The resulting Russian economic union with China will transform global geopolitical reality, to the detriment of those who sought these sanctions in the first place.
Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia has had a Jekyll and Hyde relationship with the US and the West. In the dire economic reality of post-Soviet Russia, many in the West believed the Soviet ghost could best be exorcised through a crash program of democratization, which would accompany the transformation of the ruined, centrally controlled Soviet economy into a vibrant free market built along Western capitalist lines.
The result was a disaster.
Post-Soviet Russia President Boris Yeltsin proved unsuited for the task, and what passed for democracy in Russia was quickly quashed in October 1993, when Yeltsin ordered the Russian Army to open fire on the Russian legislature. The strangulation of democracy was completed when Yeltsin won re-election in 1996 in a heavily tainted contest.
Rise of the Oligarchs
The Russian economy, meanwhile, had been taken over by Western carpetbaggers looking for a quick profit and unethical Russian entrepreneurs, who shaped domestic laws and policies that enabled them to acquire former state enterprises at rock-bottom prices.
The resulting oligarch class of billionaires began an incestuous relationship with their Western benefactors, trading access to Russian resources for help in transferring billions of dollars to offshore shelters, in the form of prime real estate, bank accounts out of reach of Russian authority, and prestige investments such as sports teams.
Left in the wake of this unscrupulous acquisition of wealth were average Russian citizens, who got only the meloch(loose change) of Russia’s experiment in capitalism, the stores and services that constitute the trappings of an ostensibly better life. Russia struggled, but survived. And the end of the 1990s, as Yeltsin turned over the sickly body of post-Soviet Russia to his hand-picked successor, Vladimir Putin, there was a class of people in Russia who had tied their fortune and livelihood to the promise of Western-style capitalism.
Putin undoubtedly saw the promise of a Russian economy guided by the principles of capitalism. But he faced the reality that, under Yeltsin, Russia had sold itself to outside interests which, in concert with an increasingly corrupt oligarch class, was throttling Russia’s economic potential. Putin also brought to the Russian presidency a strongly held belief that Russia needed to restore its position as a great power — not fully elevated to the status of the former Soviet Union, but at least equal to other world powers as part of a multilateral approach to global geopolitics.
All Except Russia
Putin’s efforts put him at odds with the US and Western Europe, which had taken advantage of the collapse of the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites to create a new European security framework that sought to unify all of Europe under a single economic, political and military umbrella — all of Europe, that is, except Russia.
Russia’s role in this great transformation was to remain militarily weak and politically compliant. Putin’s efforts at restoring Russia as a great power threw a wrench into this plan, and Russia found itself increasingly viewed as a threat by both the US and Europe. Putin’s suppression of the oligarchs, where he allowed them to retain their wealth and assets in exchange for their retreat from politics, weakened Western access to and control of Russian domestic affairs.
Moreover, Russian pushback against the expansion of Nato into Eastern Europe, when combined with the US-initiated termination of some core Cold War arms control treaty relationships, transformed Russia from a political nuisance into a geopolitical rival.
Russia’s war with Georgia in 2008 and annexation of Crimea in 2014 opened the door to US-led economic sanctions designed to punish Russia for its actions. These sanctions, when coupled with similar US sanctioning of Iran, forced Russia to confront the reality that the era of unconstrained economic association with the West was ending.
Pivoting East
Russia, together with China, began looking for alternatives to the US dollar-dominated model of global economic interaction. In doing so, they began to find common cause in crafting a geopolitical alternative to the US-led “rules-based international order,” which had dominated the global political and economic scaffolding constructed at the end of World War II.
Any Russian pivot to the East, however, was constrained by the reality that the Russian economy remained inextricably intertwined with the West. Not only was the Russian oligarchs’ wealth squirreled away in offshore shelters, but there was an entire class of Russian citizens whose daily livelihood was woven into the fabric of an economy that had absorbed Western businesses and practices. Any attempt at a divorce from the West would transform what had been a largely pro-Western Russian middle class into a politically active constituency that, if coupled to a hobbled but still powerful oligarch class, could challenge Putin’s hold on power.
Strategic Error
But Biden and his European allies decided to drop their “Keep your friends close but your enemies closer” approach in favor of the opposite.
The mistake was to believe that bringing enough pain to bear on the Russian people would prompt a political backlash that could lead to Putin’s removal from power. But for this pain to bring meaningful domestic political change, Russia would need to retain some economic connectivity with the West. Otherwise, the pain would be intense, but short-lived.
Left to his own devices, Putin would never have been able to divorce Russia from the West, and thus insulate Russian society — and, by extension, his ability to govern — from Western sanctions. Here, the US and Europe are doing Putin a huge favor, with current sweeping sanctions giving him the ability to separate Russia from its economic association with the West without the politically fatal consequences of being seen to do this on his own volition.
Thanks to the US-led sanctions, Putin will now be able to neuter the Russian oligarch class for good. The sanctions have likewise politically neutralized that portion of the Russian middle class that was economically married to Western businesses, goods, services — and mystique.
Putin has been granted his divorce without so far paying any meaningful political price. While the US and Europe may claim that Putin brought this on by invading Ukraine, to the Russian people, US and European actions led to the divorce. The demonization of everything Russia-related by many in the West only helps the Russian government deflect blame from itself, and onto the West. The West made it personal.
“I assure you,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told the press on Mar. 10, “we will overcome adversity, and we will do everything to no longer depend on the West in any strategic sectors of our life that are of decisive importance for our people.” Russia, Lavrov said, “will no longer depend on any Western companies.”
As Lavrov delivered his remarks, Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of Russia Dmitri Medvedev announced that the government was considering the possibility of nationalizing or bankrupting the property of foreign companies leaving Russia. The decoupling has begun.
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What we have here are just a few of the many, many articles describing this particular snapshot in time.
What we can see from all these writings is that all the elements for late-stage collapse of the dominant United States empire are in place, and that the rising Asia (Russia, India and China combined) are more than capable in displacing it.
During the inflexion point, anything can happen…
American hyper-inflation
American civil war
Numerous wars throughout the globe
A major war, maybe nuclear or bioweapon
Change of the reserve currency
Mass famine, discord or die-offs
Note that during this period of inflexion and change, you want to stay FAR away from the strife, and be in a place where you can handle the changes adroitly. You might want to stay in a safe location in the receeding empire, or move to the growing empire. You could also move to a safe isolated third nation well out of the fray.
But what nation?
Use history as a guide.
During the last period of change, when the European Empires (a collective group) was displaced by the United States, we learned that…
The collapsing world power (Europe) was completely destroyed and in ruins
All of Germany, France, Italy, and all of Eastern Europe.
Much of the UKs overseas colonies; India, Africa.
France was a mess.
Poland was in rubble.
Western Europe, Hungary and all the rest absolutey rubbled.
The rising world power (The United States) remained intact
The emerging powers (Russia, China) were broken and in turmoil
In this current bout of change, we should take note that…
The collapsing world power = Is now the United States.
The rising world power = Is Asia (Russia, India and China together)
The emerging powers = Korea, Japan, Australia, Pakastan, Brazil will experience change, and possible turmoil.
Take note of history and plan accordingly.
Go to either a Rising World Power, or one of the Emerging Powers.
Try to bail out and leave the Collapsing World Power.
Remember that during a cycle-based change…
The collapsing world powerbecomes absolutely destroyed, and in ruins.
The rising world power is unscathed and left intact.
The emerging powers undergo social, economic, military, and structural change. A well prepaired family can adjust to the opportunites afforded in this changing environment and profit from them.
The destruction comes in many forms…
“In two weeks, China, Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan will reveal an independent international monetary and financial system. It will be based on a new international currency, calculated from an index of national currencies of the participating countries and international commodity prices”
-Sputnik News, Mar. 14, 2022.
Along with the new currency, Russia and China will also reveal their Unfriendly Nation Lists.
The reports about the Russians losing a million tanks, soldiers, missiles and men are gradually being replaced with more sober assessments and the maps produced by western outlets are gradually starting to look more or less similar to the maps produced by the various “Putin propaganda outlets”.
I see two things coming next:
The much announced “Russian atrocity” false flag (several have failed over the past few days, including one chemical one which was thwarted when the wind blew in the “wrong” direction – that is away from the targeted town.
Poland will try to convince the USA to allow it to hide behind Uncle Shmuel’s back and conduct a “peacekeeping operation” to create a mini-Banderastan in western Ukraine.
Now there is no doubt in my mind whatsoever that the USA want three things:
A war lasting as long as possible
As many civilian victims as possible
To flood the Ukraine with weapons to then direct a “stay-behind” insurgency
I am not at all convinced that the USA will go along with the Polish plan. Why? Because I believe that a Russian Iskander strike INSIDE POLAND (similar to the ones we saw in Iavorovo, the ammo dump in Kiev and in Novaia Liubomirka) is a quasi-certitude (remember: Russia IS ready to fight both NATO and the US together!). BTW – the one in Iavorovo blew up a huge ammo dump which was buried under 60 meters of rock. I have no explanation for how that was achieved. Does anybody?
Bottom line is that if the Polaks organize another little “peacekeeping training camp” and think that the Russians won’t dare to strike a NATO country they are quite wrong. They are probably too dumb/delusional to realize that, but the folks at the US DoD probably do and don’t need this. Why, well precisely because NATO member or not, Article 5 or not, nobody will come to aid the Polaks against the wrath of the entire Russian military, the manpower and resources needed a not there anyway…
Unless the Russians and the US Americans agree to a partition of the Ukraine. Not likely, but always possible. It is going to almost certainly happen anyway, the only way to prevent that is Russian tanks at the Polish border, and not just for a quick visit, but to create something like the 201 base in Tajikistan.
Anyway, let’s not get ahead of ourselves, this is all still in the future.
…
What about the events on the front line?
I won’t into details here but I will offer a few bullet points
Very heavy combats near Avdeevka and Mariupol.
Combat pretty much everywhere the line of contact, which result in slow positional warfare with artillery exchanges and very careful mopping up building by building and even room by room.
On average Russian forces advance between 5 and 20 kilometers per day, which is rather fast against a defense in depth prepared for years.
The key cities of Kiev and Odessa are almost completely blocked, but not fully surrounded yet.
The Black Sea fleet basically controls the entire Ukie coast and all of the Black Sea itself.
The Black Sea fleet also prevents any resupply of Odessa from Romania.
Russia has full air superiority over the entire Ukie airspace
The Ukies are STILL firing both Tochka-U and Grad/Smrech missiles in the general direction of liberated cities just to create as many casualties as possible, but the Russians have become very skilled at not only shooting down these missiles (the destruction ratio has gone up very sharply) but also a destroying the key Ukrainian ammo dumps were they hide those missiles (this is what happened with the big building in downtown Kiev which the Russians totally vaporized with one perfectly aimed Iskander missile. If you have not seen this amazing video, you can quickly re-watch it here:
Lordy! That is an AMAZING FUCKING Video!
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And here is a video of what the Ukies were hiding under this commercial building (photo from a local resident since disappeared by the Ukie SBU:
2022 03 23 10 19
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And, finally, I want to share something very important with you: the Ukronazi forces cannot resupply or rotate themselves. Why?
Because moving around when the air is full of Mi-24/35s, Mi-28Ns, and Ka-52s in “free hunting” mode requires a type of courage very few people have.
Because most roads are carefully monitored by multi-sensor Russian reconnaissance/intelligence capabilities
Because more big roads (you cannot use small dirt roads to resupply or rotate effectively) are either already physically controlled by the Russians or are “shot through”, which in Russian indicate that while Russian soldiers have reached each other and hugged they can shoot at any location from these roads from any side.
So it does not matter how motivated the Ukrainians are. Even with we assume 100% of the Ukrainians are well trained, well-armed and would rather die than retreat or surrender, they still need many TONS of stuff (food, ammo, water, MRE, medicine, batteries, petroleum, diesel, lubricants, oil and many more things!) EVERY DAY. Just to give you an idea, read this pretty decent discussion of some aspects of logistics by the US military.
So once the Ukies are blocked by Russians, it is essentially over for them. Anybody with a basic understanding of modern warfare can confirm that to you.
Add to this in the very first day Russia destroyed all the Ukie communication centers and capabilities in the first few hours of the operation, and you will see that while the Ukrainian side has “brigades” and “battalions” these are all undermanned and, crucially, cannot cooperate with each other. In other words, they cannot jointly maneuver to support each other.
To put it in the simplest terms, the Ukrainians are not able to conduct any operations, and that is why all their so-called “counter-attacks” always fail and mostly never even materialized. At best, they can destroy a Russian checkpoint, blow up a truck or even shoot down a helicopter, but none of that solves their real problem which is that they are now mostly reduced to WWI type of warfare against a 21st-century ultra-modern military which has the total control of the situation.
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PS: found a very decent map of the situation on Telegram (the place to go for good info!).
2022 03 23 10 22
The most important video of this article
All of these articles lead up to the final purpose of this article.
It is to calm the reader to see that everything that is going on is [1] being managed and [2] following a well-known and well-established process.
Do not freak out. No matter what bullshit is present in the “news” onslaught.
The following is an exceptionally well done video that explains a theory of Geo-political cycles. This in many ways resembles the Fourth Turning theory of generational changes. It is presented simply, and brilliantly.
I personally believe that true information can be conveyed by others in simple terms, and this video is one excellent example of this.
Now, this video differs from my personal view. In that it claimed that the UK was the single dominant nation displaced by the United States in the 1940s. They view this by reserve currency only. Where I claim that it was the totality of Europe (Germany, the UK, France, Poland, and all the rest) that were displaced by the United States. Reserve currency is but one aspect of the totality of issues involved in change. But aside from this difference, it’s never the less a great video.
Here we end this article with this great video. Please watch it.
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
Jesus. American Senators are actively discussing United States military fighting one-on-one against the Russians in the Ukraine. I swear. The United States is ruled by fools, ignorant lunatics, and psychopathic evil demons. It is. Seriously. I do not know which rock these people crawled out of, but they have no fucking idea what they are dealing with.
War with Russia is not going to be anything like the US Senate assumes it will be like.
And I have to tell you all, after watching the video that I am presenting below, if you are not getting sweat on your brow then something is wrong with you.
This is a very, very dangerous situation that the United States is playing around with. They are NOT taking it seriously.
They are not listening.
The are ignoring every single warning sign.
2022 03 18 09 19
No one in the United States media; it’s leadership, and it’s public is taking Russia and China seriously.
I am talking about stable, thoughtful and reasonable discussions designed to reduce tensions, and create mutually agreeable solutions for everyone involved.
That is not happening.
Asia has no problem with reducing the United States into a glowing ember.
And anyone, anyone at all who cannot see the dangerous folly in this, deserves to suffer the fate that they are creating.
Here we are going to use history to predict what will come next in the world of Geo-politics.
Washington needs to be on the front-lines. Not Ukraine.
And, if we use historical trends, then that is exactly what will happen.
2022 03 17 23 t44
We begin with this to set the pace.
Tucker seems to be the only voice of reason amongst a lot of warmongers. If the US start fighting Russian aircraft over Ukraine this act will mean WWIII, the next devastating war in Europe but this time with nuclear weapons. Tucker is the only one who sees this imminent danger and dares to speak out against it. I really do hope he will continue to do so.
-Joe Fairdin
Please watch this video. It is critical that you watch this short video because this entire article is a reaction to this particular video.
It’s horrific.
Tucker Carlson reports that the United States Senate is completely willing to go to war against Russia. And all the neocon senators (Republican and Democrat) believe that it will be [1] conventional, and [2] limited to Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a televised address today, and basically spoke to the world regarding the events taking place in Ukraine and the economic fallout being blamed on it.
Putin said Moscow offered the Ukrainian authorities not to engage in hostilities, if they withdrew troops from the Donbass, but they did not want to.
He went on to say the special military operation is going well and according to plan.
Here is a machine translation from Boris Rozhin (aka Colonel Cassad): (only partial extracts from the full transcript, slight English editing by MM.)
The operation of the Russian Armed Forces in Ukraine is developing successfully, strictly in accordance with plans.The tactics of the Russian Defense Ministry in Ukraine have fully justified themselves, everything is being done to avoid civilian casualties.
Before the operation began, Moscow offered Kiev to withdraw troops from Donbass, but they refused.
All the tasks necessary will certainly be solved.If Russian troops had stopped at the borders of the Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics, this would not have been the final solution, it would not have removed the threat to Russia.Russia is not going to occupy Ukraine.There was no necessitated need to storm the major cities.The strike on Donetsk on March 14 is a bloody terrorist attack.Russia will not allow Ukraine to remain a springboard for anti-Russian actions.The whole planet has to pay for the ambitions of the West, the myth of the “golden billion” is collapsing.
The “golden billion” is Russian slang. золотой миллиард. It means the relatively wealthy people found in the Western nations. It refers to the “middle class” that live in nice homes, drive nice cars, and are affluent.
The West is trying to convince its citizens that their difficulties are the result of Russia’s actions, but this is a lie.Sanctions against the Russian Federation are hitting the Europeans and Americans themselves, “it is not necessary to shift from a sick head to a healthy one.”
The Russian President pointed out that Western patrons are pushing Kyiv to continue the bloodshed, by supplying weapons, intelligence, and sending mercenaries.
Не стоит переходить от больной головы к здоровой is an idiom that translates to “it is not necessary to shift from a sick head to a healthy one.”
Many people have the bad habit of blaming others for their own faults. As a result, they do not know how to accept their own mistakes and are accustomed to blaming others for their troubles. The Russian idiom “to fall from a sick head to a healthy one.” refers to this behavioral aberration.
The US and the EU actually defaulted on their obligations to Russia, freezing its reserves – now everyone knows that the state’s reserves can simply be stolen.Russia – unlike Western countries – will respect the right of ownership.Arrests of foreign assets of the Russian Federation and business – a lesson for Russian entrepreneurs, there is nothing more reliable than investments at homeWe now know who cowardly betrayed their partners and failed to fulfill their obligations to employees.Trying to “cancel” Russia, the West has torn off all the masks of decency.I am sure that after blocking the accounts of the Russian Federation in the West, many countries will convert their reserves into goods, which will increase the deficit.It is obvious that the current events draw a line under the global dominance of Western countries, both in politics and in the economy.Moreover, they themselves question the economic model that has been imposed on developing countries in recent decades. Yes, in general, the whole world.
The actions of the United States are being viewed by the rest of the world. That in turn will influence their decisions on using the USD, adopting American “protections” and placing their systems under the umbrella of the United States government.
I emphasize that the sanctions obsession of the United States and its supporters is not shared by countries where more than half of the world’s population lives. It is these states that represent the fastest growing, most promising part of the global economy, including Russia.The “empire of lies” of the West is powerless against truth and justice, Russia will continue to bring its position to the whole worldThe West relies on the fifth column, national traitors, such mentally are there, in the West, and not in Russia. The West is trying to split our society, speculating on combat losses, on the consequences of sanctions. The people will be able to distinguish patriots from scum and traitors and just spit them out like a fly that accidentally flew in. The natural self-purification of society will strengthen our country.
Most interestingly, Putin pointed out a network of a dozen laboratories operated in Ukraine, where military biological programs were carried out with the financial support of the United States Military.
These included experiments with samples of coronavirus, anthrax, cholera, African swine fever. He went on to say authorities in Ukraine are now strenuously trying to cover up traces of these programs.
Speaking to the world, he said
"I want ordinary citizens of Western states to hear me too.
They are now trying to convince you that all your difficulties are the result of some hostile actions of Russia; That from your wallet you need to pay for the fight against the mythical Russian threat.
It's all a lie!
And the truth is that the problems faced by millions of people in the West are the result of years of actions by the ruling elites in the West.
Their mistakes, myopia and ambitions.
These elites are not thinking about how to improve the lives of their citizens, they are obsessed with their selfish interests and super profits."
Putin also spoke about his future plans for Ukraine, saying
"The appearance of Russian troops near Kiev and other Ukrainian cities is not connected with a desire to occupy Ukraine, Russia has no such goal.All tasks assigned in the special military operation will certainly be completed;
We had no other option to ensure the security of Russia."
He laid out what is going on and why. He identified who started the war and why. He elaborated on the extent of Russian involvement and narrated the need for the West to stop now before things get bad.
In short. Russia is ready for war.
Economic. Military. Social. Financial. Scientific. In every way.
I would just add “better late than never”!
Now, let me be perfectly clear. It will NOT be limited to Ukraine. Both Putin and Xi Peng know where all the warmongering originates. They will not allow proxy wars on their borders.
Many still do not understand that we are already deeply in decay. Two groups immediately spring up once we realize we are in decay: the standard lazy-stupid human “wow it’s all doomed, no point in doing anything” response, and the “we must cling to what we still have” group. The latter sort of get it, but not fully.
If you have a garden and are sent out of town for a few months, you will return to a ruin. Overgrown with weeds, ridden with rotted plants, layered in dead leaves, and possibly now inhabited by wild animals, your garden is a working model of nature (which itself models a fully complex system fairly well, so you can draw parallels to any situation of sufficient complexity via this model).
In all situations, your approach is the same: remove parasites and unwanted plants, remove the sick, clean up the mess, and nurture the health of those plants you want.
Weeding is, if viewed properly, a tragedy. Here I am on my hands and knees, yanking out grasses, clover, dandelion, and broadleaf that I would otherwise be very happy to see on the edge of a forest where I could selectively harvest them, dandelion for tea, clover for poultice, and broadleaf for salad.
And yet, if I want the tomatoes, eggplant, onions, peppers, chives, garlic, stringbeans, cabbage, and mustard to thrive, I need to yank out these otherwise functional plants — now categorized as “weeds” — and allow the plants I need to take up the sunlight, water, space, and fertilizer that otherwise would be siphoned off by the others.
Weeds, by the way, show us economics in action. Even a five percent loss of inputs — the sunlight, water, dirt, and nutrition mentioned above — to weeds or bad plant placement can reduce a crop by half. That may not matter so much for ornamental gardens, but if you plan to feed your family with those plants, it is instantly a very big deal.
Gardens separate humanity into two groups, much as society does. On one side you have the realists, who recognize that whatever must be done to make the garden grow to the maximum should be done; this is a morality of realism, or reality first.
The other side consists of both liberals and religious conservatives. They talk about what should be done, and from that list, want to select the methods that can be used in the garden. This is classic Control: exclude any methods that are unwanted, and then by managing the methods used by others, create an external situation designed to manage human inner mental state. Instead of self-control and positive motivation, you have negative motivation (political correctness, Biblical morality, social disapproval, shareholder revolt) paired to external control, with the idea that you will have no inner structure whatsoever because you have given it all up for the mental comfort of the group.
In this way, our morality comes down to two forms. The realists figure for ends-over-means, signifying that what should be done is what is functional; the humanists look toward means-over-ends, proclaiming what should be done and then trying to shoehorn function into what is left. All humanist groups eventually become narcissistic, solipsistic, and egotistic like the Communists and, by catering to every human, provide for none, and self-destruct.
Democracy just takes a slightly slower boat especially when mediated by capitalism as it has been in America. Europe has doomed itself by neutering itself; as the Russian military struggles through Ukraine, we might all reflect that this shows us Europe before Genghis Khan’s Mongols arrived: so accustomed to our own battles that we downgraded to an efficient optimum and equilibrium, we were unprepared for anyone using other tactics, even if these were widely known. Contemporary Europe, like the Russian army, has downgraded itself to meet the threats it likely faces, all of whom are sickened by the same weeds of socialism and diversity, not the Black Swan threat it should prepare for since that will be its test of survival.
This means that democracy has reached its endgame. The weeds have won; a third of the garden is growing random plants that serve none of our purposes, and the others have accepted a life of taking less and producing less, year after year, hastening our inevitable Soviet-style decline when our system can no longer produce what we need.
The result of the USA-China meeting in Italy
U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, warned Beijing it would “absolutely” face consequences if it helped Moscow evade sweeping sanctions over the war in Ukraine. Unnamed US “Officials” stated that “Russia asked China for military equipment after its Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine”. This report was catagorically denied by the Chinese government.
Personally, I can’t figure out (for the life of me) what military weapons that China could possibly provide Russia. Only the ignorant would believe that Russia and China use the same weapons.
But a lie, is a lie, is a lie. And since it is coming out of Washington DC, you can expect it to be a BIG lie.
Jake Sullivan (according to the United States “news” media), started mapping out the consequences and growing isolation China would face globally if it maintains its support of Russia.
Jake Sullivan
Or so the media narrative went.
The purpose, supposedly, for the meeting is that the United States was to warn China not to support, help, or trade with Russia. If it does, then bad things will result.
“Bad things”.
After the meeting, the United States media hardly said a peep about what transpired. All it said is that the meeting lasted seven hours. Nothing else.
The Chinese media, however, was very clear.
China said no.
Then no again.
Then again, no, and then No, get out of my face.
Followed by no, and know who the fuck you are dealing with.
The USA failed, and China would not be intimated. Here’s the best summary that I could find on the Internet. You-Tube. Great video.
2022 03 17 11 39
Curious Coincidence
Immediately after the failed USA-China negotiations in Italy, China was hit with a very lethal strain of Coronavirus.
Shenzhen is under full and absolute lockdown.Same with a number of other cities including Shanghai, Danguang, and Wenzhou.
No one is moving. HK has hospitals overflowing, and the entire nation is swabbing the population multiple times. I myself, have already had three swabs in the last 48 hours.
It’s a good thing that China is still at DEFCON 2.
Major coronavirus outbreaks in multiple locations at ports and entry cities. All coordinated at the same time, all after failed negotiations with the United States. What a coincidence.
Imagine that!
Chinese aide to Russia
Here’s a comparison between facts, and the resulting distortions.
Note:
To China, the relations between China and Russia is absolute and necessary.
Where Russia is like the teeth. And China is like the lip.
If the lip is damaged, the teeth will be exposed to the harsh world without protection.
Thus, the wellbeing of Russia is a life and death issue for China.
I am in no doubt that China will stand side by side with Russia in the 21st century facing off against the dying United States military empire.
9 x propaganda :
What China Can and Cannot Do for Russia Amid Sanctions
Spokesperson for Chinese mission to the EU answers a question about NATO leader’s remarks about China
Question:
According to reports, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said yesterday that any Russian support, military support or any other support, will actually help Russia wage a brutal war.
A war against an independent sovereign state, Ukraine, and help them continue to wage a war that brings death, suffering and great destruction.
He also stated that China, as a member of the UN Security Council, has an obligation to actually uphold and abide by international law and join the rest of the world in condemning the Russian invasion.
What is your comment?
Answer:
We have taken note of the relevant comments.
The Chinese can fully understand the pain and suffering of other countries because we will never forget who blew up our embassy in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
We don't need lectures on justice from a violator of international law.
As a remnant of the Cold War and the world's largest military alliance, NATO continues to expand its geography and range of operations.
What role has it played in bringing peace and stability to the world?
NATO needs to think carefully.
Deleted Web Page Shows Obama Plan to Build BioLab for ‘Especially Dangerous Pathogens’ in Ukraine
Former President Barack Obama was a part of an agreement that allowed for the construction of Biolabs in Ukraine that handle “especially dangerous pathogens.”
The discovery was made after a deleted web page was discovered by The National Pulse.
This discovery comes on the same day that Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland told the US Senate that the Biden Administration was worried about potential bioweapon research facilities being taken by Russian troops as the conflict in Ukraine continues to escalate following Russia’s invasion.
The article, titled “Biolab Opens in Ukraine” goes into how Obama helped negotiate the construction of a level-3 biosafety lab in Odessa, a city that has already seen conflict. Obama did so during his time serving as an Illinois Senator.
The article reads:
U.S. Sen. Dick Lugar applauded the opening of the Interim Central Reference Laboratory in Odesa, Ukraine, this week, announcing that it will be instrumental in researching dangerous pathogens used by bioterrorists.The level-3 bio-safety lab, which is the first built under the expanded authority of the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program, will be used to study anthrax, tularemia and Q fever as well as other dangerous pathogens. “The continuing cooperation of Nunn-Lugar partners has improved safety for all people against weapons of mass destruction and potential terrorist use, in addition to advancements in the prevention of pandemics and public health consequences,” Lugar said.Lugar said plans for the facility began in 2005 when he and then-Senator Barack Obama entered a partnership with Ukrainian officials. Lugar and Obama also helped coordinate efforts between the U.S and Ukrainian researchers that year in an effort to study and help prevent avian flu.The Nunn-Lugar Act, which established the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, was established in 1991. Since that time it has provided funding and assistance to help the former Soviet Union dismantle and safeguard large stockpiles of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. The program has also been responsible for destroying chemical weapons in Albania, Lugar said.
Another document by the BioWeapons Prevention Project breaks down in detail which pathogens are in the bio lab. Ebola and other “viruses of pathogenicity group II by using of virology, molecular, serological and express methods” are listed.
Victoria Nuland
[1] Responsible for the bioweapons in the Ukraine. [2] Admitted that they are in the Ukraine. [3] Agrees that the Ukraine is a war zone, but any problems with them are Russias fault.
Weak-wristed loser pointing fingers at others for her very own actions.
Victoria Nuland.
The Burning Platform on the madness that has gripped the United States
When Machiavelli wrote The Prince he had Vladimir Putin in mind. The president of Russia has adroitly sought, maintained, and used power, the theme of Machiavelli’s masterpiece (see “The Black Belt Strategist,” Robert Gore. SLL, July 19, 2018). That he is an amoral snake is both true and laughable as a criticism coming from the amoral snakes who populate Western power structures. Nobody who slithers to the top of those pits is anything other than an amoral snake. Western snakes hate Putin because he’s repeatedly outsnaked them.
Call Putin a rattlesnake for he clearly rattled before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
That he was ignored is a worrisome indication of the epistemological breakdown that grips the West.
Its leaders are unable to grasp that Putin meant what he said.
That is because those in the West rarely mean what they say.
Facts are not facts and the truth is whatever narrative they’re promoting at the moment. It’s become axiomatic that power flows from control of the narrative.
Until it doesn’t.
Power flows from understanding reality and making use of what it can offer.
If narratives were power, Ukraine’s army would be in Moscow by now.
We haven’t seen this kind of excessive excrement from governments and their media minions since . . . Covid. Narratives are for simple-minded sheep and the wolves who devour them.
The propaganda is devoid of any mention of:
The 2014 U.S.-sponsored coup against a democratically elected government;
rampant corruption within the Ukrainian oligarchy;
Ukranian payola to American political figures (e.g., the Bidens and Clintons);
widespread neo-Nazi infestation of Ukraine’s military and government;
their eight-year war on its Russian-heritage citizens in eastern Ukraine;
the government’s willful failure to adhere to the Minsk accords that were meant to resolve that conflict, or the latest—
U.S. built, funded, and staffed, bioresearch labs in Ukraine.
Simply trying to find accurate information about the military situation in Ukraine is virtually impossible amidst the propaganda onslaught and the censoring or shutting down of Russian information sources.
Previous wars have featured regular press updates and maps that detailed the situation on the ground, that is, reality.
Not this one.
No matter how loathsome the opponents, it’s always a good idea to know what they’re doing and saying, even when its demonstrably untrue.
During the first Cold War the West had armies of analysts studying every scrap of information that came from the Soviet Union.
Now Western leaders and most of the populace are flying blind.
They’re children sticking their fingers in their ears and screaming over anyone saying anything they don’t want to hear.
It’s yet another sign of epistemological breakdown and reflects a terrifying feedback loop. Mental chaos leads to chaos in reality, which leads to more mental chaos and so on.
Trying to explain the Russian position on Ukraine, even when the explanation is festooned with disclaimers that it’s not a justification of the invasion or Putin, is as useless as trying to explain the dangers of Covid vaccines. This is true, even by doctors and scientists who have promoted vaccines their entire careers and who have had the Covid vaccines themselves. The children have their masks jabs, and boosters, they’re waving the blue and gold. You’re antivax, pro-Putin, and must be canceled immediately—that’s it, end of story.
This childishness can only lead to disaster.
Which has arrived on multiple fronts.
Russia is a net exporter of grain, minerals, metals, oil, and natural gas. The U.S. and non-Russia Europe are net exporters of debt.
The former are exchanged for the latter via the SWIFT inter-bank messaging network, fiat currency and debt’s global circulatory system.
Some Russian banks’ access has been cut off, stopping the flow of debt and the counter flow of Russian exports. Although payments for gas and oil exports have been exempted, Russian oil and gas still trades at a steep discount on fears the exemption will be lifted if the war gets worse.
The exemption reflects Europe’s dependence on Russian oil and gas.
However, Germany canceled approval for the completed Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline from Russia.
The energy situation in Europe was already strained, with natural gas trading at a large premium to the rest of the world.
Renewable energy is meant to replace fossil fuels and nuclear, but solar and wind are intermittent. The stopgap is coal, ironically the dirtiest fuel.
European energy’s shortages and high price hurt the competitiveness of its industries, particularly Germany’s. Stopping Nord Stream 2 exacerbates the problem.
Biden administration energy policies have shifted towards the same delusory green agenda, making the U.S. an importer again after it had achieved energy self-sufficiency during the Trump years.
Although it’s not a huge percentage of total energy used, the U.S. has been importing Russian oil, gas, and coal, giving Russia additional wherewithal to make war on Ukraine.
Recognizing that awkward fact, the administration banned those imports by executive decree (now the favored form of rule), which will put more pressure on prices from non-Russian energy sources.
Ascending gas prices are not helping the administration politically, notwithstanding its blatant lies that they are due solely to Russia’s invasion. (Prices had almost doubled prior to the invasion.)
The U.S. and Europe’s energy miscues are matched by their financial folly, which amount to children holding their breath until they suffocate and die.
Stopping Russia’s exports via the SWIFT cutoff is severe.
The price of nickel, a big Russian export, recently jumped 250 percent in one day.
Tsingshan Holding Group, a Chinese stainless steel giant whose largest creditor is J.P. Morgan Chase, has a huge short position in nickel. The London Metals Exchange, caught between its own Chinese owners, Tsingshan, and one of the world’s systemically important banks, shut itself down and is trying to undo some trades.
A tentative settlement has been reached, but this kind of mess can reverberate quickly throughout the world’s financial daisy chain, sparking globalized financial meltdown. It certainly doesn’t increase faith in financial clearinghouses.
That’s not the worst of it.
Curtailed access to SWIFT hinders Russian companies’ ability to service their debts.
As with most of the sanctions regime, this hurts Europe the most.
Several of its banks have large exposures to Russia debt, and its banking system was dangerously over-leveraged pre-Ukraine war, much more so than the U.S.’s. Bank insolvencies in Europe could also reverberate across the planet, as mortgage and mortgage-security insolvencies did in the 2007-2009 financial crisis.
Even that’s not the worst of it.
The U.S. and Europe crossed a monumentally important red line when they froze the Russian central bank’s foreign exchange reserves.
The U.S. dollar’s reserve currency status has given the U.S. what’s been called an exorbitant privilege—the world sends it goods in exchange for its fiat currency, of which it can produce unlimited amounts.
Freezing the Russian central bank’s dollar reserves tells the world the reserve currency is no longer a safe haven.
The move is not entirely unprecedented—the U.S. has frozen the Afghanistan and Venezuelan central banks’ reserves—but freezing the reserves of a nuclear power is an order of magnitude greater breach of global financial arrangements and contracts.
Joining Canadian dollar deposits, some of which Justin Trudeau recently froze, U.S. dollar deposits can now be frozen and potentially expropriated on a political whim.
Of course dollars have been stealth-expropriated on political whim via monetary inflation since the Federal Reserve was established in 1913, but this crystalizes the threat that nations who don’t toe the U.S. line will have their dollar reserves stolen.
Russia and China have been reducing their dollar holdings—which they often invested in U.S. Treasury debt—for years, switching to euros, yuan, yen, and gold.
They’ve also created alternatives to SWIFT.
Now that the U.S. government has demonstrated that holding dollar deposits is like caching stores of food in a wolves’ den, this move is sure to accelerate until their dollar holdings are the bare minimum required for international trade.
The Russians have a financial nuclear option.
As exporters of oil, gas, crucial raw materials and industrial goods, they can demand payment in gold rather than in the fiat currencies the U.S. and Europe have now rendered worthless to them.
The reserve currency will no longer be a fake money whose value is only maintained by political promises not to produce too much of it.
Gold—real money (see “Real Money,” Robert Gore, SLL, September 9, 2015)—will be restored to the place it has held for centuries as countless government-issued fiat currencies went to their ultimate value: zero.
The current crop of fiat currencies is headed to the same destination, but the Russian nuclear option would bring down the curtain on them once and for all.
Russia and China are both large producers of gold and both their governments have been stockpiling it for years.
The U.S. government reportedly owns 8,000 tons of gold (Russia has a known 2,000 tons and Macleod estimates the Chinese government has 20,000 tons), but those holdings have never been audited and calls to do so have been fiercely resisted. Unknown as well is how much of the U.S. government’s physical gold has been collateralized, leased, or is otherwise tied into derivatives in the paper gold market. Tellingly, the U.S. has discouraged other countries for whom it acts as custodian of their gold reserves from withdrawing them.
War is the ultimate chaos and the Ukraine-Russia war has sparked another upside breakout.
To say [1] that the military situation favors Russia, or that [2] the sanctions against it will end up hurting the U.S. and Europe more than Russia, or that [3] Russia can bring down the global financial system is only to say that one way or another the situation adds to the chaos.
Assuming Russia eventually achieves its military objectives in Ukraine, the U.S. will undoubtedly foment an insurgency by feeding weapons and the usual unacknowledged mix of intelligence spooks, covert military advisors, and private mercenaries into an Ukrainian resistance.
The goal is a long-running and enervating guerrilla war that drains Putin’s support and leads to his ouster.
Cheap Stinger missiles will take out expensive Russian aircraft and cheap Javelin missiles will take out expensive Russian tanks.
The template is the successful mujahideen-led and U.S.-aided war against the Soviet Union from 1979 to 1989 in Afghanistan, often credited with helping bring down the Soviet government two years after its military withdrawal.
Syria may end up as the actual template, an effort by U.S.-aided jihadist groups to regime change that nation’s leader, Bashar al-Assad, which failed after Russia came to Syria’s defense.
Even were that the case, if Putin thinks he can invade Ukraine, impose his objectives, and then withdraw with the country pacified and compliant, he’s as deluded as American schemers have been with all their surgical strikes, covert operations, limited wars, and regime changes since World War II.
Insurgencies are always messy regardless of who “wins.” Ukraine has become another theater for the uncontrollable chaos engulfing the world.
It's a good thing then, that Russia has no plans to stay in the Ukraine. -MM
It’s not hard to imagine what forms further amplification of that chaos might take. Modern agriculture is dependent on energy and fertilizers are made from minerals of which Ukraine and Russia are significant suppliers. Both countries also export grains.
Skyrocketing food prices and famine in some areas loom, and food riots and other forms of civil unrest are sure to follow.
There is no limit to the pandemonium either centralized actors—governments and globalist institutions—or decentralized actors can wreak.
Infrastructure is never completely protected. Electrical grids can be short-circuited, water supplies poisoned, transport and logistics disrupted or destroyed, and the internet sabotaged.
Controlling chaos requires energy, resources, and production. While there is no way to determine the mathematical relationship between chaos and control (remember Get Smart?), that it is direct and exponential seems a reasonable hypothesis. Herein lies the contradiction at the heart of the globalist design.
They are fomenting ever-increasing chaos while destroying the energy, resources, and production necessary to control it.
Alexander Putin
Not a happy man. Making hard and difficult decisions while being harrased by a lunitic, out of control, evil psychopathic United States “leadership” cabal. I know what he’s thinking.
Do you?
Alexander Putin
You May Want To Figure Out Where You Want To Spend Your Days When World War 3 Fully Erupts
The growing desire for war that we are witnessing in Washington D.C. right now should greatly alarm all of us.
In this environment, voices of reason such as Tucker Carlson and Tulsi Gabbard are being accused of “treason” just because they are calling for peace. Well, you can add me to that list because I am calling for peace too.
I don’t want nuclear war.
I don’t want billions of people to die.
You would think that we should all be able to agree on those things, but unfortunately the warmongers in Washington seem absolutely determined to keep escalating matters.
That is a very dangerous game, and it is going to be way too easy for someone to make a huge mistake.
Before that day arrives, you may want to figure out where you want to spend your days when global war fully erupts.
At some point, the shooting in Ukraine will end.
Either Russia will achieve total victory, or more likely there will be some sort of a ceasefire agreement.
But when the shooting in Ukraine stops, don’t be fooled into thinking that everything is okay. The truth is that a much bigger conflict between the United States and Russia has now begun, and both sides are beginning to realize that this is ultimately a struggle for all the marbles.
World War 3 is here, and now we must hope that we can keep both parties from “going nuclear” for as long as possible.
Of course there are some that would like to see the U.S. and Russia shooting at each other very soon. On Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky begged Congress to establish a “humanitarian no-fly zone” over Ukraine…
The t-shirt-attired Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed a joint session of the U.S. Congress by video on Wednesday and asked for the United States to send warplanes into the sky over Ukraine to create a “humanitarian no-fly zone” or, failing that, to provide Ukraine itself with warplanes.“Russia has turned the Ukrainian sky into a source of death for thousands of people,” Zelensky told Congress.
Zelensky knows very well that the establishment of a “humanitarian no-fly zone” would require U.S. forces to shoot down Russian jets.
And he also understands that this would spark a shooting war between the United States and Russia.
But you can’t blame Zelensky for trying.
He is trying to save his own skin, and the best way to do that is to drag the United States into the war.
Needless to say, the establishment media in the western world absolutely adored Zelensky’s speech. The following example comes from CNN…
Zelensky’s words are not only destined for the history books. They will likely energize support for Ukraine’s defense against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war machine and reverberate across the US.When America’s top Democrats and Republicans rose side by side to give Zelensky a standing ovation, we knew the Ukrainian President had made his mark. Zelensky, reminding Americans what freedom really means after the country has spent years devaluing it in petty political battles, proves there is a new seriousness in the nation.
And most members of Congress ate it up as well. Following the speech, Senator Jeanne Shaheen boldly declared that “more must be done to assist Ukraine”…
“It is clear that more must be done to assist Ukraine and hold Putin to account,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, New Hampshire Democrat, said in a statement following Zelenskeyy’s virtual address. “The images we watched today underscore the horrific violence – the war crimes – being committed by Putin. He will pay for what he has done.”
And Senator Joni Ernst said that Zelensky’s speech made her want to put on a uniform and “go help”…
‘It’s hurtful to see anything like, you know, thinking about if it were my child, if that were my family, that were my people. You know, I’d be doing the exact same thing that President Zelensky is,’ Ernst said.‘I would be appealing to every nation possible to get whatever it takes to defeat the Russians and get them the heck out of my country. You know, it makes me want to throw on my uniform, you know, and go help.’
Actually, I would love to see that.
In fact, I would love to see U.S., Ukrainian and Russian politicians all flown to an island where they would resolve this conflict “Battle Royale” style.
But instead, all of the politicians are safe and warm while millions upon millions of Ukrainians deeply suffer.
One of the biggest warmongers in the U.S. Senate, Lindsey Graham, has decided that it is time to start calling Vladimir Putin “a war criminal”…
“It’s time for him to go. He’s a war criminal,” Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, an erstwhile standard bearer for the Republican Party’s Reagan-era foreign policies, told reporters shortly after Zelenskeyy’s address. “I am asking the Russian people to rise up and end his rein of terror.”
Joe Biden also referred to Putin as a “war criminal” on Wednesday, and he announced that an additional 800 million dollars in military aid would be given to the Ukrainian government.
Over 20 million rounds of small arms ammunition and grenade launcher and mortar rounds
25,000 sets of body armor
25,000 helmets
But of course this is not nearly enough for some of the warmongers in Congress.
In fact, 40 Republican senators just signed a letter “in which they strongly disagreed with the decision to not transfer aircraft and air defense systems to Ukraine from Poland”.
Biden was hesitant to take such a step because it might start a shooting war with Russia, but apparently that is a risk that most Republican senators are willing to take.
Thankfully, most Americans do not actually want a shooting war with Russia.
But according to one new survey, more than a third of all Americans “would favor military action even if it risks nuclear conflict with Russia”…
However, most Americans (62%) say they would oppose the U.S. “taking military action even if it risks a nuclear conflict with Russia.” About a third (35%) of Americans say they would favor military action in this scenario. Comparable shares in both parties (36% of Republicans, 35% of Democrats) say they would favor military action even if it risks nuclear conflict with Russia.
Those of us in the majority need to be much louder than those in the minority, because if the warmongers get their way we could eventually find ourselves in the middle of a nuclear conflict.
And if that happens, there won’t be a future for our country.
The Pentagon is to deploy over two thousand troops to Australia by September to join an established rotational force of 200 in anticipation of a conflict with China, according to reports.The Daily Mail notes that “The contingent is part of an ongoing US initiative in the Indo-Pacific region to prepare for a possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan in coming years.”The report notes that 1000 marines have already arrived in the country.
If Americans truly understood what was at stake, there would be massive demonstrations in the streets of every major U.S. city right now.
But the general population just doesn’t get it.
They just assume that war is something that happens on the other side of the globe and that our leaders have everything under control.
Unfortunately, our leaders most definitely do not have everything under control, and when World War 3 fully erupts the death and destruction that we will witness will be absolutely unimaginable.
Timing
Let’s talk a little about the timing for disaster.
The following is taken from a post that I wrote three years ago. I reprinted a section of it here, and made some minor alterations.
For just about everything that I predicted has come to pass, or are developing in such an obvious way that I look like a real accurate fortune-teller.
If I made any mistakes (so far) is that my predictions were one to two years late. Or, in other words I was too optimistic. Which points to a rot, and decay far deeper than which I was aware of.
Historical records clearly point out the the United States will go through a severe and harsh change in society. This has been building up for some time. The worst and most catastrophic elements of that change has already been set in motion. Anything that will occur will occur during the ten-year span from 2020 though 2030.
The worst time should be 2023 through 2024.
With 2025 being a “harsh reality“.
By 2026, my guess is that the kenetic phase might be over, but people will still be dealing with turmoil at various levels.
Serious upheaval in America will occur from 2020 though to 2030. This is a ten year period of time. It is now the first quarter of 2022. My previous predictions were on track. I was in slight error when I predicted that the events would transpire one year later than they are now transpiring.
I predicted a major military event in 2023. It seems that it occurred in 2022 with the Russian invasion of the Ukraine and the United States Senate driving a war-machine full-throttle.
Points and information
I’m going to lay out some points and some information. I’ve covered the background elsewhere in great detail. However, here we are just going to throw it all out for purposes of review.
Generational Turnings are a historically accurate methodology for predictive behaviors.
America; the United States, will go through the following in the next ten years;
Domestic unrest resulting in American death(s).
A complete change in the Federal Government.
The value of the USD will collapse.
A very serious “Hot War” on American soil.
Cultural, and societal collapse.
Normalcy bias, or normality bias, is a cognitive bias which leads people to disbelieve or minimize threat warnings.
Consequently, individuals underestimate the likelihood of a disaster, when it might affect them, and its potential adverse effects.
The normalcy bias causes many people to not adequately prepare for natural disasters, pandemics, and calamities caused by human error.
About 70% of people reportedly display normalcy bias during a disaster.
-Wikipedia
Let’s go one by one on these points.
[1] Domestic unrest resulting in death(s).
Historically, Fourth Turnings are always associated with domestic unrest. Not only that but people die. Yes. There is an entire sub-culture of Americans that believe that domestic unrest will occur. All you need to do is google SHTF and “prepper”. And you know that many Americans expect this. Gun stores are empty of guns and ammo.
Everyone is expecting societal unrest. And they plan on defending themselves and their family. In fact, for the last three months the top MM posts are those devoted to the SHTF Index.
And sure… nothing is guaranteed. This fear might just be a passing fad. Or the absolute result of American media going “off the rails”. Or some kind of mass psychosis due to being locked inside all 2020. It could be anything.
I am of the opinion …
Most Americans are unhappy.
Most Americans are locked inside of a class structure with little upward movement.
There are terrible and systematic problems regarding American society.
Government “solutions” are insufficient, meager and viewed as an insult.
There are groups who desire to capitalize on domestic discord to promote their own agendas.
There are elements inside of the Federal Government that have the power and plans to come down aggressively to any disruption of society.
None of the above should come as any surprise to most Americans. And thus I conclude…
There is a higher than average chance that there will be domestic revolt / upset. This is not a continuation of BLM, Antifa “riots”, or a Trump Supporter “frat party” style takeover of Congress.
This will be something far more serious, sinister and deadly. It will not be reported, or if it is, it will be reported in such a way as to minimize what is actually going on.
Historically, these kinds of events are preceded by the government trying to take preemptive actions. That could be [1] “false flag” events, [2] a banning of weapons or one or more Rights / freedoms, and [3] a call to fight some kind of “enemy” or “threat”.
If any of the above occurs to any serious degree, you can well expect domestic discord to follow promptly.
Historically, all Democrat Presidents have had a major "Gun-related mass-killing event" within the first nine months of their Presidency. That includes Trump who was supposed to lose to Hillary Clinton.
[2] A complete change in the Federal Government.
The United States government WILL change. And, it will not be voluntary.
Historically, Fourth Turnings are always associated with a serious and large change in the Government.
The current American government is an enormous behemoth, it is sluggish, inefficient, lazy, and is out of control. To believe that it is working fine or that it could be improved is to ignore the facts. Both sides of the political divide demand a restructuring.
Democrats are looking towards a Socialist and Marxist solution.
Republicans are looking for a return to the 1776 Republic.
Both are looking to create a major war of distraction.
The compass is all over the place on this. One thing is for certain, the wealthy oligarchy loves the status quo and do not want to change anything. To make the changes that are necessary, a real revolution must occur.
The Federal Government will change substantially. I can offer no insight into what it will change into. Needless to say, the nation is completely divided and polarized and no matter who obtains the reins of power, large segments of the population will be unhappy. The only way that I can see any kind of satisfaction is by an overwhelmingly exhausted citizenry that is ready to accept change, no matter how radical it is.
Nor can I offer insight as to how this will happen. What I do know is that unless it happens, there will be no ‘Crisis Event”.
[3] The value of the USD will collapse.
The USD is presently losing its status as a global reserve currency.
Historically, Fourth Turnings are always associated with economic changes. I see an exponential increase in the value of the stock market with zero connection to the lives of actual American citizenry. I also see an exponential increase in the national debt. It doesn’t take a genius to see that both of these things are not sustainable.
People have been predicting the eventual collapse of the American economy for decades. Yet it still hums along. The only way that this will change is if the international medium of exchange changes. And there is evidence that this is exactly what is going on. I do not see this as a sudden, precipitous event, but rather a trend that continues over a long swath of time before the USD stabilizes.
The USD will significantly change in value negatively. This will occur over a period of time. The end result will be generalized discomfort for Americans on many levels.
What we are seeing RIGHT NOW is a movment to the discarding of the USD as a reserve currency and the adoption of the e-yuan instead.
[4] A very serious “Hot War” on American soil.
No, there will not be another Iraq, Afganastan, Yemen, or Syria in Ukraine. There will be a major, big and very nasty short war.
It WILL result in much damages, destruction and death on American soil.
Historically, Fourth Turnings are always associated with “hot wars”; shooting wars that occurring using the most advanced technology available, and they always occur on the soil of the leading economic power.
This Fourth Turning event is an American driven cycle. Not an Asian cycle.
Even if the nation stays together, its geography could be fundamentally changed, its party structure altered, its Constitution and Bill of Rights amended beyond recognition. History offers even more sobering warnings: Armed confrontation usually occurs around the climax of Crisis. If there is confrontation, it is likely to lead to war. This could be any kind of war—class war, sectional war, war against global anarchists or terrorists, or superpower war. If there is war, it is likely to culminate in total war, fought until the losing side has been rendered nil—its will broken, territory taken, and leaders captured. And if there is total war, it is likely that the most destructive weapons available will be deployed.
There is no avoiding this.
Russia will not allow a war near or on it’s borders. Anyone who thinks that they can “poke the bear” is going to be in for a rude, and horrifc shock. The same goes for China. Anyone who thinks that China will allow another Yemen, Afghanistan or Syria to occur in Taiwan, on the South China Sea is delusional.
War will happen fast and be over fast.
Within a month.
That’s FAST.
These nations do not play, are peer-capable, or superior in training and weaponry, and work together. The idea that America can take on China or Russia independently is a fantasy. Any war with either will result in a war with both simultaneously.
It’s a suicide move.
So forget the illusions that America has the biggest, the baddest, and the best military. It might get by trying twenty years to fight goat-herders with AK-47’s, but is no match for merit-based, well-trained, superior-armed, and a pissed-off Asia.
From 2017 through 2020, the United States “carpet bombed” China with bio-weapons. This effort affected Russia, and Iran. And of course, China, Iran and Russia knows who was involved, why and how.
But China, Russia and Iran didn’t take any obvious retaliatory action.
That should make every single Americans hair stand on end.
We should expect a major hot war. This war will be instigated though American actions and international activities.
Neither China, nor Russia are stupid. They will strike first. They will use full-spectrum nuclear weapons, and America will resemble one of the nations that it “bombed the shit out of” for democracy™.
[5] Cultural, and societal collapse.
Historically, Fourth Turnings are always associated with severe changes to society and the individuals who live inside America. In the past, Americans have been resilient enough, independent enough, and hardy enough to rebuild any collapsed society.
But today, I am not so sure.
With or without war, American society will be transformed into something different. The emergent society may be something better, a nation that sustains its Framers' visions with a robust new pride. Or it may be something unspeakably worse. The Fourth Turning will be a time of glory or ruin.
Most Americans are terribly overweight, and while many are functional with technology, during a period of societal collapse most technology will not operate in an optimal manner during a full scale Crisis Event.
During 2020 large segments of the American population failed to work together and wear masks during the pandemic. I just cannot imagine that Americans would rebuild radioactive cities, start planting vegetables in their suburban lawns, and working together for free.
Americans have been a historically resilient people, but whether or not they will be able to come together during the Crisis Event is unlikely. It is not a politically attractive position, but it is a realistic expectation.
Let’s combine everything together.
Well, there is nothing that I have said here that I have not covered elsewhere. But let’s see if we can compile some knowns to help us make a substantive predictive engine for our use.
In 2019, I created the following map which I extrapolated from Fourth Turning cycles and the Deagal (Remote Viewing) Report.
Keep in mind that this is just a predictive map. It may or may not happen.
.
Recent events suggest that things have accelerated somewhat, and are pushing the dates ahead by 1.5 years.
Uh Oh!
My argument is that the COVID-19 fiasco in the United States is not part of this collapse crisis vector. It is only a contributor.
Whether the future occurs as predicted will depend on the actions or inaction’s of the American Presidency. Any of the following events will probably unleash a particular singular element of the Crisis event.
Passage of restrictive laws that infringe on cherished Rights.
Freedom of Speech.
Gun control.
Travel / banking.
Ability to be employed.
A military action that involves either China, Russia or Iran. Perhaps all three.
No attempts at financial, banking or economic restructuring.
A trigger event being either “false flag” event of any purpose, or a major provication such as crossing a “red line”.
WMD (nuclear, biological, and chemical / EM) will be used.
These are all historical trendlines.
Knowing that these are exactly the same kind of modus operandi that Washington has used over the last fifty years, you can well expect that some or all of them will precipitate the Crisis event.
Year by Year expectations
The graphic above is pretty complex. Let’s look at it like you would a newspaper horoscope.
The key point representative of the year are in bold red.
Items that have been predicted correctly, that has already happened are in blue.
2021
The pandemic continues all year.
Posturing of various political and special interests organized by various oligarchies.
Internet freedoms curtailed.
Urban riots.
Submarines / US Naval vessels damaged or sunk.
Continued (minor) unrest on many levels.
A somewhat stabilization of the overall economic consideration.
An event that will force one of the major Asian powers to take action.
2022 Shit breaks out.
The pandemic continues.
Domestic unrest starts to manifest. Maybe shootings or some kind of organized behavior.
Asian powers threaten nuclear retaliation.
FEMA, NSA, FBI or other domestic agencies activated.
Rule by Executive Orders continue.
Major domestic crime.
Producted goods become harder and harder to obtain.
Some unpopular laws or regulations are implemented.
United States bioweapon activity starts to get public attention.
Inflation in the world grows to an unmanagable level.
Sides in a geopolitical conflict are established; Us vs. Them.
The mid-tem elections generate an electorial sweep.
The USA starts to get involved in some strong covert (not visible) international military actions.
American Congress start talking about fighting either Russia, China, Iran or North Korea directly.
Events force Russia or China to initiate hot kinetic wars.
2023 Crisis Deepens.
People are adapting to the Pandemic and it seems to be subsiding.
People refuse to mask up even when bioweapons are used in America.
Domestic unrest continues and gets more violent.
United States debt is beyond comprehension, and items become unobtainable.
The economy and the USD starts to falter.
Ambushes and attacks on American police.
The United States starts to have shortages in gasoline / heating fuel.
Economic Balloons start to “pop”.
The Internet starts to falter in many nations.
Rural communities starting to band together for protection.
American trade with China is decreased sharply.
Some states discuss leaving the Untied States.
The USD is no longer a major reserve currency.
The United States government starts seizing assets, energy, and finances from its enemies.
The Federal Government initiates a hot war with a major power as a desirable technique of distraction and unification.
The USA starts to engage in International Military Actions of some visible type. American soldiers are shooting at Asian powers and forces.
Risk of a HOT WAR is very high. It may or may not hit American soil.
2024 Insanity
Still a pandemic, but is seemingly under control.
Domestic unrest breaks out in open conflict in numerous areas.
The Federal Government starts to decentralize, or change in some significant manner.
The United States starts to have shortages in food.
The United States starts to have shortages in medicine.
Brown-outs roll throughout the United States.
The US government plans / talks about a draft and forced civilian enlistment.
The 2024 election is a crazy turmoil, and no one is happy with the results.
The economy starts a long sequence of contractions and mini-collapses.
The USD starts to have it’s value erode significantly.
SEVERE HOT WAR! Americans on American soil are affected. It’s not a “police action” in a far away land or sea.
The health system, inefficient and expensive, collapses completely.
Society is disrupted. Communication, transport, food, and electricity are all unreliable and disrupted.
The Election is a landslide for one political party who promises massive change.
2025 “Everything but the kitchen sink”
2025 will be like 2024, only crazier, and more intense.
American contractions at every level continue.
The Federal, and the States governments show complete incompetence.
Bad moves, and bad decisions result in numerous fiascos for the United States.
Discord and disruptions are commonplace and are no longer isolated to certain geographic regions. Everyone “feels the pinch”.
Some states start to actually leave the Untied States and restructure themselves.
Americans start to hunt, fish and eat pets in certain areas.
May people start to die of illnesses that could have been prevented or cured.
New illnesses and viruses start to appear all over America. These are far worse than the COVID-19. Americans treat them like the “seasonal flu”.
Everyone is in “survival mode”.
Americans start to turn to non-American news for information.
Most of the Hot War is over.
2026 “The Kitchen Sink gets included”
Anything that was good about 2025, is now gone.
FIASCO!
Normal lifestyles are permanently disrupted.
Urban areas are hotbeds of contentious activity.
The United States starts to put people in FEMA camps.
The United States start to shoot fellow Americans.
Woods and forests are flooded with urban refugees.
Hot war officially ends.
2027
Things are still crazy, but groups of people are working together to sort out the craziness.
The United States is largly gone.
A new type of government emerges.
Domestic discord and fighting continues, but it’s mostly “turf wars”.
The USD has substantially collapsed.
US economy is in ruins.
The government begins to discuss reconstruction efforts and mobilization of work forces for a common good.
2028
A new normal has arrived in America.
There is a new government, new people, new ideas, and new systems.
The USA is shattered and a real mess, but people are starting to band together in small groups to make things right in their little area of control.
People can see the “light at the end of the tunnel”.
2029
Reconstruction efforts begin.
Rehabilitation efforts begin.
New policies and lifestyles start to manifest.
A brighter future lies ahead for everyone still left alive.
Conclusion
I wrote this article after I watched the horrific section on Tucker Carlson FOX “news”.
He’s right.
War is bad, but not as bad as having United States Senators openly advocating war with nuclear armed Russia over a flat of bland terration that has zero strategic importance for America.
It just confirms my worst fears.
Here’s pretty much the future that most everyone in the collective West can look forward to.
Historically, the rising nations pretty much survives the Fourth Turning unscathed. I don’t think that they will remain as pristine as the USA did during World War II, but they will pretty much be in far better shape than the West.
There’s a lot of bullshit on the “news” sites.
But, I can positively say the following…
The United States caused the Ukraine-Russia war.
This is becuase they violated Russian“Red Lines”.
Now the United States wants to get involved in it directly.
Russia warned that it will destroy the USA if they don’t stop.
And for China, irregardless as to the absolute failure of the Italy talks…
The USA push towards war / sanctions with China is continuing.
China has repeatedly warned that it is a dragon that DOES bite.
The USA government is ignoring the warnings.
The USA government is proceeding with the violation of Chinese“Red Lines”.
2022 03 18 09 24
The article describes the actions. It’s crossing the Chinese “Red Lines”.
Internally, domestically…
Americans are happy for no more mask mandates.
Mass crime continues.
Inflation is absurd.
Washington DC is oblivious.
Supply Lines / trade is a complete fiasco.
The American “news” media is on overdrive and the propaganda is outrageous.
As far as Russia is concerned…
Leading Russian leadership personnel have evacuated Moscow and all the major cities. This and the very wealthy in Russia…
A large exodus of private jets out of Moscow towards Dubai this morning too. Looks like the uber-rich Arab oil Billionaires are high-tailing-it out of Moscow too.
From a source within the Diplomatic corps . . .
For the past three days, Russia has been pulling one of a kind, proprietary, machine dyes and templates, and putting into deep storage, along with items of cultural value.
On Thursday, 17MAR22, at 4:02pm EST, the formal message from Russia to the United States read…
"U.S. USED NUCLEAR WEAPONS IN JAPAN AFTER WORLD WAR II AND HAS NO RIGHT TO PREACH TO US REGARDING OUR USE OF THEM."
Please plan to avoid the high risk areas. Note that I am conservative in my predicitons, and anumerous elements are proceeding in advance to what I predicted.
Good luck.
2022 03 17 23 44
This information is compiled from other sources.
To see the methodology in these other sources, please go to the Theories of Collapse Index here…
What this means is that the defense intelligence organizations represented by Deagel believe that there will be some kind of event or series of events that will result in a major population drop by 2025.
Deagel site projections.
From the chart above we can clearly see a number of conclusions or extrapolations that they have made.
I have an index that collects various observations regarding the internal collapse of the United States. That is in a sub-Index known as “Front Row Seat”.
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
The State Department is trying to get us into a war and the Pentagon is trying to keep us out.
- Ron Paul
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War sucks. I’m not going to be nice about it. It honestly, and really sucks. People get hurt and die. Innocents are maimed. Bad things happen. The wealthy that create the conditions for war flee, and the poor that work for them are sacrificed on the alter of ideology. What ever it might be.
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There is nothing valiant about war.
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Wars are fought by young men precisely because they don’t know any better. They cannot imagine themselves spending the rest of their lives in a retirement home without arms or legs. Or having their homes blown to bits and pieces.
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And most especially for Americans. As well as for Candians, Australians and Britions. They cannot imagine it’s THEIR famies dying, and their neighborhoods being blown to smithereens and destroyed. Safe and isolated. That’s the way it’s always been.
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Right?
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And ideology… well, that’s the medium on how you can control others.
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In the United States, the ideology is democracy. In Syria the ideology is in religion. In the Ukraine, the ideology is pure Nazism. Ideology gets people killed. Or worse. Don’t you know.
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I’m really not a fan of ideologs. I know that from time to time I have moved about the political spectrum, but when you get my age, you just no longer can zip back from one point of view to the other. It makes you dizzy.
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So you just are happy with simple things.
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Simple things, like a beloved cat. A pet dog that is happy as can be to see you. A fine book, and a glass of nice tasty wine. A delicious steak, hamburger, or tasty thick soup. A roaring fire on a cold snowy night. A warm dry bedroom while it pours rain outside…
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Simple things.
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Simple things.
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You know, my social media feeds are all clogged up with the mindless hordes that reguritates the NSA talking points. You don’t have to get too involved in the termonology. It’s all the same and predictable.
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The callouts are the same “stooge for Putin”, “Russia is evil”, “crushing democracy in Ukraine”. Sigh.
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You can easily replace the word “Russia” with “5G radiation”, and the meaning would be the same.
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Replace it with “China”, and the meaning would be the same.
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It could be “vaxx”, or “Swine Flue”, or “Y2K” it’s all the same.
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5G and Coronavirus.
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If you do not agree with the United States official narrative, you are a traitor!
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That’s exactly how all this works. Whatever the government says, must must agree with it. When the Trump administration was at war with China over technology, it was all about “evil Huawei”, and “arrest the evil CEO”, and “5G radiation destroys brain cells”.
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I try to tell them that they are victims of Vault 7. But they are oblivious. Vault 7 is what is going on. Vault 7. If you don’t know what this is, then you are in a truly sad state indeed.
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It’s not just controling your opinions. These algorithms control your thoughts.
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As such they alter your body chemistry.
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Once altered, you will NEED to take medicine to maintain your sanity, and your health. Your body chemistry changes. You start experiencing problems. You get anxiety. You suffer aches and pains. You get eating disorders, and start having helth problems with your liver, your kidnes, your stomach, and your heart.
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Ask any one who is regurigating the American narrative if they are taking medicine. Any medicine, for any reason. Just ask.
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So far, I have found 100% of the people who I asked say “yes” in the affirmative. America has become; seriously, a nation of zombies.
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Americans today.
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It’s stuff to think about.
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Once I started to carefully vet what I read and watch, my life has really, substantially calmed down. That’s a fact.
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Anyways. I tire of arguing with NPCs. So I penned this article. It winds the clock back in time to one month before the invasion of the Ukraine. By reading it, you can easily see how and why the war in the Ukraine started.
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And NO, it’s not “Putin’s fault”.
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It was planned to occur. And the planners were the United States Senate. And it’s all well known, and well understood. All you need to do is watch the historical archives from CSPAN.
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I mean, come on, it’s all very damning.
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They tell you right then and there. “America needs to start a war elsewhere. Not on American soil. And the Ukraine is the best place to have that war.”
This is an absolutely great article by Paul Craig Roberts. He’s a major conservative voice in American politics. He’s pretty good, and I have been following him for a long time. He tends to discuss American domestic issues with detailed and thoughtful analysis, and takes a hard, critical look at American international issues.
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This article was written one month before Russia invaded Ukraine. And during that time, in January 2022, the big news was about how the United States refused to take Russia seriously. This is that article. It’s truly poignant now, as we see what an absolute clusterfuck the United States has created for itself. And because of the enormity of that fuck-up, this article is even more valuable.
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I am presenting it here, right now, to help us all have a better contextual understanding on what the Hell is going on in the Ukraine and in the Geo-Political circles.
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Does Russia Understand She Is Dealing with Lunatics?
In advance of the January 10 meeting, Secretary of State Blinken and NATO functionary Stoltenberg stupidly reduced Russia’s Options to Two: Surrender or Use Force.
If these idiotic accusations were not enough, Blinken accused Putin of intending to restore the Soviet Union. It is impossible to understand how a person this stupid was confirmed by the US Senate as Secretary of State.
The last thing the Kremlin wants is all the problems of all of these countries. All the Kremlin wants is that they be independent countries, not US puppet states armed against Russia.
My take on the situation is that from foolish statements such as the above by Blinken and Stoltenberg and other ill-considered remarks from the White House and media, the Kremlin has concluded prior to Monday’s meeting (January 10) that Washington will not take seriously Russia’s security concerns.
I think the Russians have come to the conclusion that the West will not take them seriously until the Kremlin demonstrates forceful action.
The Russians are just giving diplomacy one last chance before they destroy the military installations that the US has built in Ukraine.
I came across this report from pravda.ru dated about a month ago (November 26) that Russian nuclear submarines were urgently sent to sea in a state of combat readiness.
This does not mean that the Kremlin is preparing a nuclear strike.
It is meant to forestall any stupid Washington response to Russian removal of perceived threats, just as the Israelis do routinely in their attacks on Iraqi, Syrian, and Lebanese territory.
As I have reported on occasion, the Russians have had their fill of Washington and are not going to take anymore.
The Russians have concluded that only decisive action on their part has any chance of sobering up Washington from its hubris and restoring a sense of responsibility in Washington at least equal to the sense of responsibility that kept a lid on Cold War tensions. If Washington is unable to recover a sense of responsibility, the possibility of Armageddon will again hang over our heads.
My concern is that there is no one in the Biden regime or the decimated officer ranks of the US military that has five cents worth of intelligence.
The people with their hands on US foreign policy are Russophobes with delusions of American omnipotence.
Moreover, they believe their own propaganda, which prevents them from understanding the Russian view.
I don’t know if the Kremlin is capable of imagining a government as lunatic as the American one.
If the Kremlin does not understand they they are dealing with lunatics, the situation could quickly get out of hand.
And he was correct… absolutely correct.
One month later, Russia invaded the Ukraine, preventing a Ukrainian assault on the LDR and the DDR.
And the Western press were all ready with a flood of anti-Russian “news”, and sanctions, and all the rest. It was all perfectly timed and implemented.
Everybody and his goat are talking about the Ukraine. Why not me? You might ask, But Fred, what do you know about it? To which I would respond, Look, this is journalism. You don’t need to know anything, just wing it, preferably using words you can spell. Admittedly this is more of a limitation than it used to be. Anyway, here goes:
Why did Russia invade the Ukraine?
Contrary to American media, the invasion was not unprovoked. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, America has been pushing NATO, which is a US sepoy operation, ever closer to Russian borders in what, to anyone who took fifth-grade geography, is an obvious program of military encirclement. Of the five countries other than Russia littoral to the Black Sea, three, Turkey, Romania, and Bulgaria, are now in NATO. America has been moving toward bringing in the Ukraine and Georgia. After Georgia would have come Azerbaijan, putting American forces on the Caspian with access to Iran and Kazakhstan. This is calculated aggression over the long term, obvious to the—what? Ten percent? Fifteen percent?—of Americans who know what the Caucasus is.
Putin has said, over and over, that Russia could not allow hostile military forces on its border any more than the US would allow Chinese military bases in Mexico and China or missile forces in Cuba. Washington kept pushing. Russia said, no more. In short, America brought on the war.
Among people who follow such things, there are two ways of looking at the invasion. First, that Washington thought Putin was bluffing, and he wasn’t. Second, that America intentionally forced Russia to choose between allowing NATO into the Ukraine, a major success for Washington’s world empire; or fighting, also a success for Washington as it would cause the results it has caused.
From the latter understanding, America pulled off, at least at first glance, an astonishing geopolitical victory over Russia. Nordstream II blocked, crippling sanctions placed on Russia, many of its banks kicked out of SWIFT, economic integration of Europe and Asia slowed or reversed, Germany to spend 113 billion on rearming (largely meaning buying American costume-jewelry weaponry), Europe forced to buy expensive American LNG, and Europe made dependent on America for energy. All this in a few days without loss of a single American soldier. This presumably at least in part engineered by Virginia Newland who, though she looks like a fireplug with leprosy, seems effectively Machiavellian.
Next victim, China.
Divide and conquer. Or at least that’s the theory. At the same time reinstate the JCPOA and use economic baubles to try to pry Iran away from Beijing.
Here we need some context. Everything Washington does internationally aims at maintaining America’s largely military near-hegemony over the world. This involves several elements:
First, military dominance.
This includes the many hundreds of bases around the world, naval supremacy, and the huge military expenditure. Thy latter will be maintained at any cost to domestic needs, and apparently it is going to be increased.
Second, control of the world’s supply of energy.
Washington is trying to starve Venezuela, with its vast reserves of petroleum, into submission. Submission means letting American-dominated oil majors exploit the country’s oil. Washington is doing the same with Iran and its enormous reserves. It has troops in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, has confiscated Syria’s oil lands, crushed Libya, and so on. Keeping the European vassals from buying more Russian gas through Nordstream II is part of this energy control and an important part.
Third, and crucial, keep the EU from coalescing into a vast continent-spanning trade zone.
This is exactly what China contemplates in its BRI, Belt and Road initiative. This is too much subject for a few paragraphs, but some thoughts: China is a manufacturing juggernaut in explosive growth. Economic power is the basis of all power. China has the advantage of inner lines of communication: it can build rail, fiber optics, highway,s and pipelines in Asia, where America has little access. China has money because it has a for-profit economy, and America doesn’t. The pull of China’s gigantic market and manufactures was beginning to loosen America’s control of Europe. Eurasian integration had to be stopped.
Fourth, the dollar.
Washington controls the dollar, the IMF, SWIFT, and in general the international financial system. It uses this control brutally as a weapon to impose sanctions, crippling the economies of such countries as Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, North Korea, and now Russia. Seeing this intimidates other countries. Washington may have gone too often to this well. Having made England, its chief bootlicker, confiscate Venezuela’s gold reserves, and now freezing Russia’s reserves, Washington has served notice that no country is secure from this treatment. Here I speculate freely, but this may prove America’s worst mistake since 1619 as it may greatly accelerate the search for other payment systems—CIPS from China, SPFS from Russia, and the upcoming digital yuan. Washington, methinks, is betting the farm.
So much for the world…
Meanwhile, America seems to be sinking into irreversible decadence that must eventually—I would say soon—affect its international position. As the world’s economic and, laggingly, technological center of gravity moves east to Asia, an internally collapsing America will be less able to maintain the empire.
Consider:
[1] Printing of money out of nothing.
Washington’s printing of money, equivalent to the debasing of the coinage characteristic of failing societies, has resulted in high inflation and a potentially catastrophic national debt. This will cause political perturbation as voters seek to find which of the two essentially identical parties will not behave like the other one. Unrest will grow. Trust abroad in the dollar will decrease.
[2] Enormous Trade Deficit.
America suffers from a massive and growing trade deficit, largely with China, about which nothing can be done, certainly not soon, because America no longer makes things it needs. Manufacturing cannot be brought back, excep perhaps in niche markets like semiconductors, because the US no longer has the necessary engineers and trained work force, and American labor costs more than Chinese, so reshoring would increase inflation. The importation of cheap Chinese products keeps inflation down,.
[3] Wall Street / Military seizing all the money.
The heavy flow of national wealth into Wall Street and the military in addition to offshoring has led to real poverty in Appalachia, the Rust Belt, and the rural Deep South. This has produced some 100,000 opioid deaths annually in despairing populations. Simultaneously large and growing homeless aggregations appear in LA, Seattle, San Francisco, Austin, St. Louis, on and on, estimated at 60,000 in LA and 50,000 in New York, making the subways dangerous. Bush world conditions presumably do not make for political stability, as neither does the governmental inattention to them.
[4] Massive Crime
Crime is out of control, not a sign of a healthy polity. Some 700 homicides annually in Chicago, 300 in Baltimore, and similar numbers elsewhere are now routine, almost all of the killers and killed being black. To countries like Japan and South Korea this must seem barbaric. The situation is not First World.
[5] Racial Problems
America’s racial problem is grave. The southern border is open, the southwestern states either majority Latino or soon to be. This is not as bad as it could be as the races seem to get along, but it imposes heavy economic and other costs. At the same time across the country cities have huge black ghettos with appalling semiliteracy, no prospects for the young, all of this apparently irremediable. Racial attacks on whites and Asians grow in number and so, almost everywhere, do racial killings, mostly by blacks. Governments at all levels fear blacks who they know will burn cities if provoked, which leads tax bases to flee from cities, making things worse.
This adds to potentially explosive resentment. There is a substantial White Nationalist movement, that wants no non-whites in America (a bit late for this), Republican Chambers of Commerce, that want more illegal Latinos for the cheap labor but won’t say so, and the high-tech sector, which wants more East Asian and Indian immigrants on which America, with a failing educational system, increasingly depends.
The Overall Prognosis is Poor
Overall, government is weak, unable to prevent crime, riots, and looting.
Washington does not control, but is controlled, being a storefront operation for special interests.
Elections do not change policy but only the division of the spoils.
Presidents perform their three essential duties, protecting Wall Street, Israel, and the military budget, but not much else.
Schooling is being dumbed down in stark contrast with China.
Excellence everywhere is discouraged in the name of equity. Native white talent dwindles in the elite schools, from high-end high schools through CalTech, as Asian majorities predominate.
Measures of talent, such as SATs and Medcats, are dropped or downplayed. English grammar and arithmetic are dropped as racist.
None of this seems likely to improve America’s future competitiveness.
Finally, the media are controlled.
This allows Washington freedom of action abroad as enough of the public will believe anything they are told by television (The Russians are coming, the Chinese are coming, the Iranians are coming, the Guatemalans….)
Internally censorship may keep the lid on, for now anyway, by keeping enough of the population from knowing what is going on.
By preventing discussion of problems, or their mention, it assures that nothing will be done.
I suspect this is having the effect of winding a spring.
Where is all of this leading?
Biden is playing as if this were 1960 and the US enjoyed rock solid military and economic superiority and the population were firmly behind him.
This is the world he remembers, being an aging cold warrior. He seems to believe that he consequently can do what he pleases with no repercussions for America. This may be true, or true enough. Perhaps he believes that Russia will collapse in domestic rebellion or simply surrender to the US.
It is not how I would bet.
But—and this is sheer speculation—it is not clear what would happen if Russia cut off gas and petroleum and wheat and such things as neon gas from Europe.
The West is accustomed to bombing remote countries, not to going without.
Would Russia collapse under privation before Europe decided it wanted to trade with Moscow after all?
If Biden and the hawks decide to play hardball with China, they may realize that America is an economic dependency of Beijing. If—again, very hypothetically—China cut off all trade with America, the US economy would die instantly.
Almost everything on American shelves is made in China.
An American public already very unhappy would explode, which it is on the point of doing for various reasons.
Reflect on the Floyd riots.
China would be hurt, but it has other markets and a nationalistic population more united than the American.
Them’s my thoughts, probably worth what you pay for them.
Speaking of China…
Declining empires and their ‘forever wars’? “As the US and NATO struggle to deal with the unfolding crisis in Ukraine, China’s Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, has issued a warning to the Biden administration not to repeat the mistakes made in Europe by attempting to create a Pacific version of NATO to contain and constrain China.
He’s talking about the QUAD.
He’s talking about AUKUS.
Calling such plans “perverse actions” that “run counter to the common aspiration of the region for peace, development, cooperation and win-win outcomes,” Wang declared that if they were implemented by the US, “they are doomed to fail.”
– https://lnkd.in/eAJKmwJG
More excerpts:
◉ The Chinese concerns are not imaginary, but rather drawn from a direct reading of the guidance published by the Biden administration in the Spring of 2021.
◉ A plain reading of that text clearly shows that the US was pursuing a NATO-like alliance in the Pacific solely focused on the issue of “holding China to account.”
It is in this light that one must view partnerships such as the “QUAD”, a military partnership between the US, Japan, India, and Australia, and the newly constituted AUKUS alliance composed of Australia, the United Kingdom, and the US.
Both the QUAD, and AUKUS organizations exist solely to coordinate a military response to China’s presence in the Pacific region.
◉ “Wang also criticized the US for expanding its ties, including military cooperation and weapons sales, with Taiwan.
◉ Such policies, Wang warned, “not only push Taiwan into a precarious situation, but will also bring unbearable consequences for the US side,”
◉ Wang clearly stated, “Taiwan will eventually return to the embrace of the motherland.”
◉ Many experts and observers were surprised by Russia’s decision to intervene militarily in Ukraine. When it comes to China’s readiness to go to war over Taiwan, there should be no such uncertainty.
◉ “The Russian side reaffirms its support for the One-China principle, confirms that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China, and opposes any forms of independence of Taiwan,” it reads.
The fact that Russia signed on to such a statement knowing full well that China had committed to the use of military force to defend its claims regarding Taiwan underscores the seriousness of the Russian-Sino joint statement.
◉ China knows that any military action against Taiwan would bring with it economic retaliation on the part of the US and its allies.
◉ Like Russia, however, China holds significant cards in its hand, and any Western effort to punish it with economic sanctions would bring about a response which could cripple the economies of those targeted.
◉China has already developed an anti-sanction law, that automatically goes into action once a sanction is imposed. It was specifically written with the United States in mind.
Moreover, any military action against Taiwan would, in and of itself, have dire economic consequences for the United States, especially in the field of semiconductor manufacturing.
Any military conflict involving Taiwan would have a crippling impact on the American military electronics market, dependent as it is on the computer chips produced by Taiwan.
This is simply becuase ALL of the American military and high-technology IC chips have been outsourced to Taiwan. It is the sole and only source of supply for American military integrated electronics.
How will a war in Taiwan affect the global consumer market? The effect would be negligible. The vast majority of IC chips are already produced in the Chinese mainland.
What about the USD?
The movement to de-dollarize will be unstoppable and one of the lasting impacts of this war, not just rogue states, but US allies will also join in.
This must-read article in Foreign Affairs is a sobering read on de-dollarization as is this supporting article on sanctions in Quartz (https://bit.ly/3pN9Rfb)
When I started writing about de-dollarization almost three years ago I was widely considered a “Cassandra.”
I now have good company believing this, but admit that I take no joy in writing about a process artificially accelerated by the inhumanity of war.
So here’s what is at risk, from FA:
“These punitive sanctions may also backfire in another way. Biden’s flexing of American economic muscle will only embolden Russia and other US rivals, notably China, to deprive the US of the very power that makes sanctions so devastating.”
“Russia and China will expedite initiatives to “de-dollarize” their economies, building alternative financial institutions and structures that both protect themselves from sanctions and threaten the US dollar’s status as the world’s dominant currency.”
What is driving this is sanction fatigue, from Quartz:
“[Sanctions are] economic warfare at an unprecedented level. It’s true that, over the past decade, the global use of sanctions has exploded to the point of making them routine.”
With sanctions now “routine” nations are questioning their commitment to the dollar. It isn’t because they bear ill-will toward America but see reducing dollar dependence as “risk management.” They also see it as a way to bolster the use of their own currencies so are creating CBDCs.
Pushing the issue will be the global impact on food and energy prices from the unprecedented size of Russian sanctions (Quartz):
“But most of the time, [sanctions] are much narrower—aimed at certain individuals, institutions, or industries—or applied over a much longer timeline, or against a much smaller economy, as in the case of Iran. The speed, scale, and sweeping nature of the Russian sanctions make them the equivalent of an economic blitzkrieg.”
Now a stunning admission from the FA:
“Deteriorating U.S.-Chinese relations incentivize Beijing to join with Moscow in building a -credible- global financial system that excludes the US. Such a system will attract countries under US sanctions. It would even appeal to major US allies who hope to promote their own currencies to the detriment of the dollar.”
And that is the part that is inevitable, this new bi-polar financial system will appeal to US allies!
It should not be seen as a litmus test of friend or foe but instead “whose money offers the better deal?”
The US cannot reverse this change, and it will lead to a weakening of its global standing.
The collapse of the USD as a “reserve currency” is nearing the end. It is collapsing vry fast. And will collapse even faster once the hyper inflation of the $30 trillion dollar bubble manifests, on top of the sanctions.
This will spell out many changes to the lifestyles of those that live in the West, and the nations that maintain trade and use of the USD.
The lifestyle of those in the West is about to change…
Now, you cannot say that you have been warned. But, Jeeze! You were. You all should have listened to Mr. Putin when he said “if you put your fucking nukes on my border, I will be forced to use military-technical measures”.
Sheech!
So when you are paying your $54 / gallon of gas to drive to the fast food resturant to buy your $200 hamburger (minus cheese), don’t go a calling me a “Putin Puppet”. You all brought this fiasco upon yourselves. Suck it up with a big toothy smile, your wishes came true, you mindless oafs.
The true and real actual United States GDP is about to come crashing down, and Americans will start living like trailer park trash in the rural hills of Kentucky. And that’s just the way it is.
I stand by my belief that theres more things down the pipe. Never forget about who you are all dealing with…
America vs China.
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Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
When I was a boy, my father bought me this used hard-cover book.
I was in the bedroom, playing around. He came home from work, and handed me the book. Stuck around a while, and then back downstairs. I way a young boy. Maybe eleven years old.
I loved the illustrations in it. They were well done, beautiful, really. I treasured that book. And I kept it with me for years and years until I was “retired”, and my belongings sold by my “friends” and “family” for what ever profit they could derive from our relationship.
Howard Pyle’s Book of Pirates.
Later, as I got older, I realized what I once had. Sigh.
It’s called life.
Today, we will visit the beautiful illustrations of pirates and buccaneers that so colored my childhood with adventure, treasure and high piracy on the seven seas.
Pyle created images which made the public buy a magazine or a book for its cover alone.
Vincent Van Gogh admitted to his brother Theo, he was struck “dumb with admiration” when he saw Howard Pyle’s illustrations in a magazine. Pyle (1853-1911) was the top American illustrator circa 1880-1910. His work made top moolah pulling in five times the going rate or $75 for a double-page spread in Harper’s Bizarre, 1878.
010 HOWARD PYLE DEAD PIRATE
Pyle created images which made the public buy a magazine or a book for its cover alone. In modern parlance: his work was cinematic, powerful, and dramatic. If he’d been born a few decades later, Pyle may have been a film director. He used strange angles to look down on battle scenes or cast figures centre frame while mayhem occurred all around. He sketched deserted figures in a landscape which explained the whole narrative in a single frame.
When I, as a boy of perhaps 11 or 12 was given the Book of Pirates by my father, I was enthralled.
The book was a collection of popular pirate stories, which mostly centered around brave non-pirates who crossed paths with an infamous pirate and yet who lived to tell the tale.
Sure, they were very romanticized stories focusing on the more adventurous side of piracy than the true aspect of it (though the sacking and slaughter of entire towns is mentioned, just not in gory detail). But for me, as a young boy, I found it all to be an enjoyable, quick read.
09 HOWARD PYLE CITIZENS GIVE TRIBUTE
Pyle was born in Wilmington, Delaware. His parents early recognised his prodigious talent for drawing and painting. They encouraged him to focus on developing this talent. He was lucky he got sent to a private school which fostered his genius.
08 HOWARD PYLE KIDD WATCHES PIRATES BURY TREASURE
When he first moved to New York to become a magazine illustrator, he had no idea how to sell himself. He needn’t have worried.
One glance by the editor of Pyle’s artistry pulled in commissions.
He was soon illustrating books like the The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood which created the imagery we are all familiar with today. Or books about knights in shining armour like Men of Iron and Otto of the Silver Hand.
Publishers would hire Pyle knowing no matter how trashy the novel, Pyle’s artwork would make it a hit.
07 HOWARD PYLE PIRATES FIGHT CAPTAIN
In the 1890s, Pyle, by then married with seven kids, was asked to teach drawing at university.
This led him to set up the Howard Pyle School of Illustration Art in 1900. His school launched a whole new generation of artists who shaped the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s.
As a young boy, when I read the book, what really stood out were the absolutely stunning and beautiful illustrations throughout the book. Looking at them, you could smell the rum, fish and cannon powder and hear the ocean and gun shots.
Every book, magazine, and Hollywood film used Pyle’s illustrations of pirates to dress Errol Flynn as Captain Blood or Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow.
04 HOWARD PYLE SHOT IN THE HEAD
What is not well know, however, is that once he mastered his work, he turned to teaching others in his technique.
Howard Pyle was an instructor at the Drexel Institute of Art, Science and Industry (now Drexel University) from 1894-1900, and in that time, he taught a generation of celebrated illustrators including, Maxfield Parrish, Jessie Wilcox Smith, Elizabeth Shippen Green, Frank E. Schoonover, and Violet Oakley.
03 HOWARD PYLE WALK THE PLANK
More than 20 oil paintings will hang in the Paul Peck Gallery, including Howard Pyle’s “Here, Andre! A Spy! (1897)” on display with a variety of works on paper, as well as accompanying artifacts.
A majority of the exhibit will be presented in the Paul Peck Alumni Center, which is a historic Frank Furness designed building itself.
Some of the featured original paintings and drawings decorated American homes during their time period — also gracing the covers of publications such as Ladies’ Home Journal and The Saturday Evening Post.
02 HOWARD PYLE PIRATES AN ATTACK
“A.J. Drexel founded the Drexel Institute in 1891, and when he died, he made it clear that his vision should be accessible to men and women from all backgrounds, which was unique for a college of that time period,” said Paula Marantz Cohen, Pennoni Honors College dean.
“Pyle’s time at Drexel undoubtedly shaped the field of American Illustration. He was an early parallel advocate of Drexel’s philosophy of ‘learning by doing’ encouraging his students to go out into the world to study their subject matter, an approach reflected in Drexel’s present-day Co-op program.
01 HOWARD PYLE CAPT KIDD
Not long after Drexel’s founding, Philadelphia’s publishing industry took off — greatly influencing Pyle’s artistic philosophy.
Pyle honored Drexel’s mission of experiential, democratic learning. His influences greatly contributed to illustrative painting and drawing becoming one of the truest forms of applied art.
He taught his students to be practical and commercially focused by observing reality first-hand.
020 HOWARD PYLE DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES 1280×900 1
“Today everyone knows the name Norman Rockwell but few people know the name Howard Pyle, let alone his art or his impact on generations of artists and American illustration,” says Judy Goffman Cutler, co-founder of the National Museum of American Illustration.
019 HOWARD PYLE HE STRUCK HIM
After his death from Bright’s disease in 1911, a giant compilation of Pyle’s illustrations of swashbuckling buccaneers was published under the title Howard Pyle’s Book of Pirates.
It became a go-to-book for Hollywood costumiers and pulp fiction illustrators when conjuring up those daring pirates of the seven seas.
018 HOWARD PYLE PIRATES FIGHT
The book that I dedicate this entire article towards is a formula for (almost) every piece of swashbuckling fiction, namely scarred pirate captains, roguish and witty surogates, forced romance and the triumph of the just and lawful citizen whose virtue is rewarded with oh-so-fairly-gained and definitely-not-tainted-by-piracy wealth.
It’s perfect fodder for the young boy in all of us, and yes, you girls too.
018 HOWARD PYLE BUCCANEER
Many pirates were women. And I hear that many of them were absolutely ruthless.
017 HOWARD PYLE DROWNED SAILOR
I lament that I lost the book to someone who found more pleasure in getting the fifty cents from a used book store from it, than any real value. To others, I suppose it’s just an item to profit from. Not one that held value. For me, the greatest pleasures of this book are the occasional descriptions that place you on a ship or an island, where you can briefly feel yourself bobbing over the swells or smell the brine.
016 HOWARD PYLE PIRATES KILL EACH OTHER
The illustrations in the book are phenomenal, and it reads like you are at the bar or a pub during a rainy day and your friend is recounting a story his grandfather once told him.
015 HOWARD PYLE PIRATES IN JAIL
Here’s an excerpt from the book…
Then the pirates marched into the town, and what followed may be conceived. It was a holocaust of lust, of passion, and of blood such as even the Spanish West Indies had never seen before. Houses and churches were sacked until nothing was left but the bare walls; men and women were tortured to compel them to disclose where more treasure lay hidden.Then, having wrenched all that they could from Maracaibo, they entered the lake and descended upon Gibraltar, where the rest of the panic-stricken inhabitants were huddled together in a blind terror.
014 HOWARD PYLE THE TREASURE WAS DIVIDED 1280×871 1
I will admit that the writing style is old and not easy for all of us used to contemporaneous feeds.
After him came one Mansvelt, a buccaneer of lesser note, who first made a descent upon the isle of Saint Catharine, now Old Providence, which he took, and, with this as a base, made an unsuccessful descent upon Neuva Granada and Cartagena. His name might not have been handed down to us along with others of greater fame had he not been the master of that most apt of pupils, the great Captain Henry Morgan, most famous of all the buccaneers, one time governor of Jamaica, and knighted by King Charles II.
013 HOWARD PYLE CUT AND SLASHED
But for a young boy of eleven the stories were rich and ripe of adventure…
The attack of the castle and the defense of it were equally fierce, bloody, and desperate. Again and again the buccaneers assaulted, and again and again they were beaten back. So the morning came, and it seemed as though the pirates had been baffled this time. But just at this juncture the thatch of palm leaves on the roofs of some of the buildings inside the fortifications took fire, a conflagration followed, which caused the explosion of one of the magazines, and in the paralysis of terror that followed, the pirates forced their way into the fortifications, and the castle was won. Most of the Spaniards flung themselves from the castle walls into the river or upon the rocks beneath, preferring death to capture and possible torture; many who were left were put to the sword, and some few were spared and held as prisoners.
012 HOWARD PYLE BULLETS HUM FLY
With the text and the illustrations, as well as the swash-buckling battles, it was a great escapist adventure for me to live out my boyhood dreams.
011 HOWARD PYLE LED TO THE CAPT
As for the bulls, as many of them as were shot served as food there and then for the half-famished pirates, for the buccaneers were never more at home than in the slaughter of cattle.
Then they marched toward the city. Three hours' more fighting and they were in the streets, howling, yelling, plundering, gorging, dram-drinking, and giving full vent to all the vile and nameless lusts that burned in their hearts like a hell of fire. And now followed the usual sequence of events—rapine, cruelty, and extortion; only this time there was no town to ransom, for Morgan had given orders that it should be destroyed. The torch was set to it, and Panama, one of the greatest cities in the New World, was swept from the face of the earth. Why the deed was done, no man but Morgan could tell. Perhaps it was that all the secret hiding places for treasure might be brought to light; but whatever the reason was, it lay hidden in the breast of the great buccaneer himself. For three weeks Morgan and his men abode in this dreadful place; and they marched away with one hundred and seventy-five beasts of burden loaded with treasures of gold and silver and jewels, besides great quantities of merchandise, and six hundred prisoners held for ransom.
Whatever became of all that vast wealth, and what it amounted to, no man but Morgan ever knew, for when a division was made it was found that there was only two hundred pieces of eight to each man.
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The rest of them sailed away to the East Indies, to try their fortunes in those waters, for our Captain Avary was of a high spirit, and had no mind to fritter away his time in the West Indies, squeezed dry by buccaneer Morgan and others of lesser note. No, he would make a bold stroke for it at once, and make or lose at a single cast.
On his way he picked up a couple of like kind with himself—two sloops off Madagascar. With these he sailed away to the coast of India, and for a time his name was lost in the obscurity of uncertain history. But only for a time, for suddenly it flamed out in a blaze of glory. It was reported that a vessel belonging to the Great Mogul, laden with treasure and bearing the monarch's own daughter upon a holy pilgrimage to Mecca (they being Mohammedans), had fallen in with the pirates, and after a short resistance had been surrendered, with the damsel, her court, and all the diamonds, pearls, silk, silver, and gold aboard. It was rumored that the Great Mogul, raging at the insult offered to him through his own flesh and blood, had threatened to wipe out of existence the few English settlements scattered along the coast; whereat the honorable East India Company was in a pretty state of fuss and feathers. Rumor, growing with the telling, has it that Avary is going to marry the Indian princess, willy-nilly, and will turn rajah, and eschew piracy as indecent. As for the treasure itself, there was no end to the extent to which it grew as it passed from mouth to mouth.
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And now Blackbeard, following the plan adopted by so many others of his kind, began to cudgel his brains for means to cheat his fellows out of their share of the booty.
At Topsail Inlet he ran his own vessel aground, as though by accident. Hands, the captain of one of the consorts, pretending to come to his assistance, also grounded his sloop. Nothing now remained but for those who were able to get away in the other craft, which was all that was now left of the little fleet. This did Blackbeard with some forty of his favorites. The rest of the pirates were left on the sand spit to await the return of their companions—which never happened.
As for Blackbeard and those who were with him, they were that much richer, for there were so many the fewer pockets to fill. But even yet there were too many to share the booty, in Blackbeard's opinion, and so he marooned a parcel more of them—some eighteen or twenty—upon a naked sand bank, from which they were afterward mercifully rescued by another freebooter who chanced that way—a certain Major Stede Bonnet, of whom more will presently be said. About that time a royal proclamation had been issued offering pardon to all pirates in arms who would surrender to the king's authority before a given date. So up goes Master Blackbeard to the Governor of North Carolina and makes his neck safe by surrendering to the proclamation—albeit he kept tight clutch upon what he had already gained.
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It was a glorious thing for our captain, for here were thirteen Yankee crafts at one and the same time. So he took what he wanted, and then sailed away, and it was many a day before Marblehead forgot that visit.
Some time after this he and his consort fell foul of an English sloop of war, the Greyhound, whereby they were so roughly handled that Low was glad enough to slip away, leaving his consort and her crew behind him, as a sop to the powers of law and order. And lucky for them if no worse fate awaited them than to walk the dreadful plank with a bandage around the blinded eyes and a rope around the elbows. So the consort was taken, and the crew tried and hanged in chains, and Low sailed off in as pretty a bit of rage as ever a pirate fell into.
The end of this worthy is lost in the fogs of the past: some say that he died of a yellow fever down in New Orleans; it was not at the end of a hempen cord, more's the pity.
2022 03 07 20 20
The cheat was kept up until the fruit of mischief was ripe for the picking; then, when the governor and the guards of the castle were lulled into entire security, and when Davis's band was scattered about wherever each man could do the most good, it was out pistol, up cutlass, and death if a finger moved. They tied the soldiers back to back, and the governor to his own armchair, and then rifled wherever it pleased them. After that they sailed away, and though they had not made the fortune they had hoped to glean, it was a good snug round sum that they shared among them.
Their courage growing high with success, they determined to attempt the island of Del Principe—a prosperous Portuguese settlement on the coast. The plan for taking the place was cleverly laid, and would have succeeded, only that a Portuguese negro among the pirate crew turned traitor and carried the news ashore to the governor of the fort. Accordingly, the next day, when Captain Davis came ashore, he found there a good strong guard drawn up as though to honor his coming. But after he and those with him were fairly out of their boat, and well away from the water side, there was a sudden rattle of musketry, a cloud of smoke, and a dull groan or two. Only one man ran out from under that pungent cloud, jumped into the boat, and rowed away; and when it lifted, there lay Captain Davis and his companions all of a heap, like a pile of old clothes.
Capt. Bartholomew Roberts was the particular and especial pupil of Davis, and when that worthy met his death so suddenly and so unexpectedly in the unfortunate manner above narrated, he was chosen unanimously as the captain of the fleet, and he was a worthy pupil of a worthy master. Many were the poor fluttering merchant ducks that this sea hawk swooped upon and struck; and cleanly and cleverly were they plucked before his savage clutch loosened its hold upon them.
Marooned
Not a word was spoken after they had thus left the shore, and presently they might all have been ghosts, for the silence of the party. Barnaby True was too full of his own thoughts to talk—and serious enough thoughts they were by this time, with crimps to trepan a man at every turn, and press gangs to carry a man off so that he might never be heard of again. As for the others, they did not seem to choose to say anything now that they had him fairly embarked upon their enterprise.
And so the crew pulled on in perfect silence for the best part of an hour, the leader of the expedition directing the course of the boat straight across the harbor, as though toward the mouth of the Rio Cobra River. Indeed, this was their destination, as Barnaby could after a while see, by the low point of land with a great long row of coconut palms upon it (the appearance of which he knew very well), which by and by began to loom up out of the milky dimness of the moonlight. As they approached the river they found the tide was running strong out of it, so that some distance away from the stream it gurgled and rippled alongside the boat as the crew of black men pulled strongly against it. Thus they came up under what was either a point of land or an islet covered with a thick growth of mangrove trees. But still no one spoke a single word as to their destination, or what was the business they had in hand.
The night, now that they were close to the shore, was loud with the noise of running tide-water, and the air was heavy with the smell of mud and marsh, and over all the whiteness of the moonlight, with a few stars pricking out here and there in the sky; and all so strange and silent and mysterious that Barnaby could not divest himself of the feeling that it was all a dream.
So, the rowers bending to the oars, the boat came slowly around from under the clump of mangrove bushes and out into the open water again.
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There he lay for I know not how long, staring into the darkness, until by and by, in spite of his suffering and his despair, he dozed off into a loose sleep, that was more like waking than sleep, being possessed continually by the most vivid and distasteful dreams, from which he would awaken only to doze off and to dream again.
It was from the midst of one of these extravagant dreams that he was suddenly aroused by the noise of a pistol shot, and then the noise of another and another, and then a great bump and a grinding jar, and then the sound of many footsteps running across the deck and down into the great cabin. Then came a tremendous uproar of voices in the great cabin, the struggling as of men's bodies being tossed about, striking violently against the partitions and bulkheads. At the same instant arose a screaming of women's voices, and one voice, and that Sir John Malyoe's, crying out as in the greatest extremity: "You villains! You damned villains!" and with the sudden detonation of a pistol fired into the close space of the great cabin.
Barnaby was out in the middle of his cabin in a moment, and taking only time enough to snatch down one of the pistols that hung at the head of his berth, flung out into the great cabin, to find it as black as night, the lantern slung there having been either blown out or dashed out into darkness. The prodigiously dark space was full of uproar, the hubbub and confusion pierced through and through by that keen sound of women's voices screaming, one in the cabin and the other in the stateroom beyond. Almost immediately Barnaby pitched headlong over two or three struggling men scuffling together upon the deck, falling with a great clatter and the loss of his pistol, which, however, he regained almost immediately.
What all the uproar meant he could not tell, but he presently heard Captain Manly's voice from somewhere suddenly calling out, "You bloody pirate, would you choke me to death?" wherewith some notion of what had happened came to him like a flash, and that they had been attacked in the night by pirates.
2022 03 07 20 18
The vessel in which they sailed was a brigantine of good size and build, but manned by a considerable crew, the most strange and outlandish in their appearance that Barnaby had ever beheld—some white, some yellow, some black, and all tricked out with gay colors, and gold earrings in their ears, and some with great long mustachios, and others with handkerchiefs tied around their heads, and all talking a language together of which Barnaby True could understand not a single word, but which might have been Portuguese from one or two phrases he caught. Nor did this strange, mysterious crew, of God knows what sort of men, seem to pay any attention whatever to Barnaby or to the young lady. They might now and then have looked at him and her out of the corners of their yellow eyes, but that was all; otherwise they were indeed like the creatures of a nightmare dream. Only he who was the captain of this outlandish crew would maybe speak to Barnaby a few words as to the weather or what not when he would come down into the saloon to mix a glass of grog or to light a pipe of tobacco, and then to go on deck again about his business. Otherwise our hero and the young lady were left to themselves, to do as they pleased, with no one to interfere with them.
As for her, she at no time showed any great sign of terror or of fear, only for a little while was singularly numb and quiet, as though dazed with what had happened to her. Indeed, methinks that wild beast, her grandfather, had so crushed her spirit by his tyranny and his violence that nothing that happened to her might seem sharp and keen, as it does to others of an ordinary sort.
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Americans and Westerners (The United States, the EU, Canada, Japan, Australia, and Korea = the collective “West”) have been mandated to take an mRNA “vaccination” to fight Coronavirus. This, most people know.
What they don’t know is this…
The mRNA is not a vaccination. It’s an injection of a content-secret chemical.
Russia, China, and the rest of the world use traditional “dead host” vaccines.
Both Russia and China accused the USA of unleashing Coronavirus on the world.
They claim that it is a bioweapon. One of 11 total. (8 against livestock, 3 against people.)
If the reader is aware of those four points, then good for you. If you are unaware, then you REALLY need to change your “news” sources.
Now, that being said, many in the (collective) West are openly critical of these mRNA “vaccinations”. They don’t understand why they need to take it for a chest cold weaker than the seasonal flu. As such, many refuse to take it, with Americans being the most agressive about this.
To force compliance, the West have set up systems where you MUST get this mRNA injection or be “black listed”. Being “black listed” has many negative attributes, such as loss of job, income, ability to bank, financial investments and others too numerous to list.
When pressed, they (the government) argue that “the rest of the world is doing this, so we must as well”.
Not true.
Only the collective West is doing this.
Not the East.
China and Russia are very serious about this, true, but they use “dead-host” (actual) vaccines. They do not use mRNA injections becuase the studies have shown severe side effects within the injected population over time.
In fact, (unreported in the West), China is still at DEFCON 2 right now and has been at that point since 2020 when they accused the United States for unleasing the three bioweapons attacks against their civilian population.
Good luck visiting and arriving in China.
It’s still locked down. You have to apply for a visa under the “special authorizations” clause, and then endure two weeks in a quarantine hotel (with daily multiple swabs) and another two weeks at your destination under lock-down. That’s a total of four weeks under lock-down. Obviously, there aren’t many people visiting China right now.
Remember the Winter Olympics? The entire area was one big “clean room”.
So here you have the situation.
Polorized Globe
The earth is now divided into two haves.
On one side you have the “The First World”, also known as the “Collective West”. It consists of the United States led unipolar order. The nations are the United States and all of it’s toadies; it’s “allies”.
On the other side, you have a China-led order. With Russia, all of Africa, the Middle East, and most of South America.
The West vs. the East.
The “West” in blue. The “East” in gray.
One side wants it all
This shouldn’t be news to anyone. The collective West demands a unipolar global order led by the United States; one that can make the rules as it moves forward, and break and ignore the rules it doesn’t like.
The East wants a world of equals working together as needed per the UN charter. They beleive that much can be gained for the bulk of humanity if everyone participates in wealth generating activities. Not just the super wealthy.
Again, this shouldn’t be news to anyone.
If you are not aware of this, then I posit that you have been living under a rock, and your “news” sources are pathetic.
How can the USA take it all, once and for all?
The West wants it all, but they are impotent.
The United States might have the largest military in the world, and bases everywhere, but they have major liabilities. Culturially, socially, physically, and substantively on every level, the West is approaching “senile, old age, riddled with dementia”.
For the last fifty years, it lost every war that it fought (with the notible exceptions of Grenada, and Panama), all the time while fighting multiple wars all over the globe. Right now it is involved in eight simultaneous hot kinetic wars, and numerous “color revolutions”. It’s been a busy, busy nation.
But the rest of the world has risen. It’s awake. And it’s aware.
Don’t piss it off.
Any war with a major Eastern nation will be collective. Meaning, if you fight China, the rest of the world will engage you. If you fight Russia, the rest of the world will engage you. As we are just now starting to witness.
Uh oh.
Nuclear weapons are out. Well for now, at least.
Yes. America (and it’s surrogates) has an enormous nuclear arsenal. But the delivery systems have been rendered obsolete by the Eastern block. Not only does the East have very advanced hyper-velocity missiles, but they have AI, internal ability to evade, plot course changes, and stealth.
In addition, all of Asia has the ability to shoot down incoming nuclear missiles on any form or shape. America and Europe does not have this. They never saw the need. They are exceptional, the shining house on the hill; the nations where everyone wants to become part of. Don’t you know!
So, if nuclear destruction is out of the calculus, then what’s left?
Biowarfare
Now, it is well documented that the United States under Trump / John Bolton / Mike Pompeo launched a two-phase bioweapons assault on the East in 2019.
Again, if you are unaware of this, I have to shake you up with the “Rule number one of being a spook”. Look for what is NOT being reported in the “news”.
So, yeah. China was intentionally “suppressed”. It’s all part of that “hybrid-warfare” onslaught package. Don’t you know.
And it was genius.
It truly was.
The “lite” version, the one that only caused a sore thoat was given to Americans and Europeans in June 2019. This was to innoculate the population with the COVID-19A “safe” virus. You know “herd immunity”. And it has worked.
While the nasty bad momba-jamba COVID-19B rampaged though Iran and China in December that year.
China went DEFCON 1, and full lockdown and suppressed the bioweapon attack. Irans, had some real serious dings and lost most of it’s leadership.
I argue that the attack failed. Then when the modified strains started to circle the globe, and hit the USA, everyone started running the “wear a mask” gambit, and hurry up and get inoculated…
But…
But…
Something just doesn’t add up.
The United States Bioweapon facilities
The United States is the ONLY nation developing bioweapons in the world. In fact, it has held this role for at least fourty years since the fall of the former Soviet Union.
Yet, why all the many, many, many bioweapons facilities?
There’s over 330+ of them, and they are all over the globe. Why?
Let, me spell it out to you all. Why so many development labs all regionally located thoughtout the world? These are top secret facilities. Why are there so many, and why so regional?
Think about it.
Well, let’s “cut to the chase”. All you need to do is look at a map of human DNA variations by geographical region to see the answer.
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They have been developing DNA targeting viruses to target specific geographical population clusters.
And it has been going on for a long time.
But, you know, there’s no way to know for certain. The facities are all locked down, with up-most secrecy. No one is ever going to discover what the United States government is up to.
Russian invasion of the Ukraine
Then the invasion of the Ukraine occured, and the Russians seized some of these bioweapons facilities, and their findings were truly worrisome.
U.S. Nailed to the Wall on Illicit Biological Weapons Labs in Ukraine
For the world to survive and have peace, US generals have to kick the imperialist addiction, and the ruling political classes of the US and EU thoroughly renovated.
A couple of days ago, when I presented a summary of the dramatic information and warnings conveyed in the latest televised briefing by the spokesman for the Russian military, Igor Konoshenkov, I received back from some readers the comment that this was all just Russian propaganda, similar to the kind of propaganda we hear regularly coming from the Pentagon and State Department.
The allegations of biological weapons banned under international convention being produced in experimental laboratories in Kharkiv and other Ukrainian towns under programs paid for and supervised by Americans had to be fake news, these skeptics and cynics maintained.
The same had to be true of Konoshenkov’s asserting that the Ukrainians were working on dirty nuclear bombs at their Zaporozhye nuclear power stations, which had just been captured by Russian forces.
However, yesterday the story about biological weapons labs received convincing confirmation from the U.S. State Department, when Victoria Nuland, Under Secretary for Political Affairs, said publicly before microphones that the USA fears that its biological labs in Ukraine will “fall into the wrong hands.”
That is a very convoluted admission that the Russians’ allegations are perfectly true.
The U.S. is battening down the hatches against the coming storm of international indignation, at the same time trying to divert attention away from itself by suggesting that the Russians might do something dastardly with what they find.
Enter China
American evasion and attempted dissimulation were stymied however when, also yesterday, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs demanded an explanation from the United States.
He demanded what exactly Americans have been doing not only in their Ukrainian labs, which were situated in cities across the Ukraine from Kharkiv to Lviv, but also in a further 130 such labs spread out across the world.
Intense Chinese concern is understandable since one such laboratory was in Wuhan, the point of origin of Covid19.
The subtext is that the U.S. Chiefs of Staff have taken with the utmost seriousness the warnings of retaliation from Konoshenkov, against NATO, Article 5 or no Article 5 pledges of ‘one for all and all for one.’
.
Meanwhile, the general public in the United States is clueless because virtually nothing about this appeared in major media.
Remember the MM spook rule #1;
"Look for what is NOT being reported".
Leaks from these labs – Intentional or unintentional?
Still on the subject of biological weapons being prepared in Ukraine under United States funding and guidance, Russian experts were on television this morning explaining how leaks from these labs have been monitored over the past few years.
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In one such case, 450 Ukrainian civilians were said to have died from biological agents that contaminated their residential block.
This number, you will note, is higher than the total number of civilian deaths in the ongoing “barbaric” Russian in Ukraine.
As reported in The Financial times (characterization as “barbaric” by Andrew Bacevich, Chairman of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a self-described American think tank for peace).
The Russians are now examining whether outbreaks of swine flu and avian flu that caused havoc with their livestock in farming areas close to the Ukrainian border may not have been artificially induced by saboteurs coming from Ukraine.
Work on viruses transmissible from animals to humans was also reportedly being done in the Ukrainian facilities.
And nuclear weapons too?
Let us now turn to the question of Ukraine’s program to produce nuclear weapons, which Konoshenkov also mentioned in his briefing. Today Russian news is saying that they possess more than just documentary proof of such development, which contravenes the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 and the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, to which Ukraine is a signatory. The Russians now claim to have found sample “baby bombs” which will prove beyond doubt the nuclear ambitions of Kiev for which the United States was a guiding force.
All of the foregoing points to what may be expected when the Russians finish their demilitarization and denazification campaign in Ukraine in the next several weeks.
They may well convene an international tribunal to try the Ukrainians who were responsible for the illicit programs involving weapons of mass destruction.
We may expect the Chinese to join them in running the tribunal, as well as other closely interested countries.
It is also reasonable to expect that this tribunal will identify and seek to extradite their American handlers.
This may be difficult, because Moscow has already said today that the Americans on the ground in Ukraine overseeing the biological weapons laboratories all carried diplomatic passports.
However, the Russians, like the Americans, can be very resourceful in cases like this.
Well U.S. Biolabs in Ukraine must be true because Twitter suspended @::::war::::clandestine account. Someone out there got post on video. Here it is. pic.twitter.com/S5418JOQbj— Secret Squirel (@cbcool2532) February 24, 2022
Geo-Political “games”
Finally, before closing today’s bulletin of latest developments in the Russia-Ukraine war at the political level, I direct attention to the question of Poland’s turning over its fleet of Soviet-era MIG jet fighters to Ukraine, which has been a hot issue on Western news these past few days.
The Poles had been in discussions over this possibility with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken last week, and Blinken seemed to be approving.
For the Poles, the proposed “donation” to support Ukraine would be a godsend. They would get rid of their fleet of old Soviet planes and would receive in exchange from the United States F-16 fighters, thereby better integrating Poland into the standard equipment of NATO fully at the charge of Uncle Sam.
Let us assume the transaction would come to half a billion to one billion dollars to the benefit of Warsaw and to the cost of U.S. taxpayers.
Is it any wonder that several other former Warsaw Pact countries, now NATO member states yesterday said they too were ready to help the comrades in Ukraine by turning their old MIGs over to Kiev and taking in exchange United States fighter planes.
Warsaw announced yesterday that it intended to fly its MIGs to the Ramstein airbase in southwestern Germany for the hand-over.
This news release apparently took the U.S Government by surprise.
At her testimony before the Senate a little later in the day, Victoria Nuland said she had no pre-warning of the announcement and would not comment till she got back to her office and studied the matter further.
This announcement was indeed remarkable.
Ramstein is the headquarters of the United States Air Forces in Europe and also of the NATO Allied Air Command.
If the MIGs had simply been transferred to Ukrainian pilots on Polish territory and then flown into combat in Ukraine, then they would bring down on the dispatching airport in Poland the instant retribution that General Konoshenkov stated explicitly two days ago.
Russia would bomb Poland.
By sending the planes to Ramstein for the hand-over to the Ukrainians, the Russian response, cruise or hypersonic missile attack, would go instead against the United States airbase.
Russia would bomb the United States.
Dear promoters of Poland as the defense shield of Europe in Washington: pay close attention to what your friends would do to you.
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However, none of this will come to pass, as we may conclude by today’s announcement from the Pentagon that the deal is unacceptable and is outside the competence of Poland to offer.
Today the Pentagon spokesmen say plainly that the issue at hand concerns all of NATO and can be taken only by NATO collectively, not by one member, Poland.
This is a nice formally correct explanation from the Pentagon.
The subtext is that the U.S. Chiefs of Staff have taken with the utmost seriousness the warnings of retaliation from Konoshenkov, against NATO, Article 5 or no Article 5 pledges of ‘one for all and all for one.’
Meanwhile, the general public in the United States is clueless because virtually nothing about this appeared in major media.
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When the war started, President Putin was hopeful to come to a quick understanding with the leading officers of the Ukrainian armed forces regarding capitulation and regime change.
However, in a matter of days it became clear that the Ukrainian military has been thoroughly infiltrated by radical nationalists and is unable to act in the interests of the nation independently.
It now appears that this type of analysis would be better applied to the United States of America.
Only the senior generals in the Pentagon have their eyes and ears wide open to the Russian capabilities and intentions.
The political classes, both Democrats and Republicans on The Hill, are lost in their own virtual world of unlimited United States power.
That alone explains the potentially suicidal demand from Democrats yesterday that Biden now impose a ‘no-fly zone’ over Ukraine.
It may be that the war will end when the Pentagon generals and their Russian counterparts sit down and talk about revising the European architecture of security, leaving Blinken and his associates to look on through the windows.
A real possibility.
But what about the mRNA vaccines?
Let’s back track right now and look at some bullet points…
The USA is the sole nation running bioweapons development.
The USA is leading the “West” and needs to destroy the “East” to achieve dominance.
The USA has located bioweapons falicilites all over the globe and evidence in Ukraine suggests viruses that target regional populations by DNA.
And we know, from published mRNA data (far too detailed to present here)…
Content of the mRNA “stew” injected into Westerners is secret.
This is not “corporate confidential”, but rather “government military secret”.
All of the collective West must get the injections.
Putting the first group of bullet-points with the second group of bullet-points we see an association.
The plan
It appears (as the most obvious conclusion possible) that [1] the United States plans (in some way) to release regionally-targeted bioweapons globally, and [2] use it’s mRNA injection protocols to protect itself.
As different bioweapons are released, booster updates will be given to the civilian population to protect them from the bioweapons.
It’s pretty fucking evil.
Yikes! It’s a new way to fight wars
Yes it is.
What had happened is that when Russia invaded the Ukraine they were able to seize these facilities. And they were able to identify what they were doing and why. And one of the most obvious tasks was to develop bioweapons for United States use that was released to civilian populations locally. Then cover up the release as an “accident”. All as a cover for the development of regional DNA-targetted bioweapons.
And the way for the United States to protect itself is to inject it’s people with a cure. This would be a mRNA “milkshake”.
In Ukraine, under the leadership of the United States, a real biological weapon was developed
Alexander GRISHIN
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The Russian Defense Ministry has published a new document on the intentions of the leadership and directly the military command of Ukraine in relation to the Donbass. This is the original secret order of the Commander of the National Guard of Ukraine Mykola (Nikolay) Balan, signed by him on January 22, 2022. Once again – not copies, but the original document with all the authentic signatures of those responsible.
What is special about this document?
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This is not yet an order to attack the Donbass (the time will come, and such will appear at our disposal), but an order on the preparation and combat coordination of a separate battalion-tactical group of the 4th operational brigade of the National Guard to carry out combat (special) tasks in the so-called operation Joint forces in the Donbass region.
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Coordination exercises were held in the Lviv region at the Yavoriv training ground, the very one where most of the Javelins and other modern weapons transferred from the USA to the Armed Forces of Ukraine were stored.
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The exercises were supposed to pass according to the “NATO standards” program and prepare the fighters of the group psychologically, physically, teach them combat tactics and skills in handling foreign weapons. Further, this BTG was to operate as part of the 80th separate airborne assault brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. From the name of which it is already clear what tasks this connection performs. At the same time, a separate paragraph of the order forbade sending those National Guardsmen who would show “unsatisfactory results of psychological testing” to perform tasks in the Donbass. “Psychological stability” is a very important indicator for punishers,
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All preparations for solving the tasks set by the command were ordered to be completed by February 28th. We throw in another week to transfer the group directly to combat positions in the Donbass, a couple of days to line up, as they say, battle formations, and we get the start of an active offensive after receiving a combat order from the command today or tomorrow.
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By all logic, by all accounts, the military-political special operation launched by Russia on February 24 to denazify and demilitarize Ukraine averted a new tragedy in Donbass. Let’s face it, it’s much bigger than anything he’s done before. Ukraine was preparing for this.
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But besides this, as it turned out, there were other reasons for precisely such actions of Moscow, which we are now observing.
“WHY WILL BATTLE VIRUSES?”
Dmitry Peskov – about biological laboratories in Ukraine: “Measures are being taken. You will know about the results in a timely manner”
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Official China asked when the US would give clarifications on the 336 biological laboratories that Washington manages and finances around the world. However, rather, not Washington, but the Pentagon, the US Department of Defense. 30 of them are in Ukraine.
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From the documents cited earlier by the same Russian Ministry of Defense, it became clear that in Ukraine, under the leadership of the United States , a real biological weapon was being developed .
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In the order received from the Ministry of Health of Ukraine, the leadership of the laboratories was ordered to destroy all research materials and the viruses themselves and other pathogens as early as the day the Russian special operation began.
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The next day, February 25, they all reported on the work done and the irretrievable destruction of the pathogens of diphtheria, salmonellosis, anthrax, ulcers, plague and other deadly diseases.
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Despite a chorus of ridicule from Russian liberals about this report by the Russian Defense Ministry, the veracity of this information was confirmed not by anyone, but by the United States itself.
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"There are biological research laboratories in Ukraine. At the moment, we are concerned that the Russian military may be trying to take control of them, was forced to admit at a hearing in the US Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland (the same one who gladly handed out cookies and buns on the Maidan in Kyiv). - We are working with the Ukrainian side to ensure that biological research materials do not fall into the hands of Russian forces."
This in itself is a recognition that they did not develop flu drops there. After all, if everything is harmless, then why destroy the samples and strive so hard that they “do not fall into the hands of the Russians.”
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By the way, the Americans were very interested in the Bayraktara drones in terms of whether it is technically possible to spray aerosols from them during the flight, which is also confirmed, this time by other documents.
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"They probably just wanted to help the Ukrainians with fertilizers during the farming season."
- The head of the troops of the RKhBZ of Russia on military biological programs in Ukraine
If for someone this is not enough. Then here’s something even scarier.
“WHO SAID ‘DIRTY’ BOMB? I SWEAR CLEAN I WASHED IT MYSELF”
Let’s remember that at a security conference in Munich this year, Zelensky said that in case of refusal of assistance to ensure the security of Ukraine, Kyiv could withdraw from the Budapest Memorandum.
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Which approves the non-nuclear status of Ukraine.
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No, Ukrainian politicians have repeatedly spoken about the need to revive the nuclear program in the country, but such a promise was made by the current head of state for the first time.
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Keep in mind that the Ukraine, since the CIA backed "color revolution" in 2014 is a wholly owned and controlled serrogate state, with a puppet leader. -MM
And this, judging by a whole range of evidence, was neither a bluff nor an empty threat. As follows from a number of reliable sources, the SVR and the GRU have documented evidence that such a program has already been implemented. Moreover, two types of charges were developed: plutonium and uranium.
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The key role in the project was assigned to the National Center “Kharkov Institute of Physics and Technology”, which had an experimental base, in principle, for obtaining weapons-grade plutonium from spent reactor thermal assemblies. The work was also carried out in the zone of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, where the increased radiation background hid their work. Both the Institute for Nuclear Research in Kyiv and the Institute of Organic Chemistry were involved in the work on the project.
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Documents from Kyiv and Kharkov are still waiting to be made available, but Zaporizhzhya NPP personnel have already confirmed that such work was carried out at the plant, and IAEA inspectors from among the recruited local personnel did not reflect them in their reports.
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According to various estimates, a nuclear explosive device could be created in Ukraine within a period of several months to a couple of years. Ukraine also has carriers that would allow the charge to be carried, if not to Moscow and St. Petersburg, but to at least Belgorod, Kursk, Voronezh, Rostov-on-Don, albeit in very limited quantities.
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As for the so-called “Dirty” bomb , which is used to infect the area through the explosion of a conventional munition, Ukraine already has such a possibility, given the presence of a giant repository of spent nuclear fuel and waste in the Chernobyl nuclear power plant zone. Precisely to prevent such sabotage, which can be compared with the terrorist attack on the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant (where the Americans supplied plutonium), units of the National Guard were introduced, which, by the way, are on duty there together with the National Guard of Ukraine.
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In general, both the GRU and the SVR do not eat their bread in vain, since information about all this was brought to the attention of the President of Russia in a timely manner.
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Probably, it may even seem like some kind of blasphemy now, but in a good way, the world should be grateful to Russia for the fact that it launched its military operation so on time. Imagine the detonation of a nuclear warhead on the territory of Russia and what the consequences of this would be.
Conclusion
And there you have it. There is a grand scheme of massive depopulation / war initiated by the United States via bioweapons globally.
If you believe the World Economic Forum, 80% of the population of the globe must be killed off to initiate a new “utopia”. One that is led by an American unipolar world-order.
The idea is to have the globe ruled with Service-to-self entities, and serviced by servie-to-another (NPC) entities. The service-for-others sentience will be killed off.
They plan to do this within the next two years.
There is a “bump in the road with both Russia and China” not wanting to have anything to do with it. But no matter. The United States is on “autopilot”. The systems are in place and the plan is in process.
How this will evolve over time is anyone’s guess.
But at least there’s a lone voice in Ireland speaking out…
2022 03 10 11 39
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
Mort Künstler is best known today for his vivid paintings of scenes from American history, specifically the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. These works have been featured in books and calendars, and spotlighted in exhibitions around the country.
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Less known is Künstler’s early work in men’s adventure magazines, a unique genre that populated newsstands from the 1950s through the late ‘70s. Also known as “men’s sweats,” because most covers featured a sweaty, shirtless guy facing some type of peril, scores of adventure titles vied for a reader’s attention with eye-popping headlines such as “Death Orgy of the Leopard Women” and “Weasels Ripped My Flesh!”
Men’s adventure magazines were the bastard child of the popular pulp magazines of the ‘20s, ‘30s and ‘40s, and many of the artists who worked for the pulps also put paint to canvas for this next evolution, most famous among them being Norm Saunders. Numerous publishers saw an easy buck in the men’s adventure magazines, but none more so than Martin Goodman’s Magazine Management, whose titles included Male, Stag, Action For Men, Battlefield, Complete Man, For Men Only, Man’s World, and many others.
Künstler started working for the men’s adventure magazines shortly after graduating from Pratt Institute in the early 1950s.
“I was a hungry guy, and I was persistent,” he says. “I clicked with several [men’s adventure magazine] publishers, and it almost became a competition for my services. I ended up with Magazine Management mostly because they paid better and offered me as much work as I could handle.”
Künstler also did a lot of work for other publishers, whose titles included True, Argosy, Adventure, American Weekly, and The Saturday Evening Post. The men’s adventure magazines specialized in lurid headlines and even more lurid covers, often depicting over-the-top war stories, daring tales of escape, deadly encounters with dangerous animals, and sex. Most of the stories were pure fiction but presented as fact – an easy way to lure gullible readers. Künstler illustrated them all with a straight face.
“I always tried to make my covers and interior illustrations as believable as possible,” he says. “That was my knack, and instrumental in why the magazines sold so well. And I was rewarded as a result. It worked out very well and I had a lot of fun with it.”
The stories with a sexual component sometimes made Künstler a little uncomfortable, and he admits to turning down a couple of assignments because of that. When he did say yes, however, the results were stunning – sexy in a clean, classical style.
“By today’s standards, none of them are offensive,” Künstler says, “but they were slightly risque. I never painted an illustration in which a woman’s breasts were seen; they were always covered by long hair or a torn blouse.”
Now, if you will, picture, if you can, a time before man buns and rompers on the covers of “men’s magazines.” A time before the easy reach of internet porn, when magazines were a source of escape, fantasy and inspiration.
We’re not talking GQ, Maxim or Esquire, but instead titles that left nothing to the imagination, like Complete Man’s Magazine or True Men Stories or All Man or my personal favorite (for obvious reasons), Stag.
The publishers didn’t try to mine focus-group-driven demographic data to determine their audience. The editorial staff knew who they were after: Men.
Real men.
Guys who were just coming back from war or who were headed back into it.
Guys who were away from their families, girlfriends and wives, who wanted nothing more than to feel like a man in an environment that was trying to rob them of their souls.
They wanted to be transported back into the shit and to read stories about survival and sweat and combat and conquest.
These men’s magazines of the 50s and 60s offered the perfect respite from life’s drudgery. Packed with heroic stories of war or more salacious articles like the “‘Private Love Club’ Girls of London.”
Ads for well-paying jobs like meat cutting (“People Must Eat!”). These magazines went straight to the heart of what drives men to be only slightly-better-dressed cavemen. Action, adventure, women, fighting, danger, lust and an unwavering addiction to being a proud American.
The covers of these magazines were absolute works of art, typically depicting pulse-pounding scenes such as an outdoorsman shooting bloodthirsty wolves trying to attack his downed horse, a sailor rescuing crewmates from Nazis, or a swimmer beating a shark to death with a raft paddle.
Many of the publications featured artwork depicting the age-old damsel-in-distress with an imminent rescue by a Burt Lancaster-meets-Paul Newman type.
The foes didn’t matter — Nazis, bloodthirsty Mongolians or Pacific Island natives. What these stories had in common was that they raised the heart rate of the reader.
When I scrounged around the dusty, moldy boxes in an old used book store in a collapsing central Pennsylvania building, they had no idea that I was a fan of Men’s Magazines.
Before I unwrapped them, I could smell the musty pages that instantly transported me back to my grandfather’s basement, where I first saw some of these rags.
There was a stack there against a back wall sitting in a wooden apple crate wedged between an old oil tank piled with books and the remains of a sewing machine buried under bags of paperbacks.
I remember when I was a young boy.
Sometimes I would sneak down and leaf through them, not really understanding what I was looking at, but nonetheless fascinated by the pictures. I mean, how is an eight-year-old supposed to understand the subtle intricacies of article titles like “Nude Love Slaves of the Master of Pain”?
I got to see barely covered boobs on the covers and that was enough for me. (The “Playboy” stash would be uncovered later, scrounging though garbage cans outside. And yes, that was a different level of reading comprehension.)
Decades later, I still remember the impact of some of those covers, and this treasure trove that arrived in the mail was a perfect walk down memory lane.
I fell into the articles and pictures again, completely consumed by them.
Seriously, the cover images blew me away and I wanted to find out more about the artists who designed them.
Research kept leading me back to Mort Künstler, an illustrator and artist best known for his historical, war-themed pieces.
However, Künstler started like many of us do, freelancing for jobs as a way to pay the bills. In the 50s and 60s this meant illustrating the covers for many of the men’s pulp titles.
Want a man depicted fighting a shark? Künstler was your go-to guy.
There were others, of course.
Norman Saunders was also very well known for his illustrations across all men’s magazines, eventually branching out from pulp into westerns and science fiction. Saunders spent time as an MP and as a member of the Army Corps of Engineers during World War II.
Perhaps the military experience fine-tuned his skill at creating lifelike fantasy perfectly suited for pulp.
Throughout that period Künstler and Saunders progressed in their careers, prolifically creating works for magazines like National Geographic and Newsweek.
As cover art was slowly replaced by photography in the 70s, Künstler shifted directions and became a historical artist, while Saunders worked for Topps trading cards and continued illustrating other fantasy magazines.
There were several other artists that helped to shape this era as well, but many were never credited or else worked under pseudonyms so as to not affect their “real” art careers.
What they left in their wake, though, was an epic genre of images that sparked the imagination like no photography ever could.
At the time these magazines were being published, the country was in the midst of a cultural shift. Hippies were on the rise, political correctness was in its infancy, and we had Viet Nam looming.
These men’s magazines offered a release and a non-PC point of view. Drawn in by the cover art, the men who bought these mags were captivated by their stories that often blurred the lines between fact and fiction.
Inside these 25-cent rags there were no glossy pages or color photos. Each page was filled with black-and-white text on cheap, newspaper-type material. The articles were littered with testosterone-fueled, somewhat realistic fiction.
These pieces weren’t exactly an imitation of hardcore journalism — unless you are thinking of that other sort of hardcore.
Essentially, these magazines were eighty pages of pulp fodder, laced with sex, adventure, history and menace. The ads were reflections of society at the time, too.
Flipping through them, you could almost picture Don Draper sipping a third martini in his office before noon, dreaming up quick-hit ads that sold everything from love pills to binoculars to early precursors of cell phones.
What’s interesting is that all of the same types of ads are still in play today, only the quality of the images and sales copy has changed.
Suffice it to say, men are always going to be men, drawn to the same stuff. These magazines just gave zero F’s about subtlety. Remember, they weren’t trying to appeal to Harvard-educated executives. Their core readership were the GIs that had served in World War II or Korea, or who would be going to Viet Nam.
Pictures were key, but in-depth research was not. The heavyweight titles and subtitles were enough to keep the pages turning.
One of my favorite patriotic pictorials was simply titled, “Invasion!” It included grainy black-and-whites from Normandy. That would be cool in and of itself, but the subtitle was even better: It can be a platoon carrying M-1s or an Army corps backed by atomic cannon.
Once they’re dumped on that beach, an invasion boils down to just plain guts. Guns, guts, military superiority, nostalgia and pride. All the ingredients that would ensure the reader would come back for more.
But once the initial content got the reader’s heart pumping, it was time to send that blood elsewhere.
Toward the middle of the magazine were the women. Bikinis, bed sheets, blondes and brunettes — the centerfolds were tame by today’s standards.
Remember though, there was no Tinder, Instagram or PornHub for a guy to get his fix.
For a quarter, the reader was immersed in a world that catered to his every desire. From Japanese wrestling girls to The Case of the Nude Lady Bartenders.
These literary gems also tried to answer medical questions like “What is Sexual ‘Excess?’” (A good question if we’ve ever heard one.)
The back pages of the magazines were very much like they are today. A collection of ads, business “opportunities” and promises of better living through consumption. The publishers had the formula nailed.
As societal tastes have changed over the decades, so has the content of most major men’s magazines. Impossibly beautiful men living impossibly extraordinary lives are the substance that publishers and advertisers think we want.
As a middle-aged man with a few kids and a world-class “dad-bod,” I just can’t relate. I want to hear stories from guys with scars that they got in some unknown part of the world. Authenticity is what sells, and a bit of creative license here and there just makes the reading fun.
So, the next time you’re cruising the local bookstore or men’s magazines at the supermarket, take a look at the covers and ask yourself if there is anything actually piquing your interest.
Do you really want to learn “7 Secret Tips to Grooming the Perfect Beard?”
Or do you want to see a leather-clad biker saving his old lady from the clutches of the Nazi sadists?
Yeah, us too.
Yeah. I know.
It’s an old clichéd joke to say you read adult magazines for the articles. However, if you’re talking about men’s mags from the 1950s and 60s, there might actually be some truth in your statement.
Magazines like Playboy, Adam, Jem, and Rogue often featured genuinely well-written articles and short fiction.
Getting published in a men’s magazine wasn’t the shameful smudge on an author’s reputation as it is today – in fact, it was a common stepping stone for soon-to-be-famous authors.
But it isn’t just the stories that deserve respect – it’s the artwork that complimented them. Often sleazy and purposefully outrageous, the illustrations were designed to entice you to read the story in a not-so-subtle way.
In my mind, Mort Künstler was one of the best. And I hope that I can impress upon you all why I loved his work. What follows are some of his art, and I hope that it teleports you all to another time and place…
Defending a house full of school girls from the rampaging communist menace…
Escaping on a raft with beautiful ladies and trying to navigate over rapids while the enemy tries to bomb you with explosives tied to kites…
Assault on a Nazi German stronghold…
Fighting off pacific islanders while on a captured Japanese patrol boat, while you protect the beautiful lasses who want to be saved…
Fending off ME-109s with a “tommy gun” while in a high altitude balloon, as you try to infiltrate the German V2 secret rocket program…
Rescuing women in a slave rape camp from their evil Nazi captors…
The crew of a merchant marine ship sunk by the Japanese, take control of the submarine and claim it for themselves…
Fighting off mutant, rapid, attack gophers…
Blowing up a secret Nazi installation while saving a beautiful scuba-dame…
Crashing through a bases gate with a red haired raven…
Battling sharks while shipwrecked on the high seas…
Fighting the evil communist Chinese with help from pretty attractive native women…
Special forces seize the personal quarters of a ranking Nazi German officer and commandeer his (ahem) possessions…
Military vet fights off thugs to protect the pretty lass…
Bank robbery, mission impossible style…
Hunting bigfoot for fine eating…
Taking over a Nazi German training aircraft and using it to bomb German bridges…
When the airfield is under attack, the hero races to a forgotten vintage biplane on display…
Dealing with evil Chinese triad mobsters…
Secret mission and convincing an attractive lass to help…
Separating the women from the Japanese as spoils of war…
Captured and a meeting of the Sheik…
When elephants rampage!
Freeing Russian women from the pleasure quarters…
Battle of Midway.
The fighting of the giant stingray!
A femme fatale…
Braving the wild rino!
Fighting a very agressive panther.
Staked down in the sand and being fed upon by vultures…
There’s a new shirtless cowboy in town…
Lone survivors. A man and two lovely women.
Mob action on board a yacht.
An art of seduction…
Seduction of two Nazi officers.
The rescue of a dame…
Battle in the skies…
A bank robbery…
Saling in the rough South Pacific…
Fighting together…
Party times Nazi style…
Balloon fun…
Rescue of trapped ladies from the Japanese…with tanks!
Plans within plans…
More heists…
Capture of a German military train…
Raid in a casino…
Seduction of Nazi elite…
A ruse for the big attack…
A surprise awaits inside the tent…
A paratroop rescue from the wild barbarians…
Hiding from the evil Chinese commies…
Seizing the beauty from the military base…
A bomb based bank heist…
Remember the Catina!
battle on the high seas…
The rewards of vice…
Stealing the oil…
Placing bombs on the hulls of the evil Japanese navy…
Mobsters caught poaching…
Capturing a key bridge…
And inside of China, some serious skull duggery…
Shootout in the subway…
Brave race for life…
Top secret mission to the South Pole.
The rewards of ill gains can provoke female inspiration…
Escape from a prisoner of war camp…
A historical battle…
Or battling the evil Chinese communists on their home turf…
Tromping though Vietnam…
Or being rescued by attractive native dames…
A civil war story…
Or fighting the wild indians…
Surprise awaiting at home…
Learning how to survive in the Northern wilderness…
Fighting the British…
Defending the South…
Destruction of the South…
Fun and games in the French Foreign Legion…
Secret mission to destroy the evil communist navy…
Taking away valuable assets…
Breaking up an evil Nazi party…
Destruction of a SAM missile complex…
Gathering of battle forces…
Taking over the port…
Taking over Nazi submarines…
Fighting a wild bear…
Prep for battle…
Recon the enemies new secret weapon…
Wagon train adventures…
And so on, and so forth.
I hope you all enjoyed this. My fingers are tired. Have a great rest of the day.
Do you want more?
I have more articles like this one in my Art Index here…
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.
The young Russian artist Elena Limkina reveals the inside of her fascinating sketchbook, where each page contains beautiful drawings in ink or watercolor. A wandering into the world of the artist through her creative diary, where she experiments styles and techniques, moving from architectural drawing to animal or floral illustration.
Throughout my life, I have maintained my own MM sketchbooks. Being both an artist, an engineer, and a scientist, having a well documented record of my thoughts was important. And like this artist, my books were very similar to these works.
I would use ink, pencil, and blue pencil in the journals. The light blue pencil was used to outline the shapes, and then I would use an ink pen to illustrate. I preferred to use a light green, or light tan notebook with lines. And for highlighting, I would use a white pencil.
On some notebooks, I would use a light wash of watercolor. This helped me add depth to my sketches.
However, many of my notes also incorporated formula, calculations, part numbers, addresses and the like. So I would often use a red pen, a blue pen, and sometimes other colored pens to highlight specific information.
I would use a yellow highlighter for passwords and access codes. And many of my notebooks used tape to hold in various photos, documents and other items that I wished to include in my journals.
One of the things that I was doing, up until I was incarcerated for my “retirement” was to print out photos on adhesive-backed paper. I would then cut out the paper, and place it nicely and tightly in the journal.
This included photos of new friends that I would make during my trips to China and the KTV establishments, maps, schedules and photos of projects.
Often, people would see me writing in my books and would want to take a look, and they would really love to go page by page through it. I am sure that it was meaningless to them, but they really seemed to like the mixture of sketches and thoughts.
Honestly, it looked a lot like the notebook that the Saint used in the movie of the same name. With sketches, and papers, and photographs.
I always instructed my engineers, designers, and interns to take up the habit of using and engineering notebook and using it in a more or less traditional manner. I also insisted that they do this religiously, as all it takes is one computer melt down to wipe away years of hard work.
The younger “kids” don’t understand as they believe that once in the “could” the data is forever safe. I don’t believe that that is true at all.
But having a journal is more than that. You can write down your dreams and monitor your personal non-physical life. You can include your affirmations. You can internally debate your wishes and dreams in your journal, and you can write down things in one place so that you would never forget about them. Whether it is a recipe, or some notes, you will always know where to find the information.
Most people, in modern society, do not understand the concept of privacy. Especially Americans, I am sad to say. Even though the Bill of Rights authorize “security and privacy in one’s personal papers and documents”, that hasn’t been functionally true for centuries.
I am one to tell you that AS A FACT.
In fact, it was my journals that were used against me when I was “retired”. Ah. Any excuse serves a tyrant.
But privacy is a natural need. We all require time alone. Whether it is to gather our thoughts, take a dump in the toilet, say our affirmations, pray, or masturbate. We, as humans, require privacy. Anyone who cannot recognize that basic need is an evil, selfish, and self-centered busybody.
Run away from them as fast as you can.
My first wife maintained dream journals, and as she gradually lost her mind (she had a mental illness), her journaling became an obsession. She would wake up and spend five hours writing down her dreams. Which was obviously unhealthy.
My brother maintained magick journals for his studies, incantations, and other projects that he worked on. He loved to use these thick, soft leather-bound books with a strap to hold everything tight and in place. While I really used a spiral bound lined notebook that I would buy in packs of ten.
Notebooks offer a person, such as myself, a canvas to illustrate our thoughts and concepts. It was when I was in prison that I cluttered up my notebooks (well, actually, there were just tablets of paper. We were unable to own notebooks in the ADC.) with sketches of the MWI and world-line travel.
Long time readers of MM will be able to imagine the kinds of sketches and drawings that I made regarding souls, consciousness, and travel on the MWI. As well as thoughts on the teleportation device, and the mathematics behind it’s operation.
I would place my personal thoughts and concepts there in my journals. While in prison, I used a kind of pencil known as a “golf pencil” because of its diminutive size, and I sharpened it with sandpaper that I could get from the commissary store. We were also permitted a small pen. I would use that to ink my sketches.
All was very crude, but it served its purpose. Yes, there were others while in prison that maintained a sketchbook where they practiced their art. But most of the people int eh ADC were illiterate. Often what we would call “urban youth”, “trailer park trash”, and “gang members. Folk like myself were a minority.
Of course, most of my sketch books, journals, and writings occurred while I was working as an inventor, designer, engineer, and scientist for the US government, large technical corporations and the like. And when they would let me go (i.e. fire me / downsize me / lay me off) they would demand to retain my journals and notebooks, often claiming that they contained company secrets.
These notebooks shown here are obviously not mine, but they have well been mine. The look, the feel, and the drawings are all similar.
I seriously encourage everyone to have their own journal or notebook. I do not suggest that they rely on electronic media, no matter how seductive it appears, and I have had multiple bad experiences in using these software programs.
Aside from the computer dying and a hard-drive death meant the end of everything that I wrote and collected, but other things happened as well. For instance, I once used an electronic diary. It was nice and worked really well. Then it suddenly stopped working.
As it turned out, the diary was only configured to work for five years, then you had to ask for an upgrade for a small fee of course. So when it stopped working, I called the company and discovered that they went out of business and all of my writings and documents were unable to be recovered.
And don’t get me started on Microsoft. You are typing away, and suddenly MS wants you to register, and pay for yearly updates. And when you don’t pay, you are locked out of your documents. It wouldn’t be all that bad, but last year they demanded $350 from me.
It’s one of the reasons why I switched to Lunix.
And forget about freeware. Or donationware. My experience with them have been hit or miss. You have to have one that is directly configured for your needs. Right now I have three folders (on my Lunix computer) each one containing a separate group of files unique to that particular program. All of which are not available in Lunix format.
Now, of course, there are benefits to using electronic media. For instance, you can lock it with a password. That makes it safe so that only you or the NSA can open it up. Passwords are transparent to the American government. If you don’t believe me, read my story about how I was retired.
But there are some disadvantages to putting things in journals. For one, they take up space. Unless you have a lot of room, and don’t mind hauling them around, it could be a problem. Another thing is many people, notably your spouse and the United States government, have no respect for boundaries, personal space, privacy or secrecy.
If you don’t want anyone to access them, you must either write in code, not write at all, or use symbology that only you understand.
This woman does a nice job in her artistic renderings and I find her work noteworthy. It’s a joy to look at, and takes and carries me away to an other place and other thoughts. I start to muse and dream. All very good things.
What ever your desires are, I urge you all to start sketching and journaling.
Of course, I no longer have my notebooks.
When I was retired, the police seized many of my notebooks as evidence of my devious character. They were subsequently “lost”. The remaining notebooks were acquired by my father, desirous of protecting me, promptly burned them.
Those sketches and notes, that I made while in prison, were often confiscated and misplaced. I never got them back. Of the few that I was working on at the time of my departure from prison, were in my luggage that was misplaced and ended up in the lost-luggage section in Newark, NJ.
I started anew. A “blank slate” as they say. And married a woman who respects my privacy, my confidentiality and my space. If you don’t have that, perhaps you should reconsider your relationships and what kind of life that you have.
Do you want more?
I have more articles like this one in my Art Index here…
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.
This is a sitrep for the Russian / Ukranian / Western collapse in coils as of early march 2022. It’s a bit all over the place. It includes fighting updates, control of the media narrative, pretty Chinese girls, jokes from Satan himself and hamburgers. Hamburgers too. Lots and lots, and lots of hamburgers. I hope that you will like it.
We start off with some food porn; the lovely hamburger.
In fact, I will go as far as to proudly state that this article has been brought to you by the lovely hamburger (Well, in this case a cheeseburger.) and I hope that you too end up appreciating the news with a flavor for excitement!
One of the residents of one of the new Republics.
This explains so much! Guy is from one of the new provences, the LDR or the NDR (not specified) that is joyous about Russia stopping the Ukrine shelling of their homes.
“Now I am constantly among the fighters. Many of my colleagues talk about the progress of the liberation of Donbass and Ukraine, so I focus on something else: I talk about the mood of our guys.I don’t need to say that they are all on the upswing, their morale is high and they are ready to carry out the tasks assigned to them. What is important is that none of them has any bitterness or desire to fight for the sake of war.For everyone, this battle is a battle for freedom. There are many, many young men in the ranks today from among those who have a home in the territories yet to be liberated. Can this be an invasion? It’s a homecoming, as they themselves say.There are many volunteers who come without summons, at the call of the heart. And regardless of age, civilian occupation, place of residence – they are all united by the desire to liberate the Republic and Ukraine from Nazism.This is not a war for the sake of war, this is a war in the name of peace, and the civilians of Ukraine are not enemies to these guys.”
Comic of the year!
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American “news”
Heh. Heh.
"Want some comedy? Go take a look at the front page of the Drudge Report. I’ve never seen such mass propaganda in my life. How do they possibly retain a shred of creditability on anything after this. The desperation reeks."
Yeah. The American “news” is all full about the mistake Russia made and how it is now in a disastrous quagmire. Oh No! Here’s the top, highest promoted links on the Drudge Report today. Nothing is balanced. Nothing is accurate. Nothing is a view about the entire situation. It’s all emotionally driven bullshit…
LIONHEART ZELENSKY...
Yeah. The proud, brave man who is taking on Russia all by himself.
'I NEED AMMO'...Oh. Right. So the reason behind the Russian incursion is to disarm the Ukraine. And that is what the West does not want at all. They want an armed Ukraine, and a long quagmire.
UKRAINIANS RALLY TO DEFEND...Brave Ukrainians ready to die for their homeland. Actually, the truth is more like Russia stepping in and stabilizing a very unstable place. Anyone who lays down weapons can continue their lives, and return to their roles once the situation stabilizes.
But the truth remains the same; the louder the shrilling, the more obvious the defeat of Western forces is. Indeed. The more vicious the propaganda gets, the more likely it is that NATO is loosing badly on the ground. Popcorn time.
While in the United States
Yah. It’s a completely different reality. Far removed. Living life. Just bombing the rest of the world to pieces and provoking wars left and right. But in the meantime, just enjoying life. video 4MB
For youse newcomers to MM…
I sprinkle content all over the place. You have to see the big picture, and realize that everythign is connected. When you see the big picture, and break up content MM style, you disable the vault 7 influences imbedded inside of all Western electronic media. Your mind adapts quicker than the vault 7 influence.
Additionally, it serves as an easy check to see if someone ACTUALLY read the article. Hit and run commenters don’t. And if you read the articles, and not comment on the food, pretty girls, or side ventures, then I know that you haven’t read the article. Like this joker…
By Dmitry Orlov and posted with the author’s permission.
Last Thursday I reposed my “top ten signs that Russia has invaded the Ukraine” from 8 years ago when the Ukrainian regime change and civil war first started and the West continuously made claims that Russia had invaded. Well, last Thursday Russia did indeed invade.
Russia had the full legal right to invade the Ukraine from several perspectives: to defend its allies in Donetsk and Lugansk;
to defend itself against Ukrainian WMDs, which the Ukrainian president threatened to start producing at the Munich Security Conference;
and to stop NATO from continuing its advance toward Russian borders in violation of its previous commitment of “not an inch to the east.”
Russia exercised its right of self-defense under article 51 of part 7 of the UN Charter.
The Ukraine had forfeited its right to territorial integrity under the 1970 UN Declaration by refusing to honor the rights of its Russian-speaking population.
It also refused to renew its Friendship Treaty with Russia and therefore no longer had a defined border with Russia that Russia was obligated to honor.
From a strictly legalistic perspective, claims that “Russia violated the Ukraine’s territorial integrity” or that this is “an act of Russian aggression” is just pure twaddle.
From a moral perspective, the fact that the entire international community idly stood by and ineffectually discussed politics for eight years during which the civilian population of Donetsk and Lugansk was continuously shelled by the Ukrainian “anti-terrorist operation” is utterly shameful.
Shameful.
People who are now speaking out against Russia’s military action in the Ukraine need to answer a simple question: Where have you been for the last eight years while [1] the carnage in Donetsk and Lugansk was going on, while [2] people were being burned alive in Odessa, [3] while the Ukrainian government organized terrorist operations on Russian territory and [4] while the entire Ukrainian population has been forced to kowtow to Americans and to speak Ukrainian, most often against its will?
If your answer is “I didn’t know” then you have forfeited your right to an informed opinion on what’s happening there now. Please keep that in mind and act accordingly.
Now I will go through the 10 predictions I made 8 years ago and see how well they held up in light of events that have unfolded for the past three days.
A reasonable expectation would be that I got them completely wrong; if not, then that’s something of a minor miracle. Please keep that in mind also.
1. Ukrainian artillery fell silent almost immediately. They are no longer shelling residential districts of Donetsk and Lugansk. This is because their locations had been pinpointed prior to the operation, and by Thursday afternoon they were completely wiped out using air attacks, artillery and ground-based rocket fire, as the first order of business. Local residents are overjoyed that their horrible ordeal is finally at an end.
Not quite true. Donetsk and Lugansk is still being shelled sporadically, although most of the firing has been suppressed and as more and more territory is being liberated from the Ukrainian forces by the Donbass militia (with Russian forces playing a supporting role). At the same time, new possibilities for civilian carnage are resulting from the fact that the Ukraine’s Nazi battalions, under guidance from their US/NATO minders, are hiding heavy weapons in residential districts and using civilians as human shields.
2. The look of military activity on the ground in Donetsk and Lugansk has changed dramatically. Whereas before it involved small groups of resistance fighters, the Russians operate in battalions of 400 men and dozens of armored vehicles, followed by convoys of support vehicles (tanker trucks, communications, field kitchens, field hospitals and so on). The flow of vehicles in and out is non-stop, plainly visible on air reconnaissance and satellite photos. Add to that the relentless radio chatter, all in Russian, which anyone who wants to can intercept, and the operation becomes impossible to hide.
This is obviously the case. No sane person would now say that there are no Russian forces in the Ukraine. They made their presence about as obvious as they possibly could and the sight of endless columns of Russian military vehicles rolling unhindered through the Ukrainian countryside appears to be effecting a sea change in the mindset of the Ukraine’s population. Throughout history, it has always been quick to switch allegiances as circumstances and battle lines shifted, and this time will probably be no exception.
3. The Ukrainian military has promptly vanished. Soldiers and officers alike have taken off their uniforms, abandoned their weapons, and are doing their best to blend in with the locals. Nobody thought the odds of the Ukrainian army against the Russians were any good. Ukraine’s only military victory against Russia was at the battle of Konotop in 1659, but at the time Ukraine was allied with the mighty Khanate of Crimea, and, you may have noticed, Crimea is not on Ukraine’s side this time around.
Again, not entirely true. It turns out that there is a hardened Nazi embedded with each and every detachment of Ukrainian forces whose job is to shoot those who try to surrender. Nevertheless, some unknown number of Ukrainian soldiers have surrendered, signed a promise to no longer fight against the Russian army, and have been given some food and sent home. In all, the Ukrainian military is turning out to be no different from other NATO-organized, NATO-trained forces, be they in Afghanistan, Georgia, Iraq or elsewhere. All of them immediately turn out to be completely useless as soon as a real military force arrives on the scene, be it the Russians, the Taliban or the Islamic Caliphate. Also notable is the fact that the large quantities of weapons recently supplied to the Ukraine by the US have been shown to be completely useless. The Javelin anti-tank missiles, which helped line the pockets of some of the Pentagon’s top brass, have been worse than useless: by the time they can be set up to fire there is generally nobody left alive to fire them, so the soldiers don’t even bother with them.
4. There are Russian checkpoints everywhere. Local civilians are allowed through, but anyone associated with a government, foreign or domestic, is detained for questioning. A filtration system has been set up to return demobilized Ukrainian army draftees to their native regions, while the volunteers and the officers are shunted to pretrial detention centers, to determine whether they had ordered war crimes to be committed.
Not true at all. The Russian troops are not engaging with the civilians in any way, scrupulously avoiding residential districts and doing their best to see that the delivery of electricity, water and other essentials is not disrupted. As far as denazification, I am still not sure what the plan is, but my hunch at the moment is that this will be left up to the Ukrainians themselves. There is a good chance that once they realize what the Nazis and their Western masters have been doing to their country, they will do their best to round up the Nazis and hang them on streetlights. The Nazis will see this coming (some already do) and will run away to Poland or Slovenia or points further west.
5. Most of Ukraine’s border crossings are by now under Russian control. Some have been reinforced with air defense and artillery systems and tank battalions, to dissuade NATO forces from attempting to stage an invasion. Civilians and humanitarian goods are allowed through. Businessmen are allowed through once they fill out the required forms (which are in Russian).
The Ukrainian border guards along the Russian border have abandoned their posts. Some of them walked over to the Russian side and surrendered. The Russian and Belorussian borders are under control from the Russian and Belorussian sides. The western border crossings are crowded from all the people flying to flee.
6. Russia has imposed a no-fly zone over all of Ukraine. All civilian flights have been cancelled. There is quite a crowd of US State Department staffers, CIA and Mossad agents, and Western NGO people stuck at Borispol airport in Kiev. Some are nervously calling everyone they know on their satellite phones. Western politicians are demanding that they be evacuated immediately, but Russian authorities want to hold onto them until their possible complicity in war crimes has been determined.
Flight radar shows zero flights over all of the Ukraine. In fact, air traffic has been disrupted over much of Europe, with many airspaces closed and lots of new restrictions on traffic. Many vacationers, especially those from the Ukraine, are stuck wherever they are. The ones in Egypt are lucky: the Egyptian government is paying for their hotel stays while they are stuck there. The Westerners, on the other hand, having learned their lesson from the fiasco in Afghanistan, fled the Ukraine ahead of time. Since there is a long list of places for them to get the hell out of before their luck runs out, it’s good that they are getting the knack of it.
7. The usual Ukrainian talking heads, such as president Poroshenko, PM Yatsenyuk and others, are no longer available to be interviewed by Western media. Nobody quite knows where they are. There are rumors that they have already fled the country. Crowds have stormed their abandoned residences, and were amazed to discover that they were all outfitted with solid gold toilets. Nor are the Ukrainian oligarchs anywhere to be found, except for the warlord Igor Kolomoisky, who was found in his residence, abandoned by his henchmen, dead from a heart attack. (Contributed by the Saker.)
The number one Ukrainian talking head, the president-cum-comedian Zelensky, is hiding in a bunker in Lvov, Führer-like, surrounded by his Nazi henchmen. His jumbled missives to the faithful appear to have been prerecorded. At the same time, the information war is proceeding apace, with numerous new fake news items arriving daily, too many to keep track of. The real fun will start when the TV channels in Kiev get denazified and Ukrainians stir from their eight-year stupor, figure a few things out for themselves and become extremely angry at those who have been lying to them for eight long years.
8. Some of the over 800,000 Ukrainian refugees are starting to stream back in from Russia. They were living in tent cities, many of them in the nearby Rostov region, but with the winter coming they are eager to get back home, now that the shelling is over. Along with them, construction crews, cement trucks and flatbeds stacked with pipe, cable and rebar are streaming in, to repair the damage from the shelling.
This is yet to start happening. It will be a slow process, given that the number of refugees now, eight years later, is in the millions and scattered over numerous Russian regions.
9. There is all sorts of intense diplomatic and military activity around the world, especially in Europe and the US. Military forces are on highest alert, diplomats are jetting around and holding conferences. President Obama just held a press conference to announce that “We don’t have a strategy on Ukraine yet.” His military advisers tell him that his usual strategy of “bomb a little and see what happens” is not likely to be helpful in this instance.
This is definitely the case. The goal for Western leaders now is to look purposeful and strong while doing nothing of consequence. They keep talking about cutting Russia off from SWIFT bank messaging system, but keep recoiling in horror when they realize what they will mean for their energy prices (which are already dangerously high). The Russian posture vis-à-vis Western sanctions seems to be “Bring them on; we are ready!” Apparently, eight years have been enough for Russia to thoroughly prepare for this event.
10. Kiev has surrendered. There are Russian tanks on the Maidan Square. Russian infantry is mopping up the remains of Ukraine’s National Guard. A curfew has indeed been imposed. The operation to take Kiev resembled “Shock and Awe” in Baghdad: a few loud bangs and then a whimper.
Russian tanks are unlikely to enter the city center; they are concentrated on destroying military installations, demobilizing the Ukrainian military and destroying the Nazi battalions. There is indeed a curfew in effect in Kiev.
One more significant development worth mentioning: Russian forces are taking charge of the Ukraine’s nuclear installations, including the one at Chernobyl, which is now under joint Russian/Ukrainian control. This will reduce the chance that the Ukrainian Nazis will try to blow up one of them on their merry way to hell. The Ukraine has 15 nuclear reactors, and since it is virtually out of other sources of energy it has been running all of them flat out. Two of them went off-line recently because of technical issues. Russia is working very hard to make Chernobyl 2.0 less of a possibility.
I am not sure what grade I should give myself for my predictions. Russia’s political and military planners have turned out to be quite a bit smarter than me, but this is not at all a surprise. After all, they have all of the intellectual resources of a huge, powerful country whereas I am just a guy with an office chair and a laptop.
Do I care to make some more predictions about the Ukraine?
Sure, why not!
1. Donetsk and Lugansk regions will continue on their path of closer and closer integration into the Russian Federation. They are already part of the Russian currency space, their educational systems are integrated with Russia’s (same standards and procedures), their defense systems are fully integrated and diplomatically they act as a well-synchronized unit.
2. An area further west, probably encompassing the entire basin of Dnieper River and the Black Sea littoral, from the Belorussian to the Romanian border, will be part of a Russian zone. The regions within this zone will be given political autonomy within a general security and economic framework linked to Russia. The rough outlines of this area can be determined from the following language map. The areas in red and orange—is Russian-speaking and is naturally part of the Russian zone. The only two exceptions will be a Carpatho-Russian enclave (in purple) which will need to be administered separately and a Hungarian enclave (in green) that might as well be absorbed into Hungary.
3. Further west will lie a zone that will be wrapped in fancy paper with ribbons and bows and presented as an extra-special present to the EU to love to cherish and to suffer migraines and aneurisms over. Roughly speaking, the yellow area is Ukrainian-speaking and is an all-you-can-eat (please don’t choke) buffet for the West. It has relatively poor soil and high incidence of iodine deficiency and imbecility in the general population. It is also where Ukrainian nationalism comes from and where the current Ukrainian Nazi plague originated. The Russian stance should be (if I may be so bold as to recommend what the Russian government should do) along the lines of “If you like your Ukrainian Nazis, you can have your Ukrainian Nazis.”
Why the Chinese system works
Here we have a son who has a mental issue. He left home 11 years ago. But in China, everyone is monitored, and it is the duty, the requirement; the responsibility of each local govenrment to know who is in their jurisdiction. So they found this young man. And they used AI to find out who he was, and contacted his family. In this video, the mother and his sister comes to get him and take him home. It is not right for him to live hand-to-mouth on the streets alone.
I argue that it is better to drive a distressed automobile but eat extraordinarily well, than you drive a nice car and live off fast food. And you can take that opinion of mine “to the bank“.
Love her belly
I like this girl’s belly. It is appealing. Like a milkshake. video 5MB
Taiwan Leadership argues for a change in alliances
Well, it is obvious to us here, but hidden from the rest of the world. The United States does not care about you or your country, and will abandon you and leave to to rot if it is to their advantage.
Well, it looks like people in Taiwan are watching the events and wondering “what about us”?
Former Taiwan Vice President from the pro Independence Party 民进党 (The people progressive party) openly criticized her own party and current president. She now promotes discarding alignment with America, and a military buildup. She now is endorsing reunification with China. Wow.
This is obvious to me, but not so for the rest of the world.
‘Never forget the real threat to world’: Amid Ukraine crisis, the Chinese embassy in Russia slams the United States. Among the 248 Armed conflicts that occurred in 153 regions across the world from 1945 to 2001, 201 were initiated by the US, accounting for 81% of the total number.
It’s all about community. Participate. Make the world a better place. Be like the Chinese. video 6MB
Austrian Minister of Defence, Klaudier Tanner
According to SD, this might be the person who would launch World War III. Whether it is soon, or far off. This is the face of the person to initiated the nuclear conflagration.
Austrian Minister of Defense, Klaudier Tanner.
Satan has some advice to Americans / EU
Taxi Driver gives a ride for free
He’s a true Rufus. He sees a young girl carrying a baby all alone,a nd stope and gives them a free ride. What a Rufus! video 6MB
Now, let’s talk hamburgers.
This piece of work really speaks to me. You know…
Hamburgers for all.
What do the Chinese think?
Maybe a tiny percentage of netizens are very interested in the situation in Ukraine, following it constantly, but I’d say majority (95%, I guess ?) of Chinese just get on with their life and feel grateful that they can live in a contry where NATO/US & its 5-eyes allies can not come and bomb it.MSM/some people keep on posting this or that about Chinese/China’s stands on the on-going situation between Russia and Ukraine, it sometimes seems to me like a part of the Western psyop to drive a wedge between Russia and China and their supporters/sympathisers.
-Lulu
Russian SWIFT cutoff
According to the Russian National SWIFT Association, Russia has the second-largest number of users after the US, with some 300 Russian financial institutions in the system, more than half of Russia’s financial institutions.
This is not the first time US, EU banned Russia from SWIFT. So Putin is not caught by surprise.
Russia is the world second largest exporter of resources, so, by imposing sanction on Russia from using SWIFT (yet again), it will force the world hungry for Russian resources to trade through China in RMB.
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Only this time, the Chinese RMB international transaction system is established and ready to welcome the world with confidence.
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As a result, we can expect the continue rising in value of rmb, this will attract more and more investors using rmb as reserve currency, and will speed up the replacement of US dollar to rmb worldwide.
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There is always good reason behind an inevitable empire collapsed:
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US regimes are basically run by elderly who born in the 1930s and 40s, these are out of touch extreme supremacists. They are self centred, know no consequences, one leg already in the coffin; truly ugly, old folks. Their stupidly and aggression will send their country into poverty, backwardness, and disintegration. Well, it already has, but so far the decay has been hidden from prublic view.
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As the Chinese word 危机 (crisis) suggests; 危 is for danger, and 机 is for opportunity.
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So each time the West creates a crisis for China and others, China will identify the opportunities to turn the crisis into opportunity and make herself stronger.
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Each time, US and Europe push and promote aggression against China, they are actually helping to create an enemy that they cannot defeat.
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Welcome to the coming new world order with more fairness, equality, and freedom from the nasty; nasty American-lead unipolar global dictatorship.
China’s Xinghua News journalist reporting from Ukraine and Belarus
– Feb. 28th around 8: 30 local time, the same Chinese businessman of yesterday’s vido I posted, who lives in Kiev suburb, tells Xinhua News that the suburb of Kiev is quiet. It’s safe to stay at home. He also says there’s only one TV channel in Ukraine right now only reporting the war: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1Ea411h7GX?spm_id_from=333.999.0.0;
No, it is not the image of a “great and wonderful white shinging building on the hill”, but rather a corrupt, third world nation that is falling down into black hole of decay and internal rot at all levels. video 51MB
Why I think that America has been taken over by Satan…
Think Hamburgers
This lass certainly does.
I thought we were reasonably free of Trump and I ignore most of his utterings. But this one – it got to me.
TRUMP: “Under Bush, Russia invaded Georgia. Under Obama, Russia took Crimea. Under Biden, Russia invaded Ukraine.”“I stand as the only president of the twenty-first century on who’s watch Russia did not invade another country.”
America’s brutalist belief system
No wonder, the bully still thinks it’s 20 years old, muscular and tough. When instead, it’s an old seniale man, with a walker. video 3MB
From the attack dogs’ own mouths—how stupid can these people be?
Why I think that America has been taken over by Satan…
Remember that China trains EVERYONE to fight
Here’s rifle training in middle school. I wonder what the American school kids learn in schools today. video 3MB
Berated about my love for ladies
Yeah. Trolls hate me putting up pictures of pretty ladies. Oh, boy oh boy! Do they hate it. It drives them bonker-crazy! But no one has yet to complain about my love for hamburgers.
Here we have a vintage lass hold a fine burger in her hands. Now, what’s wrong about that? Whoops! Mind the nipple flash. I think that it must be a “wardrobe malfunction”.
Military sitrep overview – Ukraine
At the operational level there have been mistakes such as about convoys undefended. At the strategic level things are very much on track. Russian procedure on clearing towns is excellent and was used extensively in Syria.
Step 1 approach the town and assess the chance of their surrender Step 2 surround the town, cutting off resupply. Step 3 based on initial recon begin with very targeted strikes weakening defenses Step 4 send in probes to gain a clearer picture of internal defenses Step 5 begin degrading them Step 6 open humanitarian corridors Step 7 begin probing attacks from different sides 24/7 to disturb and confuse and sleep deprive (your troops can rest) Step 8 when defenses are sufficiently weakened invade
Chinese Term ‘Wuxin Gongzuo’: Can’t Focus on Work Due to Russia-Ukraine Crisis
Chinese netizens are so focused on the Russian attack on Ukraine that nobody can focus on work (wuxin gongzuo). From HERE.
2022 03 01 15 20
A comment
The Grand Chessboard reveals all.
The purpose of NATO is...
keep Germany down in Europe,
keep the USA in control of Europe,
keep the Russians out.
With the combined factors of;
Russia’s rise and dedollarise;
China’s rise militarily and economically;
Germany’s pending approval of NS2 to increase Germany’s economic strength; Germany being the dominant economy and country in EU;
America had to find a way to scare EU and tighten America’s stranglehold on the EU.
What better way than to provoke a war in a part of Europe not exactly vital to EU?
Ukraine is going exactly to plan: it’s a win win for USA and Russia.
Russia knows its LNG sales to other countries, like Japan, will not be targeted. Can you imagine what will happen to Japan if LNG from Sakhalin is removed? The depressive effects will spark a global depression.
You can bet China is studying this Ukraine conflict very intently.
We have reached an inflection point.
The world will shift to a path different from the hegemon’s choosing. Whatever deity you choose to praise, do thank him/her for your salvation.
-Grune
Pretty girl
Here’s one of the popular girls on Douxing in China. She’s impressive. video 3MB
How about some hamburgers?
While all sorts of crazy stuff is going on in the United States, the rest of the world is fine and following plans. So don’t get too worked up about it. how about enjoying a fine hamburger instead.
Elon Musk deploys SpaceX’s Starlink Internet satellites over Ukraine after request from vice PM | Euronews
There seems to be an obvious connection between the United States military / government and Elon Musk. From the attack on the Chinese Space Station to this, it’s obviously suspicious.
Nice view. She’s a strutting down the street don’t you know. video 3MB
Oh, and don’t forget about the fries!
Sheech! I am so accustomed about eating hamburgers with french fries that I forgot how to eat a burger without them. Usually, I try to substitute potato chips, or potato salad instead.
Americans, Brits and Europeans should stop clapping with glee…
This is the latest comment from Aaron Hawkins (Storm Clouds Gathering):
“ As this war heats up you will see many cheering for one flag or the other; promoting escalations and retaliations. This is a trap.
Who exactly benefits from a major war that sends millions of young, fighting age men and women to slaughter each other in Eurasia (at the precise moment when civil disobedience with teeth was beginning to spread)?
And what do you suppose is about to happen to the monetary system now that Russia is being cut from SWIFT?
Did you consider the fact that not only does Europe depend heavily on Russian gas (that the U.S. cannot even come close to replacing), but Russia and Ukraine also happen to be the world’s two largest wheat exporters comprising approximately 30% of global production?
All of Ukraine’s exports have been halted, and with Russia cut off from the western banking system all future customers will have to work outside the dollar.
Even if the physical war were to be contained to Ukraine (spoiler alert: it won’t), the consequences of the cyber and economic warfare already underway will be devastating. Western leaders are setting their populations up for much more than just parabolic price increases. Widespread shortages and famine are on the horizon. This will not be a short term phenomenon."
Five days into the war and the first inkling of truth is presented to Americans
Watch Yevhen Karas the leader of Ukraine’s neo-Nazi terror gang C14’s speech from Kiev earlier this month. Straight from the horses’ mouth, he dispels the many narratives pushed by the Western governments, the mainstream media and the State Department.
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He claims:
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– Ukraine is being armed as pawns of the West because “we have fun killing”
– “We have started a war”
– “We have the most Javelins on the European continent”
– The European family has already collapsed
– Maidan would’ve been a “gay parade” if not for Nazi influence
America is pushing all this warfare
Keep in mind the ugly face of what he Hell that everyone is dealing with right now. The United States is NOT a happy, safe, and healthy nation right now. video 3MB
Now that’s a serious whopper!
Wow!
Great Video Speech regarding Ukraine & Russia 2014
Well, worth the watch. I watched it, was going to record it, and then Boom! No longer available in my region. Sigh! I urge everyone to watch it.
Do people seriously imagine Russia simply blundered into the Ukraine not knowing what the west would do?
You may be surprised to hear that the world is actually still spinning. All we have to deal with is the mighty Wurlitzer which is an old-style pipe organ for theaters, and also a propaganda instrument.
Allow me a moment to explain:
In 1967 the magazine Ramparts ran an exposé revealing that the Central Intelligence Agency had been secretly funding and managing a wide range of citizen front groups intended to counter communist influence around the world.
In addition to embarrassing prominent individuals caught up, wittingly or unwittingly, in the secret superpower struggle for hearts and minds, the revelations of 1967 were one of the worst operational disasters in the history of American intelligence and presaged a series of public scandals from which the CIA’s reputation has arguably never recovered.CIA official Frank Wisner called the operation his “mighty Wurlitzer,” on which he could play any propaganda tune.
Hugh Wilford provides the first comprehensive account of the clandestine relationship between the CIA and its front organizations.
Using an unprecedented wealth of sources, he traces the rise and fall of America’s Cold War front network from its origins in the 1940s to its Third World expansion during the 1950s and ultimate collapse in the 1960s.Covering the intelligence officers who masterminded the CIA’s fronts as well as the involved citizen groups—émigrés, labor, intellectuals, artists, students, women, Catholics, African Americans, and journalists—Wilford provides a surprising analysis of Cold War society that contains valuable lessons for our own age of global conflict.
Now, the Mighty Wurlitzer, exposed during the cold war, has never ended.
We see it in full swing now.
Here are a few snippets, a few items from memory (it has to be from memory as most of the Russian sites are still down, or up or down, in a relentless cyber propaganda war and this cannot be meticulously linked to source).
And you know what, the Ukraine inherited its own theater and mighty Wurlitzer, where they are designing and producing for the common man, theater productions for this current time.
Excepting now, it is all done in studio with breathless journalists playing war and running around in front of green screens.
So, while the tinny and discordant theater music sometimes drowns out even our own ability to think (it is torture, you know!) let’s look at a few realities.
Sanctions. Big Big Headlines – Russia is sanctioned for this or that and for basically everything, even Vodka. The latest is SWIFT (but only for a few banks). Take a good look at the sanctions. It is paper production for the purpose of paper production. The German sanctions on Russian banks for example have fine print. (They all have). They’re sanctioning Russia from hell, but of course, this does not apply to gas or oil payments. Those will continue, says the fine print.
Sanctions on Russia are now the latest fashion accessory. The one that can play that Wurlitzer the loudest is the one who wins. So what happens if they don’t win? What happens if they are busy shooting themselves in the heart, and not even in the foot?. What happens if the fervor to punish Russia simply accelerates their own demise?
Russia is decoupling as fast as what the West is sanctioning. A headline that comes to mind is: “European Commission: The disconnection of a number of banks from SWIFT “will actually block Russian exports and imports”.
No Einstein, it will hasten de-dollarization.
How about a plate of double cheeseburgers?
I could easily eat all of them up. WHat they do need is a fine strawberry milkshake, don’t you know.
Chinese girl
Let’s take a look at this fine Chinese lass. Here she is inside of her house. I’ll bet she is fun to be with. video 1MB
America’s Anti-Russian “news”…
This morning from Medvedev:
‘Final review’ of Russia’s relations with West now possible – former president
Dmitry Medvedev has dubbed European organizations “meaningless almshouses”.
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Western sanctions could be an “excellent reason for a final review” of Russia’s relations with the nations that have imposed the restrictions, the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council and former president, Dmitry Medvedev, said on Saturday.
Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, which was launched on February 24, has prompted outrage in the West and a new wave of harsh sanctions against Russia. In a lengthy post on the Russian social network VK, Medvedev called the restrictions “a myth, a figment, a figure of speech.”
“Sanctions could be an excellent reason for the final review of all relations with those states that have introduced them. Including interruption of the dialogue on strategic stability,” Medvedev wrote.
[sidebar] Take another look at that sentence – why now? It is because most of the western world do not have answers to Russia on strategic stability, so they decided to play that Wurlitzer pretty loud to attempt to hide their inability).
He added that in principle, it is possible “to renounce everything,” including the New START Treaty.
“Yes, and diplomatic relations, in principle, are not particularly needed. It’s time to close the embassies with barn locks. And to continue contacts by examining each other only through binoculars and weapons’ optical systems,” Medvedev said.
Commenting on the decision by the Council of Europe and Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe to suspend Russia’s membership, the former president said that while this is a “flagrant injustice,” it could still be considered as a good reason “to finally slam the door and forget about these meaningless almshouses forever.”
This development could also be used to “restore a number of important institutions for prevention of especially serious crimes in the country,” he said, such as the “death penalty for the most dangerous criminals, which, by the way, is being actively used in the United States and China.”
He has no assets abroad and to the UK sanctions against Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote:
“Neither Putin, nor Lavrov have accounts neither in Britain nor anywhere abroad. Maybe the kingdom’s government got something frozen off rather than it froze something?”
We are in a new world.
A few more:
Russia has just suspended cooperation with NASA on the international space station .. including the launch team which will not be available to the US. Russia will work with China.
Zap!
Are there any US astronauts there at the moment? I don’t know, but Elon Musk will have to get them home.
Let’s take a look at few more of Mr Putin’s actions these last days.
Russia’s President Meeting (http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/67851) with Security Council permanent members
💬 Vladimir Putin: According to available information, and this is confirmed by objective monitoring – we are seeing this; Banderites and neo-Nazis are putting up heavy weapons, including MLRS, right in the central districts of large cities, including Kiev and Kharkov. They plan to force return fire by Russian strike systems vs residential quarters. They are acting in the same way terrorists act all over the world – using people as shields.
It is known for a fact that all this is being done on the recommendations of foreign consultants, primarily American advisors.
❗️ Once again, I am appealing to the military of the armed forces of Ukraine. Do not allow neo-Nazis and Banderites to use your children, wives and elders as a live shield. Take power into your own hands. It seems it will be easier for us to come to terms with you than with this gang of drug addicts & neo-Nazis that have settled in Kiev and that have taken the Ukrainian people.
President Vladimir Putin had a telephone conversation (https://is.gd/m8pf2L) with President of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev.
The Presidents discussed developments related to the special military operation designed to protect peaceful civilians in Donbass as well as Ukraine’s demilitarisation and denazification.
☝️ Shavkat Mirziyoyev expressed understanding of Russia’s actions.
The Presidents also touched upon certain current issues on the bilateral agenda. They reaffirmed their shared intention to continue the development of the Russian-Uzbek strategic partnership with a focus on implementing specific trade, economic, and humanitarian projects.
President Vladimir Putin had a telephone conversation (https://is.gd/322XIF) with President of the People’s Republic of China Xi Jinping.
The President of Russia gave the President of China a detailed account of the reasons behind the recognition of the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Lugansk People’s Republic and the start of a special military operation to protect civilians from genocide and ensure the demilitarisation and denazification of the Ukrainian state. Vladimir Putin also noted that considering the signals received from Kiev he was ready to send a delegation to Minsk to hold talks with representatives of Ukraine.
☝️ Xi Jinping stressed that he respected the actions of the Russian leadership in the current crisis.
The two Leaders assessed the current international situation from a common perspective. They reaffirmed a mutual readiness to closely cooperate and support each other further at the UN and in other multilateral platforms.
Held at Kyrgyzstan’s initiative, the telephone conversation (https://is.gd/Ppnjou) between President Vladimir Putin and President of the Kyrgyz Republic Sadyr Japarov focused on the situation with the special military operation carried out by Russia in Ukraine.
☝️ Sadyr Japarov said that Kiev was responsible for derailing the Minsk agreements and expressed his support for Russia’s decisive actions to protect civilians in Donbass. Vladimir Putin thanked the President of Kyrgyzstan for his principled solidarity.
The two Presidents reaffirmed their mutual commitment to strengthening the strategic partnership and allied relations between Russia and Kyrgyzstan in all areas.
President Vladimir Putin had a telephone conversation (https://is.gd/oACYDq) with Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan.
The Parties continued their exchange of views on the practical aspects of the implementation of the agreements documented by the November 9, 2020, January 11 and November 26, 2021, tripartite statements by the leaders of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia on Nagorno-Karabakh, including efforts to ensure stability and security on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border. Some items on the current bilateral agenda were also touched upon.
The Ukraine is dancing to the music of the Mighty Wurlitzer. Don’t you do that too! Turn the music off. Zone B is way behind Zone A in playing the organ, but way ahead in creating a life friendly to human people, for this planet.Margarita Simonyan focused on the 5th and 6th columns with a devasting phrase:
“If you are now ashamed that you are Russian, do not worry, you are not Russian,” she wrote in her Telegram channel.
And in the event that you are worried about China, they just posted this from their Russian embassy. They truly understand that this time it is Russia, but for the throw of a set of dice, or a different tune on the Wurlitzer, it could have been China.
Captures
USA’s and UK’s “lethal aid” To Ukraine captured by DPR and Russian forces. SMAW-D & NLAW
It’s all so easy to get caught up. Don’t. Sit down. Settle down and enjoy life more.
Serious considerations
I imagine at this point President Putin has convened a Stavka and he and the general staff of the Russian Armed Forces are now looking at all thinkable and unthinkable situations that could evolve that would impact the safety and security of the Russian people.
The President of the Russian Federation has to prepare the State apparatus for:
1. Sustained war against Russia
2. Explain to the people what they must do and why they must do it
3. Insure all civil defense structures are ready to house and feed the masses
4. Speak with the clergy to address all military personnel and give them the spiritual confidence to fight hard
5. Seek allies including China and make them all realize they will have to engage their forces now or perish
Russia waited too long and now she will saddle up and ride as fast as possible to meet the enemy head on and at full speed. The time for principled diplomacy has ended; the shashka has been unsheathed and it will cut the beast a thousand times and stab it in its dark heart until it is dead.
The feat of the Russian special forces opened the way to Kiev –
The Russian army entered Kiev on Friday. This happened only on the second day after the start of the special military operation in Ukraine, which means that what is happening can be assessed as a grandiose success. However, there is reason to believe that the entire plan of the operation hung in the balance – and everything turned out successfully only thanks to the real feat of the special forces soldiers.
The most important event took place in the north of Ukraine, in the region of Kiev. It was there, at the Gostomel airport, on February 24, that several helicopters landed with Spetsnaz commandos. https://youtu.be/rorZDGkcd54
In the video, several people, without fussing, set up a firing position on one of the outskirts of the giant Gostomel airfield to the sound of automatic bursts. The pathos of the plot was powerful and straightforward – Russian troops, just a few hours after the start of the operation, found themselves on the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital. It was unthinkable to imagine something like this the day before.
The Antonov airfield (officially called Gostomel a few years ago) is the “home” airfield of the famous Antonov company. This is an airfield with a huge runway (three and a half thousand meters), covering hundreds of hectares. It operates and is equipped with everything necessary for the takeoff and landing of heavy military transport aircraft.
From a military point of view, Gostomel has a number of advantages over other Kiev airfields (Zhulyany and Boryspil). First of all, it is not used as often, it has much less staff and people in general. It is located on the right bank of the Dnieper, where the main administrative buildings of Kiev are located. It is closest to the city center. And most importantly, it is closest to the Belarusian border (only about 60-70 km), from where the Russian landing force advanced.
Apparently, special forces helicopters covered this distance over the Dnieper, which in these places, from the Belarusian-Ukrainian border to Kiev, is extremely wide. The instant appearance of a division of the Russian Airborne Forces twenty kilometers from the center of the Ukrainian capital means a knife at the heart of the Kiev regime.
Of course, the significance of what was happening was instantly understood in the Kiev military leadership. Throughout the night of February 25, there were reports of an intense battle was going on in the vicinity of Gostomel. The British Minister of Defense even announced that – “the Russian landing near Kiev failed, Russia lost hundreds of fighters.”
However, on the morning of February 25, it turned out that the skirmish in Gostomel did not subside at all – as it should have happened if the special forces had really been destroyed. On the contrary, it intensified. And in the neighborhood of Gostomel, other battles suddenly began. And there were reports of completely different tanks – Russian combat vehicles were found near the village of Vorzel, ten kilometers from the airfield.
It was, apparently, a special aid group made her way all night to the special forces soldiers surrounded at the airfield – and finally released it. Following which, there were reports of other combat groups of the Russian army approaching Kiev.
And a little later came the official message.
“On February 24, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation carried out a successful landing operation in the area of the Gostomel airfield in the suburbs of Kiev. During the capture of the airfield, more than 200 nationalists from the special units of Ukraine were killed,” said the official representative of the Russian Ministry of Defense, Igor Konashenkov. Later it was stated that Russian troops completely blocked Kiev from the west.
We have before us an example of exceptional valor and military skill, shown to all of us in what is called real time.
You must realize why America is pushing this war against Asia…
Fight, fight, fight is all about distract, distract, and distract. The true face of what America is, is NOT pretty. I wonder why these images are not shown on CNN, BBC or FOX “news”? video
It’s about how you look at things
The end of SWIFT
China’s Cross-Border International Payments System will give Russia a lifeline and accelerate the de-dollarization of the world.
French sea police have seized a ship in the Channel that authorities suspect belongs to a Russian company in one of the first visible displays of the West enforcing sanctions on Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine.
The cargo vessel transporting cars, which was headed for St Petersburg, is “strongly suspected of being linked to Russian interests targeted by the sanctions”, said Capt Veronique Magnin, of the French Maritime Prefecture. The ship was diverted to the port of Boulogne-sur-Mer in northern France between 3am and 4am local time, Magnin said, adding that checks were being carried out by customs officials and that the ship’s crew was “being cooperative”.
The US Treasury Department has issued blocking sanctions against the vessel saying it was owned by a subsidiary of Russian lender Promsvyazbank, one of the Russian entities hit by US sanctions.
The bank’s CEO, Pyotr Fradkov, is the son of Mikhail Fradkov, a former head of Russia’s foreign intelligence service, who also served as prime minister under Vladimir Putin. Pyotr Fradkov was himself included in the latest round of US sanctions. Promsvyazbank, in a comment sent to Reuters, said its subsidiary no longer owns the Baltic Leader, and that it was bought by a different entity before the sanctions were imposed.
The Russian embassy in France is seeking an explanation from authorities over the seizure, Russia’s RIA news agency quoted the embassy as saying. The embassy also said the ship’s crew had been allowed to come ashore and move freely about the port.
The United States, European Union, and other Western states this week imposed extensive new financial and trade sanctions on Russia after it sent military forces into neighbouring Ukraine. The US Treasury said Promsvyazbank was put under sanctions “for operating or having operated in the defence and related materiel and financial services sectors of the Russian Federation economy.” It was also targeted by EU sanctions.
MM comments on this article
French sea police have seized a ship
The US Treasury Department has issued blocking sanctions
The Russian embassy in France is seeking an explanation
Ergo; France is a proxy nation taking orders from the United States.
It’s about how you look at things
Just focus on what is in front of you. One fry at a time.
Chinese girl on a bed
It’s pretty typical. yah. Nice smile. Like she ate a bird. LOL
From everything we see in the news lately about all the attacks against Russia,we may actually be heading for WW3 after all.
If the EU does provide military aircraft to Ukraine, and they allow them to based in NATO countries next door…
…then they emerge from their safe bases in NATO and fly out and attack Russian forces and then scurry back across the border.
There is no way Russia will tolerate that.
What they will do is that they will go across those borders and destroy all those bases, and the weapons there.
If that brings war between Russia and NATO then Europe needs to be sure they have enough nuclear bomb shelters around, because they are going to need them.
I saw on RT that Russia was going to start evacuating their citizens from the EU.
Now just what do we think that says… eh?
An important tweet
I think that Richard Moore, the chief of MI6, certainly revealed a lot when he tweeted this…
“With the tragedy and destruction unfolding so distressingly in Ukraine, we should remember the values and hard won freedoms that distinguish us from Putin, none more than LGBT+ rights. So let’s resume our series of tweets to mark #LGBTHM2022.”
Peter Mann Comments
Not everyone knows the details and background of events happening halfway around the world, even for well educated and smart people. If they sit there and watch the mainstream news, they will obviously be victims to pervasive and well coordinated propaganda.
Confirmation bias is a strong force.
If you’re not careful, whatever you hear first becomes the truth regardless of facts. Even very smart people may be susceptible. Sometimes, arguments ensue. The first part of the comment relates to finding the truth, the second part more specifically on the current armed conflict, with a small prediction for the end game.
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No need to argue. Challenge the seeker of truth to find out.
Here is a short clip from Brian Berlectic, an ex-Marine who has been living in Thailand and has done very good work showing his viewers the sources of his information, usually directly from the liar’s mouth. This is very similar to I. F. Stone, who exposed the liars by meticulously digging through information provided by the liars. My first exposure to I. F. Stone was his “The Hidden History of the Korean War.” It is important to know who the liars are, and then never trust anything they say.
How to learn the truth? Stay smart, read widely, read beyond the superficial, read between the lines, read the fine print, learn about the writer/speaker and his organization, get into the head of the author, be careful of false narratives, reject insidious adjectives, learn about deliberate omissions and obfuscations, look in the mirror, question everything, including your own beliefs.
Liars are not hard to expose, yet people prefer to believe in liars who are known to do nothing but lie. Ask yourself why. It’s very difficult if not impossible for a hypocrite to admit that he or she is a hypocrite. Americans like to elect them for a good reason.
Here is a clip from an Ukrainian girl Masha who is from Donetsk in the Donbass, about 20 kms from the war zone. She speaks almost perfect Chinese and works as a translator for Chinese businessmen in Kyiv. Her family has been living in the shadow of war for the past 8 years. Masha has done vlogs showing the bombed out areas. American poison has been creating hell for some Ukrainians but the hypocrites do not see it. Who paid for the poison? The American people of course.
There has always been a solution for peace; it’s known as Minsk II. But it’s another lie just like Camp David and Oslo. The Palestinians are weak and divided, so they will suffer what they must. But Russia is the largest country in the world with the most nuclear arms. Its people have destroyed Napoleon’s previously invincible Grande Armee and single-handedly killed over a million German soldiers who dared to invade their country. American lies of how they have saved the world from the Nazis are laughable for people who have read history beyond American propaganda. Why should anyone be so delusional as to believe that the Russians will sit there and be bullied into submission without a fight? The stupidity of these tiny European chihuahua countries like Georgia and Lithuania are so poisoned by the American lie that they really think they want to goad Russia into war. And when they have it, where is their protector overlord?
Ukraine is of course a basketcase. It is just a puppet government installed by the hegemon, and its comedian head of state has been following the American script of forcing Russia into war. All that suits America of course. This war would not have happened if America wanted peace. The war would be easy to avert and it’s not by America imposing the mother of all sanctions on Putin (the false narrative around which the political partisans are fighting; American mainstream media has become a farce). America only has to agree to let Ukraine be a non-military zone. How hard is that? How evil is Russia’s request? Russia’s position has been very clear from Day One. If America won’t agree, then Russia will turn Ukraine into a NMZ. For some reason, many pundits refused to see it. But America does not want peace. America wants wars that Russia will be fighting with its European neighbors. It will let America put its European vassals on a short leash, get Russia and Europe to destroy each other’s economy, and create bad blood for Russia and its neighbors while providing a lot of good propaganda for America, allowing the Empire to maintain its hegemony. It is nefarious as hell. And of course, the morons of America will suddenly decide that the lying politicians and lying mainstream media are telling righteous truths. Evil Russia has out of the blues invaded Ukraine without provocation. The stock market goes up because oil goes up and the Military Industrial Complex expects big contracts. The hegemon wins again, thanks to the Ukrainian Neo-Nazis acting as America’s attack dogs.
Once you cut through the bullshit and understand what’s going on, it’s easy to predict what will happen.
These people and countries acting as attack dogs for the empire must therefore be taught an unforgettable lesson. If you don’t put down the rabid dogs, they will get up and bite you again. Therefore, Russia will not take half measures. They will not stop unless the surrender is total, and punishment for the miscreants dealt out accordingly. Otherwise, this operation will be for naught.
Why argue? There is no morality in politics. If anyone believes there is, then they’re fools. Show me a country willing to crusade for the Palestinians and I’ll show you a moral politician. In geopolitics, one does not own anything one cannot defend. The rest is bullshit and balderdash.
For the same reason, I wrote two years ago that a golden opportunity presented itself for China to summarily reunify with Taiwan without bloodshed. I suspect a well planned operation at the golden moment will only take hours, certainly less than a day. The sooner it happens, the less mayhem America can cause with its poison, paid by American taxpayers of course. The American people will starve and die on the street, but they love a good war, and will spend any amount of money to fight the Russians to the last Ukrainian. How happy they will be to see the Chinese fighting the Chinese!
Wow! Since I have incorporated my mix up of multiple subjects in articles, there was a near collapse in troll activity on MM. Of course, youse guys wouldn’t be aware of what’s going on as I don’t publish the majority of comments. But yeah. It’s all way, way down. It drives the algorithms crazy. They cannot handle dialog and it causes them to go zoomy! Whether a person or a ‘bot. They cannot handle mixed content in an article.
Quick update from the talks in Belarus:
Russians and Ukranians are trying to discuss how to end the conflict. The dude in the cap from Ukraine at the talks demands the immediate withdrawal of Russian troops from the Crimea and Donbass. Russia wants the end of NATO encroachment.
So don’t expect anything from these negotiations.
You will note that the Ukrainian negotiators all have their iPhones laid out on the table so that the US curators can hear every word.
Shooting at residential buildings, distributing weapons and hunting for "saboteurs" - in war, all means are good
Valentin ALFIMOV
Due to the fact that Ukrainian troops hide their equipment in cities, shells fly right into residential buildings.
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THE PEOPLE ARE THE BEST PROTECTION
“Ukrainian nationalists place armored vehicles and artillery in residential areas of cities, using the population as a “human shield,” said Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov.
It turns out, indeed, that the Ukrainian warriors showed the world “innovative tactics” of combat. With a 100% guarantee, they learned how to take their technique out of the blow. Everything is very simple: you just need to brazenly stick a gun or “Grad” at the school, kindergarten or just under the windows of residential buildings. In other words, hide behind civilians:
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Here in the residential quarter of Severodonetsk, right at the school stadium, there is a calculation of 3 howitzers, a kindergarten was left behind the scenes. Ammunition is laid out next to each, the fighters are at the ready.
In a residential area of Severodonetsk, right at the school stadium, the Armed Forces of Ukraine deployed a crew of 3 howitzers
Here is a military truck on the steps of the Odessa Opera House (an architectural monument, by the way) hiding from Russian intelligence right under the roof.
Military truck on the steps of the Odessa Opera House
Here is a self-propelled gun of the 92nd brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine rested its caterpillars on the balconies of house No. 308 in the Solnechny microdistrict of Kharkov.
And there are hundreds of such photos and videos now. The residents of the cities are starting to lose their nerves – in the same Severodonetsk, people went out into the yard to drive away the Ukrainian armored personnel carrier with the words to the soldiers “get out of here, we have a full basement of children.”
But Mariupol is especially affected by this , which was turned into a fortress by the nationalists of the Azov Regiment and the Right Sector (both banned in Russia). They placed mortar crews right on the roofs of high-rise buildings!
In Severodonetsk, people are trying to drive Ukrainian armored personnel carriers away from their homes
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IN YOUR OWN EYE THE LOGS DO NOT SEE
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Due to the fact that Ukrainian troops hide their equipment in cities, shells fly right into residential buildings. The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation reported that a Ukrainian Buk missile hit a residential building in Kyiv.
The most striking example is the “Russian missile attack” on a high-rise building in Kyiv – the Zhuliany district. “The Russian aggressor is shooting at residential buildings!” – the news rushed through the Ukrainian propaganda channels and networks.
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The Russian Defense Ministry found out: “At night, there was a failure in the missile guidance system of the Ukrainian Buk-M1 air defense system and the missile hit the corner of a residential building.” And in general, “the Russian army does not strike at cities.” He doesn’t even hit the barracks, so that there are no big casualties. Only at military air bases and warehouses.
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A little later, local residents confirmed that the rocket came from where the Ukrainian units are stationed.
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Under such pressure, even the command of the Ukrainian army surrendered, they admitted that it was their missile.
But the NATO and Ukrainian media are already silent about this. The culprit has been found, but it has already been hammered into people’s heads – “Russians are hitting home.”
The icing on the cake of Ukrainian war tactics was the massive distribution of weapons. Anyone. Who wants. From trucks, machine guns are dumped on the asphalt like potatoes. Come, take it. Kiev set the trend, Kharkiv, Zaporozhye, Odessa joined a little later…
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“Political studies” for Ukrainian women and children
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From the armed people they form detachments of “territorial self-defense”, as under Makhno. These gangs have already begun arbitrariness and looting on the streets. Approximately every first one is seen as a spy. If they notice two, it’s definitely a sabotage group.
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So in Kyiv, a truck of the Ukrainian army and an anti-aircraft gun, which were driving to a shelter, were mistaken for Russian spies and opened fire on them.
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The crew of the truck fell down, and the anti-aircraft gun managed to leave, crushing a civilian car in a panic. A little later, the deputies of the Rada identified all the dead and confirmed that they were all Ukrainian soldiers. But this was already after the crowd had had time to mock the corpses: “So you, Russian saboteurs.”
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In Kyiv, the Strela-10 air defense system ran over a car driving along the road
In the same Kyiv, a family of five people who tried to leave the city were shot right in the car. They were also mistaken for saboteurs. Parents and one child died. Two more children are in critical condition in the hospital.
A family of five was shot dead in a car in Kyiv
The Nazis went wild – in order to get to Kyiv, they demand to correctly pronounce the word “Palyanitsya”. Russian-speaking Ukrainians can easily get shot for just mispronunciation.
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Women with children are trained for the same. “Political classes” are held right in the courtyards, where employees of the Security Service of Ukraine explain to residents: “Whoever has personal weapons at home, you can calmly use them to kill. Quietly, carefully from around the corner – and then dump.
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And the apotheosis of all this was the statement by the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine that it was releasing prisoners and distributing weapons to them. Ukraine is rapidly sinking into the Makhnovshchina..
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ACTORS GOT PRISONERS
In general, the fight against saboteurs has been raised to an absolute level, Everyone is looking for them and everything is under suspicion. And they do catch! Packs!
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So in Ukraine, more and more fakes with Russian “captives” are being launched. They are crushed in two counts. But the enthusiasm does not subside.
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So on one video, allegedly a Russian prisoner sits under a yellow-blue flag and lows through force: “Glory to Ukraine.” Only the director of this production grinned like a fool: this “Russian prisoner” turned out to be Panasyuk Yaroslav Fedorovich from Ternopil, a participant in the punitive war in the Donbass. His proud profile has already flashed on Facebook.
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Allegedly, the “Russian prisoner” turned out to be Yaroslav Panasyuk from Ternopil, a participant in the punitive war in the Donbass
Another guy in the video. Users found out that he did not come from Russia, but lives in Kyiv. “Warrior” happened to be handed over by a girl – she already posted pictures with him on her page and never deleted it.
The detainee allegedly “OMON” from Novokuznetsk, turned out to be a member of the military-patriotic club from the Ukrainian Nikolaev.
In the area of the city of Gostoml, where the Russian Airborne Forces fought a hard battle for the airport, the Ukrainians shot down a Ka-52 helicopter, a local resident, Mikhail Pavlushenko, approached him. It was then that the SBU officers took him! And they managed to show in the news to report – “Russian pilot in captivity!”. Only later did it become clear that he was an archpriest of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. But at least someone is already interested.
Archpriest Mikhail Pavlushenko was passed off by the Ukrainian media as a “Russian pilot”.
Meanwhile, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko addressed the population and reassured them that there were no Russian troops in the capital. And why then does the hunt for saboteurs among the civilian population continue?
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U.S. GOVERNMENT ISSUES NUCLEAR BLAST SURVIVAL INSTRUCTIONS
It’s certainly curious timing.
USG Issues NuclearBlastSurvivalInstructions large
Hamburger thoughts on a nice sunny day
Ah. But it’s all postering. There is not way that any serious concerns are given to Americans about Nuclear War. It’s all a game of “Chicken”.
Let’s think (instead) about a delicious hamburger!
The evil communists!
Ever since Trump it’s all been a big war against “evil communists”, but sheech! What changed? China is doing well now. Russia is doing well now. The West is turning into a shit hole. video
The 10 Rules of Ikigai
They are:
1. Stay active and don’t retire.
2. Take it slow.
3. Don’t fill your stomach.
4. Surround yourself with good friends.
5. Get in shape for your next birthday.
6. Smile.
7. Reconnect with nature.
8. Give thanks.
9. Live in the moment.
10. Uncover and Follow your Ikigai.
2022 03 01 15 53
Slowing life down is a mindful and deliberate choice. While not always an easy one, it leads to a greater appreciation for life and a greater level of happiness.
ZIRCON Hypersonic Nuclear Missiles (Land Attack Missile Version) have been loaded onto tracked, Road-Mobile Launchers, and are presently on rail cars being moved publicly inside Russia.
Prototypes were test-launched from a Tu-22M3 bomber in 2012–2013.
Launches from a ground-based platform followed in 2015, with first success achieved in 2016.
In April 2017, it was reported Zircon had reached a speed of Mach 8 (6,100 mph; 9,800 km/h; 2,700 m/s) during a flight test. Zircon was again test-fired on 3 June 2017, almost a year earlier than had been announced by Russian officials.
In November 2017, Colonel General Viktor Bondarev stated that the missile was already in service. Another flight test reportedly occurred on 10 December 2018, during which the missile demonstrated that it could attain a speed of Mach 8.
On 20 February 2019, Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed the missile is capable of accelerating up to Mach 9 and destroying both sea and land targets within 1,000 km (540 nmi; 620 mi). By the year’s end, on 24 December 2019, Putin stated that Zircon’s land-based version was in development.
Warhead
> 300 HE , > 200 kt tnw nuclear
INVISIBLE TO RADAR
Zircon can travel at a speed of Mach 8 – Mach 9 (6,100–6,900 mph; 9,800–11,000 km/h; 2.7–3.1 km/s). This has led to concerns that it could penetrate existing defense systems. Because it flies at hypersonic speeds within the atmosphere, the air pressure in front of it forms a plasma cloud as it moves, absorbing radio waves and making it practically invisible to active radar systems (Plasma stealth).
The final section of the missile’s trajectory will be overcome in under 10 seconds. As such, the enemy does not have time to carry out all the necessary procedures needed to even TRY to intercept it. Moreover, the Zircon exchanges information in flight and can be controlled by commands if necessary to alter course of change target.
Missiles like this could, in theory, be fired from Russia, and hit the Capital cities of NATO member countries bordering Russia.
You know, the Capital cities of countries participating in ejecting Russia from the SWIFT banking system; or other countries supplying weapons or now fighter jets to Ukraine, to be used fighting Russia. It would happen so fast, and with such Stealth, that the countries being targeted wouldn’t even know the missiles were coming until their Capitals got hit and blown up.
The 200 kiloton warheads would obliterate the cities that were hit. In comparison, the USA blasted Hiroshima with a 15Kiloton warhead.
UPDATE 6:30 AM EST —
From Russian Ministry of Defense: “In accordance with the order of the President, the duty of the command posts of the Strategic Missile (nuclear) Forces, the Northern and Pacific Fleets, and the Long-Range Aviation Command have begun combat duty with reinforced personnel.”
This means that the order Putin gave earlier, to get them ready, is now being fulfilled and they’re operating in a high alert/readiness mode. Nukes will be armed and prepared & ready to strike — if order given.
7:18 AM EST–
Russia’s top military command has ordered heavy strategic bomber flights in effort to block US and EU military aid from getting to Ukraine, per a defense statement. Russia has tried to “fully destroy” Ukraine’s airfields with missile attacks, per Ukraine MoD -Foreign Policy.
UPDATE 7:22 AM EST —
The “masses, who are asses” (in Kiev) are lining up at . . . Supermarkets . . . . trying to buy food. As usual, the overwhelming majority of the general public are so utterly stupid, they make absolutely ZERO plans and take absolutely no action to protect themselves,, even though they’re in Day 4 of an actual shooting war. Don’t be like these morons – get your preps right now. Don’t wait.
When the missiles start flying, you don’t want to be like these people. Oh, and if the missiles start flying, credit/debit cards won’t work because all the computers and communications lines will be out. No way to get authorization for any purchases. So you’d better have cash money in your possession before all hell breaks loose!
UPDATE 7:26 AM EST —
Russian Ministry of Defense — Russian Air Force has gained air supremacy over the entire territory of Ukraine as of this morning.
"There were unacceptable statements about possible conflict situations and even confrontations and clashes between NATO and Russa. I will not name the authors of these statements, although it was the British foreign secretary"
Kiss of Death?
SWISS DEFENCE MINISTER SAYS “WE HAVE CONCLUDED USE OF RUSSIAN NUCLEAR WEAPONS RELATIVELY UNLIKELY, POPULATION SHOULD NOT BE AFRAID”
(HT REMARK: When government tells you things are safe, that’s when you panic)
Deliveries of Germany's weapons to Ukraine make us wonder if the process of denazification was completed in Germany itself
- Russian Foreign Ministry
UH OH!
3:00 PM EST —
BIDEN SAYS AMERICANS SHOULD NOT BE WORRIED ABOUT NUCLEAR WAR
The US State Department said that Washington stands for the defense of the principle of non-nuclear war and does not see the need to increase the level of readiness of its deterrence forces.
Russia has not shown any interest in some sort of deconfliction mechanism with the United States over the Ukraine invasion, Pentagon says.
UKRAINE NEWS@kuringechuwa· At the moment, military pilots from Ukraine are in Poland. Today they receive 29 Polish MiG-29s. With full weapons and electronics.
(HT Remark: So Poland has now become a defacto Ukrainian military base. This won't end well. I suspect the very MOMENT those planes take off, Russian fighter jets and surface-to-air-missile batteries will be ordered to target them all and destroy them all as soon as they cross into Ukraine air space.)
No one in government seems to grasp that It’s all bait.
That’s why it’s the OLD Russian tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, trucks and stuff in Ukraine. I suspect it will only be Two or three more days.
Putin will act. He warned everyone publicly. He meant what he said. He WILL act.
I suspect Poland first.
Then US/UK. — Especially the UK. I think they’ve been severe trouble makers around the world for decades and I personally believe they need to get absolutely crushed by Russia. Mercilessly crushed! It will not surprise me at all if the very first UK strike is against the CITY of LONDON within London itself. That’s where all the contracts are. That’s where all the global financial shenanigans get decided. I hope they glow.
Possibly Germany after that, it seems, from the “de-Nazification” comment reported on this page earlier today.
4:53 PM EST —
Looks like the ground war in Ukraine is about to turn much darker. Putin is sending a 17-mile long convoy of artillery and tanks towards Kyiv with intense helicopter support and fighter jets all over it to take out any attackers.
Programming the Retards Has Begun:
2022 03 01 15 14
Could A Small Nuclear War Reverse Global Warming?
Ukraine Armed Forces says that if necessary, the planes they’re getting from other NATO countries “will be able to be based on Polish airfields from which Ukrainian pilots will perform combat missions”
BEING SUPPLIED TO UKRAINE, TODAY:
Bulgaria (MiG-29) – 16
Bulgaria (Su-25) – 14
Poland (MiG-29) – 28
Slovakia (MiG-29) – 12
Tomorrow Finland will begin a Parliamentary Discussion to join the NATO Alliance, this could take weeks or only a few hours it just depends on how the Finnish Government is feeling, NATO has already said Finland can be admitted to the Alliance within 24 Hours after a decision.
This will result in only one of two outcomes…
EITHER
[1] Putin feels the overwhelming pressure on his border, takes a win, and slowly works to try and repair the extreme damage that’s been done to his economy…
OR
[2] He’s decided that Russia will no longer cow to the threats posed by NATO and decides everything to the west of his border will be reduced to ashes.
It’s a terribly risky strategy being run by the Europeans…they’ll either wind up looking like heroes and saviors…or like nothing at all and with no one to care.
China nurtures it’s best and brightest
Meanwhile the USA does the exact opposite. School selection is determiend by lottery with attendence optional. Sheech! And all these people are armed with guns! video 3MB
Open letter to TV watching western armchair generals
Your entire life you have been trained to see a successful military operations like so:
Begin by bombing the shit of the “hadjis” or “sand niggers” with bombs and missiles, then flatten their town à la Fallujah, then move in with heavy armor and shoot everything which still moves or breathes.
Then distribute chewing-gums to a few kids while on video.
Then take the city center, drop a statue in front your embedded presstitutes, and then declare victory.
Then, after declaring victory, stay another 20 years or so (Blinken was clearly projecting!), ruin it completely, then leave it again and declare another brilliant victory.
And don’t forget to declare urbi at orbi that you reserve the “right” to bomb the shit out of them anytime you deem it is needed. And fuck their sovereignty or anybody else’s while we are at it!
Lastly, once home, don’t forget to “thank” your “veterans” for their “service”.
I get it.
Now YOU try, please!!
Now, in spite of this conditioning, please at least try to understand the following points:
First, the Russians do not see Ukrainian as Hadjis but as their own brothers.
Second many/most LDNR soliders have relatives in the Nazi occupied Ukraine.
Third, yes, Russia can turn any Ukrainian city into Fallujah, but who do you think will then have to pay for its reconstruction?
Fourth, please understand that the double goals of 1) denazification and 2) disarmament implies that any person which is not a Nazi or is not armed and hostile is not, repeat, NOT the target of the Russian armed forces.
Fifth, the Ukie military was 80% defeated on Day 1. Get that? It was gone as a coherent fighting force. THAT is why they are blowing up bridges, distributing weapons and releasing convicted criminals. NOT because they are winning! I mean – how stupid are you if you believe that? Ukie stupid?
Seriously?
Right now you are the object of probably the biggest PSYOP operation in history. If you realize that and treat these PSYOPs as you should, that is as “informational warfare from the bad guys” you will be able to tell your kind and grandkids “I never believed that crap”. Good for you!
But if you don’t, well then, just don’t tell too much about you in 2022 to your kind and grandkids, save yourself the ridicule and embarrassment…
That’s it. My very last attempt to wake you up. From now on, I will pretend like you don’t exist and instantly ban any comments parroting kind of self-evident nonsense.
Now I will quietly leave your room, switch off the lights, and let you watch your TVs.
Andrei
How is Chinese media reacting to growing tensions in Ukraine? How are Chinese citizens talking about this on social media?
During the last few days, all the western embassies in China have been releasing a flurry of statements, like never before, with the aim of pressuring the government to distance itself from Russia, and to affect Chinese public opinion on the issue. However, on social media people have been mocking this campaign and questioning why this seems so coordinated, lots of jokes and memes have arisen.
Overall, Chinese people do not see a need to comment on a conflict that isn’t theirs. Until recently, everyone understood this as a western attack on Russia, and now the discussion is about why the west feels the need to play out their conflict on Chinese social media.
I saw one comment saying that the west ‘thinks we can’t see international news because of the firewall, that’s not true’. Above all, China does not want to be involved in any kind of war and always believes in doing everything to avoid war. While the Chinese government maintains that position, the Chinese people will not feel the need to react to these kinds of conflicts.
Hamburger / cheeseburger thoughts
The Winter Olympics are now over, how do Chinese people feel about how the games went?
I think people are feeling a bit empty now that it’s all over, it was a highly successful event. It has awakened, for the first time, a huge interest in winter sports and people are buying the gear.
China performed well, winning 15 gold medals, placing them in 3rd place [above the US]. This success has been the number one tendency everyday on Chinese social media as people have been able to interact with the games virtually but without disrupting everyday life because the whole games took place within the physical bubble created within Beijing.
The Digital Yuan, a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) was adopted in a big way for the time during these games. What is it like to experience the birth of this CBDC?
The Digital Yuan was used during the games but it was not the only form of payment permitted. It is a long way from mass adoption within China, it’s being used in some zones where there are trial runs, but not on a mass scale.
China already has multiple venues for digital payments for everything, the country never really saw bank cards, it jumped from a cash economy straight to digital payment through phones etc.
WeChat and Alipay are the most prominent ways to make payments within China, so the government will have to work to promote this CBDC, which is basically a cryptocurrency, and change the habits of consumers.
China banned private cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin firstly for environmental reasons. The country has strict goals for carbon reduction and mining Bitcoin is extremely harmful.
The CBDC was launched with international commerce, rather than domestic commerce, in mind. It is being launched as an alternative to the US dollar, it is very far away from achieving that, but existing as an alternative option to USD for international trade is the aim and so the US sees this as a great threat because they use the power of the dollar to enforce sanctions. For example, the US was able to sanction European companies that were trading with Iran because the trade was in dollars.
Pretty girl in a red halter
I always liked halters. Most women don’t however. They tend to keep sliding down, and so you’ve got to tug and tug and tug to keep them up high. Sheech! video
PM Comments;
Art of War, Sun Tzu. America harms Russia without suffering a single casualty. America doesn’t care about Ukraine. Its just an attack dog.
In a real fight, the attack dogs die first.
But the attack dogs can bite and harm Russia.
What about America having to spend billions to arm Ukraine so the attack dogs will have teeth? Money is nothing to America.
They print their trillions, which come from the people’s debt, while the money created goes to the elite-owned Military Industrial Propaganda Complex. Which a part of which supports the political/technology/media structure which keeps the country in perpetual war and provides unlimited budgets for war. It’s a perfect cyclical economy that supports the capitalist Big Lie that a number on a ledger created out of thin air represents wealth.
Not only that, but the rest of the world eventually helps to pay for the war budget because the USD is the worlds reserve currency.
Anyone who disagrees will be starved or bombed to the Stone Age, except for China and Russia who can defend themselves.
America prints trillions and the world suffers from inflation, not just America.
The elites don’t pay for inflation, as their property holdings will increase in value, the people who pay for groceries, rent, and daily necessities suffer from inflation but who cares.
Not only that, but distant wars actually help the American war-based economy and cause the US Dollar to rise in value against its profligate printing.
In war zones, people tend to hoard US Dollars, taking US Dollars out of circulation.
America also makes it hard for US Dollars to be repatriated.
So the hegemon wins when you are forced to fight a war against your brethren who have been turned into attack dogs for the empire; you’re also paying for it. This is a good lesson for China to not find itself in such a poor strategic situation.
What can Russia hope to achieve from this unwanted war? Russia must from now on be much more influential in the affairs of Ukraine.
All de-Russification must be reversed, including the separation of the Orthodox Church.
The Russian language will be one of the official languages to be taught at schools.
The Neo-Nazis will be deligitimized and their crimes duly prosecuted.
Ukraine must have a treaty with Russia and be a member of the federation.
Foreign media and NGOs must be licensed (actually best simply kicked out and kept out, as they are mostly disinformation agents and spies.—TGP)
There will be Russian bases. Then we’ll have peace.
Alternatively, Russia will employ FOABs (enormous bombs short of nuclear—TGP) which will kill everything within a 300m radius. It will be cruel, but such is war. Learn from Sun Tzu, do not get yourself in that situation.
Hopefully, the Ukraine side will finally come to its senses. When Russia succeeds in their operation, it will be the turn of the three Baltic states to shake in their boots, NATO or no NATO.
—PM
It’s about how you look at things
Conclusion
Look at the big picture, and then relax. The war in the Ukraine is not a sporting event. Rather it’s a catalist forcing the world to choose sides. The aftermath will be a bio-polar world rather than a uni-polar world, and those that stick with the USA are going to be in trouble.
Big picture so far:
[1] Europe threw itself off the cliff. It is Officially Game Over. All that’s left is the autopsy.
RT & news blocked,
Cultural, sports & local-carriers air travel to Russia blocked,
A separation from financial infrastructure,
Open hostility evident through support of Nazis in PsyOps and ostensible but meaningless arms.
Everything calculated for a generational rupture and impotent group-hate shriek at Russia..
Predictable results:
A near-term loss of existential 50% petroleum products,
A loss of 40%+ grain products and the withering away of Europe.
Pity. European cost of living will be Biblical come next Dark Winter.. And an exodus to Russia and other sane points likely beforehand.
[2] The “WW3 OR Sanctions” threat by Biden was actually directed at EU. It was the trigger to get the loons to leap off the cliff. How will Russia punish the deceitful USA piper, which has now wrecked the western peninsula of Asia for the next 3+ generations?
US squats, toad-like, pretending to be the whistling innocent bystander at the scene of the epic European ritual suicide. It is in the role of Annatar during the Fall of Númenor – urging the fool King Ar-Pharazôn to sail on the gods themselves.. the Sundering and drowning of Númenor itself is next on the playlist. Someone should send that memo to the AZE; Europe and Anglo-lands are now forever chained together.. https://youtu.be/nL_DcMu2KpU
[3] I saw this amusing movie with Clint Eastwood decades ago, “Every Which Way but Loose (1978).” The operative mission regarding Russia is now, “Weaken Them Every Which Way Possible.” And to destroy the gutless Europeans simultaneously is a bonus treat at the Bonfire of the Vanities.
So current calculations focus on the DAILY $700-750 million Russian export earnings. Much of these daily earnings is to Europe. They do not have time for a war of attrition this time.. It is a cold shut-down.
In part, the group hate and hysteria campaign is to “psych themselves” and convince the sane in West it’s a necessary cost, to hurt themselves to hurt Russia. Cut off your damn nose Frenchie, we have excellent plastic surgeons in the Bayou.
[4] There is no nuclear war on the current cards (Phew!). According to the Kremlin, their action yesterday was in reaction to words from Perfide Albion. They have since been put in their tiny place. Deconfliction is on between Americans and Russians. The relevant issue is the suiciding of Europe, not the longed-for first strike.
[5] China (& India) sit pretty. A 500-year Beast is making a dramatic exit from the stage. Pfizer is doubly doomed – folks are so excited in Zone B, there is no need even for Viagra anymore. What support Russia needs, be it diplomatic, financial, new business arrangements (buying that grain and extra gas), lighting a million candles, are quietly being made.
Half-cocked Korean Rocketman rattled off missiles in his no-longer-pudgy fist, to help the loonies focus fully on their Death March in the heavenly rich black soil of Novorussiya.
Indeed, this is the Last March of the Russia Haters, in commiseration with the Last of the Mohicans. And both shall soon be in the museum with the Dodo. An ongoing flood of Ukie refugees is the cherry on top. So Russia extracted the necessary concessions from Zone B partners to wield the brass knucklers on behalf of mankind.
It has the depth of support in Asia to see to the necessary dirty task.
Maybe all-in-all, maybe things will go “tits up”, or maybe not. What I do know is that now is the time to relax, regroup, and plow forward in new and exciting directions. Eat some delicious food. have a good time. Play with friends, and by all means; be the Rufus.
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
Ok, so the Russians make a move that they were forced into by the United States. Of course the USA knew what it was doing. Every American knows about the “Cuban Missile Crisis”.
To pretend that it doesn’t is ridiculous.
If you place, or threaten to place, nuclear weapons on the border of a major nation, you can expect CERTAINLY a series of responses.
This is exactly what happened, but of course, it’s not being reported this way in the American / British “news”. According to that “news”, the Russians are taking a beating by the proud and brave Ukranians.
So, I go on LinkedIN, and other other mainstream media, and Lordy! It’s all about the brave Ukranians fighting the evil communists. Sheech! Talk about spinning a narrative! So here, we are going to put some perspectives in place and then resume business as usual.
This is a fine meandering article hosting a wide selection of rambling thoughts and interests. Remember, don’t look at one singular issue and study it. Look at the big picture, as that is how everything is actually connected.
First, a look at a map…
Did you know that the Ukraine is the fourth-largest recipient of American equipment and weapons in the world? Imagine that.
Why? Why in Good God’s name, why?
Now, we begin with a statement that The Domain Commander made; “We are striving for little bads, so we can avoid the Big Bads”…
Andrew Korybko One World
Thu, 24 Feb 2022 20:56 UTC
.
A much larger war that could dangerously escalate into World War III was averted by Russia’s preemptive special operation in Ukraine aimed at neutralizing the US and NATO’s latent, imminent, and hot threats emanating from that country. This makes Moscow’s military mission truly a peacemaking one since the Eurasian Great Power responsibly sought to prevent World War III, not spark it. Russia truly had no choice but to act now.
In short, the US and its anti-Russian NATO allies were secretly establishing military facilities in Ukraine for launching their own impending war against that neighboring nuclear power. First, however, Washington wanted to neutralize Moscow’s nuclear second-strike capabilities through the regional deployment of “anti-missile systems” and strike weapons, including one day hypersonic missiles and even eventually to Ukraine itself too. This coincided with the US’ withdrawal from strategic arms pacts such as the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, and the Open Skies Treaty, all of which destabilized European security by making America’s military intentions all the more ambiguous to Russia.
President Putin’s speech from Monday evening when he announced his country’s recognition oftheDonbassRepublics saw him meticulously detail the existential nature of the threat that the US and NATO’s secret military infrastructure in Ukraine poses to Russia. He described their airfields, bases, and ports in the country that he warned will soon be used to strike his own, albeit after first presumably neutralizing its nuclear second-strike capabilities. Thursday morning’s speech compared post-Soviet Russia’s three-decade-long appeasement of US-led NATO to Stalin’s pre-World War II appeasement of Nazi Germany, declaring that “We will not make this mistake the second time. We have no right to do so. Those who aspire to global dominance have publicly designated Russia as their enemy.”
According to Russian intelligence, “If we look at the sequence of events and the incoming reports, the showdown between Russia and these forces cannot be avoided. It is only a matter of time. They are getting ready and waiting for the right moment.” “They did not leave us any other option for defending Russia and our people, other than the one we are forced to use today”, President Putin revealed, which is why “In these circumstances, we have to take bold and immediate action.” He then issued what’s widely interpreted as a nuclear warning to NATO: “No matter who tries to stand in our way or all the more so create threats for our country and our people, they must know that Russia will respond immediately, and the consequences will be such as you have never seen in your entire history.”
It’s for all of these reasons that Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova clarified that “It’s not a beginning of war, it is prevention of a situation that could lead to global military confrontation.” What she meant was exactly what President Putin himself had said, namely that a much larger war that could dangerously escalate into World War III was averted by Russia’s preemptive special operation in Ukraine aimed at neutralizing the US and NATO’s latent, imminent, and hot threats emanating from that country. This makes Moscow’s military mission truly a peacemaking one since the Eurasian Great Power responsibly sought to prevent World War III, not spark it. Russia truly had no choice but to act now.
That’s because President Putin also revealed on Thursday morning that “Even now, with NATO’s eastward expansion the situation for Russia has been becoming worse and more dangerous by the year.” As he put it, “It is a fact that over the past 30 years we have been patiently trying to come to an agreement with the leading NATO countries regarding the principles of equal and indivisible security in Europe. In response to our proposals, we invariably faced either cynical deception and lies or attempts at pressure and blackmail, while the North Atlantic alliance continued to expand despite our protests and concerns. Its military machine is moving and, as I said, is approaching our very border.” It’s therefore understandable why Russia finally had to act.
After all, President Putin already made his back-up plan known on 21 December when speaking at an “Expanded Meeting Of The Defense Ministry Board“. At that time, he said that “what they are doing, or trying or planning to do in Ukraine, is not happening thousands of kilometres away from our national border. It is on the doorstep of our house. They must understand that we simply have nowhere further to retreat to.” That event coincided with Russia’s publication of its security guarantee requests to the US and NATO for ensuring the integrity of its national security red lines. Moscow asked for legal guarantees halting the bloc’s continual eastward expansion, the removal of strike weapons from Russia’s borders, and a return to the continental military status quo enshrined in the now-defunct 1997 Russian-NATO Founding Act. Regrettably, the US-led West rebuffed the last chance for a diplomatic solution.
Had Russia not acted when it did on Thursday, it’s very likely that the US would have used the pretext of the third round of civil war hostilities that it encouraged Kiev to provoke last weekend in Eastern Ukraine to deploy strikes to that country on an emergency basis under the false pretext of “defending” it when in reality it would all be about clandestinely seeking to worsen Russia’s security as explained. President Putin therefore had no choice but to commence his military’s special operation in Ukraine on Thursday morning, which arguably averted the Third World War that would have inevitably followed with time had Russia continued to appease the US, seeing as how that nuclear superpower was never sincere about respecting its counterpart’s national security red lines.
And now time for a pretty girl
I really like her top with the chain metal fringes on the sleeves. Pretty hot.
The threat of expulsion from SWIFT as a deterrent to war is a “paper tiger” and fintech helped.
The nightmare of another European war is upon us and the non-military deterrent of being cut off from the SWIFT currency transfer system seems toothless. A paper tiger.
Ever since Iran’s SWIFT cut-off in 2012 US and EU policymakers have wielded the threat of a SWIFT cut-off like a sword. Now it seems throwing Russia’s 1.7% of global GDP off of SWIFT is unpalatable.
Let’s look at why. The biggest reason is energy but the others are tech-based:
1️⃣ G7 officials made it clear that they were reluctant to expel Russia because it would make it impossible to pay for Russian energy, leaving Europe in the dark and paying more. This is the clearest and most compelling reason not to cut off Russia.
2️⃣ SWIFT expulsion is not guaranteed to stop cash flows. SWIFT is merely a messaging system, it doesn’t move money. Anyone following China-Iran trade can attest that a cut-off doesn’t stop trade, so much as make it more expensive. Iran has perfected barter and international digital goods trading off of SWIFT.
3️⃣ China’s “Cross-Border International Payment System (CIPS) started in 2015 as a SWIFT alternative. It now has 1,186 financial institutions in 100 countries signed up. Russia has access to CIPS and while not ideal there is nothing preventing Russia from using the system and RMB in lieu of dollars. China built CIPS, following Iran’s cut-off for exactly this purpose. Russia’s equivalent SPFS system is simply too small.
4️⃣ Crypto is not yet ready to take over a meaningful amount of Russia’s $670+ bn in combined imports and exports but it doesn’t have to. If CIPS and other options above are put to use crypto can likely help small businesses move money across borders to keep things running.
Stablecoin tether was already illegally used in trade between China and Russia in 2019 with flows of up to $10-30mn a day. This is new territory, but I think we should not underestimate crypto’s capabilities. They may surprise us.
5️⃣ The digital Ruble, is in testing and perhaps within a few months, it could be rushed into production. Digital yuan-ruble trade is already in discussion. Russia may convince other countries to accept a digital ruble in trade. The recipients won’t need a CBDC themselves, just a digital ledger at the central bank to avoid SWIFT.
War causes change at a shocking pace. All of these SWIFT alternatives shift money out of dollars. De-dollarization is a trend the US doesn’t want to accelerate and why the US will not push in earnest for a SWIFT cut-off.
Fintech is now a pawn in the great geopolitical game. Its role in turning the SWIFT deterrent into a paper tiger is no small feat.
A great discussion about the Ukraine on You-tube…
It’s pretty good, and it goes in great deal about the history about what is going on.
Yeah. I get it. Too many cute and beautiful girls. Well, I am in China. I can’t help it. I am surrounded by them. To understand China, is to understand beauty.
Social media users will be given new powers to control who can interact with them under a major crackdown on hate-filled internet trolls.
Platforms like Facebook and Twitter will by law have to give users the tools to block anonymous unverified accounts.
Users will also be given the option to verify themselves. The onus will be on the firms to find a suitable verification method, but it could range from taking a selfie to providing proof of a passport or driving licence.
The new measures have been added to the upcoming Online Safety Bill, which will impose a duty of care on tech companies to protect users.
However, individuals will be allowed to choose whether to join the verification process – despite calls from some campaigners to make it a requirement.
Ministers were concerned it could jeopardise the safety of vulnerable users. Online anonymity can be crucial for domestic abuse victims, activists living in authoritarian countries and young people exploring their sexuality.
The Government has also announced a measure that will force platforms to provide adult users with tools to block ‘legal but harmful content’ such as racist abuse and Covid disinformation.
This could include allowing users to turn on settings that would stop them receiving recommendations on certain topics or place sensitivity screens over that content.
The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) said the new measures would ‘put more power in the hands’ of social media users by giving them more choice over who they communicate with.
Digital Secretary Nadine Dorries said: ‘Tech firms have a responsibility to stop anonymous trolls polluting their platforms.
‘We have listened to calls for us to strengthen our new online safety laws and are announcing new measures to put greater power in the hands of social media users themselves.
‘People will now have more control over who can contact them and be able to stop the tidal wave of hate served up to them by rogue algorithms.’
It comes after calls from MPs, footballers and celebrities to take action on internet trolls after highlighting the horrific abuse they suffered.
The Government has already announced tougher punishments for trolls, with those found guilty of the worst abuse facing up to five years in prison under the new Bill.
The latest measures will only apply to the biggest social media platforms deemed ‘category one’ such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram as they pose the severest risk.
Watchdog Ofcom will be given the power to fine them up to 10 per cent of annual global turnover for any breach or even block the sites from being used in the UK.
A DCMS spokesman said of the new measures: ‘While this will not prevent anonymous trolls posting abusive content in the first place – providing it is legal and does not contravene the platform’s terms and conditions – it will stop victims being exposed to it and give them more control over their online experience.’
The Bill will also force social media giants to remove illegal content such as child sexual abuse imagery, the promotion of suicide, hate crimes and incitement to terrorism.
But there is a growing list of toxic content and behaviour on social media which falls below the threshold of a criminal offence which still causes significant harm.
The spokesman added: ‘Much of this is already expressly forbidden in social networks’ terms and conditions, but too often it is allowed to stay up.’ Firms will have to make tools available that will allow users to block this on news feeds.
Three ways to crack down on hate
New measures added to the Online Safety Bill today will force social media giants like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to ensure users can:
VERIFY THEMSELVES
Users must be given the option of verification. It will be up to the platforms what methods they use, but this could range from uploading a selfie to match their profile picture or providing proof of Government-issued ID like a passport.
BAR ANONYMOUS TROLLS
Tools must be provided to enable individuals to block other users who choose to remain anonymous. These could include ticking a box within settings that allows direct messages or replies to posts to be sent only by verified accounts.
FILTER HARMFUL CONTENT
Users must also be given a way to block content that falls below the criminal threshold but still causes significant harm, such as racist abuse. Tools could include allowing users to alter settings so the site does not recommend certain topics or placing sensitivity screens over such content.
And for MM here…
I am SERIOUSLY considering making everyone apply to comment. I have to verify their email, and I am considering interviewing everyone via skype as well. This should seriously, seriously CUT down on trolls.
And don’t give me that “free speech” speil. There is no “free speech” in MM land. You join a community, and we police that community. If you disfunctional, or sociopathic, we kill you off.
It’s really simple.
Here, we operate like the social clubs of yore. Like the “Polish Falcons”, “The Elks”, “The grand woodsmen”, and others. You apply to join, and you pay membership dues. And the community polices itself.
You are NOT alone. This is a community. And as members of that community, we all work together as one. Like they do in China. As this video clearly shows what happens to sociopaths and other people with strange mental illnesses.
Participation in your community is what a Rufus is all about. It is the heart beat a thumping that makes the community, safe, calm, kind, happy and secure. As this next video clearly shows…
A Rufus is not a spectator. It is not a bystander. It is not a passive consumer. A Rufus is a participant in the community. Watch how this Rufus leave the pack of bystanders and actually does something. What a Rufus!
I know this mall. It’s Coco park in Shenzhen. Some great restrurants, bars, and clothings shops. She’s nice. One of my favorites. She’s wearing a nice sweater. You can be very sexy and attractive without showing skin, don’t you know. All you need to do is feel relaxed and comfortable, and wear a big massive smile on your face.
This is war, and it is in flux. There are going to be losses on all sides. Whether one side recaptures this, or shoots down that, has no meaning. The end result is what happens when the dust settles.
However, there are those that are trying to keep score. As if war is a tabulated war game. Here is a decent enough site in a flood of websites.
Keep in mind, though, that much of the digital evidence you see online is faked by amateurs. From Gizmodo:
Gizmodo has found at least ten viral photos and videos currently being spread on social media that are completely fake. In some cases, the videos and photos are years old. In others, the images are clearly not from Ukraine. There are even two examples of videos on Twitter today that are actually from war-themed video games.
But it hilariously lists Bellingcat, the Atlantic Council’s cut-out to the Intertubes, which is a lot like putting the American Council of Pork Producers in charge of censoring fact-checking information on swine fever.
This is a community. If you are a Rufus, then you participate in it. You just cannot sit by and do nothing. We take action. For we are part of something greater. And for those who have volunteered to the Domain, know exactly what I am talking about.
Today was only day two of the Russian military operation. And yet, what a day it was!!!
First, a quick update on the progress of Russian forces. Here is a bulletpoint summary for today:
Kherson: liberated
Nikolaev: fighting taking pace in outskirts
Konotop: taken by Russians
Chernigov: blocked by all sides by Russian forces
Melitopol: surrounded
Mariupol: is under attack, street fighting
Severodonetsk: under attack
Kharkov: very heavy mopping up operation
Suma: mopping up operations
Kiev: blocked from the West and under attack, the authorities are distributing weapons
Gostomel airport has been captured by Russian forces
Zaporozhie: Russian forces expected there tomorrow
A land corridor from Crimea to Russia should be opened by tomorrow.
Odessa: big question mark – so far, not Russian attacks reported (that I know of!)
Now about Donetsk and Lugansk:
Both cities are still under fire, and that goes to show that the advance of the LDNR forces has been slow, which is hardly surprising considering that the Ukronazis had 7 years to prepare their defenses. Still, things ARE getting better. Not only that, but the LDNR air defenses shot down a Ukie Tochka-U missile aimed at Donetsk. So it sure looks like the long awaited A2/AA “protective cupola” is being extended over the LDNR.
That being said, the LDNR forces did break through in at least two directions today, which means that the life left for the Ukie artillery shelling the LDNR will soon come to an end.
But that does not really tell the full story. So I will try to clarify things a little.
A typical battalion has about 400-600 men, depending on the type. Let’s also assume that that battalion has 3-4 companies with APCs, a mortar battery, an air defense platoon, an automatic grenade launcher platoon, a signal platoon, supply platoon, and a few smaller more specialized subunits. If that battalion loses its APCs it has basically lost its most important source of firepower. If its communications are down (destroyed or jammed), then that battalion cannot operate as part of a bigger force and if its supply routes are cut, then its ability to operate (more or fire) will rapidly dwindle down. So, on paper this battalion will remain combat capable, but in reality it will have broken up and cannot be considered a truly combat capable battalion anymore.
So, to destroy/incapacitate a battalion only a few precision strikes are needed. Such strikes though, will leave most of the soldiers alive and quite capable of resistance, but not as a battalion anymore, but more like a typical infantry company or even squads armed with small arms, machine guns, PRG, mines, etc.. They cannot maneuver very much, but they can conduct small hit and run operations against the enemy force. Which means that specialized infantry/police forces must now be send to find these small forces and deal with them in potentially bloody mopping up operations.
Of course, rather than a few precision strikes, it is much more effective to strike the entire battalion with, say, MLRS strikes which will not only destroy most of the hardware, but which will kill most of the soldiers, especially if they did not prepare and seek cover. But that means 400-500 dead in one single strike. That is if this battalion is somewhere in the steppe. But if it is in downtown Mariupol such a strike will inevitably result in even more scores of dead civilians, especially since the Ukies are very careful to always position their artillery near or even on top of buildings.
Does Russia want that?
Not if there is ANY other option left.
Please keep in mind that Russia has the reconnaissance-fire complexes needed obliterate an entire battalion anywhere in the eastern Ukraine in one single salvo. They have deliberately NOT done so today (with one possible exception during the very heavy battle for the Gostomel airport, which was taken by Russian special forces and is now secured as a safe bridgehead for Russian Military-Transport aviation right next to Kiev).
Something similar can be seen in urban offensive operations. It is one thing to get to a city or town’s outskirts, and quite another to penetrate inside the city or town. If the city is lightly defended by small arms fire, that is one thing, but if the city is well defended, in specially engineered defensive circles, with minefield, IEDs, very strong building used as command posts and if the city’s houses and basements have been prepared by combat engineers, then it is much harder to take. Again, one option is to send it dedicated urban combat groups while the other is flatten any building which is used by the defenders as a fortress.
The Russian forces have the means to flatten any building anywhere in the Ukraine, including by cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, MLRS with cluster or fuel-air munition or by using howitzers, heavy mortars and even the TOS-1/TOS-1A heavy flamethrower multi-barrel rocket launch systems.
But, again, that can only be done at a major cost in human lives. Russians won’t hesitate to obliterate some Nazi deathsquads, but to massacre hundreds of regular Ukrainians, irrespective of their personal views, is only and truly a last resort option.
There is a lot of evidence that the Russian forces have moved into the outskirts of many Ukrainian towns, including Kiev, Mariupol and others. Here is how Russian military practice works:
First, approach and try to block or surrender the city
Second, suppress the main enemy firing positions
Third, make sure that the city is truly blocked (except for a few special corridors, see below)
Fourth, hold your position and reconnoiter the outermost enemy lines (by fire when appropriate)
Fifth, send in special reconnaissance groups inside the city to observe and coordinate attacks
Sixth, once the city is surrounded/blocked and once you get a pretty decent picture of what is inside you take the next decisions which might include any of the following: open corridors for civilians to flee and for military personnel to surrender and cross over, determine the main axes of attack and begin slowly grinding down the opposition with heavy firepower (artillery, air, missiles).
Seventh, once the city’s defenses have been sufficiently disorganized, begin a house to house mopping up operation by specialized forces.
Before I go further, I want to remind you that during WWII the Soviet Military freed a whopping 1’200 (one thousand two hundred!) cities from the Nazi forces. Russians know how to do this better than anybody else.
Furthermore, during both Chechen wars, the Russians always managed to take Grozny, which was extremely heavily fortified and defended by some of the toughest fighters on the planet in spite of the fact that at that time the Russian army was it its lowest and badly disorganized, especially during the first Chechen war! But even in the first Chechen, the Russian did seize Grozny, twice, admittedly a huge cost (on both sides), but they did.
That was almost three decades ago.
Speaking of the Chechen war, in the first one the Russian military lost a big part of an entire brigade which had quickly entered the city, moved into the city center only to find itself surrounded and cut off, with terrible communications, quasi-non existing reconnaissance capabilities. That debacle left a very painful memory in the Russian collective memory and if somebody was expecting Russian APCs to reach the Mariupol or Kharkov at full speed with flags and screams of “hurrah!” – they don’t understand what is taking place: the (truly criminal) mistake made by Eltin’s generals during that first Chechen war will never be repeated by modern Russian commanders.
Any defeat is always a terrible tragedy, the only and best thing anybody can do after a defeat is to understand why and how it happened, and never repeat such a (criminal) mistake again.
That is the true reason why today Russians stopped on the outskirts of so many cities.
The bottom line is this. These are things which the Russians are trying to achieve
Destroy the Ukie armed forces but kill the absolute minimum number of Ukrainian soldiers (real Nazi will probably be destroyed no questions asked). Why? Because these surviving Ukrainian soldiers and officers are the ones who will play the main role in finally cleaning the Ukraine from the Nazi scum.
Get to the outskirts of as many major Ukrainian cities and gradually begin the steps I outlined above.
Convince civilians to flee and convince Ukrainian solders to lay down arms
Delay any Russian penetration inside the cities until the moment is “just right” (not too early, not too late)
Why?
Because Russia has ZERO intention of occupying or, even less so, rebuild or police the Ukraine, that’s why. The LDNR (in its legal borders) is as far as the Russians will go (with only a few possible exceptions).
The Kremlin decided that the goal of the operation was to 1) disarm and 2) to denazify the Ukraine. As soon as these goals are reached, the Russian want to get the hell out of the Ukraine and back into the LDNR and let the Ukrainians fight their own anti-Nazi civil war. That means that:
The Russians now must identify reasonable Ukrainian commanders and/or politicians to negotiate with
That Russia needs to offer the leftover Ukrainian ground forces the same deal which the Ukrainian forces which were tasked with the control of the Chernobyl nuclear planet were given today by the Russian forces: let’s secure this facility together and keep it secure together, with no combats of any kind. The Ukrainians gladly accepted, by the way, and now they are jointly patrolling area.
The Russian might also try something which worked well in Chechnia: tell the local town/city authorities that if they guarantee that not a single bullet will be fire from that town/city not a single Russian bullet will fly back and not a single Russian solider will enter the city, unless accompanied by locals and in order to ascertain the reality of the situation. But if a city is declared “open and peaceful” and then is used to attack Russian forces, it will be simply flattened with artillery. I call that the “Shamanov ultimatum” and, after a few false starts (and subsequently flattened towns) it worked very well.
The crucial factor is this: during the two Chechen wars or during 08.08.08 the Russians never saw the local people as their enemy and, if anything, they were hoping that the locals would start their own “housecleaning operation” which was a bad joke in the first Chechen war, but worked very well in the second Chechen war, and failed again during 08.08.08.
In military/combat terms the Ukies are much more similar to the Georgians than to the Chechens, so there is a good chance Russia might have to leave unconditionally and let the locals slug it at between each other for as much as they want (which is what Russia did in 08.08.08 even though Russia Airborne units were at the outskirts of Tbilissi).
Which brings me to THE QUESTION for tomorrow: how will the Ukrainian soldiers and civilians behave?
Right now, Ukrainian losses have been minimal (considering the undeniable fact that this is a fullscale strategic offensive), the Russian forces have reached their positions on the outskirts of many towns and tomorrow or the day after will be “decision time”.
I hope and pray that Russian and Ukrainian soldiers find a common language in as many locations as possible. Those who will chose a heroic stance (hardcore Nazis mostly) will be offered the possibility to die for their ideas.
In that context, “Ze” released a video in which he offered to negotiate directly and unconditionally, even about neutrality and any other topic. The Russian reply was simple and to the point:
Russia is immediately ready to start negotiations after the Armed Forces of Ukraine lay down their arms.
The Ukraine must be demilitarized and declared neutral.
The Ukraine must be denazified.
Russia will no longer allow the Nazis to rule in Ukraine. Ever.
After that reply, “Ze” and his aides stopped communicating.
I personally doubt that he has any control over anything. And the fact that a huge amount of weapons has been distributed to whomever wanted one today in Kiev shows that “Ze”‘s handlers have given him the order to make the biggest possible mess and bloodbath before he is evacuated.
This is very sad, and utterly immoral, but there is nothing Russia can do about that: the Ukraine will be flooded by well armed criminals gangs and Nazi insurgents for years to come.
Putin today made a speech in which he suggested that Russia’s beef was only with the Nazis and their deathsquads but that Russia would seek to cooperate with the Ukrainian armed forces (well, what’s left of them, really) should they overthrow the Nazis. See his full message here.
So, today was “we get to our staging positions” day.
So what did not happen (yet)?
The operational envelopment of the Ukrainian forces along the LOC with the LDNR forces has not happened yet, there is still a corridor by which these forces can withdraw. The Russian could have shut it down already “by maneuver by fire” but, apparently, they want to keep it open for a little longer.
The Russian Black Sea fleet has not engaged in any major combat activities (that I know off, so take that with a grain of salt).
Will that happen tomorrow? Maybe, it all really depends on whether the regular Ukrainian units will agree to surrender or whether they will fight to their last solider. It also depends on how the Ukrainian civilians will react at the sight of approaching Russian forces.
So what to look for tomorrow?
A further penetration of Russian forces deeper inside Ukie territory, with cities bypassed.
The gradual penetration of Russian forces into blocked/surrounded cities
The intervention of the Black Sea Fleet in combat operations (with maybe Odessa as a strategic target, not necessarily to take, but at least to threaten and weaken).
A western false flag (some “Russian atrocity” no doubt)
One more thing:
Western PSYOPs are in “max attack mode” and they are being helped by Russian 5th columnist websites. For example, I was trying to find a halfway decent map of the combat operations today, and ALL the Russian websites which offered such maps were hardcore 5th element. Okay, I get it – 5th columnists don’t need any real facts to make their maps, while the real patriots are afraid of both getting it wrong and leaking info. Still, I remember during the first two wars in the Donbass, there were some pretty decent maps available out there.
Today I see such zero. If anybody can recommend semi-decent military maps of the combat operations I would be most grateful.
The fact that the Russian 5th column is allowed to continue to operate the way it does really frustrates me. Could the Kremlin not tell them to “zip it” at least during active combat operations?
I did not even bother checking the output of the 6th column today, I fully expect it to be indistinguishable from the output of the 5th, and so I have no interest in it.
What is certain are two things: the joint efforts 5th and 6th column efforts have had some success, especially in locations where Putin his hated and pro-western views more common than in most of Russia. The best poll I have seen says “Three-quarters of the respondents rather support the decision of the President of Russia to recognize the independent Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (73%), rather do not support – 16%, and every tenth Russian found it difficult to answer (11%).The majority of Russians – 78% – expressed support for the President’s decision to sign an agreement on friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance between Russia and the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics.Rather, 14% of respondents do not support this decision“. Putin personal rating is at 67,2%.
My guesstimate that no more than 5% of Russian support the 5th column and not more than 15% support the 6th column. Toss in another 5-10% which is afraid and on the fence. This is only a guess following my readings of the Russian social media, not a precise figure or even one based on serious research!
Next, the main thesis of US PSYOPs today was “the Russian movement is very slow, much slower than expected” hinting at some formidable Ukrainian defense operations. I hope that while I did not post any maps today, the above will tell you all you need to know to identify this thesis for what it is: western information operations, nothing more. The problem is that there is no “smartphone confirmation” of any of that, and by tomorrow I expect the main western PSYOPs thesis to change from “no/slow advance” to “Russian atrocities” (the smartphone coverage for that will, of course, be provided by the western press corps).
So, in conclusion, and once more – the “fog of war” is real, and to read through it takes both time and experience. By tomorrow, I only expect this “fog of war” (powerfully augmented by PSYOPs) to drown us all in all sorts of nonsense, rumors and wild claims. Again, please don’t post panicked questions such as “is it true that the Ukrainian forces are already on the Red Square in Moscow” or something equally insipid.
Two quick ones just in, then I need to crash (sorry, I am exhausted).
The US decided to impose personal sanctions personally on Putin (and others) which will result in a full termination of any diplomatic relations (as Russians warned the US many times). Note: such sanctions are entirely symbolic but maximally offensive, so a full break with Russia is what the US wants.
Twelve thousand Chechens will be sent to the LDNR if needed, so promised Ramzan Kadyrov, the President of Chechnia. Actually, I think that this is a very good idea, like in Syria, the Chechens should get involved in policing and public security operations. FYI – when the “toughest” and “NATO trained and equipped” Georgian brigade heard that the Chechen battalion Vostok was approaching, they all ran abandoning all their fancy (and secret) equipment. Russia then organized exhibits of all that NATO kit.
Today, the LDNR authorities report the seizure of large Ukie weapons depots including the famous Javelins and NLAWs. This is all very good news.
MM video
I took this video from inside a DD (Chinese version of Uber). It depicts where I live in JiDa in Zhuhai, China. Sure it’s sideways, but well, not too much I can do about that now.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry says it wants to end the 8-year bloodbath in Donbass that both Ukraine and the West turned a blind eye to.
The West spent eight years ignoring the “sea of blood” in Donbass while arming Ukraine, and now claims Moscow is the aggressor when it stepped in to end the conflict, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told RT on Thursday.
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a military operation in Ukraine in the early hours of Thursday, claiming it was necessary to “demilitarize and de-nazify” the neighbor. Kiev accused Russia of aggression, while the US, EU and NATO have called it an “unprovoked” invasion. Moscow insists this is not the case.
In announcing the operation, Putin said the “main objective is to stop the escalation of the war that’s been going on for eight years, and to stop the war,” Zakharova told RT in an exclusive interview.
“Russia did not commit aggression of any kind,” Zakharova insisted. “This did not start yesterday. There’s a sea of blood that’s appeared over the past 8 years,” she added, referring to the conflict in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, which Russia on Monday recognized as independent states.
The main aim is to stop the escalation of the war that's been going on for eight years, to stop this war
Donetsk and Lugansk broke away from Ukraine in 2014, after the West-backed coup ousted the democratically elected government in Kiev. Zakharova noted that the two self-proclaimed republics held a referendum eight years ago, saying they did not want to remain in Ukraine, but both Moscow and the West rejected this and tried to put the “broken” country back together.
When asked about President Volodymyr Zelensky’s statement that Ukraine wanted peace, Zakharova wondered why Ukraine was arming itself and refusing to negotiate with the Donbass.
“If Ukraine wanted peace, why did they get all these weapons” from all over the world, the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman told RT, adding, “It was clear that these were offensive weapons. Who were they fighting? Their own people in southeast Ukraine, and spoke often about seizing Crimea.”
The peninsula voted to rejoin Russia in March 2014, but Ukraine and its Western backers have refused to recognize this, calling it an “annexation.”
Zakharova also noted that the top Ukrainian officials have openly and publicly brought up the idea of obtaining nuclear weapons in recent weeks, pointing out this was a fact and not something claimed by Russian intelligence.
Divisions in Ukraine go beyond Donetsk and Lugansk, Zakharova added, accusing armed groups with Nazi-era symbols – such as the notorious Azov Battalion – of having influence over much of the country.
For years, she said, Western media so concerned over human rights in places like South Sudan and Myanmar kept silent on all this, ignoring that more than 13,000 people have died in the Donbass – many of them civilians. While Russia provided them with humanitarian aid, Kiev besieged them by cutting off trade, finance, and even utilities. Zakharova noted that the water canal towards Crimea is now once again operational after Ukraine “criminally” shut it off years ago.
Community
It’s not about individual “freedom” and allowing the sick, evil and malovent to hijack a forum. It’s about community. Community. You have a choice. you can sit behind your computer in a grey cubicle and shout your opinions anomously, or you can participate in a community as an accepted member. It your choice.
Not in his entire life has President Vladimir Putin made a speech like Monday’s Donbass address to the Russian people.
Nor has he ever named the Americans to be Russia’s national enemy in such unequivocal Russian terms – American promises worthless, American intentions deadly, American speeches lies, American actions intimidation, extortion, blackmail.
“So I want to ask”, Putin said: “why, why all this, for what? Okay, you don’t want to see us as a friend and ally, but why make us an enemy? There is only one answer: it’s not about our political regime, it’s not about anything else, they just don’t need such a large independent country as Russia. That’s the answer to all the questions. This is the source of traditional American policy towards Russia.”
“The pretext for another sanctions attack will always be found or simply fabricated, regardless of the situation in Ukraine. There is only one goal – to restrain the development of Russia. And they will do it as they did before, even without any formal pretext at all, just because we are and will never give up our sovereignty, national interests and our values.”
Unlike the most famous of English and American mobilization speeches against French, German and Confederate enemies – King Henry’s Agincourt, Winston Churchill’s Dunkirk, and Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg speeches – Putin didn’t wave his arms or move significantly his head, neck, shoulders, or right hand. Putin’s right hand is the operational one.
Watch and listen. The stillness of the body language, the pauses for breathing, the speech pitch, pace and modulation – these mean to all Russians: Do or die — now we do for ourselves or else the Americans will kill us.
Putin spoke for 55 minutes, 48 seconds – Shakespeare’s Henry V spoke for just over two minutes; Lincoln for less than that; Churchill for 20 minutes.
The Pentagon has been using body language and voice techniques to spy on Putin for years. Timothy Colton, the US Naval War College agent doubling as a Harvard professor, was exposed in 2015 after several years of paid secret work; read the details here.
Colton has also been the biographer of Boris Yeltsin, a work celebrated as a “masterpiece” by the US officials who once controlled Yeltsin. Yeltsin was unnamed in Putin’s speech, but all Russian listeners understand that he was meant in Putin’s accusations of “historic, strategic mistakes”, “pandering to the ambitions of the nationalist elites”; “injustices, lies and outright pillage.”
“Against the backdrop of the superficial and populist rhetoric about democracy and a bright future based either on a market or a planned economy, but amid a true impoverishment of people and widespread shortages, no one among the powers that be was thinking about the inevitable tragic consequences for the country… The collapse of the historical Russia known as the USSR is on their conscience.” For “market” Putin means the Yeltsin group, the two ranking officials who belong to it – Anatoly Chubais and Alexei Kudrin — are still alive, along with the oligarchs they created. For “planned economy” Putin refers to Mikhail Gorbachev whom he has condemned as well. For “conscience” Putin means hypocrisy.
The qualifier: “Of course, we cannot change past events, but we must at least admit them openly and honestly, without any reservations or politicking. Personally, I can add that no political factors, however impressive or profitable they may seem at any given moment, can or may be used as the fundamental principles of statehood. I am not trying to put the blame on anyone.”
Analysis of Putin’s body language and verbal cues on behalf of the secret services by Colton and his colleagues has not discouraged the hospitality which has been shown to Colton by the Valdai Club, the Kremlin-financed platform. The reason Putin has just announced openly. For the traditional American reason the Russian command believes Colton’s capacity to threaten is limited by his incapacity to comprehend.
Count Putin’s head, neck, and shoulder movements and measure them against the vertical and horizontal axes. Head movements left and right are restricted within 5 degrees of the vertical; there is almost no kinesis of the head forward or back; no neck rotation; and apart from a couple of left shrugs, Putin’s shoulders remain immobile and at rest on the horizontal for all 55 minutes. This is an unusually long time.
Movement psychologists diagnose these features as indicating on the one hand a combination of internal control and confidence in what is being said; on the other hand, the commitment to reassure the listener.
Putin does not stumble in speech, mispronounce or misread his teleprompter lines. Speaking without a glass of water for an hour, he clears his throat very rarely. His breathing intakes are short, regular, and without the diaphragmatic discipline of the Stanislavsky stage method; in short, natural. The pitch and modulation of his voice remain steady without many peaks of emphasis or emotion. But the president does something he has exhibited very rarely — he breathes out in audible sighs. This is a display of regret, sadness. For the Russian audience this is attractive because it is human.
For his emphases Putin employs as few of his moving parts as he can. This signifies a high degree of self-control without nervousness. Instead, he uses his hands, the right more than the left, to anchor his body. When he wants to underline a verbal point, there is no agitation of the arms nor tension in the fingers on the table. His gestures – either single-handed or double-handed – illustrate the military threats Putin is discussing from the US, the NATO alliance, and from Ukrainian territory.
Left: “a truly fatal document, the so-called ethnic policy of the party in modern conditions”. 2nd from left: “blackmailing the West to secure preferences by claiming that otherwise Russia would have a bigger influence in Ukraine”. 3rd from left: “we got five waves of NATO enlargement one after another….” 4th from left: “It’s called, rightly, ‘the knife to the throat’”. Right: “they are trying to blackmail us, again threatening us with sanctions, which, by the way, they will still introduce as Russia’s sovereignty strengthens”.
The last time the United States faced an enemy as calm, unmoving, disciplined, and confident was in the Vietnam War. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and deputy Victoria Nuland were less than eight years old at the time; National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan had not been born.
Oh, and speaking about Taiwan…
And about China’s defenses regarding Taiwan…
AI controlled Chinese Robotic bombs are swimming independently all over the South China Sea. Collecting info, and ready to detonate upon command. Video 6MB
Chinese Naval Aviation. I wonder if CNN, BBC, or FOX “news” would ever show these kinds of videos. Video 7MB
How community works
This is what happens inside of China. It is a nation that values community, and that does not tolerate social misfits. And Trolls are mentally ill social misfits. That’s WHY they hide their true names, faces, appearance, and location.
Then (supposedly) hidden they cause saddness, interruptions and sow disgust.
This is unaccceptable inside of China, and China is very strict about putting these misfits out of society. Instead they provide them with meaningful labor, in well structured environments where their social skills are allowed to gorw and mature until one day then can return back into that community.
Community. Without it, you are just a loney, solitary misfit.
When was the last time you ate this delicious dish?
My guess is that you must have eaten at least 300 buckets of KFC chicken since then. So much, that you (and the rest of society) has forgotten that there as so many ways to cook chicken, and deep frying it is only one such way.
Chicken a la King took the United States by storm in the middle of the 20th century. But if you try to find it on a dinner menu these days, you probably won’t have much luck.
By embracing this dish, featuring cubed chicken with a cream sauce served over your favorite grain (rice, noodles or bread), you’ll get to taste what made this chicken recipe such a classic and maybe even discover your next favorite meal.
Remember the onslaught of lies trying to pin Coronavirus on the Chinaese because of unhealthy habits, filth and dirt at a Wet Market. Yet, no one ever showed images of what a Wet Market looks like. Well, here is what it looks like.
Despite possible sanctions and their hard-hitting economic consequences, the hunted Russian bear has got out of the den and is going after the hunters. Until recently, Russians, Ukrainians, and Europeans believed that there would be no war.
What we see now, however, is a full-scale Russian intervention and quite a successful one too. Where are the Russian troops going, and most importantly, why? And where will they stop?
Strengthened since the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia was quite content with its new status of a leading regional power, and only verbally recalled its glorious imperial past. During the early 2000s, Russia even mulled the possibility of integrating into NATO and the EU, only to see its natural and legitimate interests repeatedly and shamelessly ignored. Millions of Russian-speakers living in the post-Soviet republics were deprived of their right to use their native language, while the Baltic countries and Ukraine profited from the transit of gas, oil, and raw materials. There was even a new “policy of gas pipelines,” when Russia was pressured into make concessions in exchange for being allowed to build a gas pipeline or simply put a stop to the syphoning off of its pipeline gas.
In fact, a resurgent Russia was gradually being presented as a “potential enemy” for the sake of reiterating NATO’s role as a defender against the imagined Russian threat. All this resulted in the 2013 events in Ukraine where nationalists came to power not without outside help, flatly refusing to safeguard the interests of the country’s Russian-speaking population, primarily in eastern Ukraine. Facing the risk of losing its naval base in Sevastopol (existing there since the 18th century) and wishing to protect the Russian-speaking people living in Ukraine, Russia, with the full support of the local population, re-absorbed Crimea and supported the separatists of Donbass. This was followed by Kiev’s ban on the use of the Russian language in the country (not entirely successful, though, since it was the main spoken language of Ukraine) and police persecution of those who advocated a dialogue with Moscow. In its effort to support Ukraine, the West introduced a series of anti-Russian sanctions, which seriously damaged the Russian economy. Still, for the past eight years, Russia was ready for dialogue. In exchange for autonomy for Russian-speakers and guarantees of non-deployment of a NATO infrastructure in eastern Ukraine, Moscow was prepared to roll back its support for the separatists and, possibly, even hold a new referendum in Crimea on its reunification with Russia.
However, during all these eight years, people continued to die along the disengagement line in Donbass, separating Kiev’s armed forces and the separatists (at the rate of more than 100 a year). Meanwhile, Russia was officially branded by Kiev as an “aggressor,” and those in power in Ukraine started to busily prepare for a big war, demanding military and financial assistance from the EU and Washington. And while President Zelensky’s predecessor, the millionaire Petro Poroshenko, was still able to maintain a dialogue with Moscow with the help of the oligarchs, the current president, who came to power on the strength of promises to seek peace and reconciliation, was trying hard to enter NATO and was threatening Russia with missiles deployed near Chernigov (750 km from Moscow). As for the Kremlin, it has spent the past six months trying to negotiate with Brussels, Washington and Zelensky himself. All that Putin was asking for were security guarantees for Russia. In fact, Moscow never really threatened Ukraine but was still being systematically pushed towards a military solution.
It should be noted that prior to the intervention, Putin explained in great detail to his compatriots what was going on, recalling how the borders of the Soviet republics had been cut and how Russian-speaking territories had been handed over to Ukraine. He also made it clear that one cannot talk about a violation of international law after the invasion of Iraq, the bombing of Serbia, the recognition of Kosovo and NATO’s move to the Russian borders.
Let’s be honest: a bear sleeping peacefully in its den was smoked out of there by being poked with a stick, and now they are wondering why it is chasing those who did that. Moscow has been pushed into a corner and is now demonstrating its strength and standing up for its interests. Now Putin will at best be satisfied with a change of guard in Kiev, and at worst, Ukraine as a state will disappear from the map of Europe. Is it possible to justify an aggression that has been provoked for a long time? This is a matter of a lengthy discussion. One thing is clear: 20 years ago, Russia could and wanted to join NATO and united Europe. However, the latter chose to make Russia an enemy…
Pick a side
I have recounted how various “experts” are advising Washington DC to sanction China along with Russia. They argue that since the USA controls the money supply and debt that countries would “of course” choose America over China. I argue otherwise. Where are people going to get things?
And concerning China…
A reminder that China DOES NOT PLAY
Like Russia, China has a ferocious military. Military training starts in first grade, however, certain kindergarden schools also start the tykes early as well. Marching, rules of organization are taught in first grade. Third grade you have field stripping of firearms, small arms training, and mortar fire.
China has a population of merit driven, determined soldiers of 1.6 billion people. Someone should slap the American neocons ont he side of the head and remind them that both China and Russia are decendents of Genghis Khan.
Today is a major day in the Russian military operation. Why?
Because Russian forces are now on the outskirts of many major Ukrainian cities. If yesterday was “standoff weapons” day, today is the first day when Russian forces can now begin to degrade Ukrainian artillery dispositions, engage Ukie armor and break through Ukrainian fortifications. Today is also the last day for US PSYOPs to try to present a counter-narrative (Ukies heroically resisting, Russian dying in huge numbers, effective counter-attacks, etc.).
Yet we live in the smartphone with camera era and picture like this one tell the full story:
What you see in this picture are immense traffic jams of folks fleeing not Mariupol or Kramatorsk, but Kiev, the capital.
Here is a quick machine translated news update from Col. Cassad:
1. LDNR – the positional nature of the fighting remains, with attempts by the LDNR armies to advance to the borders of the territories occupied by the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
2. The southern direction – the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation retained control over the bridge over the Dnieper at Kherson, repulsing attempts of counterattacks by the Armed Forces of Ukraine.. Fighting in the Antonovsky Bridge area continues.
A New Kakhovka is also being held. Melitopol was taken this morning and the advance towards Berdyansk began.
3. Kharkiv direction – fighting continues on the near approaches to Kharkov. Both sides are suffering losses in people and equipment.
4. Sumy direction – the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation took Putivl and passing through Sumy (the battle at the airport continued there today), advanced to Konotop, surrounding the city. Today, attempts to take Akhtyrka continued in order to reach Kharkov from the west. There are Russian roadblocks on the Sumy-Kiev highway. There is an advance to Kiev and Chernihiv. (The APU repelled the attack of the Russian Armed Forces in the Chernihiv direction).
5. Kiev – Gostomel airfield is held by paratroopers. The APU could not dislodge them from there. This morning, tank columns of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation broke through to the near approaches to Kiev and are close to establishing direct communication with the landing. The AFU is preparing a counterattack, stating that another landing will be thrown out in the Gostomel area today. The Pentagon says that Kiev will fall in the coming days. After 10 o’clock shooting was heard in the city. Also, according to the statement of the Armed Forces of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, the landing was thrown to the west of Zhytomyr. The Armed Forces of Ukraine are actively undermining bridges on the approaches, trying to slow down the advance of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation,
6. In the morning, strikes continued on military facilities of the Armed Forces of Ukraine throughout the territory of Ukraine. A Su-27 of the Ukrainian Air Force was shot down over Kiev – according to one version by the Russian air defense system, according to another – by the Ukrainian ones. The downed “Caliber” fell on a residential building in Kiev, but there were no casualties. During the shelling of Gorlovka, a school was hit – 2 teachers were killed.
7. The AFU launched a missile attack on the Millerovo airfield on the territory of the Russian Federation. Damage is reported at the airfield, but there are no losses in aircraft.
What a Chinese home is like
Yeah. It’s pretty much like this. Only, her house is not nearly as messy and cluttered up as mine. You know, having young kids is a real way to “decorate” your home. Video
And in Taiwan, a lesson for everyone
Ukraine’s crisis comic: note the flags, the texts, and the last picture : how US, UK, and EU farewell the stupid Ukraine president after giving him the weapons.
I love this Taiwan TV current affair channel. The current Taiwan regime ban them, so they go on social media.
It’s a tad too technical, on my side. You all can skim over the article if you want. Essentially, China’s AI systems detected the behavior of the USA’s NSA hacking tool. It mapped it out, and then algorithims figured it all out. The part that is NOT reported in this article is that the Chinese were able to do so as the enire system is transparent. It’s like trying to find a glass stature submerged in ice cube water.
Researchers from China’s Pangu Lab have disclosed details of a “top-tier” backdoor put to use by the Equation Group, an advanced persistent threat (APT) with alleged ties to the cyber-warfare intelligence-gathering unit of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA).
Dubbed “Bvp47” owing to numerous references to the string “Bvp” and the numerical value “0x47” used in the encryption algorithm, the backdoor was extracted from Linux systems “during an in-depth forensic investigation of a host in a key domestic department” in 2013.
The defense research group codenamed the attacks involving the deployment of Bvp47 “Operation Telescreen,” with the implant featuring an “advanced covert channel behavior based on TCP SYN packets, code obfuscation, system hiding, and self-destruction design.”
Bvp47 is said to have been used on more than 287 targets in the academia, economic development, military, science, and telecom sectors located in 45 countries, mainly in China, Korea, Japan, Germany, Spain, India, and Mexico, all the while going largely undetected for over a decade.
The elusive backdoor is also equipped with a remote control function that’s protected using an encryption algorithm, activating which requires the attacker’s private key – something the researchers said they found in the leaks published by the Shadow Brokers hacker group in 2016.
Pangu Lab is a research project of Pangu Team, which has a history of jailbreaking Apple iPhones dating all the way back to 2014. At the Tianfu Cup hacking contest last year, the white hat hacking team demonstrated several security flaws that allowed for remotely jailbreaking a fully patched iPhone 13 Pro running iOS 15.
The Shadow Brokers leaks
Equation Group, designated as the “crown creator of cyber espionage” by Russian security firm Kaspersky, is the name assigned to a sophisticated adversary that’s been active since at least 2001 and has used previously undisclosed zero-day exploits to “infect victims, retrieve data and hide activity in an outstandingly professional way,” some of which were later incorporated into Stuxnet.
The attacks have targeted a variety of sectors in no less than 42 countries, counting governments, telecom, aerospace, energy, nuclear research, oil and gas, military, nanotechnology, Islamic activists and scholars, media, transportation, financial institutions, and companies developing encryption technologies.
The group is believed to be linked to the NSA’s Tailored Access Operations (TAO) unit, while intrusion activities pertaining to a second collective known as Longhorn (aka The Lamberts) have been attributed to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Equation Group’s malware toolset became public knowledge in 2016 when a group calling itself the Shadow Brokers leaked the entire tranche of exploits used by the elite hacking team, with Kaspersky uncovering code-level similarities between the stolen files and that of samples identified as used by the threat actor.
Bvp47 as a covert backdoor
The incident analyzed by Pangu Lab comprises two internally compromised servers, an email and an enterprise server named V1 and V2 respectively, and an external domain (identified as A), sporting a novel two-way communication mechanism to exfiltrate sensitive data from the systems.
“There is abnormal communication between external host A and the V1 server,” the researchers said. “Specifically, A first sends a SYN packet with a 264-byte payload to port 80 of the V1 server, and then the V1 server immediately initiates an external connection to the high-end port of the A machine and maintains a large amount of exchange data.”
Simultaneously, V1 connects to V2 via the SMB service to perform a number of operations, including logging in to the latter with an administrator account, trying to open terminal services, enumerating directories, and executing PowerShell scripts through scheduled tasks.
V2, for its part, also connects to V1 to retrieve a PowerShell script and an encrypted second-stage payload, the encrypted execution results of which are sent back to V1, which, according to the researchers, “acts as a data transfer between the A machine and the V2 server.”
The Bvp47 backdoor installed on the servers consists of two parts, a loader which is responsible for decoding and loading the actual payload into memory. “Bvp47 generally lives in the Linux operating system in the demilitarized zone that communicates with the Internet,” the researchers said. “It mainly assumes the core control bridge communication role in the overall attack.”
Links to the Equation Group
Pangu Lab’s attribution to Equation Group stems from overlaps with exploits contained in a GPG-encrypted archive file published by the Shadow Brokers – “eqgrp-auction-file.tar.xz.gpg” – as part of a failedauction of the cyber weapons in August 2016.
“In the process of analyzing the ‘eqgrp-auction-file.tar.xz.gpg’ file, it was found that Bvp47 and the attacking tools in the compressed package were technically deterministic, mainly including ‘dewdrops,’ ‘suctionchar_agents,’ ‘tipoffs,’ ‘StoicSurgeon,’ ‘incision’ and other directories,” the researchers explained.
“The ‘tipoffs’ directory contains the RSA asymmetric algorithm private key used in the Bvp47 covert channel [for] command execution and other operations. On this basis, it can be confirmed that Bvp47 is from [the] Equation group.”
The findings mark the second time hitherto undocumented malware developed by the Equation Group has come to light in as many months. In late December 2021, Check Point Research disclosed details of a diagnostic utility called “DoubleFeature” that’s used in conjunction with the DanderSpritz malware framework.
“Judging from the attack tools related to the organization, including Bvp47, Equation group is indeed a first-class hacking group,” the researchers concluded.
“The tool is well-designed, powerful, and widely adapted. Its network attack capability equipped by zero-day vulnerabilities was unstoppable, and its data acquisition under covert control was with little effort. The Equation Group is in a dominant position in national-level cyberspace confrontation.”
A most outstanding Interview
It truly is. Man, oh man. No holding back. This is THE Scott Ritter that was sent to Iraq to find WMD’s and got in all sorts of trouble by the Bush Administration when he couldn’t find any. Man, he lets loose!
This link with Scott Ritter just popped up on moa a little while ago.
I’ve had to listen twice — highly recommended.
I think he is correct — NATO is dead and gone, bar for the funeral.
The European defence process will need to rebuild a less costly, more effective framework for peaceful co-existance with the Slavic world.
And this is a key point about re-alignments at a higher level than simply nation state.
It is at Chinese; Slavic; European; Anglo-American scales — everything else is just “loose ends” from the 20th century past.
Time to wake up, folks, and smell the roses (or the rubbish in the streets) and blame our local political representitives — after all, they ARE our ‘leaders’ (so they keep saying).
Accountability is a bitch ….Lol.
“NATO Too Weak to Face Russia: Scott Ritter on Russian Offensive
17,097 views • Feb 25, 2022 ” [38min]
https://youtu.be/3GkmdCaBECs
This kind of scene is fairly common when you go to a Business KTV. The girls will dance, and feed your food like grapes, strawberries, and drinks. They will hold your arm and be playful with you. video
“We’ve seen this picture show before, ahem,” claimed Archduke Peter Von Fishburn-Waldrop III, of County Hampshire, as he took snuff. “Whenever a world war is about to break out, one of us is inevitably assassinated, ahem.”
Archdukes are contracting mercenaries, hirelings, sell-swords, adventurers-about-town, and various other soldiers of fortune to round out their security details.
“Aye, it be good for business, make no mistake. Surely none of us wish to see an Archduke what with his life-force pourin’ out of his noggin, but we got bills to pay too, mind you,” said Captain John Ninefingers, leader of the famed Free Company.
Students of history will remember that the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand precipitated World War I, called The Great War at the time, fought by various European powers. Archdukes fear that with the Ukrainian crisis, it’s only a matter of time before history repeats itself.
“One day you’re collecting rent from peasants, ahem, or getting promoted in the military despite no accomplishments, and the next day, ahem, you get assassinated by a young upstart who wants freedom from your imperial empire,” muttered Archduke Yannis Belagrovstad, of the Gutenberg Province. “What nerve! What cheek!”
The motley collection of heirs-apparent is leaving nothing to chance. The finest technologies have been employed to ensure the safety of the Archduke corps throughout Europe.
“We attempted to develop a motorcar that was consistently surrounded by a moat as it traveled, ahem, but the peasants complained that it was too much digging,” mused Archduke Johannes Reberg, of the Kaiserschoten Kaserne. “And isn’t that just like a peasant?”
When asked for comment, Ursula Gertrud von der Leyen, the current leader of the European Commission, said, “The safety of the Archdukes remains our number one priority. That’s why we’ve diverted troops from Ukraine to stand guard around their four-post beds throughout the night.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a press release Tuesday morning regarding the safety of the Archdukes.
“When it comes to the assassination of Archdukes, it appalls me to think that anyone could be considering such an action,” said Putin, “without me having first ordered it”.
Checkered sweater for the tropics
Here, in the tropics, it’s HOT. Then there’s the “rainy season” which is HOT and STEAMY. So how do these Chinese girls get around wearing sweaters? Is it becuase they stay inside the air conditioning all day? Well, maybe so, but also the clothes in China are designed for the environment. Here is a sweater for the tropics. Cool, eh?
The Russian operations in the Ukraine continue at a moderate pace. Some more troops were committed today. In all the Russian military may have now introduced some 20-40% of its prepared forces.
The Ukrainian military is not so much holding a line but concentrating in and around its bigger cities. It has destroyed some bridges north of Kiev to make an approach more difficult. That will slow down the Russian moves but will not prevent them. Russia’s military is famously good at setting up combat bridges.
So far the Russians have used their artillery sparsely. An exception was last night near Kharkiv in the northeast of Ukraine where a strike by multiple launcher artillery systems (MLRS) hit some area target with yet unknown results.
A 13 minutes long video from a highway drive near Kherson, a city north of Crimea, shows nearly 100 destroyed Ukrainian trucks and tanks. These are likely victims of air attacks.
If this map from a Turkish think tank source is correct the Russian troops did not attempt much deeper strikes today but mostly consolidated their frontline.
This map from Janes shows less progress. But it also has not marked the Donbas area in the southeast which is held by pro-Russian forces.
Russia’s President has called on the Ukrainian military to overthrow its government. I do not think he believes that will happen but it is a possibility so why not call for it.
Facebook now allows to praise Ukrainian Nazi groups like the Azov battalion. This was prohibited with Azov previously being in the same category as ISIS. Now these are ‘our guys’.
There are a lot of discussions of sanctions against Russia and every western country is trying to get as much exemptions for its industries as possible . The U.S. has for example exempted everything that has to do with hydrocarbons from its own sanction package. It will still buy Russian oil and will continue to sell drilling equipment to Russia.
The EU countries are still negotiating with themselves. They should be careful with what they do.
Britain has had the stupidity of sanctioning the Russian air carrier Aeroflot. In a counter move Russia prohibited British Airways from flying over Russian territory. Normally all flights from Britain to the Far East cross Russian airspace. These will now have to be redirected to other routes which will significantly increase their flight time and fuel burn.
Russia has threatened ‘inconvenient’ counter-sanctions to those who sanction it. Overflight rights are only one of the tools it can use.
NATO has said it will continue to deliver weapons, including air defenses, to the Ukraine. NATO does not have any weapons but some NATO countries seem to strive for a larger war. The U.S. seem willing to sacrifice the Ukraine to create a quagmire for Russia.
Syria was also supposed to become a quagmire for Russia when Russia came to its help. It didn’t turn out that way.
Finally, this is how we handle Trolls here on MM
"Once you cut through the bullshit and understand what's going on, it's easy to predict what will happen.
These people and countries acting as attack dogs for the empire must therefore be taught an unforgettable lesson. If you don't put down the rabid dogs, they will get up and bite you again.
Therefore, Russia will not take half measures.
They will not stop unless the surrender is total, and punishment for the miscreants dealt out accordingly. Otherwise, this operation will be for naught."
If you don’t understand this video, you must have a mental illness. Truth this.
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
Yeah, if you go on to the Western “news” it’s all bullshit. I really cannot believe that anyone believe anything from these people anymore. They lie so much that their lies are lies of lies regarding lies.
The alternative sites, many of which are not the neocon conservative “gung ho! for ‘Merica” sites, show a great healthy respect for Russia, and some for China. Here’s we are going to throw out some stuff as the fluid situation unfolds.
Keep in mind that this is war. It’s chaotic and confusing, and there are all sorts of misinformation out there.
You can find many such websites that have collected blow-by-blow pictures, videos, and opinions / reports as they come in. I’m not going to do that except, maybe put a few interesting elements in place.
To quote DM…
"...the reposts I am hearing have me absolutely bewildred at the ruthless efficiency of the Russian army. I mean MM hinted at it, but its not until you see it in full swing you can really appreciate it."
In summary, in 24 hours, Russia took over the Ukraine. All the fancy and expensive munitions, weapons, ships, planes (supplied by the USA and NATO) were destroyed. There are some very interesting videos out there regarding this. Paratroop drops, jets blowing up the house that you are in, and the “leadership” scurrying away for safety under the great protective arms of the United States and NATO.
Right now, it’s a mop up operation, while the United States and NATO are still arguing what kind of “tough sanctions” that they will impose… or, more likely, what kind of emotionally driven (by manipulated polls) action that they could take.
My guess, could be a very BAD action, resulting in VERY BAD consequences.
But as it stands today, 25FEB22, most (but not all) of the Ukraine is under Russian control. The vast majority of American-trained (since 2014) Neo-Nazi troops laid down their arms and entered the protective corridors to their families to wait out the situation in peace. So now, we are talking about phase two…
We start with this…
Russia is ready to sit down and talk now that the Ukraine has been suppressed.
Objective and accurate report of the Russian objectives:
However, in the eyes of Putin and most Russians, the latest move serves as a counterstrike against the Western squeezing of Russia’s security room with extreme measures and a relatively large-scale showdown in wrestling with the US, a view that is also shared by the majority of Chinese.
“Circumstances require us to take decisive and immediate action,” Putin’s order read. In an address to the public, the Russian president said he wanted to “demilitarize” and “de-Nazify” Ukraine, Russia Today said. Putin further said, “We have no plans to occupy Ukrainian territory.”
“Demilitarize” could be understood to be putting down arms and surrendering, which can also be understood as incapacitating the opponent and rendering them unable to form a threat in a broader sense, Song Zhongping, a Chinese military expert and TV commentator, told the Global Times on Thursday.
“As a result, Russia will completely destroy the heavy weapons of Ukrainian troops, including warplanes, tanks and armored troops as well as defense forces, such as air defense missile forces and the navy,” Song said.
Russia announced it has destroyed Ukraine’s airfields, air defenses and control systems just a few hours after it launched the military operations.
“And as we take the measures announced by the president to ensure the security of the country and the Russian people, we will certainly always be ready for a dialogue that will return us to justice and the principles of the UN Charter,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said late on Thursday.
Yury Tavrovsky, head of the “Russian Dream-Chinese Dream” analytics center of the Izborsk Club, told the Global Times that Russia’s military operations in Ukraine are “completely legal.”
Both chambers of Russia’s Duma (parliament) had earlier approved recognition of Donetsk and Lugansk as “independent states.” The Upper Chamber (the Senate) later approved use of armed forces outside the national borders, Tavrovsky explained.
The military operation was launched just one day after the US and Europe unveiled what is believed to be just the first round of sanctions against Russian individuals and institutions in response to Putin’s signing of two decrees recognizing Lugansk and Donetskas independent and sovereign states.
As global markets tumbled steeply over the Ukraine-Russia crisis, some raised questions as to why Russia took this step, how the situation will evolve and whether the US will engage in a direct war with Russia.
Moscow’s motivation
In a phone call with Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Thursday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov explained the development of the Ukraine situation and Russia’s position, saying that the US and NATO violated their commitments by expanding east, refused to implement the new Minsk Agreements, and violated UN Security Council Resolution 2202, forcing Russia to take necessary measures to safeguard its own rights and interests.
Noting that China has always respected the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries, Wang said that China recognizes the complex and special historical context of the Ukraine issue and understands Russia’s legitimate security concerns.
China maintains that the Cold War mentality should be completely abandoned and a balanced, effective and sustainable European security mechanism should be finally established through dialogue and negotiation, Wang said.
“China believes there should be mutual cooperation and sustainable security, and the reasonable security concerns of all parties concerned should be respected and solved,” Hua Chunying, spokesperson of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said during a press conference on Thursday.
Some Chinese observers said the US has continued its intensive containment of Russia, for example, by implementing more sanctions, finally forcing Russia to try to realize its security demands in this drastic way.
Russian elites such as Putin and Deputy Chairman of Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev believe that the Ukraine issue has reached the point where it must be resolved.
“I believe Russia’s military operation is a reaction by Moscow to Western countries’ exertion of pressure on Russia for a long time, showing that Moscow can’t tolerate it anymore,” Yang Jin, an associate research fellow at the Institute of Russian, Eastern European, and Central Asian Studies under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Thursday.
“As to how the situation will evolve, I think we need to spend more time to observe it. First thing first, we need to focus on the attitude of the US, on whether Washington will launch a direct war against Russia,” he said, noting that everything depends on how NATO and the US will react.
If the entire military operation goes smoothly, Russia could reach its target of fully controlling Ukraine, and what worries NATO most is whether Russia will then carry out further operations again the three Baltic countries, namely Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, Li Haidong, a professor from the Institute of International Relations of China Foreign Affairs University, told the Global Times on Thursday.
The US and NATO are now observing how the situation evolves. The US and NATO have been training Ukraine troops since 2014, and it’s time to see if they will confront Russian troops and for how long they will fight them. “As long as Russia does not engage in military conflicts with NATO members, there won’t be direct confrontation between NATO and US [on one side] and Russia [on the other],” Li said.
Now, keep in mind that this is directly after the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. You know, that one that the United States, the UK, and the Australians decided to sit out of for one concocted reason or the other…
The entire opening ceremony for the 2022 Winter Olympics
At 2:11:01 is the meaningful symbolic embrace performance that made all the Chinese and some Taiwanese get all emotional. It’s about community and family and inclusion.
Nice hyper-cute Chinese girl
I think that it would be a nice spot to include this fine Chinese lass. My oh my! Look at that terrible communist regime! Look how dirty and polluted it is! Look at how thin she is, it’s obvious that the regime starves her. She must be pining away for freedom™ and democracy™, don’t you know!
That is not all that unlike America in the early 1950s. Here’s a winter scene. It’s in front of a neighborhood gas station. I wonder if they still have these things back in the ‘states. Notice the smiling and happy woman, and the rag-top (or convertible) in the back. Calm. Easy. Fun.
Like China is today.
Calm and fun United States in the 1950s.
From the Black Sea to the East Med, do not poke The Russian Bear
This is what happens when a bunch of ragged hyenas, jackals and tiny rodents poke The Bear: a new geopolitical order is born in breathtaking speed.
From a dramatic meeting of the Russian Security Council to a history lesson delivered by President Putin and the subsequent birth of the Baby Twins – the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk – all the way to their appeal to President Putin to intervene militarily to expel the NATO-backed Ukrainian bombing-and-shelling forces from Donbass, it was a seamless process.
The (nuclear) straw that (nearly) broke the Bear’s back – and forced its paws to pounce – was Zelensky the Comedian, back from the Russophobia-drenched Munich Security Conference where he was hailed like a Messiah, saying that the 1994 Budapest memorandum should be revised and Ukraine should be nuclear-rearmed.
That would be the equivalent of a nuclear Mexico south of the Hegemon.
Putin immediately turned Responsibility to Protect (R2P) upside down: an American concept invented to launch wars in MENA (remember Libya?) was retrofitted to stop a slow-motion genocide in Donbass.
First came the recognition of the Baby Twins – Putin’s most important foreign policy decision since going to Syria in 2015.
That was the preamble for the next game-changer: a “special military operation (…) aimed at demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine”, as Putin defined it.
Up to the last minute, the Kremlin was trying to rely on diplomacy, explaining to Kiev the necessary imperatives to prevent heavy metal thunder:
recognition of Crimea as Russian;
abandon any plans to join NATO;
negotiate directly with the Baby Twins – an anathema for the Americans since 2015;
finally, demilitarize and declare Ukraine as neutral.
Kiev’s handlers, predictably, would never accept the package – as they didn’t accept the Master Package that really matters: the Russian demand for “indivisible security”.
The sequence, then, became inevitable.
In a flash, all Ukrainian forces between the so-called line of contact and the original borders of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts were boxed in as the occupying force of territories of two Russian allies that Moscow had just sworn to protect.
So it was Get Out – Or Else.
“Or else” came as rolling thunder: the Kremlin and the Russian Ministry of Defense were not bluffing.
Timed to the end of Putin’s speech announcing the operation, the Russians decapitated with precision missiles everything that mattered in terms of the Ukrainian military in just one hour: Air Force, Navy, airfields, bridges, command and control centers, the whole Turkish Bayraktar drone fleet.
And it was not only Russian raw power.
It was the artillery of one of the Baby Twins, the DPR, that hit the HQ of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Donbass, which actually housed the entire Ukrainian military command.
This means that the Ukrainian General Staff instantly lost control of all its troops.
This was Shock and Awe against Iraq, 19 years ago, in reverse: not for conquest, not as a prelude for an invasion and occupation.
The political-military leadership in Kiev did not even have time to declare war.
They froze.
Demoralized troops started deserting.
Total defeat – in one hour.
The water supply to Crimea was instantly re-established.
Humanitarian corridors were set up for the deserters.
“Remnants” now include mostly surviving Azov batallion Nazis, mercenaries trained by the usual Blackwater/Academi suspects, and a bunch of Salafi-jihadis.
Predictably, Western corporate media has already gone totally berserk branding it as the much-awaited Russian “invasion”. (A reminder: when Israel routinely bombs Syria and when the House of One Saudi routinely bombs Yemeni civilians, there is never any peep in NATOstan media.)
As it stands, realpolitik spells out a possible endgame (see Donetsk’s head, Denis Pushilin: “The special operation in Donbass will soon be over and all the cities will be liberated.”)
We could soon witness the birth of an independent Novorossiya – east of the Dnieper, south along Sea of Azov/Black Sea, the way it was when attached to Ukraine by Lenin in 1922. But now totally aligned with Russia, and providing a land bridge to Transnistria.
Ukraine, of course, would lose any access to the Black Sea.
History loves playing tricks: what was a “gift” to Ukraine in 1922 may become a parting gift a hundred years later.
It’s creative destruction time
It will be fascinating to watch what Prof. Sergey Karaganov masterfully described, in detail, as the new Putin doctrine of constructive destruction , and how it will interconnect with West Asia, the Eastern Mediterranean and further on down the Global South road.
President Erdogan, the ceremonial NATO Sultan, branded the recognition of the Baby Twins as “unacceptable”.
No wonder: that definitely smashed all his elaborate plans to pose as privileged mediator between Moscow and Kiev during Putin’s upcoming visit to Ankara. The Kremlin – as well as the Foreign Ministry – don’t waste time talking to NATO minions.
Lavrov, for his part, had a recent, very productive entente with Syrian Foreign Minister Faysal Mekdad. Russia, this past weekend, has staged a spectacular strategic missile display, hypersonic and otherwise, featuring Khinzal, Zircon, Kalibr, Yars ICBMs, Iskander and Sineva – irony of ironies, in synch with the Russophobia-fest in Munich.
In parallel, Russian Navy ships of the Pacific, Northern and Black Sea fleets performed a series of submarine search drills in the Mediterranean.
The Putin doctrine privileges the asymmetrical – and that applies to the near abroad and beyond.
Putin’s body language, in his last two crucial interventions, spell out nearly maximum exasperation.
As in realizing, not auspiciously, but rather in resignation, that the only language those neo-con and “humanitarian” imperialist psychos in the Beltway understand is heavy meal thunder (they are definitely deaf, dumb and blind to History, Geography and Diplomacy, for that matter. Not to mention they never accepted their defeat in Syria.)
So we can always game the Russian military, for instance, imposing a no-fly zone in Syria to conduct a series of visits by Mr. Khinzal not only to the Turk-protected shady jihadist umbrella in Idlib but also the jihadists protected by the Americans in Al-Tanf base, near the Syria-Jordan border. After all these specimens are all NATO proxies.
The United States government barks non-stop about “territorial sovereignty”.
So let’s game the Kremlin asking the White House for a road map on getting out of Syria: after all the Americans are illegally occupying a section of Syrian territory and most of all adding extra disaster to the Syrian economy by stealing their oil.
NATO’s stultifying Stoltenberg has announced the alliance is dusting off its “defense plans”: that may include little more than hide behind their expensive Brussels desks. They are as inconsequential in the Black Sea as in the East Med – as the Empire remains quite vulnerable in Syria.
There are now four Russian TU-22M3 strategic bombers in Hymeimim base, each capable of carrying three S-32 anti-ship missiles that fly at supersonic Mach 4.3 with a range of 1,000 km. No Aegis system is able to handle them.
Russian TU-22M3 strategic bomber.
Russia in Syria also has stationed a few Mig-31Ks in Latakia equipped with hypersonic Khinzals – more than enough to sink any kind of US surface group, including aircraft carriers, in the East Med. The US has no air defense mechanism whatsoever with even a minimal chance of intercepting them.
Mig-31K equipped with hypersonic Khinzal missile.
So the rules have changed.
Drastically.
The Hegemon is naked.
The new deal starts with turning the post-Cold War set-up in Eastern Europe completely upside down.
The East Med will be next.
The Bear is back, baby.
Hear him roar.
Well, what about the ruthless, moronic, idiots running the “West”?
And how will the USA respond?
The Americans are obviously in a state of apoplectic rage and anxiety right now.
The American Overlord will likely descend further into insanity and violence, as its sense of imperial entitlement to rule the world just got pimp slapped by the Russian bear.
Oh, no. You can be sure that they do not like what is going on, and you can be sure that they are ready to just toss the boardgame up in the air in defiant frustration.
What is next is anyones guess, but it just cannot be good.
The collective West will be seething – no Black Sea base near Crimea – their dreams up in smoke again.
So impotent with rage – they get out their sanctions manuals and try and find the worst they can possibly find to hurt Russia and have a fleeting feeling of satisfaction and power until they realise inflation is going through the roof, they have no energy to make anything, their industries start failing, can’t grow anything and they can’t heat their homes. And the glutinous fat cats in the EU have nothing to do and wonder how long their jobs will be around as it was their so clever idea to sanction their main energy supplier and now have no fertilizer to grow anything. The peasants will be bellowing outside wanting their pound of flesh.
You would think that they would just do their pontificating, but I would think that the evil “it’s time for the rapture! Let’s bring on MAD nuclear engagement now!” neocon crowd is pressing for a full scale nuclear “response”.
If that happens, the USA will be completely destroyed.
Bad news. You bet.
But, you know, the Commander did say “little bads, not big bads”. So we will see. One thing is for certain; Imperial hubris meets Karma. And it’s a bitch.
I didn’t copy the whole thing. I just shake my head. Can they actually BELIEVE what they write? Or is their opinion of American people so so that they think that they will believe it?
"...unprovoked invasion."
Nice small cute and adorable girl
Somehow, she reminds me of a very cute little mouse. Maybe it’s the outfit. Anyways, it’s pretty awesome and what a nice tight little outfit she is wearing. I’ll get that she has all the boys chasing her!
A classic of 1950s Americana, Cheeseburger Pie is the most comforting of weeknight casseroles: sautéed onion and ground beef, baked under a simple batter of flour, baking powder, eggs, and milk and a rich topping of cheddar cheese. Serve it in thick wedges with an easy celery and romaine heart salad.
Cheeseburger pie. Why not?
Cheeseburger pie slice.
US Foreign Policy Is a Cruel Sport
Bear baiting was long ago banned as inhumane. Yet today, a version is being practiced every day against whole nations on a gigantic international scale.
From HERE at the Greenville Post. Another excellent article.
In the time of the first Queen Elizabeth, British royal circles enjoyed watching fierce dogs torment a captive bear for the fun of it. The bear had done no harm to anyone, but the dogs were trained to provoke the imprisoned beast and goad it into fighting back. Blood flowing from the excited animals delighted the spectators.
This cruel practice has long since been banned as inhumane.
And yet today, a version of bear baiting is being practiced every day against whole nations on a gigantic international scale. It is called United States foreign policy. It has become the regular practice of the absurd international sports club called NATO.
United States leaders, secure in their arrogance as “the indispensable nation,” have no more respect for other countries than the Elizabethans had for the animals they tormented. The list is long of targets of U.S. bear baiting, but Russia stands out as prime example of constant harassment. And this is no accident. The baiting is deliberately and elaborately planned.
As evidence, I call attention to a 2019 report by the RAND corporation to the U.S. Army chief of staff entitled “Extending Russia.” Actually, the RAND study itself is fairly cautious in its recommendations and warns that many perfidious tricks might not work. However, I consider the very existence of this report scandalous, not so much for its content as for the fact that this is what the Pentagon pays its top intellectuals to do: figure out ways to lure other nations into troubles U.S. leaders hope to exploit.
The official U.S. line is that the Kremlin threatens Europe by its aggressive expansionism, but when the strategists talk among themselves the story is very different. Their goal is to use sanctions, propaganda and other measures to provoke Russia into taking the very sort of negative measures (“over-extension”) that the U.S. can exploit to Russia’s detriment.
The RAND study explains its goals:
“We examine a range of nonviolent measures that could exploit Russia’s actual vulnerabilities and anxieties as a way of stressing Russia’s military and economy and the regime’s political standing at home and abroad.
The steps we examine would not have either defense or deterrence as their prime purpose, although they might contribute to both.
Rather, these steps are conceived of as elements in a campaign designed to unbalance the adversary, leading Russia to compete in domains or regions where the United States has a competitive advantage, and causing Russia to overextend itself militarily or economically or causing the regime to lose domestic and/or international prestige and influence.”
Clearly, in U.S. ruling circles, this is considered “normal” behavior, just as teasing is normal behavior for the schoolyard bully, and sting operations are normal for corrupt FBI agents.
This description perfectly fits U.S. operations in Ukraine, intended to “exploit Russia’s vulnerabilities and anxieties” by advancing a hostile military alliance onto its doorstep, while describing Russia’s totally predictable reactions as gratuitous aggression.
Diplomacy involves understanding the position of the other party.
But verbal bear baiting requires total refusal to understand the other, and constant deliberate misinterpretation of whatever the other party says or does.
What is truly diabolical is that, while constantly accusing the Russian bear of plotting to expand, the whole policy is directed at goading it into expanding!
Because then we can issue punishing sanctions, raise the Pentagon budget a few notches higher and tighten the NATO Protection Racket noose tighter around our precious European “allies.”
For a generation, Russian leaders have made extraordinary efforts to build a peaceful partnership with “the West,” institutionalized as the European Union and above all, NATO.
They truly believed that the end of the artificial Cold War could produce a peace-loving European neighborhood.
But arrogant United States leaders, despite contrary advice from their best experts, rejected treating Russia as the great nation it is, and preferred to treat it as the harassed bear in a circus.
The expansion of NATO was a form of bear-baiting, the clear way to transform a potential friend into an enemy. That was the way chosen by former U.S. President Bill Clinton and following administrations. Moscow had accepted the independence of former members of the Soviet Union. Bear-baiting involved constantly accusing Moscow of plotting to take them back by force.
Russia’s Borderland
Ukraine is a word meaning borderlands, essentially the borderlands between Russia and the territories to the West that were sometimes part of Poland, or Lithuania, or Habsburg lands.
As a part of the U.S.S.R., Ukraine was expanded to include large swaths of both. History had created very contrasting identities on the two extremities, with the result that the independent nation of Ukraine, which came into existence only in 1991, was deeply divided from the start.
And from the start, Washington strategies, in cahoots with a large, hyperactive anti-communist anti-Russian diaspora in the U.S. and Canada, contrived to use the bitterness of Ukraine’s divisions to weaken first the U.S.S.R. and then Russia. Billions of dollars were invested in order to “strengthen democracy” – meaning the pro-Western west of Ukraine against its semi-Russian east.
The 2014 U.S.-backed coup that overthrew President Viktor Yukanovych, solidly supported by the east of the country, brought to power pro-West forces determined to bring Ukraine into NATO, whose designation of Russia as prime enemy had become ever more blatant.
This caused the prospect of an eventual NATO capture of Russia’s major naval base at Sebastopol, on the Crimean peninsula.
Since the Crimean population had never wanted to be part of Ukraine, the peril was averted by organizing a referendum in which an overwhelming majority of Crimeans voted to return to Russia, from which they had been severed by an autocratic Khrushchev ruling in 1954.
Western propagandists relentlessly denounced this act of self-determination as a “Russian invasion” foreshadowing a program of Russian military conquest of its Western neighbors – a fantasy supported by neither facts nor motivation.
Appalled by the coup overthrowing the president they had voted for, by nationalists threatening to outlaw the Russian language they spoke, the people of the eastern provinces of Donetsk and Lugansk declared their independence.
Russia did not support this move, but instead supported the Minsk agreement, signed in February 2015 and endorsed by a UN Security Council resolution.
The gist of the accord was to preserve the territorial integrity of Ukraine by a federalization process that would return the breakaway republics in return for their local autonomy.
The Minsk agreement set out a few steps to end the internal Ukrainian crisis.
First, Ukraine was supposed to immediately adopt a law granting self-government to eastern regions (in March 2015).
Next, Kiev would negotiate with eastern territories over guidelines for local elections to be held that year under OSCE supervision.
Then Kiev would implement a constitutional reform guaranteeing eastern right.
After the elections, Kiev would take full control of Donetsk and Lugansk, including border with Russia. A general amnesty would cover soldiers on both sides.
However, although it signed the agreement, Kiev has never implemented any of these points and refuses to negotiate with the eastern rebels.
Under the so-called Normandy agreement, France and Germany were expected to put pressure on Kiev to accept this peaceful settlement, but nothing happened.
Instead, the West has accused Russia of failing to implement the agreement, which makes no sense inasmuch as the obligations to implement fall on Kiev, not on Moscow.
Kiev officials regularly reiterate their refusal to negotiate with the rebels, while demanding more and more weaponry from NATO powers in order to deal with the problem in their own way.
Meanwhile, major parties in the Russian Duma and public opinion have long expressed concern for the Russian-speaking population of the eastern provinces, suffering from privations and military attack from the central government for eight years.
This concern is naturally interpreted in the West as a remake of Hitler’s drive to conquest neighboring countries.
However, as usual the inevitable Hitler analogy is baseless. For one thing, Russia is too large to need to conquer Lebensraum.
You Want an Enemy? Now You’ve Got One
Germany has found the perfect formula for Western relations with Russia: Are you or are you not a “Putinversteher,” a “Putin understander?” By Putin they mean Russia, since the standard Western propaganda ploy is to personify the targeted country with the name of its president, Vladimir Putin, necessarily a dictatorial autocrat. If you “understand” Putin, or Russia, then you are under deep suspicion of disloyalty to the West. So, all together now, let us make sure that we DO NOT UNDERSTAND Russia!
Russian leaders claim to feel threatened by members of a huge hostile alliance, holding regular military manoeuvers on their doorstep? They feel uneasy about nuclear missiles aimed at their territory from nearby NATO member states? Why, that’s just paranoia, or a sign of sly, aggressive intentions. There is nothing to understand.
So, the West has treated Russia like a baited bear.
And what it’s getting is a nuclear-armed, militarily powerful adversary nation led by people vastly more thoughtful and intelligent than the mediocre politicians in office in Washington, London and a few other places.
U.S. President Joe Biden and his Deep State never wanted a peaceful solution in Ukraine, because troubled Ukraine acts as a permanent barrier between Russia and Western Europe, ensuring U.S. control over the latter.
They have spent years treating Russia as an adversary, and Russia is now drawing the inevitable conclusion that the West will accept it only as an adversary.
The patience is at an end. And this is a game changer.
First reaction: the West will punish the bear with sanctions! Germany is stopping certification of the Nordstream 2 natural gas pipeline. Germany thus refuses to buy the Russian gas it needs in order to make sure Russia won’t be able to cut off the gas it needs sometime in the future. Now that’s a clever trick, isn’t it! And meanwhile, with a growing gas shortage and rising prices, Russia will have no trouble selling its gas somewhere else in Asia.
When “our values” include refusal to understand, there is no limit to how much we can fail to understand.
The Fall Of Utopia: Absolutely Amazing Digital Art Works Of Quin Wu
This brutalist interpretation of a McDonald’s in Russia forms part of architect Quin Wu’s artwork series “Big Mac in Snow”, which bridges the gap between two confrontational ideologies—Soviet Russia and the ultra-capitalist fast food franchise.
In his work, Quin Wu gives us a clear understanding of how fragile the balance is in today’s society. And how easy it is today to fall into the abyss between good and evil.
“All images posted here are my personal work. They are computer generated renderings. The architectural themes range from house designs to environment scenes to social critiques.
During the peak of Covid-19 on 2020, I gave it a try to learn some programs that are commonly used in the game industry.
I am a believer that tools are extension of the mind. Gradually polishing skills in modeling, texturing, compositing, rendering etc., I am able to materialize some of my thoughts into actual images. It has been a very fun journey,” he writes.
Here’s another.
And yet another.
Some nonsense from the Western Press
China has lifted restrictions on Russian wheat and barley as of yesterday, the day Russia invaded Ukraine.
Australia’s Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, is criticising the move
.
Meanwhile, Defence Minister Peter Dutton says China could persuade Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the invasion
RUSSIAN economic sanctions in response to the “Sanctions from Hell” from Biden / NATO
The United States imposed a series of economic sanctions upon Russia this week (last week of February 2022) in response to the recognition by Russia of Luhansk and Donetsk as “Independent states.”
In response, the Russian Foreign Ministry said today “new US sanctions will be met by a ‘strong response’, ‘sensitive for the American side.’
NATO / US sanctions:
The EU imposed sanctions against 351 State Duma deputies who voted for the recognition of the DPR and LPR, as well as against 27 individuals and organizations. Then, EU EXEC. VP DOMBROVSKIS ANNOUNCED: “IF RUSSIAN SOLDIERS ENTER UKRAINE BEYOND SEPARATIST-CONTROLLED, SELF-PROCLAIMED REPUBLICS, THE EU IS PREPARED TO IMPOSE A SECOND SET OF SANCTIONS ON MOSCOW.”
RUSSIAN retalitory sanctions;
Secretary of the General Council of United Russia and Deputy Chairman of the Federation Council Andrey Turchak said that Russia is indifferent to the sanctions imposed by the West and their consequences.
When asked what options the Russians might employ against such Sanctions, an Intelligence Analyst source responded in a general manner…
Russia could close airspace to civil airlines of the countries that sanction Russia. That would be hugely disruptive to international flights.
Russia could declare that Russian exports must now be paid for in Rubles, gold, etc.
Russia could stop all sales of anything to USA (space rocket motors and oil especially).
Russia could break all contracts with countries that sanction Russia on the grounds that a state of hostility exists. That is, all oil and gas deliveries stop immediately.
Russia could announce that no more gas will be shipped to or through Ukraine on the grounds that a state of hostility exists. Russia won’t sanction anyone. They don’t play with gloves. They will stop the natural gas deliveries to Europe, and the entire world economy collapses.
Assuming a fantasy best case scenario (fantasy, because it will NEVER happen), Europe’s LNG terminal unloading capacity, even working 100%, 24/7, assuming a non-stop stream of tankers, can only match under 17% of what Russia delivers. Needless to say, European economy goes belly up the next day, and the WESTERN world will follow.
And when that happens, countries automatically pivot direct to war. A lot, including the US, get granted war powers that allow the state…
to seize the means of production and distribution,
set price controls,
require civilians to operate and maintain critical infrastructure
being drafted/forced into service,
set curfew and movement restrictions,
suspend constitutions and civil rights,, etc.
It can get very draconian very quickly. But will not change the outcome : full economical collapse.
Add to that the pure mad-max SHTF when the is no food in the cities. There isn’t much a government can do, TODAY, that can avoid the worst case scenario.
We’re NOT in 1916 or 1940, when most of the world lived on country-side, and produced food.
We’re not in 1916 or 1940, when the supply chains were extremely short (hell, you could use carriages then to supply the economy and the people).
We’re in 2022, after 2 years of constant economic decline, millions of companies that went bankrupt, an inflation that needs just a nudge to go up faster then an hyper-sonic missile, and supply chains that are thousands of miles long. Maters not what government do, it’s going to be the biggest SHTF ever. Most likely the last SHTF.
Russia and China would roll out their counter-SWIFT. It’s already in prototype stage, and ready to “turnkey” into operation.
They could abandon the “petrodollar” too. That would FUCK everyone in the WEST. Most especially those in Europe and the Untied States because they don’t have any gold. All they have is paper.
Nice Chinese girl with a filter
I guess it is a generational thing, but a lot of the Chiense girls like to use these “filters” and decorate their videos with them. They are really quite awesome, and some are jsut silly while others are funny. Check out the filters on this woman. Watch how they follow her face and movment. The tracting and positioning are exceptional!
I am getting emails from all types of sources about Ukrainian cities already being liberated. The problem is that there are, as predicted, A LOT of fakes out there, including from anti-Putin Russian interests. So rather than risk getting it wrong and list those cities, I will just offer a few comments and then take a break.
Enormous Operation
I was expecting an operational-level Russian operation, but what I see today this is clearly a strategic operation. This is way bigger than what I expected.
In the eary phases
We are in the very early phases of the operation, but I see all the usual signs of a Ukrainian strategic collapse. By tomorrow morning we should know a lot more.
The initial strke was very successful
The first strike phase of the operation has been extremely successful and the Ukrainian ground forces are now not only without any kind of cover or support (the Ukie Air Force and Navy passed away today), they are also without orders: not only has the Ukronazi HQ in the Donbass been totally destroyed, the Russians are, no doubt, putting down their EW blanket on the full area of operations.
Operational envelopment to be completed soon
I think that by tomorrow evening the operational envelopment of the Ukie forces in the eastern Ukraine will be completed. After that, only two types of Ukie soldiers will be left: those who surrendered and the dead.
Major cities are secured
The Russians have either approached or even surrounded several major Ukrainian cities. I won’t list them now. Why? Because by tomorrow we will have that list confirmed.
Belarus
Belarus is fully backing Russia (Lukashenko was very emphatic about that today), as does Iran. Our Chinese friends have been rather restrained and proffered only well-intended generalities, let’s see if that changes in the future.
Narrative is out of control
I also suspect that tomorrow will be the last day for the US PSYOPs to try to control the narrative, after that there will be too many cellphones with cameras to conceal the magnitude of the disaster.
For this reason, I still expect a major false flag.
Refugees
The Poles and Hungarians have declared that they fear a massive influx of refugees and that they are therefore deploying more forces to the border to “control the situation”. These forces could be easily and quickly moved inside the Western Ukraine to seize the Lvov and Ivano-Frankovsk regions. Best of all (for them) is that they can be pretty sure that the Russians won’t object. And with all the NATO facilities in the Ukraine being destroyed right now, the Russians can toss this (mostly Nazi) and faraway bone to whoever in the EU who wants it (The Hungarians are probably too smart for that, but the Poles???). Whatever may be the case, I expect a minor NATO operation into the western Ukraine in the next couple of days. Frankly, I couldn’t care less.
Major Risks
Another MAJOR risk is the presence in the Ukraine of A LOT of very dangerous part of the civilian infrastructure (including 15 nuclear reactors which barely function) The Ukies have already blown up at least one (pretty small) damn near Lugansk. I hope that the Russian and Belarusian special forces will secure these facilities as soon as humanely possible.
Russian Black Sea fleet
Next: watch the Russian Black Sea fleet. Something tells me that tomorrow we will see it A LOT and, probably, along the entire Ukie coast.
No long-term occupancy
Last but not least. Iraq has shown that it is one thing to destroy an army, and quite another to deal with an insurgency, even one armed with only small arms and RPGs. I remain categorically opposed to any Russian mid/long occupation of the Ukraine. I am confident that Putin will soon declare the end of major combat operations (if only because there won’t be many enemies left) and that many Russian forces will begin a pullback.
But the nightmare of having hundreds of thousands of assault rifles distributed to “the population” but which, in reality, armed what NATO will want to see as a “stay behind insurgency” will begin. And I want the Ukrainians to fight that battle by themselves, with some Russian help if needed, but not by hiding behind Russian forces.
So A LOT really depends on the people of the Ukraine: the coming days will show us who and what they are. Now is the time for them to do the right thing.
That’s it. I wish we had more info, but here we need to stop and wait.
By tomorrow we will know A LOT more.
Goodnight everybody
Andrei
A new American political party…
Here is the statement from the newest political party in the States – The National Justice Party:
The National Justice Party hopes that the situation can be resolved with as little bloodshed as possible on all sides and considers the spilling of any Russian or Ukrainian blood a tragedy. We reject the false and childish narratives about the conflict that are being promoted in Western media and place the lion’s share of blame for the escalation on the shoulders of the US and NATO, who have instigated this crisis from the beginning and cynically lied to their own citizens.President Biden has vowed to make Russia pay a steep price, but the only people he is capable of making pay anything are Americans and European citizens. Oil and natural gas prices are expected to spike even further as a result of the conflict, placing the burden for US/NATO geopolitical games on ordinary Americans and Europeans who have no interest in a hostile relationship with Russia. On February 22nd the German government, under orders from NATO, revoked the certification for the Nordstream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, thus putting the project that would alleviate the energy bills of millions of Germans in further jeopardy.
Nice Chinese girl in her home
And she is nice. Why not enjoy a fine cup of coffee while sitting down and listening to mellow jazz?
China has blamed the US for creating the tensions which led to Thursday’s Russian attack on Ukraine. Beijing further called on the international community to avoid “stoking panic” over the situation.
During a press briefing, China’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said the key question was the role played by the Americans, whom she branded “the [main] culprit of current tensions.”
“If someone keeps pouring oil on the flames while accusing others of not doing their best to put out the fire, such kind of behavior is clearly irresponsible and immoral,” Hua said. China objects to “any action that hypes up war,” she added.
Chunying accused the US of hypocrisy, asking whether Washington had respected the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Iraq and Afghanistan, where she said it had “wantonly killed innocent people.” She called on the US to “take these questions seriously and abandon double standards.”
.
Describing the unfolding events as “complex,” the spokeswoman confirmed that Beijing was not providing military support to Russia, and said China was not “jumping to any conclusions” over the situation.
She called on all sides to “work for peace instead of increasing tensions” or “stoking panic.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a military attack on Ukraine on Thursday, which he said was aimed at demilitarizing and “denazifying” the country. He accused the West of flooding Ukraine with advanced weaponry and ramping up the NATO presence in the country, arguing that the Russian “special operation” was necessary to protect the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, which Moscow has recognized as sovereign states.
Russia’s military action has prompted an international outcry and threats of new, large-scale sanctions. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced on Thursday that Kiev had cut diplomatic ties with Moscow.
Nice Caddy
Now, this is one dream car that I would be just proud to drive about in. I love everything about this scene. From the burgandy color of the car, to the fine slacks on that cute blonde next to that lucky man.
Washington, DC
Nice Chinese girl
Well, here in China, you won’t see too many natural blondes, but you will see a lot of fine attractive women. Like this gal, for instance…
I parsed some info source and I can offer a few quick reactions to what is taking place. The operation is bigger than what I had predicted. However, I STILL don’t believe that Russia wants to invade the Ukraine.
Let’s first see what Russia has already done using ONLY HER STANDOFF WEAPONS:
The Ukrainian air defenses have ceased to exist
The Ukrainian air force has ceased to exist
The Ukrainian navy has ceased to exist
The Ukrainian command and control are severely disrupted with many command posts destroyed
All the military airfields in the Ukraine are now not operational
Numerous supply dumps of ammo, petroleum and lubricants have been destroyed.
Russia controls the entire Ukie airspace and all the Ukie coastal waters in the Black and Azov seas.
Next, let’s see what LDNR and Russian forces are, apparently, doing right now:
The LDNR forces have broken through the Ukie defenses in two locations and have penetrated 7-10km behind the LOC.
These forces advanced with fire support from Russia
The Ukie forces have built fortifications for 8 years, so the progress against the bulk of the Ukie ground forces is slow. HOWEVER
It appears that the Russian have decided to encircle the entire Ukronazi force on the Donbass by a pincer movement from the north and south
It is my opinion that Russia will encircle the Ukie forces, the entire Ukrainian force along the LOC and then wait for them to surrender thereby minimizing losses on both sides. In other words, the Russians are trying to lock the Ukies in an operational cauldron and basically remove these forces from the equation.
Second, Putin has clearly stated the Russian goals: demilitarize and denazify the Ukraine.
The first element, disarmament, is already well under way.
The denazification implies some kind of regime change. There are reports of Russian forces near Kiev and I believe that a “hunt for Nazis” will be conducted in one way or another.
Interestingly, the Russians have totally surrounded the city of Kharkov, but have not moved in (yet). This makes perfect military sense, but it also signals, or so it seems to me, that Russia wants to avoid as much as can be to get involved in offensive combat operations in big cities and also wants to avoid killing civilians. Mind you, the military which could take Grozny in 2000 can *easily* and *quickly* storm any Ukie city (if only because Ukies and Chechens are almost polar opposites in terms of their combat abilities). But why do through the bother?
When possible, the Russian will surround the Ukie cities, blockade them and wait for the white flags to appear.
Whether that is possible or not I can’t tell, and what will happen to Mariupol next will be interesting: this time, yes, the city shall be liberated, but it will be interesting to see how much resistance the LDNR/Russian forces will encounter.
BTW – does anybody now about any webcams/geocams for Mariupol?
Intermediate conclusions:
Basically, this 08.08.08 on a much larger scale: move in, disarm, withdraw.
My guesses (not more, it is waaaay too early to tell!) is that:
The Ukie forces along the LOC will be surrounded and neutralized. Once that goal in achieved, most of the Ukrainian ground threat will simply disappear. True Nazis will be shot, the rest disarmed and sent home. Their weapons will go to the LDNR.
LDNR and Russia forces will advance deep inside the Ukraine, but only to execute specific missions, after which they will be pulled back to the legal border of the LDNR (with a few exception possible for specific, local reasons).
The Ukronazi leadership will run away and Kabul like scenes are possible. Some will be caught.
The Nazi regime in Kiev will be regime changed to some other regime which will accept a Russian ceasefire and the opening of direct negotiations with both the LDNR and Russia. Eventually, a general ceasefire will be proclaimed.
I still think that a NATO (Polish?) ground operation into the Lvov and Ivano-Frankovsk regions is likely. Officially to “protect our allies and friends” but in reality with two goals:
Save face
Establish a mini-Banderastan under Polish control in western Ukraine
Feed the hyena of Europe
The Kremlin might think otherwise, but I don’t have a problem with that as long as a semi-civilized and semi-sane regime is put in power in Kiev.
There will be elections, of course, which nobody in the West will initially recognize. That’s fine. Nobody in Russia cares about Uncle Shmuel or his Euro-rodents.
Now Biden (I forced myself to listen to him, again!) is aping Obama and promises that sanctions from hell will cripple Russia. Bernhard, at Moon of Alabama, made an interesting comment today: “The Russian stock market is down but gold, oil and gas are up and Russia has so far lost zero money“. I am sure that he is correct.
And, yes, in the short to mid term, sanctions will also have some negative effects on some sectors of the Russian economy. However, in the mid to long term I think that energy costs will provide Russia with a real windfall of money. At the Russian SC meeting, Mishustin appeared to be fully relaxed, focused and calm.
Besides, as I mentioned yesterday, the recent surge in energy prices over the past month have already refunded Russia all the money invested into NS2, and that is BEFORE the (inevitably upcoming) lawsuits against Germany 🙂
In a recent post I “recognized” both President Biden and Chancellor Scholtz for doing everything in their power to force Russia to intervene.
Today I want to recognize the truly immense contribution of “Ze” himself, and the Nazi nutcases around him. He was the first to mention that Banderastan wanted to acquire nuclear weapons. The Nazi nutcases in the Ukie regime and social media immediately picked up this truly “brilliant” idea.
I want to sincerely thank “Ze” specifically for:
Forcing the Russian to intervene (Nazi and nukes are a bad combo in any Russian’s mind!)
Frankly, “Ze” did a lot for Russia, and I think that Putin should let him flee to the West. But the one guy I want to see in handcuffs and tried in Odessa is Aleksei Goncharenko.
Yeah, I did say in Odessa, didn’t I?
Which brings me to one more possibility: Russia cannot leave the Ukie Black Sea coast under any kind of Nazi or pro-NATO control. Hopefully, the next regime in power in Kiev can deal with that, and Russia can help if needed. But if not, I think that the Black Sea Fleet might have to conduct the operations needed to make sure that no part of the Black Sea coast is ever used to threaten Russia again.
I would MUCH prefer if the Ukrainian people themselves cleaned their own house. But if they can’t, then, okay, Russia can help as long as her intervention is temporary.
In fact, I would categorically oppose any longterm Russian intervention in the Ukraine beyond the LDNR. I don’t think that it will happen anyway. But a short term denazification operation might be unavoidable and I accept that.
Putin had no good option left. Russia, as a nation, had no good options left. So they chose the “least bad option” possible. So far, I like what I see very much.
But while the initial standoff strikes are now mostly over, it will take time to liberate, disarm and stabilize the LDNR and the Ukrainian territories adjacent to it.
Also, I can’t imagine the CIA/MI6/Bellincat/CNN and the rest of them not executing at least ONE major false flag of some kind. Not because that will change anything, but because that is what they are (kinda) good at.
Last, and very deliberately least, its over for the EU. The EU was always a US colony, but now it will sink to a new low with Europeans losing any remnants, however tiny, of self-respect they might have retained. From now on, the EU is Uncle Shmuel’s punkass bitch (forgive the profanity, but that is what fits best in my opinion). All I can say about that is this: those who have no self-respect cannot expect to be respected by others.
That’s it on my end.
Your turn now.
Cheers
Andrei
American Biolabs in the Ukraine
The US biowarfare labs have been i the back of my mind for a while now. Since they (mostly) seem to be located next to Russian borders (I wonder why?), would it be better to use standoff weapons to incinerate these labs and all the materials inside of them, or capture them and remove or destroy the biowarfare agents very carefully? No easy answers.
Other info was provided.
Apparently Putin is targeting all the bioweapons sites with direct missile hits and destruction.
And now, the Chinese are stepping up to the plate with their own warnings for the out-of-control moronic United States…
PLA general warn US over Taiwan… With the words “or else… “
“The special military operation in Donbass will soon be over and all the cities will be liberated.”
Russian Defense Ministry
“According to intelligence, the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ troops and service members are leaving their positions in large numbers, dropping their weapons. No strikes are being carried out on the positions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ units that have laid down their arms.”
China FM spox accuses US of ‘inciting war’ in Ukraine
Hua Chunying has said the Russia-Ukraine situation reflects a “complex historical background,” after Moscow implemented a “military operation” in Donbass.The FM spox accused Western media of using the word “invasion” but did not when US military decided to initiate ‘armed actions in Afghanistan and Iraq.’She continued to lambast Washington for its role – condemning America for ‘hyping up tensions and inciting war, while selling over $1.5BN worth of weapons.’
Peskov
The demilitarization of Ukraine, which is one of the goals of the Russian military operation, means the neutralization of its military potential
Nice Chinese girl
Let’s wrap this all up on a positive note…
Some fine “eye candy”. Keep in mind that according to the American and UK press “news” that the Chinese are terribly malnourshed, starving waif in need of freedom™ and democracy™. They jsut cannot wait to adopt the “American way of life”, become a transexual and shart a showing some enormous booty!
Wrapping everything up in my concluding statements
This is a time of enormous change. The balance has recentered and the fulcrum is now in the favor of Asia. The Western “leaders” are scrambling, and theya re in Check Mate. No matter what they do will cause hardship for them. All they can do is quite limited.
Flip the table and destroy the world in a MAD nuclear senario.
Try to minimize the damage as much as possible.
My guess is the idiots will do something terribly irrational, erratic, and dangerous. (As if they haven’t already.)
Buckle up.
Remain calm.
It’s like jumping into a pool of icy cold water. Once you get over the shock, it becomes rather nice there.
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
I just read through the headlines on RT. It's incredible the West's relentless pounding of war drums in Ukraine. I suspect there will be some kind of Mukden/Gulf of Tonkin false flag, with which the BLPM will brainwash the world that it was the evil Vlad Putin who started it. If it happens, I hope the Russian army rolls all the way to the EU's borders.
Jeff J. Brownwww.chinarising.puntopress.comwww.chinatechnewsflash.com
Eh?
More like, roll to Washington and Langeley. And say…
" So, you thought you could pull another WWII, destroy Europe and Russia, and pick up the pieces unscathed, Huh?
Yeah.
They are THAT stupid and ignorant.
From Z-Man blog…
The American media has brought down the cone of silence. Drudge has a government issued warning to Canada at the top. The New York Times and Washington Post are busy peddling their latest Russia fantasies. Soviet media was more informative that the American media is now. If you want to know anything about anything you have to dig around in Substack and independent sites. The American media is now a blanket of darkness thrown over the public square.
The other thing that comes to mind is how blatant the authoritarianism is now. I see the Canadian dictator just ordered the funds for the truckers frozen. He just made up some new rule apparently or his handlers did. Trudeau is most likely illiterate, so he has to rely on others to do these things. The US government is flying surveillance aircraft over the protest to intercept communications. They will then “share” this intel with their “partners” in the Canadian secret police.
This is the new game now. We saw this with Trump. The CIA asked Australia and Britain to spy on the Trump campaign. That got around the rule against the CIA spying on Americans and gave the FBI an excuse to do their own spying. Five years ago, they made up a phony story as cover, but now it is out in the open. We live in a country that has secret police that spy on people with impunity. America is becoming East Germany with better consumer goods.
That last bit is always the undoing of authoritarians. You can run a police state or you can have a happy productive society that has nice things. With posted inflation approaching double digits and real inflation much higher, the economic reckoning is quickly approaching. There is no easy way to tame inflation. It always means a recession and usually an ugly one. People are unhappy now. Imagine where things are when the economy is in the dumper.
The world is moving forward, and the United States is sitting still and pouting. They have their arms folded across their chest, and staring at the game board deciding whether or not to tip it all over and let the pieces crash all over the room.
Numerous people (obviously outside of the mainstream media) have noticed various aspects of the global Geo-Political situation and have written about it. Here, in this article we will look at some of those writings.
And…
Throw in some fine MM comment, thoughts and distractions to round out the presentation.
Let’s start off with some fine Rufus action to set up a positive mood…
Rufus behaviors are what the world needs today
Be the Rufus. This is China today. People are all part of the community and they all work together as one. video 20MB
Some Geo-Political chat
Always interesting to listen to. This is about the fiasco meeting between the USA and China in Alaska.
Race to 6G: Chinese researchers declare data streaming record with whirling radio waves
Experimental wireless line set up in Winter Olympics compound could stream over 10,000 high-definition live video feeds simultaneously, says Beijing research team
‘It is about introducing a new physical dimension, which can lead to a whole new world with almost unlimited possibilities,’ according to 6G researcher.
Using vortex millimetre waves, a form of extremely high-frequency radio wave with rapidly changing spins, the researchers transmitted 1 terabyte of data over 1km (3,300 feet) in a second.
The experimental wireless communication line, set up in the Beijing Winter Olympics compound last month, could stream more than 10,000 high-definition live video feeds simultaneously, the team led by Professor Zhang Chao, of the school of aerospace engineering at Tsinghua University in Beijing, said in a statement on Thursday.
The vortex waves, unlike anything in radio communication over the last century, added “a new dimension to wireless transmission”, said Zhang and his collaborators from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and China Unicom.
They said the experiment suggested China was “leading the world in research on potential key technologies for 6G”.
China to ‘help set international standards’ for 6G mobile technology
Existing mobile devices use electromagnetic waves that spread like ripples in a pond for communication. Information is represented by the “up and down” of these waves, which – from a mathematical point of view – have just two dimensions.
The vortex electromagnetic wave has a three-dimensional form like a tornado.
Extra information could be coded into the whirling, or orbital angular momentum (OAM), of these waves to massively increase the bandwidth of communication.
The spinning potential of radio waves was first reported by British physicist John Henry Poynting in 1909, but making use of it proved to be difficult.
Zhang and colleagues said their breakthrough was built on the hard work of many research teams across the globe over the past few decades.
Researchers in Europe conducted the earliest communication experiments using vortex waves in the 1990s. In 2020, a team with the Nippon Telegraph and Telephone company in Japan achieved a speed of 200Gbps over 10 metres (33 feet).
A major challenge is that the size of the spinning waves increases with distance, and the weakening signal makes high-speed data transmission difficult.
The Chinese team built a unique transmitter to generate a more focused vortex beam, making the waves spin in three different modes to carry more information, and developed a high-performance receiving device that could pick up and decode a huge amount of data in a split second.
A government researcher studying 6G technology in Shenzhen said the experiment in Beijing could be “the start of a revolution” in communications technology.
“The most exciting thing is not just about the speed. It is about introducing a new physical dimension, which can lead to a whole new world with almost unlimited possibilities,” said the researcher, who asked not to be named because he was involved in confidential research projects with China’s largest telecoms firms.
The Chinese government and telecommunications industry will focus mainly on the mass application of 5G in the coming years because the existing millimetre wave technology matured with decreasing cost, according to the researcher.
The commercial roll-out of 6G is expected by 2030, but the military could adopt the technology earlier because “they care more about performance than cost”, he said.
Zhang’s team said their experiment used W band, a radio frequency used in military applications. In 2018, they established a vortex wave link between a plane and a ground station over a distance of 172km, which remains a world record.
The Tsinghua team is also building a prototype quantum radar using similar technology that can accurately detect stealth aircraft.
A research team in Tianjin last month said they had developed a terahertz transmitter, another technological approach to 6G, for China’s hypersonic weapons programme.
The United States and Japan announced a US$4.5 billion programme in April last year as a joint effort to counter China’s rapid progress in 6G technology.
A survey by Nikkei and Tokyo-based research company Cyber Creative Institute in September last year found that China owned more than 40 per cent of the world’s 6G patent filings, followed by the US with 35 per cent, Japan (10 per cent), Europe (9 per cent) and South Korea (4 per cent).
Things used to be so difficult…
Now for a pretty Chinese girl
I just want to remind everyone who these people are that those neocons in Washington DC want to destoy, kill and turn destitute. It’s people like you and me. video 2MB
Not really Geo-political or Chinese but fun anyways.
Sorry, I can’t help but want to lighten up the mood here, don’t you know. It’s about cats, and music and it’s really kind of cute.
It’s videos like this that caused President Trump to ban Tictoc from the United States. It was listed as a “National Security” issue, when the truth was that they cut into the profit margins of the Trump political donor class.
Warning: Watching this video will corrupt your mind! And change you (gasp!) into a dreaded evil communist. Yikes!
Again. The future belongs to those who have Rufus behaviors
This is a key point that all long-time MM readers will certainly recognize. The way out from the life that we endure is though our behaviors and our thoughts. We msut be better people, and we must all work together for the greater good of all. video 2MB
Well, you know this is after the Beijing Winter Olympics. And The Western media has flooded the media with the most outrageous things. Such as this…
Like this screen shot from the American “news” aggregator “DrudgeReport” 8FEB22.
Nonsense.
Crying?
Seriously. Crying?
Well, the Olympic athletes have made all sorts of videos of their experiences, and the vast, vast bulk of them have been overwhelmingly positive.
Well, you know that that just doesn’t go well with the American (and Western) narratives.
Thus bringing out this article…
YouTube’s Olympics Highlights Are Riddled With Propaganda
The platform’s search engine is funneling sports fans into watching political content about China.
It’s not something it can come out and directly say, because admitting it sees itself as the rulers of the world would make it look tyrannical and megalomaniacal, writes Caitlin Johnstone.
The Wall Street Journal has an article out titled “U.S. Aims to Thwart China’s Plan for Atlantic Base in Africa“, subtitled “An American delegation wants to convince Equatorial Guinea against giving Beijing a launchpad in waters the U.S. considers its backyard.”
The article quotes the former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Tibor Nagy saying, “We’d really, really not like to see a Chinese facility” on the Atlantic, and discusses “American concern about China’s global expansionism and its pursuit of a permanent military presence on waters the U.S. considers home turf.”
The Quincy Institute’s Trita Parsi has discussed the irony of WSJ yelling about China’s “global expansionism” over a potential military base in Equatorial Guinea without applying that label to the U.S., when the U.S. has hundreds of times the number of foreign military bases as China.
Antiwar’s Daniel Larison wrote an article back in December eviscerating the ridiculous claim that a military base some six thousand nautical miles from the U.S. coastline could be reasonably framed as any kind of threat to the American people.
A massive threat to America!
But what really jumps out is the insane way the U.S. political/media class routinely talks about virtually every location on this planet as though it is a territory of the United States.
The Wall Street Journal referring to the entire Atlantic Ocean as “America’s backyard” and “waters the U.S. considers home turf” follows a recent controversy over the U.S. president proclaiming that “Everything south of the Mexican border is America’s front yard.” This provoked many references to the so-called “Monroe Doctrine”, a nineteenth-century imperialist assertion that Latin America is off limits to any power apart from the United States, effectively declaring the entire Western Hemisphere the property of Washington, DC.
It also follows another incident in which Press Secretary Jen Psaki remarked on the ongoing tensions around Ukraine that it is in America’s interest to support “our eastern flank countries”, which might come as a surprise to those who were taught in school that America’s eastern flank was not Eastern Europe but the eastern coastline of the United States.
The Chinese government’s strategic ambition has expanded so that it now aims to dominate the entire world in military and economic power, according to Antony Blinken, whose country has 800+ bases around the world to China's four.https://t.co/OX3SmCYA7k— Consortium News (@Consortiumnews) February 10, 2022
The casual way these people say such things reflects a collectively held worldview that you won’t find on any official document or in any schoolchild’s textbook, but which is nonetheless a firmly held perspective among all the drivers of the modern empire: that the entire world is the property of the U.S. government. That the U.S. is not just the most powerful government in the world but also its rightful ruler, in the same way Rome ruled the Christian world.
It’s not something they can come out and directly say, because admitting they see themselves as the rulers of the world would make them look tyrannical and megalomaniacal. But it’s certainly something they believe.
They’re about as obvious about it as could be. They make almost no effort to conceal it. And yet you’ll still get empire apologists like Michael McFaul saying nonsense like this:
There was a time, not long ago, when imperial powers like UK, France, Portugal etc claimed their colonies as their "sphere of influence." Thank God we didn't listen o them back then. So why now is it ok to let Russia exercise a sphere of influence over its former colony, Ukraine?— Michael McFaul (@McFaul) February 7, 2022
McFaul knows very well that the U.S. is an imperial power and that it demands a very large “sphere of influence”.
Would you like to see a picture of America’s sphere of influence? Here you go:
To live in the western world is to be constantly inundated with made-up stories about tyrants who want to terrorize the world, while living under a globe-spanning power structure that is actually terrorizing the world. It’s just so bizarre watching these imperial spinmeisters try to frame nations like China and Russia as freakish and backwards while working to literally rule the world like a comic book super villain.
The U.S.-centralized empire is quantifiably the single most destructive and evil power structure in today’s world. We shouldn’t want anyone to rule over the entire planet with an iron fist, but these monsters are the very least qualified among us to do so.
Exceptionally bad, evil, corrupt, self-serving and selfish.
Now for a pretty Chinese girl
I just want to remind everyone who these people are that those neocons in Washington DC want to destoy, kill and turn destitute. It’s people like you and me. They way they do this is to keep videos and pictures of their targetted enemies away from the American people. Like this gal.
I just cannot stress hard enough, how important it is for everyone to behave better, nicer and kinder; to be more considerate and to call out and cite psychopaths, sociopaths and the evil greedy folks that cause so much turmoil in our lives today. Be that Rufus! video 7MB
Caitlin Johnstone: Just Run the News Media Out of Langley
That way nobody needs to pretend they’re doing news reporting instead of intelligence agency stenography and the public is clear they’re being fed whatever story about reality the C.I.A. wants them to believe.
I think it would be a lot more efficient and straightforward if all English-language news media were just run directly out of C.I.A. headquarters by agency officials in Langley, Virginia. This way news reporters could eliminate the middleman and drop the undignified charade of presenting unproven assertions by western intelligence agencies as “scoops” that they picked up from “sources”.
I mean, right now the mass media are churning out stories about “intelligence” which says Vladimir Putin has decided to invade Ukraine very soon, citing government officials and anonymous sources. We are never shown the “intelligence”, and we are never shown any evidence of its veracity; we’re simply told what opaque and unaccountable government agencies want us to believe about a foreign government.
We’re not even reminded by the publishers of these C.I.A. press releases that western intelligence agencies have a very extensive history of lying about exactly this sort of thing, and we’re certainly not informed that Kiev appears to be ramping up aggressions in eastern Ukraine.
Seriously, look at this absurd tweet by CNN’s Natasha Bertrand:
Scoop: US and allies have new intel that suggests Russia could be planning to attack Ukraine prior to end of Olympics, contrary to previous assessments. New intel comes as officials have dramatically ramped up the urgency of public warnings related to Ukraine in past 24 hours.— Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) February 11, 2022
That’s not a “scoop”. That’s just a news media employee repeating something she was told either directly or indirectly by the western intelligence cartel. She’s literally just telling us what an immensely powerful spy intelligence agency told her to say. And that’s become the norm for mass media reporting on all nations the western power alliance doesn’t like, especially Russia.
So why mess around? Why not just move CNN’s office into the George Bush Center for Intelligence in Langley and have the C.I.A. just publish its reports directly from there? I hear CNN needs a new president anyway. That way nobody needs to pretend they’re doing news reporting instead of intelligence agency stenography, the general public is clear that they’re being fed whatever story about reality the C.I.A. wants them to believe, nobody feels like they’re being treated like a fool, plus it saves a commute for all the intelligence agency insiders who already work in the mass media.
Because it must get pretty tedious, right? Where instead of just having your C.I.A. employer tell you to run a story you have to go through this whole song and dance where an agency officer contacts you and says “Ooh buddy, have I got a scoop for you!” and then you type up what they say in newsy-sounding language citing “sources familiar with the matter” and present it as a news story.
Clearly that’s not news reporting.
Clearly it’s nothing other than garden variety state propaganda.
Ukraine Defense Minister: Russia is not invading anytime soonUkraine President: Russia is not invading anytime soonRussia: We have no plans to invade UkraineThe US: https://t.co/YbyyNA40p5— Radio Free Amanda ??? (@catcontentonly) February 11, 2022
And of course we already know the answer.
Propaganda doesn’t work if its targets know they are being propagandized. It needs to be administered by institutions who the public trusts to tell them the objective truth about what’s going on in the world.
If the U.S. and its Five Eyes allies simply controlled all media through the government like overtly totalitarian regimes, their propaganda would actually be far less effective than the systems of domestic perception management they have in place currently.
The C.I.A. is officially forbidden from operating in the United States (though as we’ve seen many times since its creation and up to the present day this is treated more as a guideline than a restriction), but what it is not officially forbidden to do is contact the media directly or through a proxy under the pretense of feeding them a news story which just so happens to advance the interests of the agency. The plutocratic media who benefit from the same status quo that the C.I.A. protects then uncritically funnel that information into the minds of the unsuspecting public, and before you know it they’re rending their garments over a foreign government they’d previously not thought much about.
In an actual free society with an actual free press, the very idea of this would be outrageous and if such a thing ever occurred it would be immediately condemned as journalistic malpractice with severe consequences for everyone involved. In an inverted totalitarian dystopia with the most effectively propagandized population on earth, it’s just treated as normal.
No, I’m not going to ignore this most important aspect of change today. It’s one where everyone strives to be a better person and contribute inside their communites for the betterment of all. video 12 MB
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
Well, I have covered this issue on all sorts of articles, each one highly detailed and laid out clearly. What makes this (particular) article different is that we are now watching and observing overt actions, as opposed to covert actions.
Yes, The USA has been carpet bombing China with bioweapons since 2017, but the American mainstream media turned that war effort hidden. It turned it covert.
Now, with each overt action, we see an increase of pressure of a retaliatory nature. This response is against the enormous United States military empire, and its surrogates.
So here, in this article, we are going to cover the first dramatic weapon exchanges in February 2022.
It's biological weapons vs Scalar / directed energy weapons.
No. I’m not going to cover the (supposed) any day now… “war in the Ukraine”. LOL. That’s for the mindless sheeple to believe.
No. We are instead going to talk about real covert and overt activities. Not the manufactured narrative that is there for the sole purposes of population control / fear manipulation and entertainment.
But first a review of the American war plan arrangements using biological weapons.
America’s Bioweapon grand strategy
Here’s the grand scheme…
Suppress foe-nations.
Then take advantage of seeded discord using NED assets.
Generate “regime change”.
Absorb the nations into the unipolar arrangement by proxy.
Functionally, it works like this…
Spread out an array of bioweapons of different classes, globally. While the individual nations are busy trying to develop vaccines, inoculate friendly-nations with mRNA injections.
The advantage of an mRNA injection is that it can be easily and quickly configured “on the fly” for whatever biological entity that is thrown at it.
However, it’s not working as planned…
Back-up military actions are put into place.
Trade delay tactics. These include an ad hoc arrangment of various “incidents” to create a “perfect storm” or situation whereas trade comes to a standstill. Strikes, blockages in canals, pricing, inflation, pandemic rules, price of gas, all of these manipulations are intentionally trying to slow down the American economy (and the economies of its serrogates) to stretch out and lengthen the time to fully implement the grand strategy.
Military encirclement tactics. These include nuclear weapons placed all around the Russian/China landmass. Everything related to American foreign “diplomacy” has been related to this effort in one form or the other.
Suppression tactics. This goes by the terms “friendly hybrid-war”. It’s not. It’s just a full on economic, legal, economic, and social war.
And now, who actually is running this shit-show?
The impression that I have is that Biden and the media are just following a script, and the writers (of the script) are either dead or in a nursing home. It’s on autopilot.
Everything is on auto-piolt. No one, sitting at the helm of any organization would behave like what we are witnessing in Western politics.
It’s all bullshit. Whether it is true or not, or whether it is yet another person trying to jump onto the “war with the Ukraine”, “war over Taiwan”, “war to save Hong Kong democracy”, a “religious war over Tibet”, or a “war to free the oppressed Uighur Muslims” bandwagon, is unknown.
Here we are going to look at an interview with the exact people who are in control of the mess that America is today. This is the person who has orchistrated all this on-going warfare. While not the only individual, his role in it cannot be denied.
He even admits to it on video. He doesn’t care what anyone thinks. He doesn’t give a fuck.
George Soros
Maybe not an “American”, though he sure as fuck controls most American l”leadership”, as well as British, and European “leaders”.
This guy truly would have been the *ideal* actor to play the role of Satan in any movie. Instead, he chose to play the role of Satan in real life. Check him out, this is truly priceless!
Now Israel has been warned. They have been sternly advised, and every warning was presented to them. But like the arrogant fucking son-of-bitches that they are, they decided (after their Beirut detonation of the port on the Southern tier of the BRI) to bomb some Russian bases. Bad move.
We don’t know all the details. As this is not only a war event, but the “news” media is completely silent about this. You have to read Russian media.
Prior history suggests a well planned strike by Israel, and if they followed standing operating protocol, then multiple aircraft were involved.
Prior history, and examples with both China and Russia, suggest a complete disabling of all missiles, avionics, and engine systems of all planes hit by the directed energy beam weaponry.
At the least we can expect the loss of multiple aircraft, munitions and lives by Israel.
[2] American submarine disabled and trapped undersea
Well, I guess the warning wasn’t adequate. I covered that warning HERE.
Oh, you don’t know what I am talking about? Well, I am talking about that well reported covert recovery of an F-35C that crashed in the South China Sea, don’t you know.
You all do realize that “covert” actions are NEVER “well reported” in all the media.
So here’s the cover story…
A Naval Aviator launches from a carrier and suddenly ejects. “Leaked” stories, and “leaked” photos, support the narrative that the “top secret” plane must be recovered as quickly as possible.
Which is a cover story for all those submarine rescue craft that were hurriedly steaming to the “crash zone”.
We don’t know which submarine it is, or what the damage is. My guess is that it’s a complete write-off. The Chinese gave one warning shot. And then, they play “hard ball”.
Obviously, this cannot be reported to Americans. It will have negative political ramifications.
[3] Third time Elon Musk tries to ram the Chinese space station
Well, I guess he didn’t heed the warning from China. I covered that warning HERE. Well, China placed formal complaints, and they also warned SpaceX and the United States government that this kind of behavior was dangerous and threatening, and they will no longer tolerate it.
And the arrogant sons-of-bitches ignored the warning. And tried a third time.
Whoops!
Look at how pretty all those Musk SpaceX satellites fall to the ground. Like hundreds of tiny falling stars.
From HERE. Translated by machine and cleaned up and edited by MM.
49 new satellites and 40 scrapped, Musk throws garbage into space?
It has influenced the Chinese space station! The Foreign Ministry responded, and NASA also spoke out…
2022-02-11 08:02 Daily economic news
Recently, Musk’s “Starlink Satellite” stall has been in trouble.
According to CCTV News, on February 10, Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian presided over a regular press conference.
A reporter asked:
According to reports, in a note sent to the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs on January 28, the US side denied China's claim that the Starlink satellites had twice endangered the safety of the Chinese space station.
They said that the activities of the Starlink satellites did not meet the threshold of the established emergency collision avoidance standards.
Thus, no emergency notice was required.
The US note also said that before sending a note to the United Nations, China did not contact the relevant US departments to express concerns about the danger caused by the Starlink satellite.
What is China's response?
Zhao Lijian said:
China followed the treaty as prescribed.
China's notification to the United Nations of the dangerous approach of the Starlink satellite to the Chinese space station and the threat to the safety of astronauts in orbit is to fulfill its international obligations under article 5 of the Outer Space Treaty.
In the relevant collision avoidance incident, the US Starlink satellites are in a continuous orbital maneuvering state, and the maneuvering strategy and intention are unknown.
Chinese astronauts in orbit face real and urgent security threats.
China has had to adopt preventive collision avoidance controls.
After the collision avoidance incident, the Chinese authorities repeatedly tried to contact the US side by email, but they did not receive any replies.
Presently, the US side uses the so-called "lower limit of the emergency collision standard" to shirk responsibility and divert attention.
This is not a responsible attitude that a space power should have.
Additionally, the US side has no right to unilaterally set a "lower limit of the emergency collision standard" outside of any UN approved international treaty.
Zhao Lijian then pointed out…
That article 9 of the Outer Space Treaty stipulates that the exploration and use of outer space by all States parties shall be based on the principle of cooperation and mutual assistance.
That all activities of the State parties in outer space shall properly accommodate the equal interests of other States parties.
China has registered the relevant information on the space station with the United Nations and published the number of orbital roots of the Chinese space station on its website.
Proceeding from safeguarding the safety of Chinese astronauts and space stations, China is willing to establish a long-term communication mechanism with the United States and hopes that the United States will take practical measures to avoid the recurrence of such incidents.
China also hopes that all countries will jointly respect the international system of outer space based on international law and work together to safeguard the life safety of astronauts in orbit and the safe and stable operation of space facilities.
Ok, then.
So what is going on?
Well, the public narrative is that;
A statement on its official website on the evening of the 8th local time, saying that due to the impact of the geomagnetic storm, as many as 40 of the company's latest deployment of 49 "Starlink" satellites will be scrapped.
SpaceX said in a statement that on Feb. 3, the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched 49 Starchain satellites at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The rocket sends the satellites into a predetermined orbit, with a perigee altitude of about 210 kilometers, and each satellite achieves a controlled flight.
However, the satellites were severely affected by geomagnetic storms the day after launch. The storm caused an increase in the density of the atmosphere at the low deployment altitude where the satellite was located. Airborne GPS shows that atmospheric resistance at this altitude is 50% higher than when launched. SpaceX said in a statement that the StarLink team controlled the satellite into safe mode, taking "flanking flight" to minimize drag and avoid the storm. Preliminary analysis shows that up to 40 satellites "will re-enter or have re-entered" the Earth's atmosphere due to increased resistance during low-altitude flights, which prevent satellites from deviating from safe mode for orbital lifting operations.
Geomagnetic storms took out 49 satellites. Yes. 49 satellites suddenly became inoperable all at once, and tumbled out of control and fell to the earth in a firey mess.
Hum.
Really?
Humans have been putting up satellites into space since sputnik in 1957. And this is the FIRST time any of them fell from orbit due to Geomagnetic storms.
According to reference news, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics physicist Jonathan McDowell said on the 9th (February 2022) local time that this event is considered to be the largest satellite collective loss caused by a single geomagnetic event.
I would add that it is the ONLY event. Ever.
…
Coincidences?
According to Wikipedia, Acoincidence is a remarkable concurrence of events orcircumstances that have no apparent causal connection with one another. The perception of remarkable coincidences may lead to supernatural, occult, or paranormal claims. Or it may lead to belief in fatalism, which is a doctrine that events will happen in the exact manner of a predetermined plan. In general, the perception of coincidence, for lack of more sophisticatedexplanations, can serve as link to folk psychology and philosophy.
But if you spent any time even remotely connected to the ONI or MAJ, or perhaps the CIA, you would realize that there is NO SUCH THING as coincidence.
Period.
So, you don’t have to believe me. You can believe the “news”. A war in the Ukraine is going to happen any day now, and it is going to be a long drawn out conventional battle over the ruins of the Ukraine.
Or you can believe me.
World War III is not being televised. It is not being reported, and what is reported is not what is actually going on.
Buckle up. More is in the making.
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum — even encourage the more critical and dissident views.
That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.”
…
Russia attacked Israeli air defenses with an unknown heavy-duty electronic warfare system
Russia used a super-powerful electronic warfare system against Israel, which is not officially in service.
It’s an unknown weapon.
Which is the kinds of systems that both Russia and China deploy.
Anyways, a few hours ago, there was an Israeli attempt to attack a group of Russian troops in the port of Latakia. Additionally, they began to threaten Russian military aircraft. In response, Russia deployed unknown heavy-duty electronic warfare systems.
Taking into account the range of interference, mobile systems of this type do not officially exist in Russia’s arsenal.
However, the situation turned out to be catastrophic for the IDF that Israel’s air defense / missile defense systems.
They were suppressed at a distance of over 300 kilometers, which is unexpected, and unheard of. It was a major surprise, I am sure, to all American, and Western observers.
In addition to that, interruptions in the operation of the global positioning system were observed even at distances of about 400 kilometers.
“The Russian military, during a night attack by the Israeli Air Force on targets near Damascus, allegedly again activated the electronic warfare systems deployed in Syria. As confirmation, data from the FR24 service is provided, where violations are visible in determining the GPS coordinates of aircraft in the area of Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv , ”
-the Military Observer Telegram channel reported.
In the above image, you can actually see that the GPS global positioning systems are seriously disrupted, while all over central and northern Israel, air defense / missile defense systems were automatically activated and rocket fire alarms sounded.
Experts note that if the IDF does not give an adequate explanation for its actions, Russia can constantly use its electronic warfare systems against Israel.
I wonder if the Western “news” will report on this. They tend not to, don’t you know. But I told the MM readership that there were other things going on, didn’t I? More to follow. I wanted to throw this news out as soon as it came in.
Were you aware that Russia was in the water at the Southern branch of the BRI?
Were you aware that Israel was prosecuting against that region in Syria, Iran, and threatening the UAE?
Were you aware that there were Russian military forces on station in that region?
Well, as I have repeatedly stated, real secrets are secret and wars… REAL wars are never announced.
Expect more of the same, and a very fluid Geo-political situation.
To include…
An Australian-Chinese dual citizen is being prosecuted under the controversial National Security Law in Hong Kong, the Federal Government has confirmed.
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) has not identified the man, but told nine.com.au he was arrested in January last year under the sweeping legislation.
He could face life imprisonment if convicted. His arrest comes amid high tensions between Canberra and Beijing.
The man was arrested in the same month authorities detained 47 pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong under the draconian legislation.
"The Australian Consulate-General in Hong Kong was notified by Hong Kong authorities of the arrest of a dual Australian-Chinese citizen under its National Security Law in January 2021," a DFAT spokesperson said.
They also said that Australian officials have been repeatedly refused consular access to the man, because the Hong Kong government no longer recognises dual citizenship.
But Australian officials plan to attend the man's future court hearings.
"We are in regular contact with the individual's lawyers and will continue to attend future court hearings," the DFAT spokesperson said.
https://www.9news.com.au/national/australian-hong-kong-dual-national-arrested-under-national-security-law/289f1226-940d-4a08-8a9b-5235d182b9cc
So don’t get too upset with the “news” that you are being bombarded with. It’s a fake narrative that paints an illusionary image.
Here, on MM, are the REAL stuff.
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
Ok, it is the weekend before CNY January 30, 2022. There is a ton load of things happening right now. A real enormous pile of shit.
On top of the USA rout in Afghanistan, the failed color revolution in Belarus, and Kazakhstan, the death of the CIA assets in Tibet, and the multiple submarine events in the South Pacific Sea (One “crash into a mountain”, and another missing sub and recovery effort with the cover of “recovery of an F-35C in the ocean”) things are not going well for the USA.
The ramp up for a war in the Ukraine did not happen, and now the USA is trying to sabotage the Olympic Games in China. Geeze! Can’t these assholes give it a rest?
There’s so much that one can say about an uncertain future, but one thing is for sure, that the harder the United States try to drag the world into a global war, the greater it’s losses mount.
Everyone by now should realize that both China and Russia told the United States to stop putting nuclear weapons in their borders, trying to instigate “color revolutions” and hybrid-wars, and all the rest. But the “red lines”, the requests for “white tent” peace, and cooperation are going nowhere.
The United States, like a snotty assed brat, said no. NO! And you can’t make me! Nah. Nah, Nah, nah.
There are no “positive things” in the American response. The response is a flagrant and contemptible rejection of Moscow’s core demands on NATO expansion and the deployment of nuclear missiles to locations on Russia’s border.
Obviously, they believe that they can goad Asia into a fight where the United States would emerge the Victor.
Both Putin and Xi have plans for how to deal with what comes next.
China Sitrep: Cookies, Lil’Blinky and The Pain Dial
Victoria Nuland (affectionately known as Cookies), jumped the shark.
She called her counterpart in China and demanded, (asked, petulantly begged?): China Do Something!. Influence the Russians!. We need a concession from them. Just Do Something! There were the requisite attempts to deliver soft threats: “if there is a conflict in Ukraine it is not going to be good for China either,” as “there will be a significant impact on the global economy”
The Chinese Foreign Ministry responded:
Stop interfering in the Olympics
Pay attention to Russia’s Security Guarantees which are valid
Give up your zero-sum game and the Cold War mentality and use the correct method to put out the fires you started.
On the very same day, this past Thursday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken (affectionately known as Lil’Blinky) had a telephone conversation with China’s State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi. Lil’Blinky talked about the risks posed by “further Russian aggression against Ukraine” and conveyed that “de-escalation and diplomacy are the responsible way forward.”
Wang Yi responded:
Stop interfering in the Olympics
Pay attention to Russia’s Security Guarantees as this is valid and important
Give up your zero-sum game and the Cold War mentality and use the correct method to put out the fires you started.
And what about those Minsk accords? You understand they have to be implemented, don’t you?
Global Times wrote an op-ed about all of this, explaining: “The root cause of the Ukraine issue is that the US has promoted NATO’s eastward expansion unrestrainedly, thus pushing Russia into a corner where there is no way to retreat.
Washington is the culprit of the crisis.
The US now hopes China will “persuade” Russia. In essence, it wants China to urge Moscow to make a concession. The perfect plan Washington desires is that Moscow will cooperate unconditionally with the US’ geopolitical ambitions. How absurd and ridiculous its logic is!”
So both Cookies and Lil’Blinky struck out on the highest levels of the diplomatic circles in Beijing.
What?
More interference in the Beijing Winter Olympics?
Yes.
That would be the new plot to encourage athletes to create chaos and to cause trouble everywhere.
Sources said the plan includes encouraging athletes to express dissatisfaction with China for various reasons, not to compete or even not to participate in the games.
The US has also pledged to offer generous rewards to athletes who join the program and to mobilize global resources to “protect the personal reputations” of athletes who choose to play negatively. (Is this what the 47 state department officials for security only wanted visas for)?
The US is also blowing smoke of withdrawing their diplomats from China during the course of the Olympics. Can you connect the dots in terms of what is being planned here?
And then they want China to help with concessions?
How perfectly arrogant.
And oh BTW, China is also not interested in the US’ F-35C stealth fighter that recently crashed in the South China Sea, says the Foreign Ministry.
It was left to the new Chinese Ambassador to the US to ratchet up the final pain dial one more click. In an interview with NPR, to a US Audience, his first public interview since taking the post as Chinese Ambassador, he states:
“If the Taiwanese authorities, emboldened by the United States, keep going down the road for independence, it most likely will involve China and the United States, the two big countries, in a military conflict.”
This has caused shockwaves in the United States.
Duh? I mean, how stupid can people be? But then again, I am talking about the United States, after all -MM
China simply says that the US must take its warning with all seriousness and Washington’s strategic arrogance will only drag the US into more tense strategic unpreparedness.
In addition, this exacting expression is used:
If Washington provokes either China or Russia, the other one will not be indifferent.
Seems to me Lil’Blinky and Cookies have just been wack-a-moled. Apparently, Blinken was so curtly dealt with, that he could not get to the litany of human rights abuses and the Uyghurs and whatever else. He was cut off smartly before he could rattle off that old litany of nonsense.
Ambassador to the US Qin Gang has succeeded in raising the stakes and turning the tables.
Indeed, like a little kid.
The pot of water is boiling on the stove, and the moronic United States, like little children, are trying to reach up and grab the handle.
Things are really hot right now.
So what is next…?
In this example, I will use a scene from the American television series “Breaking Bad”. In this scene, there is a fight / conflict between two gangs over some drug territory.
The guy in white represents the local (well established) drug boss in the town. The others are hungry, mean and aggressive Mexican cartel members who are moving in and taking over his territory.
We get the idea, in watching this scene, that the guy (and his gang) in white clothes believes that he is “untouchable” and that his local, well established reputation will be enough to protect him. And that is anything happens, it will be something like what you see in the movies or in television.
But reality is not like that.
The cartel uses strategy.
When you watch this scene, keep that in mind. Consider the United States to be fat guy guzzling a super-sized coke and acting haughty on “his turf”. And the Mexican cartel guys to be Asia (China, Russia and Iran).
Watch and learn. Strategy.
That’s what is coming next. MARK MY WORDS. Please watch this little video. Click on the link if your internet isn’t that functional.
Obviously, whoever, or whatever is running the United States and the Western Block today, are seriously disconnected from reality.
I am not saying that Russia or China will engage in a hot kinetic war, but you can bet your sweet bippy that they are going to take action in a well-planned, well-coordinated, and thorough effort.
…
Again, don’t get too hot and bothered about anything. Again, follow my age-old grandfatherly advice…
Don’t get so caught up in all the fearmongering talk.
Follow the basic MM precepts. You will be fine.
Affirmation prayers.
Stable world-line templates and controlled slides.
Fate forecasting.
Be the Rufus.
Participate in your local community.
Be prudent, traditional and have a larder.
You all will be fine.
…
Now go forth and call up a friend. Invite him over. What the Hell are you waiting for?
Then, place a tray of chicken wings in the oven and have a case of beer on hand. Then just hang out with friends and family, eat the chicken legs, wings or whatever, and drink beer together. Maybe play some cards.
Just share your time.
Maybe even play an old board game. Risk. Monopoly. Chess, or checkers. Possibly Trivial Pursuit.
Baked Chicken.
Oh, expert tip…
After taking the chicken out of the over, pour honey over all of them, and then have some blue cheese salad dressing nearby and place it in a bowl for dipping purposes.
It will look something like this…
Enjoy your time.
Now…
Picture the scene.
Friends. Beer. Delicious food. It’s called “Heaven”.
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
The notion expressed in the original piece that the US just resigns itself to failure and fades away is unrealistic, or at the very least not certain.
Historically, the outcome of circumstances like the present is major war.
Empires rarely die quietly. They go either piecemeal or all at once, violently.
The British went piecemeal. But Britain was always too small to hold onto their Empire.
The US is a superpower, not just an imperial power like the European colonial powers. As long as it has its navy and air force (another important distinction from Britain), it will continue to try to push its power everywhere until forcibly restrained.
-Richard Steven Hack
This is just going to be a short and simple article that I want to throw out there. But it’s an important one. Currently, the United States military empire is dying. It is collapsing from the inside, falling apart and flailing in every conceivable way and (since the “news” is owned and 100% controlled by the government) and all of this is selectively being reported or hidden intentionally. Here we are going to provide a tool; a “filter” from which to read all the bullshit on the internet with.
This filter is very significant. It should not be ignored.
Pay attention…
The Filter
The nature of war has changed.
Any major war between the Western Block and Asia will NOT be along any of the assumed avenues…
Color revolutions; CIA sponsored “regime changes” for “democracy”.
Military troop advances and the capture of territory; such as in Iraq, World War II, and so on and so forth. Including all this talk about the Ukraine.
Blockades. Whether by sea lanes, or sanctions, or currency manipulation.
Public Opinion. The only control of the media is domestic, and that is in tatters.
Grass Root movements. It used to occur centuries ago. No longer exists.
Economic. Sabotage, manipulation or theft are all well documented techniques.
Remote electronic precision attacks. The drone effect was pretty effective in devastating Yemen, Not so in the next conflict.
Bio-warfare. We’re in that right now. The 11 strains of American bioweapons did not suppress China, it only made it stronger.
Now what we do have…
HV-MIRV-ICBM. Hyper-velocity, AI controlled, flight maneuverable, independent, that may or may not be nuclear armed, weapons that can hit anything, anywhere and there is no defense against it.
In other words, why have a military moving to capture some nameless hill in the Ukraine…
… when Moscow can just kill all the generals and their neocon supporters by one singular nuclear burst in Washington, DC?
Boom!
Problem solved. Root cause eliminated. Ukrane reverts to a peaceful agarian land.
And that is where we are at right now. The politicians can no longer hide in their mansions far away from the battle zones. The technical savvy fighters cannot sit in their comfortable barracks and fly drones halfway around the world. The wealthy warmongering businessmen can no longer guarantee that they will be safe where ever they live; even if it’s a bomb shelter in New Zealand.
It’s a new world; and a new situation.
Great Quote
This is the new situation, and Asia is incorporating it from the top downwards. If anyone attacks them, they will not fight the battles as they used to. They will now destroy the leadership of the war-sponsoring nation.
Let me give you this great quote to help put things in perspective…
“Russia plans to engage its nuclear weapons not against those countries where it was launched against Russia, but against the mastermind cities where all the decisions were made.
To be exact, it is Washington, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and numerous other American cities.
Please fully understand, in case American nuclear weapons are launched from, eg. Taiwan, or Poland, the Russian response will be to hit New York or Washington.”-Russian Duma deputy, Yevgeny Fyodorov.
This is Chinese policy as well.
So what does this mean?
Well, consider the “news”. About the United States sending ships out here, and military forces out there, and all this and all that.
Russia and China have both specifically “telegraphed” that any placement of offensive weapons in their borders will be met with the destruction of ALL AMERICAN CITIES.
It’s “red lines”. The ones that the media has so laughingly dismissed.
1. Russia (not just Putin) is insisting in ‘writing’ only because the U.S. pinky swear of 1991 was worthless and they denied it. If we go to war, Russia being all prim and proper wants this to be on record. ‘We got this on record!’2. Russia made their demands clear, even if the U.S. denied it. Do not use NATO membership as an excuse to install U.S. tactical / nuclear missiles. If you do we will destroy them.Hard stop. Period end.
-Christian J. Chuba
Look at the militaries of all involved.
Russian militaries are NOT designed to advance over and take over large swaths of territory and police it. They are designed for rapid and horrific, short-lived devastation quickly and then go back home.
Kazakhstan is a perfect example of this…
A “color revolution” breaks out and all the Western media are in unison blaming it on gas increases.
A “color revolution” in the heart of the BRI explodes, with trained insurgents seizing all the major facilities and airports involved. Within 24 hours, Russia flies in and treats it…
… not as a pro-democracy uprising over the price of gas…
…but as a CIA-backed “color revolution” with armed and trained soldiers. And Russia came in and seized all the soldiers and killed them. Within three days it was all over, and the “staff in Langley, Va” were left with their “jaws on the floor” in stunned disbelief.
Russia comes in. Kills all the bad guys. Then leaves.
“By submitting their security demands, Russia is signaling unequivocally it is now taking the initiative.”Yes. This aligns with my own thoughts. When Russia declared its ‘ultimatum’, existing conditions were already in a state of violation.
Witness Kazakhstan.
Therefore, Russia had no choice but to act or face global humiliation by failing to live up to its own decree. Russia could not just sit passively knowing another ‘color revolution’ was being hatched. This is why I believe that the Russian offensive began in Kazakhstan. Russian intel succeeded in exposing the Western-backed coup attempt and forced it to be prematurely executed. Everything was already in place to crush the uprising quickly and efficiently.It is certain Russia is not passively waiting for what comes next with regard to Western intentions for Ukraine. I’m wagering that there is an active Russian initiative to solve the Ukrainian problem, but not one that will entail tank battles on the steppes. Rather, it will be a lesson in Russian-style hybrid warfare. Maybe not even a shot will need to be fired, or perhaps violence will be limited to one mass casualty event amongst Western PMC’s or UkroNazis. It is probable that the puppet regime in Kiev has only a few weeks left.
The same is true about China.
China’s military are not large to take over Japan. It is large to prevent anyone from even considering attacking the Chinese mainland. They have absolutely zero interest in seizing any further lands or territories. Though, the reunification of their Taiwan province is a separate matter.
Meanwhile, the United States military is for global force projection from staging based pre-supplied with equipment and material. With 800+ military bases, and guns, ammo and materials sprinkled all over the world, it is designed to be the “world’s Policeman”.
It’s a new world with new weapons and new power-structures.
What is the capability?
To strike anywhere on the world unopposed using massive weapons of destruction.
Which nations have this capability?
Russia
China
Which nations do not have this capability?
The United States
The UK
Japan
Australia
The European Union
So what does that mean?
The next “big” war will not resemble any of the previous wars.
Those nations that have the ability to deliver systems unmolested to their opponent will win the next war.
Nations, countries and societies that cannot fight this kind of war are advised not to get involved in any war. Instead, they should concentrate on their own domestic needs and trade.
If a nation refuses to do so, and tries to push towards a war using full-spectrum hybrid-war techniques, they are likely to be annihilated completely and erased from the surface of the planet.
What am I saying?
Russia and China can shoot down nuclear missiles. The United States cannot.
Russia and China can launch missiles that cannot be defended against.
Thus, during this short period of time we have a situation where the United States is being very aggressive in trying to start a war based upon historical techniques, not really realizing that THIS NEXT WAR will be the end of the United States.
Regarding the “news”
Any discussions of troop movements, and naval positioning is for the purposes of intimidation and to apply pressure on one nation or the other.
A REAL war will happen within minutes, and the only way that you will know anything is going on is by your lack of internet.
MM Advice
No one ever listens to me.
But, were I to be the President of the United States, I would advise surrender.
If I were president of Australia, I would advise kicking the USA out of their nations, and push forward as a neutral nation trying to be friends with all my neighbors.
If I were the head of the UK, I would advise focusing on all the domestic issues and reach outwardly to my neighbors in kind manners towards an embrace of mutual respect and friendship.
As I said, I am a practical person. I do not have the psychopathic tendencies that many of the leadership in the collective West seem to possess. So my advice will not be listened to.
So, the next best thing is to “punt”. Pull back and bide some time. What ever happens, absolutely The WORST course of action is to attack either Russia or China or any of their allies and friends. It will not go well.
Makes me yen for earlier days…
And it does. It’s so easy to get angry reading the “news”. Expecially all the lies that are going back and forth. I tell you that American “news” is the worst! Let’s go back to an earlier time…
Get a haircut and eat a breakfast. Together for under fifty cents.
Want a haircut?
Take a spin on a motorcycle…
Motorcycle man.
January 20, 1919. “Recreation barracks at the American Red Cross Agricultural Training School for French Mutiles, Le Liege (Indre et Loire).”
Go flying…
Go flying.
Life in the big city
November 1940. “Corner store in Lexington, Kentucky.” Medium format acetate negative by John Vachon for the Farm Security Administration.
November 1940. “Corner store in Lexington, Kentucky.” Medium format acetate negative by John Vachon for the Farm Security Administration.
November 1940. “Boys in soft drink parlor. Central City, Kentucky.” Medium format acetate negative by John Vachon for the Farm Security Administration.
Crossing the street
Buying some groceries. March 1939. “Small Mexican grocery store. San Antonio, Texas.” Medium format acetate negative by Russell Lee for the Farm Security Administration.
Buying some groceries.
Roundhouse dreams…
October 1937. “Boy reading in bedroom. Note lack of proper bed clothing. Home of A.O. Ryland, farmer who has quit farming. Near Williston, North Dakota.”I love his breeches.
Getting involved in a good book.
Checking out the nice car…
New Hampshire circa 1906. “Taking trains of Mount Washington Railway at base station, White Mountains.” A cog railway to the highest peak in the Northeast.
Taking a train.
What does this all mean?
History is full of periods of inflection like we are experiencing today.
Whether it was American Indians meeting rifles, horse and smallpox, or the Polish calvary meeting German tanks with machineguns the period of inflection occurred.
And with each period of change, the world changed as well…
…but…
For many, if you were outside of the primary fighting or the battles, your life was safe. It was calm, and it was nice. Such as in these pictures above. And that is what is going on right now. Most of you all are safe. The only “news” is the bullshit that you read, and seriously it’s all lies.
Right now.
So, just live life. Strengthen your little bubble of security and live it. Don’t allow the monster that is the “news media” throw you “out of kilter“. Live life well.
Have some delicious fondue with nice delicious cheese…
Enjoy the delicious fondue.
And enjoy it with some nice wine, breads, olives and cheeses…
Enjoy the good things.
And enjoy the time with friends and family…
Friends and family.
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
Jeeze! There sure are a lot of big changes going on right now. I just cannot keep up with it all. I tell you what; I will need to start mega releasing clusters of articles before they get stale and outdated.
Ok. Perhaps one of the safe “outs” for the United States is to fracture. Get rid of the Federal government and revert to states, clusters of states or communities. The Federal government is a big fucking mess, ruled by technocrats, oligarchs and insane psychopaths. Get rid of them all, or America will die.
It’s pretty obvious. And you know what? That is exactly what is starting to happen…
‘The Constitution is not a suicide pact’ – but it is nearing that deadly threshold in a number of ways: federal debt, unchecked immigration, but most existentially in a lunatic foreign policy.
In its relations with Russia and China especially, but also with regard to Iran, North Korea, and others, the diplomatic/military/intelligence apparatus in Washington City seems driven to ignite dangerous international conflagrations.
‘NATO officials have thumbed their noses at Putin’s concern with Russia’s security. Trump’s National Security Advisor and neocon warmonger John Bolton encourages more provocation of Russia, which as Putin has made clear will result in war.‘Clearly as 2021 comes to an end, there is no intelligence to be found anywhere in the Western World as all vie to show how tough they are with Russia.‘When Putin says Russia has nowhere left to which to retreat, he is telling the idiot West that Russia has reached the extent of its ability to avoid war. “We simply have no room to retreat” means Russia has done all she can do to avoid war and now the Americans must get off Russia’s doorstep.‘Putin is relying on Biden to show awareness and responsibility and to work for peace by acknowledging Russia’s legitimate security concern. But what if Biden is just a figurehead, and the shots are called by the military/security complex who will go for profits despite the risk that Putin will not back down?‘What if Washington’s concern is limited to destabilizing Russia in the interest of US hegemony and Russia’s security is precisely what Washington intends to undermine, not secure.
‘ . . .
‘2022 could . . . be the year the Western world comes to an end in nuclear war.’
…
Is it any wonder why so many countries in the world now despise the US?
But this could not be further from the traditional Southern approach to foreign policy.
US Senator Fulbright of Arkansas gave expression to it in some remarks of his during the Vietnam War:
‘If America has a service to perform in the world and I believe it has it is in large part the service of its own example. In our excessive involvement in the affairs of other countries, we are not only living off our assets and denying our own people the proper enjoyment of their resources; we are also denying the world the example of a free society enjoying its freedom to the fullest. This is regrettable indeed for a nation that aspires to teach democracy to other nations, because, as Burke said: “Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.” . . .‘There are many respects in which America, if it can bring itself to act with the magnanimity and the empathy appropriate to its size and power, can be an intelligent example to the world. We have the opportunity to set an example of generous understanding in our relations with China, of practical cooperation for peace in our relations with Russia, of reliable and respectful partnership in our relations with Western Europe, of material helpfulness without moral presumption in our relations with the developing nations, of abstention from the temptations of hegemony in our relations with Latin America, and of the all-around advantages of minding one’s own business in our relations with everybody. Most of all, we have the opportunity to serve as an example of democracy to the world by the way in which we run our own society; America, in the words of John Quincy Adams, should be “the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all” but “the champion and vindicator only of her own.” …
‘If we can bring ourselves so to act, we will have overcome the dangers of the arrogance of power. It will involve, no doubt, the loss of certain glories, but that seems a price worth paying for the probable rewards, which are the happiness of America and the peace of the world.’
US foreign policy for the last several decades bears little resemblance to the Southern ideal of prudent restraint and peaceful, mutually beneficial relations with other countries. Southrons need to ask themselves just how they are benefiting from the policies being promoted by both Republicans and Democrats:
From sanctions that impoverish the innocent populations of various countries;
From drone strikes that kill hundreds of non-combatants;
From non-governmental organizations like the National Endowment for Democracy that serve as front groups for the CIA causing revolutions in northern Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, etc.;
From the promotion of the LGBT ideology in socially conservative countries like Uganda and Poland where Christianity still has some hold on the public consciousness;
From bellicose language from scalawags like Sens Cotton and Wicker who never miss a chance to stoke war fever with other countries.
What benefit is the Federal Government Insanity?
Southerners do not benefit one iota from any of that. Yet because of the Yankee propaganda pumped into the South through school textbooks, talk radio, the Heritage Foundation, etc., that the US is the City on a Hill, the indispensable nation chosen and anointed by God to rule the world, she does not object too loudly (if at all) and actually serves in numbers disproportionately higher than her percentage of the total population in the US military.
Prospects for reforming Washington do not look too good. Typically, anyone who tries is either killed (like JFK) or beaten into submission (like Trump). The best option for the South is to leave Washington and its Deep State bureaucrats to their own devices and to develop a foreign policy that serves the people of Dixieland and represents her tradition-friendly culture, one that is not in service to the cartels of Big Ag, Big Pharma, the military-industrial complex, and so on.
The insanity that has gripped Washington, one that does not rule out a first-strike using nuclear weapons, is a danger to the South in the most basic sense of that word – a threat to life itself.
The great need…
The South needs to separate herself from Washington’s madness, expel lunatics like Sen Wicker from office, and send out diplomats who exude both Southern friendliness and trustworthiness, but also hard resolve, to the countries of the world, whether friendly or unfriendly to us at the moment, to cultivate productive relationships, to secure us from the ill-will that the Yankee mindset has attracted to all 50 States.
Whether it is countries with a Southern diaspora like Brazil or a more isolated, insular place like Japan, the South would be far better off with a President, diplomats, etc., who truly reflect the best of Southern culture.
They with their humility and common sense would hopefully be able to gain back the goodwill of many of those whom Yankee arrogance has alienated, allowing Southerners to live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and honesty (I Timothy 2:2).
There will be an endless stream of news stories about the 2022 federal elections in the months ahead. But rather than marching dutifully to the polls in November, wouldn’t it make more sense to channel that fervor in a different, more productive direction – for the State Legislatures of the South to hold special sessions in their chambers, hold a vote of no confidence in the federal government, and begin negotiations with that entity so the South will be able to free herself from the fanatical Deep State ‘reign of witches’ permanently?
The breakup is in process…
The breakup is already underway, though it is going so slowly that few seem to recognize it. A few recent examples:
US Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia has suggested a ‘national divorce’ of the States;
Gov DeSantis of Florida has reinstituted the Florida State Guard that would operate completely independently of the federal government;
Gov Abbott of Texas has recently told the Texas National Guard that he, not Pres Biden, is their commander-in-chief;
Gov Newsom of California has made it known that he will make his State a safe haven for abortion providers should the federal Supreme Court overturn Roe v Wade.
This kind of absurd, contradictory, ‘disunited union’ cannot last, nor should it. Better for the South and for any other sane section of the US to get out now before the madmen in Washington start a nuclear war that will get them incinerated in a retaliatory strike.
Opinion and conclusions.
If this happens, then World War III can be avoided.
There are no official results from the meeting in Geneva yet. The US has promised to give the Russians an official answer in writing within a week. The Russians have declared that they have explained the Russian position to their US counterparts in minute details leaving no ambiguity. According to Russian sources, the US position was a “diehard/stubborn” one.Clearly, the War Party in the USA is, at least so far, prevailing. When I listen to the delusional statements of the likes of Blinken, Psaki, Kirby & Co I get the strong feeling that for these people everything is a zero-sum game and that to them an agreement with Russia, any agreement, is simply unthinkable.
A united Asia is ready to flatten the USA. It’s a very tense time.
Now is when American need to stand up and wrest control of the nation from the evil psychopaths in charge. NOW is the time.
NOW.
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning 2. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
LDNR authorities have identified the chemical substances US PMCs have brought to the cities of Mariupol, Krasnyi Liman and Avdeevka: botulinum toxin and dibenzoxazepine. These chemical weapon were brought over from the USA by USAF contracted aircraft and are now deployed by 120 US mercenaries.
-False flag aborted in the Ukraine.
Jabber, jabber, jabber from the war-mongers in America about China and Russia. These people are deranged lunatics. And they are somehow delirious believing their invincibility and superiority. They have funded an enormous war machine, and they are pushing, pushing, and pushing towards WAR!
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Just this week Congress passed a $7 billion dollar anti-China propaganda campaign to villainize China and to prevent Chinese news from ever reaching America. To put this in perspective, the 2020 budget of NASA is $20 billion dollars. So it’s roughly one third of the entire space budget of America. That’s how serious the USA is determined to garner the population on a war-footing.
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Why bother? Americans already consider China the enemy. video 5MB
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Fools.
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Here’s an interesting discussion in the American Conservative circles discussing a war with China. It’s illuminating. Not only on the points of view being bantered about, but the lack of understanding on the true realities, and the absolutely horrific consequences involved.
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Read and be enlightened.
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Top American conservatives including AT’s David Goldman recently debated the risks of preparing for war with China
Whether the United States should prepare for war with China – and thereby make war almost inevitable – was the matter of a verbal brawl at one of the largest gatherings of American conservatives, the National Conservatism Conference in Orlando, Florida, from October 31 to November 2.
It would have been unseemly to have a polite exchange in a hotel ballroom a few miles from Disney World about the desirability of killing millions of people in a nuclear exchange.
So I wasn’t polite.
Although the arguments on both sides are well known, the Orlando debate merited publication of a lengthy edited transcript, for two reasons.
First, the exchange between former Trump adviser and war-hawk Michael Pillsbury on one side, and former Trump National Security Council official Michael Anton and this writer on the other, set the issues in poignant relief.
Second, the audience of conservative activists, the opinion and organizational leaders of the Republican Party, repudiated the war party by a margin of about three to one, by my informal poll of the audience.
Of the informal guess-timation of participants;
75% of the Conservative opposed a war with China.
25% of the Conservatives were neocons in favor of a war with China.
The American right doesn’t want war with China.
That doesn’t mean war won’t come. Christopher Clark’s magisterial account of the outbreak of World War I, The Sleepwalkers, recounts the intellectual corruption and grandiose irresponsibility of the statesmen who stumbled into World War I.
It’s an old story: If one side mobilizes, the other has to mobilize or be defenseless; if one side believes the other is likely to mobilize, it must do so first. Clark proved – contrary to the usual Anglophile account – that it was the Russian mobilization, urged by the French, that started the war.
By the same token, if the United States attempts to force the issue of Taiwan’s independence, China will pre-empt this by seizing the island. If the United States takes military measures – stationing troops on the island, mining the Taiwan Straits – China will have to consider pre-emptive action.
It’s August 1914 all over again, played as farce rather than tragedy. The European powers had existential interests to defend; the United States has nothing to lose but the perception that it can project its power anywhere in the world, including China’s coasts.
The American military wasted US$6 trillion and thousands of lives in misguided nation-building campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, while China built up a massive high-tech defense in and around its coasts.
This weakened America’s strategic position decisively.
The blunderers who vitiated America’s defense will risk war simply to save their reputations. The war hawks have shown scant interest in rising to China’s technological ambition, which presents a real challenge to America’s leading position in the world.
But they will roll the dice on war over issues that do not bear directly on American security.
America is in NO STATE to take on a war against the combined forces of Russia and China.
Compared to them, the sleepwalkers of 1914 were exemplars of enlightened statesmanship.
Transcript
There follows my edit of the transcript of the conference session on China. I have included all the points of substance, leaving out the ancillary discussion in the interest of space.
Video of the event will be available at the conference website.
Pillsbury:The Hundred-Year Marathon [Pillsbury’s best-selling book] was translated by the Chinese military. No royalties, but they had a little ceremony for me. They make fun of Biden. They say Biden is plagiarizing, it’s the Trump administration policy.
Trump loves to say, if Hillary Clinton had won the election, China would be surpassing us now. But it’s not going to happen on my watch. If you’re close watchers of Joe Biden’s TV interviews, four months ago, he said the exact same words.
China wants to surpass us, but it’s not going to happen on my watch. The Chinese reaction to that is to laugh. Because they don’t expect it to come that soon. But when they do surpass us, I think the level of arrogance they showed today is going to be something that we wish for.
When they do believe that they’re superior to us in a number of ways. We will wish that it was 1947 when the Soviet Cold War began, and we did was, we created the CIA by legislation. We created the Defense Department. We created the National Security Council.
There’s not a single new institution in our government to deal with China. I think there should be.
Goldman: We will spend these next few days complaining about how terrible things are. I hear very little discussion of what we need to do about it. My argument is very simple. We’ve done it before. We did it during the Reagan administration. We did it during the Kennedy administration, we did it under Franklin Roosevelt.
We need to rebuild the American economy and we can only do that with a visionary strategy that galvanizes the imagination of Americans like the Kennedy moon-shot, the Reagan SDI.
The numbers show that the Trump policy towards China was a catastrophic failure. We’re importing now more than 30% more from China than we did in January 2018, when Trump imposed tariffs.
And as for technology suppression?
China’s built 70% of the world’s 5G networks and is proceeding to build the applications on top of that, which constitute the Fourth Industrial Revolution. We can do better than China. We’re better equipped to innovate than China.
But we’re not because we’re crushed by a technocratic elite which has sucked the marrow out of the United States economy and generated enormous wealth doing things that, for the most part, harm us. Nothing short of an intervention by the federal government, namely an industrial policy, will turn that around.
That’s not a classically liberal view of things. Industrial policies are dangerous. They lead to rent-seeking behavior, corruption and too much state power. But that’s what you do in a war, and we’ve got the economic equivalent of a war going on.
The thing that worries me the most is the knuckleheads who spent $6 trillion on forever wars and gutted our military by frittering away our resources. If we’d spent a 10th of that on high-tech weaponry, we wouldn’t be worrying about China’s hyper-velocity missiles or anything else like that.
They will steer us into a confrontation with China that will lead to a war that nobody can win.
John Bolton is the most dangerous lunatic roaming the streets of the United States right now.
If you try to force the independence of Taiwan, any Chinese government that wants to rule China will use military action, Communist or not.
The Chinese Communist Party is Communist the same way the mafia is Catholic. They take it very seriously. But it has very little practical importance for running a Chinese empire. You have to suppress rebel provinces. The only thing we can do with Taiwan is to maintain strategic ambiguity, raise the price of the Chinese taking it by force, which we have no means to stop at this point short of a nuclear war.
We should dissuade them from doing it, maintain Taiwanese democracy and walk the fine line.
John Bolton (on the other hand) would call the question, and that gets a lot of people killed.
John Bolton
If you don’t believe me, read Admiral Stavridis’ marvelous thriller 2034. Spoiler alert: We blow up a bunch of their cities. They blow up a bunch of our cities and we’re back to square one.
Now let me talk about the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which is what’s really critical here. Wars are not won by stealing data, they are not won by spies, they are won by logistics in depth and the willingness to prevail. The first industrial revolution began when James Watt sold his first commercial steam engine in 1776.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution began when China responded to the Covid-19 pandemic by using artificial intelligence applied to massive data sets to predict potential outbreaks. They are now proceeding to roll out the technologies associated with this. This is the real science fiction stuff we’re talking about – 5G permitting groups of industrial robots to communicate on the shop floor and program themselves.
Smart logistics allow individual objects to be tracked from mine to factory to warehouse to ship back to warehouse to truck loaded onto autonomous vehicles and controlled all the way. It allows AI servers to optimize urban traffic and match every passenger and package to a conveyance.
It allows sensors at the base of soybean plants to communicate with drones that deliver fertilizer and pesticides and direct autonomous tractors to harvest them. We’re talking about an explosion of productivity like that of the first and second industrial revolutions.
The main thing the Chinese stole from us was the great idea of the Reagan Revolution that you can have dual-use technologies, which both give you button guns and butter. They foster civilian productivity. They pay for themselves 10 times over, just like the Apollo program did, just like the Strategic Defense Initiative did.
Every single invention of the digital age. No exceptions started with the DARPA project. They were all funded by the Department of Defense.
The Chinese have stolen the American approach. They want to be Reagan in the Cold War against the sclerotic Soviet Union. Now, they’re not as good at it as we are.
My argument is we have nothing to learn; we only need to remember. We know all these things because we’ve done every single one of them.
We only have to dust off the old ideas and get the band back together, and what I put to you is that the conservative movement needs a part of a positive program, a set of solutions to galvanize the American people, capture their imagination, as Kennedy did when he pointed to the Moon, as Reagan did when he promised to defend the homeland against enemy ballistic missiles.
We need a positive view. We need a can-do approach, and we need to found it on the proven track record of the United States of America in pioneering the future for the world.
Anton: I’m just going to go through a couple of historical points to put this in context. In 1842, the Chinese ceded Hong Kong island to the British in perpetuity – in perpetuity. The Chinese regime at the time of Imperial China greatly resented it. And that resentment carried over through Republican China to Communist China, National, etc.
Why is this important?
This is something that was a thorn in the side of the succession of China as a civilization, not of one regime, not of the communist regime of China for 150 years. It bothered them very greatly. They look forward to the day when they could get it back. They were patient and they got it back.
Without conflict, without much of a struggle, with just some gnashing of teeth and hair, pulling and sighing and crying by the British, but they got it back.
A couple of quotes.
“To win without fighting is best.”
Some of you may remember recognize this.
The second one is:
“To destroy the enemy is not the acme of skill; to capture what you want from the enemy, whether that’s a city, a fortress, a ship, an army, that is the acme of skill.”
Those are both from Sun Tzu, a Chinese classic written about 200 BC. This very well encapsulates the Chinese strategy, I would say, with regard to Hong Kong and with regard to Taiwan.
Taiwan is a similar thorn in the psyche of China.
This would be the case, no matter what the regime in Beijing were. It could be, you know, the neocons’ fantasy of a liberal democratic China, and they would still really care about getting Taiwan back. It’s central to the regime’s conception of its territorial national integrity…
One very firm demand of the Chinese government on the international community is Taiwan can never be a full member of an international organization for which statehood is a member and as a requirement, and they make it very plain that they’ll go to war over that.
They’re very, very clear about this.
An Article five guarantee in the NATO charter, for instance, that is a treaty requirement that the United States has got to go to a nuclear war in defense of a place. [Our agreement with Taiwan] is a commitment of sorts. The full extent of it and what it legally obligates us to do is a bit ambiguous compared to an actual mutual defense treaty signed by both sides.
This comes up a lot, especially lately, because we are told constantly that crisis is brewing in the Taiwan Straits.
China’s been patient.
Patience may be running out.
Maybe they’ll try to do something soon.
What we’ve seen now is a pretty dramatic shift toward I still have a bipartisan consensus on China, but now it’s a bipartisan consensus to sort of beat up on them rhetorically not to take any actual action as far as I can see, except some of the things we talked about.
But what, where that rhetoric leads is, you know, we’re obligated to do something about Taiwan and it would be a stain on the national honor and so on and so forth.
And so if something happens, we’ve got to get into a fight.
China’s preference is still to take Taiwan without fighting for it. Time is on their side. Some are saying, some people who claim to know, are saying, Oh no, no, they’re getting impatient and they’re going to … they’re going to do something shortly.
I just have no basis to evaluate that.
But based on historical precedent, I think the Chinese would certainly like to do exactly what they did with regard to Hong Kong, tipped the balance of strategic power, economic power, political power so much against the possibility of continued Taiwanese independence that public opinion in Taiwan comes to accept the notion that we just have to make the best deal we can make.
And then you win without fighting.
You know, a nation of 24 million can only have so big a military and especially against a nation of 1.4 billion … China’s been building up [its military] for decades. The Taiwan-American combination has not caught up either in terms of sheer numbers and certainly not in terms of technology.
So that’s a way of winning without fighting if you have two or three decades to build up so much force on one side that the other side just looks at it and goes, “I can’t win that fight,” then the fight doesn’t happen unless the other side is delusional or crazy brave.
And the last point I will raise, I just want you to think about this.
I’ll tell you the last time a United States aircraft carrier was sunk. It was the battle of Midway, the USS Yorktown, June of 1942. Actually, we did lose an aircraft carrier last year, not a fleet carrier, a smaller carrier, you know why?
Because it burned in San Diego Harbor and the navy couldn’t figure out how to put out the fire.
USS Bonhomme Richard. A compete loss.
And they had to scrap the ship, the USS Bonhomme Richard. Look it up.
The navy crashed four ships in 2017. Read the official reports from the Department of the Navy and the Congressional investigations on those crashes. They were marvels of esoteric writing to try to dodge the cause of what happened, while somehow revealing it between the lines.
If you’re Taiwan and you’re counting on the United States to defend you, what conclusion did you draw from Afghanistan this summer? Did you get the conclusion that here is a great power that knows what it’s doing, that keeps its promises, and that can execute the things that it wants to do?
American military flee Afghanistan just like they fled Vietnam.
Plausibly, if not certainly, the Chinese have had an ability to sink a fleet carrier for the last decade.
And now… ask yourself how the nation would take it.
Right now, there seems to be a massive amount of group think. We’re only allowed to think about this one way. Only one way.
Nobody is allowed to bring up any of the counterfactuals or any, you know, any other outlying considerations.
And when policy is made on that basis, horrible blunders and catastrophes result.
So before the United States commits itself to some policy or before we, whoever we broadly understood as being in this room are right of center conservatives, intellectuals, nationalists want the best for our country, who want the best for our military, who want to maintain our alliance structure with credibility.
But before we commit ourselves to a policy, are we in this room?
Take a stand in favor of X or against Y and make recommendations that other people may read and listen to.
We should be at least thinking about all of these considerations and, in my view, the conversation as it has. I don’t mean this conversation. I mean, the broad conversation on Taiwan has taken insufficient account of the things that I mentioned and others.
Goldman: The most important fact about any country is its people. Taiwan, according to the CIA World Factbook, has the lowest birth rate of any political entity in the world … China does have a demographic crisis, but Japan, South Korea and especially Taiwan are much worse.
So if you simply. Kick the can down the road, maintain strategic ambiguity. What the Chinese will get if they eventually get Taiwan is a bunch of old people. It’s simply, in my view, not worth having a nuclear war over.
The ideal situation is to maintain the status quo as long as possible. Anything else means a war, and the possible loss of American cities. I ultimately don’t care about China. I care about the United States of America. I’m a nationalist and I want what’s best for us.
We can’t abandon Taiwan because it makes us look weak and we lose important economic advantages and leverage against China. We can’t force the issue and start a war.
The Chinese have hundreds of anti-ship missiles.
Michael Pillsbury and I have something in common. He for many years, and I briefly, worked for a great man at the Pentagon, Andrew Marshall, head of the Office of Net Assessment.
Andy told me in 2013 that the Chinese missiles could (and would) sink an American carrier.
Anton: I think the core answer, it is the best outcome is the status quo for as long as possible because any attempt to change the status quo will be worse than the status quo.
There are only two alternatives to the status quo.
One is Taiwanese independence. Well, Taiwanese independence will start a war. Taiwan becoming part of China would be net bad for us. Obviously, if it becomes a part of China through military action, that’s worse than if they just make a deal.
So for as long as the status quo can be maintained, that’s, unfortunately, the best possible scenario. And I just say unfortunately, because it’s an inherently unstable scenario, and it’s also by its very definition, it’s not permanent. The status quo isn’t going to last forever, so let’s stretch it out for as long as we can, and that’s unfortunately about the best we can do.
Pillsbury: President Trump once asked me, How did we used to defend Taiwan? He saw me as the in-house historian who knew all this ancient stuff. Nobody else in the room knew.
So I finally spoke up.
We used to have atom bombs there. We used to have them attached to jet fighters ready to go to hit the mainland with the Chinese made sure that Kissinger took them out in ’74. We used to have a treaty with a garrison and 30,000 troops and a war planning unit underground in Taipei.
Now it’s an art center and a Mongolian barbecue restaurant …
So what do the paranoid group in charge today say when they hear someone like Michael Anton say, oh, we can’t get it in a war, you know, they think that this is American deception.
Of course, the Americans are going to get into a war, which is why they’ve been increasing the deployments and we are moving closer to a nuclear war with China.
It’s not just me saying this, quite a few other people inside the government are saying this as well.
The head of our strategic command in charge of all our nuclear forces, he’s given two interviews. He says the Chinese are engaging in a strategic breakout of their nuclear weapons, including ICBMs, which they are doubling or tripling.
This is the four-star admiral who commands our nuclear forces.
Quite a few other people are talking this way – very different from Michael Anton. They’re more like Churchill. Bill Buckley, the long tradition of Americans like Barry Goldwater …
So I’m going to have to go home to Washington.
So yes, I went to the conservatism conference. A bunch of the people there on the panel said surrender Taiwan. We don’t want to go to war with China. That’s appeasement. Michael and I should clarify his remarks in my humble opinion.
Anton: If they can sink an aircraft carrier and if the only way to stop an invasion of Taiwan is to deploy the forward-deployed aircraft carrier…
and maybe send one or two others out there, which as far as I know, is the only way for the United States to effectively defend the island if the Chinese decide to invade it and they sink one of these 12 to 14 billion dollar behemoths with 6,500 men on board.
What’s the US response going to be at that point?
Pillsbury: Well, we could turn to you and say, I surrender.
Anton: What would you do if you were either the secretary of defense, the president, the head of a Pacific Command and sitting there in Pearl Harbor?
Pillsbury: I’ve been working on this for 30 years. More recently, the US has gotten a much more detailed picture of what it could do.
Exactly which targets inside China could be struck.
Exactly which targets inside China could be struck?
What would happen the first morning?
…
New York “concrete jungle” cleared of the underbrush.
More and more work is being done on both sides about how a war would happen and both the Chinese and American military have come to a conclusion.
It would be a long war.
Okay, maybe two or three years – I haven’t read.
There’s a brand new book by the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Pentagon under Trump [Elbridge Colby’s The Strategy of Denial, featured in a June 2021 Asia Times webinar].
There’s a whole chapter on how to recapture Taiwan after it’s been partially taken by the Chinese military.
This is the state of the art thinking.
There’s a new piece of legislation, the Taiwan Defense Act … They say, please, Pentagon, give us a plan for how to avoid a fait accompli taking place on Taiwan. The Pentagon is drafting their response.
We’re moving closer to a war.
It doesn’t help for you to tell conservatives, oh, if we lose an aircraft carrier, what are we going to do then? What would Winston Churchill say?
Goldman: What, Winston Churchill? Just before the fall of Singapore in 1942, according to Andrew Roberts, Winston Churchill said in the event of war “the Japanese would fold up like the Italians because there were the wops of the Far East.”
Winston Churchill, when it came to Asia, was an absolute idiot, and we bailed him out. He was as stupid as Nicholas II who lost the Russian fleet at Tsushima [in 1905].
Bridge Colby has been a dear friend for 20 years who is now hallucinating about what the United States might do to take Taiwan back.
This is crazy.
Anton: Following the logic of what you said – because I haven’t read whatever STRATCOM put out – I have read certain analyses: not even analysis. There’s speculations that the Chinese are increasing the size of the nuclear arsenal in this underground network of tunnels that we can’t follow and so on.
The official estimate that we have some confidence in is that the Chinese nuclear arsenal is at least 300 warheads, right?
None of which have to be air-dropped anymore.
That means all [delivered by] ICBM hyper-velocity AI-guided missiles. And if you read their doctrine, unlike ours, they formally take a doctrine of minimal deterrence.
That is to say, they have no kind of nuclear warfighting doctrine at all.
They just have city killers.
And if they feel that the territorial integrity of China or the survival of the state is at stake, they’re willing to use those 300 missiles or some portion of them on American cities. The largest 300 American cities would be blasted into radioactive rubble.
The largest surviving American city would be New Bedford, Massachusetts. With it's five gas stations, and two strip malls. -MM
In fact, once as I’m sure you remember in the far-off year of 1996 on one of the more tense moments in the Taiwan Strait, a Chinese general was quoted as saying, “I don’t think the Americans will do anything at the end of the day. They won’t want to trade Los Angeles for Taipei.”
Their nuclear arsenal is now triple what it was.
And they’re going on a more offensive posture with nuclear weapons and this thing ends up going to nuclear war.
How that fits into the seeming “recommendation” you just gave, I have to admit, being somewhat dim, I don’t see because it would seem to make the danger greater.
And I also would ask: What do you think the American people’s response to losing a fleet carrier would be?
My own estimate is it would be the greatest psychological shock we’ve had in a generation, arguably greater than 9/11.
Unquestionably, getting one single city nuked would be the greatest psychological shock the American nation has ever had in its history.
So how do we deal with something like that, given that Taiwan is orders of magnitude more important to China, and they’re willing to do that over this, as they have said, than it is to us?
From a Chinese point of view, Taiwan is like the US "Statue of Liberty". Destroy it and the Chinese would sacrifice their first born in revenge.
From an American point of view Taiwan is a news item that fits in the bottom of a news feed. Nestled somewhere between a Viagra ad and a cute cat video. -MM
Well, I’m going to be the dove here and say that it’s possible to avoid a nuclear war, whether it be over Taiwan or any other place.
I’d kind of prefer to do that.
If that makes me an outlier, I’m at least I’m in good company with that other famous nuclear dove named Ronald Reagan.
Goldman: [to the audience] Who volunteers to be in the first city that gets nuked? Any takers?
No. Not me!
Pillsbury: One wonderful book shocked the hell out of me. It came out of the Hoover Institution 1962. It’s called Wall Street and Hitler. It’s by a professor who went through the Nuremberg war trials after the war.
I didn’t know Henry Ford’s photo was in Hitler’s office.
I didn’t know the Nazis gave prizes to different American businessmen.
I didn’t know that the Nazis knew they lacked synthetic oil production and that they got the technology from America.
It’s a long book and it goes to in great detail what Wall Street was willing to do even as late as 1938-1939. We had a huge debate about getting involved in Europe … A big group in our country in ’38, ’39 wanted to surrender to Hitler – for lack of a better word; surrender.
Anton: What are they trying to do? I mean, the Soviet Union had to be contained because the Soviet Union was very explicitly an expansionist power.
We know the Chinese would like to expand and take Taiwan.
I’m not aware of the Chinese wanting to expand and take other people’s territory.
They want to exert dominance in East Asia and in the western Pacific, and some of that dominance they will exert in ways that will be deleterious to American interests.
That’s irrespective of our ability to be able to prevent and stop that. But I think there are certain things we could probably be doing better that could push back against some of those influences. But it’s not as if unless, you know, Michael Pillsbury could tell me differently.
Like the Chinese after Taiwan, they’re going to invade South Korea and they’re going to invade Japan, and then they’re going to invade Vietnam.
I don’t know. I don’t get the sense of that from them, nor in the sources that I read. Granted, I can’t read Mandarin. They don’t say that they want to do that.
Pillsbury: Specifically, specifically on Japan and in India … the Chinese think this is part of the key.
They hope the Americans don’t do it.
The Japanese stick to 1% of their GDP on defense, which is very, very low. Maybe that will double to 2% over the coming years.
That’s an alarm sign to the Chinese.
The Indians want to. They’re fiercely independent. The British poured poison in their ears as they left that the Americans are going to be a new colonial power.
You know, we don’t have a treaty with them. So we’ve got a long way with the Indians. We have quite a few military exercises … So slowly, we’re improving our military cooperation with India, other countries in the region.
Trump picked up the idea of the Quad as a magic word. Japanese say they invented it. Biden attacked Trump. You don’t, you know, you’re not seeking help from our allies. I think it was not true.
But the Quad, even under Biden, is starting to increase its consultations, mainly about China. So things are moving in the direction of your question.
Some videos describing what is not being said
It’s like a discussion over tea and crackers. Oh “Taiwan is sort of important to the Chinese, well we can convince them…” In your fucking wet dreams. The Chinese no longer has any tolerance for the United States BULLSHIT. Just like Putin has. These jackasses have no idea who they are dealing with.
I am gonna show you all.
History
Burned into the minds and soul of China. If you all think that China will allow an invasion by any one for any reason, you are very, VERY mistaken. They will rip apart your cities, gut your nations, and then burn it to the ground. They are a serious nation that does not play games.
Atrocities by the Japanese occupation forces 1937. video 6MB
Actual photos, actual sound recordings. Nasty shit. video 11MB
Atrocities by the Japanese inflicted on the Chinese. video 20MB
The Chinese are not individualists. they fight for their community! video 6MB
Serious. Dangerous. Well equipped. Superbly trained. video 3MB
Very dangerous. Not a music video. look at the equipment. video 6MB
You all think that American military can airlift and sea transport forces into Chinese waters safely to fight this formidable army? video 3MB
Reread the dialog
They are talking about a “long drawn out war” with China.
What would actually happen?
The moment a war starts, the USA GDP will fall to under 50% of what it is now. And that is just if there is another “regional police action”. Not a full-borne war. A full on war, would collapse the GDP to a fraction of what it is now. Perhaps in the single digits. Think 2% to 6%.
As such, inflation would skyrocket, and the value of the USD would approach zero. Think $25,000 for a can of Pepsi. That’s pretty pricy even for you Pepsi lovers out there.
99% of all medicines used in the United States come from China. How is America going to deal with providing hospitals medications, and supplies? That means ZERO MEDICINE. When a full 65% of the American population is on some kind of medicine, and you take that away… whether pain medicine, anti-depression medicine, heart or high blood pressure medicine, anti-biotics, aspirin, tums stomach medicine… what will happen? My guess is “Zombie apocalypse”.
How are the people going to react to all this? Bare store shelves? Insane prices for gas and heating oil? Electricity? And periodic internet if any? They will be very frustrated, angry and fearful. And they all will have lots and lots of guns…
America is a mess domestically. You cannot isolate the long drawn out fighting and overlook how it will affect the domestic population.
Any war with China is a war against Russia and China together. There is no fucking way that America is able to fight TWO (x2) above-peer military forces, let alone one. The result would be the destruction of ALL 13 core aircraft carriers, all major naval bases and staging locations.
How will the American public react to that.
And knowing so…
Conclusion
…America would “push the big red nuclear button”. But it would be too late. American cites would already be rubble.
Funny how NO ONE is addressing this very clear and always present danger. My guess is that they are all collectively idiots of the lowest caliber. And I am being generous.
Consider this memo to all the employees at McDonald’s.
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
"I didn't graduate from the 7th grade to put up with this shit!"
-Chef, "Apocalypse Now"
When I was growing up, my parents raised me on a steady diet of television. Back then in the early 1960’s my favorite shows were “Diver Dan”, “The Jetsons”, “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.”, “Get Smart” and “I dream of Genie”. These shows influenced me as I grew up. It was all about adventure, space and fighting those dastardly communists. Yikes!
Watching TV with mom.
I used to love Saturday mornings.
it would be a morning full of cartoons. I would go get a bowl of sugary cereal, add milk and even more sugar, and sit there in front of the television screen absorbing all the great child entertainment. My favorite cereals from those years were “Froot Loops”, “Coco puffs”, and “Rice Krispies”. I was, I tell youse guys, just a normal kid.
Watching the shows.
In those days, mind control via electronic media was unheard of. It had to be introduced and perfected, which it was indeed, over the next two to three decades.
Now we have very advanced systems to control the minds of people, and they do work. But every now and then, the absurdity of it all becomes so glaringly obvious. And it’s laughable. Really.
If it wasn’t so absolutely sad.
From MoA. Classic.
There seem to be general meme directives for ‘western’ outlets with regards to official enemies.
Russia is said to weaponize everything. The position of China is not (yet) seen as in military terms. The emphasis is on economic competition. Any undeniable Chinese achievement must be declared to have been a bad investment. The directive thus reads:
"When writing about China's achievements - question their costs."
China’s Experimental Cure for Cancer China’s curing cancer faster and cheaper than anywhere else. But some worry they may be going too fast.
– Bloomberg, Dec 12th 2019
I read a few articles on China’s high speed train system, and in the most recent the cost versus revenue was a worry/criticism, even though it would be easy to argue or at least discuss about positive externalities worthy of subsidies.
Similar cost related criticism was laid on the huge program to develop new gas fields in Eastern Siberia and connect them with pipelines to China. It seems to be true that the long term contracts signed with China when the natural gas prices were very depressed were not best possible, but since those projects have to be considered in 20-50 year time frame, it was silly even then. Now the concerns about profitability of delivering natural gas to China in the future look hilarious.
There is an objective aspect in some “cost/global” articles. China is dominating so many commodity markets that decisions impacting import and export of China have tremendous impact on importers and exporters alike.
Most glaring is the lack of “at what cost” questions concerning the West. EU delays approval of North Stream II, but at what cost? Technocrats decreased investments in fossil fuels in EU and reliance on so-called clean fuels, but at what cost?
Both are phenomenal.
Madam Baerbock speaks her mind, but at what cost? This girl sends markets to panic which is not a part of her job description.
Ukraine “decreases reliance on Russia”, but at what cost?
Some estimate that the resulting losses are many times larger than gains from “western orientation”, western commentators do not attempt any such calculations. Freedom is worth every price if someone else pays for it (USA likes when the cost is born by EU, and EU likes when Ukrainians hold the short end of the stick).
Some thoughts…
Now I know to read any title that contains ‘China’ and ‘at what cost’ because it threatens the cult of U.S. hegemony.
1. Articles about environment: After skimming these articles, I agree, the ‘at what cost’ was so inappropriate for the content, it does look like it was planted, ‘will they succeed’ would have been more natural for these articles. Air quality has previously been notoriously bad in China, ongoing efforts to improve it was a very good thing.
2. articles about AI: ‘threatened by U.S.’ would be most accurate or some suitable alternative. This group of headlines says that China is vulnerable in the chip area. There is a condescending tone because it says, ML (Machine Learning) is data sets and processing power, and not so much about innovation, this is true. But I would not discount China’s ability to innovate. In using AI to implement a police state, ‘at what cost’, is appropriate here, as it conjures up everyone’s worst fears, even for our own govt. Pointing out how ML can be abused by a govt is a good thing. But even better is pointing out how it has eliminated rapes, kidnapping, child abductions, and fraud by leaderships inside of China is a great thing.
3. I can see how ‘at what cost’ can be used for the other categories but agree that the repetitious use wreaks of information war.
Infographic
Global Times provides this excellent infographic aimed directly at BigLie media’s propaganda meme as it’s titled, “China’s commitment to the world in 2021.”
Number two…
Number three…
Number four…
I am “chomping at the bit” in anticipation to see the United States versions of these meme’s.
Here’s an article out of Laos…
Laos.
‘The country that bombed you is your friend. The one that built your new railway is your enemy’
Major bridge across the Yuanjiang River along the China-Laos railway in southwest China’s Yunnan Province. Xinhua
Tom Fowdy / RT
This is the Western media’s bizarre messaging to the people of Laos, a nation that was carpet bombed by America, and which is now being vilified for accepting a new $6 billion railway line paid for by China.
Thursday was National Day in Laos, a celebration marking 46 years since the landlocked Southeast Asian nation deposed its monarchy and became a revolutionary communist state, an effort which was supported by Vietnam.
This year, the anniversary had added significance, as it saw the opening of a major new project, an electrified high-speed and freight railway system connecting the capital city, Vientiane with its northern neighbour, China.
The $6 billion project is part of the Belt and Road Initiative, and has been hailed as one of its flagship achievements. It is the first commercial and industrial railway in Laos, which, given its geography and the fact it is surrounded by mountainous terrain, has not previously had many options to expand its exports and generate economic growth.
Now, though, it has a direct rapid link into the world’s second largest economy and the world’s largest consumer market by population, and a connection to the booming ports of Guangdong. In terms of what it will bring to Laos, it is a game changer. So, what’s not to like about it?
To nobody’s surprise, the mainstream media have responded to the railway with the usual anti-China negativity. A plethora of articles sought to paint the project as a ‘debt trap’, promoting the accusation that Beijing loans countries money for projects they cannot afford and then exerts political leverage over it.
The Financial Times, for one, ran with a cynical article headlined ‘Laos to open Chinese-built railway amid fears of Beijing’s influence’. It implied that somehow Laos feels threatened or fears the construction of this very pioneering railway project (which the country’s own leader made sure he was the first to travel on). This suggestion of ‘fears of Chinese influence’ has become a common feature on such stories, which seek to cast doubt over anything positive China may be achieving or doing.
A common Twitter meme among pro-China users which has followed from stories like this asks: “but at what cost?” highlighting the frequency of such negative coverage.
And if you Google “China, but at what cost?” you can find a great many examples of articles published in major outlets. In producing such pieces, the broader intention is to depict Beijing’s actions as unwanted, threatening and constantly facing opposition. In the case of the Laos railway project, the ‘problem’ is it was financed by debt, and therefore it is not a positive step.
Yet this argument is as insulting as it is outright insensitive to Laos’ contemporary history. Anyone who knows anything about Laos’ relatively recent past will be well aware that China is not the country to fear, but the United States – the nation that dropped over 260 million cluster bombs on Laos and completely devastated the country as an extension of the Vietnam War, making it the most single bombed nation in history and claiming over 50,000 lives.
Many of these bombs remain unexploded and litter the countryside of Laos, continuing to kill civilians. In constructing the new railway, workers first had to clear the unexploded ordnance. How is it that the world and the mainstream media remain indifferent to this atrocity? And how, by any stretch of the imagination, can they claim that China is the true threat to Laos, and that the US and its allies act in the true interests of the country?
Herein lies the problem. Such a mindset symbolizes the elitism, chauvinism and self-righteousness of the countries of the West, which are ideologically inclined to believe that they stand for the ‘true interests’ of the ordinary people in the countries they profess to liberate.
Western politics peddles the assumption that through countries’ adherence to liberal democracy, they exclusively hold a single, universal, impartial and moralistic truth, derived from the ontological legacy of Christianity, and they have an obligation to introduce it to others. The West always acts truthfully and in good faith, while its enemies do not. And therefore, so the logic goes, any policy the US or its allies direct towards Laos is motivated by sincere intent and goodwill for its interests, and in turn, anything that China does is bad-faith, expansionist and power-hungry behaviour motivated by a desire to influence or control the country.
This creates the bizarre scenario whereby Beijing is depicted as evil and sinister for building a railway to connect to its neighbour – but we should forget America dropping millions of bombs on the country because it was done in the name of ‘freedom’. I’m sure you can imagine how the media would react if China did the latter.
Those who push this narrative predictably omit any insight into how Laos itself thinks about the situation. Another piece which took a similar stance, published in The Diplomat, was titled ‘Laos-China Railway inaugurated amid mounting debt concerns’.
But like the ‘fears of Beijing influence’ expressed in the FT, who are these ‘concerns’ from? The report cites the “Washington-based Center for Global Development” and what it merely describes as a “US based analyst” as sources who push the ‘debt trap’ narrative. But nowhere in any of these articles is there an actual voice direct from Laos who raises any fear of China, or objects to the railway’s existence.
Instead, they simply talk on the country’s behalf, obscuring the reality that a communist state which suffered from extreme levels of aggression from the US probably does not see its northern neighbour – and its most important economic partner – as a threat to its regime. With many more articles running variations of the same theme, there is minimal effort given to the consideration that the railway will help the country rapidly expand its exports, sustain greater growth and help Laos pay for the project.
The Laos-China railway has provided a textbook example of how the media can distort a story in order to fortify an incriminating narrative, while brushing aside brutal realities. We are shown a lopsided world, where the travesty of a country being bombed into oblivion with consequences lasting decades is ignored, and the preference is to try to convince us how that same country’s first commercial railway line is, in fact, what it should really be scared of.
It is a demonstration of how the power of the English-language, pro-US media distorts reality itself and how they can blow up an issue, yet hide the truth, by professing to care dearly about the wellbeing and interests of a country which the West poured death, destruction and carnage upon in the name of freedom.
Here’s an article out of Cambodia…
Cambodia
Cambodia-US Relations: Cambodia is not the enemy of the US
Two U.S. Air Force Boeing B-52D Stratofortress bombers over Cambodia, 1970. Original description: “Aerial bombing of Cambodia: Operation Menu”. Wikipedia
America believes that Cambodia is China’s vassal state. And it does everything to solidify that belief. At the end, they justify their sanctions against Cambodia for being too friendly with China whom the US considers as the “malign actor” and “revisionist state” to the hegemonic order with the US at the top.
But then how much is called overdependent? How much sanction is considered enough against the alleged malign actor?
Americans warn Cambodians to beware of lucrative interactions with China. But Cambodia’s trade and investment with China is less than 10% of the whole of Southeast Asia. Statistically speaking, countries that are close with the US such as Singapore and Vietnam are in fact the highest beneficiaries from trade and investments with China.
Media that are anti-China can lie about Cambodia’s overdependence on China but numbers don’t lie. Impartial academics should look into those number by themselves and make comparison to the whole region to verify and question their established prejudice. The so-called independent minds should not become the trash collectors of all bad press about Cambodia with many hyperlinks to the anti-Cambodia puppet media and organizations.
Cambodia is currently the most sanctioned country in Southeast Asia, even more than the military junta in Myanmar, and the fact is that there is no sanction at all against communist Vietnam, who has no freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom of expression. What does anyone say to these? None at all.
What does democracy mean to America when Cambodia is being treated this way by the American government and congress on the aspect of democracy and human rights?
Cambodia is among the few countries in Southeast Asia that has regular multi-parties election.
Cambodia is among the few countries where press, both domestic and foreign, operate freely, and some of the US’ affiliates like the Voice of America, the Voice of Democracy, and Radio Free Asia, bombards daily with verbal diarrhea against Cambodia as if Cambodian people are living in hell. Nothing can be seen positive from the point of view. And they still say that Cambodia has no freedom of expression.
Facebook operates freely in Cambodia. Internet freedom is among the fullest compared to countries in the region. Cambodian people are addicted to Facebook freedom. They really enjoy it. So long as they don’t defame, libel, slander, promote uprising, treason and the toppling of government, they are free to say anything.
Cambodia is hosting more than 5,000 civil society organisations but human right groups in Cambodia, funded by foreign governments, still has liberty to say that Cambodia lacks freedom of association as compared to Viet Nam which has only one state union. In the US, these organisations would have been banned or classified as “foreign agents”. According to the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), passed in 1938, it is required that agents representing the interests of foreign powers in a “political or quasi-political capacity” disclose their relationship with the foreign government and information about related activities and finances.
But such kind of civil society organisations in Cambodia are hiding behind protection of their foreign embassies crying foul that Cambodia’s Law on NGO (LANGO) is too restrictive because they simply cannot disclose their finance and activities that are fundamentally foreign-owned, foreign-initiated and foreign-led.
What does America want from Cambodia? Does it want Cambodia to become the enemy of China and to fight China on America’s behalf? Where does Cambodia’s national interest stand in supporting the US and in making China its enemy? Where is the right to self-determination of Cambodia that the US often says that it respects fully? Does the US want Cambodia to commit suicide to express its sincerity in wanting friendship with the US?
Cambodia is considered as “gold-standard” in terms of cooperation with the US in area such as POW/MIA. Cambodia even accepted 300 Afghan refugees when only a few countries in the region are willing to do so.
But what does Cambodia receive in return? The US cut off scholarship for military students who are already in the US. The US imposed visa sanctions against high-ranking officials in the whole Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation.
They are sanctioning the very individuals that act as the main bridge of friendship and relations between Cambodia and the US.
This is too cruel a treatment from a friend. The US is treating Cambodia like an enemy.
While the US says that it stands with Cambodian people for its independence and march towards stable and peaceful democracy, Cambodia is in fact one of the most sanctioned countries in Southeast Asia, even worst than the so-called US enemies.
People might probably say sometimes, frankness is needed among sincere friends. But a friend should not express solidarity through piles of sanctions like what the US is doing towards Cambodia right now.
How could a friend be so cruel to treat another friend that way? What does friendship mean for the American government and congressmen?
Is this the best treatment that the American government can afford to Cambodia, which is the last beacon of hope of democracy in the Mekong region? Which country in the Mekong region that fares better than Cambodia in terms of democracy and human rights?
Cambodian people like America; they like American democracy; they aspire to have American democracy.
It is totally unfair for Cambodia that it needs to sacrifice its national interest to befriend with the US. Why is it so hard to befriend with the US?
The US should reconsider its relations with Cambodia from the heart, not from the brain of geopolitical strategy. The brightest brain like Henry Kissinger that was behind the dropping of millions of bombs on Cambodian people is not a friend of Cambodia. He is nothing but a war criminal. He should not be the one to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. What does peace prize mean for an individual that was behind the killings of hundreds of thousands of Cambodian people?
Which US congressman and policy-maker want to become the next Henry Kissinger, the war criminal that won a Nobel Peace Prize?
An American B-52 aircraft is not smart to distinguish between the Viet Cong and Cambodian civilians. The fact is that they killed more civilians than the Viet Cong that the US considered as US’ enemies.
There is no better definition than “war crime” and “crime against humanity” considering the US’ acts against Cambodia during the 1970s. America should never forget that. American government, American people, American policy-makers, American congressmen should never forget that. America should remember their atrocity against Cambodian people during the 1970s. Cambodian civilians and government are not US’ enemy.
And another article…
China’s Belt and Road rail services booming despite Covid-19
A train carrying 33 refrigerated containers departs from the Tengjun International Land Port in Kunming, capital of southwest China’s Yunnan Province, for Laos. Xinhua
Beijing has inked more than 200 cooperation documents for the joint construction of the Belt and Road with 145 countries and 32 international organizations
Xinhua – Though the world remains haunted by the still ravaging COVID-19 pandemic in the year 2021, the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has seen a boom in promoting world connectivity.
Under the BRI framework, railway construction is expanding across the global landscape. The iconic China-Europe Railway Express, the China-Laos railway and the railway line in Tanzania have all recorded milestone achievements over the past year.
These important railway projects provide important pillars for the BRI, and also contribute their due share to improving the global supply chain and the COVID-19 fight.
LINE OF HEALTH AND GIFTS
During days just before Christmas, when people in Western countries are worrying that they may not be able to receive their Christmas gifts on time due to clogged shipping lanes, China-Europe trains from different regions were sending products to Europe without delay.
This year marks the 10th anniversary of the launch of China-Europe freight trains. By the end of October, the China-Europe freight trains plying along 73 routes have reached 175 cities in 23 European countries with more than 50,000 kinds of goods.
Amid the pandemic, the number of China-Europe express trains as well as the volume of freight have continued to break new records.
Data from China’s National Development and Reform Commission shows that during the January-November period, the railway service linking the two sides operated 13,817 trains, carrying 1.332 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs), an increase of 23 percent and 30 percent respectively compared with the year 2020.
At the end of November, the cumulative number of anti-epidemic equipment transported by the China-Europe freight trains reached 13.43 million pieces and 103,000 tons.
“China is very important for the global supply chain. And in most cases it’s faster (than the ocean shipping). Therefore, it’s a useful alternative to use the train, and it’s reliable,” said Axel Mattern, joint chief executive officer of Port of Hamburg Marketing.
According to global logistics company MEDILINK, the initial freight rate of the China-Europe rail network is often two-thirds higher than that of sea freight, but the current price is very competitive.
The current freight rates of the China-Europe freight trains are basically the same as those of sea freight, but it only takes nearly half the time, said Logistics industry insiders.
KEY FOR TRANS-ASIAN CONNECTIVITY
On Dec. 3, the China-Laos Railway officially started operation. It marks a crucial step for the trans-Asian railway network, which has been brewing for more than half a century. Since then, the journey from Vientiane to the border with China has been reduced from 2 days to 3 hours, and the journey to Kunming, capital of China’s Yunnan Province, can be made in a day.
“The China-Laos railway is conducive to promoting the development of areas that are located along the line. Countries in the Greater Mekong Subregion, including Thailand, Laos and China, will benefit from trade, agricultural products, consumer products, investment and tourism,” said Pichet Kunadhamraks, deputy director-general of the Department of Rail Transport under the Thai Ministry of Transport, in an interview with Xinhua.
The railway is expected to reduce transport costs between Vientiane and Kunming by 40 to 50 percent, said a World Bank report, noting transport costs from Thailand’s Laem Chabang port to Kunming are expected to fall by at least 32 percent.
It is estimated that by 2030, the annual volume of commercial goods in transit through the Laos section of the China-Laos Railway will reach 3.9 million tons, it added.
This year coincides with the 30th anniversary of the establishment of China-ASEAN dialogue relations, and the two sides are advancing the BRI and the Master Plan on ASEAN Connectivity 2025.
On Jan. 1, 2022, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) will officially enter into force. Experts believe that the BRI will lead to the construction of the trans-Asian rail network and promote regional connectivity.
ROAD OF DEVELOPMENT
In mid-June this year, a ceremony was held to launch the Ithaca-Mwanza section of the Standard Gauge Railway of Tanzania’s Central Line, the construction of which is undertaken by a Chinese company.
After the completion of this project, it will become an important route connecting Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and other countries, providing a pathway to the Indian Ocean. It is of great importance for promoting the economic development of the countries in the region and improving the living conditions of the people.
From the Tanzania-Zambia railway built in the 1970s, to the Djibouti-Ethiopia and Mombasa-Nairobi railways, and the Standard Gauge Railway of Tanzania’s Central Line, the joint efforts of China and Africa have created jobs, trade opportunities and a better investment environment, thereby contributing to local prosperity as well as to the improvement of the living conditions of the local residents.
As of Dec. 16, China has signed more than 200 cooperation documents for the joint construction of the Belt and Road with 145 countries and 32 international organizations, and financial institutions such as China-proposed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and Silk Road Fund have expanded financing channels for infrastructure construction.
According to Bambang Suryono, chairman of Indonesian think tank Asia Innovation Study Center, for many countries, a major obstacle to escape poverty is the weakness of transport infrastructure, and in this regard, China’s success can set an example.
Conclusion
When you measure everything against the cost structure imposed by western capitalism, everything China does inevitably looks costly.
Totally absent from the analysis is the question of benefits.
The west thinks only of profits. China thinks of the benefits not only to China and the Chinese people, but to the countries and peoples with whom they do business.
The West = Personal Profit
China = Benefits for Groups of People
The long term superiority of such a strategy is blindingly obvious to any open minded observer. It’s the reason why China and Russia will eventually pass through this contentious period of change, and prevail in a new better world.
Many other nations see this, and they do remember how the United States treated / treats them. When the shit hits the fan, and it will, the United States will be broke, penniless, scorned and friendless.
No matter how you spin it, it will not a good situation to be in.
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
Yes. More stuff about China and the on-going war-war-war narrative out of the United States. I tire of it, and I am sure you all do as well. But this is a little important article that throws some light on all the absolute garbage “floating out there” regarding China and Taiwan.
No, this is not a parody. This is a serious discussion of things as they actually are, and not what we all want to believe.
Yes, there is a lot of misinformation, and disinformation floating about regarding a war with China, (or a war with Russia), here we will ignore those “articles” and discuss the reality instead. After all, those “articles” are for domestic American, UK or Australian consumption to garner support for war.
They are not to actually inform.
This article discusses the real reasons behind the need for a war against China, as well as the real capabilities and the real issues involved. We discuss truths here, no matter how distasteful they actually are.
So we are going to cut through the lies and the propaganda. You know them anyways. There’s no need to rehash the bullshit. The purpose is for domestic consumption, not for real strategic planning purposes.
But first [1], we need to address what China actually is. We need to see the nations involved as they actually are. We also need to see the United States as it actually is. By addressing reality we can then address how the United States can turn things around to achieve it’s goals and objectives. Then, [2] we can discuss how to use American strengths as a means towards success.
In this discussion I will present already established and published reports of advantages, as well as some things that are not really for general public release.
What America is today
Let's cut out all the bullshit. Face what America is right now. The good and the bad.
America is a young nation. It’s just under 250 years old. And it is still growing. The Roman empire was around 1000 years old when it eventually collapsed.
It was formed as a Republic. Just like Rome. But that didn’t last long. 28 years later, with the passage of the 12th amendment, it became a Democracy.
Internal stresses and conflicts between the federal government and the state governments resulted in a civil war that conclusively turned the nation into a Central Federal Democracy. During that time the fully autonomous individual state-nations lost their independence once and for all, and a central federal government became reality.
Subsequent amendments gave greater and greater control to the wealthiest individuals in the nation. So that by the beginning of the 19th century, it emerged as a solid Oligarchy.
As a result, Presidential candidates, Senators, and Congress representation were selected by the oligarchy and put up to the citizenry to vote upon. No matter who they voted into office, the oligarchy controlled the levers of power.
With the end of World War II, the massive American military might on a distraught and collapsed world resulted in an Oligarchy-run Military Empire.
There was a potential scaling back of the military aspects of the empire under President John F. Kennedy, but his death, and the subsequent replacement by President Lyndon B. Johnson established a mighty massive military empire.
Suppression of the civil dissatisfaction of what the government had become changed the structure even further. By 2001, it became a Domestic Police State, and an Internationally run Military Empire.
For various reasons what America is today more closely resembles a complex, multi-layered Kakistocracy. It’s obvious, and is (I am sure) the bane of the current President Biden administration.
New York City.
That DOES NOT mean that America is bad, evil, or collapsing. No.
Nations constantly go in and out of periods of change. And because of the current shape of the government, and the current domestic turmoil, it is necessary to unify the nation towards the greater good. One must consult history books to realize just how long the Roman Empire existed as a Kakistocracy.
It was a long time.
In any event, the domestic turmoil inherent with the current American government structure requires attention. There are numerous solutions. However, the ones selected consisted of [1] a state of constant fear, [2] control of every aspect of the citizenry’s lives, [3] birth to death taxation with enormous penalties for non-compliance, and [4] the generation of a common enemy.
The American people must be unified against a common enemy, and that way they can focus on an outside target instead of fester inside the nation and contribute to it’s collapse.
To this end, obviously, both China and Russia have been selected as the targets.
By doing so, and constantly feeding the American populace horrible hate filled images of Russia and China, their angers are directed outwards, and not on the domestic turmoil that embroils inside the United States. This is a good thing. Otherwise great civil disturbances will manifest. Possibly even a second civil war.
So the anger and frustration must be externalized.
So there MUST be a war. It is the only way that the United States can unify, and get though this period of change and maintain it’s global leadership as the world’s biggest and most powerful Military Empire.
Why China?
Both China and Russia have been selected as the enemies to target. However, those in Washington DC view China as the “weaker” of the two foes. This is primarily a military consideration based on the number of nuclear weapons that it possesses. It’s very difficult to see any other criteria.
What China is today
Let's cut away the endless stream of lies and falsehoods about China. Let's look at what it actually is and how it actually works.
China has over 6,000 years of written history. It has seen nations come and go. The current government was formed just after World War II by Mr. Mao and he embraced Communism.
Like America still calls itself a “Republic” when it is a Kakistocracy. Modern China continues to call itself a “Communist” nation when it is actually a Meritocracy.
CCP Leadership
It is important to realize that what China is today has no parallel anywhere else in history. It is unique and new. There has never been a real meritocracy in the history of the world until now.
Being a Meritocracy, everything in China is now sleek, modern, efficient, high technology, and the people are happy, unified, and content. This is true thought China, whether in the shining and gleaming buildings or in the tiny isolated villages.
Beautiful Shanghai Bund night
Obviously images of this must be withheld from the citizens of the United States.
It is critical that Americans are unable to compare their lives with anyone outside of the bubble of control. (It sounds bad, but ti’s the way the American leadership views the situation.) This is why the 2022 Federal budget allocated funding to suppress any news, articles, pictures, or videos out of China.
This is from 2021.
That is $1,200,000,000 USD total.
The anti-China narrative has been an onslaught, and most people believe the bullshit. If you do also, you should be ashamed of yourself.
China is wholly focused on itself and on it’s citizenry. In so doing, it has established the BRI to surround itself with prosperous and happy national neighbors.
When China bought up $3 trillion of the United States $20 trillion dollar debt, everyone thought that it was crazy and foolhardy, but what China has been doing is using that debt to build massive infrastructure projects throughout the BRI, and surround itself with comfortable and growing happy economies.
Today, China is a prosperous nation with a great economy, a strong and traditional society, and a massive defense system.
The Oligarchy are calling the shots.
There are two primary forces pushing for a war between the USA and China. They are…
The Taiwan Oligarchy.
The American Military-Industrial Establishment Oligarchy.
Additionally, both American Political Parties are “riding” the anti-China deluge (funded by the Taiwan oligarchs, and the Military-Industrial oligarchs) and using that to garner votes for election purposes.
The Taiwan Oligarchy
When Taiwan reunifies with the mainland, it’s not if… it’s when, the oligarchy will suffer immensely. They will be forced to share and enjoin the same laws that are applied uniformly throughout China. This is unacceptable to them. As for the last handful of decades they operated as lawless entities… completely above the law and controlled everything as their own fiefdom within Taiwan.
It is no wonder why they are spending billions of dollars to foster a war between the United States and China. They want their king-like lifestyle to continue unabated.
The American Military-Industrial Establishment Oligarchy.
If you read any of the articles out of Washington DC, whether pro-war or anti-war, they ALL make the same statement. Which is that a war between the USA and China would be a long, long, LONG drawn out affair.
Only a mere spattering of articles suggest a nuclear slug-fest, and absolutely NONE discuss the detonation of nuclear weapons on American cities.
Such as this…
It would take Beijing decades to overcome the losses incurred from a war to take Taiwan, even if Beijing triumphs.
The United States and our western allies, on the other hand, would remain at full military power, dominate the international business markets, and have the moral high ground to keep China hemmed in like nothing that presently exists.
Xi would be seen as an unquestioned aggressor, even by other Asian regimes, and the fallout against China could knock them back decades.
Our security would be vastly improved from what it is today – and incalculably higher than if we foolishly tried to fight a war with China.
-The Guardian
This is great news to the American military-industrial complex. They need a replacement founding source since they lost Afghanistan in this role.
So they are pushing for war.
The conditions for the war
This Military-Industrial Complex are pushing for strict and defined criteria [A, B & C] that MUST be met for a successful American takeover and suppression of China.
[A] Force a conventional war. Prevent China from nuclear retaliation.
This is accomplished by ringing China with Nuclear weapons. Not just in the seas with nuclear submarines, but ringing it with nuclear warheads in Korea, in Japan, in Australia and…
…still in process…
… Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and the Philippines.
Then once China is backed into a corner, plunge the entire nation into an embroiled conflict. And to this end, it must be…
[B] Engage a long duration war on Chinese soil.
By doing this it is inconceivable that the war would “spill outside” of the kill zones. The USA would define the area of conflict, the type of conflict and the participants of the conflict. The United States would thus be in full control of the situation from start to finish.
[C] Lower it’s guard / disable it’s nuclear arsenal
Under current policy, the United States will not use nuclear weapons against the vast majority of the world's countries in any circumstances. There are however, exceptions.
Longstanding US policy, re-affirmed in the Trump administration's 2018 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), says that the United States ...
"will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states that are party to the NPT [Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty] and in compliance with their nuclear nonproliferation obligations"; this promise covers more than 180 countries (OSD 2018). This policy is known as a "negative security assurance."
However, China, Russia, Iran and North Korea do not fall under the US negative security assurance. China and Russia are nuclear weapon states under the NPT, and North Korea withdrew from the treaty in 2003 and conducted its first nuclear test in 2006. And Iran is treated as an unconfirmed nuclear power.
This means that they could be expected to be targets for US nuclear weapon preemptive strikes. Which means the United States launching weapons at them first prior to a formal declaration of war.
This was since confirmed by both President Obama, and then reaffirmed by President Donald Trump.
Such as with this agreement. (By the way, America NEVER lives up to any agreements it signs.)
Anti-nuclear use agreement.
Nice agreement.
So then [1] the USA – Australian nuclear deal is no longer going to happen and the construction of nuclear facilities inside of Australia will now end. No. And that [2] the American nuclear ships and submarines will leave the South China Sea, and that [3] the American nuclear weapons will no longer be positioned in the Ukraine? Is that all correct. No.
Then what is this all about?
It’s about defanging the Chinese military strategy.
Chinese Military Strategy
So many articles, all throughout the Western media, discuss war with China. Yet not one single one discusses modern Chinese military doctrine.
At best there is a trivial mention of Sun Tsu and his "Art of War". This omission provides a distortion of the reality in this matter.
So before we continue we need to provide an overview of current Chinese military strategy.
Let’s cut out the bullshit and consider the reality and why it is such a difficult task to obtain those two stated goals. Then we will show exactly how the United States can overcome this formidable adversary.
Here’s a few selected key points that must be included in any calculus involving a war with China.
[1] Routine use of tactical nuclear weapons
If anyone attacks China, China will respond back ferociously. Agreement of not. China will fight back.
China military doctrine has always called for the use of every weapon at it's disposal with no concerns as to the type and nature of the weapon.
The Chinese are just as capable of firing a gun, as it is releasing a toxic chemical, or unleashing nuclear weapons. They make no distinction between their use, nor their consequences.
This is clearly stated in Chinese military policy briefs. They have never changed. Once the shooting starts, many of the first munitions fired by the Chinese will be nuclear.
[2] First strike nuclear use policy
This policy has always been defensive in nature, but if China believes that they will be attacked, they WILL fire nuclear weapons first to prevent that attack.
The United States and much of the nuclear armed world have manuals and policies on how and when to use nuclear weapons. China does not have any of that.
Their doctrines do not make a distinction between military forces and civilian targets. In fact, Chinese history clearly illustrates that the best way to destroy an enemy is to destroy the cites of the enemies completely and irreparably.
When the United States fires the first bullet against China, you can expect to see the top 40 American cities eviscerated in nuclear fireballs. Then, the military bases will be targeted afterwards.
This is a long standing Chinese policy dating to the times of Genghis Khan.
[3] Routine use of AI swarm nukes
Isn’t technology wonderful?
The United States has a long standing policy of precision weaponry. Each weapon is designed to directly and specifically target a building, a complex, or a specific location in a city.
China does not have this policy.
Instead China employs AI controlled swarm nukes. Instead of a MIRV with different precise targeted objectives, the Chinese incorporate AI to alter the flight paths of a swarm of nuclear munitions. the policy is to blanket an entire region or swath of area with clusters of nuclear weapons. The belief here is that the damage and the disarray and the causalities would be much greater in this manner.
This is a "shotgun effect" using nuclear warheads.
While the American strategy is more akin to a nuclear sniper rifle.
[4] Routine use of neutron bomb nuclear weapons
Fielded since the 1970’s.
The American military do not field "neutron bombs" due to the inhumane nature of the weaponry. Not so with China. Their military doctrine is to employ the most horrific weapons possible in the shortest span of time possible.
A neutron bomb is the WORST type of nuclear weapon ever created.
[5] “Hit them where it hurts” retaliatory strategy
Good bye New York. Good bye Chicago. Good bye Los Angles. Bye Bye to Houston.
The United States military operate in "theaters" and plan every battle and every strategy down to the last horseshoe. Not so with the Chinese.
The Chinese believe that the best way to hurt an aggressor force is to destroy their homeland.
The sack of Baghdad is a prime example of how the Chinese conduct wars. It should be of no surprise that the entire military and assault forces were Chinese sappers.
Not only would New York City be completely destroyed, but the entire region of New York State would be uninhabitable for centuries afterwards.
[6] A nation of trained soldiers
Both China and the United States has a military of trained volunteer soldiers. However China teaches military training starting in first grade to everyone.
There are weekly classes in discipline, military strategy and small arms operation. By the time the child attends middle school they are introduced to maneuvers, martial arts, and disabling armored vehicles. This continues throughout childhood. Then this is followed by a mandatory two year stint in the military and then afterwards as a forever irregular as part of the Chinese societal structure.
That is 1600 million people.
The American military is 1.2 million people.
When did you all learn how to fire mortars, arm and hit targets on military operations? The Chinese learn in third grade. video 6MB
[7] Peer-capable military
American military are certainly well equipped. But what is not well understood is that the Chinese military is equally well equipped. Further, American military doctrine suggests a heavy reliance of Command and Control technologies, remote surgical strikes, and precision munitions.
The Chinese fight in autonomous clusters using sophisticated high-technology weapons that operate independently.
Russia has been supplying their cutting-edge weapons systems to China, and China has been supplying Russia with their systems.
It is a foolish mistake to believe that the weapons that the United States has no deterrence and defense against is not being shared.
[9] Full control of the South China Sea
China owns the South China Sea, just like Russia owns the Black Sea. The entire region is crisscrossed with sensors and observation platforms and bases. Nothing can move in this region without being tracked and monitored by the Chinese.
[10] Combined Military Allies with Russia
Much to the chagrin of the United States, China and Russia re more than just allies. They possess a symbiotic relationship. It is far tighter and closer than can even be imagined in the West. To this end, the both share military actions as partners and as equals.
Any war against China will involve Russia as well.
[11] Massive Navy operating in a small defined area
China has the largest Navy in the world. It is also one of the most modern, and it is equipped with peer-superior technologies that the United States Navy has little defense against.
It also operates almost exclusively in the South China Sea. Such a massive concentration of military vessels is a great lethal deterrent.
Rarely reported are numerous fielded weapons that have no Western analog. Robot hand-grenades. Swarm drones and swarm robots. Field denial radiators, pain generators, and insect-size drone munitions.
Not to mention, the strange UFO like vehicles that toy with the United States navy from time to time and the USO objects.
Of course, China does also possess hyper-sonic weapon delivery systems.
video 3.1MB
[13] Quick and painful doctrine
The Chinese military doctrine is one of "massive damage" in a stunningly short period of time.
When the Chinese decides to remove all the embedded CIA and NED operators they did so in hours. Hundreds. Within hours.
In this case, they collected all their intel, and waited. They then went and captured every one. They interrogated them, and then quietly killed all of them.
They did not imprison them, use them as bargaining chips, or anything like that. They just killed them.
[14] Carrier Killers
If there is one thing that China has perfected it is the destruction of aircraft carriers and Naval battle fleets. Nothing else needs to be said.
[15] Sonic weapons
China possess systems that can render all aircraft systems to go crazy and fail. They have systems that can generate pain on military personnel (such as in a submarine) or flying in a plane. They have systems that can make the nuclear power systems on Naval Vessels scram.
[16] Historical Weapons
They have implanted agents everywhere, and many are not ethnic Chinese, but for-profit Americans who will perform sabotage, espionage, and clandestine activities for a profit.
[17] Motivated and Patriotic
The Chinese people are the most patriotic people that I have ever seen. When I hear that the Chinese are pining away for "democracy" and that the Chinese government doesn't have the support of the people, I just laugh. I laugh at the ignorance of any fool that would believe the propaganda.
The Chinese are fiercely patriotic.
Fiercely patriotic.
[18] Never again.
Anyone who REALLY knows about what the Japanese, the UK and the Western forces subjected China to, should be pissing in their pants not to fuck with China. China has NEVER forgotten. And they will be brutal back. You all do not want that kind of karma.
There are indications that the Chinese have implemented the exact same technology as the Russian “Dead hand” switch. So no matter how big or how small the nuclear detonation is, whether a large city buster, or a micro-nuke to take out an office building, the “Dead Hand” system would engage and launch a full onslaught nuclear ICBM / hypervelocity salvo against the United States.
Dead Hand (Russian: Система «Периметр», Systema "Perimetr", lit. "Perimeter" System, with the GRAU Index 15E601, Cyrillic: 15Э601), also known as Perimeter, is a Cold War-era automatic nuclear weapons-control system (similar in concept to the American AN/DRC-8 Emergency Rocket Communications System) that was used by the Soviet Union.
The system remains in use in the post-Soviet Russian Federation.
An example of fail-deadly and mutual assured destruction deterrence, it can automatically trigger the launch of the Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) by sending a pre-entered highest-authority order from the General Staff of the Armed Forces, Strategic Missile Force Management to command posts and individual silos if a nuclear strike is detected by seismic, light, radioactivity, and pressure sensors even with the commanding elements fully destroyed.
By most accounts, it is normally switched off and is supposed to be activated during times of crisis; however, it is said to remain fully functional and able to serve its purpose whenever it may be needed. -Wikipedia
I can CONFIRM that this system (Were it to be formally announced, after all, it’s not supposed to exist. Wink. Wink.) will be switched on during DEFCON 3 or higher states of readiness.
Watch the movie of The Battle at lake Changjin
The Chinese fought the United States in Korea.
The United States with a bunch of Allies (27 or so nations) attempted to seize Korea. China got involved, and the Chinese forced the United States back and the US military left defeated.
So, instead of capturing all of Korea, the USA “punted”, setup a North and a South Korea, and declared the fiasco a “victory”. Here is a movie of just one such contributing battle.
It’s a surprisingly good movie.
Free on You-Tube. Here’s the full three hour long version of the most popular movie of 2021. It’s the true story of the 《長津湖》The Battle at Lake Changjin（English subtitle). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjnFTx9OeQ4
All in all, the Chinese are perhaps the most formidable foe that the United States has ever encountered. Along with Russia it appears that any attack would be suicidal.
It really does.
I, trying to explain for years now that the issue is very simple--US Armed Forces never fought the enemy which can not only defeat them, but completely shut down the skies for the US main power tool--its Air Force and standoff weaponry.
Once this is removed from the equation, annihilation of the opposing force is just the matter of Russia's own standoff arsenal and then mopping up by the ground forces which will retain their combat effectiveness even against most advanced and massive attacks from the air.
It is, obviously, impossible to explain to neocons infesting corridors of high power in D.C. and who made their careers both in Pentagon and State Department by writing theses on Peloponnesian Wars and deriving "lessons" from swords, shields and bow and arrows armed cohorts slaughtering each-other more than 2,000 years ago, that those do not apply for machine speed operating combat networks and weapons which can hit not just to tactical and operational depths, but can, actually, reach easily the United States proper.
And that is a big, big difference.
-Big Big DIfference
Unless there is some big massive secret weapon that the United States possess.
It seems so impossible given Chinese military doctrine, technology, training, and global political support. But the United States is pushing and pushing for a war against China. And I believe that it is doing so because it has a secret weapon. Let’s go over some of the very formidable secret advantages that the United States military possess.
According to all the serious military strategists in the United States today, these are the American strengths…
[1] Diversity
One of most prized and valued elements of the new, revised, and improved American military is the strengthening of LGBT values, trans-gender and minority leadership appointments.
I have often wondered why this is considered a strength as I (personally) consider this a weakness. However, upon reflection, I have come to this conclusion…
It's been well promoted and advertised, and to many conservatives and traditionalists, it seems like some kind of sick joke. However, the fundamental idea behind having a diverse military is to be so inclusive that everyone wants to support your efforts and join you.
No one wants to harm a cute fuzzy bunny rabbit.
No one wants to shoot a kindly little old lady.
And no one wants to throw away uneaten pizza slices.
By having a diverse, minority run, and LGBT military no one would be desirous to shoot and attack you. In war and combat, split second decisions are the difference between life and death. By being diverse and LGBT, the enemies would have second thoughts about shooting and harming people that they can relate to.
This is America's biggest and most powerful secret weapon.
America’s secret weapon.
[2] Massive support for war
A war against China will not be like the Vietnam war. It will have massive public support. In fact, it will rally the United States together against a singular enemy.
The American military is respected and loved all over the world. When the United States troops left Afghanistan, thousands of people didn't want them to leave. Many wanted to travel back to the United States with them. That is how beloved the American military is.
Currently polls internal to America show a great deal of support for a war against China. This support will make it easier to have a long drawn out war when millions of people are dying.
Massive anti-China protest.
[3] An endless military budget
This is a well known fact, but will have a major impact on the long-duration promotion of war.
America owns the world's money printing presses and it can print all the money it needs. it's an unlimited budget. Other nations do not have this ability. Thus in a war situation, the United States can out-spend and thus out-produce any foe.
An endless military budget.
[4] Powerful allies willing to die for America
The United States has enlisted hundreds of nations that are part of the "democracy coalition". Many ware willing to fight on the same side as the United States and will happily allow American bases, American military on their land. Not to mention that many are willing to fight and die for America.
The most notable examples are Canada, Australia, the UK, and the Ukraine.
Australians are ready to die for America.
[5] A powerful media messaging machine
No matter what China says or reports, it will be effectively drowned out, forgotten and suppressed by the very powerful media megaphone.
Lavish funding for anti-China media.
[6] Largest military in the world
America possesses over 800 bases all over the world. It have one of the largest stockpiles of nuclear weapons and has military culture. America has substantial military experience.
American bases around the world.
[7] God
The biggest and strongest fist of power is God. With God on the side of the United States it is impossible not to prevail.
The most important, popular and significant religious leaders inside of America have confirmed that God is on the side of the Righteous. And thus, it is on the side of America. Any other nation, no matter how strong they appear on paper are helpless before God.
No matter what. God will smite the enemies of democracy.
God will protect the brave American soldiers.
Conclusion
The reader might disagree on this calculus. But the strengths of both China and the United States are presented as they actually are. Not as one might wish them to be.
Sources are the military leadership of both nations. Not the political mouthpieces, or their media.
From the point of view of China, they believe that they are strong enough to prevent anyone from daring to attack them. Whether it is via a “false flag event” or due to some domestic action that has been demonized in the mainstream media (Taiwan, Tibet, Hong Kong, Uighur’s, etc.) China has worked on being very formidable, and very dangerous and lethal.
From the point of view of the United States, it is critically important that a war against China starts to happen quickly, and last a long LONG time. Otherwise, the entire nation might implode. To this end, the United States has incorporated numerous unconventional weapons that when combined are truly formidable in breadth and scope.
From the point of view of the oligarchs, it is important that they maintain their income stream and positions of global power. Whatever is necessary to accomplish those ends are acceptable to them. Nothing is to dangerous, too lethal, or too horrific to prevent them from losing their positions of power.
From the point of view of a regular guy, I wish that all the oligarchs would just disappear, that the United States would fix it’s domestic problems, and that everyone else would let us alone to live in peace.
A man and his cat.
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
I have been musing about eating a fine delicious ice cream cone. I know, I know, youse guys eat it all the time. but I really don’t. Ever since I put in my verbal affirmation that “I eat healthy, delicious, and nutritious food“, somehow the sugar laden icy deliciousness of the Ice cream cone has since eluded me. Sigh.
Now that it is getting old, I have been fantasizing about hot fudge sundaes, upside down banana splits, and Carmel sundaes. Maybe substituting blueberries on a strawberry shortcake, or having an extra heaping scoop on a five scoop ice cream surprise.
Ice Cream Sundae.
It’s not my normal fare. Don’t you know. Sigh.
Everything is a trade off.
Though, it (a hot fudge sundae) would probably go great with a nice whiskey.
Today
So I am going though my normal routine. Checking out the laughingly pathetic “news” out of America, and the “real” news out of Russia and tiny. tiny real alternative outlets. When I came across an article that is not being covered at all in the American “news”.
Apparently two satellites had a trajectory that sent them flying toward the Chinese space station on a collision course.
Two.
T.W.O.
– 2 times –
Not a coincidence.
Accidents do not happen twice in a row, just like it is extraordinarily rare for lightening to strike twice.
One of the missions of the (newly established) American Military Space Command is to approve all space flight trajectories originating out of the United States. For some odd reason, they approved a collision course of a SpaceX satellite on not one, but two occasions to collide with the Chinese space station. Since this is an impossible flight vector… as space is far too huge. It is a deliberate attempt to ram and destroy the Chinese space station.
“…So Elon Musk attempted two acts of terrorism against the Chinese space station (while it was occupied by human-beings). These acts, which expose the true purpose of SpaceX, have gone entirely unreported in media, mainstream or otherwise. I don’t remember it getting a mention at MoA or anywhere else.
Below is the complaint China wrote to the UN which details how the space station had to carry out emergency evasive maneuvers on two separate occasions….
Information furnished in conformity with the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies
Note verbale dated 3 December 2021 from the Permanent Mission of China to the United Nations (Vienna) addressed to the Secretary-General
The Permanent Mission of China to the United Nations (Vienna) presents its compliments to the Secretary-General of the United Nations and has the honour to refer to article V of the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies 1 (the Outer Space Treaty), which provides that “States Parties to the Treaty shall immediately inform the other States Parties to the Treaty or the Secretary-General of the United Nations of any phenomena they discover in outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, which could constitute a danger to the life or health of astronauts”. In accordance with the above-mentioned article, China hereby informs the Secretary-General of the following phenomena which constituted dangers to the life or health of astronauts aboard the China Space Station.
The China Manned Space Programme completed five launch missions in 2021, with the successful launching into orbit of the Tianhe core module of the China Space Station, the Tianzhou-II and Tianzhou-III cargo spacecraft and the Shenzhou-XII and Shenzhou-XIII crewed spacecraft. The China Space Station has travelled stably in a near-circular orbit at an altitude of around 390 km on an orbital inclination of about 41.5 degrees.
During this period, Starlink satellites launched by Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) of the United States of America have had two close encounters with the China Space Station. For safety reasons, the China Space Station implemented preventive collision avoidance control on 1 July and 21 October 2021, respectively.
1. The first collision avoidance
As from 19 April 2020, the Starlink-1095 satellite had been traveling stably in orbit at an average altitude of around 555 km.
Between 16 May and 24 June 2021, the Starlink-1095 satellite maneuvered continuously to a precise orbit of around 382 km, and then stayed in that orbit. Even though the orbit trajectory took it on a collision course with the Chinese space station.
A close encounter occurred between the Starlink-1095 satellite and the China Space Station on 1 July 2021. For safety reasons, the China Space Station took the initiative to conduct an evasive maneuver in the evening of that day to avoid a potential collision between the two spacecraft.
2. The second collision avoidance
On 21 October 2021, the Starlink-2305 satellite had a subsequent close encounter with the China Space Station.
As the satellite was continuously maneuvering, the maneuver strategy was unknown and orbital errors were hard to be assessed, there was thus a collision risk between the Starlink-2305 satellite and the China Space Station.
To ensure the safety and lives of in-orbit astronauts, the China Space Station performed an evasive maneuver again on the same day to avoid a potential collision between the two spacecraft.
In view of the foregoing, China wishes to request the Secretary-General of the United Nations to circulate the above-mentioned information to all States parties to the Outer Space Treaty and bring to their attention that, in accordance with article VI of the Treaty...
“States Parties to the Treaty shall bear international responsibility for national activities in outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, whether such activities are carried on by governmental agencies or by non-governmental entities, and for assuring that national activities are carried out in conformity with the provisions set forth in the present Treaty.”
China’s in-progress space station has performed preventive collision avoidance control to avoid being struck by SpaceX Starlink satellites. China has informed the United Nations Secretary-General of the issue.
In a document posted by the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space dated December 6, 2021, there is notification by China under Article V of the Outer Space Treaty concerning preventive collision avoidance between the China Space Station (international designation 2021-035A) and United States’ Starlink-1095 (international designation 2020-001BK) and Starlink-2305 (international designation 2021-024N) satellites.
Dangers to astronauts
“The China Manned Space Program completed five launch missions in 2021, with the successful launching into orbit of the Tianhe core module of the China Space Station, the Tianzhou-II and Tianzhou-III cargo spacecraft and the Shenzhou-XII and Shenzhou-XIII crewed spacecraft. The China Space Station has travelled stably in a near-circular orbit at an altitude of around 390 km on an orbital inclination of about 41.5 degrees,” the document points out.
“During this period, Starlink satellites launched by Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) of the United States of America have had two close encounters with the China Space Station. For safety reasons, the China Space Station implemented preventive collision avoidance control on 1 July and 21 October 2021, respectively.”
“China hereby informs the Secretary-General of the following phenomena which constituted dangers to the life or health of astronauts aboard the China Space Station,” the document states.
The incident was first flagged by the U.K.’s Express as well as Reuters news agency.
Meanwhile, China astronauts have just wrapped up about six hours of EVAs.
China’s taikonauts, Zhai Zhigang and Ye Guangfu, safely returned to the Tianhe space station core module. Female astronaut Wang Yaping stayed inside the module, supporting the spacewalking duo, including operation of the station’s robotic arm.
This was the fourth time for Chinese astronauts to conduct EVAs during the construction of the country’s space station and the second by the Shenzhou-13 crew.
Zhai and Ye completed such tasks as adjusting a panoramic camera, tested goods transport, installed hardware for future use and evaluated the EVA spacesuits.
Accumulated experience
Yang Yanbo, deputy commander of space mission team, Beijing Aerospace Control Center told China Central Television (CCTV):
“We have made proper arrangements for the extravehicular activities such as readjusting settings of mechanical arm’s movement and the platform, which allowed astronauts to operate equipment and mechanical arm simultaneously, thus improving the efficiency of extravehicular activities.”
Zhu Guangchen, deputy chief designer of the space station system at the China Academy of Space Technology under the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation said:
“The extravehicular activities have further tested designs of the core module airlock module, the mechanical arm and the extravehicular suit, and assessed the coordination between space and Earth, which will accumulate experience for the future assembly and construction tasks.”
Zhou Jianping, chief designer of China’s manned space program, told CCTV:
“All the tasks have been performed smoothly so far, with key construction technologies tested. All indicators show that the functions and performance of our space station meet the requirements, and some of them are even far better than what we had expected, this laying a solid foundation for the future space station construction and operation.”
Step-by-step
China’s space program has successfully completed five launches, five rendezvous and docking missions, and four EVAs since the Tianhe space station core module was sent into Earth orbit on April 29, 2021.
The China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) noted that extravehicular operations are becoming the normal work of the space station flight missions. Chinese astronauts will carry out more and complicated EVAs to provide support for the completion of the construction and the stable operation of the space station.
The orbiting outpost is to be completed by the end of 2022.
Six-month mission
China launched the trio of Shenzhou-13 taikonauts on October 16. The crew is on a six-month mission to construct China’s space station.
The Shenzhou-13 crew will continue their in-orbit work to greet the coming new year. This is also the first time that Chinese astronauts to greet a new year in space, the CMSA added.
The CMSA noted that extravehicular operations are becoming the normal work of the space station flight missions. Chinese astronauts will carry out more and complicated EVAs to provide strong support for the successful completion of the construction and the stable operation of the space station.
The Tianhe core module is the first and main component of the in-construction China space station, informally known as Tiangong (Heavenly Palace).
Next year, China is to loft new segments of the station.
To view newly-issued videos regarding the completed 2nd EVAs go to:
China said its space station deployed prevention collision avoidance control measures in July and October and called on the US to ‘bear responsibility’
Elon Musk sparks China fury as space station takes emergency measures to avoid collision
Chinese citizens lashed out against the tech billionaire’s space ambitions on Monday after satellites from Starlink Internet Services, a division of Musk’s SpaceX aerospace company, had two “close encounters” with the Chinese space station. According to a document submitted by China to the UN space agency, the incidents occurred on July 1 and October 21.
In the papers, Beijing complained about how the near-miss incident “constituted dangers to the life or health of astronauts aboard the China Space Station”.
It said: “During this period, Starlink satellites launched by Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) of the United States of America have had two close encounters with the China Space Station.
“For safety reasons, the China Space Station implemented preventive collision avoidance control on 1 July and 21 October 2021, respectively.
“For safety reasons, the China Space Station took the initiative to conduct an evasive manoeuvre in the evening of that day to avoid a potential collision between the two spacecraft.”
China also cited article VI of the Outer Space Treaty, which was signed by all the space-faring nations of the world and forms the basis of international space law.
Article VI stated: “States Parties to the Treaty shall bear international responsibility for national activities in outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, whether such activities are carried on by governmental agencies or by non-governmental entities, and for assuring that national activities are carried out in conformity with the provisions set forth in the present Treaty.”
Social media users erupted on Weibo, which is a Chinese alternative to Twitter.
One user described Starlink’s satellites as “just a pile of space junk,” while another accused them of being “American space warfare weapons”.
In an anti-satellite (ASAT) rocket test last month, the Kremlin fired a missile into space to deliberately blow up a redundant satellite.
However, the debris from the explosion began to hurtle through space towards the ISS, which caused astronauts to take emergency measures.
Because of this debris, NASA also halted its planned activities as astronauts waited for the storm of debris to pass.
Playing with FIRE.
What is the matter with these lunatics?
I do not believe Elon Musk planned this flight path alone. I believe that it is an intentionally directed trajectory.
Why do I know? Well, maybe it’s my role in MAJestic. Or, maybe it’s because I studied Astrophysics. In any event the odds of this being an accident is very, very tiny.
Plus, it is a FACT that ALL American orbital trajectories are monitored and approved by the United States Military USSPACECOM. Space Command. So either the US Military Space Command made a vital and unusual highly-unlikely mistake, or it is intentional.
So what is going on?
Is that it?
China is just going to lodge and register another complaint in the UN that will not be reported anywhere else? Like the Coronavirus being a bio-weapon, eh?
Hum.
Don’t be so sure…
Subject: The countdown has started. China has disabled tracking systems for its ships and aircraft
The countdown has started. China has disabled tracking systems for its ships and aircraft
Yesterday
134 K reads
The Chinese navy – both merchant and military – suddenly disappeared. This happened while all the world’s attention is focused on Russia. And her proposals to the United States to withdraw NATO troops away from its borders. Meanwhile, China is taking concrete steps to camouflage thousands of its ships.
It’s all about the automatic identification system (AIS). This system allows ships to send information for the general use – position, speed, course and name. It is very convenient for tracing global trade chains by market players, increasing the efficiency of their business planning.
So, according to information from the global provider of shipping data VesselsValue, the number of Chinese vessels sending signals has recently decreased by almost 90% (about a thousand remained in sight).
It’s all about the new laws of the PRC on the protection of information. Their appearance is very important, as it is an example of the priority of politics over the economy.
After all, it is obvious that this law interferes with the image of Chinese suppliers. With the winter holidays approaching, the loss of information from China, where six of the top 10 container ports in the world are located, creates additional problems for the economy.CNN Business ).
But this is not so important for the Chinese leadership now. The fact is that it is the massive gathering of Chinese merchant ships that can peacefully block the island of Taiwan. Isolate the rebellious province from the world. And Western military aid. Now the conditions have been created for such a gathering to be unexpected for everyone.
But that’s not all. China plans to carry out a similar operation with aircraft. China has banned the download of the Flightradar24 app, claiming its operation poses a threat to military aircraft. The special services seized the relevant equipment. Flightradar24 is a public web service (and application) that allows real-time monitoring of aircraft position, trajectory, altitude and speed.
I don’t know about Russia, but China is clearly preparing something.
Yes they are getting ready for something. They are also, among other commodities hoarding grain in unprecedented quantities. Alas, the drums of war…
Blinken called the US conflict with China a disaster. What could he have meant and what could be the consequences for the US and China?
December 15th
5 thousand reads
The US is gradually leading itself into a dead end. This was recently confirmed by US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken himself, calling a possible conflict with China a disaster. But at the same time, it is almost impossible to avoid such a conflict – there are too many contradictions and very strong competition. What kind of catastrophe will this conflict turn out to be for the United States and China?
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The main reason for the conflict between the United States and China is Taiwan. An island that China considers its own. And the United States supports its independence. Just like with Ukraine, very similar. Also, the United States and China are direct competitors for hegemony and markets for their goods – the States really do not like that China, instead of collecting iPhones for a bowl of rice, makes its own smartphones – Huawei, Oppo, Xiaomi, etc. And many other things besides them.
There is no need to talk about friendship and cooperation in such conditions. On the contrary, recently the United States and other Western countries announced a boycott of the Beijing Olympics. And if it really comes to a conflict, then for the United States it will really turn out to be a disaster, despite the military superiority. First of all, a catastrophe in the economy and hegemony.
The fact is that the US already has big problems with the economy. There is not enough money, as before, even for the maintenance of military bases in Afghanistan and Iraq, so the United States withdrew its troops from there. The withdrawal of troops from Iraq ends on December 31. A conflict with China will only make the situation worse.
China is a leader in the extraction and reserves of rare earth metals, which are used in almost all high-tech products-from iPhones to drones. In the event of a conflict, of course, China will take advantage of this advantage and cut off supplies.
This will lead to the fact that in the United States there will be factories for the production of high-tech products, without the necessary elements for production. And U.S.-owned factories in China and Taiwan can be nationalized as compensation for the costs of the conflict with the United States. Then the United States will be left without factories at all.
And the US GDP already consists of only 20% of manufacturing, and 80% of services. And without rare earth metals, even the remaining ones will stand up.
There will be no factories and no profits – we will have to withdraw troops and close military bases in other countries. After all, US military spending exceeds $ 700 billion a year. And the lion’s share of these expenses is the maintenance of military bases. If they are closed, then the United States ceases to be the hegemon of the planet, and becomes an ordinary regional power on its continent.
Now about the struggle for the island of Taiwan. China is very close to it:
And the US is on the other side of the world. Can you imagine how much fuel you will have to buy from Russia in order to fit warships there and ensure regular supplies in the event of a conflict? And it is not known whether Russia will even help the United States with fuel in the event of a conflict with China.
The path is not close and expensive
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Also, the Americans will immediately be left with empty shelves, just like it was in the USSR. Because it is China that is the main trading partner of the United States, which supplies almost everything to America-from underwear to smartphones.
According to the results of 2020, the trade turnover between the United States and China amounted to 582 billion dollars. The Chinese themselves will somehow survive a break in trade ties with the United States. There are 1.4 billion of them. That’s 4.2 times the population of the United States.
So you can reorient your production to the huge domestic market. But what will the Americans do if they are left with empty shelves? Not otherwise, they will storm the Capitol again.
“Will get” and the US allies. For example, in Europe. It also trades with China ($586 billion). euro) and with the United States ($631 billion). euro). If China takes American production on its territory as compensation, then the United States will simply have nothing to trade with Europe.
And it will be very difficult for Europe to trade with China because of the military actions. European businesses and production facilities also largely depend on the supply of components from China. It is not in the European interest to break supply chains and suffer losses.
This, in turn, will lead to the fact that the US allies will start to “run away” from where to where – some will turn to face Russia, others to China. Because who wants to lose profit because of the desire of the weakening US to prove something to China? We were friends with the United States only as long as they were strong.
Finally, the most valuable asset that the US still has – the dollar-will lose its status. Who would want the currency of a country whose economy would collapse like a house of cards in the event of a real conflict with China?
So it turns out that in the event of such a conflict, the United States loses everything – the dollar, production, allies, hegemony, goods on the shelves of its stores, and ultimately its country. We survived the 90’s, and the Americans are left without iPhones, grandeur and toilet paper, it is unlikely to endure.
China, of course, will also suffer some losses. Especially in technology, because many Chinese products are just copies of Western ones. But in recent years, the Chinese have also learned to develop their own technologies, so they will somehow adapt. And if something goes wrong, they have nuclear weapons, the use of which will cause unacceptable damage to the United States. That’s why Blinken called it a disaster.
And a comment from <redacted>
I loved reading this. -MM
That’s gigantic news !
The KFC-AZAEL (Kakistocratic Feudal Conglomerate of the Anglo-Zio-American EstabLishment) knows that their window of opportunity is narrowing or even closing. Now that their clumsy & laughable maneuvers to destroy the Sino-Russian Comprehensive Strategic Partnership of Coordination for a New Era obviously failed, they’ll have to do something big and probably utterly stupid. Two years ago, I still thought the window of opportunity for them is about a decade… Of course, I might have been brainwashed by the ravings of Stratfor (“Strategic forecast” & al) “predicting” or rather “predictively programming” people to believe that World War III will most probably happen in the 2030s…
But now, it’s not far-fetched to say it’s in the order of 2-3 years, 5 years max. After that, the process of Integration of the World Island will simply be too relentless to do anything humanly conceivable to stop it. Even now, I dare say it’s too late for the KFC-AZAEL. Xinjiang is perfectly under control, their little terrorists have been neutered.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization has a permanent RATS (Regional Anti-Terrorists Structure) Executive Committee based in Tashkent. The Air Base just north of Kabul abandoned by the US since August 15 this year. Power of Siberia 2 going through Mongolia as the Chinese wanted to keep the Mongols interested by what the SCO can offer them, is there to stay. Russia & India will from now on settle their commerce in rubles and rupees. Russia & China in rubles and yuan (renminbi, RMB). The Russian SPFS (System for Transfert of Financial Messages) & the Chinese CIPS (Cross-Border Interbank Payment System) will replace the SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications) if needed. Under the aegis of President Hu Jintao & President Xi Jinping, the Chinese decapitated the CIA network in Mainland China between 2010 and 2015 essentially. Peace is restored in Hong-Kong since the Law on National Security (July 2020), the color Revolution (Yellow Umbrella) an utter failure.
THAT CHINA COULD ATTEMPT SOMETHING IN THE NEXT WEEKS/MONTHS IS NOT FAR-FETCHED GIVEN THE INTERNATIONAL LANDSCAPE AND BOTH THE RUSSIAN AND THE CHINESE LEADERSHIPS CONCLUDED THAT THEY CAN NO LONGER SEE THE PEOPLE IN D.C. AS HONORABLE RATIONAL AGENTS AND IT’S TIME TO ACT.
And I strongly suggest that this time, the Russian & Chinese moves are coordinated even if there are no glaring signs. Putin & Xi talked on December 15 as everyone in this group knows… They will talk again in person, face to face, in about 5 weeks and nothing prevents them to talk by phone meantime. I wish the KFC-AZAEL is mad enough to start a suicidal double move on Ukraine & Taiwan…It would be a dazzling “SUEZ MOMENT” for all to watch…
Ushakov & Ryabkov from the Russian MOFA (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) were quite assertive in their speeches to NATO on RUSSIAN RED LINES. They are fed up, they are autonomous for food, they have the Asian market for oil and gas, they have hypersonic weapons & the unwavering and enlightened Chinese backing.
China, usually so “sotto voce” in the international landscape, declared firmly & clearly that Russia has her support for Ukraine & the gas imbroglio with the EU or as I call them with affection, the Euro-Noodles…
Yes, Blinken is right to say that the conflict with China is a disaster and the article elaborating on it is crystal clear with the facts it offered. The US recent!y went back on the diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Beijing Olympic Winter Games and asked for 40 visas instead of 18 for US officials (diplomatic farce or plans of sabotage once in China?)
I believe our distinguished colleague Metallic Man was in the right when he wrote so precisely on the attempts to destroy China by multiple pathogens attacks during the last 4 to 5 years. BUT WHY CAN’T THEY OFFER SOMETHING A LITTLE BIT RATIONAL IN ORDER TO IMPROVE THINGS ??? WELL, OLD HABITS DIE HARD… Too simplistic an explanation ? Maybe not so simplistic but at the heart of plutocratic/oligarchical/closed mindset…
People having bullied without any consequences the weak, the poor and the downtrodden for centuries cannot TRULY IMAGINE they might lose this time. It’s not wired in their brains. PSYCHOPATHS HAVE DIFFERENTS BRAINS (ANATOMICALLY AT THE MICROSCOPIC LEVEL AND PHYSIOLOGICALLY) in term of emotivo-rational integration for decision-making and action compared to the normal people, so they’re much more prone to stay in their usual ruts than the average man and will NOT take note of the danger signals. I imagine Putin & Xi scratching their heads and asking to themselves, what to do and with the least “collateral damages” possible on the global stage ?
Just read History, dying empires always fell into the trap of hubris & over-reach and the rest is…History…
Sometimes, taking into account the decisions coming from the US government, in my feverish imagination & wishful thinking, I fantasize some Chinese agents must be present at the White House…
The easiest and most probable explanation for me can be given in one word : HUBRIS.
SOME PEOPLE ACTUALLY THINK ” THE UNIPOLAR MOMENT” IS STILL A REALITY.
And let’s not forget this lesson coming from the Ancient Greeks :
WHOM THE GODS WANT TO DESTROY, THEY FIRST MADE MAD…
The KFC-AZAEL wants a New World Order ? A Reset ? They will get one but maybe not the one they wished for…
But, as they say in French : l’homme propose & Dieu dispose…
Qui vivra verra…
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
Yup. The American neocons, started with the John Bolton / Donald Trump “tag team”, and passed on via Mike Pompeo to the puppet-in-chief; Joe Biden has woken up a very, very dangerous dragon. Just like Biblo Baggens did in “The Hobbit” with Smaug, this dragon is now woke. And it is not going back to sleep. You fools!
You crazy, dangerous, idiotic fools!
Yet, the American neocon’s and their rabid (well meaning, but geopolitically clueless) followers have no idea what a cluster-fuck they are walking into. And I do mean cluster-FUCK.
I am talking about Genghis Khan levels of devastation, rape, ruin and rapture.
But you cannot speak sense into their brains of mush. They have watched “Rambo”, and read the “news” about the American successes in the Middle East, and they believe it all. Everything. As if special effects and actors represent what really happens in real life.
Ok. Enough of that.
In 2019, Trump was getting ready to win is second term as President.
But he and John Bolton were frustrated. The eight (8x) strains of bio-weapons directed at farm food and produce failed (by drones no less!). The Hong Kong “color revolution” under the guise of “Pro-Democracy Movement” failed. The “Free Tibet movement” failed spectacularly. The effort to cause a collapse of the BRI via the Uighur people in Xinjiang failed, and the hybrid-war (in all of it’s many flavors) was simply pissing off the Chinese people and unifying them together as one very angry and very pissed off nation.
So what to do?
Hum?
Launch a Bio-weapon on the most important Chinese holiday of the year, in the most populous area of China, where all the high-speed trains converge for maximum spread and maximum damage.
That’s what they did.
Brilliant, huh?
Hey! How’s it all working out for you? Great huh?
It too failed in China. As did, the second bio-weapon attack, the death by vomiting virus, and the third bio-weapon attack, the death by shitting virus.
All spectacular failures.
Obviously, the United States needed to be “hit on the head” to realize that they cannot fuck with China any longer. But No. No. No. They are way too clueless. Far too gone. Far too stupid.
This neocon believes that China has mind control weapons that are poisoning the minds of Americans. And that China is at fault for the collapse of American society!
Stupidity.
You just cannot argue with mental retards. FACT.
China, always one for subtleties, decided to display OPERATIONAL military systems as a warning to the blundering, bumbling, idiocy that somehow, by fraud and deceit, run the United States today.
They showed these systems on parade.
This was nearly three years ago…do you think that the American leadership payed attention? No. Idiots are idiots, no matter what their business card says.
China’s Anniversary Parade Reveals New Weapons That Will Influence U.S. Strategies
October 1, 2019
The People’s Republic of China held a great parade (3h video, shorter version with comments) to celebrate the 70th anniversary of its founding. Some interesting new weapons were on display that are of strategic significance.
China has, like Russia and Iran, used the decades the U.S. military wasted with counter insurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan to build strength where the U.S. military has weaknesses. Those weaknesses are most visible in the Navy:
New classes of quiet diesel submarines and new developments in mine and torpedo technology make operations close to tense coastlines far more dangerous today than in the past. As a result, U.S. aircraft carriers are no longer immune from risk when entering waters within range of enemy forces.
More serious still is the deployment of Russian and Chinese area denial systems, like the so-called carrier killer DF-21 antiship missile developed in the last decade by China. Its range of over 1,000 miles far outstrips the range of any warplane on U.S. flight decks today. Sailing a U.S. carrier strike force through the Taiwan Strait these days—in a show of support for pro-democracy forces in Hong Kong, for instance—would risk catastrophe.
Iran does not yet possess anything as sophisticated as China’s DF-21. However, its domestically produced Noor antiship missile (itself a reverse-engineered rip-off of an earlier Chinese cruise missile) is dangerous at over 100 miles. [...] The combination of these missiles and Iran’s fleet of fast and cheap patrol boats has been enough to keep the USS Lincoln out of the Persian Gulf as tensions between Iran and the United States increased this summer.
The carrier killer DF-21 is no longer China’s top weapon. It is a ballistic missile and a U.S. carrier group may be able to use its missile defenses to take it down. China used the last years to exceed its capabilities.
One closely-watched weapon unveiled Tuesday was the Dongfeng-17, a glider capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. Foreign analysts say is designed to maneuver at high speed to evade anti-missile defenses.
Another missile displayed, the Dongfeng-41, is believed to have a range of up to 15,000 kilometers (9,400 miles), which would make it world’s longest-range military missile. Analysts say it may be able to carry as many as 10 warheads to hit separate targets.
Here are some screenshots from the parade video.
First up is the DF-17 hyper-velocity, AI controlled, nuclear weapon. Designed to decimate complete carrier groups, islands and cities. Row after row, after row after row of these vehicles were paraded.
A number of neocon publications have claimed that these must be dummy mock-ups. That no nation could build so many, in such a short period of time. If America, with the “best manufacturing in the world” cannot do it, then no one can.
The DF-41 is a road mobile beast. The 8 axle vehicle can transport, erect and launch the missile. The DF-41 is supposedly a solid fuel missile. That means that it only requires a very short time to deploy and launch. It will be difficult to interdict while it is still on the ground. There were a total of 16 of these monsters in the parade. The DF-41 has a 9400. mile reach, making it a serious entry in the intercontinental class.
This seems to be a communication relay drone. It can be used to communicate with, and steer, another drone from the ground even when the second one is over the horizon looking for U.S. ships. It makes Chinese drones independent of satellite communications.
ABOVE: The HSU-001s are also drones but they do not fly but dive. These are likely to be used as reconnaissance vehicles against U.S. submarines and ships. They could also be useful for secretly mining an enemy harbor.
And WAS used to disable the USS Connecticut in 2021.
ABOVE: This unmanned thingy is interesting. It looks fast and stealthy and has two liquid fueled engines. While it has an undercarriage the two suspension lugs on its top insinuate that it can be launched from another plane. It looks fast and stealthy but is confusing. Is it a bomber that returns to an airport? It looks a bit too flimsy for that. Is the thing itself a “suicide drone” i.e. the warhead that hits the target? Why then does it need an undercarriage? It might be for reconnaissance but it has no visible optic systems.
Next to several thousand marching soldiers there was a number of upgraded tanks, missile systems, shore launched anti-ship missiles and lots of drones. China’s equivalent of the Russian S-300 was on display and several large and very modern early warning radars. There were also dozens of mid-range missile that are, in the case of a conflict, probably supposed to end the U.S. base on Guam.
And possibly the entire island itself…
Nearly all the systems shown were road-mobile. That means that China can easily deploy even the big ones to its islands and reefs in the South China Sea. During a crisis or conflict the U.S. Navy would have to avoid the whole area or prepare for a very bad day.
In 2001 then President George W. Bush said the U.S. would do “whatever it takes” to defend Taiwan should China insist on a forced reunion. In 2006 the U.S. operation plan on how to do that was revealed:
"The Pacific command developed a new `strategic concept' for the Taiwan contingency in December 2002, and an updated plan was produced in July 2003. Last year, based upon new 2004 guidance from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the Joint Chiefs of Staff ... a final Taiwan defense plan was published," Arkin wrote.
The plan now includes "air, naval, ground amphibious, and missile defense forces and `excursions' to defend Taiwan. Options include maritime intercept operations in the Taiwan straits [sic], attacks on Chinese targets on the mainland, information warfare and `non-kinetic' options, even the potential use of American nuclear weapons," Arkin wrote.
Air operations in support of Taiwan will be difficult when U.S. carriers can no longer dare to go near China. Maritime intercept operations in the Taiwan straits are becoming wishful thinking. Taiwan has changed its defense strategy in sight of these new circumstances:
Taiwan’s new defense concept employs an asymmetric defense strategy, where Taiwan maximizes its defense advantages, and targets an invading force when it is at its weakest. Whereas Taiwan’s previous strategy focused on fighting across the entire Taiwan Strait and defeating the enemy through attrition, the new concept divides Taiwan’s defense operations into two phases, both closer to Taiwan’s shores where the lines of communication are short and Taiwan’s forces can benefit from land-based air denial and more effective surveillance and reconnaissance.
The U.S. strategy has for decades been based on air-superiority and sea control. It has yet to adopt to the new situation in which anti-access and area denial (A2/AD) weapons prohibit the use of most of its (very expensive) offensive systems.
The lack of U.S. capabilities extend to its defense systems. Hypersonic vehicles make U.S. missile defenses largely useless. Saudi Arabia recently learned that the U.S. has no air defense system that is readily capable of defeating cruise missiles and drones. While the Saudis had spent billions of dollars on U.S. air defense systems the Houthi could use those rather simple and effective weapons to attack one of its largest oil installations. It is no wonder then that the Saudis are now filing for peace:
Saudi Arabia has given a green light to Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi to arrange a meeting with Iran as a first step towards de-escalating tensions in the region, Middle East Eye can reveal.
Abbas al-Hasnawi, an official in the prime minister's office, told MEE on Tuesday that Abdul Mahdi was mediating between the leaderships in Riyadh and Tehran and had communicated each side's conditions for talks to the other.
The Saudis still set some dumb conditions for talks but a few more Houthi attacks on its oil infrastructure will convince them that those are unnecessary.
The Saudis have to climb down because the superpower that once protected them is no longer able to do so. At least not as easily as it used to do.
Andrei Martyanov and others have long predicted that the moment would come where the U.S. would lose its supremacy. We no longer have to wait for it. The moment is here.
SELECT COMMENTS. (ORIGINAL THREAD)
WZ-8
Why then does it need an undercarriage? It might be for reconnaisance but it has no visible optic systems.
I haven't seen the videos, but I don't see any undercarriage in the stills. Isn't that just a mounting on the trucks, that can be seen?
Posted by: BM | Oct 1 2019 18:28 utc | 1
There are now pictures in better resolution than my screen grabs.
Posted by: b | Oct 1 2019 18:45 utc | 4
Thanks for the posting b....I'm impressed and hope the US MIC is as well
This is what can be done when you don't have profit as the primary motivation because you think you are invincible.
If we go the extinction route in this WWIII that the world is in, the path looks to be quite short. I hope the elite of the West love their children more than they love hegemony of the global private finance cult.
I did read a Reuters posting that I think fits here and is included below
"
GENEVA (Reuters) - The international community must confront America’s hostile approach, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Tuesday as tensions have spiked between the Islamic Republic and the United States.
“The international community must confront America’s hostile and unilateralist approach by taking a definitive decision and effective actions,” Rouhani said at a speech at a meeting of the Eurasian Economic Union in Armenia, according to the official IRNA news agency."
America/Western empire is not going to attack Iran and get away with it. It is time for the Western empire bullies to stand down and a multi-polar world to stand up as China is showing can be done.
Posted by: psychohistorian | Oct 1 2019 19:10 utc | 6
b: Air operations in support of Taiwan will be difficult when U.S. carriers can no longer dare to go near China
Yes, a major factor causing a decrease in US naval power (unrecognized by Navy) is the obsolescence of the aircraft carrier.
• First, carriers are generally unavailable because they are much more complex and require significant maintenance. Currently, of eleven carriers only two are deployed here, which is common. And the new carriers now cost about $13 billion, plus the accompanying ships in a carrier force, plus 5,000 crew personnel etc.
• Just as the aircraft carrier obsoleted the battleship a century ago because aircraft range exceeded gunfire range, so now the carriers' aircraft range (shorter than ever) is exceeded by missile range. It's difficult to sink a huge ship like a carrier, but any strike on the deck or on the deck island would incapacitate a carrier for some time, perhaps permanently. That's just one explosive missile, and there is no shortage of missiles.
What's the effect of this? No jet fighter air cover would doom any serious attempt by the US Navy to hinder whatever it is that China decides to do militarily in its area of operations. On top of this, the US Marine Corps is currently going through an identity crisis. What could they do? Sit on some islands? The US Army, looking for a raison d'etrebesides the "Russia threat" is proposing long range artillery on some islands somewhere -- grasping at straws. US Air Force?--out of it, given China air defenses.
Posted by: Don Bacon | Oct 1 2019 19:21 utc | 7
It's becoming more and more likely that the US with arrogantly launch an small attack on Russia, Iran, Syria or China confident that they will back meekly down, only to get a rude discovery when they strike back. I've heard that the US military is more "realistic" in their own internal assessments of the dangers of a conflict with China and Russia, but US politicians are increasingly talking themselves into a corner vs the rest of the world
Posted by: Kadath | Oct 1 2019 19:21 utc | 8
So what is going to happen…
If the USA tries to fight China or Russia for “democracy”?
This…
Ouch!
Some video fun…
Here’s some videos of Chinese military. Fun stuff, showing a large, modern and motivated military.
This was three years ago. Since then, if you can possibly believe it, China has become much more aggressive in R&D development of weapons systems, and manufacturing and mass producing weapons systems. Today is is more than just a peer equal militarily with the Untied States. It is superior to it. And coupled whit Russia, the entire Asia is ready to PUT THEIR FOOT DOWN and stop this rampant misbehavior by the US insanity-run government.
In 2022, both Russia and China will stop using SWIFT. This will cause a massive disruption in the flow of “free money” into the USA, and will expose the value of the US Dollar to what it’s actual value is. This will create economic shocks and turmoil inside the United States.
How will the USA handle it? Well, there is a faction that still believes that they can somehow rescue the situation by blaming their ineptness on a war; and thus create the “mother of all wars”. China and Russia will not allow that.
We will see what will happen.
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
Doesn’t it seem that every single thing that the United States accuses China of, it manifests inside America? It’s almost like this big; enormous wish-machine was turned on it’s head and starts attacking it’s creator. Yeah. It’s like the science fiction movie where a mad scientist creates a robot, and then the robot turns on it’s creator.
Today I saw the horrific images of an African-American Rapper who drove an SUV at high speed through a children’s parade killing and maiming scores of children. He’s a “rapper” who spouts hate and disgust from his urban enclave. It’s all very disturbing. My God! He was out on bail for running over another woman with his SUV. Insanity. Pure insanity.
Why is this happening in America? What is going on?
The answer is simple
America has collapsed. It is dead, it’s just that the people don’t really realize it yet.
When there is no longer a “rule of law”, and “justice” becomes a tiered game of money laundering, society is over. It’s all a simple matter of the rats scurrying from ship mast, to ship mast, and trying to jump on some pieces of wood floating in the water. It’s just the middle of a long, drawn out scramble of survival.
The ship of America has sunk.
Over.
Dead.
Throw some dirt on top of the grave and move on.
Oh sure, the bow of the ship is riding high. Lights are still blazing in the portholes. The band is still playing on the deck, and the Captain is still at the helm. But the ship is no longer seaworthy.
Some realize this. That is why you see mass looting of stores all over the cites in America, those shootings in the suburbs and on the highways, and the crazy behavior of the American leadership. They are all Jack-shit crazy and the world is falling apart all around them.
Here in this article I am going to prove my point by presenting short videos of the freefall collapse of the United States.
Please keep in mind that what you see on the “news” and social media is only a small percentage of what is actually going on. It is actually far worse than what is being depicted.
The real bad things are not being reported on.
China
Keep in mind that while the shit-show known as the United States “democracy” collapses, China moves on. It is a merit driven society that teaches military discipline to everyone from first grade onward.
Here’s a first grade class reporting for military training. Video 5MB
And a nation that is merit driven, unified, and run by STEM (science, technology, engineering and manufacturing) educated people who volunteer for that role is naturally going to overwhelm the fucking clown-show that the “blue blood” oligarchy operates. Fucking FIRE (Fiance, Insurance, Real Estate) folk haven’t a clue how to run a nation.
Here’s a locally produced, 100% all Chinese design and manufactured, Chinese fighter aircraft. video. 5MB
The Chinese do not play. They are a serious, serious nation. And they take their roles seriously. Here is a video of a Corruption Police raid on a kidnapping operation. I like how they rescued the little girl at the end.
You do not mess with China.
But since the USA is in a state of collapse, those in the West cannot see the shit show that they are living inside of. They need to start comparing their world to the rest of the world outside.
Here’s a funny video of a hysterical American screaming that America is not China.
It’s funny because China is so very much better than America in every way imaginable, but the dumbed down poverty serfs have no clue about how impoverished they actually are.
So, anyways, this video has been circulating all over China, and getting a ton load of snickers and giggles.
The guy probably hasn’t a clue as to why all the Chinese are laughing at him. video. 4MB
Clueless. Stupid. manipulated. Ignorant serf that services the billionaire class. Yeah, your fucking silly world is collapsing all around you, and you want to blame China.
Blame China? How about blaming yourself.
China has endured horrors that you have no fucking about. Thousands of years of fighting, and then Japans takeover and horrors followed by massive poverty, and abuse.
China will not forget what they had to endue. Do not push them. video 6MB
China is not a pushover.
China will retaliate if you all threaten them, and the United States is in no state to attack anyone. Hell, it can’t even build a simple fence on it’s borders.
It’s a helpless big lazy blob. So put everything in context. Understand what is going on and what the stakes are. video. 4MB
Videos of the United States in collapse
They are everywhere. Here’s looting and damage in a McDonald’s in the suburbs. video. 2MB
American nighttime roadblock.
Full militarized armored cars, full automatic assault rifles, sidearms, flack vests, and other military paraphernalia show that this is a domestic military road block and not a police action.
Shootings, riots, mobs, organized crime and daring store break-ins are now common throughout the Untied States today.
This is not a lonely, singular, isolated event.
It is common throughout most of the major cities inside of America today. video. 2MB
Shoplifter at Walmart.
And so the guy drives off and the security guard shoots at him. Just another normal day inside of America. But now people are starting to die…
Police said the suspect - dressed in all black with a black mask - attempted to steal unspecified merchandise and, when confronted by the store worker in the parking lot, pulled out a firearm.
The loss prevention officer, who has a concealed carry permit, then shot the armed suspect two or three times at close range, he told police.
The suspect fled the scene and was later detained at a home near 5th and Olympia in Kennewick without incident.
-Ferguson Walmart Shooting
People! This is not an image of a healthy society. video
And while hard crime rages… Guns are being purchased, and used.
People are dying, the government enacts draconian laws, rules and clamps down on the Police State, well-meaning folk try to change things for the better.
But they are not going after the serious issues. They are addressing the trivial. Video. 7MB
Meanwhile in China…
China has face recognition technology, and a completely wired nation that tracks your movements, and permits law abiding people free reign, while snagging the evil, the selfish, the dangerous and those CIA inspired (NED) “bad actors”.
While the American wealthy is trying to steal everything on paper, and the serf citizenry are trying to haul away everything not nailed down, China is building, growing, developing.
China is, and stands, in stark contrast to the cluster fuck that America is today. video 8MB
What is China like?
China is a merit driven nation and it strives to be the best home for it’s people.
It spent time working on the basics. It spent time developing things, and it took time to do so. And the Chinese philosophy is summed up in this little video here. video. 2MB
Back to the American meltdown
Crime is rampant all over the United States.
It’s a consequence of multiple failures on multiple levels and the situation is getting worse, much worse. the society has broken down. There is rampant lawlessness throughout the urban areas. video 5MB
And another robbery inside of America. These are so common these days. Honest citizens hide inside their homes and peer through drawn curtains. they hope that everything will go away and change.
It’s a complete breakdown of society and it’s every man for himself, with zero protections under the law, and zero policing. video. 7MB
This is what it looks like when society collapses. It’s every man for himself.
Mobs rule. Gangs rule. Society fractures, and the wealthy scurry to their enclaves for safety.
What America resembles today is what happened during the Fall of Saigon. video. 43MB
People are out and just being really brazen in their crimes.
They don’t care.
Nothing matters these days inside of America. Here is a guy that hijacked a complete tractor trailer rig and it’s cargo and is in a high speed chase down the highway. Jeeze! video. 28MB
America as it really exists
Consider the reality. Why must the current mess that the United States is, be allowed or permitted to exist. It does not serve it’s people. It’s a war empire that causes destruction all over the world, it rapes and pillages, and is run but a small handful of evil greedy oligarchs. Why?
Why is it important that the world become like America? VIDEO
Video of City life inside of America.
Here’s some roadside rage. It’s about to get really ugly, really soon. video 6MB
Still not convinced, well lets go to a DIFFERENT city… VIDEO
Video
Still not convinced, it is EVERYWHERE in America. Ok, well lets go to a third DIFFERENT city… VIDEO
Video
Hey! Do you want to know why there are NO homeless in China?
Let this Chinese girl living in America explain it to you. For all of my Chinese friends, they are just flabbergasted at the lack of care and concern the US government has for it’s people.
The world will breathe a sigh of relief when the United States is finally broken up
Yes. The rest of the world will.
Look, if you are not aware of the collapse of America then you are delusional. The fact is pretty clear America is collapsing and it is up to the rest of the world to manage how their own individual nations handle that event. Most will be just fine.
It’s not that I want it to happen, in so much as I want the scales of justice to balance.
For far too long the crimes and the injustices have been propagated for far too long. It is a time of reckoning, and if you are smart you will align yourself with justice, truth and freedom . If you are a fool, then you will align yourself with the United States. It’s your choice.
I however, advise running away and hiding. Go to somewhere safer, and better. Like Uganda…video 7MB
Look at all the very beautiful women in the audience. Jeeze!
What am I doing wasting my time in China? video 1MB
Well, there’s only one of me, and so many interesting and beautiful and smiling people everywhere. So much food to eat. So many interesting people to meet and chat with. So many nice restaurants to eat in. So many great things to do. Sigh.
I love it when a woman cooks food. It just really drives me absolutely crazy! And Chinese food is so very delicious!!!!
Oh, and you know, I do love to go out girl watching. There’s something great about women shopping in the malls, looking great in their outfits, nice makeup and just bouncing about. In America they all rush off to their cars, and then speed away. Not enough time for me to watch their poetry as they walk. video 5MB
Out of the ruins of America new societies will develop. The key is to create societies where everyone has the choice to participate, but only ONLY those that participate, and make the society a good place to live can have any say in government.
It’s a Rufus philosophy. And it is crucial to good governance.
Be the Rufus. Only allow other Rufus’s to control the government. They do it for others, not themselves. video. 16MB
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
Again, yet again, MM here addresses the things that no one ever talks about. And in this case we are taking up the real whale; the massive, titanic-sized “elephant in the room”. While just virtually all of the American media press is gung-ho for a war against China (and assumes that China will be alone), no one is talking about the consequences of such a war.
Nothing surprises me, the more successful China becomes the greater the lies.
-Roger
As the clueless media and their readership assumes that the United States will win any war that it starts in Asia. (Or actually, that it will be a long decades long war, and life would go on without any impact on their own lives.) No one talks about the rightful consequences of a war effort gone terribly wrong…
But we will.
The United States will lose.
And it will lose BIGLY.
And, it’s not just me saying this. It’s RAND, Heritage Foundation, the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies and every single one of the military war games (for the last 18 years), the military think tanks, and the “big buck” experts in Washington DC. As well as all of the generals in charge of the American military.
America would lose.
I have discussed over and over, and over again, why the United States would lose. Don’t want to hear this, do you? Well, tough cookies. Here, we talk about things as they actually are, not as we want them to be. If you are a new comer to MM, you might want to take a refresher course in actual current affairs here…
According to US analysts, by 2025 the USA won’t be able to win a war against China.
Frankly, I think that this ship has already sailed a long, long, LONG time ago.
However, that semi-admission is a desperate attempt to create the political climate to circle the wagons before China officially becomes the second nation the USA cannot defeat.
The first one being, obviously, Russia (I would even include Iran and the DPRK is that list).
Hence all the current Anglo posturing in the Black Sea (which is even far more dangerous for US/NATO ships than the China Seas) is just that: posturing.
The main risk here is that I am not at all convinced by the notion that “Biden” can rein in the Brits or the Poles, especially since the latter are both NATO members who would sincerely expect NATO to protect them (they should ask Erdogan about that).
But, of course, there really is no such thing as “NATO”: all there is the US and its vassal states in Europe.
Should the two wannabe empires trigger a real, shooting war, all it would take is a single Russian conventional missile strike somewhere deep inside the continental USA (even in a desert location) to convince the White House, the Pentagon or the CIA “get with the program” and seek a negotiated solution, leaving the Brits and the Poles utterly disgusted and looking foolish.
I don’t think anything else can bring those two countries back to a sense of reality.
-Andrei
Why concentrate on hybrid/unlimited war instead of an outright nuclear or conventional military conflict between the US and China and/or Russia?
That is because both conventional and nuclear military conflict between any of these three nations is an insane, suicidal choice, while those in charge of defining military strategy are specifically not selected for their suicidal tendencies.
Neither Russia nor China are known for their wars of aggression, and while the US is extremely well known for its homicidal, violent tendencies (having carried out 32 bombing campaigns on 24 countries since World War II), it is fundamentally a bully, only picking on weak countries that pose no threat.
And… it (because of the non-stop demonetization of China) thinks that China is weak enough to pick on.
Based on publicly available information, both Russia and China are now quite far ahead of the US in weapons development, to a point where any possible direct US attack on either of them would be [1] self-disarming at best and [2] suicidal at worst.
Its like when the schoolyard bully realizes he can't bully you anymore, so now he just throws slurs and insults instead of punches. After a while he loses all credibility and starts being ignored. A couple of decades later you go to a school reunion and he is the loser that no one wants to talk to. That reunion was sweet ....
Posted by: Roger | Nov 19 2021 17:20 utc | 16
[1] In the best case scenario, the US launches an attack which is successfully repelled: bombers and rockets shot down, ships sunk, US military bases and port facilities destroyed, possibly US command and control centers also destroyed, as quite pointedly promised by Putin.
The US then lays prostrate and at the mercy of its opponents.
If its cooperation still leaves something to be desired, some combination of deplorables, despicables, imponderables and indecipherables will be organized just enough to make a bloody mess of what’s left of US government structures and power elites, which will then be replaced with an international peacekeeping force (as an optimistic case) or just left to persist in durable disorder, misery and international isolation.
[2] The worst case scenario is the tired old mutual assured destruction, nuclear winter and end of life on Earth, but it is unlikely for a number of reasons.
First, of the US nuclear deterrent triad only the submarine component remains viable, and even it is quite tired.
Aside from a single Minuteman missile launch test most hasn’t been tested in decades, and these are ballistic missiles which, once the boost phase is over, follow a perfectly predictable inertial trajectory.
This makes them easy targets for Russia’s and China’s new air defense systems.
Of the Minutemen that manage to get out of their silos and launch in the general direction of Russia or China, it is unknown how many of their nuclear payloads would actually detonate since these are all quite old and haven’t been tested in a long time either.
The US no longer has the ability to make new nuclear charges, having lost the recipe for making the high explosive needed to make them detonate. But that may be a moot point, since at this point no ICBM is likely to be able to penetrate Russian air defenses. Both Russia and China have state of the art formidable anti-ICBM systems. video
As far as Chinese air defenses, it is notable that Russia and China have integrated their early warning systems and China now has four divisions of Russian S-400 Triumph air defense systems and is planning to add more. video
Turning to the airborne part of the US nuclear triad, its mainstay is still the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress, the youngest of which is almost 60 years old. It cruises at 260 knots at an altitude of 34000 feet and is the opposite of stealthy, making it easy to shoot down at a stand-off distance of several hundred kilometers. Since this makes it perfectly useless for dropping bombs, all that remains is cruise missiles, which fly at a positively poky 0.65 Mach, again making them easy targets for modern air defenses.
There are also some newer stealth bombers—very few and, it has turned out, not too stealthy, putting them essentially in the same category as the Stratofortress, and the cruise missiles they can launch are also those same old subsonic ones.
Lastly, there are the strategic nuclear submarines, which are the only part of the US nuclear triad that is still viable. They remain effective as a deterrent, and they do have the ability to get up close to launch a sneak attack with a good chance that at least a few of the missiles will get through the air defenses, but they can’t possibly hope to get around the inevitability of retaliation which will cause unacceptable, fatal damage to the continental US. This makes them useless as an offensive weapon.
The uncloaking, and damage to the USS Connecticut, is worth a good study in this regard. HERE.
Add to this Russia’s updated nuclear doctrine, according to which any attack against Russian sovereign territory or Russian sovereign interests, whether conventional or nuclear, would open the door to a nuclear retaliation, launched upon warning, and Putin’s solemn promise to counterattack not just against the locations from which a strike is launched but against the centers of decision-making.
Considering that Russian missiles are hypersonic and will reach their targets before those of the US reach theirs, and that Russia has the means to shoot down US missiles while the US is unable to shoot down Russian ones, if the US were to launch an attack, those who launched it would be dead before they could find out whether their attack succeeded in causing any damage at all or whether they had just suicided themselves for nothing.
The “Punch Line”
All of this adds up to an inevitable conclusion: under no circumstances will the US attack either Russia or China, using either conventional or nuclear weapons. To do so would result in nuclear annihilation. And for a weakened nation such as the United States is today, it’s wouldn’t take too much to throw it into absolute chaos.
Only an idiot would consider such an action.
However, there are experts who are of the opinion that a world war could spontaneously erupt at any moment without anyone wishing it to do so, just as the world slid into World War I due to a confluence of unhappy accidents. But there is a big difference: the military and civilian leaderships of the warring sides in World War I did not have hypersonic missiles pointed directly at their heads.
They thought that the war would be fought far away from their palaces, headquarters and stately mansions. They were, in some cases, quite wrong, but that was their thought originally: why not test our industrial prowess while sacrificing the lives of several million useless peasants?
Now the situation is quite different: any substantial provocation is an automatic self-destruct trigger and all sides know this.
Especially against Asia.
Pilger is bouncing a few examples of Western anti-China drivel off a Chinese historian. The historian gets a bit impatient and says (words to the effect):
"Look, China doesn't want to take over the world or tell other countries how to behave. In fact we built the Great Wall to keep the barbarians OUT!"
Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Nov 19 2021 18:24 utc | 23
Of course, there will be minor provocations such as the US Navy steaming around in the Taiwan Strait or the Black Sea close to the shores of Crimea, but then they do have to earn their keep somehow.
In turn, the Russians and the Chinese will periodically up the ante a little bit by shooing them away with a harshly worded radio message or a few shots fired across their bows. But both sides know just how careful they have to be because any serious error will require immediate deescalation and may entail major loss of face.
And that, as the saying goes, would be worse than a crime: it would be a vast mistake.
The USA Leadership are idiots
And at that, we can see that no matter how much we can parse the issues; no matter how many times we can study the calculus; no matter how many times we can say “nah, no one would be that stupid to risk a war”, we see the United States doing just that.
All part of the required reverberations for the "drum beat of war".
Making the public recognize and demonize an enemy is a requirement! Step by step, little by little.
Don't think there is a war on the way? Just look around at the chaos, misinformation and pursuit of control.
Don't think others hear the drum beat? Read here: https://thesaker.is/russian-options-in-a-world-headed-for-war/
Posted by: James Cook | Nov 19 2021 17:04 utc | 5
The provocations against China are getting more and more outrageous, outlandish and dangerous. This is intentional, and it is not going to end up well.
The calculus so far assumes reasonable people would be in charge of the Leadership of the West. But that variable is “thrown out the window”, the United States and their proxy nations are all run by imbeciles and they are dancing on top of nuclear armageddon.
The Chinese military is dangerous
Here’s a training exercise. Hey! Do you see any cheap AK-47 / SKS clones here? Do you see uneducated peasants? Do you see any starving people that was all that delicious freedom and democracy out of America? VIDEO
And they start training in first grade. Military discipline is part of their lives.
Here’s some third grade students showing first grade students how to assemble and handle rifles, and weapons. VIDEO. It’s a long video at 83MB, but WELL worth the watch. I recorded it while watching my little girls, so sorry about the chit-chat in the background.
Please pay attention to what is going on. Third grade students doing this. 9 years old. We see them teaching the first and second graders in basic squad movement and behaviors. VIDEO.
Video
We will discuss the consequences of the loss of the United States to Asia
In this article we will assume the following…
The United States is successful in triggering a war with China. After all, it has been non-stop provocations for years now. It’s not like China has an aircraft carrier off Boston harbor. Sooner or later there WILL be a response. And it won’t be a subtle hint like the USS Connecticut affair, either.
And, what is omitted from American media (and Conservative) articles and discussions on this subject…
Russia and China work together to fight the USA as they said they would.
Nuclear weapons would be used as they said they would.
The “war” would be short and devastating. Per war game results.
The “war” would be on Asian terms, not defined by America. Per war game results.
First use of nuclear weapons occurs. Per Russian military doctrine.
We will also ignore the ruin and destruction in the rest of the world. This article is not about Israel, Europe, the Ukraine, China, or Japan. This article is about what would happen to the United States once it lost a war.
It would be a first.
And, it would be painful.
Some history…
To understand this article you have to understand history.
America has never lost in a war. The closest to losing a war is what the Confederate States experienced when the South lost the American Civil War. And using that as a template, as well as the pain and anguish that both Russia and China has experienced over the last ten centuries or so, we can compile up a pretty comprehensive picture of what to expect.
So don’t yell at me.
You all should have read a history book or two while you were in school. None of this should be new. The only difference here is that I am providing a reminder that YOU are right now, living in a historical moment. And that moment can have enormous consequences.
We are teetering on the very sharp edge of a very thin line, with a deep abyss on both side.
And using this history, we can compile a listing of potential things to expect to occur once America loses World War III.
Brace yourself…
New borders
Every losing nation ends up having it’s geographical boarders redrawn. For a large nation such as the United States, we would see the entire nation carved up into separate “Protectorates.”
Hawaii would be it’s own Protectorate.
Alaska might be returned to Russia.
Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands will become a Protectorate.
Texas would be carved up. Part would go to Mexico. The other half would be a Protectorate.
California would be carved up. Part would go to Mexico. The remaining sections carved up into protectorates.
The remaining states on the continental United States would be reshaped into ten to 25 individual protectorates.
No existing State would be permitted to retain it’s borders.
Think about what happened to Poland after World War I, and then again after World War II. Think about what happened to Africa when the British colonial power left it. Thank about what happened when the “White Settlers” colonized North America.
The State of Louisiana cut up into regions by cultural and social lines. This could very well be the fate of the entirety of America.
Protectorate laws
As a “Protectorate” the region would function under the rules and laws of the conquering nation. This would vary from protectorate to protectorate. But some things will be constant.
A protectorate can ONLY trade with it’s physical neighbor.
A protectorate cannot have a standing army, navy, air force, space forces.
A protectorate must pay tribute to the conquering nation. This historically consists of a lump sum, plus a very high annual tax born by the inhabitants.
A protectorate would do anything the conquering nation demands.
New Government
The federal United States government would be crushed, destroyed, and any mention of any former leaders retaining power would be harshly suppressed.
A small taste of what is to come.
For a new world out of the old, all old and former government influences are to be extinguished. Buildings would be destroyed, historical monuments raised, and all history rewritten. This is not just on the Federal level, but on the state and local levels as well. Everything would be raised and then altered beyond recognition, and a new command and control government structure rebuilt upon the ashes of the former.
Each protectorate will be told (by the conquering nation) what government it shall have. Some will become theocracies. Such as the “Bible Belt States”. Others will become quaizi-republics. Still others will be dictatorships, and others will simply be socialist based government structures.
All will use the police forces to enforce their new laws, rules and regulations.
The new rulers will use what ever systems are in place to enforce complete obedience.
New laws
There will be new laws. All of the old laws will be discarded. This will be everything from divorce law to business law, to patent law and criminal law. The laws specified by the protectorate will be determined by the conquering nation. You can expect a very harsh social credit scoring system, and the harshest penalties for non-compliance.
Sentenced to being stoned to death for admitting to being raped.
They can be arbitrary, vindictive, and capricious.
Loss of a leg for drinking alcohol.
Beheading for jay-walking.
Death for showing disrespect.
Penis removal for wearing shoes on Sunday.
Non-compliance is often death.
The process of stoning a person to death.
Ownership will change drastically
You may suddenly discover that the home you live in has been seized for “public housing”, a “museum”, or a barracks. That your factory where you work is now under new management and everything is being disassembled and shipped elsewhere, or that the apartment complex that you rent out of is now being turned into hospital.
What’s more, you might be granted 24 hours to gather your belongings and leave… if you are lucky.
Ownership takes on a new meaning when the world is turned upside down, and you are on the losing side. And now you will have to obey your new masters. Imagine that these people were now YOUR local government authority…
It is people like these that will be pressed into an anti-white frenzy and will hurt, attack, and torture you before they rape and kill you. These people will become pawns of the new conquering nation.
Quality of life will plunge
Sure, you might have three cars, two motorcycles and live in a McMansion. But all that means nothing when you have a social credit score so low that you are not authorized to drive, purchase gasoline, or use electricity.
What are you going to do? Hide in your house for months?
Many people will find themselves plunged from “Middle Class” into the world of the sub-slave. Today, the United States is a stratified, balkanized society with nine social classes. After conquest, many will find themselves at the lower “bottom feeder” social classes.
And let’s not even talk about the lifestyle changes for those who expect running water, electricity, access to a cell phone and radio. All these things can, and probably will, be subject to the whims of the new protectorate government.
The USD will collapse and be replaced
One of the first casualties of any war will be the total and complete collapse of the “house of cards” known as the United States Dollar. It’s kept alive on vapor, dreams, hope and frantic, fanatical spending. During a war, and afterwards, these pieces of paper will have zero value.
And unless you have something tangible, and not other vapor-currency like bit-coin, you will suddenly become penniless. Then what are you going to use for trade and commerce when your stomach is growling, and you need heat, water, electricity and a meal in your gut?
The USD is going to become absolutely worthless.
What are you going to barter with?
An x-box when there is no electricity? A car when there’s no access to gasoline? Your collection of Pokemon cards?
More than likely it will be a service that you, or your family can provide to others. Do they have the necessary training? Or will they need to receive on-the-job training to meet the needs of others during a SHTF scenario?
Think sex, manual labor, or other undesirable activities.
Rights become zero
Forget about the “Bill of Rights”.
You will be a slave. Slaves have no Rights. It’s a historical norm.
Cambodian soldier who turned in weapons as directed by his commander when the Marxists took power. Once disarmed, he was tied up and bound. Still in his army uniform. Photographed before being killed. This is the price you pay for not qualifying to live in a Marxist paradise. He was demonized for his “privilege”, attacked for his social irresponsibility, and tortured, well… because it was fun. He was then photographed and killed. .
Sure it is pretty much meaningless today, but in this scenario, it not only doesn’t exist, but it would be ignored BY LAW. If you think that you have the right to think, speak, dream or practice your religion… then think again.
It will be OVER. And non-compliance would mean death. It’s a historical norm.
Conquered people do not have Rights. They are slaves, servants, or chattel.
Deal with this historical fact.
In the Ukraine, the woman were forced to strip in the fields while the drunken soldiers, political squads, and other progressives raped them. Then, when they were finished, they simply lined them up and killed them all.
Places will be renamed
The water-filled crater formerly known as New York City will be renamed “Commode”. Washington DC will become “Fresh Vomit”, and San Francisco will become “Fagland”.
This means different things to different people. But with the renaming of places will come with an entire different understanding of geography. Maps will all be different, and along with it will be the associated perceptions.
Places will be renamed by the victors.
Restrictions become many
There will be all sorts of restrictions on everything. The inhabitants of the conquered territories will need to ask permission to do anything and everything. Failure to get the correct permissions, permits, or pay the necessary fees will result in the harshest measures possible.
Once disarmed, the people will be collected in the cities. They will be segregated into groups. Then they will all be killed, if not used for slaves. This is a historical norm. This is what always happens. .
Driving a car. Traveling. Ownership of a bicycle, access to a bridge. Crossing a border will all be illegal.
And that’s just for movement.
Think about food, clothing and shelter. All will be restricted access. You will be told where to live, what to eat, how to behave, how to dress, what to do, and whether or not you are paid for your labors.
History will be rewritten
Typically all history books and records are burned, destroyed and eliminated. The teachers killed, and a new history constructed to fit the needs of the new ruler class.
Think about the reeducation camps for the teachers and intellectuals in South Vietnam when the North Vietnam took over Saigon (now, Ho Chi Men city.) Think about what happened in Cambodia with the “killing fields”. Think about what happened to the Polish in the Katyn Forest massacre.
TheKatyn massacre, also knownasthe zbrodnia katyńska ('Katyń crime'), was a massexecutionofPolishPOWofficersand citizens ordered by the Soviet authoritiesin 1940. The most widely accepted estimate of the number of dead is about 22,000. Thevictims were murdered in the Katyn forest, Kalinin ( Tver) and Kharkiv prisons, andelsewhere.
-Katyń
Prison camps / rape camps / mass torture complexes
There will be segregation of people into locations. Then new jobs, activities, and tasks will be assigned to them depending on their utility.
Here is a truck parading captured, and “handed over” females to be either given to the soldiers, or sold off in the public square as slaves. This is from Syria, and the girls were most likely handed over to the “police” to spare their lives. The “police” then processed them and set them off to the market for their future roles within the community; sex slaves. .
Men typically are used either for fertilizer (killed outright in mass graves) or as slaves.It is very rare for a male to survive within a conquered land. They are viewed as a viable threat vector and eliminated in mass. Though, exceptions can occur based on their skills or knowledge.
Women are almost always earmarked as sex toys. Historically the women that manage to survive in this role age from 12/14 to up to 30. Older than that, then they are killed.
All of the women will be dehumanized, raped and sent off to “collection centers”. There they will be provided dehumanizing clothing and attire, and raped until they are of no further use.
German Nationalist Socialists (Nazi’s) collected Jewish women. Stripped them, and provided them a roughly hewn sackcloth to wear, and a scarf to cover their head with. An uncovered woman is considered to be a threat. And used them as they felt necessary. .
Everyone, and every moment will be documented to excess. It doesn’t matter if it was the Nazi’s with the Jews, the Soviets with other Soviets, the Khmer Rouge with their fellow citizens, or Americans against Americans. Each person will be interviewed, indexed, photographed, sheared, and categorized prior to execution.
Know your history.
Children are typically killed. Older people are also typically killed. Pets tend to be eaten.
Children rounded up in Syria by the occupation forces. The parents gave them up because the new government promised to protect them and keep them out of harm’s way while the war raged. As a result they were sold and abused. many died.
Schools will change
Historically schools are eliminated, and then when they do reappear, access is severely curtailed and limited. The subjects and information taught in the schools also change as well.
As the schools change, so will the people.
Know your history.
It’s not all boring you know.
Assimilation.
Important cities will be erased
If a city manages to survive the war, and the attacks, it will not be spared when the occupation forces arrive.
The Japanese “rape of Nanjing” in China is one such example.
Nanjing was “occupied” by the Japanese when Japan conquered the region. Then then decided to torture and kill every single person in that entire city.
The entire city was rounded up, tortured and killed by the Japanese occupation forces. Many such examples of this occur throughout history.
Have you ever wondered what happened to the American Indians that lived in such places as Kittanning, PA, or Oswego, NY? All erased from history. Their cities plowed under and now exist as State Game Lands, farm land or parking lots.
The Japanese attack China with the “rape of Nanjing”
Cultural landmarks will be destroyed
Expect such landmarks as Mount Rushmore to be dynamited, The statue of liberty to be torn down and used as scrap metal, the San Francisco bridge to be destroyed, and the iconic White House to be leveled into dust.
Landmarks will be destroyed.
A new “privileged class” will arise
Those “bottom feeders” in society, who have obtained power and control over groups of people, such as urban ghetto enclaves will often be granted special powers and abilities. They will use these powers to control people, places and things in the new protectorates.
Urban groups will seize control of the cities.
Urban groups will seize control of the cities.
Drug gangs will seize entire geographical areas.
Drug gangs will seize entire geographical areas.
Restrictions on movement, attire, and activity
Seemingly random restrictions will appear and will be mandatory. Such as not being allowed to wear camouflaged clothing, shoes, use a cell phone or use a cigarette lighter. Certain areas may forbid the use of automobiles, and the access of grains, apples, seeds, or corn could mean a death sentence.
American police today. It would not be difficult to turn them into an occupation force.
Conclusion
Pretty terrible, huh?
Well then, WHY THE FUCK IS THE UNITED STATES TRYING TO PROVOKE A WAR with both China and Russia simultaneously? Are they out of their minds? Because sooner or later, when you poke a lion it will snap back.
Sooner…
…or, later.
So here is what you all have to look forward to unless things change. You cannot continue to act like a bully when you walk into a gang of Hell’s Angels (hard core bikers). They will not be nice.
The United States had best stop acting like a bully, or else some very mean people are going to take care of the issue.
Summary
Once a war starts, it will only be a matter of time before the United States collapses and is occupied by the rest of the world. During that time, the nation will be broken up, tortured, abused, redefined, purged, and the lives of Americans will be worth nothing.
That’s what you get when your government is corrupt and your leaders are dysfunctional.
The ONLY way to prevent this nightmare scenario is for America to stop trying to provoke a war with Asia, and start trying to reform itself. Though to expect that to actually happen is very, very unlikely.
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
This article discusses what it is like for me to be who I am with the understanding that I have been modified by both the United States government, and by our benefactors (the type-1 greys from The Domain). These modifications have, of course, changed me. The closest image available to recount these modifications is from the movie series “Alien”, and most specifically a character known as “Ripley 8”.
This article came about when The Domain Commander told me that I “was not human”.
I did not want to hear that. And I am actually resentful of it.
The Commander Statement
You are NOT a normal human being.
When our agency / MAJestic installed the ELF probes, they / we / us also transformed your personality. We compartmentalized you. You know that. During your MAJestic retirement sequence in ADC Pine Bluff, you confronted various personalities that are part of you.
You are aware of the scientist, the Naval officer, and so on and so forth. However, there are other personalities that you are not aware of. Let it be well understood that it is intentionally by design. These other personalities are not anything that you want to know about, or be associated with.
Thus they are not part of your shutdown sequence. They are permanently hardwired to your personality.
You have [1] Dr. Jeckle and Mr. Hyde, you have [2] The Wolfman (actually, the image is of a half-man, half-sabertooth tiger). You have [3] Mr. Dracula / The Mummy (image is confused and overlaid over each other.), and you have [4] The Incredible Hulk. None of these alter personalities are muted. They are all active.
They are always intended to be active. That makes you dangerous, and why you needed to be sent to prison. That is one of the reasons why they (MAJestic) cannot allow people like yourselves to be walking the (American) streets freely. You are a loaded gun with no "safety switch".
When you start to have memory triggers, event triggers, or code triggers, one of the personalities will manifest. Your "normal" personality will fade into the background and the new personality will dominate.
Most of the manifested personalities (you have experienced) this year has been of "The Incredible Hulk", and you have done a very fine job of suppressing that character personality. We are personally proud of you.
No one is harmed. At worst, your wife looks at your strange. That's it. It has been triggered by memories while you are under a lot of stress. This is normal for humans, however in your case there is a personalty change has been intentionally engineered and triggered.
There's other triggers as well.
Over the last six years the Dr. Jeckle and Mr. Hyde personality were occasionally triggered. You don't remember those events because afterwards your memories are suppressed. But if you look back, you will see these periods of *blank*. That is when this personality was triggered.
This is due to the fact that you live next to the Zhuhai heliport. And some of the aircraft use an electrical signal emitter that triggers your personality change. Luckily, for you, the "go code" signal is never emitted. So all that happens is that you go into a "stand by for orders" mode. Then when nothing happens, you "wake up" and forget about the entire incident.
For you to turn off these programs you will have to go through the entire Pine Bluff deactivation procedure all over again. We advise you not to do that. We further advise you NEVER (emphasis) return to the United States. All scenarios where you return is problematic for you personally.
Do not listen to DZ (my brother). He's a "strange cat" with other purposes and intentions for your return.
The reasons are obvious.
However, you need to remember that many of your latent personalities can be triggered by radio frequencies at various frequencies, amplitudes, patterns and pulses. The United States has substantially changed since you were there last. The spectrum of presently emitted radiation would trigger some very lethal responses from you.
Fucking lovely. Sheech!
Oh for Pete’s sake!
First I’m some kind of troll like bureaucrat named Mades Escapleon, and now I find out that I am a cross mix of of the bad characters from all the B-grade horror movies of the 1960’s. And to top it off, I’m a gun without a safety switch.
Sheech! Can’t I ever get a break?
This is obviously false. As I look, act and think like a human, and live in a human society. Not to mention that I enjoy pizza, wine and pretty girls. Not to mention, sex, playing with cats, and watching movies. So perhaps, I misinterpreted the comm.
Q: Please expand on the reasoning behind the statement that “I am not human”.
You are not human.
You are neither a pure human archetype, nor an inmate "skin suit". You are a hybrid creation with elements of both, as well as constructions intended for utility by the Domain.
(Image of a PPT presentation showing a "free and normal" human archetype. Followed by it being "changed" into a different kind of human; an inmate "skin suit". Then, changes to it with ELF, EPB and then a number of operations. The resulting figure on the PPT looks like neither the first Human archetype, nor the inmate "skin suit".)
All of the members in your MAJestic sub-project are hybrid creations. Some, like yourself, have further refinements. While others are slightly retarded / backwards / not up to date /contemporaneous with the update software / coding / medical procedures / system enhancements.
Additionally, all volunteers to The Domain (through MM here) that have agreed to work with us have also become hybrid creatures. They are no longer "inmate" human (appearing) skin suits. They have had one significant alteration to their inmate "skin suits". Some have had two or more. The severity of the changes is equated to their current dream states, feelings / emotions / perceptions.
(I think that it means that the odder your experiences are; your feelings are; your dreams are; the more changes to your "skin suit".)
In your case, you were altered for your role in our surrogate agency / utility /division (I think he means MAJestic) and then further altered with the addition of the EBP. So you have at least three layers of alterations. Certainly you might not appreciate the alterations, but we believe that they are necessary for the successful role that you play.
Stop assuming that you are the same as everyone else. YOU ARE NOT. (It felt like he was stressing things to me like my old DI in the Navy.)
Then, what the Hell am I?
Ripley 8?
Who or What is “Ripley 8”
We now refer to a fictional character. This character is from the movie “alien resurrection“.
Ripley 8
Ripley 8 (also known as Number 8) was the eighth and almost fully successful clone of Lieutenant Ellen Ripley created by the USM.
The USM’s mission was to retrieve a Xenomorph Queen (in its chestburster cycle) from the clone’s chest.
However, subsequently the clone’s human DNA was mixed with Alien DNA there by creating a hybrid that retained much of the memories and personality of the original Ripley as well as other features.
Birth
Ripley 8 was cloned from frozen samples of Ellen Ripley’s blood, recovered after her death, from Fiorina 161. The United Systems Military knew of the Alien Queen inside Ellen Ripley at the time of her death, made several attempts to clone Ripley, and after seven failures, they finally got the process right, effectively creating Ripley 8. They surgically extracted the Queen from Number 8 and began to teach her how to use her powers onboard the Auriga. During therapy sessions, one of the scientists brought back repressed memories of Newt.
alien resurrection Ripley 8
Escape
Number 8 was later confronted by Call, who attempts to kill her, believing that she may be used to create more Aliens, but Call is too late; the Aliens have already matured and quickly escape their confinement, damaging the ship and killing most of its crew.
Dr. Wren, one of the ship’s scientists, reveals that the Auriga’s default command in an emergency situation is to return to Earth. Realizing that this will unleash the Aliens on Earth, Ripley, the mercenaries, Wren, a marine named Distephano, and a surviving Alien host, Purvis, attempt to escape on the Betty and destroy the Auriga.
Ripley 8
While escaping the Auriga, number 8 came across the laboratory containing her failed predecessors, including number 7. Struggling to speak, number 7 begged number 8 to euthanize her to end her life of agony, and number 8 complied by killing her with a flamethrower then torching the entire lab. As the group makes their way through the damaged ship, several of them are killed by the Aliens.
Call is revealed to be an android after Wren betrays the group. Using her abilities to interface with the damaged ship’s systems, they set it on a collision course with Earth, hoping that the Aliens will be destroyed in the crash. Ripley 8 then feels the pain endured by the Genetic Queen via telepathic connection, she was captured by the Xenomorphs and was brought to the Queen’s chamber.
Encounter with the Newborn
The Queen gave birth to a new lifeform called the Newborn. Shortly after birth, the newborn decapitates the Queen, instead having imprinted Ripley as its true mother.
alien resurrection Ripley 8
The newborn follows Ripley onboard the Betty, closing the jammed door and saving the spacecraft from the vacuum of space. After another encounter with Ripley, she uses one of the being’s sharp canine teeth to cut her hand. Splashing her own acidic blood onto the plexiglas viewing port of the Betty’s cargo bay, she succeeded in her attempt to breach the window and caused everything to be sucked out (along with the newborn) which caught against the glass as it tried to return to Ripley. Subsequently, it is sucked out into space piece by piece, unable to properly free itself from the vacuum of space.
New Life
The Auriga was destroyed upon its impact to the Earth’s atmosphere, taking the remaining Xenomorphs onboard along with it, destroying the last trace of the creature in existence. Number 8 later finds herself in Paris, though it is obvious that something catastrophic happened there as the city is in ruins. She then wonders what new world awaits her.
Ripley 8
Personality & Traits
Number 8 was an exact copy of Ellen Ripley but that was only partly skin deep, as her personality was much different; she is apathetic, cold and seemingly enjoyed the havoc the Xenomorphs caused.
She was also able to “feel” the Xenomorphs, but despite this she was on the side of the humans. This may not have been out of morality, but the fact that she was still a target of the Xenomorphs; as a facehugger latched on to her in the flooded section of the ship and Xenomorph Warriors tried to kill or capture her, despite the fact she was part xenomorph herself.
Ripley 8
Dr Gedimen said that she has something of a predatory behavior as she toys with the Betty crew in the basketball court.
Some of the original Ripley’s personalty and maternal behavior does reside in her though, as when a female scientist shows Ripley a picture of a young girl, Ripley smiles but then quickly becomes saddened as she remembers both Newt and her daughter, Amanda, and realizes what the memories mean. She also becomes protective of Call, almost motherly-so.
Hybrid Characteristics
Due to the crossing of Ellen Ripley and an Alien Queen, number 8 has traces of the Xenomorph genes that she continually exhibits throughout the movie. Below are a list of such characteristics:
Physical Appearance: Being her clone, number 8 looks identical to Ellen Ripley; however because of her Xenomorph genes, there are some physical differences which includes glossy metallic teeth, naturally dark fingernails, and a slightly altered skin tone.
Psyche: Number 8 displayed very violent and ferocious behavior. Her general outlook and mindset were notably vicious and obviously reminiscent of the Xenomorph behavior. Even her body language speaks of the Alien DNA she possesses, as her movements are feral and almost cat-like.
Superior Strength: Numerous times number 8 demonstrates a superior strength that is not natural to humans. Such example is just after a few drones escape their cages and begin to take over the USM Auriga: number 8 is locked in a small, barren quarters and an Xenomorph is trying to break in to kill her. Quickly acting, number 8 uses her bare hands and fists to punch through a sealed metal panel so that she can trip wires to a back door. Another example was during the swim through the flooded area of the USM Auriga, when a Facehugger attached itself to her after the group had surfaced, and after a struggle she managed to pull it off.
alien resurrection Ripley 8
Rapid Cell Regeneration: Another ability given to number 8 due to the gene crossing is her ability to rapidly heal from injuries. From her confines, she is visited by Annalee Call, who brandishes a knife in an attempt to kill her. But number 8 runs the blade through her right palm without pain, then after removing the blade, the wound heals within moments.
Jumping Skills: She is shown to be able to leap large distances.
Endurance: Number 8 is able to have a higher endurance rate than any human. An example is during the unexpected swim through the USM Aurigas decks that number 8 shows the uncanny ability to stay underwater longer. Additionally, she is never shown as having shortness of breath or any weariness during the frantic escape from the ship like her human counterparts.
Caustic Blood: Much like the Xenomorphs, Ripley 8 has acidic blood that can burn through metal, skin, clothing, aluminum silcate glass, and fused silica glass. However, number 8’s blood does remain crimson red like that of humans and is much more mild than the pure Xenomorph’s yellow-tinted blood.
Alien Empathy: Due to her half-Xenomorph genetics, number 8 is able to sense the presence of other Xenomorphs as well as their motives and emotions and possesses an apparent mental connection with the Xenomorph hive.
Genetic Memory: The Xenomorphs possesses the ability to pass on their memories genetically, and because of this Ripley 8 has “inherited” vague memories that belonged to the original Ellen Ripley as well as the Xenomorph. An example of this is when a scientist onboard the Auriga inadvertently triggers Ripley’s memories of Newt and her daughter. These confiding memories results in Number 8 suffering a crisis of loyalty until the original Ripley’s hatred for the Xenomorphs break through and she sides with the humans.
Now for the real stuff; MM
Ripley 8 is a fiction. But I am real.
My experience in MAJestic, and how I became who I am today is all documented on the many pages of MM. But this article is to say that Hollywood is a fiction. And I am real. And I just want to take a moment or two to discuss what it is like being me.
I have numerous unmodified traits that make me different from most “average” people.
My core education is in Aerospace Engineering / Astrophysics.
I was accepted for and trained as a Naval Aviator.
Those two things set me apart in education and training. How many Aerospace Engineers are alive in America these days? And how many of them are Naval Aviators? Not many. Most of the other aviators I trained with took basic humanities. Very few were STEM educated.
I also have other things that set me apart from most SAP’s in the US government.
I joined MAJestic. Which is a volunteer organization that operates within the ONI.
Which then physically modified me with seven ELF probes in my skull.
And which used MK-Ultra behavior modification to compartmentalize my personalities.
Which really narrows down my augmented skill set. How many do you figure are in the United States today that meet all of these above criteria?
And that is just for starters. Once that was completed, I was sent off-world and further modified by The Domain; our “benefactors”. Which again makes me somewhat “special”. As most of MAJestic do not have EBP installed.
EBP installed.
Physical body modified.
Non-physical bodies modified.
And then over time, with my various tasks and assignments, I have experienced a reality far different from which a “normal” human would experience.
World-line changes
World-line slides
Ability to communicate via the ELF probes.
Ability to communicate using the EBP.
And my experiences…
Married to a person who had a serious mental illness.
In a cutthroat high-tech industry that hired and fired at will.
International travel as part of my work.
Retirement as a Sex Offender.
Finally, egress and departure to live inside of China.
All told my experiences are wholly unique. All of this, by definition, makes me different.
But NOT alien.
Keeping all this real.
We are ALL, every single one of us, dealing with our own unique lives, and our own unique experiences.
None of us are better or worse than each other.
We are all different, and that is a good thing.
This article is to tell you all that I enjoy wine, pretty girls, pizza, steaks, “goldfish crackers” and “cheese-it” crackers, sex, and a nice ice cream Sunday on a hot, hot day. I like cats, dogs, and playing with things. I like to tromp in the woods, and smell the lush moistness underfoot, and rid a motorcycle though winding roads.
The human part of me is still there.
And I am getting old. I have blood pressure problems, heart problems, I drink too much, smoke too much, and am starting to have a daddy-belly (if you know what I mean).
I get happy, elated, and angry and sad. I like to read, and eat, and cook, and nap.
I think that most people here can relate to all that.
That’s because I am human.
But being different is not evident. Many people make the mistake that I am 100% of what they expect. You can see this on the occasional comments that I allow to post. Like the Jackass who asked (respectfully) why I don’t allow discussions about Jews! Jews! Jews! on my website. I mean really! Is this guy so clueless not to realize how anti-social that is? Sheech!
You know guys, anything can happen. And one day I will move on. My family will be sad and distressed. The MM site will fade into obscurity without a mention, and I will be one of those “flash in the pan” characters of limited interest to the society as a whole. Like Soopy Sales, Howdy Doody, or Jerry Lewis.
The point
Does it really matter if I am different on the inside? Does it matter if you are? Or if she is? Or if those people over there are?
No it doesn’t.
What does matter however, is our acceptance of things that we cannot change, may not like, or want to improve. And in order to accept those things, we need to be accepting that EVERY PERSON is just as different from each other, as I am from the “typical person”. We are all — everyone of us — different.
Being different is a good thing.
When I was in Pago Pago, a fellow came over to do some plumbing work on one of the hospital installations that I was working on, and we got to talking. He kept on saying that he really wasn’t a plumber, in a sad desultorily manner. And I had to correct him. He said he was a trained EMT, but that the funding for the job ended, so he was just doing what ever work he could find.
I told him that you are NEVER defined by your job. Which is a major lesson us men must deal with.
And…
You are also never what your career or your education is either. That is meaningless.
And…
Your value is never defined on how much money you make, though it will influence the happiness of your spouse.
And…
You are not what others say your are, whether lies or truth.
And…
You are not your past, your past mistakes, or your past successes.
Because, you are exactly who you are right now. PERIOD. Good, bad, ugly, dirty, clean, pristine, perfect, or tarnished. You are what you are in this very slim moment in time.
You must make this moment special, and let the rest of the world howl in frustration.
You know…
I haven’t flown a plane in years. I am tardy in my physical exercises. I could be a lot nicer. I should be making more money. I do need to take care of a lot of home projects that are falling behind, and so on and so forth…
I suppose that many of you are like me.
That’s because we ARE human. No matter what anyone else says. No matter how strong, important or powerful they are, you are exactly who you are, as unique as you are. And that is wonderful because you are SPECIAL.
Is this guy better than me because he has money…? (VIDEO)
Video
And to tell youse guys the truth, I am sure that this guy is enjoying life and having a great time, but I really don’t know if I would feel comfortable living like him. Not really.
It is how we handle our life that matters. It is the ways that we interact with others, do our best, and be helpful. These are what matters. And if you are the Rufus, your life changes. It changes. (VIDEO)
Be the Rufus VIDEO
And you know, you don’t need to perform heroic actions. You just need to be good.
Be good. Do good things.
You need to put smiles on the faces of those around you. Let them know that they are special and appreciated. Give the neighborhood cats a little treat. Tell the girl in the office that she looks good in the dress. Tell the bank teller that you like her glasses. Buy a cup of coffee for a coworker. Hold the door open to others, and smile and say Hi!
Use your talents, whatever they are. Give others “a break”. Cut them some slack. Put smiles on the faces of those around you.
Use your talents. Like this artist. He just gives people his art for free. No strings attached. (VIDEO)
This is an interesting read. I think that many MM readers will enjoy this article. In it, a remote viewer, investigated some of the administrative and entry processing centers for General Population programming and egress. Very intersting.
Honoring Bruce Moen – Afterlife Explorer and Pioneer
Bruce has completed this leg of his journey and has made his transition to the world of spirit on November 14, 2017.
In February 1996 I attended the first of two Exploration 27 programs at The Monroe Institute, a program in which participants explore specific areas of Focus 27 called “Centers”.
The following excerpt is taken from an exploration of a portion of the Reception Center called “the Reentry Station”, the place in Focus 27 human beings pass through on their way to lifetimes in the physical world.
CHAPTER 5: THE ENTRY DIRECTOR
Copyright: Bruce A. Moen, All Rights Reserved
.
During our next program tape exercise our task was to explore how human beings move from Focus 27 into physical lifetimes on the earth.
I arrived first at my place in Focus 27, noticing the hanging canvas chairs were occupied as usual by people who were always there waiting.
After talking with them about the insights I’d gained during the previous exercise examining the chair and playing with the clover, it was time to leave and meet up with my group of fellow explorers at the crystal.
Bob and Ed were there waiting again when I arrived, motioning for me come over to where they were standing.
…
“That clover of yours was an interesting creation,” Bob remarked.
“Sure left me with some questions!”
“Good! A little something for that curiosity of yours to play with,” Bob laughed.
“Maybe somewhere along the way you’ll find some answers,” Ed casually remarked.
…
Then it was time to leave for my encounter with the Entry Directory (ED), the guy who supposedly knew about how humans entered lifetimes on the earth.
After taking on a charge of energy from the crystal with the rest of the group, I placed my intent to find the ED.
I shot straight up through the roof and into blackness.
After a brief sense of movement the tower I’d seen earlier, with the two bell shapes, came into view.
Very tall, it looked like a radio antenna tower with two huge bell shaped objects at the top.
The small ends of the bell shapes joined together and appeared to be fastened, horizontally, to the tower at its very top.
Stopping to look more closely, I became aware of someone standing behind me.
…
“Are you the Entry Director I’m supposed to talk to?” I thought out to the presence behind me.
“Well, let’s just say I’m one of many who attend to the operation of the Reentry Station and I can probably answer your questions.”
“I’m a member of a group in a program called Exploration 27 at The Monroe Institute back on earth. We’re all here to learn about the inner workings of Focus 27.”
“Yes, I know. Your buddy, Bob Monroe, told us your group would be coming for a tour of the place. How can I be of assistance?”
“Is this thing I’m looking at, the tower with the bell shapes at the top, is that the Reentry Station?”
“Yep.”
“What does it do and how does it work?”
“Look closely around the big open end of the bell shape at the left and tell me what you see,” the ED suggested.
“I see a flow of something entering the open end of the bell shape,” I described.
“Direct your attention to that flow and tell me what you see there,” the ED continued.
“I see a cylindrical flow of little bits of yellowish-gold light, all moving together into the bell shape.”
“Look closely at the bits of light.”
I moved closer to the flow to get a better look.
“They all have generally the same size and shape, and they’re emitting light. They look a little like cocktail shrimp after they’ve been cooked and peeled, kind of the shape of little cheese curls.
I’ve seen these things before in a place I call the Flying Fuzzy Zone.
These curls look the same, but in the Flying Fuzzy Zone they fly all around like moths buzzing a bright light. What are these things?”
“Focus your attention on them, what do they feel like?”
After gazing at them for several moments I got the precept, “I’ll be a son of a . . . those curls are people! Each one is a separate human being!”
“And?”
“They seem to be in some kind of ‘dormant’ state. Not too much activity going on in them, not much thinking. More like they’re asleep and waiting. Why are they like that, and why are they entering the bell shape of the Reentry Station?”
“Come on, follow me,” the ED replied, “we’ll go inside the station so you can take a look.”
There was a quick feeling of movement and then I was standing at the center the of the area where the small ends of the two bells joined. I could plainly see the flow of curls being compressed as it passed through this area.
“This part of the station is called the constriction,” the ED volunteered.
“This section seems to be putting the curls under pressure. Why?” I asked.
“Preparation for entry into physical world reality. The awareness of each curl is compressed here to help hold it together and stay focused in one place long enough to make the transition.”
“I’m getting the sense that compression also closes down its conscious awareness of nonphysical reality in general, including awareness of nonphysical aspects of itself. Is that a result of compressing a curl’s conscious awareness?”
“Yes. Physical world reality is a pretty crowded place. By compressing the curl’s awareness into one place, it’s more concentrated. It’s better able to focus, concentrate if you like, on its tasks and purposes once its in the physical world. Less apt to be distracted by input overload from the high level, M-band noise pressure.”
“Input overload? High level M-band noise pressure?”
“At the level of physical world reality there are presently over five billion human inhabitants packed onto a very small place called earth. Everyone living there is constantly broadcasting their thoughts and feelings into that close quarters environment. They’re like five billion little radio stations all broadcasting their own, unique talk shows into the airwaves at the same time. Those thoughts and feelings are what we call M-band noise. There are so many people broadcasting at once, all pushing their thoughts and feelings out into the environment, we call it high level, M-band noise pressure.”
“Does closing down a curl’s level of awareness by compression in the constriction section have something to do with limiting the effect of that M-band noise?” I asked, responding to impressions I was getting as I watched the curls pass through.
“It limits the curl’s ability to sense things in the nonphysical environment, doesn’t it.”
“Yes it does. You see, if a curl’s conscious awareness remained fully expanded to its normal size during and after entry into physical world reality it couldn’t function. It’s being constantly bombarded by a great percentage of the M-band noise. Finding its own memories and thoughts amongst that blaring jumble would be extremely difficult, if not impossible. At its normal level the curl’s awareness would be in a constant state of complete and utter chaos, as a result of the input overload. Such overload would make progress on a curl’s purpose for being in physical world reality impossible. The compression step of the reentry process concentrates the curl’s awareness into a very small area, allowing it to be less aware of M-band noise.”
“So compression reduces conscious awareness of nonphysical reality. But doesn’t that also make it so the curl has no memory of what happened to it or decisions about its purpose made before entry into the physical world?”
“Well, yes, sort of. Memory of those decisions and contact with the Greater Self, your Disk or Monroe’s I/There, is also almost completely blocked by the compression. You see, compression works on the level of the curl’s conscious awareness. That doesn’t mean those memories and contacts are removed or totally inaccessible, they’re just compressed into the subconscious. They are fully accessible, but ordinarily only at the curl’s subconscious levels.
“Wouldn’t be better to let curls decide whether they want this to happen or not?”
“They do decide, Bruce. Each curl understands and agrees to this as part of the reentry process. It’s not a rule imposed upon the curl by anyone, it’s part of the preparation necessary for survival in the environment. You could think of it like the old fashion, deep sea diving suits. You know, the ones with the big heavy helmet and air hose hooked to a pump on the surface. To withstand the pressure and survive while exploring the ocean bottom in the old days, divers had to wear the suit. Compression at the Reentry Station is where the curl puts on that suit.”
“I’m getting that M-band noise is somehow similar to the water pressure at the bottom of the ocean in your metaphor,” I said, responding to incoming impressions.
“Very good! M-band noise IS like the water of the ocean. As you go deeper toward the ocean bottom, physical world reality, M-band noise pressure becomes greater. Once a curl reaches physical world reality M-band noise pressure actually helps maintain compression of its conscious awareness within the limits of its physical body.”
“What do you mean?”
“Remember, we are talking about conscious awareness of the curl. If the diver, in my metaphor, tries to expand himself at the bottom of the ocean he has to push outward against the surrounding water pressure. If a curl attempts to extend its conscious awareness beyond the confines of its body it encounters the M-band noise of all the other inhabitants.
Just like a diver extending himself beyond his suit and feeling the water, a curl extending its awareness beyond its body becomes aware of the blaring jumble of the M-band noise. The thoughts and feelings of the other inhabitants begin to come into the curl’s awareness.
It’s such a jumble it tends to breakup the concentration and focus required to further extend its awareness. Prolonged contact with the surrounding M-band noise leads to wandering thought trains that jump from one track to another as thoughts and feelings of others flood into the curl’s thus triggering memory associations.
After a while, curls generally stop trying to expand their awareness, since they so easily lose the train of thought necessary to do so. That’s how M-band noise pressure tends to maintain compression of conscious awareness. Some curls continuing trying to expand their awareness into the M-band noise and some of the successful ones are often labeled psychotic.”
“How can curls safely get through the M-band noise to expand their awareness?” I wondered out loud.
“By learning to focus their attention not through the M-band noise, but beyond it. If the curl learns to focus its awareness at a level of consciousness where the M-band noise is attenuated or nonexistent, expansion is much easier. Meditation is an useful, time tested method and the one you’re using seems to work pretty well.”
“The method I’m using?” I asked, puzzled.
“You learned to focus your attention beyond the M-band noise using the sound patterns of hemi-sync. Remember something in the advertising about coherent brain wave states. You learned to maintain your focus and avoid the jumble by shifting your conscious awareness past M-band noise and into states you call Focus levels. Focus 10, Focus 21 and so on are levels of human consciousness with greatly reduced M-band noise.”
“I see what you mean. The hemi-sync the tool I stumbled upon allowed me to remain in a coherent, focused state as I expanded my awareness past the M-band noise and into states beyond it!”
“You sound surprised! Hemi-sync is an adaptation of a long known technique. As for stumbling upon it, later you might want to check for filament of awareness connections between yourself and the guy who introduced that system. For right now let’s get back to the to the purpose of your tour,” the ED said cryptically.
“Okay. I’m getting that compression also causes the curls to lose memory of where they came from. It’s the reason so few have any past life memories or awareness of anything that exists beyond their present physical world.”
“Yes, that’s a byproduct of the compression. Again, compression pushes these memories into the curl’s subconscious, by definition that means the curl is not consciously aware of them. Typically, they are unable to extend their conscious awareness through the M-band noise to access ‘outside’ sources of the information either. These, so called, outside sources of information exist in awareness levels adjacent to the physical. Past life memories, the focus levels you’re aware of, lots of information sources exist in these adjacent levels of awareness. Of course the information is carried inside the curl too, but few learn to focus inward to find it there. Curl’s, compressed as they are have little if any conscious awareness of that information stored within themselves, and the M-band noise tends to cut off access to adjacent sources. Of course there are some exceptions, in fact, here comes one now,” the ED said, as he directed my attention to the incoming flow of curls.
Focusing my attention to where he pointed, I saw what my Tour Guide was referring to. In amongst all the other little curls in the flow was one at least ten times their size. It stood out as the biggest, brightest curl in view.
“Big Fish, we call them,” the Tour Guide said. “What do you get from that one?”
Reaching out to sense the Big Fish, it seemed more awake and active then the other curls. I watched as it moved through the constriction and then exited off to my right.
“Seems to be more aware and active then the others. It knew about the compression process it was going to go through and maintained its awareness while passing through it. I get that it remembered most of what it entered with after passing through the constriction,” I replied, relating my impressions.
“Big Fish have developed the ability to be consciously aware of far greater ‘volumes’ of information. They pass through the constriction losing very little of their multidimensional awareness. They’re exceptionally well suited to bringing awareness of adjacent realities, and of human existence in them, into the physical world. Many live lives in which they share their multidimensional awareness with others living in physical world reality who are lacking it. By doing so they help others become Big Fish,” the ED said, with a wistful pride.
While pondering the implications of little curls and Big Fish, something else in the flow caught my eye. There were four curls, a little above average size, that appeared to be connected together along some kind of lighted filament. They looked like shrimp on a string with two, close together, leading the way, followed by two others spaced close together, further along the string.
“Could be a family of four, or just four curls planning to act on a common purpose,” the ED Tour Guide explained before I could ask the question. When we see them strung together like that, we know they have a prior agreement about something that requires they pop into the physical world in a certain time sequence.”
“So if it was a family of four, the two in the lead are probably the parents and the next two will be their kids?”
“Yeah. And if it’s not an actual family, with parents and children, it could be just that those four have to arrive in a specific time sequence.”
That phrase, specific time sequence triggered a question, “Is that group headed for Focus 15?”
“Of course, every curl goes to 15 after they finish compression. I don’t have time right now to go into all the details of what happens from then on, so don’t ask.
That will all be covered later in your tour,” the ED said, cutting off the whole line of questions I was forming. “Groups like those four are usually tied into a cooperative effort aimed at carrying out individual and group purposes.”
“Like?”
“Like, maybe those first two have to bring a discovery into physical world awareness that the second two will later utilize. In the case of that specific group, the second curl will be traipsing through a jungle when he meets the first one, a native medicine man, a local shaman. Their combined knowledge of drugs and diseases will uncover the healing properties of a certain plant. Years later, the second two curls will meet when they each deliver research papers at the same medical conference. They’ll discover they’ve both been working independently to bring the use of the plant’s properties, discovered by the other two, into practical use. They’ll join forces to carry on their work together as man and wife. That’s when they’ll start working on the most important joint purpose for the entire group’s entry.”
“Most important purpose?”
“With the inflated egos those two have it’s going to be quite a challenge for them to learn to love through each other,” the ED said, with concern in his voice. “At least they’re got their love of humanity bonding them together. Working toward practical use of the that plant’s properties for the good of mankind is a real plus in that department.”
“How do you know all that, or are you just making it up?” I asked inquisitively.
“I’m not making it up, I know because I can read curl, and because my awareness extends beyond what you’re used to.”
“Who decided what their purpose was and what they were going to do to accomplish it? Sounds like predestination, like they have no choice.”
“Those curls made all those choices for themselves. You could call it predestination I suppose, as long as you remember they made all the decisions effecting their destinies and agreed to work as a group before they came to the Reentry Station.”
“So there is predestination!”
“Of course! They decided what they were going to do, and now they’re going to go do it. You can call it predestination if you like, as long as you remember who made the decisions,” the ED stated flatly.
“I want to know more about that string that connects them and what it has to do with when they arrive in the physical world?”
“That string, as you call it, is a filament of awareness that connects them now and will remain in place throughout their lives. You could also call it a section of a time/event line. The string is part of the process of insertion into time frames in the physical world and the Big Clock gets used as part of that process.”
“What are time/event lines and what’s the Big Clock?” I asked excitedly, hoping to learn more about the Focus 15 angle.
“I’d suggest you save those questions for your visit to The Planning Center. They can explain it better in the context of what they do there.”
“Okay, thanks. I’ll make a mental note to do that.”
“Don’t worry. If you don’t remember I’m sure your Tour Guide there will have gotten the word to remind you.”
“Thanks.”
“Take a close look a the curls in the flow again. Pick out a group on a string and look real close at the filament of awareness associated with them. Here comes a group of three now, check out the area directly behind the group.”
“I don’t see anything other than that they’re connected together by a fine bright filament. . . Wait a sec . . . There’s an even finer filament trailing them. In fact, now that I can see that one, I see all the other curls in the flow have the finer filament trailing them too. Didn’t notice it before, what is that?”
“Do you remember the story of Curiosity you wrote in your first book? Do you remember Curiosity’s Probes?”
“Yes, why?”
As I waited for the Tour Guide’s answer, it hit me like a forty foot wave crashing into a sea wall and I caught insights in the spray.
“Those are Probes! Those filaments trailing each curl are their connection to their Disks, the things Monroe called I/There! Those filaments are what provide transfers of awareness between the Probe and its Disk! I saw my filament and followed it back to my Disk during a vision in the mid 1970’s. That’s how I became aware of the my Greater Self, my Disk, my I/There!”
“Glad you caught on to that, Bruce, As you continue your tour of Focus 27 during your program, I’d like to suggest you be open to learning more about who and what you really are. There’s more to learn.”
Looking closely at the filaments trailing the curls again I noticed something odd. “That group of three I saw had only one filament trailing it. Some of the other groups I see have more than one filament trailing them. Why is that?”
The ED just stood there looking at me, waiting for me to get the answer on my own. Then it hit me! “Those three curls with the single filament are all from the same Disk, aren’t they!”
“And the ones with more than one trailing filament?” the ED asked.
“Not all the curls on the connecting string are from the same Disk!”, I blurted out.
“What are the implications of that?” I asked.
“Like I said, there’s more to learn, but that’s one you’ll have to explore and discover for yourself.”
For several moments I floated in silence, trying to get more insight into what my Tour Guide seemed to be alluding to. Not getting much I decided to pursue something else.
“I’m puzzled by something.”
“Shoot.”
“Wouldn’t it be better if all curls who reentered physical reality lifetimes carried more of their memories in their conscious awareness? Wouldn’t I have a better shot at carrying out my purpose in life if I knew what it was? Couldn’t the compression process of the Reentry Station be modified to allow that to happen?”
“In some cases, like Big Fish, much of such memory remains intact and easily accessible. And there are things that can be done to help a curl move toward Big Fish awareness levels. Part of that process is the curl learning to feel what’s going on inside its awareness, becoming aware of what’s stored within it’s subconscious. That process also involves becoming aware of what’s available in adjacent levels of awareness. That’s an internal learning process all curls go through as they make progress towards becoming Big Fish. But to do that within the M-band noise of physical reality, one must utilize the emotional charge and emotional impact of events in physical world reality. Emotional impact is part of the earth school training system, part of learning to feel and become a Big Fish.”
“So remembering too much would interfere with learning, Big Fish training if you will?”
“It tends to reduce the emotional impact of events which normally help a curl learn to feel what’s inside itself. Think of it this way, if someone told you all the details of a suspense thriller you were planning to see at the theater, including the climactic ending, what would it do to a movie’s emotional impact on you?”
“If I knew everything ahead of time, including how the movie ended, most of the emotional impact would be gone.”
“And you might experience less or weaker feelings in response to what happened on the screen?”
“I see what you mean, emotional impact helps us learn to feel and so we curls don’t remember our purpose in life because it might spoil our movie?”
“Something like that. There’s also learning to use the filament connection to consider.”
“What’s the filament of awareness connection got to do with becoming a Big Fish,” I asked, not seeing any possibilities.
“Becoming aware of that connection can lead to awareness of your Disk. That in turn can lead to an accelerated opening of awareness by virtue of the information available via that connection to the Greater Self. Surely, you of all people, can see the possibilities in that!” the ED said, like I really ought to have figured it out already.
“Oh . . . you mean my vision of the Disk way back in the middle ’70’s. I see what you mean! Once I had some limited awareness of my Greater Self, and my connection to it, the pace of my growing opening picked up. Gee, you mean I’m in training to become a Big Fish?” I questioned proudly.
“Bruce, all curls are in training to become Big Fish,” he said, taking a little wind out of my sails.
Dar’s voice startled me when it cut into my conversation with the Tour Guide at the Reentry Station, suggesting it was time to return to the crystal at TMI There.
“That’s my signal to go back to physical world reality, I got so involved in our conversation I forgot this is just a tape exercise in a program. Seems like there’s a lot left unanswered.”
“As you continue your tour you’re free to keep asking questions of anyone you meet and of course, let that curiosity of yours have free rein. Feel free to come back and visit me whenever you like.”
“Before I leave, since you read curl and all, can you give me anything on my purpose during my present lifetime?”
“Sure,” he said as he flipped me a thought ball, “but you already know most of it, so nothing in this one should come as any big surprise.”
“Thanks, ED, you put on quite a tour, and thanks for this,” I said, holding up the thought ball.
“Anytime.”
On my way back to the crystal, moving through blackness, I excitedly opened the thought ball, anticipating some great revelation. It said: “You entered this lifetime as a retrieving type to recover many of yourselves and those with other Disks of origin. Most of all, you wanted to learn more about the energy called Love. Beyond telling you that, I wouldn’t want to spoil your movie!” It was signed, “ED, Entry Director.”
Conclusion
This is a fascinating look at a remote viewing session. It opens up all sorts of new terms and ideas that are new to me. I would like to find out more, investigate other books and works and so on and so forth. If any one has some links or suggestions I will incorporate what we can gather in MM so that all of us might learn and benefit.
Do you want more?
You can find many more videos in my “The Domain Action Articles” over here…
Yes. There is something “big” in the works on the USA side. I am getting multiple confirmations from my resources. No one is saying anything tangible. And when you are in the “black world” (American special access programs – being a “spook”), this absence of Intel speaks volumes. Something “big” is planned. And the components and pieces are moving into place.
Head’s up everyone.
This is coming from numerous sources.
Including my own brother.
Scooby Doo
Today I was pleasantly surprised by an email from my brother. I was surprised because I haven’t heard from him in about a year, and he never answered my emails, skype messages or anything like that. It was just “dead air”. After a while, you know, you just stop and think “well, he’s lying low key” and let him be.
He’s gone “X ray”.
His email was interesting. He said that the reason why he wasn’t writing or answering any of my “pings” was because he was “too busy”.
People(!) no one is more busier than I am, and look at all that I churn out.
Anyways, I just let that all roll off my shoulders and read the content of the email.
He just came back from a visit with a mutual boyhood friend of ours. Who is now in San Diego and while he works in civilian government he is still directly tied to the US Navy and the submarine basing forces there.
Right after he chatted, and came back home, he told me that he had to send me an email.
He just “had” to send me an email.
The content reads…
It’s not “safe” in China.
I should get the next flight to the USA where it is “safe”.
Leave immediately, he said. Do not put it off. Leave THIS week.
Oh my!
Well, seeing that I have businesses, homes, not to mention a family with wife and children, and friends, and all of that, it seems rather strange for him to insist that I “bug out”. Leave my wife, and my children behind. Abandon my homes. My jobs. My lifestyle and my society for what ever the hell the United States is collapsing towards.
Especially since his ideas and impressions of what is safe and what isn’t doesn’t resemble anything that I experience. So maybe he is talking about world war III. Ah. If America cannot be number one, then no one can.
Anyways, there’s nothing in the USA for me. But it’s worse than that, the USA is collapsing head over heels.
Now, I don’t know what kind of “news” is popular in the United States today, I pretty must assume that it’s the same old repackaged lies of “China is collapsing”, “war is any moment now”, and all of that horse rot. But I am not falling for it, though it seems that everyone inside the United States is.
I don’t know what they all discussed on their visit, but I’ll be willing to wager that it is based on some absurd impressions from the “news”, and some observations from talking with other all of the same mindset. Like maybe this…
Anyways, I replied. I told him…
China is doing good. All is great here.
China and Russia are aligned militarily, and war against China will include Russia. And it will be nuclear.
Were a war to happen, the USA would be completely devastated. It would lose, and lose very badly.
Now, I am sure that he doesn’t want to hear that, but that’s the way it is.
He did say that he is now locked inside of the USA because the State Department sill not issue him a new replacement passport because the IRS has alerted the government that he is a “Tax Protestor”.
Funny that a person that is stuck inside the USA gulag wants me to join him. Misery loves company, perhaps?
This article
We all know this; the USA is pushing, pushing, and pushing in all levels of provocation to force a war with China. The American people are primed for this war. The military is ready, and the Washington DC folk are as excited as young children on Christmas eve. War is gonna happen, and the USA has special “tricks” that will make it happen.
Hoyeru says:
October 28, 2021 at 4:52 am GMT • 9.3 hours ago
(This is a) strange column that somehow manages to miss the obvious.
So i will add it: The US is so pissed and upset about china winning, they are willing to destroy the whole earth including themselves.
If they can't control the world, nobody else will.
It's pure spite.
We will start off with this great article I pulled from Ron’s operation…
Bumbling Menace Blinken Says Taiwan Should Join the UN
After the US secretary of state claimed Taipei’s accession to the UN would be pragmatic, Beijing hit back, reiterating that Taiwan should not be granted permission to join the body because the island was part of China.Speaking on Wednesday, Ma Xiaoguang, spokesman for the Taiwan Affairs Office in Beijing told reporters the UN was an international governmental organization made up of sovereign states – and Taiwan wasn’t one.“Taiwan is a part of China,” Ma stated, adding, “Taiwan has no right to join the United Nations.”The spokesman’s comments came after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement on Tuesday marking 50 years since the UN General Assembly voted to replace Taipei’s seat with Beijing’s that he regretted Taiwan’s absence.Blinken said the reason the island’s participation in the UN would be welcomed was not political but pragmatic. “As the international community faces an unprecedented number of complex and global issues, it is critical for all stakeholders to help address these problems. This includes the 24 million people who live in Taiwan.”
The statement is not political or pragmatic – it’s a provocation.
This is what the plan is, apparently: the Biden plan to “contain China” is a bullying harassment campaign.
Instead of just declaring war, they do things to attempt to publicly humiliate China.
The concept of “face”
It’s worth noting that decades ago, the West was trying to understand China and became fixated on the concept of “face.” They talked so much about it that we actually have the loan idiom from the Chinese language – “saving face.”
The Chinese – and general Asian – concept of “face” is similar to honor, but more complicated. It is also related to what we would call “prestige.”
It includes honor, just like our idea of honor: being a good member of the community and nation, who is respected and viewed as being morally righteous, and willing to sacrifice for others and the good of the community or nation.
But ” building face” also includes wearing certain clothing styles (now associated with brands), driving certain cars, living in certain areas, going on vacations, and other things we associate with prestige.
Another aspect, which I guess we would just call “power” or “authority,” is the ability of an individual to exercise his will in society, and to make things happen. (Just for example, if you ask someone to get you tickets to a sold out event and they deliver, that person would be “building face” as someone capable of making things happen.) All of this is combined to create a person’s “face,” which is his persona as seen by the world.
(For the record, the concept of “face” is also the basis of the social credit system, which is why virtually all Chinese people support the social credit system – it’s built on a foundational element of their society.)
Anyway, this is what the boomers who analyzed Chinese culture in the 1970s determined was the driving force behind Chinese psychology.
I think that is more or less true.
The United States is following a plan that is no longer viable, but doing so blindly out of ignorance.
As I explained in my very long piece about China a couple weeks ago, the current regime in America is clearly acting on plans laid by more competent men who are mostly dead.
So, when I see something like Blinken coming out and saying “hey, wouldn’t it be cool if Taiwan joined the UN?”, I am able to see that this is part of a very shoddy attempt to cause the Chinese authorities to “lose face.”
It’s very vulgar behavior, and it is intended to appear vulgar. What Blinken is attempting to do – more likely, what his advisors are attempting to do – is insult the Chinese authorities and make them look inept and incapable.
What isn’t clear is what exactly the goal of this is. It would make sense in the context of attempting to:
Humiliate the Chinese leadership to the point that the regime collapses (this isn’t possible, and the US authorities really should understand that by now), or
Try to bait the Chinese into doing something stupid to “save face” (Xi is not ever going to do anything he doesn’t mean to do, so this also doesn’t make sense)
Really, all I’m able to do personally is just observe.
America has no goals with China
I do not understand the goals of the US State Department and Department of Defense with regards to China, beyond the fact that they are fixated on regime change.
I’m not an expert on military strategy, and I’m highly skeptical of anyone who claims to understand how a war would unfold in this third decade of this third millennium after Christ.
However, given what I understand about the current social situation inside China, I am quite certain that there is no possibility of doing a Ukraine-style color revolution. It’s just not happening.
The Chinese people love Xi like they loved Mao, and just do a little bit of research on what the Chinese people tolerated from Mao.
I am completely unclear on how well the Washington establishment understands China, but having seen their actions, I would say not very well.
That’s why it looks to me as if Blinken’s team simply read some book talking about “face” and decided to attempt to humiliate them.
Mike Pompeo and the Deep State
We should also note that Mike Pompeo took a very similar approach, and that he is still planning State Department strategy at the Hudson Institute, where he is billed as an expert on foreign policy and China.
The State Department is one organization in the US government that is very obviously “deep state” in that it never changes from administration to administration. Whether officials are appointed by Republicans or Democrats, they move in and out of these same think tanks, which active government officials consult with so habitually that they are effectively extensions of the state.
Pompeo’s big play was to incite an Antifa revolution in Hong Kong.
I still do not understand what the purpose of that was, exactly. In theory, it would have been to cause Xi Jinping to lose face, to make it look like he was unable to control the city, and maybe to attempt to stir up discontent in the mainland.
Again, this shows a total lack of understanding of the situation.
The end result of the violence in Hong Kong was that Beijing closed the city down, and started banning all of the State Department’s schools for indoctrinating youth into revolutionary liberal ideology. If I had planned the strategy, I would not have wanted to have sacrificed the ability to influence Hong Kong so recklessly.
By fomenting those strange riots, the State Department gain literally nothing, and in fact they severely damaged their own image, and hardened the Chinese in all territories against the US.
Hilariously, the right-wing in Taiwan now cites the Hong Kong riots as a reason not to trust the West.
Chinese people are all very aware that these riots were incited by the West, and this is viewed as distasteful in the extreme, and also mystifying.
(In general, there is an overwhelming sense of confusion among the Chinese as to the intentions of the United States, but there is a certain amount of natural good will based on a positive perception of Hollywood and certain American companies, such as Apple. Instead of using that good will for definite ends, the State Department has pissed it away recklessly, and continues to do so.)
Clueless America
Obviously, the average American has literally no idea what is going on.
Even Americans who are semi-engaged with politics think that Taiwan is somehow a real country, that it is independent from China, and that China is planning to invade it.
In fact, Taiwan is not a country. It is a part of China.
Because it is an island, a separate revolutionary entity opposed to the CCP fled there during the 1940s. The Kuomintang had failed as China’s government and been overthrown by Mao’s forces, but the West protected them as they fled to the island. To this day, the “Republic of China” still claims to be the real government of China, despite the fact that it is nearly a century since they lost control of China in the 1930s.
At the end of World War II, just as the US quickly turned against their war ally the USSR, and established West Berlin, they also turned against their former ally the CCP, and established Taiwan. Modern Taiwan is as much of a relic of the post-war era as East Germany, it is simply that Taiwan still exists, because unlike the USSR, China was well-managed and did not collapse.
Illogical American leadership
The logical conclusion of any thinking person would be that the conflict between the East and West is over, and we should all just move on with our lives.
The US should negotiate a peaceful Chinese reunification, get a lot out of the deal in terms of reasonable Chinese concessions, and be done with it.
But that obvious thing cannot happen, because the regime that controls the United States – which, for a lack of a better term, can be referred to as “ZOG” (Zionist Occupation Government), is hellbent on creating a global government, and it is impossible to do that while China remains standing as an independent, traditionalist, nationalistic state.
So at this point, the purpose of Taiwan is to use it as a battering ram against the government of mainland China.
But there is no clear chink in the Chinese armor wherein to jam that battering ram. Thus, the State Department is instead opting for irate harassment and bullying.
Real Options
This is obviously not a long-term strategy, and given that the CIA has completely failed to create any significant fifth column inside of China, their only real option is to start a full on war with the Chinese and I guess just hope it works out.
If you understand all of this, it is really crazy to watch.
Apparently, they want to manipulate China into drawing first blood.
But then what happens?
What is step two?
The United States is going to have a nuclear war with China?
A nuclear war?
It’s unlikely that the US could win that war.
Frankly, the mere suggestion that people like Mark Milley and Lloyd Austin are going to successfully manage a war against China is both laughable and viscerally offensive.
It could be massively destructive, resulting in hundreds of millions of dead.
But a decisive victory by the US just doesn’t seem possible.
What’s more, there is no possibility of negotiation, given that the Chinese are so nationalistic, and have more or less zero interest in being part of the “international community” beyond selling people high quality products at reasonable prices.
What’s more, they are basically holding all the cards.
If you game out any potential outcome of this conflict, China wins.
Maybe the US could land a few nukes and wipe out some people, but if there’s one thing China has a lot of, it’s people. And unlike the US, the Chinese would be able to deal with being nuked.
The destruction of one or more major US cities, on the other hand, would completely obliterate the psyche of the American population.
You also have the fact that funding the war machine would be virtually impossible. The dollar as global reserve currency could not survive very much war, and it would come down to sheer raw productivity.
All previous wars have been won based on who had the bigger production output capacity, and the Chinese beat the US on that front, probably by an order of magnitude in real terms.
If the American leadership were smart…
If the people in Washington were smart, they would back off, and try to regroup. The problem is, they don’t have anything to regroup.
They’ve already gone all in on “diversity and inclusion,” putting what should be their most capable human capital on fentanyl or labeling them domestic terrorists.
If I was running this show, I would have skipped this moronic virus hoax and allowed Trump to remain in office on the condition that he start a war with the Chinese.
It still would have been a long shot, but it would have been within the realm of possibility. You could have stirred up the competent segments of American society with patriotic war energy, and used that to reestablish a production base in the United States.
But they didn’t do that.
They did something totally insane.
They stole the election for Joe Biden, who is probably the single least popular leader the country has ever had, with a plan to replace him with the much less popular Kamala Harris.
Then they effectively declared war on the native population of the country, labeling them domestic terrorists.
They are now attempting to force vaccinate the entire population, and they are willing to cripple the country’s productivity in order to force through this inexplicable gene therapy agenda.
Complete cluster fuck
If I had to guess, I would say that you have very little communication and possibly even very little awareness between whoever is running this plan for a war against China and whoever is running this domestic war against the domestic population.
The whole thing just looks totally chaotic and demented.
The bottom line is this: I do not think there is any possible way that the World Economic Forum’s “Agenda 2030” is going to come to fruition in 2030, or ever.
If the US were to back off of this push for conflict with Russia and China, they would simply end up totally crushed economically by China as they put their own population into extreme austerity using bizarre technological tyranny.
What is likely going to happen is that the US (and to various extents the rest of the West) is going to get increasingly brutal and weird, while China continues to advance economically, technologically and militarily.
You’re going to have a situation where the United States is just an utter mess, where no one really even understands what the goals or agendas are, and eventually the dollar is going to collapse, and that will be the end of the American Empire.
The end of the American Empire will be the beginning of the end of our tribulations.
For the American people, I do not think there is any solution to what is happening now, political or otherwise.
The only logical thing for an individual to do is try to stay out of the way while this lumbering beast staggers and eventually collapses.
After it collapses, we can reassess, and figure out how to build something new from the ashes.
The exciting part is that those of us who make it through this time of such trouble alive will probably live to see the other side. I’m as optimistic about the mid-to-late 2030s as I am pessimistic about the next decade.
So says one person
The truth is that no one really knows what lies in store in all of our futures. But we do know a couple of things. These are as obvious as the keyboard in front of my hands.
The USA “leadership” are following a script mindlessly.
The script is out of date.
The USA has numerous “bubbles” that are about to pop.
In a move that reeks of desperation, the USA is aggressively pushing and pushing and pushing for war.
The only way for these trends to be mitigated is for the USA to get on with it, and collapse already.
Now, there are many, many aspects of issues all tied in in regards to this. The next article looks at the IC, AI and supercomputing realms…
US is trying to kneecap China AI and Supercomputing by hitting it at the lower stacks (semiconductor fabs) but its in Chinese interest to reclaim its rogue provinence sooner than later…
Right now US is forcing Taiwan TSMC to cut ties with mainland Chinese firms yet prioritizing chip making for US origin firms like Intel, Apple, GM, Boeing etc…
The conflict between US and China is an economic conflict, not a political one.
The economic conflict arises exlusively from the the unnatural and unsustainable state and position of the US economy which operates as a global rent-seeker.
The US’ primary export good is the US dollar which is sold globally with the threat of force backing the sale. Officially the arrangement operates as follows: the US provides security – typically against a third party – and the “protected” countries in turn buy dollars. Unofficially the US uses direct threat – typically in an an indirect attack against the country’s economy and destabilization of its security – to facilitate USD sales.
This is in particular true of the so called “allies” – most importantly Germany and Japan in the 80s and 90s.
Though it might seem as a “security arrangement with a subscription fee payable in USD” in reality it is the exact opposite – and arguably always has been for any money producer throughout history.
The military establishment rarely seeks to expand its power as numerous examples of military dictatorships demonstrate. Military dictatorships tend to expand only as means of reinforcing their internal power structure. Consistently throughout history the primary driving force for war and imperialistic expansion are the banks.
Not the industry – as the industry has ways to compete for foreign markets through innovation or currency devaluation.
The banks however have only one product – money – and its value is entirely dependent on its unit of account and its purchasing power. What is also important it is the banks and fiat currencies that operate exactly on the principle of economic exploitation.
Marx was wrong about this being a general principle of “capitalist” mode of production and the 20th century provided evidence for that.
However when applied to the description of for profit production of money it necessarily works along the principles of exploitation since the nature of the good/product (money) makes it extremely inflexible in terms of deriving profits.
They can only be achieved through devaluation of purchasing power – which leads the users to abandon currency – or through increased demand. Money is literally a “unit of account”. There is no room for optimization. You either take it as it is or leave it as it is.
The only way to enhance money as a product is to package it with another basket of goods. Germany and the EU package the Euro with the access to highly valuable markets or export goods.
The US used to do so early in the history of the global dollar system (early after WW2) when the US had 40% of world’s industrial production, 60% o the world’s oil, a majority of the world’s food production and the world’s most potent military.
However this position was ruined by predatory behavior of American ruling class and currently the US offers very little in terms of voluntary transaction. Even the most dynamic industry – IT – operates on the basis of the theft of value (data) rather than the provision of it.
The problem arises from the mutually supporting structures of US global financial cartel and its military machine.
The financial cartel finances the military machine and the military machine enables the financial cartel.
One can’t exist without each other and the weakening of each will result in the necessary weakening of the other.
Here’s a short run-down of US vulnerability.
In nominal terms the US economy currently constitutes approximately 24,5% of world’s GDP. In comparison the Euro area constitutes approximately 15% of the world’s GDP. China in nominal terms, measured at the current artificially lowered exchange rate, has approximately 17,5% of world’s GDP.
In PPP terms the US economy is actually slightly smaller (due to the overvaluation of the USD), while Eurozone is slightly larger, and China is substantially larger.
Now compare it to the share of global currency reserves – the USD constitutes 59% of global reserves, the EUR constitutes 21% of reserves and the RMB constitutes 2% of reserves having been listed only since 2016.
This is crucial to understand American vulnerability.
The Euro
If Euro takes a hit on international markets it retains its natural ability to resist since its loss of value will improve the attractiveness of Eurozone exports which are the main source of demand for Euro. Even if Euro loses some of its demand it can be absorbed internally by the Eurozone.
In fact, this has been precisely the case since the Eurozone crisis which started a few years after 2008.
The vulnerability of the Euro is political (hence America’s attempts to destabilize the EU) and not economic.
Furthermore if the Eurozone was dissolved it would lead to the creation of a stronger currency – since Euro is the German Mark weighed down by various weak currencies like the Franc, Lira, Peso etc – that could take comparatively greater share of world reserves just like it was the case in the 80s.
The Chinese RMB
If Renminbi takes a hit on international markets it has almost no consequence at this point.
The US Dollar
If the US takes a hit on international markets then this hit will be translated through the magnitude of the global dollar reserves which are circa 140% greater than America’s share of the global economy at present moment.
The dollar reserves are helping to increase the nominal size of the US economy so any loss of demand will necessarily lead to smaller economy i.e. a death spiral since the US has largely deindustrialized and its industry is incapable of supporting its currency.
Therefore the dollar depends on the US military power and its ability to continue enabling forcible sales of USD.
The moment American “security” no longer is has value it results in loss of demand for USD.
How does American “security” loses value?
It has to be credibly challenged and made impotent.
This applies anywhere on the globe so if US is engaged in a protracted large conflict with China it means it can’t provide “security” anywhere else.
Remember that the UK won the WW2 and still lost the empire simply because they were not able to match supply of Sterling with the demand for it since they no longer provided global security for trade.
This means two things:
Any conflict over Taiwan is advantageous to China in the long term regardless of the outcome in the short term.
Any conflict over Taiwan is disadvantageous to America in the long term regardless of the outcome in the short term.
And this means that the conflict over Taiwan is not a real conflict in its own right, but a tool for something greater.
It is a tool for America’s attempt to physical separate its rent-generating properties from the globalized world which no longer allows them to retain their advantage in perpetuity.
America established a global economy under its hegemony because it was the global American empire with USD as its currency.
Now that the position of USD and the hegemon is vulnerable it wants to dissolve the empire and establish a new one, which will be then followed by inflationary escape from external debt (Weimar solution) and establishing of a “new dollar” backed by American military power.
In other words the US wants to return to the days of the cold war where “1st world is American sphere of influence” , “2nd world is China sphere of influence” and “3rd world” is the contested area.
Taiwan does not matter.
The US wants to change the rules of capital movement through state action so that the new rules continue to benefit its ruling class.
This is why
This is why they instigate tensions in Europe with Russia and push their European vassals to recognize Taiwan. It is all about decoupling the Eurozone from Russia and China and reinstating American military power as solution to “Russian threat” and “Chinese threat” as the foundation of its money production and rent-seeking.
And this explains also the psyop relating to Hongkong, Xinjiang and attacks at Chinese investments and commercial activities.
Not to mention Covid the covert CIA biovirus that carpet bombed the economies of the developing world.
It is not about attacking China since the US knows it is impossible.
It is about tearing the current global economy apart to protect its position.
American ruling class is attempting to secede from the international system to protect its position much in the same way as the ruling class of the American South seceded from the Union it created to protect its position.
Similarly the ruling class of United Kingdom seceded from the EU to protect its money-laundering and tax-evading industry.
An interesting perspective…
Both of these perspectives show reasons and observations. And they all seem to be pretty “spot on”.
Both argues that the USA is collapsing, and it is thrashing out of an ignorant leadership to pull back and regain or maintain some of it’s control. This is true whether it is military or economic, or social. I can understand that.
Taiwan has long been the rationale for meddling in China’s affairs but the latest interference poses great danger for “paper tiger” nation.
Mao Zedong often referred to U.S. imperialism as a paper tiger. This is truer today than it was in the mid-20th century when Mao frequently employed the phrase. No matter how bellicose the American empire becomes, its strength is more appearance than fact. Brutal violence and exploitation are thus signs of weakness, not legitimacy or credibility. The U.S.’s recent military maneuvers around the issue of Taiwan clearly signal a growth in the decay of the American Empire.
Taiwan has been a topic of conversation in the U.S. corporate media throughout the month of October. Headlines have circulated that claim China has escalated military tensions by flying military aircraft over Taiwan’s so-called Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ). The ADIZ was created by the United States after World War II and isn’t recognized by international law. In fact, Taiwan’s so-called ADIZ includes large portions of mainland China. This hasn’t stopped the U.S. media from beating the drums of war with China.
The U.S. Department of Defense under Joe Biden has affirmed its commitment to threatening war with China over Taiwan. Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby has warned China that its so-called “pressure campaign” on Taiwan requires the United States to step up efforts to “protect” the island from “danger.” Just days after Kirby’s speech, U.S. and Canadian warships sailed through the Taiwan Strait in a show of joint military force not seen since the U.S. normalized relations with China in 1979. This blatant intensification of military aggression came just a week after reports surfaced that the U.S. had spent the last year secretly deploying special forces to Taiwan.
The American empire has a long history of using Taiwan to meddle in China’s affairs. After pouring heavy financial and military support into the Kuomintang’s (KMT) brutal war against the Communist-led revolution of 1949, the U.S. supported the KMT’s exile to Taiwan. The U.S. heavily militarized Taiwan and even threatened to use nuclear weapons in an attempt to undermine the Chinese revolution. More than two decades would pass before the U.S. cease the prevention of the People’s Republic of China to gain full recognition at the United Nations in place of the “Republic of China” government located in Taiwan. In 1972, the U.S. signed the Shanghai Communiqué —a document that stipulates U.S. recognition of Taiwan as part of China and clearly articulates that the U.S. will cease all attempts to military intervene in its affairs.
That Taiwan is part of China is not controversial outside of the parasitic lens of U.S. and Western imperialism. Taiwan has experienced centuries of colonial incursions. This includes a half-century of Japanese colonialism that ended only after Chinese resistance forces sacrificed more than fifteen million people to win historic victories against fascism in World War II. The return of Taiwan to China is thus an important victory for the anti-colonial movement. And it is this victory that the United States is currently working hard to reverse.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump and current President Joe Biden have provided staunch support to the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the separatist political party ruling in Taiwan. In 2019, Trump signed the TAIPEI Act into law which encourages the U.S. to facilitate deeper ties between international organizations and Taiwan’s separatist-led government. This blatant violation of the One-China policy has been followed up with billions worth in military arms deals to Taiwan. After Trump approved $1.8 billion in arms sales to Taiwan to end his administration, Biden signed off on $750 million more in military weapons transfers to Taiwan which included 40 M109A6 Medium Self-Propelled Howitzer Systems. These maneuvers bolster the Western-oriented government in Taiwan led by President Tsai Ing-wen, a devout separatist who has openly called Taiwan “vibrantly democratic and Western.”
U.S. interference in China’s relations with Taiwan has made a profound impact on U.S. public opinion. More than half of Americans now support U.S. military intervention in Taiwan . Of course, the poll conducted by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs added “if China invades” to the question for added anti-China effect. That the poll would promote the propaganda that China could invade its own province should come as no surprise. The Chicago Council on Global Affairs is funded in large part by the Pritzker Foundation . The Pritzker family’s enormous wealth derives not only the from the Hyatt hotel but also from its deep connections to war profiteering and the CIA.
Taiwan is the clearest expression of the U.S.’s agenda to reassert neocolonialism in the Asia Pacific as a means to counter China’s rise. However, attempts to bully China over Taiwan have no legitimate end goal. China will not bow down to the claims that Taiwan is an “independent country” since no such thing is acknowledged by international law. The United States must think long and hard about escalating militarily with China. Despite an enormous shift of U.S. military resources to the Indo-Pacific Command, war strategists and profiteers alike would face heavy casualties in a direct conflict with China’s high-tech military armed with a nuclear deterrence.
Unlike the first Cold War, the American Empire is in precipitous decline. Economic immiseration is all the American Empire has to offer the vast majority of humanity. U.S. military policy only facilitates death, destruction, and displacement. U.S. domestic politics are mired in stagnation and lack the capacity to address any fundamental problem facing working class and oppressed people. The paper tiger of American Empire is being ripped apart by its own contradictions. Crisis is the only stable feature left remaining of the American Empire’s so-called dominance.
China does not possess such problems. China’s government has shown consistent respect for international law with regard to Taiwan. China’s stable, prospering socialist economy has eliminated extreme poverty and contained COVID-19. These achievements alone have gained China’s socialist model immense prestige both with the Chinese people and the people of the Global South. Still, the American Empire remains dangerous precisely because its desperation requires the escalation of a New Cold War that threatens to bring about a confrontation between two nuclear powers.
Taiwan is but one piece on a chessboard designed by the United States to undermine China and thus the world from charting a course of history free of imperialist domination.
Anyone who calls themselves “the Left” would be foolish to follow the imperialist paper tiger into a trap of its own making with regard to Taiwan or any other feature of the U.S.’s New Cold War against China.
Yet this is exactly what has happened.
Most of the “left” has abdicated its responsibility to oppose U.S. imperialism and therefore shares responsibility with the right for the U.S.’s hostilities toward China.
U.S. interference in China’s affairs regarding Taiwan should thus be seen as an opportunity to reverse this dangerous course and place the demand for the U.S. to respect international law at the forefront of the movement.
Now, for my point…
I think all of these points are valid. But, I want to throw something else (a “monkey wrench”) into the mix.
Suppose that those who “lead” the United States, whether it is President Biden, political factions, the military or the oligarchy, are actually crazy psychopathic personalities. Perhaps they did not get to their positions through merit, but some other means, and they have a view of the world that we “normals” have a difficult time understanding.
American “leadership”.
And while we can point at the various strange actions of the United States leadership with our ideas, our historical or economic references, they do not address the frightening possibility that irrational people are in control of a very large and powerful nation with lots of nuclear bombs.
The entire globalist elite having devolved into a decadent and dumb state is the single explanation that explains everything that is going on right now, and does not require any kind of ridiculous leap in logic to mush everything together in a coherent way.
Now, I argue that the deafening silence on my black world contacts are screaming “Big Event” is on the way.
Heads down, alert up.
I hope to hell that I am wrong, but for all practical purposes, it appears that the USA is planning a first strike action against China and IT WILL be nuclear.
There is some degree of confidence in their ability to carry it though. Whether or not it is really well thought out or not is immaterial.
The fact is that the USA is going to do something very bad, very big, and it will change the global social economic calculus for centuries hence.
I believe that the USA is planning a first-strike nuclear sneak-attack against China.
From a MM contributor who is also a spook like myself…
Let’s see what happens. Remember that seriously mentally deficient people are running the US government today. They do not “have all their marbles.”
Here’s a thing which is happening: people – probably most of you reading this – are confusing the total power of the current US government for competence.
This is very natural, psychologically – it makes fundamental sense that people with absurd amounts of power would have to have competence.
But, if we break down the fact that these people inherited this power structure, then you might look at it like the logic of assuming a guy driving a Lamborghini must be rich, before you find out it was stolen.
It took me a long while to process it myself, and I definitely didn’t have a full understanding of it until Joe Biden took over as our overlord, but these people are not competent.
Upon closer inspection, we realize they are actual morons.As a thought experiment: try to think of one single thing that the Democrats have done since assuming total domination of America that is indicative of competence.
The only thing you will likely be able to think of is the fact that they’ve managed to keep this virus hoax rolling, but that is obviously virtually entirely managed by the media. And the success of the project is entirely dependent on the docility of the American people.
Prolog – Why I say that this might as well be the case.
For two decades I was married to a woman with a severe mental illness. It’s schizoaffective. And one of the things you learn, as a caregiver, is that they think and believe that they are making valid and good decisions, but in reality their decisions were terrible, based on all sorts of things, and off the wall.
I once asked her what the idiom “people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones” meant. She, in all seriousness, told me that the idiom meant that glass breaks and has sharp edges.
...people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones Those who themselves are open to criticism or vulnerable to attack should not attack others.
This proverb dates from the time of Chaucer, who used a version of it in Troilus and Criseyde (ca. 1374).
-People who live in glass houses - Idiom
I am convinced that the American leadership, no matter who it is, is wildly dysfunctional and dangerous. They do not know that they are ill, and they have surrounded themselves with similar people who are equally crazy.
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
You know, I am having a cup of coffee, a plate of buttered crunch baguette beside me (with a side of cut up tomatoes with salt) and just going through my emails, my comments, the forum, and the normal round of sites that I just skim though. Then I hit LinkedIN.
Ho. Ho. Ho.
There was a very lively discussion about America invading Australia. Invade? Australia? WTF? I thought that it must have been a joke. So did everyone else. The comment thread was long, silly, humorous and to the point. To quote one such commenter…
“America is off their trolly.”
And then nothing.
Yes. these people are seriously off their trolleys.
Well, I will tell you that this little announcement SHOULD be taken seriously.
Though I do not (as of this time) recognize it as a fluke, a misunderstanding, a “flag” proposal, or a “fair warning”, I do need to explore the mechanism behind this statement.
This mechanism is frightening.
America 101
“You see them on the street. You watch them on TV. You might even vote for one this fall. You think they’re people just like you. You’re wrong. Dead wrong.”
— They Live
When you recognize what America actually is, then how the internal domestic politics and statements play out becomes much clearer. So let’s forget the standard Hollywood ideas about America being the great wonderful nation that protects others and look at what it REALLY is.
For starters
America is an Oligarchy.
In fact, a study conducted by Princeton and Northwestern University concluded that the U.S. government does not represent the majority of American citizens. Instead, the study found that the government is ruled by the rich and powerful, or the so-called “economic elite.” Moreover, the researchers concluded that policies enacted by this governmental elite nearly always favor special interests and lobbying groups.In other words, we are being ruled by an oligarchy disguised as a democracy, and arguably on our way towards fascism—a form of government where private corporate interests rule, money calls the shots, and the people are seen as mere subjects to be controlled.Not only do you have to be rich—or beholden to the rich—to get elected these days, but getting elected is also a surefire way to get rich. As CBS News reports, “Once in office, members of Congress enjoy access to connections and information they can use to increase their wealth, in ways that are unparalleled in the private sector. And once politicians leave office, their connections allow them to profit even further.”
America is also a Military Empire. The largest in the world, and the largest in history.
This Empire is supported by an enormous Military-Industrial industrial complex. Every Senator, and Representative has large military factories within their districts that employ voters. As long as the voters are employed, they get to stay in office.
Clearly, we are now ruled by an oligarchic elite of governmental and corporate interests.We have moved into “corporatism” (favored by Benito Mussolini), which is a halfway point on the road to full-blown fascism.Corporatism is where the few moneyed interests—not elected by the citizenry—rule over the many. In this way, it is not a democracy or a republican form of government, which is what the American government was established to be. It is a top-down form of government and one which has a terrifying history typified by the developments that occurred in totalitarian regimes of the past: police states where everyone is watched and spied on, rounded up for minor infractions by government agents, placed under police control, and placed in detention (a.k.a. concentration) camps.
This arrangment is so embedded in American society that “peace” will equate to “economic depression”. If you stop buying military hardware, the economy just simply cannot recover. A collapse is imminent. The people “take to the streets” and in America they are armed and dangerous.
Therefore, the United States can only exist as long it is constantly fighting wars all over the globe.
No wars = No United States.
Situational awareness
Lately, and over time, an entire series of “bubbles” have been created. The collapse of any singular one of them would create a chain-effect that would rage through America like a firestorm on a dry August wheat field. So something HAS to be done. It cannot be put off.
There are only two solutions available.
Disassemble the Military-Industrial industry and convert the production output to other purposes. Somehow. Using systems not yet in place. Using staff that are unskilled, and finding markets for new products that do not exist.
Or,
Start a HUGE war that would be able to feed the coffers of the multitudes of industries that exist for warfare.
Given what amounts to the stupidest leadership in history, the United States government leadership has earmarked either Russia or China for a war.
For the last fifteen years, there was a tug and forth between various political interests. One side wanted a war with Russia. The other side wanted a war with China.
And for the last five years it has become obviously apparent that China was set up as the enemy du jour.
The general secretary of NATO has told the Financial Times that there's a new foe in town. After decades of sparring with the Soviet Union, and Russia, the bloc is firmly setting its sights on a different standoff – with China.
Putting aside the diplomatic niceties, his pitch is simple: NATO should turn its attention to Beijing. To put it more bluntly than Stoltenberg did, the US’ European partners should follow Washington into a new, openly-declared Cold War in East Asia.
The pitch belies the fact President Joe Biden is offering NATO members a deal they are not supposed to refuse. Either you help us in our new Cold War against China on which we have decided alone, or we will no longer help you feel safe from Russia. As Stoltenberg puts it, for America, NATO is “not something they do to be nice to Europe.” Instead, he reminds us, for Washington, allies must fit their national interests.
In other words, now that the endless 'wars on terror’ are winding down, the US has identified its new geopolitical enemy number one, Beijing. The Pentagon and the attached military-industrial complex – as president Eisenhower once called it – must be kept in business after all.
-RT
And so it is currently.
But uh oh!
However, within the last five months or so, the American military leadership have been busy trying to “bitch slap” the neocons inside of Washington DC, K-street with the fundamental understanding that were a war with China to occur, America would lose.
And lose badly.
And the entire nation would be destroyed, rubbled, and the leadership would all be dead. Dead. DEAD.
In fact, there isn’t a single war simulation, not one, that has the USA the victor or even a close draw. Each and every simulation for the last 18 years has had the United States defeated in a war with China.
But it has to be something that will keep the Military-Industrial industries still alive and working. A war with either China or Russia, or any of their allies would not do that. The war would come to American shores, and it would be very hard on the voters which is a big “no no” in a “democracy”.
So what options are available?
Go to war with a small defenseless small nation that is not aligned with anyone. Think Vatican City, Palau, or Portugal.
Go to war with a nation that is aligned with either Russia or China. Like Mongolia, or North Korea.
Go to war with one of the more prosperous of American allies. Like France, Canada, Mexico, or Japan.
It is obvious what the answer is. It is to go to war with one of America’s allies. That’s the most logical and reasonable solution.
A war with a small third world banana republic would not meet the needs of the enormous military industrial complex.
A war with a surrogate or ally of either Russia or China would be equivalent to conducting war with them directly.
So the solution is to turn on one of America’s allies.
Which American proxy nation?
To select the nation, we have to relook and revisit the criteria required.
The target nation must be formidable enough to provide a challenge.
However, it must be weak enough so that the United States would be in full control from start to finish.
It must provide good “optics”.
It must be large enough so that immense quantities of war material can be used.
It must have some kind of native population that the US propaganda machine can use to fabricate an excuse of “saving people”.
It must have nearby large American bases from which to send huge quantities of manpower and material for logistical support.
It must be new and novel.
And apparently, the K-street crew, decided that Australia is the best alternative available.
Why?
Well. Let’s break it all down.
The target nation must be formidable enough to provide a challenge.
Americans tire of endless wars blowing up mud huts, shooting defenseless donkeys, and strafing cabbage patches. They no longer want to see this. They want a shooting war that resembles a made-for-Hollywood war. They want to see bad guys with guns, tanks, and see real buildings; relatable buildings destroyed and smashed into tiny broken pieces. They want to see shiny stainless steel and glass skyscrapers exploding under a volley of Hellfire™ missiles. They want to see the large civic structures; the Opera Houses, and the bridges full of holes, collapse and rusted wrecks.
Australia is perfect.
House to house fighting in Melbourne is relatable, has great sensational value, and in many ways would resemble Southern California. The ruins of Sydney with proud American troops marching though the streets with willing and smiling Australian women running into their arms for liberation would be well televised and appear “just” and “right” to the dumbed down American masses.
Perth in 2030
And the Australians, at least those not yet disarmed, would put up a fight. It would be a losing battle of course, but it would be relatable. You can almost hear the bullets at the Starbucks in Brisbane, or the McDonald’s on fire in Perth. You can just see proud American gunships strafing the lorries on the motorways.
However, it must be weak enough so that the United States would be in full control from start to finish.
Australia has a weak government, a corrupt election system, a government where crime and corruption lead from the top, and for-profit individuals at every level. That should be obvious from watching the clown-show that the Morrison administration has been running. As well as the (so called) representative congress that just approves all Morrison dictates like kingly pronouncements from God himself.
America would then initiate and script a “colorful” war within Australia and prod the Australian “actors” on what to do and what to say. The American people would eat it all up and love every minute of it. America would be winning again! American exceptionalism at it’s best!
They would announce that “Australians will fight to their dying last breath for the warm sandy beaches and the happy shelas”. Perfect.
Sydney Australia in 2030
Additionally, the military is weak, using (and following) American military doctrine. It would be easily consumed by the mighty American military forces. Of course, scripted battles would be the norm, and the Australian forces must be able to fight to a point where a long and protracted war can occur.
It must provide good “optics”.
This is all about salvaging the American economy while preventing a very disheartened American populace from rising up and burning Washington DC to the ground. The optics must be more than just good. They must be great!
From the coastal cities, to the outback, to small desert towns to quiet fishing hamlets, the great diversity of scenery and the fact that the Australians speak a strange accented English would make television ratings soar. It would be exotic, yet very familiar.
Red skinned, and tan skinned, Australians wearing bush hats and shouldering FNAL rifles as the scurry from the gleaming American killer drones would make great television. The Facebook feeds would show all the action in colorful bloody gore, and that would attract more views. American flag bumper stickers would reappear on the cars, and Churches throughout America would be taking donations “for the cause”.
Brisbane in 2030
It must be large enough so that immense quantities of war material can be used.
Australia is a large nation.
Maps would be presented on the mainstream media showing pincer movements in red and blue arrows. There could be all sorts of interesting CGI effects, and displays of the latest in American military technology. Barrack Obama would come out of retirement and opine how racially divided Australia has always been and that it is the time; a long overdue one, where the “white man” gets his due.
Tons and tons of munitions can be thrown on such cities as Adelaide, or Hobart, and they would just take it in. After all, it would be the “Yanks” doing it. Their long time buddies. As they say I’ll be right, and fair dinkum.
Australia has the proper mixture of rural desolation, scenic beauty, and urban life that would make a glorious war for freedom™ and democracy™ worthwhile.
Americans are needed inside of Australia to show them what Freedom and Democracy is all about.
It must have some kind of native population that the US propaganda machine can use to fabricate an excuse of “saving people”.
Certainly there are the local inhabitants. And the Americans, being so insanely dumbed down, can be told anything and they would believe it. Look how easily they fell for the Uighur “concentration and rape camps”, or the “dangers of 5G radiation”. Look how much they fear vaccinations, using the cell phones near gasoline pumps and cell phone towers.
It is so easy to construct a narrative about saving people in Australia. Just toss in some words about “concentration camps”, “forced sterilization”, and “racial discrimination”.
It would be so simplistically easy to hammer down the idea that America must save the native inhabitants of Australia NOW NOW NOW!!!!
It must have nearby large American bases from which to send huge quantities of manpower and material for logistical support.
Australia is perfect. under the guise of a military build-up to “counter China”, enormous quantities of war material could be flown direct into Australia without a sound. By the time a “go plan” is launched, ten American battle divisions can be fully amassed and positioned within Australia for the war to start.
It is so easy to transport tons of American military equipment to Australia without any government oversight.
Keep in mind that the United States military presence inside of Australia is quite large. Here’s from a fan located in Darwin…
...There is something you can do to prevent war between the US and China, by helping us remove the US military bases from the NT of Australia. These bases are key infrastructure, part and parcel of the 2015 Rand report recommendations for such a war.
Contrary to popular belief, the Gulkula civilian aerospace facility in Arnhem Land is in fact run by the US military and Raytheon, with Lockheed Martin probably still involved. Their presence is camouflaged with NASA.
I read the internal report before it was taken down in 2017.
I also read the NT Government reference to US military expansion there in the Budget review committee documents, so this is absolutely certain.
The installation is for nuclear-armed missiles.There are several secret US bases in the NT, as well as the six knowns... submarine, heavy air, fighter air, Five Eyes, and spy satellite centres x 2, and 3500 US Marines to man a warehouse full of tanks.
Obviously, here to contain local rebellion.What keeps the US here is Rupert Murdoch's control of the media.
Particularly the NT News (News Corp), but he also controls the ABC through his associates, Ross Garnaut and Frank Lowy. Garnaut, by the way, is a key world economist, controls Australia's climate change agenda, and is a permanent member of the Trilateral Commission.
He is a pivotal element in US control of Australia and has recently released a major paper recommending an end to taxation for American corporations in Australia, under the guise of more efficient taxation...
It must be new and novel.
Obviously, it would be unexpected. Unique and exotic to the American and global readership. Any images of Australia that now persists in the United States today are all colored by the images of Barry Humphries and Paul Hogan.
This unique imagery, when coupled with the current contemporaneous military culture would make a nice juxtaposition which would be perfect for an enemy to attack.
While a war is going on, it could last ten, twenty to fifty years, and the American Military-Industrial establishment can continue to saturate the entire nation under constant warfare without any equivalent destruction of American cities.
Not only that but the actions of the Morrison government has effectively isolated Australia from the rest of the world. Russia and China would loathe to come to their aid.
The same can be said for the peace-loving New Zealand people.
Japan would stand down. Korea would stand down. India would do nothing. There would be come “rubber stamp” squeals and protests from the UK, but nothing of substance.
It’s all a “perfect storm” waiting to happen.
Why do I say all this?
I think all of this is pure evil.
I believe that it is despicable.
I think that it is horrible.
But whether it is war! War! War! with China, or War! War! War! with Australia they are both the same.
The SAME!
War is horrible and anyone desirous of war should be locked up in a mental institution for the rest of their life.
Oh, it’s so easy to “get on the bandwagon” and say “we must fight a war with China” (Here’s looking at you you Australian war-mongers) It’s another thing completely different when you are facing the enormous military might of the Untied States.
Australia has minerals that America desperately needs. It has coal. It has food. It has a major geographical location that America can exploit. By conducting a war with Australia, the eventual collapse of the United States can be delayed for up to 75 years. Isn’t that worth fighting for?
To save American exceptionalism!
To preserve the American rules based order!
So what if a handful of Australians are sacrificed on the alter of democracy? It’s not like they would matter to the needy in New York. Some real perspective is needed right now. And on the grand scale of things, it’s obvious that those in Washington DC are more important than anyone in that overly hot, but sunny land, down under.
What are Australia’s options
Not many, I am afraid.
Continue on the path that the Morrison government has laid out and be attacked by the United States in three to five years.
Get a new government in. Break all treaties with American military interests, and give the United States a reason to attack.
Get a new government in. Phase out American interests, and team up and form protective treaties with China.
That’s it.
From the American neocon point of view.
Troops and material inside of Australia offers all kinds of options and flexibility.
Australia can be sacrificed if the USA provokes a war with China.
If there isn’t a war with China, then America can have a war with Australia.
Win. Win.
In both cases, American industrial and social re-engineering agents can remake Australia into a “little America”. It could be granted citizenship and statehood. The nation could be afforded all the Rights that Americans already possess, as well as the great pride of being an exceptional society; a city on the bright and shiny hill.
Then, soon afterwards, the mandatory taxes, fees, and regulations can be implemented and collected from Australians. The take home income of Australians can be taxed at a minimum of an additional 30%, and the fine judicial and policing systems can displace the paltry ones that now exist.
Australians will be able to use “real” units like feet, inches and miles. they would be driving on the correct side of the road, and they will be celebrating Christmas properly with big hot turkeys and heavy mashed potatoes instead of prawns, shrimp and vegimite. Not to mention that it would be an American flag that would be flying in the breeze, and American language they would be speaking, as well as American food that they will be eating, and…
…most importantly, appreciating the real standards of real American beauty on women.
Keep in mind who Candace Owens is
This is NOT some “news” media commentator. She is a LEADER in the neocon faction of the Republican political party.
She has direct top contacts with the Military-Industrial Complex, and she is / was / has the eyes and ears of all the influential decision makers inside of America.
If she is promoting this, you can be assured that THIS DECISION HAS ALREADY BEEN MADE and that the public announcement is a “tell tail” to gauge the intensity of the anti-Australia propaganda campaign that will naturally follow.
Buckle up Australians, whether you will be the next Syria or Afghanistan is up to you this coming election cycle.
MM estimation on the outcome of this crazy turn of events.
MM readers are aware of our extraordinarily high prediction ratings of future Geo-Political events. Right now, it’s running in the mid 80’s in percentage of success.
I’d hate to destroy that streak placing my bets on such an “out of the blue”, “out of left field” crazed political bullshit being floated off K-street. But you know, weirder things have happened.
Here’s my likelihood estimations of success;
90% chance that this discussion is active in the neocon offices in Washington DC.
45% chance that resources are being put in place to study it as a fall-back position instead of attacking China.
65% chance that there are SAP programs studying the feasibility avenues of this plan.
51% chance that the oligarchy has tentatively given a “green light” go-ahead for further research.
15% chance that generals have been briefed.
80% chance that the top active generals know that this option is on the table for consideration.
98% chance that the CIA is involved presently.
How all this will go is unknown.
My guess that this becoming reality is far stronger than what the general public thinks or believes.
And for you Australians that are furious at reading this, relax. I think the entire idea is just bat-shit crazy. Don’t start screaming at me. I agree with you that this is insanity, and it is mean and uncalled for.
In fact, after Trump’s tantrums and Biden’s Great Rout of Kabul, even the most doctrinaire European Atlanticist must face the facts: America is not a reliable hegemon, neither with respect to its domestic order (it might well turn from being an oligarchy with democratic rest features into an oligarchy with growing authoritarian features) nor regarding its commitments and behavior abroad.
-RT
However, you need to know just how fucked up America is today, and if you dance with the devil, you had best expect to be date-raped by it.
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
I have these EBP things in my body. In August or September 2021, I discovered that I could open up a comm link using them to their owners; The Domain. I was surprised when they communicated back. After a short while we honed the process and now I have a mechanism where I can ask questions and get answers. This is part of the various Q&A sessions that I have had with them. This one occurred in October 2021.
Here’s some additional questions that I have asked.
Are any members of the Domain’s “Lost Battalion” part of the MM readership?
This might be a curiosity to some, and important to others. It was asked in a question on 18OCT21. Here is the response.
Yes.
And talk about being terse! Jeeze. That’s about as helpful as knowing that there are worms in your backyard grass.
So I asked for elaboration.
It is best if the members of the "Lost Battalion" do not realize who they are at this time.
Those that view / read /respect /search for answers are on the path towards rehabilitation. But many are not ready for the answers and truth yet. Their conditioning has been far too invasive, distressing and thorough.
By their very nature they will fight against anything new or different. They will appear gruff and cantankerous at times for after all, their life on the Prison Planet has not been kind to them. As well as that is part of their very nature.
Enough said.
What do you regard as their highest truth? If there is a master key to the puzzle that we are all missing that will make the universe make sense?
Again, quick. Faster than what I was ready for.
Yes there are truths, and then there are TRUTHS. What we would regard as a "truth" would hold a completely different meaning to an person (inmate) within an artificial reality.
Humans on the earth, as well as many other creatures, are inmates.
Imagine a fish tank full of fish. There are big fish, small fish, crabs, a frog, all types of things. To them, their entire universe is that fish tank, and while they can peer through the glass, the objects in the distance are identifiable to them, but not understood by them. They are recognizable shapes, but they have no understanding of them.
That telephone on the table is just a rectangular shaped object. That light that comes on and off at times is a "natural rhythm". They don't understand them. They don't understand that the telephone is the "Bees Knees". They just don't understand.
Now, let's suppose the lady of the house waltzes in the room. She smiles like she always does, and feeds the fish with the fish food nearby, and then walks away with her gams in rhythmic motion. The fish would assume that she is part of the nature of things. That she is reliable, and dependable and that their existence depends on her. To them, she appears as a swanky goddess. To them, the "truth" is that they are part of her daily routine. It's a natural world.
But the actual TRUTH is something entirely different.
The fishbowl is a construct. The lady, as beautiful and kind as she is, is their keeper. And their very life depends on her. The fishbowl lies within a much larger universe, and there are so many things that they just do not understand about it. In fact, you can say that outside the fishbowl is a much different world. There is no stable bubbling oxygenation of water, no thermoclines, no gravel at the bottom, and no algae on the sides of the tank walls.
And if you told them this, what would it matter?
Are any of the fish going to jump out of the tank, and try to make it to the front door in the living room?
Truth is a relative thing. It depends on the person asking the question.
For the questioner...
... the truth is simple. You are in a prison. The "universe" that you see that lies outside beyond the prison, but what you observe is not what actually exists. It's something else entirely. You are not going to take a rocket ship and travel the "vast gulf of space" to another star like you think you are able. It will not be like Star Trek, or Flash Gordon. It is similar to what you observe (from afar), but decidedly and functionally different. As the universe that you view is not what it actually is. This is not hokum.
Outside the prison walls is a universe that does not at all resemble what you think it does. That's a truth that you must accept.
I have been having these images of what I once was. A Mades Escapleon. Are these perceptions correct?
Again, a personal question.
My images are a comically gnome / dwarfish / kind of lizardly elfin figure with a big belly and a kind of green and white Santa Claus style outfit. Pretty bizarre eh?
Your mind constructs images that you have encountered during this life. The constructs an image of what you would expect yourself to be. That is the case right now.
There are multiple species in co-habitation in the "Old Empire". Many resemble the images of faeries, goblins, dwarves, and so on and so forth. However the images and the presentation of what you have in popular media and literature is not the real and actual depictions of these archetypes nor is it a depiction of the societies that they occupy.
Mades Escapleon was not a human archetype. He became one when he entered General Population in fear to escape The Domain when we took over the local command and control facilities at the administration center. Your depiction of him, however comical, is actually pretty close to his (garbled. interruption. Not clear.). You would not recognize him as storybook fable type of character. But rather as a smallish, ugly businessman with an abrupt manner, and a sneering demeanor.
The administration and command and control operation for the earth planet within this prison planet is inside the moon in a large void that resides adjacent to the offset metallic hot core. We (The Domain) have taken over this facility and now use this region for our own purposes. However there are many members of the "Old Empire" that did not egress into the General Population when we seized the administration complex. they still live there inside the cavity. To you, they might appear as those fairy tale book characters.
Your office was large, and was in the most predominant structures within the void. Keep in mind that Mades Escapleon was just a singular (series of) incarnations that you maintained as a (not clear) role for his majesty (not clear / garbled / not important). You need not get too upset or worry about your past. The incarnations in the general population of the Prison planet system has changed you.
Consider these thoughts just echoes of a former life that no longer has any importance to who you are today.
The Lost Battalion living in human form. Do the Mantids interact with them?
From my previous Q&A…
“Unfortunately most humans are prevented from configuring their “stage upwards / higher form / above non-physical” bodies. This is a Mantid (sic.) directive. This is why inmates are quickly shuttled off to “Heaven”. So they cannot shape change their “migration paths / attunement centers / organ clusters” to fit other forms.”
The Lost Battalion living in human form. Do the Mantids interact with them? Or are they outside of the Mantids’ directives/supervision? I believe the Mantids supervise every human or at least monitor them at death. If so, then that suggests the Mantids know where the members of the Lost Battalion are. This drills down into some inconvenient questions, which I assume both you and the Commander is very much aware of.
The answer came in the form of sliding events, which I really don’t want to describe right now, as I am tired. And I need to get some sleep.
Think of it is a kind of layered deck of cards that you push to the side and draw off the top card, and then another appears and so on and so forth….
Yes. The Mantids (sic.) interact with all inmates in General Population. There are Mantid(s) (sic.) associated with every human (or mammal) form as this is an artificial construct that needs to be maintained while in the Prison Complex.
The forms that the Domain "Lost Battalion" were in when they were captured are not the forms that they are inhabiting now. These forms are not "doll bodies". But rather, they are specially constructed "skin suits" for use within the General Population chambers in the Prison Complex. Some are human, some are in other mammal bodies. Each "skin suit" has an associated Mantid (sic.) to maintain it, operate it, and make sure that it follows the pre-birth world-line template (sic.)
Since the Domain interacts and communicates with the Mantids (sic.) we are able to identify where the elements of the "Lost Battalion" are. We know where they exist within the Prison Complex at any moment, and we work with the Mantids (sic.) as necessary towards our end goals and directives.
The Mantids (sic.) control the "skin suits". They maintain and help follow the progression of life events along the pre-birth world-line template (sic.).
But these Mantids (sic.) are not the same as the creatures (Mantids Prime) that occupy roles within the "Heaven" that was constructed as part of this Prison Complex.
Both the Mantids (sic.) and Mantids Prime (sic.) that occupy heaven are of the same genetic classification, however they are totally different in their operational parameters.
[1] The Mantids Prime (sic.) continue to follow the "Old Empire" directives and operate within "Heaven" as if the Domain does not exist.
[2] While the Mantids within the Prison Complex work with us and are aligned with our end goals.
We of The Domain do not venture within the "Heaven" constructed sub-universe. To do so would require us to go through the electromagnetic washing of our very being and souls. So we have never visited the "Heaven" constructs. Thus we have never communicated with the Mantid Primes (sic.)
Thus, when a member of the "Lost Battalion" dies it is immediately shuttled off to the "Tunnel of Light", enters "Heaven" and is met by Mantid Prime (sic.) caretakers that have a directive to immediately recycle back with a pre-defined (nasty) pre-birth world-line template.
Then upon the General Population in the Prison Complex, "our" Mantids (sic.) take over and work with us to our end goals.
How are cats not part of the inmates!?
From my previous Q&A…
“Felines follow the same general behavior rules as humans do. Except that felines are not inmates in the Prison Planet Complex.”
How are cats not part of the inmates!? Are they visitors from elsewhere? This suggests that they are pretty advanced. In fact by my limited interaction with my feral cats, in some respects they display more human behavior than most humans. I actually learnt kindness and trust in ways which surprised me.
This was an interesting response.
(Pause.) I have to get back to you on this.
So, what will happen is that the Commander will go off and do his / her / it research or communication, and get back with me. Probably at an odd point in time.
Four weeks later. His response…
Felines, not only ordinary house cats, have a quantum makeup that differ substantially from that of the inmate archetypes that were developed when the Prison Complex was first established. You can think of it as oil vs. water, or Windows computer operating system, and the Lunix operating system. Or you can think of it as an electrical heater as opposed to a kerosene heater. It's completely different.
But it is more than that.
The feline archetype did not approve of making any inmate version archetypes. Every time an attempt was made to create a feline prison suit, it was thwarted and blocked. Not only because it was much, much harder to do, but also become the felines themselves did not want that to happen.
You cannot contain or constrain a cat. They are their own free entities, and they value this aspect of their lives in the must fundamental manner. They actually view most other forms of physical manifested life as "below them". They would not permit a "lower" species to create a genetic manipulation of their archetype.
So it did not happen.
When the first efforts were undertaken to do so, there were all sorts of problems and issues. Eventually, the engineers and researchers of the "Old Domain" gave up. They "shelved" the feline project and excluded it from the catalog of inmate skin suits.
Now, initially, they did report these issues to their superiors. Each and every time their superiors demanded that they work harder. Eventually, they decided not to say anything and the Prison Complex was opened up without feline archetype modification.
There were side projects in which archetypes were developed and failed. Eventually, the researchers told their superiors that it was not advisable as the felines would find a way to escape from the Prison Complex. This was an excuse that the upper management accepted, and so all research was filed away and forgotten. And you now have this situation that persists to this day.
Your point about trans species migrations.
Dogs and elephants etc may be equally intelligent as humans, just limited by their containers. So a dog when in a human behavior has all the same emotional and mental intelligence when freed from the limits so imposed. This suggests that emotions and intelligence is similar across specie across the worlds.
If true then many characteristics are cultural or biological. (I’m thinking your Commander can absorb the culture of humans because he has access to ALL of your memories lol. But this rabbit hole I will leave to you. For me it’s more benign than it looks.)
Trans-species migrations happen all the time. It's fairly common outside of the Prison Complex universe. However, there are limitations, and favoritism in the body selection and group quantum clusters that make a favorite type of incarnation more desirable than others.
In the Prison Planet environment, however, it is a completely different situation. The mantids in Heaven (mantid prime) make the decisions and give permissions or not to allow or not this kind of inter-specie transfer experience. Individual IS-BE's have very little say in the outcome of that request.
One of the problems that can arise is when one species, say a predatory insect species, inhabits a modified human skin suit for the General Population in the Prison Complex. Their personality will stay the same, but will adapt to the new skin suit and environment.
These old previous species behaviors, while natural in other environment could end up being toxic in the human environment. Thus it is one of the reasons why we (The Domain) put a stop to other civilizations dumping their undesirables into the Prison Complex for administrative punishment.
Does your ownership of planet Earth come from right of conquest? Some sort of Terra Nullius?
Continuing on the Q&A. This particular question was asked late at night after I finally got my young daughter to sleep. I then sat down and started the process.
We created the master universe that the Prison Complexes and it's pocket universe inhabits. We established the creatures, the plants, the planets, the stars and the entire operation of everything. At that time, The Domain was an earlier incarnation, and we all were learning and establishing fundamentals and boundaries for the universe.
We let general chaos expand, and as a result the master universe became something that we do not like to see. We held a series of meeting in this regard and decided to secure all errant elements and maintain a most basic and fundamental foundational aspect of control.
What is going on with your "Milkyway galaxy" is that we are suppressing the unstable elements in favor of unified control according to our most basic principles.
Rather than a territorial expansion and seizure of this galaxy, we are instead working behind the scenes where possible to stabilize errant civilizations. When we cannot do so, we secure the civilizations by force. This is what we did with the "old empire".
In all cases the civilizations are then scrubbed of the negative attributes and problematic behaviors and permitted to operate within a very broad set of guidelines that will prevent a relapse of dangerous behaviors.
If Earthlings are in the position of native Americans who faced annilation at the hands of the Great White Father, what do we do?
Morning inquiry.
Fear is the problem. Certainly there is reason to be concerned, as earth history is rife with stories of conquest. But the earth is a unique environment peopled with many vicious and malevolent / selfish / profiteering entities. This is NOT (there was a great vibrational rocking with this particular word. Almost like a earthquake) the norm in the "master universe".
This Prison Complex was derived and came from a particularly unique culture of war-like entities that formed a society that we refer to as the "Old Empire". So this war-like, profiteering society took their worst (and their best) citizenry and locked them up inside this prison complex. The lives that you have experienced here, and the histories that you have experienced here are excessive and extreme.
That being said, the "Old Empire" being warlike and aggressive is in itself an extreme manifestation. It's not the normal.
These extreme manifestations of society crop up throughout the universe, and that is what The Domain is active in suppressing. There are approximately two to three really problematic civilizations per galaxy, and the larger galaxies such as yours might hold from seven to twelve (or fourteen) such societies.
Your fears are rational because they are based on your known histories.
This is what you can expect;
[1] The "Old Empire" has been purged of it's "darkest" elements. It is now on the mend and is turning into a calmer, quieter and more peaceful society. Though certain elements of that society had to be forcefully amputated.
[2] By the time the Prison Complex is fully actuated under The Domain control, many trapped IS-BE's will be able to return to their former relationships and lives in the "Old Empire" or elsewhere as the need be.
[3] Prior to this happening, however, there has to occur numerous events prior to the release of the inmates.
[3A] Sentience sorting. We cannot permit those sentience's that are prone to dangerous behaviors to exist outside of a monitored area on their own. Instead they will be granted supervised parole, and observed and watched so that they cannot unduly influence their surroundings negatively.
[3B] Scrubbing of the skin suits. The attire of the entities will all have to be remanufactured to fit their natural archetypes. Obviously STS , DIS, and SFA entities (under parole) would posses "parole" skin suits, while STO entities would possess natural archetype skin suits.
STO = Service to others
STS = Service to Self
SFA = Service for another
DIS = Disjointed
[3C] Memory re-injection. We will attempt (and succeed) in the restoration of all memories.
[3D] Phased release. The members of the lost battalion will be the first major group to be released. Followed by STO individuals. Then a phased system of SFA individual consciousnesses. The last would be the very dangerous STS and DIS consciousnesses.
[3E] The Most dangerous. The most problematic entities and the highest probability of disruption / destructive abilities / and borderline evil entities would be either recycled or banished.
[3E-1] Those banished would be sent to the pocket universe known as "Heaven" which is a pocket universe within the pocket universe of the Prison Complex. There they would be locked in place and stay there until a sufficient method can be arranged to rehabilitate them.
[3E-2] Those recycled would be reduced to basic components through a system resembling the "tunnel of light" until they are rendered inert.
The questioner need not fear any of this. The questioner is slated for a phased release, after memory restoration.
If things are less dark, then how do we work or trade together?
I assume that this concerns what is presently going on earth-side and the question relates to the next few years. As such, I queried it that way. Morning probe at 9am.
The fears abound. But things will return to normal sea lane shipping, and normal levels of commerce. However, there will be a decrease in the volume of the products, the type and mixture of products, as well as the relative utility and life of those products.
This is something that is well documented on our side.
We see and anticipate a "new normal" after a seven year (or so) adjustment period.
Some nations will be impacted the most. Such as the United States, the UK and parts of Europe. Others, many others, will not be. And they will continue their lives as if the disruption was a trivial matter.
Those nations or societies that will be impacted the most will undergo severe and abrupt societal readjustments. Mostly it will be triggered by energy utility, currency or the inflation related to, and inherent and intentional balkanization of the citizenry.
Next group of questions – Some important points
If I cannot understand the question, I cannot communicate to the Commander. Further, I need to be able to understand what he is communicating. Anything that lies outside of my knowledge or experience is impossible to communicate with. We have to have a common frame of reference, and then be able to use that reference to form a basis of understanding.
This next bath of questions took me back.
Heavy in technical jargon.
A large number of multi-part questions.
Coming from a non-influencer who didn’t even bother with a singular donation.
A disregard to the effort all this takes.
As they did not at all follow my request that only one question be asked and that it be put in a clear and easy way for me to communicate to. This was the question…
Here are some late & difficult but revolution-assisting questions:
*Are Clifford Algebras with real-value coefficients a serviceable mathematical format for representation for reality?
*Is there a better type of math to use? If so, what? Otherwise:
*What is the sign aka signature (+ or -) of the squares of the basis vectors of the spatial dimensions?
*Is this a convention or is it physically significant?
*Are there other such dimensions with the same signature, e.g. “proper time”?
*How many such space-like dimensions are there?
*and what is their significance?
*How many dimensions of opposite signature to the spatial ones are there, e.g. relativistic time and other time-like dimensions?
*What can be said about their role – e.g. do they concern nuclear reactions or allow for branching time-lines?
*Are there effectively null-square (zero-square) dimensions formed from the sum and differences of pairs of + and – signature dimensions, e.g. light-cones or “conformal” projective dimensions?
*Are there null-square dimensions independent of the + and – square dimensions?
*Are null-square dimensions your home environment?
*Are there applications of null-square dimensions, e.g. portals between realms or amnesia devices?
*Does thermodynamic entropy create “Akashic records”?
*What principles relate thermodynamic entropy (heat diffusion) and information from physical histories (wave equation); are they analogous to exchanging a + square for a – square dimension, (or relativistic time for proper time, or time (t) for imaginary time (it)),
*...and if so, can this “Wick rotation” be done in both directions so as to allow passing from our physical realm to the “afterlife” and back?
16 fucking technical specialized questions! Are you fucking kidding me?
Now you know, this son of a bitch did not give me a donation, nor did he add anything to MM aside from saying that the posted art was beautiful. So what? It’s beautiful. I know that.
Duh!
Now, for these questions, I had to do some research. Then I had to understand it. Finally, I had to communicate it to the Commander in the “easily digestible form”.
Understand the language.
Understand the physics involved.
Phrase it so that I understood the questions when I read it.
Query question by question to the Commander.
Communicate that query.
Transcribe the answer.
Double check the answers for uniformity.
All in all, I figure months of dedicated study, if not years. Then weeks, to months of asking these questions.
That’s one FUCK of a lot of work.
So, I sent an email to this clown.
I said.
Listen guy, let me make something perfectly clear. If I cannot understand the questions, then it cannot be communicated properly to the Commander. Some of these questions I can ask.
And another thing. I am doing this for free.
Look at the God damn bulk of questions you asked. Do you have any god damn idea what stress I go through in this procedure. Have some fucking compassion, or at least throw a donation my way. Jeeze!
To respond to this query, I need to fully understand the question.
Remember. With information comes responsibility. You are now responsible in the dissemination of this information.
He responded.
Frankly, by all indications it seemed like you were a whole team getting paid by the word by some Chinese intelligence agency, so I gave you some of the best open-source intel I could – that 300-reference COVID origin paper on unz.com and the rexresearch.com technology archive.
I have also tried to suggest ways you might increase your rhetorical effectiveness, though it’s often hard to point such things out without giving offense.
I don’t get paid for anything myself, I’m still recovering from repeated heatstroke from labor in a SE US sweatshop and don’t have funds to spare, unfortunately. I wasn’t aware how your link depends on your understanding or the effort required, my apologies.
That’s an apology? By insulting me? And still he’s not even going to toss me money for a cup of coffee for the seven months it would take to answer his questions?
He continued…
Nevertheless, the topics of my questions could yield very important intelligence, understanding of principles behind advanced technology and even the nature of reality.
I have found them worth spending many years of study, but for the same reason it is not easy to briefly summarize them. Here’s an attempt, still too long:
***
http://www.rudyrucker.com/blog/2012/07/28/transrealism-interview-with-leon-marvell/#comment-50789
[Notes on Cabbalistic significance of the whirling double cone in projecting between higher and lower worlds]
“the double-cone’s vortex form can be made by swinging a rod by its center point so that the ends describe circles” [doing so associated with sudden destructive tornado]
“Another instance of a form similar to the double-cone occurs in Bruce Moen’s exploration of what the Monroe Institute calls “Focus 27”, though the cones are more like bells or hyperboloids. He describes a large, antenna-like, horizontal structure of this double-cone form whose function is to compress souls (which he says look like cocktail shrimp or cheese curls) so that they can reincarnate without excess awareness, which would lead to sensory overload.” [expanding the center point of a double-cone into a circle results in a hyperboloid]
“Yeats had a more interesting vision of the importance of the double-cone – he saw helical gyres on the surface of the cones as tracing out the history of every mind… ‘The mind … has a precise movement … this form is the gyre.’ This was the origin of the famous lines: ‘Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer; ….” [The poet W.B. Yeats was a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the most influential group in the development of modern occultism.]
***
Geometric Algebra (GA, real-valued Clifford Algebras, a.k.a. hypercomplex numbers) gives the only mostly-comprehensible-to-me account not only of higher spatial / temporal dimensions, but of physics in general. One of the best things about it is that nearly every paper using GA explains it from first principles before going on to use it for physics or computer science. Most physics papers in other fields seem to take a positive joy in obscure math and impenetrable jargon. I’ll try here to give an even less mathematically difficult account of some of GAs implications than most GA papers.
Given a set of n mutually orthogonal basis vectors, one vector for each independent dimension, a space of 2^n quantities results from considering all possible combinations of these basis vectors multiplied together. For instance taking pairs of vectors from a 5D space gives 10 possible planes of rotation, 4D space 6 planes of rotation, while in 3D there are only 3 independent planes of rotation. (The numbers of other combinations for n dimensions go as the n-th row of Pascals triangle or binomial.) For orthogonal vectors such as the basis vectors of a space, the order of multiplication determines the sign of the result, so: d1 d2 = -d2 d1. This can be interpreted as being a rotation in the plane defined by the two vectors, either in one direction (d1 -> d2) or the other, “negative” direction (d2 -> d1).
Sums of all the 2^n elements, each weighted by a different scale factor give “multivectors”, which are generalizations of complex numbers.
Each of the basis vectors will have a positive or negative square. (Vectors’ squares are always scalars, that is, real numbers.) In conventional relativity the basis vectors squares’ signs, also called “signatures” are (+ – – – ) or (+ + + -), with the different sign from the others belonging to time. When plugging into the Pythagorean theorem, the square of time can cancel out the squares of the spatial dimensions, giving a distance of zero when the spatial distance equals the time interval (time multiplied by c to give all units in meters). This happens for anything moving at the speed of light. The zero interval is the amount of perceived or “proper” time for a light wave traveling between any two points. This light-speed type of path is also called a “null geodesic”. For any given point in space and time, there is a “past light cone” of places that could be seen from that point, called a “cone” because it spreads out as one goes back further in time. Likewise, for each point at a given time there is a “future light cone” of places from which an event at that place and time can be seen. The “cone” terminology comes from looking at 2D plus time, each cross section of the cone is then a 2D circle of points. (It’s easier to imagine the future light cone as pond ripples spreading out from a dropped pebble. The past light cone is like reversing the film so the ripples converge to throw the pebble out of the pond. In 3D, it looks sort of like glass onions turning inside-out. Placehoder: Transactional Interpretation of QM, Carver Mead’s Collective Electrodynamics) Mathematiclly the points on the past light cone are defined by the spatial separation, r, and the time-times-lightspeed, ct, so: (ct)^2 = r^2 .
Now it is possible and actually quite useful for computer graphics to add a pair of dimensions with signature (+ -) to the usual spatial ones (+ + +). The sum and difference of the extra dimensions give an alternate basis for these two dimensions, but with the basis vectors squaring to zero (0 0). These “null dimensions” are called “origin” and “infinity”. A projection from this augmented space down to 3D allows many other structures besides points and directions to be represented by vectors in the 5D space. For instance, multiplying 3 points gives a circle passing through those points, 4 points gives a sphere. If one of those points is the point at infinity, then the product is a line or a plane respectively. The other advantages of this way of doing things are too many to list here. This “conformal” scheme is actually quite easy to visualize and learn to use without getting into abstruse math by using the free GAViewer visualization software and its tutorials.
An interesting thing about the ( +++, +- ) signature algebra is that it is the same as one that has been <a href=”http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0601194″> proposed</a> by José B. Almeida as an extension of the usual 3D+t (+++-) “Minkowsi space” of relativity, augmenting the usual external time (-) with a second sort of time having positive square and describing internal or “proper time”, (which in relativity will be measured differently by a moving external observer). But if it is assumed that everything in the universe is about the same age, then they have comparable proper time coordinates, so proper time can be used as a universal coordinate corresponding to the universe’s temporal radius. This gives a sort of preferred reference frame for the universe, which is ordinarily considered impossible. In this 5D scheme, not just light but also massive particles follow null geodesics, and from that single assumption can be deduced relativity, quantum mechanics, electromagnetism, and in addition dark matter, the big bang and the spatial expansion of the universe seem to be illusions.
The math is also easier than the usual warped-space general relativity, instead using flat euclidean space and having light, etc. move more slowly near mass, that is, treating gravitational fields as being regions of higher refractive index than regular space.
Quantum mechanics is also much much easier to visualize using GA. For instance, the behavior of the electron can be described fully by treating it as a point charge moving in a tight helix at light speed around its average path (a “jittery motion”, or in German: “zitterbewegung”). The handedness of the helix is the electron spin, the curvature of the helix is the mass, the angle of the particle around the helix is the phase.
Geometric Algebra is useful in all areas of physics and computer modeling of physics. GA has been successfully applied to robot path planning, electromagnetic field simulation, image processing for object recognition and simulation, signal processing, rigid body dynamics, chained rotations in general and many other applications. It gives very clear, terse and generally applicable, practically useful descriptions in diverse areas using a single notation and body of techniques.
Basic Geometric Algebra (GA) visual introduction:
https://slehar.wordpress.com/2014/03/18/clifford-algebra-a-visual-introduction/
Interactive visualization software, includes 5D (3+2D) Conformal Geometric Algebra (CGA)
https://geometricalgebra.org/gaviewer_download.html
Tutorial for CGA using GAviewer software:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265065144_GABLE_A_GAViewer_Tutorial_for_Geometric_Algebra
Thorough math/physics intro:
https://www.av8n.com/physics/clifford-intro.htm
Good old intro from the top GA study group:
http://www.mrao.cam.ac.uk/~clifford/pages/introduction.htm
***
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wick_rotation
replacing inverse temperature, kT (Boltzmann’s constant times temperature) in thermodynamic equations with: -i f hbar (negative imaginary unit (square root of [-1]) times frequency times Planck’s constant divided by 2 pi) (both of which have dimensions of energy), converts the heat diffusion equation to Schrodinger’s wave equation (the fundamental equation of quantum mechanics). Frequency and time are inverses of each other; Wick rotation is more often expressed using imaginary time than imaginary frequency. My research shows that frequency should be regarded as primary and time should be seen as being derived from frequency.
* entropy= heat, and entropy=information: they are the same thing. Therefore since entropy always increases (2nd law of thermodynamics), information always increases and accumulates in the universe, giving a very scrambled record of the history of the universe. This can potentially be unscrambled using a Wick rotation
***
https://www.specularium.org/
Peter Carroll, noted as the originator of “Chaos Magic”, has for some years been working on physics rather than magic, in particular a scheme that uses three dimensions of time. I corresponded with him over a few months last year regarding some of the relations to GA, in particular the possibility that each spatial-temporal dimension pair would form an alternate basis with two null-square dimensions. I can’t say I understand his hypersphere cosmology or 3D time theories, but they certainly do resonate with my intuition.
*
Anyway, I hope that’s more interesting, edifying & enlightening than burdensome — you owe me nothing, of course, but perhaps it may lead to some profit for you down the line.
Just a bunch of cut and paste from the internet. Supposedly, I guess to give the impression that he knows something.
Christ. This information has to be USED. I am not some novelty for your own God Damn personal comfort and queries. I fully expect you to USE this information and make GOOD USE of it, disseminate it, and do good works with it.
I am not a novelty.
I am not some yokel that goes round and round in a hamster cage, just for some novelty questions.
I am NOT doing this easily and for fun.
It’s a labor.
It’s also painful, physically exhausting, and a chore. Thus I get angry when people treat me, and what I am doing trivially. You WILL respect me. You WILL show respect to The Domain, and you WILL behave when you visit MM. Or I will fucking get rid of you, and if you still persist, I will make it a permanent stay in the corn field.
Are Clifford Algebras with real-value coefficients a serviceable mathematical format for representation for reality?
Is there a better type of math to use? If so, what?
And the answer…
This is an insincere request made by a malevolent entity. They do not seek an answer, but rather are desirous in trying to "trip you up", "run snipe hunts" to occupy your time and labor. Any information provided will not even be read. Nor will it be disseminated or used.
Future associations with it will be problematic. It is advisable to sever all communication channels and avoid them.
…
So on Monday 25OCT21 I severed all communication with this person. I sent him a response to his comment and gave him 45 minutes to respond. I was being generous.
I am a contributor to both the UNZ and The Saker. This you should know.
You should also understand who I am and why I am doing this. Obviously you do not.
Long time readers will recognize what an insult it is to say that I work for the Chinese government. That alone is enough to send you to the cornfield.
But I am not going to do that. I think you are trivially intelligent but have the social skills of a goat.
KNOW WHO YOU ARE DEALING WITH.
Your lack of perception, veiled insults, and general garrulousness is irritating to me. I am too old for this bullshit. Therefore you are banned. Good bye.
Then I went and blocked his entire city from accessing MM. Not just him alone. Then another MM follower Ultan responded…
Mr Man. You are very much loved and respected by those of us out here who have been reading and listening to you for years, and have actually taken the time to read and think about your experiences while comparing / contrasting those experiences with our own. Rather than, say, trying to fit your narrative into our narrative, or what we think we know about reality.
And in the case of this character above, failing very badly. But a classic example of wooden thinking if ever there were. And let’s not even get into the subtle hints about you being a paid liar. Or other contributors for that matter. I mean, for all the errrr, intellectual nitty gritty (for want of a better expression), he doesn’t even know anything about free energy and the plasma-fusion core.
Good call, IMHO.
And please do not let these guys get you down– there’s a lot of messed up people out there looking for answers. You’ve placed the pearls for all who have eyes to see, some of us have scooped them up; let the herd blunder on toward the intellectual abattoir.
My response…
A big thank you for the uplifting response.
You know that I hate banning people, but if I find myself feeling bad by something that someone said, I do not analyze it. I just throw them into the gutter.
MM is not for everyone. It is not for the general population to visit and ohh and ahh at. It is only for a few very special people.
People like you, the guy from Ohio, Florida, Australia, South America, Northern Europe and Israel as well as the guy from Africa. There’s women from France and the Caribbean, and Georgia that mean the world to me. And it’s for you guys that I keep pumping this stuff out day in and day out. You guys are so very, very special to me. So special. You have no idea.
Lately when I see people get on my forum, on my site, and lay down insults about what I say, write or report. They lay down insults about me and why I do what I do, it hurts. And honestly the world would be a much better place if we all see that when we are hurt it’s a real thing. It’s just like that video of the dish breaking.
The dish is gone. You had a dish. Now you don’t. So good bye.
Who them responded back to me with…
All part of the ‘demonisation and dehumanisation of the other’ phenomena that’s accelerated thanks to ‘social media’ over the past few years, Mr Man. And by design, of course.
Folks entrapped emotionally in a circle-jerk by these very advanced algorithms tend to forget that on a cyber-forum you are dealing with another human being– that’s what the word ‘forum’ means! A place to gather and discuss anything and everything; and just like in the real forums of old– insult anybody or try and force your own peculiar views on others in that forum and you’d be laughed out of the atrium, at best, or kicked out on your ear with a dagger in your arse, at worst.
Folks, free men, knew how to behave, back then. And ‘natural selection’, let’s say, did away with the socially retarded. (Check out what woulda happened to you in ancient Sparta if you insulted another person or his views in a disrespectful manner. And that was just the warriors/free-men, alone– men and women.)
But in cyberspace it’s easy to remain anonymous and dismiss opposing views to yours no matter how rationally put or well-intended with the utmost disrespect– or get angry when your views aren’t upheld in a way that you’d like; shills, bots, NPCs, non-humans; trolls; paid disinfo; and much worse….we’ve seen it all before. Such is what passes for ‘discourse’ in cyberspace. Again, all by very clever design.
So keep ’em coming, IMHO– and if one day you decide to pull the plug, I at least have downloaded your classics to keep forever and reread at my leisure.
So thanks again for that.
And I commented…
It’s always a pleasure to hear your kind words and support. FYI, I didn’t just ban this guy. I banned his entire city. Chinese-style. Anyone in his city now gets a notice when they try to visit MM.
It says “Your geographic region has been banned from accessing this site by the site administrator.”
And this was the response.
😂, oh man, blocking the regional I.P. address? F that; why don’t you call up your Domain contact, fire up his or her doomsday device, and plough the furrows in the remains of that dump with salt while you’re at it, Scipio Africanus style.
How’s that for polite debate! Respect the Metallicman and you can live and let live; disrespect him, however, and the Rods of God are a-comin your way.
Duck, you sucker, 😂.
Ah.
Don’t piss me off.
Never the less, I did actually ask the question.
It took me days to present, unpack, translate, transcribe and review. Here it is.
Keep in mind, that I still don’t understand the question. To me it is a question on the tools of a methodology related to utilization of a system that could be used to describe the nature of a universe. And thus I presented it as such.
Here’s the result.
The use of mathematics to describe the universe that the prison complex is part of makes sense from the point of view of the inmates. However, it is a very awkward and feeble methodology. The better methodology is a simpler pictorial representation.
The prison complex operates in a pocket universe that exists inside a general "master" universe. With in this pocket universe are secondary universes known collectively as "Heavens". Each universe possesses different rules, different environments, and different ways of operating.
Here we must assume that the question is in regards to whether Clifford Algebra can help describe the nature of the "physical universe", which is functionally different in operation from the "master" universe that is resides within.
(Now, I hope that I get this transcribed properly. It was parsed out slowly and carefully for me, and I really still do not understand it.)
The problem with using this methodology to describe the prison universe; the "pocket" universe that resides inside the "master" universe is that it relies on the notion that time does exist.
Here, time is the scalar component of a Clifford space. In Clifford Space geometry, "time" results from properties of space itself. This comes about when one properly uses the higher dimensional formalism afforded by Clifford’s geometric algebra.
At that, it can be viewed as an intrinsic geometric property of three-dimensional space without the need for the specific addition of a fourth dimension. (As people tend to do, referring "time" as the fourth dimension.) Thus, it is quite attractive to those seeking mathematical solutions to the geometry of the artificial prison universe.
Clifford algebra is a unification of real and complex numbers, (quaternion and vector algebra) which reflects the intrinsic properties of space-time.
(I wrote down "qu-an-er-non", as I try to phonically assemble words that are new to me, but the closest apparently useful word is quaternion.)
The reason why Clifford algebra is attractive is because it provides a unified, standard, elegant and open language and tool for numerous complex mathematical and physical theories. By using it, engineering principles can be devised to provide solutions within the prison planet universe.
If you base everything / mathematics / physics / engineering on the four basic principles and Clifford algebra, all basic physical equations within the prison planet universe can be derived.
And it stopped there! Talk about being maddening.
I really haven’t a clue as to what he is talking about, or whether or not the question was actually answered. So I “prodded” for “more”. (Don’t force me to explain. It’s a way that I communicate using the EBP.) And the result was more “forceful”, and “stronger”.
The logical relations between equations can all be reconstructed using Clifford Algebra.
Additionally all of the solutions of the more typical equations can be solved.
This system does explain the concepts of space-time and quantum theory.
As such, it is a useful, by some, methodology to help better understand the nature of the prison complex pocket universe.
The queried answer is; Yes.
Clifford Algebra, using real value coefficients CAN (there was a syllabic emphasis in the forth tone) be used AS A serviceable (used as an italicized image) solution to a mathematical representation of the reality as experienced by the inmates within the prison complex pocket universe.
At this point, I really wanted to get some specific details. So after I transcribed the answers, I parsed them out for detail.
Q: You said “The logical relations between equations can all be reconstructed using Clifford Algebra.” Do you mean “most”, or can I use the word “all”?
The proper term is "all". However, there are some mathematical "tricks" that need to be employed on some of the solutions. Not every "trick" or technique is well known. This is an esoteric avenue for the specialists in this field.
This should not be your concern.
Q: You said “…all of the solutions of the more typical equations can be solved. ” Again do you mean “all” or “most”, and why did you use the adjective “typical”?
The more accurate translation is "most of the functional equations can be solved, and those that cannot can be 'bridged' using mathematical 'work-arounds'".
Again, this is not your realm of expertise. Those with the necessary skills and expertise now possess the understanding that they are on the right track and moving in the proper direction. In truth, there are some valid and appreciate work in this field by those of that interest and skill level.
It need not be your concern.
The questioner also put up this part 2 of the question. It is, rather, if the Clifford Algebra cannot explain the nature of the reality universe, what can? And the questions ran like this…
Otherwise:
*What is the sign aka signature (+ or -) of the squares of the basis vectors of the spatial dimensions? Is this a convention or is it physically significant?
Are there other such dimensions with the same signature, e.g. “proper time”?
How many such space-like dimensions are there, and what is their significance?
*How many dimensions of opposite signature to the spatial ones are there, e.g. relativistic time and other time-like dimensions?
What can be said about their role – e.g. do they concern nuclear reactions or allow for branching time-lines?
*Are there effectively null-square (zero-square) dimensions formed from the sum and differences of pairs of + and – signature dimensions, e.g. light-cones or “conformal” projective dimensions?
Are there null-square dimensions independent of the + and – square dimensions?
Are null-square dimensions your home environment? Are there applications of null-square dimensions, e.g. portals between realms or amnesia devices?
*Does thermodynamic entropy create “Akashic records”? What principles relate thermodynamic entropy (heat diffusion) and information from physical histories (wave equation); are they analogous to exchanging a + square for a – square dimension, (or relativistic time for proper time, or time (t) for imaginary time (it)), and if so, can this “Wick rotation” be done in both directions so as to allow passing from our physical realm to the “afterlife” and back?
Because the answer was substantive in the first part of the question, I did not proceed with the second part.
However, I think that the Commander wasn’t clear enough to meet the precise needs of the questioner. So I wanted to get some much better answers and some “meat” that I could provide herein. So I got myself a quiet spot, and a cup full of warm water. And started transcribing. And it does not make sense to me, but here it is…
Q: In Unified Field Theory, how does this Clifford Algebra fit?
And you know, that I am shoot wildly in the dark. I haven’t a clue as to what I am asking or how it would all fit together.
Many are trying to understand the nature of the pocket universe that surrounds the prison complex. The unified field theory is one such mechanism.There is Way-Al scale invariant (?) methodology, Kal-uze-al five dimensional space time, Hamilton Formalism and the gauge unified field theory. Each one has it's pluses and minuses in utility.
Clifford Algebra is a methodology used to help resolve numerous paradoxes. These include the Twins, Effer-Fest, and the ladder paradoxes.
There are other scientists on other prison planets within the entire prison complex that are proceeding on their versions of these theories. Which is why we are very aware of the questions that you ask.
The strongest attribute / characteristic of the Clifford Algebra methodology is the utilization of the Nonlinear Spinor Equation. There is the Nonlinear Dark field, the electromagnetic Interaction field and the interactions with classical mechanics and with the Lorentz Transformation. All of these show usefulness and utility. The key to understanding the use of Clifford Algebra is the use of Spinor property utility.
You need the Inter-grable Conditions of the Eli-Gen Equation, and the Curvilinear Coordinate System solution.
Q: Are these hints or directions for the mathematical solutions using Clifford Algebra geometry for unified theory and space-time resolution?
Yes.
The way to proceed is to develop Inter-grable Conditions for the Dir-Ack, and the Pauli equations.You will then develop a "New Model" for Strong Interactions. Then, with a strong understanding of the Light-Cone Coordinate System, you can then begin the simplification of Einstein Tensor.
From there, you would then work on the Linearization of Einstein Field Equation. (He said it twice as if it was important.) Linearization of Einstein Field Equation. Then work on the dynamics of observed stars and all should be obvious to the researcher.
It looks like a “road map” for flushing out unresolved aspects of the Clifford Algebraic solution.
Honestly guys. I don’t know if he is “pulling my leg”, or just messing with me. This is just a bunch of disjointed statements that I just cannot figure out heads or tails over. I only hope that someone in the MM audience can understand it. In words that are new to me I used phonics to spell them out.
And that’s it. I am spent. I feel like an empty shell casing after completing final exams during my university years.
The next morning I asked this question;
Was I too harsh in perma-banning the questioner?
No.
The questioner is a DIS sentience. He would do nothing with the information. He would fail to disseminate it. He would only nod with a smirk that you fell for his "trap" / ploy / snare / amusement.
By allowing him to continue to visit MM, you would be empowering his sickness / illness / distortion of self.
It would be akin to allowing a family alcoholic member a bottle of whiskey a day just to keep him sedated and out of harms way. When the real solution would be to push him out of the house and lock the doors so that he cannot come in.
Note to the readers that it was my decision to ban him. I was not ordered to do so.
In the late 1940’s one of your vehicles were downed in Roswell New Mexico. From this event we obtained the document “Alien Interview”. Can you please tell us what downed your vehicle?
At that time we believed that it was downed by a disruption of it's operational field by natural energy discharge / lightning discharge. We learned however, that it was more complex than that. The real reason was the radar equipment that was being tested at the Roswell base.
The captured (Nazi) German radars Flakleit G, Freya, Mammut and Wassermann were being used and studied at the American Roswell, NM base at the time of the crash.
We are unsure which particular radar was the actual culprit at this time, but that is immaterial, as all the radars possess interference properties that we have since had to counter.
During the crash, the two (minor) officers lost their doll bodies immediately and they returned to their operational staging locations. The Commander was captured and secured, and you know what happened after that.
Regarding the document titled “Domain Expeditionary Force Rescue Mission.”. Is this document really from Matilda? Does Airl have knowledge of it?
I posted this question. And I was told…
Read the book, and then ask the question again.
Sheech!
What does this mean? Does that mean that they obtain all my impressions, and sensory input, and then use that to base their answers on? Or do they rely on my impressions and then alter my opinions in how I transcribe? It’s all so confusing. I am pretty much convinced that they need my thoughts and impressions, for whatever reason, to come to a conclusive answer. It explains so much, but also opens up some questions as well.
So I need to read the document. So ok. No problem. I’ll respond to this question later on after I read the document.
What happened to me when my EBP was installed? Where did I go, and have I met your expectations?
Well, I want to know.
We do not question your loyalty to the Domain nor your dedication to responsible service. In fact, these characteristics were carefully vetted prior to us presenting the opportunity to you.
We know that you want to entertain the idea that you went to some exotic location. Any of the moons of gas giants would cause biological disruptions due to the radiation belts inherent within their planetary fields.
You went to a medical facility within the moon. There is no need to venture further away to achieve the procedure that we conducted.
You have correctly surmised that it was not a vehicle, and that it was upon a planetary body. What you might not be clear on is that it occurred deep inside the moon, well under the planetary surface.
The idea that it occurred on Mars is a romantic assumption on your part.
If Heather is now occupying the human body of <redacted>, how is this possible as all human bodies are inmate skin suits, and cats transcend those limitations?
It’s a persistent question.
Heather (FYI, Heater was a previous cat from 30 years ago) isn't really occupying a human body, but is rather sharing it. Felines have the ability to co-inhabit bodies of all sorts of creatures. This is especially pronounced in the Prison Complex environment. This is exactly what is going on.
From your point of view <redacted> is a "shadow person" (sic.), but your cat Heather occupies it with you as your "traverse the MWI" (sic.). Thus both of you share the same experiences together. When you die, your cat will leave the co-inhabited body. It's a natural process.
Conclusion
This is just some personal questions that I have asked using my EBP. I’ve had these things in my head for decades, but only recently realized that two-way communication could be achieved with them.
There are numerous MM readers and commenters that had a role in this selection of questions and all in all, it was a big positive. So thank you for all of your nudges, and questions and concerns.
In the future, I will open up the EBP for more questions and you all can ask some more questions. This was just my own personal ones, and I must apologize if my questions were banal or boring.
Do you want more?
You can find many more videos in my “The Domain Action Articles” over here…
This article is based on a comment that was on one of my forums. In it, the person suggested that what he has read about China, from MM, reminds him of the society as depicted within the science fiction story “Starship Troopers” by Robert Heinlein. I have to admit that this is a profound observation. And I agree with him. Here, we will dissect this observation and add some of my personal comments to it.
Service grants citizenship.
The book
The book is well worth the read. I have it available in glorious and easy to read HTML here…
Starship Troopers is perhaps the best-known novel of science fiction master Robert A. Heinlein. Unlike many science fiction novels, the longevity of Starship Troopers’ reputation has at least as much to do with controversies over its themes as the quality of the writing and storytelling.
I am afraid there is no getting around using the f-word here—there is significant debate as to whether Starship Troopers, which glorifies martial virtues and a highly authoritarian political constitution, is fascist.
This debate is muddied by the 1997 movie based on the book, which the filmmakers intentionally used as an artistic opportunity to engage in a reductio ad absurdum of militaristic culture.
Starship Troopers
Putting the movie aside, I want to explore the political economy of the novel itself.
My claim is simple: Starship Troopers is not fascist. Instead, it is an exploration of certain sociopolitical truths that, if ignored, doom a civilization to self-parody by the hemorrhaging of civic virtue.
The novel, told from the perspective of infantryman Juan “Johnnie” Rico, primarily depicts the transformation of a civilian into a soldier. But it is also a commentary on the qualities of a political structure that result in a durable social order.
The novel is set centuries into the future, where earth is part of a polity called the Terran Federation, a spacefaring civilization that extends humanity throughout the galaxy.
In this civilization, all high school students are required to take a course titled “History and Moral Philosophy,” which must be taught by a veteran of the armed services. Johnnie’s teacher, retired Lt. Col. Dubois, recounts to his students how the “twentieth century democracies” gradually experienced a breakdown in domestic law and order.
Starship Troopers
This occurred as these polities continued to grant more and more rights to their citizens, but did not impose accompanying responsibilities.
One result was a spike in crime, such that public spaces were no longer safe at nighttime and many were not safe during the day.
Later in the novel, we learn that international military disaster accompanied domestic political disorder.
A vaguely described war—between the “Chinese Hegemony” and an alliance of the United States, Britain, and Russia on the other—so exhausts the Western polities that they lose the ability to even maintain order within the armed services.
With the breakdown in social order, veterans of this war eventually take the law into their own hands. They form gangs to police their towns and cities, imposing martial law without any civilian oversight—of which it is unclear there could be any, given the previously mentioned political atrophy.
At first, this is unmistakably nothing more than vigilante justice.
But through sheer force, they are capable of maintaining a rudimentary peace. The order of martial law is a low form of order; no great civilization can flourish with a boot on its neck.
But eventually, not through any formal grant of legitimacy via democratic processes but a gradual acceptance of the new ad hoc regime, regularity returns to the social world.
Starship Troopers
On-the-spot justice gives way to regular procedures for ascertaining guilt and assigning punishment to perceived criminals.
As these practices become institutions, civilization shifts from one sociopolitical equilibrium to another.
With regularity comes justified expectations of future behavior by the new government, and along with it the rule of law, and the return of some semblance of democratic and parliamentary governance.
The chief difference is that society is now quasi-Spartan: only those with a military background can participate in the governance of the polity; key civilian positions are reserved by law for veterans; and those who do not perform at least two years of federal service cannot exercise “sovereign franchise.” That is, they cannot vote.
At various points in the novel, this narrative is referred to in order to point out two important truths about governance.
Starship Troopers
These truths are explored through the interplay of Johnnie’s character development and his eventual comprehension of his society’s governance structures.
The first of these truths has to do with the nature of sovereignty.
In the real world, we tend to view sovereignty in ethical terms. We answer “Who rules?” by asking, “Who ought to rule?” This is how we continue to affirm democratic legitimacy even though it is obvious that the will of the people has little to do with how modern Western polities are actually governed.
In contrast, the characters in Starship Troopers have no truck with romantic theories of governance that have no basis in reality.
At its root, sovereignty is power, which means force.
The quasi-military government of Starship Troopers exists because the founders of the Terran Federation, back when they were little more than a vigilante mob, were willing to impose themselves on others.
As it became clear that nobody could oppose them, they became the new de facto government, and eventually the new de jure government. The essential truth of sovereignty, in terms of who actually rules, is that sovereignty is inevitable and, in a higher sense, arbitrary.
Why do veterans govern the Terran Federation?
The only possible answer is because they can.
Starship Troopers
To be clear: This is not a claim that social order requires violence. It is the claim, as historically robust a truth as can be found, is that someone, somewhere, will wield the sword.
To the extent that our political constitutions can be founded on “reflection and choice,” our choice is not power versus self-governance.
Instead, it is responsible versus irresponsible power.
Now we see why so many worry about the glorification of fascism in Starship Troopers. Heinlein had the audacity to explore a world where Sparta works, and is durable.
Understandably, this puts our Western (American) Athenian sensibilities on Red Alert.
The novel’s justifications for franchise restrictions, perhaps the ultimate blasphemy in our egalitarian-democratic age, highlight a second sociopolitical truth:
Any society that decouples rights and responsibilities thereby enables irresponsible power.
…
Eventually, Johnnie is recognized as officer-caliber material.
He is sent to the Terran Federal Service’s equivalent of officer candidate school, which if anything is more grueling than basic training, both physically and mentally.
Chapter 12 of the novel illustrates the intimate link between rights, responsibilities, and a well-governed society in the form of a dialogue between a grizzled officer-instructor and a naïve cadet.
Starship Troopers
The instructor asks the cadet for “a reason—not historical nor theoretical but practical,” for limiting the franchise to discharged veterans.
The cadet goes through several incorrect explanations—that veterans are higher-quality beings, “picked men,” or that they are “more disciplined”—before he, along with Johnnie and the reader, are enlightened.
The instructor begins by wryly asserting,
“I handed you a trick question. The practical reason for continuing our system [of limited franchise] is the same as the practical reason for continuing anything: it works satisfactorily.”
This is a repeated emphasis on the fundamentals of sovereignty.
The instructor then goes through the restrictions on voting, or the exercise of political power more generally that have existed throughout history, and in what respect the restrictions of the Terran Federation differ.
The answer:
“Under our system every voter and officeholder is a man who has demonstrated through voluntary and difficult service that he places the welfare of the group ahead of personal advantage….
He may fail in wisdom, he may lapse in civic virtue.
But his average performance is enormously better than that of any other class of rulers in history.”
The instructor takes a realistic, and hence grim, view of political power—again, remember the truth of sovereignty!—when he continues,
“To vote is to wield authority; it is the supreme authority from which all other authority derives…the franchise is force, naked and raw, the Power of the Rods and the Ax.
Whether it is exerted by ten or by ten billion, political authority is force.”
Next the instructor singles out Johnnie to complete the narrative. He asks what the necessary complement to authority is, and Cadet Rico answers “Responsibility.”
Starship Troopers
This pleases the instructor, who finishes explaining why the political system of the Terran Federation has been both successful and stable:
Authority and responsibility must be equal—else a balancing takes place as surely as current flows between points of unequal potential.
To permit irresponsible authority is to sow disaster; to hold a man responsible for anything he does not control is to behave with blind idiocy.
The unlimited democracies [of the twentieth century] were unstable because their citizens were not responsible for the fashion in which they exerted their sovereign authority….
No attempt was made to determine whether a voter was socially responsible to the extent of his literally unlimited authority.
If he voted the impossible, the disastrous possible happened instead—and responsibility was then forced on him willy-nilly and destroyed both him and his foundationless temple (emphasis added).
There you have it: The stark recognition that the right to vote is the right to rule, and that the right to rule without the responsibility of bearing the consequences of one’s decisions is a recipe for infantilism writ large.
One may dispute whether this specific form of civic virtue is the safest foundation on which a limited franchise rests.
But the key point, that there is such a thing as better and worse voters, and that empowering the latter is a sure path to gradual erosion of social cooperation, is sound.
It’s also one we desperately need to hear today.
And now, the inevitable caveats. There is some truth to the claim that, on its own, Starship Troopers is a dangerous form of social commentary.
Martial glorification is an inherently slippery slope, as any historian of Wilhelmine Germany can attest.
Starship Troopers
Furthermore, the kind of mind sympathetic to highly hierarchical governance is at risk of mistakenly thinking a whole society can be run like a barracks.
These impulses must be tempered by exposure to insightful commentary on what happens when power is, despite everybody’s best intentions, exercised irresponsibly, an unfortunately all-too-common occurrence. But all of these caveats do not diminish the wisdom that Starship Troopers conveys, all the more remarkable for being a work of fiction.
If we are unwilling to find a way to structure our political institutions such that rights are firmly coupled with responsibility, we will continue to see a ballooning of the former and an erosion of the latter.
The result will not be pretty, and we will deserve it.
Starship Troopers
But is China really like this?
As someone who has lived 40 years in America from birth, and then an additional 20+ years inside of China, I am positively affirm that Chinese society is very, very similar to the society that was depicted in the book.
Similar.
No, it’s not the evil “Communist regime” that the onslaught of anti-China Western propaganda spews daily in your “news” feeds.
It’s something else entirely.
But China is not Sparta. Nor is it like the Western “democracies”. It is a new social system that has never been seen before on the world. And the closest illustration of what it is, by far, is through the book “Starship Troopers”.
Starship Troopers
The tenants of the society depicted within the book
Let’s break down some of the core points in the book and how they manifest within China.
And I am going to tell you all, right off the bat, that this is information that you will not find in the American or “Western” press or “news”. They (the media) all are well-funded propaganda mills that actually believe their echo-chamber nonsense.
We will look at these tenants listed in the movie;
Only those with a military background can participate in governance.
At all levels discipline is required for success.
Sovereignty is power, which means rule by force.
Responsible versus irresponsible power.
Rights and responsibilities are intertwined.
Only those with a military background can participate in the governance of the society.
Well, let’s begin with the understanding that not all things military resembles marching armies.
In America we have the Coast Guard, the Department of Homeland Security, The Civilian Conservation Corps, and The Peace Corps. What all these organizations possess is that the participants are volunteers that risk their lives, devote their time and careers, towards the betterment of society.
Coast Guard = Working to protect society.
Civilian Conservation Corps = Working to protect societies environment.
Peace Corps = Working to support other societies for the good of all.
Starship Troopers
So if we use this model and expand “the military” to include “organizations that support the growth and maintenance of society” you can say…
Yes. Absolutely!
In China if you want to vote in the “democratic process” you must be a member of the “Party”, and to be a member, you must contribute and participate.
Service grants citizenship.
Those that do not participate; that do not excel in school; that do not help and volunteer, and those that do not join The Pioneers when in elementary, middle and high schools cannot participate in government within China. Period.
Modern China.
In China, not everyone can vote.
It is a meritocracy. The ability to vote requires that you, throughout your life, contribute to the good of society and do what ever is needed at any time of the day or night.
If the government asks you to help rebuild a dam, then you leave you job and do so. If the government asks you to build a hospital over night, then you do so. You don’t complain. You do it.
That is participation. That is a society that only allows contributors to participate in governance.
At all levels discipline is required for success.
Discipline is taught at a young age. And from Kindergarten on up, the students obtain daily discipline training, education on civic society, military behaviors and pure military field rife and combat training.
Here’s some videos that I collected. Some are training films. Some are recruitment films. Some are just studies. Some are personal videos. All in all a good mix. It will give you all a great idea about the Chinese military capability.
Discipline – Elementary Echool Soldiers
Young Pioneers and elementary children going through mandatory military training.
Starship Troopers
Some of the films have children in it going through training. These are the elementary-school Pioneers (the Chinese cub scouts). Everyone in China gets full military training. Those older kids, are in middle school. They are the ones wearing blue slacks with the white line training and shooting AK-74’s.
You will see closeups of the various electronic weapons systems, and the state of the art Chinese SEAL and Special Forces troops as well. You will see some videos about how Japan came into China and killed off so many innocent civilians. And note that now that every civilian can fire a gun, and fight, that is never going to happen ever again.
It starts off with some more middle school assault weapon training.
Next is the elementary school pioneers who undergo physical obstacle course training. Notice that they do it while carrying a full military rifle. Also note that it’s both boys and girls. No one gets a pass. VIDEO.
Boys and Girls no one gets a pass.
The third video is the reservists. China has an active military and the reserves that meet every few weeks. VIDEO.
Reservists practice and drill over and over and over and over.
Training, training, training.
Fourth video is for the young Pioneers. For inspiration and training. Very, very interesting. If you don’t watch any of these videos here, you MUST at least watch this one.
China will NEVER allow a repeat of the “Rape of Nanjing”.
Of course there are all sorts of interesting things in these videos.
Group 3B
Discipline – Learn about Chinese Society
Here we have some first grade students demonstrating their skills in front of the rest of the school in assembly. Note that all students not only learn English, but also get weekly lessons in military warfare, strategy, and operations. VIDEO.
And here are how a Pioneers assembly looks like. These are all first grade students around 6 years old. VIDEO.
Discipline. Merit. Training.
Sovereignty is power, which means rule by force.
Ah. This is the common anti-China narrative. But the reality is that China does not rule by force. Instead, they rule by compliance.
Starship Troopers
In China, everyone is expected to comply with the law. The entire nation is wired up with AI monitored video, audio and systems, and boy oh boy is that driving the American CIA bonkers! China knows who is doing what, where and why. It’s sort of like that Tom Cruse movie where you can follow a person’s movements from when they wake up in the morning throughout the day. That is China today.
It is invasive?
No, not really, with 1.6 billion people there is no way for people to monitored gulag style. Instead, AI monitors and flags dangerous behaviors. A social credit scorecard is used to connect individual behaviors to society hierarchy. If you are a dick, a bad person, a skank, you will be low on the hierarchy. But if you are good, helpful and volunteer, you will go up higher. It’s all merit driven.
One of the core tenants of the book “Starship Trooper” was that only the responsible would be in the position of power to govern. that really riled up the sensibilities of many a free wheeling, casual, “good time Charlie” lover. And responsibility comes with wisdom, experience, effort and merit. You are not just “responsible” at birth. It is a learned behavior.
Starship Troopers
If you are not to be responsible, you become irresponsible. Not just to yourself, but to those around you. You need discipline, behavioral training, and coaching.
While the book refers to this trait on a personal level, the key point is that it applies throughout society. There is a real problem when you live in a family with an irresponsible parent. The entire household becomes dysfunctional.
Its even worse when an irresponsible person takes over the reins of government. And that must be prevented.
[1] At the system level
The system must screen for dangerous people.
Honor guards attend a flag-raising ceremony at Tiananmen Square in 2017.
The system that brings in leadership, and directors must be solid, substantive, rugged and robust. It must be such that all the problematic personalities; the greedy, the psychopathic, the sociopath, the narcissistic and the evil be forever barred from positions of power and control. This system is inherent inside the operation of the Chinese communist party. It is very, very difficult to join, and the requirements to do so are maintained by service-to-others (SEO) committees.
[2] At the operation level
The leadership must constantly be policed.
This is the bane of most societies and only in the last ten years has this changed in China. China has set up the “Corruption Police” and they have made “earth shattering” changes to all levels of government. The days of graft, vice, abuse of power are all gone. (Well, in the process of going away. There are always hold outs.) This “Corruption Police” are an elite group of SEO officers and agents that root out corruption at every level and work to functionally make the Chinese society a well-run meritocracy.
Starship Troopers
Rights and responsibilities are intertwined.
America talks and talks about Rights. There are no Rights in America. Every single (so called immutable Rights) now come with exceptions. And there are so many of these exceptions that they render the Rights useless.
While in China, the Rights of the people are maintained, policed and enforced. No wonder the Chinese have a 95% approval rate for their government.
The Chinese are hyper-patriotic.
But inside the ruined has-been nation of America, the story is quite different. With only a mere 15% of the population trusting the United States government, with a margin of error around 15%. Which means that somewhere between 0% and 30% of the United States citizenry trust the American government.
John White head said it best…
“We can zip our lips and bind our hands and shut our eyes.
In other words, we can continue to exist in a state of denial. Yet there is no denying the ugly, hard truths that become more evident with every passing day.
The government is not our friend. Nor does it work for “we the people.”
Our so-called government representatives do not actually represent us, the citizenry. We are now ruled by an oligarchic elite of governmental and corporate interests whose main interest is in perpetuating power and control.
Republicans and Democrats like to act as if there’s a huge difference between them and their policies. However, they are not sworn enemies so much as they are partners in crime, united in a common goal, which is to maintain the status quo.
The lesser of two evils is still evil.
Some years ago, a newspaper headline asked the question: “What’s the difference between a politician and a psychopath?” The answer, then and now, remains the same: None. There is virtually no difference between psychopaths and politicians.
More than terrorism, more than domestic extremism, more than gun violence and organized crime, the U.S. government has become a greater menace to the life, liberty and property of its citizens than any of the so-called dangers from which the government claims to protect us
The government knows exactly which buttons to push in order to manipulate the populace and gain the public’s cooperation and compliance.
If voting made any difference, they wouldn’t let us do it.
America’s shadow government—which is comprised of unelected government bureaucrats, corporations, contractors, paper-pushers, and button-pushers who are actually calling the shots behind the scenes right now and operates beyond the reach of the Constitution with no real accountability to the citizenry—is the real reason why “we the people” have no control over our government.
You no longer have to be poor, black or guilty to be treated like a criminal in America. All that is required is that you belong to the suspect class—that is, the citizenry—of the American police state. As a de facto member of this so-called criminal class, every U.S. citizen is now guilty until proven innocent.
“We the people” are no longer shielded by the rule of law. By gradually whittling away at our freedoms—free speech, assembly, due process, privacy, etc.—the government has, in effect, liberated itself from its contractual agreement to respect our constitutional rights while resetting the calendar back to a time when we had no Bill of Rights to protect us from the long arm of the government.
We now find ourselves caught in the crosshairs of a showdown between the rights of the individual and the so-called “emergency” state, and “we the people” are losing.
All of those freedoms we cherish—the ones enshrined in the Constitution, the ones that affirm our right to free speech and assembly, due process, privacy, bodily integrity, the right to not have police seize our property without a warrant, or search and detain us without probable cause—amount to nothing when the government and its agents are allowed to disregard those prohibitions on government overreach at will.
If there is an absolute maxim by which the federal government seems to operate, it is that the American taxpayer always gets ripped off.
Our freedoms—especially the Fourth Amendment—continue to be choked out by a prevailing view among government bureaucrats that they have the right to search, seize, strip, scan, spy on, probe, pat down, taser, and arrest any individual at any time and for the slightest provocation.
Forced vaccinations, forced cavity searches, forced colonoscopies, forced blood draws, forced breath-alcohol tests, forced DNA extractions, forced eye scans, forced inclusion in biometric databases: these are just a few ways in which Americans continue to be reminded that we have no control over what happens to our bodies during an encounter with government officials.
Finally, freedom is never free. There is always a price—always a sacrifice—that must be made in order to safeguard one’s freedoms.
We cannot remain silent in the face of the government’s ongoing overreaches, power grabs, and crimes against humanity.
Evil disguised as bureaucracy is still evil. Indeed, this is what Hannah Arendt referred to as the banality of evil.”
But this is not the case in China.
In China if you want a Right, you must earn it, and then show responsibility for it. If you do not, then it will be withheld from you. On the day to day, practical level, this manifests as the Social Credit Scoring system.
Starship Troopers
To give a good example of this, consider the laws that require parents to be responsible for the bad things their children do. China’s parliament will consider legislation to punish parents if their young children exhibit “very bad behavior” or commit crimes.
Yeah it is the parents’ responsibility to take care of their children, whether the child is good or bad depends on the parents, educate the child in the path he should follow, and even when he is older he will not depart from it.
it’s called RESPONSIBILITY.
Conclusion
But China is Communist! They scream!
China says it’s a Social Democracy based on traditional Communist Values. While America calls itself an exceptional democratic republic.
He says. She says. Who cares?
China today is something that cannot be easily explained in tight, narrow, traditional political definitions. While America is simple. It is a classic oligarchy ruled military empire.
The BRFLS Second Grade Chinese Young Pioneers Initiation Ceremony
Part of the problem with trying to solve or fix a problem is defining what the problem is. America is broke. It is broken, smashed, and a walking cluster fuck. That’s a fact Jack. If you cannot see it, then you must be mentally ill.
Meanwhile, China is the absolute opposite of it.
There are many, many similarities between the Chinese society and that of the society as depicted within the book “Starship Troopers” by Robert A Heinlein.
On a whole, I believe that China is doing things right.
They should be applauded for it. This system raised over a billion people out of poverty. This system has created a great “level playing field” for the vast bulk of Chinese society to have a moderate successful life, and this system is rocking the world with scientific discoveries, help, and innovation.
China is taking the world by the hand gently and moving it forward. I for one applaud it, and you should too. Do not fear that the billionaires can only become thousandaires, or that “‘ma freedoms to a vote in a democracy” would be restricted. Those are fears intentionally generated to make you fear what the world is becoming.
Do not fear.
Instead…
Look at what America has become. When you are ruled by the psychopathic in society, the society becomes ill, distressed and dysfunctional.
Here is America today…
The cities are inhabited by zombies. They really are. Video.
Well, not all the cities are inhabited by zombies.
You have a bunch of people walking around in “freedom”, “doing their own thing”. Such as this fine upstanding “pillar of the community” here. VIDEO.
There is no alternative. China is the future.
China is the future!
China is the future.
Just like in the movie “Starship Troopers”…
Starship Troopers.
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
In early October 2021, I established a task request asking for those versed in LD and other skills to investigate whether or not there were any “backdoors” or other ways in and out of the “Old Empire” “Prison Complex” that we are all (unfortunately) part of. By the second week of October the results began to pour in. The first group of results was posted HERE.
This is a posting of subsequent results.
Volunteers
I asked in this post if any MM readership would be interested in joining The Domain to help rescue their “Lost Battalion”.
The response was overwhelmingly positive.
And then within a few days after the readership started adding affirmations and confirmations that they wish to help The Domain, be a Rufus, and do whatever they can contribute, many many MANY of them started writing to me privately.
They were (for the most part) terrified.
Within hours or days of making a verbal affirmation that they indeed wanted to assist The Domain, all of them, every single one of them, experience sleep paralysis and horrible fears and manifestations. All of which is very similar to “abduction events”.
That they were “hijacked” in their dream state and all sorts of operations and procedures occurred. For them, it was truly frightening.
However, I said then, and I will say now…
In the non-physical reality, thoughts take on tangible form.
Fears are used to control you.
So when you experience any type of help, your fear-defenses (part of the “Old Empire” programming), will try to make you fight and prevent the assistance.
So keep in mind…
To help The Domain, certain retardations and alterations to your inmate human body must be undone.
This requires an operation; a procedure.
The Domain will undo those alterations when you join in the effort. They will conduct an operation and perform a procedure to remove those “chains” and “blocks” that you have shackled to your non-physical body.
Do not fear it. You NEED to have it done, whether you want to help the Domain or not.
It is a medical procedure.
Many people have commented on this event as a “dream”, or a “Join the Domain related dream”.
Janus Mission Briefing
This is from an anonymous MM lurker that communicates with me by secure means. He is an expat like myself. He is prior SAP like myself. He is retired like myself, but unlike myself he fled the ‘States before he could be formally “retired”. You all can leave messages and your thoughts about his experiences on the forum or in the comments. He will read them, but he will not comment on them directly. In this matter, I act as an intermediary. -MM
I have been unwilling to 'Go under' for some time now. To be honest I have been scared. I've previously had some success with Lucid Dreaming, but I have much more control in OBE (Out of Body Experience/astral travel etc.).
The problem was, the minute I 'let go of the rope' I feel like being kidnapped. Not unlike being sucked into the giant vacuum cleaner.
It feels like somebody is waiting for me at the entry point (not a good word, it's more like bopping to 3D from 2D). Like they were ready for me. That has never happened to me before.
OBE has always been a joyous, refreshing and FREE state. Now it's scary and that sucks. I thought they were the Prison Guards but didn't stick around to ask questions.
Then I read the experience of others, and it dawned on me. It was The Domain scrubbing away the prison colors, so I wouldn't be spotted right away!
I have the house to myself the whole day, I will attempt an entry now.
Janus 10-18-2021, 09:30 AM
The “Join The Domain Dream”.
I am only now able to write about it all. I had to do 60min deep meditation to thoroughly rinse my mental palate of disgusting gunk that covered my consciousness.
After I understood that the kidnapping was for my own protection, I didn’t try to evade it. As soon as I released myself from my body, I felt like I had grown an umbilical core and was pulled by it.
I let it happen.
After a period of time that was from nanosecond to a lifetime (I really don’t have any frame of reference for time there), I found myself suspended in a rig. I knew instantly that I have been in this before, many times apparently.
What happened next was without a doubt the most intensely unpleasant experience of my life. I felt like being skinned alive with a butternife.
It wasn’t sharp pain, it was more like a too heavyhanded massage. It lasted as long as it did, again no way of telling the time in any meaningful way.
I was no longer in the rig, it was more like a lounge-chair from the future.
The material felt like a memory-foam but better. I felt weightless and totally supported at the same time. I was unable to move, wasn’t able to even try to move.
Next sensation I felt, was like my head was held in a vice.
You know how to boil a frog? That happened just like it; initially I felt no discomfort, then the grip was so strong I thought my eyes would pop out.
Thia is difficult to verbalize.
My brain was rinsed.
I felt very close to dropping out of the OBE, perhaps I did. I felt my consciousness being totally independent and outside my brain and body, but I could still feel powerwashers drumming my sclera or cortex. I could feel dozens of small needle like thingies getting dislodged from the brain-tissue.
I somehow blacked out, there was a clear cutoff, because I was no longer held or suspended.
Now I was very much THERE.
I felt fit, my vision was disturbingly clear and vivid, like I was using my eyes for the first time. But it wasn’t my eyes I was seeing thru.
I was ‘sensing’ everything.
I knew I was able to sense ultraviolet light as well as infrared, and then some. Do you remember the scene from Matrix, where Neo is able to see the code for the first time?
That was it to the T.
The whole episode felt like getting an oil-change, tires rotated, new spark-plugs and a coat of paint; I didn’t get superpowers, but more like superUSER powers. It felt like I could see thru walls and distinguish between players and NPC’s. To use an American vernacular, I felt like a million bucks!
But I felt totally spent at the same time.
I swam back to the surface.
I opened my eyes and realized that I was sweating like a pig. Only 30 minutes had passed, it felt like a lifetime. I took quick dip in the almost freezing lake and planned my next move. I was in flames to try my enhanced abilities, but on the other hand I was very tired.
Lucid Dream Attempt
I haven’t been very successful in Lucid Dreaming lately, but part of it was the nagging fear of getting kidnapped.
Why not give a go? Worst case, I Could fall asleep.
I went to bed, just over the covers, not between the sheets, and took a keychain in my hand.
…
I was in a shopping mall. The Mission was to look for open entry points or hidden backdoors. I took the escalator to the bottom floor. Doors opened, and I saw the place crawling with NPC/guards. I saw a an old woman trying to go out thru the main doors. There were four revolving doors, she went to the second from right. I looked at her as she stepped into the revolving door.
As on command, all the NPC’s turned to look at her as well, grinning. The door sped up. It looked like a dust-devil. After a few seconds the door slowed down, the woman was gone, but not outside.
Ok, four exits, check.
Viability as possible rally/entrypoints: zero.
I was at the bottom floor, so it seems that only way is up. As I was sneaking back to the elevators, another thought struck me.
> You are standing in front of a door. You see corridor to your right.
> _
When I was a teen I played a lot of these text-based games. One of the game-designers Holy principles is “The unintuitive move is the right move”. If the only rational move is to open the door in front of you, you can bet your ass there’ll be Dragons behind it.
The revolving doors were enter only, manned with killer-bots, and a death-trap if you try to exit.
The elevators go from “E” to “10th floor, women’s lingerie”.
There was bound to be a skylight that opens or a hidden staircase. This took forever to write, but dream-time is non-local, and time there is an irrelevant artifact.
I was descending the hidden stairs before I finished the thought.
I went down and flipped 180 degrees emerging up. Very weird sensation. It was like a move I knew how to do, but have forgot. Like learning to fly by jumping up and forgetting to come down.
I came up and I kept going up until I was so far from the ground that I spotted a familiar looking beach, some mountains over the left. I was looking to east, south-east, the beach was behind me.
I was in West-Africa, somewhere around Senegal or Gambia.
That’s not so bizarre as it sounds, I’ve been there several times. I even ran an NGO in Gambia. I was up north, Mauretania, I think. The place I went through looked like a target. X marks the spot, eh?
Anyway I tried to spot the place in Google Earth just now.
Holy Shit!!
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Caldera.
I need to drop this off to you now. I haven't even read this through. Sorry about poor penmanship, I just needed to write this down before it goes away.
You can share it with the class, if you wish.
Conclusion
Warning: Please take general caution against getting too excited about any particular place on LD/RW/Astral.
Do you see what happens when we all work together as part of a team? This image resembles a volcanic island, only not in the ocean. Yet, I would hazard a guess that around the time when this entire planet was set up as a Prison Planet that this area was covered in water. This goes together and add a lot of interconnected puzzle pieces to the mix. I cannot wait for others to report on their findings.
Do you want more?
You can find many more videos in my “The Domain Action Articles” over here…
Lately I have been musing about the mandatory mRNA vaccinations that are now required all over the West. What was considered radical just a few months ago has been normalized by a massive propaganda campaign and mandated by executive order an law.
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While I don’t want to join the fray and armies of the anti-Vaxx people, I do want to throw some of my opinions into this mix.
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As you all know, I live in China and everyone is getting their vaccination injections. It’s free, and no one is raising any concern. The reason is, of course, that [1] everyone trusts the Chinese government, and [2] the vaccine is based on a “dead host” which is the well known, well documented, “tried and true” method of inoculating people from virus strains. And, of course, [3] the Coronavirus is a rapidly mutating bio-weapon thrown at China in 2019 CNY by Trump / Bolton. Being in China, you see how serious all of this is.
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Now, I do not know why America and the rest of the West are so adamant in everyone getting an “experimental” mRNA vaccination instead of a traditional “dead host” vaccine. It seems all to “hush hush”. And I have long learned never to trust the United States government. So it is worrisome.
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When the USA government makes a law, drums up a media narrative for it, and then suppresses alternative viewpoints, every alarm bell should be going off in your head.
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I have speculated that all of this is because they want to “piggy back” some other system with the vaccine. Maybe [1] an inoculation about a bio-weapon that the USA has yet to launch. Or perhaps [2], a way of countering radiation from a nuclear war. Or, [3] even such things as mind control and tracking nano-chips are in the list of “anything is possible”. But the truth is I, and no-one else knows.
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But that is not what this article is about. This is about something else.
The need for mRNA booster injections
By most accounts, this mRNA vaccine is part of a system of never-ending yearly or quarterly injections. These injections will suppress whatever mutation of Coronavirus might arise, as well as perhaps other systems that emerge over time. And on paper it might look ok.
[1] The stockholders in big-pharma would be happy to have a captive audience that needs to pay for yearly or quarterly booster injections or suffer government mandated obsolesce.
[2] With everything taking these yearly (or quarterly) boosters, it will become normal and expected. Just like the American Federal Income Tax forms are every April. And once the cattle people become accustomed to it, changes can be made to the ingredients, and alterations can be made for other purposes.
But let me suggest a downside.
The Big Assumptions
There are assumptions made, and these assumption assume a very steady-state non-changing reality. And that simply is not true. History tells us otherwise.
The big assumptions are…
That the (various) government will enforce mandatory booster injections.
That the factories can easily adapt to a changing viral environment and create boosters based on the mRNA models faster and better than the “dead host” model.
That people will comply with getting the boosters.
So far, all of these assumptions are given in every discussion about the benefits of the mRNA vaccination.
That the mRNA boosters, working with mass inoculations will create a herd immunity against any virus strains that the government deems threatening.
That the government can pay for the boosters, the R&D, and all the support systems necessary.
These two points are always assumed, and taken as “givens”. But they shouldn’t really be.
That over time, people will elect to pay for the boosters out of their own pockets.
This assumption is based on the Federal Income Tax model; also known as the “boiling frog technique” to manage sheeple compliance.
That the companies will always have factories to produce these boosters without interruption….
The last point is what I find frightening
No one is talking about this.
And they SHOULD.
Stocks plummeted this week.
Investors are terrified.
And Morgan Stanley just announced that a “20% drop in the S&P 500” could happen any moment.
If you're a student of history, you likely recognize the signs.
And it's time to prepare for a market moment that could define your wealth for the next decade.
A small group of U.S. investors are in line to receive advance notice of the exact day of the next market crash.
Regards,
Keith Kaplan
CEO, TradeSmith
I get these doom and gloom email notices all the time. After a while you shut them off. I mean you can only take the bullshit so long.
But you know…
The USA national debt is fucking enormous. That’s what happens when you make and earn money from nothing. It has become a big mountain of nothing. Yah. It’s hollow inside, but everyone is living off this mountain, and it will pop. It really will. Nothing lasts forever.
But there are other things going on as well.
Suppose that America has finally done “it”. Whether they “false flag” an event, launch a provocation, or just implement a full on nuclear WMD on China,, the results will be the same. They will royally piss off both Russia and China, and a full-scale WMD holocaust will be unleashed in the United States.
It will not be pretty.
A destroyed America.
We will have cites destroyed. Electrical systems destroyed. EMP bursts that render all computers, and internet, not to mentions all vehicles into slag. And in the middle of this, when starvation begins to beset the land, and crime is rampant and it’s every man for himself…
… how in God’s name are the booster injections going to be made, distributed and paid for?
How?
And when those people in a SHTF situation, hiding in their houses, and trying to figure out how get some food…
Food will be difficult to get.
…suddenly find themselves with a really bad chest cold. Not a flu. Not a Coronavirus, but a Covid Zelda variant.
What then?
People!
War is not something that you watch on television or check your news feed over. It’s not going to be fought in a “far away” land like the South China Sea, or Australia. Or Japan, or Korea.
Everyone inside the United States will experience it.
Just like they are experiencing the blow-back from the John Bolton / Donald Trump launch of three bio-weapons WMD on the busiest holiday in China. Who’s fucking laughing now, dipshits?
If the USA instigates a war, whether it is with China or Russia, the battlefield will be on American soil.
Not in Taiwan.
Not in the South China Sea.
Not on Australian soil
It will be in America…
Dog eat dog world.
Oh. Some battles will be on, near and on the territories of the USA proxies, but both Russia and China are not, NOT stupid. They are not going to waste their times and effort on the pawns. They will go after the Kings and Queens and will attempt a very quick checkmate.
How many destroyed cities will it takes before the USA surrenders?
One? Five? ten?
Twenty?
Forty?
Fifty?
I’m betting that it will be around 35.
And with America a blaze in a nuclear winter… So tell me, what’s going to happen to those who need mRNA boosters? Are they going to run off to the local hospitals for a booster?
A crushed America.
And just where are the boosters going to be made with the vast majority of the pharmacy supply sources inside the biggest cities? And even if a city was spared, how are the medicines going to be made without power, electricity and every single computer system fired into slag?
Of course, it’s important (for the oligarchy) that you do not see the entire picture…
Back in 2012, living in China, I was also such a (western) “News” addict.
I then did an experiment:
During > 2 months, I deliberately didn’t watch western TV, didn’t went to any western news website, didn’t listened to western radio stations.
I only watched Chinese TV (various TV stations) only read Chinese newspapers and Chinese online news sources
What a revelation ! What a relief that was ! What a peaceful, healthy life !
-[Redacted]
Right? So there is a major media push to keep the “rabble” (that’s me and you, bub) in line. Don’t question anything. If you do, you will be censored. You know… for “a matter of national security”. And so on and so forth.
Let me tell you a few things about the media…
See below. All credit to the author who shall remain anonymous. You know who you are, don't you? It's a great piece.
Here is a thought- provoking dialogue between the gorgeous Li JingJing & the awesome Vijay Prashad. I would like also to name Michel Collon, a French-speaking Belgian reporter & geopolitical analyst having written on the 5 principles of war propaganda.
Coined by others, not by me, an acronym to remember them easily : M.E.D.I.A.
MONOPOLIZE
“M” as in MONOPOLIZE THE DEBATE.
This can be done by saturating the media landscape (written, cable TV, online) with presstitutes.
Also by restricting the allowed topics and last but not least, by restricting the range of permissible or legit answers (You all know the Overton window) Here some structural factors of the human nature help tremendously the manipulators.
Stages 1 & 2 of the Maslow Pyramid are basic needs (survival) and physical safety.
The third stage being psychological safety or to state things clearly, the need to belong to a group but not only that, to a group perceived as shining, desirable & prestigious…
To free oneself relatively from this emotional need, at least to the extent to be capable to have a space between that need and the awareness of other’ people own gratifying images of themselves, if I still want to use Maslow’s concept, it would be the work on one’s one mind called self-realization, a quite unpopular task.
Most people believe what they want (consciously/subconsciously/unconsciously) to believe to preserve their belonging to a prestigious group (or so they think…)
So in the West, it’s always much much easier for the governments to promote a narrative with at its core the key message being ” it’s China/Russia/Iran/the Other’s fault ”
The bigger (China/Russia/Iran) the boogeyman is, the better…
ENSNARE
“E” as in ENSNARE.
ENSNARE the people’s minds with irrelevant fantasies, thus avoiding to tackle seriously what is at stake economically, diplomatically, militarily or geopolitically in a given event or situation, at home or abroad.
The dumbing down process going on during the last 50 years and keeping on is facilitating this diversion tactic (red herrings galore).
You are most probably familiar with Charlotte Yserbit’s work.
For me, the uber Structural Red Herring in the West the last 50 years has been the displacement of the focus from socio-economic struggles to so-called woke issues (what in French is called the opposition between the two concepts of “social”,understand real socio-economic struggles and “sociétal”, understand woke)
One amusing survey that can be done is to ask 100 French citizens what they think of ” Mai 68″ first and then ask what is their understanding of a color revolution and last what about “Mai 68” as a color revolution ?
I bet most of them would be flabbergasted to learn that “Mai 68” was a color revolution set to get rid of Charles de Gaulle and to strengthen the Anglo-American Establishment’s grip on France. “Mai 68” & “June 89″ (2 decades later in Beijing) were essentially of the same nature if the ” color revolution ” concept is used, Ho! Ho! Ho !…
Let”s remind that the US ambassador to France was in the streets with the students in 1968 as James Lilley, US ambassador to China & CIA agent, was in the streets with the students in 1989…
The vital difference is that “Mai 68” succeeded beyond expectations & “June 89″ failed miserably on the essential goal of regime change but is successful as a smearing operation against China, as we are reminded on June 4 each year with the China-bashing in relation to the so-called ” Tian An Men Massacre ”
Concerning the process of dumbing down, another name to remember is Eugene Michael Jones, alive & in his seventies.
His 1992 book is a masterpiece of philosophy, psychology and politics : Modern degenerates, modernity as rationalization for sexual misbehavior.
His 2000 book is the natural completion of the 1992’s one : Libido Dominandi, sexual liberation & political control.
His intellectual adventure began when he lost his teaching position in the 70s because he stated at work that he is against abortion, he was utterly flummoxed since he taught in a Catholic school for girls…
This personal mishap has awaken his curiosity, investigative endeavor & meditation since then.
DEHUMANIZE/DEMONIZE.
“D” as in DEHUMANIZE/DEMONIZE.
DEHUMANIZE/DEMONIZE the Other in all dimensions : ugly physical appearance, defective psychological construct, spiritual emptiness is the norm obviously, rigid or primitive social organization, twisted historical development, warped anthropological foundations, evil religious practices…
The Other cannot be motivated by good intentions, all words uttered must be scrutinized because ignorance or perfidy must be expected.
All actions are driven by greed and fear, needless to say since Truth, Goodness and Beauty are not granted to the Other.
Some people definitely need a mirror, not only for the Body but also for the Mind & the Soul.
INVERSION
“I” as in INVERSION.
INVERSION of identity between the aggressor & the victim of the. aggression. Examples are numerous but I simply mention the category of false flag operations, an egregious chapter by itself.
ABSENCE
“A” as in ABSENCE.
ABSENCE of a quality historical understanding offered to the public in order to truly contextualize the event or the situation, at home or abroad.
A sound chronology of the events is either absent or the chronology presented is biased, oriented by a specific agenda.
Conclusion
The trouble is, in Australia, i listen to news while driving, listen to radio news while custom made frames, and I have no alternative news sources beyond Australian fake news.
whenever I internet search China development news, even in Chinese language, the news that appear at the first page are usually BBC Chinese, CNN Chinese, DW Chinese, Epoch Times Chinese....
Dam!
(All the Western propaganda outlets printed in the Chinese language.)
Yes, CCTV news focus on China developments and policies, full of positive energy. They make me happy.
The Chinese Gov don't talk about poor people as lazy, they talk about how to give them a vision, incentive, conditions, and motivate them to work hard to help themselves out of poverty.
The Hong Kong TVB recently visited 10 poorest region across China, and was touched by how much the government quietly doing so much for those remote region residents.
The title of the documentary series is 无穷之路，the road to no poverty. Below is chapter 1:
https://youtu.be/dcF_WB--P0U
You no need to know the language, just see how remote these villages located, and what the government did to improve their lives and you will understand they are wealthier than the working poor in America who can afford to pay rent and become homeless.
-[Redacted]
Sometimes I hate being right.
If you have something that works (the traditional “dead host” vaccination methodology) but instead [1] elect to move forward with untested, unproved, unestablished technology.
Then [2] you mandate forced compliance.
Coupled with [3] forbidding anyone from using the traditional methods for vaccination, that should set off every alert in you head.
And knowing what I do about China and Russia, they already probably know the TRUE and REAL reason why the mRNA vaccination is being so aggressively promoted inside the USA today. And if I were them, and I knew that the United States is building up towards a massive world war against us, I would figure out a way to use this mRNA system against the aggressors.
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It’s called logic.
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
There is a ton-load of disinformation, opinion, mixed messages and all sorts of distractions and bullshit on the internet. Nothing is more rife than that associated with the “Type-1 greys”.
Indeed, there are MM followers, well meaning no doubt, and inadvertently pick up on these other “signals” (whether through reading something, or in a vision or other non-physical method) and repeat it here. I am not saying they are bad, or wrong. But I really want clarity.
I try to provide what I know in simple, clear language, and in a non-confrontation (for the most part) manner. I want this place to be a “safe place”; a “safe space”. I want people who arrive at MM doorstep to be welcomed and accepted, no matter what they believe, no matter what social environment they come from, and no matter what their experiences are. I want this place to be a sanctuary where you are accepted without hesitation.
Never the less, sometimes our experiences, our backgrounds, our understandings contain baggage that seeps into our daily lives, and we bring it here to MM. Like automatically assuming that Mantids are the angels spoken about in the Bible. Maybe they are. Maybe they aren’t. Maybe they are something else. But does it REALLY matter?
No.
What matters is how YOU view them. And you can communicate your views using the tools at hand. Which might be the Bible… and well understood by Christians, but confusing to Daoists.
Communication is the key. The ability to communicate openly and freely.
And when we are receiving the messages from others we can get a little confused. Try teaching vibrational mechanics to a classroom of college students hung over from last nights drinking to get an idea of what I am talking about. Which is pretty much WHY I try to simplify, simplify, and dumb down everything.
MerLynn has some great information, but he gets so enraptured in the content, that you must really latch onto it or you will get thrown off. It’s like a bucking bronco and you must hold on for dear life. Which is why I have asked him to simplify it, and not be so information dense.
Here’s an example of how understandable it can be once you simplify things…
This entire Universe is made of Light Structures. Everything is the Light said Tesla. Thales and Aristotle agreed that Everything is Water and Life is in Everything. What this means is.... Light, from ALL sources, candle, spark, sun, bulb is a STRUCTURE that is Magnetic. Like a tiny "lego" piece that has a North and South Pole and an 'equatorial' polarity region. These Structures of Light come together to form Tetrahedrons and then these Tetrahedrons form ALL OF CREATION. There are no electrons or protons or neutrons Dracul. So if you want to discuss ALIEN TECHNOLOGY which is TESLA and Leedskalnin TECHNOLOGY, please do so using their terms of Reference and 'electrons' are just not part of any real science. Think in terms of Energy, Frequency and Vibrations with WAVE FORMS.
Brilliant. Really.
It doesn’t mean that he is wrong, or bad, or misunderstanding things from my point of view. It just means that I want his information to be spread out as understood by a much wider scope of MM readership, than just the hard-core. I want more people to read it. More people to understand it. More people to embrace it.
It’s a good thing right?
Information, and the communication of it, is important. We all come from different places, with different backgrounds, different histories, different needs, wants and desires. But we all want to share.
One common way on the internet is to use “themes” and “memes”.
We all know what a meme is. It’s a common phrase or understanding that is well packaged in a mannerism, or scene (from a movie or television show).
“Sure Jan” meme. This is from the 1960’s television comedy show “The Brady Bunch”. Where one sister is talking to the other about something that her older sister well understands, and knows it’s not going to work out of be the way she thinks.
Likewise are “themes”.
There are ton-load of “Themes” in the American internet. Donald Trump was the master of creating themes…
Jail Hillary.
Contain China.
Build a Wall.
Make America great again.
But these “themes” come in all sorts of other venues as well. Even themes that you don’t realize are themes.
Katana swords are great for killing zombies.
Do not by a used car from a dealer wearing a polyester plaid business suit.
Having a tattoo shows your “uniqueness”.
‘Merica!
And in the conventional scene we have…
Madcow illness will turn your into a moron if you eat that hamburger.
Y2K means that you had best be prepared for the apocalypse.
3G radiation will fry your brain.
Cell phones will explode near gasoline pumps.
And when you start talking about extraterrestrials… well then there are a host of themes…
Reptilians shapeshift and control the worlds governments.
Little grey extraterrestrials are a dying race that are time travelers and are trying to cross breed with humans.
Tall Nordics are peaceful who want to teach enlightenment to the earth.
We use these themes to communicate our thoughts and our opinions.
But it does not mean that the themes themselves are accurate. It just means that we are using the themes to describe our thoughts and beliefs. And with that comes a problem…
When we say “Build that wall!” (as an American), what are we saying?
[A] We want a wall to keep everyone out of America except those properly vetted by the government?
[B] We want the entire nation of America to have a wall of isolation for our protection against the fearful external world.
[C] Powerful forces want this wall to be built. It has a dual purpose to keep people out and to keep people in.
[D] Donald Trump is “my man” and I will follow him because I sincerely believe that he has my best interests at heart.
[E] I tire of the endless “news” about people streaming into America taking my money, resources, and using up my tax money. I am strapped as it is and I don’t want further erosion of my buying power while experiencing an increase in taxation.
Now, the person who is using this “theme” might be thinking of situation [A] in his usage of it. However his wide and diverse audience might view the statement in another way, or in another form. For [C], for example. Or for [E] for example. Just because someone nods in agreement with you does not mean that they agree with you. It means that they recognize a part of what you are trying to convey, and that part that THEY recognize is what they are agreeing to.
Because it is so easy to confuse thought intention with the limitations of the English language, I try to simplify things. Because, I know, I am abrasive caustic and sarcastic at times. I really do not want to offend anyone. I just want the information to be disseminated.
When I say I like the AK-47, it does not mean that I like all the millions of people that it killed, or the destruction of societies that it participated in. It simply means that I like the technical innovations that provide a clear, functional robust design. If I were talking to a fellow engineer, this point would be obvious. But if I am talking to the girl behind the ice cream counter, it would easily be misinterpreted.
And then you couple all these issues with communication with the onslaught of intentional disinfo. (Big Sigh.) There are people and organizations that spread intentional disinformation and try (and often successfully) inflame to derail the communication process. So we all have to be wary. We all have to be aware. We all have to be careful.
I do NOT want this MM site to become another clone of the forced disinfo campaigns, whether intentional or not.
Shape-shifting reptilians.
Star-children to impart knowledge.
Time-traveling police to adjust world-lines.
Coronavirus is a hoax, or China manufactured it, or vaccinations are XYZ…
Y2K will cause the upcoming end of civilization as we know it.
2012 will bring in the “new enlightenment”.
And so on and so forth.
Millions of United States federal funding went towards disinfo on extraterrestrials. Millions.
Therefore, I have taken it upon myself to open up a comm line to the Domain Commander via my EBP and ask them questions regarding themselves and their operations here. One on one. Direct.
For me only.
For my purposes only. Because it is a personal issue with me. It is who I am now. I am sorry guys. I have these fucking things in my head. I’m not lying about them. They exist and they can be seen in an MRI, and I fucking deal with them every god-damn day.
So I am committed.
Because after all, if COVID was not a bio-weapon but really some form of mind control over Americans, the idea that extraterrestrials don’t exist because Oprah or Ellen Degeneres didn’t validate it, or that the Greys are actually from Zeta Reticuli then I must really be all full of shit.
And thus, MM has no value.
It’s just another blog on the internet, yet another in a series of millions of blogs. It is of no special value. I’m just a blowhard with a five dollar blog churning out my opinions into the internet hoping to connect with others for my own nefarious reasons.
I should really just chuck it all away.
Say fuck it, and go out whoring and drinking. And let me tell you guys; that’s an option that exists and I’m keen on going that direction. I mean really. Really.
Really keen.
The internet is full of opinions. Just like MM has opinions.
Some are ‘bots. Here’s an example of a ‘bot that trolls my LinkedIN posts…
And others aren’t ‘bots. As there are some real and honest experiences.
I really don’t know why you all are here, but I really hope that MM benefits you.
I sincerely hope.
And for it to provide benefit, I must keep it sanitized. Clean. Simple. Fun. And easy to understand. No bullshit. The things as I see them. Straight, open, honest and real. “Justthefacts, ma’am“.
"Justthefacts, ma'am" is acommon catchphrase often attributed to Friday, orless often, to Stan Freberg'sworksparodying Dragnet. But neither used the exact phrase. WhileFridaytypically used the phrase "All we want are the facts, ma'am" when questioningwomenin the course of police investigations, Freberg'sspoofchanged the line slightly to "I just want to get the facts, ma'am".
-Wikipedia
This Q&A was designed for, and is is for my personal benefit. ONLY. The rest of you all can read or not. The rest of you can believe it or not. It’s purpose is to help me better understand my purpose and utility in this entire MM situation. Thus it is a personal, a deeply personal conversation, and published as is.
It’s a published Q&A; MM to the Domain Commander. No others are involved.
[1] An update on the expansion of The Domain in the Milky Way galaxy
I am curious just as everyone else is. If you try to ask others about what is going on, they look at issues regarding the same tired old meme’s. They don’t realize what kind of real access we have right here.
Real access to information.
As such, I an ask things directly via the EBP than what I could have asked of my Mantid via the ELF constellation of probes. So I am a curious sort. So I figure it wouldn’t hurt to ask some general questions and get some answers that we all can “chew on”.
Especially since I have a keen and direct interest in space, our universe and our galaxy. Not to mention; society.
Question: Can you please kindly provide me with a brief and general overview of The Domain expansion efforts in this galaxy? The last update we obtained was in 1947 with “Alien Interview” that was released only a decade ago.
The Domain's expansion into the Milky Way galaxy is continuing. Much of the "Old Empire" has been conquered. There are pockets of resistance, but most have been subdued.
We have encountered a very large empire that appears to be around 10,000 light years in diameter. (The "Old Empire" was much smaller than that. -MM) They are also advanced technologically. They do not appear to be as brutal as the "Old Empire" however.
They are rather benign and peaceful. However they did engage in wars of conquest to obtain their current size.
[2] What is this empire like?
Well, I am curious. Come on! Aren’t you?
They are space-faring. With physical bodies that are not like anything you have been exposed to. They exist on planets that you would not find attractive, or inhabitable.
(I image a gas shrouded heavy planet. Maybe not a gas giant, something smaller than that. Like a "Hot Super Earth" with a very dense atmosphere.)
Consider the "Old Empire".
The "Old Empire" did not resemble what you image it to be. There were no futuristic skyscrapers that you see in your minds eye.
(He is correct, I have imagined it as some kind of futuristic "Jetsons'" city inhabited with creatures that were very human appearing. Only with a decidedly cyberpunk feel to it.)
Rather it was peopled with gargantuan public constructions, and a society of smaller more diminutive people which were probably the source of your stories about dwarves, elves, faeries, trolls and goblins. They use technology that you would consider to be akin to magic spells, hexes and alchemy / occult practice.
The same is true for this other empire.
Only instead of planets that resembled a more Springlike earth, these planets and systems that they inhabit are very, very different in atmosphere, weather, lifeforms and in just about every criteria. You would have a difficult time recognizing the civilization for what it is because your biases are so profoundly in error.
I pictured (when this information was being conveyed) something on the order of a “hot super-terran” to a sub-sized “Hot mini Neptunian”. That is the impression that I have. I guess that the planets would be from 5Me to 15Me (Mass of Earth where 1 Me = earth size) and all located in the “hot zone” of a parent star. All under a very dense and heavy atmosphere.
Here is a good chart of the characterization of the “recognized” world types that have viewed over the last few decades. The impression that I have is that the kinds of world that my Commander refers to sits in the top row between the “superterrans” and the “neptunians”. Let’s give it an MM name; the “superterran-subneptunians”.
Further, in the interests of clarity, and (my personal joy in classification), lets use this accepted exo-planetary chart to help us…
And from the impression that I have, these planets are in the “Class T” range. Just for your interest and curiosity. Certainly this civilization would not seemingly be of any interest to contemporaneous humans.
[3] What is your procedure for domination?
I mean is it like Genghis Khan, or more like the American Empire? Or is it “hands off” and live and let live? This is a direct question. After all, The Domain is trying to control the “Master Universe”. So why not ask?
Question: When you take over an existing society or empire, what changes do you make, if any? Do you wipe them all out and destroy everything, or do you do something else? What is the procedure in the case of the “Old Empire”?
IS-BEs who enter this "Master Universe" that we created must behave in certain ways that do not [1] harm the planets that they are on, [2] disrupt the ecosystem that we have created, [3] create hardship or distress to other IS-BEs.
Those societies that do so are corrected / adjusted / modified / controlled in whatever manner we deem appropriate.
In the case of the "Old Empire" there had to be a regression of technology, a correcting of society behaviors, and a change in the patterning of the incarnation process. These were done through a process of occupancy of the leadership, and then wholesale readjustments of the structure to approved archetypes for that selection of species and for that particular environments.
We avoid dangerous destruction of societies and cultures, but we do perform cultural amputations, social reconstruction, and personality readjustment. We have entire divisions / battalions / armies devoted to these efforts. Our end goal is to make the conquered empire a more stable place to exist in.
.No harm to the planets that they occupy or control.
.No disruption of the ecosystem of those planets and systems.
.No hardship, torture (for amusement), or distress to other IS-BEs.
[4] Is The Domain a “dying race”?
A number of MM commenters on the site and forum are repeating the idea that the “Greys are a dying race”. These comments come from people who I love and respect. Their thoughts and their opinions matter to me.
I have to listen to them. What they say; everything that they say has weight, meaning and importance.
When a three year old goes up to you and says “You have stinky-poo poo breath” you believe them. Right? You know that they are being honest with you. So when people suggest things to me and are trying to be open and honest with me, I want to “do my homework”.
And I don’t want to be the duped guy who is broke, penniless on a sidewalk while others drink their Starbucks coffee and snicker “I told you so.”
Seriously.
I’ve been fucked over way too many times not to sit up, take notice, and peer a little more “squint eyed” towards those that I seem to be so enraptured with. I mean, why not? A second or third, or fourth look is always good. As I have explained to my staff; “The more eyeballs that look at something, the easier it is to find mistakes.”
And if I am in error, what then?
After all, then what the fuck and I messing around with them then? Am I brainwashed? If The Domain is a dying race, and the Mantids are really the Angels that the Bible says, the possibility exists that maybe I am the one in error. Maybe I am the one who is wrong about everything. That maybe I am the fool for believing everything that I encounter.
So I asked them.
Question: Is The Domain a dying race?
No. Absolutely not.
The Domain is a social structure of IS_BE entities that choose to spend the vast bulk of their time in the timeless state. This is different from the many, many IS-BE's that enjoy the "Master Universe" as physical entities in one degree or the other.
IS-BE's are without physical form, and live outside of time and space. All came into being trillions of years ago, and we will continue to live for trillions of years hence.
None of us "dies".
The Domain structure may or might not change during that period of time. However, the system in place; a merit driven system based upon the desires of the participants work well for the vast numbers of Domain membership. It has for trillions of years, and we clearly intend it to work for trillions of years in the future.
Any and all Domain members may easily obtain physical bodies to experience physical experiences at will. However, we are involved in some rather serious undertakings that involve moving the entire state of ALL-THERE-IS to BEYOND-THAT.
To get to that state we need to "tame" the populated universe down to a state before we "buggered it up" back billions of years ago. this was a mistake that we inadvertently unleashed and created the fracturing and discordant social systems to develop as they have. This is discord, and it is not bettering any IS-BE. Just providing enjoyments and pleasures.
The IS-BE's that comprise The Domain are not dying.
The Domain itself; it's organizational structure and society is not dying either.
Those IS-BE's that desire to leave the Domain are welcome to do so and either set up their own societies, or adapt to other existing ones are welcome to do so. There is a small leakage of membership in this regard, however the egress tends to be small, short lived, and trivial. Once you have purpose, as The Domain clearly has, you will not be easily swayed by physical pleasures and the beauty of the physical environment.
Of course they would say this. But doubts still linger.
I have been duped and tricked so many times in my past. I just don’t think that I could take such a fundamental shock to my system. Remember people; I am fully committed.
You do know the difference between "committed" and being a participant?
In a plate of bacon and eggs, the chicken was a participant, but the pig was committed.
[5] Does The Domain possess physical societies on planets like the Earth or elsewhere?
Along with this idea that the Domain is a dying race is the idea that they have physical cities, physical societies and structures that are collapsing. This narrative can be found all over the internet. Which various sub-plots where they come to earth to cross-breed, or extract “precious bodily fluids” and so on and so forth to keep their species alive?
Let’s cut to the chase then.
Question: Does the Domain possess physical societies on planets like the Earth or elsewhere?
The Domain has structured environments. However they do not really resemble what your would consider to be societies. They lie outside of the physical time and space environment.
However, we do have communities that exist within the "Master Universe". Such as the bases here in "your" solar system. When we interact within these communities we utilize "doll bodies". You would consider these facilities to be barren and spartan.
Never the less, the vast bulk of our time is spent in a non-physical state, with forays in and out of the non-physical worlds, the physical worlds and other universes as we see fit.
No. We do not have a society that resembles anything upon the earth, whether in the physical realm or the non-physical realm. You simply cannot compare what The Domain is to anything you know and understand.
[6] If The Domain is primarily part of the timeless “Master Universe” then why bother conquering any nations of it?
I am sorry guys. But it doesn’t make any sense to me. If The Domain exists outside of the physical portion of the “Master Universe”…
…then why is it so busy in capturing and absorbing the civilizations and societies in this universe? Hum?
Question: Why is a society (The Domain) who only visits the “Master Universe” as needed, so interested in conquering and controlling the societies that inhabit it?
"You got me there." (He actually transmitted this statement. Can you fucking believe it?)
We created the vast bulk of the "Master Universe". Over time we improved upon it, and created planets, lifeforms, societies and the environment that you see within it.
Other universes with other IS-BE's entered and merged with it over time.
These new ideas and thoughts and ways of doing things merged with ours and changed them. The "Master Universe" became a stew of all sorts of exciting changes, interesting possibilities and constructions.
All very good. All very exciting. All very wonderful.
But, along with that came negative behaviors, and negative structures and destructive systems that started to undone the good works that we started.
These new system's, and many of the hybrid systems that developed afterwards started to run amok and started to unleash a torrent and cascade of changes that really damaged the universe. Indeed, entire civilizations were destroyed, hurt, and the IS-BEs deformed and altered into new undesirable forms.
This is not just catastrophic wars with gargantuan and colossal weapons of destruction, but the entire structure; the fabric of the universe started to be altered in really irreparable and dangerous ways. Think of a fine silk dress with a tear. OR maybe some pantyhose, if there is a snag, you must do something about it, or the entire article of clothing will be ruined beyond repair.
The Domain is tasked with preventing these "tears". Then "smoothing out the wrinkles" in the fabric of the universe. Finally with all the most worrisome attributes subdued, we can focus on the NEXT-BIG-THING.
[7] Are the Domain, or their craft from the future?
One of the on-going sub-plots in the entire grey extraterrestrial disinformation campaign is the idea that they are actually not extraterrestrials at all. But rather that they are humans from the future and they have come back to “warn us”, “alter history” or some other related purpose.
So, let’s ask them directly.
Are the Domain, or their craft, or their crews from the future; specifically the earth’s future?
The Domain exists in a timeless, dimensionless condition. It is part of he "Master Universe" but not of it. Because there are great misunderstandings what time actually is, it is nonsensical to claim that the Domain come from the future.
Many humans have trouble with this.
The easiest way to imagine what The Domain is, is to imagine a society of spirits. Each one has no body. Each one lives in a place without time. Each one goes about their own individual business with other spirits. This society created the place; this "Master Universe". And the spirits (IS-BE) visit it from time to time in groups and clusters. Always for a purpose. Always working toward a goal.
If you call these spirits "IS-BE". And, if you fully understand how the "Master Universe" differs from the "Physical Universe" (that is the MWI with world-lines) then you can see that the answer is not what you expect, but is actually clearer than what you would expect.
The Domain can enter the MWI in the "Reality Universe" at any point in "time". And thus we are "time travelers" in that sense. In a similar manner the IS-BE "spirits" can enter the "Master Universe" at any point in time.
Like both universes, this ability to enter and leave at different time periods is "time travel".
However, the popular narrative that you are referring to is incorrect. The Domain are not evolved humans from the far-far future that have come back to the "past" to change things. That is absurd.
[8] Cats, humans and IS-BE’s
I have long wanted to write more information regarding cats, and felines. However I am limited as to until I have been contacting the Domain directly, I had to rely on the Mantids to provide me information.
ELF = MAJestic and Mantid Comm Link.
EBP = The Domain / Type-1 Grey Comm Link.
And the Mantids, well, they have been very unhelpful regarding felines. It’s not that they do not want to help, it’s that they cannot. Felines are not part of their charter and so they know very little about them.
So I have wanted to collect some data on felines from The Domain and see if the Commander can help me.
Question: There are many MM members who are cat lovers and who have close friends that are cats. Can you please provide insight on the IS-BE’s that become felines and their relationships with humans?
You guessed correctly. All living entities (as you call them) consist of shells within the MWI "Reality Universe". Some are (as you refer to them) "shadow people" and some are inhabited with a consciousness.
Felines follow the same general behavior rules as humans do. Except that felines are not inmates in the Prison Planet Complex. They can come and go in and out of the "reality universe" (MWI) and the "Master Universe" at will.
They never suffer amnesia or map out pre-birth world-line templates (sic.) for themselves.
Instead, they prefer to "latch onto" a friend / buddy / pal / companion that is "riding" / following / exploring the MWI "reality universe" and so attached, they experience the same kinds of ups and downs as the host human goes through.
Being a free IS-BE they can come and go at will. They can enter bodies at will. They can enter and leave a body at will. In many, many ways they are far, far freer than any inmate in the Prison Complex.
When a feline is sleeping or resting (they are two different states) the IS-BE consciousness segments and they are off traveling in other places doing other things. For many (felines) it is close to the physical reality, but moving about in the non-physical reality. You might refer to this as "feline lucid dreaming".
Cats can come and go as they please. So if there is a special bond between a human and a cat, all that is needed is for the cat (if it dies, for instance) to find a highest probability body for it to occupy that you will meet. And then your "feelings" or "intuition" or "gut feeling" will be drawn to it. And if you two get to meet, and stay together it is all good. The feline IS-BE will adapt to the physical limitations of the new inhabited body and that will result in some personality changes. But you two will be together.
If you two meet up, but something happens and you are not able to be together, the cat will try again. And again. And again. Each time in different bodies until you two are together again.
If you really want to speed up this process, all you need to do is focus your thoughts (through verbal affirmations) and it will manifest quickly.
In general, felines consider humans to be rather slow, retarded (but lovable) companions that can't hunt for shit. (!) They love being around humans, especially one that they have bonded with, and will try to find (if possible) other bodies to occupy that is of the same shape, color or some other attribute that might trigger the human to recognize that it is a "reincarnation" event.
But that is very difficult to trigger.
Most of the time, they select bodies that are available. And then try to emulate "attraction thoughts" to help cement a new bond between the human and the new cat body.This is why you might bond with a cat that "feels" close to you, but it will look different, act a little different, and behave a little differently than your former (but now dead) friend.
[9] Why won’t the Mantids discuss the feline and human relationship?
I am very curious about this issue. Obviously they know a lot, as human and feline interaction is common and an important part of human society. It also figures predominantly in the pre-birth world-line template generation. Why are the Mantids so reluctant to discuss feline to human interaction with me?
As you have surmised, the Mantids (sic.) are a hybrid-construct based on a local dominant earth-centrist body form. This "Old Empire" DNA and biological alteration was one that focused all their energies towards herding humans within the Prison Complex system. Very little thought was given towards outside or relationships, forms or shapes. The Mantids (sic.) are very human-centrist. (Includes the other dominant inmate forms; pigs, horses, dolphins, elephants, etc.)
Not feline.
The Mantids (sic.) possess a basic understanding of felines. They possess a basic understanding of soul and consciousness construction (sic.). They understand the basics of the human-feline dynamic. And that is the extent of their knowledge in this matter.
In general, the Mantids (sic.) are bred to be very focused on "helping humans" endure strife and then be rewarded afterwards.
They are so focused on this aspect, that event though they have a very strong awareness of their own IS-BE state, they ignore that state in everything else. They are elitist in that way, and when they encounter a human, for example, that is aware they treat that person as a special oddity and follow very special protocols in how to interact with that person.
When they encounter a feline (or any other creature for that matter) that shows or indicates strong IS-BE non-amnesia characteristics they simply ignore it. They cannot understand it. Nor do they try.
In hindsight, I have absolutely zero memories, connections, feelings or associations with Mantids and any of my cats in any way, shape or form. Not even in my dreams!
[10] Trans-species migration of IS-BE’s
I often wonder why an IS-BE would go from one human life, into another and then again into yet another. Why always a human? I know from Dr. Newton that there is trans-species migration, but all of them seem to evolve into similar types of creatures.
My question is this; If an human dies, and is a pure IS-BE, could it not become a feline and then escape the entire Prison Planet system?
Physical bodes are not blobs of flesh. They are complicated mechanisms. Likewise, the non-physical bodies are not blobs of non-physical flesh. They are also complicated mechanisms. And the IS-BE that chooses to enter a specific body, must alter it's form / shape / composition / operation / energy / vibrations to do so.
Alteration of an IS-BE form is easy to do...
...if you are outside of the Prison Planet Complex.
Unfortunately most humans are prevented from configuring their "stage upwards / higher form / above non-physical" bodies. This is a Mantid (sic.) directive. This is why inmates are quickly shuttled off to "Heaven". So they cannot shape change their "migration paths / attunement centers / organ clusters" to fit other forms.
Thus humans, and dogs, and elephants, and dolphins, and horses, and pigs (and a few others) are prevented from migrating out of this Prison Complex environment. This is one of the layers of control.
However, IS-BE's that are not configured in their inmate form (inmate clothing such as humans in this Prison Planet) can naturally shape their "migration paths" to reconfigure to be a human, or a dog, or a feline.
Which is why you have felines entering and leaving the Prison Planet complex at will.
Further, cats (using felines as an example) can decide to enter a unmodified human body [a "shadow person" (sic.)] and inhabit it, free of the Prison Complex restrictions on IS-BE movement. And then leave at will.
In your case, your cat Heather (this is a cat that I owned when I lived in Indiana back in the late 1980's) is now your [redacted for very personal reasons]. This kind of hybrid movement of IS-BE into human bodies is illustrated in the movie "A dog's Purpose" (2017).
On a side note, if you haven’t watched either of these movies you must. The first “A Dog’s Journey” is a tale of reincarnation from a dog’s point of view. And the second “A Dog’s Purpose” talks about trans-species reincarnation. Both are very emotionally moving movies. Have tissue nearby.
[11] Why me?
I have been a little down on myself lately. We all have ups and downs. But sometimes I feel like I am a sucker; a fool to take on this responsibility. I have read some MM comments about those who wish to assist the Domain, but don’t want to have any further association with them. They argue that it is dangerous to trust those that … well, look at what The Domain has admitted to.
Why trust them, and as being so trusting, why was I selected, and why am I running MM instead of cavorting with pretty girls, gorging myself on delicious food, and quaffing down some fine red wine.
Question; Why me?
There is a great deal of angst and frustration in your life right now, but this is what you have agreed to endure in your pre-birth agreement. The [redacted].
I can tell you that things will become clearer over time, and that your work is significant on many levels and that you have changed others for the better. There's [redacted], and they will see their great works in [redacted].
When to start to compare yourself, and that is what you are doing now, it will only serve to cause distress. You can never be the illusions that others present. It is not in your makeup.
You are correct on many, many levels but are surrounded by others that do not posses your insights. You worry too much about [redacted] and part of the reason behind that is [redacted]. Remember what [redacted] therefore, when you start to notice the [redacted] you should [redacted].
[Redacted].
[Redacted].
We made you this way. It had to be this way.
Sorry about that guys. Too much personal stuff to the internet community. Nothing really important concerning you all has been redacted, it’s just that some things I want to keep private. You understand right?
[12] Why did you alter me?
He made some statements about my alterations in all of my bodies (physical and non-physical, etc) and that got me thinking.
We needed to alter you to carry out your mission parameters. This included both your physical and non-physical bodies. When we installed the EBP (sic) we changed things.
You had diseases inside your body that we removed. You know which ones. (Yes, I do, but I only suspected the "hidden time-bombs".) You had trackers in your body that we removed. You had "holes" in your make up that we filled in. You had damage to your structure that needed to be repaired.
Your life is what it is today because of the changes that we made, as well as your ability to direct and focus your thoughts so that your consciousness can engage in directed target assignments.
What I did not include in the above dialog is a very detailed piece on how pre-birth world-line templates can have areas of “DO NOT CHANGE” established in them. GuyFromAfrica knows what I am talking about, and these had to be removed.
Of course, he did not use my terminology. But that is what he was talking about.
[13] What will happen to me after I die?
I am very selfish. I want to know. I really want to know if I will die and then kind of waft around like some kind of disheveled spirit in the wind, while the world changes but I just remain a specter.
You will not be discarded. That is your fear, no?
You have a role, and we are cultivating and rehabilitating your IS-BE body to better adapt to the changes that lie outside of the Prison Planet Environment. We picture a great role for you, and a rewarding and personally significant role for you after your physical death.
Your physical death means nothing as your non-physical being will still be interacting with us long, long after your body decays.
You will continue to help others. You will continue to have an interesting, colorful, and adventuresome life, only that it would involve a greater part of you and you will experience the great satisfaction of helping others. This is just the first beginnings my friend. Do not fear.
He did not promise me any kind of great military post, rank or mission / position. He simply promised me a spot in the society where I will have a meaningful and purposeful life. And that sounds good to me. Thank you.
[14] Am I a former member of The Domain’s “Lost Battalion”?
I don’t think that I am. But, you know, I figure, why not ask?
No. You are not.
[15] The idea that I am Mades Escaplion is repulsive to me. I ask again. It is who I am?
I just want a double confirmation. That’s all.
(Being kind.) It is a role and a personality that you had during a phase in your soul experience track. You will note that this experience has been useful to us in unraveling the entire network of traps and snares that exist in the Prison Complex. You serve a great role and hold great purpose. Do not be discouraged.
In truth, the image that you hold of Mades Escaplion is wrong. He was a functionary. He was a minister. He held an administration role. He was neither cruel nor evil. He was a "cog in the machine".
Your role was part ceremonial, and part functionally administrative. You spent much of your time in meetings (or the equivalent of) and in discussions with the various architects of the on-going array of systems that were implemented one on top of the other.
So you need not fear. You were not repulsive nor evil. You were just an entity doing it's job. You were the perfect little civil servant. You were uninspired, did what you were told, and had no desires to "buck the system".
When we (The Domain) destroyed the remains of the "Old Empire" space fleet in the region you disappeared. We tracked you down by personality signature (sic.) We (at the time we found you) were working with the Mantids (sic.) and made arrangements to set you on this life path that you have now.
It has been beneficial for all.
[16] (Last minute addon) Who are you, and what is my role?
The following is / was a request for clarity on my role in this “thing” with The Domain and who I am “talking to”. I just want to know “pecking order” on a pyramidal organization structure. Funny thing is that I did not need to verbalize it, but I formed the thoughts and boom! the answer materialized.
It makes me wonder if this was an implanted question.
I am "the unit Commander" for all Domain operations in this region of geographical space.
You (referring to myself) are my I/O. You are my direct “hands / fingers /sensory inputs / ears / senses". You have a critical role. Without you, I am unable to perceive the contemporaneous events going on in the earth environment.
There are thousands of implanted individuals （sic.). Only a handful were carefully vetted. You are one of the "special" ones. You have provided the most useful information and sensory experiences for us. You are continuing in other equally important roles right now. Your impressions of the world around you establishes the groundwork / foundation for our implementation of the planetary changes that will / have been / going to be established in the future.
Most of what you do or see are bland in your eyes but are crucial and significant in ours. It is a pleasure to work with you sir!
Conclusion
This is just some personal questions that I have asked using my EBP. I’ve had these things in my head for decades, but only recently realized that two-way communication could be achieved with them.
There are numerous MM readers and commenters that had a role in this selection of questions and all in all, it was a big positive. So thank you for all of your nudges, and questions and concerns.
In the future, I will open up the EBP for more questions and you all can ask some more questions. This was just my own personal ones, and I must apologize if my questions were banal or boring.
Do you want more?
You can find many more videos in my “The Domain Action Articles” over here…
In early October 2021, I established a task request asking for those versed in LD and other skills to investigate whether or not there were any “backdoors” or other ways in and out of the “Old Empire” “Prison Complex” that we are all (unfortunately) part of. By the second week of October the results began to pour in.
This is a posting of the results.
Volunteers
I asked in this post if any MM readership would be interested in joining The Domain to help rescue their “Lost Battalion”.
The response was overwhelmingly positive.
And then within a few days after the readership started adding affirmations and confirmations that they wish to help The Domain, be a Rufus, and do whatever they can contribute, many many MANY of them started writing to me privately.
They were (for the most part) terrified.
Within hours or days of making a verbal affirmation that they indeed wanted to assist The Domain, all of them, every single one of them, experience sleep paralysis and horrible fears and manifestations. All of which is very similar to “abduction events”.
That they were “hijacked” in their dream state and all sorts of operations and procedures occurred. For them, it was truly frightening.
However, I said then, and I will say now…
In the non-physical reality, thoughts take on tangible form.
Fears are used to control you.
So when you experience any type of help, your fear-defenses (part of the “Old Empire” programming), will try to make you fight and prevent the assistance.
So keep in mind…
To help The Domain, certain retardations and alterations to your inmate human body must be undone.
This requires an operation; a procedure.
The Domain will undo those alterations when you join in the effort. They will conduct an operation and perform a procedure to remove those “chains” and “blocks” that you have shackled to your non-physical body.
Do not fear it. You NEED to have it done, whether you want to help the Domain or not.
It is a medical procedure.
Many people have commented on this event as a “dream”, or a “Join the Domain related dream”.
Perhaps one of the best explanations of what goes on is from GuyFromAfrica…
GuyFromAfrica comments
So I got the “Join the Domain Dream”.
I could “see” the Type-1. He was somewhere seated.
Then There was MM. I guess as an intermediary.
They didn’t speak literally but I could hear their voice and understand what they were saying. He said (The Type-1) that I would have to make a decision and because they knew who I was (my attributes, character and more) that I was the only one who could do it and see it to the end.
I also [1]got the paralysis and I literally could not move in the dream. someone had to drag me out. ( In the physical too.) Damn weird man. I just laid on the bed half asleep unable to move.
All this happened after I decided to join the domain but coz am still on my pause I had to wait till at least next month. (I think it was due to my thoughts.) [2]
They have [3] helped in suppressing somethings that were really disturbing that’s what they said and showed me. (Actually true. Never gonna go back.)
I just hope that shit doesn’t go down. NO FEAR. JUST CONCERNED. [4]
MM Comments on GuyFromAfrica
[1] This is what really freaks people out. Don’t be afraid. This is necessary. Your consciousness must be removed from your physical and non-physical bodies for the operation to occur.
[2] You do not have to be in a campaign or out of it to have this happen. The moment you “think” and make up your mind to help The Domain, you telegraph a message to them. They monitor all activity on MM. You all should be well aware of this.
[3] One of the things that they will do, provided that you are not too freaked out and trembling in fear or anger, will show you why they are doing it, and how it will personally benefit you. In the case of GuyFromAfrica, they showed him the impediments from his life that they are removing.
[4] He was able to discuss this clearly simply because he held his fear in check. Everyone, GuyFromAfrica is certainly a leader in this. Learn from him.
Freaking out folk
So many dear MM readers have been completely freaked out with the speed, and the unexpectedness of having themselves paralyzed and filled with their worst fears. Images of harm, terrible things, violence to their children were (are) commonplace. It’s really terrible fears. Your worst fears. Everything thrown at you to freak you our royally.
It’s all part of the “Old Empire” programming.
As an inmate you are not permitted to change your physical and non-physical bodies. You are inmates. These changes will permit you to “go through” the fence. These changes will allow changes to your world-line templates. These changes will seriously and substantially reduce the conflict and turmoil in your life.
Which is why the “Old Empire” put up these “trigger blocks” to force you to go primal, filled with fear, and resist changes to your physical and non-physical bodies.
If you make a commitment to be a Rufus and assist The Domain in what ever capacity that your have (and most people have absolutely no idea of their abilities), the Domain will undo your chains.
They will “change your out of the inmate uniform”. They will give you an “access pass” to “go through the fence”. They will scrub tracking information, and erase pre-life behavior settings that you have lived with.
It’s all so frightening.
But ah, so exciting.
If you haven’t committed, but want to, and you are sincere and serious. it will be done. Just remember not to freak out. The fears are all part of “Old Empire” programming. They need to be culled and removed. That’s your job to keep those fears of yours in check.
The Task at hand
The specific task call out was posted in THIS ARTICLE.
This is what I asked for…
To be brutally honest, this is an OFFICIAL REQUEST for a volunteer. It is direct request via EBP from The Domain.
As I understand it, it is only something that can be done by an inmate with a strong ability to this end. And that this specific type of mission WILL encounter unknowns and if the person encounters any kinds of dangers, they are to retreat and regroup.
It’s just a “fact finding” mission.
And, for what ever it is worth, they have certain people in mind for this action, and consider them to be very important and valuable assets that must be protected at all costs. (I am to repeat and underline this last sentence.) They are very important and must be protected at all costs.
Background – Backdoors
I argued that something must have happened since the “Old Empire” collapsed. Then with the battles and destruction within this solar system, obviously there was a corruption of the (formerly pristine) Prison Complex.
The Prison Administration “bailed out”, and left.
The Prison System has been taken over, and corrupted by very malevolent entities.
It seems to me that there MUST be some kind of “backdoor” that enables these self-serving for-profit entities to corrupt the Prison System for their own purposes.
In cybersecurity, a backdoor is anything that can allow an outside user into your device without your knowledge or permission. Backdoors can be installed in two different parts of your system:
Hardware/firmware. Physical alterations that provide remote access to your device.
Software. Malware files that hide their tracks so your operating system doesn’t know that another user is accessing your device.
A backdoor can be installed by software and hardware developers for remote tech support purposes, but in most cases, backdoors are installed either by cybercriminals or intrusive governments (like the United States) to help them gain access to a device, a network, or a software application.
Any malware that provides hackers access to your device can be considered a backdoor — this includes rootkits, trojans, spyware, cryptojackers, keyloggers, worms, and even ransomware.
If there is a “backdoor”, then we can come to the conclusion that the “backdoor” was put there intentionally by one or more of…
The architects of the “Prison Complex”.
The administration of the “Prison Complex”.
A technologically advanced society (not the “Old Empire”) that exploited the prison system intentionally.
Some kind of dimensional / universe malware.
Background – The advantages of LD talent
Those that have the important ability to LD (Lucid Dream) are in a unique position to reconnoiter towards this end.
It would be a reconnaissance mission.
In military operations, reconnaissance or scouting is the exploration of an area by military forces to obtain information about enemy forces, terrain, and other activities.
Examples of reconnaissance include patrolling by troops (skirmishers, long-range reconnaissance patrol, U.S. Army Rangers, cavalry scouts, or military intelligence specialists), ships or submarines, manned or unmanned reconnaissance aircraft, satellites, or by setting up observation posts.
Espionage is usually considered to be different from reconnaissance, as it is performed by non-uniformed personnel operating behind enemy lines.
-Wikipedia
And if you want to be specific, it is purely espionage. As the LD asset is an inmate in general population.
I can tell you that doing so is very important, and would be greatly appreciated by The Domain. Though, I must caution everyone that LD travel is not to be taken lightly. Dangers abound. I also do not know what the LD asset would discover, or what surprises await them. But I am ABSOLUTELY CONVINCED that they would like some talented assets to volunteer for this task.
To be brutally honest, this is an OFFICIAL REQUEST for a volunteer. It is direct request via EBP from The Domain.
As I understand it, it is only something that can be done by an inmate with a strong ability to this end. And that this specific type of mission WILL encounter unknowns and if the person encounters any kinds of dangers, they are to retreat and regroup.
It’s just a “fact finding” mission.
And, for what ever it is worth, they have certain people in mind for this action, and consider them to be very important and valuable assets that must be protected at all costs. (I am to repeat and underline this last sentence.) They are very important and must be protected at all costs.
Background – Mission parameters
For starters…
This is a volunteer activity, and there is no dishonor in refusal.
And then,
You absolutely not reveal who you are or what you are doing.
You must not engage any subject entities that you encounter. You observe.
The specific tasks are…
You must identify [1] if there are others, who are not part of the “old empire” prison complex, that are involved in selection of pre-birth world-line template selection and layout.
You must identify [2] if there are others, who are not part of the “old empire” prison complex, that are using the collected memories or records of memories of other humans for anything other than the original stated purposes.
Reporting and dissemination.
No matter what your opinions are, you must report what you experience.
You are to report your findings, no matter how disjointed or confused, and include your associations and thoughts and ideas regarding them. (Some results might be disturbing or distasteful, but you must report everything.)
MM will publish your findings.
Finally,
You must vocalize permissions to allow The Domain to observe your operations. You may place restrictions on how they observe and time limitations or windows if that is your desire.
Please kindly know and realize that possession of a EBP would “blow your cover” and thus it is impossible for you to be implanted at this time for this role. Thus this request follows this procedural venue. Finally, there is no dishonor in refusal. The Domain realizes just how seriously dangerous this mission activity is.
Collection of the data
Everyone is different. We all have different abilities and different strengths and weaknesses. Furthermore, our experiences, whether in dreams, LD, or any other format are very personal things.
For instance, when I get messages and comm in my channels in either the ELF or EBP implants the results are very difficult to explain. Most especially how I discern between a message and my own internal thoughts, and external clutter. It’s not easy and takes practice, and when I try to explain it just opens up an entire long train of question after question. The bottom line is you either KNOW that you experienced X, or your BELIEVE you experienced X, or you SUSPECT you experience X.
Each elemental wording has a different degree of validity.
Each elemental wording has a different degree of validity.
As of late, I have been mercifully been granted physical confirmation “pings” to confirm that I am not letting my imagination get the better of me, but this is not always possible with others.
For me, the “pings” are a rush of endorphins, a physical reaction to my body while simultaneously obtaining a brief message confirmation.
Most people have some “keys” of understanding that will allow them to unlock what they experience. And with this in mind, let’s look at this first report. Here, the tasked agent had a very active dream of significance, and it is mighty confusing…
I walked in on an intimate celebrity workshop class led by… you guessed it… Chuck Norris!?
Chuck Norris
Joe Rogan was there too.
Joe Rogan
I understood (in a meta-dream analysis sense) that these actors were not specifically important or accurate. They were stand-ins for people of power gaining insights from older mentors.
There were barrels on the stage and participants had to strip naked, get in the barrel, and pee on each other. The point of the ritual was humiliation.
A ritual involving humiliation.
Utterly bizarre… I didn’t want to watch but I was told, in no uncertain terms, “THAT’S THE POINT.” Now you’ll remember. They were utterly beyond the pale, but that’s the programmable zone.
Humiliation is the point.
Any inputs and suggestions from Chuck (bless his soul) were immediately followed, because the decency line had already been crossed.
Once the person completes the humiliation they are listened to / respected.
They were being programmed with a trauma feedback loop. “We’re doing it, we’ve done it, and now we can do anything.”
The humiliation sequence is a purging experience to create a new kind of person.
Then, a blonde woman joined the scene. She got in a barrel too, and I got the impression that it was completely upsetting the programming. This is when I saw them. Men were standing behind a red curtain off to the side where I hadn’t noticed.
A different kind of entity enters the programming environment and upsets the entire process.
Joe, in his programmable state, was beginning to lose his compliance. The woman was totally upsetting the psychodynamic balance in the room.
Those that had previously accepted the programming now question it.
She said, “My favorite thing in the world is baking pain au chocolat.” The incredibly strange juxtaposition of this statement in a room full of naked men peeing on each other was…. odd.
(I'm so sorry forum readers. Nothing about this was sexual, and couldn't be further from my idea of a fantasy. I'm just presenting my dream as-is. Hope someone has a laugh at least.)
It was a trigger phrase and Joe snapped out of it.
A trigger phrase or event occurred and the participants were released from their programming.
Programmers are pissed. I’m being ejected.
The Programmers are upset and the observer is ejected.
Woke up with incredible back pain. Can’t turn my head all day. I have lasting impressions of similarities to L. Ron Hubbard and Tom Cruise. There’s a significant link between his religion and the programming of celebrities.
I also realized that the men behind the red curtain were like a mix of metaphors from Twin Peaks and Wizard of Oz.
Scene of the “man behind the curtain” in the movie “The Wizard of Oz”.
Takeaways:
Investigate L. Ron Hubbard and what he knew.
Investigate Scientology as it relates to the prison system.
Investigate actors as favored “clients.”
Arnold Schwarzenegger was clear in my mind (Sorry, I personally like the dude).
I’m so sorry – just following orders:
"You are to report your findings, no matter how disjointed or confused, and include your associations and thoughts and ideas regarding them. (Some results might be disturbing or distasteful, but you must report everything.)"
Recon Mission Undertaken at the Request of the Domain Commander: The Volcanic Prison
Notes;
DM authorized involvement with The Domain, and specifically approved of them observing his activities and helping them.
The Domain altered his non-physical body and he experienced all the paralysis that I have written about above.
When he provided this information to me, I was a little taken back that the Domain didn't witness the events themselves, and instead relies on MM here to transcribe and translate for them. It's a mystery to me. But apparently the transcription is very important for them to use the information.
Never the less, the feeling that I get is that these espionage activities are something that must be taken very carefully and that there must be absolutely no association with The Domain in so conducting them.
In the report below, I have taken the time to parse every nugget of information that DM has provided. I only hope that it serves some benefit.
By [Daegonmagus] compiled 10OCT21.
Introduction:
I think I have something for the Domain Commander. I wasn’t lucid but I am fairly certain this was a good intel hit; though it did come after deliberately trying to enter a lucid state. I have been here before, several times, I am certain of it.
Interested in hearing yours and the Commander’s opinion. There is some concerning things in it regards to rape camps, not sure if you want to delete this part before publishing; it is entirely up to you. I am curious to know if the name I got rings any bells.
Summary:
I come to on some volcanic island. I am not lucid, but operating on “autopilot”.
Not a Lucid Dream. But is a "special" dream. Knowing what I know of DM, I would classify this event as "high quality" Intel.
I have been here before.
This location is one that is familiar to him. in either dreams, LD , memories or all of the above.
A prison has been built into the crater. There are hundreds of people being kept here against their will. These are people’s energetic bodies. I recognize some of them from school.
It is a prison. It is in a confined area.
Many people are in the prison against their will; means that they were there either through [1] a corrupted judicial system, [2] got there by bypassing a legal system, or [3] were born into it without any say in the matter.
In prison, there are many people who believe that they goat a bad deal. But there is a world of difference between...
[A] I was committing crimes, but you know the punishment was way, way beyond what I deserved. It's unfair. Its unjust.
And...
[B] I didn't commit any crimes at all. I was "railroaded" by a corrupt system, and now "blackballed" for life.
The impression that I get from DM is that many of the inmates fell under category "B".
I materialize here.
Other people can’t phase in and out of this place like I do.
DM describes that he has a special affinity for this "place", and special abilities to enter and leave at will.
To begin with, I blend in with the crowd and pretend to be a guard. This gives me the ability to tour some parts of this prison system. I have definitely been here many times before…
This is a familiar place to DM, and perhaps had other missions / adventures associated with it. It is not new to him.
… and there is something very strange going on, sort of like a breakout or a riot.
As he enters it, this time, he notices something unusual and strange going on. To him it appears to be a breakout or a riot. Both of these events describe a situation where the inmates override the protection rules and systems. And in both situations, it is the corrections officers tend to be ill prepared and typically follow procedures and retreat while awaiting backup.
The cells are cut into the rim of the crater, all around it.
I believe this might be a reality brainwashing facility.
This is an important comment. DM suggests that the purpose of this particular structural object / place is a "brainwashing" facility. Which would imply that it is where the amnesia (that we all unfortunately live with) takes place.
The prison complex goes inside the crater, like a good deal of rock has been carved out and the network extends into this rock and underground.
There are green trees inside the crater; it actually looks like a decent island paradise apart from the prison.
The physical details can represent things or not. But what I take from this is that this is a singular place. Like a zit on your face, or a wart on your arm, or a volcano in the middle of the ocean, or an island. It is a singular place.
He also says that it appears to be a nice place. Like a calm island, or a well taken cared for campus, or a well up-kept neighborhood.
So I am in this room pretending to be one of the guards and the riot breaks out.
The mind creates the visualization. The information is transferred.
I take the opportunity to go for a bit of tour while the rest of the guards are preoccupied.
DM conducts his espionage activities when he has the opportunity to do so.
I penetrate deep into the network; this thing goes several stories beneath the bottom of the crater.
DM explores deep into the complex. He recognizes that it is an extensive facility and goes very, very deep. It must be enormous.
It would be ideal if he could have somehow explored the administration and see what he might discern. However, this kind of exploration is fraught with danger. So it might not be a good thing to do during this particular event.
He goes into the lowest levels of the facility trying to find the darkest and deepest secrets.
These subterranean rooms are where they do all the bad shit, torture, reality brainwashing, breeding programs etc whatever it is this island is being used for.
DM finds the ugly activities, etc. All of it is not pleasant.
I have memories of being down here in a similar riot.
Curious statement. I get the impression that these "riots" have been an on-going thing over the many years.
Something happens – I don’t know what exactly – but the volcano is now about to erupt.
Referring specifically to this particular event, it appears that the build-up is reaching a critical juncture; an inflection point of substantive change. Like a volcano.
I decide to head back to surface.
I come across several panicked guards – helmets covering their faces, and khaki colored coveralls, fairly short maybe 5ish feet tall, who are shocked to see me.
Everything is chaos; the six or so guards are trying to evacuate.
This is a representative scene. There is a panic in the corrections officer cadre. There is chaos. And the corrections officers are trying to retreat and disengage.
These guards try to apprehend me, drawing these guns that shoot photon beams or something similar but I annihilate them with a flick of my hand – I am not lucid, but this is a left over reaction from my lucidity expeditions. It is a natural reaction that happens without me even thinking of it when I am threatened.
Thoughts are powerful. Whether in LD state or in dreams. If you believe that you can do something, the chances are that you actually can.
The guards disappear, and I make it to the surface.
One of the prisoners asks me for help, so I decide to help them figuring I can get more information on who is in charge of the place.
It's a scene from one of the Mission Impossible movies, where the one agent is trying to escape from a Russian Prison. Never the less, the root breakdown is that DM assisted in the breakout, and was led on how to make it happen by another inmate.
Within minutes everyone is freed from their cells.
I am now leading a group of about 20 to 30 of these people through these metal lined rooms, over scaffolding, and bitumised pathways that wrap up the edge of the crater.
DM is leading a cluster, or a group of inmates, towards freedom. Not all of them. Just a group of the ones associated with the particular individual that he helped.
They are are going upward Z-axis.
Downward Z-axis is the horrible torture pits and structures.
For some reason they think getting to the top will solve their problems; I don’t tell them the only way out is through portals they don’t have access to.
I have a vague recollection of coming here via one.
This is important. Everyone believes that the way out; the exit is the opposite of the depths of the structure. But they are wrong. The exit is not the opposite of the obvious. It is something else.
A few more guards appear here and there, but I extinguish them like the others.
Soon it is just me and the prisoners, everyone else has left.
The volcano is raging; there is a definite time constraint we are working against.
It is a race against time. To leave now is preferable than to wait until the entire system collapses.
Scene from Joe vs. the Volcano.
Regardless, we stop for a breather about half way in a sort of courtyard that has been built upon the scaffolding and under overhanging rock.
There is a woman I know her from school as being Tegan.
One of the guys makes a snide remark about her having sex with someone – possibly him -, basically calling her a slut. I roll my eyes; this is the last shit we need. I feel like punching this guy in the face. It was typical bullshit school children politics.
Tegan is clearly upset and distressed and tries to explain there was a different side of the story and she didn’t want to go into it right then and there, but this guy persists. Tegan eventually ends up replying saying it was not consensual and this guy had raped her. The one calling her a slut goes red, now there is a fucking fight amongst the inmates. Great.
Control mechanisms. "Old Empire" utilizes fear, emotion, anger to side-track inmates and delay them into a maze of other issues instead of focusing on what is directly important. (This must be a characteristic of inhabiting a human body.)
I am angered, but some how keep my composure – was this a trick to turn my attention away from what I was here for?
Yes. It was.
Did Tegan mean this took place at school, or in this prison? I got the impression she meant it was in the prison. I have knowledge of other “rape camps” in these non physical planes, where men are doped with a drug that affects their conscious before being hypnotised to rape women against their will, though that knowledge is not based on my own experiences.
This is a side issue that we might explore in the future.
Until now I have no memory of ever being in one.
It’s an argument I really don’t want to get involved in so I walk off and leave the others fighting.
I remember I am supposed to be finding someone who can tell me who is in charge of this place.
This is the mission and I am glad the DM is keeping focus.
I come back and find an older woman.
Her face is really distinct, very monkey like, old, withered, and dark tanned. If I had to guess, I would say she was from a southern American tribe of some sort.
She had a really long face, her chin was very angled and she had raised cheekbones. She was wearing what appeared to be a very grubby and ripped shirt – you could see one of her breasts poking through it and a definite tribal skirt.
She was the “mother” of the place; you could tell by the way everyone looked up to her and the younger girls that looked after her fragile body; helping her get up and helping her walk etc.
DM is directed to the entity that is in charge of this amnesia facility. Aside from the appearance, it is an old entity that is very knowledgeable and has been involved in this system for many, many years.
It is not clear if she is a revered inmate, or an administrator. My guess is that she is an inmate.
She started telling me a story – I cant quite remember the details of it, maybe it was how she got captured I don’t know – but I remember it finished with her trying to pronounce a name that she couldn’t properly pronounce.
She is from the earliest days of the first group of inmates to the facility. She has been here in the prison facility the longest.
She said the name was like sasquatch but with a “D” sound at the start and “ahuwy” or “ahuty” at the end Dasquachahuwy Dasquachahuty or something.
This name was in relation to the main antagonist in her story.
I got the impression it was the same one in charge of the volcano facility.
The impression is that the name of the administrator fo the amnesia machinery facility goes by the name Dasquachahuty.
Da-squach-ah-uty
I wondered if she meant Thoth, whose other name is Tahuty.
The eruption all of sudden got much worse. The people seemed to remember what was going on, stopped fighting and started panicking, looking to me for help.
I apologized, telling them I had to leave. Shortly thereafter I woke up.
My previous memories of this place:
Some background information.
I have a memory of coming here and having to infiltrate it via the top of the volcano.
There is some kind of rappelling system that takes you to the top of the rock.
Suggestive of others that have tried to manually infiltrate the facility.
It is a mountain of sorts that is very barren and of a black rock that stretches for miles in every direction.
It is very similar to Mordor out of the Lord of the Rings movies.
The trees don’t become apparent until you get to closer to the crater.
It is very, very large.
At the top of the crater, in this particular experience, it is heavily guarded and there is some sort of machinery littered about; it feels very similar to a mine site.
Heavily guarded is indicative of prior incursions being monitored, noted and the area reinforced with guards and corrections officers.
I remember watching a line of people being marched down from the rappelling system into the crater by the guards in a single file. The diameter of the crater is several kilometres across.
It is a big facility, and there is a manual entrance-way. Inmates and others can enter via this methodology rather than just using a portal.
I can’t remember if it was this experience or another one, but I have also explored the same subterranean network before.
There is a lift that takes you most of the way down.
Intel.
You come out in what appears to be a natural lava tube/ cave tunnel. There are concrete steps and a concrete pathway that are built into the ground to make walking around easier.
There are a myriad of steel doors several feet thick that slide open from the middle.
I am fairly certain at the end of this tunnel is a stargate like portal – different to the ones I used to gain access which are spherical and summoned through my own mind.
I believe this is how proper access to this place is gained.
This is serious Intel.
In this past experience I am headed towards this portal, after a similar riot breaks out.
Another recent dream…
I also recently had another dream which I believe is connected to an area close to this place that I think is relevant.
In this dream weird things were going on – I cannot adequately describe it but these weird things are usually a tell for me that I am not having a standard dream.
I was in a train/ mono rail type carriage that would snake around this island, but it would do so by going in and out of different non physical planes.
So in the span of what equated to about 500 meters of train track, you’d go through 5 or 6 different planes.
This suggests ...
[1] A manual "rappelling from the top" access method.
[2] A portal that is special and designed specially. (Perhaps the egress portion of the "tunnel of light".)
[3] This multi-portal dimensional "train". Perhaps this is the "egress portion of the tunnel of light".
As well as...
[5] The portal technique DM has been using now and previously.
I remember talking to someone “important” on this train.
They were talking very specifically about when the “simulation is turned off and what to expect”; everyone on earth would be given a special “document” that would brief them on the next part of the operation.
I could not tell if this was a good or bad thing.
From my particular vantage point I could see the volcano Island in the background separated by a few kilometers of water. There seemed to be some sort of glass like structure erected around it which I believe was used for cloaking purposes. This glass structure consisted of many rectangular panels that had been arranged at oblique angles to each other. It could very well have been an entirely separate building at the edge of the island.
Sort of like the island in the movie "Free Guy" eh?
Scene from “Free Guy”. The area shielded from view.
Conclusions
Breaking down as follows…
We see that DM has observed the “amnesia complex”.
There are four entrances that DM identified.
One of which is probably the egress section from the “Tunnel of Light”.
DM met one of the first people who be imprisoned at the facility.
She game him a “key”; a “name”, or a “clue”.
This “key” is Da-squach-ah-uty.
The fact that there is a torture area in the deepest levels of the facility suggests either…
That there is a “Hell” or “Pugatory” awaiting certain visitors through the egress portal. This is a planned portion of the entire prison reincarnation system.
Or, the deeper levels were “add ons” to the complex at a later time, implying that others have taken the system and modified it for their own personal amusements.
This area is still functioning. However, it is having operational problems.
The operational problems could be catastrophic.
The corrections officers are on station, but the administration functions seem to be “off line” or “elsewhere”.
Once the person completes the humiliation they are listened to / respected.
The humiliation sequence is a purging experience to create a new kind of person.
A different kind of entity enters the programming environment and upsets the entire process.
Those that had previously accepted the programming now question it.
A trigger phrase or event occurred and the participants were released from their programming.
The Programmers are upset and the observer is ejected.
As I read this, it appears that the Prison system has become some kind of “system of change” of the entities. The inmates accept the changes and go along with the changes.
Then a new entity enters the picture. This is unexpected and upsets the previous status quo. They change everything. An event or trigger phrase occurs and the programming is interrupted.
Those that control the programming are angry and eject the observer.
Combined comparisons
Both Intel suggest that there is a long established system. That it is undergoing change due to an interruption. The purpose of this system is established as part of the “Prison Complex” methodology of Punishment/reward.
Do you want more?
You can find many more videos in my “The Domain Action Articles” over here…
I have written about this many times before, and I tire of rehashing the basics to people who have been kept in the dark living like mushrooms for most of their lives. But this article, and in this article, I want to discuss the differences between the political nincompoops that are driving America towards war, and the generals that will have to fight it for them. Followed by the sitrep realities of fucking around with China.
.
It’s a battle between the “pinky in the air” political neocon moron-coops…
Bloomberg OWNS most Americans and has a zillion little mechanisms to extract your wealth.
… and the tanned-leather, chew on nails, or die, military.
Shortly afterwards, he turned to his other generals and asked them point blank if they would obey his orders if he asked them to provoke China, or Russia. And there’s all sort of articles about that. Just look up the controversy regarding General Miley.
.
Firstly, Let’s talk about what the differences are between a political neocon and a career general.
A political neocon
Neoconservatism is a political movement born in the United States during the 1960s among “war-hawks” who became disenchanted with the increasingly pacifist foreign policy of the Democratic Party.
They were also upset with the “New Left” and counterculture of the 1960s, particularly the Vietnam protests.
Some also began to question their liberal beliefs regarding domestic policies such as the Great Society.
Neoconservatives advocate the promotion of American-style democracy and forced American interventionism in international affairs.
This includes such buzz words as “peace through strength”. They are known for their rabid hatred of anything regarding Socialism, Marxism or Communism, and many believe that the creation of wars are necessary to maintain American global leadership.
In short, they believe that they are the best, and that their systems are the best, and that they have the right to destroy anyone else who challenges their systems, no matter what or who they are.
The Military
The military is a merit driven hierarchical organization. This is true in every nation, and in every country. In America they are subservient and report to the President of the United States. Who is, I should remind you all, a political figurehead.
But the military, are not political tools. No matter what the politicians believe. They are a merit driven organization, and they are the ones putting their lives on the line.
And every day things are closer and closer, nose to nose, neocon to the actual generals. Such as this…
“US has already lost #AI fight to China, says ex-Pentagon software chief”
An astounding headline as cracks appear in the façade of America’s AI supremacy. Nicolas Chaillan, the Pentagon’s first chief software officer says things may not be as rosy as reported.
Mr. Chaillan recently resigned from his job at the Pentagon in protest to the slow pace of technological change in the Pentagon and his statement is a shocker:
“We have no competing fighting chance against China in 15 to 20 years. Right now, it’s already a done deal; it is already over in my opinion,” he said, adding there was “good reason to be angry”.
Just to ensure that you don’t consider Mr. Chaillan a malcontent, here’s what the US National Security Commission on AI headed by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt said in March:
“China is already an AI peer, and it is more technically advanced in some applications. Within the next decade, China could surpass the US as the world’s AI superpower.”
The sky is not falling and AI will not be the sole determining factor in the fate of nations. So there’s no need to be upset.
What you must take away from this is that those who tell you that “everything is fine and that there is nothing to worry about” are perhaps less forthcoming than you may think.
This pertains not just to AI, but to automated ports, smart cities, chip development, #5G and a host of other technologies. And as I have warned repeatedly, #CBDCs. Each of these technologies represents a slow imperceptible dripping away of the US's technological lead.
For each of these technologies, we have all read articles by pundits who simply shrug their shoulders and say that it doesn’t matter and that the US’s technological supremacy is secure. Smug in a belief that the US’s open society has a natural advantage and that it is inconceivable that China might overtake the US.
A mere three days ago I used this astounding quote from an article by David P. Goldman who had this to say to these pundits:
"These are self-consoling illusions of a lazy elite that has allowed America’s manufacturing, technological and education advantages to erode over the past 20 years – an elite that has nothing to say about reversing the decline."
To which my comments from a mere three days ago seems prophetic and worthy of repeat:
And the problem is that he’s right. The elites that are telling you not to worry because the US is miles ahead in Chips and AI, or that China is going to fail are flat out wrong.
They are falling back on prejudices about China from another era, or are so caught up in loathing of China’s political system that they fail to see what’s happening.
When it comes to tech the US is bringing a knife to a gunfight.
-Richard Turrin
1 October 1990 – Air Force General and VP candidate Curtis E. LeMay died at March Air Force Base, California, at age 83. General Curtis Emerson Lemay was the “Father of the Strategic Air Command.” When he took over as its commander in 1948, it consisted of little more than a few understaffed and untrained B-29 groups left over from World War II.
Less than half its aircraft were operational and the crews were next to worthless. He ordered a mock bombing raid on Dayton, Ohio, and most of the bombers missed their targets by one to two miles.
That was unacceptable.
He subjected his men to vigorous training and long hours of hard work, but fought for additional pay and better housing to make their demanding lives more tolerable. He obtained vast fleets of new bombers, established a vast aerial refueling system, started many new units and bases, began missile development, and established a strict command and control system. When he left the command in 1957 to assume his new job as Air Force Vice Chief of Staff, SAC was the most powerful military force the world had ever seen.
But that was only one of his many accomplishments. He was the outstanding air combat leader of World War II. He developed the bombardment tactics and strategies that left Nazi Germany in rubble. He was transferred to the Pacific theater, where he took over command of the B-29’s and led the air war against Japan.
He incinerated every major Japanese city and oversaw the dropping of the atomic bombs. He believed that, “if you are going to use military force, then you ought to use overwhelming military force.
Use too much and deliberately use too much.. you’ll save lives, not only your own, but the enemy’s too". But he could be a humanitarian, and after the war he organized he famous Berlin Air Lift.
He often demonstrated his courage by personally leading his bombers on the dangerous missions, including what many regard as the most dangerous mission ever flown – the attack on Regensberg, Germany. The Army Air Forces lost half of the 1,000 planes launched that day, which has gone down in Air Force history as “Black Thursday.”
If his crews weren’t flying missions, then they were subjected to his relentless training.They called him “Iron Ass” because he demanded so much, but they respected him immensely. A popular story that was widely circulated in SAC is that he approached a fully-fueled bomber with his ever-present cigar stuck firmly between his lips. A guard asked him to put it out, as it might blow up the aircraft. Lemay replied, “It wouldn’t dare.”
He is buried in the United States Air Force Academy Cemetery at Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Air Force General and VP candidate Curtis E. LeMay
Generals who are up front and who will have THEIR ASS on the front lines take a far different world view than the coddled wealthy political appointees who think that they are better than everyone else.’
General – I’d die for my Country, but this leader is a moron. My job is to protect the country. War is an avenue of last resort. But this is not a last resort situation.
Political Neocon – I have a plan, and since I am smarter, wealthier, and better than everyone else, and I have God, history, and “greatness” on my side, I just cannot possibly be wrong. It’s inconceivable!
Never the less, the political elite in America are sleepwalking towards Armageddon.
The following is brilliant, and the author is so in tune with my feelings and beliefs on this issue that I must reprint these entire two articles. Just brilliant! The author is Chris Faure. He is exceptional.
China will not be conquered again, even if every last Chinese has to join the fight.
In the past four days, China has sent first 28, then 29 fighters and bombers near Taiwan. (Taiwan itself reports different numbers). Then, the US announced on Sunday that this is provocative. So, China called the statement irresponsible and sent a massive number of 59 fighters and bombers near Taiwan in a ‘take that!’ move.
But first, why would China militarily get involved in Taiwan, as it is their own territory under the 1992 Consensus for “one-China”? Taiwan is clearly China’s internal affair. What are their red lines?
Taiwan declaring a flash independence (they cannot really because they are umbilically connected to the mainland)
Internal turmoil inside Taiwan as we saw in Hong Kong
Taiwan may make a non-legal military alliance with another country
And any violation of the 1992 consensus.
None of these conditions are currently present, but we will need expert advice on the 1992 consensus. I do not know de jure how close Taiwan is to that red line. De facto the Taiwan announcement that they are preparing for war is completely provocative.
Currently China is not threatening.
She is using her air force to deliver very strong warnings that the conditions are approaching red lines.
Lets look at Global Times. Bear in mind that the Global Times is not a bullhorn for Chinese people. It is for the dissemination of information to western people. That is its function. ‘
– Time to warn Taiwan secessionists and their fomenters: war is real:
“The secessionist forces on the island will never be allowed to secede Taiwan from China under whatever names or by whatever means...... and, the island will not be allowed to act as an outpost of the US’ strategic containment against China. “
“The strategic collusion between the US and Japan and the DPP authorities is becoming more audacious...... and the situation across the Taiwan Straits has almost lost any room for maneuver teetering on the edge of a face-off, creating a sense of urgency that the war maybe triggered at any time.”
Sunday, further Global times writing appeared, by a GT voice, warning the EU (GT voice should indicate to us that this is unified among the Chinese people).
EU warned not to play with fire on Taiwan question.
– China will reconsider the European trade agreement.
“If the EU simply wants to develop normal economic and trade relations with the Taiwan island, its unusual emphasis on the latter’s role in its Indo-Pacific strategy should be viewed with suspicion.
Some European politicians may think that playing the “Taiwan card” will draw more attention and could help pressure the mainland to make more concessions.
But confusing the right and the wrong on China’s bottom line is a dead end.The Chinese mainland’s position on the Taiwan question remains clear and resolute.
All exchanges with the island must be handled in strict accordance with the one-China principle. They cannot exceed the scope of normal nonofficial cooperation and exchange.”
So, this is where we stand in this face-off and more analysis will follow.
Escalation? Continuation of “Sitrep : China. Is. Dead. Serious.”
Continuation of “Sitrep : China. Is. Dead. Serious.”
Let’s take a look at what China overcame in our near history.
The NED and similar organizations’ sponsored “Color Revolutions” in Hong Kong, Tibet, and Xinjiang all collapsed. We can also be sure that this escalation that we see now is not really about Taiwan. Taiwan is playing its role, like the dissidents in Hong Kong did.
The Trump Trade War collapsed and his focus on tariffs is now taking a tremendous toll on the US West Coast Ports.
The western propaganda war on China is collapsing because of the efforts of blogs like The Saker Blog and many others that took up writing about this.
The economic war is collapsing. For this, we have to follow Michael Hudson who details the butt-hurt Soros types who cannot make China dance to their tune. China has done massive work so that they do not have monopolies and internal destabilization by ‘too big to fail types’.
The return of Meng Wanzhou as a figure of national pride, which was a very delicate operation if one follows all of the plane routes during the sensitive exchange. Meng was exchanged for two worthless Canadian spies. There is another theory and this is that Canada tumbled to pay back the US for not including them in AUKUS.
The idea that the Chinese are not soldiers. They are that now because they have to be. * More about this following.
Let’s see what China gained in our near history
The pride, persistence, and trust of the citizens.
Major developments in space, like their own space station (slated to be a launching platform for? For what really? I do not know but the west has declared space a warfighting domain.) Most nations are welcome to come and hook up their own module, but the western world is not. This is a little payback for not allowing Chinese astronauts on the international space station.
A top US general, Milley, is so fearful of China that he called his counterpart in the late days of the Trump administration and told them that the US will not attack. (General Miley called to deliver a madman message–we have a madman at the helm and he may send nukes your way, so don’t do anything to give him an excuse. The poor general also had to deliver a contradicting message–at the same time, America is not falling apart; everything is hunky-dory and the well-oiled machine is running smoothly. ) (I know this has been taken out of perspective by almost everyone, but I am thankful, no matter that he may be a sniveling idiot. He did the rest of the world a favor).
China is in the process of destroying the dollar hegemony slowly but surely with Russia already having done its part and divesting from the dollar in their sovereign wealth fund. This deserves an analysis all by itself. Needless to say, China is launching its digital Renminbi, or Digital Currency Electronic Payment, commonly referred to as E-CNY, a central bank digital currency issued by China’s central bank, the People’s Bank of China. It is the first digital currency to be issued by a major economy. The digital RMB is legal tender and has equivalent value with other forms of CNY, such as bills and coins.
The fight against a virus called Covid.
China is now exceeding the US in almost all economic metrics, although they still refer to themselves as the 2nd major economy.
And at this stage, China makes major military flights near Taiwan.
A few statements:
China has no interest in military action against Taiwan
Taiwan has no real desire for military action against China (it would be somewhat like swatting a fly for China and will be over in an hour whichever method China chooses).
Here is Taiwanese Foreign Minister warning that his country is preparing for war with China. He asks Australia for help and Australia’s 60 minutes distributes the war propaganda.
Is the US interested in a war against China over Taiwan? We simply do not know.
What do we know?
Taiwan is a smaller copy of the economic miracle of China and there is no question of its economic success and high tech ability. But China mainland purchases over 40% of Taiwan’s production in both high-tech and agricultural products.
By studying Taiwan’s financial reports, MintPress has ascertained that the semi-autonomous island of 23 million people has, in recent years, given out millions of dollars to many of the largest and most influential think tanks in the United States.
It is then easy to conclude that with this revolving door, the US decided that Taiwan is an easy ingress to their hope for regime change in China itself (stated publicly by Mike Pompeo) and the AUKUS deal started the new range of increased provocations: It looks like any of the old color revolution tactics or initiatives, just now with an added threat.
This one, could end up in a hot war with both Russia and China.
Taiwan will not have a referendum for independence, because independence is not a done deal for the Taiwanese people. The ruling class fears that such a referendum will not be successful.
We all know the ‘call to democracy’ and we all know that this is invoked over and over by hegemonic powers to justify their own excesses. Well today, Taiwan’s Tsai is invoking ‘a call to democracy’ via an article in Foreign Affairs Magazine.
China is not impressed as she knows as well as you and I, what that really means.
China’s interest is peace and security in the region, which is now being called Indo-Pacific. Martyanov says this terminology is hegemon speak, and I’m inclined to agree with him.
It used to be Asia Pacific.
I so hope someone can draw me the borders (even a dash line) where the Indo pacific and the Asia Pacific exists. Wikipedia, instead of being obscurantist as usual, this time gives the plot away.
The term first appeared in academic use in oceanography and geopolitics. Scholarship has shown that the “Indo-Pacific” concept circulated in Weimar Germany, and spread to interwar Japan. German political oceanographers envisioned an “Indo-Pacific” comprising anticolonial India and republican China, as German allies, against “Euro-America”.
[2] Since 2010s, the term “Indo-Pacific” has been increasingly used in geopolitical discourse. It also has “symbiotic link” with the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or “Quad”, an informal grouping of in the region, comprising Australia, Japan, India, and the United States. It has been argued that the concept may lead to a change in popular “mental maps” of how the world is understood in strategic terms. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Pacific
Martyanov says that the US has clear dominance in submarine capability and he also says that escalation is something that is very hard to predict. Here we see escalation toward war, with the US using probably the only card that they have to play, trying to kick off an ocean-wide domination conflict on the shipping lanes of communications, with probably the only weapon that they have left, submarines to try and consolidate at least something of US economy and influence across the world.
Right here the issue of escalation becomes complex.
Russia will not stand out of this and what happens when the Zircons start flying? How soon until Japan, Australia and Taiwan are demolished? We will leave this here for professional analysts to opine.
With that as a backdrop, let’s return to China, specifically the general belief that the Chinese are not born soldiers.
That is true, yet the difference is that they prefer to solve problems non-kinetically. (Which is 100% fine with me!) But, they have other abilities, one of which is that they do not give up. The Saker has often said that morale is the greatest weapon of a military force. In this case, I would add to that: preparedness. Again Martyanov said that this thinking on the dominance of sea-lanes is not new. Well, China knows that as well, and they have prepared.
Every school child and university student in China now goes through military training. For the school kids, it is part of the initiative by the Chinese leaders to relieve the school kids from absurd requirements for STEM learning and to get them outside to take part in healthy play and strengthen them physically.
Every city has a local militia and they are armed to the teeth and drill and practice continually. This alone is estimated at 1 million feet on the ground (from Chinese sources).
If kinetic action breaks out in their own backyard, they have the numbers and home team advantage.
Following are some comments from our China correspondents. I don’t have the necessary 2 sources plus another for these, but I put them here to give you an idea of the chat.
China is known to be able to set together production lines very quickly. In these comments, this one is comical and says that…
China is mass producing nuclear warheads like they crank out paper lanterns. The only thing on earth that is faster is the US money machine.
It may be a comical comment, but the underlying issue here is that the average Chinese person has no doubt that China will, and is able to build whatever is necessary, any war materiel of any kind, to withstand kinetic action.
Is this meaningful in discussing this escalation? I would say yes.
More comments:
If you think a war against China (and Russia – we have to call in Russia at this stage) will be a perpetual war, kindly think again. This is not a win or a lose – it is total destruction of the one that fires the first shot or shoots the first missile or positions the first submarine to destabilize sea-lanes.
Here's a hint; Destabilization of the sea shipping lanes will, by it's self create a near (if not total) collapse of the economies of the Western nations. Which, is, by the way, why the United States cannot fight a war with China.
This represents the average Chinese and their chat and it is not the type of barroom soldier chat. These are ordinary people.
China is a merit nation and very serious.
One can expect precision and ruthlessness.
You may want to believe that the Chinese are not born warriors or you may want to believe that they cannot innovate. You can believe what you want, but take a look at these comments:
They do not believe in surgical strikes should anyone attack them. They believe in pounding the source of the attack and whatever is around it, into oblivion. They have their own history as a template.
This is a point that I have been trying to pound into the brain-dead West for years now. So many article praising American precision munitions and "surgical strikes" are meaningless.
China does not play.
They will see an guy running in a field and cluster nuke that field into radioactive glass. They just don't give a fuck. Caprice?
Btw, does this remind you of the Russians, who said that any strike on Russia will not only take out the strike, but also the platform where the strike comes from? The interaction between Russia and China militarily has grown tremendously as well, but again, this is another analysis.
I expect full-on military readiness as the Chinese military has been on a readiness footing for about a year now.
An outstanding question is how unified Asia is around China. Again we come up against Martyanov’s principle of escalation and this is really difficult to predict.
There is the old saying that goes like this:
Do not march on Moscow!.
We need to add one.
Do not militarily threaten Baba Beijing!.
It does not matter how for how long, they do not count their own possible dead, but they will stay the course.
Can we hope for level heads in Washington DC? Realism tells us that we have to hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.
China is doing that.
Oh, but what about Russia; the bear?
You all think that Russia will sit this one out? Are you fucking delusional? Maybe you haven’t noticed by the Chinese and Russian military cross-trains together. Maybe you haven’t noticed, but both military’s have their leadership in both HQ command centers. Maybe you haven’t’ noticed but immediately after the Australian submarine nuclear basing deal, the Russians and the Chinese held very long and serious “emergency” meetings of their top military leaders.
You haven’t noticed.
I’ll bet that you watch FOX “news”. CNN “news” or The Drudge Report “news”.
China and Russia are the pissed off nerds that are building “death rays” in their basements. China and Russia are the shunned, betrayed, and kicked upon wimps that stood tall while they were abused year after year. China and Russia are not going to play “ball”. No sure-ee. They are going to fucking devastate the playing field and what ever remains will be turned into mulch and used to fertilize their septic tanks.
Do you fucking think that Japan doesn’t know this? You should study some God damn history. Japan tries anything, anything, and it’ll be a radioactive series of ocean filled craters. Craters, mind you, that will have navigation warnings (in Chinese) for future shipping hazards.
Taiwan (and Japan) are islands.
Islands.
Islands, with densely populated zones and densely concentrated industrial zones.
Which means that if China or Russia are ever attacked by, or from, these islands all they need to do is lob just a few well aimed missiles at a few critical nodes to create not only total chaos, but also cripple the WORLD high tech industry (this is also true for the ROK, by the way, were one specific facility can be easily destroyed and create total chaos worldwide.
Which means that those who in the Anglosphere think of their Japanese or Taiwanese “allies” as canon fodder are kidding themselves. Just 24 hours after any attack on the DPRK, the PRC or Russia the world economy will violently crash just from the sheer panic induced by such missile strikes.
As for the people living on Taiwan, the ROK or Japan, they will deal with such industrial pollution and chaos that warfighting will be the last thing on their minds.
And, if they don’t fully surrender at that point, both Russia and China can turn their small islands into wastelands.
By the way, the US force planners all know that.
This was first taught to me by a *very* experienced US force planner in a class he called “why Japan cannot fight any war”. I am just adding the ROK and Taiwan to the list.
Finally, I think that most people in the region, at least in the ROK and Taiwan are aware of that.
-Anonymous
Do you have any idea how quickly South Korea will exit any alliance with the United States? Or haven’t you looked at a God damn map lately?
Korea is an a very, VERY bad location if it wants to support anti-China and anti-Russia activities.
America, Britain, and Australia has never experienced the receiving end of conquest. And it will be fucking nasty. Nasty.
China and Russia are going to go ‘Bronze age on your asses.”.
How about being forbidden to speak English. Being forbidden to have children. How about being forbidden to drive a car, ride a bicycle or suffer the penalty of death? How about being forbidden to wear shoes. How about slave markets, and not being able to use currency or have access to a bank?
Yeah. Conquest is like that.
What? You think that it can’t happen?
YOU ALL HAVE IDIOTS IN CHARGE OF YOUR WESTERN NATIONS. Get God-damn serious (for a change) and face the reality.
American “leaders”.
You, yes you, need to start changing things before all Hell breaks out.
China forgives, but never forgets. You all better stop kicking Asia, or it is going to unleash bloody fucking fury on your asses. Just remember you DO NOT WANT TO BE ON PAYBACK side…
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
I have often commented that American (today) is a land of a million tiny hands in your wallet. Being an American you don’t realize just how bad it is until you step outside of America and see what other nations are like. And there you see that there is something seriously wrong when the basic necessities of life, many which are basically pretty cheap, are taxed, regulated, and siphoned from by others who use it as a model to extract money.
Indeed, today, everything in America is a money-generating mechanism.
From removing public water fountains, and replacing it with water / soda vending machines, to requiring a person register with the county (or city) to be able to cut someone’s hair. To updating your driver license, to updating your vehicle license, to getting a pet license, to paying a fee to use an ATM. It’s all, every bit of it, a money-generating mechanism for the top 0.001% in society.
Why do you need to pay for a fishing license? Why do you need to renew your license plate? Why do you need to pay for a study on the lifestyles of migrant sparrows in your county?
Why? Why? Why?
Why? Because it is a way to generate money.
Not for you. Not for your family. Not even for your community. It’s for others, in far away towns, cities, and communities to get wealthy from.
Bloomberg OWNS most Americans and has a zillion little mechanisms to extract your wealth.
Which is why I, and many others, refer to Americans as “debit serfs”.
Well, actually the serfs from the Middle ages had it much, much better than American do today. At a top tax of 10%. No fees. Nor regulations. No laws except those regarding a victim. And a full 100 days off a year in holidays, and a four day work week. A six hour long work day. Yeah. They had it much better than Americans do today.
Anyways, today we have two worlds;
A uni-polar worldwhere the United States 0.001% oligarchy rules.
A multi-polar world where individual nations manage either societies as they see fit.
The United States is having a complete fit, and is literally fit to be tied, and is willing to destroy the rest of the world if that is what it takes to be the massive God-over-all. Have your read the George Soros tantrum articles? The Bloomberg articles? Jeeze!
Meanwhile, the rest of the world is moving on regardless.
Here is a most fantastic article that describes my vision of “America being the land of a million tiny hands in your wallet”. It’s brilliant. I only with that I was as good of a word-smith as these folk. I do hope that you enjoy it.
The article is below. All credit, yada, yada, yada.
Ross Welcome to Renegade Inc. With China’s increasing wealth, Western investors want some of the action. One of those investors is a bullish gentleman called George Soros. However, the Chinese are acutely aware that with Western investment comes inequality. So as Beijing begins to rethink how to do proper economic growth, we ask, will China learn from Western mistakes?
Ross Michael Hudson, always great to have you back on Renegade Inc.
Michael Hudson It’s good to be back here. Thanks for having me.
Ross Michael, we join you at a time where a lot of people think the unipolar world could have maintained its supremacy. Turns out it hasn’t. Multipolar world is here to stay. You of late have been quite vocal about George Soros, no less. Mr. Soros has been casting aspersions about various things, but one of them is talking about the Chinese economy and why Black Rock, amongst others, should be allowed to invest there, because ultimately it’s going to undo American interests. Can you unpack that for us because it seems very complicated?
Michael Hudson Well, George Soros’ dream is that China would do what Yeltsin did to Russia – that it would privatise the economy, really carve it up and let US investors buy control of the most profitable heights. In that way, the foreign investors would be able to sort of get the profits of Chinese industry, Chinese labour, and it would become the darling stock market of the world, just like Russia’s stock market was the leading booming stock market of 1994-96. China would be run to benefit US investment bankers. Soros is furious that China is not following the neoliberal policy that the United States is following. It’s following a socialist policy wanting to keep its economic surplus at home to benefit its own citizens, not American financial investors. For Soros, this is a clash of civilisations. His proposed strategy is to stifle the Chinese economy by putting sanctions against it, to stop investing in it so as to force it to do to itself what Yeltsin did to Russia.
Ross Let’s hear it in his words. He says: ‘The BlackRock initiative imperils the national security interests of the US and other democracies because the money invested in China will help prop up President Xi’s regime, which is repressive at home and aggressive abroad. Congress should pass legislation empowering the Securities and Exchange Commission to limit the flow of funds to China. The effort ought to enjoy bipartisan support’. He’s not mincing his words, is he?
Michael Hudson He thinks that China actually needs American dollars to build its factories and invest. He thinks that somehow China’s balance of payments is going to fall apart without the US market, without US investors telling President Xi what to do. The Chinese government won’t have a clue as to what to invest in and how to let the ‘free market’, meaning George Soros and BlackRock and other companies, operate. So he’s living in a dream world where other people need us. It’s like a guy who doesn’t realise his girlfriend doesn’t need him anymore.
Ross There seems to me to be a distinction here that the Chinese are acutely aware of, and it’s between the classical economists and the neoclassical economists. The classical economists have understood the idea of unearned wealth, unearned income. The neoclassical economists actively chase unearned wealth, unearned income, because that is central to their playbook. Can you just expand on those two ideas? And is it the case that that’s why you talk about a clash of civilisations?
Michael Hudson Well, you put your finger on it, Ross. People think that China’s advantage is its abundant, low priced labour force, or the government building infrastructure. But what’s guiding this is an understanding of the kind of economics that goes back even beyond Marx, to Adam Smith, and John Stuart Mill and the other classical economists. They realise that there’s a difference between earning income and creating wealth by employing labour to produce goods, to sell at a profit and then reinvest these profits and more capital formation, in contrast to simply buying a rent-yielding property, buying land and letting it rise in price without the landlord doing anything, buying a monopoly and just raising the price – charging monopoly prices like the US pharmaceutical companies are doing. China understands the difference between earned income and unearned income, between productive investment and unproductive investment.
In the United States, if they do recognise this difference, they realise that via unearned income you can make wealth by parasitically much quicker than you can actually create real wealth. It’s cheaper to be a parasite than a host. And so most of the financial strategy of Wall Street involves how to get something for nothing. How can we get a free lunch? Well, to do that as a major policy, we have to begin by telling people what Milton Friedman said: There is no such thing as a free lunch. But the whole of Wall Street is looking for a free lunch. They’re looking to grab Chinese assets on the cheap, like Soros has grabbed post-Soviet assets. They’re looking for monopoly rights. They’re looking for lending money and letting China do the work, to pay the interest to the Americans that are going to be providing it with money that the Federal Reserve ends up creating on its computers, or that George Soros already has saved largely by how he got the free lunch from the Bank of England betting against that and driving Sterling down.
Ross Some people call it the free world. Others call it a democracy. Others, for America, call it an advanced oligarchy. Do you think that the Chinese have looked at America and the wider West, understood that privatising all that rent has ultimately led to societal decline?
Michael Hudson They’re beginning to look at it that way. Most Chinese Marxists focused on Volume 1 of Capital, which is about employers hiring workers and putting them to work and making a profit off the mark-up. Only in the last couple of years have Volumes 2 and Volume 3 of Capital moved into central discussion in China. And it’s Volumes 2 and 3 that talk about economic rent. And so China has come to realise tha the United States is not an industrial economy. We’re not going to understand what’s happening in the United States, in England or Europe by looking only at what Marx wrote in Volume 1 of Capital, because they’re not making money industrially anymore. They’re making money by being a rentier economy, by landlordism, by monopolies and by bank credit, which Marx discussed in Volume 2 and 3.
So they’re now broadening the discussion. For the first time, you’re having, especially in the last month, China asking, “Do we want to let Chinese investors make money, financially, by buying housing, becoming absentee landlords and hoping that there is going to be a housing price inflation like you have in the United States? Or, do we want to keep housing low priced and not to bid it up by credit creation and finance?” They’re now realising that to keep China’s cost of living low, you have to keep the price of housing low. That means that you don’t want housing to become a commodity, an investment vehicle for absentee owners and landlords to make money. You want housing to be for Chinese people to live in. That means low-priced housing, not debt-leveraged housing as they’re seeing in the United States.
Ross I know somebody who works on the life boat on the Thames and they get a view each night that no one else would ever get. And they go up and down the Thames and they see all these high rises, which are oversupply of property, real estate. And there isn’t one light on in any of them. The reason, foreign investors, predominately the Chinese, have come bought them, clingfilmed the whole place, locked the door and then they chip off back to China – sit and wait, basically allow that land value to go up and cash out 10 years later. You can see what that does to local communities, schools, shops, infrastructure, services and all the rest of it – this absenteeism. Do you think that those foreign investors, the leadership in Beijing, has seen this model around the world and thought, yep, fine, we can do it over there, and yet we need to repatriate some money because of some of the liquidity issues that we’ve got over here. But we’re not having that as a central business model or a central economic model to our economies? Do you think that that light has gone on?
Michael Hudson Well, they’ve been discussing this regarding Hong Kong for the last 10 years. Hong Kong is the typical example of multi, multi-billionaires in real estate. They think that a socialist economy is not one that gets rich by creating absentee landlords. There’s been a large outflow of Chinese investment to the West. You have it in New York City on the west side, all very dark apartments with no lights on at night because they’re absentee-owned. Thorstein Veblen in 1923 wrote a book, Absentee Ownership, saying that housing should really be for living, not a speculative vehicle. But in America, real estate is all about civic development. It’s about how to increase real estate prices and create a bubble for speculators to find someone to flip the property to. I’m not sure it’s going to happen much longer and in London now that Brexit has occurred. But I think that what China is trying to do is asking how to create a domestic economy where Chinese people make money productively. They can not only afford a house of their own, but if they invest, they can invest in making China richer, not in buying income-yielding, rent-yielding, assets in America, England or Europe.
Ross Do you think that the pictures that we’ve recently seen on social media of the huge tower blocks that haven’t been finished, residential, that haven’t been finished for eight years and now they’ve just put semtex under them and raised the whole thing to the ground? Do you think that’s a real world example of the scar tissue, if you like, that private debt creates and in another sense, a Minsky moment? Blowing all these things up means that you get rid of all of that oversupply, which means that that inventory isn’t in the market and isn’t their to be flipped and speculated on.
Michael Hudson These are buildings where they wanted to pre-plan for what they thought was going to be a rural exodus, but the rural exodus didn’t occur into these cities. Right now, China is focusing, I think for the first time in quite a few years, much more on rural development. China is primarily a still a rural economy, a village economy. Most people don’t realise that. When you think of China, you think of Shanghai and Shenzhen and Beijing and even Wuhan. But the fact is that much of China’s rural and there can’t really be a rural exodus to the cities because you have a kind of passport plan in China. In order to live in Beijing, you have to have a permit to live in Beijing so the city won’t become even more overcrowded than it is now. They’re having to re-focus development much more on the rural areas that have not kept pace with the heavy industrial factory areas that have occurred. So they wanted to do a lot of building, not only to employ labour and to do construction, but to think just in case they needed this housing for the rural exodus, they needed it in place. Now they realise, OK, we’re not following that particular central planning idea.
Central planning really is very hard. It’s very hard to build whole small cities in advance with nobody there. It’s much easier to wait until they’re actually economic forces leading you to develop. So in that sense, China’s becoming more market oriented in its planning. But at the same time, it shapes the market, increasingly, to create domestic prosperity and earning opportunities, not unearned rent-extracting opportunities, but productive earning opportunities. This is an ongoing process of re-evaluating, restructuring, fixing up and improving the economy.
Ross Michael Hudson, welcome back. Great to have you for the second half.
Michael Hudson Thanks.
Ross Michael, we said right at the top of this programme that there is, let’s say, a tug of war between the unipolar and the multipolar. China have looked at the West and they must conclude now, the Russians also, must conclude, that the Western economic model is fatally flawed. In many ways, what you’ve got in America is an advanced oligarchy. Across Europe, you’ve got a zombie banking system. And basically the model for the last certainly 30, 40 years has been to extract as much rent as possible and pass it off as an economic miracle. To avoid all that, this fork in the road has crystallised. What do you think will be the decisions coming out of Beijing when they look at the economy in a more holistic way and they realise that they want to better the lot of the average Chinese citizen?
Michael Hudson Well, as I pointed out, their concept of the economy realises the distinction between earned income and unearned income, between rent and profits. It wants to make profits, not economic rents. And it also sees that the United States is trying to prevent it from going along this socialist road, and that’s really the new Cold War. You mentioned unipolar versus multipolar. It’s actually not so much that China, Russia and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, along with Kazakhstan and Iran and now the other groups are pulling away. It’s the United States that’s trying to force them to follow the US neoliberal model by imposing sanctions and special penalties and military threats, not to mention ISIS terrorism. The United States is driving Europe, Asia and now Africa as well, into a unified, consolidated unit outside of itself. It’s very self-destructive. It thinks like George Soros, that if we stop investing in Asia and other countries, that will force them to knuckle under to the US. But what it’s doing is it’s driving them altogether into the Belt and Road Initiative.
What China’s doing is creating a precondition for a profitable industrial economy over a large area to benefit from. It’s participants are going to need transportation. You’re going to need ports. You’re going to need roads. You’re going to need pipelines and is focusing on the interconnections, on the infrastructure.
America doesn’t build infrastructure these days unless it’s monopolised. This is the political fight going on in the United States now. President Biden has a infrastructure plan that he’s scaled down from six and a half trillion to three and a half trillion. And essentially the bulk of the Democratic and Republican Party said if we can’t privatise infrastructure and make it a rent-extracting monopoly, we’re not going to do it, and we’re going to block the government from doing it.
So in the United States, they’re going to have high priced infrastructure, high-priced health care and high-priced education while China is going to have low-priced transportation, low-cost infrastructure, free education, public health care.
And you’re going to have a very high-cost United States unable to compete with the rest of the world.
All it can do is make military threats or financial threats. If it tries to impose sanctions as it’s imposed on Russia, China and other countries, these are going to serve as protective tariffs for foreign countries.
When President Trump put sanctions on agricultural exports to Russia, it was a windfall for Russia. They developed their own agriculture and Russia is now the largest grain exporter in the world. Senator McCain characterised Russia as a gas station of atom bombs, but it’s a gas station with the largest farm sector in the world, and is developing an industrial integration with China and the rest of Asia. It’s a Eurasian world island as Mackinder called it a century ago, and it is becoming the economic focus of the world, leaving the United States as the high cost economy with no visible means of support, because we’re not doing our own industry anymore. We’re not competing with China. We’re letting China do all of the industry, and all of a sudden we’re dependent on it. This does not bode good for prosperity in the United States or Europe and other areas that are satellites of the US economy.
Ross What is the probability of the West going, hang on, we have taken a detour here, we need to do something differently?
Michael Hudson I’d say maybe between one and two percent. In order to understand that you’re taking a wrong detour, you have to understand what the right path is, and why China’s doing it right. They can’t acknowledge that, because that’s called socialism. And when everyone points out that instead of having health care absorbing 18 percent of the American GDP, you could provide public health care and lower the cost of living in the United States. That’s a precondition for making labour more competitive.
Well, the employers are going to argue that if you make health care public, then you’re going to lose the ability to lock-in labour to its employers. Right now in the United States, especially during the pandemic, if you work for an employer for a living, you’re afraid of being fired because you lose your health insurance and that is a threat of bankruptcy.
If you complain about your job, you might be fired. That’s a danger. So having private health care paid for by the employers locks labour into dependency. They’re afraid to ask for higher wages. They’re afraid to ask for pensions. Privatized employer-based health care has become part of the class war here, and it is succeeding in impoverishing labour. Same thing with privatized education costs financed on credit at fairly high interest rates, without any bankruptcy recourse to wipe them out..
President Biden promised that he was going to wipe out student debt. If you have students paying 40 to 50 thousand dollars a year to have a college education and a college diploma is a precondition for getting a job like a union card used to be, then you’re going to have that added to the cost of living. When you have all of these privatised – education, health care, not to mention housing and other factors – when you have all these rent-extracting exploitative sectors you cannot be a competitive economy. You can only get money by conquering and exploiting other countries, by owning their own rent-extracting sectors and monopoly-profit sectors.
But there’s no one to conquer anymore. America couldn’t even conquer Afghanistan. Every economy for the last 5,000 years has two parts. There’s the real economy of producing and consuming and paying taxes and government services. And then there’s the debt and financial overhead.
All economies operate on credit. The problem is that credit cost money, and creditor claims accumulate at compound interest. if you look at the compound interest for anybody’s savings – take the wealth of the One Percent and all the trillions of dollars they have – if you leave your money to accumulate compound interest, it grows exponentially. But economies don’t grow exponentially.
They grow in an S-curve, and sometimes there’s an interruption. Sometimes there’s a disease like Covid. Sometimes there’s bad weather and a environmental disaster or there’s a war. And once there’s an interruption, what do you do with the fact that the finance sector grows faster?
Well, this goes way back to Babylonia. It occurred in Greece and Rome. Ultimately the tendency is for the financial sector to take over and to use the financial returns to take over real estate. And so there’s a symbiosis between real estate and finance. That’s occurred in every economy for the last 2,000 years since Greece and Rome.
It certainly characterises where most money and most wealth is made today.
In the universities, you take a course and they say, well, you accumulate wealth by saving up the wages and saving up the profits you made. But that’s not how the wealthy classes got money. That’s not how the One Percent have made money. They have made money either by taking property from the public domain by privatisation, or it’s made today by the central banks, lowering interest rates, flooding the market with credit, enough credit to push up real estate prices 20 percent in the United States in the last year. Housing prices have gone way up to unaffordable levels, pushing up education prices – and education is priced at whatever a bank or the government will lend you to pay with a student loan. It’s all financialization.
It turns out that what people thought was industrial capitalism has turned out to be finance capitalism instead.
So what China is doing is saying that it’s not going to let our industrial capitalism evolve into finance capitalism. It’s going to evolve into socialism, because they’re a socialist government.
Ross Just say the Chinese, the penny’s dropped and they’ve understood how badly wrong the West got it. What does the Chinese economy, and as importantly, society look like 10, 20 years from today?
Michael Hudson It’ll be a more balanced, less polarised economy. It will still let people make fortunes, but not gigantic fortunes large enough for an independent oligarchy to develop, to become a rival to government and try to replace government. In the West, you’ve had a financial oligarchy evolve and take over planning from elected government. So we don’t have democracy now.
It means a free market where you leave everything to Wall Street as your central planner.
So China is going to leave its planning spontaneously to individuals to innovate, to develop, where America is becoming, and England, are centrally planned economies planned by Wall Street, not to create prosperity, but to create rent-extracting opportunities for Wall Street stocks and bonds and absentee real estate.
So you’re going to have a rentier economy – let’s call it neofeudalism – while the rest of the world goes forward into what industrial capitalism was meant to be a century ago before it was sidetracked in the West.
Much of Eurasia and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization will evolve into socialism, as most expected would happen in the West a century ago.
Ross You talk about Super Decadence. Is the irony lost on you that one of your politicians recently attended a 35,000 dollar gala event dressed in an expensive dress with the words ‘tax the rich’ embroidered all over the back of it?
Michael Hudson That perception of inequality has become so popular that you can almost make fun of it. There’s something called neurolinguistic programming, that says that if you have a problem, a headache or something, if you can imagine your headache or your problem being very far away and then expanding and expanding and finally, poof, it all dissolves and goes away.
They think that they can say “Tax the rich” and just make it into a phrase that’s so popular, it doesn’t really mean tax the rich any more.
It means that you accept inequality, but realize that it’s just become part of the system – and wouldn’t it be nice if there were a parallel universe in which we could indeed tax the rich. But of course, that’s just a nice fantasy.
Ross Michael, always entertaining. Always a pleasure. Thank you so much for your time.
Michael Hudson It’s wonderful to be here, Ross. Thanks for having me on your show.
POSTSCRIPT:
Right after this interview, China did on its own just what George Soros was asking U.S. money managers to do: Stop lending money to China. So China itself made an about-face and turned down the BlackRock’s plans to buy a large Chinese real estate company, and it did not pay foreign holders of its Evergrande bonds on September 23.
Diplomatically, China had expected Wall Street firms to lobby to stop America’s anti-China policy. And indeed, many Wall Street executives did point out to the U.S. government that China offered many opportunities for America to make money, and urged not to treat it as an enemy. But the military-industrial complex (MIC) has its own agenda, along with the neocon and neoliberal advocates of unique U.S. unilateralism.
I think that ever since China’s officials met in Alaska with Mr. Blinken earlier this year, they see the handwriting on the wall, as have Russia and other SCO members. The’ve accepted that the world economy is fracturing between the U.S.-centered “free world” (central planning by Wall Street and unilateral diplomacy from Washington) and the multilateralizing rest of the world.
MH
Conclusions
Cut out the different terms, and you discover that these fellows are talking about something that I have noticed for a long, long time. And this is one of the primary reasons why you feel so free once you step outside of the American gulag-state.
Granted, the way that I speak and talk will just be considered too “colonial” for these kinds of people, but the fact still remains, no matter what you call it.
America is a nation that does not make anything.
Instead, it is a nation of the oligarchy that act as leeches, feeding of the most basic needs of the American people.
And as the people get sick and tired of this situation, and they start to revolt and fight back, the oligarchy has but one remaining trick… distraction. And the distraction is a major war with a major power.
They chose China.
Way back in 2004 – 2005 as they believed that it was the weaker of the two (China and Russia) And they are still playing that game, still following though the plans, even though things have changed substantially in China since then.
The one to tame this monster of a beast, my gut feeling is, will not be China. It will be Russia. And that is for another discussion at another time.
…
For all that talk about how great America is, just pales in comparison to China. And that is simply because NOW (at this time… subject to change, of course) that the Chinese government serves the people. And the United States does not.
And, rather than go one and on about it, and angering my American friends, here’s a comparison…
If you go down the list you can easy see how true it is.
Regulations. Well, in America you had best comply with a EPA study to see if your local spangled wombat spider isn’t going to be affected when you add a pool to your back yard. That will cost money. Who will get the money? Well, it’s “the regulators”. How do you become a state regulator? Come on, boys and girls, you know that you can apply all you want but only the select few get state jobs.They are the friends of those already in power. Don’t believe me? Apply for a state job that pays a decent wage.
Laws. Oh, yeah. Tell me about it. There’s two sets in America. One for us, and one for the wealthy. That’s it. Argument over.
Domestic Policy. In America nothing is done domestically unless some oligarch can profit from it. That’s the way it is Jack, and the 7 trillion dollars that President Biden is proposing isn’t going anywhere except into the wallets of the wealthy.
This is the difference between a people’s government and a billionaires democracy.
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
One thing that I have learned over the decades was the interpretation of signals from the EBP and ELF constellation. While I am functionally retired from MAJestic, The Domain considers me a forever active asset and I pretty much get a near constant stream of sensory input or data. While there are special events like when I was able to open up dedicated channels to the Commander, most of the signals a “quieter”, not so assaultive on my personal sensibilities.
These “softer” and “quieter” signals are in three “packets” or “groups”.
And I have organized these “groups” into projects, and thus, I have a number of on-going “themes” or projects that I am (supposed) to be working on, I have a regular life and things have to go at my pace. I am a human, not a machine. Anyways, the projects that I am going to launch consist of the following…
An article on possible “back doors” to the ‘Prison Planet” established by the “Old Empire”. (That is this article. As well as the request at the end of it.)
A series of articles that consist of plans to create a “wish machine” that will beam signals to your mind and greatly accelerate the manifestation of affirmation prayer campaigns. (Basic electrical design engineering based upon some existing “mind control” patents.)
A fabrication of the above machine for sale on this MM site. (I’ll design it, I’ll make it. I’ll sell it.) Maybe I will be able to sell three or four units. LOL!
Personally, I am a bit nervous of the creation of a “wish machine”. As it could be dangerous in the “wrong hands” and be used to affect the thinking of others. As long as it is just provided here on this site, and the vast majority of the MM readership are STO sentience, I feel relatively comfortable that it will not be used for ill or selfish intent.
Let’s start with this Article – Profiting from the Prison Planet system
Given the nature of the “Old Empire” as described in “Alien Interview”, it seems obvious that there would be entities / individuals there who would have tried to profit from the “Prison Complex” system. Just like there are many, many people who are profiting from the various prison complexes in the United States today.
For instance, in the American prison system, you have wealthy oligarchs that profit from…
Being the sole supplier for commissary supplies.
Corrections officers stealing supplies, using trucks for personal use etc.
Corrections officers supplying contraband goods to the inmates.
Free labor at work-shops and factories.
Free labor by the Hard Labor Squads.
And so on and so forth.
We know, from “Alien Interview”, that the “Old Empire” was corrupt and practiced cannibalism, and held “gladiator style” sports. It would not be unreasonable to expect that some of these attributes of “pleasures” could somehow be used in part of the massive “Prison Complex”.
Granted that this is a very large kind of prison and it has a completely unique system, I would have to argue that the systems used to profit from this “Prison Complex” would somehow revolve around the torturing and amusement of the inmates, or in the selling of “vacation packages” to wealthy individuals.
Trigger article
This train of thought was inspired by an MM reader who submitted this following article for perusal. Key trigger phrases are in BLUE.
Some of you may be familiar with the interview I conducted with a man I met who experienced a Demiurge during his near death experience.
Here is some very interesting feedback I received from a woman who also had a near death experience. She claims to be able to access the akashic records and verifies what he is saying. This is from the email I received on December 16, 2017:
"Dear Mr. Bush, Good day!Just this morning, whilst seeking an IANDS group which might meet closer to me than Culver City, CA.I happened upon your Interview.I see you have a website: Tricked By The Light. I have not read it as yet.Although I concur! I have been putting up installments of my most unusual phalanx of paranormal and hideous experiences on Wattpad - just to leave some sort of record, in case I wound up "disappeared."Indeed, my hard drive was stolen - and once my friend's son gave me a laptop and downloaded the contents of an external hard drive I had hidden behind my bookcase - (unnoticed by the thieves), said laptop went Kerplooey. So my friend's son worked for weeks to salvage the contents of my original desktop and did so, most admirably.The only other stories I have read which in many ways reflect my own experiences in my home at 1926 Parksley Ave,Baltimore, MD are the books of Reverend Bill Bean ("Dark Force") and Bill Scott ("When Satan Came Calling").While it is easy to attribute the terrifying events of the last 14 years to "ghosts" and "haunting" and "demons" - alas, there were also some ex-Military persons involved - one of whom I met. You may, or may not know MANY Satanists and Occultists routinely interface with Lower Astral Entities (demons) and enslave them, as well. This is ancient knowledge.All that to say - your Guest who saw a Demiurge was telling the truth. I know him by another name.Due to my unexpected and certainly astonishing experiences, I began to research anything and anyone and read all articles, web pages, books et al, which might have helped me. I was disabled, nearly bedridden and out of my mind with fear. My children all lived in other states, trying to work and raise children. No one believed me. So I stopped at nothing to arrive at the truth.I was a plain, old-fashioned Lutheran Grandmother - nada special about me.I knew absolutely nothing about Souls, God Source, Karmic Contracts, "heaven/hell" - Karma, Life Reviews, Earth School, Reincarnation, Life Movies, etc.Zero.Suddenly, in the middle of the horror, my memories of Near Death Experience(s) returned.I prayed for death daily, anyway, so ghastly were my experiences, I certainly did NOT need those memories - and all the "gifts with a razor blade attachment" Aftereffects an NDE can provide.So now - I see Past, Present and Future Lives, Life Before and Between Lives, Souls creating the films for their "Lives," Discussing and rehearsing "roles" (which Soul is going to play which "part") "taste-testing" Karmic Intersections (they can actually jump in and out of their character at important Karmic Intersections (US being the "characters") so they'll remember them, going to the Programming Center for their "Programmed Prompts" (sometimes called Guideposts) and I see these as movies - snapshots, trailers - and indeed, when people asked me where I got the ideas for my stories and paintings, I told them all I had to do was watch the "little movie" and copy it.My art class friend patted me on the shoulder and said, "Guin, no one else sees the little movies."I was aghast! I've seen all that Programmed CRAP all my so-called Human Life!I've read Dr. Newton's books, Dr. Weiss's books and everything else you can imagine. At least I got SOME relief and assistance from PMH Atwater, herself a triple NDEr.They are all partly programmed to spread propaganda.I live EVERY DAY with a transparent-appearing overlay - as I had it explained to me - a side effect of an open Third Eye. This overlay is more of the "Game Plan" and "Life Lessons" and even film clips of WHO'S COMING NEXT in my "life movie.” This is on top of what my normal human eyes see. I became clairvoyant, clairsentient, clairaudient - a MOST reluctant medium. However, unless the person is involved in my life, I won't know anything about them. I try to ignore ANY medium crap. I hate it.My children asked me NOT to tell them what I see about their lives.My life is HELL. Hell. It is hard to function when you can SEE your future! And it plays out as you can see it!You are right on the money, m'friend. We have ALL been deceived. Souls care nothing for us - some Light Beings, eh? They call us "Host Bodies and Host Vehicles” and program and manipulate the woo hoo out of us!Stewart Swerdlow was a Lot of help to me. I am one of MANY school children chosen for Mind Control Experiments back in the 60s. We are usually killed off when the Mind Control begins to fragment or wear off - around age 50.So that is what happened to me- almost.I am still alive and telling my tale. SO glad to find your website.I remember "Class" and "Teacher-Guides" and "Soulmates" and the entire shebang. Don't buy that Lesson crap. We are HUMAN and don’t need but one lesson - we have the Body and Human Brain and we can cancel those "Life Contracts" . . . "Life Plans" whatever.Trust me, what happened at my former home should NEVER happen to ANY being, human or nonhuman.Because I did not die - my phone, cell, computer, snail mail were all hacked. No one ever got my phone calls. Or emails. They were all answered by hired folk who probably had no idea why they were being paid to do so. I've had people I did NOT know walk up to me in a grocery store and talk about the very subjects I'd just discussed with one of my few friends the day before - on the PHONE.Excuses about Karma don't move me. I am a nice person and most people are. Souls don't like us and many don't even know how to operate us. I am disgusted that not one Guide will come down here and console me for what occurred . . . and explain it, or show me love or consideration.Here is how it works: They are told it is a School or Game. The Game on The Limitation Plane. Earth School. One-third of our lives WE are asleep. They are not veiled and that is play time, the creeps.We are NOT Souls. Only part of our consciousness is their consciousness. I found my Soul to be unlike me and set up a rather vengeful retaliation program. Gotta love the Programming part, eh? What a crock! Well, we can also undo a lot of that programming, Stewart Swerdlow tries to help people do that all the time.The Demiurge in fact DOES have to do what he does - I know him all too well. There is a balance which MUST be kept, It IS his Game. It was never meant to be.
He has copies of Akashic Records, which can be taken out JUST LIKE NETFLIX and he sticks poor Souls in various characters and THEY are forced to lead lives of HELL, not to mention he puts some of his "demons" (negative polarity beings) in the roles of people who were supposed to be Helpful, or a Soulmate or a Friend or a Karmic Intersection meant to allow us to teach a lesson, etc.
Just the opposite will occur. Those intersections will be terrible. Mine were obvious! I just deconstructed my entire Life Plan in Baltmore.The Game has been hacked, in other words. Akashic Records are NOT safe and inviolate. The Demiurge's name is "Maratona." Call him that. He HATES it. Maratona's Armada! (Satan's Army)You know what they call us? "Marionette Amore!" "Love Puppets."He can mess with us any which way he pleases. Yes, we can cancel the contracts ALL SOULS MUST MAKE WITH HIM or they cannot Game here. Think Holo-video Game. We already have this coming in the Human World.
Why doubt it exists? The entire world is a Holographic Universe (Universal Games) and "Source" is NOT "All That Is.” Those Hollywood movies are SO obvious, too!Souls trapped in one of those "Games" are in a Life Movie already lived by other Souls. They claim they are using those Lives as Video Instructions. B.S.
They get ENERGY out of OUR SUFFERING. Period!
The poor human "characters" have NO CLUE why "life sucks and then you die," "most men live lives of quiet desperation." Guess why!I pray for DEATH, I tell you. Rod Sterling cannot beat THIS story. Your Soul is your WORST enemy! The Light is only a frequency of vibration which FEELS GOOD to Souls, so they are taught that is “love” and Souls are often Firefly Entities. Why would they care about us?I was one. They are impossible to understand. And I am pretty darn good at communicating with them!We cannot think the way they do. It is not possible. We have short lives!Man has been messed with for ages. Now they have the Internet. Our lives are ALL scripted, filmed, rehearsed, reviewed, previewed, you-name-it.We can break the Game. I keep trying. Everything is MIND. All of it. I HATE "The Light" - because they OWE me an explanation of what happened to me at my legally owned home - so awful and malevolent and sadistic I had to move and auction off all my stuff! If it were not for my daughter I'd be dead now.I was dead. Dead. Dead for good. Not a true NDE. Dead.I went back to a Space Station and watched The Life Review. All Aliens. Stewart thought they might be Andromedans. "I" was infuriated because I did not finish a painting of my daughters. (American Beauties)There was a meeting at an oval table. A bunch of beings were present. Each had a copy of the new Script. Many Beings did NOT want my Soul to return. She argued with them, LOUDLY. She must have won - I see she is sitting with a Military HUMAN man and working on her Lesson Plan. He spent a lot of time with her.She got back into my body - problem! Time had passed. Since I keep detailed diaries, I knew something was not right! I don’t know how much time had passed. There is NO TIME, as we perceive it.Our lives and all Timeline Options and Possible/Probables are filmed. That is the Labyrinth your Guest called by another name. If you marry June instead of Andrea, THIS AND THIS will manifest. And so on.Guess what? I SEE THOSE MOVIES, TOO! All the time, every day. The good side is my ability to do so has saved my life a couple of times!I feel like I have lived this entire life before. I can tell you, the chances are very good that I have, or some other Soul has “played” me. No way to tell.I recognize entire neighborhoods, tell you what I was, used to do, who lived where. When I look up those houses on Zillow, they are in pre-foreclosures or Foreclosure! There is literally NO ONE to ask if I am correct or the time period in question. Definitely another life.Before 2006 I did NOT believe in Reincarnation.I HATE The Light. I HATE their Game. I HATE their “God.” Love and Light? NOT EVEN. NOT FOR MANKIND!I can see Astral Activity, including how Guides let Souls know the next series of “Prompts” for their Game! I have learned to discern just about any Being, and it all is soooooo not who I am!!I always knew what I wanted to do with my life. And winding up a Lab Rat for the Dark Military was NOT on MY human agenda.A human man not only programmed me, I can see he teaches the Dark Energy entities in some sort of Grade School out in the Astral. Light Beings are simply taught on a different frequency domain.How ungodly AWFUL can this get???Maratona is actually a monster - (Satanists describe him very well. He manifests as a 30-ish Blond, Curly-headed Angelic Man, VERY tall, not old and white-haired) - I harass him all the time. I don’t care one whit if they kill me. I am afraid ONLY that the military men involved, who know I am well aware they are hooked into the Astral via an antenna (the military has worked on that for YEARS) and one of them is the Interface for human/alien relations, not to mention a rapist, torturer, Satanist and murderer, will get their mitts on my human bod! Torture is their specialty.Aliens? Craft? I can tell you boodles about them. EVERYWHERE. Mankind can only perceive on a VERY limited “channel” if you will.Yes, DRAMA! Maratona means “Marathon.”
Stewart once suggested it was like SURVIVOR. That is right! And a Reality TV show!A Production Company! That is what those Akashic Records are! Like Netflix!I kid thee not! Souls do not sleep. They live in a place of No Time, No Space. They LOVE computer Games! I mean LOVE them! Some part of Ourselves is up there, jacking us around like Avatars.I have been doing drawings for years. I even drew a chessboard which has some meaning for Souls- and which I never understood. It is disgusting.Souls don’t have to go back to The Light, but they’d better be nimble, better be quick. If you die that Guide is RIGHT THERE.If Maratona wasn’t such a booger I’d stay with him. He does not make you incarnate! Master Guides LOVE to torture Souls in a human body! The human body HURTS. It is how they punish and punish and punish for every little infraction!Man, you name it - it has been done to me. A regular old Grammy with 7 Grandchildren. That’s all there is to me.There are Angels! Incredible Beings! Thank Someone!My understanding is Yahweh is the Principal of the School and Developer of the Game. There are many, many Souls who can design planets, even worlds.Any American School kid can halfway design an Avatar and World, for Goodness’ sake!This is a piece of my ghastly story. My heart went out to your Guest.This is Satan’s Game. Absolutely. I go bother him (in Spirit) all the time. We called him Satan because he was such a BRAT when he was young.Enki nothing! That is Marduk! And the Anunnaki were nothing more than PEOPLE from another Dimension trying to help Mankind. Just people! They had longer lives but they died like everyone else.I can teach you how to view one of Enki’s programs, if you like.I tell everyone my name. I am not hiding behind any Mask! I’ll tell you who the Military men are and the Spiritual Guru (*rolls Eyes*) who actually programs Human Beings to do the will of Souls - they try to over-ride our brains all the time! I’ll just put their names in another email.
The emotion-laden text threw out some very interesting concepts that I highlighted in BLUE. Which suggested that there are those that use the “Prison Complex” as some sort of GAME. Or who also use it like recreational MOVIES.
I do NOT think that this “Prison Complex” was intended to be a GAME or a source of amusement like MOVIES. But I do believe that over the centuries that a kind of illegal “black market” arose and that others have been using the “Prison Complex” to do exactly that.
Systems used to profit from
As best as I can figure, there are those, whether part of the “Old Empire” or from somewhere else that have constructed some kinds of systems inside the “Prison Complex” from which to profit from. And as far as I can see these systems fall into one or two general categories;
A “First Person Shooter” GAME. Where an entity pays for the privilege to live on the Earth as a human and experience all the sensory pleasures or discomfort that goes along with that experience.
A torture MOVIE. Here, the entities have somehow hijacked the pre-birth world-line template creation system. They establish one to fit the desires and fantasies of the entities that pay for a “good show”, and the hapless consciousness is convinced that it must experience the pains and the sorrows laid out for them. The entities that paid for this pre-birth world-line template then sit and watch the events unfold for the sorry human that is convinced that it must endure these disruptions and horrors.
Backdoors
Unless something happened…
The Prison Administration “bailed out”, and left.
The Prison System has been taken over, and corrupted by very malevolent entities.
It seems to me that there MUST be some kind of “backdoor” that enables these self-serving for-profit entities to corrupt the Prison System for their own purposes.
In cybersecurity, a backdoor is anything that can allow an outside user into your device without your knowledge or permission. Backdoors can be installed in two different parts of your system:
Hardware/firmware. Physical alterations that provide remote access to your device.
Software. Malware files that hide their tracks so your operating system doesn’t know that another user is accessing your device.
A backdoor can be installed by software and hardware developers for remote tech support purposes, but in most cases, backdoors are installed either by cybercriminals or intrusive governments (like the United States) to help them gain access to a device, a network, or a software application.
Any malware that provides hackers access to your device can be considered a backdoor — this includes rootkits, trojans, spyware, cryptojackers, keyloggers, worms, and even ransomware.
If there is a “backdoor”, then we can come to the conclusion that the “backdoor” was put there intentionally by one or more of…
The architects of the “Prison Complex”.
The administration of the “Prison Complex”.
A technologically advanced society (not the “Old Empire”) that exploited the prison system intentionally.
Some kind of dimensional / universe malware.
The advantages of LD talent
Those that have the important ability to LD (Lucid Dream) are in a unique position to reconnoiter towards this end.
It would be a reconnaissance mission.
In military operations, reconnaissance or scouting is the exploration of an area by military forces to obtain information about enemy forces, terrain, and other activities.
Examples of reconnaissance include patrolling by troops (skirmishers, long-range reconnaissance patrol, U.S. Army Rangers, cavalry scouts, or military intelligence specialists), ships or submarines, manned or unmanned reconnaissance aircraft, satellites, or by setting up observation posts.
Espionage is usually considered to be different from reconnaissance, as it is performed by non-uniformed personnel operating behind enemy lines.
-Wikipedia
And if you want to be specific, it is purely espionage. As the LD asset is an inmate in general population.
I can tell you that doing so is very important, and would be greatly appreciated by The Domain. Though, I must caution everyone that LD travel is not to be taken lightly. Dangers abound. I also do not know what the LD asset would discover, or what surprises await them. But I am ABSOLUTELY CONVINCED that they would like some talented assets to volunteer for this task.
To be brutally honest, this is an OFFICIAL REQUEST for a volunteer. It is direct request via EBP from The Domain.
As I understand it, it is only something that can be done by an inmate with a strong ability to this end. And that this specific type of mission WILL encounter unknowns and if the person encounters any kinds of dangers, they are to retreat and regroup.
It’s just a “fact finding” mission.
And, for what ever it is worth, they have certain people in mind for this action, and consider them to be very important and valuable assets that must be protected at all costs. (I am to repeat and underline this last sentence.) They are very important and must be protected at all costs.
Mission parameters
For starters…
This is a volunteer activity, and there is no dishonor in refusal.
And then,
You absolutely not reveal who you are or what you are doing.
You must not engage any subject entities that you encounter. You observe.
The specific tasks are…
You must identify [1] if there are others, who are not part of the “old empire” prison complex, that are involved in selection of pre-birth world-line template selection and layout.
You must identify [2] if there are others, who are not part of the “old empire” prison complex, that are using the collected memories or records of memories of other humans for anything other than the original stated purposes.
Reporting and dissemination.
No matter what your opinions are, you must report what you experience.
You are to report your findings, no matter how disjointed or confused, and include your associations and thoughts and ideas regarding them. (Some results might be disturbing or distasteful, but you must report everything.)
MM will publish your findings.
Finally,
You must vocalize permissions to allow The Domain to observe your operations. You may place restrictions on how they observe and time limitations or windows if that is your desire.
Please kindly know and realize that possession of a EBP would “blow your cover” and thus it is impossible for you to be implanted at this time for this role. Thus this request follows this procedural venue. Finally, there is no dishonor in refusal. The Domain realizes just how seriously dangerous this mission activity is.
Conclusion
It seems that there must be “backdoors” to the “Prison Complex”. Exploiting those backdoors would enable some rapid transformation of this sentience nursery from a Prison Planet to something else and far easier to manage.
The only people who can find out the details of such a system are talented LD assets, and in asking them to do so, they must deal with entities that have access to all of their memories and are not handicapped by amnesia.
I do not think that any of them (those using the backdoors) are anticipating espionage but the request to view this aspect of the Prison Complex is very important and comes direct from the administrator of the operation charged with the clearing of the Prison System field.
Do you want more?
You can find many more videos in my “The Domain Action Articles” over here…
This article consists of my explanation of what our “universe”; the “Reality universe” otherwise known and the MWI, actually is. And while in many ways, it resembles the science fiction movie “The Matrix” it is far more cunning, with far more serious implications. And this article discusses those implications. For here, we will get into the basic overlying general construction of this Prison Complex.
Those of you who are long time readers of MM know what I am talking about about. New comers, well, you’ll probably get lost fairly early on. Sorry about that. this is an advanced subject.
The basic construction of everything
We live inside of an artificial construct.
Being inside of this “thing”; this environment distorts our understanding of reality. It distorts our thinking and our ability to fully comprehend what is actually going on.
We call this place where we live as “our universe”.
And inside of it, we describe the operation of it as “the MWI”. Or multiple world theory.
And that is all we know. We know nothing about what lies outside of our reality. We do not know what lies outside of our universe.
Then it is “The Matrix”?
Well, kind of.
When a beautiful stranger leads computer hacker Neo to a forbidding underworld, he discovers the shocking truth--the life he knows is the elaborate deception of an evil cyber-intelligence.
Most MM readers will know what “The Matrix” is. It is a science fiction movie that says that all of what we know of, see and believe, is an elaborate computer simulation, and we are “plugged into it”.
An overly LARGE Synopsis for those who never watched the movie (they do exist, you know) …
The Matrix begins with a squad of police officers surrounding a building where they believe a computer hacker by the name of Trinity is currently hiding. A mysterious group of “agents” show up and chastise the police commander for not waiting for them before entering the building, due to the dangerous nature of their suspect.
We then jump inside where Trinity takes down a squad of police officers before going on the run from the “agents”, across the roof tops of the mysterious city. Trinity eventually makes it to a phone booth, seconds before the phone booth is plowed over by a Mack truck driven by one of the “agents”. When the “agents” examine the wreckage, they do not find Trinity’s body and state that she has escaped, but that they have found the one she is looking for.
The film then jump cuts to Thomas Anderson, a computer programmer by day and a computer hacker by night who goes by the name of Neo. Anderson is played by Keanu Reeves in all his Keanu glory. Neo is receiving mysterious computer messages that tell him to “follow the white rabbit”. After encountering someone with a white rabbit tattoo on her body, he follows her to a techno club where he meets a very much alive Trinity.
Trinity tells him that Morpheus, an infamous terrorist hacker, wants to meet Neo, and the young hacker is very interested. However, before that meeting can take place, Neo is arrested at work the next day and interrogated/tortured by agents. Fortunately, the agents release Neo (along with a little electronic bug), and Neo is able to keep his date with Morpheus.
Morpheus tells Neo that he is living in a dream world, and he can choose to leave it, if Neo so wishes it. Choosing to continue to follow the rabbit hole, Neo takes a red pill, and his reality begins to disintegrate. Neo awakens, naked and weak, in a liquid-filled pod, with cables attached all over his body. He sees thousands of similar tubes all around him before a machine comes down and disconnects him from the pod. Neo is then flushed out with the refuse where he is eventually picked up and brought aboard Morpheus’ hovercraft, the Nebuchadnezzar.
Once there, Morpheus begins to explain what the Matrix is. Neo is told that in the 21st century, that the humans of the planet fought a war with machines that had become self aware. As part of this war, the humans had blocked the skies, to prevent the machines from using solar energy. As such, the machines had to find alternative means for the power that they needed to survive, so they created the Matrix. The Matrix is a cyber reality that allows the machines to use human beings as an energy source, or a battery as it is explained in the movie.
In the Matrix, humans believe that they are living in the year 1999, and that they are in control of their lives, with no memory of the human/machine world. Morpheus explains that he is responsible for “unplugging” enslaved humans, and returning them to the real world. Morpheus further explains that there is a prophecy that one such freed person will end the war with the machines, and that he believes that Neo is that person.
The film then goes into the education of Neo for his adventures in the Matrix world. Because the Matrix is a computer program, Neo is told that they have the ability to do superhuman feats since they can bend the physical laws. However, if a person is killed in the Matrix, they will die in the real world as well. Neo is also warned that everyone who has ever taken on an agent has been killed.
Ultimately, Neo is taken by Morpheus to see the Oracle, who will, in theory, confirm whether Neo is indeed the Christ figure of this film. The bad news is that the Oracle tells Neo he is not the one. The worse news is that she tells Neo that Morpheus will die to protect Neo because of his beliefs, unless Neo sacrifices his life for Morpheus.
The good news…Neo gets a delicious cookie. As Morpheus’ crew heads back to the extraction point, they are met by policeman and agents, who have been tipped to the crew’s Matrix-world arrival by their own personal Judas, Cypher. Everyone but Morpheus escapes, but Cypher makes it back to the real world hovercraft first. There he begins killing the other members of the crew by unplugging them while their minds are trapped in the Matrix. Before he can kill Trinity or Neo, a computer monitor by the name of Tanks kills Cypher and saves the duo.
Morpheus is taken to the agents’ headquarters, where they plan to torture him and interrogate him in order to get the access codes to the mainframe computer in Zion, the humans’ last stronghold in the real world. Neo decides to go back into the Matrix in order to save Morpheus, and Trinity tags along for the ride. The duo encounter overwhelming numbers, but they manage to free Morpheus and make their escape. Morpheus and Trinity are able to make their escape from the Matrix, but Neo becomes trapped when Agent Smith destroys his exit. Neo thinks about running from the agent, but he begins to believe in the prophecy and finds confidence in his abilities.
Neo and Agent Smith fight. Spectacularly. But ultimately, Neo has to get out of the Matrix, so he goes on the run trying to find another exit while being pursued by three agents. Tank attempts to lead Neo to an exit and safety, but Agent Smith cuts him off and places several bullets into Neo’s chest, killing the hacker.
However, as the agents begin to walk away, Neo resurrects and is now completely aware of his abilities and his power. He stops the bullets from the agents’ guns with a wave of his hand, and destroys Agent Smith by jumping into his “code” and blowing him up. Neo makes his escape from the Matrix, returning to the real world just in time before the hovercraft crew blows up an EMP that would have killed Neo if he had stayed in the Matrix.
The film ends with Neo making a call to the Matrix, stating that he knows that they are afraid now. Neo tells them that he will show their human prisoners “a world where anything is possible” before hanging up the phone. Neo then Superman’s off the screen, essentially creating the first cyber-world super hero.
The idea is valid.
Yes. We exist inside of an elaborate simulation.
The Matrix.
Except that instead of it being a computer simulation, it is far, far more than that. It is a completely separate and unique “universe” of sorts. The entities that built this simulation did so intentionally and used technologies that appear “God Like” to us.
They created a unique “universe” which is a “bubble” within a much larger universe.
Important Note
And important note: this is NOT a universe that lies outside of the “larger universe”. This is a “bubble universe” that lies inside of the “larger universe”.
As this statement clearly explains (from “Alien Interview”)…
"The Domain exists in such a universe, as well as in the physical universe."
How universes come into being
I’ll let “Alien Interview” explain…
"Before you can understand the subject of history, you must first understand the subject of time. Time is simply an arbitrary measurement of the motion of objects through space.
Space is not linear. Space is determined by the point of view of an IS-BE when viewing an object. The distance between an IS-BE and the object being viewed is called "space".
Objects, or energy masses, in space do not necessarily move in a linear fashion. In this universe, objects tend to move randomly or in a curving or cyclical pattern, or as determined by agreed upon rules.
History is not only a linear record of events, as many authors of Earth history books imply, because it is not a string that can be stretched out and marked like a measuring tool. History is a subjective observation of the movement of objects through space, recorded from the point of view of a survivor, rather than of those who succumbed.
Events occur interactively and concurrently, just as the biological body has a heart that pumps blood, while the lungs provide oxygen to the cells, which reproduce, using energy from the sun and chemicals from plants, at the same time as the liver strains toxic wastes from the blood, and eliminates them through the bladder and the bowels.
All of these interactions are concurrent and simultaneous. Although time runs consecutively, events do not happen in an independent, linear stream.
In order to view and understand the history or reality of the past, one must view all events as part of an interactive whole. Time can also be sensed as a vibration which is uniform throughout the entire physical universe.
Airl explained that IS-BEs have been around since before the beginning of the universe. The reason they are called "immortal", is because a "spirit" is not born and cannot die, but exists in a personally postulated perception of "is - will be". She was careful to explain that every spirit is not the same. Each is completely unique in identity, power, awareness and ability.
The difference between an IS-BE like Airl and most of the IS-BEs inhabiting bodies on Earth, is that Airl can enter and depart from her "doll" at will. She can perceive at selective depths through matter. Airl and other officers of The Domain can communicate telepathically. Since an IS-BE is not a physical universe entity it has no location in space or time.
An IS-BE is literally, "immaterial". They can span great distances of space instantly.
They can experience sensations, more intensely than a biological body, without the use of physical sensory mechanisms. An IS-BE can exclude pain from their perception. Airl can also remember her "identity", so to speak, all the way back into the dim mists of time, for trillions of years!
She says that the existing collection of suns in this immediate vicinity of the universe have been burning for the last 200 trillion years. The age of the physical universe is nearly infinitely old, but probably at least four quadrillion years since its earliest beginnings.
Time is a difficult factor to measure as it depends on the subjective memory of IS-BEs and there has been no uniform record of events throughout the physical universe since it began. As on Earth, there are many different time measurement systems, defined by various cultures, which use cycles of motion, and points of origin to establish age and duration.
The physical universe itself is formed from the convergence and amalgamation of many other individual universes, each one of which were created by an IS-BE or group of IS-BEs.
The collision of these illusory universes commingled and coalesced and were solidified to form a mutually created universe. Because it is agreed that energy and forms can be created, but not destroyed, this creative process has continued to form an ever-expanding universe of nearly infinite physical proportions.
Before the formation of the physical universe there was a vast period during which universes were not solid, but wholly illusionary. You might say that the universe was a universe of magical illusions which were made to appear and vanish at the will of the magician. In every case, the "magician" was one or more IS-BEs. Many IS-BEs on Earth can still recall vague images from that period. Tales of magic, sorcery and enchantment, fairy tales and mythology speak of such things, although in very crude terms.
Each IS-BE entered into the physical universe when they lost their own, "home" universe. That is, when an IS-BE's "home" universe was overwhelmed by the physical universe, or when the IS-BE joined with other IS-BEs to create or conquer the physical universe.
On Earth, the ability to determine when an IS- BE entered the physical universe is difficult for two reasons:
1) the memory of IS-BEs on Earth have been erased, and
2) IS-BEs arrival or invasion into the physical universe took place at different times, some 60 trillion years ago, and others only 3 trillion.
…
Immortal Spiritual Beings, which I refer to as "IS-BEs", for the sake of convenience, are the source and creators of illusions. Each one, individually and collectively, in their original, unfettered state of being, are an eternal, all-powerful, all-knowing entity.
IS-BEs create space by imagining a location. The intervening distance between themselves and the imagined location is what we call space.
An IS-BE can perceive the space and objects created by other IS-BEs.
IS-BEs are not physical universe entities. They are a source of energy and illusion. IS- BEs are not located in space or time, but can create space, place particles in space, create energy, and shape particles into various forms, cause the motion of forms, and animate forms. Any form that is animated by an IS-BE is called life.
An IS-BE can decide to agree that they are located in space or time, and that they, themselves, are an object, or any other manner of illusion created by themselves or another or other IS-BEs.
The disadvantage of creating an illusion is that an illusion must be continually created. If not continually created, it disappears. Continual creation of an illusion requires incessant attention to every detail of the illusion in order to sustain it.
A common denominator of IS-BEs seems to be the desire to avoid boredom.
A spirit only, without interaction with other IS-BEs, and the unpredictable motion, drama, and unanticipated intentions and illusions being created by other IS-BEs, is easily bored.
What if you could imagine anything, perceive everything, and cause anything to happen, at will? What if you couldn't do anything else? What if you always knew the outcome of every game and the answer to every question?
Would you get bored?
The entire back time track of IS-BEs is immeasurable, nearly infinite in terms of physical universe time.
There is no measurable "beginning" or "end" for an IS-BE.
They simply exist in an everlasting now.
Another common denominator of IS-BEs is that admiration of one's own illusions by others is very desirable.
If the desired admiration is not forthcoming, the IS-BE will keep creating the illusion in an attempt to get admiration. One could say that the entire physical universe is made of unadmired illusions.
The origins of this universe began with the creation of individual, illusionary spaces. These were the "home" of the IS-BE.
Sometimes a universe is a collaborative creation of illusions by two or more IS-BEs. A proliferation of IS-BEs, and the universes they create, sometimes collide or become commingled or merge to an extent that many IS-BEs shared in the co-creation of a universe.
IS-BEs diminish their ability in order to have a game to play. IS-BEs think that any game is better than no game.
They will endure pain, suffering, stupidity, privation, and all manner of unnecessary and undesirable conditions, just to play a game. Pretending that one does not know all, see all and cause all, is a way to create the conditions necessary for playing a game: unknowns, freedoms, barriers and/or opponents and goals. Ultimately, playing a game solves the problem of boredom.
In this fashion, all of the space, galaxies, suns, planets, and physical phenomena of this universe, including life forms, places, and events have been created by IS-BEs and sustained by mutual agreement that these things exist.
There are as many universes as there are IS-BEs to imagine, build and perceive them, each existing concurrently within its own continuum. Each universe is created using its own unique set of rules, as imagined, altered, preserved or destroyed by one or more IS-BEs who created it. Time, energy, objects and space, as defined in terms of the physical universe, may or may not exist in other universes. The Domain exists in such a universe, as well as in the physical universe.
One of the rules of the physical universe is that energy can be created, but not destroyed. So, the universe will keep expanding as long as IS-BEs keep adding more new energy into it. It is nearly infinite. It is like an automobile assembly line that never stops running and none of the cars are ever destroyed.
Every IS-BE is basically good.
Therefore, an IS-BE does not enjoy doing things to other IS- BEs which they themselves do not want to experience. For an IS-BE there is no inherent standard for what is good or bad, right or wrong, ugly or beautiful. These ideas are all based on the opinion of each individual IS-BE.
The closest concept that human beings have to describe an IS-BE is as a god: all-knowing, all-powerful, infinite. So, how does a god stop being a god?
They pretend NOT to know. How can you play a game of "hide and seek" if you always know where the other person is hiding?
You pretend NOT to know where the other players are hiding, so you can go off to "seek" them. This is how games are created. You have forgotten that you are just "pretending". In so doing, IS-BEs become entrapped and enslaved inside a maze of their own devising.
How does one create a cage, lock one's own self inside the cage, throw away the key, and forget there is a key or a cage, and forget there is an "inside" or "outside", and even forget there is a self? Create the illusion that there is no illusion: the entire universe is real, and that no other universe exists or can be created.
On Earth, the propaganda taught and agreed upon is that the gods are responsible, and that human beings are not responsible. You are taught that only a god can create universes. So, the responsibility for every action is assigned to another IS-BE or god. Never oneself.
No human being ever assumes personal responsibility for the fact that they, themselves -- individually and collectively -- are gods. This fact alone is the source of entrapment for every IS-BE.
…
And let’s look at this one statement in detail…
[1] There are as many universes as there are IS-BEs to imagine, build and perceive them, each existing concurrently within its own continuum.
[2] Each universe is created using its own unique set of rules, as imagined, altered, preserved or destroyed by one or more IS-BEs who created it. Time, energy, objects and space, as defined in terms of the physical universe, may or may not exist in other universes.
[3] The Domain exists in such a universe, as well as in the physical universe.
[1] IS-BE’s create universes at will.
[2] They are complete separate entities that exist within it’s own set of laws, rules and continuum.
[3] The Domain exists in one such universe, AS WELL as “The Physical Universe”.
Since, the Domain Commander was discussing the situation at Roswell he was making s simplification statement that has been pretty much glossed over by most everyone who reads the “Alien Interview” document.
There is the BIG “parent” universe. This is where The Domain exists. As well as where the “Old Empire” existed.
And there is …
The Physical Universe. This is a smaller “pocket universe” that sits inside the “BIG parent universe”. It is what we see. It is everything that we physically see, and sense. But it is not the totality of everything. Because this “Physical Universe”; the MWI is the “Old Domain” “Prison Complex”.
The creation of a “artificial” universe within a universe
So this “Prison Planet” is more than just a singular planet with a “fence” around it. It is a planet within it’s own “pocket universe”.
And I can tell you, from MAJestic, that Earth is not the only planet within this “pocket universe”. But there are perhaps four to five other solar systems involved. (Five if you include “our” solar system.)
So it is a very special “pocket universe” within a much larger BIG universe.
This is a very unique universe
Furthermore, there is an elaborate structure that makes this “Prison Complex” unique. It is much more than a simple “electric fence”.
There is a system of recycling IS-BE consciousness’s back and forth from “Prison” to “Parole”. We know this system as …
Birth
Living on the earth
Death
Going into the light
Heaven
Reincarnation
The “Punishment” aspect of our incarceration is in BROWN. The “Parole” / rehabilitation aspect of our incarceration is in BLUE.
Thus we have something else.
We have [1] a huge complex that handles the “punishment” aspect of our incarceration. We call this the “physical reality”, or the MWI. And we have have [2] a massive complex for the “parole” / rehabilitation aspect of our incarceration. This goes by the name of “Heaven”.
There are two massive complexes involved in this “Prison Complex”.
Our “Pocket universe” contains multiple universes
For every imprisoned IS-BE consciousness species, there is an equivalent “Heaven”. And there are many. It’s not only humans. There are horses, elephants, dolphins just to name a few. Each “Heaven” is a universe.
So looking from the outside, you can see that this “pocket universe” is segmented into other universes, and the entire complex, or cluster, of universes is one grand “Prison Complex” that is administered by a complete and ruthless system of control.
Why it is like a geode
A geode is a geological secondary formation within sedimentary and volcanic rocks. Geodes are hollow, vaguely spherical rocks, in which masses of mineral matter (which may include crystals) are secluded.
Geode.
The crystals are formed by the filling of vesicles in volcanic and sub-volcanic rocks by minerals deposited from hydrothermal fluids; or by the dissolution of syn-genetic concretions and partial filling by the same, or other, minerals precipitated from water, groundwater or hydrothermal fluids.
In our case, the creation of a universe within a universe was a very special construction. In fact, I might argue that it would have been far easier to create a universe outside of our universe, but apparently the rulers of the “Old Empire” as technologically advanced as they were, wanted to create a system that would permanently imprison FOREVER those that they condemned…
…within their universe, and within their geographic territory.
So they FORCED the artificial construction of a unique static “pocket universe” with very strict MWI world-line behaviors. And were any inmate to escape, at the very worst they would escape to geographic terrain of the “Old Empire”. This would not be something that would be possible with a completely separate universe that would lie outside that of the “parent universe”.
And in so escaping, they would be going from a “reality universe” where the laws and rules are one thing, and to a “parent universe” where they are something else entirely different. With a complete amnesia, it would be extremely difficult for an inmate to successfully escape.
What does this understanding provide to us?
This provides us with a great deal of insight regarding the technology of the “Old Empire” and what they could and could not do.
They could create a “pocket universe”.
They could not create a total self-contained universe to exile others to.
Thus it is not wonder that The Domain was able to vanquish the “Old Empire”. As members of The Domain are fundamentally IS-BE’s with a class structure that prohibits memory amnesia when occupying a physical body. While the “Old Empire” (apparently) was a societal structure where the occupancy of a physical body allowed or forced memory amnesia.
It also tells us why it is difficult for The Domain to reverse engineer this “Prison Complex”. As this is not a separate universe, but rather a “pocket universe” construction that lies within a “parent universe”.
Where do we inmates fit into the picture?
This region, this “Prison Complex” appears to be just like the “Parent Universe”. So much so, that The Domain entered it, set up a base of operations inside of the “reality universe” totally and completely unaware that it was within a spawned “pocket universe”.
I am confident that The Domain has learned many, many things over the decades and centuries. But I do not believe that mastery of this “pocket universe” can be obtained in the next few years. It might take longer than that. Thus the track that The Domain is on is quite reasonable.
Set up a system for sentience sorting and rehabilitation.
Enlist the Mantids towards this goal.
Assist the”conditional release” of inmates as they acquire “exit visas”.
Regain control of the entire “Prison Complex” through mastery of the “Pocket Universe”.
Administer care to the inmates…
With the goals of rescue of the Lost Battalion, and recovery of all memories of all IS-BE’s so incarcerated.
Conclusion
One of the most important fundamentals that an inmate must understand when trying to escape a prison, is the layout of that prison. Well known “prison breaks” all required an understanding of the prison layout, the routines of the guards, and an understanding on what needs to occur; step by step, prior to a successful break-out.
While there are many who are tying to escape one way or the other, I argue that it will be very difficult to do so unless the inmate have a good understanding of the environment where he is incarcerated within.
Given the nature of this “Prison Planet”, it seems reasonable to conclude that a map or an understanding of a path must be laid out for the inmate to extract themselves out of the general population environment. This will not only list the various traps, snares, and tricks that lie along the way, but also the boundaries and mechanisms for the other associated “pocket universes” that lie within this “Prison Complex”. Such as the various heavens, and the very detailed snares.
This article might not seem like much, but it establishes a most fundamental understanding of the limits and the geography of the “Prison Complex”.
Do you want more?
You can find many more videos in my “The Domain Action Articles” over here…
Americans have no idea what it would actually be like to have a real war. Most of them don’t even know that China has surpassed the US economically. Most Americans literally think a war with China would be similar to a war with Afghanistan or Iraq – something you watch on television that has no direct effect on your life, other than maybe causing gasoline prices to fluctuate.
This article is a collection of insightful articles, musings, and tidbits that most (not all) of my fellow Americans are completely unaware of occurring.
We will start with a big news item, and then approach it from the point of view of what is not being reported…
Meng Wanzhou
Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou arrives in China after more than 1,000 days under house arrest in Canada, following a deal with U.S. prosecutors to end a fraud case against her.
Love China and China will love you. Millions and millions of people all over China watching live the return to freedom from Canada of the Huawei Boss. We were watching live in the local pub here in Dongguan. More exciting than watching a corrupt European football game. Very bad news for Canada as far as the average Chinese person is concerned.
- Peter Weston
Yes. Big news in China.
Three Videos of just HOW BIG this is.
Everyone knows what happened. The United States Military Empire kidnapped a leading Chinese Industry leader on trumped up charges. Then after three years of no proof, they released her.
Why is this big news?
Imagine if China did the same thing to Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates or Steve Jobs.
Now, imagine if the Chinese had behave like a bunch of Washington DC weak-wristed yes-men, who were only in their positions due to political graft.
Most likely, they would be uselessly fighting on the American and Canadian courts as we speak, and Meng would probably rot for at least some 15 years in prison.
Luckily, the Chinese are communists, so they don’t delve into bullshit. They saw her prison for what it really was – a political stunt – and counter-attacked accordingly, by arresting two of Canada’s ruling elite (i.e. the Canadian capitalist class) members.
The Release Of Meng Wanzhou’s Is A Small But Decisive Victory For China
The U.S. has given in to the Chinese demand to end its hostage holding of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou:
A plane believed to be carrying Chinese tech executive Meng Wanzhou took off from the Vancouver airport on Friday, marking a new stage in a legal saga that ensnared Canada — and two of its citizens — in a dispute between the U.S. and Chinese governments.
A B.C. court decided on Friday that the extradition case against Meng would be dropped after the Huawei chief financial officer reached a deferred prosecution agreement with the U.S. government.Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, the two Canadian citizens who were detained in China just days after Meng's arrest in Vancouver, are now on their way back Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau confirmed on Friday evening.
The U.S. had accused Meng Wanzhou of misleading the opium dealer bank HSBC about Huawei’s relation with a local entity in Iran. This, the U.S. claimed, had led to breach by HSBC of its unilateral sanctions against Iran.
This was a constructed crime with the only evidence being some wording on one page of a longer power point slideshow which Meng Wanzhou surely had not edited herself.
The deferred prosecution agreement seems to admit that:
As part of her arrangement with U.S. prosecutors, Meng pleaded not guilty in a court Friday to multiple fraud charges.
The Huawei chief financial officer entered the plea during a virtual appearance in a New York courtroom. She was charged with bank fraud, wire fraud and conspiracies to commit bank and wire fraud more than two and a half years ago.
...
The agreed statement of facts from Friday's U.S. court appearance said that Meng told a global financial institution that a company operating in Iran in violation of U.S. sanctions was a "local partner" of Huawei when in fact it was a subsidiary of Huawei.
The whole case was constructed and the arrest arranged by John Bolton when he was National Security Advisor under then President Donald Trump:
The Trudeau adviser said Mr. Bolton and other like-minded officials in the U.S. government were well aware of the significance of the arrest they were asking Canada to make. The adviser and a senior national-security official say they are convinced the U.S. picked Canada to arrest Ms. Meng – and did so in a last-minute rush – because they believed the Justice Department and the RCMP would honor the extradition request.
Trump has linked resolution of the U.S. government’s dealings with Huawei to a potential trade agreement with China. He has said he would consider Huawei’s role in a trade deal at the final stage of negotiations, the court application says.
...
“Prejudice to the fairness of these proceedings is made out by the president’s repeated assertions that (Meng’s) liberty is effectively a bargaining chip in what he sees as the biggest trade deal ever.”
The case gave Canada a lot of headaches as China had arrested two of its spies just days after Canada had followed the U.S. request to arrest Meng Wanzhou. Canada has denied that Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig were spying for its services. However, Canada’s main spy agency, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, welcomed the release of its boys:
Canadian CIA.
During a July visit to China U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman had been given two lists of issues that China demanded to be solved before it was willing to cooperate further with the U.S.:
In the List of U.S. Wrongdoings that Must Stop, China urged the United States to unconditionally revoke the visa restrictions over Communist Party of China (CPC) members and their families, revoke sanctions on Chinese leaders, officials and government agencies, and remove visa restrictions on Chinese students.
China also urged the United States to stop suppressing Chinese enterprises, stop harassing Chinese students, stop suppressing the Confucius Institutes, revoke the registration of Chinese media outlets as "foreign agents" or "foreign missions", and revoke the extradition request for Meng Wanzhou.
China sees the end of the Meng Wanzhou issue as a victory:
The high-profile case of Meng, which has become a political dilemma significantly affecting the global geopolitical landscape, has been settled through both legal channels and political wrestling, experts said, noting that China, the US and Canada have seen the best scenario with much compromise made by the Biden administration in resolving the matter. It also helped pave the way for the positive interaction between the world's largest economies in the near future amid strained China-US relations.
It was also one mistake of the US administration that has been corrected in line with the request of China, as China put forward two lists to the US during the bilateral talks in Tianjin in July, including the List of US Wrongdoings that Must Stop which urged the US to release Meng, showing that Beijing's US policies began taking effect and remaining mistakes of the US have to be corrected.
Commentator Pepe Escobar however, does not believe that the release of Meng Wanzhou will change much if anything:
Pepe Escobar @RealPepeEscobar - 11:49 UTC · Sep 25, 2021
MENG WANZHOU
- political kidnapping masked as criminal prosecution
- part of the demonization of Huawei
- near 3-year illegal detention
- fake charges
- “Justice” Dept. had to drop extradition request
- Hybrid War continues
While I agree that U.S. aggression against China will continue I do see this as a Chinese victory. China has disabled one of the weapons that U.S. had used against it.
From now on no country will risk to follow a U.S. requests to arrest a Chinese citizen:
The swiftness of the apparent deal also stands as a warning to leaders in other countries that the Chinese government can be boldly transactional with foreign nationals, said Donald C. Clarke, a law professor specializing in China at George Washington University’s Law School.
“They’re not even making a pretense of a pretense that this was anything but a straight hostage situation,” he said of the two Canadians, who stood trial on spying charges.
Mr. Spavor was sentenced last month to 11 years in prison, and Mr. Kovrig was waiting for a verdict in his case after trial in March.
“In a sense, China has strengthened its bargaining position in future negotiations like this,” Professor Clarke said. “They’re saying, if you give them what they want, they will deliver as agreed.”
The U.S. had, via Canada, taken Meng Wanzhou as a hostage.
China replicated that by taking two Canadian citizens as hostages, thereby putting the pressure on the weaker power involved.
It also stopped imports of Canadian canola and pork. No government will want to repeat the experience of the Canadian one.
The sentiment of patriotism prevailed at the scene. After the short speech, Meng waved to the crowds holding Chinese flags to welcome her at the airport, with a big smile, while singing a song for the motherland together with people at the scene.
People were still singing after Meng rode the bus to undergo epidemic prevention inspection at the request of Chinese Customs.
Groups of people, who wore protective suits, held flowers and welcome banners as they waited on the parking apron at the airport, as Chinese port cities have adopted strict epidemic prevention measures against COVID-19. Local media reports said earlier that Meng was expected to follow the 14 plus 7 days of quarantine following her arrival.
So this is indeed a victory but in a minor battle and in a war that is likely to see much bigger ones.
Other thoughts…
How did China know that the two Canadians were spies? Could it be that CIA incompetence exposed them and others? Seems very likely.
Keep in mind that China managed to roll up an entire CIA network of spies some years ago (ca. 2011), no doubt by methods such as that (and probably by using double agents like the Venezuelans did to fool the US into thinking their military would support Guido).
Eighteen ‘sources’ were reportedly neutralized in that one Chinese operation. Of course we don’t, and won’t, know the truth but it sounds like it was a pretty disastrous outcome for the CIA.
Do you think that there were other “round ups” that occurred but were not reported?
What happens to Western Spooks that go to China?
Concerning China's abilities at keeping track of Five Eyes spooks, what part of the imperial color revolution in Hong Kong was missing? What do we normally see in an American regime change operation after the US State Department's NGOs succeed in building protests that was lacking in Hong Kong?
Of course, the snipers.
So where are the snipers that the CIA trained up to spark the protests into a raging conflagration?
Obvious answer: At the bottom of Victoria Harbor wearing concrete boots.
This was unlikely to have been done by Chinese intelligence themselves but rather by the Triads after some negotiations with mainland authorities. While the Triads are not allied with the Communists, they are part of the second system in that "One country, two systems" deal and have a deep interest in maintaining the status quo. The empire's color revolution seriously jeopardized that status quo and had to be neutralized.
Posted by: William Gruff | Sep 25 2021 21:22 utc | 36
…
In other news, this is excerpt from CGTN…
French writer exposes U.S. global hegemony
Updated 22:59, 25-Sep-2021
CGTN
The number of companies and entrepreneurs that have fallen victim to the U.S. global hegemony is unknown but Marc Lassus, founder of Gemplus, a manufacturer of smart cards (including SIM cards) is one of them.
After witnessing the Frenchman’s business making waves with users in the billions, the U.S. took control of the company and drove Lassus away, Chinese newspaper the Global Times has reported. Lassus said that their goal was, through the CIA and NSA, to spy on the whole world.
Lassus has told his story in a recently published book, “The Chip Trap.” During an interview with the Global Times, he shared his thoughts on Canada’s arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou at the request of the United States.
"Meng Wanzhou's detention in Canada is just a pure scandal, as well as their request for extradition to the U.S," he said.
Huawei has a very significant technological advantage in 5G infrastructure and to some extent in fiber optics, their presence in Africa is also very strong and it is too late to beat them, Lassus said. Therefore, the U.S. used brutal and “cowboy” approaches to hinder Huawei’s business expansion.
He added that Meng’s case reminded him of his own experience. He was almost arrested on similar, trumped-up “charges” during a private trip to Cuba but he miraculously escaped imprisonment in the U.S.
"The move from the Trump administration to Biden's will not change much the U.S. policies," he noted.
He also mentioned that the U.S. claim that it values free markets is “pure hypocrisy.” They use any possible means to suppress other countries’ high-tech companies from being successful in international markets, such as Huawei, ZTE and places pressure on chip manufacturers such as Samsung.
Lassus said he was optimistic about the cooperation between China and Europe, which is entering into a new era with ties becoming more strategic, more complex but more promising.
"It is very clear now China should put more effort and investment than ever to develop key technologies in the semiconductor industry such as key equipment, materials and design tools, and so on. Especially when the U.S. is trying to ban any exchange between world-leading companies and China," he said.
Yes, and so China is doing so. How are the billions in new investments in the IC / AI / IoT technology corridor HK, Zhuhai, and Guangzhou being reported in your nations?
The long arm of U.S. jurisdiction dates backs to over a decade ago when the world’s biggest power felt threatened by the rapid ascent of other economies. Now the possibility of losing technological advantage haunts Washington, which has resorted to bending the law to gain a competitive edge. Bribery, fraud, and violating sanctions are commonly used pretexts for the U.S. to strike down any individual, entity or country that it feels threatened by.
Frederic Pierucci, an executive of Alstom, a French power and transportation conglomerate, was arrested by the FBI when his plane arrived at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport on April 14, 2013. He was charged with bribing Indonesian officials to win a power plant contract.
Coincidentally or not, the arrest of Pierucci, then president of the French power titan’s boiler subsidiary, ran parallel to the largest business acquisition by the American General Electric (GE) of its French rival Alstom’s energy business.
Lassus said it was only after January 2019 when Frederic Pierucci published his book “Le Piege Americain,” also known as “The American Trap,” that he felt free, credible, and publicly protected to come out with his story.
“Pierucci’s book relates the U.S. aggression, through General Electric, to take control of ALSTOM, a French company. Pierucci has been put for two years in jail in the US! A real scandal,” Lassus said.
An interesting comment that I read…
The comment goes…
Two things I would like to add here.
One, this is embarrassing as a Canadian. We don't have ANY politician who saw through this. NONE.
Many internationalist Canadians saw through this within the first 3-7 days, but none were in government, and none were even (audible) in Parliament.
This is utter international relations incompetence.
As we learned from the immigration lawyers for the defense, this case was rigged from the very start - the arrest should not have happened;
The signs for a different than advertised goal by the FBI were overt;
The RCMP should not have been allowed to enter into it with the border guard;
The Prime Minister and Justice Minister should have been reachable instead of 'on their weekend';
Etc, etc...
Beyond that, if the President of the USA then makes a statement politicizing the arrest, the Prime Minister of Canada has no right to hide behind "Executive vs Justice" power, As the extradition agreement explicitly states that the PM can intervene through the Justice Minister to avert political abuses of the extradition agreement.
So this is totally on Trudeau's incompetence and cowardice.
Two, this US subversion of Huawei will not work because XXXXXXX has understated, hugely, the Chinese distance created from the stone-age USA in current day digital progress.
I was shocked as a Canadian European, coming into Chicago and Ohio in 2000 and discovering how far behind the USA was in simcard and digital technology.
It caught up, but barely.
Now, China is too far ahead and is running much faster than the US is or has the capacity to.
China has already won - this Huawei case is just a little side cake - because they have all the infrastructure and are way beyond 5G - they are building the next universe and America can't even have the data points to dream about it.
As a Canadian expat he is seeing what I have seen. But I am in technology, R&D and manufacturing. I can tell you that the USA is behind, but no one wants to listen to MM.
Do you agree with me that China is much more advanced in technology, or the Western narrative that soon, say in 2025, China will surpass the USA?
And this interesting rebuttal…
In Canada’s defense — the authorities here were dealing with John Bolton, a known a**h@le who believes in breaking eggs to make omelettes.Interviews with Canadian ultra political insider, Peter Donolo on BNN Bloomberg (just BNN back then maybe?) expressed concern about who would replace the just fired National Security Advisor.So Canada’s political class protested through the media (which is how you gotta do it with the neocons, just ask Russia) about John Bolton’s appointment.Somewhere I picked up that Canada was threatened with having US troops at the Vancouver airport if Canada refused to act in the interests of American security.The Michaels are 5th columnists.They don’t work for CSIS, Canada, the Canadian political class or any other Canadian national interest or institution.Their arrest was quite possibly arranged behind-the-scenes between China and Canada to get Bolton fired as well as the other results b mentions. And a very important piece of this is the Canadian Ambassador to China, Dominic Barton.Check out this man’s resume.His appointment could have been at the request of China, quite possibly, another Canadian concession (although Trudeau wanted him in that role previously, but he declined).
Here’s an interesting note (not by me) on how the flight route that was used to bring Meng back to China (Google Translated from Russian):
“And by the way, about the small details of today’s event, the evacuation of Meng Wangzhou from Canadian captivity.
Look how they dragged her from Vancouver to China, you can shoot an action movie (I think the Chinese will easily shoot it).
Rescue air flight.
[1] Vancouver is close to the United States, so the board briskly went along the line “as far away as possible from the main territory of the United States and from Alaska” vertically upward, aiming directly at the North Pole.
[2] Over the Arctic, he made the shortest possible route to the Russian air defense zone and went further south through Siberia and Mongolia.
[3] The standard version of the route (see the second picture), through the Pacific Ocean, where the American control points and, in general, there are enough opportunities to do something bad, was not used, although it was announced in advance that this is how Air China would fly back.
On the question of when they soberly assess the situation and understand that agreements with Canada and international law are one thing, but the Arctic region, where the Northern Sea Route is, is completely different and, somehow, under the wing of Shoigu and friends, it is calmer and safer.”
Do you think that the Chinese were being overly cautious, or rather that the over-the-pole flight path was the most economical one to take?
All this is very interesting, but let’s not forget one thing…
Naughty China citizen Meng was charged with breaking a United States law while she was inside of China.
US Justice Dept, Jan 28, 2019
Meng is charged with bank fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracies to commit bank and wire fraud.
“As charged in the indictment, Huawei and its Chief Financial Officer broke U.S. law and have engaged in a fraudulent financial scheme that is detrimental to the security of the United States,” said Secretary Nielsen.
“They willfully conducted millions of dollars in transactions that were in direct violation of the Iranian Transactions and Sanctions Regulations, and such behavior will not be tolerated." . . .here
The US hasn't given up trying to convince China citizens to obey US laws.
US Justice Dept, Sep 24, 2021
Meng Wanzhou, CFO of Huawei Technologies, admitted today that she failed to tell the truth about Huawei’s operations in Iran, and as a result the financial institution continued to do business with Huawei in violation of U.S. law. Our prosecution team continues to prepare for trial against Huawei, and we look forward to proving our case against the company in court.” . . .here
United States laws only work within United States territory. Just like Chinese laws only work within China, and South African laws only work in South Africa.
Obviously the idiots in Washington DC do not respect other people’s (geographic) space.
What’s with this issue? Why don’t Americans understand that once you leave the USA, there are different laws, rules, regulations, culture and society and the USA cannot violate the national sovereignty of others in other nations?
And this interesting response…
Ms Meng ‘the Merciless’ was monstered by ‘(inter)National Interests’.
Who the fuck have the US the right to arrest people in foreign countries? For breaking the unilateral US sanction on another country??
That is not simple Exceptionalism...
...it’s is gross Overeach.
It can only be dumb superiority complex and racism to have thought that they can talk loud and carry a big stick to keep the savages subdued.
That Canadians have meekly re-elected the controlled scion of ones of the Empires CEO’s who was brought up by the Fascists of the West and the Money is pure pathetic Stockholm syndrome exhibited by voters in the west over the last 50 years.
We deserve all we get!
Canadians did to Meng what Sweden did to Assange and what the Decimate Empire is doing to the World in clueing as I say their own subjects as is happening daily now to the U.K. subjects because of BrexShit.
Chaotic scenes at petrol stations!
...In one of the richest countries in the World.
The MSM are fully controlled Mockingbird operatives. Independent journalism is muted and inprisoned, like Craig Murray is.
I’ll link to my post on the open thread that addresses why the Empire and Eva cornered rat and it’s Masters are morbidly stuck in their death throes as China changes human history on planet Earth with a competent partner in Russia and their SCO.
‘Are we getting it yet barflies?
Posted by: D.G. | Sep 23 2021 17:31 utc | 171 ‘
And another comment…
The Hauwei angst in the west is because China has ‘leapfrogged’ the Western modernity with nextgen tech and AI in their daily commercial environment.
The west having legacy ageing tech infrastructure and systems that hasn’t been squeezed of the last drop of payback/profit from it!
That’s how they have always rolled.
Capturing IP rights and shelving innovation.
They couldn’t do that with 5G and plus.
Or with AI in public services.
Which makes them natural predators of similar organizations in the west by virtue of the WTO ‘open to competition’ rules. Which were designed under the assumption they only would work in one direction.
It is that simple. Expect no mercy but be willing to accept that They will not act like we would and will not stoop to such savage western expectations.
Posted by: D.G | Sep 25 2021 20:23 utc | 27
What about the UN?
The UN Charter, in its Preamble, set an objective:
"to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained".
Ever since, the development of, and respect for international law has been a key part of the work of the Organization.
This work is carried out in many ways – by courts, tribunals, multilateral treaties – and by the Security Council, which can approve peacekeeping missions, impose sanctions, or authorize the use of force when there is a threat to international peace and security, if it deems this necessary. These powers are given to it by the UN Charter, which is considered an international treaty. As such, it is an instrument of international law, and UN Member States are bound by it. . .here
China has been clear about the US ‘rules-based international order’ i.e. US laws, which go against the UN Charter.
Mar 18, 2021
SECRETARY BLINKEN: Well, good afternoon, and welcome. On behalf of National Security Advisor Sullivan and myself, I want to welcome Director Yang and State Councilor Wang to Alaska, and to thank you very much for making the journey to be with us.
I just returned myself from meetings with Secretary of Defense Austin and our counterparts in Japan and the Republic of Korea, two of our nation’s closest allies. They were very interested in the discussions that we’ll have here today and tomorrow because the issues that we’ll raise are relevant not only to China and the United States, but to others across the region and indeed around the world. Our administration is committed to leading with diplomacy to advance the interests of the United States and to strengthen the rules-based international order.
That system is not an abstraction. It helps countries resolve differences peacefully, coordinate multilateral efforts effectively, and participate in global commerce with the assurance that everyone is following the same rules. The alternative to a rules-based order is a world in which might makes right and winners take all, and that would be a far more violent and unstable world for all of us. Today, we’ll have an opportunity to discuss key priorities, both domestic and global, so that China can better understand our administration’s intentions and approach.
Director Yang responded–
What China and the international community follow or uphold is the United Nations-centered international system and the international order underpinned by international law, not what is advocated by a small number of countries of the so-called “rules-based” international order.
And the United States has its style – United States-style democracy – and China has the Chinese-style democracy.
It is not just up to the American people, but also the people of the world to evaluate how the United States has done in advancing its own democracy.
In China’s case, after decades of reform and opening up, we have come a long way in various fields.
In particular, we have engaged in tireless efforts to contribute to the peace and development of the world, and to upholding the purposes and principles of the UN Charter. . .here
So it’s a showdown between the USA and the UN. China and Russia and the rest of the world (minus the UK, and Australia) want to stand with the UN. The USA wants to be God over all. Is this an exaggeration?
And China plays down the line.
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman visited Tianjin, China July 25-26 2021 and was presented a list of US “wrongdoings that must stop”, also mentioning specifically Meng Wanzhou
In the List of U.S. Wrongdoings that Must Stop, China urged the United States to unconditionally revoke the visa restrictions over Communist Party of China (CPC) members and their families, revoke sanctions on Chinese leaders, officials and government agencies, and remove visa restrictions on Chinese students.China also urged the United States to stop suppressing Chinese enterprises, stop harassing Chinese students, stop suppressing the Confucius Institutes, revoke the registration of Chinese media outlets as "foreign agents" or "foreign missions", and revoke the extradition request for Meng Wanzhou.
Meng’s release is creating waves.
Chinese citizens are giving unprecedented support to the government.
Overseas Chinese are ever more united behind China.
Even those anti-communist and brainwashed Chinese in Taiwan, Hong Kong and elsewhere are quietly admitting the positive result – because they understand that they could be the target of arrest by America in future if this turns out the wrong way.
It is giving a tough-love lesson to the serially abused vassal states, e.g. Japan (Toshiba), France (Alstom), Germany (Siemens) and countless others. I don’t know what are their politicians and executives thinking right now: shame, regret, impotent, admiration or some combination of these?
It has delivered a bloody punch to the war-mongers and anti-China neocons, who are licking their wound.
And finally,
It is giving hope to the rest of developing countries. Countries who treasures their independence and dignity needs to grow a spine and learn to grab a stick.
But that is not the only thing going on…
Eurasia Takes Shape: How the SCO Just Flipped the World Order
The SEO. It’s going to become a really big deal in the next few years. Pay attention.
SEO = Russia + China + Iran + India
As a rudderless West watched on, the 20th anniversary meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization was laser-focused on two key deliverables: shaping up Afghanistan and kicking off a full-spectrum Eurasian integration.
The two defining moments of the historic 20th anniversary Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Dushanbe, Tajikistan had to come from the keynote speeches of – who else – the leaders of the Russia-China strategic partnership.
Xi Jinping:
“Today we will launch procedures to admit Iran as a full member of the SCO.”
Vladimir Putin:
“I would like to highlight the Memorandum of Understanding that was signed today between the SCO Secretariat and the Eurasian Economic Commission.
It is clearly designed to further Russia’s idea of establishing a Greater Eurasia Partnership covering the SCO, the EAEU (Eurasian Economic Union), ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) and China’s Belt and Road initiative (BRI).”
In short, over the weekend, Iran was enshrined in its rightful, prime Eurasian role, and all Eurasian integration paths converged toward a new global geopolitical – and geoeconomic – paradigm, with a sonic boom bound to echo for the rest of the century.
That was the killer one-two punch immediately following the Atlantic alliance’s ignominious imperial retreat from Afghanistan.
Right as the Taliban took control of Kabul on August 15, the redoubtable Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of Russia’s Security Council, told his Iranian colleague Admiral Ali Shamkhani that “the Islamic Republic will become a full member of the SCO.”
Dushanbe revealed itself as the ultimate diplomatic crossover. President Xi firmly rejected any “condescending lecturing” and emphasized development paths and governance models compatible with national conditions. Just like Putin, he stressed the complementary focus of BRI and the EAEU, and in fact summarized a true multilateralist Manifesto for the Global South.
Right on point, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev of Kazakhstan noted that the SCO should advance “the development of a regional macro-economy.” This is reflected in the SCO’s drive to start using local currencies for trade, bypassing the US dollar.
The SEO is an enormous geopolitical force. Not only in geography, but populaiton, and in manufacturing and technology competance. What is going in in the news in the MM readership’s nations about this subject? How is it being reported on the “news”?
Watch that quadrilateral
Dushanbe was not just a bed of roses. Tajikistan’s Emomali Rahmon, a staunch, secular Muslim and former member of the Communist Party of the USSR – in power for no less than 29 years, reelected for the 5th time in 2020 with 90 percent of the vote – right off the bat denounced the “medieval sharia” of Taliban 2.0 and said they had already “abandoned their previous promise to form an inclusive government.”
Rahmon, who has never been caught smiling on camera, was already in power when the Taliban conquered Kabul in 1996. He was bound to publicly support his Tajik cousins against the “expansion of extremist ideology” in Afghanistan – which in fact worries all SCO member-states when it comes to smashing dodgy jihadi outfits of the ISIS-K mold .
The meat of the matter in Dushanbe was in the bilaterals – and one quadrilateral.
Take the bilateral between Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and Chinese FM Wang Yi. Jaishankar said that China should not view “its relations with India through the lens of a third country,” and took pains to stress that India “does not subscribe to any clash of civilizations theory.”
Ouch! Could the “third country” (he referenced) be the United States?
That was quite a tough sell considering that the first in-person Quad summit takes place this week in Washington, DC, hosted by that “third country” which is now knee deep in clash-of-civilizations mode against China.
Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan was on a bilateral roll, meeting the presidents of Iran, Belarus, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. The official Pakistani diplomatic position is that Afghanistan should not be abandoned, but engaged.
That position added nuance to what Russian Special Presidential Envoy for SCO Affairs Bakhtiyer Khakimov had explained about Kabul’s absence at the SCO table: “At this stage, all member states have an understanding that there are no reasons for an invitation until there is a legitimate, generally recognized government in Afghanistan.”
And that, arguably, leads us to the key SCO meeting: a quadrilateral with the Foreign Ministers of Russia, China, Pakistan and Iran.
Pakistani Foreign Minister Qureshi affirmed: “We are monitoring whether all the groups are included in the government or not.” The heart of the matter is that, from now on, Islamabad coordinates the SCO strategy on Afghanistan, and will broker Taliban negotiations with senior Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara leaders. This will eventually lead the way towards an inclusive government regionally recognized by SCO member-nations.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi was warmly received by all – especially after his forceful keynote speech, an Axis of Resistance classic. His bilateral with Belarus president Aleksandr Lukashenko revolved around a discussion on “sanctions confrontation.” According to Lukashenko: “If the sanctions did any harm to Belarus, Iran, other countries, it was only because we ourselves are to blame for this. We were not always negotiable, we did not always find the path we had to take under the pressure of sanctions.”
Considering Tehran is fully briefed on Islamabad’s SCO role in terms of Afghanistan, there will be no need to deploy the Fatemiyoun brigade – informally known as the Afghan Hezbollah – to defend the Hazaras. Fatemiyoun was formed in 2012 and was instrumental in Syria in the fight against Daesh, especially in Palmyra. But if ISIS-K does not go away, that’s a completely different story.
Particular important for SCO members Iran and India will be the future of Chabahar port. That remains India’s crypto-Silk Road gambit to connect it to Afghanistan and Central Asia. The geoeconomic success of Chabahar more than ever depends on a stable Afghanistan – and this is where Tehran’s interests fully converge with Russia-China’s SCO drive.
What the 2021 SCO Dushanbe Declaration spelled out about Afghanistan is quite revealing:
1. Afghanistan should be an independent, neutral, united, democratic and peaceful state, free of terrorism, war and drugs.
2. It is critical to have an inclusive government in Afghanistan, with representatives from all ethnic, religious and political groups of Afghan society.
3. SCO member states, emphasizing the significance of the many years of hospitality and effective assistance provided by regional and neighboring countries to Afghan refugees, consider it important for the international community to make active efforts to facilitate their dignified, safe and sustainable return to their homeland.
As much as it may sound like an impossible dream, this is the unified message of Russia, China, Iran, India, Pakistan and the Central Asian “stans.” One hopes that Pakistani PM Imran Khan is up to the task and ready for his SCO close-up.
Oh, I think that it’s going to work out. What does the MM readership think will happen?
Oh, have you noticed…
The Chinese and the Russians have been devoting all sorts of energy moving around all their ICBM’s all over the place. You never saw this in the USA, and very rarely in Russia and China, though you heard about it. But now a days, it’s very common with ICBM fleets moving all over China and Russia. Imagine that.
Song Zhonping, a Chinese military expert and TV commentator, told the Global Times on Tuesday that switching to Chinese engines means the J-20 is now completely domestically made, and this will significantly contribute to the mass production and the performance boost of the aircraft.
American neocon publications are calling the J-20 as a “cheap knock off “. Do you think this is so, or what are your thoughts on the J-20?
That troubled Western peninsula
The New Silk Roads were officially launched eight years ago by Xi Jinping, first in Astana – now Nur-Sultan – and then in Jakarta.
The announcement came close to a SCO summit – then in Bishkek. The SCO, widely dismissed in Washington and Brussels as a mere talk shop, was already surpassing its original mandate of fighting the “three evil forces” – terrorism, separatism and extremism – and encompassing politics and geoeconomics.In 2013, there was a Xi-Putin-Rouhani trilateral. Beijing expressed full support for Iran’s peaceful nuclear program (remember, this was two years before the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, also known as the JCPOA).Despite many experts dismissing it at the time, there was indeed a common China-Russia-Iran front on Syria (Axis of Resistance in action). Xinjiang was being promoted as the key hub for the Eurasian Land Bridge. Pipelineistan was at the heart of the Chinese strategy – from Kazakhstan oil to Turkmenistan gas. Some people may even remember when Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, was waxing lyrical about an American-propelled New Silk Road.Now compare it to Xi’s Multilateralism Manifesto in Dushanbe eight years later, reminiscing on how the SCO “has proved to be an excellent example of multilateralism in the 21stcentury,” and “has played an important role in enhancing the voice of developing countries.”The strategic importance of this SCO summit taking place right after the Eastern Economic Forum (EEF) in Vladivostok cannot be overstated enough. The EEF focuses of course on the Russian Far East – and essentially advances interconnectivity between Russia and Asia. It is an absolutely key hub of Russia’s Greater Eurasian Partnership.A cornucopia of deals is on the horizon – expanding from the Far East to the Arctic and the development of the Northern Sea Route, and involving everything from precious metals and green energy to digital sovereignty flowing through logistics corridors between Asia and Europe via Russia.As Putin hinted in his keynote speech, this is what the Greater Eurasia Partnership is all about: the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU), BRI, India’s initiative, ASEAN, and now the SCO, developing in a harmonized network, crucially operated by “sovereign decision-making centers.”So if the BRI proposes a very Taoist “community of shared future for human kind,” the Russian project, conceptually, proposes a dialogue of civilizations (already evoked by the Khatami years in Iran) and sovereign economic-political projects. They are, indeed, complementary.Glenn Diesen, Professor at the University of South-Eastern Norway and an editor at the Russia in Global Affairs journal, is among the very few top scholars who are analyzing this process in depth. His latest book remarkably tells the whole story in its title: Europe as the Western Peninsula of Greater Eurasia: Geoeconomic Regions in a Multipolar World. It’s not clear whether Eurocrats in Brussels – slaves of Atlanticism and incapable of grasping the potential of Greater Eurasia – will end up exercising real strategic autonomy.Diesen evokes in detail the parallels between the Russian and the Chinese strategies. He notes how China “is pursuing a three-pillared geoeconomic initiative by developing technological leadership via its China 2025 plan, new transportation corridors via its trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative, and establishing new financial instruments such as banks, payment systems and the internationalization of the yuan. Russia is similarly pursuing technological sovereignty, both in the digital sphere and beyond, as well as new transportation corridors such as the Northern Sea Route through the Arctic, and, primarily, new financial instruments.”
The whole Global South, stunned by the accelerated collapse of the western Empire and its unilateral “rules-based order…
… now seems to be ready to embrace the new groove, fully displayed in Dushanbe: a multipolar Greater Eurasia of sovereign equals.
Interesting chat on my morning feed…
America controls both the currency (USD, the international reserve currency) and conduit (SWIFT) for international trade. This is their global imperial power.
They can print paper (out of nothing) to buy the world’s limited and precious resources while the rest of the world must earn or borrow the paper. They also decide who can or cannot trade. In addition, they control all the banks and financial institutes doing international business.
America can strangle and impose oppressive fines, indict and hijack, as well as corrupt and incite regime change, to turn any intransigent player into a whimpering idiot. They control the world’s media and the narrative. America can do no wrong and you’re all assholes living in hellholes.
Most importantly, America can print paper to build the greatest military force to control your mineral resources and trade routes, meanwhile pacifying and civilizing sundry barbaric people of defenseless countries. And guess who is paying for this monstrosity? If you think it’s the American taxpayers, you’d be wrong. It’s all smoke and mirrors.
The ruling class in America creates a ton of money from thin air which becomes debt that the rest of the enslaved world must buy. That debt becomes a debt of the American people which they can never repay, therefore they become debt slaves, quietly complying to their master’s orders.
And the money created eventually ends up in the coffers of the 1% American military industrial financial warmongering scammers. Since the rest of the enslaved world ends up being holders of American debt that pays almost no interest, of a currency that is being printed at exponential rate, and paying interest that is also printed out of thin air, you the victims are paying for the oppressive weapons of the American monstrosity.
Capische?
By the way, America did not invent this beautiful scheme. After kicking the Persians out of Greece in 479 BCE, Athens was the liberating hero beloved even by their perennial enemy, the Spartans. Then Athens formed the Delian League to fight the Persians.
Everyone must pay the League and send their sons to fight. The treasury of the League soon ended up in Athens, and used to enrich Athenians. Member cities desiring to leave the League were sacked, their men slaughtered, their women enslaved, and their sons castrated.
Athens at the head of the League became an imperial power even crueler than the Persians. In less than a generation, Athens turned from being the most admired Greek city state into the most hated. Eventually, it led to war with the Spartans, who allied with the Persians to destroy Athens. That's what happens to empires.
The question of setting up an international currency for trading is theoretically fine, and the SDR of the IMF serves that purpose to some extent, but at the end of the day, America still controls the IMF and SDR is but an accounting tool. Power and trust are what cause a promissory note to be used as a token of wealth for trading between countries.
Nixon actually defaulted and robbed the world blind. It’s a well known history which you can read up on your own (Google Nixon gold default). America and its dollar still has power, but trust is badly eroded. There is no good alternative at the moment that can challenge the USD, but China’s RMB is gaining, slowly and steadily.
The digital RMB is dangerous for the US dollar hegemony because people can pay anywhere in the world just by using a smartphone, and the transaction is done instantaneously, without the need for clearing through banks, without any bank fees, and certainly does not need clearing through any American system, completely kicking America out of the loop.
No more American clearing.
No more SWIFT.
No more waiting for days going through the international banking system.
And most importantly…
No more American unilateral sanctions.
Besides, RMBs are appreciating because of China’s growing economic power, which by the way, is based on production and innovation rather than running the printers, persistent lying, and highway robbery.
Below is an article about what happens if America defaults on its treasury bills. I suggest that China shouldn’t have to worry about its 1 trillion dollar reserve. America won’t let China buy anything valuable with it anyways. Anything of value China wants to buy is against America’s “national security”.
America will eventually have to pay up, as the T-bills in China’s reserve is only a small portion in the whole pot.
In any case, the collapse of the USD hegemony is much more valuable to China and the rest of the world than empty American paper promises, which by now should be badly discounted.
If you trust habitual liars, then it’s your problem.
The fall of the USD hegemony means that America can no longer print its way out of problems and let the rest of the world bail them out. They’ll have a hard time printing trillions for their military adventures.
Every trip to the South China Sea must be balanced against servicing their debt.
Their bases all around the world may have to figure out a way to generate an income, maybe by selling military shirts and boots, all made in China, of course.
Do you think that this is being overstated? Do you believe that somehow America will steer it’s financial ship into a safe harbor and regain control of it’s economic abilities?
As three former prime ministers in Paul Keating, Malcolm Turnbull and Kevin Rudd have already pointed out, AUKUS puts Australians in greater danger, renders Australia a vassal to foreign power and antagonises our neighbours in the region.
Depending on how you count them, there are probably already four US bases in operation now:
Pine Gap near Alice Springs, Northern Territory,
Naval Communication Station Harold E. Holt, north of the town of Exmouth, Western Australia,
Robertson Barracks in Darwin, Northern Territory,
Australian Defence Satellite Communications Station near Geraldton, WA.
However, the US military already has access to all major Australian Defence Force (ADF) training areas, northern Australian RAAF airfields, port facilities in Darwin and Fremantle, and probably future access too to an expanded Stirling naval base in Perth.
Under AUKUS, this may just be the beginning. It was largely ignored during the AUKUS media blitz and the dramatic cuckolding of the French but Peter Dutton had this to say at his press conference on September 16,
Unveiling plans for new facilities on Australian soil for US naval, air, and ground forces would entail “combined logistics, sustainment, and capability for maintenance to support our enhanced activities, including … for our submarines and surface combatants”. That is on top of “rotational deployments of all types of US military aircraft to Australia”.
If the plan is to shred Australia’s sovereignty and make us a target for China, he is succeeding with aplomb. We are about to be swamped by US military.
Do you think that China would invade Australia and attack the American military there? Or what do you think China would do to deal with this threat?
Oh, and worth a view…
“We made SARS. And we patented it on 19/4/2002, before there was any alleged outbreak in Asia”:
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David E. Martin testifies at the German Corona Inquiry Committee July 9th, 2021. AV+transcript. China Rising Radio Sinoland 210907
"In Spring of 2000, I took my newly wedded mainland-Chinese wife to North America to visit the rest of the extended family.
We spent a week in Las Vegas so that my wife could experience a bit of American decadence.
One day, we walked into the Vegas Saks Department Store to browse on jewelry. An aged sales-lady immediately walked over and struck up a conversation.
My wife didn't speak a word of English, but I spoke like a native Canadian. The sales-lady asked us where we were from. I could have said we were from Hong Kong. I certainly could have said we were Canadians.
Unlike a lot of people who declared themselves Hong Konger or Taiwanese when traveling in the West, I said we were from China, and just by being confident in our own skin (I used to travel to Vegas every year for conventions and knew every nook and cranny), demonstrated that we were not ashamed to be Chinese. Aftermath: the old lady said if we were interested in anything, be sure to ask for her, as she had the authority to give Chinese tourists a discount. Nudge nudge wink wink. It was a revelation. I knew Chinese shoppers loved haggling, but I didn't know you could haggle at Saks."
Greenback’s crisis-opportunity
This article / comment is from a anti-China writer who views the e-RMB as a “pipe dream” and that the USD will regain it’s role as the leading and only global reserve currency.
Even bigger questions hang over the global financial system.The efforts by China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and other major economies to de-dollarize world trade is a work in progress, at best. The same goes for developing Asia, which spent the years since the region’s 1997-98 financial crisis pledging to wean economies off the dollar.Try as export-driven economies may, the dollar and US Treasuries are still the linchpin of the global trading system. Yet the political shenanigans on display in Washington could change that – and quickly.The “empire is crumbling” and the dollar is “slowly losing its sheen,” says Peter Koenig at Renmin University of China. Slowly, but surely, he says, the dollar “is losing its weight in the international financial market.”Technological change is accelerating the timeline, particularly as China outpaces the US in the race to bring a central bank-issued digital currency to market, says strategist Dante Alighieri Disparte at financial services firm Circle.“With the explosive proliferation of cryptocurrencies, including China’s introduction of a digital renminbi, it is not surprising to hear panicked warnings about the looming decline of the dollar,” Disparte says.It’s not the whole story, of course. If Biden’s Washington plays its cards right, Disparte notes, the dollar could end up being the “prime beneficiary of today’s market developments.”Yet the dollar is at the mercy of politics and politics can be highly toxic. If the current squabbling in Washington devastates trust in the core asset of the global financial system, current obsessing over China Evergrande will become a mere side show.
Do you think that he is correct, that the USD will regain it’s strength and global standing?
Oh. Jackie Ma. What have you done?
Jack Ma bought or invested in more than 30 media outlets, set up a university for the super rich (only those who owe a business worth $30m are qualify to enrolled as students, he is using such strategy to form a 1% gangster circle thinking he could one day control the media, economy, and government. But his link to Wall Street has been exposed in the process of Xi full scale anti corruption campaign.
His money laundering Alibaba Alipay is not put under control, his rich ganger University was shut down, his media empire is in the process of dismantling.
His corrupt friends who Jack up property prices, manipulated stock market is gone one by one….
No capitalist can bully a real people government serving the interest of the people.
US: We need to start a war to destroy China.
(Looks around all countries. Pause, silence… Then everyone replies at the same time)
Japan: You go first.
Korea: You go first.
India: You go first.
ASEAN: You go first.
Australia: I go first.
The U.S. would get its ass kicked in a war with China, which is precisely why I support one.
This is no longer my country. Not only is it no longer my country, its government has become my oppressor. We are now a photonegative of our former self, a Soviet Union of the 21st century.
I took not a little joy in seeing this government humiliated in Afghanistan, and my response to a war lost to China will be the same.
Cashless in China
No one uses cash any more in China. Oh we see it from time to time, but for most of us it’s a simple swipe of a QR code. That’s it. Bank visits are rare. ATM visits are unheard of. We’ve all adopted to it, and guess what? No fees to transfer money in any way shape or form.
No wonder the US Banking system is going into convulsions.
But…
Cash, cold hard cash, will never disappear. Cash will never be obsolete and we should all hope it will be with us for many years to come.
The need for payment that works with no-signal or no-electricity won’t go away no matter how digitally sophisticated we believe ourselves to be.
Anyone living in hurricane or typhoon-prone areas, where storms can send society back to the Stone Age, understand this better than most.
The passage below is from Cashless, Chapter 19, The case against CBDCs: The Illusion of Privacy
The Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency went so far as to advise all residents to keep “cash in small denominations” at home in case of emergencies. The idea that a power cut, cyberattack, or major technology disruption would cripple the nation because of residents’ reliance on digital payment is a real concern. Anyone in the UK who had a credit card attached to WireCard payment systems experienced this firsthand when the company failed, and cards went offline for forty-eight hours. Saying that digital system failures can’t happen or will never happen seems foolish. So for the record, cash will be with us for some time to come. It provides a simple analog solution to payment in an increasingly digital world. To say that it has no place in our future [or has lapsed into obsolescence] is to deny the fragility of our digital systems, which, time and time again, fail spectacularly. Their failures are reminders of how new we are to this digital revolution and that cash, which has been around for millennia, will still be an integral part of our modernized financial system.
I would go as far as to say that hearing the call to completely eliminate cash should make readers, even the most “cashless,” become wary.
US Propaganda is saying that the submarines will have nuclear power and missiles with conventional payload. How nice. Chinese can relax. I did never see in my live such a retarded statement. So what is this statement? Gentleman’s agreement?
So submarines can be built with nuclear power and loaded with conventional missiles. But if submarines are built with such a space dimension that they can store nuclear missiles and loading mechanism that can handle nuclear missiles, and firing tubes that can accept nuclear missiles.
Than what is worth the US statement.
Do American think that Chinese are retarded?
By the time those submarines will be built the Chinese can built four times more powerful countermeasures.
And then there is Afghanistan
Empire of chickenhawks: Why America’s chaotic departure from Afghanistan was actually perfect
We screwed up 20 years of pointless war. We didn’t win. We lost. Why wouldn’t we screw up the final exit?
The biggest fallacy about our exit from Afghanistan is that there was a “good” way for us to get out. There is no good way to lose a war. With defeat comes humiliation. We were humiliated in the way we pulled out of Kabul — and we should have been, because we believed the lies we had been told right up to the last moment.
The lies we heard at the end of our war in Afghanistan wereas the same ones we were told, and were only too happy to believe, for 20 long years: that everything was going swimmingly. Remember earlier in the summer when the headlines were about how the Taliban controlled a large percentage of the territory in Afghanistan, but the Afghan government and its supposed army still controlled the provincial capitals and Kabul, and that was where the power was.
What a total crock of shit. Everyone was shocked — shocked — when the headlines started to come. Aug. 9, from the AP: “Taliban press on, take two more provincial capitals.” That story was a doozie. “On Monday they [the Taliban] controlled five of the country’s 34 provincial capitals.” It didn’t really matter which two capitals the Taliban had taken. You had to read way down in the story to discover they were Aybak, capital of Samangan province, and Sar-e-Pul, capital of Sar-e-Pul province. Where the hell were they? Who had even heard of them?
That was Monday. By Wednesday, Aug. 11, here was the headline in Al Jazeera: “Timeline: Afghanistan provincial capitals captured by the Taliban.” How many, you might ask? In two days, the count had ballooned from five capitals to 18. Eighteen. Later that day, both Al Jazeera and Reuters were reporting that U.S. intelligence sources were saying that Kabul could “fall to Taliban within 90 days.”
Surprise! Three days later, the evacuation of Kabul began. On Sept. 1, two weeks later, CBS News headlined: “This is the last American soldier to leave Afghanistan” with an eerie night-vision video capture of Maj. Gen. Chris Donahue, commander of the U.S. Army 82nd Airborne Division, XVIII Airborne Corps, headed up the ramp of a C-17 cargo jet wearing full combat gear including bulletproof vest and helmet with night-vision goggles attached, carrying his M-4 automatic rifle.
How did Afghanistan collapse so quickly to Taliban control? Because “we” — the U.S. military and its NATO allies — never controlled it to begin with. Nor did our puppets in the so-called Afghan government. The idea that we ever did, that we ever “controlled” or even had our finger on the pulse of the “graveyard of empires” was a lie.
You know who told us that lie? Every government from George W. Bush on, and every general ever put in charge of that doomed mission. Every single one of them reported that all was well, that the Afghan army was 300,000 strong, that the Taliban was on the run, that the Afghan air force was taking over from the missions flown by American warplanes, that the Afghans had their own helicopters now. And that the Afghan president, whether it was Ashraf Ghani or Hamid Karzai, was firmly in charge back in Kabul.
And you know who went along with that fiction? The United States Congress, which voted for 20 years to spend the $2 trillion we pissed away over there, and each of the presidents — yes, including Barack Obama and Donald Trump — who approved every increase of troops, every troop withdrawal, every “surge” that was advertised as the solution to end all solutions, the thing that would finally put the Taliban on the run.
Remember all the Taliban commanders we were told were killed?
A drone strike took out this one!
Another drone strike took out that one!
Wow! We had to be winning if the Taliban was losing so many important leaders!
And then there were the keyboard commandos back in Washington and New York, and the neocons from the Council on Foreign Relations, and the growing chorus of retired generals — among them all of the commanders of our Afghanistan mission — who were all over the op-ed pages and cable news assuring us that All Was Well, as they racked up the megabucks sitting on the boards of defense contractors selling all the military shit that was winning the war for us.
"The eight generals who commanded American forces in Afghanistan between 2008 and 2018 have gone on to serve on more than 20 corporate boards,"
the Washington Post reported on Sept. 4, three days after we exited from Kabul with our tail between our legs.
There was Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who oversaw the big “surge” of 2009 that was the answer-to-end-all-answers to every problem we were having over there. He has been “a board member or adviser for at least 10 companies since 2010, according to corporate filings and news releases,” the Post reported. There was Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., who commanded allied forces in 2013 and 2014, who went on to serve on the board of Lockheed Martin, the gigantic defense contractor. There was Gen. John R. Allen, commander in Afghanistan before Dunford, who is the president of the Brookings Institution, which has received $1.5 million over three years from Northrop Grumman, according to the Post. And Gen. David Petraeus, who preceded Allen and now sits on the board of KKR, a private equity firm in New York with many investments in the defense industry.
All of these gentlemen — and let’s take a moment to note they are all men, not a female commander among them — reported back to us from their command posts in Afghanistan how well things were going over there, how we were all over the Taliban, how the Afghan government was successfully “standing up” its well-equipped, well-trained army to defend the country from the Taliban. And then they went on cable TV and continued their lies when they got back to the U.S. and retired from the Army, because that’s what generals today do. They sit on corporate boards, they give incredibly well-paid speeches, they go on TV and they rake in the Big Bucks because they were so successful in Afghanistan … and in Iraq, too. Remember Petraeus and his “surge” in 2007? Boy, were we ever surging, huh? I remember Newsweek published a cover image of Petraeus in 2004 wearing in his combat fatigues, standing on a tarmac with a Blackhawk helicopter behind him, with the headline: “Can this man save Iraq?” The story, believe it or not, was about how Petraeus was taking over the training of the Iraqi army, and that was what was going to “save Iraq.” Don’t you think we should have concluded, when the “surge” became necessary in 2007, that Petraeus had utterly failed in his mission to train the Iraqi army and “save Iraq” back in 2004?
The words “crock of shit” again come to mind, but they are far, far from adequate. These presidents, and these members of Congress, and these generals, and these war-happy pundits, ran a great big gigantic con on the citizens of this country who were paying the taxes which — someday, perhaps — will pay for the $2 trillion we pissed away over in Afghanistan, and the trillions we pissed away in Iraq, too. They lied over and over and over again that with just another troop surge, or another troop withdrawal (because suddenly everything was hunky-dory) and of course just another infusion of billions and billions of dollars and the lost of a couple thousand more American lives we could “win” in Afghanistan and “win” in Iraq.
Over there, they laughed at us. The Afghans and the Iraqis who took the money, took all the equipment we gave them, took 20 years of our politics and our “prestige” as a nation, and the whole time they were laughing their heads off, because they knew what we didn’t know. None of it was working. None of it would ever work. And one day we would be headed out of both countries with our tails between our legs, because that’s what you do when you lose.
That’s why our frantic, chaotic exit from Kabul was perfect, because it perfectly capped off 20 years of lies about what was really going on over there, 20 years of frantic, chaotic thrashing around and throwing money and the bodies of young American men and women at a problem that could never be solved. It was an enormous delusion that we, the United States of America, could march into those countries thousands of miles away from our shores and — if we spent enough money and invented and fielded enough “mine resistant vehicles” and fired enough missiles from enough drones at enough “Taliban commanders” — could somehow emerge from those quagmires victorious.
We couldn’t, and we didn’t, and when that American major general, all kitted-out in the combat gear we spent 20 years dressing our soldiers in, scampered up the ramp of that cargo jet to steal away from the Kabul airport in the middle of the night, it was the absolute perfect ending to the perfect disaster the war in Afghanistan had always been. We were humiliated in front of the entire world, as we should have been. The way we left Afghanistan “did damage to our credibility and to our reputation,” the famous Gen. Petraeus told CBS when it was all over.
Yeah, it did, Dave, and it should have. Maybe now the geniuses who got us into those godforsaken disastrous wars and kept us there will think twice before they do it again.
Except, wait. That was supposed to have been the great “lesson of Vietnam.” Never mind.
American debt is looming large…
the US federal government’s rivers of borrowed money running dry and in urgent need of replenishing. The other is a major Chinese property developer which has run into financial trouble, because the company veered off the road by squandering too much on making electric cars and sponsoring a football club.
As US federal debt default looms, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is facing her biggest test in her eight-month tenure to convince reluctant Republican lawmakers to agree to raise the US’ national debt limit, which is currently set at $28.5 trillion. The stakes are high, because if Yellen’s effort fails, the US financial system will collapse.
Yellen has called Republican leaders to convey the economic danger which lays ahead, bluntly warning that the Treasury Department’s ability to stave off default is limited, and the failure to lift the debt cap by late October would be “catastrophic” for the country and the world.
Six former US treasury secretaries last week sent a letter to top US lawmakers, warning them a default would roil financial markets and blunt economic growth. According to US media reports, Yellen last week also warned the nation’s largest banks and financial institutions about the very real risk of a default. She has spoken to chief executives of JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, BlackRock and Goldman Sachs, briefing them the likely disastrous impact a federal default will produce.
To make things worse, both Democrats and Republicans in the US are at each other’s throats now over US President Joe Biden’s new $3.5 trillion spending bill, which proposes heavy tax raises on rich families and corporations, and has met fierce opposition from Republican lawmakers. Whether they will compromise on the debt limit, by making a last-minute deal with the White House to reduce Biden’s giant spending plan remains to be seen.
Market analysts say if the US government defaults on its colossal debt, a financial system crisis of a magnitude larger than the 2008-09 debacle could occur, which is estimated to lead to an evaporation of $15 trillion in wealth and loss of 6 million jobs in the US. The capital market is now on tenterhooks facing a potential financial time bomb.
Do you think that the USA will raise the debt ceiling, or will default? There is a third option, that China and Russsia would “bail out the USA”. What do you think will happen?
Consequences.
Ever since President Trump was elected it was millions of dollars in a hate-hate-hate China narrative. And this has resulted in all sorts of violence, bad will, and Congressional action. What is not being reported is how the Chinese feel about America and Japan today.
Here is a Chinese car with pro-Japan and Pro-America stickers and wording. VIDEO.
Video.
How AP, Reuters And SCMP Propagandize Their Readers Against China
A typical ‘western’ anti-China propaganda claim is that China is using its military aggressively. ‘Western’ news agencies do this on a regular base when they report of Chinese air maneuvers around Taiwan.
Oh my goodness!
Drudge report reporting this “news” to the American people.
This report by the South China Morning Post, based on AP and Reuters items, is a perfect example for that:
Taiwan’s air force scrambled again on Friday to warn away 25 Chinese aircraft that entered its air defence zone, according to the defence ministry in Taipei.Taiwan has complained for a year or more of repeated missions by China’s air force, often in the southwestern part of its air defence zone close to the Taiwan-controlled Pratas Islands.
The latest PLA air force mission involved 18 J-16 and four Su-30 fighters plus two nuclear-capable H-6 bombers and an anti-submarine aircraft, the Taiwan ministry said.
It said Taiwan sent combat aircraft to warn away the PLA aircraft, while missile systems were deployed to monitor them.
The Chinese aircraft all flew in an area close to the Pratas, with the two bombers flying closest to the atoll, according to a map that the ministry issued.
I do not believe that China would fly its bombers and jets into Taiwan’s “air defense zone” because that is the geographic area where Taiwan would actually shoot to take them down.
So I checked with the news agency reports the SCMP story is based on. AP headlines:
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — China sent 25 fighter jets toward self-ruled Taiwan in a large display of force on China’s National Day Friday.The People’s Liberation Army flew 18 J-16 fighter jets as well as two H-6 bombers, among other planes. Taiwan deployed air patrol forces in response and tracked the Chinese aircraft on its air defense systems, the island’s Defense Ministry said in a statement.
China has sent planes toward the island it claims as part of its territory on a near daily basis in the last couple of years, stepping up military harassment with drills.
No “air defense zone” there but one extra point for “military harassment”. Reuters is less subtle:
TAIPEI, Oct 1 (Reuters) – Taiwan’s air force scrambled again on Friday to warn away 25 Chinese aircraft that entered its air defence zone, the defence ministry in Taipei said, the same day as China marked its national day, the founding of the People’s Republic of China.Chinese-claimed Taiwan has complained for a year or more of repeated missions by China’s air force near the democratically governed island, often in the southwestern part of its air defence zone close to the Taiwan-controlled Pratas Islands.
The latest Chinese mission involved 18 J-16 and four Su-30 fighters plus two nuclear-capable H-6 bombers and an anti-submarine aircraft, the Taiwan ministry said.
So the “air defense zone” claims comes from Reuters. It is however 100% fake news. Neither did the Chinese airforce fly into the “air defense zone” of Taiwan nor did Taiwan claim that it did.
Here is the original news item from the Ministry of Defense of Taiwan. The headline and first line say it all:
…There is no “air defense zone” (ADZ) in there. Instead there is Taiwan’s ADIZ, or “Air Defense Identification Zone”, into which Chinese planes ‘intruded’.
An air defense identification zone (ADIZ) is airspace over land or water in which the identification, location, and control of civil aircraft is performed in the interest of national security. They may extend beyond a country's territory to give the country more time to respond to possibly hostile aircraft. The concept of an ADIZ is not defined in any international treaty and is not regulated by any international body..
Some countries unilateral declare an ADIZ around this or that territory. They ask any plane entering it to identify itself. As ADIZ are unilateral ‘pretty please’ requests with no binding power they are regularly ignored
Taiwan has an ADIZ that covers most of the Taiwan Strait, part of the Chinese province of Fujian, Zhejiang, and Jiangxi and part of the East China Sea and adjacent airspace. Most of the ADIZ of Taiwan is built on its exclusive economic zone. Taiwan’s ADIZ was designed and created by the United States Armed Forces (USAF) after World War II.
The Taiwanese Defense Ministry Military News Updates claim that Chinese ‘violations’ of its ADIZ happen each and every day.
The Reuters fake news piece also says that the Chinese planes flew near to Pratas Island (Dongsha) which China as well as Taiwan both claim as their territory.
In fact mainland China is nearer to Pratas than Taiwan is.
The Twitter account of Taiwan’s Defense Ministry just posted this map of the alleged ‘violations’ which perfectly shows how ridiculous such claims are:
The AP report is misleading as it implies a special meaning to something that happens regularly. The Reuters piece is obviously fake news as it claims that Taiwan’s defense ministry said something which it did not say. The SCMP deserves to be criticized too as any reporter and editor covering such news should know the difference between an ADZ and an ADIZ and should have recognized that the “air defense zone” claim in the Reuters piece is obviously bollocks.
That said all three fulfill their intended purpose. They propagandize those who read them against China by depicting normal military training of China’s armed forces as aggression against its neighbors.
Posted by b on October 1, 2021 at 16:52 UTC | Permalink
It’s just another example of just how the anti-China narrative is being pushed, and pushed and pushed relentlessly. Nothing good can happen from this. I believe that the American and the Australians, and the Brits are now all worked up into a frothy fury against China and will support a war. Do you agree with me on this, or do you have other thoughts?
How things are being handled…
Curious. This next article…
Huawei CFO gets hero’s welcome; Canadians land quietly
The tallest building in Shenzhen lit up with scrolling slogan “Welcome Home, Meng Wanzhou” across its facade.
The two Canadians freed by Beijing returned to their homeland with less fanfare Huawei CFO gets hero’s welcome; Canadians land quietly | National Post
Fact Sheet: U.S. Interference in Hong Kong Affairs and Support for Anti-China, Destabilizing Forces”
As published on Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China's website. /fmprc.gov.cn
Editor’s note: Grenville Cross is a senior counsel and professor of law, and was previously the director of public prosecutions of the Hong Kong SAR. The article reflects the author’s opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.
In recent years, China’s achievements have surpassed all expectations, and the United States has become increasingly paranoid. It realizes its post-war hegemony can no longer be taken for granted, and that its star is slowly fading. Ever since the UK-based Center for Economics and Business Research reported in December 2020 that China will overtake the U.S. to become the world’s largest economy by 2028, five years earlier than previously forecast, it has been panic stations in Washington D.C.
The U.S., however, faces massive problems, and they are getting worse. It is burdened with a huge national debt, standing at $28.4 billion in August, about $1.7 billion more than a year earlier. Its foreign policy is a shambles, with the Afghanistan debacle being but the latest example, and even its closest allies are appalled by its incompetence and duplicity. Indeed, after the AUKUS deal between the U.S., Australia and the UK was sprung on an unsuspecting world on September 15, France, which was cheated out of a submarine contract, denounced it as a “stab in the back”, and, for the first time ever, withdrew its ambassador from Washington D.C.
Instead, however, of taking a long, hard look at itself, the previous and present U.S. administrations have resorted to scapegoating China, hoping to deflect attention away from their own woes. Although most of its problems are of its own making, the U.S. has sought to blame China not only for its own ills but also those of the world, thereby laying the groundwork for hostile interventions. It has decided that one of the ways of dealing with China is by fomenting internal dissent and spreading misinformation about it, just as it has done in its efforts to weaken Russia.
On June 9, 2019, when the protest movement in Hong Kong and its armed wing declared war on society, ostensibly over the SAR government’s fugitive surrender bill, the U.S. saw its chance. Although the proposals would have facilitated the return of criminal fugitives to 177 jurisdictions, subject to court oversight, and were entirely reasonable, the U.S., to inflame tensions, demonized them, and provided every encouragement to the protesters.
Indeed, on August 6, 2019, at the height of the violence in Hong Kong, the U.S. Consul General’s political counselor, Julie Eadeh, met covertly with protest leaders, including Joshua Wong Chi-fung and Nathan Law Kwun-chung, at a local hotel, presumably to share U.S. views on the insurrection and provide ongoing advice.
Again, after Brian Leung Kai-ping, one of the rioters who trashed the Legislative Council complex on July 1, 2019, causing damage estimated at HK$50 million ($6.4 million), fled the city, he was not only welcomed to the U.S., but also invited to the Congress as an honored guest.
Instead of denouncing the rioters who were bringing death and destruction to Hong Kong streets, the then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo endorsed the protest movement’s demands, supported their anti-police agenda, and sought to blame the government for the insurrection.
Even when the protest movement targeted the rule of law by firebombing the courts and threatening the judges, Pompeo and his cronies continued to lionize the protest leaders, and to whitewash their excesses. It was, by any yardstick, partisanship of the worst sort, and represented a new low in U.S. foreign policy.
Even when anti-China legislators, linked to the protest movement, sabotaged the work of the Legislative Council, preventing the passage of legislation for nearly seven months in 2019-20, the U.S. condemned the initiatives taken to get things back on track. Even though it would never have tolerated obstructionism of this type at home, it expected the authorities to allow it in Hong Kong, although the name of its game was, of course, mischief-making.
But with the exclusion of legislators bent on mayhem, and their replacement with responsible citizens committed to the well-being of Hong Kong and the national good, the city now has the prospect of effective governance.
Working through front organizations, the U.S. provided multifaceted support to the protest movement and its allies throughout the insurrection. They included various U.S.-based entities, including the National Endowment for Democracy, always generous with its cash when opponents of the Hong Kong SAR government came knocking, and the U.S. Agency for Global Media.
It has also now come to light that various other U.S.-backed groups were complicit in the uprising, including the Oslo Freedom Foundation, the Albert Einstein Institute and the Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies, which, despite their fancy names, all had sinister agendas. Although many of them operated in the shadows, this cannot be said of the U.S. Strategic Competition Act 2021, which allocated $10 million for the promotion of “democracy in Hong Kong”, a euphemism for stirring up trouble.
Once, however, the National Security Law was enacted, it provided the Hong Kong Special Administration Region (HKSAR) government with the tools it required to save the city’s way of life and capitalist system, and put an end to undercover operations by foreign powers. The U.S., however, responded by imposing sanctions on the city, revoking its favorable trade status, and suspending the agreement on surrender of fugitive offenders with the HKSAR.
Not once, however, did the U.S. explain how it thought damaging Hong Kong like this would in any way benefit its people, which was revelatory. Perhaps more than anything else, its inability to justify its actions highlighted not only its determination to undermine China by ruining Hong Kong, but also its willingness to throw a long-standing friend under the bus, just as it has now done to France, which also made the mistake of trusting it.
The U.S. attempts to destabilize Hong Kong are a disgrace, as well as a betrayal. The lengths to which it was prepared to go to hurt China beggar belief, and they have now been chronicled for all to see by the China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
On September 24, it issued a Fact Sheet entitled “U.S. Interference in Hong Kong Affairs and Support for Anti-China Destabilizing Forces”, which is highly detailed and a real eye-opener. It exposes cynical, comprehensive and intensive efforts by a global bullyboy to ruin one of the world’s most successful cities, and is essential reading for anybody wishing to know the depths to which the U.S. is prepared to sink.
Quite clearly, if the evidence contained in the Fact Sheet were to be presented in a court of law responsible for trying the U.S. for willful depredations against Hong Kong and its people, the only possible verdict would be “guilty as charged.” This, alas, will never happen, but great comfort can nonetheless be derived from the city’s survival, against all the odds.
Although, at one point, China’s adversaries thought they could bring Hong Kong to its knees and destroy the “one country, two systems” policy, they have, after the nation rallied round, been decisively thwarted. Indeed, with the Central Government’s steadfast support, the city has emerged from its experiences stronger than ever, and can now face its future with renewed confidence.
Fact listing
It’s a long list. You can skim over and refer to it later…
List of facts about U.S. intervention in Hong Kong affairs and support of anti-China forces in Hong Kong
List of facts about U.S. intervention in Hong Kong affairs and support of anti-China forces in Hong Kong
2021-09-24
1. Concocting Hong Kong-related bills, discrediting China’s Hong Kong policy, interfering in Hong Kong’s internal affairs, and wantonly interfering in China’s internal affairs.
1. On November 27, 2019, the then-U.S. President Trump signed the “Hong Kong” concocted by the U.S. Congress in order to show his support for the anti-China and Hong Kong forces and obstruct the efforts of the Chinese Central Government and the Hong Kong SAR government to stop violence, curb chaos, and restore order. The Human Rights and Democracy Act” and the “Prohibition of Export of Related Ammunitions to Hong Kong Police”. The relevant bill slanders the Chinese central government for undermining Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy, authorizes the US President to impose sanctions against relevant Chinese officials such as denying entry and freezing assets in the US, and requires the US Secretary of State to submit an annual report on Hong Kong affairs and prohibit the US from exporting tear gas and pepper spray to Hong Kong. , Rubber bullets and stun guns and other police equipment.
2. On July 14, 2020, the then US President Trump signed the “Hong Kong Autonomy Act.” The law requires sanctions against so-called foreign individuals or entities related to China’s breach of Hong Kong-related obligations, as well as foreign financial institutions that conduct important transactions with related individuals or entities, and supports so-called “persecuted” Hong Kong residents to enter the United States. On the same day, Trump signed No. 13936 “Presidential Executive Order on the Normalization of Hong Kong”, which determined that the situation in Hong Kong constitutes a threat to the security, foreign policy and economy of the United States, and accordingly declared a national emergency, including the suspension and cancellation of special grants to Hong Kong. Preferential treatment, authorization to impose sanctions on Hong Kong entities and individuals, etc.
3. On February 18, 2021, Meeks, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US House of Representatives, proposed the so-called “resolution condemning China and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region for continuing to violate the rights and freedoms of Hong Kong people”, slandering the Chinese central government and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government for upholding the rule of law. The case was approved by the House of Representatives on April 19.
4. The U.S. Congress is reviewing several negative Hong Kong bills, including: On January 25 and February 8, 2021, U.S. Republican Representative Curtis and U.S. Senator Rubio proposed “Hong Kong” in the House of Representatives and Senate, respectively. The Safe Harbor Act requires the U.S. government to provide refugee status to “Hong Kong independence” elements involved in the Hong Kong riots; on March 18, 2021, Republican Senator Rubio proposed the so-called “condemnation of the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party for repressing Hong Kong. Including the arrest of democrats and repeated violations of the “Sino-British Joint Declaration” and Hong Kong Basic Law resolutions”; on June 24, 2021, Republican Senator Sass proposed the “Hong Kong Democratic Congress Gold Medal Bill”, clamoring to Li Zhiying , Luo Weiguang, Zhang Jianhong, Zhou Daquan, Chen Peimin, Zhang Zhiwei, Yang Qingqi and other Hong Kong “Apple Daily” executives and all staff members of the newspaper awarded the American Association Gold Medal; June 30, 2021, Democratic Congressman Malinowski Introduced the “Hong Kong People’s Freedom and Choice Act of 2021”, which requires the provision of asylum for anti-China chaos in Hong Kong, criminals and criminals, and provide them with convenient access to the United States; on June 30, 2021, Republican Representative Perry proposed “Hong Kong The Freedom Act requires that the US President be authorized to recognize the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region as an “independent country.”
2. Flagrantly imposing sanctions in an attempt to obstruct the smooth implementation of the Hong Kong National Security Law and the relevant decisions of the National People’s Congress of China in Hong Kong.
1. On May 29, 2020, the then US President Trump announced the cancellation of Hong Kong’s special status and Hong Kong’s commercial preferential measures.
2. On June 29, 2020, the then U.S. Secretary of State Pompeo announced that the export of U.S. defense equipment to Hong Kong will now be banned, and the export of U.S. defense and dual-use technologies to Hong Kong will be restricted.
3. On June 29, 2020, the then US Secretary of Commerce Ross issued a statement officially abolishing the special trade treatment for Hong Kong, prohibiting the sale of dual-use high-tech equipment to Hong Kong, and will continue to evaluate the cancellation of other special treatments in Hong Kong.
4. On June 30, 2020, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced the termination of the Hong Kong export license exception treatment and prohibits the export of defense equipment and sensitive technology to Hong Kong.
5. On August 7, 2020, the U.S. government announced sanctions against 11 officials of the Chinese Central Government and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government on the grounds of enforcing the Hong Kong National Security Law and undermining Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy.
6. On August 11, 2020, the US Department of Homeland Security announced that from September 25, Hong Kong exports to the United States must indicate the origin of “China” and prohibit the use of the “Made in Hong Kong” label.
7. On August 19, 2020, the US State Department announced the suspension or termination of the three bilateral agreements signed with Hong Kong, including the transfer of fugitive offenders, the transfer of sentenced persons, and the exemption of international shipping profits tax.
8. On October 14, 2020, the U.S. State Department submitted its first Hong Kong-related report to the U.S. Congress in accordance with the requirements of the “Hong Kong Autonomy Act.” The financial institutions related to the above-mentioned persons impose sanctions.
9. On November 9, 2020, the U.S. State Department announced sanctions against four officials of the Chinese Central Government and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government on the grounds that they threatened Hong Kong’s peace, security, and high degree of autonomy.
10. On December 7, 2020, the US State Department imposed sanctions on 14 vice-chairmen of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress of China on the grounds that the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress of China enacted the Hong Kong National Security Law and disqualified four opposition members of the Hong Kong Legislative Council.
11. On January 15, 2021, the then US Secretary of State Pompeo issued a statement on the grounds that the Hong Kong police arrested 55 so-called democrats and imposed sanctions on 6 officials of the Chinese Central Government and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government.
12. On March 16, 2021, the US State Department updated the “Hong Kong Autonomy Law” report, and announced the update of the list of Hong Kong-related sanctions and additional financial services based on the relevant decisions adopted by the National People’s Congress to improve the Hong Kong election system and the implementation of the Hong Kong National Security Law. Sanctions.
13. On July 7, 2021, the White House issued the so-called “Notice on the Continuing Implementation of the National Emergency Concerning Hong Kong”, announcing the extension of the so-called “national emergency declared in response to the situation in Hong Kong” and extending the US sanctions against Hong Kong for one year.
14. On July 16, 2021, the US State Department, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of the Treasury fabricated the so-called “Hong Kong Business Warning” and discredited Hong Kong’s business environment on the grounds that the SAR implemented the Hong Kong National Security Law and the suspension of the “Apple Daily”. , Vilified the development of Hong Kong and the prospects of “one country, two systems”, and announced sanctions on seven officials of the Liaison Office of the Central Committee of Hong Kong. US Secretary of State Blincoln also issued a so-called statement on the first anniversary of the implementation of the Hong Kong National Security Law, slandering the National Security Law and attacking the Chinese government’s policy towards Hong Kong.
3. Slander and slander the affairs of the Special Administrative Region, arbitrarily discuss the enforcement actions of the Hong Kong police, and undermine the prosperity and stability of Hong Kong.
1. On February 25, 2019, the then U.S. Consul General in Hong Kong, Tang Weikang, publicly expressed in an interview his concern about the SAR government’s proposed revision of the Fugitive Offenders Ordinance, claiming that the amendment may affect the implementation of the bilateral agreement between the United States and Hong Kong.
2. On March 21, 2019, the U.S. State Department issued the “2019 Hong Kong Policy and Law Report”, claiming that the freedom of speech in Hong Kong has been eroded and that the Chinese government has increased its intervention in Hong Kong affairs, causing damage to Hong Kong in many ways.
3. On May 7, 2019, the US Congress “US-China Economic and Security Evaluation Committee” issued a report that slandered the SAR government’s amendment to the Fugitive Offenders Ordinance and “eroded Hong Kong’s autonomy”, which constituted a serious threat to the national security of the United States and the economic interests of the United States in Hong Kong. risk.
4. On May 16, 2019, the U.S. State Department issued a statement falsely claiming that the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government’s amendment to the Fugitive Offenders Ordinance threatened the rule of law in Hong Kong and was concerned about this.
5. On June 19, 2019, when Speaker of the House of Representatives Pelosi spoke at the Christian Science Monitor’s breakfast meeting, he ignored the various extreme atrocities committed by anti-China and Hong Kong elements, claiming that “2 million people took to the streets to oppose the amendment. The Fugitive Offenders Ordinance, isn’t that a beautiful landscape?”, openly condoned and encouraged anti-China chaos in Hong Kong to use illegal and violent means to confront the central government and the SAR government.
6. On July 26, 2019, Engel, then chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, falsely claimed that the Hong Kong police used violence in handling demonstrations, which damaged Hong Kong’s international reputation in governance and justice.
7. On September 17, 2019, the United States “Congress-Executive China Committee” held a hearing on the situation in Hong Kong, beautifying the anti-revision violent demonstrations, discrediting the SAR government’s handling of the Hong Kong police, falsely claiming that it undermined the “one country, two systems” and Hong Kong autonomy.
8. On September 28, 2019, the US “Congress-Executive China Committee” issued a statement on the fifth anniversary of Hong Kong’s “Occupy Central”, discrediting “One Country, Two Systems” and the central government’s policy towards Hong Kong.
9. On October 7, 2019, the then-U.S. President Trump stated that he hoped that the Hong Kong protest issue would be resolved humanely. The people of Hong Kong were great. They waved the American flag and more than 2 million people participated in the protest. Nothing like this has ever happened before.
10. On October 24, 2019, the then-U.S. Vice President Mike Pence delivered an anti-China speech at the Wilson Center, a think-tank in Washington. He repeatedly mentioned Hong Kong’s “regulation turmoil”, claiming that “Hong Kong is a living example, showing how China would embrace freedom. What will happen”.
11. On November 21, 2019, Speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States Pelosi made a public speech after the “Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act” was passed and reviewed, claiming that “China’s commitment to Hong Kong’s complete autonomy has been broken” and deliberately distorting “One Country, Two Systems” , Confusion of right and wrong.
12. On December 10, 2019, the US Consul General in Hong Kong, Smith, wrote an article in Ming Pao in Hong Kong, threatening that “the United States has consistently committed to human rights in Hong Kong”, claiming that “the United States’ enactment of the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act demonstrates the universal value of the United States. The commitment of the United States reflects the United States’ concern about Beijing’s erosion of Hong Kong’s autonomy.”
13. On May 22, 2020, the then U.S. Secretary of State Pompeo issued a statement on the “Decision on Establishing and Improving the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region’s Legal System and Implementation Mechanism for Maintaining National Security” by the National People’s Congress of China, slandering the Hong Kong National Security Law as “ Impose” and “undermine Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy.”
14. On May 27, 2020, the then U.S. Secretary of State Pompeo once again issued a statement on the imminent review and approval of the Hong Kong National Security Law by the National People’s Congress of China, arguing that the United States hopes that Hong Kong, as a “fortress of freedom”, can become a model for “authoritarian” China, and to The U.S. Congress “confirmed” that Hong Kong should no longer enjoy the treatment granted to it by U.S. law before July 1997.
15. On May 28, 2020, the U.S. State Department submitted the “2020 Hong Kong Policy Law Report” to Congress, confirming that Hong Kong cannot continue to enjoy the special treatment provided by U.S. law.
16. On June 30, 2020, the then U.S. Secretary of State Pompeo issued a statement falsely claiming that the implementation of the Hong Kong National Security Law undermined “One Country, Two Systems” and violated the Sino-British Joint Declaration and the commitments made in Hong Kong’s Basic Law.
17. On July 1, 2020, the Speaker of the U.S. Congress, Pelosi, after passing the “Hong Kong Autonomy Act” in the U.S. House of Representatives, falsely claimed that the Hong Kong National Security Act is a “cruel and comprehensive suppression of Hong Kong, undermining Hong Kong’s freedom, and marking’one country, two systems.” ‘Death’.
18. On July 6, 2020, US Consul General Smith in Hong Kong falsely claimed that Hong Kong’s national security law erode the basic human rights and freedoms of Hong Kong people and create an atmosphere of self-censorship, which is a tragedy in Hong Kong.
19. On July 14, 2020, the then US Secretary of State Pompeo issued a statement supporting the so-called “primary election” illegally held by the Hong Kong opposition.
20. On July 23, 2020, the then US Secretary of State Pompeo delivered the so-called “Communist China and the Future of the Free World” anti-China speech, maliciously attacking the leadership of the Communist Party of China and China’s political system, spreading the China threat theory, and slandering the so-called strengthening of the Communist Party of China The control of Hong Kong has beautified Luo Guancong and other anti-China chaos in Hong Kong into democracy fighters.
21. On July 31, 2020, the then White House spokesperson McNerney stated that the United States opposed the Hong Kong SAR government’s disqualification of opposition candidates.
Fact Sheet: U.S. Interference in Hong Kong Affairs and Support for Anti-China, Destabilizing Forces
2021/09/24
I. Enacting Hong Kong-related Acts, vilifying China’s policy on Hong Kong, meddling in Hong Kong affairs, and wantonly interfering in China’s internal affairs
1. On 27 November 2019, in collusion with those who are opposed to China and attempt to destabilize Hong Kong and obstruct efforts of China’s central government and the government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) to stop violence and restore law and order, then U.S. President Donald Trump signed into law two bills passed by the U.S. Congress, i.e. the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2019 and the Act to prohibit the commercial export of covered munitions items to the Hong Kong Police Force. These bills accuse China’s central government of undermining the high degree of autonomy of Hong Kong, authorize the U.S. President to impose sanctions such as inadmissibility to the United States and asset blocking against relevant Chinese officials, require the U.S. Secretary of State to submit a report regarding Hong Kong affairs on a yearly basis, and prohibit U.S. exports of police equipment, such as tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets and stun guns, to Hong Kong.
2. On 14 July 2020, then U.S. President Trump signed into law the Hong Kong Autonomy Act, which requires the imposition of sanctions with respect to the foreign individuals or entities involved in the so-called erosion of certain obligations of China with respect to Hong Kong and foreign financial institutions that conduct significant transactions with those individuals or entities. It also supported permanent residents of Hong Kong who have been “persecuted” to enter the United States. On the same day, Trump signed the President’s Executive Order 13936 on Hong Kong Normalization, which determined that the situation with respect to Hong Kong constitutes a threat to the national security, foreign policy and economy of the United States. He declared a national emergency on that basis, which included measures to suspend or eliminate the different and preferential treatment for Hong Kong, and to authorize sanctions against entities and individuals with respect to Hong Kong.
3. On 18 February 2021, Gregory Meeks, Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the U.S. House of Representatives introduced a resolution condemning the so-called “continued violation of rights and freedoms of the people of Hong Kong by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region”, which slandered the efforts made by China’s central government and the HKSAR government to uphold the rule of law, maintain order and stability and protect the life, property and safety of Hong Kong residents. The resolution was adopted by the House on 19 April.
4. The U.S. Congress is considering several other ill-intentioned bills regarding Hong Kong:
On 25 January and 8 February 2021, Republican Representative John Curtis and Republican Senator Marco Rubio introduced the Hong Kong Safe Harbor Act in the House and the Senate respectively, requiring the U.S. government to designate refugee status to individuals espousing “Hong Kong independence” and participating in the riots in Hong Kong.
On 18 March 2021, Senator Rubio introduced a resolution condemning the so-called “crackdown by the Government of the People’s Republic of China and the Chinese Communist Party in Hong Kong, including the arrests of pro-democracy activists and repeated violations of the obligations of that Government undertaken in the Sino-British Declaration of 1984 and the Hong Kong Basic Law”.
On 24 June 2021, Republican Senator Ben Sasse introduced the Democracy in Hong Kong Congressional Gold Medal Act on conferring the Congressional Gold Medal to Jimmy Lai Chee-ying, Ryan Law Wai-kwong, Cheung Kim-hung, Royston Chow Tat-kuen, Chan Pui-man, Cheung Chi-wai, Yeung Ching-kee and all the executives and staff of Apple Daily, a newspaper in Hong Kong.
On 30 June 2021, Republican Representative Tom Malinowski introduced the Hong Kong People’s Freedom and Choice Act of 2021, calling for providing protected status to those who oppose China and provoke instability as well as law breakers and offenders in Hong Kong and for enhancing protocols to facilitate their travels to the United States.
On 30 June 2021, Republican Representative Scott Perry introduced the Hong Kong Freedom Act, calling for authorizing the U.S. President to recognize the HKSAR as “a separate, independent country”.
II. Imposing sanctions in an attempt to obstruct the implementation in Hong Kong of the Hong Kong National Security Law and relevant decisions of China’s National People’s Congress (NPC)
1. On 29 May 2020, then U.S. President Trump announced revocation of the special status and preferential economic treatment for Hong Kong.
2. On 29 June 2020, then U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the immediate end of exports of U.S. defense equipment to Hong Kong and restrictions on exports of U.S. defense and dual-use technologies to Hong Kong.
3. On 29 June 2020, then U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross issued a statement, officially revoking Hong Kong’s special status in trade, banning exports of dual-use high-tech products to Hong Kong, and stating that further actions to eliminate differential treatment for Hong Kong were also being evaluated.
4. On 30 June 2020, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced the suspension of license exceptions for exports to Hong Kong, banning exports of U.S.-origin defense equipment and sensitive technologies to Hong Kong.
5. On 7 August 2020, the U.S. government imposed sanctions on 11 officials of China’s central government and the HKSAR government on the ground of enforcing the Hong Kong National Security Law and undermining Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy.
6. On 11 August 2020, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced that after 25 September 2020, imported goods produced in Hong Kong may no longer be marked to indicate “Hong Kong” as their origin, but must be marked to indicate “China”.
7. On 19 August 2020, the U.S. Department of State announced the suspension or termination of three bilateral agreements with Hong Kong covering the surrender of fugitive offenders, the transfer of sentenced persons, and reciprocal tax exemptions on income derived from the international operation of ships.
8. On 14 October 2020, the U.S. Department of State submitted its first report to Congress pursuant to the Hong Kong Autonomy Act, listing 10 officials of China’s central government and the HKSAR government as “persons undermining the autonomy of Hong Kong” and threatening to impose sanctions on financial institutions related to these individuals.
9. On 9 November 2020, the U.S. Department of State announced sanctions on four officials of China’s central government and the HKSAR government for “threatening the peace, security and autonomy of Hong Kong”.
10. On 7 December 2020, the U.S. Department of State imposed sanctions on 14 Vice Chairpersons of the Standing Committee of the NPC of China on the ground of the NPC Standing Committee formulating the Hong Kong National Security Law and disqualifying four opposition members of Hong Kong’s Legislative Council.
11. On 15 January 2021, then U.S. Secretary of State Pompeo issued a statement, announcing sanctions on six officials of China’s central government and the HKSAR government for arresting 55 so-called “pro-democracy politicians and activists” by Hong Kong police.
12. On 16 March 2021, the U.S. Department of State updated its Hong Kong Autonomy Act report, announcing an updated list of sanctioned individuals and additional financial sanctions following the NPC’s decision to improve the electoral system of Hong Kong and implement the Hong Kong National Security Law.
13. On 7 July 2021, the White House issued a Notice on the Continuation of the National Emergency with Respect to Hong Kong, announcing the continuation of the so-called national emergency declared with respect to the Hong Kong situation, and extended U.S. sanctions on Hong Kong for one year.
14. On 16 July 2021, the U.S. Department of State, Department of Commerce, Department of Homeland Security and Department of Treasury jointly issued a so-called “Hong Kong Business Advisory” on the ground of enforcing the Hong Kong National Security Law and closing of Apple Daily, in an attempt to cast doubt over Hong Kong’s business environment as well as the development of Hong Kong and the prospects of One Country, Two Systems in Hong Kong. In addition, new sanctions were announced on seven officials of the central government’s liaison office in the HKSAR. On the same day, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken issued a statement “marking one year of Hong Kong’s national security law”, in which he made groundless attacks on the Hong Kong National Security Law and the Chinese government’s policy on Hong Kong.
III. Making unfounded charges against HKSAR affairs and law enforcement actions taken by Hong Kong police in an attempt to undermine Hong Kong’s prosperity and stability
1. On 25 February 2019, then U.S. Consul General to Hong Kong Kurt Tong expressed in an interview his concerns about the HKSAR government’s plan to introduce amendments to the Fugitive Offenders Ordinance, saying that an amendment could have some impact on the implementation of the bilateral arrangements between the United States and Hong Kong.
2. On 21 March 2019, the U.S. Department of State released 2019 Hong Kong Policy Act Report alleging that freedom of expression in Hong Kong was facing setbacks, and that the increased intervention by China’s central government in Hong Kong affairs had “adversely impacted Hong Kong in multiple areas”.
3. On 7 May 2019, the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission of U.S. Congress issued a report, alleging that the HKSAR government’s proposed extradition bill would “erode Hong Kong’s autonomy” and create serious risks for U.S. national security and economic interests in Hong Kong.
4. On 16 May 2019, the U.S. State Department issued a statement, alleging that the HKSAR government’s proposed amendments to the Fugitive Ordinance would threaten Hong Kong’s rule of law and expressing concerns about it.
5. On 19 June 2019, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi addressed a breakfast meeting hosted by The Christian Science Monitor in which she turned a blind eye to the extremist and violent acts committed by those who were opposed to China and attempted to destabilize Hong Kong and claimed that “the demonstration by some two million people against the extradition bill” was “a beautiful sight to behold”. She thus openly urged rioters to take illegal and violent actions against the central government and the HKSAR government.
6. On 26 July 2019, then Chairman of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee Eliot Engel issued an unfounded statement about the so-called “police brutality in response to protests in Hong Kong”, alleging that “it has tarnished Hong Kong’s international reputation for good governance and fair administration of justice”.
7. On 17 September 2019, the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China held a hearing on Hong Kong. At the hearing, the violent demonstrations against the extradition bill was whitewashed while the response of the HKSAR government and police was attacked as undermining One Country, Two Systems and Hong Kong’s autonomy.
8. On 28 September 2019, the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China made a statement on the fifth anniversary of the so-called “Umbrella Movement protests”, in an attempt to vilify One Country, Two Systems and the central government’s policy on Hong Kong.
9. On 7 October 2019, then U.S. President Donald Trump said that “we just want to see a humane solution” in Hong Kong. He talked about the “great people over there” and said “they are flying the American flag”, “I saw two million people. I’ve never seen anything like it”.
10. On 24 October 2019, then U.S. Vice President Mike Pence delivered an anti-China speech at the Wilson Center, in which he mentioned the turbulence over the amendment bill in Hong Kong several times. He alleged that “Hong Kong is a living example of what can happen when China embraces liberty”.
11. On 21 November 2019, in her remarks made after the passing of the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi deliberately misrepresented One Country, Two Systems, alleging that China has broken the promise of high degree of autonomy.
12. On 10 December 2019, U.S. Consul General in Hong Kong Hanscom Smith wrote an article for Ming Pao, a Hong Kong newspaper, asserting that “human rights are universal, which is why the United States stands with Hong Kong”. He claimed that the adoption of the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act by the United States reflected its commitment to universal values and its concern over Beijing’s measures that erode Hong Kong’s autonomy.
13. On 22 May 2020, then U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued a statement on the adoption of the NPC Decision on Establishing and Improving the Legal Systems and Enforcement Mechanisms for Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, in which he made unfounded accusations that the National Security Law was “imposed” on Hong Kong and would “undermine Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy”.
14. On 27 May 2020, then U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued another statement on the Hong Kong National Security Law to be deliberated and adopted by the NPC in which he claimed that the United States once hoped that Hong Kong, “as a bastion of liberty”, would provide a model for “authoritarian” China. He also stated that he would certify to Congress that Hong Kong does not continue to warrant treatment under U.S. law in the same manner as U.S. laws were applied to Hong Kong before July 1997.
15. On 28 May 2020, the U.S. State Department submitted to Congress the 2020 Hong Kong Policy Act Report and certified that Hong Kong did not continue to warrant differential treatment under U.S. law.
16. On 30 June 2020, then U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made a statement, asserting that the Hong Kong National Security Law undermines One Country, Two Systems, and violates commitments made in the Sino-British Joint Declaration and the Basic Law of the HKSAR.
17. On 1 July 2020, following the adoption of the Hong Kong Autonomy Act by the U.S. House of Representatives, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi alleged that the Hong Kong National Security Law was “a brutal, sweeping crackdown against the people of Hong Kong, intended to destroy the freedoms they were promised” and it “signals the death of the One Country, Two Systems principle”.
18. On 6 July 2020, U.S. Consul General in Hong Kong Hanscom Smith asserted in an interview that using the Hong Kong National Security Law to erode fundamental freedoms and create an atmosphere of self-censorship is a tragedy for Hong Kong.
19. On 14 July 2020, then U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued a statement in support of the so-called “primary election” organized by the opposition in Hong Kong.
20. On 23 July 2020, then U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered an anti-China speech titled “Communist China and the Free World’s Future”. In the speech, he attacked the leadership of the CPC and China’s political system, fabricated the so-called “China threat”, accused the CPC of “tightening its grip on Hong Kong” and called Nathan Law Kwun-chung and other individuals who are opposed to China and attempt to destabilize Hong Kong as fighters for democracy.
21. On 31 July 2020, then White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany stated the United States’ opposition to the HKSAR government’s decision to disqualify opposition candidates.
22. On 7 August 2020, the U.S. Consulate General in Hong Kong issued a statement, blatantly smearing and attacking the Hong Kong National Security Law and alleging that it was “never about security, but rather, was intended to silence democracy advocates”.
23. On 11 September 2020, then U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo attacked China in a statement on a case of illegal border crossing made by 12 Hong Kong residents in an attempt to meddle in China’s judicial sovereignty.
24. On 11 November 2020, then Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs Robert O’Brien asserted that China’s actions disqualifying the opposition legislators from Hong Kong’s Legislative Council violated the Sino-British Joint Declaration and that the United States will identify and sanction those responsible for extinguishing Hong Kong’s freedom.
25. On 12 November 2020, then U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued a statement on the disqualification of four opposition legislators. He accused the lawful decision of the NPC of being an “onslaught against Hong Kong’s freedoms” and clamored for “holding accountable the people responsible for eroding Hong Kong’s autonomy and freedoms”.
26. On 6 January 2021, then U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued a statement on the Hong Kong police’s lawful arrest of 53 opposition members who were suspected of violating the Hong Kong National Security law. He called for the “immediate and unconditional release” of those people and threatened further sanctions.
27. On 14 January 2021, the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China released its so-called “2020 Annual Report”, alleging that the One country, Two systems framework has been dismantled. The Commission called for providing shelters for offenders from Hong Kong based on U.S. domestic laws and blatantly exerted pressure on the HKSAR government against its law-based administration.
28. On 11 March 2021, the Spokesperson of the U.S. State Department made unwarranted charges against the passage of the NPC’s Decision on Improving the Electoral System of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, asserting that the decision was a continuing assault on democratic institutions and a direct attack on Hong Kong’s democratic processes.
29. On 11 March 2021, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken released a statement on the passage of the NPC’s Decision on Improving the Electoral System of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region in which he asserted that it was a direct attack on the autonomy, freedoms and democratic processes of Hong Kong.
30. On 30 March 2021, the U.S. State Department released a 2020 Country Report on Human Rights Practices, vilifying the Hong Kong National Security Law and attacking law-based administration by the HKSAR government and law enforcement carried out by Hong Kong police.
31. On 31 March 2021, the U.S. Department of State issued the 2021 Hong Kong Policy Act Report, accusing China of undermining the autonomy and rights and freedoms in Hong Kong and stating that Hong Kong would no longer receive the differential treatment previously accorded to it under U.S. laws.
32. On 1 April 2021, U.S. Consul General to Hong Kong Hanscom Smith, in media interviews and articles published on newspapers such as the South China Morning Post and Ming Pao, vilified the major steps China had taken to improve HKSAR’s electoral system and to formulate and implement the Hong Kong National Security Law. He alleged that changes to the electoral system would render Hong Kong’s election results meaningless, and threatened to impose U.S. sanctions in an attempt to embolden those who are opposed to China and attempted to destabilize Hong Kong.
33. On 16 April 2021, Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, tweeted that the arrest of Martin Lee and others who are opposed to China and attempt to destabilize Hong Kong was “another sign of Beijing’s assault on the rule of law” and felt “saddened and disturbed”.
34. On 17 April 2021, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken tweeted that sentencing for politically-motivated charges “are unacceptable” and called for the “release” of those who are opposed to China and attempt to destabilize Hong Kong.
35. On 7 May 2021, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken tweeted that “the United States stands with the people of Hong Kong”. He called for rejecting the sentencing of those who are opposed to China and attempt to destabilize Hong Kong and their immediate release.
36. On 27 May 2021, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken issued a press statement on the State Department website, unwarrantedly accusing the Chinese government of undermining the democratic institutions of Hong Kong and calling for all individuals arrested under the Hong Kong National Security Law to be released and their charges dropped.
37. On 3 June 2021, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken issued a press statement on the State Department website, claiming that “the United States will stand with” the people of China who demand that their government respect “universal human rights”, and he called those who are opposed to China and attempt to destabilize Hong Kong “brave activists”.
38. On 4 June 2021, the U.S. Consulate General in Hong Kong lit up electric candles inside its the office window in support of the so-called candlelight vigil staged by those who are opposed to China and attempt to destabilize Hong Kong.
39. On 5 June 2021, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken tweeted that those who are opposed to China and attempt to destabilize Hong Kong were inspiring and called for the immediate release of those arrested.
40. On 11 June 2021, in an interview with Reuters, U.S. Consul General to Hong Kong Hanscom Smith alleged that the enactment of the Hong Kong National Security Law had created an “atmosphere of coercion” threatening both Hong Kong’s freedoms and its standing as an international business hub.
41. On 21 June 2021, at a press briefing, the spokesperson of the U.S. Department of State, under the pretext of media freedom, accused the HKSAR government of using the Hong Kong National Security Law to suppress independent media and stifle freedom of expression.
42. On 24 June 2021, in a statement released on the White House website, U.S. President Joe Biden, using media freedom as a pretext, called Apple Daily’s closure “a sad day for media freedom” and a signal of “intensified repression by Beijing”.
43. On 29 June 2021, the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China held a roundtable on the one-year anniversary of the enactment of the Hong Kong National Security Law, making unwarranted charges against human rights and the rule of law in Hong Kong.
44. On 30 June 2021, at the one-year anniversary of the enactment of the Hong Kong National Security Law, the U.S. Consulate General in Hong Kong, in disregard of facts, openly attacked the legislation, alleging that it curtails Hong Kong’s freedom of expression.
45. On 1 July 2021, the U.S. Department of State issued the so-called “2021 Trafficking in Persons Report”. In the part on China, the report denigrated Hong Kong’s successful efforts to combat human trafficking, and demonized the Hong Kong National Security Law.
46. On 13 July 2021, the spokesperson of the U.S. Department of State unwarrantedly accused China of continuing to undermine Hong Kong’s autonomy and business environment, and called for international attention.
47. On 21 July 2021, the U.S. Department of State issued the so-called Investment Climate Statements. In the part on Hong Kong, the Statements played up the so-called security risks of the Hong Kong National Security Law and defamed Hong Kong’s business environment.
48. On 2 August 2021, the U.S. Consulate General in Hong Kong posted “Bearing Witness” on its website, listing individuals who have been held accountable in accordance with law for opposing China and attempting to destabilize Hong Kong. The list contains such information as their names, the dates of their arrests, the dates they were charged, charges made against them, and their conviction dates.
IV. Shielding and supporting those who are opposed to China and attempt to destabilize Hong Kong, providing platforms for them to advocate “Hong Kong independence” and spread political disinformation, and justifying the acts of those lawbreakers by twisting facts and misleading the public.
1. On 17 March 2019, the U.S. Consulate General in Hong Kong arranged for a delegation of the U.S.-China Working Group of the U.S. House of Representatives to meet with Anson Chan Fang On-sang, Martin Lee Chu-ming and Joshua Wong Chi-fung and others. These people told the media afterwards that they discussed with the U.S. side issues such as the HKSAR government’s disqualification of opposition candidates from the Legislative Council election, the proposed amendments to the Fugitive Offenders Ordinance, and Hong Kong’s political development.
2. From 19 to 26 March 2019, Anson Chan Fang On-sang, Dennis Kwok Wing-hang, Charles Mok Nai-kwong and several others visited the United States, where they met with U.S. officials including then Vice President Mike Pence, Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, then principal policy adviser to the U.S. Secretary of State Miles Yu, and then Assistant Secretary for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs of the U.S. Department of Defense Randall Schriver. They also met with officials from the State Department Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons and members of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China and the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. Anson Chan and others urged the U.S. administration to impose sanctions on Hong Kong and pleaded for U.S. support for the anti-amendment bill movement launched by the opposition. The U.S. side arranged for them to give speeches at such institutions as the McCain Institute at Arizona State University and the Heritage Foundation. This provided a platform and support for Anson Chan and others to preach “Hong Kong independence” and spread political disinformation.
3. From 13 to 17 May 2019, six people, namely Martin Lee Chu-ming, Lee Cheuk-yan, Mak Yin-ting, Margaret Ng Ngoi-yee, James To Kun-sun and Nathan Law Kwun-chung, visited the United States and met with U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, then White House National Security Council Senior Director for Asian Affairs Matt Pottinger and others. The U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China arranged for them to attend a so-called hearing on Hong Kong and ask the HKSAR government to withdraw the draft amendments to the Fugitive Offenders Ordinance.
4. On 14 May 2019, the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy held a seminar on the proposed amendment to the Fugitive Offenders Ordinance by the HKSAR government, discussing the so-called “new threats to civil society and the rule of law in Hong Kong”. The Endowment arranged for Martin Lee Chu-ming and others who are opposed to China and attempt to destabilize to attend the seminar. Participants of the seminar called for taking immediate action to stop what they described as the “evil law”.
5. From 7 to 11 July 2019, Jimmy Lai Chee-ying, who is opposed to China and attempts to destabilize Hong Kong, visited the United States and met with then Vice President Mike Pence, then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, then National Security Advisor John Bolton, then Assistant Secretary of State David Stilwell and others. Jimmy Lai lobbied for U.S. intervention in Hong Kong affairs, and discussed with the U.S. side developments in Hong Kong surrounding the amendment bill and the so-called “autonomous status of Hong Kong”, for which he received positive response from the U.S. side.
6. On 6 August 2019, Hong Kong media reported that Joshua Wong Chi-fung, Nathan Law Kwun-chung and other leading figures of Demosistõ, an organization for “Hong Kong independence”, met with officials of the U.S. Consulate General in Hong Kong and called on the U.S. side to adopt a Hong Kong human rights and democracy act as soon as possible and impose sanctions on Hong Kong.
7. On 17 September 2019, the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China arranged for Joshua Wong Chi-fung, Dennis Ho Wan-see, Nathan Law Kwun-chung, Sunny Cheung Kwan-yang and others to attend a hearing under the so-called title of “Hong Kong’s Summer of Discontent and U.S. Policy Responses”. This provided a platform and support for Wong, Ho, Law and Cheung to advocate “Hong Kong independence”, spread political disinformation and smear the central government of China and the HKSAR government.
8. On 17 September 2019, U.S. Senator Todd Yang attended a press conference held on Capitol Hill to inaugurate the so-called Hong Kong Democracy Council, an organization supporting “Hong Kong independence”.
9. From 12 to 13 October 2019, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz visited Hong Kong and met with Jimmy Lai Chee-ying, Anson Chan Fang On-sang, Dennis Kwok Wing-hang, Charles Mok Nai-kwong, Bonnie Leung Wing-man and other leading figures among those who are opposed to China and attempt to destabilize Hong Kong. Cruz appeared at a protest site dressed in black and told the media that he did not see any violence. He accused the Hong Kong police, who had been enforcing the law with great restraint, of violent suppression.
10. From 22 to 26 October 2019, Jimmy Lai Chee-ying, Martin Lee Chu-ming and others who are opposed to China and attempt to destabilize Hong Kong visited the United States and met with Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, then Assistant Secretary of State David Stilwell, Chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China Jim McGovern and several members of Congress.
11. On 4 February 2020, at the invitation of U.S. senator Rick Scott, Nathan Law Kwun-chung, who is opposed to China and attempts to destabilize Hong Kong, attended the U.S. President’s State of the Union address.
12. On 5 March 2020, then U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Jonathan Fritz and U.S. Consul General to Hong Kong Hanscom Smith met with Charles Mok Nai-kwong and some others who are opposed to China and attempt to destabilize Hong Kong.
13. On 21 March 2020, U.S. Consul General to Hong Kong Hanscom Smith met with Joshua Wong Chi-fung, Sunny Cheung Kwan-yang and Fergus Leung Fong-wai, among others, and accepted a so-called petition from Wong. Wong urged the United States to impose sanctions on HKSAR government officials and members of the Hong Kong police by invoking the U.S. Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act.
14. On 18 April 2020, then U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued a statement making groundless accusations against Hong Kong police’s arrest of individuals who are opposed to China and attempt to destabilize Hong Kong.
15. On 27 May 2020, U.S. Senator Joshua Hawley met with Joshua Wong Chi-fung and others who are opposed to China and attempt to destabilize Hong Kong.
16. On 1 July 2020, the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations held a hearing and arranged for Nathan Law Kwun-chung, Lee Cheuk-yan and others who are opposed to China and attempt to destabilize Hong Kong to attend the hearing via video link, providing a platform for them to vilify the Hong Kong National Security Law and the central government’s policy on Hong Kong.
17. On 21 July 2020, then U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had a one-on-one meeting in London with Nathan Law Kwun-chung, a “Hong Kong independence” advocate who had fled to the UK, in a move to embolden Law. Law smeared China’s central government and the HKSAR government, and called on the United States to exert more pressure on China.
18. On 10 August 2020, then National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien issued a statement claiming that the U.S. side is “deeply troubled by the arrest of pro-democracy advocates” including Jimmy Lai Chee-ying and calling on Beijing to repeal the Hong Kong National Security Law.
19. On 16 December 2020, the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary arranged for Nathan Law Kwun-chung, a “Hong Kong independence” advocate, to attend a hearing via video link. Law claimed that the Hong Kong National Security Law restricted Hong Kong people’s freedom of expression and right to protest, and urged the United States to grant asylum to more Hong Kong people.
20. On 6 January 2021, then U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued a statement expressing so-called concern over the arrest of more than 50 individuals who are opposed to China and attempt to destabilize Hong Kong.
21. On 15 January 2021, then U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued another statement making irresponsible comments about the HKSAR government’s arrest made in accordance with the law of individuals who are opposed to China and attempt to destabilize Hong Kong, including an American lawyer. He called on China to immediately release individuals sanctioned under the Hong Kong National Security Law and drop charges against them.
22. On 31 January 2021, nine U.S. senators and house representatives including Jim McGovern, Marco Rubio and Jeff Merkley wrote a joint letter to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee nominating the so-called “pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong” for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize.
23. On 28 February 2021, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken posted a tweet to “condemn the detention of and charges filed against pan-democratic candidates in Hong Kong’s elections” by the HKSAR government.
24. On 16 April 2021, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken issued a statement making unwarranted accusations against China over the sentencing of Martin Lee Chu-ming, Jimmy Lai Chee-ying and other individuals who are opposed to China and attempt to destabilize Hong Kong.
25. On 8 July 2021, Joshua Huck, Chief of the Economic and Political Section of the U.S. Consulate General in Hong Kong, attended as an observer an HK court trial of individuals suspected of illegally planning, organizing and carrying out the “35 +” and “10 steps to mutual destruction” plan. When interviewed by the media, he claimed that the Hong Kong National Security Law is about suppressing the freedom of Hong Kong people and sought to glorify and justify individuals who are opposed to China and attempt to destabilize Hong Kong.
V. Colluding with some countries to exert pressure, and teaming up with allies to interfere in Hong Kong affairs and make irresponsible comments by such means as joint statements.
1. On 27 May 2020, the United States Mission to the United Nations issued a statement calling for a UN Security Council meeting on Hong Kong. The statement claimed that Hong Kong is “a matter of urgent global concern that implicates international peace and security”.
2. On 28 May 2020, foreign ministers of the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada issued a joint statement on Hong Kong, attacking the Hong Kong National Security Law to be adopted by China’s NPC.
3. On 17 June 2020, foreign ministers of the United States and other G7 countries and the High Representative of the European Union issued a joint statement on Hong Kong. In an attempt to put pressure on China, the statement claimed that the Hong Kong National Security Law would undermine One country, Two Systems and Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy, and urged the Chinese government to reconsider the relevant decision.
4. On 9 August 2020, foreign ministers of the United States and other Five Eyes countries issued a joint statement on Hong Kong, slandering the central government’s policy on Hong Kong and urging China’s NPC to revoke the disqualification of the four opposition members of the Legislative Council.
5. On 18 November 2020, foreign ministers of the United States and other Five Eyes countries issued a joint statement on Hong Kong, attacking the decision of the Standing Committee of the NPC on the qualification of members of the Hong Kong Legislative Council and China’s policy on Hong Kong.
6. On 9 January 2021, foreign ministers of the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada issued a joint statement on Hong Kong. The statement expressed so-called serious concern on the arrest of 55 individuals who are opposed to China and attempt to destabilize Hong Kong by Hong Kong police in accordance with law, and accused the Hong Kong National Security Law of being a clear breach of the Sino-British Joint Declaration, undermining the One Country, Two Systems framework, and curtailing the rights and freedoms of the people of Hong Kong.
7. On 12 March 2021, foreign ministers of the United States and other G7 countries and the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy issued a joint statement on Hong Kong. The statement claimed that the changes made by the Chinese government to Hong Kong’s electoral system were aimed at eliminating dissent in Hong Kong and would undermine Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy.
8. On 5 May 2021, the G7 foreign ministers’ meeting attended by the United States and other relevant countries issued a joint statement which smeared the Chinese government’s policy on Hong Kong, distorted the policy of One Country, Two Systems, made irresponsible comments on the internal affairs of the HKSAR, and supported those who are opposed to China and attempt to destabilize Hong Kong. The United States also proposed at the meeting the setting up of an international group called “friends of Hong Kong”, in an attempt to get other Western countries on board to interfere in Hong Kong affairs.
9. On 13 June 2021, the G7 Summit issued a communiqué which made groundless comments on Hong Kong and called on China to respect human rights and fundamental freedoms, and the high degree of autonomy for Hong Kong enshrined in the Sino-British Joint Declaration and the Basic Law.
10. From 21 June to 14 July 2021, during the 47th session of the UN Human Rights Council, the United States and 43 other countries signed a joint statement against China initiated by Canada, expressing “concern” over “human rights abuses” in Hong Kong.
On 1 July, the United States led a side event on the one-year anniversary of the Hong Kong National Security Law which slandered the Hong Kong National Security Law and the rule of law in Hong Kong. Twenty governments and nine non-governmental organizations were asked to attend it.
11. On 10 July 2021, the U.S. Department of State website published a joint statement made by 21 countries including the United States and some European countries, all being members of the so-called Media Freedom Coalition, expressing “strong concerns” about the closure of Apple Daily and the arrest of those who are opposed to China and attempt to destabilize Hong Kong. The statement also made groundless accusations against the law enforcement efforts of the HKSAR government, the Hong Kong National Security Law, and the central government’s policy on Hong Kong.
Where is the world heading to?
People are starting to recognize that within 18 months from now, a nuclear armed Australia will be the "tip of the speak" to militarily confrontation with China.
Thus (supposedly) sparing New York City, Washington DC, and Los Angles from nuclear destruction...
In the Middle East, dictatorial regimes and terrorist militias about to breathe a sigh of relief as the United States and its allies withdraw from Afghanistan and perhaps soon from Iraq.
There is a perception in the region that it is believed that for more than two centuries, first Britain and then the United States were a bone stuck in the throat of the region.
Throughout the twentieth century and the first two decades of the twenty-first century, they kept brought nothing but war, violence, and the fragmentation of nations on the map, for the Middle East. The war and conflict only achievement of the great powers, especially in the oil and energy sector in this region.
Now the table is turned.
With the first energy revolution, the United States became depleted of Middle Eastern oil by acquiring shale oil, and now, by moving to clean energy, seeks its geopolitical priorities no longer in the Middle East but in the Indo-Pacific region.
Leading oil historian Daniel Yergin delves deeply into these geopolitical changes in the post-oil world in his new book, The New Map, published September 14 2021 in New York. He says that just as the map of the world changed after the First World War at the beginning of the twentieth century, so in the twenty-first century there will be a new map of the world.
The world has been waiting for years for a strategic and geopolitical confrontation between China and the United States.
A confrontation that took place inevitably, but in any case, and for any reason, the leaders of the two countries pushed it back.
Thursday, September 16, 2021 marked another historic day for the world. On this day, the leaders of the three countries of Australia, Britain and the United States suddenly appeared on world television and announced a security defense agreement and a tripartite core.
A statement that shook the world.
China, in its first response, threatened Australia with a nuclear attack.
The Chinese do NOT bluff, and if they say something, you all had best LISTEN. Or do you think that they are liars and bluff and bluster all the time with hollow and empty threats?
The Global Times, the English-language organ of the Chinese Communist Party, immediately reacted to the statement and attacked the treaty with the most naked words. A treaty that introduced new acronyms to world political literature. AUKUS is the acronym for this new treaty, which according to Politico is the newest and ugliest acronym for America.
The three-way security pact between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States will equip Australia with eight nuclear-powered submarines over eighteen months, as well as providing Australia with many artificial intelligence technologies, costumes, defense, and security facilities.
In other words, while the United States has either withdrawn or is withdrawing from Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Syria, it is now conducting a nuclear and security camp in the Pacific against China. What Reuters has interpreted as a new Cold War that is affecting the geopolitics of the world.
The American camp in the Pacific has greatly hurt Europe, and especially France. So much so that France called it a stab in the back, and France’s foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian called it a barbaric, one-sided, and unpredictable decision in an interview with Radio France, reminiscent of Trump’s actions. Le Drian, who could not hide his anger, added: “I am angry and bitter. This is not done between allies.”
But why is France so angry?
There are two reasons for France’s anger: First, France was previously set to sell submarines to Australia under a $ 40 billion deal, but has now been barred from a lucrative deal.
But another important reason is that in the first major transatlantic security treaty, not only France but also Europe was ignored. The ignorance that Josep Borrell, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, called painful in a statement published by The Wall Street Journal.
What can be seen from what happened on Thursday in the world geopolitical scene, is that, the United States has not tolerated China’s growing progress and has finally resorted to a military alignment in its nuclear nature.
The US turning its back on this new approach is understandable to its Middle East allies; But why it ousted its European allies, especially France, in the first transatlantic treaty is a question that the future will answer.
Nope. They are not pausing to think. They are ramping up for a war against China.
Idiots.
And China is ready.
Then there’s this… .
According to former MI6 deputy director Nigel Inkster, Xi Jinping is losing patience, and China is “edging closer” to confrontation with the US over Taiwan.
Meanwhile, Taiwan declared an unprecedented US$9 billion increase in military spending the day before to meet China’s threat — a development that will not go over well in Beijing.
There is also danger that the highly controversial AUKUS defence treaty between the UK, the US, and Australia may drag Britain into a battle with China over Taiwan.
Zhao Lijian, a spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry, called the AUKUS pact an example of a “obsolete cold war zero-sum thinking.”
“On a scale of one to 10, how likely is it that we’ll see a military clash between America and China over this issue?” LBC host Matt Frei questioned Inkster.
“Right now, we’re up to eight,” Inkster replied.
…
“The best-case scenario is that both China and the United States realize they are on an equal footing militarily, with neither having a significant edge.
“This acknowledgement could help to keep the peace, even if it is shattered. That is our only ray of hope.”
“We may be approaching a tipping point when the Chinese party-state believes that peaceful reunification with Taiwan is not possible,” Inkster added.
As Inkster spoke, across the pond at the Air, Space & Cyber conference in National Harbor, Maryland, Air Combat Command’s Gen. Mark D. Kelly told attendees that China must be challenged, Air Force magazine reported.
The “cold, hard realities” are that the Air Force was superbly prepared and trained to defeat a peer adversary — Russia — 30 years ago, then achieved a highly lopsided victory in Iraq, Kelly said.
But in the last 20 years, USAF was optimized for combat in a “permissive environment” that didn’t test the force. During that same time, China was focused completely on “the high-end fight, and fighting us.”
…
China’s force structure and systems are “designed to inflict more casualties in the first 30 hours of combat than we’ve endured over the last 30 years in the Middle East,” Kelly said.
No shit. What have I been saying?
China does not believe in "surgical strikes" within strictly defined target battle zones.
they believe in all-out brutal, devistating, absolute destructive war that does not descriminate and smashes things and breaks them relentlessly.
As the United States Air Force inventory has aged and diminished, the balance with China has tilted more toward Beijing, he added.
Kelly said Russia has been able to annex Crimea and China has claimed parts of the South China Sea “without firing a shot” because contesting those situations has become harder thanks to adversary air defenses.
To regain the advantage — “to be a resolute world power ”— the US, through its Air Force, has to be able to penetrate “highly contested sovereign [airspace],” Kelly asserted.
Nigel Inkster has worked at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) since 2007. He is the former Director of Future Conflict and Cyber Security and currently a Special Adviser at IISS. His research portfolio at IISS has included transnational terrorism, insurgency, transnational organized crime, cyber security, intelligence and security and the evolving character of conflict.
Source: Brinkwire.com, Air Force magazine, CyberStability.org, Wikipedia
Scandal in Taiwan
I wonder how this is being reported in the United States?
Current Taiwan president has a fake PhD and fake PhD thesis. After a UK court earlier this year ruled that the university should released all documents on Tsai Ing-wen’s, we now see a press conference re the investigation.
Will she be trial for teaching in a Taiwan University with the fake PhD? And step down as president by lying to the voters?
Scholars on the island open Tsai Ing-wen’s thesis door to the final trial press conference and choke on falsified papers
Do you think that he is right? That China would respond, or that they would try to retreat a little to save face?
New Report Documents the Deadly Impact and Global Condemnation of US Sanctions
A coalition of North American human rights organizations has released a report on the impact and consequences of US sanctions. The report is based on wide-ranging research and interviews with citizens in countries which are suffering under US sanctions.
The report reveals a reality which western media rarely or never reports.
One finding is that US sanctions hurt the poor, have resulted in thousands of deaths and “humanitarian exemptions” do not work. Another finding is that more than 70% of the world nations officially condemn US sanctions as violating international law and the UN Charter.
A free PDF copy of the report can be downloaded from…
A top official at Russian natural gas producer Novatek who was arrested in the United States last week on tax charges says he is innocent and will “vigorously” fight the case.
“On Thursday I was indicted for baseless tax charges that I already settled through a voluntary program, and pleaded not guilty. I will vigorously fight these charges and will continue to discuss gas topics as normal,” Mark Gyetvay, the deputy chairman of Novatek’s management board, said in a tweet on September 26.
The U.S. Department of Justice announced on September 23 that Gyetvay had been arrested on tax charges related to $93 million hidden in offshore accounts. He faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
Gyetvay, who holds passports from both the United States and Russia, was released on a $80 million bond by a Florida judge, according to court filings.
As an American citizen, Gyetvay is required to pay U.S. taxes on his worldwide income even if he spends most of the year in Russia.
The 64-year old has been the face of Novatek to the Western investment community for more than a decade, conducting the quarterly earnings conference calls with stock and bond investors as well as speaking at industry conferences.
Novatek is Russia’s largest independent natural gas producer and analysts say its phenomenal rise from a bit player in the early 2000s to a $79 billion company today — not far behind BP’s $89 billion market value — is due in large part to the company’s connections to the Kremlin.
Gennady Timchenko, a key Novatek shareholder, is considered a close associate of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Their friendship goes back to the early 1990s.
The United States has been seeking to reduce Europe’s reliance on Russian energy over the years, including blocking the launch of Nord Stream 2, a pipeline designed to carry natural gas directly to Germany via Baltic Sea.
The Nord Stream 2 pipeline will reroute gas currently transiting Ukraine, depriving Kyiv of as much as $2 billion in revenue. The United States has called it a political project aimed at hurting Russia’s smaller neighbor.
The project was completed earlier this month and is now awaiting certification by German and European authorities, a process that could take several months.
In the meantime, European gas prices have surged to a record high amid a supply crunch. Washington is now accusing Russia of withholding additional natural gas supplies to Europe via Ukraine in order to pressure authorities to certify Nord Stream 2.
“Another laugher!!!” Gyetvay said in a tweet two days before his arrest after a U.S. official expressed concern that Russia was not sending enough gas to Europe. “Who tried to impose relentless sanctions while promoting [U.S. liquefied natural gas to Europe?] Reality — we need ALL gas. Period.”
What comes around goes around
Call it Karma or what have you, but when you have had centuries of taking, taking, taking… sooner or later that becomes who you are. And unless you replenish the “closed system” (Those who understand the concept of a “Prison Planet” understand.) this activity will manifest in your life; in your community, and in your people.
The United States wants all QUAD members to have nuclear weapons.
The QUAD consists of the US, Australia, India and Japan.
Up until two weeks ago, only the USA and India had nuclear weapons, then arrangements were made to place nuclear weapons systems in Australia. Now the United States is pushing for Japan to have nuclear weapons systems.
A ton-load of articles out of the United States neocons…
https://www.dailywire.com/news/chinas-nuclear...
Aug 07, 2021 · The U.S. should consider all options, including negotiations with Japan to deploy land-based nuclearmedium or intermediate-range ballistic missiles in Japaneseterritory. The offer of U.S.-controlled missiles will act to preventJapanfromdeciding to build its own nuclear weaponcapabilityin response to the Chinese threat, thuspreventing ...
-China’s Nuclear Threat Against Japan: Hybrid Warfare
“A new ‘study’ has concluded that Beijing’s huge worldwide investment programme is ‘losing momentum’ as debts mount. But a closer inspection of the facts tells a different story.
“Western mainstream media yesterday began posting in tandem a purported ‘study’ from which Reuters spun its own headline: ‘China’s Belt and Road plans losing momentum as opposition, debt mount – study’.
"The study, as noted in the report, was sponsored by the US government through the surrogate of its own international relief [and Color Revolution sponsoring] agency, USAID, and proceeded to present the usual cliches that China was maliciously saddling nations in “hidden debt,” encouraging corruption and promulgating environmental damage in participating countries, and claimed that opposition to the investment programme was mounting."
Fowdy is good at digging, but in this case he didn’t need to expend much effort:
"It is strange that large scale emphasis on that [forced labor] has disappeared, and now the agenda is being turned toward trashing the Belt and Road Initiative. But we knew this was coming. When the US Senate prepared its ‘strategic competition’ bill earlier this year, it notably earmarked $300 million in funding to deliberately spread 'negative news' regarding 'the impact of China's Belt and Road Initiative' throughout the world. To no surprise whatsoever, this is what the newly published BRI ‘study’ is doing, and it's a sign of things to come."
Fowdy then tells us some of the lies being used to discredit. He follows that with facts, a category of information Western media doesn’t appear to use in its reports anymore:
“Here’s a flavor of what they aren’t telling you. A study from Refinitiv, one of the world’s largest providers of financial markets data and infrastructure, found that, as of 2019, over $516 billion worth of BRI projects had been completed with a cancellation rate of just 0.3%. It counted 2,631 different projects across the world, in more than 120 countries.
“To name but a few examples of BRI successes:
China finished a metro system in Lahore, Pakistan, last year,
opened a 1000MW nuclear power plant in the same country in May,
is building Africa’s largest building in Egypt,
as well as the largest building in South Asia (the Lotus Tower in Colombo, Sri Lanka),
and is on the verge of finishing the China-Laos High Speed Railway.
Multiple direct transcontinental railway routes through China to Europe have also been opened.
“The study by Refinitiv, which is headquartered in the UK, also proceeded to pour cold water over the idea of a ‘debt trap’ for participating countries, noting that a review of 40 cases of China’s external debt renegotiations painted a different picture. The BRI is not being imposed, it is not dogmatic and nor is it monolithic, and it is more flexible and pragmatic than it’s given credit for.” [My Emphasis]
In other words, the BRI is essentially the opposite of the Washington Consensus’s Structural Adjustment Programs which impose development crippling austerity and serve to enrich the global 1%. Fowdy closes by exposing the utter bankruptcy of the Outlaw US Empire’s attempts to counter the long overdue development of the Global South:
“The idea that developing countries blindly and naively accept one-sided terms, jump into self-penalizing agreements, and thus don’t know ‘what their best interests are’, is insulting. It is promoting, as usual, the idea of ‘Western saviorism’, one that has been used as a justification for colonialism and domination for centuries. There is a staggering lack of historical self-awareness and sensitivity in those who advocate such claims.”
In about 30 years, the Global South will be on par with many Western nations, while surpassing those destroyed by Neoliberalism. And ya know, there really aren’t very many Western Nations, and very few of them are actually independent.
David BK Tan chimes in on the “collapse” of China…
I am seeing a lot of inaccurate articles on the western media championing the “demise” of the Chinese economy.
Besides the erroneous comparison of Evergrande to Lehman Brothers (see my post https://bit.ly/3uyUDvq) , I am also seeing articles referring to the current debt plight of Evergrande as China’s “Heisei Bubble” moment. Heisei (平成) era is the period of Japanese history corresponding to the reign of Emperor Akihito from 8 Jan 1989 until his abdication on 30 Apr 2019. The Japanese would call it Heisei bubble (平成バブル & バブル (baburu) is actually a loanword from English & hence it sounds like bubble) since the burst of its asset price bubble happened during the 平成 era .
Actually you do not need to have a PhD in economics to understand that China is not having a “Heisei Bubble” moment. What you need is to look at “First Principles” of economics to understand their differences.
If you have studied mathematics/physics in school, you might remember “First Principles” which are like axioms. So if you have no economics background, you can treat the common economics principles like axioms without the need to understand them in details & use such principles for investigative purpose. Actually such “First Principles” approach is useful in general as it helps you to probe further in a new area to gain some understanding.
The First Principle that you would need in this case is :
GDP of a country =C+I+G+(X−M) where
C=Consumer spending on goods and services
I=Investment spending on business capital goods
G=Government spending on public goods and services
X=Exports
M=Imports
You also need to know some common facts on #Japan in the 80s like its exports were very strong & thus it contributed strongly to its GDP. Its strong exports in the 80s resulted in the poor sales of local products in the US & so we had the US-Japan trade wars in the 80s which affected its trade.
So if we look at trade (% of GDP) vs GDP figures for Japan since mid- 80s, you find that its trade plunged but GDP abnormally increased. Since trade was a impt contribution to its GDP, this suggests that there would be anomalies like over-consumption/over-investment or even both. So if you are interested in the cause, you might probe further. But suffice to say, you know for China to have a “Heisei Bubble” moment, its trade must plunge like Japan’s since China is also an export-oriented economy. I have attached the second image displaying China’s trade as % of GDP vs its GDP & you will realise that its plunge in trade happened after 2006 which was due to Great Financial Crisis but its trade has been decelerating since then which is in tandem with the decelerating GDP growth.
In a nutshell, #China does not have the anomaly of Japan’s Heisei moment with over-consumption/over-investment etc since the GDP was falling in accordance with the fall in trade since 2007.
The US and its allies continue beating the drums of war in regards to China, but how serious is this? Will it really lead to war, or is it merely posturing meant to give the US the most favorable position on the other side of a fully ascendant China?
A critical inflection point identified by US war planners for years is approaching, where China’s economic and military might will irreversibly surpass the US and the center of global power will likewise irreversibly shift from West to East creating a global balance of power unseen for centuries. A closing window of opportunity estimated to close between 2025 and 2030 allows the US to carry out a limited war with China, resulting in a favorable outcome for Washington. Beyond that, the US will find itself outmatched and any attempt to curb China’s rise rendered futile.
The propaganda war, and the war itself this propaganda aims to justify and rally support for, is unmistakable, particularly for those who have witnessed similar buildups ahead of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, or US-led military interventions in nations like Libya and Syria from 2011 onward.
A recent 60 Minutes Australia segment titled, “War with China: Are we closer than we think?,” presented an amalgamation of this ongoing propaganda used to vilify the Chinese government, dehumanize the Chinese people, and create sufficient anger, fear, paranoia, distrust, and hatred in hearts and minds across the planet to justify what would be for the 21st century, an unprecedented war.
For the United States, a war with China would be the first of its kind, a war with a peer or near-peer competitor armed with nuclear weapons.
Yet US war planners are fairly confident that the conflict could be confined to East Asia, remain conventional, and see a favorable outcome for the US that would secure its primacy over Asia for decades to come.
A victory for the US would not be military in nature, but rather hinge on “nonmilitary factors,” and focus on disrupting and setting back China’s economy and thus the power propelling China past the United States at the moment.
The 2016 US War Plan Coming to Life
These conclusions were laid out in a 2016 RAND Corporation document titled, “War with China: Thinking Through the Unthinkable,” commissioned by the Office of the Undersecretary of the Army and carried out by the RAND Arroyo Center’s Strategy, Doctrine, and Resources Program. The report notes that the RAND Arroyo Center is part of the RAND Corporation and is a federally-funded research and development center sponsored by the United States Army.
The report notes that America’s military advantage is in decline vis-a-vis China, but also lays out several current realities that would favor the US should hostilities unfold.
It states on page 9 of the PDF document:
We postulate that a war would be regional and conventional. It would be waged mainly by ships on and beneath the sea, by aircraft and missiles of many sorts, and in space (against satellites) and cyberspace (against computer systems). We assume that fighting would start and remain in East Asia, where potential Sino-USflash points and nearly all Chinese forces are located.
The RAND document admits that China’s forces are concentrated in Chinese territory and that virtually all flash points that could trigger a conflict are likewise located in the region. This implies that US forces would need to be more or less right up to China’s shores and regional claims, and insist on interfering in regional disputes or intervene in matters between Taiwan and mainland China.
The Nuclear Question
Many assume any war between China and the United States would escalate into a nuclear exchange. However, this is unlikely except under the most extreme conditions.
Regarding nuclear and conventional warfare, the RAND document makes a compelling argument, stating:
It is unlikely that nuclear weapons would be used: Even in an intensely violent conventional conflict, neither side would regard its losses as so serious, its prospects so dire, or the stakes so vital that it would run the risk of devastating nuclear retaliation by using nuclear weapons first. We also assume that China would not attack the US homeland, except via cyberspace, given its minimal capability to do so with conventional weapons. In contrast, US nonnuclear attacks against military targets in China could be extensive.
The report studies a window of opportunity that began in 2015 and stretches to 2025. Current developments seem to indicate the US may see this window extend as far as 2030, including the recent announcement of the “AUKUS” alliance where US-UK-built Australian nuclear-powered submarines would be coming online and ready to participate in such a conflict around the early 2030’s.
US May Trade Heavy Military Losses for China’s Economic Ruination
Under a section titled, “The Importance of Nonmilitary Factors,” the RAND report notes:
The prospect of a military standoff means that war could eventually be decided by nonmilitary factors. These should favor the United States now and in the future. Although war would harm both economies, damage to China’s could be catastrophic and lasting: on the order of a 25–35 percent reduction in Chinese gross domestic product (GDP) in a yearlong war, compared with a reduction in US GDP on the order of 5–10 percent. Even a mild conflict, unless ended promptly, could weaken China’s economy. A long and severe war could ravage China’s economy, stall its hard-earned development, and cause widespread hardship and dislocation.
Considering the current shape of US-Chinese relations, the emphasis on economics and trade, and the persistent, even desperate attempts by the US to not only inflict as much damage on China’s economy ahead of a potential conflict as possible, but also its attempts to “decouple” from China’s economy as fast as possible could be interpreted as tying off a limb before amputation.
Preparations Already Underway to Exploit China’s Economic Damage
The report notes the follow-on effects of the economic damage such a conflict would inflict on China. It would open the door for already on-going US machinations to undermine China’s social and political stability to expand and do tremendous damage, perhaps even threatening the cohesion of Chinese society.
It states specifically:
Such economic damage could in turn aggravate political turmoil and embolden separatists in China. Although the regime and its security forces presumably could withstand such challenges, doing so might necessitate increased oppressiveness, tax the capacity, and undermine the legitimacy of the Chinese regime in the midst of a very difficult war. In contrast, US domestic partisan skirmishing could handicap the war effort but not endanger societal stability, much less the survival of the state, no matter how long and harsh the conflict, so long as it remains conventional. Escalating cyberwarfare, while injurious to both sides, could worsen China’s economic problems and impede the government’s ability to control a restive population.
The mention of “separatists in China” is particularly important. These groups, often made up of armed extremists, are supported by an extensive international network funded by the US government itself.
Separatism in China’s Xinjiang and Tibetan regions is openly supported by the US government and has been sponsored by Washington for decades. The US National Endowment for Democracy’s official website lists its programs for Xinjiang, China as, “Xinjiang/East Turkestan,” “East Turkestan” being the separatist name for Xinjiang. The organizations listed, including the Uyghur Human Rights Project and the World Uyghur Congress openly admit on their respective websites that they view Xinjiang – contrary to international law – as “occupied” by China rather than a territory of China.
In a move that could very likely be a warning of just how close to a US-provoked conflict with China we may be, the US State Department de-listed the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) in 2020 claiming it had not been active for over a decade.
Yet by the US’ own admission US military forces struck ETIM targets in Afghanistan as recently as 2018, and just this year ETIM representatives gave an interview with US-based Newsweek magazine.
ETIM is still listed by a number of nations as well as the UN itself as a terrorist organization.
Economic turmoil, armed insurrection, and socio-political instability are factors the US has openly attempted to impose on China for decades and is still placing pieces on the gameboard toward this objective. If a conflict were to break out, those pieces would clearly already be in place to maximize Washington’s ability to exploit economic damage inflicted by the conflict.
Targeting China’s Trade Lanes at Sea
The RAND paper notes specifically the impact on Chinese trade a conventional conflict confined to East Asia would have. The report notes:
…while the United States has sophisticated sensors to distinguish military from nonmilitary targets, during war it will focus on finding and tracking the former; moreover, Chinese ISR is less sophisticated and discriminating, especially at a distance. This suggests very hazardous airspace and sea space, perhaps ranging from the Yellow Sea to the South China Sea. Assuming that non-Chinese commercial enterprises would rather lose revenue than ships or planes, the United States would not need to use force to stop trade to and from China.16 China would lose a substantial amount of trade that would be required to transit the war zone. The United States expressly threatening commercial shipping would be provocative, hazardous, and largely unnecessary. So we posit no US blockade, as such.
Of course, the US has a variety of tools at its disposal that it regularly uses upon the international stage to impede free commerce. It is an irony since Washington often accuses Beijing of “threatening” such commerce in regions like the South China Sea while Washington is actually impeding it on a global scale.
NPR in its 2020 article, “US Seizes Iranian Fuel From 4 Tankers Bound For Venezuela,” would note:
According to The Associated Press, quoting unnamed USofficials, no military force was used in the seizure of the cargo, and none of the ships was physically impounded. Instead, US officials threatened ship owners, insurers and captains with sanctions to force them to hand over their cargo, the AP reported.
Because of America’s still formidable grip over international media, it would be extremely easy to sink vessels engaged in commerce and blame it on China or claim it was accidental. A total blockade would not be necessary to deter the majority of commerce in the region, only a few examples would be needed for the self-preservation of shipping companies to de facto cut off trade.
Another concerning warning sign was the Pentagon restructuring an entire branch of the US armed forces, the US Marine Corps, to specifically fight a single nation (China), in a very specific region (East Asia), with very specific tactics (shutting down straits used for commercial shipping).
Defense News in a 2020 article titled, “Here’s the US Marine Corps’ plan for sinking Chinese ships with drone missile launchers,” would claim:
The US Marine Corps is getting into the ship-killing business, and a new project in development is aimed at making their dreams of harrying the People’s Liberation Army Navy a reality.
The article also noted:
Marine Corps requirements and development chief Lt. Gen. Eric Smith told reporters last year during the Expeditionary Warfare Conference that the Marines want to fight on ground of their choosing and then maneuver before forces can concentrate against them.
“They are mobile and small, they are not looking to grab a piece of ground and sit on it,” Smith said of his Marine units. “I’m not looking to block a strait permanently. I’m looking to maneuver. The German concept is ‘Schwerpunkt,’ which is applying the appropriate amount of pressure and force at the time and place of your choosing to get maximum effect.”
The US Marine Corps has already decommissioned all of their main battle tanks as part of this restructuring which took less than a year – signifying the urgency of US preparations.
The US taking ships out in busy commerce straits and creating an environment that would cripple trade between China and the rest of the world would have a heavy impact on China’s economy.
On page 67 of the PDF document, RAND includes a graphic depiction of China’s projected GDP losses versus the US, giving us a compelling motive for the US to wage a war it knows it will suffer heavy military losses amidst, but emerge economically stronger than a China that will otherwise, barring such a conflict, surpass the US within this window of opportunity.
China Knows, But Can China Beat the Clock?
It is very obvious that China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is an attempt for China to diversify away from Asia-Pacific trade routes the US is clearly making preparations to attack and disrupt.
Pipelines running through Pakistan as part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and through Myanmar to Kunming in Yunnan Province would help move hydrocarbons bound for China from the Middle East without passing through waters the US could disrupt in the conflict it is clearly preparing for.
However, these alternative routes are already under attack.
US-sponsored separatists operating in Pakistan’s southwest province of Baluchistan regularly attack and kill Chinese engineers and the infrastructure itself.
Protests organized by US-sponsored opposition groups target Gwadar Port, CPEC’s terminal.
Just this year alone, France 24 would report in April a bombing targeting a hotel the Chinese ambassador to Pakistan was staying at but who luckily wasn’t at the hotel at the time of the bombing. In July, the BBC reported that 9 Chinese engineers working on CPEC projects were killed in a targeted attack. And according to Reuters, in August, 2 children were killed during a suicide bombing targeting Chinese engineers in Baluchistan.
US-backed opposition groups have been attacking Chinese investments in Myanmar since the military ousted the US client regime headed by Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NDL). CNN would report in March, just a month after the military took over, that the opposition was lighting Chinese factories ablaze.
US government-funded Myanmar opposition media outlet, The Irrawaddy, published an article in May titled, “Deadly Attack on Pipeline Station Spotlights China’s High Stakes in Myanmar,” claiming:
The importance of the project was highlighted in February when Chinese officials held an emergency meeting with Myanmar officials, at which they urged the military regime to tighten security measures for the pipelines. They said the project is a crucial part of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in Myanmar and insisted that “any damage to the pipelines would cause huge losses for both countries.” The request came amid growing anti-China sentiment in Myanmar, where protesters—angered by Beijing’s blocking of the UN Security Council (UNSC)’s efforts to take action against the coup leaders—have threatened to blow up the pipelines.
The article concludes by quoting a Swedish journalist claiming:
It would come as no surprise if attacks were carried out against, for instance, the pipelines, he said. “And attitudes will not change unless the Chinese government stops its support for the Myanmar military. That should be a real concern.”
Xinjiang, China, also serves as a critical juncture for China’s BRI and we can clearly see the US promoting separatism there. The recent “Uyghur Tribunal” organized by the abovementioned US-funded World Uyghur Congress aims at further undermining Beijing’s efforts to counter US-sponsored armed separatism in Xinjiang by placing additional international pressure on China for implementing necessary security measures to prevent it.
The continued US-sponsored attacks on China’s BRI, the US-led military build-up along China’s coasts, and the propaganda war the US is waging to control the narratives surrounding both, represents a race against time for both Washington and Beijing.
For Washington, it is attempting to create the conditions in which RAND predictions of China’s economic devastation following a conventional conflict confined to East Asia can be transformed into reality.
For Beijing, it is attempting to run out the clock and assume the economic, military, and political power it needs to fully deter any such conflict, and assume its position as the largest, most powerful economy on Earth.
All things being equal, China has the world’s largest population – a population that is hardworking and well-educated. China’s educational institutions are producing millions more science, technology, engineering, and mathematics graduates than the US per year. China’s massive trade networks ensure its economy has plenty of resources. It should become the largest economy. And only a war of aggression, chosen to be waged by Washington will stop this from coming to pass.
US foreign policy in the 21st century has demonstrated in action the true nature of its foreign policy versus what Washington’s politicians say with words from behind podiums or its media says in front of cameras about a “rules-based international order.”
The only rule we can see demonstrably upheld is “might makes right.”
Only time will tell whether or not the US “makes right” its smaller nation with its smaller economy clinging to primacy over China for decades to come before it no longer has the “might” to do so.
MM thoughts on this “article”…
There’s some pretty fucking huge assumptions being made. They are going to get people killed.
Any war with China will be nuclear.
It will not be fought against China alone. It will be forght against the SEO (Russia and all the other nations.)
The window of “opportunity” will not be in 2025 – 2030. It was in 2004 to 2009. It has long passed by.
If Chinese citizens, cities or geography is attacked, and destoyed so will be the fate of American citizens, cities and geography.
It will not be a long drawn out conventional war on or near China. It will be international, and vicious. And it will be devistating, and over in a short period of time.
Internal Chinese dissidant groups, all funded by the USA, have mostly been rooted out and eliminated if not violently crushed.
What are your thoughts after reading this particular bilge out of America and promoted in Australia?
Other thoughts…
re: A closing window of opportunity estimated to close between 2025 and 2030 allows the US to carry out a limited war with China . . .blah blah
That piece of garbage was written by Brian Berletic, “who is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer.” In no way could the US “carry out” (whatever that means — it’s not a professional military term) a limited war with China.
If the US warmongers want to provoke a war with China, I would say go to it. The US will lose. And in doing it will discover their mistake. You can’t defeat China’s economic dominance by military action.
I saw the article as a (mistaken) claim that the should take advantage of a window of opportunity and attack China.
US War Plans with China Taking Shape . . .China’s massive trade networks ensure its economy has plenty of resources. It should become the largest economy. And only a war of aggression, chosen to be waged by Washington will stop this from coming to pass.
China is not waiting for economic dominance over Taiwan to push the unification envelope. China simply don’t care about taking up governance over people who are brainwashed to be hostile to them. Only that China, in principle, would not give up sovereignty over the territory called Taiwan. The present situation is fine with them.
China’s economy has exceeded USA’s long ago–IMF and World Bank said 2014, but my understanding is 2010 or earlier. Just that the way GDP is calculated, the USA’s mode of non-productive sectors are given weights that is not deserved. How does the legal sector produced 10% of what people in the USA consume? How does a business consultant’s 1 hour of free-wheeling opinion voicing produce $1,000 worth of goods and services? USA’s 21+ $T of GDP is Lucy In The Sky, a hallucination.
Taiwan people are just plain stupid, brainwashed, and clinching to what they consider as the last straw. They know it’s a straw, but they don’t know that this straw is still effective only because China doesn’t give a damn about them.
Posted by: Oriental Voice | Oct 1 2021 19:37 utc | 26
War with China;
There is a sort of conceptual mistake when talking about US “capabilities” and warmongering. It is not the Military who want a “sort of” war, but the military-industrial complex, who need credible enemies.
IT is the Oligarchic owners of defense industries who want continued hostilities. As long as they can make cash. (Or rather, relieve the sheeple of their woolly coats – “for their own good”).
Most Generals go throught the “revolving doors” of industry-think*tank-Military, sometimes Political etc. So they are on both sides at the same time, they are not separate identities.
The Industry needs to be able to produce the “ultimate military rabbit out of the hat projects”, lots of them, at an enviable cost-overrun. ….. and to get rid of most of the product rapidly afterwards, to enable “replacement”.
For this they need “threats” agogo. Built in obsolescence and fruitful and intimate connections and relations with budgetteers.
*
US defense spending $811 billion. Not including other “secret” or “war” budgets. (The Afghanistan spending was concealed as War budget, and was independent from the standard defense budget. This will need “replacing” with another “war” situation for budget purposes)
The other NATO countries => $363 billion
Total $1.2 trillion per year. (Known)
(Turkey is the ONLY NATO country which has reduced it’s defense spending by 4%)
*
So we come back to China, Russia, NKorea, Iran as “credible” threats, even if they are not. As well as the others; Venezuela, Cuba etc. as walk-on bit-players to keep the propaganda tirade on the boil.
Whether there is a war with China or not, it must be profitable. The propaganda (as per b’s post) is only marketing for pre-emptive expenditure on the whole militarized industry. Advertising exageration?
Here’s a live display of shipping activity in east Asia. The US will block this and not pay a heavy price for doing so? The two dozen US military bases in Japan and half a dozen in South Korea won’t be leveled? Plus all US Navy surface ships at sea?
I guess they’ll be inspecting every ship that goes through the Straits of Malacca. They’ll need to keep an eye on Suez and Panama too incase someone tries to sneak through.
Thank you for the link to marine traffic. My immediate thought from that first glimpse was ah! that’s why China and its neighbours are busy building terrestrial rail and road systems. Equally obvious why Reuters an other liars are forever pumping the fear china, fear debt bondage mantra.
Posted by: uncle tungsten | Oct 1 2021 21:45 utc | 39
There will be war between the empire and China. It is the Thucydides trap, and there is no way out of it. In fact, the first shots of that war have already been fired with the empire using biological WMDs against China. The only questions about the war are when does the shooting start and how bad does it have to get before the empire concedes… assuming the empire is quickly convinced that defeat is inevitable and so doesn’t escalate to nuclear weapons.
There has been discussion about the empire marshaling its gimps on the front line; trying to get Japan and Australia and not-so-Great Britain to take point in the fight. I am of mixed opinion as to whether this is good or bad. On the one hand it helps legitimize the empire’s aggression and makes the forces arrayed against China seem stronger. As well, if a country like Australia is the first to take a punch from China for the empire the optics will be bad. It would look like China being a bully and kicking America’s yappy pet chihuahua. Furthermore, I am quite fond of Japan and the Japanese people and I’d rather not see them hurt again.
On the other hand, if combat operations start directly between the US and China then it is a forgone conclusion that the Chinese will pull their punches, at least in the beginning. The US, for its part, will go right for the kill from the very start. This means that China will take a terrible beating while they come to realize that the fight is serious and will not be gentlemanly. If the fight starts with Japan this will not be an issue. Japan has a karmic debt to China and the Chinese will not pull their punches in a fight with them. China will come down on Japan like an avalanche and deal Japan a very swift and decisive defeat. This decisiveness is crucial as it will help convince the empire that further aggression is futile and thereby help prevent escalation by the empire. While it would pain me to see that happen to Japan , it is one of the best outcomes that prevents things from spiraling to Armageddon.
Of course, the prefect outcome would be for Britain to take the lead in the fight and get instantly and utterly crushed, as the British also have a deep karmic debt that the Chinese wouldn’t hesitate to collect on. That would have the same benefit of interrupting the empire’s escalation, but would spare the Japanese and possibly even teach the British some humility (yeah, lots of luck with that last, right?).
Posted by: William Gruff | Oct 1 2021 21:52 utc | 40
I have to agree with you on Thucydides Trap. Interesting that you consider Covid as the first salvo the Empire fired. Actually China suspected SARS was the first salvo. That’s one reason they put effort into researching corona virus and means of containing such viral spread. Unlike Russia, they won’t openly accuse the Empire of biological warfare without possession of the smoking gun, but they will be very alert to future implantation of biological kinks coming from Empire’s direction.
Meanwhile, you’re also right that the Empire has been maneuvering to goat their lackeys to serve as canon fodders against China, even with some success. India is a prominent example. They would love for Japan to go head-on against China–the more Japanese casualties, the better narrative to build global mobilization of forces against China. Interesting that you sentimentally like Japanese and abhors the idea of them getting hurt. I guess you’re not informed of the extent of evil the Japanese had done around a century ago. Have you heard of the Nanjing Massacre, the 3-totality strategy (total plunder, total burning, total killing) in sweeping villages to ensure Chinese resistances would get no refurbishments, Project 731-germ warfare??? In fact, it was Project 731’s research dossier that started Fort Detrick lab. I suppose you consider that to be 75-100 years old past, and one should forgive and forget. Well, I can’t. Especially not when today’s Japan can’t even come clean and admit to what they have done. I don’t see a reborn Japan.
Posted by: Oriental Voice | Oct 1 2021 22:45 utc | 43
Today, the Outlaw US Empire is a Neoliberal Oligarchy while China’s a Social-Democratic nation–when both are objectively examined. Geoeconomically, the Empire’s dependent on China, not the other way round. As was overtly made very clear at the Alaska meeting, the Outlaw US Empire cannot deal with China from a position of strength either geopolitically or geoeconomically.
As I wrote a few days ago to zero objections, China and the Eurasian Bloc coalescing around it when seen in relation to the Outlaw US Empire differs little than how Yamamoto saw the dynamic between Japan and the USA prior to Pearl Harbor–Japan was sure to lose no matter what it did.
And yet again, several members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have publicly stated that they want no war with either Russia or China. They’re what Martyanov calls realists who understand the genuine balance of power no longer favors the Outlaw US Empire even when NATO is added.
Biden and the Ds just as Trump and the Rs desperately need his version of MAGA–Build Back Better–to become reality. But with the USA geoeconomically dependent on China, how is it ever going to accomplish that if it starts a war with its primary supplier if the funds ever get allocated?! Yes, the Merchants of Death constantly need an existential threat to justify their existence, and that’s the special interest fueling the war talk that the generals refute.
Then, IMO, this new set of polling results must be added to the equation–public sentiment for war against some other nation not named Congress doesn’t exist:
“Arguably more disturbing were the implications for the ‘other’ party if secession did not occur. A sizable majority of both Trump and Biden voters agreed with the statement that ‘if our society so wants, it is the duty of every true citizen to help eliminate the evil that poisons our country from within.'”
That ought to scare just a few Neoliberal grifters as the public agrees without knowing that it does on the very source of the problem being domestic. Soon, both sides will know they agree, and 2022 elections are going to see lots of fireworks.
"On the contrary, no-ones talking of a land invasion of China, just the blocking of the SLOC which would have a catastrophic effect on China’s economy."
Now hold on a second.
Given that the U.S. and most countries in the world are heavily dependent on China for manufactured goods (both finished and unfinished), what would be the effect of cutting off Chinese commercial shipping on the world’s economy?
Well, I’ll tell you, it would be a depression followed by mass outrage that the U.S. government could have deliberately brought such a catastrophe down upon everyone’s heads.
Are U.S. foreign and economic planners that stupid? They definitely are stupid, but I doubt that the actual owners (George Carlin’s word) of the country would stand for it.
“A closing window of opportunity estimated to close between 2025 and 2030 allows the US to carry out a limited war with China, resulting in a favorable outcome for Washington. Beyond that, the US will find itself outmatched and any attempt to curb China’s rise rendered futile.”
This is chilling.
In light of this, the current coercive and zealous covid vaccination program in the Anglosphere can also be seen as drills preparing for possible biological warfare.
If the US mainland and Australia are relatively protected in the eventuality of this conventional war with China, biological warfare (regardless of who initiates it) creates vulnerability.
It all makes sense now: why California is mandating vaccination for school children when their risk of dying from covid is 2 per million infected.
Taiwan is part of China. Both governments’ (Beijing and Taipei) Constitutions states that fact.
So, there are no issues, problems or arguments on any of these: ADZ, ADIZ or any other matters. PRC airplanes can fly or land anywhere, including Taipei, period.
This is the real news of our times, not the drivel pumped out by and then rerun by its handmaidens of deceit.
Posted by: uncle tungsten | Oct 2 2021 2:03 utc | 60
This is not 1944 where you can float troop transports across the Pacific to attack an enemy. We live in an age of satellites and hyper sonic weapons. If there is a war it will be a series of short furious naval battles in which the holders of land in the area will be the victors. Will Korea and Japan join? At their great peril maybe.
While the media coverage is bullshit China is boiling the frog in water slowly with Taiwan being the frog. I am sure China has though about the suppression of enemy air defenses like the US has done effectively with the Wild Weasel. I am sure China has the capacity to take out a good portion of Taiwan’s radar and air defense system. They can systematically destroy their naval bases along with their communication infrastructure and military bases without a boot on the ground. Taiwan can do little in return.
If China decided to act it would be over rather quickly with a loss of prestige on the world stage. I am sure they have thought about that as well. The US is in no position do do anything other than bitch and moan. Taiwan will have to cut some sort of deal with China at some point or China will act I do believe. When that will happen is anyones guess.
While I fully agree to your conclusion that the US can’t sensibly do anything when China decides to forcefully reunite Taiwan with the mainland, I do not see that China is boiling the frog.
China has not tightened any tensions, neither towards Taiwan, not in the SCS or ECS. The “nine dash line” is a naval border claimed by the ROC and Jiang Jieshi (Chiang kai Shek) in 1944 at earliest, and at that time, neither of FUKUS challenged that claim. That as an aside.
As to Taiwan, China has tried since decades to go a long and patient way towards unification, by strengthening ties between the territory and the motherland. Taiwan companies are heavily invested in mainland China (and vice versa where not sabotaged by the DPP administration), between 1 and 2 million Taiwan inhabitants live permanently or for long periods in mainland China, there are some hundred thousand marriages.
China has made clear that the one country, two systems situation can go on for long as long as there is no secession attempt. In that case China will act swiftly.
Hu Xijin in the Global Times described the outlines of such a forceful unification when commenting US weapon sales to Taiwan. Once China would act, there would be powerful satiation attacks by missiles, air force, and naval firepower destroying all major airports, military targets on land, military naval installations, and naval forces of Taiwan. After that a full force landing on Taiwan and all its islands would follow.
There is no reasonibly thinkable possible outcome where the attacking side could be repelled or defeated. And there is no way how a naval attack of the US, AUKUS, Quad or whomever could succeed. And it is very doubtful that even the most radical forces in the US would wage a nuclear war over Taiwan.
As to Taiwan, it is their side who is stirring up the conflicts by buying “recognition” by some Baltic SS Shitholes like Lithuania who are living on EU pockets so don’t have much to lose. Ukraine rowed back when receiving a warning from Beijing. The DPP clowns should just stop their separatist provocations. A Chinese proverb says “the rat that gnaws the tiger’s tail invites destruction”.
karlof1 @47: "The Thucydides Trap was again debunked... The antagonists are supposed to be copycat rivals to each other, but that wasn't the case with Athens or Sparta then..."
And yet the Peloponnesian War happened anyway. The details of personality are not relevant as personality is not what causes war. A rising power inevitably displaces the existing power, and the existing power resists the loss of its dominance. This basic pattern is unavoidable.
"...the Outlaw US Empire cannot deal with China from a position of strength either geopolitically or geoeconomically..."
Absolutely correct. So what tools does that leave in the “Outlaw US Empire’s” arsenal to defend its hegemony? Or do you imagine the empire will give China a sportsman-like handshake, say “Well, it was a nice run but you win. It’s your turn to show the world direction now. I’ll just retire to tending my garden.”? Laughable balderdash!
"...relation to the Outlaw US Empire differs little than how Yamamoto saw the dynamic between Japan and the USA prior to Pearl Harbor..."
Absolutely! Many of the generals and admirals know what they are up against, but Japan ended up at war with the USA anyway. Admiral Yamamoto’s realization that war would be an enormous mistake changed exactly what?
There will be war. Xi knows it, and the Chinese people in general know it.
That is why they are investing significant chunks of their resources preparing for it. China’s military is specifically designed to defeat the empire and any of the empire’s vassals that get pushed into the fight.
The war is not “if” but “when”.
The Chinese know that they are under biological weapons attack, but as Oriental Voice @43 points out they are not squealing about it as a western nation would.
Delays to the overt war still work to China’s advantage: The empire gets weaker and China gets stronger. The greater that strength disparity the more China can control the course of the war and steer that war away from doing lasting damage to humanity.
"A sizable majority of both Trump and Biden voters agreed with the statement that 'if our society so wants, it is the duty of every true citizen to help eliminate the evil that poisons our country from within."
Precisely so. And what is the tried and true method to distract a population from internal issues? Why, external war of course.
It amazes me to see bright people who are fully aware of much of the crazy shit the empire has done over the last couple decades still trying to project the empire’s future behavior based upon the assumption that it will be rational.
The empire has not been rational and it will not become rational while it remains an empire. In fact the empire will become more irrational with every passing day as its end draws nearer.
Everything karlof1 @47 says points towards war. How can someone as bright and knowledgeable as karlof1 think these things mean peace is on the verge of breaking out?
Posted by: William Gruff | Oct 2 2021 12:14 utc | 80
For those trying to dismiss the post by “Down South @8 (I’m looking at you Don Bacon @57), here is a link to the original report by the RAND Corporation that the analysis is based upon: War with China: Thinking Through the Unthinkable.
This is from the RAND Corporation. That is the closest thing the empire has to a brain. What is notable, despite the recognition in the report that the empire’s days of uncontested dominance are waning, the report paints an overly optimistic picture for the empire.
Being chilled is entirely called for.
There will be war.
Posted by: William Gruff | Oct 2 2021 12:51 utc | 82
In regards to the prospect of war with china, while I am sympathetic to gruff’s perspective, I think it still simplifies the situathon. thr US side is not monolithix while MICIMATT has institutionally mobilized all the psyops effortsz, and the Pentagon has moved to ‘pivot to asia’ since Obama, there are nevertheless the Mark Milleys that understand that there is no way for the US to win in the Asia Pacific theater against china. they wouls not only lose the war but also bleed global prestige.
That said, when the institutional gears are grinding as they are, so called strategic thinking ceases to be rational or even strategic. trying to predict what an irrational institution will do makes little sense.
Secondly, the us is already at war with china, hybrid war. it’s not as if we need to wait for some trigger event — it is already ongoing! Hong Kong color revolution, whose failure is now abundantly clear. the ongoing xinjiang campaign. and let’s not forget that china depleted a staggering amount of its US reserves in 2015 in order to fight off US orchestrated capital flight so it could harvest Chinese assets in the cheap, like they did in the asian financial crisis.
That’s not much talked about at MOC, but I’ve heard Chinese analysts speak of that financial warfare as a watershed moment. watershed because its failure precipitated more desperate and maniacal measures afterwards. keep in mind that was before the hong Kong and Xinjiang psyops.
As for biological warfare, regardless of one’s view on the origins of covid, there was a spate of agricultural pests in the trump era that devastated Chinese food production. everything is being tried.
So, war js ongoing. to instead await and analyze and predict some trigger military event like Taiwan is to miss the forest for the trees. if what’s been happening doesn’t count as aggression on par with warfare, then that is already to have internalized empire propaganda that things like sanctions are not acts of war.
The Anglo’s started WW1 to maintain their global hegemony. They started WW2 for the same purpose. Yet somehow people believe it is too far fetch that they would start a war with China to maintain the same hegemony they fought 2 WWs over?
Read the RAND report. They know they will suffer heavy military casualties and their economy will collapse by 10% but all that will be worth it if they can inflict heavy damage on China’s economy in the region of a 30-35% collapse.
What do you think the purpose of all this China bashing coverage in the media is about that b highlights? It is to prepare the populace for the coming conflict with China.
mastameta @85: "trying to predict what an irrational institution will do makes little sense."
A cornered animal is irrational, but it is easy to predict what it will do.
"secondly, the us is already at war with china, hybrid war."
Yes, of course, but the war will go overt and kinetic. That is the only path available to the cornered dog of an empire. The growling and snarling threats, the urinating on the carpet, nothing else it does opens a path back to power for the empire.
"... china depleted a staggering amount of its US reserves in 2015... "
This is policy, like that in Russia, to reduce exposure to the US dollar. To the empire that in itself is an act of war.
Yes, the war is currently on already, but it remains somewhat covert. When I talk about war starting above I am referring to overt military conflict.
Posted by: William Gruff | Oct 2 2021 15:15 utc | 90
Any experienced warfare guy will say the same, the most important element of any war is logistics. And that is the US’s main downfall in any war with China. The US does not have the capability to supply the fighting elements with the ammunition, food, repair parts etc that they would require to conduct a war on the other side of the vast Pacific Ocean which covers about one-third of the earth’s surface.
And where would those forces be? The Marine Corps plan is to move Marines from one small island to another on small ships, and then have these Marines to place indirect fire on China targets. I don’t see anyone volunteering for that ridiculous scenario. But hey, it keeps dollars in the Pentagon budget.
Another problem for the US is that both China and Russia have fielded versions of hypersonic weapons that can travel faster than five times the speed of sound (Mach 5 is about 3,806 mph) and potentially hold U.S. capital and logistical ships at risk. These missiles have a range of up to a thousand miles. The US has no defense against them and aircraft-carrier launched planes don’t have sufficient range to rectify the problem.
So it would be a maritime-based war with US major warships not able to get anywhere close to the Asian mainland, which means no war at all.
"...the most important element of any war is logistics."
Absolutely so. Fancy weapons and great troop morale get you nowhere if you cannot get them to the theater of operations along with lunch. The notion that the US can land ground forces on the Chinese mainland to occupy and annex China is absurd. That’s the “Risk” board game version of geopolitics.
But the empire doesn’t need to annex China. The empire just needs to economically set China back a couple decades. There is a faction within the empire who believe this is doable in part with a naval blockade.
Posted by: William Gruff | Oct 2 2021 21:42 utc | 109
Gabriel Collins did a very good report for the US Naval War College Review on the practicality of a maritime oil blockade of China – even in 2018 he was not too optimistic, “A Maritime Oil Blockade Against China—Tactically Tempting but Strategically Flawed”. China would also have access to Russia, Central Asia, ASEAN etc. for food and other supplies, and would have inevitably created large stockpiles before any conflict.
"The scenarios also highlight the reality that, within historically realistic response parameters, China very feasibly could adapt to conflict conditions and withstand a blockade for a longer period than an outside power realistically could sustain the operation. At the most fundamental level, a blockader would find itself increasingly isolated on the world stage, which would complicate its ability politically, economically, and militarily to continue its campaign."
"The significant long-term reduction in revenue to major oil and commodity exporters as a result of decreasing oil-demand volumes and depressed prices could exert profound internal political effects and trigger new conflicts and in- flame existing ones across the Middle East and parts of Africa. Sufficiently serious regional contingencies could divert U.S. military resources from the Asian theater, particularly if the United States found itself politically and diplomatically isolated on the world stage. This could undermine the sustainability of a distant energy blockade against China."
China doesn’t need to invade Taiwan, the two entities are already close enough on everything that counts, trade, inward investments, tourism, cultural exchanges, the lot.
China’s power is anchored in making things and selling them on every world market, by the turn of the century around a third of her GDP was coupled with exports, by 2019 this ratio was down to 15%, it must have gone up during the months of covid as the Chinese economy was the only one resuming working.
For the Americans to disrupt the sea lines from the Chinese ports would be counterproductive unless they were to find a substitute for the stuff manufactured in China for the US market, some 80% of US imports from China are on behalf of US brand names, Apple is but the one most visible example.
Despite of the warmongering China still enjoys the the Permanent Normal Trade Relations Partner status (PNTR) google for what the partner status offers, China was granted it by Bush at the time of her joining WTO. If the Americans were serious about disrupting China’s trade hence the country’s economy they would withdraw the PNTR status, they haven’t, which tells you they are stuck until they figure where else to source what comes from China.
“an established power will generally try to prevent a rising power to become so powerful that it could challenge the established power.”
I think this is a good description of the Thucydides Trap. I don’t believe the theory should be taken any more literal then that and it isn’t supposed to be some deterministic scientific comment were causality is linear an absolute. It also doesn’t require a shooting war to hold true.
Given the current situation, and The Empire’s multi-pronged attempt to harm China, I think it is fair to say the Thucydides Trap has already been sprung.
…
Having said that, I don’t think a shooting war is inevitable. I also think a blockade isn’t likely as that would almost absolutely lead to a shooting war.
People forget China has a lot of oil and other resources. Enough oil and gas to last five years without imports. They are also well connected to Russia, Central Asia and South East Asia, so even a successful naval blockade could be gotten around.
I disagree China wouldn’t invade if forced into this position. They’d take Taiwan quickly and it would be impossible to prevent them from taking South Korea, which would lead to many thousand American POW’s and KIA. They’d also have total control of the areas within the first Island chain which would provide a lot of strategic avenues.
Not to mention a blockade wouldn’t slow down their industrial production, instead it would push their industry into war-time hyper production giving China unlimited missiles to strike at everything from Gaum on in.
That isn’t to say The Desperate Empire might not try a blockade or find a way to stumble into a stupid war…it is to say it would turn out very badly for The Empire and hasten their demise rather then slow down China’s rise.
Given the current situation, and The Empire's multi-pronged attempt to harm China, I think it is fair to say the Thucydides Trap has already been sprung.
This is clear to me as well.
Having said that, I don't think a shooting war is inevitable.
Agreed. But I don’t think the possibility of a shooting war is remote either.
I also think a blockade isn't likely as that would almost absolutely lead to a shooting war.
I disagree with this. Merely the threat of attack will cause shipping rates to skyrocket. That ends China’s manufacturing advantage and ME oil supply.
China can adjust … but how quickly?
I disagree China wouldn't invade if forced into this position. They'd take Taiwan quickly ...
When I said China wouldn’t invade, I was responding to Don Bacon’s comment about the importance of logistics. There wouldn’t be logistics necessary for a battle for Taiwan because China can take Taiwan before such logistics become a factor.
And I don’t think South Korea would fall quite so quickly or easily as you believe.
China provides a governance model that may inspire the Western public to demand real change. So we see propaganda attacks against China. And rising tensions help to vitiate that propaganda.
I also think a blockade isn’t likely as that would almost absolutely lead to a shooting war.
“I disagree with this. Merely the threat of attack will cause shipping rates to skyrocket. That ends China’s manufacturing advantage and ME oil supply.
China can adjust ... but how quickly?"
Yes, but isn’t that what a blockade would do? The very purpose of the blockade is to prevent China from shipping to harm their industry.
I’d argue that once a blockade is in place, China has no choice but to hit with everything they have short of nukes. They aren’t going to wait around while their economy and industrial production is stifled…they will make the USA pay the price, and then some…and that is completely within their capabilities.
It looks to me like China is prepared for war, they would be able to switch to war production mode almost immediately. It would be the West that would be slow to adjust.
In the event of war, China does not need ME oil, they have enough domestic oil to wage a multi-year war.
South Korea wouldn’t fall easily, neither would Taiwan for that matter, but they would fall, there is no way to reinforce either once the shooting starts. Tens of thousands of casualties on both sides within a short amount of time.
To continue fighting USA would need a draft. Given current social conditions in The States how do you think a draft would play out?
Thank you Roger @ 111 and Baron @ 115 for trying to inject a dose of reality into this notion of a USN or even AUKUS enforced blockade of China.
Gruff @ 109 re: "a faction within the empire who believe this is doable with a naval blockade...."
First, blockade is an act of war, and the Chinese would be well within their rights to attack and sink any ship trying to enforce any such blockade whether in their own territorial or international waters. So there’s a high probability that any attempt to actually enforce a blockade would lead to a real hot war in East Asia. And, once again, this blockade would be completely illegal since there would be absolutely no UNSC approval for any such action.
Second, with the lengthy supply chains required to support such an effort even from Pearl Harbour, the US probably will have to utilise it’s most forward military bases in the region which means both South Korea and especially Japan which is home to over a dozen major bases that are locations for key Indo-Pacific assets of the USN, USAF and USMC. If these bases or rather their units actually launch military attacks against China then the countries that house those bases would themselves be open to direct military retaliation from China.
Both S Korea and Japan rely on shipping lanes well within the range of the Chinese conventional missile arsenal. The Chinese could respond with their own form of a blockade, shutting down the Japanese and S Korean SLOCs in a week or two by sinking (or threatening to sink) tankers and container ships in the Sea of Japan. The Japanese and SK economies require vast volumes of imported energy and other raw goods resources and are just as vulnerable as China is to a maritime blockade. So if the US wants to play the blockade game then China has options and can respond in kind with similar types of action against not only two major US allies but two of the largest economies in the world.
Third, on top of the above, nobody mentions the huge, and I mean huge, amount of trade between the countries of ASEAN ie SE Asia and China. Indonesia alone has I believe almost $50-60 billions of trade with China per annum. Add in Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore etc. and you’re talking at least a couple of hundred billion pa. Are these countries going to sit back and allow the US and its Anglo Saxon poodles to destroy their economies? Nope, didn’t think so.
Finally, everyone really should read the books by Andrei Martyanov to understand the new realities, that the next war in the Pacific won’t be won by some USMC “island hopping” strategy or another round of Midways and Coral Seas. It’s going to be won by the country that can launch salvo after salvo of conventional anti ship and anti air and other conventional missiles. Think about it – there’s lots of numbers thrown around on the internet re the Iranian and Hezbollah guided missile arsenals, 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 etc. That’s Iran and Hezbollah working under the most stringent sanctions in the world.
So how many advanced anti-ship missiles do you think the manufacturing powerhouse that is China has stored away for a rainy day? Bear in mind, some of those missiles have been in mass production for several years now. 40,000? 50,000? More? And, yes, there’s some question re the actual operational efficacy of Chinese anti-ship missile targeting. Still, assuming they get their targeting systems right (maybe with a little help from Shoigu et al!) how long do you think the USN and its allies will last when the Chinese fire salvoes of a 100, 200, 500, or even 1000 Anti-Ship missiles per day for a week or even two?
Posted by: thermobarbaric | Oct 3 2021 1:30 utc | 125
Yes, I mentioned naval blockade as one example of the empire escalating to overt warfare against China in addition to its current covert war. Yes, realistically such efforts by the empire cannot succeed beyond a temporary and relatively brief suppression of China’s GDP. But next year it will be even harder for the empire to dent China’s economic growth, and the year after harder still.
Are you so foolish as to think the empire will give up without a fight?
It doesn’t matter that it is a bad idea. The empire is out of alternatives to war.
Posted by: William Gruff | Oct 3 2021 1:43 utc | 126
"In a few years, another country with a nuclear submarine fleet will appear in the world – Australia. What kind of submarines will this country receive from its allies, what kind of combat capabilities do they provide, and according to what scenario can they be used to contain China’s military power?
Everything is learned by comparison. What are the eight multi-purpose nuclear submarines that Australia will receive (not to be confused with submarines armed with ballistic missiles)? Let’s compare them with other fleets.
First, take the example of China, against which (at least, so they say) everything is being planned. Now China has only nine multi-purpose nuclear submarines, with low stealth. Three of them are Project 091; these are old and noisy vessels that have almost no combat value. The remaining six are Project 093, more modern boats, which, however, are inferior to modern American and British ones. In fact, only these six have a real combat value, and it is this number that should be taken into account.
...Here is just one of many examples. Geographically, Australia can completely block the connection between China and the Indian Ocean: there is a direct exit there and this is not controlled by China in any way. China only has the Strait of Malacca, which with its new submarines Australia will be able to block from the Indian Ocean. Or go past Australia itself, with the same submarines and its aircraft. There is no other road by which a large amount of oil can be supplied to China.
... It is worth recognizing that the world is on the verge of war. Australia’s agreement with the United States and Britain says exactly this. An ordinary world war with tens of millions of dead, as one option, or with hundreds of millions; after all, no one has canceled nuclear weapons. Such a war is almost inevitable.
Moreover, knowing what deadlines the ‘partners’ set for themselves, you can roughly understand the time for which they are preparing the ‘hot phase’. And looking at how other countries are preparing for the next world war, it’s time for us to take a critical, honest and non-biased look at how we are preparing for it.”
The increased cost of trade would spur industry in the West
Factories will just pop up everywhere? No.
As China becomes more like USA
Never happen. Chinese are what they are, and it isn’t becoming more like Americans. It has to do with 5,000 years of culture, Confucianism, Taoism etc. So Chinese have a whole different way of looking at matters, such as working together toward a better life (which they have largely accomplished) w/o the petty political combative self-aggrandisement “democracy” so dominant in the USA.
Chinese do this under a qualified up-through-the-ranks leader, and not having to accept an elected weirdo as in the US.
The fact that Chinese are different from Americans, and will never be like them, has been a deep disappointment in Washington, but that’s the way it is and the way it will be.
BEIJING, Oct. 2 (Xinhua) -- For years, the unspoken truth about Western media is that their veneer of objectivity has come off a long time ago. While touting themselves as the epitome of trustworthiness and honesty, some media practitioners in the West have no qualms about propagating lies against China.
As the coordinated anti-China smear campaign is gaining steam, more intrepid journalists with a conscience are calling it out despite the tremendous pressure to silence them.
In one of the most excoriating rebukes against Western media's manipulation of the public opinion against China, Javier Garcia, head of the office of the EFE News Agency of Spain in Beijing, announced earlier this week that he would soon leave journalism, as the flagrant information manipulation by Western media "has taken a good dose of my enthusiasm for this profession."
The departure of journalists like Garcia is a giant loss to the industry, which is in dire need of introspection. For those who choose to stay and disagree with the highly biased and distorted reporting on China, they are usually confronted with a monolithic propaganda structure in the West to ignore, silence and discredit them.
The past few years have seen a lot of deplorable cases where anyone who dared to maintain objective and impartial positions on China were accused of being on the payroll of the Chinese government or even worse.
While they are working arduously to suppress impartial information and hoping it to pay off, some media in the West, especially in the United States, should expect that the chickens will come home to roost, as their own political order is at risk.
Even James Murdoch, son of right-wing media mogul Rupert Murdoch who owns FOX News, castigated U.S. media for amplifying disinformation that successfully sowed falsehoods.
"Those outlets that propagate lies to their audience have unleashed insidious and uncontrollable forces that will be with us for years," he told the Financial Times shortly after the U.S. Congress riot in early January.
For those Western media who are still slandering China's peaceful development, it is time for them to think twice.
One important note on something that is getting zero coverage in the “news”…
Big news in aerospace circles, and all over China is the great diversity of the new state-of-the-art military weapons that are being shown in my town (where I live). Zhuhai. It’s all very awesome. Some of the aircraft are real surprises, and it might take the USA decades to play catch up. VIDEO.
Video.
I am interested in hearing what the readers read in their local news about these systems being made and mass-produced in China. Can you please enlightening me.
The First Russian Strategic Assessment of the Australia-UK-US (USUKA) Submarine Pact
A serious Russian strategic assessment of the UK-USA-Australia decision to start basing nuclear armed nuclear submarines in Australia 18 months from now…
Unlike diesel-electrics, nuclear subs can contribute to the US blockade of China from the Pacific and in the Malacca
Following last week’s meeting in Washington of Australia’s Foreign Minister Marise Payne, the Australian defence minister and their US counterparts, a strategic military and basing agreement was announced between Australia, the UK and US (AUKUS). This is being reinforced with summit meetings in Washington this week.
The declared target of their war-making preparations is China.
Australian strategy against Russia in the Pacific region follows in lockstep with the US. But for the time being the Russian enemy, and Russian submarine and surface fleet operations in the Indo-Pacific region, are not being discussed by Australian officials in public; at least not to the extent when President Vladimir Putin last visited Australia in November 2014 with a nuclear-powered, nuclear armed naval escort.
Ahead of schemes for strategic warmaking in the Pacific, the US, the UK and Australia are also engaged in proxy war operations. These have accelerated recently in Myanmar, where Russia and China are allied in support of the military government of General Min Aung Hlaing. Next, from both sides, state bribery, subversion, putsch-making, and other special operations are likely to accelerate in the Pacific islands from Fiji to Papua-New Guinea.
For the moment, the initial reaction to AUKUS from the Russian Foreign Ministry has been as close to uncritical as the ministry can be.” Spokesman Maria Zakharova said last Thursday:
“We noted the plans, announced by Australia to build nuclear-powered submarines as part of an ‘enhanced trilateral security partnership’ agreed yesterday by the United States, Great Britain and Australia. We proceed from the premise that being a non-nuclear power and fulfilling in good faith the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Australia will honour its commitments under this document, as well as the IAEA Safeguards Agreements along with its Additional Protocol. We hope that Canberra ensures the necessary level of cooperation with the IAEA in order to rule out any proliferation-related risks.”
The first detailed technical and strategic assessment of the AUKUS scheme has followed this week in Vzglyad, the leading strategy publication reflecting the Russian General Staff and GRU assessments. A translation from the Russian article by Alexander Timokhin follows.
In a few years, another country with a nuclear submarine fleet will appear in the world – Australia. What kind of submarines will this country receive from its allies, what kind of combat capabilities do they provide, and according to what scenario can they be used to contain China’s military power?
Everything is learned by comparison. What are the eight multi-purpose nuclear submarines that Australia will receive (not to be confused with submarines armed with ballistic missiles)? Let’s compare them with other fleets.
First, take the example of China, against which (at least, so they say) everything is being planned. Now China has only nine multi-purpose nuclear submarines, with low stealth. Three of them are Project 091; these are old and noisy vessels that have almost no combat value. The remaining six are Project 093, more modern boats, which, however, are inferior to modern American and British ones. In fact, only these six have a real combat value, and it is this number that should be taken into account.
I must say that the Chinese have made tremendous progress if we start from their initial level. Their submarines are already armed with good torpedoes and means of countering enemy torpedoes. But they are still very far from British ‘Astutes’ or American ‘Virginias’.
Theoretically, the ‘Virginia’ of the latest modification (the block, as the Americans say) will be able to be used when delivering a high-precision massive non-nuclear strike on Chinese territory. In this case, the Australians will be able to increase the American salvo. In the future, when the Americans finish their hypersonic missile program for the Navy, this strike may also be very fast.It will be a separate story if the Americans again trample on international norms of behaviour and deploy nuclear weapons on Australian submarines before the war. Then, using cruise or hypersonic missiles, Australia will be able to cause China (and not only it) simply monstrous damage. And just ordinary Tomahawks with their fast, surprise launch can cause considerable damage to the side attacked – and the tactical and technical characteristics of the ‘Virginia’ will allow you to secretly approach even a well-guarded shore and deliver a sudden and unexpected blow.Naturally, this is true if Australia builds ‘Virginias’ with vertical missile launch installations, and not ‘Astutes’, which can only use Tomahawks through torpedo tubes. There is no answer to this question yet.In the event of a war more or less close to a classic naval war, these submarines will create an additional threat to China, and China will be required to allocate additional forces to this threat, which it will need very much in a war with the United States and Britain, even without Australia.
The Chinese are taking care of their fleet and developing it. They have anti-submarine surface forces and anti-submarine aviation, but when performing combat tasks outside the combat radius of their base (coastal in colloquial language) aviation, the problem of combating enemy submarine forces will become quite acute for China. Chinese surface ships will be subjected to air strikes by Australian based and American carrier-based aircraft; anti-submarine aircraft will not be able to work without cover; in fact, all tasks will have to be solved by Chinese nuclear submarines. They do not reach the western (that is, the future Australian) level yet, and they will be forced to act against heterogeneous enemy forces (submarines, anti-submarine aircraft, surface ships) without support.
How will China respond?
China has hope – there are new multi-purpose nuclear submarines being created, designated in the foreign press as Type 095, and in China itself 09-V. According to visual assessment of images of the boat, it is clear that China is trying to introduce a large number of technical solutions that increase the stealth of the submarine and the range of detection for its underwater targets. It is clearly visible that the boat is being created specifically for combat.
But what success the Chinese will have is an open question, and most importantly, even these boats will not see superiority in quality; ideally there will be approximate parity. At the same time, if the current pace of updating the submarine forces in China continues, then China will be inferior to the Americans and the British in numbers even without Australia, and even more so with it. These new boats are still in the planning stage — China has not built any of them yet. And another hostile nuclear submarine fleet will definitely require the Chinese to invest very quickly and very seriously in expanding their production; that requires time, money, and resources.
Can China ignore this threat? No.
Here is just one of many examples. Geographically, Australia can completely block the connection between China and the Indian Ocean: there is a direct exit there and this is not controlled by China in any way. China only has the Strait of Malacca, which with its new submarines Australia will be able to block from the Indian Ocean. Or go past Australia itself, with the same submarines and its aircraft. There is no other road by which a large amount of oil can be supplied to China.
Australia would never have had these opportunities in this form if it had continued its work on the purchase of non-nuclear submarines from France.A non-nuclear (in fact the same diesel-electric) submarine is not capable, for example, of going under water at a high speed, as the ‘Virginias’ and ‘Astutes’ can, and secretly, without a critical increase in noise.
A non-nuclear boat needs to deliver fuel to the combat service area, an atomic one does not need to – a nuclear submarine is not tied to nearby bases or to fuel, and it can operate disproportionately more freely than a diesel-electric one, even with an air-independent power plant.
In combat, a nuclear submarine also has a lot of advantages, up to the possibility of sometimes getting away from the enemy’s torpedo by running. For a hypothetical Australian-French non-nuclear submarine, this would be impossible. The hydroacoustic complex on the ‘Virginias’ is generally difficult to compare with something, and this is the range of target detection and the range of shooting at it.
Now China, in addition to measures to counter the submarine fleet of the United States and Great Britain, will also have to take into account Australia, which wants to get a nuclear submarine more powerful than anything that China has at present.
What does the battlefield look like in numbers? If we start from how many of the ‘Virginias’ are already built and under construction to go into service by 2036, when the Australians want to get their eight submarines, then we can assume that there will be about 20 units. And they will not be able to throw everything at China; some of the submarines will be needed in case of emergency operations against Russia.
Thus, an additional eight Australian submarines will increase the number of units opposing China by at least a third, compared only with American submarines. This is even more than the British will be able to give for the war with China. China will have to increase both the submarine and other fleet forces by a comparable number.
In general, for China, these eight additional enemy submarines are a fresh handful of bones in the throat. That’s about what the Americans planned to do with the British. That’s what eight nuclear submarines are.
This is what caused the reaction of the Chinese to the news. The Chinese Foreign Ministry said that the transfer of nuclear submarine construction technologies to Australia harms the nuclear non-proliferation regime and ‘exacerbates the arms race’, as well as the fact that the United States and Great Britain ‘extremely irresponsibly’ apply double standards. These admonitions, of course, will not have any effect.
And what does this mean for Russia? If Australia wants to have eight multi-purpose submarines by 2036, then by that year we will ideally have four Yasen-class vessels in the Pacific Ocean – the ‘Novosibirsk’, ‘Krasnoyarsk’, ‘Vladivostok’ and, presumably, the ‘Perm’.
Is for the future boat of the project 545 with the code-name ‘Laika’, the form in which the ‘Laika’ was presented to the president in December 2019 indicates the deliberate obsolescence of the project. And most importantly – it is extremely doubtful that these boats will be in service by the mid-thirties. This is another example of how many there will turn out to be — eight nuclear submarines in one theatre of military operations.
However, the western ‘partners’ may have difficulties in implementing these wonderful plans.
Is everything so simple?
There is one aspect in all of this that can complicate everything. The production of as many as eight nuclear submarines, stuffed with high-tech systems to the brim, is not an easy matter. If we assume that the Australians will build some kind of ready-made project, for example the ‘Virginia’, then in any event they will up to 14 years for the construction of eight nuclear submarines if they start next year. This is an ultra-fast pace for eight units; the Americans themselves take five years to build one ‘Virginia’ from the popint of laying the keel to delivery to the Navy.
Is it possible for the Australians to meet the deadlines? Yes, but only in an “expansive’ way – laying more submarines a year than the Americans. And this requires, firstly, shipyards in sufficient quantity to build submarines; secondly, workers and engineers; and thirdly, the supply of components from the United States, which can become the bottleneck of the project because of the existing crisis in American shipbuilding. Does Australia have all this in the right amount? The allies will not be able to help them there; they do not have enough themselves.
And if the Australians build some kind of British project – either the ‘Astute’ or, as is now rumoured in Britain, the future project of a British multi-purpose submarine, which should replace the ‘Astutes’, then nothing will work out. Britain is barely coping with the construction of its submarines by itself, including the part played by related companies. In the case of the ‘Astutes’, some of the related parties are from France engaged by by the Anglo-Saxons. On the other hand, the British can in this way compensate for the losses of the French from the broken Australian contract for non-nuclear submarines. Still, the problem of timing will also arise in this case.
The Australians seem to understand this. On Sunday, September 19, the Australian Defense Minister Peter Dutton said that Australia will not wait until its nuclear submarines are built, but will buy or lease British or American ones.
This is quite possible. However, not with British submarines, but more likely with American ones, although such a scheme would not lead to the desired increase in anti–Chinese forces; there would still be as many submarines against China, just some of the flags would change. But, firstly, by the time the construction of their series is completed (even if not all and with a delay), the Australians will already have experience working with nuclear submarines, and secondly, the United States now has problems with repairing its submarines (they do not pull, as they say), and renting some of their ships to Australia for the Americans will in fact mean their salvation as combat units, even under a foreign flag.
In general, it is possible to make Australia a country with a nuclear submarine fleet quickly. Moreover, the authors of this initiative have an extremely serious reason for all this. Such gigantic investments and sharp political turns are not carried out just like that. The hegemony of the Anglo-Saxons in the world is seriously shaken, both because of their own internal weakness, and because of the growth of China, and the sabotage of their system of power by Russia. It is quite obvious they will not give up their power over humanity and the benefits resulting from this in a favourable fashion.
It is worth recognizing that the world is on the verge of war. Australia’s agreement with the United States and Britain says exactly this. An ordinary world war with tens of millions of dead, as one option, or with hundreds of millions; after all, no one has canceled nuclear weapons. Such a war is almost inevitable.
Moreover, knowing what deadlines the ‘partners’ set for themselves, you can roughly understand the time for which they are preparing the ‘hot phase’. And looking at how other countries are preparing for the next world war, it’s time for us to take a critical, honest and non-biased look at how we are preparing for it.”
Big, huge changes, in the near future (a tentative list)
Truly, tectonic changes are happening before our eyes, and today I just want to list some of them but without going to deep into specific analyses, that I plan to do later in the coming weeks. But just looking at this list is impressive enough, at least for me. So, here we go:
The Anglos are circling the wagons:
The planned sale of US/UK SSNs to Australia is nothing short of a HUGE game changer. It is also just the tip of a big iceberg:
The US seems to have de-facto given up on Europe, not only because the UK left or because the EU is crashing and unmanageable anyway, but because the political grip the US had on the continent is now clearly slipping: NATO is a paper tiger, the “new Europeans” have outlived their utility and Russia has basically successfully diffused the threat from the West by her titanic effort to develop capabilities which make an attack on Russia suicidal for any country, including the USA, whether nukes are involved or not.
By screwing over France, the US has jettisoned a pretty useless ally which had a short hysterical fit, but is already going back to its usual groveling and begging (BTW – those who think that de Gaulle was the last French patriot capable of telling Uncle Shmuel to “take a hike” are wrong, Mitterrand was the last one, but that is a topic for another day).
Of course, in political/PR terms, the US will continue to declare itself committed to NATO and the EU, but the “body language” (actions) of the US directly contradicts this notion.
For all its immense progress since the 80s and 90s, China still has two major technological weak points: aircraft engines and SSNs. It just so happens that these are also two real US strong points. By deploying 8 more SSNs near China, the US is very intelligently maximizing the use of its best assets and hurting China were it will hurt the most. This does come with some very real risks, however, which I will discuss below.
Brazil is currently run by the US and Israel. South Africa is in a deep crisis. As for India, it is doing what it has been doing for decades: trying to play all sides while trying to weaken China. So it sure looks like the BRICS are becoming the “BRICS” which really leaves us with “only” the “RC” alliance which actually has a real name: the Chinese call it the “Strategic comprehensive partnership of coordination for the new era”.
Again, I don’t think that anybody will formally dissolve what was a rather informal alliance to begin with, but de-facto the BRICS seems to be loosing much of its former glamour and illusions. As for Russia and China, they are not going to “save” the former BRICS members out of some sense of sympathy especially not against their own will: let them save themselves, or at least try. Then, maybe.
Also, let’s be honest here, BRICS was an economic concept which was mostly an alliance of weak(er) countries against the big economic and military powers of the North and West.
As for the Russian-Chinese alliance (let’s call it that, even though formally that is not what this is), it is, by itself, already more powerful than BRICS and even more powerful that the united West (US+NATO+EU+etc.).
The SCO is changing (thanks to Uncle Shmuel), fast
If Biden was a secret “Putin agent” (“KGB agent” is the preferred term in the US, at least by those who do not seem to realize that the KGB was disbanded thirty years ago) he could not have done “better” than what he did in Afghanistan. Now, thanks to this galactic faceplant, the small(er) guys in the SCO (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan) are now getting seriously concerned about what will happen next. Even better, the (very powerful) Iran will officially become a SCO member this month! Again, neither Russia not China “need” the SCO for their defense, but it sure makes things easier for them. Speaking of Afghanistan, Pakistan is already a SCO member, as is India.
It is important to note that the SCO will not become an “Asian NATO” or an “anti-NATO” or anything similar. Again, why would Russia, China and other want to follow a failed model? They have repeated ad nauseam that their alliances are of unions of (truly!) sovereign states and that this union will not impede on this sovereignty in any ways (besides, neither Russia not China need to limit the others SCO members sovereignty to begin with).
The EU is slowly committing economic and political suicide
Initially, France had a major hissy fit, but is probably not doing the only thing France should do after what happened: leave NATO and slam the door on it, very loudly. De Gaulle or Mitterrand would have done so immediately, but Macron? Being the ultimate spineless fake that he is, it would be miraculous if he did anything meaningful (other than brutally repressing all the riots in France).
At this time of writing the result of the elections in Germany are too close to call, but even if NS2 is allowed to function, the level of russophobic hysteria in Europe is so extreme that the following will almost certainly happen: the EU will continue with its rhetoric until the prices go even further up, at which point they will turn to the only country which the EU desperately need to survive: the much hated and feared Russia. Don’t quote me on that, but last week I remember the following prices for 1000 cubic meters of gas in Europe (just under 1000 dollars), the Ukraine (1600 dollars) and Belarus (120 dollars). I might have memorized this wrong (I was traveling), and this might have changed, but the bottom line is this: only Russia can’t give the EU the energy it needs, and she has exactly ZERO reasons to make those russophobic prostitutes any favors (other than symbolic). And even if my memory played a trick on me, what is certain that the prices for energy are soaring, the EU reserves are very low, and the temperatures falling. Welcome to the real world 🙂
I won’t even go into the “multiculturalism” “inclusivity” “positivity” and other Woke nonsense which most of the EU countries have accepted as dogmas (even Switzerland caved in).
The US is like an aircraft breaking apart in mid-air
As most of you know, I have decided to stay away from internal US politics (for many different reasons). So I will just use a metaphor: the US is like an aircraft which, due to pilot incompetence and infighting, is breaking apart in mid-air with its passengers still arguing about who should be the next pilot as that could make any difference. Some passengers will continue to argue until the hit the ground. Others are engage in “mid-air fistfights” apparently believing that if they succeed in beating the crap out of the other guy, they will somehow prevent gravity from doing what it does.
The reality is much simpler: a system that is not viable AND which cannot reform itself (too busy with self-worshiping and blaming others for everything) can only do one thing: collapse and, probably, even break-apart. Only after that can the US, or whatever the successor state(s) will be called, rebuilt itself into something totally different from the US which died chocking on its own arrogance this year (like all the other empires in history, by the way, the latest one being the Soviet one).
The Russian elections
The results are in and they are yet another galactic faceplant for the AngloZionist Empire. The main Kremlin Party took a hit, the Communists did very well, Zhirinovski’s LDPR lost a lot and a new (moderately pro-Kremlin) party made it in for the first time. Considering the many billions of dollars the West has spent on trying to create a Belarus-like crisis in Russia (Navalnyi, Petrov, Boshirov & Co.), this is yet another truly gigantic failure for the West.
If anything, the rise of the KPRF shows that a lot of people are fed up with two things: 1) what they see as a tepid, if not outright weak, Russian foreign policy towards the West and 2) with the liberal (economically speaking) policies of Putin and his entourage.
Absolutely NOBODY in Russia wants “better relations” or any kind of “dialog” with the rabidly russophobic West. And to the extend that Russia and the USA simply *have* to talk to each other (being nuclear superpowers) they, of course, will.
But the EU as such is of zero interest to Russia. And if Russia needs to get something done (like what anyway?), she will talk to the US, not its EU underlings. For all its problems, the US still matters. But the clowns of the EU?
[Sidebar: the word “Communist” usually elicits a knee-jerk reaction from brainwashed US Americans. But for the rest of them, let me just say that while I don’t think the KPRF is what Russia needs and while I have nothing good to say about Ziuganov or most of the KPRF leadership, I will say that KPRF does not mean Gulags, hammers and sickles smashing Ukie babies, Russian tanks in downtown Warsaw or any such nonsense. There are several “Communist” parties in Russia, and none of them are even remotely similar to the kind of party the bad old CPSU was. So while US politicians feel very witty to speak of the CCP-virus and that kind of nonsense (Ted Cruz is officially my “favorite idiot” in Congress now), this is so far detached from any reality that I won’t even bother explaining it here.]
The COVID pandemic
Wow, just wow. Where do I even begin??? Biden’s speech on this topic was hateful declaration of war on all those who don’t fully accept the “official” White House line. The fact that many (most?) of those who do not accept the official party line DO accept an even dumber version of events does not make it right to force them into choosing between their beliefs and, say, their job, or their right to move around.
Again, after listening to Biden I kept wondering if he was a “Putin agent” as his actions are only accelerating the breakup of the “US aircraft” I mentioned above. You can say many things about COVID-dissidents, but you can’t deny them two things: 1) a sincere belief in their ideas and 2) an equally sincere belief that their core freedoms, values and rights are trampled upon by pathological liars and crooks (aka politicians + BigPharma).
They will resist and, yes, violently if needed. Because for them it is a both a matter of personal human dignity and even survival!
At least, and so far, the US still has a powerful Constitution which will make it very hard for the current nutcases in the White House to do what they apparently want to do (force 80M US Americans to obey “or else”).
Furthermore, Federal courts cannot be simply ignored.
Also, US states still have a lot of power.
Finally, most US Americans still hold dear the ideals of freedom, liberty, small government, privacy, etc. But EU countries have no such protections from governmental abuse: true, in the US these are all rights are weakened by the day if not the hour, but at least they have not been *officially* abrogated (yet?).
If you want to see how bad things can get without such rights, just look at the pandemic freak show in Canada, Australia or New Zealand!
Finally, and irrespective of its actual origin (I am still on the fence on that), the COVID pandemic wiped all the make-up and has showed the entire world the true face of the West and its rulers: weak, ignorant, arrogant, hypocritical cowards whose only true concern is to cover their butts and “grab whatever can be grabbed” before the inevitable and final explosion (nuclear, economic or social).
Now back the the Aussie SSNs
The sale/lease of these SSNs is not only a danger for China, but also one for Russia.
Simply put, Russia cannot and will not allow the Anglos to strangle China like they did with Japan before WWII.
The good news is this: the latest Russian SSNs/SSGNs are at least as good as the latest Seawolf/Virginia class, if not better. Ditto for ASW capabilities.
What Russia does lack is the needed numbers (and Anglo submarine fleets are much lager, even “just” the USN alone) and funds, both of which China has (or can have).
From the Kremlin’s point of view, the Anglos are trying to create an “Asian NATO”, something which neither China nor Russia will allow.
The Chinese already informed the Aussies that they are now a legitimate target for nuclear strikes (apparently, Australia wants to become the “Poland of the Pacific”), while the Russians only made general comments of disapproval.
But take this to the bank: the Russian General Staff and the Chinese (who both probably saw this coming for a while) will jointly deploy the resources needed to counter this latest “brilliant idea” of the Anglos.
In purely military terms, there are many different options to deal with this threat, which ones China and Russia will chose will become apparent fairly soon because it is far better to do something prevent that delivery from actually happening than to deal with eight more advanced attack submarines.
By the way, the Russians are also semi-deploying/semi-testing an advanced SSK, the Lada-class, which has both very advanced capabilities and, apparently, still many problems. SSKs are not capable of threatening SSNs in open (blue) waters, but in shallower (green/brown) waters such as straits or littorals, they can represent a very real threat, if only by “freeing up” the SNNs to go and hunt into the deep (blue) waters. Also, the main threat for subs comes from the air, and here, again, China and Russia have some very attractive options.
Conclusion: interesting times for sure…
Like the Chinese curse says, we are living in very interesting times.
The quick collapse of the Empire and the US is, of course, inherently very dangerous for our planet.
But it is also a golden opportunity for Zone B nations to finally kick the Anglos out and regain their sovereignty.
True, the US still has a lot of momentum, just like a falling airliner would, but the fact remains that 1) they ran from Afghanistan and 2) they are circling their Anglo wagons shows that somebody somewhere does “get it” and even understood that in spite of the huge political humiliation both of these development represent for narcissistic politicians and their followers, this was a price which absolutely HAD to be paid to (try) to survive.
In my article (infamous) analysis ” Will Afghanistan turn out to be US imperialism’s “Last Gleaming”?” (it triggered even more hysterics and insults than usual, at least on the Unz review comments section) I wrote this: “the British Empire had the means of its foreign policies. The US does not.”
This is now changing.
Yes, what the Anglos (aka 5 eyes) are doing is a retreat. But it is a *smart* one. They are cutting off all the “useless imperial weights” and going for the “smaller but stronger” option.
We might not like it, I certainly don’t, but I have to admit that this is pretty smart and even probably the only option left for the AngloZionist Empire.
At the very least, it is now clear that the Anglos have no allies, and never had them.
What they had where colonial coolies who imagined themselves as part of some “community of civilized, democratic and peace-loving, nations”. These coolies are now left in limbo.
So, who will be the next one to show Uncle Shmuel to the door? My guess is the Republic of Korea. And, frankly, since the DPRK is not a country the Empire can take on, and since China will only increase its (already major) influence on both the DPRK and the ROK, the US might as well pack and leave (maybe for Australia or occupied Japan?).
Okay, end of this overview of developments.
Latest Developments in China (US Products)
Not reported in the English media is that all Chinese factories that are making products for the United States are now “power off” for much of the week. Supposedly this is part of the “Climate control agreement” that Biden and Xi Peng agreed upon.
What it functionally means is that factories (in China) that make American products must stop working for a set period of time per week depending on the percentage of American products that they export. The rule sort of goes like this…
<16% = One day no work.
30% = Two days no work.
45% = Three days no work.
60% = Four days no work.
75% = Five days no work.
100% = No work allowed.
Keep in mind that in China every factory works a six day week.
Since exports to the United States make up around 10% of the total exports out of China, there will be some discomfort with this ruling.
Oh, and by the way…
Over the weekend, a major (retired) Senior CCP member wrote a strong worded letter to XIPeng that the situation with the United States is so serious that normal military use policies must be reconsidered. In specific, he advised that the “no use of military until attacked” be scrapped in favor of a “first strike – preventative posture” against openly belligerent and hostile forces.
This has been making it’s way though the Chinese social media and the overwhelming opinion that this is something that needs to be done immediately.
The Battle at Lake Changjin
Movie screenshot.
China takes a page out of the West’s playbook in war movie production. The Battle at Lake Changjin about the Korean War (1950-53) deals with Chinese troops exploits during what’s known in China as the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea.
It’s this observer’s mind-set that echoes that of the West:
"In view of the long-lasting China-US strategic rivalry, China needs more films themed on the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, which is helpful to enhance China's cohesion and confidence, said Song Luzheng, an international relations researcher at the China Institute of Fudan University in Shanghai."
Oh, the film is a huge success, smashing all Chinese box office records.
Yes, the waking of the Dragon will be seen as a huge mistake by the West that ushered in its downfall.
Looks to be an OUTSTANDING MOVIE. It’s a true story. We see personal sacrifice. Bravery. Compassion and fierce loyality to the Chinese nation.
Check out this one minute video summary clip… VIDEO
This part of the war come with a touching story.
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A few dozen PLA soldiers on the front line froze to death in a position of combat readiness. They dared not move simply becuse doing so would expose their position and alert the American forces.
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Their self sacrifice enabled the sudden strike against the well armed American forces in the middle of the night.
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The PLA foot soldiers fought the American tanks, fighter jets and other lethal weapons with strategy, self sacrifice and human will, and eventually forced the 16 most powerful and wealthy Western nation forces (at that time) back more than 500km from the Chinese border, and forced them to begin to hold peace talks.
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(An interesting note: Mao famously said in the beginning of the Korean war: we will let them decide how long to fight this war, we will fight till we win)
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This is an example of peace with the West can only be achieved by fighting back hard. This is like the Afghanistan foot soldiers taking 20 years to defeat the same group of Western barbarians and forced them to leave their holy motherland .
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Do you think that this movie will be permitted to play in the USA, the UK or Austalia or do you think that those nations will bank it for “national security”?
The global appeal for peace comes as a top Chinese diplomat warned his country to re-examine their promise to only use nukes in retaliation, in response to the new alliances forming in the region.
Beijing’s former ambassador to the UN, Sha Zukang said China must make the first nuclear strike against the US if Joe Biden continues to defend Taiwan.
He said:
"The unconditional no first use is not suitable . . . unless China-US negotiations agree that neither side would use [nuclear weapons] first, or the US will no longer take any passive measures to undermine the effectiveness of China’s strategic forces.
The strategic pressure on China is intensifying as (the US) has built new military alliances and as it increases its military presence in our neighbourhood."
The threat came ahead of a meeting between the US, India, Japan and Australia – dubbed the Quad, in Washington, host by Joe Biden.
During a meeting of the China Arms Control and Disarmament Association in Beijing last week he said:
"The policy not to be the first to use nuclear weapons unconditionally has given China the moral high ground internationally. But for some time in the future, the US will see China as its main competitor and even its enemy. Can this policy be re- examined and fine-tuned?"
Final Comment
Do you all have a headache? I sure do. All of this bullshit is because a group of assholes in Washington DC have this deleterious fantasy of enslaving the world, and they are so fucking cock-sure that they can do it.
Enough of this craziness.
Time to relax.
Here’s a nice gif. It’s getting close to that time of the year.
When the weather started to get damp and cold, I would bring my kitties in and they would sit in front of the nice wood store and stare at it for hours.
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
I have been thinking a lot of the Deagel Forecast for 2025 lately. More so, much more so than before. The reason being the new Australia-USA nuclear “submarine” agreement forged earlier this month. And you know, of course I am thinking about this. This singular deal does many, many dangerous things. But perhaps the most dangerous is makes it far easier for a major nuclear conflict with China. And since I live in China, that pisses the Hell out of me.
It’s a major assertive military aggression on the part of the United States.
As well as pointing out the obvious; that Australia is not a “democracy”. After all, a democracy would have the legislature making those decisions, not the Head of State. So in truth, Australia is but a “tin horn” dictatorship, bought sold, and owned by the United States. It’s pretty brazen, but then again, these fucking jokers don’t really give a damn any longer about what people think.
And to confirm how brain-dead the Australian citizenry is, they are not even noticing that the decisions on tariffs, embargoes, trade with China, military alignments with the United States are not going through the proper channels. It’s all being done in “smoky” back-rooms with “shadowy figures”, and the only time that any citizen finds out about it is after the fact.
Yup.
Third-world, banana republic, dictatorship. That’s Australia today.
For those of you who are unaware, Australia has agreed to build bases, staffed by American military, to service American (and British) nuclear submarines until (or well past) 2040 when the Australian versions of those submarines will be manufactured.
The reason is the same old, same old, “secure international maritime law”, “uphold human rights”, and secure “global democratic values”, maintain the American “rules based order”. (As opposed to the UN maritime law.)
Bla. Bla. Bla.
Yada. Yada. Yada.
The thing is ALL American nuclear submarines carry nuclear missiles. Both the SLBM’s for targeted destruction of cities, and nuclear torpedoes for the destruction of submarines and entire fleets.
Though, any thinking person might stop and wonder what does placing nuclear ICBM’s off the Chinese coast have to do with “upholding human rights”, “free navigational passage” or “democratic values”.
And the reason is, that it doesn’t.
Bla. Bla. Bla.
Yada. Yada. Yada.
It’s placing very serious offensive weapons off the coast of China.
And the real reason is…?
…
…
So that the fishing rights of Vietnamese fishermen next to Indonesian waters will be policed, and secured? Is that what we are supposed to believe?
…
…
Bla. Bla. Bla.
Yada. Yada. Yada.
This move has shocked the world. Though not so much the dumbed-down Americans who say…
"Oh, well. It's way off somewhere at the other end of the world. Who cares. We have more important things to worry about like Trans injecting booster Vaxx. And being forced to wear masks! 'Merica! 'Merica! 'Merica!"
But don’t worry. The Chinese Leadership got the telegraphed message loud and clear.
The global appeal for peace comes as a top Chinese diplomat warned his country to re-examine their promise to only use nukes in retaliation, in response to the new alliances forming in the region.
Beijing’s former ambassador to the UN, Sha Zukang said China must make the first nuclear strike against the US if Joe Biden continues to defend Taiwan.
He said:
"The unconditional no first use is not suitable . . .
...unless China-US negotiations agree that neither side would use [nuclear weapons] first...
..., or the US will no longer take any passive measures to undermine the effectiveness of China’s strategic forces.
The strategic pressure on China is intensifying as (the US) has built new military alliances and as it increases its military presence in our neighborhood."
The threat came ahead of a meeting between the US, India, Japan and Australia – dubbed the Quad, in Washington, host by Joe Biden.
During a meeting of the China Arms Control and Disarmament Association in Beijing last week he said:
"The policy not to be the first to use nuclear weapons unconditionally has given China the moral high ground internationally.
But for some time in the future, the US will see China as its main competitor and even its enemy.
Can this policy be re- examined and fine-tuned?"
It has already happened.
Right after the announcement, all the SEO generals met in Russia for “discussions”.
First off, SEO stands for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. And it is the de facto unified Asia. And yes. Right after the announcement about the new ICBM submarine deal, all the SEO military chiefs called a meeting to discuss things.
And right now, this is what it looks like…
(The big news, not well reported in “the West”, is how Iran just joined the SCO (this month). This is big news. This is a unified Asia.)
SCO chiefs of general staff meeting held in Russia
General Li Zuocheng (2nd L, front), member of China’s Central Military Commission (CMC) and chief of the Joint Staff Department under the CMC, attends the meeting of chiefs of general staff of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) member states in Orenburg Oblast, Russia on September 23, 2021. (Photo by Li Xiaowei)
ORENBURG, Russia, Sept. 24 — The Chiefs of General Staff of the armed forces of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) member states held a meeting at the Donguz training range in Orenburg Oblast, Russia on September 23. General Li Zuocheng, member of China’s Central Military Commission (CMC) and chief of the Joint Staff Department under the CMC, attended the meeting.
The Peace Mission-2021 joint anti-terrorist military exercise held by the armed forces of the SCO member states is also going on at the Donguz training range.
Chiefs of General Staff of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) member states including General Li Zuocheng (3rd L, front), member of China’s Central Military Commission (CMC) and chief of the Joint Staff Department under the CMC, observe the Peace Mission-2021 joint anti-terrorist military exercise in Orenburg Oblast, Russia on September 23, 2021. (Photo by Li Xiaowei)
Since its establishment in 2001, by upholding the banner of “Shanghai spirit” of mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality, consultation, respect for cultural diversity and pursuit of common development, the SCO has played an important role in promoting regional development, security and stability in the past two decades.
Participants of the meeting exchanged views on the current international and regional situations, security challenges and further cooperation of military security.
General Valery Gerasimov, chief of General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, awards the medal of “Friendship and Cooperation” to representatives of the Chinese participating troops with outstanding performance in the SCO Peace Mission-2021 joint anti-terrorist military exercise at the Donguz training range in Orenburg Oblast, Russia on September 23, 2021. (Photo by Li Xiaowei)
They also expressed concern about the new risks in the situation of Afghanistan posed by the hasty withdrawal of foreign troops from the country, and signed jointly the minutes of the meeting of chiefs of general staff of the SCO member states.
In addition, participants of the meeting observed the Peace Mission-2021 joint anti-terrorist military exercise and all agreed that this exercise has improved the coordination capacity of the militaries of the SCO members in fighting against the international terrorist forces.
On the same day, Chinese General Li Zuocheng met with Russia’s Chief of General Staff General Valery Gerasimov in a separate closed door meeting. Photo below…
General Li Zuocheng (3rd L), member of China’s Central Military Commission (CMC) and chief of the Joint Staff Department under the CMC, meets with General Valery Gerasimov (3rd R), chief of General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in Orenburg Oblast, Russia on September 23, 2021. General Li is in Orenburg to attend the meeting of chiefs of general staff of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) member states. (Photo by Li Xiaowei)
You all think that this is nothing and that it is going to “blow over”?
Hardly. But there’s not a peep in the Western press about any of this.
Drudge Report 28SEP21.
But like I’ve been saying all along, the cattle don’t need to know what the farmer is planning on having for dinner.
Let’s get into some details why the Russians and Chinese are mobilizing their military forces.
American Nuclear Submarines to be serviced in Australia
The United States submarine force consists of four operational classes – Ohio, Los Angeles, Seawolf, and Virginia – all of which are nuclear-powered.
[1] The 14 Ohio-class SSBNs serve as the sea-based leg of the U.S. strategic triad. [2] An additional four Ohio-class submarines are configured as SSGNs that possess both strike and Special Forces insertion capabilities. The three classes of U.S. attack submarines — Virginia, Seawolf and Los Angeles – are tasked with engaging and destroying enemy vessels; supporting on-shore operations and carrier groups; and carrying out surveillance.
Capabilities at a Glance
Total Submarines in Fleet: 70
Ballistic Missile Submarines (SSBNs): 14
Special forces / Black Ops Submarines (SSGNs): 4
Nuclear-Powered attack submarines (SSNs): 52
British Submarines to be serviced in Australia
The UK have four nuclear powered submarines that will be cruising off the Chinese coast. They will be the four Vanguard-class submarines: Vanguard (commissioned in 1993), Victorious (1995), Vigilant (1996) and Vengeance (1999).
All carry American nuclear SLBMs.
The United Kingdom has deployed Vanguard-class submarines with American manufactured Trident II nuclear-armed submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) leased from the United States under arrangements negotiated with the Reagan administration in 1982.
So what?
Imagine if Russia started parking it’s nuclear submarines in Cuba, and if China started parking it’s nuclear submarines in Vancouver, BC. What if China started placing nuclear armed ICBM’s in Indonesia and Tasmania targeting “freedom of maritime passage” in Australia?
It’s a BIG FUCKING DEAL.
Which makes me want to take another look at the Deagel Report.
Boiler-plate Introduction
Who is the Deagel Report, what is it?
The Deagel corporation is a minor branch of US military intelligence, one of the many secretive organizations which collects data for high-level decision-making purposes and prepares confidential briefing documents for agencies like the National Security Agency, the United Nations, and the World Bank.
Deagel Report.
It is known, for example, to have contributed to a Stratfor report on North Korea. With this kind of pedigree, Deagel should be seen as a legitimate player in the intelligence community and not merely a disinformation asset.
If so, then it must be assumed that its population predictions for 2025, as well as its industrial output predictions on a nation-by-nation basis, are based on strategic assumptions which are shared and well understood by other players in the intelligence community.
Until the start of the Covid ‘pandemic’ many commentators were perplexed by the Deagel spreadsheets.
Perhaps they were part of a psychological operation?
However, in light of recent events, we are obliged to consider a possible connection between the projected massive reduction in the population of certain countries, forecast by Deagel, and other trends going on right now.
Trends?
What trends?
Devaluation of the Dollar with an out of control American Congress.
A fake American GDP.
Strange insistence in using a mRNA vaccine instead of a traditional “dead host” vaccine.
A global pandemic that America is just fucking up royally.
Desire for a war with China.
Desire for a war with Russia.
Desire for a war with Iran.
China, Russia and Iran forming a unified Asian block.
Race war in the United States.
Progressive onslaught and control of all electronic media.
Looming bubbles in just about every facet of American life.
But mostly the latest decisions by the Untied States to create a QUAD alliance, armed with nuclear weapons, and threaten China, or if that fails, to launch a “first strike” nuclear salvo against China to destroy it once and for all.
For “democracy” and “freedom“.
Don’t you know.
The Deagel scenario
The Deagel corporation was asked to explain the thinking behind its strange set of population and output figures. While we cannot take its response at face value, it nonetheless paints a picture that is very similar to the world we now see. And this is not an exaggeration at all.
World-wide bio-weapon pandemic
Massive domestic discord
Financial collapse preceded by inflation
Broken American government systems on all levels.
The United States trying to distract domestic discord through war
They updated their report last year (exactly last year 25SEP20) to compensate for the changes in the Geo-political environment since President Obama in 2012. This is what they said…
Deagel 2020 revision to the original 2012 Deagel Forecast
BlueNarwhal:
Forecast disclaimer revision in 2020:
In 2014 we published a disclaimer about the forecast. In six years the scenario has changed dramatically. This new disclaimer is meant to single out the situation from 2020 on-wards.
Talking about the United States and the European Union as separated entities no longer makes sense. Both are the Western block, keep printing money and will share the same fate.
After COVID we can draw two major conclusions:
The Western world (success model) has been built over societies with no resilience. They can barely withstand any hardship, even a low intensity one. It was assumed but now we’ve got the full hard confirmation beyond any doubt. They are weak to the point of a decapitated cripple.
The COVID crisis will be used to extend the life of this dying economic system through the so called “Great Reset.”
The Great Reset; like the climate change, extinction rebellion, planetary crisis, green revolution, shale oil (…) hoaxes promoted by the system; is another attempt to slow down dramatically the consumption of natural resources and therefore extend the lifetime of the current system.
It can be effective for awhile but finally won’t address the bottom-line problem and will only delay the inevitable. The core ruling elites hope to stay in power which is in effect the only thing that really worries them.
Collapse of the USD Financial Banking System
The collapse of the Western financial system – and ultimately the Western civilization – has been the major driver in the 2012 forecast along with a confluence of crisis with a devastating outcome.
Progressive Multiculturalism failures
As COVID has proven Western societies embracing multiculturalism and extreme liberalism are unable to deal with any real hardship.
Coronavirus Pandemic
The Spanish flu one century ago represented the death of 40-50 million people. Today the world’s population is four times greater with air travel in full swing which is by definition a super spreader. The death casualties in today’s World would represent 160 to 200 million in relative terms but more likely 300-400 million taking into consideration the air travel factor that did not exist one century ago. So far, COVID death toll is roughly 1 million people.
Economic crisis due to forced lock-downs
It is quite likely that the economic crisis due to the lock-downs will cause more deaths than the virus worldwide. The Soviet system was less able to deliver goodies to the people than the Western one. Nevertheless Soviet society was more compact and resilient under an authoritarian regime. That in mind, the collapse of the Soviet system wiped out 10 percent of the population.
The stark reality of diverse and multicultural Western societies is that a collapse will have a toll of 50 to 80 percent depending on several factors. But in general terms the most diverse, multicultural, indebted and wealthy (highest standard of living) will suffer the highest toll.
Life-Support Systems
The only glue that keeps united such aberrant collage from falling apart is over-consumption with heavy doses of bottomless degeneracy disguised as virtue. Nevertheless the widespread censorship, hate laws and contradictory signals mean that even that glue is not working any more.
The Predictions
Not everybody has to die. Migration (out from America, the West, etc.) can also play a positive role in this.
Second and Third World Nations
The formerly (known as) second and third world nations are an unknown at this point. Their fate will depend upon the decisions they take in the future.
Western powers are not going to take over them as they did in the past because these (Western) countries won’t be able to control their very own cities let alone those countries that are far away.
If they remain tied to the former World Order they will go down along with the Western powers. However, they won’t experience the same kind of brutal decline that the Western powers will experience so brazenly. This is partially because they are poorer and (obviously) not diverse enough. Instead they are stronger than the Western powers because they are actually quite homogeneous. This is their advantage. And that they are used to deal with some sort of hardship. Though, not precisely the one that is coming.
If they switch to China they can get a chance to stabilize but will need to depend upon the management of their own resources. We expected this situation to unfold and actually is unfolding right now.
American Election Consequences
With the November election triggering a major bomb if Trump is re-elected. (Did not happen.) If Biden is elected there will very bad consequences as well.
There is a lot of bad blood in the Western societies and the protests, demonstrations, rioting and looting are only the first symptoms of what is coming.
Geo-Political Changes
However a new trend is taking place overshadowing this one. The situation between the three great powers has changed dramatically.
The only relevant achievement of the Western powers during the past decade has been the formation of a strategic alliance, both military and economic, between Russia and China.
Russia and China are a united Asia.
Right now the potential partnership between Russia and the European Union (EU) is dead with Russia turning definitively towards China. That was from the beginning the most likely outcome.
The European Union is on it’s own.
Airbus never tried to establish a real partnership but rather a strategy to fade away the Russian aerospace industry. Actually Russia and China have formed a new alliance to build a long haul airliner.
Western Europe (not to mention the United States) was never interested in the development of Russia or forming anything other than a master slave relationship with Russia providing raw materials and toeing the line of the West.
It was clear then and today is a fact.
Preparations for war
Russia has been preparing for a major war since 2008 and China has been increasing her military capabilities for the last 20 years. Today China is not a second tier power compared with the United States. Both in military and economic terms China is at the same level and in some specific areas are far ahead.
Chinese Technology is state of the art.
In the domain of high-tech 5G has been a success in the commercial realm but the Type 055 destroyer is also another breakthrough with the US gaining a similar capability (DDG 51 Flight IIII) by mid of this decade (more likely by 2030).
Nanchang, the lead ship of the Type 055 class, was commissioned amid the pandemic and lock down in China.
Potential for open war hostilities
Six years ago the likelihood of a major war was tiny.
Since then it has grown steadily and dramatically and today is by far the most likely major event in the 2020s.
The ultimate conflict can come from two ways.
[1] A conventional conflict involving at least two major powers that escalates into an open nuclear war. Most likely initiated by the United States, with a nuclear retaliatory salvo of impressive destructive magnitude.
[2] A second scenario is possible in the 2025-2030 time-frame. A Russian (with possibly China) sneak first strike against the United States and its allies with the new S-500, strategic missile defenses, Yasen-M submarines, INF Zircon and Kalibr missiles and some new space asset playing the key role.
The sneaky first strike would involve all Russian missile strategic forces branches (bombers and ground-based missiles) at the different stages of such attack that would be strategic translation of what was seen in Syria in November 2015.
Massive failures in Western Intelligence Agencies
There was no report that the Russian had such a capability of launching a high precision, multiple, combined arms attack at targets 2,000+ kilometers away.
Western intelligence had no clue.
Brainwashed Moral Superiority
The irony is that since the end of the Cold War the United States has been maneuvering through NATO to achieve a position to be able to execute a first strike (nuclear) over Russia and now it seems that the first strike may still occur but the country finished would be the United States.
Another particularity of the Western system is that its individuals have been brainwashed to the point that the majority accept their moral high ground and technological edge as a given. This has given the rise of the supremacy of the emotional arguments over the rational ones which are ignored or deprecated.
That mindset can play a key role in the upcoming catastrophic events.
At least in the Soviet system the silent majority of the people were aware of the fallacies they were fed up.
We can see the United States claims about 5G being stolen from them by China or hypersonic technology being stolen by Russia as the evidence that the Western elites are also infected by that hubris. Over the next decade it will become obvious that the West is falling behind the Russia-China block and the malaise might grow into desperation.
Why go to war?
Going to war might seem a quick and easy solution to restore the lost hegemony to finally find them into a France 1940 moment. Back then France did not have nuclear weapons to turn a defeat into a victory. The West might try that swap because the unpleasant prospect of not being Mars and Venus but rather a bully and his dirty bitch running away in fear while the rest of the world is laughing at them.
If there is not a dramatic change of course the world is going to witness the first nuclear war.
The Western block collapse may come before, during or after the war. It does not matter. The West will completely collapse. It is fragile. It will be unable to recover from even the slightest societal disruption.
A nuclear war is a game with billions of casualties and the collapse plays in the hundreds of millions.
He Concludes…
This website is non-profit, built on spare time and we provide our information and services AS IS without further explanations and/or guarantees. We are not linked to any government. Take into account that the forecast is nothing more than a game of numbers whether flawed or correct based upon some speculative assumptions. - Friday, September 25th, 2020
So much for the introductory portion. Now the meat of this article…
Realize the following truths, before we proceed.
China possesses skilled leadership.
Russia and China are aligned militarily.
The United States government is a cluster fuck.
America is balkanized, isolated, and it’s every man for himself.
Handguns, and weapons are all over America.
COVID is raging inside of America.
If you think it is bad now, imagine what happens when a roll of toilet paper costs $20, A hamburger cost $100, no one is getting cost-of-living increases, there’s hardly any gasoline. And a new round of COVID is forcing everyone into lock-downs again. And the police start to selectively deploy.
The shootings will not be televised.
And in the midst of all this unreported turmoil will be the grand American military strategy. That is to “suppress China”, that far-away nation. To “project” a American rules “based order” on the Chinese coast. So that the miserable ‘Mericans can blame their frustration on those evil vile Communists. Instead of on their government.
The Good News
The good news is that the war will be short lived. Over very quickly. In fact, it might as well happen, million of people die, and then be over before anything is actually reported. Countries might break up after a few short meetings and that will be that.
With banks gone, communication down, any balkanized nations will go tribal in hours. And people, the USA is very balkanized. Or haven’t you been watching the videos out of America today? Crime is open and brazen. Shootings are the norm.
The bad news…
…well.
People are going to die. Entire societies will be disrupted. nation-states will collapse, restructure and reform. There will be internal discord, and SHTF on a local level will emerge in the worst hit areas.
Most Western nations will become a Hellish fiasco of “zombie movie” proportions.
The countries that will suffer the greatest reduction in population, according to Deagel (as per 2014), are:
Worst hit nations.
That’s pretty darn specific. Don’t you know. And the top nations are the most “Western” nations in society, governance, and banking.
So what is driving this entire event sequence?
The AUKUS
Thenew security alliance of Australia, Great Britain and the USA, namedAUKUS, is now about which arms companies can expand their business. Britain’snuclear submarines are being built under the direction of Europe’s largestarmscompany, BAE Systems, with Rolls-Royce providing the propulsion.
-Archyde
The sole purpose of the AUKUS is to…
Unite the military systems of the USA, the UK and Australia.
Provide bases, fuel depots and maintenance facilities for nuclear submarines.
Provide nuclear basing and deployment options for second-strike nuclear SLBM systems.
The members of the AUKUS and their Deagel casualty figures.
Here’s the 2025 Deagel casualty figures for the three “mighty” members of AUKUS.
Keep in mind that the American Civil War which devastated the Southern States had a 6-8% of the population killed.
Since the casualty figures include Australia, which has been (up until four years ago) neutral, we can assume that China would be involved.
And, since Great Britain (UK) would be so seriously destroyed, we must assume that Russia would be involved.
These two facts point to the realization that both Russia and China would fight in a World War III scenario, and that given the current Geo-political alignments at this time that they would fight on the same side for the same interests.
Changes in South America
Population will increase in many nations in South America. Which is very strange. Deagel predicts that this might be due to migration way from the heavily populated Northern American nations Southward. With Brazil being one of the target destinations…
Brazil 2025.
But then…
We have Argentina that also has a decrease in population. The decrease is around 7%.
Argentina 2025.
The Members of the unified ShanghaiCooperationOrganization and their Deagel Casualty figures…
From what I can gather, most of the SEO nations fare pretty well, all things considered.
All have projected population decreases under 2%, with both India and Pakistan having growth in population.
My guess is that Asia doesn’t play.
A complete breakdown
The data was taken down from Deagel when the website hit the blogosphere, and that is the kind of publicity that no one wants. Like MM, they do not host advertisements or anything like that. The site is a grey-web site like MM. It is not a for-profit venue.
Never the less, here is the complete tabulated data in a nice convenient PDF for you to download. You all can thank me later.
A look on the bright side?
How can there be a “bright side” to any of this? Well, you see, perhaps we are all looking at this wrong. We are making the assumption that the nations themselves will not geographically change.
What if, in 2025, the United States says (after the elections of 2024) to Hell with the Federal government and the nation crumbles apart. It could very well resemble something like this…
In this scenario, the United States breaks up into four separate nation-states. An only one of them remains “The United States”. That simple Geo-political change produces the exact same results as described above.
The four new nation states…
Map
Here’s a map showing the predictions made in the forecast. You see that Asia is unscathed, while America and the West suffer horribly.
Japan will lose 1/5th of it’s population!
Australia will lose a full 1/3rd of it’s population!
Canada will lose 1/4th of it’s population!
The United States will lose almost 3/4ths of it’s population!
An American centered fiasco
Keep in mind that the largest drop in population are in “Western nations”, and those that have adopted American governance suffered the worst causality figures.
Based on historical precedents, and the Deagel predictions, these kinds of numbers and figures can only be associated with an American centered disaster. Not really a global one. Because if it was a global disaster, then the causality figures would be more uniform.
.
For instance, here is Israel…
The closer the nation is aligned with the United States, the more damage or death toll that is has.
What’s the gig?
There are all sorts of people slicing and dicing these figures. Here’s one that claims that 2025 will be a war on Christians. That it’s the Vaxx that’s going to kill all the Christians off, and that it is a master plan by those devious Chinese to steal our precious freedoms and liberties all for Communism!
(sigh)
That it must be due to religion, as that is what the Book of Revelation says, and therefore the “Four horsemen” are going to spring out from deep inside of China and unleash their terrors to the world.
I exaggerate. Sure. But it’s not that far off.
Well, if that is so, then if you read the book of revelation, then you know that the real believers will be spared, and the condemned will be the ones who will end up suffering. There will be this thing called the rapture and the unworthy will perish in what will become Hell on Earth. Where will that Hell be?
The United States.
Let’s look at the unified Asia…
The charts truly show that it is the Chinese and the Russians that will be spared. Not those in the West. So please give me a break.
What ever your personal beliefs, I do not think that any of this has anything to do with religion, philosophy or social behavior. It has to do with the collapse of the United States Empire, and the desire of the ruling oligarchy to hold on while it goes down the tubes.
(Sigh)
Never the less…
They do point out something interesting. That there is a direct correlation between the nations that are giving mRNA vaccinations, and those that do not.
The ones that insist on mRNA vaccinations…
The ones that give “dead host” traditional vaccinations…
And this is their conclusion…
That the Deagel projections have a strategic military purpose and should be taken seriously;
That the sharp division between Table A+B and Table C has a strategic military purpose;
That the worldwide Covid vaccine program is a cover to deliver a fatal or harmful vaccine to the population of a selected list of countries (those in Table A+B);
That the countries in Table C will become the new axis of the world economy, centered on the Belt & Road Initiative, which has been under development for at least 20 years;
That the vaccines produced by the Big Four are especially dangerous and should be avoided. (We are not suggesting that the other 17 are safe.)
So maybe they are making a good POINT.
Comment from Memory Loss
This came in this morning just before I published this article…
MM, looks like there is starting to be speculation about the mRNA vaccines. And you got the military aspect correct.
20% of the pfizer vaccine contains material which is redacted on the list of ingredients. The redactions fall under b(4) which appears to be code for state of the art military stuff.
So it looks like the ungodly haste is to complete the installation of a state of the art military system into the general population. The US is getting ready for use of nuclear weapons in a strike against China it would seem. Your theory of genetic modifications for subjects to survive a nuclear war is looks really plausible.
The US is getting ready for use of nuclear weapons in a strike against China it would seem. Now why would they do that?
(P.S: I am speculating that the thoughts you have been having recently may actually be glimpses into possible future time lines. If you understand my references to Swedenborg previously, you might get my drift. So it looks like we may have to enlist as irregulars ASAP lol, )
As leaders from Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States unveiled their new trilateral security partnership for advanced defense-tech sharing on Wednesday, it was also revealed that the first initiative of the endeavor would be the delivery of Australia’s first nuclear-powered submarine fleet.
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Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison returned to his Canberra podium Thursday afternoon to divulge that the country should expect more than just a costly nuclear submarine fleet within the next several years.
"[W]e will be enhancing our long-range strike capability including hawk and tomahawk cruise missiles and extended missile range for our capabilities," Morrison said, highlighting the goal of a "stable and secure region."
The acquisition of Australia’s new capabilities will come as part of the country’s 2024 structure plan, and the missiles will be fitted on Australia’s Collins-class submarine fleet.
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As for the nuclear submarine fleet, Morrison projected that the country should have a portion of the submarines “in the water” before 2030.
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“When it comes to the delivery of this program, I indicated that we anticipate being able to commence build this year and the first of those submarines would be in the water, we believe, before the end of next decade and all partners will be working to ensure that that is achieved at a date as soon as is possible to achieve,” he said.
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Morrison rejected claims that Australia “wasted” some $2.4 billion that was already funneled to France’s Naval Group as part of a $90 billion submarine contract — a deal that was rendered defunct following Wednesday’s announcement.
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"We’ve invested $2.4 billion in the attack class program and I say all of that investment, I believe, has further built our capability," he proclaimed, "and that is consistent with the decision that was taken back in 2016 for all the right reasons to protect Australia’s national security interests and has served that purpose."
The Australian prime minister went on to issue a public apology to Naval Group, the French government and French President Emmanuel Macron.
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President Biden delivers remark on National Security at the White House
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"There is few if any other country around the world that understands the importance of the Pacific and has been as committed to the Pacific as France," he said.
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"We share a deep passion for our Pacific family and a deep commitment to them, and I look forward and I hope to see us continue once we move past what is obviously a very difficult and disappointing decision for France."
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China also took issue with the AUKUS announcement, which was viewed as another example of the participating nations’ “Cold War mentality and ideological prejudice,” according to a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington.
.
"There’s an open invitation for President Xi to discuss other matters," Morrison said to a reporter asking about potential economic trade sanctions from China. "That has always been there. Australia is open to discuss issues important to the Indo-Pacific."
.
Morrison also stressed to the global community that Australia is not looking to become a nuclear power, or superpower, through AUKUS.
.
“This is about propulsion. This is not about acquiring nuclear weapons,” he said, pledging continued adherence to obligations under the treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.
.
US President Joe Biden previously clarified that Australia’s submarine fleet would be powered by nuclear reactors, but “conventionally-armed” when it comes to weaponry.
.
Comments from the article…
It’s not just that…
The United States is on a buying ordering spree of large conventional weapons and munitions designed to borrow deep into the earth and destroy things, huge systems to take out entire cities, and a massive construction program for missiles.
But the USA only wants peace…
US Air Force Orders GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators Through 2026
The Boeing Corp., St. Louis, Missouri, has been awarded a $70,000,000 indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators. This contract provides for the procurement via delivery order of GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator carriage and release equipment. The location of performance is Saint Charles, Missouri, and work is expected to be completed by April 30, 2026. This award is the result of a sole source acquisition. Fiscal 2019 3011 (production) funds in the amount of $18,025,770 are being obligated at the time of award. Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, is the contracting activity (FA8681-19-D-0008).
US Air Force to Repair Minuteman III nuclear ICBM Missiles Guidance System Through 2039
The Boeing Co., Newark, Ohio, has been awarded a $1,620,707,490 indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for missile guidance repair. This contract will repair the Minuteman III Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) missile guidance set. Work will be performed in Newark, Ohio, and is expected to be completed by Sept. 27, 2039. This award is the result of a sole-source acquisition. Fiscal 2021 operation and maintenance funds in the amount of $32,486,160 are being obligated at the time of award. The Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center, Hill Air Force Base, Utah, is the contracting activity (FA821421D0003).
Etc. Etc. Etc.
The Deagel Forecast is removed from the website.
On 4/20/21, Deagel.com, a military intelligence agency, has deleted their mysterious 2025 forecast spreadsheet that predicted a major collapse of the western countries.
The forecast used to exist at [link to deagel.com (secure)] and now that page just redirects to the home page. This forecast was on their website since 2014.
The spreadsheet predicted a major drop in the US population from 332 million in 2019 to only 99 million in 2025 (-70%).
I find it an interesting coincidence that this deletion was made within 24 hours of every American over the age of 16 qualifying for their mRNA COVID-19 vaccine.
You all do know what I think about coincidences...
-MM
Do not get caught up.
The world seems to be going into a tail spin. But it is just an illusion. It’s not. It’s just that the potential futures are frightening. Do not get caught up. VIDEO.
Video
Some final thoughts
I really hope that this does not come to pass. I really want all this nonsense to go away and not happen. Seriously I really do.
Those that predict the future are often wrong. Sometimes frighteningly so.
However, if the Deagel forecast is based on remote viewed data with an extrapolation of current events, it really does look like it’s going to happen.
Keep in mind that the Deagel remote viewed the future correctly. They printed their results in 2012.
They PREDICTED a bio-warfare induced pandemic.
They PREDICTED an Australian alliance with the United States.
They PREDICTED that America would start entering a period of "popping" of the various economic bubbles.
All of which came true by 2020.
Deagel did NOT change their forecast for 2025. It still stands. They just changed their thinking on how it would come about.
They remote viewed 2025 in great detail.
There will be [1] a massive die off of people in America, and Australia. The rest of the world will fare much better. And, most importantly, a [2] bio-weapon or pandemic figured predominantly in their calculus.
In 2012, they believed that there would be some kind of bio-weapon or pandemic that would kill off so many Americans. But they couldn’t (for the life of them) answer why Australia of all places would also have a large die off. At that time they never could of imagined the QUAD set up by Mike Pompeo, and that the Morrison government would wholeheartedly want to declare war on China. Instead, they figured that it must be a very serious pandemic with some other mystery event that complicated things in a negative manner.
In 2020, in the midst of the (three agent) bio-weapon attacks on China, and the absolute failure of America in securing it’s homeland, as well as the strong alignment of the Australian Morrison government to the war-loving neocons in Washington DC, the revised reasoning became one of nuclear war. Thus they reasoned that since the 2020 pandemic wasn’t that bad, and the drums of war were beating so loudly, that it must be nuclear war and bio-weapons used simultaneously.
Whether there is a nuclear event, or a bio-weapon event, no matter who caused it, or who instigated it, America will be absolutely and totally devastated. A 70% kill off implies that America would indeed be thrown back to the bronze age.
My advice?
Take your loved ones out for a nice meal. Right now. Enjoy the time that you have with them. Whether or not this will happen, the fact is that it’s not happening right now.
You are.
And what ever your situation, rich, poor, work tomorrow, day off, tired, or bored, do something special now. Live life, and don’t live in fear of an uncertain future.
Just call up your grandparent.
Or call your mom. Say hi.
Too much work, eh?
I dare you. I double-dog dare you. Call them right now.
Just say “Hi. I was thinking of you and just wanted to call. I hope that it is not a bad time.”
You will make their day.
And…
…if you are old (like me) and your parents and grandparents are gone, then call up a brother, sister or cousin. Talk about a television show you used to watch, a movie, a music band, a shared memory and say that you were thinking about them.
It will be a trip down “memory lane”.
But…
…if you have no family, and you don’t want to call up a friend or two to go out and grab a beer…just because. Then take your loved one to a movie. It doesn’t matter what the movie is. Just go.
Go. Let them choose the movie. It doesn’t matter what it is. Don’t quibble. Their choice. Their night out. You just make it happen.
You will be a better person for it.
So enjoy the moment now.
If you watched the movie Idiocracity, you’d get the joke.
Spend time with your loved ones.
Time will pass you by… do something TODAY.
Make a difference.
Be the best you that YOU can be.
And always, be the Rufus.
Be the Rufus.
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
This article consists of answers from The Domain to questions collected by the MM audience. This is the second of (hopefully) many such events. Though, I must admit that it is really a lot of work to do.
I collected the questions from the last week of September 2021, and tried to contact with the Domain via the EBP in fits and starts over this period. I was successful, and unsuccessful. Some times the connection was strong while at other times it was weak. All having to do with my various situation at the time.
An Important note
I asked a question. A very personal question at the end of this article, and obtained an answer.
It is very disturbing, and I am very upset by it.
I decided to put it in and let you all know what was stated. This goes against my “better judgement”, but we will see what happens.
What this is all about
On 17SEP21 I posted an article that related the fact that The Domain opened up a dedicated channel to me via the EBP. As always, it was one-sided, and detailed. But during the conversation, I had no real mental ability. I was in a receiving and reporting state. I was really unable to think for myself. I just queried what I was told to ask and recorded the answers.
You can read this article HERE, if you are confused with what is going on.
Some Background
Most people are aware that the work titled “Alien Interview” is a transcript of a Commander of The Domain when it’s vehicle crashed in 1947. What most people do not know is that this event spawned an American top secret agency known as MAJestic that fell under the ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence).
This waved, unacknowledged special access program handled (and still handles) all extraterrestrial events, technologies and interactions with the United States government. I was a unique part of that organization prior to being retired.
I have numerous devices installed in my body. The seven ELF probes are for MAJestic, with the EBP system is of Domain manufacture and utility.
Terminology
EBP – A hardwired device that connects MM to The Domain.
ELF – A hardwired device that connected MM to MAJestic through a Mantid intermediary. Now deactivated.
The Domain – The name of the species / civilization that the type-1 greys belong to.
“Old Empire” – A term used to describe a vanquished civilization that used to be in control of this section of the galaxy.
Comm channel – A link to the MM “handler” or Commander. Rank and position is unknown except that it is a senior being. This is a channel though the EBP system.
Prison Planet – Earth and the surrounding solar system.
Prison Complex – Our solar system with four to five other solar systems together.
Warden – Chief administrator for the Earth.
Corrections Officers – Police that work for the Warden.
Questions
This is the SECOND collection of Q&A from The Domain.
Here are the questions with the answers. We start off with one of MY questions to get the ol’ ball rolling…
[1] Who is Madesescapalion? Is this just a name out of my imagination, or something that I need pay attention to?
In an odd event, this name suddenly popped into my head, and stayed in my head for hours. Just banging around and around and around, and around. Jeeze!.
It’s really annoying.
Someone is addressing in a formal form like you would a officer, or the head of the FBI or something like that.
So I wrote it down. Then for the next four hours or so it still kept banging around in my skull until I wrote this question down. And then, oh, for Goodness Sakes! This popped out…
Who is Madesescapalion?
Madesescapalion (sic) is the name / a name of / one of the names of the Chief Administrator / High Authority of the Earth-centric portion of this Prison Complex. He is the local de facto head of this facility.He was a (preferential form) human who has injected himself into the prison complex as a means of escaping / avoiding / hiding from The Domain.He conducted this “donning of prison attire” when the Domain defeated the forces of the “Old Empire” sometime between 1135 - 1230 AD during the destruction of the local “Old Domain” space fleet in this region.He has been cycling in and out of “general population” in the Prison Complex ever since.He has systems in place that detect our movements and alert him, and when we get near to him he dies and goes into “Heaven” where we have difficulty following. Once he is safe, he then re-injects himself in the general population again. He is very cunning. He is very skillful. He holds many answers regarding the systems and the control attributes of this Prison Complex.
Scene from the movie Dark Shadows starring Johnny Depp.
(I wonder if there is some kind of message in the movie Dark Shadows concerning this administrator.)
I don’t know if this is the right spelling. I just wrote it as it appeared to me.
Ma - des - escapa - li - on
It could also be read as “Ma-des Escapa-Li-on”, as in “Warden Escapa-Li-on”. Tht’s my thinking of this. I don’t know if it is true or not.
Warden Escapalion
Administrator of the “Old Empire”. In charge of this Prison Complex. Went into hiding (inside the prison General Population) when The Domain took over.
Update; Maybe I wrote it wrong.
The pronunciation is not "lion" but rather "leon".
- MM
[2] What is the relationship between the Domain and the Mantids. Why won’t the Domain ask the Mantids for help?
This issue has been bothering people for some time. It’s a valid concern and there are many questions regarding it. For some people, the Mantids represent angels, while the Domain represent demons. Now they see things in a new light and are concerned.
Personally, I was afraid to ask this as there are some MAJestic prohibitions on Mantid disclosures. But, I just didn’t think about it. I just got comfortable and read and waited for a response. There was a pause of a few minutes and then this flowed out.
Domain & Mantid relationship.
The Mantids (sic) are a species that has their own civilization and culture. They have accepted The Domain jurisdiction in this geographical area. They are also neutral in regards to territory, administration, and other encumbrances of physical life.They have transcended those interests.They maintain their roles within the Prison Complex “Heaven” and are satisfied with whatever might or might not happen in the future. Our relations with them are cordial. And if we ask them for support and assistance, they provide it. They have accepted our administration over this area and Prison Complex, and are willing to work with us in whatever way that we deem fit.
Do you have any thoughts about this answer?
[3] There is a group that you are working with that I am unfamiliar with. So I refer to them as <redacted>. Who are they and what do they do?
This is one of my questions that I would like to see answered better than what I would normally call out. You see my interpretation of direct data from the EBP differs substantially from this around-about method of collecting answers. And so I wanted to see what kind of answers that I would get.
This <redacted> is a new group that was first brought up when the Domain had its first direct communication with me. I would like a name and some background on them, please.
Who are the <redacted>?
They are a species that you have never encountered before, and is rare in this section of the universe. Their society / empire / housing cluster are from a very distant galaxy and have been involved in large massive complexes, works and systems not unlike that of the “Prison Complex” here.
They are helping us decode and unlock the systems that we encounter and develop new devices and mechanisms for detection of traps and snares.
They have a name, but it would not serve you to understand something that you could not pronounce let along write. They do not physically resemble humanoids or insects. They resemble something else entirely alien to the earth experience as they are not from the same kind of planet or sun that the Prison Complex has. (The image that I get is a very large maggot or caterpillar about the size of a sofa.)
You may refer to them as “helpers” like the little people in Willy Wonka’s Chocolate factory, the “oompa loompas”, or the “Minons” from “Despicable Me”.
Note: I will refer to this group as “Technical helpers” from now on. –MM
[4] Are there any catastrophic events due in the next few years?
I was able to get answers to this question but it was full of “stops”, hesitations, pauses, and “drag-ons”. If you all can understand what I am trying to say.
Everyone in the United States are fearful of the future. Indeed it seems like the entire nation is a broken down car skidding all over the place and being run by drunken raging maniacs. The passengers are terrified. What’s ahead is unknown, and everyone wants to know what is after that “bend in the road”.
Catastrophic Events
“The [physical] earth has undeniably gone through catastrophic events… cyclically and continuously. If I recall correctly, the most common recurring event(s) are at about 25,000 year increments or so… pole-shift, crustal displacement – stuff like that. Of course other things cause destruction as well – and I presume some are NOT natural. Anyway, my current best information says that such an event is likely to happen again – SOON – VERY soon (before 2025, but maybe even next calendar year). Can you comment on this?”
There are a number of clusters of time-lines (of large size) that are on a vector route towards a catastrophic purging of life and civilization elements within certain specific societies. What will happen depends on the trajectory of those clusters. The drivers behind their movement are well-established “Old Empire” forces that intentionally manifest results that (the MM readership) you would find distasteful.Thoughts can result in many manifestations. Not only in the movement of large numbers of people towards catastrophic results like lemmings, but also in the turmoil of natural processes. These thoughts can result in natural disasters, fiascos of unexpected intensity, and horrific results that will be unexpected. In many ways it is like an infant playing with a loaded gun. You must not allow horrific consequences whether “natural” or “manmade” to include all sorts of thought-induced reactions to manifest if you can avoid them.In the Prison Planet environment is an MWI configuration that permits world-line changes and alterations. There are various individual IS-BE’s imprisoned within the complex that have the ability to conduct mechanized world-line travel to different locations and different periods. After all, and you must remember, the MWI within the Prison Complex is an artificial construct. And thus, there are people who can create turmoil on certain world-line templates (sic) and then escape to safer havens.This is what is apparently going on. If you were to capture one of these IS-BE inmates and ask them what they are doing they would come up with all kinds of stories and excuses, but none will admit that they are participating in a relative “looting” of certain templates (sic) so that they can enjoy the fruits of their labors in other templates (sic).The good thing is that the “future” is never guaranteed. Being in such an artificial construct as the Prison Complex is, guarantees that those that can control their thoughts, and that understand how the Prison System works can “ride out” any crises or turmoil that might “boil up to the surface” with the confluence of multiple anchored clusters vectoring straight to catastrophic event scenarios.
Do not fear the future. Control your thoughts and you will control your destiny. Worrying about others is a fine passion but will not benefit you as your future will be under the fabric of your creation via your thoughts.If you can control your thoughts, even if your local environment undergoes horrific events, you will be able to endure it relative comfort.
I immediate thought that this was NOT the kind of answer that the questioner wanted.
After all, I myself, have been warning about catastrophic events in the future. I say this as a nod to the Deagal Report.
His questioner wanted a yes or a no answer and some details.
And the following came though…
Yes. There will be difficult times ahead.
It will be on a scale that many people will be unfamiliar and uncomfortable with.
It will not be something that you can point to and say "here it is". It will be a growth, a growing, an amassing of a state. Then it will achieve a critical tipping point. Then, it will be very uncomfortable.
It will not be televised, or reported on. Any information that the average person obtains will be lies, distractions or manipulations. No one will know what is going on. This will continue into the "main heat" of the event cycle.
(A list was provided in laconic fashion like someone reading from a handout.)
Treasuries will be emptied.
Resources will be stolen and carted off.
Secret military engagements will take place with death and destruction.
Back-stabbing, betrayals, and and "under hand" actions will be common.
Agreements will be torn-up or ignored.
New secret agreements will be written between unlikely participants.
(Fourth tone emphasis on the last syllable of the end word in each sentence.)
No one will know any of this. Many people will continue to be *oblivious* to what is going on even after millions of people are dead. So much will not be reported.
Significant event will pass into history unknown and unrecorded.
There are numerous clusters heading towards numerous scenarios. The most worrisome are being mitigated and controlled by the Domain. Yet, the large quantity and diversity of the various participants suggest that some kind of event will happen one way or the other.
However, please note that it will happen without anyone realizing it happening until afterwards.
There is an over reliance on electronic manipulative media. Many people believe that they know everything that is going on simply by the massive scope of the size of the media. That is a dangerous illusion. Nothing truthful will be displayed. Then when cracks and fissures in the news starts to point to some disturbing things, it will be all over and past the point of no-return.
However you can control how those difficult times affect your life. If you control your thoughts, you will control the range / extent of those influences on your life. Do not allow others to control your thoughts.
Keep in mind that the Domain is monitoring this situation very closely, and will not permit substantive destruction of the environment. However the mass concentration of evil and distorted IS-BE inmates have other ideas. And there are numerous scenarios where bad catastrophic events might still be able to occur no matter how hard the Domain tries to prevent them. Such as what happened with your World War I.
Many Americans and Western governments, such as those in Europe, and Asian-Pacific nations that have “hitched a ride with Uncle Sam” are witnessing a collapse of everything that they believed in.
But you see, all nations rise and fall.
I have discussed this over and over before. And they follow a normal progression of birth to death. What this questioner is worried about can be summed up in one simple graph here…
Do you have any thoughts about this answer?
[5] Why are the Mantids so keen on helping humans when they know that our memories will be erased later?
Well, why do they keep doing what they are doing. And what are they doing exactly?
Mantids and Memory Erasure
“There is something also bugging me about the mantids involvement on earth (and when I was talking to my husband about it, the PC started doing it’s own thing…weird!) I’m having a hard time articulating it, but maybe someone else can grab it. So here we go: Why do the mantids stay with us our whole lives and reviewing it in the end, when there comes the amnesia and everything we learned is forgotten? Don’t they know about the amnesia? Are they also kind of trapped on earth and cannot escape? Or do they profit somehow from being our wardens?”
The Mantids are not Wardens. They are corrections officers / archivists / medical practitioners and they are bred for their role. They differ from specific Prison Planet to Prison Planet.
A form (originally native) to the particular Prison Planet (within the Prison Complex) is elevated and provided with a duty and a role, then their success within that role is determined by that duty. The other four or so systems in the Prison Complex each has their own version of these helpers.In the case of the Mantids, this form is found throughout the universe just like humans are, but this form has been on the earth much longer than any humans have. They call it their home and treat the humans as “adopted children” from their nest.
As transdimensional creatures they are particularly suited as the caretakers of individual human consciousnesses.They believe that it is important for them to help and guide the human species from the general population segment of the Prison Planet into “Heaven” and help them grow. They also believe that strife, experiences, and conflict make humans into better beings.
This seemingly conflicting belief is not native to their original archetype.
Like humans within the confines of the prison planet, they too have been modified. Both humans and mantids have been modified to live, work and stay within this prison complex and never leave it.
The Mantids are absolutely convinced of their need to help humans in the prison grow through pain and suffering and then reward them with a rest-period in “Heaven”.This belief was cultivated / manufactured / genetically forced into them by the “Old Empire” when this particular Prison Planet was first established. Thus they, like the inmates that they tend to, are both hybridized archetype forms dedicated to specific roles within this Prison Complex.
They believe that they are involved in great compassionate works by providing great suffering to human inmates and then rewarding them with a “Heaven” afterwards.
Jesus! – MM
[6] Is enlightenment a benefit or a distraction?
A good question from someone who is not taking the answers from the Domain at face value. Worthy of consideration.
Again, the query was calm, easy and the response was immediate.
Enlightenment
“The bit about enlightenment is highly confusing. I’m guessing because it is poorly defined/undefinable. The Domain officer said that those who managed to escape the prison mechanism were able to control their thoughts to a high degree. That’s exactly what I would expect from someone on “the way” to enlightenment (Never a final destination either). Those who point to the way also advocate self-knowledge. Isn’t this in parallel with what the Domain advises? Any clarification here would be appreciated.”
Enlightenment is a tool that is used by religions as part of a control mechanism. The individual components used to achieve an enlightened state, such as meditation, focus, mantras, and all the rest are useful components for the control of one’s thoughts. Control of one’s thoughts is THE (THE – emphasized twice) most important skill set that a IS-BE consciousness can develop.If the intention of using these components (mediation / breathing / focus / etc.) is to achieve a state of nirvana (and consider it as enlightenment) it is a “dead end”.
What you are doing is using the proper tools, but not building anything of worth or value. You are moving forward doing everything correct, and then parking the results in a great nothingness of no practical utility.You must use the exact same skills that you use to achieve enlightenment towards functional outcomes.
“Enlightenment” in of itself is NOT a functional outcome. (The Domain officer is getting rather worked up.)
Religions have taken the skills originally taught to inmates to help them leave this Prison Planet and put them on “snipe hunts” that lead nowhere. Thousands of very well skilled and talented individuals were so very close to escaping the clutches of this inmate population, only to be sidetracked. They died and believed that the tunnel of light was the enlightenment that they seek.
No. It’s just a trap. Avoid that trap. Do not try to become enlightened. Never try to become enlightened. Use the same skills for enlightenment to control your thoughts and focus your abilities.
I had to break from this for a spell. I have never experienced such a strong impassioned response before. (Not that I have many of these kinds of responses, but they all tend to be friendly – neutral. Not so…emotional.)
[7] Enlightenment and being service to self
Is enlightenment considered Service to Self?
Yes. It is a selfish action.
“There’s also the concept of the Bodhisattva who attains a high degree of self-mastery such that they could transcend, but choose not to in order to help others along the way. Such examples might be Christ or the Buddha in various incarnations.”
You do not need to obtain enlightenment, mastery or perfection in order to help others. You simply help them regardless of your current situation.
As it is functionally used, irregardless of what other potential it might possess, enlightenment is a means of tricking IS-BE's of high potential into the "Tunnel of Light" so that their memories can be erased, and they can be sent back to start all over again.
Enlightenment has never freed anyone from the Prison Complex. You must be aware of that reality.
After this response, I “felt the need” to put up this picture…
Robin Williams giving helpful advice to a fast food worker on her situation. A day or two later, he killed himself. You do not need to be enlightened in order to help others.
You do not need to be enlightened to help people.
[8] Why not just break the WHOLE machine?
“A great way to ruin the “harvest” would be to poison the crop, or break the machine. Perhaps the “elites” driving us toward destruction might be altruistic if they are trying to end all life on earth and throw a wrench in the gears. Why not destroy the entire earth system so that life here is not possible? Wouldn’t that free all IS-BEs?”
A fast and stunning response shot back to me most clearly…
This solution would be catastrophic for trillions of IS-BE's. All would have no memories except their current incarnation at the time of destruction.
They wouldn't know what to do.
Eventually a flood of (multiple) armies of the deranged evil IS-BE's could engulf this section of the galaxy with horrific consequences.
The neutral to good inmates would easily fall under their control. It would become a runaway train / domino effect / cascading of catastrophes that would run as a toxic cancer. It would envelope entire civilizations and societies and then run unchecked, one galaxy after the other.
And so I added…
In the movie Ghostbusters, bad or malevolent spirits and ghosts are captured and stored in a “containment grid” which was a device that held all the spirits in place. It was a field of electromagnetic energy that the spirits and ghosts could not break through.
Containment machine.
However there were forces that wanted to shut off the containment machinery. And, when the power was shut off from the containment grid, all of the stored spirits escaped and flew into New York City in mass…
Escaping spirits from Ghost-busters.
As they did so they created all sorts of problems.
The Governor of New York called up the the leadership and the National Guard, calling it a National Emergency of Biblical Proportions.
A National Emergency of Biblical Proportions.
Why not? Is he correct?
[9] Other extraction agents?
“Is there an official title for the robed Elders who have upwards of 20 000 other consciousnesses posted in the prison to act as extraction agents? Can this organization be considered as the same entourage of consciousnesses that are associated with either the IS-BE known as Sanat Kumara or the IS-BE known as Aetherius?”
The answer to this hit me quite fast and was unexpected. I didn’t even read the entire paragraph. I just skimmed over it. In fact, I wasn’t even fully ready to transcribe anything. I had to put my sandwich down and start typing away. I know that no one understands, but that’s what happened here.
There are all kinds of official titles for all the places, locations, people, operations, and positions of everyone. The titles are not in English. And there is no need to generate translations of titles for your use when your own names are already quite sufficient.Remember who you are. You are IS-BE. You define your world, your reality, and how you interact with it. You are GOD. You are the highest most important consciousness in everything.
(Pause. Then a continuation.)
There are numerous organizations that you refer to as "robed elders". Each one has a niche role in this Prison Environment.
(Then he starts listing. When listing, there is a sort of emphasis at the first syllable of the first word, so that I know that it is a new list item. I added numbers to help with the absorption of this information. The numbers were not provided in the transmission, but added by myself later on.)
[1] Some have been around for centuries and were initially established by Domain agents (in their spare time) as a pastime. We put an end to the unauthorized efforts around 1955. There are currently authorized efforts only, and it is a part of our overall grand strategy.[2] While other organizations were established by mischievous outsiders who find it enjoyable to play games with the inmates here. For them, it's like putting a leaf in a cage with a bored kitten. They find pleasure and enjoyment "toying" with the more active non-physical components of inmates. It's an activity of theirs. [3] Some have been established by well-meaning inmates that wanted to set up anti-Prison Operations, as a sort of like a form of warfare. It started out as a way to figure out what was going on and then evolved into something rather serious. Some of these kinds of "elders" have been around for many, many thousands of years. They have purpose. The questioner asked about one such organization.[4] Some were established by physical occult organizations from within the Prison population and has taken on a life of their own. These kinds of organizations are many. Some were created by accident. And some were created on purpose. One of the most famous (and prolific) occult leaders in your modern era was a man named Aleister Crowley and he was very active in creating some of these organizations in the non-physical worlds. Some spawned others, and some fractured and grew.[5] Some are part of the traps and snares that were established by the administration of the Prison Complex.These ones are very devious. They are run by Prison Correction Officers. Often autonomously.
[6] Some are the result of prayer and meditation leading up to quasi religious sponsored organizations that them "took on a life of their own". And operate with the highest intentions, often in ignorance, and suffering from the chains of dogma.
Each one goes by a name or group of names depending on who is dealing with them and why.
Their overall mix of intention is roughly...14% Sincere11% Mischievous24% Impassioned / religious22% Run by the Prison Complex as a snare / trap19% Accidentally spawned or grown on it's own.03% Initially set up by the Domain07% Misc
The numbers are REALLY difficult for me to nail down. So what I did was write them down as transmitted.
Then I discovered that they did not add up so I rounded them downwards to get numbers that made sense. I think that the commander was just pitching vague rough figures for illustrative purposes. The readers should not take these numbers as solid figures but as a guide to get a general feel for the kinds of organizations that are around, and the chances of one encountering one or the other.
We urge caution in dealing with all non-physical organizations.
There are many tricks and side-tracks that are purposely designed to put you in a dangerous situation. Then if you fail, you are then recycled, and your physical body dies in it's sleep. If you pass, then you go on to harder more aggressive "tests" and combat arenas. Eventually ALL IS-BE's return back to the "Tunnel of Light" and are recycled in this manner.This system is one of the most common ones used by the Prison Planet to trap those inmates with advanced skills for travel in the non-physical worlds.All IS-BE's should be very, very careful when dealing in the non-physical realm that lies inside of the Prison Confines. There are very dangerous and very complex traps purposely designed to snare the unprepared.
Then, out of the blue, about two days later this comes in.
The questioner has been involved in multiple groups. This is true even though it might appear to be a singular group authority.
At least one of them was a Corrections Officer sponsored group.
Often the "Old Empire" Corrections Officer groups disguise themselves (it's easy to do) and pretend to be another group.
As such they convince the IS-BE that they are what the IS-BE wishes / desires / wants /expects. Then they set up snare scenarios to trap the inmate. It is easy to trap such an inmate, as they are often singular and working alone.
Every caution must be taken. One should never perform dangerous actions or efforts in isolation. The risks are far too great.
Thoughts?
[10] Non-physical base monitoring traffic in and out of the Prison Complex?
“Is there an official title for the organization who maintain a permanent station in the non physical domain who are tasked with monitoring all inter-dimensional traffic coming into and out of the earth prison?”
Answers came quick. Clean.
There are multiple organizations, all working independently. The Domain, of course is one. The others are set up for their own purposes. You might think of them as regulatory agencies rather than customs officials.
Obviously the Domain has started monitoring the traffic when the fencing and monitoring mechanisms were damaged.
Some of the civilizations that (have been) dropping off their riff-raff to this environment have set up monitoring stations and platforms.
There is also a kind of constellation / data network / records system / archivist operation that monitors everything regarding this Prison Complex.
Additionally, note that even though the fencing surround this entire Prison Complex has been damaged it has not been obliterated. There are self-aware autonomous Prison systems still working, still monitoring, and still in communication with Mantids and Corrections Officers. (There are other creatures that are Corrections Officers as well as Mantids.)
Thoughts?
[11] Domain approved process for reporting targets …
“What is the Domain approved process for lucid dreamers to report targets they suspect with 100% surety as being part of the amnesia machinery when they are unable to provide exact coordinates?”
This one is complicated and I got a headache just trying to sort through all the inrush of data and stuff. I am still trying to sort it out in any kind of meaningful way. A big jumble and mess of data, concepts and information that I haven’t much experience on and cannot speak about clearly. So I will greatly simplify.
The EBP handles tracking and comm with the physical components of an IS-BE when they are attired in inmate "clothing". That is the primary purpose of the EBP. It is to completely monitor the physical person.
The non-physical comm and monitoring is another system completely. It is completely different.
Part of the Domain operations on the non-physical bodies is to release the chains of control by the Prison Administration. (Greatly simplified.) But part is something else as well. Depending on the person, other systems can be added or subtracted from the non-physical body of a given inmate.
One of the more substantive and comprehensive operations is a very complex procedure that permits tracking and recording abilities associated with a given non-physical body. Because of it's in-depth / invasive / critical infrastructure changes /alterations /dangers it is only used on the most important or critical non-physical bodies (A lot of things that I have no idea of. Simplified the response.) that have a need to be observed and monitored.This procedure is given to those that are active in "Lucid Dreaming" activities and related movements in the non-physical world that ALSO wish to participate with the Domain as a volunteer. If this occurs then the individual would experience a very strange "experience" (a bunch of concepts that I am at a loss to explain.) that would not appear to be like their normal "Lucid Dreaming" events. Instead they would be having operations performed on them, and then released. Then for the most part, their normal activities would continue as before, though they might start to get "nudges" or messages or directions. Which would be "coaching" / requests / advisement from the Domain handler to them. Their ability to understand what is going on takes time and there is no set training period for this activity.Afterwards they would not need to report anything. Their experiences would be monitored tracked, observed and noted.This is a unique procedure for unique assets. For most volunteers this is not necessary.
Is this reasonable?
[12] Suggestions or messages for escapees from the Prison Complex
“Are there any messages for those who have escaped the prison through lucid dreaming and retain much of their memories as an immortal consciousness ie as an IS-BE?”
Again this is quick and surprisingly short.
Keep in mind that as long as your physical body is alive, your consciousness will still be connected to it. The only way that you can escape this Prison Complex is to physical die within it.
Yet, when the physical body is dead, your IS-BE consciousness will still be connected to the non-physical body. For many, they will appear to be one and the same.
At that point, there are a small number of IS-BE's that [might] possess the skills to actually leave the Prison Complex. If they have that ability, we suggest that they request assistance from The Domain.
The Domain is the highest authority in this region. By requesting assistance, it is no different from calling the Fire Department, calling for an ambulance, or calling for the police. The IS-BE consciousness should have no fears or qualms about asking for support and assistance ever.
Call for help. That is what you must do, and wait for us to arrive.
What are your thoughts?
[13] Black-hole anomaly reference
“Do the Domain know about a black hole like “anomaly” that permeates through both physical and non physical worlds and has the potential to “decompose” such worlds”? This is hard to describe in Earth based language. From outside the prison it would be appear as a dark void that encompasses many of these non physical and physical worlds simultaneously.”
When I read this I got the impression of the Commander / handler sighing and looking up and thinking. Not that it actually happened, mind you, but that was the impression that I had.
And then this…
Ask this question later.
So then I waited… I waited all afternoon, had dinner and then I asked again. The response was like a tired old kindly grandfather or cherished uncle that only wants the best for you.
There are many things in space and the surrounding area that are unknown to the human inmates. This is in both the physical and the non-physical realms.
Some resemble a black-hole as you consider it. Others are something else entirely different. There are voids, and areas of occluded thought transference. There are many, many areas, and many such objects.
I would advise staying away from any objects or situations that you do not understand. This is for your own safety and to prevent you from being engulfed in a snare of the "old empire".
What are your thoughts?
[14] Any “consciousness” doping facilities?
“Are the Domain aware of “consciousness” doping facilities within the non physical planes where hypnotic commands for reality brainwashing are uploaded to the IS – BE via a type of screen?”
This was an interesting response. It was dismissive. And you all shouldn’t be taken aback by it. It’s just a response.
Yes. The Domain is aware of everything.
I am sure that this isn’t what the questioner wanted to hear. But this is all that I’ve got. Simple. Are you bothered by it?
[15] The “Wet Room”?
“Is the Domain familiar with a device known as “the Wet Room” which has the ability to “spin” a consciousness through multiple non physical worlds simultaneously and is used specifically to torture/ disorientate an IS-BE traveling outside their physical body?”
I had to read some writing on this and then re-read the question. The answer was slow in coming. Maybe too general. It was hesitating and sluggish.
IS-BE's can create anything by thought. It is common to create entire universes. But those that are inmates have forgotten this ability and the Prison Correction Officers use all sorts of devices and systems to control those in the non-physical environment.
This "wet room" is one such system. There are many, many more. Some are truly awful. You do not want to get involved in any of these traps, snare or devices if you can avoid them.
Additionally, evil people use the lack of understanding and knowledge of the IS-BE inmates to throw them into these devices of torture. Then they gleefully enjoy the agony, fear, pain and suffering that they witness.
One of the problems with this kind of third party communication is that the receiver” myself can only communicate ideas, thoughts, images and concepts that I am familiar with.
I had a very strong feeling that the Commander knew what was being asked, but was frustrated in that he couldn’t provide meaningful answers to me personally.
I suppose that were he talking to the principal questioner, he would be able to transmit ideas and answers much more readily. The Wet Room.
[16] Other escapees?
“Are the Domain aware of any IS – BEs, apart from their Officers mentioned in Alien Interview who were caught in one of the electronic traps and were able to escape?”
There was a kind of frustration in the “tone” to this response.
Others have escaped. This is true.
However, today it is very uncommon event.
Each time that there is an escape, the Warden (or his surrogates) creates a new system of preventative measures so that it will not happen again. Many of the escapes occurred early on after the system was built, and over time, with the addition of more snares, traps and systems, they became fewer and fewer.Any escapes are highly unlikely to occur without Domain assistance.
(Intentional pause. Then he continued...)
It is worth noting that when the first escapes began, at the start of the Prison Complex, the "Old Empire" needed to locate a militarized police force to patrol the region around the complex. And it was this arm of their space forces that we first battled when we entered this solar system. (Clear image of other actual military forces coming later.)
When the escapees were captured, they were re-injected into the Prison Complex and treated as "escaping offenders". This gave them "special treatment" by the Mantids. They were earmarked for tougher-than-usual difficulty in mapping out the pre-birth world-line template (sic) and much shorter cycling in reincarnation events. (Shorter lives on the earth, followed by a special "Hell" area located in "Heaven" made just for them and other escapees.)
This is a standard procedure by the (Mantid) Corrections Officers. The closer an inmate gets toward escaping, the more difficult his / her next reincarnated life will be. This is controlled by the Corrections Officers in "Heaven".Today the space surrounding all Prison Complexes, both the physical and the non-physical environments are filled with a minefield of traps and snares. They are multi-layered. We have begun cleaning out large swaths of "space" (sic. I don't know why he wanted me to add this notation.) with systems that we have developed just for this purpose, and it is a tedious and time consuming process.Part of the reason for this is that the traps and snares react only to inmates. Not to normal humans and other species.
What are your thoughts on this?
[17] How can an average Joe communicate with them? (Aside from communicating via MM)
I put this question out, and then sat by waiting for a response with my cup of coffee. As it is the way that I deal with these things. I then wait. While I was on another task (my personal journal) I felt the rising hair on the back of my neck (well, it’s like rising hair on the back of my neck. Not actually the same thing.) and switched over to record it.
I vocalized it again and then typed the response.
There is no need for an "average person" to contact us. We have everything under control and in place.
It might appear to be cold and heartless, it's just our efficiency. If we need to contract you, you will be contacted.
What is important is that everyone who works with us follows the rules and obeys the procedures. The Domain works as a unified whole and a "well oiled" organism. We need people who wish to be part of this unified whole, and not a bunch of college hooligans out for a Saturday lark. (I get the strong image of a box of kittens running all over the carpet.)
(Followed by an equally strong image of a group of college students riding in a distressed model "A" with words written all over the car, and the guys wearing strange white and black shoes, striped long sleeve sweaters with sewn on letters, and the girls wearing skirts and holding triangular pennants. I get the impression that the Domain Officer must have spent some time on the Earth in the "Roaring 20's".)
If and when you are contacted by, need to communicate with, or participate in any kind of interaction with us, it is important that you remain calm.
Do not allow your thoughts to take you to bad places.
These are fears set up by the many many layers of the Prison Planet system of control. You will find that working with us is very efficient and satisfying, and that we will be able to assist you in the recovery of so many things that you have lost.
(I think that he was talking to the questioner directly in this response. Not in generalities though me.)
Interesting.
[18] How can I detect and possibly circumvent the Old Empire aesthetic mechanisms to keep us enslaved to the physical environment?
I felt that this was a good question, and the Domain Commander agreed. The answer came forth readily without hesitation.
The typical consciousness will easily be drawn into the snares and the traps. This is far truer today than say 20 or even 40 years ago. Most inmates have become accustomed to manipulation to such a degree that they cannot recognize what is going on. This is on all levels, from the physical to the non-physical.
The best equipped to avoid the snares are those with the ability to control their thoughts, and who are very cautious and focused on end goals. Those that are not easily distracted, or manipulated by strange new events will be those best able to avoid the traps.
That being said, the traps and snares are very devious and cunning. It is unlikely that anyone can avoid them without help and assistance.
That is why there are numerous non-physical organizations. Such as "elders", "leaders", "Prophets", and the like occupying roles in the non-physical reality. The purpose of these organizations is to assist and muster groups of IS-BE consciousnesses to fundamentally fight, or avoid the traps set up by the "Old Empire" prison administrators.
Unfortunately, many of the organizations are not effective enough. Their efforts have had a very minor impact on the entrapment mechanisms of the Prison Complex.
We ask everyone who works with us to focus on controlling your thoughts. Avoiding areas of danger. And helping others in need. When the time comes for your egress from the prison system, we will be there assisting you. All you need to do is call for us.
Could it be that some of the inventions of the last few decades have become traps and snares themselves? Like social media?
[19] Can they teach us how is to live and work as citizens of the Domain?
I only just glanced at this question and got a definite answer.
Yes. Absolutely.
All imprisoned IS-BE's once they regain their memories will desire to return to people, places and things that they know.
For many of them, not all, but a high percentage of them, this will mean returning to the geographic confines of the (former) "Old Empire".
But they will be quite different (from what they once were, and from their former friends) given their experiences in the Prison Complex.
We will always be willing to accept rehabilitated prison inmates of this harsh environment into The Domain. And to this end we are working on rehabilitation plans and systems just for this express purpose.
Rehabilitation is necessary, first to reacquire an IS-BE identity, and secondary to re-enter the IS-BE community as a whole. All inmates will have been damaged by their relentless tortures in the Hell that is the Prison Complex.
(Message addendum.)
Keep in mind that the (former) "Old Empire" is now the De Facto territory of The Domain. So that makes any released inmates automatically members of The Domain.
However this is not what the questioner asked. They wanted to know if they will be able to have a substantive ROLE as an ACTIVE member of The Domain rather than just a citizen under it's authority. And the question is, of course, yes.
What are your thoughts on this?
[20] How dangerous are the traps that surround the Prison Complex?
I know that they are pretty dangerous. But I figured that I would ask just how dangerous. You know, maybe just thrown back in, or perhaps something very lethal to IS-BE’s right? So I thought that I would ask.
This is the answer.
Check your cell phone.
WTF?
I turned it on, and when my Douxing (Chinese version of TicTok) turned on and opened up. This is the first video that it displayed. An interesting coincidence.
It’s pretty amazing how this coincidence came up.
[21] Anchoring to a time-line?
This was asked while I was very busy with personal issues. So, I plopped it down and then left it be until I could get around to it. When I had a chance I got straight to it. Tuning in was calm, smooth and easy. Though I really didn’t understand the question well-enough, the answers just flowed forth.
“Not sure if you’ll read this as it’s an old post. I got hit by a car, “died”, and got shunted into this almost perfectly similar reality except for a few changes. Mandela effects flip flopped for a while.”
Would The Domain be able to explain what technology/process is involved in anchoring us to a body & timeline?
Mandela effects, anchoring, world-line cross overs, and all other aspects of these strange events are unique to the prison environment that you inhabit. You refer to it as the MWI. It is an artificial construct. It is not the way the true universe works, only the universe that you live in.
The creation of this universe is very detailed and very complex, and it is unique to the understanding of the group of IS-BE's that created it. They obviously spent much time working on it, developing it, and honing it to a degree of perfection.
Usually, IS-BE's are so enraptured with the pleasures of the physical body that they lose contact with their "spiritual" (sic) side in the non-physical and they forget what abilities that they have. Obviously this was not the case during the fabrication, construction and design of this prison facility. Some mighty (major) skill sets were called into being (use).
The Domain is in the process of studying this system. Each day are new surprises. We have been working with the [technical helpers] to discover it's operation and design. From which we would be able to extract any traps, snare, or problems that lie hidden.
Anchoring to a time-line, world-line interactions, and everything associated with it is unique to this prison environment. Certainly we understand the need to anchor groups of consciousnesses. It's like herding cattle. You cannot have them all over the place and clumping up. And this was a technique that we developed over time as we became familiar with this environment. It is not totally well understood.
Anchoring is one of the containment systems used by the administration of this Prison Complex. They use it to herd inmates. Thus they can control them, and move them towards wars and conflicts that will result in the inmates expending all of their energies on wasted endeavors. Thus, and such that they will be unable to concentrate on anything else.
Remember that the entire Prison Complex is designed to have war, after war, after war. It's designed to be a Hell. Where the inmates are tortured over and over. Then forget everything, are re-injected, and then relive the same kinds of events.
The Domain is using this system to avoid wars, conflicts and turmoil. Though, there are many, many strong forces inside the Prison Complex pushing towards this goal aggressively.
MM uses the visualization method of a three-dimensional map. It is extremely helpful, but not wholly accurate.
The actual environment is like a hot cauldron full of all sorts of things. (Food, stew, meat, eggs, tentacles, etc.) Anchoring is similar to turning the knob on the temperature control.
Anchoring to avoid conflict is similar to turning down the heat on the cauldron. All of the items settle. Some sink to the bottom, while others float to the top.
Anchoring to create conflict is similar to turning up the heat on the cauldron. All the items start to toss and turn as the mixture boils. During this period, there is a lot of steam, and smoke and evaporation. And the volume of the cauldron decreases.
If you think of the volume to be the prison population inside of the Prison Complex, then you can see that the anchoring towards wars will decrease the actual prison population inside of the physical realm. Many will die off. And thus got to "Heaven" to be forgiven, forget their memories, and "rewarded" with a break. Then the cycle begins again.
This is why The Domain has had operatives anchor world lines. They acted as a method of controlling the temperature of that cauldron.
(Pause)
Anchoring to a world-line template is of a different scope than group anchoring efforts. Much of what the Domain has been involved in has been group anchoring efforts to control "the temperature" of the "cauldron stew".
What you are asking about is what happens when you are following a normal progression on a world-line template. Then there is an "event" where somehow your IS-BE consciousness "skips" and slides to a totally different template. Then, perhaps, skips and slides to another one, and then again, and maybe again, and again.
This is a big subject...
I needed to take a break and a breather. I had the impression that I was about to get a massive dose of information.
So I said “tone it down please”.
And got up, went downstairs and got my self a coke from the vending machine.
If you use the 3D template map concept that MM promotes then the best way to visualize this as a railroad line going from one world-line to the next. It's currently visualized as a plain and simple line. But if you visualize it as a railroad line it might be easier to understand.
While the topographic surface is the strongest likelihood of movement, it is not all the options available. There's "tracks" going up and above, and "tracks" going down below.
These are equivalent to "nearby slides".
If you can imagine world-line template maps stacked upon each other like a layered cake, and that an event occurs that has you make you slide up or down into a different layer in that cake, that is what is going on.
Sometimes the "event" is so traumatic that you slide to a different world-line template. One near by, of course, but not exactly the same as the one proceeding it.
In effect, you are not just simply moving from world-lien to world-line, but you are actually sliding up or down on the Z-axis as well.
In general, if this happens, the chances are that you momentarily slid to a pre-birth (default) world-line template when the "event" occurred. As you must have somehow altered your existing template in your past and have been riding it for some time on your own autonomously.
Then, when your "components" tried to latch on to the the highest probability relationship items / components /vectors it threw you off, and you ended up on a different template, and again and again, until the "components" resettled with highest-probability fits based on the thoughts associated with you at the moment of the "event".
I have no idea what the last part is about. I have to reread it a couple of times to figure it out. I think that the “components” of our consciousness ties us to the templates that we inhabit.
And thus the selection of the pre-birth world-line template must somehow tie our IS-BE consciousness with a particular world-line.
Thus, when an “event” happens, that connection can be disrupted… until it resettles.
Not every “event” is physical only. Non-physical events happen and scar our non-physical bodies.
[22] Why/how is our awareness prevented from carrying through to the dreamworld?
“I know the body is checking for movement and thoughts and will not enter sleep until the mind has blanked out, it’s an obvious “feature” built in for control.”
This is an intentionally engineered "interrupting" feature of the inmate prison body and how it differs from that of a "normal" human archetype body that lies outside of the Prison Complex.
The physical body is intentionally designed to NOT communicate or travel when sleeping.
However, this is a developing function. It does not appear immediately. It is a feature that "grows" over time. It's an intelligent feature.
This function acquires experiences, and sensory input as the IS-BE is born in the physical reality.
Then over time, this intelligent biological alteration manifests. By the time the entity is five to seven years old, most of the population will be unable to communicate with the "dreamworld" (sic).
However, it is not a perfect system.
Certain IS-BE's of strong character and ability, as well as strong environments that foster the belief of the spirit-world as a familial norm, can avoid this biological and non-physical layer of interruption. The entity as a person can learn to be able to have "Lucid Dreams", and "Astral Projection" as well as many other skills that are denied the vast humanity that is imprisoned.
Since this is a developed "growth" that is acquired over time, it is possible to destroy that "growth", alter it's composition or destroy it entirely. This can occur by directed thought, skilled intention, and practice.
Since the vast majority of inmates do not have this ability, this system of control is effective in the Prison Complex.
What are your thoughts on this?
[23] Why is astral projection hard to achieve while awake?
Strangely this response happened very quickly. I don’t even think I got a chance to take a breath.
It’s really a lot of work doing this you know. I feel very “speedy” (a LSD reference for your children of the 70’s and 80’s). My body and hair are getting exhausted from being so electrified, and my body temperature is running rather hot. I am bathed in sweat.
Sensory overload. Your engineering physical body is unable to partition out multiple consciousnesses like the IS-BE can. Thus, you must rely on a singular consciousness to manifest events.
If you want to conduct astral projection then you will need to be able to separate your physical senses from your non-physical sensing ability.
This is a normal feature of all physical human bodies, and is not an engineered feature of the inmate prison body.
What are your thoughts on this question and answer?
[24] Why do memories from astral/dreams not carry over easily?
He continues. And my keyboard is getting slippery with all the sweat from my fingers.
Memories are stored outside of the physical body. When a physical body accesses the memories they access what can be be described as RAM. It's the everyday use memories.
This varies from person to person. Some have an easier time accessing the day to day memories. Other have a difficult time, and still others with a photographic memory remember everything.
You can remember what you had for breakfast today simply because you are using local memory. Your inmate container allows this random access of everyday memories.
The same is true with your memories of what happened one year ago.
All these memories are stored on (something similar to the computer memory system known as) "RAM".
Normally, all "normal" (unmodifed) human bodies permit access to a central repository of memories. This is equivalent to a "hard drive".
Not inmates however.
The engineered inmate bodies have blocked access to the "hard drive" that contains all of the memories that you as a IS-BE has.
This ability was not only erased by the "brain washing" efforts upon entry to the Prison Planet, but access to it is not physically possible in the physical inmate (engineered) body. The entire access circuitry is ripped out.
When you, as an IS-BE exist as consciousness from the physical reality to the non-physical reality, your memories (and experiences) are being recorded and they go straight to the "hard drive".
But when you are in the physical body, they go into RAM and the "hard drive".
Inmates are never permitted to access the "hard drive" memory circuitry. Only RAM. It's biologically engineered into all inmates.
However, when an inmate "dies" and leaves the physical "general population" and gets rewarded with a "Heaven", he or she can access these "hard drive" memories by permission. A Corrections Officer (usually a Mantid) will accompany you to a "viewing area" where certain memories will be presented to you to observe.
However, that is only for inmates.
All unmodified humans do not have this problem and can access both types of memories in real time with no problem whether they are in a physical body or not.
So, in a way, you can access some of your memories. So it’s not all bad.
[25] Is this related to the memory wipe that our memories are so poor now, or biology/soul interaction?
And this came fast as well…
It is engineered in all inmate bodies.
“With the timeline I’m sure we can shift to a completely alternate reality with a new history but I’m unsure of the process involved. And yeah, thought dump sorry, I just see these bodies are actively designed to stop us leaving in soul form.”
You can only use the skills associated with world-line , time -line travel to MWI events within the prison universe; the Prison Complex. Your thoughts will not take you out of the Prison Complex alone. That is why the entire complex is constructed as it is today.
It is unlikely that you can create a universe (via a alternative reality slide) within a universe that controls the construction of your being.
The science fiction movie “Inception” comes to mind.
(A bunch of "chatter" and a confusing mix about stuff related to "time travel" to a point in time before the construction of the Prison Planet, and other things that I am having a bunch of time understanding. I think that I a just getting tired.)
Guys, I appreciate all this input, but really. Please don’t pull a “Back to school” Rodney Dangerfield on me.
These last five questions by one person just about killed me.
It makes me just want to stop and end MM completely. Have a heart and some compassion here. Please everyone, one or two questions only. These five to eight questions in a single go is not tenable. It is not something that I want to do and it is personally very, very difficult for me to handle. To give you all an idea what it is like, then do this; Grab a screwdriver and stick it in a power outlet. Now, keep putting it in that outlet for six hours.
That’s what it’s like.
When I refer to Rodney Dangerfield, “Back to School”, I am referring to a singular scene. Where the one professor gives him one singular question.
It’s just that it has these massive 64 parts. Poor Rodney answers, “concerning part 63b, subpart d, section R-12, part 14″…
It’s tiring and takes a lot out of me. Christ. I need a drink!
Back to school.
[26] There must be flaws in the system where we can throw that anchor off somehow?
The questions continue…
Yes, there are flaws, but they are very difficult to locate, and even harder to exploit.
Enough! I’m toast. No more questions. This is more than enough for one person.
…
After a break of two days, I sat down and added these questions from someone else…
[27] My question is why the “caste system”.
“Why do the type-1 have different roles, ranks, bodies, and even abilities. Unlike the mantids they use physical bodies and are limited to the limits of time and space. STO all have the same soul structure from my understanding which are different from STS. Why this? Could you please clarify.”
Everyone is an IS-BE. Everyone is thus capable of any position within any society. That includes the Domain.
The members of the Domain have roles within society based upon their abilities, and capabilities. We have a very rigorous method of merit that determines where an IS-BE "fits" within our society.
Certainly anyone can rise to become whatever class they want. It is not a rigid caste structure. It is a hybrid class structure. The only limitations are those of the IS-BE itself.
A goose cannot swim under the water, but with practice it can take longer and longer periods of time under water as needed. By practice, the goose can indeed start to swim somewhat under water. It just takes effort and drive and ambition. However, most geese do not try to swim under the water to their roles are locked in, like a caste, to floating on the water and flying. That is what they prefer.
Now, to achieve the class rating that they want, the IS-BE must get to that position through hard work, determination and merit. In the case of the goose, it must try and try and practice and practice. It must do this over and over again until it is adept at swimming under the water.
With each class are certain "benefits" or "allowances" granted to the IS-BE. Such as the ability to use certain doll bodies and so on and so forth.
(New subject.)
Note that all members of The Domain are inherently neutral in sentience.
However the accumulation of experiences manifests in the desire to serve the society; The Domain, to the best of one's ability.
This is because of the way the society is structured. In societies that grant roles based on effort, then all efforts (in all societies) eventually evolve into Service to Others sentience.
Those societies that are not based on merit, hard work, community, or effort tend to evolve into Service to Self sentience's. The more corruption, graft, crime, corruption, the more selfish the society becomes.
Thus, because of this, the vast majority of IS-BE's in The Domain are Service for Others sentience.
Any thoughts on this answer?
[28] And volunteering to work with the domain?
“Would this mean a harder life (experiences) or what would you really be doing?”
No. In many ways it could be much easier.
The questioner is dealing with many non-physical issues that reflect how his reality manifests. By working with The Domain, many of those non-physical issues can be suppressed or even completely eliminated.
Every action that one takes has tradeoffs.
For many inmates, joining the Domain adds an extra layer of effort that one might not desire. Such as MM here.
However, for those, such as the questioner, the benefits of working with the Domain far outweigh any of the negative issues. It is all about tradeoffs.
Any thoughts on this?
Some final thoughts leading up to question [29]
You know, these answers bring up so many questions for me personally.
You see, I as MM was in MAJestic and in my interactions I fully came to understand the topography of the MWI Prison Complex.
I came to understand how the Prison Planet works in great detail.
However, from these answers, it is clear that this kind of knowledge is not available to The Domain. They are having a great deal of difficulty in figuring out all the layers, the traps the systems and so on and so forth.
The Domain captured this geographic region. However, they do not know how the Prison Planet works.
From the answers (here and before) it appears that it is possible that I know (perhaps, and I am only saying) more than The Domain does about this Prison Planet.
I understand how it works and the many, many layers and how to navigate inside of it, and so much more. Right? Are these things that I just casually picked up in all my slides and adventures? What are these “things” that I somehow understand in great clarity?
Well, whatever they are, these are things that are unique to The Prison Planet.
Not to The Domain.
Not to the universe outside of the Prison Planet. Only inside the Prison Planet.
The Commander and all the workers in The Domain know many, many things. But they DO NOT know the structure and the architecture of this complex. They need to know it in order to turn off the suppression and monitoring equipment. And so they are enlisting me to help them.
Why ME?
Was it just that I had the right education and the right background and the right place and time and coincidentally it all fell into place when I joined the United States Navy? As this is what I have believed all these years. But then again… there is no such thing as coincidences.
Do you see what I am saying?
Perhaps my involvement in MAJestic goes far deeper than what I had been made aware of.
Perhaps I, myself an a reincarnated kind of aide or assistant, or architect or something or the other. Maybe I am somehow tied with some “Old Empire” skills, knowledge.
Maybe, you know…
… it was like what happened in the Ancient China. When an Emperor had his treasure tomb built, he then killed all the workers who built it, and then buried his architects in the tomb with him so that the secrets of the tomb will never see the light of day.
Maybe that is what happened.
I am not saying that I am this person or something like that. Not at all.
But it does seem really odd to me, and as these Q&A responses flush out I find myself asking these questions more and more often. Why do I know so much more about the inner workings of the Prison Planet MWI than The Domain Commander assigned to this area?
From the movie “The Matrix”; The Architect is a highly specialized, humorless program of the Machine world as well as the creator of the Matrix. As the chief administrator of the system, he is possibly a collective manifestation, or at the very least a virtual representation of the entire Machine mainframe.
What is the story?
And so, it’s really one of those moments “of truth”. You know.
What the Hell is going on?
I put it off for a day, but I just couldn’t wait. I had to ask.
…
On Sunday 26SEP21 after I had a bowl or home-made chicken noodle soup, I asked the question.
[29] Who am I? Who is MM?
And the answer came back swift and clear.
Mades Escapalion
…
…
…
Thoughts?
Do you want more?
You can find many more videos in my “Extraterrestrial Species index” over here…
This article deals with one of the most important fundamental aspects of the fence that surround this “Prison Planet” environment. Which is the idea that the inmates reside within specially modified bodies that are designed in such a way that they can never leave the fenced in prison compound.
Basic fundamentals
The earth is a Prison Planet.
The Domain is trying to change that role to that of a rehabilitation area instead. Which I have repeatedly referred to as a “Sentience Nursery“.
This is what DM said about this…
...the Grand Elder told me that people stuck on earth (ie those who were not evil service to self oriented) would be flicked over to a “buffer” rehabilitation “reality” specifically to detox them from all the virtual reality (brainwashing) dependancies they had come to rely on whilst under the control of the Cabal (Old Empire).
All of this information (regarding this) has been detailed elsewhere on MM.
Now, due to it’s excessive size, complexity and length, it’s best that if you do not understand what is going on…
… it might be best for you to leave and go elsewhere. This article is likely to be way, way over your head.
Key principles
Actually, the idea that the earth (along with it’s solar system and four / five other solar systems) are all part of a Prison Complex should not be too difficult to understand.
The earth.
Additionally, the idea that the entire Prison Complex is much like the artificial-reality that is described within the movie The Matrix shouldn’t be that difficult to understand either.
What we think of as “reality” is in fact, an artificial construct that we think is real.
The key idea being that there is the true and actual reality, and at some point in time, a society known as “The Old Empire” created a Prison system for it’s criminals. This prison system is an artificial reality. Just like in the movie The Matrix.
This prison system is an artificial reality.
Where in the movie “The Matrix” the people can move in and out of the artificial reality by a system of electronics (such as a phone call that simulates a change in electronic manipulation)…
Moving in and out of the matrix.
…it is different in this Prison Complex.
The differences…
All and any IS-BE consciousness can enter the electro-magnetic force field at will. They can also leave it at will as well.
After all, there are many vehicles from The Domain and others that come in this Prison Environment all the time and they are able to come and go at will.
All manner of extraterrestrials can come and go in and out of this prison environment at will. Why not the inmates?
But…
…once you are designated as an inmate, your entire “self” is erased, and you are provided with a new body (system) to inhabit.
And this new body has been modified in such a way that it cannot leave the Prison Complex ever. It is sort of like having a product or software with certain features blanked out.
Appliance manufacturers make feature-omitted versions of their products to differentiate for product placement in stores.
Since you have a new body that is unable to act, behave and respond like the old body did, you are not trapped in a feature-reduced or retarded body. As such, the warden and the prison system controls everything that you have.
Everything.
In the movie the Matrix, the character Neo is shown that the system can control his actions and movements at well. This include preventing him from yelling for help or screaming.
This article talks about the differences between the “normal” human body, and the body used by inmates. We also discuss the different types or levels of a body, and what The Domain is doing to them for the irregular volunteers.
Human bodies are all over the universe
The first thing that you all must remember is that there is no such thing as evolution.
The Domain (or whatever preceded it) manufactured every type of creature that we know of.
And humans, as one such creature, is a dominant biological template that lies everywhere all over the universe. (Not THE dominant template, but one of the more common templates for a “Sun Type 12, Class 7 planet”.)
The following are extracts from “Alien Interview parsing of comments deemed trillions of years old” HERE…
"The origins of this universe and life on Earth, as discussed in the textbooks I have read, are very inaccurate. Since you serve your government as a medical personnel, your duties require that you understand biological entities. So, I am sure that you will appreciate the value of the material I will share with you today.
The text of books I have been given on subjects related to the function of life forms contain information that is based on false memories, inaccurate observation, missing data, unproven theories, and superstition.
…
The correct information about the origins of biological entities has been erased from your mind, as well as from the minds of your mentors. In order to help you regain your own memory, I will share with you some factual material concerning the origin of biological entities.
I asked Airl if she was referring to the subject of evolution. Airl said, "No, not exactly".
You will find "evolution" mentioned in the ancient Vedic Hymns. The Vedic texts are like folk tales or common wisdoms and superstitions gathered throughout the systems of The Domain. These were compiled into verses, like a book of rhymes. For every statement of truth, the verses contain as many half-truths, reversals of truth and fanciful imaginings, blended without qualification or distinction.
The theory of evolution assumes that the motivational source of energy that animates every life form does not exist. It assumes that an inanimate object or a chemical concoction can suddenly become "alive" or animate accidentally or spontaneously.
Or, perhaps an electrical discharge into a pool of chemical ooze will magically spawn a self- animated entity.
There is no evidence whatsoever that this is true, simply because it is not true. Dr. Frankenstein did not really resurrect the dead into a marauding monster, except in the imagination of the IS-BE who wrote a fictitious story one dark and stormy night.
No Western scientist ever stopped to consider who, what, where, when or how this animation happens. Complete ignorance, denial or unawareness of the spirit as the source of life force required to animate inanimate objects or cellular tissue is the sole cause of failures in Western medicine.
In addition, evolution does not occur accidentally. It requires a great deal of technology which must be manipulated under the careful supervision of IS-BEs. Very simple examples are seen in the modification of farm animals or in the breeding of dogs. However, the notion that human biological organisms evolved naturally from earlier ape-like forms is incorrect. No physical evidence will ever be uncovered to substantiate the notion that modern humanoid bodies evolved on this planet.
The reason is simple: the idea that human bodies evolved spontaneously from the primordial ooze of chemical interactivity in the dim mists of time is nothing more than a hypnotic lie instilled by the amnesia operation to prevent your recollection of the true origins of Mankind. Factually, humanoid bodies have existed in various forms throughout the universe for trillions of years.
The following are extracts from Alien Interview deemed billions of years old from HERE…
I can relate part of this history from personal experience:
Many billions of years ago I was a member of a very large biological laboratory in a galaxy far from this one. It was called the "Arcadia Regeneration Company". I was a biological engineer working with a large staff of technicians. It was our business to manufacture and supply new life forms to uninhabited planets. There were millions of star systems with millions of inhabitable planets in the region at that time.
There were many other biological laboratory companies at that time also. Each of them specialized in producing different kinds of life forms, depending on the "class" of the planet being populated. Over a long span of time these laboratories developed a vast catalogue of species throughout the galaxies. The majority of basic genetic material is common to all species of life. Therefore, most of their work was concerned with manipulating alterations of the basic genetic pattern to produce variations of life forms that would be suitable inhabitants for various planetary classes.
The "Arcadia Regeneration Company" specialized in mammals for forested areas and birds for tropical regions. Our marketing staff negotiated contracts with various planetary governments and independent buyers from all over the universe. The technicians created animals that were compatible with the variations in climate, atmospheric and terrestrial density and chemical content. In addition we were paid to integrate our specimens with biological organisms engineered by other companies already living on a planet.
In order to do this our staff was in communication with other companies who created life forms. There were industry trade shows, publications and a variety of other information supplied through an association that coordinated related projects.
As you can imagine, our research required a great deal of interstellar travel to conduct planetary surveys. This is when I learned my skills as a pilot. The data gathered was accumulated in huge computer databases and evaluated by biological engineers.
A computer is an electronic device that serves as an artificial "brain" or complex calculating machine. It is capable of storing information, making computations, solving problems and performing mechanical functions. In most of the galactic systems of the universe, very large computers are commonly used to run the routine administration, mechanical services and maintenance activities of an entire planet or planetary system.
Based on the survey data gathered, designs and artistic renderings were made for new creatures. Some designs were sold to the highest bidder. Other life forms were created to meet the customized requests of our clients.
The design and technical specifications were passed along an assembly line through a series of cellular, chemical, and mechanical engineers to solve the various problems. It was their job to integrate all of the component factors into a workable, functional and aesthetic finished product.
Prototypes of these creatures were then produced and tested in artificially created environments. Imperfections were worked out, modifications made and eventually the new life form was "endowed" or "animated" with a life force or spiritual energy before being introduced into the actual planetary environment for final testing.
After a new life form was introduced, we monitored the interaction of these biological organisms with the planetary environment and with other indigenous life-forms. Conflicts resulting from the interaction between incompatible organisms were resolved through negotiation between ourselves and other companies. The negotiations usually resulted in compromises requiring further modification to our creatures or to theirs or both. This is part of a science or art you call "Eugenics".
In some cases changes were made in the planetary environment, but not often, as planet building is much more complex than making changes to an individual life form.
…
What you see now on Earth is the huge variety of life forms left behind. Your scientists believe that the fallacious "theory of evolution" is an explanation for the existence of all the life forms here. The truth is that all life forms on this and any other planet in this universe were created by companies like ours.
How else can you explain the millions of completely divergent and unrelated species of life on the land and in the oceans of this planet? How else can you explain the source of spiritual animation which defines every living creature? To say it is the work of "god", is far too broad. Every IS-BE has many names and faces in many times and places. Every IS-BE is a god. When they inhabit a physical object they are the source of Life.
For example, there are millions of species of insects. About 350,000 of these are species of beetles. There may be as many as 100 million species of life forms on Earth at any given time. In addition, there are many times more extinct species of life on Earth than there are living life forms. Some of these will be rediscovered in the fossil or geological records of Earth.
The current "theory of evolution" of life forms on Earth does not consider the phenomena of biological diversity. Evolution by natural selection is science fiction. One species does not accidentally, or randomly evolve to become another species, as the Earth textbooks indicate, without manipulation of genetic material by an IS-BE.
…
Factually, some organisms on Earth, such as Proteobacteria, are modifications of a Phylum designed primarily for "Star Type 3, Class C" planets. In other words, The Domain designation for a planet with an anaerobic atmosphere nearest a large, intensely hot blue star, such as those in the constellation of Orion's Belt in this galaxy.
Creating life forms is very complex, highly technical work for IS-BEs who specialize in this field. Genetic anomalies are very baffling to Earth biologists who have had their memory erased. Unfortunately, the false memory implantations of the "Old Empire" prevent Earth scientists from observing obvious anomalies.
The greatest technical challenge of biological organisms was the invention of self- regeneration, or sexual reproduction. It was invented as the solution to the problem of having to continually manufacture replacement creatures for those that had been destroyed and eaten by other creatures. Planetary governments did not want to keep buying replacement animals.
The idea was contrived trillions of years ago as a result of a conference held to resolve arguments between the disputing vested interests within the biotechnology industry. The infamous "Council of Yuhmi-Krum" was responsible for coordinating creature production.
A compromise was reached, after certain members of the Council were strategically bribed or murdered, to author an agreement which resulted in the biological phenomenon which we now call the "food chain".
The idea that a creature would need to consume the body of another life form as an energy source was offered as a solution by one of the biggest companies in the biological engineering business. They specialized in creating insects and flowering plants.
The connection between the two is obvious. Nearly every flowering plant requires a symbiotic relationship with an insect in order to propagate. The reason is obvious: both the bugs and the flowers were created by the same company. Unfortunately, this same company also had a division which created parasites and bacteria.
The name of the company roughly translated into English would be "Bugs & Blossoms" . They wanted to justify the fact that the only valid purpose of the parasitic creatures they manufactured was to aid the decomposition of organic material. There was a very limited market for such creatures at that time.
In order to expand their business they hired a big public relations firm and a powerful group of political lobbyists to glorify the idea that life forms should feed from other life forms. They invented a "scientific theory" to use as a promotion gimmick. The theory was that all creatures needed to have "food" as a source of energy. Before that, none of the life forms being manufactured required any external energy. Animals did not eat other animals for food, but consumed sunlight, minerals or vegetable matter only.
Of course, "Bugs & Blossoms" went into the business of designing and manufacturing carnivores. Before long, so many animals were being eaten as food that the problem of replenishing them became very difficult. As a 'solution', "Bugs & Blossoms" proposed, with the help of some strategically placed bribes in high places, that other companies begin using 'sexual reproduction' as the basis for replenishing life-forms. "Bugs & Blossoms" was the first company to develop blueprints for sexual reproduction, of course.
As expected, the patent licenses for the biological engineering process required to implant stimulus-response mating, cellular division and pre-programmed growth patterns for self-regenerating animals were owned by "Bugs & Blossoms" too.
Through the next few million years laws were passed that required that these programs be purchased by the other biological technology companies. These were required to be imprinted into the cellular design of all existing life- forms. It became a very expensive undertaking for other biotechnology companies to make such an awkward, and impractical idea work.
This led to the corruption and downfall of the entire industry. Ultimately, the 'food and sex' idea completely ruined the bio-technology industry, including "Bugs & Blossoms". The entire industry faded away as the market for manufactured life forms disappeared. Consequently, when a species became extinct, there is no way to replace them because the technology of creating new life forms has been lost. Obviously, none of this technology was ever known on Earth, and probably never will be.
There are still computer files on some planets far from here which record the procedures for biological engineering. Possibly the laboratories and computers still exist somewhere. However, there is no one around doing anything with them. Therefore, you can understand why it is so important for The Domain to protect the dwindling number of creatures left on Earth.
The core concept behind 'sexual reproduction' technology was the invention of a chemical/electronic interaction called "cyclical stimulus-response generators". This is an programmed genetic mechanism which causes a seemingly spontaneous, recurring impulse to reproduce. The same technique was later adapted and applied to biological flesh bodies, including Homo Sapiens.
Another important mechanism used in the reproductive process, especially with Homo Sapiens type bodies, is the implantation of a "chemical-electrical trigger" mechanism in the body. The "trigger" which attracts IS-BEs to inhabit a human body, or any kind of "flesh body", is the use of an artificially imprinted electronic wave which uses "aesthetic pain" to attract the IS-BE.
Every trap in the universe, including those used to capture IS-BEs who remain free, is "baited" with an aesthetic electronic wave.
The sensations caused by the aesthetic wavelength are more attractive to an IS-BE than any other sensation. When the electronic waves of pain and beauty are combined together, this causes the IS-BE to get "stuck" in the body.
The "reproductive trigger" used for lesser life forms, such as cattle and other mammals, is triggered by chemicals emitted from the scent glands, combined with reproductive chemical- electrical impulses stimulated by testosterone, or estrogen.
These are also interactive with nutrition levels which cause the life form to reproduce more when deprived of food sources. Starvation promotes reproductive activity as a means of perpetuating survival through future regenerations, when the current organism fails to survive. These fundamental principles have been applied throughout all species of life.
The debilitating impact and addiction to the "sexual aesthetic-pain" electronic wave is the reason that the ruling class of The Domain do not inhabit flesh bodies. This is also why officers of The Domain Forces only use doll bodies. This wave has proven to be the most effective trapping device ever created in the history of the universe, as far as I know.
The civilizations of The Domain and the "Old Empire" both depend on this device to "recruit" and maintain a work force of IS-BEs who inhabit flesh bodies on planets and installations. These IS-BEs are the "working class" beings who do all of the slavish, manual, undesirable work on planets.
Thus, the human archetype is a creation of The Domain, or a precursor to it. And it is located throughout the universe.You will find people who look like “everyday” humans, big and old, fat and thin, beautiful and ugly, all over the universe.
Various IS-BE’s can control humans by exposing them to the addiction of the “sexual aesthetic-pain” desires of the human form.
Earth Prison Complex Bodies are unique
However, while the “sexual aesthetic-pain” desires can snare and entangle a given IS-BE…
…a different system must be employed to keep them tethered to a specific geographic region.
Much like clipping off the wings of a bird, or foot binding of attractive wives, or a chain around a slaves neck would do. This Prison Complex utilizes a very special kind of fence. One that ONLY reacts to the movement of inmates.
The Prison Planet has a very special fence that surrounds it.
Apparently that is what happened in the creation of this “Prison Complex”.
There were alterations to the human (and other species that also serve as prison vehicles) that prevent them from ever leaving the Prison Complex. I argue that the alterations revolve around all elements of a human body. And this includes the physical body as well as the non-physical bodies.
The make up of a body
If you study any of the oriental religions, you will discover discussions and studies of the “planes of existence” where different elements of yourself reside. On each “plane of existence” you have an associated body.
Thee bodies radiate outward, with the coarsest body being the Physical body. And as you move further away from that body (not necessarily in a Geo-position sense, but rather in an energy sense) your bodies get “finer”, “lighter” and “more energetic with higher energies”.
Or so I have read.
But I am a simple guy, and we really do not need to get involved in all those details. I have the distinct impression that many of the writings on this subject are only confluence of religious dogma rather than any practical application. Or, to put it in a better way…
… “who cares about the name of the 3rd level of the casual plane, if you cannot use that information to improve your life?”
We are going to keep things here on an elementary level. If you wish to study the religious teachings / new age / spiritual teachings there are tons of websites all over the internet that you can refer to. But for now, we are going to keep things really simple.
[1] Your consciousness (IS-BE) resides within a container.
Your IS-BE consciousness is inside a body constructed for you by the Prison Complex.
[2] This container exists within a Prison Complex as a “human-shaped inmate”.
We are surrounded by other inmates that seem much like us.
[3] The “human-shaped inmate” form is derived from the human form that is common all over the universe.
The difference being that it has been modified to exist only within a Prison Complex.
“Normal people” talking to inmates using the video conference software without needing to pass through the gates to get in the prison.
[4] This modification is complete and affects both the physical body, but the non-physical body as well
Female inmates of the ADC.
Simplification
So, because of this we will consider all those various “light bodies” that reside on all those other “planes of existence” as one singular “combined body” that is the non-physical body.
Thus, this simplification for the “human inmate body” is actually…
A physical body.
A non-physical body.
The Physical Body
It is impossible for the physical body to cross the electromagnetic “fence” that surrounds the Prison Complex. The technology of the inmates is not at the level that will permit them to build a spacecraft that will be able to cross the fence. Nor will the system ever permit the prison inmates ever obtain the kind of technology needed to build a space-traveling vehicle that can breech the fence line.
One must remember that the ONLY reason why earth’s technology is so high presently is because the mental suppression technology (or at least one of the mechanisms) was destroyed by The Domain around 1150AD. Prior to that, it was anticipated that most of the inhabitants of the Prison Complex, would at best, be living in a primitive early iron-age culture for hundreds of thousands of years.
Thus, the system of constant wars, destruction, and collapse of civilizations and technology on earth is designed to prevent any kinds of space travel or advanced propulsion techniques that might allow one to escape from the prison complex.
The non-physical body
The non-physical body can move about all over. It is not constrained by technology or manufacturing ability.
It’s the power of thought. An IS-BE who can remember a specific location or memory outside of the Prison Complex can visualize it and propel themself outside of the Prison Complex.
Thus it is imperative that all memories be suppressed. Without any idea of where to go, people to meet, places to visit, the inmate is forced to be tethered to the Prison Complex.
No memories.
However, what if something reminds an inmate of some distant memory. While every action has been taken to prevent the occurrence of memories, the fact remains that one singular memory, no matter how faint or brief can be used by an IS-BE to “latch on to” and “home into” and thus go through the electronic fence that surrounds the Prison Complex.
Thus it is of particular interest that the non-physical body be modified so that it cannot go through the electromagnetic fence line surrounding the Prison Complex.
How the Domain alters the body to avoid the force screens
The “Old Empire” has designed a system where the only way out of the Prison Complex is through use of a “normal” non-physical body. And inmates have a modified body that prevents them from leaving the Prison Complex.
Once in, you are never going to leave.
It is much like the scene in The Matrix Revolutions where Neo is trapped in a subway.
Thefinalinstallment in theMatrix trilogy finds an unconscious Neo trapped in a subway stationina zone between the Matrix and the machine world. Insidethe Matrix, Neo istrapped in a subway station named Mobil Ave (an anagram forlimbo), atransitionzone between the Matrix and the Machine City. He meets a "family" of programs, including a girlnamed Sati. The "father" tells Neo the subway is controlled by the Trainman, a program loyal totheMerovingian.
The modification to the non-physical body snares the escaping inmate so that they cannot cross the fence threshold, and perhaps even alerts the warden and his administration to retrieve the errant IS-BE.
The modifications necessary to do this
I cannot state explicitly enough what the modifications are to the non-physical body, nor can I even begin to comprehend what the non-physical body is like. I once observed my non-physical body being worked on and it was really colorful, chaotic and detailed. And way, way beyond my comprehension.
It’s a medical procedure.
Once you understand that, and calm down all your fears you will see it in fine comforting images that provide answers and insight instead of fearful images of horror and terror.
It is ONLY a medical procedure. You will be surrounded by trained professionals. You need not fear anything.
What I do know is that the non-physical body must go through a number of procedures to be able to suppress or eliminate the mechanisms associated with this Prison Complex. The changes made to YOUR body must be undone. And it must be undone BEFORE you are tricked into going back into the “Tunnel of light”.
The Procedure and consciousness extraction
I will relate a little story that occurred to me.
Around 1984-5, before I was compelled to go to China Lake NWC, I had an (intense) urge to visit the North Carolina seacoast. At that time, my wife and I were living in the hills not so far from Nashville, NC.
And so, out of the blue, my wife and I traveled a eight hour drive to go to this tiny bath-house on the beach.
It was around 8 or 9 at night when we arrived. The area was deserted (aside from one other car) and We both got out of the van and walked towards the bath house.
There, we met to other people. One, a woman took my wife by the elbow and led her back to our van where they chatted up a storm on the road, and the man took me towards the bath-house.
Suddenly I was inside this lounge of sorts, and he led me down to sit. So I sat down on this sofa. A pleasant woman came up to us. She reminded me of an airline stewardess. Everyone was “normal” looking. She smiled and placed a greenish box on the counter of the coffee table in front of me. Then she did something. I’m not quite sure what.
The upshot is that my consciousness went into that box. And I was unable to feel any movement of my body. It felt like I was completely paralyzed all over. It was like "sleep paralysis" except that I wasn't asleep.
A few hours passed.
The next thing I knew, I was waving goodbye to the man and the woman. They stood there near the bath-house on that deserted stretch of road, and we drove home. I never recounted what happened. I never discussed it with anyone. Nor did my wife.
The only thing that my wife said “That was weird”. And we rode home in silence, and didn’t say anything else.
We arrived back in the early morning.
This is kind of how it is done.
When The Domain wants to modify your non-physical body, the take you to an operating room and then place your consciousness in a containment field; or box, or container. It is possible for you to watch what they are doing, were it to be suggested to you.
And that is it.
Warnings about the non-physical reality
The non-physical world is very, very hyper sensitive to thoughts.
So if you are afraid when your consciousness enters the containment field, your fears will conjure up all sorts of nasty images and terrible things that will occupy your surroundings. It’s really awful.
So you must remain calm.
HEREis an article that describes a “Lucid dream” where I was extracted to a Domain medical facility, and my consciousness put into a containment field where I would experience “sleep paralysis”.
Evil people realize they are in a prison and make the best of it
In many prisons you have groups of inmates that form gangs and societies.
They band together and use their strengths to carve out a life for themselves under the harsh prison environment. There is no reason why this isn’t occurring here today.
Scene from the movie Goodfellas. The mafia were very powerful and when they were arrested and sentenced to prison, they used their contacts, wealth and connections to make a good life for themselves inside the prison walls.
When the Mantids tell you to make a future life for yourself, and they help guide you to lay out a pre-birth world-line template, why do you listen to them? They show care, concern and compassion. They are loving and caring.
But the evil self-centered IS-BE’s go their own way and set forth pre-birth world-line templates of power, lust, greed and physical pleasures and ignore the advice of the Mantids.
And when they die, and return back to “Heaven” it’s all forgiven and forgotten.
What a gig!
Many service to self people have constructed their pre-birth world-line template in defiance of the Mantid advice and instead live a life of ease and comfort on the earth Prison Planet.
While all the rest of us have all these prohibitions on how we live our lives and what we can and cannot do, and when we are hurt, we are told to forgive those that hurt us.
And we all go to Heaven together.
And then they (the ones that hurt us) make the next-life arrangements to return to a star-studded life full of sensory pleasures and wealth.
And we, the dumb fools we are, we listen to our loving Mantids who tell us to suffer and experience pain… to make us better.
What a gig!
We live a life chosen for us from help by the Mantids.
Prison administrators escaped by going into “General Population” but are not using a prison-body
I would like to take a moment to underline an aspect that haunts me. I cannot shake it. But apparently, the administrators and operators of this Prison Complex escaped The Domain. And the method of escape was to throw themselves into the Prison itself.
After all, we know that there are agents or “operators” that work inside the Prison Complex itself…
"Old Empire" operatives act as an unseen influence on international bankers. The banks are operated covertly as a non-combatant provocateur to covertly promote and finance weapons and warfare between the nations of Earth.
Warfare is an internal mechanism of control over the inmate population.
These individual IS-BE’s that operate within the prison “walls” must have some sort of key /pass /badge /fob /or knowledge that enables them to control the environment like they do. And thus, it is not unreasonable to expect the administration to have access to this knowledge.
Keep in mind that only thing that is specialty that that they know how the prison system works. So they are in this prison complex; on this earth… walking around near us, nearby. All the time with the knowledge in their heads of how to turn off the many, many systems and avoid the electromagnetic containment fence.
The administrators are hiding inside this Prison Complex somewhere. They have the keys, the knowledge and the skills to shut down or control this environment.
They live within the prison complex living a nice comfortable life of ease. They are somewhere. And some how, if they can be located, and brought to the officers and personnel of the Domain, many of the mysteries of the Prison Complex can be resolved.
Summary
For most humans, the body that you have is prison attire. (Or as we used to say in the ADC; “State Issue”.) This is a special uniform that makes it easy to identify who you are and what your role is. Once you put on the clothing and don the attire you cannot leave the prison grounds. This attire is ONLY for use on prison property.
If a guard sees you wearing this clothing and you enter a sally port or gate, they will draw their weapon and alert the prison for someone to come and take you back inside. It is a fundamental aspect of prison life.
“State Issue” of the Arkansas department of Corrections.
In a similar manner, every human within this Prison Complex wears his “State Issue”. This is similar to that of American prisons. But instead of clothing that a person wears, it’s a physical (and non-physical body) that the consciousness dons when it enters the MWI reality universe (from the Prison “Heaven”).
The body that you have prevents you from crossing the electromagnetic force field fence. And if you ever want to egress from the Prison Complex, you will need to [1]have your body altered so that you can pass through it.
Or…
[2]You can wait. Lifetime after lifetime, until (on day) the force-field fence is turned off and everyone can (line up) leave this Prison Complex together.
Prison Complex.
Do you want more?
You can find many more videos in my “Extraterrestrial Species index” over here…
This article consists of answers from The Domain to questions collected by the MM audience. This is the first of (hopefully) many such events.
I collected the questions over the third week of September 2021, and tried to contact with the Domain via the EBP in fits and starts over this period. I was successful, and unsuccessful. Some times the connection was strong while at other times it was weak. All having to do with my various situation at the time.
I am trying to provide a description on how it worked out, and the relative issues or feelings involved. Some of it might seem confusing but there just isn’t the vocabulary to describe my experiences.
What this is all about
On 17SEP21 I posted an article that related the fact that The Domain opened up a dedicated channel to me via the EBP. As always, it was one-sided, and detailed. But during the conversation, I had no real mental ability. I was in a receiving and reporting state. I was really unable to think for myself. I just queried what I was told to ask and recorded the answers.
You can read this article HERE, if you are confused with what is going on.
Some Background
Most people are aware that the work titled “Alien Interview” is a transcript of a Commander of The Domain when it’s vehicle crashed in 1947. What most people do not know is that this event spawned an American top secret agency known as MAJestic that fell under the ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence).
This waved, unacknowledged special access program handled (and still handles) all extraterrestrial events, technologies and interactions with the United States government. I was a unique part of that organization prior to being retired.
I have numerous devices installed in my body. The seven ELF probes are for MAJestic, with the EBP system is of Domain manufacture and utility.
Terminology
EBP – A hardwired device that connects MM to The Domain.
ELF – A hardwired device that connected MM to MAJestic through a Mantid intermediary. Now deactivated.
The Domain – The name of the species / civilization that the type-1 greys belong to.
“Old Empire” – A term used to describe a vanquished civilization that used to be in control of this section of the galaxy.
Comm channel – A link to the MM “handler” or Commander. Rank and position is unknown except that it is a senior being. This is a channel though the EBP system.
This project / system
I know, and I am absolutely convinced that The Domain wants to do this. They are sort of waiting for me to set the incident(s) in place, and then will direct it as they see fit.
It's kind of like how a microwave keeps flashing after it finishes cooking the food, or how a washing machine has the display beeping after it finished washing a load. This flashing / beeping is still present. (Though... it's something different.)
My initial idea was to collect questions, and then ask them. I did this knowing full well that they may or may not answer them.
In all cases the comm channel is a dedicated channel via my EBP.
I will admit that the type-1 grey commander of The Domain that has been helping answer these questions is not at all comfortable with the system I set up.
Let it be well understood that they prefer to communicate in a very different manner. Which is; “They speak and we respond.”
In this effort, we ask questions and request answers. And, they have a real problem with this format.
They are very uncomfortable with this, and it is not how they communicate.
So in order to facilitate this effort, what I did was post the questions as a subject. Then placed the asked questions as secondary information to each subject. I then read the text out loud, and then repeated the subject.
I then paused for input.
They seem to categorize by subject. Then take the questions as subsequent data, and then discuss the subject relative to the question. I hope this makes sense. It’s much like I described a scenario or event and asked them to comment on the statement event (meaning the entire situation involving the person asking the question and his / her mental process and situation at that time) instead of commenting on the details of the question.
When I did this, the system seemed to work much better.
The Questions and Answers (Group 1)
This is exactly how I began. I read the subject title, then the question, then the subject title. I did so reading without understanding. If that makes any sense. Like reading a dishwasher repair manual out loud. Then when the comm opened up, I wrote what came to me.
Enlightenment & Lost Battalion
Are IS-BEs who attain what is often called “Enlightenment” while in a physical body free from the amnesia machinery in death?
No. Absolute answer.
Are they useful to the Domain’s efforts and should we work to become “Enlightened” as a way of being useful to the Domain?
No. “Enlightenment” has no bearing at all on extraction from this prison mechanism. It is part of the “Old Empire” system of conditioned control and brainwashing. Enlightenment is another path that leads one into the tunnel of light.
*I understand “working” or “doing” anything to become “Enlightened” is technically incorrect but it’s hard to describe such things in duality.
Understood, but we know what you are referring to.
Thank you for this.
My pleasure.
The next group of questions happened about three hours later. At that time I asked the channel (whether or not anyone was listening) to lower the amplitude so that I wasn’t thrown into turmoil for the rest of the day. This occurred and things really mellowed out, but the comm channel was much fainter. So it was a trade off.
So as long as I was able to receive, all was well.
The Questions and Answers (Group 2)
This group of questions got no or null responses. I had to try and retry numerous times. Finally on my fifth or so attempt, I started to get some responses. I actually think that the problem was not the questions but the Commander (or their representative) was on other tasks at the time, and could not respond.
Lucid Dreaming & Lost Battalion Rescue
How can those with astral projection and lucid dreaming abilities be properly coordinated to attack the amnesia traps from the inside?
This is a dangerous request.
When The Domain decides to solve a problem, we research it in great detail, then we come up with possible solutions, each one with both positive and negative scenarios. We then weigh the pros and the cons. In this effort we use concentrated forces with strategic aims and tactical strike against specific traps and snares.
Individual IS-BE's should never attempt to engage in attacks against any "Old Empire" traps. Instead they should be marked for extraction, and the Domain notified of their existence in the exact form that they were encountered in.
A person with the ability to conduct “lucid dreaming” has a special and unique skill set that enables them to be a mission critical asset. However, this kind of asset should not be meaninglessly squandered, but rather should be briefed on a specific target and then act in coordination with other unified forces to achieve a very specific outcome.
Those that have this skill set will be (interviewed / selected) for a specific task and then allow to lie dormant until the moment occurs. Then the asset will perform their function in coordination with other (specifically trained) Domain forces.
Are there any specific locations that are proving difficult for the Domain to dismantle that those who are already in the “prison” may have a better chance at reaching.
Yes.
There are numerous systems that are problematic at this time. None, however, are impossible to dissemble.
The <redacted> (a species and cluster that MM is unaware of) are providing technical assistance in this matter.
While it was not specifically asked in the question, the implied question is would we provide you (the questioner) the information or coordinates of such processes or traps. The answer is no, at this time. Consider it a confidential need to know matter.
Your disappointment (in this matter) is for the greater good.
Are there any specific “Domain approved” frequencies or modulation techniques that infrastructure can be built around to provide a physical communication pathway so that messages may be more readily received by those without EBP. This extends to frequencies that can be tuned into via “lucid and astral based telepathy”.
Yes. There are many, or more properly specified / explained there are groupings or dances of frequencies that act as system keys or codes.
When we negate or suppress a system we utilize these techniques along with various types of electromagnetic cannon in the non-physical realms that are tuned to such intricacies.
Can electronic infrastructure found within the prison be constructed to aid in the “astral body” DNA change, or to break the amnesia as a whole?
Yes, in a way, and only partially.
The entire system has both physical and non-physical components.
The bodies of humans and certain animals have had their DNA and mRNA modified to assist in the imprisonment of IS-BE’s.
By correcting this physical biological component to the universal norm, numerous existent amnesia systems will fail to work.
If so what sort of technologies should be focused on.?
Biological magnetism, electromagnetic frequencies at large voltages, and DNA and mRNA alterations.
The Questions and Answers (Group 3)
This group was quick to answer and very clear. I had no trouble getting or obtaining answers or information. All this makes me wonder if this (Domain) individual is a dedicated handler.
Technology & Prison Planet
Have the Atlan hybrids who were experimented on under Project Prometheus, began their reunion in the astral planes?
There is nothing to say about this. Null.
Is there any technology present within the prison that may be able to aid in healing those who have been targeted by the Old Empire to have debilitating illnesses to put them off carrying out their astral based assignments?
There is technology all over the physical solar system, and the non-physical solar system.
The issue is to recognize what it is, identify how it can be used, and then trained to use it properly.
While the <redacted> are using their expertise in this matter, they have a long way to go in discovering and uncovering what lies within these layers upon layers, upon layers of complex traps.
Needless to say, they are complex and far too dangerous for the casual, but enthusiastic IS-BE, to discharge.
There are many traps and snares, and one of which is a special mechanism that seeks out certain thought patterns, personalities and actions and targets it for illness or debilitating fiascos.
These systems roam the non-physical reality and the Domain destroys them when found.
But many still exist, and many are expertly camouflaged.
Those that travel the non-physical realms need to be extra cautious and understand that superior technologies, honed by billions of years, engulf the non-physical prison environment around the earth and snare, and harm the unprepared.
Luckily, most IS-BE’s that are self-actuated are aware that they are immortal, and cannot be harmed, but if the IS-BE is tethered to the prison environment, they can be damaged and returned to the amnesia process in a very harmful way. Care and caution needs to be observed.
The Questions and Answers (Group 4)
This group was also relatively quick to answer, and the “signal” came in rather strong and clear. It was like a kite on a nice fresh Spring Day. I attribute this to the Domain Officer on the other die of the Comm Channel.
Location and Rescue
Are the 3000 in one physical location and if not are they aware of each other’s presence?
The members of the “Lost Battalion” are scattered all over the world.
They occupy different bodies, and species. Many are human, but not all of them.
They have no recollection of who they are, nor their history.
They are isolated, and the “Old Empire” has created a system that immediately throws these IS-BE consciousness’s back to the earth environment immediately.
They do not even get to “rest” in the established “Heaven” that the “Old Empire” has set up for them.
Many (but not all) are living in a life of extreme poverty, confusion, fear and hopelessness’. And this system is specifically designed to foster this environment upon them.
They are not aware of any others from their Battalion and live very singular, lonely, isolated lives for the most part.
In general, almost all of the Lost Battalion are occupying bodies / situations / forms that are lower to middle to average social stratification. Of that, the weighed average is trending to the lower social strata.
Was the location in the Himalayas the ONLY location the 3000 stayed?
The Himalaya facility was the primary base of operations. Obviously they traveled as need be throughout the local physical environment, and there were “camps” in other locations that they would occupy and visit. However, the base was new, and there wasn't much time to develop other locations before they were attacked.
Were there any defectors and have they been located.
Aside from the few that were mentioned in the “Alien Interview”, there has not been any successful escapees.
The kind of IS-BE needed to escape is very special indeed. Not every IS-BE can reach this level of capability and ability. Those in the “Lost Battalion”, while very capable, were of a caliber that was not as flexible to reality manipulation as some of the leadership was / are.
Most of them were of military / service corps caliber. They were highly skilled and trained, and very aggressive, but they did not have the skills required to escape the Prison Planet configuration. Their strengths have been used against them. Like the "Chinese finger trap".
Are the 3000 still together or in “cells” scattered around the world?
No. They are homogenized throughout the planet, and rarely ever meet another imprisoned member.
None are in holding cells or other facilities. They are in "general population" throughout the globe.
The "holding cells" are used for officers and higher level Domain personnel. The Domain maintains a class system. Each class has it's own advantages, strengths, weaknesses and privileges. Those in the various levels of leadership possess much greater abilities of an exponential nature than the class directly below them.
Blank Slate Technology is a singular part of the many mechanisms used to generate an effective amnesia system. There are many systems involved. This is just another name for the wider-scope term “Brain Washing”. Keep in mind that this is a stratified system of control with many layers.
In the MWI there are multiple histories and multiple futures.
There are futures where this theory is embraced and futures where it is not.
What is important is that the trapped Battalion regain memories and skills for egress from the environment that is fencing them in.
Unfortunately, there isn’t a critical mass of “insight” or “understanding” that will “lift up” Battalion members out of their situation.
They (intentionally) have extra systems and controls that tie them down, isolate them, fill them with fear, and force them to try to act alone if ever.
The Questions and Answers (Group 5)
This set of queries were odd in that there was a noticeable pause of hick-up (if that makes sense) during the process. I was just about ready to get up out of the chair, it was so long, when the responses came back.
Freeing of Lost Battalion
How may we recognize members of the Lost Battalion should we meet them?
You will not be able to recognize them unless we specifically point them out to you.
They have no overt markers, characteristics or any other feature or attribute that sets them apart from the rest of society.
You will not be able to sense them either.
Those with heightened and trained abilities might be able to determine a general (touch / wisp / characteristic) but that is about it.
What actions are recommended should we recognize a member of the Lost Battalion?
Take no action unless specifically directed to.
You are not to get involved in their affairs unless specifically tasked to do so. While we appreciate your sympathies we must allow only overt actions where benefits can be tangibly manifested per our goals and plans.
The Amnesia Machinery
Upon death, when we perceive the “tunnel of light”. Is it recommended that we enter it?
No. We will send someone to retrieve you.
What are the pros and cons (of entering the light)?
If you enter the tunnel of light you will go straight into the reprogramming machinery.
There you will find yourself in “Heaven”, which is a special universe constructed for this Prison Planet realm.
Going through the tunnel adds your earth experiences in the last incarnation to that already collected in prior reincarnations (while in prison). You will have no knowledge of anything that transpired before that. All the trillions of years of events prior to your arrest and incarceration will be denied you.
However, you cannot access these Prison Planet memories directly. You will need a guide (a warden) to assist you. They will then carefully measure out previous memories to give you the illusion of control and remembrances of your past.
You will be permitted to attend “schools” in this Heaven construct, and then you will be provided with a new “mission” from which you will then be (again) injected into the earth Prison Environment. And subsequently lose all memories and start out all over again.
...
If you fail to enter the tunnel of light, then you will be a non-physical consciousness that is still trapped within the electromagnetic containment field, but you would still be permitted to move about at will.
You will need to seek out help and assistance to find your rightful place in the universe.
Unfortunately many IS-BE’s that try to do this find out that they are on their own. And are thus easily tricked by other malevolent non-physical entities that are also trapped within the confines of the Prison Environment. Many, not knowing any better will return to what they know; the loving warmth of the tunnel of light, and the calls of their loved ones.
...
You can think of going “into the light” as entering the main prison building, and Psych ward. Where, not going “into the light” sends you into the prison yard. In both cases, you need to make contact with someone who has the keys to the front gate to help you leave.
If we choose not to enter into the tunnel, is it a simple freewill decision on our part not to enter, enough to escape it?
To enter or not is the decision of the IS-BE.
The IS-BE always has free will, and decisions are based upon logic diagrams.
As long as the facts, and data are correct and extensive, most IS-BE’s will make correct and valid decisions.
However, one of the layers of the prison incarceration system is to distract, and mislead the inmates. This will cause them to make invalid and erroneous decisions.
Should we choose not to enter into the tunnel, what is (a) recommended place that we should next go to?
If any IS-BE decides not to go into the tunnel, they can remain in the non-physical realm associated with their body upon death. They can move about and explore.
Those who work with The Domain will be acquired in short order and taken to a holding facility for processing, debriefing and next steps.
Those that are just “normal” and regular people should start shouting out for help and assistance. The problem with doing this is that it will attract all sorts of entities and they will have all sorts of (desires / interests / plans) which may or may not be in the best interests of the IS-BE.
The best thing to do is to call out for a Domain Officer to come and pick you up. You do this through thought visualization. Much the same way that people call out for Ganesha, or Jesus.
Destruction of other Traps
If the universe is malleable and responds to our Intentions, is it sufficient to use intention to free ourselves from or destroy these traps?
The universe is malleable to a point. And the use of thoughts and intentions is how you are able to control it.
However, the ability to manipulate the universe and realities is a function of skill level, and skills are an acquired mastery.
This is the major problem with the amnesia fence, it is difficult to use the skills that you acquire if you constant forget what they are.
Is the Domain supervised by a higher power? If so please describe this higher power.
The Domain is the highest power. The Domain does not report to or serve under any other power.
The Questions and Answers (Group 6)
This group was a quick call out and a very quick response. At this point, I felt like we were “on a roll.”
The Domain & Service to Others Sentience
How can you be STO sentience and invade other IS-BE etc. Is this like a preemptive strike so protect your freedom? Or is this like, we make contact and see if we can work together, and if not we go to war?
Imagine you have a very healthy body. You exercise it, eat well. You take care of it. But there is a cancer that develops in it.
The healthy body was here first.
The cancer attacks the body with distortions that disrupt the function of the body and will eventually destroy the body completely.
Being a STO sentience, should you live and let live the cancer that is running on a rampage? Or should you protect the weak and helpless healthy cells before the dangerous cancer cells take over.
The Domain was established at the very start of everything. We created universes, worlds, plant and animal lives. We watched as fellow IS-BE's occupy those bodies and started to corrupt the creations that we built. At a certain level, it becomes necessary to prevent the creation of dangerous civilizations, and structures that will disrupt and destroy the whole. Such as with the "Old Empire".
Service to others sentience performs actions for the greater good.
However, often we discover that Service to Self individuals tend to appear when they experience the physical pleasures of beauty in the physical reality.
It is the duty of "service to others" sentience to protect others from the malevolence of "service to self" societies.
The Questions and Answers (Group 7)
The communication for this group f questions were clear, crisp, and laconic.
Freeing of Lost Battalion
Can you provide step by step instructions for helping freeing the Lost Battalion?
No. This task is too large for any one IS-BE no matter how well-intentioned. The entire procedure is an enormous undertaking and requires a coordinated and precise group collaborative effort.
Imprisoned IS-BE's who wish to participate need only vocalize that intention as per the MM Prayer system, and focus on guidance though their observations, emotions and ("intuition" / gut feelings) and dreams.
The use of directed thought from inside the Prison Planet will enable a number of non-physical events to materialize. Then, coupled with specific training or skills that will will provide in the non-physical realms to those IS-BE's (who will notice happening while in their dream state), they will become active and valuable members of this entire effort.
Destruction (Escape) of the Amnesia Machinery
Can you provide clear instructions in order to minimize/ avoid the effects of this Machinery?
Yes we can.
We have had Domain Officers escape from this system and avoid the machinery without mRNA or DNA changes to their physical bodies, and material physical destruction of the systems. However, they were able to gain control of their thoughts to an exacting amount.
The key is the ability to control one's thoughts and alter the machinery of this reality by your thoughts.
What MM is pointing out here is that the entire system of visualization of world-line templates on the MWI is a description of the Prison Planet system. It is a machine; a machinery that controls the inmates.
It is NOT a description of the ultimate reality outside of the prison.
MM has laid out a map and an understanding on how to control and navigate in and out of the prison while mastering the control of this reality machinery.
By controlling your thoughts, not only can you alter your reality, but you can egress out and away from the control of the entire Prison Planet system.
Destruction of other Traps
Are religious systems part of the traps installed here?
Yes. From the earliest records that we know of, the "Old Empire" designated and crated religious systems to control the population. This served to objectives. First to erase the idea that IS-BE's are themselves God, and second to create a fearful environment for non-compliance with the Prison Rules.
If not, do religious practices provide an escape from amnesia? please detail which ones.
Null.
The Questions and Answers (Group 8)
I did not understand the question at all. But I read it out and got a lightening quick response that actually startled me. The “being on a roll” continued.
The evil entities within the Prison system.
How to clean the infected is be that corrupt the world, mostly as members of secret societies, and have dispersed everywhere technologies and 5G and satellites to control and tax everything and beings.
All of the systems that exist in the world today are derivatives of the "Old Empire" and set in place by intentional malevolent beings who have reincarnated intentionally to positions of power. This is a core function of the Heaven universe that is tethered and directly adjacent to the physical worldly realm.
In addition, you have "Old Empire" wardens that intentionally escaped and egressed into the system, fully understanding how it works, placing themselves into positions of power and control, and living a comfortable life of ease and wealth. We suspect, but haven't fully investigated this situation, but they seem to have "rigged the game" in their favor so that they (the wardens and elite members of the "Old Empire") can reincarnate over and over again and still retain memories. It's like they posses special keys and abilities.This is one of the tasks that we need to extract from them.
Unfortunately, they are slippery folk. As soon as they sense we are going to get them, they die and are immediately taken to the Heaven construct though the "tunnel of light" that erases all memories (except theirs), and if we follow them, we too would become trapped into this Prison Planet system.
The very nature of the Prison Planet is to create a Hellish existence where IS-BE's would relive events over and over again, and make it so that each life that they live is one of fear, terror, fright, sadness and disgust.
Technology is not evil. Much of what people experience is fear of technology which is one of the controls that the Prison Planet uses. A true and actuated IS-BE has no fear. In the world today, many evil and corrupt individuals use fear to gain control and achieve emotional satisfaction.
Currently The Domain needs to rescue the Lost Battalion. Then assist in the release of all the service to others sentience's trapped in this earth-centrist Prison Planet.
For the record, these communications are relatively easy for me (personally) to engage in. My problem is receiving the contacts without the background noise. If the “amplitude” of the connection is turned up, the messages are very clear. But I end up shaking like a leaf, am very dehydrated, an emotional ball, and spend the next eight hours or so “bouncing off the walls”. To control this, I asked to tone down the amplitude, and I have begun to listen more closely without the bothersome side effects.
The Questions and Answers (Group 9)
Again, I don’t fully understand the question but posted it anyways. I didn’t get much of anything for a while. Just a bunch of “dead air” if that means anything. Then a few bursts of information. Then silence.
Then the comm link opened on the other side and here’s the responses.
Affirmation Campaigns and The Domain
Will affirmation campaigns geared toward nullifying all contracts unwittingly taken out on our souls/astral bodies help in breaking the through the amnesia?
Yes. They are the most powerful tool for those you are unable to remove their preconditioning, programming and set baseline biases and social constructs. It's a method of thought control. They best and only way for an IS-BE inmate to self-actuate is by thought control.
If we don’t agree any of the hypnosis will this help?
Anything that focuses on control of the mind will help. But the focus must be without fear of consequences, fear of society, or any other fears as these get into the way of processing the thoughts.
The mechanisms in place take those fears and use them to bend the thought waves. As now distorted vectors they end up going in other locations and the helpless inmate is forced to experience life in coils. Over and over and over again. Fear controls it all.
Be cautious of all sources of fear generation. This includes religion media, politics, friends, rumors, society, and every other thing that makes you question your actions (whether taken or not).
The Questions and Answers (Group 10)
Short simple questions. Easy to conceptualize, and transmit. I tried to get answers but nothing happened. Null. Tried again. Null. Then on the third try I received some answers.
I have to tell you that the answers made me sit back and wonder WTF. Because they are not in agreement with my understandings of history and events.
Destruction of the amnesia machinery.
Does any of the machinery still exist in the physical reality on Earth?
We suspect that yes; some self-actuated autonomous systems do still exist on the earth surface in the physical reality.
However we have not been able to locate the machinery. They have been expertly concealed and their "footprints" are difficult to track if you do not know what to look for. Those elements that reside in the non-physical realities are far easier to locate.
The best way to track these mechanisms is to track the comm channels when the physical machinery interacts with the non-physical machinery. All of which required <redacted> support, analysis and disarming.
If so, how can we recognize it should we come across any machinery?
You would not be able to recognize it. Even if you could, it would be far too dangerous for you to disarm or attempt to disarm. The last earth-side (physical event) took place in 1908 in Tunguska. A major mechanism was destroyed completely. It had been hidden under a "force shield".
We believed that this facility was a remaining "Old Empire" logistics and storage facility. (Which seemed to have some control over thought processes. At that time we were unaware of the true extent of the systems.) This is because we were unaware of an electronic fence surrounding the region or the true purpose and nature of the region.
We thought, at that time that that was the last of the systems remaining. But we were wrong. There was an entire fully operational base staffed with "Old Empire" personnel operating and in existence.
Unaware of this, and under the impression that we cleared out the systems, we began an operation to attempt to bring peace and stability to the earth at that time.
It was an operation that enabled a Domain Officer to occupy the body of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary. The plan was to suppress a build up towards war by restoring Austro-Russian relations while maintaining an alliance with Germany.
How do we notify the Domain so it can be deactivated and removed safely?
All IS-BE's that wish to work with the Domain, need only vocalize that they volunteer to be part of The Domain. Then, over time, various systems will enable instantaneous monitoring of all experiences of the IS-BE so involved.
The Questions and Answers (Group 11)
This was really strange. I just copied the text from the comment without reading it, and plopped it down in the wordpress, and the channel burst out laughing. Which was really a weird feeling. It’s sort of like having a vibrator in your skull. The answers came smoothly. Like hot syrup.
Why Now?
My first issue is that the original timeline was pushed forward 5000 years. This implies that something really big happened and they need a new plan of action. Did something unexpected happen that caught them by surprise?
Yes. It was unexpected that the inmates in the Prison Planet would be desirous of working with The Domain. Of course, they had ulterior motives. They wanted power, technology, knowledge and skills that they could use to lord over others, and obtain more power.
We established lines of communication and engaged in technology transfer activities (of a minor nature) in exchange for assistance in monitoring the environment, society, trends, and in helping us to start shutting down the prison mechanism apparatus.
Once we applied for and obtained approval from our leadership, resources were allocated and a staff was increased to help mitigate the situation here and help recover and restore the "Lost Battalion". A major colony was set up in the moon, which MM has written about.
Early on we began collecting members of the "Lost Battalion" and implanted EBP (sic) systems to help track and monitor them. They typically are unruly to the extreme in regards to this effort. We have also identified key individual IS-BE's that seem to be close to having the necessary skills (independently) to leave this Prison Planet environment. Finally, there are a handful of MAJestic members, such as MM, which have a special role in this entire project.
There have been remarkable advances since the Roswell event. And since MAJestic was initiated, the assistance from earth-side has been invaluable. Since then, we have independently contacted other governments and entities in the world and have other groups working with us in this effort.
These organizations are diverse and all are secretive. None advertises their work, process or recruitment drives. There are formal organizations in modern day Russia, India, China, Bangladesh, as well as in South America and Africa. Each organization has a certain role.
Certainly the American MAJestic organization has been quite busy, but the other (names redacted intentionally by MM) organizations are invaluable. Most especially at this particular time.
Certainly there are all sorts of seriously bad consciousnesses and IS-BE’s that are in positions of power and control. They seem to be driving the world to the brink of extinction. What is going on? What can we do?”
You are in a Prison Environment. There are many bad people along you.
There is a high percentage of very evil people in this Prison Planet environment and they have created systems over systems over systems that reflect their desires. Eventually the entire system will explode in a major collapse, and then society will need to rebuild up all over again. It is what happens when you have a certain threshold of evil people in positions of power in society.
The good news is that The Domain have agents (now) occupying the bodies of key individuals and they will not "push the red button", or engage in war, no matter what their evil and vile crazed leaders might want them to do.
You need not worry about this. The Domain will not allow a repeat of World War I. However, a smaller, more localized event might still occur even though we are doing everything in our power to prevent it from occurring. Some events like tidal waves and typhoons and hurricanes can be prepared for, but you cannot stop them. They need to run their course.
To make it short, is there anything they should disclose to us humans or the participants? (bearing in mind, we humans can be pretty altruistic. And if things impact humanity, we still need to have some good faith disclosure).
No. There is no need for any disclosure that might generate fear.
Fear distracts from the thoughts, and thoughts affect reality. All one needs to know is that all of the situations involving the earth Prison Planet are monitored and observed and resources have been moved into place to mitigate any catastrophic events from happening.
If we have a possibly limited window to communicate , then we should focus on priorities for humanity and the Dominion.
Yes. This is correct. Thank you for understanding.
My instincts tell me we need to understand why they turn to us. In any deal, we have to know the dynamics.
This event with MM was planned at the start of MAJestic and occurred before the birth of MM. Everything now is following the steps laid down by The Domain. The plan is well thought out and methodical.
MM is not the only operative resource that we put in place. Others are working in other capabilities, and all have varying degrees of success.
The Questions and Answers (Group 12)
This train of thought continues with another batch of questions from another person. And like the preceding batch of questions the results and answers were fluid and easy.
Reasoning behind comm at this time
What was the reasoning for asking for our help at this time? Is there an urgency that we should be aware of?
All is on schedule. We (The Domain) anticipated enlisting General Population participation in the 2021 time-frame.
This is exactly 40 years from the date MM joined MAJestic. -MM
What skills, talents, or perceptions do we as imprisoned IS-BE’s possess that would assist in this mission?
The inmates that wish to assist The Domain possess a Service-to-self others sentience which is different from the Service-to-self sentience of the MAjestic and other government organizations.
We need [1] selfless devotion to a cause, and [2] directed thought that [3] emulates from within the Prison Planet confines.
In case there is any confusion as to what is expected of a Service to others sentience, consider this video that was brought to my attention this morning.
A young Pioneer (a Chinese version of the cub scouts / girl scouts) shows us what a Service to Others life is all about.
Is there anything in the physical world we should be doing, either in regards to the Lost Battalion or the traps and machinery of the “Old Empire”, or will our efforts concentrate on the spiritual realm and Intention campaigns?
The most important aspect of participation is anchoring efforts as part of intention campaigns. This is crucial to this phase in the effort. In addition, we might ask certain individuals with other advanced skills to participate in other ways, and we might ask a few to accept a EBP (sic) modification.
What should we be most wary of, and should we expect to be part of this operation for multiple lifetimes?
Every IS-BE is different. Ideally, this would be the last cycle of reincarnation for the participants with The Domain.
However, fear is a strong driver, and not everyone who wants to be a service-to-others sentience actually is. Thus, there are those that may choose to assist with the Domain and then upon death cycle back into the "Heaven universe" associated with this Prison Planet and begin all over again.
What plans do you have for the rehabilitation of your imprisoned IS-BE’s and the release of other favorable IS-BE’s?
We are currently working on systems to do this, and this requires a number of helpers that are and would be considered to be very strange to your sensibilities. But the rehabilitation systems are being developed right now and are on schedule.
The Questions and Answers (Group 13)
This was an interesting reaction. Odd. Surprisingly quick. Like how a father would speak to a young child who just lost their puppy. It was a very curious feeling.
Existing comm with the Domain.
Some of us are highly aware and actively engaged in our contracts through the Domain, but have become aware of a breech in communication efforts.the interference does not seem like CMEs etc, but rather are terrestrial satellite interference’s. will we be able to reopen our channels soon? or is this too great of a security threat at this time? has anyone else questioned why we feel ” forced into solitary confinement” and silence?
(Long Pause.) There are authorized and unauthorized contacts. There are also frauds and hoaxes. MM and members of his project cell are the only MAJestic-authorized direct contacts.
We once permitted ad hoc communication of Domain officers in the Prison Environment, such as with Nikola Tesla. That ended by directive when we decided to implement efforts to recover this solar system. There are no longer any unauthorized communication efforts.
Yes. There are contacts through some other organizations.
We do not authorize individual communication without a physical EBP installed in the physical body. You will know if you have it. It happens in the physical body. It is not easily dismissed or forgotten.
Communication through the EBP is impervious to all external interference and interruption. It is a direct comm link to (a handler, local to this region in) The Domain.
We do make changes to the non-physical bodies, and the individual IS-BE's so modified will have a disturbing dream, a frozen in place feeling, or a very lucid dream that they cannot control. Most will retain a memory of it. Many misinterpret this as an "Alien Abduction Event". But these changes to the non-physical body do not permit ease of communication. They serve another purpose.
If you are experiencing anything other than direct communication efforts then ... (Intentionally trailed off.)
(I do not know what happened.)
These contacts and communication channels are not trivial things. The channels are for assignments, tasks and collaborate collection in Intel. Nothing else. (The phrase "nothing else", echoed like in a long hallway.)
I am aware of every communication effort with the inmates in this region. If you want to open a dialog, strengthen your... (again, long pause), or understand your relationship with the Domain, you need to focus your thoughts to that end. You need to focus on the needs of The Domain if you wish to communicate with us.
(Then, I could picture a kind smile, like what a vet would give me when my beloved cat was very ill.)
I tried to offer some additional suggested text and hit a blank wall, and nothing. This is a final word.
The Questions and Answers (Group 14)
This next group comes piggy-back, back to back with the one preceding it. I actually have the impression that the Commander was a little snarky in the previous chat. No. Snarky is not the right word, maybe humorously aggressive in a Boston-Friendly sort of way.
Kind. Very kind. But also very fatherly.
And the “feeling” was “switch from A to B”, or go from “color green to bright yellow”. If that makes any sense. I felt a distinct serious and fatherly tone.
Time and world-lines
Am I right in assuming, that the ‘help’ we can offer is limited to this particular timeline, timeline being understood as linear progression of time from this point forward?
Yes. You are correct from your point of view.
(There are a series of in-depth and advanced information garbles that I cannot make heads or tails out of. The Commander is obviously trying to submit information. I just cannot catch it.)
(I have snatches that I understand. Clustering. Anchoring. Progression forward. Soul / consciousness "beam-walking".)
The impression that I get is that there is much that can be said and the Commander wants to transmit valuable information here, but I am not up to the task. I am sorry.
Am I right in assuming that our activities should be limited spatially to this particular instantiation of ‘planet earth’?
No. Earth is one of numerous solar systems caught up in the Prison Planet force field. And the entire MWI slices involved... (Again, much information. Too much to sort out. I am failing and flailing here.)
(Commander backs off.)
Focus on your IS-BE consciousness at your moment of time and work from there. You not worry about all the other aspects of it. You, in particular (directed at the person who asked the question), will see the clarity of the entire situation once you exit the physical reality. Just don't go back into the (that) tunnel.
(Wants to transmit more information.)
(Good will. Right track. Positive glee.)
If one should gain insight into the life/lives of this current Soul/Sentience. -combination, is that information/insight still valid in this timeline?
Yes. Everything is valid. The issue is remembering it all, then recompiling it at the end of the lifetime and reusing that information to build upon and grow.
The Questions and Answers (Group 15)
When I got this group of questions I just shook my head. And “felt a smile”, and a memory flooded my mind clear as day. When I lived in Indiana we would often have lots of cats, and litters of kittens. Often from nearby feral cats that would have a bunch of kittens.
Once I had maybe eight kittens in a tall cardboard box. They were mostly orange and white in different patterns. But one was a cute nearly all black kitten with a white and orange stripe on it’s head. And while the other kittens were all content to romp and play inside the box, this one; this black one, was constantly trying to climb out of the box and run away.
One day he climbed out, ran across the street and was hit by a car and died.
This memory and image came up clear as day when I read this following cluster of questions.
Answers are not specific enough.
Still not specific enough. What facilities do they not know the location of?
(Snark response.) What non-physical entities are you NOT aware of that occupy the 3Km diameter region centered from your bathroom?
What do they suspect the traps are and how do they need assistance in disabling them?
Null response.
(There is an answer to this question above.)
What is the power source for the equipment being used to suppress memories?
(Snark response.)
The standard local power sources that all the traps use. Duh! (Yes, as really strange as it seems he actually went "Duh!" with an overlay of Homer Simpson.)
Will they commit more resources in the short term if assistance is offered?
We have everything we need right now. If there is a need for more resources then we will apply for them, and obtain them. This is not an issue that you need be concerned about.
You’ve said in other posts that the Greys are like the Borg from Star Trek, and that someone in the know likely tipped Paramount productions off about the real aliens as inspiration for that idea. I’m a ‘Love thy enemy like yourself’ sort of person. Help can be offered, still there is risk. Will they promise not to harm humanity if their battalion is freed?
All entities of this geographic and spatial region are under the ownership and control of the Dominion. No harm will come to anyone. You are all under our jurisdiction. Please keep in mind that IS-BE's cannot be destroyed. However there are other awful futures that can be contemplated for the malevolent.
I read the Alien interview closely when you published it. Any more specifics other that what was already mentioned in the alien interview are better than none. Surely if they contact you again they can offer a tidbit more than what we already have or they wouldn’t have contacted you and your audience in this fashion.
This is the purpose of this dialog, human.
The Questions and Answers (Group 16)
I tackled this Q&A with the feeling of “ready, let’s do this”. And the answers flowed forth. It was all very matter-of-fact, on point and direct.
Amnesia Trap
Does the amnesia trap have a physical size or range of effectiveness in physical space?
Yes it does. It is limited to a small geographical area that contains five inhabited solar systems. Not every inhabited system contains planets like the Sun Type 12, Class 7 that the earth is.
This region is ovoid in shape with a oval X axis, and oval, X axis, and an oval Z axis. (3 dimensional football-like shape. -MM)
About 70 million years ago a great war devastated many of the solar systems in this geographic region of the galaxy. This occurred long before the "Old Empire" came into existence. During the recovery period a number of colonies were established on the planets in this region, but not of them grew to be major hubs of trade or commerce.
Around 208,000 years ago the "Old Empire" established dominance, and took over this geographical region. They ascertained that this section of the galaxy was a "junk yard" / rubbish / "of no use" and decided to turn it into a big Prison System. They destroyed what ever colonies or civilizations existed in the systems around 75,000 years ago, and created the Prison Complex that exists today.
It seems that since IS-BEs need to be brought to Earth for imprisonment, there might be a region or volume in which the trap is effective. If it does have a finite size, what would happen to humans who travel beyond it’s edge?
The entity would be free of the Prison environment and all the traps that exist. The IS-BE would be able to explore and travel anywhere.
However, the felon would not have any memories aside from the singular last lifetime on the Prison Planet environment.
All the trillions of years prior to their arrest and incarceration would be missing, as well as the memories associated from the hundreds to thousands of lives that they lived cycling in and out through the Prison "Heaven" would all be gone.
What would happen if a human were to die while beyond the edge?
Humans are IS-BE. IS-BE's never die. There is a fundamental vested interest of the "Old Empire" prison system to prevent you from seeing who you actually are. They fear that you will identify (by using your own memory) the slave masters who keep you imprisoned.
The Questions and Answers (Group 17)
This next question is in regards to communication between MM readership and The Domain. I guess that the intention is on an individual basis. I asked after I ate lunch, and settled down. I had a period of nothing. No responses. Then the comm opened up.
Communication
What can we do to support and improve communications?
The best way to communicate with The Domain is to use the EBP. If you do not possess one, then the second best way is to use someone that has as an intermediary.
Individual inmates that are of service-to-others sentience, and who sincerely wish to provide supporting roles with The Domain can volunteer.
To do this, [1] you modify your affirmation prayer campaigns (sic) to specifying (your) acceptance of volunteering and assisting The Domain in our efforts what ever they may be. (I have script code to add to your prayer affirmations to accomplish this. -MM)
Over time, some quicker than others, an [2] opportunity will arise where you are contacted in the non-physical body. It is very rare to be contacted in the physical body.
[3] The perceptions of this event will differ from person to person. Some "feel" this event. Some witness this event. Some remember this event as a very strange dream. This "contact" will take different forms for different people, and it depends on many things. Some people might feel a vibrational attachment (of some sort), while others might witness a medical procedure. Still others might experience a very lucid but completely strange dream. Some will feel like they are frozen and unable to move, and the fear of that will cause all sorts of terrible manifestations. Some will feel like they are under water, and unable to breathe, and others will feel both big and small and very very disoriented. It will be horrific. But it's all perceptions colored by fear.
How it appears will depend on many things.
It will be strange. It will be unusual. It will be difficult to describe. But it will feel absolutely real.
However, take and make an important note [4], if you believe, or feel, that this event occurred then it actually did occur. (All emphasis is from the Domain Officer, not MM.)
The over all purpose of this communication is to gather up a group of volunteer inmates to assist in efforts of The Domain. If you accept this recruitment effort by MM, then follow the steps outlined above.
Note that every task will be a personal task, and will not really be anything that will make sense to others outside of your operational cell. We would truly love for your participation with us. (Smile.)
On a personal note, I think that I am getting better at this. I think that this comm system is working out.
Additional comments from the officer
The following are follow-up comments from the Domain officer(s)…
19SEP21 15:49
There are numerous individuals that are (now) experiencing things; events, situations and are confused. You need not be. Everything is proceeding to plan. Some of you will be assigned some dangerous tasks, but nothing that you will not survive out of, nor will you operate alone. You will always be supported.
(Garbled / unclear.)
Trust in yourself, and follow MM. Perform your exercises. Be of good heart.
My own personal questions
I mean, I can do this right? So I asked.
A number (more than just a few) of MM followers are reporting “sleep paralysis”. What is going on?
In every case, those that experience this sensation have agreed to support the efforts of The Domain and have volunteered to join our local irregulars.
What they are experiencing is an operation (of sorts) [like a medical procedure] that alters their non-physical body. These alterations serve to sever numerous well known chains /tethers /controls /traps set up by the "Old Empire" and the warden(s) in this environment.
Some will need to experience only one procedure. Some might experience multiple procedures. No one need be fearful, but if you are unaware of what is going on, it will be a natural fear response and your thoughts will conjure up all sorts of terrors. They are not real. Everyone must remain calm and realize what is going on.
These procedures are not the installation of EBP (sic). These are something completely different and varies from IS-BE to IS-BE. It will make it easier for the IS-BE to work with The Domain, and be able to move about the non-physical environs as well as be able to leave this entire region all together.
Everyone will experience the procedure differently. One of the most common effects is feeling like you are in a state of paralysis. What is actually going on is that the consciousness is placed in a holding chamber / facility / stasis state while the non-physical body is being operated on. For many this is a first-time experience, and is entirely new and strange. They naturally panic, and the fears generate nightmares in the thought-sensitive operating chamber.
My message to all is to remain calm. We are not harming anyone. We are altering your body so that you can work alongside The Domain. If things become too terrifying for you, you need only relax. You are in the midst of friends.
Conclusions
Some of the responses were surprising. There was a latent humanity that I was not expecting. Some were aggressive and it was intended for me to transfer that aggressiveness in my report. I hope that you all benefited from this.
I know that some will not be satisfied with the answers; claiming them to be too general. While others will be satisfied. While still others, maybe a little frustrated or angry. As we used to say in corporate America; “Don’t shoot the messenger”.
I do hope that everyone has benefited in some way over this. Have a great day.
Do you want more?
You can find many more videos in my “Extraterrestrial Species index” over here…
This article is a request for the MM audience to collect questions for me to ask The Domain via my EBP. If you all don’t know what I am talking about, then you can probably skip this article.
On 17SEP21 I posted an article that related the fact that The Domain opened up a dedicated channel to me via the EBP. As always, it was one-sided, and detailed. But during the conversation, I had no real mental ability. I was in a receiving and reporting state. I was really unable to think for myself. I just queried what I was told to ask and recorded the answers.
You can read this article HERE, if you are confused with what is going on.
Some Background
Most people are aware that the work titled “Alien Interview” is a transcript of a Commander of The Domain when it’s vehicle crashed in 1947. What most people do not know is that this event spawned an American top secret agency known as MAJestic that fell under the ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence).
This waved, unacknowledged special access program handled (and still handles) all extraterrestrial events, technologies and interactions with the United States government. I was a unique part of that organization prior to being retired.
I do know that MAJestic works intimately with the Domain. And that it has acquired technology, information and understandings from The Domain. Obviously further more exacting information came forth and was accumulated in the 75 or so years since the formation of MAJestic.
This project
I know, and I am absolutely convinced that The Domain wants to do this. They are sort of waiting for me to set the incident(s) in place, and then will direct it as they see fit.
It’s kind of like how a microwave keeps flashing after it finishes cooking the food, or how a washing machine has the display beeping after it finished washing a load. This flashing / beeping is still present. (Though… it’s something different.)
My idea is to collect questions. Know full well that they may or may not answer them. But I will go read the questions and then record the answers if available. If they do not answer, I will respond as such.
People (!) this is your first, maybe ONLY chance, to ask questions to an extraterrestrial.
My impression is that this is an officer or an approved liaison that is associated with my EBP implants. I am also under the impression, most strongly, that this is an approved effort. And that it is somehow associated with my Majestic role. To this end, there is a channel that is open and dedicated to this purpose.
I know it is open. I can fucking feel it.
I do not know how long it will remain open. Hours. Months, Years. I just do not know.
I have the impression that they WANT to do this, and that they WANT actual inmate involvement in their efforts in this region of geographical space. I believe that they NEED and / or require our participation in some way.
What are the interests of The Domain on Earth?
This EBP channel is not for popular trivia.
Nor is it for questions about our worries or fears. It is for queries on how we, as inmate humans, can help and participate with the Type-1 extraterrestrials of The Domain. That’s it.
It’s for Rufus’s to ask questions so that we can learn how to be able to assist the Type-1 greys of The Domain.
I get the distinct impression that they really want for us to participate in their objectives, and they are willing to provide a diversity of answers to help alleviate our fears and concerns. But in all cases keep in mind that they will only answer what they want to answer.
Thus, any questions that you might conceive of, MUST be directed towards [1] The Domain and [2] their role and mission in this earth regional environment.
Their interests are…
Freeing the 3000 members of the “Lost Battalion”.
Control and destruction or control of the amnesia machinery that surrounds the earth.
Destruction of the various traps, systems, and mechanisms that entrap consciousness in this environment.
Preservation of the earth’s environment and prevention of nuclear, biological or climatic destruction.
Patrol and policing of this region from “dropping off” more consciousnesses into this Prison Planet.
Establishment of a rehabilitation plan for the inmates in this environment.
Support of the sentience sorting efforts so that the “good” inmates may be freed from this environment.
Freeing of IS-BE’s that are worthy of leaving this Prison Environment.
Because these are the interests of The Domain at this time, in our region, these are the topic areas that we would be able to obtain answers regarding.
Some notes on how this open channel affects me
It is like electricity.
Normally, with the ELF probes active, and the EBP it was like a normal life, just “very active”. Everything was like a car engine running at full speed.
Then when I was retired, and the ELF probes were shut off, everything went quiet. It was a state of calmness that I hadn’t felt for decades. It was like calm still water, while before it was like being tied to an electric chair with 30,000 volts surging through my body.
But the EBP was still active.
And yet, as a result of this, I would have a channel in the EBP open and get chit-chat from time to time. Always one sided. Always directed. Always functional. Always on a passive station but ready for my responsive actions.
Then when I received the communication from a Commander of The Domain, it’s like “multiple channels”, or a bandwidth increase. Much better data transfer and sensory input.
I’m not used to it.
It’s not bad, it’s not horrible. It’s just that it’s unlike what I have been exposed to and pretty fierce.
It’s like plugging in a fan, as opposed to letting the fan sit in the corner of the room inert and alone.
As a result, I have a very clear comm channel.
When I say that they are open to answering sincere questions, then they will do so. And that when I say that they want us to work with them, believe me. That is the situation.
So be the Rufus, and posit some decent questions.
Question format and queries
What I plan on doing is collecting any and all questions that might result from this article. Then simplifying them, and placing them in a Q&A format. And seeing what happens.
If nothing happens, then so be it.
But if something does, then you might be surprised at the answers. As you can tell, they answer things very clearly and directly with a great deal of detail. It’s very similar to what was found in The Alien Interview.
Please ask questions that fall under these categories, and when you ask a question, please specify what category that it falls under.
Freeing the “Lost Battalion”.
Ask questions on what we can do to free the “Lost Battalion”. Or what problems or issues seem to be stopping their release. Ask what we can do to help, or anything related to freeing inmates.
Destruction of the amnesia machinery.
You should ask questions related to this machinery and how an inmate might be able to assist in the destruction of this equipment. Maybe we, as insiders, have a benefit, or skill or strategic advantage that we can offer. We should ask.
Aside from the amnesia machinery, the destruction of other systems or traps.
It’s not only the amnesia machinery that needs to be destroyed, but the layers and layers of other systems, in all forms. From the various social constructions, religious constructs, and even the environmental constructs, what can we do or how can we help.
Preservation of the earth’s environment.
I know that the type-1 greys are very keen on preserving the earth. This entire region has experienced galactic wide wars of great destruction and the ruins of many a civilization litter this region. This is more than just climate change.
Prevention of nuclear and biological destruction of the biosphere.
Certainly there are all sorts of seriously bad consciousnesses and IS-BE’s that are in positions of power and control. They seem to be driving the world to the brink of extinction. What is going on? What can we do?
Patrol and policing of this region from “dropping off” more consciousnesses into this Prison Planet.
When The Domain destroyed the “Old Empire” units and bases in this region they inadvertently opened up a “Wild West”. For the last few thousand years, all the nearby galactic civilizations have been dropping off their criminal elements here to imprison them. What of it?
Establishment of a rehabilitation plan for the inmates in this environment.
This is a big issue, and we are up close and up front. We can ask questions regarding this plan or systems or programs that are being considered.
Support of the sentience sorting efforts so that the “good” inmates may be freed from this environment.
Release of everyone immediately would be catastrophic for the galaxy. As there are many, many very terrible consciousnesses in our region. The universe doesn’t need a new Khan Running around.
Freeing of IS-BE’s that are worthy of leaving this Prison Environment.
What of the “average joes? The artists, and the creators that somehow found their way here in this environment and imprisoned improperly? We can ask questions about them, and how they can be distinguished between the really bad and nasty folk.
Procedure.
Put your questions in the comments of this article. I will collect them in another article and run a request up-stream. Let’s see what happens.
Do you want more?
You can find many more videos in my “Extraterrestrial Species index” over here…
I have presented a great and wide diverse selection of articles to the MM audience. And I do hope that you all appreciate them, enjoy them, learn from them, and I most certainly hope that they will all better your life in some way. This article is going to be a little different.
This article kicks off a project that I believe is important. It is something that I want to do.
Instead of being an informative article, this article asks all those Rufus’s in the MM audience to help the Type-1 greys of The Domain. They have a “Lost Battalion” that is imprisoned here on the Earth with us. And we should do what ever we can to help rescue them.
MM Role
I have no recollection of ever being in The Domain, or being a Type-1 grey or anything like that. I was in MAJestic and I dedicated my life to helping others and being part of something larger. I want to help them. I do not expect riches, wealth or some kind of trans-species reward or anything like that. I just want to help them.
If there are Rufus’s in the MM audience that are so inclined to join me, then please do so. Let’s give something back. Let’s make the Earth a better place, and lets all work together to bypass the memory suppression technology that surrounds this Earth Environment, and help free the “Lost Battalion” and enable them to recover their memories.
What I am asking the Rufus’s to do…
It is my personal “gut” feeling that the members of the Domain’s “Lost Battalion” 3,000 have some very strong erasure protocols installed in their world-line templates. Stronger than say, the rest of us.
When the Types-1 greys try to conduct medical or other procedures on the soldiers, they fight and resist aggressively.
I’ve been thinking that the best thing for us to do is lay down “suppressive fire” that will alter all of our templates in favor of these imprisoned soldiers.
It will not cause damage to our goals or anything, but we will start to anchor our world-line clusters in favor of the imprisoned Domain members, and make it much easier for them to break out of their confining electro-magnetic prisons and suppressive brain-washing.
The task…
For those Rufus’s that are so inclined, and only if you are so inclined, I suggest adding some special lines of code to your affirmation prayer campaigns.
Lines of code from the movie “The Matrix”.
These lines of code will help anchor your world-lines to that of a group cluster that focuses in rescuing the trapped Domain soldiers in the Earth Prison Planet.
Here are the lines of code…
From a contributor…
I volunteer and support “The Domain” in their mission to rehabilitate the IS-BEs on Earth.
I allow an officer from “The Domain” to enlist me and alter my non-physical body to allow for communication and collaboration.
I am being trained in techniques to assist my assigned role in this mission.
My participation in this mission will not affect me and my family negatively in the physical reality.
And my suggestions…
Any and all members of The Domain’ “Lost Battalion” are no longer imprisoned in this “Old Empire” containment facility.
All of these IS-BE entities are in recovery and rehabilitation.
They are all on the way to recovering their memories and regaining a role within their society.
Just add the lines of code, and the next time that you start your next campaign, just read off these lines with the rest of your affirmations.
You might also want to add this line as well…
I, as an IS-BE have recovered all of my memories, and now have the necessary skills to be freed from the Earth Prison Planet environment.
Rewards…
There are no rewards. So do not do it in the expectation of any kind of benefit.
What is all this about?
Not everyone reading this article will understand what is going on. MM has many “one article stands” where someone stumbles on the site, skim reads and then leaves. But if you stay around and read the articles you will see what is going on.
I have presented the PDF titled “Alien Interview” to the readership. It is supposed to be the transcripts of the interview that a nurse had with an extraterrestrial entity that was recovered from a spaceship crash in Roswell, New Mexico. There is a lot of good stuff there, and some things that run counter to what I know and understand to be true.
In the transcript the extraterrestrial jumps all over. And in many instances he seems to reflect normal regular human feelings and attitudes about issues (such as the platypus) and you can read it and miss many things as it is a dated document translated by a nurse in 1947. In order to best sort it out, to a frame of reference that we can all understand, I am now (in this series of articles) going to separate the “Alien Interview” document into sections categorized by dates.
The key text segments…
"What would you like to say, Airl?", I asked. "I have been a part of the Domain Expeditionary Force in this sector of space for several thousand years. However, I have not personally had intimate contact with beings on Earth since 5,965 BCE. It is not my primary function to interact with inhabitants of planets within The Domain. I am an Officer, Pilot and Engineer, with many duties to perform. Nonetheless, although I am fluent in 347 other languages within The Domain, I have not been exposed to your English language.
The last Earth language with which I was conversant was the Sanskrit language of the Vedic Hymns. At that time I was a member of a mission sent to investigate the loss of a Domain base located in the Himalaya Mountains. An entire battalion of officers, pilots, communications and administrative personnel disappeared and the base destroyed.
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One of my duties involved interrogation of the human population that inhabited the adjoining area at that time. Many of the people in that region reported sighting "vimanas" or space craft in the area.
Following the logical extension of evidence, testimony, observation, as well as the absence of certain evidence, I led my team to the discovery that there were still "Old Empire" ships and well-hidden "Old Empire" installations in this solar system of which we had been completely unaware.
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"Airl described the abilities of an IS-BE officer of The Domain to me, and she demonstrated one to me when she contacted -- telepathically -- a communications officer of The Domain who is stationed in the asteroid belt.
The asteroid belt is composed of thousands of broken up pieces of a planet that once existed between Mars and Jupiter. It serves as a good low-gravity jumping off point for incoming space craft traveling toward the center of our galaxy.
She requested that this officer consult information stored in the "files" of The Domain, concerning the history of Earth. She asked the communications officer to "feed" this information to Airl. The communications officer immediately complied with the request. Based on the information stored in the files of The Domain, Airl was able to give me a brief overview or "history lesson". This is what Airl told me that The Domain had observed about the history of Earth:
She told me that The Domain Expeditionary Force first entered into the Milky Way galaxy very recently -- only about 10,000 years ago. Their first action was to conquer the home planets of the "Old Empire" (this is not the official name, but a nick-name given to the conquered civilization by The Domain Forces) that served as the seat of central government for this galaxy, and other adjoining regions of space. These planets are located in the star systems in the tail of the Big Dipper constellation. She did not mention which stars, exactly.
About 1,500 years later The Domain began the installation bases for their own forces along the path of invasion which leads toward the center of this galaxy and beyond. About 8,200 years ago The Domain forces set up a base on Earth in the Himalaya Mountains near the border of modern Pakistan and Afghanistan. This was a base for a battalion of The Domain Expeditionary Force, which included about 3,000 members.
They set up a base under or inside the top of a mountain. The mountain top was drilled into and made hollow to create an area large enough to house the ships and personnel of that force. An electronic illusion of the mountain top was then created to hide the base by projecting a false image from inside the mountain against a "force screen". The ships could then enter and exit through the force screen, yet remain unseen by homo sapiens.
Shortly after they settled there the base was surprised by an attack from a remnant of the military forces of the "Old Empire". Unbeknownst to The Domain, a hidden, underground base on Mars, operated by the "Old Empire", had existed for a very long time. The Domain base was wiped out by a military attack from the Mars base and the IS-BEs of The Domain Expeditionary Force were captured.
You can imagine that The Domain was very upset about losing such a large force of officers and crew, so they sent other crews to Earth to look for them. Those crews were also attacked.
The captured IS-BEs from The Domain Forces were handled in the same fashion as all other IS-BEs who have been sent to Earth. They were each given amnesia, had their memories replaced with false pictures and hypnotic commands and sent to Earth to inhabit biological bodies. They are still a part of the human population today.
After a very persistent and extensive investigation into the loss of their crews, The Domain discovered that "Old Empire" has been operating a very extensive, and very carefully hidden, base of operations in this part of the galaxy for millions of years. No one knows exactly how long. Eventually, the space craft of the "Old Empire" forces and The Domain engaged each other in open combat in the space of the solar system.
According to Airl, there was a running battle between the "Old Empire" forces and The Domain until about 1235 AD, when The Domain forces finally destroyed the last of the space craft of the "Old Empire" force in this area. The Domain Expeditionary Force lost many of its own ships in this area during that time also.
About 1,000 years later the "Old Empire" base was discovered by accident in the spring of 1914 AD. The discovery was made when the body of the Archduke of Austria was "taken over" by an officer of The Domain Expeditionary Force. This officer, who was stationed in the asteroid belt, was sent to Earth on a routine mission to gather reconnaissance.
The purpose of this "take over" was to use the body as a "disguise" through which to infiltrate human society in order to gather information about current events on Earth. he officer, as an IS-BE, having greater power than the being inhabiting the body of the Archduke, simply "pushed" the being out and took over control of the body.
However, this officer did not realize how much the Hapsburgs were hated by feuding factions in the country, so he was caught off guard when the body of the Archduke was assassinated by a Bosnian student. The officer, or IS-BE, was suddenly "knocked out" of the body when it was shot by the assassin. Disoriented, the IS-BE inadvertently penetrated one of the "amnesia force screens" and was captured.
Eventually The Domain discovered that a wide area of space is monitored by an "electronic force field" which controls all of the IS-BEs in this end of the galaxy, including Earth. The electronic force screen is designed to detect IS-BEs and prevent them from leaving the area.
If any IS-BE attempts to penetrate the force screen, it "captures" them in a kind of "electronic net". The result is that the captured IS-BE is subjected to a very severe "brainwashing" treatment which erases the memory of the IS-BE. This process uses a tremendous electrical shock, just like Earth psychiatrists use "electric shock therapy" to erase the memory and personality of a "patient" and to make them more "cooperative".
On Earth this "therapy" uses only a few hundred volts of electricity. However, the electrical voltage used by the "Old Empire" operation against IS-BEs is on the order of magnitude of billions of volts! This tremendous shock completely wipes out all the memory of the IS- BE. The memory erasure is not just for one life or one body. It wipes out all of the accumulated experiences of a nearly infinite past, as well as the identity of the IS-BE!
The shock is intended to make it impossible for the IS-BE to remember who they are, where they came from, their knowledge or skills, their memory of the past, and ability to function as a spiritual entity. They are overwhelmed into becoming a mindless, robotic non-entity.
After the shock a series of post hypnotic suggestions are used to install false memories, and a false time orientation in each IS-BE. This includes the command to "return" to the base after the body dies, so that the same kind of shock and hypnosis can be done again, and again, again -- forever. The hypnotic command also tells the "patient" to forget to remember.
What The Domain learned from the experience of this officer is that the "Old Empire" has been using Earth as a "prison planet" for a very long time -- exactly how long is unknown -- perhaps millions of years.
So, when the body of the IS-BE dies they depart from the body. They are detected by the "force screen", they are captured and "ordered" by hypnotic command to "return to the light". The idea of "heaven" and the "afterlife" are part of the hypnotic suggestion -- a part of the treachery that makes the whole mechanism work.
After the IS-BE has been shocked and hypnotized to erase the memory of the life just lived, the IS-BE is immediately "commanded", hypnotically, to "report" back to Earth, as though they were on a secret mission, to inhabit a new body. Each IS-BE is told that they have a special purpose for being on Earth. But, of course there is no purpose for being in a prison -- at least not for the prisoner.
Any undesirable IS-BEs who are sentenced to Earth were classified as "untouchable" by the "Old Empire". This included anyone that the "Old Empire" judged to be criminals who are too vicious to be reformed or subdued, as well as other criminals such as sexual perverts, or beings unwilling to do any productive work.
An "untouchable" classification of IS-BEs also includes a wide variety of "political prisoners". This includes IS-BEs who are considered to be noncompliant "free thinkers" or "revolutionaries" who make trouble for the governments of the various planets of the "Old Empire". Of course, anyone with a previous military record against the "Old Empire" is also shipped off to Earth.
A list of "untouchables" include artists, painters, singers, musicians, writers, actors, and performers of every kind. For this reason Earth has more artists per capita than any other planet in the "Old Empire".
"Untouchables" also include intellectuals, inventors and geniuses in almost every field. Since everything the "Old Empire" considers valuable has long since been invented or created over the last few trillion years, they have no further use for such beings. This includes skilled managers also, which are not needed in a society of obedient, robotic citizens.
Anyone who is not willing or able to submit to mindless economic, political and religious servitude as a tax-paying worker in the class system of the "Old Empire" are "untouchable" and sentenced to receive memory wipe-out and permanent imprisonment on Earth.
The net result is that an IS-BE is unable to escape because they can't remember who they are, where they came from, where they are. They have been hypnotized to think they are someone, something, sometime, and somewhere other than where they really are.
The Domain officer who was "assassinated" while in the body of Archduke of Austria was, likewise, captured by the "Old Empire" force. Because this particular officer was a high powered IS-BE, compared to most, he was taken away to a secret "Old Empire" base under the surface of the planet Mars. They put him into a special electronic prison cell and held him there.
Fortunately, this Domain officer was able to escape from the underground base after 27 years in captivity. When he escaped from the "Old Empire" base, he returned immediately to his own base in the asteroid belt. His commanding officer ordered that a battle cruiser be dispatched to the coordinates of the base provided by this officer and to destroy that base completely. This "Old Empire" base was located a few hundred miles north of the equator on Mars in the Cydonia region.
Although the military base of the "Old Empire" was destroyed, unfortunately, much of the vast machinery of the IS-BE force screens, the electroshock / amnesia / hypnosis machinery continues to function in other undiscovered locations right up to the present moment. The main base or control center for this "mind control prison" operation has never been found. So, the influences of this base, or bases, are still in effect.
The Domain has observed that since the "Old Empire" space forces were destroyed there is no one left to actively prevent other planetary systems from bringing their own "untouchable" IS-BEs to Earth from all over this galaxy, and from other galaxies nearby. Therefore, Earth has become a universal dumping ground for this entire region of space.
This, in part, explains the very unusual mix of races, cultures, languages, moral codes, religious and political influences among the IS-BE population on Earth. The number and variety of heterogeneous societies on Earth are extremely unusual on a normal planet. Most "Sun Type 12, Class 7" planets are inhabited by only one humanoid body type or race, if any.
In addition, most of the ancient civilizations of Earth, and many of the events of Earth have been heavily influenced by the hidden, hypnotic operation of the "Old Empire" base. So far, no one has figured out exactly where and how this operation is run, or by whom because it is so heavily protected by screens and traps.
Furthermore, there has been no operation undertaken to seek out, discover and destroy the vast and ancient network of electronics machinery that create the IS-BE force screens at this end of the galaxy. Until this has been done, we are not able to prevent or interrupt the electric shock operation, hypnosis and remote thought control of the "Old Empire" prison planet.
Of course all of the crew members of The Domain Expeditionary Force now remain aware of this phenomena at all times while operating in this solar system space so as to prevent detection and the capture by "Old Empire" traps."
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And, the very unusual combination of "inmates" on Earth - criminals, perverts, artists, revolutionaries and geniuses - is the cause of a very restive and tumultuous environment. The purpose of the prison planet is to keep IS-BEs on Earth, forever. Promoting ignorance, superstition, and war between IS-BEs helps to keep the prison population crippled and trapped behind "the wall" of electronic force screens.
IS-BEs have been dumped on Earth from all over the galaxy, adjoining galaxies, and from planetary systems all over the "Old Empire", like Sirius, Aldebaron, the Pleiades, Orion, Draconis, and countless others.
There are IS- BEs on Earth from unnamed races, civilizations, cultural backgrounds, and planetary environments.
Each of the various IS-BE populations have their own languages, belief systems, moral values, religious beliefs, training and unknown and untold histories.
These IS-BEs are mixed together with earlier inhabitants of Earth who came from another star system more than 400,000 years ago to establish the civilizations of Atlanta and Lemuria. Those civilizations vanished beneath the tidal waves caused by a planetary "polar shift", many thousands of years before the current "prison" population started to arrive. Apparently, the IS-BEs from those star systems were the source of the original, oriental races of Earth, beginning in Australia.
On the other hand, the civilizations set up on Earth by the "Old Empire" prison system were very different from the civilization of the "Old Empire" itself, which is an electronic space opera, atomic powered conglomeration of earlier civilizations that were conquered with nuclear weapons and colonized by IS-BEs from another galaxy.
The bureaucracy that controlled the former "Old Empire" was from an ancient space opera society, run by a totalitarian confederation of planetary governments, regulated by a brutal social, economic, and political hierarchy, with a royal monarch as its figurehead.
This type of government emerges with regularity on planets where the citizens abandon personal responsibility for autonomous, self-regulation. They frequently lose their freedom to demented IS-BEs who suffer from an overwhelming paranoia that every other IS-BE is their enemy who must be controlled or destroyed. Their closest friends and allies, whom they espouse to love and cherish, are literally "loved to death" by them.
Because such IS-BEs exist, The Domain has learned that freedom must be won and maintained through eternal vigilance and the ability to use defensive force to maintain it.
As a result, The Domain has already conquered the governing planet of the "Old Empire". The civilization of The Domain, although considerably younger and smaller in size, is already more powerful, better organized, and united by an egalitarian esprit de corps never known in the history of the "Old Empire".
The recently despoiled German totalitarian state on Earth was similar to the "Old Empire", but not nearly as brutal, and about ten thousand times less powerful. Many of the IS- BEs on Earth are here because they are violently opposed to totalitarian government, or because they were so psychotically vicious that they could not be controlled by "Old Empire" government.
Consequently, the population of Earth is disproportionately comprised of a very high percentage of such beings. The conflicting cultural and ethical moral codes of the IS-BEs on Earth is unusual in the extreme.
The Domain conquest of the central "Old Empire" planets was fought with electronic cannon. The citizens of the planets forming the core of government for the "Old Empire" are a filthy, degraded, slave society of mindless, tax-paying workers, who practice cannibalism. Violent automotive race tracks and bloody, Roman circus type entertainments are their only amusements.
Regardless of any reasonable justification we may have had for using atomic weapons to vanquish the planets of the "Old Empire", The Domain is careful not to ruin the resources of those planets by using weapons of crude, radioactive force.
The government of the "Old Empire", before being supplanted by The Domain, was comprised of beings who possessed a very craven intelligence, very much like the Axis powers during your recent world war. Those beings manifested precisely the same behavior as the galactic government that exiled them to eternal imprisonment on Earth. They were a gruesome reminder of the ageless maxim that an IS-BE will often manifest the treatment they have received from others.
Kindness fosters kindness. Cruelty begets cruelty. One must be able and willing to use force, tempered with intelligence, to prevent harm to the innocent. However, extraordinary understanding, self- discipline and courage are required to effectively prevent brutality, without being overwhelmed by the malice that motivated the brutality.
Only a demonic, self-serving government would employ a "logic" or "science" to conceive that an "ultimate solution" to any problem is to murder and permanently erase the memory of every artist, genius, skilled manager, and inventor, and cast them into a planetary prison together with political opponents, killers, thieves, perverts, and disabled beings of an entire galaxy!
Once the IS-BEs expelled from the "Old Empire" arrived on Earth, they were given amnesia, and hypnotically tricked into thinking that something else had happened to them. The next step was to implant the IS-BEs into biological bodies on Earth. The bodies became the human populations of "false civilizations" which were designed and installed in the minds of IS-BEs to look completely unlike the "Old Empire".
All of the IS-BEs of India, Egypt, Babylon, Greece, Rome, and Medieval Europe were guided to pattern and build the cultural elements of these societies based on standard patterns developed by the IS-BEs of many earlier, similar civilizations on "Sun Type 12, Class 7" planets that have existed for trillions of years throughout the universe.
In the earliest times the IS-BEs sent to prison Earth lived in India.
They gradually spread into Mesopotamia, Egypt, Mesoamerica, Achaea, Greece, Rome, Medieval Europe, and to the New World. They were hypnotically "commanded" to follow the pattern of a given civilization by the "Old Empire" prison operators.
This is an effective mechanism to disguise the actual time and location from the IS-BEs imprisoned on Earth. The languages, costumes and culture of each false civilization are intended to reinforce amnesia because they do not remind the IS-BEs on Earth of the original "Old Empire" planets from which they were deported.
On the very far back-track of time these types of civilizations tended to repeat themselves over and over because the IS-BEs who created them become familiar with certain patterns and styles, and stayed with them. It is a lot of work to invent an entire civilization, complete with culture, architecture, language, customs, mathematics, moral values, and so forth. It is much easier to replicate a copy based on a familiar and successful pattern.
A "Sun Type 12, Class 7" planet is the designation given to a planet inhabited by carbon-oxygen based life forms. The class of the planet is based on the size and radiation intensity of the star, the distance of the planetary orbit from the star, and the size, density, gravity, and chemical composition of the planet.
Likewise, flora and fauna are designated and identified according to the star type and class of planet they inhabit.
On the average, the percentage of planets in the physical universe with a breathable atmosphere is relatively small. Most planets do not have an atmosphere upon which life-forms "feed", as on Earth, where the chemical composition of the atmosphere provides nutrition to plants, and other organisms, which in turn support other life forms.
When the Domain Force brought the Vedic Hymns to the Himalayas region 8,200 years ago, some human societies already existed. The Aryan people invaded and conquered India , bringing the Vedic Hymns to the area.
The Vedas were learned by them, memorized and carried forward verbally for 7,000 years before being committed to written form. During that span of time one of the officers of The Domain Expeditionary Force was incarnated on Earth as "Vishnu".
He is described many times in the Rig-Veda. He is still considered to be a god by the Hindus. Vishnu fought in the religious wars against the "Old Empire" forces. He is a very able and aggressive IS-BE as well as a highly effective officer, who has since been reassigned to other duties in The Domain.
This entire episode was orchestrated as an attack and revolt against the Egyptian pantheon installed by "Old Empire" administrators. The conflict was intended to help free humankind from implanted elements of the false civilization that focused attention on many "gods" and superstitious ritual worship demanded by the priests who "managed" them. It is all part of the mental manipulation by the "Old Empire" to hide their criminal actions against the IS-BEs on Earth.
A priesthood, or prison guards, were used to help reinforce the idea that an individual is only a biological body and is not an Immortal Spiritual Being. The individual has no identity. The individuals have no past lives.
The individual has no power. Only the gods have power. And, the gods are a contrivance of the priests who intercede between men and the gods they serve. Men are slaves to the dictates of the priests who threaten eternal spiritual punishment if men do not obey them.
What else would one expect on a prison planet where all prisoners have amnesia, and the priests themselves are prisoners?
The intervention of The Domain Force on Earth has not been entirely successful due to the secret mind-control operation of the "Old Empire" that still continues to operate.
A battle was waged between the "Old Empire" forces and The Domain through religious conquest. Between 1500 BCE and about 1200 BCE, The Domain Forces attempted to teach the concept of an individual, Immortal Spiritual Being, to several influential beings on Earth.
One such instance resulted in a very tragic misunderstanding, misinterpretation and misapplication of the concept. The idea was perverted and applied to mean that there is only one IS-BE, instead of the truth that everyone is an IS-BE! Obviously, this was a gross incomprehension and an utter unwillingness to take responsibility for one's own power.
The "Old Empire" priests managed to corrupt the concept of individual immortality into the idea that there is only one, all-powerful IS-BE, and that no one else is or is allowed to be an IS- BE. Obviously, this is the work of the "Old Empire" amnesia operation.
It is easy to teach this altered notion to beings who do not want to be responsible for their own lives. Slaves are such beings. As long as one chooses to assign responsibility for creation, existence and personal accountability for one's own thoughts and actions to others, one is a slave.
As a result, the concept of a single monotheistic "god" resulted and was promoted by many self-proclaimed prophets, such as the Jewish slave leader -- Moses -- who grew up in the household of the Pharaoh Amenhotep III and his son, Akhenaten and his wife Nefertiti, as well as his son Tutankhamen.
The attempt to teach certain beings on Earth the truth that they are, themselves, IS-BEs, was part of a plan to overthrow the fictional, metaphorical, anthropomorphic panoply of gods created by the "Old Empire" mystery cult called "The Brothers of The Serpent" known in Egypt as the Priests of Amun. They were a very ancient, secret society within the "Old Empire".
The Pharaoh Akhenaten was not a very intelligent being, and was heavily influenced by his personal ambition for self- glorification. He altered the concept of the individual spiritual being and embodied the concept in the sun god, Aten.
His pitiful existence was soon ended.
He was assassinated by Maya and Parennefer, two of the Priests of Amun, or "Amen", which the Christians still say, who represented the interests of the "Old Empire" forces.
The idea of "One God" was perpetuated by the Hebrew leader Moses while he was in Egypt. He left Egypt with his adopted people, the Jewish slaves.
While they were crossing the desert, Moses was intercepted by an operative of the "Old Empire" near Mt. Sinai. Moses was tricked into believing that this operative was "the" One God through the use of hypnotic commands, as well as technical and aesthetic tricks which are commonly used by the "Old Empire" to trap IS-BEs.
Thereafter, the Jewish slaves, who trusted the word of Moses implicitly, have worshiped a single god they call "Yaweh".
The name "Yaweh" means "anonymous", as the IS- BE who "worked with" Moses could not use an actual name or anything that would identify himself, or blow the cover of the amnesia / prison operation. The last thing the covert amnesia / hypnosis / prison system wants to do is to reveal themselves openly to the IS-BEs on Earth. They feel that this would restore the inmates memories!
This is the reason that all traces of physical encounters between operatives of space civilizations and humans is very carefully hidden, disguised, covered-up, denied or misdirected.
This "Old Empire" operative contacted Moses on a desert mountain top and delivered the "Ten Hypnotic Commands" to him. These commands are very forcefully worded, and compel an IS-BE into utter subservience to the will of the operator. These hypnotic commands are still in effect and influence the thought patterns of millions of IS-BEs thousands of years later!
Incidentally, we later discovered that the so- called "Yaweh" also wrote, programmed and encoded the text of the Torah, which when it is read literally, or in its decoded, form, will provide a great deal more false information to those who read it.
Ultimately, the Vedic Hymns became the source of nearly all of Eastern the religions and were the philosophical source of the ideas common to Buddha, Laozi, Zoroaster, and other philosophers. The civilizing influences of these philosophies eventually replaced the brutal idolatry of the "Old Empire" religions and were the true genesis of kindness and compassion.
You asked me earlier why The Domain, and other space civilizations do not land on Earth or make their presence known.
Land on Earth?
Do you think we are crazy or want to be crazy?
It takes a very brave IS-BE to come down through the atmosphere and land on Earth, because this is a prison planet, with a very uncontrolled, psychotic population. And, no IS-BE is entirely proof against the risk of entrapment, as with the members of The Domain Expeditionary Force who were captured in the Himalayas 8,200 years ago.
No one knows what IS-BEs on Earth are going to do.
We are not scheduled to invest the resources of The Domain to take total control of all the space surrounding the area at this time.
This will occur in the not-too-distant future -- about 5,000 Earth years -- according to the time schedule of The Domain. At this time we do not prevent transports from other planetary systems or galaxies from continuing to drop IS-BEs into the amnesia force screen area. Eventually, this will change.
In addition, Earth, inherently, is a highly unstable planet. It is not suitable for settlement or permanent habitation for any sustainable civilization. This is part of the reason why it is being used as a prison planet. No one else would seriously consider living here for a variety of simple and compelling reasons:
The continental land masses of Earth are floating on a sea of molten lava beneath the surface which causes the land masses to crack, crumble and drift
Because of the liquid nature of the core, the planet is largely volcanic and subject to earthquakes and volcanic explosion
The magnetic poles of the planet shift radically about once every 20,000 years. This causes a greater or lesser degree of devastation as a result of tidal waves, and climatic
Earth is very distant from the center of the galaxy and from any other significant galactic civilization. This isolation makes it unsuitable for use, except as a "pit stop" or jumping off point along the way between galaxies. The moon and asteroids are far more suitable for this purpose because they do not have any significant gravity.
Earth is a heavy gravity planet, with heavy metallic soil and a dense atmosphere. This makes it treacherous for navigational That fact that I am in this room, as the result of an in flight accident, in spite of the technology of my craft and my extensive expertise as a pilot, are proof of these facts.
There are approximately sixty billion Earth- like (Sun Type 12, Class 7) planets in the Milky Way galaxy alone, not to mention the vast expanses of The Domain, and the territories we will claim in the future. It is difficult to stretch our resources to do much more than a periodic reconnaissance of Earth. Especially when there are no immediate advantages to invest resources
On Earth most beings are not aware that they are IS-BEs, or that there are spirits of any kind. Many other beings are aware of this, but nearly everyone has a very limited understanding of themselves as an IS-BE.
One of the reasons for this is that IS-BEs have been waging war against each other since the beginning of time. The purpose of these wars have always been to establish domination by one IS-BE or group of IS-BEs over another. Since an IS-BE cannot be "killed", the objective has been to capture and immobilize IS-BEs.This has been done in an nearly unlimited variety of ways. The most basic method to capture and immobilize an IS-BE is through the use of various kinds of "traps".
IS-BE traps have been made and put in place by many invading societies, such as the one that established the "Old Empire", beginning about sixty-four trillion years ago. Traps are often set up in the "territory" of the IS-BEs being attacked.Usually a trap is set with the electronic wave of "beauty" to attract the interest and attention of the IS-BE. When the IS-BE moves toward the source of the aesthetic wave, such as a beautiful building or beautiful music, the trap is activated by the energy put out by the IS-BE.
One of the most common trap mechanism uses the IS-BE's own thought energy output when the IS- BE tries to attack or fight back against the trap. The trap is activated and energized by the IS-BE's own thought energy. The harder the IS-BE fights against the trap, the more it pulls the IBS toward it and keeps them "stuck" in the trap.
Throughout the entire history of this physical universe, vast areas of space have been taken over and colonized by IS-BE societies who invade and take over new areas of space in this fashion. In the past, these invasions have always shared common elements:
(1) the overwhelming use of force of arms, usually with nuclear or electronic mind control of the IS-BEs in the invaded area through the use of electroshock, drugs, hypnosis, erasure of memory and the implantation of false memory or false information intended to subjugate and enslave the local IS-BE
(2) takeover of natural resources by the invading IS-BEs.
(3) political, economic and social slavery of the local population.
These activities continue in present time. All of the IS-BEs on Earth have been members of one or more of these activities in the past, both as an invader, or as part of the population being invaded. There are no "saints" in this universe. Very few have avoided or been exempted from warfare between IS-BEs.
IS-BEs on Earth are still the victims of this activity at this very moment. The between- lives amnesia administered to IS-BEs is one of the mechanisms of an elaborate system of "Old Empire" IS-BE traps, that prevent an IS-BE from escaping.
This operation is managed by an illicit, renegade secret police force of the "Old Empire", using false provocation operations to disguise their activities in order to prevent detection by their own government, The Domain and by the victims of their activities.
They are mind-control methods developed by government psychiatrists.
Earth is a "ghetto" planet. It is the result of an intergalactic "Holocaust". IS-BEs have been sentenced to Earth either because:
They are too viciously insane or perverse to function as part of any civilization, no matter how degraded or
Or, they are a revolutionary threat to the social, economic and political caste system that has been so carefully built and brutally enforced in the "Old Empire". Biological bodies are specifically designed and designated as the lowest order of entity in the "Old Empire" caste system. When an IS-BE is sent to Earth, and then tricked or coerced into operating in a biological body, they are actually in a prison, inside a...
In an effort to permanently and irreversibly rid the "Old Empire" of such "untouchables", the eternal identity, memory, and abilities of every IS-BE is forcefully erased. This "final solution" was conceived and carried out by the psychopathic criminals who are controlled by the "Old Empire".
The mass extermination of "untouchables" and prison camps created by Germany during World War II were recently revealed. Likewise, the IS-BEs of Earth are the victims of spiritual eradication and eternal slavery inside frail, biological bodies, inspired by the same kind of craven hatred in the "Old Empire".
The kind and creative inmates of Earth are continuously tortured by butchers and lunatics who are controlled by the "Old Empire" prison operators. The so-called "civilizations" of Earth, from the age of useless pyramids to the age of nuclear holocaust, have been a colossal waste of natural resources, a perverted use of intelligence, and an overt oppression of the spiritual essence of every single IS-BE on the planet.
If The Domain sent ships to every corner of the universe in search of "Hell", their quest could end on Earth. What greater brutality can be inflicted on anyone than to erase the spiritual awareness, identity, ability, and memory that is the essence of oneself?
The Domain has, as yet, been unable to rescue the 3,000 IS-BEs of the Expeditionary Force Battalion either.
They are forced to inhabit biological bodies on Earth. We have been able to recognize and track most of them for the past 8,000 years. However, our attempts to communicate with them are usually futile, as they are unable to remember their true identity.
The majority of lost members of The Domain force have followed the general progression of Western civilization from India, into the Middle East, then to Chaldea, and Babylon, into Egypt, through Achaia, Greece, Rome, into Europe, to the Western Hemisphere, and then all around the world.
The members of the lost Battalion and many other IS-BEs on Earth, could be valuable citizens of The Domain, not including those who are vicious criminals or perverts. Unfortunately, there has been no workable method conceived to emancipate the IS-BEs from Earth.
Therefore, as a matter of common logic, as well as the official policy of The Domain, it is safer and more sensible to avoid contact with the IS-BE population of Earth until such time as the proper resources can be allocated to locate and destroy the "Old Empire" force screen and amnesia machinery and develop a therapy to restore the memory of an IS-BE."
Summary and conclusion
We can all use our special abilities to help others in need. It’s fine to read about Alien Interview, or participate in MAJestic, but it is something else entirely to go forth and devote time and thoughts to helping our benefactors. Here I ask and call upon all Rufus’s in the MM sphere to add some rescue code to their prayer affirmation campaigns to help the trapped Domain Battalion. Participation is optional, but it would b nice if others would join me in this effort.
Do you want more?
You can find many more videos in my “Extraterrestrial Species index” over here…
This is a big special treat for the MM audience. Boy oh boy! Straight from the “horse’s mouth”. Oh baby!
Most people are aware that the work titled “Alien Interview” is a transcript of a Commander of The Domain when it’s vehicle crashed in 1947. What most people do not know is that this event spawned an American top secret agency known as MAJestic that fell under the ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence).
This waved, unacknowledged special access program handled (and still handles) all extraterrestrial events, technologies and interactions with the United States government. I was a unique part of that organization prior to being retired.
I do know that MAJestic works intimately with the Domain. And that it has acquired technology, information and understandings from The Domain. Obviously further more exacting information came forth and was accumulated in the 75 or so years since the formation of MAJestic.
This article is my attempt to further flush out some points (in addition to) the Alien Interview. Fill in the blanks, so to say.
Here’s where it gets strange…
You plan on one thing happening, and something entirely different transpires…
Background
Initially I had planned to disgorge what I knew of these matters though my involvement with MAJestic, and then redact everything that was questionable. But, you know, it didn’t work out that way. Not at all.
Something else happened.
As always, I set up a new “post” based on a wordpress format that I established. I cleared the wordpress, and started typing. I wrote the two paragraph introduction, fully planning to discuss what I could piece together based on my four decades of involvement, and just as I was about to start…
…I had to jump up. And then pace in my office. I actually paced. Kind of shuttered a bit to the left and almost walked out of the office to the hallway, but didn’t and went back in.
I kind of bounced around from the corner plant to the sofa, and back to the credenza.
I sat down. Cleared my desk, and took a sip of coffee, and started to type. And well, nothing came out. You know. I started to type, but (you know) I was not able to write anything down at all. I couldn’t do anything.
Blank.
So I leaned back. Perplexed.
I couldn’t even think. Blank.
I took a sip of coffee, and tried again. Still blank.
Blank.
Blank.
And then, I got goosebumps all over my arms. No shit. And right then and there, truly, something unique, and very special happened. Listen closely. Pay attention.
…
An officer of The Domain opened up a channel and talked to me directly.
No Bullshit
And make no mistake I am directed to do this with excitement / urgency (expediency).
It’s a real thing.
I am not blowing smoke up your ass. Not like Jerry Falwell getting a message from Jesus that he needs a million dollars before Tuesday or Satan will take over, or any bullshit like that. This is a real fucking thing, with real physical effects.
Communication through the EBP is always subtle and one way. I listen and then respond.
EBP– Task Directive / question.
MM– Do and confirm.
However, in this case, the system worked like this…
EBP– They prompt for a specific question.
MM– I ask / verbalize the question.
EBP– Get answer.
MM– I record the answer.
EBP– Next query…
I am forced (it’s the only way that I can do this at this time) to lay it out in Question and Answer format. And what I know or conscious of is a direct function of what I am allowed or permitted to disclose. Nothing more.
My questions and the officer’s answers…
The Disclosure
As of today, how close is The Domain able to shut down the amnesia-force-field and associated “Prison Planet” technology?
The Domain has established a task team to work on this problem.
They are working with MAJestic, as well as a number of other earth organizations to accomplish this.
The earth environment is a "battlefield" of all sorts of "traps" and "snares". Many of which are independent, individual, self-autonomous in nature.
The Domain has located and tracked our missing battalion. We work with their non-physical bodies in various efforts to release them.
As of this date, most of the battalion are still imprisoned.
However, serious and strong steps have been taken to root out and shutdown and suppress the machinery and systems that many of the mechanisms that the snares operate under.
These actions have laid down a foundation for further more successful subsequent efforts to take place.
Most of the equipment and systems are in the non-physical realms.
Any efforts towards directed thought will be most helpful.
What is the time-line for the completion of this effort?
From the start it was anticipated that the project can begin in 5,000 years. This date has been advanced, and is in process now.
We do not have a realistic time-table for completion.
This entire effort is a staged, and built-upon, effort. And it takes time. It will take many human life-times.
Sentience sorting is the methodology that will be used to select and release IS-BE's from this environment.
We anticipate the reestablishment of containment control (to stop other species from dumping their riff-raff in), and simultaneously building upon control over thought process suppression. Meanwhile snares, traps and tricks will continue to be rooted out and destroyed.
Once those most basic steps are secure, then the modification of the (physical) human biology can advance with mRNA and DNA alterations making it easier to release the non-physical bodies from the non-physical environment that surrounds this region.
We are active in modifying the non-physical bodies of many imprisoned IS-BE's. But because there are so many, it is a herculean task. Our priority is to save the Domain Battalion, and all MAJestic members that work with us (and other organizations that work with us as well). We physically change their non-physical bodies to assist in suppression of the effects of the field that surrounds this region.
We also work with other special IS-BE's that show a preference to assist us in this task. This includes both imprisoned IS-BE's as well as other IS-BE's from outside this region who volunteer to help.
How do you select or prioritize those IS-BE’s that can leave this Earth Prison Planet region?
We sort by sentience.
We have prioritized The Domain IS-BE members first. They are our most important asset in this entire effort. They hold the "keys" to "unlock" the fences.
We also work with <redacted>. You do not know them. (Referring to MM here.)
Why are you having trouble freeing the “Lost Battalion”?
They are mostly specialized "troops" that you would consider to be of military caliber. Their nature is to fight aggressively.
Additionally, they have had special "chains" or "processes" that make their recovery so much more difficult than your typical inmate.
What about other species?
Humans are not the only enslaved and imprisoned species here. Other species include dolphins, and horses.
We are working to free all IS-BE's in the regions irregardless to what physical form they inhabit and what associated Heaven they are associated with.
What can I do to help?
(Directed at MM) You are just doing great. Follow your intuition.
I think that while it was directed at me personally, I strongly think that this applies to all MM readership as well. I strongly have the "message" that it is specifically directed to some certain MM followers, but no names are being given to tell youse guys who.
What about prayer affirmation campaigns and the other things that are listed here?
(Directed at MM readership) All the tools you need to find are here. Keep in mind that the techniques are conceptual and can be modified by your own mental utility to fit your needs, do not believe in absolute solutions, as it is your thoughts that modify your reality.
Is this “channeling”?
This is "EBP stuff" as you call (refer to) it.
I want to really be a bridge between The Domain and the MM followers here. What can I do to participate in this?
(Directed at me.) Perhaps we can provide more of this in the future. It will depend on the mindset and desires of your audience. It will develop.
Is there anything else that I can ask or that you want to say?
No. Message sent. Do not worry too much (directed at the MM audience). The physical saturation of discomfort is under our (the Domain) control (observation and manipulation as necessary), and the tools that MM provides.
Conclusion
Wow!
You are welcome.
References
This communication occurred between 9:45am and 10:39am on 16SEP21. It is a direct EBP channel direct from the Type-1 greys of The Domain to me personally. It is exactly as sent. And I am personally stunned as it never happened this way before.
Final Comments
There are so many questions that I want to ask, but I was unable to gather my thoughts and ask them. That is not how you deal with these entities. I was only able to ask what they told me to ask. Though, I did have some degree of freedom on how to phrase the questions, and then post-edit some parts of the answers.
This is big stuff for me personally. If you don’t understand you can leave. I am now filled with emotion and actually my physical body is shaking with “goosebumps” all over it. Chills running back and forth.
It took me about 8 hours to cool down.
Do you want more?
You can find many more videos in my “Extraterrestrial Species index” over here…
Some thoughts. A bunch of “stuff” flooded my brain this morning, and so I want to spew this stuff on paper and move on with my other projects and activities. So just let me go a spewing. And as I spew forth on this beautiful morning let’s all keep in mind to have a lovely day.
Shall we go a spewing?
Coffee, freshly brewed in the morning, tastes great.
Perhaps we take what we commonly consume for granted. I watched one of those “cop shooting videos” where this guy threatens a police officer to shoot him. He said “go shoot me!”. And the police tell him “lay down your weapon.” And so he lunges out at the officer, and is shot dead. I think he was dead before he hit the ground.
Ugh.
In one year no one will remember his name, what he did for a living, or really care.
And you know what?
That cup of coffee that he had in the morning was his last.
He probably didn’t savor it either. He probably poured himself a cup, gulped it down without a thought and read the “news” about “Presidents says this…”, or “Rich oligarch flies into space because he can. And fuck the rest of youse guys”
Or better yet “Coronavirus is worst ever!”. Or “new strain attacks people left and right!” Or, maybe “new leaked evidence about US funding, and Coronavirus development in China”.
Or perhaps, “Australia alarmed”, or “Japan Alarmed”, or “Refugees pour in from Afghanistan”. Yada. Yada. Yada.
Sheech! Enjoy what you have.
Morning coffee.
Do you smell the coffee when it is brewing? Do you have the opportunity to drink it in the early morning with some “me” time? Do you eat something along with it?
Like eat a bagel.
Or hang out with your little buddies.
NOW.
Engineering of humans for this “Prison Planet” environment.
As I understand it, the “normal” and default biological life-form is fully capable of simultaneous co-habitation in both the physical world and the non-physical world.Most creatures naturally go back and forth between the two realities quite easily.
Yet humans do not have this ability.
For us (Earth bound) humans, we can only see the physical reality, and have no ability to see the non-physical reality, and what’s worse, not even able to remember it.
The reasoning behind this is described in the work “Alien Interview”.
I suggest that this implies that the human species (for this earth environment) was specifically modified (or retarded) to prevent this ability. And this belief is confirmed in the “Alien Interview”.
Alien 3 movie – A prison planet.
If we can determine what the alterations are, we can reverse this aspect of the damage.
I argue that the Type-1 greys are physically modifying the non-physical reality bodies to correct these and other issues, and all that nonsense about abductions are just fears manifested from ignorance. Now, to prevent me from going into stuff that I just cannot state, I will suggest that the “other” humans that sometimes attend these events are not from our “Sentience Nursery Region / Prison Planet”. Instead they are from “outside” of it.
Their bodies are not “retarded” Prison-bodies that we are all so entwined with in this realm that we are in.
The key then is “containerizing” our consciousness outside of the physical body, as it seems to have been devised (or modified) as a physical cage.
Indeed this “Prison Planet” has many, many levels.
Body selection for the truly evil
I think that those souls that developed into truly evil and vile consciousnesses needed to be put into a secure holding facility; a “Prison Planet”. The problem is that as the “Old Empire” got old and corrupt itself, everyone was thrown into this environment. And it is thus and environment that we share together.
Good. Bad. Evil. Disjointed.
Earlier I wrote about CJ, the beauty model that I lived with. She was amazingly beautiful, but inside she was like a horrible demon. At times, when her “real” side came out, I considered her to be an actual evil demon-like entity.
I wonder…
If you were evil and vile and you were in Heaven, and it was time for you to construct your time on earth, what kinds of bodies would you inhabit?
I think that most evil and vile people would inhabit the bodies that would give them…
Large amounts of Power.
Unlimited sex with whomever they wanted.
Control over others, domination.
Wealth in copious and ridiculous amounts.
Thus, is it any wonder that we see such a concentration of evil and vile people in Washington DC, or in the leadership of smaller African, and South American nations today?
And thus we see an outrageously beautiful person who is a real evil vile person inside.
Alien Interview placed many concepts, now accepted as real, decades before scientific acknowledgement of them.
For instance “continental drift”. “Chariots of the Gods”. The “12th Planet”. “Pole Shifts”. The ability to clone and design creatures with DNA. The list goes on and on.
It is so easy for us to read “Alien Interview” with the eyes of a contemporaneous person from 2021 instead of a person from 1947.
We have to keep that in mind.
In 1947, the “new age” movement did not exist. It did not occur until the late 1960’s. Most Americans believed the Bible was the de facto history of the world. And while Darwinism was taught in the universities, most people focused on the principle subjects of reading, writing and arithmetic.
For the “leadership” of America at that time, it all must have come as a great shock. The idea of “not to follow the tunnel of light”, and that there is no “Heaven” or “Hell”, and that memories are not ever supposed to be erased.
All in all, it was obvious from the reading of the narrative in support of “Alien Interview”, that leading scientists and capable people at that time were pulled in for their thoughts and commentaries. And after much deliberation, I am positive that they HAD to conceive of a secret organization to deal with this species and all of what it talked about.
That is how MAJestic came about. And no, it wasn’t JUST because one singular “flying saucer” was captured. It was EVERYTHING associated with it.
Some cat quotes
I found these humorous.
Does McDonald’s i(outside of China) still have those little white plastic stir-sticks? What about those little metal foil ash-trays? Or those cute kitty-sized little milk creamers?
This is so relatable.
Indeed. They seem to be immune to the earth as a “Prison Planet”.
They come and go from non-physical to physical and back again as if it were nothing.
Poor kitty.
And…
Yeah. I hear ya bud.
And…
Fact. Jack.
Japanese press is hyping up a war with China
American influence no doubt. But it’s all nonsense. A lot of words, and posturing. And it ignores the serious, serious open wounds that fester inside of China.
But let me tell you all, and any Chinese in the MM audience can confirm this statement as true.
"If Japan makes ANY military move against China, China will start nuking that fucking little island like there is no tomorrow. Fuck their military. It will be their cities and people who will all die God Damn it!"
For the last 75 years every single person in China has been exposed to the horrific tragedies and rape of China by the Japanese and the hatred is visceral. I, as an American, am shaken to the core when I see the Chinese react to any of this Japanese nonsense. Believe me. They will fucking bludgeon Japan into a bloody pulp.
Believe me.
Japans had best hide from China, and not do anything that the USA wants. Mind My Words. Video…
The Japanese were brutal against the Chinese, and China wants PAYBACK in the worst way.
Things have changed.
This was then. Now look at today. If you want to fuck with China you had best get ready for a real bludgeoning. Video.
If you want to fuck with China you had best get ready for a real bludgeoning.
Greek Breakfast foods
Every now and then I come across a Greek restaurant. I love the food there. And I think that it would be great to try some of their breakfast foods.
Feta, Veggies and Eggs
Whether they’re scrambled or served omelette style, you can’t go wrong with topping eggs with Feta. Try adding chopped onion, a bit of garlic, veggies of choice (zucchini, bell peppers and tomatoes are great in this dish). Sprinkle in some coarse salt and freshly ground pepper. Toss in a splash of milk, and whip together in a bowl. Cook the eggs either omelet or scrambled style, adding the Feta, when the eggs are almost finished. Delicious Greek breakfast food!
A fine Greek Breakfast.
Eliopsomo: Greek Olive Bread
You can pick up this wonderful, traditional bread at a Greek bakery or cafe, as well as many specialty grocery stores. While it’s delicious simply toasted and served with your morning cup of coffee, try switching it up a bit by topping the bread with a good Greek cheese.
Eliopsomo.
Spanakopita
Who doesn’t love Spanakopita? But, remember, it’s not just for lunch and dinner. Why not warm a slice and serve it on a plate with your morning cup of coffee? It’s a great alternative to the everyday breakfasts you’re likely tired of eating.
Spanakopita
PLA expels U.S. destroyer from China’s territorial waters off Nansha Islands
The Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) said Wednesday it had expelled a U.S. guided-missile destroyer that trespassed in China's territorial waters near the Nansha Islands in the South China Sea.
PLA Southern Theater Command spokesperson Tian Junli said in a statement that the U.S. military's act had seriously undermined China's sovereignty and security interests.
Calling Washington "a risk maker" to the security of the South China Sea and the "biggest destroyer" of the region's safety and stability, Tian warned that the theater command will "remain on high alert."
"We will resolutely safeguard national sovereignty and security, as well as peace and stability in the region," he said.
I expect more belligerent actions by the US Navy in the coming months. And expect China to tire of the “cat and mouse games” after a while.
With all the new a talking about Afghanistan, no one is talking about this little tidbit of treasure. The national animal of Afghanistan is Snow Leopard.
The Snow Leopard is a big cat who lives on a high altitude and preys on Argali wild sheeps, Ibex, Pikas and rabbits etc.
A snow leopard.
Snow Leopard are very rare and are only found in 12 countries like China, Nepal, Pakistan, India, Russia, Afghanistan etc. Snow Leopards are so rare that they estimate that there are only 3500 of these creatures left.
China has the 60% of the population of these majestic cats.
These white big patched cats love to live between an altitude of 10,000 meters – 18,000 meters. The gestation period is 3 and half months. An astonishing there here is that their limbs are extremely powerful, even they can hop up to 30 feet which is 6 times their body length, extremely strong limbs huh?.
A snow leopard.
Another specialty of these Snow Leopards is that it have a gray or light green eyes rather than a yellow or gold like the other big cats. The Snow Leopard was thought to be extinct in Afghanistan, however, 100 are still out there somewhere.
There is no specified reason why Snow Leopard is opted as the national animal, but some says as the people Afghanistan are well known for their brave character and this majestic cat, however, reflects the very same ideology. And you know, the Afghanistan people are not as the USA media pictures them. They are something else entirely. I think the Snow Leopard fits their psyche.
Changes in the geography of the basic world-line template that many people use
Changes are happening, and the templates are changing. No, not the anchoring effects, but the general master templates themselves. To do this is very, very, VERY powerful.
I was once asked how powerful the extraterrestrial benefactors were. They asked if they had weapons powerful enough to destroy cities. I responded that they had the ability to move the earth from it’s orbit. Put it inside the Sun for five minutes. Let it bake good and well, and then place it back in orbit. That is how powerful they are.
I see that there are some events that are changing. Future life-track world-lines seem to be adjusting to new templates, and these templates are … peculiar.
Peculiar.
You heard it here first.
Bob Odenkirk back on ‘Better Call Saul’ set after heart attack
I enjoy “Better call Saul”. It’s a great show. But you all gotta follow it for a while to figure out what is going on. I think it’s great. But them I was surprised to discover the actor who plays Saul Goodman had a heart attack. It bummed me out.
Better call Saul.
58 years old. Had a heart attack and blockage. Major bummer. I am glad that he’s back on his feet again. You all must take care with your body. As you get older heart attacks become real threats.
I’ve had two of the fuckers.
The first time was in a high-stress work environment, while dealing with a high-stress mentally ill wife. I was in the machine shop and had a serious heart attack. Good thing that I was young. 36 years old or so. I was able to pick my self up from the floor and get to the doctor. The second time was last year when I was adjusting to new blood pressure medicine.
Eat well. Watch your health. You never know.
What is “freedom”?
I know, I know, I know. I have gone on and on endlessly about this subject. But “freedom” is NOT the ability to vote in a democracy™. It’s something else. It’s entirely something else.
Some things that need to be underlined…
Freedom to be left alone.
Freedom to disappear.
Freedom of complete privacy.
Any nation that does not allow these freedoms is just a prison.
Facebook pays contractors to read your ‘encrypted’ WhatsApp messages, shares info with prosecutors – reports — RT World News
Obviously this is an ideal, but I do have to tell you’se guys that if your nation isn’t allowing it’s citizenry these freedoms then it is not DOING ITS JOB. Nations have a duty to their citizenry.
All nations in the world today violate these aspects of life to one degree or the other. I argue that this also includes China…
…but, China is far better protecting the massive onslaught against the individual by aggressive interests than the United States is. The freedom to be left alone is a major issue, don’t you think?
Some thoughts on democratic voting balancing
I have long given up on the belief that a democracy is the best way (or even a way) of running a nation. But others haven’t. Here’s some thoughts by RM on how the American democracy could be improved to better serve it’s people.
What we are not seeing at the city and county level is this:
USA balancing act.
Rural farming areas and downstaters are screwed when there is a big city in their state.
.
Their vote is continuously cancelled and it does not count toward the results that they want.
.
States are like a giant gerrymandering. I have often thought that states should have a series of county referendums or whatever legal path they could find and redraw their boundaries. For instance here is Greater Idaho, which they are currently working on:
Changing the lines of control.
Then groups of these newly defined states could make coalitions in Congress.
.
Create cooperative zones for building their economies.
Cooperate on state banking and mutual credits for home and industry.
Support common problems of pollution or agriculture development.
Have an Environmental protection that does not stop at state borders.
Combine their national guard forces. (This one is important.)
Maybe make tax free zones and trade concessions.
Well, they should do everything to grab more power from the Feds.
Even change the US tax structure.
I believe that in the US they would have to find a better way to consolidate interests into bigger factions, to wrest governance away from the present power structures. This could be a way, without disruptive protest or armed rebellion.
.
Is it too late? Or is the process just getting started?
Just some kids playing
In America they banned toy guns “for the children”. In China, all kids get to play with toy guns, and they all receive real military training on how to use them in the Pioneers and Scouts. Not to mention the mandatory Middle School mandatory boot camp. Video.
Kids playing.
FOX “news” praises China!
Are pigs flying in the skies above the United States these days? Did Hell freeze over?
The famous China-hater Carlson says China does a few things right:
Houses are for people to live in, not for speculation;
Children are to limit their gaming time to three hours in the weekend;
Celebrities are not to be worshiped; he should add: young men are not to wear make-up to look like women.
The differences in the relative importance of sex to women as opposed to men
Men and women are different.
Men have testosterone flowing through their veins and women have progesterone flowing through their veins. Both hormones greatly affect our social interactions with others, as well as our drive to succeed, make friends, form businesses, and establish long-lasting relationships.
Both levels fluctuate over the life-time. And thus both males and females experience different phases of life.
Testosterone levels for men and women during a life-span.
For Women… the progesterone levels fluctuate on a cycle. This reflects the ability to have children. As the levels fluctuate, moods, emotions, and physical appearances all change. I am sure that all MM readers realize this.
Now, you notice that after a period of time, this cycling stops. And thus we have this graph…
And my point is this…
Both women and men change biologically through their lives. For women, they tend to cycle faster on a more or less monthly basis, while men are fairly constant. Then at around 35 years old everything changes.
And the reason why I bring this up is that physical cosmetic changes in transgender surgery might help a person’s ego and self-esteem, but it will not change their biology. No matter what amount of dosages of hormones that they take.
When a 50 year old man goes into transgender surgery to become a woman, the only changes will be external appearance, and perhaps personal ego. It will not change their internal biology. For the rest of their lives they will be tethered to external hormonal treatments just to maintain their state of mind. The moment that you decide to go transgender, you become addicted to big-pharma, and at the mercy of what ever they demand of you.
If you stop, intentionally or unintentionally (such as a societal collapse, war, or inaccessibly of hormonal treatments) your biological regression could become a living Hell for you.
Do you think that I am being mean or cruel to point this out?
If people want to do something, I say do it! But, please do so with balance. If you are proud to be a transgender person, then tell your story. Firstly for those who need hope, but also for those that don’t understand. However, don’t paint a 100% rosy picture either.
Life is about tradeoffs. You all need to discuss those tradeoffs realistically and openly.
If you are in your late 40’s and wish to be a transgender woman then you must realize that the lifestyle that you are moving towards will have consequences.
American military transgender people speaking out about their decisions.
Some Chinese food
I eat a lot of food in China that you simply cannot get anywhere else. All those “Chinese” restaurants only sell pre-packaged “Chinese fast food” that has been Americanized, or Westernized to some extent. Here’s some short videos. Please check them out…
This is the “real deal”. Not the pale processed meat patty things that you get in fast food restaurants.
XianXi chicken tenders.
The ONE problem that I have with these delicious foods is the glossiness. All that gloss and shine is caused by heavy quantities of MSG. Ugh!
Facing a Harsh Future With the Wisdom of the Past
Ah. It’s a very American-centrist article. Very myopic. However the conclusion is critical. Americans MUST take a good hard look at what America is TODAY, and work on a NEW WAY to govern, deal with a great diverse citizenry, and function properly.
But before we get to the article, lets note what was said about the former Soviet Union. One observer described this as follows.
As the state and economy collapsed, their money worthless, their jobs evaporating, with crime, disorder, and corruption rampant, life expectancy plummeted in post-Soviet Russia. The longstanding Russian curse, alcoholism, became an endemic phenomenon in Russian life. Abortions substantially exceeded births, suicides soared, and the state apparatus and law enforcement collapsed along with the unkept utopian promises of a failed system.
Well…
Can’t you describe the United States this way today?
As the state and economy collapsed, their money worthless, their jobs evaporating, with crime, disorder, and corruption rampant, life expectancy plummeted in the United States.
Alcoholism, and drug abuse (both legal and illegal) became an endemic phenomenon in American life.
Abortions substantially exceeded births, suicides soared, and the state apparatus and law enforcement collapsed along with the unkept utopian promises of a failed system.
By tradition Americans are an optimistic people. As the saying goes, we are imbued with an “indomitable spirit” in times of hardship at home and major crises abroad. These qualities contribute to our sense of national unity. We view ourselves as a country defined by, but not imprisoned in, the past. We eagerly await future opportunities that will make our lives better and more fulfilled. We don’t fear what is to come — we welcome challenges of all sorts.
Throughout our history, we have bonded together when necessary to overcome barriers to our development as a nation. We have tamed an entire continent and fought wars abroad in support of freedom. We have survived economic failures, massive political unrest, and other threats to our sovereignty.
However, in light of recent events and civil disruptions, the cohesiveness of times past — “our indomitable spirit” — is no longer as firmly embedded in our national consciousness as before. Other countries are challenging our scientific dominance in many areas.
Our role as a leading world power is being questioned if not discredited.
China and Russia are expanding their influence throughout the globe with impunity. Obsessed with domestic unrest, the COVID pandemic, and immigration, we have not yet fashioned a coherent policy to deal with their aggressive strategies.
In spite of this shift in priorities, we tend to fall back on old ways of viewing our national goals and international commitments. Rapidly shifting conditions have created the need for a reevaluation of our relationship with allies and adversaries.
Once again, we have reverted to what I call the basic fallacies in the way we negotiate issues of national and international importance. Our optimism and pioneer spirit, as mentioned above, have a decided effect on the following observations:
The first fallacy is minimizing the impact of radical change: believing that successful measures should stay the same.
Our nation was founded on the principles set forth in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Many political scientists and judges are classified as “constructionists”: they believe that these two documents are “sacred” in nature and cannot be changed as written; others, on the other hand, are “organic life” specialists who conceive of these same documents as broad-stroked guides to political governance.
As a result, they should be interpreted according to the exigencies or dynamics of the times. Conservatives, in this debate, wish to preserve the integrity of past legislation and its precedents; liberals seek a flexible, malleable Constitution that can be interpreted as conditions warrant.
Conservative and liberal scholars both admit that adjusting to societal needs is the purpose of Constitutional amendments (27 overall to date); however, from a conservative perspective, why should legislators modify its basic framework at the same time?
We cannot project current trends with any accuracy into the future. For more than 234 years our republic has been well served by the wisdom of the founding fathers.
Resistance to change is normal but the refusal to change or alter our strategies can be very costly in the political arena. In general, cautious flexibility in judgment should always prevail to avoid the fallacy of expecting similar results over time.
The second fallacy is that good-hearted people, guided by compassion, will always determine political outcomes.
Laws, as well as wars, are rarely decided by well-intentioned government agencies. War is ended through defeat or surrender, in most instances without conditions.
Compassion has nothing to do with how the enemy is treated during the occupation of their land. Expediency and collaboration serve as principles of conduct for most Western powers. Countries in the Far East have long ruled their conquests by sheer force, terror, and indoctrination.
Western laws are legislated with mutual interests in mind, not compassion.
They are the end product of hard-nosed compromises in republican governments. Under dictatorial rule, laws are enacted by representatives who are subject only to the will of a tyrant. As Louis XIV of France famously said” “L”Etat c’est moi!” (“I am the State”)
The third fallacy is that democratic or republican government will always be preferred to autocracies that suppress individualism and freedom.
The United States has tried repeatedly to impose democratic rule on countries they have conquered. Without a foreign military presence and forcible adoption of republican-like governments, these nations would most likely have reverted to an autocratic form of leadership that meets the needs and expectations of native or tribal leaders (e.g. Afghanistan and Iraq). Autocracy–if administered with a full understanding of the people and culture–can be very effective: to wit, the despotism of Saddam Hussein in Iraq that held warring tribes together (the Sunni vs. Shia).
Countries in the Middle East have been governed by monarchies, emirates, and dictatorships for many years. Democracy and its emphasis on individual rights are for the most part incompatible with these cultures.
Lacking the oversight of American military forces, Afghanistan will quickly return to tribal governance; extremists (i.e., the Taliban) will enforce Islamic laws that are detrimental to women and young girls. More than twenty years of warfare have forced us to admit that the Islamic world has hierarchical gender customs that are unacceptable to Western sensibilities.
The fourth fallacy is that, in times of crisis, America will always protect the rights of the individual as dictated by law.
LOL. Ha ha ha ha ha ha.
This fallacy is a product of Western thinking and political expectations. In the Far East, with the exception of South Korea and Japan (“conquered” nations with an active American military presence decades after the end of hostilities), in times of crisis the individual will always be sacrificed to the welfare of the group or nation.
In the United States, there would be a hue and cry of protest if individual rights were not protected, even during the worst of times.
Dictatorial or autocratic governments see little benefit in making an entire nation suffer to improve the life of an individual or a small group of citizens. This attitude reflects the culture’s view on human life and its relative value to society as a whole.
The fallacy of assuming that all cultures will accept our interpretation of human rights is the basis for multiple conflicts abroad, especially in the Middle East and China.
The subcontinent of India, with its rapidly increasing population, seems to be the exception to autocratic or monarchical Far Eastern regimes. Its republican government comes from the Raj or British colonial rule. Within a relatively short period of time, demographers project that India’s population will surpass that of China, thus making it the most populous country in the world. With multiple ethnic groups, religions, and languages, one wonders just how long India’s national unity will endure under the stress of these social and sectarian divisions.
In spite of many attempts to do so, we cannot impose our political style of governance on conquered nations (“nation-building”).
The American concept of local or state sovereignty, allied with the federal government on issues of national importance, is unknown in many nations around the globe.
Our system of government is successful because most citizens accept its efficacy.
Once that cooperative spirit and support are disparaged, our belief in the necessity of collective action will eventually disappear. If this should occur, our democracy, in its current form, could not survive.
Given the widespread diversity that now characterizes the American population, how can we preserve the willingness to accept electoral results? When voting procedures are litigated and broadly challenged, the seeds of discord are planted.
The outcomes of future elections will be viewed with suspicion.
Voter acceptance will be weakened and outcomes subjected to excessive scrutiny. We are quickly moving toward a more tribalistic form of governance as identity politics and interest groups take priority over concerns of national stability. The progressive movement to rewrite history in favor of “disadvantaged” minorities will undermine our sense of national unity. The wokeism of modern politics will have disastrous consequences in the years to come.
Our recent celebration of the Fourth of July (2021) with fireworks and the traditional appeals to unity rang a little hollow.
Many liberal extremists now view the American flag as a symbol of white domination, not national unity. Radicalized athletes “take a knee” in protest against racial injustices of the past. In a few decades, if this anti-American trend continues in our schools and social media, what will the cohesive theme of the Independence Day celebrations be? Will we continue to show the same enthusiasm about our country and its uniqueness?
This divisive mood was evident in the singing of the “Black national anthem” together with the “The Star Spangled Banner.”
If Blacks can impose their will on authorities at this event that celebrates national unity, we should expect Hispanic or Vietnamese music at next year’s festivities to emphasize their growing national influence. An hour-long special on the evils and repercussions of slavery would also be appropriate. This would encourage Whites to reflect on their “privilege” and need for atonement, not on the common traits that join our diverse ethnic groups into a functioning whole.
Do not expect, however, an in-depth documentary on the “root causes” of Black-on-Black crime in the bloodbath of Chicago’s ghettos. Blacks who shoot other Blacks are considered collateral damage (if not commonplace) and not worthy of media attention since they do not conform to the “progressive narrative.” Blacks are important only if they are perceived as victims of white neglect or violence. More than anything, a White police officer who shoots an “unarmed” Black merits national media coverage of a prolonged nature.
A statue of George Floyd (“I can’t breathe”) — a five-time convicted felon, counterfeiter, drug dealer and addict — is emblematic of this racial disparity. In a sense, his monument places a minor-league Black criminal on an equal footing with the statue of Martin Luther King, Jr., in Washington D. C. which is a focal point for racial justice and peaceful compromise.
In summary, we tend to reason in ways that reflect our personal experiences and biases . The fallacies we have discussed pertain to national habits and attitudes which offer reassurance that most problems, no matter how difficult, can be solved by good-will diplomacy and relentless hard work. In a word, it is the “American way.”
In another context, this fallacious approach to domestic issues will have a negative impact on our national security and future solidarity. The questions that we should address in discussing our current political crises are many. The following are only a few examples among the most critical:
The Left’s recent promotion of “systemic White racism” as an intrinsic quality of being White; race is deemed a form of social destiny if not a “disease” that must be eradicated. The celebration of Project 1619, now being taught in many schools and Juneteenth (the arrival in America of the first shipment of slaves and its adoption as a national holiday); the introduction of “critical race theory” into the classroom (our country was founded on slavery and the continuous oppression of Blacks up to the present day; history must reflect this reality as an innate and permanent evil of white leadership.); social progressivism and its narrative: the Marxist ambition to remake America into a socialist state. To wit, laws enacted by white legislators have no relevance in the wokist community and are consequently illegitimate in their eyes. Rioting in the name of woke political causes is effective and morally justified, no matter what the results may be. As the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin once stated, to make an omelet you must first break some eggs. Unrestricted immigration is not so much a demographic issue for Americans but a means of achieving the long-term dominance of the Democratic Party.
We must also remember that to remain silent in the face of this dystopian turmoil is a sign of assent. The Biden-Harris regime is using the full power of the federal government to enforce its agenda. The COVID pandemic and its variants will be the stalking horse for the implementation of draconian measures related to gun control, “white supremacists” and their insurrection, climate issues, and the radical socialization of American politics. President Biden is now touting “human infrastructure” in his efforts to promote child care and parental subsidies that have nothing to do with the rebuilding of bridges and roadways. COVID vaccinations will become mandatory in spite of legitimate objections to their application on a national scale. Ideology is promoting vast changes in the way we relate to others.
The America First of the Trump era is becoming a radicalized new country in its political aspirations toward equity and inclusion of minorities in all facets of government, regardless of true merit.
If we remain as we are now — diverse, quasi-socialist, egalitarian, and democratic — we have no reason to expect that this trajectory will change.
That means, that for the first time, we must reconsider our assumptions about what America is, and look instead to what it must be in order to survive our bad decisions as a democracy up to the present date.
And one of the reasons why you won’t find anything positive about China in the USA media or literary sections…
Sad, but true. I guess that a 98% satisfaction rate with their Chinese government isn’t good enough.
And in the WTF department…
Can someone please explain…
Messed up.
China’s August exports defy reality and surprise many
When 150 million wealthy Chinese tourists travel and spend domestically:
.
150 million people = 33 times the size of New York City
The western sanctions and aggressiveness against Chinese businesses (The “Hybrid war on China”) resulted in a reciprocal response from China. This response allowed Chinese businesses to take back their native markets from the barbarian big brands….
.
… all working together as one.
Along with the completion of many infrastructure projects. Both domestically and internationally via the BRI (the belts and roads strategy). The Chinese economy is now completely independent from the Western “crusader” markets.
.
The outcome is:
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China’s exports grew by 25.6 % in August compared with a year earlier, up from 19.3 per cent growth in July
China’s imports grew by 33.1 % last month, year on year, up from 28.1 per cent growth in the previous month
Welcome to the new world order without the (Anchorage, Alaska April 2021) style bullying by the Western nations.
The situation in the USA is madness
Well it is. You simply cannot deny it. Video HERE.
What is the true situation in Russia today?
From “Amorphous Anonymous” .
We talk a lot about the Soviet Union, but how does this relate to modern Russia? I don’t know the answer, consider this as a question. (Socialism I suppose?)
A) The transformation of the city of Ivanovo and seven others.
Video blogger, Студия Позитивчик, named “Studio Positive”, has made 8 before/after videos comparing the last 9 years of development within 8 Russian cities. The video links are on his home page:
Gelendzhik, NE coast Black Sea 150 km up from Sochi
Veliky Novgorad, 125 km south of St Petersburg on road to Moscow (about 450 km from Moscow)
Ryazan, 200 km SE Moscow
Saratov, On the Volga, about 850 km SE Moscow
Tyumen, East of Ural mountains, about 8-900 km east Moscow
Naberezhnye Chelny, in Tatarstan, about 600 km east of Moscow
What do you see when you scan through these video records? Well, you see modern Russian architecture, which is very interesting just for that. Eight cities are developing, growing, being renewed. I ask “How is this being done”? You can identify several different kinds of projects.
Renewed streets and landscaped parks and waterfronts. This is all local government financed obviously.
Commercial activity, strip malls, restaurants, shopping malls. I am thinking this is all private investment, it must be capitalism, for the wide variety of it.
Some large residential complexes? I don’t know, is there social ownership in living spaces? Or is it capitalism again?
Many old residential complexes (ragged looking in the 2011 before photos), are renewed with white walls and brightly colored balconies and the accent of architectural touches. Would a private owner put money into building aesthetics? Would they get any more rent out of it? Has it changed hands and the new owner is upgrading? Maybe it is old communal residences with community financing doing the work?
Also there are some stadiums and other large structures. What is the ownership status of these complexes and who are the investors?
These are questions that I don’t have the answers to. Who are the city planners, and how much do they have a say about city development?
B) An understanding of Russia’s Future
We try to get a better understanding of Russia’s future by going to some websites that are purported to have expertise on Russia, and run by Russian speakers. These are like the Saker, Dmitry Orlov, Andrei Martyanov, Charles Bausman, John Helmer,Vsevolod Pulya,Patrick Armstrong, Alexander Mercouris, Marko Marjanović, I think that there are others that I have left out.
What do they say?
Lots are concerned with geo-politics and military science. Then we are led to believe that
"Putin’s successes are anchored in a powerful energy sector, along with a vigorous science-technical and arms sector, which are also under direct state control".
Russia must be doing pretty good, right? Or are we getting a correct picture from these new “Hypersonic missiles”, gas pipelines, super weapons, and atomic Ice-breakers?
Plus now lately, we are told that Russia will build 5 new cities from scratch in Siberia, and the order is signed and the money is available. (Let them start with one.)
Will this happen? Is this a full and correct picture of modern day Russia? The 8 videos above show developmental progress in some important cities. If this is the general picture it should show up in all phases of Russian technical, scientific, educational, and commercial activity.
But lets’ try to take an honest look with a 2017 survey of Russia’s achievements.
B.1) Russia is number 12.
In a listing of published scientific articles by country, Russia is number 12, with only 10% by numbers, of the articles published in the USA. I won’t discuss the quality of the articles, which some do. the 2021 figures are here:
You can also divide the papers up by what Russia is good at, like mathematics and astronomy, but still the standing is very poor.
B.2) Russian foreign studies
Russia has a very poor standing in studies of foreign countries. For example China has at least an order of magnitude more people studying about Russia than Russia has studying in the universities about China. That being said, it is the global norm. The amount of American studies of other nations is practically zero.
Russian salaries in 2012,
$500/month for a Research Fellow,
$900/month for a senior researcher at the Institute of the Far East RAS.
$1,000/month for an Assistant Professor,
$1,500/month for a full Professor at Moscow State University’s (MSU) Institute of Asian and African Country Studies. (2012)
The $ exchange rate has more than doubled since then, so do scholars survive on those same old ruble rates, or have they gotten a raise? (Admittedly their expenses are in rubles, not in dollars.) But if it was too low they may leave the country.
B.3) Salaries for R&D
Salaries for R&D are some of the lowest in the top 50 countries. I could put up a chart, but Russia is at the bottom.
B.4) Technical equipment is gutted and sold off
R&D equipment is missing, in 2017 Russia had 3 supercomputers, China had 202, US 143. Russia is 18th in the list.
B.5) DNA
It is hard to come up with the number of Russian “high throughput DNA sequencers” for biotechnology research. But I think it is minuscule compared to the rest of the world. Some (older) sources said only 8, but let’s give it 25. 2013-14. Back then there were 250 in China and over 900 in the USA. Europe is loaded too.
B.6) Patent Applications
Russia is 6th in patent application in 2017, 30,000 compared to 1 million in China, 300,000 in US and 250,000 in Japan.
B.7) Venture Capital
In 2016 Venture Capital funding in Russia was 300,000 Euros, about the level of (less than) Ireland, or Finland, and more than in Italy. All of Europe $14 billion, US $72 billion, China $49 billion, India $8 billion. Russia is 6% of China, Russia 4% of US.
B.8) Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence startups in 2017, Europe 409, US more than 1000, Russia only 12. Equal to Sweden, Finland or Switzerland each with 10% of Russia’s population.
B.9) Industrial Robots
Russia had an operational stock of around 1,771 multipurpose industrial robots as of 2012. America 200,000, China 100,000, Japan 300,000, ROC Korea 138,000, Germany 162,000. Poland 4,500.
The absurdly low levels of robotization in industry raise serious questions about Russia’s political economy and its economic future. Low wages preclude automation, and low automation preclude greater productivity and higher wages?
B.10) Tooling and machining
2014-2015 Russia is 17th in machine tool companies, 485 companies producing machine tools in Russia (Canada just ahead, Thailand just behind).
China 22,000 companies,
Japan 13,000,
German 12,000.
Italy 5000,
Korea ROC 4,600,
USA 4,500.
The problems holding Russia back are severe, and possibly intractable. There are strong financial and ultimately institutional barriers to unlocking Russia’s scientific potential.
(Russia does consume around 2.7% of the world’s machine tools – it is, after all, the world’s eighth (or so) manufacturing power.)
A solid start would be to look at these statistics and acknowledge that a very big problem exists, which if unresolved, will continue to degrade Russia’s economic, industrial, and eventually military competitiveness. Where is the money and where is the resolve to tackle these problems? That is what I am asking, to anybody that might know.
Who are the true friends of Russia? Those that sound this alarm, or he who says “don’t say things that our western sworn enemies are always saying”? To me the answer is obvious.
Of course I have sources for all of this data. It comes from Karlin on Unz. He’s got all the charts and 5000 words of commentary. 2017. You can check them yourself. https://www.unz.com/akarlin/russias-technological-backwardness/ If there is a newer study, of course I would love to see it.
…
You don’t hear much about Russia these days, and thus Americans and most of Europe are kept intentionally ignorant about both China and Russia. As I see it, the rest of the world is growing and sorting itself out the tangled monstrosity that the United States has become. And unless the USA starts taking time to improve its piss-poor domestic state, it will be doomed to become a modern day Portugal.
The United States ranks last in media trust — at 29% — among 92,000 news consumers surveyed in 46 countries, a report released Wednesday found. That’s worse than Poland, worse than the Philippines, worse than Peru. (Finland leads at 65%.)
One reason is that U.S. media are either not reporting important events, are misreporting them, or are very late in covering twisted plots that even a lowly blogger can get right just as they happen.
It’s 4:30 PM in China. A very mellow time.
It is a mellow time. It’s peaceful and calm. China (outside of the big cities) has a much slower pace of life, and lifestyle than what the hyper West has. And it is refreshing as “get out”. Check out the video below.
Note that even though China is very safe and isolates any virus outbreaks immediately, everyone still wears masks, and is a heightened level of security and safety.
Also note that all my life, walking and enjoying life at 4:30p, was denied to me. I was usually at my desk or in a meeting in a sterile workplace technical corporate environment. Being outside that bullshit is refreshing to me. Video.
4:30pm mellowness.
Actually this is a big issue, and I need to devote a few articles to this subject. Do you all “get” what I am trying to say in this matter?
In pondering Washington’s new toy, a cold war against China, one sees a pattern. China’s approach to influence and prosperity is commercial and longsighted. This does not mean that the Chinese are warm and fuzzy, only intelligent. They advance their interests while turning a profit, which wars don’t. China invests heavily in the infrastructure, both physical and educational, that makes for current and future competitiveness. They are fast, agile, innovative, and imperfectly scrupulous. They seek trade agreements: The Comprehensive Agreement on Investment with Europe, The RCEP, Regional comprehensive Economic Partnership, the CPEC, China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, the huge Iran deal, the development with Russia of the NSR, the Northern Sea Route. They seem good at it, China now being the largest trading partner of something like 165 countries.
Washington’s approach is military, coercive, shortsighted, and commercially dimwitted. It forms military alliances: the Quad in the Indian Ocean, with Japan against China, puts missiles in South Korea, pushes Europe to buy more American weaponry, sends naval forces to the Indian Ocean, Taiwan Strait, South China Sea, Black Sea, and Persian Gulf to intimidate, without much success, China, Russia, and Iran. It wants to get the Ukraine and Georgia into NATO to threaten Russia. It makes as much sense as lug nuts on a birthday cake.
China’s major capital expenditures, as gleaned as best I can from pubs covering these: highways, dams, bridges, very-high-voltage power lines, airports, rail, new high-tech 360 mph rail, five-g implementation, reactors, and semiconductor catchup.
America’s major capital expenditures: the B-21, F-35, Virginia-class subs, , Ford-class aircraft carriers, SSN (x) attack submarine. Biden says he will build infrastructure but, if history is a guide, he will pander to the woke, fight systemic racism, promote LBGQXYZ, become mired in congressional infighting, and the whole thing will devolve into pork. Want to bet?
What are these weapons for? The B-21 is an intercontinental nuclear bomber. What does one do with intercontinental nuclear bombers? Engage in intercontinental nuclear war. Are we sure this is a good idea? There will be no such war unless America starts it. China isn’t going to since (a) its approach to power and influence is commercial, which is working well, and (b) America has so many, many nuclear weapons of all sorts that China would be obliterated. If the US launched a first strike, the bombers would get there hours after the war was over. What would be the point?
The point is to funnel vast amounts of money into a bloated, running-on-autopilot military business so large that it can’t be reduced or controlled. All of this send-money PR assumes that China thinks it needs a nuclear holocaust. Who can doubt it?
It is impossible even to leave the military budget as it is, much less reduce it.
Military industry is so pervasive, providing so many jobs in so many states with so many lobbyists, that the President and his party cannot control it
China-Africa trade hits record high of $139.1 billion from January to July: MOFCOM
America sends troops (Africom, Africa Command) and builds drone bases. China builds rail lines and buys up resources. Did we say something about a pattern?
What is a Ford-class carrier good for? The Fords are versatile ships, having a three-fold purpose: Funneling lots of money into military industry, killing defenseless peasants, and sticking the Pentagon’s tongue out at China. Killing peasants and soldiers in third-rate armies of bedraggled third-world countries is what the American military does. Think Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Somalia. Getting into big wars with real countries is no longer practical despite the opportunities for profits because big countries depend on each other too much commercially. Even killing peasants begins to lose cache, as witness the comic opera defeat in Afghanistan..
A list of examples from Ohio. When military industry wants to produce a new weapon, it makes sure that components are produced in as many states as possible. But some things should be obvious. A big-ticket carrier creates a huge number of jobs for years at Newport News as well as jobs all over America for parts. When the carrier is completed and sails off to kill its peasants, the town goes into depression and stockholders lose dividends. The Pentagon then discovers an urgent need for another carrier. Congress shares this sense of urgency. Surprise, surprise.
What do I mean in saying that America is “short-sighted”? Try this:
Oregon Governor Kate Brown quietly signed a bill last month that removed the requirement for graduating high school children in the state to be proficient in reading, writing, and math, in an effort to aid “students of color.”
Wowee, that must terrify them over in China’s engineering departments, where students are years ahead of American in mathematics. This sort of thing goes on across America.
Number of Chinese overseas military bases: 1 (Djibouti) American: Hundreds. Number of Chinese military conflicts: One, a minor border clash with India. American: You know the list as well as I do, with Iran perhaps being groomed for the next war. Which country spends more on the foregoing? What has America gained?
This is long and kind of techy but makes the point that China is leaving the US far behind in five-g. While many think of Five-G as being for use in smart phones, this is actually of negligible importance. Where it counts is in industry, robotics, smart cities, mining with nobody underground, on and on. The United States, unable to compete with Huawei, consigned itself to primitivism by excluding the Chinese. Then it failed in its attempt to prevent China from rolling out five-g within its own borders. So much for bringing manufacturing back to America.
Here is a point worth noting. The Chinese have the engineers, the numbers and the focus to do pretty much anything. They do not always have the machinery. AI takes more brains than machinery.
CATL goes all in on next-gen sodium-ion EV batteries
CATL Goes All in on Sodium Ion Batteries
Not a game-changer, and other countries look at the same thing but, as so often, China is right up there with the other big boys.
“Last month, during high-level talks in Honolulu, the US Indo-Pacific Command and the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) agreed to build a new base in the island nation.” To contain China.
Military, military, military, military. The assumption in the Five Sided Wind Box seems to be that China is about to come roaring into the Pacific like the Japanese Imperial Naby in full flood, to conquer it. China is more likely to buy it.
Associated Press: “The politically sensitive goods deficit with China rose to $27.8 billion in June, up 5.8% from the May level. So far this year, the goods deficit with China, the largest that the United States runs with any country, totals $158.5 billion, an increase of 19.2% compared to the same period in 2020.”
Some economists predict America’s first overall trade deficit of a trillion dollars.
“China’s state-owned Shanghai International Port Group (SIPG) grabbed the Haifa port contract in 2015 which allows it to operate the commercial shipping facility for 25 years.”
Commercial, commercial, commercial, commercial.
Moscow Bothered by ‘Uncontrolled, Unrestricted Expansion’ of US Military Biolab Network Near Russia
And here in Mexico, where I live, people swear they see Chinese electric scooters and mini-electric which, they also swear, can be bought online from Alibaba and such. Meanwhile the narcos get assault rifles from the US.
I’ve seen this look before
This expression is one that I have seen time and time again. A foreigner visits China for the very first time, and he /she has been her for maybe a week… and this is the expression that they get on their faces. It’s precious.
This is the start of a series of short thoughts and articles that I just want to clump into a new category of article. What do you guys think? Do you think it’s fine, or would you like me to continue to write long in-depth articles on singular topics? Any preferences?
Do you want more?
You can find more such articles in my “Rambling Thoughts” Index which is currently in my massive Happiness Index…
This is a massive article concerning China, and it’s military. And the point that I want to make is that China is a perfect organism wholly designed to prevent anyone from attacking it. It is like a vicious animal with spikes, poison, and large sharp teeth. Only a fool would want to attack it. It’s defensive. And I have a lot to say about this subject, as well as a ton load of videos to watch as well.
Poor countries are supposed to stay poor so that they can be exploited indefinitely for cheap labor and resources. When a poor country starts to pull itself out of poverty, that country will soon be pulled back down again through a mixture of warfare, sabotage, sanctions, and propaganda...all under the pretext of "protecting human rights." China has defied this rule by making itself wealthy. Accordingly, the propaganda directed toward it will only intensify.Posted by: Donbass Lives Matter | Sep 1 2021 22:17 utc | 50
Keep in mind that you cannot learn things by only looking at one singular aspects. you must see the big picture, and then put the focus on the little aspects as they fall within that big picture. So this large article is going to cover other tangential things that help give you a better appreciation for the much bigger picture that is omitted in modern contemporaneous dialog today.
But first, I want to relate a little story.
The tale of Frank
When I was growing up, there was this man who lived with my maternal grandmother. She was my mother’s mother, and there was this guy called “Frank” who lived in one of the upstairs bedrooms.
My mother called him Frank. My grandmother called him Frank. My brothers and sisters called him Frank. My aunties and my uncles called him Frank. My parents called him Frank. No one said anything else at all about his relationship with my grandmother.
I assumed that, since he went by his first name only, he wasn’t a close friend. Because in the United States, close male friends are referred to by their last name. While close girl friends are referred to their first name.
He wasn’t an uncle, as all my uncles went by the name “uncle” followed by their first name. As in “Uncle Robert”, “Uncle Ralston”, and “Uncle Sonny”. In fact, my grandmother’s brothers and sisters were still alive, and I called them “Uncle Eddie” and such.
So I figured that he was a renter who helped my grandmother pay the rent.
Long afterwards, when my grandmother had a stroke, and died, I attended her funeral. And there she was laid next to Frank, who was, after all, my maternal grandfather!
And this surprised me.
And when I mentioned it, I was hounded and ridiculed and given so much shit. I will tell you that it was horrible and ruthless, and just obnoxious. What was I supposed to know? Make assumptions, absorb the relationship by osmosis? Jeeze!
There is a reason… a REASON… why there are job titles, positions titles, business cards, name plates, and all the rest in regards to family and business relationships.
It’s important.
It adds another dimensions to the relationships that will enable us to better understand things. For once you understand the deeper relationships behind something, you can better understand the events, and items and how they all fit together as part of the unified whole.
Think about that for a minute.
As it pertains to everything.
…
Here’s some Chinese military videos. Some are recruitment videos. Some are narrative videos. Some are “fan” videos. Some are something else entirely. In any event, these videos give a person a fairly good overview impression of the kind of military that China has.
China isn’t anything like what is portrayed. China does not play “nice”. Especially when it comes to defending China from crazed manicidal psychopathic wanna-be-Rambos.
And keep in mind that China is truly playing for “keeps”. If anyone wants to fuck with them, they will fuck you right back. Smartly.
Defensive Forces
If we talk about "representative government" we have to ask what kind of representation the weakest individual in society can get. I would submit that in the US the answer is laughable. In China, which takes surveys endlessly, prolifically and as a vital part of analysis and the systematic, results-based development of policy, one can argue very well that the weakest individual is much better represented than in the US.Fact is, no one wants democracy. What anybody wants is good representative government.Posted by: Grieved | Sep 2 2021 3:47 utc | 80
China possesses “defensive forces”.
Note that they are not “expeditionary forces”. They are harsh defensive forces and have no qualms about slaughtering anyone who tries to attack China in any way.
If you attack China, and China considers Taiwan PART of China, it will go nuclear in a nano-second.
China is NOT the USA. Do not believe the neocon propaganda about Taiwan this, or Taiwan that. China will take over the island in a matter or hours, and the world will left reeling. Those that want to get involved will be slaughtered mercilessly.
Listen up Japan!
Listen up Australia!
I am talking to you. As well as your bosses on K-street in Washington DC.
So forget any fantasies about peasants with mass-produced AK-47 clones. China will fiercely decimate enemy force with tactical and theater neutronmunitions from the “get go”.
A neutron bomb, officially defined as a type of enhanced radiation weapon (ERW), is a low-yield thermonuclear weapon designed to maximize lethal neutron radiation in the immediate vicinity of the blast while minimizing the physical power of the blast itself.
The neutron release generated by a nuclear fusion reaction is intentionally allowed to escape the weapon, rather than being absorbed by its other components.
The neutron burst, which is used as the primarydestructive action of the warhead, is able to penetrate enemy armor more effectively than a conventional warhead, thus making it more lethal as a tactical weapon.
-Wikipedia
The mere fact that no American strategic planners are taking into account this long standing military policy (since 1977, I believe) just shows how oblivious the planners are on K-street and in the Pentagon are.
Oblivious.
As in moronically blind to reality.
Somehow these morons believe that a war with China, on Chinese soil, will be a long-drawn out conventional war, in a far away land. Sort of like a larger Afghanistan.
Effects of a Neutron Bomb
The New York Times reported that “the nuclear weaponeers have unfolded a new brainchild, the neutron bomb, which will kill people while preserving buildings, tanks, and artillery.”
-Air Force Magazine
Neutrons scattered around after the neutron bomb explodes, in soil, metals, food, etc. activates neutrons; this neutron activation is 10 times higher than that of an atom bomb.
The so-called neutron activation causes inanimate bodies to emit secondary gamma rays.
Thus, the Neutron bomb causes damage due to both neutron beams and gamma rays.
Since neutrons make the objects they hit emit gamma rays, each object becomes a mini-bomb after the neutron bomb is dropped and starts to emit gamma rays.
Lovely.
Who’d figure that your iPhone and Alexia would someday actually kill you?
Chinese DF-16 tactical surface to surface conventional and nuclear weapon.
The first effect of the neutron bomb is to scatter fast neutrons and gamma photons. The irradiation dose is up to hundreds of thousands of rad (radiation units) in open air beyond the explosion and thermal irradiation distance (150-300 m.). Let us remind that human beings die even in the face of neutron irradiation higher than 300 rad.
Fast neutrons are exposed to elastic scattering in the nuclei of light atoms, during which rebound protons are released, protons are strongly ionizing particles.
Thus, human beings are exposed to a strongly ionizing radiation.
As protons move through human tissues, they cause havoc with a very high energy per unit path. Not only that, the nuclei of some biological tissues become radioactive by capturing neutrons, as a result, countless radioactive foci appear in the human body, each of human tissues becomes a mini-bomb and begins to self-destruct with dangerous rays.
Herein lies one of the greatest dangers of neutrons; Neutrons strike living or non-living objects, making the atoms in front of them radioactive.
These atoms start to emit lethal rays and countless mini-bombs are born.
After the neutron bomb was dropped, buildings, tanks, etc. It is said that it will remain the same. In fact, both corpses and these inanimate things will become radioactive. Both the removal of the corpses, these buildings, tanks and so on. entering into it will mean receiving a high dose of lethal radiation.
Non-living things that remain intact can only be used with special protective clothing without irradiation.
One of the purposes of using neutron bombs is to instantly turn those who are exposed to the neutron into the living and dead.
The DF-10 can really turn your day into a neutron-saturated toasty BBQ.
The Neutron bomb alone can turn people into this. Other “normal” nuclear bombs cause burns and wounds with the heat of the explosion wave and glare and kill them immediately.
With the effect of radiation, neutrons will enter the brain and destroy the electrical connections of the nerve cells. Computers and electronic devices exposed to strong radiation will stop immediately.
Yeah.
That means all cars, internet, home appliances, televisions, radio, stop lights, alarm systems, electronic doors, elevators, and aircraft. It’s sort of like an EMF weapon only with the extra bonus of making everything highly radioactive.
Those exposed to a radiation of 3000 rad will remain unconscious for 3-7 minutes, then sober up…
… great. Right?
Not so fast…
…. within a week they will die of gastrointestinal bleeding; The entire digestive system from mouth to anus will become an open wound, the kidney and heart will weaken and the patient will bleed and die in fever.
Those who are exposed to 650 rad will not have an immediate effect, but the bone marrow that makes the blood cells will dry, the old blood cells will survive another 25-30 days after the irradiation, but their division will stop, the patient will die in 4-5 weeks as a result of anemia and inability to defend against germs.
That is…
…unless they have some mRNA modification that compensates for this effect.
Hum…
Anyways…
According to the British geneticist J. Edwards, the most terrible aspect of the Neutron bomb is this: The neutron bomb is such a bomb that its effect is not limited in time, after the Neutron bomb is dropped, many generations will be born as cripples and monsters, it is not up to anyone to prevent this, rays.
This painful consequence is inevitable as it destroys heredity molecules (genes).
The destruction will be the most in regions (cities) where people live densely.
All living things in an area of 8 km2 will die in 2-3 days at the latest as a result of lethal rays. In an additional area of 10 km2, 1-100 rad rays will be received. 2-3 km.
The Neutron bomb, thrown at intervals, will kill anyone caught outdoors.
Radiation at a distance of 400 meters from the explosion point of a 1 kiloton Neutron bomb is 418,000 rad. Even in a shelter reducing radiation 500 times, the dose would be 836 rad, which is twice the minimum lethal dose.
According to the American scientist A. Westing, a 1 kiloton neutron weapon will destroy 310 hectares of pine forests, 170 hectares of deciduous forest and 140 hectares of grassland, and it will take centuries to replace them.
In short…
… a neutron bomb is a far more lethal weapon than an atomic or hydrogen bomb. And the Chinese field these weapons on a tactical basis all over China. If you try to attack China, they will not scurry into a hamlet behind the donkeys and sheep (Syrian style)…
No, instead, they will start launching a barrage of neutron hyper-velocity missiles at you. And there will be NO place to hide.
The Chinese DF-12 surface to surface, short range ballistic missiles that can carry neutron warheads.
The good news is that you will have enough time to pray for a quick death.
That will be the best you can do. You wouldn’t dare pick up your rifle, pistol, or get into a vehicle. All that metal and material will be irradiating the shit out of you. That’s right. All the metal near you would be acting like one giant X-ray and microwave beaming radiation right at you.
China is an organism
In China…
Everyone works together and they are very, very patriotic. Of course no one in the West understands this. It’s dog-eat-dog, and fight to be the “lone wolf”. You don’t kick an organized hornet’s nest and not expect to get stung.
China, the Chinese people act as one singular organism together.
And, you know what, it is even MORE SO NOW TODAY.
The Chinese learn from an early age
From the time they are able to walk, all the Chinese are taught to work hard, study, and be aggressive in everything that they do.
This is not a land of coddled wealthy, or diversity overweight wooble jaumbas.It’s not a land of prep-boys, or “silver spoon in the mouth” elitist “blue bloods”. It’s a land full of the hardiest people that you ever met, who are also the smartest people who you have ever met, and who also are the most determined people who you have ever met.
And what’s more…
These people are taught to live for the community. To fight for the community. To do the best for the community, and if necessary to die for the community.
Check out what it is like for those in kindergarten… Pretty amazing for four and five year olds. Please watch the entire video.
In kindergarten.
The Chinese students can only play electronic games during certain hours
Oh, you think that China isn’t serious?
My eyes almost popped out of my head when I read "Gamers under 18 will only be allowed to play online between 8:00 pm and 9:00 pm on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays". Real leadership... in 2021... I am flabbergasted.
I am a high school science and math teacher in Australia. That single policy in itself is game over.
Posted by: Rae | Sep 1 2021 21:15 utc | 38
And…
Earlier a math teacher stopped by to praise the new time limits on video gaming for young folks in China. I add my own 'bravo' to that.
And here's another one---the Chinese crackdown on celebrity 'culture'.The Chinese National Radio and Television Administration on Thursday enhanced management on entertainment programs and related personnel, calling for boycott against individuals with illegal or immoral records, sky-high prices for stars and abnormal appreciation of niangpao, or feminine men.
How much of the West's descent into unimaginable societal degradation is due to young kids being raised, for generations now, not by attentive parents, but by TV and Hollywood?
The so-called popular 'culture' has long since imposed itself into the family home and pushed out the role of parents as guides for impressionable young folks.
Some have mentioned the west's dismal STEM graduate production. How are young people supposed to have an interest in math and science when most just want to be 'celebrities'? Or at least social media 'influencers'?
Like everything in society, from financial greed to bringing up children, things cannot be simply left to chance. That produces a garden full of weeds and thorns.
The CPC is truly a shining light in today's world!
Posted by: Gordog | Sep 2 2021 6:09 utc | 90
The Chinese exercise from an early age too
Physical health and well being is important to the Chinese. No couch-potatoes allowed. Every single school, at every single level performs strict dance, exercise and martial arts routines. All of them do this. They do this six days a week every single day.
The Chinese can build up enormous constructions from scratch
Remember all those “Ghost cities” that the BBC, CNN and FOX “news” were all making fun of? Remember them. Oh, you don’t hear much about them today do you? Why not? Why isn’t the “news” getting right in front of China’s “grill” and bad mouthing them about “Ghost Cities”?
This is why…
They aren’t ghost cities any longer. Watch the video and be amazed.
A Ghost City.
As a result of US sanctions against Chinese companies, China is developing its own technology to cater for its internal market. Low cost, not Western, no manual.
Low cost, because at the volumes of the Chinese internal market even a saving of a fraction of a cent is real money. Different from US designs, so no license fee needs to be paid. And little or no documentation in English - it's intended for the Chinese internal market.Posted by: Passerby | Sep 1 2021 22:24 utc | 52
So you really think that the United States can compete against China?
Really? Have you seen what America has become? America is very, very weak right now. Here’s what all the major cities look like. Watch the full video.
The United States today.
Watch the full video to get the full effect. This is what America is today. And it is indicative of the culture and the society. It is a reflection of the failure of the government. Not only in structure but in the leadership.
And this nation actually believes that it is better than China is?
China has a substantial sized rocket and munitions closet. All designed for mass saturation of broad swaths of terrain. These were perfected after the results of World-War II that showed how successful that the Soviet Union was in employing these weapons against the superior technological weaponry of Nazi Germany.
In the American military circles this is considered worrisome, but not terribly so. The conventional belief in the Pentagon is that America would obtain dominance very quickly using the integrated computerized electronics systems and be able to use stand off drones and munitions with “pin-point” accuracy to selectively destroy any targets of this type.
I wouldn’t be so sure of this.
In a conflict between the United States and China, the United States would have ZERO “eyes in the skies”.
The Chengdu J-20 “Mighty Dragon” (NATO Name: Black Eagle) is a single-seat, twinjet, all-weather, stealth, fifth-generation fighter aircraft developed by China’s Chengdu Aerospace Corporation for the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF).
Video here…
Video
The J-20 is designed to execute ground attack missions even in hostile environments. The aircraft can reach higher altitudes with its delta wings in supersonic speeds. It is larger than Sukhoi T-50 and Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor. The front portion of the prototype looks similar to the F-22 Raptor and the rear section looks like a Sukhoi T-50.
According to the neocon publications out of K-street in Washington DC, the F-22 is the best thing since “sliced bread” and the Chinese is only copying it. Only doing the copying very poorly.
Conventional wisdom holds that the J-20is currently unable to face the US Air Force's F-22 in a straight-up dogfight.
- Business Insider
I wouldn’t be so sure about this.
The United States has a terrible problem in overestimating their capabilities and down-plying that of China (to the extreme). Just keep in mind that any war involving these aircraft will need to land. The chances are slim that there will be any place to land once a war breaks out near China.
You won’t ever see this in FOX “news”. This video…
Japanese sub limps home.
China is a nation of STEM NERDs
Stem graduates by country 2016
China: 4.7M
India: 2.6M
U.S: 570k
Russia:561k
Iran: 335k
Now you know why Netanyahu wants us to nuke Iran so bad to eradicate them like bugs.
So the top 3 countries that we target as enemies graduate 10 times more STEM students than we, the U.S. do and half of our graduates are foreign students. This is why Iran has a domestic arms industry that includes advanced RADAR. But we are still in denial about that as evidenced by us fretting over Iran getting their hands on Humvees and M4 rifles from the Taliban.
Our view of Iran, 'I think it is some kind of magic wand that stirs up the spirit of the truck engine, try turning it and see what happens'
---------------
Now some wise guy might note that India does not have an advanced military but that's because they suffer collective Stockholm syndrome from Britain. I have no idea why they love the Brits and west so much after all they did do them.
Posted by: Christian J. Chuba | Sep 2 2021 1:13 utc | 70
But…
And last time I checked, about 15% of those STEM graduates in the USA were . . . citizens of the PRC. I'm sure a goodly number are citizens of India too.Posted by: corvo | Sep 2 2021 1:21 utc | 71
What about those TicTac’s that buzz the American naval ships?
The "Tic Tac" incident.Date: November 14, 2004; Location: Pacific Ocean
Jack Sarfatti writes, The USS Nimitz UFO incident refers to a 2004 Radar-Visual encounter of an unidentified flying object by US fighter pilots of the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group. In December 2017, infrared footage of the encounter was released to the public. Prior to the December 2017 incident, early November 2004, the Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser USS Princeton, part of Carrier Strike Group 11, had been tracking mysterious aircraft intermittently for two weeks on an advanced AN/SPY-1B passive radar.
And what did they see?
Well, they saw this…
US Navy buzzed by UFO.
And what does this look like?
Well, if you have been paying attention to the technical side of what China is involved in, instead of what the latest bullshit is about 5G, Huawei, the pull-out from Afghanistan, and Vaxx issues you might have noticed this…
But then again, most MM readers realize this. It’s just the rest of the West who read the “news” and get this completely false impression and idea of what China is. It’s not even a distortion. It’s a false reality. Check out the Video.
At the start of this article, I simply discussed the use of tactical nuclear “neutron” bombs. These are what the army uses to take out this hill, that city, or that carrier group. They clean out the area and then move in and occupy.
But what I am referring to here is the very dangerous, mega-large hyper-velocity ten warhead, nation crusher the MIRV ICBM the DF-41. These are strategic weapons.
They are designed to wholly crush and decimate a nation.
And thanks to Trump and Biden, China is now on a massive mass production rally regarding these horrific weapons. They are churning them out so fast that if they all were to be used, the target nation would be reduced to radioactive glass.
Thank you President Trump (and his enabler Mike Pompeo).
Thank you Joe Biden (and your enabler Tom Cotton).
You see, those fucking morons who talk about war with China over Taiwan, or the South China Sea or what ever is the “reason of the day” simply omit the fact that China will BURY the United States if it attacks them.
And the result will be global devastation, but you know, China will rebuild. China can and has that ability. America will not.
Never forget the China’s military policy is to swarm and overwhelm with tons of nuclear tipped missiles
Not simply one or two relying on precision computers.
But many, many, many.
Many.
As in A lot!
This is quite different from the American strategy of full-spectrum dominance based on computers and remote sensing. China, on the other hand, believes in overwhelming the target area and saturating it with the most deadly weapons available.
Here’s group eight (8). Lot’s of stuff here. Check out the video here.
Group 8
China flexes sea power with new foreign ship law – Asia Times
A security measure to prevent a preemptive strike.
A new Chinese legal requirement demands that multiple classes of foreign vessels traversing waters claimed by Beijing must [1] provide detailed information to state authorities and [2] take aboard Chinese pilots.
The new maritime law, which came into legal force today (September 1), threatens to inflame South China Sea disputes pitting China and Southeast Asian nations and stoke already rising tensions with the United States in the contested waters.
On August 27, China’s Maritime Safety Administration said in a statement that five categories of foreign vessels, namely …
submersibles, (as in submarines and SEAL insertion submersibles)
nuclear-powered vessels, (as in aircraft carriers, destroyers and subs)
ships carrying radioactive materials,
ships carrying bulk oil, chemicals, liquefied gas or other toxic substances,
as well as vessels that may endanger China’s maritime traffic safety…
… fall under the law.
Uh oh. There goes the American Navy! especially those pesky aircraft carriers.
Foreign vessels will be required to provide information including their ship names and numbers, recent locations, satellite telephone numbers and dangerous goods, according to the statement.
If their automatic identification systems do not work properly, they will need to report to China’s maritime authorities about their locations and speeds every two hours until they leave the country’s territorial waters, the statement said.
At face value, these are not necessarily problematic provisions – unless the definition of “Chinese territorial waters” is interpreted to include nearly all of the South China Sea, as claimed in its wide-reaching and hotly contested nine-dash line.
The new rules were first made public on April 29 this year after the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress amended the Maritime Traffic Safety Law (MTSL), which was established in September 1983.
A full English version of the revised law, translated by Peking University Law School, can be seen on the website of Steamship Mutual, a mutual insurance association in the maritime space that provides risk pooling, information and representation.
Oh! But Japan will act as a Proxy for the United States in a Taiwan conflict, eh?
Yeah. I read the bullshit propaganda out of Japan.
So you think that Japan can invade China, or fight China? Is that what you think?
Let me tell youse all something too. Just like the Chinese students do daily exercises, and study hard, they are also exposed to what Japan did to China, and it is burned into the soul of China. And if Japan wants to take on China, well then, China will be really ROUGH back.
Oh! You don’t believe me?
What?
You do not know what I am talking about, eh?
Watch this entire video. It’s around four minutes long. Watch it. Watch the entire thing. Now, what do you think a nuclear armed China will do to the tiny island of Japan? Watch the video.
The Japanese inside of China.
So you think that China will somehow forgive and forget with japan starts attacking the mainland?
China is ready, so is Russia.
Do you all REALLY want a war? You all want to take on China for freedom™ and democracy™? Is that what you want? Well, China just wants to be left alone, but apparently that’s not good enough is it?
I guess not.
You all want to poke the Panda. And the Panda and Russia are as one today. You poke China, and you anger the Bear. You poke the Bear and you piss off China. Washington DC will be a water-filled radioactive crater before you have the chance to say…
…”Oh. Fuck”.
Chinese Boy Scouts
Here’s what boy scouts look like in China. Are you ready to fight them? Video HERE.
Tough boy scouts.
A bunch of tough first and second grade kids. Click to download the archive of videos.
Click to download the archive.
The Neocons say that if you kill the Chinese leadership that China will crumble
It’s a fantasy with no bearing on reality what so ever.
Xi Xinping was himself molded by the CR. He was sent to live and work with the peasants in the dirt and poverty of the countryside. When he was free to return to the city, he elected to return instead to the village he had lived in, and to continue his work there. They remember him now with great love, and there are documentaries available if one wishes to search.
The national leader of China has an understanding of the supreme value of "the people over all things" ingrained into his hands with dirt and blisters and blood. He came by his understanding experientially and honestly.
~~
The Communist Party of China (CPC) has at least 90 million members. One might think that, even on the scale of China's population, joining the CPC would be a routine matter. Xi Xinping applied at least 6 times (I believe actually 10 times in all) before the Party accepted him.
He worked his way into a meritocratic organization, and has worked his way to leadership through merit.
If we wish to understand what runs China, we must know how the CPC works. Here are 3 possible introductions, from Godfree Roberts:
The Chinese Communist PartyChina’s Congresses in ActionSelling Democracy to China
Posted by: Grieved | Sep 2 2021 3:46 utc | 79
Here’s group 9
And here’s some active military videos.
I am just unleashing a true “mother load” of videos today. To talk about the Taiwan and a conflict on the South China Sea then you need to understand what the “players” are and what they are capable of. And boys and girls, the Chinese do not play. they are a serious, serious nation. Check out the videos HERE.
Group 9
To Counter U.S. Hostility China Moves Towards People Centered Policies
In December 2001 China became a member of the World Trade Organization. That opened new markets for China’s industry and attracted a lot of foreign investment.
The growth in GDP that China has achieved since is breathtaking.
This development allowed China to make enormous investments in infrastructure. It also generated the resources necessary to eliminate poverty.
It is no coincidence that this development happened while the U.S. was wasting money on wars in the Middle East. As the U.S. is now step by step retreating from those wars to confront China the country needs to prepare itself for the new environment.
The introduction of more and more capitalistic features into China’s economy over the last 20 years has created imbalances.
Business tried to ignore or to gain influence over government structures and regulations.
Companies abused their workers.
Speculation by rich people created bubbles in the housing markets.
Cultural excesses that emphasized individualism threatened national unity.
These imbalances let the description of China’s economy as ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’ look empty.
Over the long run they would lead to dissatisfaction of a wide range of the public with the ruling political establishment. It was high time to eliminated the excesses the ultra fast development had created.
The government had to act to avoid future internal conflicts. Since the end of last year it has done so with the same efficiency that allowed it to stop and eliminate Covid-19 outbreaks. It does this ruthlessly without regards to stock values or investor interests.
Some six weeks ago I argued against Stephen S. Roach’s take on new Chinese regulations and described why the wider public in China will not care about ‘investors’ and will support those steps.
Since then the regulation campaign has continued with astonishing speed and breath. Here is a collection of headlines, published since my last take, that detail the development and the flood of new regulations and laws designed to set things right while keeping China’s economic growth going.
The new slogan for this era is now ‘common prosperity’, a policy that will reduce large wealth gaps while keeping reasonable monetary incentives and the market economy alive to allow for further development.
A pamphlet, written by a minor Maoist figure, that justifies these measures and puts them into a larger political context was widely published by Communist Party organs:
A commentary published widely in Chinese state-run media described President Xi Jinping’s regulatory crackdown as a “profound revolution” sweeping the country and warned that anyone who resisted would face punishment.
“This is a return from the capital group to the masses of the people, and this is a transformation from capital-centered to people-centered,” the commentary said, adding that it marked a return to the original intention of the Communist Party.
“Therefore, this is a political change, and the people are becoming the main body of this change again, and all those who block this people-centered change will be discarded.”
The author then goes on to set the ‘profound transformation’ into a wider, geopolitical context:
“China is currently facing an increasingly severe and complex international environment. The US has implemented military threats, economic and technological blockades, financial strikes and political and diplomatic siege against China,” Li wrote.
“The US has also launched biological warfare, cyber warfare and public opinion against China.”
“If we still have to rely on big capitalists as the main force of anti-imperialist and anti-hegemonism, or still cooperate to the US’ ‘tittytainment’ strategy, our young people will lose their strong and masculine vibes and we will collapse like the Soviet Union before we are attacked,” he said, claiming that the US had launched a color revolution against China through different channels.
The “profound transformation” underway in China aimed to respond to the US’ brutal and ferocious attacks as well as the current complicated international situation, he said.
The curbs on the entertainment sector were far from adequate as ordinary workers and people should become the main characters on screens.
People would benefit from the “common prosperity” goal after the education, medical and property sectors were reformed, he wrote.
While this sounds like Culture Revolution 2.0 it is assured that there will be no rampages of Maoist students through libraries or reeducation camps for party members.
Predatory capitalist George Soros claims in the Financial Times that these moves it will doom China’s economy. (See Michael Hudson’s counter here.) But people who, like Soros, argue against strong regulations forget that there are would be no markets without them.
Companies that only look at shareholder values are not sound and do not allow for a healthy society.
Just look Boeing and at the homeless camps in U.S. cities.
Aside from the ideological underpinning the new regulatory moves are populist. The masses will like them. They guarantee President Xi Jinping’s reelection at next year’s national party congress.
They will strengthen China’s unity in its competition with the United States.
China is cleaning up a few problems but I think it is also going into war mode.Posted by: Peter AU1 | Sep 1 2021 22:26 utc | 53
It is a nation of hard working, martial arts trained, studious NERDS. Most of the factories are inside of China. Not what passes for “factories” in the United States today. Which for the most part is nothing more than a nice office building in a “Industrial park” that houses cubicles staffed with accountants, diversity officers, attorneys, finance and marketing folk.
China is very capable. And if you want to to toe-to-toe, and head-to-head with them you had best be ready to accept the consequences of a harsh defeat and a life as a conquered nation. Check out this video here.
This article would have been very useful if it had stuck to its headline warning, which is more or less along the lines that Xi has made very clear that he’s not going to allow investors, above all foreign investors, to exercise more influence in Chinese business and society.
However, Soros then goes on in a vein that the article subhead accurately summarizes:
“The leader’s crackdown on private enterprise shows he does not understand the market economy.”
Oh, contraire, China’s success has been built on learning from the mistakes of other Asian countries that developed quickly but then fell prey to financialization, particularly Japan, and had difficulties making the transition from being export and investment led to consumption led.
In particularly, Soros is cheesed off at Xi restricting foreign investment, particularly in stocks.
First, China is a capital exporter. It doesn’t need foreign funds.
Second, despite the Anglopshere idealization of public stock markets, China doesn’t need one either, although getting rid of the one it has now would be messy and very disruptive.
As Amar Bhide pointed out in a landmark Harvard Business Review article, Efficient Markets, Deficient Governance, anonymous, freely traded shares inherently lead to poor governance.
Public companies cannot share critical business information that investors need to make informed decisions.
Transient shareholders also lack the motivation and means to improve the performance of the companies they’ve invested in.
Bhide has pointed out in other venues that while all other types of investments, such as derivatives and venture capital, existed in pre-modern times, arms length share trading did not because stock is a legally vague and weak promise.
And despite the idealization of share ownership, it’s almost entirely divorced from the funding of business. The most important source for new investment is retained earnings. Second is borrowing. Share sales are a distant third. The overwhelming majority of stock trading is shuffling paper among investors.
The most charitable interpretation of Soros’ position is that he suffers from a China version of the saying attributed to Charles Wilson, “What’s good for GM is good for America,” which here becomes, “What’s good for people like me of course is good for China.” Except as Michael Hudson explains, it isn’t.
Below are sections of the Soros article, with Hudson’s remarks in bold italics:
Xi Jinping, China’s leader, has collided with economic reality. His crackdown on private enterprise [what the classical economists called rent-seeking and unearned income] has been a significant drag on the economy [meaning the economy’s polarization concentrating wealth and income in the hands of the richest One Percent]. The most vulnerable sector is real estate, particularly housing. China has enjoyed an extended property boom over the past two decades, but that is now coming to an end. Evergrande, the largest real estate company, is over-indebted and in danger of default. This could cause a crash. [That’s just what is needed.]
….One of the reasons why middle-class families are unwilling to have more than one child is that they want to make sure that their children will have a bright future. [This is true of every advanced nation today. It is most extreme in the neoliberalized countries, e.g., the Baltics and Ukraine – Soros’s poster countries.]
We have skipped over Xi’s crackdown on the private tutoring industry…as if tutoring is essential to providing for security and an adequate standard of living for the next generation. How about strong public education, including remedial and advanced tracks, and vocational/technical training for those not bound to universities?
Back to Soros and Hudson:
Xi does not understand how markets operate [meaning that he rejects rapacious rent-seeking, exploitative free-for-all, and shapes markets to serve overall prosperity for China’s 99 Percent]. As a consequence, the sell-off was allowed to go too far [by which he means, too far to maintain the dominance of the One Percent; it seeks to reverse economic polarization, not intensify it]. It began to hurt China’s objectives in the world [meaning America’s neoliberal objectives for how it had hoped to make money for itself off China].
Recognising this, Chinese financial authorities have gone out of their way to reassure foreign investors and markets have responded with a powerful rally. But that is a deception. Xi regards all Chinese companies as instruments of a one-party state…
Pension fund managers allocate their assets in ways that are closely aligned with the benchmarks against which their performance is measured. [The tragedy of financializing pensions is that fund managers are rated on making money financially – in ways that hurt the industrial economy by promoting financial engineering instead of industrial engineering.]
Almost all of them claim that they factor environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) standards into their investment decisions. [At least, that’s what their public relations advisors advertise. Exxon claims to be cleaning up the environment by expanding offshore oil drilling in Guyana, etc. As for “social standards,” the neoliberal mantra is trickle-down economics: by making our stock prices rise, by stock buybacks and higher dividend payouts, we are helping wage-earners earn a pension, even though we are offshoring and de-industrializing the economy, de-unionizing it and “freeing” the economy from consumer and workplace protection laws.]
….The US Congress should pass a bipartisan bill explicitly requiring that asset managers invest only in companies where actual governance structures are both transparent and aligned with stakeholders. [Wow. Such a bill would block Americans from investing in many American companies whose behavior is not at all aligned with stakeholders. What proportion: 50%? 75%? More?] This rule should obviously apply to the performance benchmarks selected by pensions and other retirement portfolios.
If Congress were to enact these measures, it would give the Securities and Exchange Commission the tools it needs to protect American investors, including those who are unaware of owning Chinese stocks and Chinese shell companies. That would also serve the interests of the US and the wider international community of democracies. [So Mr. Soros wants to block the US from investing in China. That is President Xi’s objective also: China doesn’t need U.S. dollars, and is in fact de-dollarizing.]
There are a lot of reasons to criticize Xi and the Chinese regimes, but combating foreign influence and a bit late in the game pushing back against high levels of inequality are not among them.
And Soros presents himself as having superior insight into China, and then acts as if an American strike on Chinese public companies would dent them. Good luck with that.
Indeed.
Great rebuttal by hudson. Soros is fuming at china,its because he cant run his usual financial schemes and assert some measure of control on sectors of their economy. Why anyone listens to this documented nazi collaborator, and destroyer of economies, and the pound sterling is beyond me. China is not in the business of allowing these types to have input or dictate their financial policy. I applaud them.
Posted by: RC213V | Sep 1 2021 21:52 utc | 46
You would think that most reasonable people would understand this. But they don’t. I have been reading the Australian “news”. Oh Lordy! These Bozo’s actually think that Australia and Japan will physically invade mainland China and be allowed to march right into the cities and take over.
I don’t believe it, but obviously the United States, though it’s enormous media is posturing towards a major conflict. And at this stage of the game, it looks like they want it to happen so badly that it probably will.
The Chinese leader tells cadres at the Central Party School that the ‘risks and challenges we face are conspicuously increasing’. Xi’s comments about the the need to fight to protect national security come amid ongoing tensions with the United States
And remember what I said at the start of this article…
"... the point that I want to make is that China is a perfect organism wholly designed to prevent anyone from attacking it. It is like a vicious animal with spikes, poison, and large sharp teeth. Only a fool would want to attack it..."
A final word.
So the United States wants to go into a HOT war with China. Don’t be so sure on what will happen.
From an anonymous commenter…
Some American and Chinese virologists are developing the new Sinoamerican virus (let's call it "Sinoamerican 200") in a laboratory in Guangzhou. The virus is a combination of a modified porcine influenza H1N1 and the previous Sinoamerican virus (SARS COV 2). The Sinoamerican 200 will be disseminated somewhere in USA in November 2021.Posted by: Kim Jong Il | Sep 2 2021 5:54 utc | 87
Let’s see what will happen in December 2021; around and just before Christmas time.
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.
Please kindly help me out in this effort. There is a lot of effort that goes into this disclosure. I could use all the financial support that anyone could provide. Thank you very much.
This article discusses why the Earth (and a number of other solar systems in our region of physical space) is known as a “prison planet” and why it is now morphing into what I refer to as a “Sentience Nursery”. It’s a rather detailed, and strange look (I guess) at the world we all share in light of the events of MAJestic and the “Alien Interview” disclosure.
Now, let it be well understood that throughout my entire time in MAJestic, I was told that the earth was a “sentience nursery” for the evolution and sorting of the consciousnesses here. But when I encountered the disclosure “Alien Interview”, which I am wholly and positively convinced that it is authentic, they referred to the earth (and nearby solar systems) as “Prison Planets”.
This did NOT change the fact that the earth and it’s environs are “Sentience nurseries”, instead, if provided a background that helped me (personally) flush out the events leading up to what is going on today.
Alien Interview – 1947
I have presented the PDF titled “Alien Interview” to the readership. It is the transcripts of the interview that a nurse had with an extraterrestrial entity that was recovered from a spaceship crash in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. It was released in 2007. There is a lot of good stuff there, and now I am convinced that everything is in agreement with what was presented to me in MAJestic.
A quick reminder
In graphic form. A picture tells more than two encyclopedias.
Key events of The Domain occupation plotted against Humankind technical advancement.
Here’s the pertinent section…
The Domain enters the Milky Way galaxy
She told me that The Domain Expeditionary Force first entered into the Milky Way galaxy very recently — only about 10,000 years ago.
The Domain conquers the Old Empire
Their first action was to conquer the home planets of the “Old Empire” (this is not the official name, but a nick-name given to the conquered civilization by The Domain Forces) that served as the seat of central government for this galaxy, and other adjoining regions of space. These planets are located in the star systems in the tail of the Big Dipper constellation. She did not mention which stars, exactly.
The Domain installs bases inside the Milkyway Galaxy
About 1,500 years later The Domain began the installation bases for their own forces along the path of invasion which leads toward the center of this galaxy and beyond.
The Domain sets up a base on Earth
About 8,200 years ago The Domain forces set up a base on Earth in the Himalaya Mountains near the border of modern Pakistan and Afghanistan. This was a base for a battalion of The Domain Expeditionary Force, which included about 3,000 members.
They set up a base under or inside the top of a mountain. The mountain top was drilled into and made hollow to create an area large enough to house the ships and personnel of that force.
An electronic illusion of the mountain top was then created to hide the base by projecting a false image from inside the mountain against a “force screen”. The ships could then enter and exit through the force screen, yet remain unseen by homo sapiens.
The Old Empire attacks the Domain base on Earth
Shortly after they settled there the base was surprised by an attack from a remnant of the military forces of the “Old Empire”.
Unbeknownst to The Domain, a hidden, underground base on Mars, operated by the “Old Empire”, had existed for a very long time. The Domain base was wiped out by a military attack from the Mars base and the IS-BEs of The Domain Expeditionary Force were captured.
You can imagine that The Domain was very upset about losing such a large force of officers and crew, so they sent other crews to Earth to look for them. Those crews were also attacked.
The unusual handling of the capture Domain forces
The captured IS-BEs from The Domain Forces were handled in the same fashion as all other IS-BEs who have been sent to Earth. They were each given amnesia, had their memories replaced with false pictures and hypnotic commands and sent to Earth to inhabit biological bodies. They are still a part of the human population today.
After a very persistent and extensive investigation into the loss of their crews, The Domain discovered that “Old Empire” has been operating a very extensive, and very carefully hidden, base of operations in this part of the galaxy for millions of years.
No one knows exactly how long.
Final destruction of the Old Empire in this region
Eventually, the space craft of the “Old Empire” forces and The Domain engaged each other in open combat in the space of the solar system. According to Airl, there was a running battle between the “Old Empire” forces and The Domain until about 1235 AD, when The Domain forces finally destroyed the last of the space craft of the “Old Empire” force in this area. The Domain Expeditionary Force lost many of its own ships in this area during that time also.
A hidden Old Empire base in our area
About 1,000 years later the “Old Empire” base was discovered by accident in the spring of 1914 AD.
The discovery was made when the body of the Archduke of Austria was “taken over” by an officer of The Domain Expeditionary Force. This officer, who was stationed in the asteroid belt, was sent to Earth on a routine mission to gather reconnaissance.
A “electric fence” surrounds this area
Eventually The Domain discovered that a wide area of space is monitored by an “electronic force field” which controls all of the IS-BEs in this end of the galaxy, including Earth.
The electronic force screen is designed to detect IS-BEs and prevent them from leaving the area.
Snare, capture and make compliant
If any IS-BE attempts to penetrate the force screen, it “captures” them in a kind of “electronic net”.
The result is that the captured IS-BE is subjected to a very severe “brainwashing” treatment which erases the memory of the IS-BE.
This process uses a tremendous electrical shock, just like Earth psychiatrists use “electric shock therapy” to erase the memory and personality of a “patient” and to make them more “cooperative”.
On Earth this “therapy” uses only a few hundred volts of electricity. However, the electrical voltage used by the “Old Empire” operation against IS-BEs is on the order of magnitude of billions of volts! This tremendous shock completely wipes out all the memory of the IS-BE. The memory erasure is not just for one life or one body. It wipes out all of the accumulated experiences of a nearly infinite past, as well as the identity of the IS-BE!
The shock is intended to make it impossible for the IS-BE to remember who they are, where they came from, their knowledge or skills, their memory of the past, and ability to function as a spiritual entity.
They are overwhelmed into becoming a mindless, robotic non-entity.
Reprogramming and return back to prison
After the shock a series of post hypnotic suggestions are used to install false memories, and a false time orientation in each IS-BE.
This includes [1] the command to “return” to the base after the body dies, so that the same kind of shock and hypnosis can be done again, and again, again — forever.
The hypnotic command also tells [2] the “patient” to forget to remember.
The Old Empire was using Earth as a Prison Planet
What The Domain learned from the experience of this officer (in the body of the Archduke of Austria) is that the “Old Empire” has been using Earth as a “prison planet” for a very long time — exactly how long is unknown — perhaps millions of years.
So, when the body of the IS-BE dies they depart from the body.
They are detected by the “force screen”, they are captured and “ordered” by hypnotic command to “return to the light”.
The idea of “heaven” and the “afterlife” are part of the hypnotic suggestion — a part of the treachery that makes the whole mechanism work.
After the IS-BE has been shocked and hypnotized to erase the memory of the life just lived, the IS-BE is immediately “commanded”, hypnotically, to “report” back to Earth, as though they were on a secret mission, to inhabit a new body.
Each IS-BE is told that they have a special purpose for being on Earth. But, of course there is no purpose for being in a prison — at least not for the prisoner.
Who are the inmates in prison?
Any undesirable IS-BEs who are sentenced to Earth were classified as “untouchable” by the “Old Empire”.
The worst of the worst were sent to the Earth Prison Planet.
This included anyone that the “Old Empire” judged to be criminals who are too vicious to be reformed or subdued, as well as other criminals such as sexual perverts, or beings unwilling to do any productive work.
An “untouchable” classification of IS-BEs also includes a wide variety of “political prisoners”.
This includes IS-BEs who are considered to be non-compliant “free thinkers” or “revolutionaries” who make trouble for the governments of the various planets of the “Old Empire”.
Of course, anyone with a previous military record against the “Old Empire” is also shipped off to Earth.
A list of “untouchables” include artists, painters, singers, musicians, writers, actors, and performers of every kind. For this reason Earth has more artists per capita than any other planet in the “Old Empire”. “Untouchables” also include intellectuals, inventors and geniuses in almost every field.
Since everything the “Old Empire” considers valuable has long since been invented or created over the last few trillion years, they have no further use for such beings. This includes skilled managers also, which are not needed in a society of obedient, robotic citizens. Anyone who is not willing or able to submit to mindless economic, political and religious servitude as a tax-paying worker in the class system of the “Old Empire” are “untouchable” and sentenced to receive memory wipe-out and permanent imprisonment on Earth. The net result is that an IS-BE is unable to escape because they can’t remember who they are, where they came from, where they are.
They have been hypnotized to think they are someone, something, sometime, and somewhere other than where they really are.
The Domain Officer unravels this entire scheme
The Domain officer who was “assassinated” while in the body of Archduke of Austria was, likewise, captured by the “Old Empire” force.
Because this particular officer was a high powered IS-BE, compared to most, he was taken away to a secret “Old Empire” base under the surface of the planet Mars. They put him into a special electronic prison cell and held him there.
Fortunately, this Domain officer was able to escape from the underground base after 27 years in captivity.
When he escaped from the “Old Empire” base, he returned immediately to his own base in the asteroid belt. His commanding officer ordered that a battle cruiser be dispatched to the coordinates of the base provided by this officer and to destroy that base completely. This “Old Empire” base was located a few hundred miles north of the equator on Mars in the Cydonia region.
The “fence” and snare and return continued to function in 1947
Although the military base of the “Old Empire” was destroyed, unfortunately, much of the vast machinery of [1] the IS-BE force screens, [2] the electroshock / amnesia / hypnosis machinery continues to function in other undiscovered locations right up to the present moment.
The main base or control center for this “mind control prison” operation has never been found.
So, the influences of this base, or bases, are still in effect.
Earth has become a “dumping ground” of misfits
The Domain has observed that since the “Old Empire” space forces were destroyed there is no one left to actively prevent other planetary systems from bringing their own “untouchable” IS-BEs to Earth from all over this galaxy, and from other galaxies nearby.
Therefore, Earth has become a universal dumping ground for this entire region of space.
This, in part, explains the very unusual mix of races, cultures, languages, moral codes, religious and political influences among the IS-BE population on Earth.
The number and variety of heterogeneous societies on Earth are extremely unusual on a normal planet. Most “Sun Type 12, Class 7” planets are inhabited by
only one humanoid body type or race, if any.
In addition, most of the ancient civilizations of Earth, and many of the events of Earth have been heavily influenced by the hidden, hypnotic operation of the “Old Empire” base.
So far, no one has figured out exactly where and how this operation is run, or by whom because it is so heavily protected by screens and traps.
Furthermore, there has been no operation undertaken to seek out, discover and destroy the vast and ancientnetwork of electronics machinery that create the IS–BEforce screensat this end of the galaxy. Until this has been done, we are not able to prevent or interrupt the electric shock operation, hypnosis and remote thought controlof the “Old Empire” prisonplanet. Of course all of the crew members of The DomainExpeditionary Force now remain aware of this phenomena at all times while operating in this solar system space so as to prevent detection and the capture by “Old Empire” traps.”
MAJestic – 1947
The “Majestic–12″ committee, was organized by President Harry Truman shortly after the Roswell incident in 1947. And this created the SAP known as the MAJestic organization.
MM and the MAJestic Narrative
I joined MAJestic as a Naval Aviator / (Astrophysicist & Aerospace Engineer) in May 1981. After thirty years of active participation in the organization, I was retired in May 2006. My “active retirement” lasted five years and ended in 2011. I am now a discarded MAJestic operator.
EBP insertion and non-physical training began in 1981. My training, and calibration of the ELF probes happened a number of years after that. All exposure that I have to knowledge, understanding and skills comes from the entanglement of our benefactors.
My primary and functional duty was “anchoring” of consciousnesses in this region to prevent catastrophic events from occurring. (Whatever those catastrophic events were, I haven’t a clue.) This meant world-line travel and consciousness manipulation were my primary tools.
I was involved in…
Manipulation of consciousness
World-line travel
Anchoring of clustered world-line behaviors.
As strange as this might appear and sound, if you look at what the events and operational projects entailed, you can clearly see that they were involved in the control and manipulation of world-line alterations as a function of consciousness mass-manipulation.
Not protecting the earth from those pesky Reptilians as part of the great marine space fleet. LOL! I had to throw this bunch of popular fiction in, don't you know!
If you consider that each consciousness was “retarded” in access to their memories, then…
… my actions were all in alignment with rehabilitative services within a restorative clinic or hospital environment.
So, obviously Earth is a “sentience nursery”. Just as what has been described to me all these years within MAJestic.
So, please most kindly take notes. Today the earth is not considered to be a “Prison Planet”. It is considered and treated as a rehabilitation complex. And all those “abductions” and “probing” and “procedures” are good things designed to alter your prison (non-physical) bodies into a (operation gown) bodies for rehabilitation purposes.
But what happened? What changed?
Think people.
If you manage to destroy a sizable number of the systems and facilities (the walls and the guard towers) of a prison, what are you going to do with all the inmates? Are you going to release them “Ghostbusters” style all at once (like what happened in the Ghostbusters movie)?
All the spirits were released in Ghostbusters all at once.
No.
There are all kinds of people in the Earth Prison Planet Environment.
Some are really innocent. Some just got caught up and imprisoned here. Others were political prisoners who were sent here. Some are terribly creative individuals who were sent here, and some are truly evil, and selfish creatures.
So how you do sort them all out?
And you do need to sort them all out. If you don’t you would end up polluting the entire galaxy with hordes of very evil and dangerous entities.
You sort them.
You sort them by sentience.
The criteria
So if you are going to sort consciousness by sentience, you need to filter out what you keep, what you allow to leave, and what you keep an eye on as they are almost ready to leave, just not totally there yet.
As far as I understand, the sentience of human beings fall into the following categories…
Service to self (being selfish and greedy).
Service to another (a follower, a believer, a NPC).
Service to others (a member of a group of people putting them first).
Disjointed, confused, or emotionally, mentally sick.
Service to Self sentience sub-types
As best as I can tell, the subcategories of a Service to Self person are…
Psychopath
Sociopath
Selfish
Greedy
Narcissistic
They get to stay in the “Sentience Nursery” / “Prison Planet” environment simply because they are too dangerous to unleash on the rest of the universe.
Service to Another sentience sub-types
These consciousnesses are not ready to leave yet, but they are on the way and almost ready to go. I would guess that their progression in sentience would depend on many things, most importantly is their position in any of the subcategories of this type of sentience.
And the subcategories of a Service to other person are…
1. Sycophants
These are very close (if not the same as) a Service to Self sentience.
Also known as a toady, a sycophant follower knows nothing but an advantage. All that is in his mind is nothing but a strategic plan to keep on holding on or following till he gets what he really wants or keep on maintaining the advantage he wants.
More often than not the sycophant follower seems to be self-seeking and behaves like a parasite: gives nothing, yet takes.
2. Critics
Critics are also close to being Service to Self sentience entities.
They are annoying, they are also motivating. The critic followers will always post, comment or say unfavorable opinions concerning a person or an organization or a political party at all times. For others it may be a very annoying process yet for some it is a learning point and adjusting method for future reference.
3. Realists
These are sentience’s that are caught up in the material world. They are not necessarily bad, but they still have much to learn. They need a few more cycles of “reincarnation” to straighten out their sentience.
Here are the philosophers. The realist followers are so aware of reality and they have to let you accept it. The realist followers are always on the side of the truth, the naked truth. They will always accept the physical and most evident of circumstances and issues and they will always let the world know, and to the person or thing or group, they might be following.
4. Loyalists
These are close to Service to Others sentience, but not all the way there. They, for the most part, are but one reincarnation away from a Service to Others sentience.
They are the best kind of followers, the loyalist followers. They are as loyal as dogs can be. You will likely never be disappointed by a loyal follower for they are as true and as honest. No mischief in them or cunning activities. They are loyal almost to a fault.
5. Traitors
These are Service to self individualists in disguise.
Traitors are another bunch of followers that are the complete opposite of the loyal followers. These are the Judases that will betray Jesus from time to time.
Traitor followers will stick by you; follow up with you as long as the weather seems as conducive to continue being with you, not forever but till that time when the first drop of rain falls and the going gets tough, then they will betray you.
6. Spectators
These are Service to self individualists in disguise.
The spectator followers are always on the sideline and surely enough are careful enough not to cross it and only do so when the excitement gets too much. The spectator followers are never in the game but will make sure that you get your support.
They will give you all deserving praises and belief then let you walk into the battlefield all alone.
7. Opportunists
These are Service to self individualists in disguise.
They have not much of a difference from the sycophant followers or traitor followers. The opportunist follower will have no other reason for starting following other than for an advantage at some point.
He or she does not have upmost loyalty. They are like a soaring eagle in the sky keenly eyeing and falling indistinctively with an end goal to capture an unaware fish or mouse.
8. Sheep
These sentience’s are on the path, but they need a few more cycles of reincarnation to sort out the sentience better.
The common myths and facts suggest that sheep are the dumbest of all animals following without question or doubt, keenly observant to only beck at its master’s call and commands. And so is the sheep follower.
They follow with no question, they seem so loyal, and they might be. More often than not, the sheep followers would rather follow other than making an informed and independent decision.
Many associate those that blindly follow government rules or elected officials without any questions as sheep.
9. “Yes” People
They need a few more reincarnations to straighten out their sentience direction. They are actually “sitting on the fence” in the over all scheme of sentience selection.
The ‘yes’ followers simply want to avoid confrontation and pleasing people is their number one priority. The ‘yes’ people follower will always find themselves in uncalled for situations since they do not take their time to think through the yes responses that they give.
They are a often resentful types of people which makes them end up having following what they do not even believe in.
10. Alienated
They are almost at a Service to Self sentience.
The alienated type of follower will always strive to make you feel indifferent and rather hostile. They really know how to pick their words and actions to fit well with their aim and purpose.
11. Survivor
These kind of sentience’s are closer to the Service to Other’s sentience, but need some time to sort things out a little better.
Survivor followers are the most prevailing as they stick by you through hard moments and also stick by you through the good times. The survivor followers have a strong belief in you.
12. Effective
They are almost at a Service to Self sentience. Almost “one foot in the door”.
Here are the kinds of followers that just really know which decisions to make in the order for you reach your intended goal. The effective followers not only follow you but also have a really good impact on your success.
13. The Isolate(d)
A person who is strongly leaning to a Service to Self sentience.
The isolate(d) follower needs no cushioning. He or she acts on their own and most seemingly enjoys the following solo. He does not like crowds. The isolate follower is a lone wolf.
14. The Bystander
This person is solidly in the Service to another realm, and needs a few cycles to sort things out.
The bystander follower seems like the spectator follower. He too does not necessarily take part in the course of action. In his following, he becomes the keen observant from a distance.
15. The Participant
This person is almost a Service to others sentience, and might end up being one entirely within this lifetime.
Here is the jack of all spades. The participant follower is active and vibrant. He is very present and would even go the extra mile for you. He is also the type to bring fun along.
16. The Activist
Almost a full Service to Others sentience in this life.
The activist follower is not just the average follower. He is the one that always follows and cares to bring about change and in most cases, the popular good is his aim.
17. The Diehard
Almost a full Service to Others sentience in this life.
The diehard follower is very instinctive. Like a viper, he is ready to strike and will go down even to the bottomless pit for you. If there is one who can die for you then it is the diehard follower. Fans of the Lord of the Rings franchise would quickly identify Sam Gamgee as the diehard follower of Frodo.
Who gets to leave and who needs to stay?
As I understand it, the ability to leave the “Sentience Nursery” is a function of what your consciousness is.
A service to others sentience gets to leave. At least that is how I understand it today. Obviously when the Old Empire controlled this area, no one ever got to leave it. But things are quite different now.
A service to self sentience gets to stay. They get to relive their time in the earth habitat over and over, and over, and over until they start to feel compassion towards others and their sentience changes.
A service to another sentience stays but is monitored. They are not yet fully developed enough to leave, but not really ready to be released. You can consider this sentience to be on various states of parole.
Disjointed, confused, or non-settled sentience’s stays. Until they straighten out one way or the other, they must stay in this realm under supervision.
Summary and conclusion
The earth realm, both physical and non-physical, is a Sentience Nursery. it was initially set up as a Prison, but that has changed since the Domain started working with MAJestic. The ability to leave this environment depends on your true nature, and this is determined by your sentience.
If you watch Rufus videos and in your heart, you think that they are suckers, idiots, or fools; then you are probably a Service to Self sentience.
If you watch Rufus videos and in your heart, you feel emotion, joy and wish to be a helpful person, then you are a Service to Others sentience.
If you watch a few Rufus videos but are quickly bored and find no interest in them, then you are a Service to Another sentience.
If you watch Rufus videos and wonder about them, are curious about them, but cannot relate to the Rufus in the video, nor the people needing help, you are a disjointed sentience.
Are you ready to take the test?
Watch the video below. Measure your feelings and thoughts after viewing it, and use it to see what sentience that you are “leaning towards”. Sentience is not something that you can hide. It is a resonance point that is affiliated with your consciousness.
There are no right or wrong answers. It’s a method to determine where you are at in regards to sentience and whether or now you need to reincarnate over and over again on the earth, or if you are worthy to be “altered” to permit “escape velocity” from this region.
The sentience test.
Grading
If you think that She is brave and the embodiment of what a person should be, then you are a Service to Others Sentience.
If you think that she is stupid for not trying to steal the guys wallet, then you are most certainly a Service to Self Sentience.
If you think that she should have stood by and called the police, as she is too old, and the accident is too serious, then you are a Service to Another Sentience.
If you don’t think anything other than this is a “stupid” and silly movie, and a waste of your time, then you are a Disjointed Sentience.
Do you want more?
You can find many more videos in my “Extraterrestrial Species index” over here…
I dedicate this article to "Nick" who asked what will the Middle East look like when China replaces the United States as the dominant nation.
I want to take a moment and acknowledge that there is a lot of historical events going on right now. (Sigh.) They have been covered through the various “news” outlets over and over all with various “spins” and opinions. I am sure that you are all getting tired of this. Especially for youse Americans who are (probably) just exhausted by it all.
Yes, the pre-planned Clusterfuck in Kabul, or Bay of Pigs 2.0, or whatever shook the world as victims of 20 years of lies and death reasserted a modicum of control over their situation. The outrage and howling from the CIA-controlled media and the Establishment over Biden's correct decision is hilarious.Posted by: gottlieb | Aug 22 2021 14:11 utc | 1
It’s been a very crazy week.
Personally, I’ve been a tad busy, but then you have the US failure in Afghanistan. But… is it really a failure, or just a regrouping?
The long-term optimism of China is great but the US does not care about that. The US has not been number one at anything for a long time; not education, literacy, healthcare, internet speed, and all the things called "human development". At the turn of the century the U.S. ranked about 18 on the UN Human Development Index adjusted for equality. Today it is 28.
Yet if you ask the average American what country is the best in the world, he will say the US. The people do not even realize how far they have fallen compared to the rest of the world. That shows how good the US propaganda system is. The US is #1 at propaganda. #1 in military spending too, although the technology of the weapons is declining. #1 in obesity. #1 in junk culture. Yes, bread and circus to keep the masses happy works.
The U.S. does not care about the development of the people. It does not care about cooperation.
The U.S. does not care about winning wars. Wars are the end in itself. It is how the wealth of the people is transferred upwards. That is why during the "War OF Terror" the U.S. has been steadily declining "when adjusted for equality" from 18 to 28.
The U.S. has not "lost" in Afghanistan, because it had nothing to lose. Nor has the U.S. pulled out of Afghanistan.
It has just been a pivot.
CIA special activities, special forces and mercenaries are "stay behinds". They will now regroup the mujahideen and create a civil war that will last for another 20 years. They will also intensify direction of the mujahideen to former Russian republics, Chechnya, Xinjiang, Myanmar, Thailand, and anywhere else they can get a foothold for regime change and to attack the BRI.
The US takes China and Russia's kindness as weakness. It will take what kindness is offered and then stab the giver in the back. The US will use whatever sabotage it can against the BRI.
America is not interested in cooperation.
The battlefield of propaganda has been well prepared for the American people. They believe the US has many aggressive enemies, and all (illegal) US wars (of aggression) are defensive. The vast majority believe anything from the CIA's Mighty Wurlitzer.
Regards,
[name withheld]
This (mid-August 2021) was a week where the U.S. retreat from Afghanistan overshadowed everything else. That is okay as huge consequences will flow from these events. The future history books (or what ever they will use) will record these events as one of the most significant dates and contributing events that will eventually lead up to the start of the “New Beginning” of the new global order.
And it will, as this comment foreshadows…
When will other occupied suzerainties ask Imperialist forces to leave? The Taliban has been fighting the Imperial forces since their occupation started. However, people in Germany, Japan, South Korea,… that have been occupied by the Imperialists over many decades do nothing. Aren’t they democracy? What does it tell about these SUZERAINTIES? What percentage of their transactions are in Imperialist’s currencies? Are you okay with imperialism? Imperialists go back!Name a democracy that isn’t a suzerainty.Will Afghanistan’s fiasco create any wave of change?Posted by: Max | Aug 22 2021 14:23 utc | 3
Hey! What the heck is a “suzerainty”? That’s a new word for me.
"apositionofcontrolby a sovereign or stateoveranotherstate that is internally autonomous."
So, a nation can be under the control of another nation, while still having it’s own domestic laws, rules and culture. So Japan, would be under the control of the United States as a vassal state, but is still allowed to keep Japanese culture, society, laws and rules domestically. However, internationally, it must obey and do what ever the United States says.
The USA tells Japan to join the QUAD. They join the QUAD. The USA tells them to buy USA debt. They buy USA debt. But if the girls want to wear kimonos, watch strange television, and have a giant penis festival, that’s just fine.
So Japan is a suzerainty of the United States.
Hey! You learn something every day.
So it has got me to thinking. You know. I start to ponder things, and wonder about things. So, I wonder what the difference between a suzerainty and a “vassal state” is?
Vassal stateState
A vassalstate is any state that has a mutual obligation to a superior state or empire, in a status similar to that of a vassal in the feudal system in medieval Europe.
Vassal states were common among the Empires of the Near East, dating back to the era of the Egyptian, Hittite and Mitanni conflict, as well as Ancient China.
The use of vassal states continued through the middle ages, with the last Empire to use such states being the Ottoman Empire.
The relationships between vassal rulers and empires was dependent on the policies and agreements of each empire.
While payment of tribute and military service is common amongst vassal states, the degree of independence and benefits given to vassal states varied. Today, more common terms are puppet state, protectorate, client state, associated state or satellite state.
-Wikipedia
So, to me it appears that as a Vassal State, the controlling Empire can also dictate domestic behaviors, society and laws as it deems necessary. While a suzerainty is permitted domestic autonomy.
We can thus think that a “suzerainty” is a subset of a “vassal state”.
A suzerainty.
Interesting stuff.
It puts the entire perspective of what the world really looks like and operates into a much greater perspective. And most certainly what the United States actually is in the greater scheme of things.
To the world at large, the United States is a big massive, bad bully. That if not “tamed” by the rest of the world, it will end up consuming it and destroying it. As stated in this video. Funny how this section was never shown on American media…
The USA is out of control.
Some haggling seems to continue today but the outcome is assured.
Trump has something to say…
Yada, yada, yada.
Trump gives his two cents worth.
Now for the “meat”…
Big warning; long read.
And as my articles tend to be long, expect this one to be encyclopedic. To fully understand what is transpiring in this far-away mountainous area you need to know some history. And Jeeze! There’s a lot of history.
By the time you are 25% done reading, you should be moe informed than a full 90% of the people around you. At 50%, that number jumps to 95%, and at the end of this article, you will be more informed than 99.99999% of those around you.
Such a responsibility!
Do you want this level of understanding?
We will avoid all the great pilliages of the Genghis Khan and the Persions and all the rest, and we will start when the UK British Empire decided to annex the region as a Vassal State.
Then we will explore how the Soviet Union Empire decided to annex the region as a Vassal State.
And finally, we will explore how the United States Military Empire decided to annes the region as a Vassal State.
Long read. As I said.
So first, some history…
The usual disclaimers apply. Content edited for this venue all credit to the original authors, etc.
Britain’s first war in Afghanistan: what happened and why?
Britain’s first war in Afghanistan took place in the Victorian era, beginning in 1839. Historian William Dalrymple explores the conflict in conversation with Rob Attar, in a piece first published in 2013, and discusses what parallels can be drawn with the fighting in recent years
The First Anglo-Afghan War: what happened?
Concerned that Russia was expanding its influence in the region, Britain invaded Afghanistan in 1839, ousting ruler Dost Mohammad and replacing him with Shah Shuja, who had been king from 1803–10.
Insurrections later broke out, compelling the British garrison to flee Kabul. Believing they had been promised safe passage, a large contingent of British and Indian forces attempted a retreat in January 1842, but were ambushed by Afghan troops, leading to the deaths of around 18,000 soldiers. Abandoned in Kabul, Shah Shuja was killed.
British forces managed to recapture Kabul later that year and elsewhere laid waste to the countryside but eventually decided to pull out of the country altogether. Dost Mohammad returned to Kabul in 1843 and his dynasty would remain in power until the 1970s.
William Dalrymple, author of Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan, discusses the First Anglo-Afghan War in conversation with Rob Attar
How does your book change our understanding of the First Anglo-Afghan War?
It is one of those old chestnuts that’s already got a shelf-and-a-half of books written about it. So it seemed the only point of dedicating four years to this was to try to completely rewrite the story, obviously with a view to seeing it in the light of what is going on now, but more specifically trying to cover both sides of the story, which has never been done before. To date, not one book on the war has used a single Afghan source. Everything we have is entirely from the British side.
The British Experience.
I did several trips to Afghanistan to search out more sources and by the end I had nine full-length Afghan accounts of the war. What emerged from them was that the war had a completely different dramatis personae and a more fractured regional make-up than the British seemed to be aware of. They saw an undifferentiated wall of bigoted bearded Afghans coming towards them but in reality the resistance was divided by tribe, ethnic group and language.
My most exciting find was the autobiography of Shah Shuja. He had been written off by the British and Afghan nationalists as a weak and hopeless guy, but I think he was wonderful. He was a poet, civilised and immensely likeable. He just didn’t have military luck ever in his career.
The British Experience.
Astonishingly he was from the same sub-tribe, the Popalzai, as current Afghan president Hamid Karzai. We’ve put the same guy in twice! And he was brought down by the Ghilzai who today make up the foot soldiers of the Taliban. This is the same tribal war, continuing under slightly different flags, 170 years later.
Has your research changed your view of the First Anglo-Afghan War’s origins?
The account I give is subtly, but not completely, changed from previous versions. The basic reason for the British invasion was a blown-up fear of Russian intervention and here there are parallels, oddly enough, with the war in Iraq, with a ‘dodgy dossier’. A group of hawks manipulated intelligence to exaggerate a threat that didn’t exist in reality as substantially as they thought it did.
There was this episode when a young great gamer, Sir Henry Rawlinson, was riding through Persia to join the Shah of Persia’s camp in the north-west of the country. One night Rawlinson found himself in the very dodgy borderlands between Persia and Afghanistan and, just as dawn was breaking, he witnessed a party of horsemen coming down the valley towards him. He saw that they were Russian Cossacks heading in the direction of the Afghan border. He headed them off at the top of the pass and found them eating their breakfast.
There was a young Russian officer who refused to talk to him in Russian, Persian or French but agreed to chat in Jagatai Turkish. He told Rawlinson he was on his way to the Persian camp so Rawlinson rode straight there to see the Shah. The Shah said that the Russians were nothing to do with him but were going to open diplomatic relations with Dost Mohammad in Kabul.
This was the yellowcake of its day [in 2002, it was claimed that Saddam Hussein had been trying to obtain yellowcake uranium to develop weapons of mass destruction]. For 30 years hawks had been worrying about Russia moving towards Afghanistan and there was this whole literature already in London about Russia taking Afghanistan then sweeping down the Khyber and expelling the British from India. There was no evidence for this at all until this chance discovery.
There was this new governor general, Lord Auckland, who had inherited a group of belligerently hawkish and Russophobic advisors, led by the hopeless William Macnaghten. They ignored the advice of the one British official in India who really knew Afghanistan, Alexander Burnes. He was sending despatches saying that Dost Mohammad wanted to ally with the British rather than the Russians, but they didn’t listen and advised Auckland to oust Dost Mohammad and bring in what they described as the ‘ousted legitimate ruler’ Shah Shuja.
How did the British fare in the early military operations?
The war followed the same trajectory as the current conflict. Everyone warned that it would be catastrophically difficult, but in fact they conquered the country almost instantly with minimal casualties. Then you had, as happened in 2001, the government crowing that they’d seen off the naysayers and it was going to be easy.
For the first year it did seem to be so.
The Afghans were very friendly and their noblemen went hunting, did amateur theatricals and played cricket with the British. But slowly it began to unravel, from Helmand, working northwards. There was more and more resistance until the British found themselves surrounded in Kabul without any control of the countryside around it. Again, it was exactly the same as the situation today.
The British Experience.
Where did this resistance come from?
Here my interpretation is different from that of the British. They assumed that the Afghans were rising up against Shah Shuja as much as themselves but it’s quite clear that a lot of the resistance was from irritated royalists who wanted Shah Shuja to shed his allegiance to the British. They thought the British were abusing agreements he’d made with them, which was indeed the case.
The initial idea had been that Shah Shuja would be given rule and the British would just help him enforce it, but, rather like with the tensions between Karzai and the British and Americans, increasingly the British got irritated with their own puppet and tried to bully him or take unilateral action. Macnaghten and Burnes gradually despaired of ever running Shah Shuja effectively and just took control of Afghanistan themselves.
What we get very clearly from Afghan sources is the motivations of individual leaders, which were all quite different. Abdullah Khan Achakzai was a young aristocrat whose girlfriend was seduced by Burnes, so for him it was a personal slight. He made a wonderful speech the night before the rebellion saying: “We have to put a stop right here and now, otherwise these English will ride the donkey of their desires into the field of stupidity, to the point of having us all arrested and deported into foreign imprisonment.”
Aminullah Khan Logari was a self-made man who had worked his way up for over 60 years of service. He was treated very peremptorily by a young British official who threw him off his lands. It was people such as Logari and Achakzai who kicked the whole thing off. They called everyone to arms and, within a few days, 50,000 had gathered in Kabul to fight the British.
The British Experience.
Did the British just retreat then?
There were two quite substantial battles that they lost through their incompetence and then they retreated. It was during the retreat under the promise of safekeeping that they got shot down. The East India Company at the time still used the Brown Bess musket, which was great in a flat European field like Waterloo but couldn’t fire long distances or uphill. The Afghans had these clumsy big jezails that took an hour to load but nonetheless could fire a mile downhill and were perfect for mountain warfare.
How did the British allow this catastrophe to happen?
It was quite fantastically incompetent British leadership. As well as Burnes and Macnaghten, who were always at each other’s necks, there was this gout-ridden old general called William Elphinstone who hadn’t seen action since the battle of Waterloo and was an invalid. On the first morning of the revolt he tried to get on his horse, which fell on top of him and he was more or less out of the action from there. By their own indecision and hopelessness the British lost the war very quickly. They lost all their food and ammunition within about 48 hours and it was only a matter of time before they had to retreat.
Was it a political or military decision to pull out of the country altogether?
Retreat was inevitable once they’d lost their food and ammunition, so that was a military decision. The Kabul garrison was wiped out but there were others surviving in Jalalabad and Kandahar. They were reinforced and the following spring they returned and laid waste to southern Afghanistan.
This army of retribution committed war crimes on a grand scale, raping and murdering women and children.
The British Experience.
After that, the decision to pull out was an economic one and this is also true of the later conflicts. Resistance can be defeated but only at huge cost, because the country is so diffused and the geography makes it so difficult. Plus there is no way of defraying the cost of the occupation. If you invade Iraq you can take the oil, or in the Punjab you can tax the rich, fertile land, but the entire tax revenue of Afghanistan never paid then and doesn’t pay now even a fraction of the cost of occupation.
How might your book inform policy makers today?
I do think there’s a huge amount to be learned from the Afghan version of events. It gives a precision into understanding the resistance, which has been lacking to date.
The story of the First Anglo-Afghan War provides clear warnings about the dangers of being trapped in Kabul, surrounded and with no allies, having fallen out with the people you put into power.
The problem is that each generation fails to learn these lessons.
George Lawrence was one of the troops taken hostage during the retreat and so survived to write his memoirs. He saw history repeating itself in the 1870s with the Second Anglo-Afghan War and he roused himself to write a letter to The Times. He said:
“A new generation has arisen, which instead of profiting from the solemn lessons of the past, is willing and eager to embroil us in the affairs of that turbulent and unhappy country… The disaster of the retreat from Kabul should stand forever as a warning to the statesmen of the future not to repeat the policies that bore such butter fruit in 1839–42.”
He wasn’t listened to in 1870, and this is now the fourth lost Afghan war.
William Dalrymple is an award-winning writer and historian based in India. His books include The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company (Bloomsbury, 2019), Koh-i-Noor: The History of the World’s Most Infamous Diamond, co-authored with Anita Anand (Bloomsbury, 2017) and Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan (Bloomsbury, 2014) This article was first published in the February 2013 issue of BBC History Magazine
After Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan in 1988-89, the regime it was defending there fell. This experience contributes to present fears that, if America withdraws from Afghanistan, the regime it is defending will also fall. A closer look at Soviet and Russian actions between 1988 and 1992, though, suggests that this need not have been the result then — and that it need not be the result of an American withdrawal now either.
The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December 1979 to prop up the Marxist regime that had come to power the previous year but which appeared to be on the verge of collapse.
Unlike the Soviet invasions of Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968, however, Soviet forces encountered prolonged resistance that they were unable to defeat.
In order to promote his goals of domestic reform and improving Moscow’s relations with the West, Gorbachev withdrew Soviet forces from Afghanistan (which he had termed a “bleeding wound”) between May 1988 and February 1989.
Russians in Afghanistan.
At the time, it was widely predicted that the Marxist regime Moscow had been supporting in Afghanistan would fall within a few months — or even weeks — of the final departure of Soviet forces.
The regime of President Najibullah, however, survived until April 1992, over three years after the Soviet withdrawal.
Several factors contributed to the regime’s longevity, including the continuation of Soviet military and economic assistance, the mistakes made by some of the mujahideen (the Afghan forces that had fought against the Soviet occupation) as well as their Pakistani supporters, divisions among the various mujahideen groups, and the Najibullah regime’s successful exploitation of these problems.
After the downfall of Gorbachev and of the Soviet Union itself in December 1991, though, Moscow’s assistance to Najibullah ended.
Without this assistance, Najibullah was unable to continue effectively exploiting the weaknesses of his adversaries. Instead, they were able to exploit his, and so his regime fell. This paper will examine how Moscow’s actions helped Najibullah survive but then contributed to his downfall, as well as how Moscow’s actions affected the other factors influencing the fortunes of the Afghan Marxist regime.
Russians in Afghanistan.
1989-91: Soviet Support for Kabul Continues
Although the Soviet troop presence in Afghanistan ended in February 1989, large-scale Soviet military and economic assistance to its Marxist protégés there continued.
As Soviet troops withdrew, they left behind literally all their matériel except for the vehicles needed to transport them back over the border. In addition, as Soviet forces withdrew from Eastern Europe following the downfall of communist regimes there in late 1989, some of this weaponry was transferred to Afghanistan.
From early 1989 to late 1991, Soviet assistance to Kabul reportedly amounted to $300 million per month. Perhaps this is not a large figure by today’s standards, but it was a much greater amount than the mujahideen were receiving after the Soviet withdrawal, and was a considerable financial burden on the economically beleaguered USSR.
Weaponry that Moscow supplied to Kabul included MiG- 27 fighter jets (the Afghan Marxist regime had an air force with some 200 aircraft plus helicopters). In addition, as Zalmay Khalilzad (whom President George W. Bush appointed as special presidential envoy for Afghanistan and then U.S. ambassador to Kabul) noted in 1991,
Moscow has provided more than thirteen hundred Scud-B missiles, hundreds of shorter range Frogs, several hundred tanks, and sixteen hundred five-ton trucks. To keep Kabul supplied, the Soviets launched the biggest air supply effort in its history, sending some twenty-five or more IL-76 transport planes to Kabul each day for much of 1989 (Khalilzad 1991, 82-83).
Indeed, all this was reportedly more than the Marxist regime could effectively use. To help them, though, Moscow left behind about 300 advisers, some of whom reportedly participated in the firing of the Scud missiles at mujahideen targets. (In addition to a regular army of 55,000 men, the Kabul regime also had the support of a 10,000-strong presidential guard and various militias, including an especially effective one raised and led by the ethnic Uzbek leader, General Abdul Rashid Dostum.)
When the Soviets withdrew, much of the anti-foreign-presence motivation for many Afghans to fight with the mujahideen disappeared.
A mujahideen group.
Indeed, some mujahideen groups themselves appeared tainted for being so very close to Pakistan. Soviet assistance also allowed Kabul to effectively compete with Pakistan and the various mujahideen groups based there in paying off local commanders and tribal leaders inside Afghanistan.
While Pakistan tied its support to various mujahideen groups not only to whether or not they fought against Kabul but whether they did so in the manner specified by the ISI, Kabul gave support to various groups just in exchange for not fighting against it. As Khalilzad noted at the time, “Najib’s offer is more attractive than ISI’s; while ISI wants it clients to fight and risk their lives, Najib is willing to pay if the commanders agree not to fight” (Khalilzad 1991, 81).
Russians in Afghanistan.
Further, the groups Pakistan supported were not always effective. In March 1989, some 15,000 Pakistani-backed mujahideen forces attacked the town of Jalalabad. Their unwillingness to accept prisoners, though, meant that the defending government forces had strong motivation to fight on. Although the mujahideen laid siege to the town, the Kabul government was able to resupply and reinforce its garrison by air, launch a counterattack, and break the siege by mid-May 1989. This was a major humiliation for Pakistan and its allies.
In addition to military assistance, though, Moscow provided Kabul with key economic assistance. As mujahideen forces approached Kabul and interrupted the supply of food and other consumer goods into the city, the Soviets airlifted these commodities to the Afghan capital.
At Moscow’s urging, the Kabul regime attempted to broaden the basis of its support by downplaying its Marxist nature, appointing non-Marxists to visible positions and trying to appeal to nationalism.
According to contemporary accounts, though, these efforts were not particularly successful, as the Marxist regime — especially President Najibullah — was extremely unpopular with the Afghan population. Indeed, while outwardly broadening the base of the regime, it appears that Najibullah actually narrowed it by increasing reliance on his hard-core supporters.
But while Najibullah and his regime lacked popular support, the mujahideen themselves frequently provided Afghans with strong incentive either to support the Marxist regime or to see it as the lesser of two evils. The mujahideen’s efforts to impose an economic blockade on Kabul as well as their periodically shelling it did nothing to endear them to the citizens of the capital.
Even worse, when the mujahideen captured the town of Khost in March 1991, they not only looted it but killed all the government forces they had captured instead of holding them prisoner. This action not only created fear in other towns; it also made clear to irresolute government forces that defecting to the mujahideen was probably not an option for them.
A mujahideen group.
Mujahideen groups also fought among themselves, and this was something that the Marxist government was able to exploit. As was noted in the International Institute for Strategic Studies’ Strategic Survey 1989-1990,
…by early 1990, although the mujahideen continued to control the bulk of the countryside, most of them had in effect ceased being mujahideen, in the sense that they were no longer fighting against the central government, but were instead attempting to work out compromises with Kabul which would ensure their local power, particularly against their former fellow comrades in arms.
Most local commanders had reverted to the traditional relationship between local powers and a weak central state that has shaped Afghan history since the eighteenth century.
The central state is seen less as an enemy than as a referee which can help to promote the interests of the local group.
This development was expected to play a decisive role after the collapse of the Najibullah regime, not before.
That it has come into play so soon is a result of the unexpected adroitness of the regime, aided by the ineffectiveness of US-Pakistan policies (IISS 1990, 160).
At the time, Khalilzad seemed to suggest that the Afghan Marxist regime might even come out on top in the ongoing conflict, when he noted that the Kabul regime “…is likely to increase its efforts to reach out to make deals with commanders and the supporters of the former king at the expense of the majority of the Peshawar-based leadership. Should it succeed, it can reduce the fighting in the country” (Khalilzad 1991, 84).
1992: Russian Support Ends
But, of course, the Afghan Marxist regime did fall in April 1992. Once again, Russian actions appear to have played a key role in bringing this about.
Shortly after the failed August 1991 coup attempt in Moscow and under very different political circumstances, Moscow and Washington agreed to stop aiding their respective Afghan allies as of January 1, 1992.
Not only did Moscow end its arms supply to Kabul, but it also stopped providing it with food and fuel. By contrast, although Pakistan had agreed to stop aiding the mujahideen, Saudi aid to them via Pakistan continued.
Shortly after this in February 1992, Najibullah (a Pushtun) apparently tried to bolster his authority over the Uzbek militia chieftain Dostum by appointing a fellow Pushtun as a commander in the northwestern Uzbek heartland.
But if this was his intention, it backfired in April 1992, when Dostum defected from the government and joined forces with long-time anti-Soviet Tajik mujahideen commander Ahmad Shah Massoud (whose relationship with both Pakistan and the Pushtun mujahideen groups it supported was adversarial). Non-Pushtun forces from the north and Pushtun forces from the south then rushed to capture Kabul, with the Marxist regime splitting along ethnic lines and either joining forces or making deals with their ethnic kin.
Najibullah resigned and sought sanctuary inside the UN compound in Kabul after his attempt to reach the airport was blocked (by his erstwhile ally Dostum, according to some).
The Islamic State of Afghanistan was declared, but the mujahideen remained divided.
After a short, sharp battle for control of Kabul, the Dostum-Massoud alliance prevailed over their Pushtun opponents, for the time being. Russia appeared to play no role in these events.
Conclusions from the Russian Experience
Six observations can be made about the events described here:
First, even after the withdrawal of Soviet forces was completed in February 1989, Soviet military and economic assistance enabled an unpopular regime to remain in power in Afghanistan — at least, in the major population centers — for over three years.
Second, despite continuing to receive significant aid from Pakistan and other nations, the mujahideen were unable to overthrow the Afghan Marxist regime so long as that regime was receiving significant aid from the Soviet Union.
Third, opposition to the Afghan Marxist regime appeared to decline after Soviet troops withdrew. Further, while they had not performed effectively during the period of Soviet occupation, the effectiveness of Afghan government forces increased significantly after the Soviet withdrawal.
Fourth, after Soviet assistance to Kabul ended at the beginning of 1992, the Afghan Marxist regime’s strength declined rapidly.
Fifth, the collapse of the regime in April 1992, though, was not due just (or perhaps even mainly) to the actions of the Pakistani-backed Pushtun mujahideen. Indeed, the immediate downfall of the regime was precipitated by the defection of the previously pro-regime Uzbek militia leader, Dostum, to the side of the non-Pushtun opposition to the regime.
Sixth, as the collapse of the regime approached, the most salient division in Afghanistan was not Marxist vs. Islamist, but Pushtun vs. non-Pushtun.
History, of course, is not destined to repeat itself. These six observations from the 1989-92 period, however, may have salience for the present as well as the short- and medium-term future. They suggest the following:
First, even after the withdrawal of ISAF forces is completed by the end of 2014, American and allied military and economic assistance to the current less-than-popular Karzai government may enable it to remain in power in the major population centers.
Second, the Taliban are not destined to return to power, despite the likelihood that they will continue to receive Pakistani assistance so long as the Kabul government continues to receive significant aid from America and its coalition partners.
Third, opposition to the Karzai government may actually decline after the American and coalition withdrawal. Once they are responsible for their own survival, the effectiveness of Afghan government forces may quickly increase.
Fourth, if American and allied support for it ends, the Kabul government’s strength is highly likely to decline rapidly.
Fifth, under these circumstances, ethnic divisions within the Kabul government leadership are likely to become exacerbated. It is highly likely that the non-Pushtun officer corps would seek to oust the Pushtun president, Hamid Karzai, and his entourage.
Sixth, even if (indeed, especially if) the Taliban manage to seize control of Kabul once again, the most salient division within Afghanistan is once again likely to be Pushtun vs. non-Pushtun.
Well that was pretty dry and scholarly…
And yeah. That’s what it was.
Real events are colorful, painful, full of joy and sadness. They are visceral. Here’s a far better explanation…
When the Soviet Union intervened in Afghanistan in December 1979, it set the stage for a decade-long quagmire, similar to the American War in Vietnam.
By William Stroock
In late 1979, the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan was torn apart by a civil war pitting the weak Communist government of Hafizullah Amin against several moderate and fundamentalist Muslim rebel armies.
The war had been brought about by Amin’s incompetence and corruption, his vicious program of political repression, the massacre of entire village populations, and a ham-handed agrarian “reform” program that disenfranchised tribal leaders.
He followed the very exactly same mistakes as the Americans and the South Vietnamese did back in the 1960's.
Fearing that Amin would be defeated and replaced by a government of Muslim fundamentalists or—even worse—pro-American intellectuals, the Soviet Union launched an invasion on Christmas Eve aimed at removing Amin and replacing him with a more reliable strongman.
To pave the way for the invasion, Soviet advisers with the Afghan Army tricked their clients into incapacitating themselves.
In one case, the Soviets told an Afghan armored unit that new tanks were about to be delivered but that, due to shortages, the gas in the old tanks would have to be siphoned out. The Afghans obligingly siphoned gas out of their tanks, rendering them useless.
In another instance, Soviet advisers told an Afghan unit to turn over all their ammunition for inspection, something that likewise was done without question.
Sneaky. Very sneaky.
A Former Prime Minister Declares Himself President
By the time the first Soviet transport planes landed at Kabul airport carrying elements of the 103rd Guards Airborne Division, the Afghan Army was largely incapable of fighting back.
On December 27, the Soviet 5th Motorized Rifle Division rolled across the borders toward Herat, Shindahd, and Kandahar, while the 108th Motorized Rifle Division drove on Kabul.
The 201st Motorized Rifle Division advanced toward Kunduz.
That same day, Soviet troops captured the Kabul radio station and attacked the presidential palace, killing Amin.
December 27, 2019
By Frud Bezhan
KABUL — Afghanistan’s communist President Hafizullah Amin was lying unconscious in his bed.
A KGB agent who had infiltrated Amin’s staff as a cook had poisoned the president and his ministers during lunch at the Tajbeg presidential palace in Kabul.
It was December 27, 1979.
Two Soviet doctors, unaware of the KGB plot, worked desperately to revive Amin at the palace. His ministers were rushed to a military hospital.
“The doctors put tubes through his nose and mouth to pump his stomach,” Faqir Mohammad Faqir, the interior minister, who had rushed to the palace, tells RFE/RL. “When his stomach was cleaned out, the doctors took him to the bathroom. For 30 minutes they poured cold water over him.”
After four long hours, Amin gradually regained consciousness. Still groggy, he muttered to Faqir, one of his most trusted men, to go to the nearby Defense Ministry building.
A few hours later, the Afghan president was lying in bed in his underpants when scores of KGB special forces stormed the presidential palace, killing Amin and his family members amid fierce clashes. Soviet forces also seized key government buildings and military installations in Kabul in a coordinated attack.
Moscow considered Amin, who had studied in the United States, an unpredictable ally. Some in the Kremlin suspected he had attempted to forge links with Washington. Meanwhile, his penchant for using brutal methods to crush his rivals fueled growing opposition to communist rule in Afghanistan.
Moscow installed Babrak Karmal, a rival communist leader, as president the next day. Thousands of Soviet troops and hundreds of planes and tanks crossed into Afghanistan in the following days.
The invasion was the start of a devastating, decade-long Soviet occupation that would set Afghanistan on a path for decades of conflict.
“The Soviet invasion was the worst day for Afghans,” says the 86-year-old Faqir as he trudges through the empty halls of the Tajbeg Palace, which is now being reconstructed. “It was the darkest day,” he adds. “The most miserable day for Afghans. The misery that started that day continues until today.”
‘So Much Firing’
When Faqir arrived at the Defense Ministry, army chief Yaqub Khan was at a meeting with several Soviet military advisers in his office.
After greeting the guests, Faqir turned to sit down on a couch, when there was a burst of gunfire. He dashed to an adjacent room to take cover.
“After a few moments, Yaqub Khan entered the room and fell on the bed,” Faqir says. “He had been shot twice and seriously wounded.”
Minutes later, Khan died.
Drenched in Khan’s blood, Faqir grabbed his handgun and aimed it at the door.
“There was so much firing that you couldn’t hear anything,” Faqir says, retelling the story as he slowly trudges through the National Museum, which back then housed the Defense Ministry. “The [Soviets] were throwing hand grenades, firing rockets, and using Kalashnikovs.”
‘They Look Like Russians’
Khan’s secretary, Dawlat Waziri, was sitting at his desk at the Defense Ministry building when the shooting erupted.
“I got up, grabbed my Kalashnikov, and I opened the window,” says Waziri, who was then 26 years old. “I saw that there was gunfire coming from down there, so I fired a few rounds.”
Waziri says the attackers were wearing “yellow uniforms and woolen hats.” “I thought to myself, ‘They look like Russians,'” he says.
He then stormed into Khan’s office where, he says, he saw a Soviet translator shoot his boss.
Waziri rushed out the door and into the hallway. He spotted a Soviet soldier and dashed to take cover. “Before I could fire, he fired at me,” he says. “A bullet struck my wrist. I dropped my Kalashnikov. Then another bullet struck me in the stomach and one in my right leg.”
Waziri stumbled into a nearby room. A grenade landed nearby, smashing the door and setting it on fire.
He was cornered.
“I thought for a second, ‘Why did the Russians fire at me?'” Waziri recalls. “Just then, they were about to throw a second grenade. So, I opened the window and jumped out.”
Waziri broke his legs and shattered his hip in the jump from the second floor.
He passed out.
‘Shots Were Fired’
Before the attack, hundreds of Soviet paratroopers — members of the Soviet Army’s Muslim Battalion — and KGB special forces had surrounded the palace, taking cover in the heavy snow.
The KGB forces stormed the palace while the Soviet troops provided a ring of security around the building.
“Our job was to neutralize any reinforcements that came to Amin’s aid,” Vytas Luksys, a former Soviet paratrooper from Lithuania, tells RFE/RL.
“It was dark,” recalls Luksys in the capital, Vilnius. “There wasn’t much time to think about what was happening where. We had to focus on carrying out our orders. We heard that shots were fired, but we couldn’t pay much attention to it.”
The KGB special forces, most of them in sportswear or plainclothes, went floor to floor battling the Presidential Guard and members of Amin’s family.
No reinforcements came to Amin’s help, much to Luksys’s relief. “I don’t know how I would have fared,” he says. “We had very little experience with night-vision devices, guns, and machine guns.”
Within hours, the battle was over. Over 200 Afghans were killed and over 1,000 surrendered. Declassified KGB files said over 100 Soviet personnel were also killed in the fierce clashes.
Amin is believed to have died of gunshot wounds.
All his male relatives at the Tajbeg Palace were either killed in the clashes or executed. His wife, daughter, and grandchildren were sent to prison.
‘It Was Better To Die’
Faqir had been holed up inside one of Khan’s personal rooms for seven hours when he heard a colleague’s voice. “He said, ‘If anyone is in the room he should put down his weapon and come out,'” he says. “He was my friend, so I decided to come out.”
When Faqir came out he was handcuffed by Soviet troops. “That was when I realized that the Soviets had attacked us,” he says. “I shouldn’t have left the room. I didn’t want to surrender. It would have been better to die.”
Soviet forces whisked Faqir away to their military headquarters. He was sentenced to death and transferred to Pul-e Charkhi, the notorious prison outside Kabul where Amin was alleged to have sent thousands to their deaths.
Waziri, meanwhile, woke up in an operating room in the hospital the day after the invasion.
“I was piled up along with the dead bodies,” Waziri says. “When they realized I was still alive, they took me to the operating room in the hospital.” He would be in the hospital for 13 months recovering from his wounds.
Afterward, Waziri served as an officer in the Soviet-backed Afghan army.
Luksys visited the Tajbeg Palace the next morning to find scenes of destruction. “It was a big beautiful palace that had been turned into a mess,” he says. “There were beautiful carpets. Furniture, tables, intricate stucco, very pretty chandeliers.”
“There was blood, but no dead bodies by that time,” Luksys recalls.
After the storming of the palace, Soviet forces wrapped the bodies of Amin and his family members in carpets and buried them in unmarked graves.
Their bodies have never been found.
‘Biggest Betrayal’
The element of surprise was key to the Soviet Union’s lightning seizure of Kabul.
The Soviet decision to topple Amin was a shock, including to the Kabul regime, which had forged close ties with Moscow since communists seized power after a bloody coup in 1978.
“The Soviets committed the biggest betrayal,” Faqir says. “We had a brotherly relationship. We had no idea that the Russians would attack us.”
Faqir was released from prison in 1989 after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, having served 10 years and three months.
Luksys served two years in the Soviet Army before leaving in 1981.
Military Quagmire
The events of December 27, 1979 would have a lasting effect, unleashing a four-decade war that has yet to end.
The Soviet Army soon got bogged down in a costly military quagmire against the mujahedin, the U.S.-backed Islamist rebels.
The Soviet Union pulled its troops out of Afghanistan in 1989 after an estimated 2 million Afghans and at least 15,000 Soviet soldiers had been killed. Millions of other Afghans were displaced, living mainly as refugees in Pakistan and Iran.
The mujahedin toppled the communist regime from power in 1992. But within months, a devastating civil war erupted among the warring mujahedin factions, paving the way for the rise of the Taliban.
By then, the Soviet Union no longer existed.
In a radio address broadcast from the Soviet Union, former prime minister Babrak Karmal, who had been handpicked by Soviet authorities, declared himself president.
Russian map of attack.
The DRA army had an impressive strength on paper, numbering 13 infantry divisions and 22 independent brigades.
There were also 40 separate regiments.
This force was composed of at least 70 percent conscripts, including thousands of men who had been rounded up by government press-gangs and forced to serve in the army.
What few volunteers there were usually became junior and noncommissioned officers. Despite the press gangs and financial incentives to volunteer, DRA army units were badly under strength, sometimes by as much as 40 percent.
The army was decimated by desertions and riddled with mujahideen spies. Supplementing the army was the KHAD, or secret police, numbering 100,000 men.
Hope for Stabilizing the Region Was Failing
Soviet planners had hoped that the invasion and coup would stabilize the situation enough for the DRA army to take control.
In fact, their strong-armed tactics devastated morale in the Afghan Army and led to further desertions and defections.
Even worse, enraged mujahideen took to the field and engaged Soviet forces in open battle outside Kandahar, in Jalalabad, and along the Salang highway.
After the Soviets’ massive firepower overwhelmed them, the mujahideen retreated into the mountains along the Afghan border and switched to guerrilla-style tactics.
The Soviets followed.
The Red Army deliberately waged war on Afghan civilians and drove them over the border into Pakistan. By doing so, they hoped to deny the mujahideen local support and a native population to hide among.
In 1980, the Soviets mounted a large-scale offensive into the Kunar Valley that resulted in the expulsion of nearly all of the valley’s 150,000 residents.
A similar offensive was undertaken to the south in the Sultani Valley. Supporting these Soviet attacks were clearing operations south of Kabul and around Kandahar that destroyed dozens of villages. Similar operations were launched throughout the country in 1981, but with little long-term success.
Guerrilla Attacks and Civilian Casualties
In the face of the Soviet onslaught, mujahideen forces retreated into the mountains or melted into a population made friendly by repeated Soviet and Afghan Army atrocities.
When the mujahideen did come out and fight, they subjected Soviet forces to a constant stream of guerrilla attacks.
DRA troops were no match for the mujahideen. In daring assaults in April and September of 1981, the mujahideen temporarily seized Kandahar from DRA forces and left only after the Soviet Air Force bombed them.
Compounding anti-Soviet sentiment brought about by the Red Army’s complete disregard for Afghan civilian casualties was the brutality of the common Soviet soldiers, who regularly took out their frustration on the Afghan populace.
An Afghan farmer passing through a Soviet roadblock could count upon his valuables being stolen and his wife being raped. Mounted Soviet troops seemed to take great joy in shooting at Afghans along the road. Soviet advisers, officers, and NCOs treated their Afghan proxies with contempt.
The frustration of the Soviet fighting man was easy to understand.
Soviet soldiers were conscripts who often received only three weeks of basic training before being sent to savage Afghanistan.
Once there, a new recruit was bullied by veteran soldiers and brutal NCOs. Soldiers were badly paid, ill fed and clothed, and lived in tents.
Many soldiers found relief from their situation in the form of the opium or locally produced alcohol. Hungry conscripts sometimes traded their weapons to the Afghans for food. Fevers and infections caused by unsanitary camp conditions decimated thousands of Soviet recruits.
Hills Swarming With Mujahideen
Despite the Soviets’ various campaigns of annihilation, the hills outside the major Afghan cities were swarming with mujahideen.
Soviet army units were confined to their bases and traveled only on the main roads.
Traveling at night in anything other than a large convoy was suicidal.
The Soviets, like their American counterparts in Vietnam, were heavily reliant on helicopters for movement through the hostile countryside. Also mirroring the American approach in Southeast Asia, the Soviets used only a bare fraction of their military might, refusing to delegate more men and material than were absolutely necessary.
They even went so far as to call the 40th Army in Afghanistan a “limited contingent of forces.”
By 1981, the mujahideen numbered as many as 150,000 fighters organized into seven main Sunni Islam parties.
Three Islamic fundamentalist organizations had roots reaching back to the 1960s, and a fourth group formed in 1982 to serve as an umbrella organization and raise money for the cause throughout the Islamic world. There were also three “moderate” parties.
These were formed after the 1978 coup, and although not as radical as the other four groups, they were still Muslim organizations. There were also three smaller Shiite groups with ties to Iran.
Excellent Fighters, but Poor Soldiers
The average mujahideen fighter was an illiterate farmer or herder. Although they were excellent fighters, mujahideen tended to be poor soldiers.
They disliked field craft, were reluctant to crawl even when under fire, and were often unwilling to conduct sabotage missions, as these were not seen as glorious and honorable.
They were terrified of Soviet land mines, which often maimed rather than killed—the former being considered a fate worse than death.
Mujahideen saw firearms as a status symbol, and most were excellent shots. They took great pride in their centuries of tribal warfare and raiding, and consequently they believed that they had little to learn from Pakistani and Western advisers about how to fight a modern superpower.
In 1982, the closest thing the mujahideen had to a central command was the Afghan Bureau of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI.
Led by General Mohammed Yousaf, the Afghan Bureau operated numerous training camps in the border area, provided advisers from the Pakistani Army, and funneled supplies to the mujahideen.
These were provided by the American Central Intelligence Agency, which bought weapons from sellers all over the world, including China, Egypt, and, ironically, Israel, which sold equipment it had captured during the various Arab-Israeli wars.
The Afghan Bureau also tried to coordinate mujahideen attacks. This inevitably led to conflicts.
Afghan leaders were interested in disrupting Soviet supply lines and sabotaging infrastructure, while mujahideen commanders wanted to engage Soviet troops in open combat.
Still, some highly valuable and successful attacks were carried out. In one bold raid, mujahideen fighters loyal to Ahmad Shah Massoud fought their way onto Bagram Air Base, attacked Soviet barracks packed with sleeping troops, and hit the airstrip, destroying 23 aircraft.
They then retreated to their bases in the nearby Panjshir Valley.
Ahmad Shah Massoud
In the aftermath of the airport raid, the Soviets launched a massive counteroffensive against the Panjshir Valley designed to destroy mujahideen forces and install permanent DRA army garrisons there.
The Panjshir Valley juts out from the Hindu Kush, pointing like a dagger at Kabul and Bagram Air Base.
The Salang highway, the road over which 90 percent of the Soviets’ supplies were carried, went right past the valley entrance.
Running through the valley is the Panjshir River. The banks were dotted with villages, farms, and vineyards. Dozens of canyons were home to small, isolated villages. At the beginning of the war, some 100,000 people of Tadjik origin resided there.
The valley was also home to the mujahideen’s most feared commander, Ahmad Shah Massoud.
Born in 1953 in Herat, Massoud was part of Afghanistan’s minuscule educated class, having attended the French-run Lycee Istaqlal and the Russian Polytechnique Institute (both located in Kabul) where he studied engineering.
Massoud was an accomplished athlete, voracious reader, and spoke French, Pashto, and Dari.
During his time in Kabul, he became politically active, joining the Jamiat-e Islami party.
When Mohammad Daoud seized power in 1974, Massoud fled to Pakistan, where he underwent military training and studied the art of war, particularly the campaigns of Mao Zedong, Che Guevara, and North Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap.
He returned to Afghanistan in 1978 and began operations in the Panjshir Valley, quickly gaining a cadre of tough, loyal followers who waged a guerrilla war against DRA forces.By 1980, Massoud controlled the entire valley.
The Ambitious “Panjshir V”
Massoud’s rebel army was a pan-Afghan force numbering more than 3,000 Tadjiks, Pashtuns, Turkmen, and Uzbek fighters.
He divided the valley into 25 field commands, each defended by a small unit called a sabbet.
These were supplemented by a number of moutariks, or mobile companies. Each moutarik numbered about 75 men and was subdivided into platoons of three.
Moutarik fighters received extra rations and a welfare benefit for their families back home. Each unit had in its arsenal three machine guns, three RPG-7 grenade launchers, one mortar, and a ZPU-2 antiaircraft gun.
Panjshir V, as the Soviet operation was called, was ambitious.
At the valley entrance, the Soviets deployed the 103rd Guards Airborne Division, the 66th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade, one regiment from the 108th Division, one regiment from 201st Division, the 345th Parachute regiment, and elements of the 866th and 181st Separate Motorized Rifle Regiments.
There were also significant DRA forces, four infantry regiments, and parts of the 37th Commando Brigade.
Under the Soviet plan, heliborne troops from the 103rd Guards Airborne Division would seize villages and hilltops throughout the valley and pin down mujahideen fighters.
At the same time, Soviet/Afghan motorized forces would advance along both banks of the Panjshir River. In this way, the Soviets hoped to bring Massoud’s army to battle and destroy it in detail.
To mislead Massoud as to the actual target, a diversionary attack would be launched against the Ghorband district to the north.
The Panjshir V campaign began on May 15, 1982. The diversionary attack against Ghorband succeeded in fooling Massoud, who sent significant reinforcements to the Ghorband district in Parwan Province.
The next night, several Soviet reconnaissance companies advanced to the valley’s entrance; lead elements of 108th Division advanced a short way into the valley.
On the morning of May 17, the Soviets unleashed a massive aerial and artillery strike up and down the Panjshir Valley.
Then Soviet heliborne troops landed at key high points.
Even though Massoud was surprised by the move, his forces, armed with numerous ZPU-2 antiaircraft guns, managed to shoot down two helicopters and damage several others.
There was also severe fighting for control of the landing zones, but the Soviets had put dozens of gunships in the air, and the mujahideen were outgunned and had to withdraw.
In all, the six Soviet battalions were inserted.
In the meantime, elements of the 108th Division slowly advanced up the valley along a battalion-wide front.
The vanguard encountered a never-ending stream of man-made obstacles and land mines that had to be cleared by engineers and sappers deployed up front.
The mujahideen engaged the lead forces, sparking fierce and lopsided clashes as Soviet firepower and close air support were brought to bear.
There were dozens of small engagements as well, as Soviet forces cleared out the numerous canyons running out from the valley. In contrast to the pounding they were giving Soviet troops, the mujahideen left DRA troops largely alone.
This encouraged defections, so many that the Soviets had to pull several DRA units out of the valley.
In an effort to trap mujahideen forces engaging elements of the 108th Division on the second day of the advance, one Soviet and one Afghan battalion landed at the village of Mata, halfway up the valley.
Mujahideen forces there were quickly overcome, allowing the combined Soviet/DRA force to occupy the heights above the village.
The next day, a similar force landed at Astana, and on the 22nd two Soviet and two Afghan battalions landed at Evim, 60 miles inside the valley at an important crossroad through which the mujahideen received supplies and reinforcements.
The Evim operation was the scene of particularly heavy fighting as Massoud did not want a large enemy force on the ground so far up the valley. After sundown, several moutariksconverged on the landing zone and launched a determined assault on Soviet/DRA forces there.
The assaults were repelled with heavy losses.
Although impressive on paper, the landings did not prevent mujahideen forces from continuing to move at will throughout the valley. They knew the terrain too well and could move at night.
Nor did the heliborne insertions keep the mujahideen from withdrawing before a Soviet advance.
Massoud’s moutarikshad ample warning, as any Soviet attack was preceded by an artillery barrage lasting up to half an hour.
After the barrage, the moutarikswould pull back to a prepared position farther up the valley while a small rear guard sniped at the advancing column. Such tactics resulted in a steady trickle of Soviet casualties and vehicle losses and ensured that the moutarikssurvived to repeat the process.
The battle for Evim marked the end of Panjshir V. On May 25, Soviet forces began a gradual withdrawal to Bagram, completing it three days later.
Control of the valley was handed over to DRA units, but their bases were gradually overrun by the mujahideen. The Soviets returned to the valley in September and, after another impressive show of force, once again left DRA forces in control.
By the end of the year, however, Massoud’s forces regained effective control of the valley. In all, Panjshir V cost the Soviets 2,000 casualties, 17 tanks, and a dozen aircraft. DRA losses totaled 1,200, including numerous defectors. The mujahideen lost 180 fighters.
The civilian toll was much greater.
In 1983, Massoud signed a truce with the Soviets. By agreeing to a cease-fire, Massoud allowed his forces a chance to rest and re-arm. Other mujahideen commanders were furious, since the unilateral truce freed up Soviet forces for operations against them.
The Soviets returned to the Panjshir Valley in 1984. Informers in Kabul tipped the ISI, who informed Massoud and sent emergency supplies to him.
The Soviet offensive began on April 20 with a massive high-altitude bombardment by TU-16 bombers.
This was supported by SU-24 medium bombers that struck individual targets. After the air strikes, which did little more than bounce the rubble and announce the coming attack, the 108th Motor Rifle Division, along with the 8th and 20th Afghan Infantry Divisions, moved into the valley.
They advanced in typical Soviet fashion, with a long artillery barrage preceding every movement.
As the divisions made their way up the valley, airborne battalions landed behind villages and other suspected mujahideen strongpoints. The raids netted few prisoners—Massoud’s fighters simply avoided the valley floor and sniped at the ponderous Soviet column from surrounding hilltops.
Under such conditions, it took the 108th MRD eight days to advance 50 miles to the village of Khenj.
In the second part of the operation, several Soviet airborne battalions helicoptered into the valley’s side canyons in an attempt to cut off the mujahideen line of retreat.
In one instance, a Soviet battalion landed at the village of Dash-i-Ravat, 13 miles beyond the main advance. On a hilltop deep inside mujahideen territory, the battalion was badly exposed. Several moutariks converged on the landing area and inflicted heavy casualties on the isolated paratroopers.
By May 7, the Soviets felt that they had accomplished all of their objectives and gradually began withdrawing, again leaving DRA garrisons at various spots along the valley. These were highly vulnerable, and troops had to be resupplied by air.
In June 1985, Massoud’s forces attacked the DRA base at Peshghor. In a dawn attack, they penetrated the base’s minefield and stormed the defenses under cover of a rocket and mortar barrage. Afghan resistance collapsed. Massoud captured more than 400 prisoners, including five DRA colonels from Kabul.
When Mikhail Gorbachev took power in the Soviet Union in 1986, he announced plans for a phased withdrawal from Afghanistan, which he famously called “a bleeding wound.” Such a withdrawal required the DRA army to take the lead against the mujahideen.
The Ministry of Defense decided to launch an operation aimed at destroying the massive mujahideen facility at Zhawar Kili. Although planned by the Soviets, the assault would be a largely DRA operation, with the 7th, 8th, 14th, and 25th Infantry Divisions, the 38th Commando Brigade, and the Soviet 666th Air Assault Regiment in support. The attack was commanded by Afghan General Mohammed Delavar.
Zhawar was the center of mujahideen activity in Paktika Province; through it flowed 20 percent of the mujahideen supplies.
It was the site of an 11-cave storage facility housing a barracks, hospital, mosque, and electrical power plant. Zhawar fell under the purview of Jalaluddin Haqqani, a mujahideen commander loyal to the fundamentalist Hezb-Islami party.
Haqqani was regarded as a competent and brave leader, a favorite of the ISI and the United States.
As such, he received millions of dollars in military aid, including the much-vaunted Stinger missiles. Haqqani had stationed at Zhawar a permanent regiment of 500 fighters supported by nine ZSU-1 and ZSU-2 antiaircraft guns, a dozen M-12 multiple rocket launchers and two T-55 tanks.
Stationed north and east of Zhawar was a quartet of mujahideen units belonging to other parties. The complex lay south of Khost at the end of a canyon, a few miles from the Pakistani border.
The main route to Zhawar was through the Manay Kandow Pass, whose entrance was dominated by the mountainous Dharwi Ghar.
Atop Dhawri Ghar was a cave protected by a large overhang.
The DRA assault began on April 2. After a massive artillery barrage, a half dozen MI-8 helicopters landed a battalion of the 38th Commando Brigade east of Zhawar, unknowingly inside Pakistan.
The battalion quickly came under heavy attack by the mujahideen, and Delavar decided to insert the rest of the brigade into the fight.
Dozens of helicopters flew over the battlefield and landed Afghan commands on the heights east of Zhawar.
The mujahideen shot down three helicopters and destroyed several more on the ground. Haqqani’s fighters attacked the landing zones, over-running four. He also brought in reinforcements from Pakistan.
The combined force enveloped and pounded the trapped commandos, killing dozens and capturing nearly 600.
In the meantime, Soviet bombers pounded the cave complexes, collapsing the entrances to a pair and trapping more than 150 mujahideen, including Haqqani who, although badly wounded, managed to escape.
For three days DRA forces, the 7th Infantry Division in the west and the 8th Infantry Division in the east, tried and failed to blast their way through the mujahideen positions.
After suffering heavy casualties and exhausting their ammunition, the two divisions pulled back. In their place, the 14th and 25th Infantry Divisions moved up and attacked mujahideen fighters holding Manay Kandow Pass.
This attack, too, went nowhere as mujahideen inside the caves were invulnerable to air and artillery strikes.
After 10 days of fruitless efforts, Delavar called off the attack.
While artillery and aircraft pounded the region, the DRA resupplied and reinforced its exhausted units. Delavar was sacked.
The offensive was restarted on April 17 with a two-pronged assault; the 25th Infantry Division advanced on the east while the 14th Infantry Division moved on the west.
Like its predecessor, the 25th Infantry Division encountered heavy resistance. DRA commanders finally decided to forgo the standard massive artillery preparation in favor of a snap attack that took the mujahideen by surprise and swept them from the mountain. DRA forces pushed out to the east and outflanked the remaining mujahideen facing them. Haqqani was wounded again, and rumors that he had been killed demoralized the mujahideen.
With no one to rally the mujahideen forces, Zhawar fell later that day. DRA troops and Soviet advisers rigged the complex with explosives and destroyed the extensive stores.
That night, the head of the Hezb-Islami party, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, launched a counterattack, but patrols approaching Zhawar found the base abandoned. The battle had cost the mujahideen 100 dead, as well as the vast stores at Zhawar.
The DRA lost 1,500 dead or wounded, 500 prisoners, and 13 aircraft.
The base at Zhawar was back in mujahideen hands 48 hours after the DRA abandoned it.
By the beginning of 1989, the situation in Afghanistan had changed radically. The influx of American-supplied Stinger missiles had given the mujahideen a powerful weapon with which to counter Soviet/Afghan airpower.
In Pakistan, President Zia ul-Haq and the head of the ISI had been killed in a plane crash.
That February, the last Soviet forces withdrew from the country.
The seven mujahideen parties formed an interim government in waiting. The alliance was eager to go on the offensive; its leadership felt that a large show of force would bring about the final collapse of the Communist regime.
Their target was Jalalabad, at the foot of the Hindu Kush. Connecting it to the Khyber Pass to the east and Kabul 33 miles to the west, Highway 1 ran right through the city. A few miles east was the Kunar River; the Samarkel Ridge commanded the highway.
By taking the city, the mujahideen alliance hoped to demoralize the DRA and grab a swath of the country that they would declare “Free Afghanistan.” From there, they planned to go for the jugular and attack Kabul. The operation was carried out with the full approval of the new head of the ISI, General Hamid Gul. The DRA had plenty of time to prepare for the attack.
Stationed in Jalalabad were the 11th Infantry Division and the 1st Border Brigade. The government had filled the ranks with replacements and stockpiled supplies in the city. The DRA units manned a formidable ring of defenses including concrete bunkers, minefields, and barbed wire.
Some 7,000 mujahideen gathered for the assault, with contributions from all seven of the major parties and an eighth group of well-equipped Arab jihadi led by a rich Saudi calling himself Abu Abdullah.
His real name was Osama bin Laden.
Other important contingents were personally led by Massoud and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Like Massoud, Hekmatyar had attended school in Kabul, where he studied engineering.
In the mid-1970s, he founded the Hezb-Islami party, which sought to establish an Islamic caliphate in Afghanistan in the mold of Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, whom he greatly admired. Hekmatyar was virulently anti-Soviet, but also anti-American. Seeking to consolidate power, he had also waged war on other mujahideen parties. He was a bitter rival of Massoud.
The campaign began in early March 1989 with a mujahideen assault on Samarkel Ridge. Supported by a massive rocket and mortar barrage, the mujahideen took the ridge after three days of fighting.
The mujahideen then fought their way into the village of Samarkel on the ridge’s western slope. The next target was Jalalabad airfield, which they attacked on March 8.
There, the mujahideen went up against a battalion of crack DRA troops who held their ground in the face of several determined assaults. Advancing behind a line of T-55 tanks captured at Samarkel, the mujahideen finally managed to take the airport, but the DRA counterattacked later that day and retook it.
Four days into the battle for the airport, a battalion of DRA Special Guards was flown in from Kabul. The frontal assaults continued until late March, with the mujahideen suffering more than 1,400 casualties. DRA forces lost 1,000.
Tired of seeing their fighters impaled on the defenses of Jalalabad, mujahideen commanders decided to starve the city into submission. Unfortunately for them, the siege was not airtight.
Some commanders along the highway allowed convoys to slip through in exchange for a portion of the supplies. And since the DRA still held the airport, the Soviets were able to resupply government forces from the air.
Mujahideen commanders also had difficulty coordinating attacks, with many unwilling to make the first move for fear their men would bear the brunt of the fighting. What attacks were carried out were badly exposed to Soviet high-level bombing and Scud missile attacks.
By July, the mujahideen siege had collapsed. On July 6, the DRA launched a counterattack aimed of Samarkel Ridge, which they took two days later. In defeat, the rivalry between Massoud and Hekmatyar slipped into outright war, with the two parties fighting each other throughout the rest of the year.
The Communist regime in Kabul managed to stay in power until 1992, falling only after the Soviet Union itself broke up.
A fractious mujahideen coalition led by the Jamaat-i-Islami failed to bring peace and was ousted by the Taliban in 1996. For the next five years, the Afghan resistance called the Northern Alliance was led by Massoud.
He was assassinated on September 9, 2001—two days before the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City. Haqqani became a minister in the Taliban government and, on September 29 he was appointed commander of Taliban forces.
He fights on today out of Waziristan, having survived several American attempts to kill him. Hekmatyar still leads the Hezb-Islami party, which is closely allied with the exiled Taliban. He too has survived numerous assassination attempts.
Despite losing nearly 15,000 troops in a decade-long incursion, Soviet commanders never grasped the concept that, in order to defeat an insurgency, they first must win the loyalty of the civilian population. Their oafish tactics had the opposite effect.
By forcing millions into refugee camps in Pakistan, they created a limitless pool of angry youth from which the mujahideen could recruit more troops. The war could never have been won so long as Pakistan remained a mujahideen safe haven. American and NATO forces in Afghanistan today confront exactly the same problem, and like their Soviet predecessors two decades ago, they have to date devised no workable solutions.
The ravaged nation remains a bleeding wound in the seemingly endless war on terror.
Lessons for Leaders: What Afghanistan Taught Russian and Soviet Strategists
Thirty years ago this month, Gen. Boris Gromov became the last serviceman of the Soviet 40th Army to cross the Friendship bridge from Afghanistan into Uzbekistan, heralding the end of a Soviet military intervention that had lasted nearly a decade.
That intervention, which began in December 1979 (with 30 military advisors and some guards remaining beyond February 1989), did not only fail to firmly anchor Afghanistan to the so-called socialist camp, as the Soviet Politburo had hoped, but contributed to the demise of the USSR by imposing formidable human, financial, economic, political and reputational costs on the already declining empire; needless to say, it caused numerous casualties and widespread grievances among Afghans as well.
Debates continue to this day about the full array of national-level, organizational-level and personal-level factors that led the Communist Party leadership—including General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev and a handful of other Politburo members—to adopt a resolution on Dec. 12, 1979, authorizing the deployment of a “limited contingent of Soviet troops” to Afghanistan.
However, even with that debate unfinished, the Soviet experience in Afghanistan offers plenty of lessons to explore—some of which can, perhaps, be applied by the U.S. and its allies as Washington leans toward ending its own military campaign in this war-plagued Central Asian country.
The following is a selection of military-political lessons gleaned mostly from the recollections of Soviet strategists who were involved in making and executing the fateful decision to send troops to Afghanistan, as well as from writings by some of post-Soviet Russia’s prominent military analysts.
Where possible, the author made an effort to relay these strategists’ analysis of the failures and successes of the intervention because he felt that such assessments, based on first-hand experience, are not always given their due in English-language literature on the subject.
The lessons listed below, which are discussed in greater detail in subsequent sections of this research paper, are lined up in the order in which they would have come up—starting with the Soviet leadership’s decision to consider sending a large contingent of troops into Afghanistan, moving onto its management of the actual intervention and, finally, onto its decision to withdraw the troops and beyond. All of these lessons are meant for consideration by nations’ military-political leadership.
Lesson 1:
Before making final decisions on issues of fundamental importance, such as military intervention, determine what national interests are at stake, what options exist for advancing or defending those interests and what costs and benefits each of these options would generate, both direct and indirect; and do not let leaders’ personal ambitions impact the ultimate decision.
Lesson 2:
Ensure a sufficiently broad and comprehensive inter-agency process of reviewing potential decisions to use force, factoring in the views of all key stakeholders in general and those to be tasked with implementing the decisions in particular.
Lesson 3:
Examine aspects of a country’s history relevant to your planned undertaking.
Lesson 4:
Once the decision to send troops has been made, formulate the goals of the intervention and communicate them clearly to the agencies involved in implementation; also, shape your messaging to other key stakeholders likely to influence the outcome of the intervention.
Lesson 5:
If you do decide to go in, develop an exit plan in advance.
Lesson 6:
Once in, ensure effective inter-agency coordination and cooperation.
Lesson 7:
Rather than try to mold your local allies in your own image, empower them, encouraging self-reliance, and pay attention to indigenous traditions.
Lesson 8:
You cannot succeed in a military intervention unless the side on whose behalf you intervene is willing to fight for your joint cause.
Lesson 9:
Talk to moderates on the opposite side.
Lesson 10:
When leaving, leave…
Lesson 11:
…but before you leave, secure enforceable guarantees that POWs and MIAs are found and brought home, and give the returning soldiers proper welcome and care.
Lesson 12:
…also before you leave, secure firm and enforceable agreements that would not only meet your own minimum requirements for a negotiated settlement, but also those of your local allies, because the end of an intervention by itself cannot end hostilities.
Lesson 13:
Even after you leave, prevent mission creep.
Lesson 14:
Last but not least: Be willing to learn the lessons.
Only some of these lessons were inferred as the intervention unfolded, while most were drawn years after the withdrawal of the Soviet 40th Army—which made up the bulk of the so-called limited contingent of Soviet troops in Afghanistan, or OKSVA—on Feb. 15, 1989.
Of course, such hindsight could not have changed anything in the intervention.
We should also bear in mind that “where you stand depends on where you sit”: As some of the passages below demonstrate, some of the “lesson learners” tend to cast their own and their comrades-in-arms’ actions in a favorable light while criticizing the conduct of their peers from other agencies.
Despite the occasional bias, these lessons could still prove useful to policymakers faced with the stark dilemmas of a possible military intervention.
In particular, some of the entries at the end of the list could, perhaps, prove instructive for the U.S. leadership as it contemplates whether or how to end its own intervention in Afghanistan.
Finally, those in charge of applying these lessons should keep in mind historian Ernest May’s procedure for ensuring against amateurism in drawing historical analogies, as described by Graham Allison and Niall Ferguson in their Applied History Manifesto: “Put the analogy as the headline on a sheet of paper; draw a straight line down the middle of the page; write ‘similar’ at the top of one column and ‘different’ at the top of the other; and then set to work.
If you are unable to list at least three points of similarity and three of difference, then you should consult a historian.”
And here is yet another group of lessons...
The Lessons (in far greater detail…)
Lesson 1:
Before making final decisions on issues of fundamental importance, such as military intervention, determine what national interests are at stake, what options exist for advancing or defending those interests and what costs and benefits each of these options would generate, both direct and indirect; and do not let leaders’ personal ambitions impact the ultimate decision.
Winston Churchill once famously observed that the key to Soviet decision-making is “national interest.”
If Churchill was right, then anyone with access to transcripts of Politburo meetings from 1979 should expect to find some kind of discussion on the Soviet national interests at stake in Afghanistan, as well as opportunities for advancing these interests with an intervention.
In reality, the author’s review of transcripts of the Soviet leadership’s deliberations on Afghanistan revealed that while Politburo members did discuss some of the Soviet national interests that were at stake, they failed to take stock of potential, direct and indirect, costs and benefits that their country would encounter if they decided to advance those interests by means of a full-fledged military intervention in Afghanistan.
A failure to grasp that the costs of such an intervention would significantly outweigh the benefits led the Soviet leadership to make an erroneous decision on Dec. 12, 1979, in favor of sending troops en masse into Afghanistan. In addition to horrendous human costs on all sides of the conflict, that decision cost the Soviet Union’s stagnating economy dearly through a combination of such factors as Western sanctions and expenditures needed to sustain the intervention. Moreover, in the decade after the withdrawal of Soviet troops, Afghanistan turned into a hotbed of instability.
This did not only spill over to affect post-Soviet Russia’s Central Asian allies, but also gave a home base to al-Qaeda, which in turn supported the insurgency in Russia’s own North Caucasus. In the end, therefore, the intervention undermined rather than advanced such Soviet interests as having neutral or friendly neighbors and sustainable development of the Soviet economy.
The author’s review of Soviet deliberations on Afghanistan prior to Dec. 12, 1979, reveals a variety of justifications for intervention put forward by different members of the country’s leadership—including ones that concern Soviet national interests such as ensuring the survival of Moscow’s allies and having friendly neighbors. Soviet Defense Minister Dmitry Ustinov and some other Politburo members, for instance, pointed out the need to bolster the rule of the pro-Moscow People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA)—which had come to power in an April 1978 coup—and save it from being overthrown by opposition forces.
The coup, which the Soviets preferred to call the “April Revolution,” had resulted in the ouster of Afghan President Mohammed Daoud Khan and his eventual succession by PDPA General Secretary Nur Muhammad Taraki; by the fall of 1979, however, Taraki had been assassinated at the behest of his rival and party colleague Hafizullah Amin, who took over as PDPA leader and president of what became the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA).
This power grab gave Politburo members new cause for concern: One of the arguments they considered in favor of intervention was the perceived need to prevent Amin from initiating a rapprochement with the West, which they saw as a possibility, according to a secret Central Committee memo signed by several Politburo members—including Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, KGB chairman Yuri Andropov and Ustinov, the defense minister—as well as Boris Ponomaryov, chief of the Central Committee’s International Department.
In his 1995 book about the intervention, “The Tragedy and Valor of Afghanistan,” Gen. Alexander Lyakhovsky wrote that Andropov and Ustinov told a meeting of select Politburo members in Brezhnev’s study on Dec. 8, 1979, that they feared Amin’s interest in mending fences with Washington could eventually allow the U.S. to deploy medium-range nuclear-armed missiles in Afghanistan to target the Soviets’ Baikonur cosmodrome, among other facilities. (More generally, Lyakhovsky, who served in Afghanistan in 1987-1989, blamed the decision to intervene on what he saw as a strategic disinformation campaign pursued by the U.S. and its allies, among other things.)
The Soviet leadership also feared that, if allowed to establish a presence in Afghanistan, the U.S. would be able to collect telemetry during launches of newly designed Russian missiles, since most of the main testing ranges were located in southern parts of the Soviet Union, according to a 1999 article by Gen. Valentin Varennikov, who was not a Politburo member but was intimately involved in planning and carrying out the intervention as deputy chief of the Soviet General Staff.
Some of the post-factum analysis of the intervention also made references to the Soviet Union’s geopolitical interest in keeping Afghanistan anchored to the Cold War-era “socialist camp” of countries. For instance, Gen. Ivan Pavlovsky, who had commanded Soviet ground troops as deputy defense minister in 1967-1980, believed that several key factors played a role in the decision to send in troops, including the possible strengthening of American positions on the Eurasian continent, the deterioration of Soviet relations with China, China’s rapprochement with the U.S. and a dramatic increase in the influence of Islamic fundamentalism within Afghanistan. Varennikov wrote in his memoirs, entitled “The Unrepeatable,” that the Soviet leadership’s decision hinged on “the calculation that the presence of our troops in Afghanistan would cool the hot heads of Amin’s supporters, and even those of the opposition forces, and … would prevent possible encroachments by the Americans and stabilize the situation.”
General of the Army1 Makhmut Gareyev, the chief Soviet military advisor to the Afghan army after the withdrawal, wrote in a 1994 article called “Why and How We Went Into Afghanistan” that he saw the USSR’s “geopolitical interests” in general as the main driver of the decision to intervene. Among those interests he singled out the Soviet Union’s need to have loyal or at least neutral neighbors to ensure the security of the country’s frontier regions, particularly in the south.
It should be noted that in addition to the need to defend the aforementioned interests, various other justifications for the intervention were offered in the course of discussions by the Politburo.
Not all of them look plausible. For instance, one rationale cited during the Dec. 8 meeting of five Politburo members in Brezhnev’s study was the need to prevent Iraq from getting access to Afghanistan’s uranium deposits, which Baghdad could have then used to build nuclear weapons.
That concern was raised by Ustinov and Andropov, according to Lyakhovsky’s aforementioned book.
Another justification cited by the duo was the need to disrupt what they saw as U.S.-supported efforts by Turkey to build a new Ottoman empire that would incorporate the Soviet Union’s Central Asian republics, according to the book.
The top Soviet decision makers in the Central Committee’s Politburo did see some downsides to an intervention too, including the reversal of Soviet-U.S. détente and the inevitable damage to the USSR’s reputation in the world as a whole. Less than nine months before the intervention, when the Afghan government had asked Moscow for help against an uprising in Herat, Gromyko, the foreign minister, allegedly told fellow Politburo members that the Soviet army would be branded “an aggressor” if it were sent into Afghanistan and that it would have to “first and foremost fight the Afghan people,” according to a transcript of the March 18, 1979, deliberations by Politburo members cited in Lyakhovsky’s book. Gromyko warned that Brezhnev’s summits with American and French leaders would have to be cancelled.
According to the same source, Andropov agreed it would be wrong to send troops. “We can only prop up the [April 27, 1978] revolution in Afghanistan with our bayonets, but this is completely unacceptable for us” and “we cannot run such a risk,” Andropov said as almost 9,000 DRA soldiers mutinied against Taraki’s regime.
The Politburo meeting concluded with the consensus that troops should not be sent, but that the Soviet Union will expand military aid to Taraki’s regime.
However, the issues raised at this and other Politburo meetings represented just a fraction of the costs that the Soviet Union could incur. In the end, in its decision-making process, the Politburo neither took full stock of the exact interests at stake nor produced a comprehensive review of all the potential, direct and indirect, costs and benefits of sending troops into Afghanistan.
This flew in the face of warnings from some of the Soviet Union’s top military strategists—warnings that the Politburo ultimately ignored. One senior Soviet military officer said to have comprehensively assessed the costs of a campaign before it began was the commander of Soviet Ground Forces, Ivan Pavlovsky. Pavlovsky inspected the state of affairs in Afghanistan in August-November 1979 and concluded that Soviet troops should not be sent there.
In a 1999 article for the aforementioned Rodina journal Pavlovsky recalled citing seven reasons not to intervene militarily in a report he sent to Ustinov upon his return from the 1979 trip to Afghanistan.
These included: his perception that the April 27, 1978, socialist “revolution” did not enjoy significant popular support; the lack of a working class and mass belief in Islam; widespread possession of arms; porous, ill-guarded borders that would allow the U.S. and its allies to ship in arms; an inevitable popular backlash against such an intervention; and the resulting deterioration in relations with the U.S. and NATO.
Anatoly Chernyaev, who was a senior international affairs analyst at the Central Committee when the decision to intervene was made, was quick to point out that it could not have possibly generated a net benefit for the Soviet Union. “Have we really acted only for the sake of revolutionary philanthropy? The argument that we had to do so to secure the border is ridiculous,” he wrote on Dec. 30, 1979, three days after Soviet commandos stormed Amin’s residence outside Kabul in an operation code-named Storm-333 to kill him and bring Babrak Karmal to power, as Moscow’s troops poured across the Soviet-Afghan border. In Chernyaev’s view, the Soviet Union could have reaped “political and prestige dividends” if only it had chosen to prop up socialist factions in Afghanistan without a large-scale military intervention. Beyond seeing no benefits from the intervention, Chernyaev—who went on to become assistant for international affairs to Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet general secretary who ended the intervention—saw serious costs too.
In a diary entry dated Nov. 1, 1980, he lamented that the intervention cost “several million [in cash] every day, and … the blood of our soldiers also every day.” The head of the Moscow-based Institute of the Economy of the Global Socialist System, Oleg Bogomolov, made similar points in a memo sent to the Central Committee at about the same time as Chernyaev recorded his thoughts.
“With the sending of troops to Afghanistan our policy … has crossed the permissible boundaries of confrontation in the third world,” Bogomolov wrote in the 1980 memo. “The benefits of this action turned out to be insignificant in comparison with the damage that was inflicted on our interests.” The costs, as seen by the authors, included: the emergence of a hotbed of instability on the “southern flank of the USSR”; generating dissent among the Soviet Union’s allies regarding the intervention; burying any prospects for normalizing Soviet-Chinese relations; facilitating consolidation within the anti-Soviet coalition of states that “girded the USSR from West to East”; stalling Soviet-U.S. detente; and strengthening the West’s technological and economic sanctions against Moscow (something Russian President Vladimir Putin may find all too familiar in the wake of his intervention in Ukraine).
The author of the 1980 memo and other informed sources have also pointed out the “economic burden” the invasion placed on the Soviet economy—and it was no small burden, indeed. As of the late 1970s, Soviet aid accounted for half of all foreign aid to the DRA, according to Vladimir Toporkov, a KGB officer who advised Afghanistan’s security establishment in the 1980s and went on to become a general in post-Soviet Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB).
By his calculations, the overall costs, including both aid and funding for Soviet military operations in Afghanistan, totaled the equivalent of $50 billion in 1979-1989.
That sum by itself was “neither catastrophic nor painful” for the Soviet economy, according to Toporkov.2 However, if one were to count not only direct but also indirect costs, such as Western sanctions imposed on the USSR over its Afghanistan campaign, these were a significant destabilizing factor, for the Soviet Union, according to Toporkov’s study, “The Influence of the Afghan Factor on Economic Processes in the Soviet Union in 1989-1992,” published by the Russian Defense Ministry’s Military-Historical Journal in 2004.
Like Toporkov, generals Gareyev and Lyakhovsky also waited for the Soviet campaign in Afghanistan to end before publicly weighing its pros and cons, with both of them concluding that its costs had outweighed the benefits.
Gareyev, who retired shortly after his time as chief Soviet military advisor to the DRA army, wrote in his 1994 article that the primary cost of the campaign was that “the Soviet Union found itself in international isolation,” its relations with the U.S., NATO and China deteriorating.
He also wrote in a 1996 book called “My Last War” that “the protracted war in Afghanistan and the need for continued support of the regime in Kabul generated huge financial and material costs, undermining the already limping economy” of the USSR and sapping its military strength. “The decision of the Soviet leadership to stage an armed intervention into Afghan affairs ended up generating more minuses than pluses,” he wrote in the 1994 article, published in the Russian Defense Ministry’s Oriyentir journal.
Lyakhovsky, for his part, believed that one of the costs vastly underestimated by the Soviet leadership was how strong local resistance to the intervention would be: “Scant regard toward the Afghans played an important role too. Ustinov, for example, thought that some of the rebels would instantly lay down arms, while the rest would flee as soon as the Soviet troops appeared in Afghanistan,” he wrote in a 1999 Rodina article called “How the Decision to Send Troops to Afghanistan Was Made.”
“In practice, however, underestimating the adversary cost the USSR dearly. The same thing happened in Chechnya in 1994,” Lyakhovsky wrote, referring to Russia’s first war with separatist Chechnya.
In addition to failing to fully anticipate the costs and benefits that the Soviet Union would encounter if it were to try advancing its interests in Afghanistan by means of military intervention, some Soviet leaders let their personal ambitions influence the fateful decisions they made on their country’s behalf. For instance, Varennikov wrote of “our leaders’ ambitions” in his 1999 article, headlined “Those on Top Wanted Glory, the Military Opposed the War.”
When listing reasons for the intervention, he referred specifically to Ustinov’s personal ambitions: “It was difficult to call Dmitry Fyodorovich an outstanding political leader. However, at one point I sensed how he began to want to try on the laurels of a strategist and a victor.” While Ustinov’s personal feelings may indeed have been a contributing factor, they were not as decisive as Brezhnev’s. In his diary Chernyaev bluntly blamed the intervention on Brezhnev’s desire to take revenge on Amin. Chernyaev wrote in his dairy on Feb. 5, 1980, that some of Brezhnev’s confidants must have managed to “play on” the Soviet leader’s “demential indignation” over Amin’s decision to have Taraki ousted and then killed. That Brezhnev was agitated by Taraki’s murder is also confirmed by his personal physician, Yevgeny Chazov. “In spite of the decline of his ability for critical perception, he took that event much to heart,” Chazov recalled in his book, “Health and Power: Memoirs of a Kremlin Doctor.” According to him, Brezhnev was most infuriated with the way Amin undermined the Soviet leader’s personal credibility by killing Taraki whom Brezhnev had hosted and publicly promised support to a month earlier. “What will they say in other countries? How can one trust Brezhnev’s word if his assurances of support and protection remain just words,” Chazov quoted Brezhnev as saying. Gareyev, in his post-factum analysis, also wrote that Taraki’s murder on Oct. 9, 1979, had “pushed Brezhnev toward that step” of sending in troops.
After the killing “there was no longer any carefully considered analysis of the situation” by Soviet decision makers and “much was being done in haste,” according to Gareyev’s 1994 article. Lyakhovsky, in his 1999 article in the Russian government’s Rodina journal, also said that Brezhnev’s view on military intervention in Afghanistan changed after Taraki’s murder.
Lesson 2:
Ensure a sufficiently broad and comprehensive inter-agency process of reviewing potential decisions to use force, factoring in the views of all key stakeholders in general and those to be tasked with implementing the decisions in particular.
One reason the Soviet leadership erred in its decision to send a military contingent to Afghanistan was that the decision-making circle was very narrow. Had the political leaders included the country’s top military strategists, the decision could have been the opposite. According to one authoritative account by then First Deputy Foreign Minister Georgy Kornienko, “a narrow group” that consisted of only five of more than a dozen Politburo members at the time “made the final political decision” to send troops. Those were Brezhnev, Andropov, Ustinov, Gromyko and Mikhail Suslov. Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin, also a Politburo member, was absent from the meeting, according to Kornienko’s recollection of the events, which he published as part of his memoirs, “Cold War: Testimony of a Participant.”3
According to Kornienko’s account, the hand-written, two-paragraph resolution passed by this small group on Dec. 12, 1979, was “formalized retroactively” with signatures from the remaining Politburo members. “Thus, not even all the members of the Politburo made the fateful decision,” according to Kornienko, whose recollection is corroborated in Lyakhovsky’s book.
Notably, even though the decision was adopted only by a handful of Politburo members, its signatories framed it as a resolution of the entire Central Committee, even though most of its members had not been consulted before it was made; other high-level officials were likewise kept out of the loop.
Chernyaev was equally dismayed by the narrowness of the decision-making: “I think that in the history of Russia, even under Stalin, there has not yet been such a period when such important actions were undertaken without a hint of the slightest coordination with anyone, [without any] advice, discussion, careful consideration, even if only in a very narrow circle,” he wrote in his diary in December 1979. It is notable that despite their key positions, both Chernyaev and other senior officials in the Central Committee staff were kept in the dark not only about the exact reasons for the decision to send in troops but also about who actually initiated that decision. It was only in 1985 that one of Chernyaev’s colleagues told him Kornienko had claimed in a casual chat that it was, in Kornienko’s view, his boss, Foreign Minister Gromyko, who had convinced Brezhnev to send in troops.
In addition to being too narrow, the circle of decision makers also suffered from a lack of reliable information.
The fact “that the information was distorted did not allow the country’s top leadership to understand the processes taking place in Afghanistan and prevent fatal mistakes,” Gareyev wrote in his book.
As Col. Nikolai Vasilyev, a military historian, explained in his own 2014 article on the lessons of the Soviet military intervention: “Many leaders, including members of the Politburo, adapted themselves to the opinion of L. I. Brezhnev. The intelligence and other agencies were required to confirm the ‘sagacity of the leader,’ and the information and recommendations of analysts and experts that did not fit into the pre-planned framework were thrown away.” The quality of information fed to the Politburo’s top brass did not improve even after Soviet troops were deployed and learning about the situation in Afghanistan first-hand. “Most likely, the General [Secretary] doesn’t even know what is happening around us.
Briefings from Afghanistan are prepped for him so that they’re full of ‘complete normalization.’ As for information from the West, it’s probably ‘at the level of Pravda’ [the Central Committee newspaper], since he’s long been kept in ‘spare-him mode.’ So he’s not even aware of what he’s done,” Chernyaev wrote in his dairy on Feb. 9, 1980. As important, Chernyaev believes the ageing Brezhnev could not have drawn sound conclusions from the information even if it had not been distorted to please him because of the extent to which his mental capabilities had deteriorated. In a Sept. 29, 1982, diary entry Chernyaev describes how Brezhnev, in Baku to laud the performance of Soviet Azerbaijan, had become so senile by the third year of the Soviet campaign that, 10 minutes into a televised speech, he did not realize he was reading the wrong text even after it explicitly referred to “Afghanistan” instead of “Azerbaijan.”
Even when accurate information on Afghanistan did make it to the top decision makers, they often rejected it as they suffered from cognitive bias, dismissing dissenting views even when they were presented by key stakeholders who would be tasked with executing the decisions.
Top Soviet military commanders felt particularly slighted by their exclusion from the decision-making process. As Vasilyev, the military historian, lamented in his article, published by the Defense Ministry’s Military-Historical Journal, “The Special Commission of the Politburo for Afghanistan, headed by Foreign Minister A. A. Gromyko, in effect replaced the Council of Defense of the USSR and, in part, its working body, the General Staff.
… Among them [the commission members] there were no professionals of military strategy.” Chief of the Soviet General Staff Nikolai Ogarkov, his first deputy Sergei Akhromeyev and Varennikov, a deputy of Ogarkov’s, had been asked to present their thoughts about sending troops sometime before the pared-down Politburo meeting Dec. 12. The trio argued that a Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan would be “impossible and inconceivable, first and foremost from the political standpoint,” according to Chernyaev’s diary. Rather than heed their advice, Ustinov, the Soviet defense minister and a Politburo member, dismissed their arguments, telling them “not to discuss [orders]” and to present a detailed plan of the operation.
Ogarkov, it should be noted, objected to the intervention on more than one occasion. When summoned to the Politburo on Dec. 8, 1979, Ogarkov called on its members to reject Gromyko and Andropov’s arguments in favor of reversing the Soviet leadership’s previous position, which had been to refrain from sending troops. He repeated his calls again the following day in Brezhnev’s presence, warning that “we will turn all of eastern Islamism against ourselves and lose politically across the world,” only to be shut down by Andropov: “You were invited not to have your opinion heard, but to write down the Politburo’s directives and organize their implementation.”
That conflict, according to Varennikov, led to a dramatic deterioration in Ogarkov’s relations with Andropov; Ogarkov lost his post after Andropov succeeded Brezhnev as general secretary. One senior Soviet commander who lost his post even before the campaign had begun, possibly over his opposition to the intervention, was the aforementioned commander of Soviet Ground Forces, Pavlovsky. As described above, after his travels in Afghanistan in summer-fall of 1979, Pavlovsky claims he pleaded with the Soviet military-political leadership not to send a contingent, but his advice was not heeded; shortly afterwards he was relieved from his post.
In his 1994 article Gareyev criticized the Soviet political leadership for ignoring Ogarkov’s views and telling him to stick to military planning. “As life has repeatedly proved, political decisions prove viable and grounded only when they take into account all aspects, including foreign policy, economic, ideological and military-strategic considerations,” he wrote, adding: “The General Staff cannot determine policies, but they must actively participate in crafting military aspects of this policy and ignoring these aspects can lead to major political failures.”
Interestingly, while telling the General Staff to stick to military planning, the Politburo would not even heed the staff’s advice on such a key element of that planning as the personnel strength of the intervening force. Ogarkov had responded to the political leadership’s order to develop an intervention plan with a proposal for deploying 30-35 divisions, but his request was shot down, according to Gareyev’s recollections of the events, which he shared with University of Kansas history professor Jacob Kipp in 1996 and also put on paper for his other book on the subject, entitled “Afghan Suffering.”4 However, the Politburo authorized only 75,000-80,000 servicemen, according to Lyakhovsky’s book (at the time, a typical Soviet infantry division had 13,000 servicemen).5
Lesson 3:
Examine aspects of a country’s history relevant to your planned undertaking.
There’s a joke that says Americans learn about the history of other countries by invading them. The Soviets, you could say, merely recalled what they had already learned about Afghanistan’s history by invading it. Had the Soviet leadership factored in the way that Afghan tribes’ intense and enduring dislike for outside powers and their local clients had foiled previous empires’ attempts to anchor the country, that may have influenced Moscow’s final analysis about sending in troops and helped to save them from a costly mistake.
None of the transcripts of Politburo discussions about intervening in Afghanistan contains any significant discussion of Afghan history. Analyzing how Afghans had fought off various past encroachments, by the British Empire among others, would have perhaps made Soviet leaders more averse to using force to accomplish anything there. The absence of such discussions is especially ironic given that one of Soviet ideology’s most revered figures warned how “unruly” Afghans could be: None other than Friedrich Engels observed between the first and second of the three Anglo-Afghan wars that Afghans’ “indomitable hatred of rule, and their love of individual independence, … prevents their becoming a powerful nation; but this very irregularity and uncertainty of action makes them dangerous neighbors … [for whom] war is an excitement.” The Politburo members could have also examined how Joseph Stalin staged an abortive military intervention in Afghanistan in an effort to prop up Amanulla Khan, the sovereign from 1919 to 1929 who signed the 1921 Soviet-Afghan Friendship Treaty, but then had to abdicate his throne in a revolt. In 1929 Stalin sent 1,000 Red Army soldiers into Afghanistan disguised as Afghan soldiers to operate jointly with some of Khan’s loyalists, according to Lyakhovsky’s book and a 1999 article in Rodina by Pavel Aptekar. The joint Soviet-Afghan unit took Mazar-i-Sharif in April 1929, but Stalin then had to recall his troops after learning that Khan had fled to India.
Some Soviet officers came to the same conclusions as Engels, but only after being sent to Afghanistan to take part in the 1979-1989 intervention. “It was impossible to defeat those Afghan bearded men and their sons, with whom we then had to fight. They were ready to fight their whole lives, and they had nothing to lose from it because they had nothing to their name, just like now. This is a proud, freedom-loving people. They have nothing but their faith and the desire to live the way they want and consider to be right,” KGB officer Vladimir Garkavy, who completed multiple tours of duty in Afghanistan in 1979-1984, wrote in his book. Gromov also cited history in his 1999 Rodina article on Afghanistan. “Any interference from the outside is deemed to fail in a country where tribes have struggled against each other for centuries and where nationalism is extremely developed,” he wrote in his book, which contains more useful insights on the intervention than a New York Times op-ed he co-wrote with Dmitry Rogozin; entitled “Russian Advice on Afghanistan,” that January 2010 piece is essentially a wish list Moscow had at the time for U.S. conduct in Afghanistan.
Lesson 4:
Once the decision to send troops has been made, formulate the goals of the intervention and communicate them clearly to the agencies involved in implementation; also, shape your messaging to other key stakeholders likely to influence the outcome of the intervention.
The Soviet leadership’s marching orders for its military contingent, OKSVA, were anything but clear—with the exception of the secret order to immediately replace Amin with Karmal. The fact that the Soviet leadership failed to define what would constitute the ultimate long-term success once the initial goal of regime change had been achieved made it difficult for both that leadership and commanders on the ground to understand, once Amin was removed, whether the Soviet intervention was succeeding, failing or stagnating, other than by measuring how much territory the DRA regime controlled at any time. In the absence of a well-defined mission, Soviet commanders oscillated between merely providing support to DRA forces and actually leading combat engagements, while some of the military advisors pressed for a troop surge that could expand the mission to sealing Afghanistan’s borders. In addition to failing to clearly communicate their goals to their own troops, Soviet leaders also failed to communicate their goals in Afghanistan to the international community as a whole, making it easier for the U.S. to win support in its efforts to isolate and punish the USSR over the intervention.
The lack of a clear long-term mission was evident in the key documents kicking off the Soviet intervention, both on the political and the military side. The two-paragraph Politburo resolution initiating the troop deployment, entitled “Concerning the Situation in ‘A,’” stated neither the reasons for the campaign nor its goals. The military directive to execute the Politburo’s decision, issued jointly by the Defense Ministry and the General Staff of the Soviet Armed Force on Dec. 24, 1979, gave only a vague idea of why troops were being sent into Afghanistan, proclaiming it was to “give international aid to the friendly Afghan people and also to create favorable conditions to interdict possible anti-Afghan actions from neighboring countries.” (Defense Ministry newspapers such as Red Star didn’t provide “any sensible explanation” either, according to Gareyev’s 1994 article.) In his book, Gareyev recalled that Directive 312/12/001, signed by Ustinov and Ogarkov, stated that Soviet troops were being sent into Afghanistan for “fulfillment of international duty.” “What that duty constituted was to be decided by each commander and soldier themselves,” Gareyev wrote. According to one website maintained by Soviet veterans of the Afghan war, the directive did not provide for Soviet troops’ participation in combat. That created ambiguity in its interpretation, even though the 40th Army did get involved in fighting almost immediately. For instance, Marshal Sergei Sokolov, the deputy defense minister in charge of the ministry’s Operational Group in Afghanistan in 1980, told Soviet military advisors there in January of that year that “special attention should be paid to the inadmissibility of Soviet troops’ involvement in the armed struggle against the rebels; their [the troops’] functions are completely different.” Several days later, however, the same commander, under pressure from Afghan allies, sanctioned the use of “one or two units of Soviet troops” to oust the mujahedeen from an artillery depot, according to Gareyev’s 1994 article. In addition, while Sokolov’s boss, Ustinov, also under pressure from the Afghan leadership, “demanded that Soviet troops engage in active combat operations,” General Staff chief Ogarkov, opposed to the intervention from the outset, tried to restrain the troops’ involvement in large-scale military operations, according to Gareyev. Gromov, commander of the 40th Army, which made up the bulk of OKSVA, described in his book how he prioritized minimizing Soviet casualties and criticized Kabul for constantly pleading with Moscow to have his troops step up operations while trying to find ways to prevent using its own troops. Gareyev—who commanded no units in Afghanistan and, therefore, bore no personal responsibility for casualties—appears to have criticized what he saw as the 40th Army commanders’ passiveness, writing in his book that some of their most important combat operations “were undertaken only at the request of the Afghan leadership and under pressure from the Soviet leadership.”
(In the end, a decision to limit involvement in combat operations appears to have prevailed among the Soviet top brass: At some point as many as 70 percent of the 40th Army’s forces were tasked with ensuring transportation of humanitarian supplies and 60 percent of its activities were geared toward peacekeeping and nation-building, such as helping to build infrastructure and training the DRA army, according to Gromov’s estimates.)
The Soviet military’s top brass also appears not to have spelled out rules of engagement when sending in the troops. “The inadmissibility of the use of weapons against the civilian population is stipulated by international legal norms, but what about the ‘civilian’ armed with an automatic rifle or a grenade launcher? Wait till he shoots?” asked Gareyev in his book. He also recalled: “As strange as it may sound, from the very beginning of the introduction of troops and until the end of their stay in Afghanistan there was no clear line on whether our troops in this country should fight or not.”
As a result, some Soviet commanders displayed “covert resistance to attempts to force the troops to fight,” Gareyev wrote. The Soviet political leadership’s lack of a “clear goal” and a “definite plan of action” had a direct impact on military operations. In fact, in Gareyev’s view, the Soviet leadership continued to have neither “a definite political, strategic plan nor an integral concept of the use of troops in Afghanistan from the very beginning and in essence until the end” of the campaign.
Lyakhovsky concurred in his book that Soviet leaders had failed to spell out to the troops what they would be doing in Afghanistan, lamenting in his book that “the political leadership of the USSR formulated the strategic goals of the Soviet military presence in Afghanistan in a vague and unclear way,” except, again, for the goal of replacing Amin with Karmal, which was not made public. According to Gromov, however, the 40th Army did at least have clear initial goals. The first was to keep the “April Revolution from dying,” he wrote in reference to the April 1979 coup d’état that had brought the Moscow-friendly PDPA to power. The second goal was to prevent external aggression. The 40th Army “handled that [first] task brilliantly,” but then the PDPA’s leadership managed “craftily to drag the 40th Army into a large-scale guerilla war,” Gromov wrote.
While criticizing the Soviet political leadership for failing to formulate and communicate clear goals for the campaign in Afghanistan, Gareyev and other officers involved in the campaign had their own ideas on what these goals should be. In Gareyev’s view, which he shared with Ogarkov in December 1979, the Soviet military contingent should have been tasked with sealing Afghanistan’s borders and establishing control over all major settlements, communications and other infrastructure, arguing that the Soviet command should send 40 rather than four divisions to accomplish these goals.
Lev Rokhlin, who commanded infantry regiments in Afghanistan and then fought in Chechnya, concurred with Gareyev’s view that the Afghan borders had to be sealed, but also thought OKSVA should have refrained from siding with any of the warring parties in the country, according to a 1999 article of his in Rodina, “I Was Not Afraid to Fight.” It should also be noted that the Soviet command did task 50,000 soldiers with securing Afghanistan’s borders as of 1986, according to Akhromeyev, Ogarkov’s first deputy at the General Staff, but that number was insufficient to stop the inflow of arms and rebels. In general, it is doubtful that such a goal would have been achievable. If the experience of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan and Russia’s own experience in Chechnya during the two campaigns there are any guide, a complete sealing of borders would have proved problematic, at best.
That’s why, perhaps, Vladimir Kryuchkov, who served as deputy chairman of the KGB during most of the intervention before heading up the agency in 1988, believed the mission should have been limited to a special operation to replace Amin with Karmal. “I remain convinced that a short special operation” to effect regime change “would have been the best outcome,” Kryuchkov was quoted as saying in a 1999 issue of Rodina.
In addition to failing to clearly communicate their goals to their own troops, Soviet leaders also failed in their communications with allies, foes and the international community on the issue. For instance, while official Soviet statements cited the Soviet-Afghan Friendship treaties of 1921 and 1978 as giving legal grounds for the intervention, portrayed by the Soviet propaganda machine as “international aid to the friendly Afghan people,” the Politburo decision makers did not even bother to have their Dec. 12, 1979, resolution approved by the Soviet parliament, though such a move may have somewhat increased the “official” credibility of their decision in the eyes of their allies. Lyakhovsky noted this problem in his 2005 book: “The then leadership of the CPSU [Communist Party of the Soviet Union] did not consider it necessary to submit this question for discussion by the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. It was simply announced as ‘international assistance’—end of story.”
Lyakhovsky’s boss, Varennikov, thought it was wrong not to reach out to the international community on the decision to send troops into Afghanistan. “What was the main mistake that our leadership made after making a decision to deploy troops? That we did not announce it.
We should have preempted the Americans and others by announcing it to the whole world: The leadership of Afghanistan repeatedly asked us for military assistance,” Vasilyev quotes Varennikov as saying. Moreover, the propaganda dimension of the Soviets’ efforts vis-à-vis the Afghan public did not become a priority until the sixth year of the campaign. It was in 1985 that the Soviet military-political leadership made the decision to “organize special propaganda in relation to the population and opposition of Afghanistan” and that was done in response to an increase in Western “information influence” there, according to a 2003 article on the “informational and psychological struggle” in Afghanistan by Col. Yuri Serooky in the Russian General Staff journal Military Thought.
To be fair, it is unclear whether such propaganda could have made much of a difference in the battle for Afghan hearts and minds even if launched on Day 1 of the intervention. After all, it would have been very difficult to make Afghans forget whose troops had poured into the president’s palace and killed Amin in the Storm-333 operation—no matter that Afghan leaders, including both Taraki and Amin himself, had asked the Soviets some 20 times to send in troops, according to Gareyev’s 1994 article and Lyakhovsky’s 1999 article.
Lesson 5:
If you do decide to go in, develop an exit plan in advance.
It should also be noted that the Soviet military had no exit plan when going in. The first draft of such a plan was developed only in 1980, according to Gareyev’s book, which cites Yuri Drozdov, the former chief of the KGB’s so-called “Illegals Program.” According to Varennikov’s 1999 article, however, it was not until 1983 that Soviet commanders submitted a proposal for withdrawing troops for consideration by the country’s political leadership. Of course, the development of an exit plan in advance could not have influenced the outcome of the intervention. In the end, Gromov, the last commander of the 40th Army, had many months to plan the withdrawal and executed it both leaving months’ worth of supplies for the remaining DRA forces and minimizing losses among OKSVA personnel during the withdrawal itself. However, had the intervention gone wrong in the early stages of the campaign (e.g., if Afghan rebels had inflicted massive losses on the advancing troops or a significant unexpected event had emerged, such as a major military conflict elsewhere), then a hasty, unplanned withdrawal could have cost a lot of lives.
Also, while the military component of the exit was well planned and executed, the diplomatic component fell short. As discussed further down, the Soviets failed to secure either assurances for the return of their own POWs and MIAs or the effective enforcement of other signatories’ obligations on ending aid to the rebels. The latter accelerated the fall of the PDPA regime, bringing instability to the disintegrating Soviet empire’s southern frontiers.
Lesson 6:
Once in, ensure effective inter-agency coordination and cooperation.
Both the preparation and the execution of the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan revealed that inter-agency coordination and cooperation was inadequate. That by itself could not have decided the outcome of the campaign, but inter-agency rivalry did limit the OKSVA command’s situational awareness, causing a range of problems, including the diminished effectiveness of combat planning and operations.
Initial coordination was so ineffective that key figures were kept in the dark about their colleagues’ plans even within a single agency. For instance, the chief Soviet military advisor in Afghanistan, Gen. Saltan Magomedov, had no idea that commandoes of the General Staff’s Main Intelligence Directorate would storm Amin’s palace, in cooperation with KGB commandos and other forces, to replace him with Karmal. When Ustinov called this star-studded advisor in December 1979 sometime prior to the attack and asked to be briefed on “readiness for Operation Storm-333,” Magomedov did not know what his superior was talking about, according to Gareyev’s book. When Magomedov admitted this, Ustinov suggested he contact the KGB representative in Kabul. When Magomedov did that, he got “hints, not … the necessary information,” Gareyev wrote.
Moreover, according to Gareyev’s 1994 article, Soviet military advisors in Afghanistan learned that Soviet troops had entered the country from foreign radio broadcasts.
Cooperation across agencies was equally if not more problematic. Both Gromov and Gareyev listed multiple instances when Defense Ministry and KGB personnel would fail to coordinate their actions in Afghanistan. Being army generals, both blamed the lack of cooperation on the KGB, particularly when it came to interactions with the General Staff’s Main Intelligence Directorate, or GRU. KGB agents in Afghanistan would sometimes refuse to share intelligence they had collected directly with the Soviet armed forces’ commanders there, sending it to superiors at KGB headquarters in Moscow instead. “As a result, we [40th Army Command] would learn about actions supposedly planned by the mujahedeen from Moscow,” Gromov wrote.
“Such situations arose with depressing consistency and created certain tensions between military intelligence [GRU] officers and their colleagues from the State Security Committee [KGB],” Gromov wrote.
It was only in 1985, six years after the campaign began, that inter-agency intelligence coordination meetings began to take place at 40th Army headquarters so that representatives of the GRU, KGB, Interior Ministry and Foreign Ministry could jointly examine and analyze intelligence, according to Gromov.
Lesson 7:
Rather than try to mold your local allies in your own image, empower them, encouraging self-reliance, and pay attention to indigenous traditions.
As stated above, the Soviet Union spent the equivalent of billions of dollars arming and training DRA forces, including Defense Ministry, Interior Ministry and security troops.
The results proved to be far from either lasting or sufficient, however. DRA troops proved unable either to hold on to territorial gains made by the Soviet 40th Army or to withstand rebel offensives after Moscow withdrew the army and then discontinued aid.
The implosion of the DRA forces—which proved to be no match for the rebels in skills, tactics or morale—brought instability to the southern frontiers of the Soviet empire.
One of the senior Soviet officials to criticize the quality of DRA forces’ training by their Soviet advisors was Leonid Shebarshin, then a general in the KGB’s foreign intelligence branch.
While some Soviet military commanders sought to portray their efforts to train the Afghans as adequate, blaming poor results on the Afghans’ ineptitude, Shebarshin offered searing criticism of the trainers themselves in his memoirs. “What was the source of the [Soviet commanders’] distrust of the [Afghan] ally? How did it happen that two thousand advisers, including colonels and generals, failed to create a single fully combat-capable and reliable unit in the Afghan army?
How did it happen that the tactics of the Afghan army’s actions are not based on modern realities but on the hopelessly outdated experience of war in the open spaces of Russia?” wrote Shebarshin, who spent more than a decade in the region, conducting more than 20 trips to Afghanistan and eventually becoming chief of KGB operations in the Middle East.
In Shebarshin’s view, one reason the training of Afghan troops proved to be ineffective was that the Soviet commanders never learned how to delegate powers to their trainees: “We did teach something to Afghans, no doubt.
But mainly we ordered them around and commanded them, ‘stitching them on’ to our operations, imposing our decisions, while loudly shouting about the weak fighting capacity of the ally.”
Gareyev agreed with Shebarshin’s assessment on the lack of Soviet commanders’ trust in their Afghan allies, but blamed it in his book on KGB operatives.
Whether it was the lack of trust that adversely affected soldiers’ conduct, or the other way around, is unclear. What is clear, however, from all the Soviet commanders whose writings and statements were reviewed for this article, is that this conduct was subpar.
Rather than try to press their Afghan allies into some Marxist-Leninist mold, the Soviets should have encouraged the PDPA leadership to revert to indigenous traditions of power sharing to ensure national reconciliation and subsequent self-reliance. As Gromov wrote in his book, “A puppet-string mentality grew so strong among Afghans that they could no longer act independently, without the help of the Soviets.”
Chernyaev was even starker in his assessment of the Afghan leadership’s overdependence on the Soviets for making crucial decisions: “Karmalism is the dogmatism of Marxism-Leninism plus parasitism in relation to the USSR,” he wrote on Aug. 28, 1987, in his diary.
As Gareyev wrote: “In the early 1980s, in relation to Afghanistan, the most realistic thing was [for Soviet-policymakers] to avoid striving for the creation of a similar, obedient and unconditionally socialist state, but to support more moderate forces that enjoyed the support of the majority of the population and to push for reconciliation of the parties from the very beginning.” Gromov struck a similar note. “It is impossible to make country like Afghanistan, with its completely different way of life, with different religion, low level of development, a country that lives in its fourteenth century according to its calendar, similar to the Soviet Union. It would be a real absurdity,” Gromov wrote.
Lesson 8:
You cannot succeed in a military intervention unless the side on whose behalf you intervene is willing to fight for your joint cause.
No amount of training and empowering your local allies will help an intervention succeed unless those allies are actually willing to fight for your joint cause. The Soviets intervened to bring Karmal’s PDPA faction to power, going as far as assassinating a president to make way for their protégé. But the PDPA lacked a sufficient number of loyalists willing to fight for that cause, and many of the tens of thousands of men conscripted into the Moscow-aligned Afghan forces preferred to either avoid battle or outright desert when given orders to fight opposition forces.
Gromov vented repeatedly in his book about Afghan civil and military authorities’ failure to hold on to territorial gains made by Soviet forces, implying that differing priorities played a part. “The local Afghan leadership, despite its pro-Soviet sentiment, was not interested in having us conduct combat operations with maximum efficiency. Only a few of them [Afghan officials] tried to consolidate their power and govern in the provinces that we had ‘cleared.’ Obviously, they understood that sooner or later the war would end and there would be no one to face the music but them,” Gromov wrote of his first tour of duty, which ended in 1982 with him commanding an infantry division. His second tour of duty, which he began in 1985 as the General Staff’s representative in Afghanistan, was not marked by significant changes. Gromov called the situation he returned to that year “a dead end”: “One and a half months after our battalions returned to [their] military camps, we were again forced to conduct operations” in the same areas, he wrote in his book. “Our experience has shown that the results we achieved during our combat operations are not then utilized by the Afghans.
About one and a half to two months after completion of an operation everything would go back to square one: Mujahedeen would again take the districts from which we had knocked them out; they would restore their old bases with weapons and ammunition, coming very close to our sites again and resume shelling and attacks.
The question is: What did we fight for so long, sacrificing our guys in the mountains? It was necessary to stop,” Gromov wrote in 1985. Akhromeyev, first deputy chief of the General Staff, lamented the same problem at around the same time: “There is not a single piece of land left in this country that a Soviet soldier has not taken, yet most of the territory is in the hands of the rebels,” he told a Politburo meeting chaired by Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, on Nov. 13, 1986. “We control Kabul and the provincial centers, but we cannot establish authority in the conquered territory. We lost the fight for the Afghan people,” Akhromeyev said. Indeed, as of 1986, only 8,000 of some 31,000-35,000 villages were under Afghan government control, according to estimates by Mohammad Najibullah, who succeeded Karmal as PDPA head in May 1986, which he shared with Soviet diplomat Yuly Vorontsov in October of that year, according to Gromov’s book. As of 1989, the authorities’ controlled only 18 percent of the country’s territory, according to Gromov.
Gromov confirmed his impressions of Afghan soldiers’ and administrators’ conduct during his third and final tour of duty in 1987-1989 when he was commanding the 40th Army. “A time will soon come when revolutionary leaders will be left alone with their problems. They will be left one on one with the opposition. Only in this way can I explain the numerous instances of treason and betrayal by the Afghan military, which we encountered wherever we went,” he wrote in his 1994 book “Limited Contingent.”
Some of the officers from Afghanistan’s Ministry of State Security were no more enthusiastic about standing up to the mujahedeen than their Soviet Defense Ministry counterparts or civilian administrators, according to Gromov.
In his book he described how Soviet forces would “mop up” areas, detaining suspected mujahedeen and passing them on to the Afghans, only to encounter the same suspects again during the next mopping-up operation three or four months later. It was most likely that Afghan security agents would simply let these suspects go without investigating them or prosecuting them in court, Gromov surmised.
Not only were Afghan authorities and troops far from committed to the Soviet cause, they sometimes actively sabotaged it. Gromov complained that opposition field commanders like Ahmad Shah Massoud had “broad networks of informants in the Afghan army and government,” making it difficult to keep combat plans secret. Moreover, Afghan soldiers kept deserting to the opposition forces, taking their arms with them, including even howitzers and heavy armored vehicles. Equipment transfers by government troops “constituted a formidable source of arms and ammunition for the rebels,” Gromov wrote. Thousands would desert from the Afghan ministries of defense, security and internal affairs. According to one Russian account, a 1993 memoir called “Pursuing the Lion of Panjshir,” the number of deserters totaled 34,000 in 1983 alone. Even some DRA Air Force pilots would desert, reportedly flying their Soviet warplanes and helicopters to Pakistan, while some of those who stayed on would deliberately drop their bombs away from the designated targets, according to Gromov, who claims to have “documented a multiplicity of such instances.” He also wrote that some of the DRA servicemen tasked with observing enemy positions and providing targeting data would supply coordinates of locations where their personal enemies lived rather than mujahedeen.
Desertion from DRA forces became particularly widespread in the late 1980s as it became clear that OKSVA would be leaving. Of the 370 Afghan tank crewmembers trained in the city of Termez in Soviet Uzbekistan in 1989 and used to form a new tank brigade, only 127 made it to Kabul, according to Gareyev; the rest deserted, with several trainees fleeing during every night-time stopover en route.
Even when faced with an existential threat to the regime, some DRA commanders could not stop theft of military stocks or prevent desertions among their soldiers. When departing Soviet troops left three months’ worth of supplies for the DRA army, including almost 1,000 armored vehicles, 3,000 other vehicles and 14,400 assault rifles, many of these supplies did not reach the designated recipient because they were either stolen and sold to insurgents or seized by insurgents by force, according to Gareyev.
Gromov described how entire military camps that his withdrawing army had outfitted with everything from security perimeters to slippers next to beds would be looted by corrupt DRA commanders and their subordinates within days of being handed over and the goods then sold in local private shops.
Lesson 9:
Talk to moderates on the opposite side.
In theory, the Soviets were bound by their ideological dogmas to offer unconditional support for the PDPA only. In reality, while supporting Afghanistan’s ruling socialist regime, Soviet commanders did not refrain from reaching out to some of the moderate leaders among the mujahedeen, even though they espoused such “hostile ideologies” as political Islam and Pashtun nationalism. Such outreach proved to be important not only in reducing combat losses, but also in creating opportunities for reconciliation, which ultimately remained unused.
The Soviets likewise managed to establish direct contacts between commanders and chiefs of staff of Soviet units and “a multiplicity of [rebel] field commanders,” using Soviet military intelligence agents as liaisons, according to Gromov.
Gromov dedicated quite a few pages in his book to describing his contacts with such leaders, including Massoud, whose stronghold was in the Panjshir valley. “We were particularly interested in individual gangs’ attitudes toward the Afghan state authorities and the Soviet troops,” he wrote. Gromov noted that some of the field commanders would deal with OKSVA top brass, but would refuse to deal with official Afghan authorities. “Apparently, the mujahedeen believed they would benefit more from dealing with the Russians.
In addition, constant cooperation with the command of the Soviet troops gave them certain guarantees that this or that grouping would not be destroyed in the near future,” he wrote.
Those field commanders who cooperated with OKSVA would even sometimes receive medicines and food from the Soviet contingent, according to Gromov.
Overall, however, this cooptation fell short, mostly due to ideological dogmas. “Having bet on PDPA members and ignoring the Afghan elites established over the centuries, the Soviet leaders made themselves hostage to all these Tarakis, Amins, Karmals, Najibs [short for Najibullahs] and the like. This they understood much later, however,” Vasilyev, the military historian, wrote.
However, not all of this outreach was a waste. The contacts between Gromov and Massoud may have contributed to the latter’s desire to take a cooperative stance toward post-Soviet Russia.
Once the DRA regime fell apart and the Taliban rose to power, Massoud became one of the leaders of the so-called Northern Alliance, which post-Soviet Moscow supported in its effort to prevent an expansion of the Taliban’s influence into Central Asia in the 1990s.
Lesson 10:
When leaving, leave…
When describing how he engineered the withdrawal of the 40th Army in his book, Gromov does not cite the popular Russian adage “when leaving, leave,” sometimes attributed to Cicero.
However, the description itself proves that he persistently tried to do just that despite pressure from DRA rulers.
Had Gromov not been so persistent, Najibullah may have succeeded in persuading Moscow to keep the troops in-country, and the result of that “success” would have been only delaying the fall of his regime at the cost of more OKSVA casualties.
Moreover, had the Soviet soldiers stayed for three more years, they would have found the state they had sworn to defend vanish in December 1991.
Even as it was, the subsequent process of dividing Soviet units among the 15 newly independent republics proved to be chaotic and antagonistic at times, which would have seriously affected both the supplies and the morale of OKSVA had the contingent still been deployed.
Come 1992, and even the largest of the ex-Soviet republics, Russia, would have lacked the resources possessed by the USSR in 1989 to smoothly and securely withdraw the 40th army had post-Soviet Moscow claimed it for its own. In reality, when 1992 came, there were only seven “Soviet” military advisors left in Afghanistan and they all left the country in April of that year.
In his book Gromov describes multiple instances when Najibullah and some of the Soviet leaders kept coming up with options that would commit Soviet troops to stay in Afghanistan even after the announcement about withdrawal.
In 1988 “the government of Afghanistan made truly ‘heroic’ efforts to stop the 40th Army from leaving at any cost,” Gromov recalled in his book.
To do so, the Afghan Defense Ministry made repeated attempts to draw OKSVA into “large-scale combat,” while DRA diplomats argued that the withdrawal should be suspended because Pakistan was failing to fulfill its commitments under the 1988 Geneva Accords.
In one instance, also in 1988, Najibullah said that he would agree to the withdrawal of the 40th Army, but asked that Soviet volunteers guard Kabul’s airport and the Hairatan-Kabul highway, which would have required a 12,000-strong division, according to Gromov’s book.
A secret Central Committee memo of Jan. 23, 1989, described several options for providing military support to the DRA after the withdrawal, including one similar to what Najibullah asked for—to leave a 12,000-man division to guard the highway so that the Soviets could continue shipping aid. Another option was to ask the U.N. to deploy peacekeepers and keep Soviet troops in until they arrive.
A third option was to withdraw OKSVA, but have Soviet military units guard convoys with aid. The fourth option was to “withdraw almost all Soviet troops,” but leave some units behind so they could guard key parts of the Hairatan-Kabul highway. The fifth and final option was to withdraw all troops, but have the Soviet military send in ammunition and other supplies to fully equip and maintain Afghan government units guarding the highway.
Ultimately, the Soviet leadership rightly concluded that keeping in regular troops was not an option and withdrew all personnel except advisors, who at one point totaled 2,000, according to an interview Gareyev gave the Rodina journal in 1999.
The Soviet departure did not suffice to end the civil war, as some may have hoped based on the mujahedeen’s stated goal of driving out the Soviets; however, subsequent events proved that the Soviets’ Afghan allies could hold onto power even without Soviet soldiers and, therefore, without significant Soviet casualties, as long as Moscow continued to materially support the government.
Lesson 11:
…but before you leave, secure enforceable guarantees that POWs and MIAs are found and brought home, and give the returning soldiers proper welcome and care.
Describing how the last battalion of the 40th Army crossed into Termez under his command on Feb. 15, 1989, Gromov wrote how ordinary people embraced the returning soldiers heartily, but how also “not a single commander in Moscow even thought about how to organize greeting” them. “Were we supposed to greet ourselves? The attempt to overlook the withdrawal of the 40th Army from Afghanistan became another instance of tactlessness by those who worked in the Kremlin… They could have at least sent someone from the huge government staff or the Defense Ministry to meet us in Termez. It’s not every day we complete the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan,” Gromov wrote. He also wrote that some of the Soviet citizens welcoming home his last battalion were relatives of Soviet soldiers who had been killed in Afghanistan.
“Some of them, having received official notices and even having buried their loved ones, still hoped: What if he was alive, what if he would come out now?” Gromov wrote. Overall, 15,051 Soviet servicemen were killed in Afghanistan, according to a 2001 study edited by Col. Gen. Grigory Krivosheyev. As for Afghans, some 800,000-1,500,000 of them died during the intervention, according to one scholarly estimate.
Of those who did return, many suffered from post-traumatic disorders that often went untreated, while also encountering public disapproval from those with anti-war sentiments, much as Vietnam veterans initially did in the U.S.
The author of this paper encountered one such veteran in 1999. The former sniper, broad-shouldered, had served in a Soviet commando unit in Afghanistan and said the only means of relaxation his commanders had provided was an aquarium.
He also said his complaints about what he later realized to be a post-traumatic stress disorder were dismissed by commanders with phrases like: “What psychological stress?
Have you seen the size of your arms?” (meaning, presumably, that his physical fitness precluded any medical conditions).
According to a book by KGB officer Vladimir Garkavy, who completed multiple tours of duty in Afghanistan, “despondency, apathy and despair have become the companions of many veterans.” Garkavy wrote that some 500 veterans of the Soviet war in Afghanistan committed suicide in 2007 alone.
In addition to failing to organize a proper welcome to the returning troops or ensure adequate treatment of their war-induced disorders, the Soviet authorities also did not bother to include a clause on the return of Soviet MIAs in any of the so-called Geneva Accords,6 which were signed in 1988 and included three Afghan-Pakistan bilateral agreements on ending the war and a declaration on international guarantees signed by the U.S. and Soviet Union and meant to cut off U.S. and Soviet aid to the warring sides.
At the time, Gorbachev and his foreign minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, “who concluded these treaties, seemed to be concerned only about convincing the public that they were not personally involved in the deployment of Soviet troops to Afghanistan and to disclaim responsibility for it.
Soviet soldiers and officers who were in captivity … were of little interest to them,” Lyakhovsky wrote in his book. According to Varennikov’s 1999 article, he and other Soviet commanders pleaded with Shevardnadze during a 1987 meeting to include clauses on reciprocal closure of rebel bases in Afghanistan and he agreed to push for them, but none made it into the accords.
Gromov also wrote in his book that the leadership of the 40th Army and Soviet Defense Ministry “insisted” the Soviet government insert a clause on the return of Soviet POWs and MIAs into the accords because “we had no moral right to leave Afghanistan until we liberated our soldiers or at least ascertained their fates.”
However, these demands were disregarded. According to the Krivosheyev study, 417 Soviet soldiers went missing or were taken captive in Afghanistan during the intervention, with 130 of them later found and returned home, leaving 287 MIAs and POWs as of Jan. 1, 1999; by 2013 the list had been whittled down to 263 people, according to a Moscow-based veterans’ organization.
Lesson 12:
…also before you leave, secure firm and enforceable agreements that would not only meet your own minimum requirements for a negotiated settlement, but also those of your local allies, because the end of an intervention by itself cannot end hostilities.
Had the Soviet Union managed to secure enforceable commitments from other external powers involved in the conflict to discontinue aid to the Afghan rebels in exchange for doing so itself, it might have at the very least delayed the fall of the friendly regime in Kabul. Moreover, that could have created a stalemate that would have made some of the warring factions more inclined to achieve national reconciliation. This, in turn, could have led to the emergence of a regime that would have been neutral toward Moscow rather than hostile like the Taliban. The latter ultimately gained the upper hand in Afghanistan in the 1990s before being ousted from power by a U.S.-led coalition and, at the time of this writing, was negotiating a power-sharing agreement with Washington.
Gareyev, Gromov and Kryuchkov all pointed out in their books and interviews that the Soviet withdrawal may have robbed the mujahedeen of one of their rhetorical casus belli, but it did not and could not have ended hostilities, as the rebels strove to finish off Najibullah’s regime. Yet the new Soviet leadership (Gorbachev and his team) was so keen to withdraw from Afghanistan that a POW/MIA clause was not the only one they forgot to insert into the Geneva Accords: While the U.S.-Soviet declaration obliged both countries to cut aid to warring factions in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and other sponsors of the Afghan mujahedeen either were not bound by the accords or ignored them, continuing to supply aid and rightly calculating that the Soviets were in no mood to enforce agreements as their country grew weaker.
Gromov wrote that Pakistan was failing to abide by the accords even as the Soviets honored their obligations: “We knew that the government of Pakistan did not really fulfill most of the clauses of the signed agreements. As before, insurgent bases operated on the territory of that country, [and] weapons were continuously flowing from there,” he wrote in his book. Gromov refrained from evaluating Pakistan’s failure to honor its commitments, but Gareyev was blunt in his criticism of the Soviet leadership’s failure to make Islamabad comply: “Neither the Soviet nor the Russian foreign ministries did anything to achieve the implementation of the Geneva Accords by the United States and Pakistan…
[While] the Soviet troops left, all the military bases and training centers of the mujahedeen in Pakistan remained. Soviet military aid to the Republic of Afghanistan was stopped, but the supply of weapons and ammunition to the mujahedeen continued,” he wrote.
“Why did we need long and expensive negotiations with the Americans and Pakistanis and the Geneva Accords if only one side abided by them and the other was not going to do anything? It would have been easier to withdraw the Soviet troops unilaterally and resolve the issue without any diplomatic games,” Gareyev wrote. Former KGB officer Garkavy struck a similar note in his book. He criticizes the Soviet leadership for committing to end assistance to Afghanistan in exchange for a U.S. commitment to end assistance to the mujahedeen because such reciprocity did nothing to stop aid that the Afghan rebels were getting from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt and Kuwait.
In addition to trying to obtain enforceable guarantees from external stakeholders, the Soviets could have also done more to press their own client into reconciliation when still providing the DRA with substantial aid because such aid could be used as leverage. As Gareyev wrote, “there were no tangible results in the implementation of the policy of national reconciliation. The concept of political settlement in Afghanistan put forward by the Afghan leadership was perceived by many [PDPA] party leaders as a loss of its current leading role in governing the country and, for many members of the leadership, as having to leave the government positions they held.”
Lesson 13:
Even after you leave, prevent mission creep.
Even when the bulk of the troops have been withdrawn and only a small contingent of military advisors are left behind to help the ally retain positions, it is important to continue avoiding mission creep. Otherwise, leaders of the (no longer) intervening power may find themselves in the same predicament as Al Pacino’s character in “Godfather III” when he exclaimed: “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.” According to Gareyev, such mission creep nearly occurred again after the 40th Army was withdrawn with only 30 Soviet advisors and some guards left behind. The general recalled in his book how Dmitry Yazov, the-then defense minister, told him—when dispatching him to Afghanistan in 1989 to act as the chief Soviet military advisor after the 40th Army’s withdrawal—that his task was to make sure Najibullah’s regime survives for at least three or four months; if it did, Yazov argued, then maybe a political resolution of the conflict could be attained in that time.
But, seeing Najibullah’s regime last for a year after the OKSVA withdrawal, some top officials in the KGB and Foreign Ministry began to assert that Najibullah’s troops and their Soviet advisors had been on the defensive long enough and should now initiate “decisive, offensive actions in all directions,” Gareyev wrote. He also wrote that he had had a hard time convincing some leaders in Moscow to refrain from such “adventurist aspirations” that “could only lead to the most negative consequences.” It is easy to see how, if DRA forces would have gone on a major offensive, they could have suffered a disastrous defeat, strengthening the case made by Najibullah and some of his supporters in Moscow – who tried to prevent withdrawal of OKSVA – from brining the troops back in.
Lesson 14:
Last but not least: Be willing to learn the lessons.
Last but not least, strategists of an intervening power need to be willing to infer and internalize lessons that the intervention has generated. Otherwise, they will be more likely to repeat mistakes and less likely to replicate some of the intervention’s successes.
An estimated 620,000 Soviet soldiers and officers were rotated in and out of Afghanistan during the 10-year campaign. (The author of this paper still remembers, as an adolescent, the sinking feeling upon seeing his father, Soviet Air Force Lt. Colonel Karen Saradzhyan, pack for another komandirovka to Afghanistan at the time.)
However, while the rank-and-file learned to fight in the country’s rugged mountains because it was a matter of survival, not all of their commanders did. Members of the military-political leadership need to be willing to learn the lessons that present themselves during a campaign—that is the final lesson inferred for this paper from Soviet commanders’ and officials’ recollections of the country’s intervention in Afghanistan.
According to Gromov, in the summer of 1981, with the intervention well into its second year, the Soviet Defense Ministry decided to send the commanders of several military districts to Afghanistan for several days to learn the lessons learned there by the OKSVA. Many of the dispatched high commanders and their staff officers showed no real interest, however, thinking the lessons would be of little use to them because the local war was local whereas they had been preparing for a major international conflict with NATO. Ironically, though his book came out in 1994 when Russians troops were fighting an anti-insurgency campaign in the mountains of Chechnya, which was in some ways similar to Afghanistan, Gromov did not draw such a parallel. Rather than focus on lessons, some of the commanders spent much of their time in Afghanistan examining whether barracks were tidy, “whether the soldiers’ beds were made and there were slippers next to the nightstands,” Gromov wrote.
When these visiting commanders did venture out to combat areas, they were asking why there is no loudspeaker communication between the commander and his artillery unit. “By and large, no one got interested in the experience we acquired. It was simply ignored and it was not integrated into education. Apparently, they believed it was better to keep silent about the war in Afghanistan.
I think the reason the war was initiated should not affect whether the invaluable combat experience [accumulated over its course] is studied or not,” Gromov wrote. Soviet advisors likewise did not apply the inferable lessons when shaping the Afghan military they were advising. “How did it happen that the structure of the Afghan armed forces was created exactly according to our model and the experience of a nine-year war did not yield any changes in that structure,” KGB general Shebarshin wrote in his book after more than 20 tours of duty in Afghanistan.
Finally, a year and a half after ascending to the post of general secretary in March 1985, Gorbachev too faulted the Soviet military top brass for failing to infer and learn some lessons from the Afghan war. “In Afghanistan, we have been fighting for six years,” Gorbachev told a Nov. 13, 1986, meeting of the Politburo. “If you do not change the approaches, then we will be fighting there for another 20-30 years.
This would cast a shadow on our ability to influence the development of events. I must also tell our military that they are learning poorly from this war. … In general, we have not found the keys to solving this problem. Are we going to fight endlessly, as testimony that our troops are not able to deal with the situation? We need this process completed soon,” he said.
Thoughts and summy of the 14 lessons.
As demonstrated above, the Soviet leadership made a number of mistakes, first [1] when contemplating whether to intervene in Afghanistan, then [2] during the intervention and, finally, [3] when withdrawing the troops.
Some of these mistakes were particularly costly, such as the failure to take full stock either of the hierarchy of vital national interests at stake in Afghanistan or of the costs and benefits of intervention. Had the leaders in Moscow paid attention to the full array of potential costs presented to them, they may have avoided the fateful error of sending troops en masse across the Soviet-Afghan border.
The Soviet leadership also erred in failing to clearly formulate the troops’ mission beyond regime change, creating confusion and debates among top commanders about what it is they were supposed to achieve in Afghanistan once Amin was replaced with Karmal and how.
Whatever the mission, the Soviet military operations would have probably dealt greater setbacks to the armed Afghan opposition at lower costs to the Soviet troops if the various Soviet government agencies had fostered effective coordination of their activities from the very beginning—including, first and foremost, the sharing of intelligence on the ground.
The Soviets eventually learned the importance of such sharing and corrected the mistake.
However, even such coordination, or better training of DRA forces by their mentors, could not have led to a decisive defeat of the opposition forces as long as many of the DRA forces remained unwilling to fight.
Therefore, it was a matter of time before the Soviets realized that their only option was to leave. That was the right decision, which was made in spite of pressure from the DRA ruling elite. However, while leaving was the right move and its military component (the actual withdrawal of troops) was executed well, the diplomatic and political aspects of that maneuver were not without flaw. Not only did the Soviet government fail to secure guarantees for the return of POWs and MIAs, but it also failed to secure enforceable commitments from other external powers involved in the conflict to discontinue aid to the Afghan rebels in what could have at the very least delayed the fall of Najibullah’s regime.
The Soviet intervention in Afghanistan was not what bankrupted the Soviet Union or led to its collapse, contrary to U.S. President Donald Trump’s January 2019 take on Soviet Russia’s experiences in Afghanistan, which he offered as he argued in favor of a U.S. troop withdrawal from the country. Rather, as Yegor Gaidar convincingly demonstrated, a combination of structural economic and other factors played the lead role in the demise of the Soviet empire. However, that intervention, which caused horrendous hardship for many Afghans, did contribute to the demise by imposing formidable human, financial, economic, political and reputational costs on the Soviet Union, despite the fact that Soviet leaders did eventually realize some of the mistakes they had made in Afghanistan and sought to correct them.
Not all erroneous decisions can be reversed and some of them can have disastrous consequences.
Therefore, if faced with a situation that passes May’s test for historical analogies to the Soviet predicament vis-à-vis Afghanistan, Western leaders would do well to learn from those mistakes, rather than make their own, even if some senior Russian legislators are now planning to convince their compatriots that the Soviet intervention was the right thing to do.
And so… now we have the American debacle…
And this here it kind of sums things up from the point of view of American “allies” and other neocons throughout the American military empire. They are not happy…
…and emotion is clouding their judgement.
Debacle.
Yeah. It’s a mess.
What is HELL is America and the UK doing there in the first place?
Well, here’s some clear and true points well stated…
The USA should stay?
And let’s not forget what he said in his younger days as the President of Singapore. This next video has to be one of the very best video clips that I have ever seen in my life. Check it out…
And now, since you all know a little bit of history, and a little bit about the UK and RUssian experience, you should be well equipped to read this great article…
Nasrallah: Afghanistan is worst debacle in US history, Biden hopes for civil war
Speech by Hezbollah Secretary General, Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, on August 17, 2021, on the occasion of the commemoration of the 9th night of Ashura, two days before the martyrdom of Imam Hussein.
Transcript:
[…] My last point is Afghanistan, which I quickly mentioned before. What is happening in Afghanistan right now is an emergency situation that is grabbing the attention of the whole world. Inside the United States, this is the main event all are talking about, and of course everyone blames each other, just like in Lebanon, people are all the same: the Republican Party blames the Democrat Party, blames Biden, and describes the scene as a humiliation for the United States, (a proof of) weakness, helplessness, failure, historic defeat, shame, disgrace, etc. If we want to faithfully describe (the political situation in the United States), we can say that they are tearing each other apart. The same goes for the position of European countries, of the leaders of certain European countries [United Kingdom, France, Germany…], who speak with very strong and very negative words to assess the situation in Afghanistan.
Suppressed crocodile tears: that’s all British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace has to offer all his Afghan allies that the Royal Army won’t evacuate.#Afghanistanhttps://t.co/HbIh7DR9ay
— Le Cri des Peuples (@cridespeuples2) August 21, 2021
It is indeed a striking and vitally important spectacle, filled with lessons to be learned, and we all must…
It is not something that one or two speeches is enough to describe, for the situation continues to develop, and deserves everyone to watch it carefully and think about it seriously, very seriously.
This should not simply be of interest to (pseudo-)experts (in) strategic (issues), who are very numerous today, ma sha Allah, experts, analysts, no: all men and women (must feel) that what is currently happening in Afghanistan (is their concern), and all that has been said so far remains little in the face of the importance and consequences of what is happening in Afghanistan, at the historical, strategic, ideological, cultural, political, psychological and moral levels.
And those who must be the most assiduous in the reading (and the interpretation) of this (considerable) event to draw the strategic and historical consequences from it are the peoples of this region. Yes, the people of the Middle East must be the first to care about what is happening. Because what is happening in Afghanistan is a very big and even masterful lesson.
The images that you see and have all seen on TV screens speak for themselves… and all the media around the world (follow and broadcast what is happening), because however strong the censorship system of the United States may be, (it is powerless to prevent the mass distribution of these images).
On the subject of social networks and the Internet, which the United States has opened up and spread around the world to instrumentalize them in color revolutions here and there, they find themselves caught in their own trap, because even inside of the United States, the government of Biden can certainly influence such newspapers or such television channels (to dissuade them from broadcasting these humiliating images), but how could it prevent millions and tens of millions of users of social networks who disseminate and share these images?
And glory to God, these are exactly the same images as in Vietnam!
As in Saigon, the (American nationals) climbed stairs to access a helicopter on a roof (and escape), we see exactly the same thing happening at Kabul airport! It’s extraordinary ! A real photocopy! Can we believe that this is just a coincidence?
PHOTO 1: US diplomat evacuate US from embassy via helicopter as the #Taliban enter #Kabul from all sides. #Afghanistan (2021)
PHOTO 2: US diplomat evacuate US from embassy via helicopter as the PAVN & Viet Cong capture of Saigon, Vietnam (1975) pic.twitter.com/YamWmzjOay
— Stefan Simanowitz (@StefSimanowitz) August 15, 2021
History repeats.
Either way, the images of Afghanistan and the fall of Afghanistan into the hands of the very movement that the United States fought for 20 years and expelled (from power), before handing the country over to them on a silver platter…
The Taliban flag flies over Kabul airport.
I have already mentioned Afghanistan in my previous speech [cf. below], and today Biden took the floor to try to defend himself…
I said before that instead of rushing to achieve the withdrawal of his troops, as long as the American forces were present , and since the Afghan forces (formed by the USA) have 300,000 to 400,000 members —between soldiers and police forces— he should have cut a deal between the Afghan government and the Taliban, in favor of the formation of a transitional government, which would have avoided everything that happened, allowing the United States to withdraw with dignity.
Why didn’t he do this?
Because he couldn’t bear to stay any longer (in Afghanistan). Honestly! It was not out of respect that Biden did not do this.
And don’t take my word for it, listen to what Biden himself said! Listen to Biden, listen to his Secretary of State and his National Security Advisor… Because now they are forced to explain themselves to the American people…
They do not explain themselves to the peoples of the world, but to the American people who is amazed at these humiliating images of defeat and failure.
Listen to his explanations, and you will understand the American point of view.
I’m not going to make you a (full) TV report, but I hope everyone will listen carefully to what Biden said yesterday, today, and what American (authorities) will say in the days to come.
Give seriously some time to their statements, as this will give a good understanding of the historical and strategic consequences of the (humiliating) defeat and (monumental) failure of the United States and NATO in Afghanistan. It is a matter of concern to us as peoples of the region, and gives us lessons that we can use for our present and our future.
I’m going to stop on two points (of Biden’s speech).
In his speech today, he said
“We have spent over a trillion dollars, that is over a thousand billion dollars! They spent a trillion dollars in Afghanistan! And they left crestfallen, empty-handed, with Honaïn’s shoes as the saying goes, humiliated, defeated, ashamed, in disgrace. And this according to the admission of their own media, and Western media. What does this prove?
That they have failed (miserably), that they have been routed, that they are helpless, ignorant and stupid.
Biden himself said that the US did not foresee that the Afghan government and forces would collapse so quickly, and was surprised that they neither fought nor resisted. The Secretary of State and the National Security Advisor said the same thing. What does this indicate?
People imagine the United States to be a demigod, omniscient, analyzing and mastering everything at their fingertips, knowledgeable about everything, able to plan everything through its state-of-the-art study and planning centers with top notch skill and technology, with huge & infaillible plans, etc.
But the reality is far from all that!
In our region, the United States is ignorant, unable to understand anything!
For decades, they have been repeating the same mistakes, deploying the same experiments and the same calculations doomed to failure!
This is one of the lessons to be learned!
Biden says it is not the fault of the United States, but the fault of the Afghan forces who did not fight. But my dear, these Afghan forces, you left them without air force, because the air force is in your hands, (and you did not allow them to develop it), while claiming that you spent a trillion dollars .
This is the first point.
Second, these Afghan forces were led by your generals, who prepared doomed (war) plans for them! What (war) plans did you concoct, what (military) advice did you provide to these Afghan forces?
Third, what did Biden want (ultimately)? What does his confession reveal? Because he did not know how to hold his tongue, too entangled in his defense (awkward, and he unmasked himself).
He wanted a civil war!
He wanted the Afghan forces to wage war on the Taliban, a war between hundreds of thousands (of fighters) against hundreds of thousands (of fighters), and he would just have to sit down and enjoy the spectacle. bloody in Afghanistan.
Whereas if he had humanity, and cared (for the well-being) of people as he claims, he would have presided over an agreement and a settlement of the conflict before withdrawing from Afghanistan.
(This contempt for the lives of Afghans) is an ethical and moral downfall of the American administration!
This moral degradation is emphasized even by leading politicians and commentators in the United States and elsewhere.
This is why Biden says today that he wanted a political solution (between the Afghan government and the Taliban), but that Ashraf Ghani, the Afghan President, did not want it. You see? Biden pins the blame on him, and claims to be faultless!
These words reminded me of those verses of the Qur’an which speak of the devil:
“[And Satan will say when the matter is decided: “It was God Who gave you a promise of truth: I too promised but I failed in my promise to you. I had no authority over you except to call you but ye listened to me.] Then reproach not me but reproach your own souls. » [Quran, 14, 22]
(The damned) are invited not to impute to the devil (their bad actions which will lead them to Hell), but to only blame themselves!
What were the American administrations doing with all the those tax dollars in Afghanistan? pic.twitter.com/winabg5GEn
— Syrian Girl (@Partisangirl) August 16, 2021
It was you (pro-US Afghans) who put yourselves at the service of the Americans, who listened to them and obeyed them, who placed your hopes in them and bet on them, but they got to the point where they told you (quite simply) fare well, « Bye-bye » [Nasrallah says it in English].
And what kind of « Bye-bye » are we talking about?
What is happening at Kabul airport is incredible, it is heartbreaking and sad. Because in the end (these Afghans who want to flee) are human beings. We have all seen this (American military) plane advance with dozens of people around it, without worrying about them, without the pilot stopping, while he could have run over them!
And he saw that people had clung to the plane, but took off anyway! Whether they fall and crash (horribly to the ground) or not, that’s not his problem!
Desperate Afghans trying to flee the Taliban hanging on to US military plane to get out of Kabul and fall to their deaths. Low flying US Apache helicopters chasing Afghan civilians off the runway with their rotor blades. But Julian Assange is the criminal? pic.twitter.com/RPT1o48MqL
— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) August 16, 2021
This is the United States! What I’m telling you is all over the media, I’m not inventing anything! They embarked police dogs, but did not embark the Afghans who collaborated with them!
They embarked equipment which costs only money, but did not embark human beings, who are human beings, men, with human rights! Such is the United States, (this is their true face)!
Everything that is happening in Afghanistan, even if in Lebanon we are absorbed by our daily problems, I hope that we will pay attention to it and will consider it as the pivotal moment that it is, because for 50 or 60 years, there was nothing like it.
And this will have a great impact on international policies, international relations, international alliances. And today, those who observe and comment on these events most attentively are the Israelis!
If the US stopped supporting Israel tomorrow, Tel Aviv would fall faster that Kabul.
— Syrian Girl (@Partisangirl) August 16, 2021
Because when Biden said, and this is a message to all of America’s allies in the region (including Israel), when Biden was defending himself, he said something very, very, very, very, very, very, very… (repeat it until you lose your breath) important, and I hope America’s “friends” in Lebanon and the region will read this very carefully.
Biden said
“American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war in the place of anyone else.“
If anyone expects the Americans to come and fight for them, this is what Biden says!
Listen up Taiwan.
Listen up Australia.
Listen up South Korea.
Listen up Europe.
And in order not to fight for anyone else, he is ready to endure a historic and humiliating defeat in Afghanistan! When we talk about Lebanon or whatever, in comparison, it is only an (insignificant) detail (in the eyes of the Americans).
At least 40 people have died since Monday in a stampede and shooting in Kabul International Airport, TOLOnews TV channel reported – citing a Taliban commander who is inside the airport.
According to him, the people died after “foreign troops opened fire” as well as a stampede
— ASB News / MILITARY (@ASBMilitary) August 17, 2021
In conclusion, in what is happening in Afghanistan, are very big and very important lessons, and we must take advantage of them and act accordingly, at the cultural, ideological & emotional levels, at the level of our choices, of our hopes, of our our reading (of events), of our alliances, of our infrastructure, at the economic, political, military, security levels, etc.
This was my conclusion during my last speech, when I said that we must only rely on God and on ourselves!
We must not wait for the United States, nor their training, nor their advice, nor their support, nor their false promises, nor their plots! We do not want their good nor their evil.
Of course no good can come from them. The good resides in our people, in our (Arab-Muslim) Community, in our region, in the Arab-Muslim peoples. It is on them that we must rely. Because we have all these possibilities and capacities.
This is so sweet.
The Iranian interpreter got emotional when Sayyed Nasrullah said Iran never abandones its allies, biggest evidence being the dismembered hand of martyr Qassem Soleimani in Iraq where he was assassinated beside his ally and friend Abu Mahdi Al Muhandishttps://t.co/m1nRrXbkkA
— Marwa Osman || د. مروة عثمان (@Marwa__Osman) August 20, 2021
I am done on this subject.
I will meet you tomorrow, for the 10th night (of the month of Muharram, the eve of the martyrdom of Imam Hussein), the night of the last meeting, and of the big fare well.
Peace be upon you, O my master Aba ‘Abdillah al-Hussein, and on the souls who dwell in your court! On you, from me, the Peace of God, forever, as long as I exist and as long as night and day last! May God not make this the last time I am visiting you! Peace be upon Hussein, upon ‘Ali son of Hussein, upon the children of Hussein and upon the companions of Hussein!
Peace be upon you, as well as the Mercy of God and His blessings.
I’ve never seen the American people so inconsolable before. If their mothers had died tragically, it wouldn’t be that much grief. Didn’t imagine a defeat in godforsaken Afghanistan would be so devastating.
Has the Dollar Empire given up the dream of a global empire?
Haven’t seen strong signals to conclude “yes.”
What is the national hierarchy in the Financial Empire?
The Financial Empire is a global debt based financial system administered by the City of London and Wall Street, and enabled by NATO & Six Eyes (Five Eyes [USA+UK+Aus+Can+NZ] + Israel)?
The Global Financial Empire’s hierarchical structure looks like the following:
Core: SIX Eyes – English Union, huge debt generators, negative trade balance (U$A, UK)
Conquered: EU/Germany,.., Saudi Arabia, Japan, South Korea – Debt distributors, positive trade balance (supporting the US$)
Capital Rich: Russia, China, Brazil, Africa, Iran, ME – (Resource/Asset rich)
Circumference countries: ROW
The U$A is the top management layer, CEO/CFO. It has a board seat. Why is it creating lots of IOUs?
The Financial Titanic (Dollar Empire) is taking water (Debt) at an exponential rate. This is UNSUSTAINABLE. Are Americans sleeping or having fun while music is playing?
The average age of a global reserve currency is 94 years (80-110). It is said the US$ started on its reserve trajectory in 1921.
When will this Financial Titanic break?
Something to ponder about while you read over the next article.
Here's another article.
Despair in the Empire of Graveyards
Or Gilbert and Sullivan Come to Afghanistan, Depending on Your Perspective
Forty-six years ago in a previous comedy I was in Saigon, recently having been evacuated from Phnom Penh in an Air America—CIA—Caribou carrying, in addition to me, several ARVN junior officers and perhaps a dozen BUFEs (Big Ugly Fucking Elephants, the ceramic pachyderms much beloved of GIs).
America had already embarked on its currently standard policy of forcing small countries into wars and then leaving them in the lurch.
Caribou aircraft.
In Cambodia this led to the reign of Pol Pot, the ghastly torture operation at Toul Sleng, and a million or so dead. In the unending fight for democracy, casualties are inevitable.
At the time Saigon was tense because Ban Me Thuot had fallen and the NVA roared down Route One toward Saigon.
To anyone with the brains of a doorknob, the American adventure in Vietnam was coming to an end, but the embassy was studiedly unconcerned.
Embassies do not have the brains of a doorknob, but are keenly aware of public relations. Acknowledging the inescapable is not their way.
As usual, Washington would rather lie than breathe, and did.
As in Cambodia, so in Nam, and so later in Afghanistan.
Apparently a genius at State realized that a lot of gringo expats lived in Nam—the number six thousand comes to mind, but may be wrong—and that six thousand hostages taken when Saigon fell would be bad PR.
So the embassy in Kabul—Saigon, I meant to say, Saigon—quietly announced that expats could fly out on military aircraft from Ton Son Nhut.
They didn’t, or at least many didn’t. The NVA continued its rush toward Saigon.
The expats didn’t fly out because they had Vietnamese wives and families and were not going to leave them, period. These wives may not have had the trappings of pieces of paper and stamps and maybe snippets of ribbon. These things do not seem important in Asian war zones. But the expats regarded them as wives. Period. The family went, or nobody did. Period.
The embassy didn’t understand this because embassies are staffed by people from Princeton with names like Derek who wear pink shirts and don’t know where they are. The ambassador is usually a political appointee being rewarded for campaign contributions and probably doesn’t speak the language as few gringos spikka da Pushto or Vietnamese or Farsi or Khmer. For example, nobody at all in the embassy in Cambodia spoke Khmer.
The rank and file of State are better suited to a high-end Rotarian barbecue than a Third World city teeming with strange people in funny clothes eating God knows what horrible things in winding frightening alleys.
And so the State people could not understand why an American would marry one “of them,” as in the embassy I once heard a gringa put it. It was a good question. Why would a man marry a pretty, sleek, smart, self-reliant woman who wanted family and children? It was a great mystery.
The Taliban—NVA, I mean–NVA kept coming closer. A PR disaster loomed.
Meanwhile the PR apparatus insisted that the sky wasn’t really falling even as it did and no, no, no the US had not gotten its sit-down royally kicked by a ratpack of rice-propelled paddy maggots, as GIs described the opposition.
Many in government seemed to believe this. This was an early instance, to be repeated in another part of Asia, of inventing a fairyland world and then trying to move into it.
Finally State faced reality, a novel concept. It allowed quietly that expats and their families could fly out, military. It was getting late, but better than nothing.
The comedic value of this goat rope grew, becoming more amusing by the hour. I was trying to get a young Vietnamese woman out as she had worked for the embassy and we suspected things might not go well with her under the NVA.
Call her Linda. Linda and I took the bus to Tan Son Nhut. The Viet gate guards gave her a hard time, envying her for getting out while they could not, but we got in.
I was going to tell the State people that we were married but that while I was in Can Tho, by then in VC hands, see, the marriage papers had slipped from my carrying case.
This was obvious bullshit, but I guessed that if I made a huge issue of it they would bend rather than get in a megillah with a reporter, no matter how unimportant.
We found ourselves in a long line of expats with their families leading to the door of a Quonset hut, inside of which a State official was checking papers. Some of the expats had around them what appeared to be small villages of in-laws, brothers of wives, sisters, everything but the family dog.
An official with a bull horn told us to write down all their names and the relationships on clipboards being passed around. Tran Thi Tuyet Lan, sister, for example.
Then a genius at the embassy or Foggy Bottom realized that something resembling a third of Viet Nam was about to come out, listed as in-laws.
Policy changed, at least in Washington which was as usual blankly ignorant of reality on the ground. At Tan Son Nhut this meant telling men that they had to leave parts of their families behind, which they weren’t going to do.
This would not look good above the fold in the Washington Post. Dozens of Americans taken captive because the State Department would not let their families out.” All was confusion because the US had spent years telling itself that the disaster couldn’t happen. What to do?
American ingenuity kicked in. At the Quonset hut the guy with the bullhorn announced, “From now on, all mothers-in-law are mothers, all brothers-in-law are brothers. Change your forms.” All along the line, magic markers went through “in-law.”
This meant that some women had two mothers, but this under the circumstances seemed a minor biological quibble.
The guy with the bull horn was at most three feet from the guy in the Quonset hut who was certifying papers as valid. He solemnly looked at the papers with their strike-through’s, , certified them as correct, and that was that. A field expedient.
Hours and hours went by. Night came. Tempers frayed. Nobody seemed to have planned how actually to get these people out. Nobody seemed to have planned anything. Finally a 130 howled in.
This was the Lockheed C-130 Hercules, a four-engine turboprop cargo bird and a magnificent plane. It taxied over. The engines did not shut down. The prop wash was strong and hot.
The tail ramp dropped.
The waiting mob were rushed aboard without ceremony. There were no seats in the dark cavern of the fuselage. That would have required planning, which no one in Washington had thought of. The air reeked of burned aviation kerosene. We squatted on the cargo deck while an Air Force guy with a bullhorn warned, “Keep the kids’ hands out of the expansion slots, you’ll lose them.”
The real-world Air Force didn’t have people named Derek in pink shirts and if you told it all rules off, get the job done, it did. Ramp up, fast taxi, takeoff run, tight corkscrewing climb with the engines running at power I didn’t know they had.
The NVA and VC were now very close due to incompetent planning (have I mentioned incompetent planning?) and might have SAM-7s so it wasn’t a good idea to fly over territory they now controlled. Cutting and running from a stupid war run by generals as clueless as they were careerist, with Saigon spinning below, seen through open doors amid tightly packed peasants going they had little idea where.
Days later when we got to San Fran on a chartered airliner, hundreds of refugees were dumped into the main concourse, no immigrations, customs, or paperwork.
And now we have done it all over again in Kabul, complete with helicopters over the embassy and a panicked evacuation undertaken way too late and sudden concern for turncoat Afghans who made the mistake of working for the US. There is talk of importing 20,000 Afghan refugees to America. I find it amusing that many conservatives, who thought the war was peaches because it was about democracy and niceness and American values, now object to importing people their dimwitted enthusiasms put in line to be killed. Use and discard. Countries and people.
There was the now-traditional underestimation of the speed of the insurgent advance, the predictable deprecation of the “good” Afghans for not fighting with sufficient enthusiasm for the Empire: If they didn’t care enough to defend their country, Biden would say with earnest cluelessness, what could we do?”
So why did this happen? Why another rush to the exit as the world laughs? Which the world is doing. In a sentence, because if you do something stupid and it doesn’t work, it probably won’t work when you do it again.
The psychological explanation is slightly more complex. Vietnam is a good example. America invaded a country of another race, utterly different culture, practicing religions GIs had never heard of, speaking a language virtually no Americans spoke, a country exceedingly sick of being invaded by foreigners, most of them white. in Afghanistan the designated evil was terrorism, in in Viet Nam communism, but the choice of evils doesn’t matter. You have to tell the rubes at home something noble sounding.
Then the Americans did as they always do, training the ARVN, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, to fight the communists to impose democracy, which the Viets had not asked them to do. But when you ask some Viets (Bodes, Laos, Iraqis, Afghans) to fight other Viets (Bodes, etc.) to kill their own people for the benefit of the invaders, they are not greatly charmed.
With a predictability that makes sunrise seem chancy, they desert, fight lackadaisically, with officers charging the US pay for soldiers who do not exist, and probably go over to the other side en masse when the collapse comes. Which latter the Afghan army just did. Duh, as the kids say.
The speed of the Taliban advance took Americans by surprise because officers are liars and had been hiding the deplorable state of the “Afghan” army, its numbers, morale, degree of training, and phenomenal rates of desertion.
Often the American officer corps thinks that if it can just have a little more time, they can win, so lying is a part of the war effort.
Biden bought into this, announcing that the Afghan army vastly outnumbered the Taliban and was better armed and trained and the insurgents couldn’t possibly do what they proceeded to do.
Another reason is that the American style of war recruits its enemies. Soldiers are not the Boy Scout defenders of civilization that so many like to imagine. They kill a lot of civilians, many tens of thousands in the bombing of cities such as Baghdad and Hanoi.
Ground troops come to detest the natives whom they designate gooks, zipperheads, sand niggers, camel jockeys, and the like.
They commit war crimes that, when discovered, are called “isolated incidents,” when in fact they are common.
Fragmentation bombs produce such things as a little girl crying with her belly torn open and intestines falling out while her mother goes stark raving bugfuck mad watching her daughter bleed to death and she can do nothing about it.
But it is for democracy and American values, and anyway the ragheads breed like flies, and besides, CNN won’t air it.
Today drone strikes hit weddings and other gatherings.
When you kill people in a village, the young men join the insurgents, wanting revenge. When a few thousands were killed in Nine-Eleven, Americans exploded in rage. Three thousand is a small fraction of the numbers killed in, say, the attack on Baghdad.
The Iraqi soldiers killed in a hopeless attempt to defeat the Americans were sons, fathers, husbands, brothers of other Iraqis. How much love do we think it engendered in Iraqis? This seems not to occur to Washington.
Militaries at bottom are amoral. Afghans know of the torture operations at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. Americans seem to dismiss such things as minor. They are not. Afghans seeing Moslems lying in pools of blood at Abu Ghraib, or being paraded around naked in hoods, are going to want to kill someone. Guess who.
American wars last a long time because no one has an incentive to end them. American casualties are low, especially now with the killing mostly done from the air against peasants with no defenses.
No important American ever gets killed. American wars are all class wars, with the dying being done by blue-collar suckers from Kansas or the deep South, not by Bush II, Hillary, the other Clinton, Bolton, Bannon, Obama, Blinken, Biden, Cheney, Kamala, Trump, and the rest of those not required to fight.
The US public has little idea of what goes on in its wars because the corporate media hide them. the Pentagon having learned that the media are their worst enemy, not the Taliban.
It would not surprise me if one unfettered camera crew, filming the corpses and mutilated children and devastation, could force an end to such a war.
Americans are not heartless but calculatedly uninformed. Wars are also extremely profitable for those who provide the bombs, fuel, vehicles, and so on. If the US loses a war, the contracts stop, and equally if it wins.
Keeping it going for decades provides a steady revenue stream.
What’s not to like?
Finally, or as much as I am going to worry about, there is the 1955 Syndrome, the engrained belief that America is all powerful.
This is arrogance and self-delusion. In the Pentagon you encounter a mandatory can-do attitude a belief that the US military is indomitable, the best trained, armed, and led force in this or any nearby galaxy.
In one sense this is necessary: You can’t tell the Marines that they are mediocre light infantry or sailors that their aircraft are rapidly obsolescing, their ships sitting ducks in a changing military world, and that the whole military enterprise is rotted by social engineering, profiteering, and careerism.
But look around: The US has failed to intimidate North Korea, chase the Chinese out of its islands in the South China Sea, retrieve the Crimea from Russia, can’t intimidate Iran, just got run out of Afghanistan, remains mired in Iraq and Syria, failed to block Nordstream II despite a desperate effort, and couldn’t keep Turkey from buying the S-400.
The Pentagon plans for the wars it wants to fight, not the wars it does fight. The most dangerous weapons of the modern world are not nukes, but the Ak-47, the RPG, and the IED. Figure it out.
And now the US comes home, leaving Afghanistan in ruins for decades. Use and discard.
Here's another note, collected over the week...
Dear [redacted]
” China will not initiate trouble but is not afraid of trouble “
” Willing to talk ? The door is wide open !
Want to fight ? We will entertain you ! “
Absolutely, Chua !
In a nutshell, that’s my life philosophy !
Or as President Xi Jinping said
准 备 打 仗 打 胜 仗
Zhun3 Bei4 Da3 Zhang4 Da3 Sheng4 Zhang4
Be ready to fight victoriously !
And then we have this little blub that also came to the MM mailbox...
From [redacted]
Peace can sometimes only be achieved via well armed and the readiness in hit back.
The reason US and NATO dare not attack Russia is because they are well armed with nuclear weapons, and putin has made it clear that “don’t F with a nation with nuclear weapons.” putin also warn US, “if there is any missile fly toward Russia, Russia will regard it as nuclear attack, and will immediately response with nuclear missiles. ” this is why no one dare to bomb the Russian (including their military bases in Syria.)
When trump visited Beijing before starting the trade war, China offer trump $235b worth of deal. Guest what happen next?
Trump think that China is afraid of US, and thinking he can demand more from China. He has instead begin his first stage of trade war and announce to move on to the 2nd stage within months. He then claim that trade war is easy to win.
What trump didn’t expect is that China hit back.
China never stab on anyone on the back. China has made it clear all the times, “China will not initiate trouble and are not afraid of trouble”
China also make it clear: ” willing to talk? The door is wide open! Want to fight? We will entertain you.”
So, China simply respond to a situation initiated by the crusaders Nd not stabbing on people back. We should not expect China simply stood there fir people to bomb.
In Australia, China has issue numerous warning before hitting back.
China outline a 14 grievance created by Australia.
In Chinese history, they rather build wall, marrying princess, and initial a tribute system to keep peace, but if someone push too hard thinking they are in the position of strength, they will eventually be crushed .
This is not back stabbing. This is a last resort to keep peace.
The defeat of the crusaders in the Korean war allow China to enjoy the next 50 years of relative peace with the crusaders.
Today, the armed with AK47 Taliban successfully chase away the crusaders simply because they fight back.
Only when the crusaders are defeated, the Afghanistan people can then rebuilt their nation and looking forward to a better future with China belt and road.
Asia will again become the world most peaceful and wealthy region before the end of 21st century when China successfully chase away the trouble maker from the region.
The crusaders can also enjoy peace and prosperity if they change their mindset and get rid of their corrupt, low quality fake democratic political system. They need to control property price, nationalised industry that provide basic needs to the people like water, electricity, mining, health, pension fund, education, public transport etc like what China do.
Wealth redistribution from Wall Street to allow the 99% also doing well. This will automatically make a nation strong, a society in harmony.
Cheers
[redacted]
.
I have to tell you that there has been a lot of messages, articles, comments and thoughts flowing back and forth all week. Here's another...
Whether you supported the 20-year war in Afghanistan or not, if you are American, you paid for it. Two Trillion Dollars. Your personal tax tab is 7 thousand dollars.
If you sent a relative or friend into this horror in South Asia, you paid an emotional price also.
If your relative or friend lost his or her life, you paid again, most grievously.
If you are one who returned, PTSD is taking a toll on your life. You pay every night and day, psychologically.
If you came back with traumatic wounds, you pay each moment as you try to rehabilitate and recover.
And with all these payments and losses you sit in front of a TV or monitor and watch the most feckless, incompetent leadership on the face of the Earth. You see total disorder, amateur thinking, and disgraceful performance of State Dept. and US Military. The top command and elected officials, the top counselors and advisers, each and every one clueless, ignorant, flummoxed by reality. They know nothing and can do nothing. Yet, they lead the country.
If you are fond of NATO, the alliance just took a huge hit.
So, the 75 years of unity and the 20 years of joint operations in Afghan are tossed away unilaterally. NATO is fracturing.
They know Biden is a fraud and the US is aimless.
You finally hear from the President of the United States, the reasoning that was the policy and follow through. It makes no sense. The old man is irrational.
Day after day this continuing catastrophe you see the same imbeciles prove over and over that they don’t know how to think, organize, lead or inspire.
Admiral John Kirby spokesman for the Defense Dept., Ned Price spokesman for State Dept., Jan Psaki spokeswoman for the WH, all of them know nothing, have no facts to report, seem bewildered by simple questions.
Listening to Jake Sullivan, NSC explains, is more naïveté and kindergarten-level thinking.
Mark Milley and Lloyd Austin are a quiniela of incompetence, both are lost in Critical Race Theory and too busy to win a war, command an evacuation, secure billions of dollars in lethal weaponry or answer a simple question with believable facts. Two Four-Star Dumb and Dumbers.
These dolts cut off the US government pipeline for the citizens caught inside Afghanistan, their lifeline to the State Dept. and consular staff has gone just when they need them.
These jackasses sent off all the resources their citizens needed for evacuation.
They inadvertently point blame to the Clown-in-Chief Biden, who reflexively blames Trump for the policy Biden created.
Then the inept US military took six days to bring in 7000 troops to work security at the airport. These troops, they told us, were pre-positioned and ready to go. Another massive failure of military logistical performance.
There are more days of this until the artificial deadline on the 31st. The odds are there will be 20-30,000 Americans and Afghanis who worked for and with our military left behind. This is totally unacceptable. They will become hostages to Taliban authorities.
The only good result of this debacle is it hurts Biden politically and makes a change in the Congress much more likely in 2022.
Biden’s Kabul is worse than Ford’s Saigon and Carter’s Tehran. And it is far from over.
As a citizen, you are embarrassed, ashamed, insulted, depressed, left helpless, enraged, and damn angry at the juvenile operational disaster in plain sight at Kabul airport.
Biden and Harris should be impeached. The entire NSC staff should be fired. The JCS chief and the JCS staff and the SOD should be fired. The State Dept. from top-down to consular staff should be fired.
It is their turn to pay for this national embarrassment, geopolitical disaster, and human tragedy.
August 12, 2021. History will register it as the day the Taliban, nearly 20 years after 9/11 and the subsequent toppling of their 1996-2001 reign by American bombing, struck the decisive blow against the central government in Kabul.
In a coordinated blitzkrieg, the Taliban all but captured three crucial hubs: Ghazni and Kandahar in the center, and Herat in the west. They had already captured most of the north. As it stands, the Taliban control 14 (italics mine) provincial capitals and counting.
First thing in the morning, they took Ghazni, which is situated around 140 kilometers from Kabul. The repaved highway is in good condition. Not only are the Taliban moving closer and closer to Kabul: for all practical purposes they now control the nation’s top artery, Highway 1 from Kabul to Kandahar via Ghazni.
That in itself is a strategic game-changer. It will allow the Taliban to encircle and besiege Kabul simultaneously from north and south, in a pincer movement.
Kandahar fell by nightfall after the Taliban managed to breach the security belt around the city, attacking from several directions.
In Ghazni, provincial governor Daoud Laghmani cut a deal, fled and then was arrested. In Kandahar, provincial governor Rohullah Khanzada – who belongs to the powerful Popolzai tribe – left with only a few bodyguards.
He opted to engage in an elaborate deal, convincing the Taliban to allow the remaining military to retreat to Kandahar airport and be evacuated by helicopter. All their equipment, heavy weapons and ammunition should be transferred to the Taliban.
Afghan Special Forces represented the cream of the crop in Kandahar. Yet they were only protecting a few select locations. Now their next mission may be to protect Kabul. The final deal between the governor and the Taliban should be struck soon. Kandahar has indeed fallen.
In Herat, the Taliban attacked from the east while notorious former warlord Ismail Khan, leading his militia, put up a tremendous fight from the west. The Taliban progressively conquered the police HQ, “liberated” prison inmates and laid siege to the governor’s office.
Game over: Herat has also fallen with the Taliban now controlling the whole of Western Afghanistan, all the way to the borders with Iran.
Tet Offensive, remixed
Military analysts will have a ball deconstructing this Taliban equivalent to the 1968 Tet Offensive in Vietnam. Satellite intel may have been instrumental: it’s as if the whole battlefield progress had been coordinated from above.
Yet there are some quite prosaic reasons for the success of the onslaught apart from strategic acumen: corruption in the Afghan National Army (ANA); total disconnect between Kabul and battlefield commanders; lack of American air support; the deep political divide in Kabul itself.
In parallel, the Taliban had been secretly reaching out for months, through tribal connections and family ties, offering a deal: don’t fight us and you will be spared.
Add to it a deep sense of betrayal by the West felt by those connected with the Kabul government, mixed with fear of Taliban revenge against collaborationists.
A very sad subplot, from now on, concerns civilian helplessness – felt by those who consider themselves trapped in cities that are now controlled by the Taliban. Those that made it before the onslaught are the new Afghan IDPs, such as the ones who set up a refugee camp in the Sara-e-Shamali park in Kabul.
A new generation of IDPs in Afghanistan.
Rumors were swirling in Kabul that Washington had suggested to President Ashraf Ghani to resign, clearing the way for a ceasefire and the establishment of a transitional government.
On the record, what’s established is that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin promised Ghani to “remain invested” in Afghan security.
Reports indicate the Pentagon plans to redeploy 3,000 troops and Marines to Afghanistan and another 4,000 to the region to evacuate the US Embassy and US citizens in Kabul.
The alleged offer to Ghani actually originated in Doha – and came from Ghani’s people, as I confirmed with diplomatic sources.
The Kabul delegation, led by Abdullah Abdullah, the chairman of something called the High Council for National Reconciliation, via Qatar mediation, offered the Taliban a power-sharing deal as long as they stop the onslaught. There’s been no mention of Ghani resigning, which is the Taliban’s number one condition for any negotiation.
The extended troika in Doha is working overtime. The US lines up immovable object Zalmay Khalilzad, widely mocked in the 2000s as “Bush’s Afghan.” The Pakistanis have special envoy Muhammad Sadiq and ambassador to Kabul Mansoor Khan.
The Russians have the Kremlin’s envoy to Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov. And the Chinese have a new Afghan envoy, Xiao Yong.
Russia-China-Pakistan are negotiating with a Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) frame of mind: all three are permanent members. They emphasize a transition government, power-sharing, and recognition of the Taliban as a legitimate political force.
Diplomats are already hinting that if the Taliban topple Ghani in Kabul, by whatever means, they will be recognized by Beijing as the legitimate rulers of Afghanistan – something that will set up yet another incendiary geopolitical front in the confrontation against Washington.
As it stands, Beijing is just encouraging the Taliban to strike a peace agreement with Kabul.
The Pashtunistan riddle
Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has minced no words as he stepped into the fray. He confirmed the Taliban leadership told him there’s no negotiation with Ghani in power – even as he tried to persuade them to reach for a peace deal.
Khan accused Washington of regarding Pakistan as “useful” only when it comes to pressing Islamabad to use its influence over the Taliban to broker a deal – without considering the “mess” the Americans left behind.
Khan once again said he “made it very clear” there will be no US military bases in Pakistan.
This is a very good analysis of how hard it is for Khan and Islamabad to explain Pakistan’s complex involvement with Afghanistan to the West and also the Global South.
The key issues are quite clear:
1. Pakistan wants a power-sharing deal and is doing what it can in Doha, along the extended troika, to reach it.
2. A Taliban takeover will lead to a new influx of refugees and may encourage jihadis of the al-Qaeda, TTP and ISIS-Khorasan kind to destabilize Pakistan.
3. It was the US that legitimized the Taliban by striking an agreement with them during the Donald Trump administration.
4. And because of the messy withdrawal, the Americans reduced their leverage – and Pakistan’s – over the Taliban.
The problem is Islamabad simply does not manage to get these messages across.
And then there are some bewildering decisions. Take the AfPak border between Chaman (in Pakistan’s Balochistan) and Spin Boldak (in Afghanistan).
The Pakistanis closed their side of the border. Every day tens of thousands of people, overwhelmingly Pashtun and Baloch, from both sides cross back and forth alongside a mega-convoy of trucks transporting merchandise from the port of Karachi to landlocked Afghanistan. To shut down such a vital commercial border is an unsustainable proposition.
All of the above leads to arguably the ultimate problem: what to do about Pashtunistan?
The absolute heart of the matter when it comes to Pakistan’s involvement in Afghanistan and Afghan interference in the Pakistani tribal areas is the completely artificial, British Empire-designed Durand Line.
Islamabad’s definitive nightmare is another partition. Pashtuns are the largest tribe in the world and they live on both sides of the (artificial) border. Islamabad simply cannot admit a nationalist entity ruling Afghanistan because that will eventually foment a Pashtun insurrection in Pakistan.
And that explains why Islamabad prefers the Taliban compared to an Afghan nationalist government. Ideologically, conservative Pakistan is not that dissimilar from the Taliban positioning. And in foreign policy terms, the Taliban in power perfectly fit the unmovable “strategic depth” doctrine that opposes Pakistan to India.
In contrast, Afghanistan’s position is clear-cut. The Durand Line divides Pashtuns on both sides of an artificial border. So any nationalist government in Kabul will never abandon its desire for a larger, united Pashtunistan.
As the Taliban are de facto a collection of warlord militias, Islamabad has learned by experience how to deal with them. Virtually every warlord – and militia – in Afghanistan is Islamic.
Even the current Kabul arrangement is based on Islamic law and seeks advice from an Ulema council. Very few in the West know that Sharia law is the predominant trend in the current Afghan constitution.
Closing the circle, ultimately all members of the Kabul government, the military, as well as a great deal of civil society come from the same conservative tribal framework that gave birth to the Taliban.
Apart from the military onslaught, the Taliban seem to be winning the domestic PR battle because of a simple equation: they portray Ghani as a NATO and US puppet, the lackey of foreign invaders.
And to make that distinction in the graveyard of empires has always been a winning proposition.
A nation is made of race, ethnicity, culture, and identity. Ernst Renan called it a “daily plebiscite.” He said a nation needs a “common will in the present,” and the wish to perform great deeds in the future. Identity is a feeling, but feelings, emotions, personalitiesandbeliefs come from the blood. We don’t create ourselves, and we can’t be other than what we are. Polities are temporary, but peoples endure.
I remember September 11, 2001. I never knew what people meant by “blood running cold” until I looked at New York City from my favorite hill and saw the smoking ruin where the Trade Center had been. I felt a deeply personal insult.
An abstraction called “America” hadn’t been attacked. This was something real. “Freedom” wasn’t under attack. It was my city, my people, my country that these savages had assaulted. American unity was awesome. President George W. Bush could have asked for anything from the country. The grief and righteous anger could have changed the world.
Now these feelings seem absurd and embarrassing. Patriotism is at a record low, even among conservatives. It’s hard to define what “America” means, or if it even exists.
Part of this is because the response to the attacks had nothing to do with defending America. President Bush could have stopped immigration, worked to defend the Christian faith he supposedly holds, and renewed patriotism. He did none of these things. Multiculturalism and anti-white preferences are far stronger today. Rather than seizing the moment to push assimilation and patriotism in schools, they teach Critical Race Theory and other anti-white ideas. Islam, once a marginal force in American life, has joined homosexuality and black identity as one of our national totems.
In 2001, the attackers entered the country legally through holes in our immigration laws. The holes are still there and immigration is worse than ever. The Muslim population of the United States has grown continuously, despite support for a total ban on Muslim immigration. Keith Ellison, the first Muslim in Congress, was a black nationalist who once argued for ending the Union — and no black congressmen ever said that was wrong. We fought in Afghanistan and Iraq to bring “democracy” to foreigners, who rightly hated us for trying to turn them into something they were not. The Iraq War’s most lasting consequence, and the greatest impact of the so-called Christian Right, may have been to destroy what was left of Christianity in Iraq. A SEAL team eventually killed Osama bin Laden. Crowds cheered, but that seems hollow now.
What was the purpose of the wars? If they were to “spread democracy,” they failed. If they were to defend the “American way of life,” they failed. The America of 2021 is a nightmare to a patriot from 2001. It’s bad enough that today’s “American way of life” is imposed on us, let alone on foreigners. If the War on Terror was supposed to keep us “safe,” that also failed. America seems far more besieged than before 2001, despite trillions spent and intrusive surveillance. America even faces the possibility of real defeat in a conventional war against great powers. If our government took foreign terrorism seriously, we would not have a porous border.
What happened over the last 20 years is something deeper. Thousands of Americans are still in Afghanistan, and the defense secretary said the world’s sole superpower has “no capability” to go outside the Kabul airport to get them out. “There was nothing that I or anyone else saw that indicated a collapse of this [Afghan proxy] army and this government in 11 days,” said General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Incredibly, he didn’t resign. President Biden bizarrely defended himself by saying that the scenes of desperate people fleeing the country and falling off airplanes were from “four, five days ago.”
We had to leave Afghanistan, but it’s astonishing that we had no plan to protect Americans, secure weapons, or even protect the airport. Those in charge pay no price for failure.
After September 11, Americans thought American power had been roused and we would smite our enemies. Instead, we sacrificed thousands of young men to bring “democracy” to foreigners. Iraqi and Afghani cooperation (or collaboration) went no farther than a paycheck. Many Americans even died at the hands of their supposed “allies” in “green on blue” attacks, which killed more than 150 coalition troops by 2020.
Now we have a supposed “obligation” to bring in Afghans. How many “green on blue” attacks will we get in the homeland? President George W. Bush (in)famously defended the wars by saying that “we will fight them over there so we do not have to face them in the United States of America.” Now, it appears we fought Afghans “there” so we could bring Afghans “here.” If an estimated 99 percent of Afghans want to make Sharia the basis of law, it’s hard to claim we are bringing “pro-American” Afghans here. The ones who come will learn in no time to complain about “white supremacy.”
The United States could have pulled out of Afghanistan in late 2001 after removing the Taliban and still continued the hunt for Bin Laden, who was in Pakistan. The US could have declared victory after it killed Bin Laden. Instead, the country spent trillions trying to turn Afghanistan into a liberal democracy. This included propping up a miserably corrupt government, promoting female politicians who never visited their constituencies, spending more than $780 million on “gender programs,” celebrating “Pride Month,” and, most infamously, punishing American soldiers who tried to stop child abuse by Afghan allies. And we were supposed to be fighting for the “good guys?”
There isn’t even an “Afghanistan.” It is a patchwork of tribes. Rather than working with the tribes, the United States tried to impose an artificial “national” government. The United States rejected the idea of re-establishing the Afghan monarchy, which had the support of most tribes. Instead, America imposed Hamid Karzai. The ungrateful stooge now blames the USA and NATO for his country’s collapse. Old ethnic and tribal patterns have re-emerged.
The Taliban is mostly Pashtuns, the largest ethnic group. Just as in 2001, the old “Northern Alliance” is coming together in Panjshir, led by the son of the legendary commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, a Tajik. Afghanistan’s tribal society may make it almost impossible for foreigners to conquer, but it also makes it almost impossible to unify. Turning tribal groups into Afghans is hard enough. America should never have tried to turn them into proto-Americans.
Indeed, we can’t even turn refugees into Americans. And they certainly won’t be grateful. The most prominent “refugee” in American life is Rep. Ilhan Omar. She said September 11 was nothing more than “some people did something,” and brags, “This is not going to be the country of white people.” Tucker Carlson says she’s proof our country is “not very good at resettling refugees.” The Hmong, another group of American “allies” imported after Vietnam, have been a disaster for America and a burden on social services.
America itself is turning into a tribal society. Pat Buchanan explains:
The more diverse we have become, it seems, the less united we have become, even about public manifestations of patriotism — the American flag, the national anthem, the pledge of allegiance. Nor do our history, holidays and heroes unite us as once they did.
Is the system that rules us worth defending? No. If that makes me a “traitor,” I would say only that there is nothing to betray. Our rulers have already betrayed us.
The Afghan and Iraqi wars did nothing to protect this country. They made things worse. Every servicemen sent was sacrificed by a government that doesn’t deserve them. Soldiers deserve respect, but their commanders and politicians deserve scorn. I have yet to hear one veteran say the wars were worth it. Even the legendary Pat Tillman came to oppose the Afghanistan War — before he was accidentally killed by his own comrades. “Were all our sacrifices wasted?” heartbroken veterans ask. Yes.
Reportersbragaboutgetting the military to purge white soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines who had a racial consciousness. Perhaps we should thank them. Eighty-five percent of those who died in Afghanistan were white. Their government clearly doesn’t appreciate them. Afghanistan was not worth one life, nor are the interests of politicians and financiers.
The military teaches Critical Race Theory. General Mark Milley was telling Congress less than two months ago why we had to study “white rage.” He should have been studying intelligence reports on the Taliban.
Patriots must not die for the interests of those who despise them. If China moves on Taiwan, let journalists, defense contractors, and affirmative action pets do the fighting. The Global American Empire’s interests are not ours.
After September 11, it was common for liberals to mock the idea of a “War on Terror,” How do you fight an idea? No one is mocking the fight against “hate.” If those in power want to wage war, it may be against us.
President Biden’s “National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism” is designed to spy on white advocates and censor us. The Patriot Act and other national security laws pushed through after September 11, 2001 are now used against American citizens. If the FBI decides you are under investigation, it can seize your assets, and there is nothing you can do. The United States government has lost all moral authority to call Russia or China authoritarian. Even the Taliban is mocking Facebook (whichis underincreasing pressureby the federal government to censor content) for hypocrisy on free speech.
Even liberal news outlets are now doubting the supposed “militia” plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. It appears the FBI wasencouragingtheplot, not thwarting it. (An FBI agent involved in the investigation was just arrested for assault.) Shun anyone who ever talks about violence. He’s probably a government employee looking to justify his paycheck.
PayPal and the ADL are teaming up to investigate the financial transactions of users to fight “racism.” When a system mouthpiece, Jimmy Fallon, mentioned that whites were a declining share of the population, the audience applauded, which even Mr. Fallon found bizarre. And there was the widespread celebration at the death of Ashli Babbitt, who was a misguided victim.
When I see the scenes of retreat and shame in Afghanistan, I feel humiliation, but also schadenfreude. This strips naked the fools who have been sending soldiers to die. I long for the America that was, and mourn for the brave men who died for a government that doesn’t deserve them. And yet there is a certain satisfaction in the ruling class’s humiliating defeat.
The Jewish publication Tablet, marveling at the desire of the American elite to destroy its own country, says:
[T]here are no institutional elites left to ask whether it’s a good idea to purge the combat ranks of the U.S. military by targeting “white supremacism.” America’s all-volunteer military is 43% minority, but the majority of its combat units are made up of white males. So why purge them? To make America vulnerable to foreign adversaries? Maybe the elites are more fearful of the domestic cohort still armed with a powerful group solidarity — i.e., patriotism — and most likely to defend what the elites are determined to destroy.It’s frightening to see American leadership pulling America apart at the seams. And it’s shocking to see our constitutional order ripped to shreds as the establishment undercuts property rights, imposes capricious public health regulations, mandates experimental medical treatments, and holds political prisoners.
This author is right. The elite wants to unmake the middle class and sees patriotic white men as the real threat. This leaves us with a tragic choice between our people and “our” government. On September 12, 2001, I’d have attacked someone who even suggested there was a distinction. Today, I find myself a man without a country. I don’t discount the possibility of a solution within the system. We must obey the law, pay our taxes, and fight to reclaim our rights. But there may be no electoral solution. Our future may be South Africa.
We should talk openly of secession That is how this country began. Those who rule us don’t value the Founders, but we do.
Two decades after September 11, America’s rulers are disgraced, humiliated, and unaccountable. What legitimacy do they have besides their courts and their guns? We must build alternative institutions that can win the loyalty of our people. We must provide for them in the dark times that are coming.
As we turn our backs on the Regime, we do not turn our backs on America. America can survive the degenerate ruling class on the Potomac. If the last few weeks have taught us anything, it’s that a strong tribe can outlast a failing empire.
We are the nation. America is ours and always will be. Renan had an “abridged hymn of every fatherland” that quoted from a Spartan song: “We are what you were, we will be what you are.” If we can get enough whites to believe that, anything is possible. The empire is dying; let the nation be reborn.
The years ahead will be dark, but we should rejoice. We live at arguably the most important time in our people’s history. America, Western Civilization, and the white race can survive only as one. It’s up to us.
Had, enough? Here's another...
Oh, did you see this?
Biden forfeits his Afghan victory by defending his Deep State advisors
By Michael Hudson, first posted at Unz Review and Expanded for The Saker Blog
President Biden put a popular flag-waving wrapping for at America’s forced withdrawal from Afghanistan in his 4 PM speech on Monday. It was as if all this was following Biden’s own intentions, not a demonstration of the totally incompetent assurances by the CIA and State Department as recently as last Friday that the Taliban was over a month away from being able to enter Kabul. Instead of saying that the massive public support for the Taliban replacing the United States showed the incompetent hubris of U.S. intelligence agencies – which itself would have justified Biden’s agreement to complete the withdrawal with all haste – he doubled down on his defense of the Deep State and its mythology.
The effect was to show how drastic his own misconceptions are, and how he will continue to defend neocon adventurism. What seemed for an hour or so as a public relations recovery is turning into a denouement of how U.S. fantasy is still trying to threaten Asia and the Near East.
By throwing all his weight behind the propaganda that has guided U.S. policy since George W. Bush decided to invade after 9/11, Biden blew his greatest chance to burst the myths that led to his own bad decisions to trust U.S. military and state officials (and their campaign contributors).
His first pretense was that we invaded Afghanistan to retaliate against “its” attack on America on 9/11. This is the founding lie of U.S. presence in the Near East. Afghanistan did not attack us. Saudi Arabia did.
Biden tried to confuse the issue by saying that “we” went into Afghanistan to deal with (assassinate) Osama Bin Laden – and after this “victory,” we then then decided to stay on and “build democracy,” a euphemism for creating a U.S. client state. (Any such state is called a “democracy,” which means simply pro-American in today’s diplomatic vocabulary.)
Hardly anyone asks how the U.S. ever got in. Jimmy Carter was suckered by the Polish Russia-hater Brzezinski and created Al Qaeda to act as America’s foreign legion, subsequently expanded to include ISIS and other terrorist armies against countries where U.S. diplomacy seeks regime change. Carter’s alternative to Soviet Communism was Wahabi fanaticism, solidifying America’s alliance with Saudi Arabia. Carter memorably said that at least these Muslims believed in God, just like Christians. But the Wahabi fundamentalism army was sponsored by Saudi Arabia, which paid for arming Al Qaeda to fight against Sunni Moslems and, early on, the Russian-backed Afghan government.
What is so typical of America’s aggressive Cold War mindset is that it could have much more easily (and at much lower cost) won Afghanistan by honey, by having so much more to offer economically than did Russia. Documents released from Soviet archives show that:
None of the Soviet documents list terrorists going into the USSR as a concern in 1979. The Soviet worry was the incompetence and worse of their Afghan Communist clients, the declining Soviet influence (much less control) in the country, and the possibility of Afghanistan going over to the Americans.
Soviet Politburo documents that first became available in the 1990s show the real Soviet fear was that the head of the Afghan Communist regime, Hafizullah Amin, was about to go over to the Americans. (Egyptian president Anwar Sadat famously flipped in 1972, ejected thousands of Soviet advisers, and became the second largest recipient, after Israel, of U.S. foreign aid.)[1]
This policy predates President Carter, of course.
It was endemic in America’s Cold War force-oriented strategy since the 1950s.
Over 60 years ago, for instance, I sat in on a meeting with Fidel Castro’s representatives trying to get support from the Democratic Party and Kennedy for their overthrow of the Batista regime.
Imagining that it was the Republicans and the Dulles brothers that were the hardliners, they expected that the incoming Democratic Party diplomacy would find their self-interest in giving economic support to help Cuba’s economy recover from the corrupt dictatorship.
My father warned them that the Democrats would be just as force-oriented.
On my visits to Cuba, it was obvious that the population and even many government officials would have welcomed a deal whereby the loosened their Castroite economic policy in exchange for U.S. aid.
The United States has never tried to use this tactic in the Caribbean or Latin America, any more than it has done in Afghanistan.
That is the neocon mentality:
“Do it by force, don’t give any other country a choice.”
A “market-based” tradeoff of aid for economic policy acquiescence is not U.S. policy. Offering a carrot still leaves the choice to America’s designated adversary.
The only way to make sure that a country will obey is to confront it with brute force.
That is the mentality behind U.S. support for Maidan and the neo-Nazi Bandaristas opposing Russia instead of simply trying to help reform Ukraine.
And so it has gone in Afghanistan. After Carter, George W. Bush and Barack Obama funded Al Qaeda (largely with the gold looted from destroying Libya) to fight for U.S. geopolitical aims and oil in Iraq and Syria.
The Taliban for its part fought against Al Quaeda.
The real U.S. fear therefore is not that they may back America’s Wahabi foreign legion, but that they will make a deal with Russia, China and Syria to serve as a trade link from Iran westward.
Biden’s second myth was to blame the victim by claiming that the Afghan army would not fight for “their country,” despite his assurances by the proxies whom the U.S. installed that they would use U.S. money to build the economy.
He also said that the army did not fight, which became obvious over the weekend.
The police force also did not fight. Nobody fought the Taliban to “defend their country,” because the U.S. occupation regime was not “their country.” Again and again, Biden repeated that the United States could not save a country that would not “defend itself.” But the “itself” was the corrupt regime that was simply pocketing U.S. “aid” money.
The situation was much like what was expressed in the old joke about the Lone Ranger and Tonto finding themselves surrounded by Indians. “What are we going to do, Tonto,” asked the Lone Ranger.
“What do you mean, ‘We,’ white man?” Tonto replied.
That was the reply of the Afghan army to U.S. demands that they fight for the corrupt occupation force that they had installed.
Their aim is to survive in a new country, while in Doha the Taliban leadership negotiates with China, Russia and even the United States to achieve a modus vivendi.
So all that Biden’s message meant to most Americans was that we would not waste any more lives and money fighting wars for an ungrateful population that wanted the U.S. to do all the fighting for it.
President Biden could have come out and washed away the blame by saying: “Just before the weekend, I was told by my army generals and national security advisors that it would take months for the Taliban to conquer Afghanistan, and certainly to take control of Kabul, which supposedly would be a bloody fight.”
He could have announced that he is removing the incompetent leadership engrained for many years, and creating a more reality-based group.
But of course, he could not do that, because the group is the unreality-based neocon Deep State.
He was not about to explain how
“It’s obvious that I and Congress have been misinformed, and that the intelligence agencies had no clue about the country that they were reporting on for the last two decades.”
He could have acknowledged that the Afghans welcomed the Taliban into Kabul without a fight.
The army stood aside, and the police stood aside.
There seemed to be a party celebrating the American withdrawal.
Restaurants and markets were open, and Kabul seemed to be enjoying normal life – except for the turmoil at the airport.
Suppose that Biden had said the following:
“Given this acquiescence in support for the Taliban, I was obviously correct in withdrawing the American occupation forces.
Contrary to what Congress and the Executive Branch was told, there was no support by the Afghans for the Americans.
I now realize that to the Afghan population, the government officials that America installed simply took the money we gave them...
... and put it into their own bank accounts...
... instead of paying the army, police and other parts of civic society.”
Instead, President Biden spoke about having made four trips to Afghanistan and how much he knew and trusted the proxies that U.S. agencies had installed.
That made him seem gullible.
Even Donald Trump said publicly that he didn’t trust the briefings that he was given, and wanted to spend money at home, into the hands of his own campaign contributors instead of abroad.
Biden could have picked up on this point by saying,
“At least there’s a silver lining: We won’t be spending any more than the $3 trillion that we’ve already sunk over there.
We can now afford to use the money to build up domestic U.S. infrastructure instead.”
But instead President Biden doubled down on what his neocon advisors had told him, and what they were repeating on the TV news channels all day: The Afghan army had refused to fight “for their country,” meaning the U.S.-supported occupation force, as if this was really Afghan self-government.
The media are showing pictures of the Afghan palace and one of the warlord’s office.
I did a double-take, because the plush, wretched-excess furnishings looked just like Obama’s $12 million McMansion furnishings in Martha’s Vineyard.
Obama officials are being trotted out by the news spinners.
On MSNBC, John Brennan warned Andrea Mitchell at noon that the Taliban might now back Al Qaeda in new destabilization and even use Afghanistan to mount new attacks on the United States.
The message was almost word for word what Americans were told in 1964:
“If we don’t fight the Vietcong in their country, we’ll have to fight them over here.”
As if any country has an armed force large enough to conquer any industrial nation in today’s world.
The whole cast of America’s “humanitarian bombing” squad was there, including its harridan arm, the Democratic Party’s front organizations created to co-opt feminists to urging that Afghanistan be bombed until it treats women better.
One can only imagine how the image of Samantha Power, Madeline Albright, Hillary Clinton, Susan and Condoleezza Rice, not to mention Indira Gandhi and Golda Maier, will make the Taliban want to create its own generation of ambitious educated women like these.
President Biden might have protected himself from Republican criticism by reminding his TV audience that Donald Trump had urged withdrawal from Afghanistan already last spring –and now, in retrospect, that the Deep State was wrong to advise against this but that Donald was right.
That is what his order for withdrawal was acknowledging, after all. This might have detoothed at least some Trumpian criticism.
Instead, Mr. Brennan and the generals trotted in front of the TV cameras criticized Biden for not prolonging the occupation until the fall, when cold weather would deter the Taliban from fighting.
Brennan stated on Andrea Mitchell’s newscast that Biden should have taken a ploy out of his “The Art of Breaking the Deal” by breaking the former president’s promise to withdraw last spring.
Delay, delay, delay.
That is always the stance of grabitizers refusing to see the resistance building up, hoping to take what they can get for as long as they can – with the “they” being the military-industrial complex, the suppliers of mercenary forces and other recipients of the money that Mr. Biden curiously says that we spent “in Afghanistan.”
The reality is that not much of the notorious $3 trillion actually was spent in Afghanistan.
It was spent on Raytheon, Boeing and other military hardware suppliers, on the mercenary forces, and placed in the accounts of the Afghan proxies for the U.S….
…maneuvering to use Afghanistan…
…to destabilize Central Asia on Russia’s southern flank and western China.
It looks like most of the world will quickly recognize the Afghan government, leaving the U.S., Israel, Britain, India and perhaps Samoa isolated as a recalcitrant block living like the post-World War I royal families still clinging to their titles of dukes, princes and other vestiges of a world that had passed.
Biden’s political mistake was to blame the victim and depict the Taliban victory as a defeat of a cowardly army not willing to fight for its paymasters.
He seems to imagine that the army actually had been paid, provided with food, clothing and weapons in recent months simply because U.S. officials gave their local proconsuls and supporters cash for this purpose.
I understand that there is no real accounting of just what the $3 trillion U.S. cost was actually spent on, who got it the shrink-wrapped bundles of hundred-dollar bills passed down through America’s occupation bureaucracy.
(I bet the serial numbers were not recorded. Imagine if that were done and the U.S. could announce these C-notes demonetized!)
The U.S. is now (20 years after the time it should have begun) trying to formulate a Plan B.
Its strategists probably hope to achieve in Afghanistan what occurred after the Americans left Saigon: An economic free-for-all that U.S. companies can co-opt by offering business opportunities.
On the other hand, there are reports that Afghanistan may sue the United States for reparations for the illegal occupation and destruction still going on as the country is being bombed in Biden’s flurry of B-52 anger.
Such a claim, of course, would open the floodgates for similar suits by Iraq and Syria – and the Hague in Holland has shown itself to be a NATO kangaroo court.
But I would expect Afghanistan’s new friends in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to back such a suit in a new international court, if only to block any hopes by U.S. companies of achieving by financial leverage what the State Department, CIA and Pentagon could not achieve militarily.
In any case, Biden’s parting shot of nasty bombing of Taliban centers can only convince the new leadership to solidify its negotiations with its nearest regional neighbors with their promise to help save Afghanistan from any American, British or NATO attempt to try and come back in and “restore democracy.”
The world has seen enough of Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s “rules based order”.
And President Biden’s pretended history on whose mythology U.S. policy will continue to be based.
Add: It is not an accident that the politicians backed by the United States are so corrupt, ruling corrupt bureaucracies that increasingly alienate local populations.
There is a deliberate thought-out reason why American diplomats choose to work with such opportunistic grabitizers as clients whom they place in control.
It is precisely such people whom the U.S. sponsors can trust.
Suppose that you have some truly democratic idealists whose aim is to develop their country.
The problem is that such individuals cannot be trusted to follow U.S. diplomatic aims.
They may act on their own – and go their own way, independently of U.S. direction.
That is a risk that U.S. diplomats never choose to take.
The result is much like corporate bureaucracy, where opportunistic CEOs choose yes-men (or yes-women if they seek protective coloration by posturing as more woke). Such subordinates will support the boss in his own maneuvering, not serve the welfare of the firm.
That is why Boeing preferred financial managers to engineers, whose logic might not be that of the increasingly financialized company.
The aim of U.S. “aid” is not to help the country – or even to help “America” – but to help U.S. arms exporters, contractors, big engineering firms, and neocon ideologues in the CIA and State Department, along with ambitious generals in the military seeking a path to promotion and retirement on the board of directors of the military-industrial complex.
All this was expressed crisply by Zbigniew Brzezinski in famous advice for U.S. hegemonic strategy on the Eurasian continent:
Its aim should be…
“to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and keep the barbarians from coming together.”
What kind of local leader indeed could one expect to implement such policy?
Here's yet another. Man! I am intentionally whipping a dead horse. But by the time this is all over, you all won't want to hear anything else about this section of the world...
When Ichiro played in the Major Leagues, he was always hounded by a mob of Japanese journalists and photographers, starting with the first day of Spring Training.
Sick of this, he told an interviewer he wished they would just disappear.“From your life?”“No, from this earth.”
The USA, though, is not being pestered but deformed, debilitated and, well, frankly destroyed by a host of people, many of whom you may not have heard of, so let’s us:
Imagine there’s no George Soros,
No Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch or Klaus Schwab, too.
No Jeff Zucker, Mark Zuckerberg, Arthur Sulzberger,
Jonathan Greenblatt, Larry Fink, David Solomon,
Robert Iger, Charles Scharf, Jamie Dimon,
Steve Schwarzman, Jeremy Zimmer, Len Blavatnik,
Andy Slavitt, Jeffrey Zients, Anthony Fauci,
Jessica Rosenworcel, Janet Yellen, Gary Gensler,
Betsy Berns Korn, Mort Fridman or, what the hell,
Nancy Pelosi also, mostly because she’s so icky.
Even more than most lists, it’s highly incomplete, but you get the idea.
Or maybe not. It’s too eclectic, you say, if not confusing.
What do they have in common?
They are all social engineers, out to remake America in ways that have nothing to do, at least initially, with the wishes of its majority…
… so there goes your democracy.
And that's the way it is, Jack!
As new norms are relentlessly propagandized, legalized then imposed, most Americans will learn to embrace their newly cowed, castrated selves.
Many clearly have.
When I tried to indict a cynical and sinister Uncle Sam in my last article, one who has wrecked not just dozens of foreign countries, but America itself, several readers took offense, not at Sammy, the Jew-jerked puppet, but me!
Clearly, they identify with the steel boots that are pinned on their faces, so fine, let them embrace their increasingly wretched fate, but what about others? What about their children?
Due to their parents’ nauseating cowardice, American kids are inheriting hell.
Notice I didn’t bother to list Biden, not because he’s already dead, but because American politicians are merely cabana boys and girls for their social engineering paymasters.
From president on down, they decide absolutely nothing.
Truly moronic…
… Americans keep waiting for the next election to vote in their savior…
… or they vote for an “independent” candidate as a symbolic gesture.
By merely voting, however, they endorse a system that’s openly destroying them.
With voting machines that can’t be audited, American presidential elections are designed to be rigged, with one of two vetted candidates allowed to win to keep the intramural bickering and catfight lurching along, to distract the dummies from seeing what’s going on.
(The last American politician with any integrity was Cynthia McKinney, and they’ve chased her all the way to Bangladesh. Once disappeared, she’s never mentioned by any former colleague, such is their collective cowardice.)
In any case, you don’t want to turn a clown like Obama or Trump, say, into a martyr or, God forbid, national hero, to be worshipped for centuries.
Not that America is likely to last another decade, especially since most of its “patriots” are curled up, with their eyes shut tight, as waves of degeneracy, idiocy and infamy lap over them.
As their family graves are routinely crapped on by their ruling wardens, these pant-soiling patriots keep muttering, “Please don’t fire, deplatform or cancel me, massa! I’ll do whatever you say. I’ve never whispered one bad word about you, not even online. I’ve only used my internet privilege to spit at Afghan refugees and Mexican dishwashers, but no, no, no, I’m no racist! Black lives matter! Please give me the blackest flip-flop to french kiss!”
Conditioned by Hollywood to enjoy others being chopped or blown up, many Americans are getting a kick out of the current terror and panic in Afghanistan.
Some justify this sick schadenfreude by saying these Afghans are collaborators who fully deserve their punishment or even death, but guess which country has provided the most collaborators, by far, to the evil empire?
America, of course.
To the millions who have fought for war profiteers and Jews, you must add all the employees of Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, General Dynamics and Raytheon, etc., as well as all the academics who go along with the perverted, mostly Jewish-led social engineering agenda, and the journalists who spew nonsense and lies daily, on and on, so that, really, about the only innocent Americans are the little kids, those who will inherit a hellish, denatured reality as constructed by their clueless or spineless parents, not to mention an astronomical mountain of debts, as brought into being by a Jewish-dominated banking system.
Many Americans are also laughing at the quick collapse of the Afghan Army, but 66,000 of them did die fighting the Taliban and other opposition groups (who themselves suffered 51,191 deaths). 117,191 Afghan men, then, laid down their lives over conflicting versions of Afghanistan.
Do prove me wrong, but the only country that’s going down without any fight whatsoever is the United States of America.
But, but, but America has just created the largest military budget in history to "counter" China. Obviously a grand World War III is planned. What then? Can America destroy China?
China, Russia conclude joint military exercise
Updated 12:54, 14-Aug-2021
CGTN
A five-day joint military exercise between China and Russia, named ZAPAD/INTERACTION-2021, concluded Friday in northwest China’s Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region.
A four-phase exercise was held on Friday morning and attended by more than 10,000 service personnel and main battle armaments, including aircraft, artillery and armored vehicles of various models.
Chinese Minister of National Defense Wei Fenghe and his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu observed the exercise and held talks later in the day.
Wei said that the Chinese and Russian armed forces have supported each other in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, demonstrating the high-level development of relations between the two militaries.
The two militaries should enhance strategic coordination and comprehensive and practical cooperation, so as to make greater contributions to the building of a community with a shared future for humanity, and safeguarding world peace and stability, Wei said.
Russia is willing to enhance strategic communication with China, deepen cooperation in areas such as counterterrorism and work together to safeguard regional peace and stability, Shoigu said.
The two ministers also observed the signing of cooperation documents.
They announced the conclusion of the exercise in the afternoon of the day.
The exercise was the first joint military exercise held in China since the COVID-19 outbreak.
By Pepe Escobar: The Saker Blog and cross-posted at the Unz Review.
The first Taliban press conference after this weekend’s Saigon moment geopolitical earthquake, conducted by spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, was in itself a game-changer.
The contrast could not be starker with those rambling pressers at the Taliban embassy in Islamabad after 9/11 and before the start of the American bombing – proving this is an entirely new political animal.
Yet some things never change. English translations remain atrocious.
Here is a good summary of the key Taliban statements, and
– No problem for women to get education all the way to college, and to continue to work. They just need to wear the hijab (like in Qatar or Iran). No need to wear a burqa. The Taliban insists, “all women’s rights will be guaranteed within the limits of Islamic law.”
– The Islamic Emirate “does not threaten anyone” and will not treat anyone as enemies. Crucially, revenge – an essential plank of the Pashtunwali code – will be abandoned, and that’s unprecedented. There will be a general amnesty – including people who worked for the former NATO-aligned system. Translators, for instance, won’t be harassed, and don’t need to leave the country.
– Security of foreign embassies and international organizations “is a priority.” Taliban special security forces will protect both those leaving Afghanistan and those who remain.
– A strong inclusive Islamic government will be formed. “Inclusive” is code for the participation of women and Shi’ites.
– Foreign media will continue to work undisturbed. The Taliban government will allow public criticism and debate. But “freedom of speech in Afghanistan must be in line with Islamic values.”
– The Islamic Emirate of Taliban wants recognition from the “international community” – code for NATO. The overwhelming majority of Eurasia and the Global South will recognize it anyway. It’s essential to note, for example, the closer integration of the expanding SCO – Iran is about to become a full member, Afghanistan is an observer – with ASEAN: the absolute majority of Asia will not shun the Taliban.
For the record, they also stated that the Taliban took all of Afghanistan in only 11 days: that’s pretty accurate. They stressed “very good relations with Pakistan, Russia and China.” Yet the Taliban don’t have formal allies and are not part of any military-political bloc. They definitely “won’t allow Afghanistan to become a safe haven for international terrorists”. That’s code for ISIS/Daesh.
On the key issue of opium/heroin: the Taliban will ban their production. So, for all practical purposes, the CIA heroin rat line is dead.
As eyebrow raising as these statements may be, the Taliban did not even get into detail on economic/infrastructure development deals – as they will need a lot of new industries, new jobs and improved Eurasian-wide trade relations. That will be announced later.
The go-to Russian guy
Sharp US observers are remarking, half in jest, that the Taliban in only one sitting answered more real questions from US media than POTUS since January.
What this first press conference reveals is how the Taliban are fast absorbing essential P.R. and media lessons from Moscow and Beijing, emphasizing ethnic harmony, the role of women, the role of diplomacy, and deftly defusing in a single move all the hysteria raging across NATOstan.
The next bombshell step in the P.R. wars will be to cut off the lethal, evidence-free Taliban-9/11 connection; afterwards the “terrorist organization” label will disappear, and the Taliban as a political movement will be fully legitimized.
Moscow and Beijing are meticulously stage-managing the Taliban reinsertion in regional and global geopolitics. This means that ultimately the SCO is stage-managing the whole process, applying a consensus reached after a series of ministerial and leaders meetings, leading to a very important summit next month in Dushanbe.
The key player the Taliban are talking to is Zamir Kabulov, Russia’s special presidential envoy for Afghanistan. In yet another debunking of NATOstan narrative, Kabulov confirmed, for instance, “we see no direct threat to our allies in Central Asia. There are no facts proving otherwise.”
The Beltway will be stunned to learn that Zabulov has also revealed, “we have long been in talks with the Taliban on the prospects for development after their capture of power and they have repeatedly confirmed that they have no extraterritorial ambition, they learned the lessons of 2000.” These contacts were established “over the past 7 years.”
Zabulov reveals plenty of nuggets when it comes to Taliban diplomacy: “If we compare the negotiability of colleagues and partners, the Taliban have long seemed to me much more negotiable than the puppet Kabul government. We proceed from the premise that the agreements must be implemented. So far, with regard to the security of the embassy and the security of our allies in Central Asia, the Taliban have respected the agreements.”
Faithful to its adherence to international law, and not the “rules-based international order”, Moscow is always keen to emphasize the responsibility of the UN Security Council: “We must make sure that the new government is ready to behave conditionally, as we say, in a civilized manner. That’s when this point of view becomes common to all, then the procedure [of removing the qualification of the Taliban as a terrorist organization] will begin.”
So while the US/EU/NATO flee Kabul in spasms of self-inflicted panic, Moscow practices – what else – diplomacy. Zabulov: “That we have prepared the ground for a conversation with the new government in Afghanistan in advance is an asset of Russian foreign policy.”
Dmitry Zhirnov, Russia’s ambassador to Afghanistan, is working overtime with the Taliban. He met a senior Taliban security official yesterday. The meeting was “positive, constructive…The Taliban movement has the most friendly; the best policy towards Russia… He arrived alone in one vehicle, with no guards.”
Both Moscow and Beijing have no illusions that the West is already deploying Hybrid War tactics to discredit and destabilize a government that isn’t even formed and hasn’t even started working. No wonder Chinese media is describing Washington as a “strategic rogue.”
What matters is that Russia-China are way ahead of the curve, cultivating parallel inside tracks of diplomatic dialogue with the Taliban. It’s always crucial to remember that Russia harbors 20 million Muslims, and China at least 35 million. These will be called to support the immense project of Afghan reconstruction – and full Eurasia reintegration.
The Chinese saw it coming
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi saw it coming weeks ago. And that explains the meeting in Tianjin in late July, when he hosted a high-level Taliban delegation, led by Mullah Baradar, de facto conferring them total political legitimacy. Beijing already knew the Saigon moment was inevitable. Thus the statement stressing China expected to “play an important role in the process of peaceful reconciliation and reconstruction in Afghanistan”.
What this means in practice is China will be a partner of Afghanistan on infrastructure investment, via Pakistan, incorporating it into an expanded China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) bound to diversify connectivity channels with Central Asia. The New Silk Road corridor from Xinjiang to the port of Gwadar in the Arabian Sea will branch out: the first graphic illustration is Chinese construction of the ultra-strategic Peshawar-Kabul highway.
The Chinese are also building a major road across the geologically spectacular, deserted Wakhan corridor from western Xinjiang all the way to Badakhshan province, which incidentally, is now under total Taliban control.
The trade off is quite straightforward: the Taliban should allow no safe haven for the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), and no interference in Xinjiang.
The overall trade/security combo looks like a certified win-win. And we’re not even talking about future deals allowing China to exploit Afghanistan’s immense mineral wealth.
Once again, the Big Picture reads like the Russia-China double helix, connected to all the “stans” as well as Pakistan, drawing a comprehensive game plan/road map for Afghanistan. In their multiple contacts with both Russians and Chinese, the Taliban seem to have totally understood how to profit from their role in the New Great Game.
The extended New Axis of Evil
Imperial Hybrid War tactics to counteract the scenario are inevitable. Take the first proclamation of a Northern Alliance “resistance”, in theory led by Ahmad Masoud, the son of the legendary Lion of the Panjshir killed by al-Qaeda two days before 9/11.
I met Masoud father – an icon. Afghan insider info on Masoud son is not exactly flattering. Yet he’s already a darling of woke Europeans, complete with a glamour pose for AFP, an impromptu visit in the Panjshir by professional philosopher swindler Bernard-Henri Levy, and the release of a manifesto of sorts published in several European newspapers, exhibiting all the catchphrases: “tyranny”, “slavery”, “vendetta”, “martyred nation”, “Kabul screams”, “nation in chains”, etc.
The whole set up smells like a “son of Shah” [of Iran] gambit. Masoud son and his mini-militia are completely surrounded in the Panjshir mountains and can’t be de facto effective even when it comes to regimenting the under 25s, two-thirds of the Afghan population, whose main worry is to find real jobs in a nascent real economy.
Woke NATOstan “analyses” of Taliban Afghanistan don’t even qualify as irrelevant, insisting that Afghanistan is not strategic and even lost its tactical importance for NATO. It’s a sorry spectacle illustrating how Europe is hopelessly behind the curve, drenched in trademark neo-colonialism of the White Man’s Burden variety as it dismisses a land dominated by clans and tribes.
Expect China to be one of the first powers to formally recognize the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, alongside Turkey and, later on, Russia. I have already alluded to the coming of a New Axis of Evil: Pakistan-Taliban-China. The axis will inevitably be extended to Russia-Iran. So what? Ask Mullah Baradar: he couldn’t care less.
Now, let's focus on China, as China will play a major role in this region.
Sitrep : Here comes China : Military Drills, Extortion, the ‘Religious Freedom Balkanization’ Plan for China
The main news of the day is the Biden administration’s effort to sell 40 155mm M109A6 Medium Self-Propelled Howitzer artillery systems, 1,698 precision guidance kits for munitions, spares, training, ground stations and upgrades for previous generation of howitzers, to the island of Taiwan in a deal worth up to $750 million. China is, to say the least, livid.
US ‘large-scale’ military exercises cannot scare China, Russia
The US has begun two “large-scale” military exercises. The first is a joint Indo-Pacific military exercise led by the US Indo-Pacific Command with the participation of Japan, Australia and the UK. The other is the “Large-Scale Exercise 2021” held by US Navy around the world and is reportedly the largest naval exercise since 1981. A US military scholar told media that it is intended to demonstrate to China and Russia that US naval forces can simultaneously meet challenges in the Black Sea, Eastern Mediterranean, South China Sea and East China Sea.
Chinese, Russian militaries to hold joint drill in NW China
YINCHUAN — A joint military exercise by the Chinese and Russian armies will be held from Aug. 9 to 13 at a training base of the People’s Liberation Army in northwest China’s Ningxia Hui autonomous region.
The exercise, named ZAPAD/INTERACTION-2021, is the first joint military exercise held inside China since the COVID-19 outbreak, according to the exercise’s leading group.
While we are right at the end of the Tokyo Olympics, the force is strong for canceling or otherwise interfering with the upcoming Beijing 2022 Games.
This is what Radio Free Asia (and people should recognize that for what it is), reports, and this is clearly within the human rights wars.
2021-07-27 — The International Olympic Committee on Tuesday said it had to “remain neutral” on global political issues in response to a request from the U.S. Congressional commission that asked it to postpone and relocate the 2022 Beijing Winter Games if China does not end its human rights abuses against Muslim Uyghurs in its Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
The reply came in response to a letter that the bipartisan U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) sent to IOC president Thomas Bach. The commission made the letter public on July 23.”
Despite these efforts to do something to China, anything, before the Beijing Olympics, the Chinese are keeping cool: “Off the field, observers noted that the success of the Tokyo Olympics under huge pressure is a desperately needed inspiration for the world. Tokyo’s experience in carrying out a major international event under such circumstances sets an example for next year’s Beijing Winter Olympics, experts said. ”
United States blackmail.
And then during the time of writing, the news broke. Part of the Xinjiang story, is pure hard blackmail: the US-based nongovernmental organization (NGO) The Worker Rights Consortium (WRC) blackmailed, bribed, and extorted a Chinese company and its US cooperative partner for $300,000 by threatening to hype up fabricated “forced labor” issues related to China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
The complete Xinjian story of forced labor, a genocide (with no dead people), prison camps et al is falling apart like an overripe watermelon that just smashed itself falling off the watermelon buggy and is not fit for eating any longer.
A MUST READ report…
While we are on the topic of extortion, Alex Rubinstein did some undercover work.
He says:
“Using a friend’s company on my application and adopting a fake persona, I attended a three-day summit on religious freedom where leading figures in the Democratic Party including Nancy Pelosi, USAID Director Samantha Power and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken ...
...joined up with anti-gay Evangelicals,
...a slew of shady NGOs and
...multiple bonafide cults to ratchet up pressure against China.”:
From this ‘Davos of Religious Freedom’, we see top democrats, top republicans, the Christian far right, some clear cults, NGO’s with no history, and just about every anti-China organization in the world right across the spectrum.
The objective? Balkanization under the guise of religious freedom as the new front in the new China cold war.
This report is incredibly detailed and would need some time to read through.
It is however recommended to understand the vast array of forces aligned in the new cold war against China.
The recent visit of US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, despite the usual initial nice and welcoming words apparently did not go down well. “A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said that the talks were in-depth, frank, and beneficial to the relationship between the two countries.”
Days later the story changed materially. “We will no longer make unilateral efforts to maintain the public opinion atmosphere in China-US relations. Using illegal sanctions as a pretext, the US, aided by Canada, has effectively kidnapped a high-ranking Chinese corporate official, Meng Wanzhou, and is still threatening her with possible imprisonment. No other nation behaves so brazenly in defiance of international norms.
“The basis for such changes is that Chinese society has become fed up with the bossy US and we hold no more illusion that China and the US would substantially improve ties in the foreseeable future.
The Chinese public strongly supports the government to safeguard national dignity in its ties with the US and firmly push back the various provocations from the US.
In the face of the malicious China containment and confrontational policy adopted by the two recent US administrations, the Chinese people are willing to form a united front, together bear the consequences of not yielding to the US, and win for the country’s future through struggles.
In other words, Chinese society would unconditionally support whatever tough counterattacks the Chinese government would launch in the face of US-initiated conflicts in all directions toward China.
The US should abandon forever the idea of changing China’s system and policies through sanctions, containment, and intimidation.
We hope US allies in the Asia-Pacific, especially Japan and Australia, can weigh the situation.
They should not act as accomplices of the US’ China containment policy and place themselves at the forefront of confronting China, or they are betting their own future.”
And this is the message that is still prevailing in China and internal to her people.
Huawei’s Meng Wanzhou was in the dock in a Canadian court this last week but at the time of writing, I have not seen any reports.
Chinese Technology is amazing…
Check out this video…
Amazing!
Further details:
Far more world leaders visit China than America: “If leadership diplomacy was an Olympic sport, Beijing beats Washington to the gold medal.”
In 2019, 79 foreign leaders visited China, while only 27 called on the United States.
More world leaders have visited China than the United States in every year since 2013. Many US allies visited China more often than the United States, including those of South Korea, Germany, the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, and New Zealand.
Foreign Minister Wang Yi said ties with Southeast Asia are a priority for China and called for “multilateralism with Asian characteristics”, as the country seeks to counter US moves in the region.
“China has always made Asean its priority for diplomacy in the region … and firmly supports Asean’s central role in regional cooperation,” Wang said, according to the Chinese foreign ministry readout on Thursday.
“Both sides should conduct frequent communication on all levels, and continue with mutual understanding and support for each other’s core interests.”
Judges had already dismissed parts of two cases after it was revealed FBI agents hadn’t properly informed them of their rights against self-incrimination.
U.S.-listed Chinese firms must disclose Chinese government interference risks.The Securities and Exchange Commission said Monday that Chinese companies listed on U.S. markets must disclose the risks of the Chinese government interfering in their business as part of their reporting obligations.
Selections from Godfree Roberts’ extensive weekly newsletter: Here Comes China. You can get it here: https://www.herecomeschina.com/#subscribe
Further selections and editorial and geopolitical commentary by Amarynth.
Geopolitical moves:
Most of the geopolitical space was taken up by the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. Soon Lavrov and his Chinese counterpart Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, moved in, boots ‘n all, with SCO.
A geopolitical story of note is the confirmed friendship between Xi Jinping and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un pledging to strengthen their friendly relations as they exchanged messages on the 60th anniversary of a bilateral landmark defense treaty.
Under the 1961 agreement, China and North Korea must automatically defend each other when one of them is attacked. Xi said he is ready to work with Kim to “take bilateral friendly cooperation to a new level and deliver more benefits to the two countries and two peoples.”
Meng Wanzhou’s extradition case suffered a major blow.
A Canadian judge ruled that HSBC documents showing that US authorities had made selective, misleading and “outright false” claims about the Huawei CFO could play no part in the case.
[Ed: Under Hong Kong’s controversial extradition law one had to commit a crime. Under Canadian law one can be extradited if they “may” have committed a crime].
On Taiwan, the Chinese have put down their red lines and a warning: “We advise the US and the island of Taiwan not to misjudge the situation and not to underestimate our determination and will to punish their provocation. They must be prepared to face a sudden blow.”
Well, I heard that President Biden is going to throw some more billions of dollars for more High Speed Train development in the United States. I am sure that the lawyers, the accountants, and the bankers are all very excited about the money. But look at what is going up in Africa…
Made by America? Nope. Made by China.
Two good-feel-good stories:
Pandas
Wild Giant pandas are no longer endangered, but they are still vulnerable with a population outside captivity of 1,800.
Authorities have expanded their habitats and replanted bamboo forests to feed them.
The number of Siberian tigers, Amur leopards, Asian elephants, and crested ibis has also “visibly increased” as a result of conservation efforts.
And those wandering elephants are still wandering. Excepting western reporting considers this story as: “Cuddly elephants are the latest propaganda weapon in President Xi Jinping’s propaganda offensive to present a more ‘lovable’ global image of China.
The elephants are just one manifestation of Beijing’s decade-long obsession with boosting what it calls its ‘discourse power.’” Sydney Morning Herald.
I’ve seen western reporting say things like: Marauding and destructive elephant herd in China demolishes the countryside. So, now we know, even good-feel-good stories out of China are weaponized.
(Could we imminently expect a headline saying .. marauding Chinese elephants EAT pandas in JinJiang? Xi Jingping personally responsible for giving the order. For those who find themselves temporarily without a sense of humor, this is meant as humor although it illustrates the media from the west that will use anything and everything to continue the media war).
It is hard to choose what to put first from this growing Chinese juggernaut. Let’s start with banks:
The world’s top banks are Chinese: ICBC, China Construction Bank, Agricultural Bank of China and Bank of China hold the top four positions for the fourth year in a row. ICBC has been at the top of the table for nine consecutive years.
Its Tier 1 capital has grown to $439.9bn, the highest individual bank total on record and a $59.7bn increase YoY.
Capital levels continue to grow significantly, up 18.6% YoY compared to the global average of 12.7%. They now account for 30% of global aggregate Tier 1 capital in the Top 1000 compared with 11% in 2011 and 5% in 2001.
GDP grew 18.3% in Q1 and 12.7% in H1 YoY. Urban unemployment is 5%, and 6.98 million new urban jobs, 63.5 percent of the annual target, were created in the first half. Per capita disposable income increased 12.6% YoY.
Exports up 32.2% in June, from 27.9% in May, YoY. Imports increased by 36.7% y/y last month, down from 51.1% y/y growth in May. The trade surplus was $51.5 billion in June, and to $45.5 billion in May.
January – May, Chinese trade with Germany, $92.8 billion, grew 36% YoY and France $32.9 billion rose 44%. China has proposed cooperating with Germany and France for Africa’s development and aims to reopen investment deal with EU.
Six new projects broke ground at Gwadar Port, a flagship of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC): a fertilizer factory, an animal vaccine factory, a lubricant factory and an exhibition center.
A 300MW imported coal power plant has been in construction since 2019 and the Power Purchase Agreement was signed earlier this year.
Beijing’s investigation of Didi jolted global markets and tech startups canceled overseas IPOs. Keep, backed by SoftBank, Alibaba-backed medical data solutions provider, and Ximalaya, the podcast app, all canceled IPOs, admitting that regulators had discouraged them from listing overseas.
The Financial Times says the “debacle signals [the] end of [a] steady stream of New York listings for Chinese companies.”
China’s Tech Crackdown Hits Wall Street’s Wallet. U.S. listings of Chinese companies have accounted for nearly 8 percent of Goldman Sachs’s underwriting fees so far this year, and over 12% of underwriting revenue over the previous five years. Didi Chuxing is just the tip of the iceberg.
Remember, the Chinese work together as one singular organism
You try to hurt it, and all Hell will break loose, the people in the United States and the West have absolutely no concept or idea of what they are going up against. It’s like those cocky Space Marines in Aliens II (the movie) and then were FUCKING slaughtered in three minutes.
The Chinese are not what everyone thinks.
The Chinese work together.
Compliance in China
A Global Times op-ed explains that Chinese tech companies are moving from an era of “barbaric growth” to an “era of compliance,” in which internet companies learn to observe domestic laws and regulations. China has long held restrictions on foreign investment but a loophole, called a VIE, allowed companies to bypass those rules. Chinese internet companies “should now step out of the gray area and move toward normalized corporate governance.
How Chinese clampdown targets offshore listings: China’s securities regulator is setting up a team to review plans by Chinese companies for initial public offerings (IPOs) abroad, including those using a corporate structure that Beijing says has led to abuse.
In a separate act of decoupling, the U.S. Commerce Department today added 14 Chinese entities to its growing economic blacklist over their participation in “China’s campaign of repression, mass detention, and high technology surveillance” in Xinjiang. The companies include AI and other tech firms based in Xinjiang, Beijing, and Chengdu.
Couriers delivered 49 billion pieces in H1, up 46% YoY, and added an average of 2 billion pieces of express delivery per month, with business volume approaching 10 billion in a single month, constantly hitting new record highs.
TikTok will stop requiring employees to work an extra day every two weeks, following a similar move by its local rival Kuaishou. Under the arrangement, workers were paid double their regular daily rate when working on weekends and triple during legal holidays, a bonus that some young professionals preferred to better work-life balance.
Two of China’s three best-selling electric vehicles in June were Shanghai-built Tesla models, shining a light on the U.S. automaker’s popularity in the world’s largest auto market despite recent setbacks there like a regulatory probe into the safety of its autopilot system.”
China is embarking on a building spree for battery swapping centers, as the nation’s network of swapping centers numbered 716 at the end of June, nearly three times the amount at the end of last year.
Shanghai Microelectronics sells its 600/20 flagship lithography machine for 90 nm chips. By Q4, it will offer machines for 28 nm, replacements for ASML’s 1980Di machine and next year will offer 14 nm. machines. “China has world-class EDA(Electronic design automation) startups–companies with worldwide customers.”
For the SpaceONauts – China’s space sector is getting too big and too busy to report on in this Sitrep and magazine format and I’m sure there are media focused on the sector. Just a little while ago, we have this reusable suborbital spacecraft with its successful first launch. It leaves earth horizontally, and returns vertically, like an airplane.
China and Syria signs rebuilding and BRI investments
Until a little while ago, at the time of writing, this was a rumor. Now it is fact.
Chinese FM arrives in Syria, meets officials and signs agreements
There is another similar type of rumor, very small in the press as yet, that China is now active in the Ukraine in terms of rebuilding and perhaps farming contracts. This is very small currently but keep your eyes open.
On these two items, one has to remember the ‘double helix’ of China and Russia.
This is but a fraction of what I gleaned from the Here Comes China newsletter. Godfree has some delicious longer reads in his newsletter: https://www.herecomeschina.com/#subscribe
And if all this isn't enough, then let's start talking about America and how it fits with the changing global situation...
A new American president is presenting a program for renewal of human values in the marketplace unheard of since the 1930s but still projecting American military domination and environmental destruction far beyond the awareness of most Americans.
Continued insistence that Russia and China are major global threats to everyone and not just American monopoly capitalists resonate not only in the cosmic void between the ears of our mentally disabled foreign policy experts but echo in the minds of innocent Americans since that’s all they get from major, and all too often minor media.
The charge that China is conducting genocide on its Islamic people coming from the butchers of hundreds of thousands of Islamic people in the middle east would be a dreadful sick joke if not so incredibly evil, but poor souls condemned to network media remain stuck in a misinformation chamber amplifying our ruling power’s message day in and day out.
The fact that growing majorities have little or no faith in government or media is a hopeful sign but until we totally clean out the sewage system much of corporate news has become, the stench that wafts up remains a carrier of the information pandemic.
While alleged economic threats from China actually do offer market competition to the empire ( and market competition is supposed to be good, according to the theology preached by the priest-rabbi-therapists of the church of capital ) and China is under the control of communists who at least try, not always with success, to force it to work for the common good and not just the minority of Chinese capitalists, why and how and to whom is that a threat?
Only to America where majorities exist in numbers of those in debt but never those who vote nationally.
This is called “our” democracy by many wishful thinkers still unaware that the political process is owned and operated by the wealthiest minority, which spends billions to maintain political control by purchase and rental of candidates and office holders.
Citizens innocently proclaiming this hustle as “our” democracy are like past slaves referring to “our” plantation.
If they were the minority house negroes of the time they could afford such fantasy but the overwhelming majority who toiled in the fields and suffered the most brutal treatment had no such luxury.
And as if the treatment of these two powerful nations didn’t show enough imperial idiocy, that of a nearly helpless tiny nation currently, as usual, under assault, is greater indication of lunacy bordering on stark raving insanity.
After 60 years of a murderous attempted strangulation of the Cuban political economy, that tiny nation survives with the support of the overwhelming majority of governments on earth.
Recently at the United Nations 184 countries voted to end the filthy American embargo with only Murder Inc. headquartered in the USA and Israel still, as always out of step with the overwhelming majority while spouting humanitarian rhetoric and practicing murderous brutality.
This still finds well meaning people waving flags and quoting bibles and constitutions as though these fabled symbols clean up the reality of degenerate social practice as hypocritical as a rapist claiming victims only to assure they do not suffer sexual frustration.
The anti-Cuban lobby, second only to that of Israel in its control of American foreign policy, was originally a creature of the Cuban upper classes who escaped to Miami from the revolution that was working to spread education, jobs, health care and other necessities of life to the greatest number of people who had long been denied by American partnership with Cuban ruling power.
They loom large in the current scenario of an alleged uprising against the terror and horror of millions of people eating, going to school and getting health care despite the ugly embargo and other violent attempts to smother the island of 11 million so that capital might again profit from gambling and drugs, as it did before 1960.
Meanwhile, another bloody lie in Afghanistan has ended with the Taliban, the group we were allegedly protecting poor afghans from, has taken over the government of their own country.
This after billions have been spent and hundreds of thousands murdered in pursuit of profits while good people here have been fed stories about emancipating women and educating afghans to the joys of democracy like ours, where hundreds of thousands of Americans live in the street while we spend trillions to kill people and billions to care for pets.
And far beyond wretched national policies looms the global curse of what private profit industrial and war marketing are doing to the environment shared by humanity and not just one or anther national identity group often claiming super status with a special connection to deities ranging from Santa Claus to the Easter bunny for all they are worth in the material world.
Words about democracy are not balanced by deeds of mass murder, oppression and absolute support for rich minority rule that assures continued profit making from exploitation of workers whether they clean toilets, drive buses, pilot airplanes or walk dogs.
Like the sex workers who use their private parts to create private profits for their entrepreneurial pimps, those who create, package and deliver the consumer goods that are the foundation of the economy are doing it for the benefit of owners and investors rather than their own which would be far better served if they owned and ran the businesses they form the foundation for while others get rich on their labor.
Facing horrible news at what the future of humanity looks like under the environmental stress called climate change, more people than ever are working to end foul methods of economics that assure disaster for humanity but trying to do so while maintaining market rules of private profit assures further destruction or worse, simply throwing people out of work they do only to survive and thus destroy hope of survival.
The future must be to keep people alive by assuring the public good before any pursuit of private profit. We do not need professional economists to explain that capitalism is the only answer to social problems all the while collecting fat salaries and investment opportunities while society fails more quickly under their rule.
In truth, if workers are doing dirty work that affords them salaries so they can pay their rent, mortgages and other life supports, but it costs society billions to have to clean up the mess they create, we would all best be served by paying them to not go to work.
We’d be saving the billions we’d have to spend to clean up the mess they created in service to private profiteers and assure their survival by using those mammoth savings to help them learn and get better jobs for them and everyone else, that serve all of us and not simply minority investors.
As the world grows more threatened and conditions become more dangerous with the USA holding several hundred military bases in foreign countries and surrounding Russia and China with troops and war ships, immediate action must be taken to both confront environmental conditions that threaten us all and war like preparations that are profitable to a criminal minority while threatening the planet and all its people.
In short, we need global democratic communism before anti-social capitalism destroys us all.
Let’s not forget the Amazing HST that has revolutionized China, and is now changing all of Asia…
Video of Chinese HST. Good watch.
Now, let’s move on to the biggest project of the century; the BRI…
The Belt and Road Initative
From my mail box by [redacted].
Here we focus on making people understand that the Belt & Road Initiative is the Endeavor of the Century.
And it’s not a small task with the pervasive anti-China propaganda.
Why ? because the BRI will decrease poverty, will open perspectives, will connect lands & seas, will create bonds between nations, will provoke many occasions to work together and learn from each other personally, will boost education (technical & philosophical).
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Yes, capitalists & upper class people (Americans, Chinese, Russians, Iranians, Europeans, Japanese, Indians, Pakistanis, Koreans, Africans, Latin Americans, Down Under-ians etc.) will profit more, so what ?! They got the money and the organization ! Let’s be realistic !
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A bit of Real Politik, please, as Vladimir Vladimirovitch Putin said to Angela Merkel at the occasion of her valedictory visit to him. If this project, which is supposed to be finished in 2049, (for the 100th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China) can achieve only 50 % of its potential, the World will not be a paradise but it will be a much much better place because true, physical development will be possible for so many people on Earth. Imagine it as a Marshall Plan to the square.
True development means first and foremost public utilities and infrastructures (clean water, power grids, roads & bridges, schools buildings etc.). I think it was Lenin who said that the Bolshevik Revolution is the power of the Soviets plus the electrification of Russia.
According to an article by MK Bhadrakumar, a former Indian diplomat, the total amount of money injected in the BRI projects to now is in the order of 4 trillions, with a “t” !
Imagine the 2.2 trillions wasted in Afghanistan and the 5.7 trillions lost in Irak channeled to infrastructural, health & educational (all levels) improvements in the USA !
China became Europe’s first commercial partner this year with exchanges worth almost one trillion, with a “t”.
Speaking of Europe, Yanis Varoufakis, former Greek Finance minister can testify to the unexpected and respectful Chinese interventions in the so-called Greek crisis within the framework of the Belt & Road Initiative.
It is obvious that we need to be aware of the ecological dimension and many industrial projects were utterly careless for our natural environment but the Climate Change narrative and Green narrative are fabrications to brainwash in order not to allow true and respectful of nature development. Watch Professor William Happer’s video or for those speaking French, François Gervais’s videos.
As Vijay Prashad said rightly, in the mind of the Crusaders, most of the Planet are pools of slaves and microscopic pockets of house niggers/ching-chongs/wogs/snow white house niggers (if you want a nicer, politically correct ,acceptable & respectful expression:compradore bourgeoisie) for them to use & abuse so they can live the high life. Of course, a global project for true and solid development like the Belt & Road Initiative
(development of the mind & true industrialization)
is absolutely anathema to them.
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What is happening now in the West is the slow ( maybe not so slow) motion of the plutocrats to crush the offspring of the middle class created post 1945 because even the crumbs they “gave” your parents cannot be “given” to you anymore since new poles of power re-emerged, depriving them (relatively for now but the tendency will increase with time) of guaranteed long term slave laborers and cheap natural resources so they want to “give” even less here because in THEIR SYSTEM, the profits are less.
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In technical words, that’s the system of empire or the British system (aka closed paradigm) the eternal foe of the open paradigm or the American System of Physical Economy (and true development) by Henry Charles Carey (1793-1879) who was also the economic adviser to President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
I want to remind everyone of Jeff’s 6 E s describing the PBC’s (Psychopathic Barbarian Crusaders) usual modus operandi : Extortion, Extraction, Expropriation, Enslavement, Evangelization & Extermination.
I would like to remind everyone a conversation between Roman historian Tacitus (56-c.120) and his father-in-law, the general Agricola (40-93). Agricola was at the time of the chat governor of the province of Britain, he was looking in the direction of Ireland and confided to his son-in-law his wish to conquer it.
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Tacitus replied it would be a loss for the empire since those barbarians are not even fit to be trained as slaves. Agricola said that Tacitus was naive because to leave a pocket of freedom is a danger for Rome, it would give a small hope to the subjugated people. The English oligarchy learned from the “right” people !
Exploitation & Intimidation form an eternal pair.
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But in an open paradigm, that mentality of false scarcity for justifying oligarchical control will not be accepted.
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For those who can’t stand Lyndon Larouche (1922-2019), be informed that he was a genius and a philosopher king, without a crown like Confucius (551 BCE-479 BCE) and Plato (427 BCE- 347 BCE). The mere fact that the oligarchy felt the need to fabricate a sordid story of stolen documents to convict him to years of hard labor speaks volumes.
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He also predicted the 2008 crisis years in advance, not a small feat since most of the garden variety economists were clueless, I don’t even think they were bought off, I would grant them too much brain by adhering to such a hypothesis… Larouche might sound a little bit granddiloquent in certain speeches but it was the natural expression of a man confident in the quality of his mind because he truly developed it.
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Last but not least, he insisted on exposing the epistemological warfare, denouncing the dionysian sex, drug and rock’nd roll “culture”, skillfully and surreptitiously downgrading the possibilities of the human mind, making people easier to corral.
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The Frankfurt school, the ‘societal’ changes, the ‘ecological’ battles were all used as red herrings to the true socio-economic struggles. Mai 68 in France was a color revolution to get rid of Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970), try to explain that to a Parigot bobo completely brainwashed by the contemporary doxa !
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His analysis of Universal History is outstanding. Webster Tarpley, a brilliant historian having writtten ” 9-11, terror made in USA ” has been part of his organization.
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For those having difficulties to watch “The Revival of the American System with Chinese Characteristics”, I suggest 12 sessions of 5 minutes. I’m not being sarcastic, sometimes simplistic means can give great results…
To recapitulate, if you are not filthily rich or do not wield formidable power (meaning you don’t have money to give or positions to offer) but are willing to devote some time in order to be useful for the cause of an advanced & refined mankind :
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FOCUS ON PROMOTING THE BELT & ROAD INITIATIVE AND TRY TO EDUCATE AS MANY PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE ON EPISTEMOLOGICAL WARFARE
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Which is (the worst form of slavery is the mental form, please remember Plato’s allegory of the Cave and don’t forget one of the six E s is Evangelization) because both are powerful multi-generational (not only do we need to understand Real Politik but also that a great Endeavor will take the efforts of many people over more than one generation) tools to escape the clutch of the imperial aka British system.
And a message for all thos neocons who wants World War III with China & Russia…
Things are not going to happen as you think.
Never forget that the Chinese are super patriotic
If you try to hurt the Chinese now, they will SLIT YOUR FUCKING THROAT.
Of course, there is no one at the helm in the United States these days. What ever professional diplomatic corps that used to exist has been sacked and replaced with toadies who are just political donors. And they have no concept of the shit-load of trouble that they are walking into.
It absolutely reminds me of the Hungarian and Polish leadership that tried to take on Genghis Khan and his hordes of blood-thirsty killers.
Here’s a Chinese preschool.
Do not mess with the Chinese.
Now, a few years older. Here’s a video of Chinese “cub scouts” (Optional in Elementary School)…
Elementary School.
Next a video of Chinese Middle School Students (Mandatory. Everyone in China get’s this training.). When a kid is in middle school, they must attend Summer training at different levels. They make up the basis for the conscript army.
Chinese mandatory Middle School Training.
Next a video of some Chinese Para-Military. There are all sorts of para-military forces embedded within China. This group is a regulatory arm of the Corruption Police. Of course, they are all trained in the warrior arts.
Chinese Paramilitary.
Next video shows some of what China’s professional warrior class can do. China is hardly a “peasant army fielding old AK-47 clones”.
China’s professional warriors.
And of course, everyone knows that China is no match for America’s professional military with it’s “Warrior Culture”, massive numbers of high-technology weapons, and the “never-give-up-Rambo spirit!
sayed salahuddin @sayedsalahuddin - 11:59 UTC · 22 Aug 2021
Almost all parts of Afghanistan enjoying peace for a week now after over 42 years of war, but Kabul airport has become the most violent part.
We went from the history behind Afghanistan and the various military empires that tried to conquer it, to the gnashing of the teeth and wailing of the American cheerleaders who are in shock and pain.
Then, we started to review how this obscure nation fit in with the global power play and that means the “collective West” and Asia. Where “Asia” is China, Iran and China together.
Then, if that isn’t enough…
…we see that China continues to grow.
And even though the “news” about China is all doom and gloom…
… no one in the “West” has any idea of what a force China is right now, and how insurmountable a united Asia is against the fat, weak, corrupt United States and it’s vassals.
There is no question that for the twenty years that the United States has been in Afghanistan not one American leader read any history…
… not one American diplomat or military general or expert had any idea about what was actually going on in that section of the globe.
And since Afghanistan was such an enormous drain in money, resources, and “news”, once can only imagine the poverty of United States ability in other Geo-political arenas.
The best thing for the United States to do right now is to die quietly in a hole somewhere and allow the rest of the world to carry on.
Provocative?
Yes, I suppose, but it is accurate.
Proud transgender American military.
We know that with the enormous outlay of military funding that the United States fully plans to engage China in a serious war. And they plan to do it not only in the South China Sea, but on Chinese soil. This will not work out the way that everyone plans.
As I have said before, China is a serious, serious nation, that does not play.
Video of the future of Africa with Chinese help.
China is a serious serious nation that does not play.
Read my Deagel reports, if you don’t know what I am talking about. Right there is everything that you need to know about the future of the world. And what you can do about your little part of it.
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
How’s that for a “mouth full” headline. Nah. Not the kind of stuff that you were expecting from ol’ MM was it. But (I am so sorry) I am being “pestered” to draft this up. And it truly is “pestering”, and I don’t like it ok? And don’t bother asking why I am publishing this article now, of all times. I haven’t a clue.
And that’s the way it works, don’t you know. So just enjoy the read, and if this article resonates with you, then great for you! Otherwise, just get some wine, a fine companion, and eat some delicious tasty food… stuff that you can savor and smell.
Oh, and one more thing.
In this analysis we are going to entertain a professional Remote Viewer for his comments on the Deagel Forecast. And given that I am being so insanely driven to push this article out (for God know what reason), I am including the entire conversation with him.
And it goes everywhere.
So buckle up. Some of it might be important to some people, and some of it might not be to others. So just relax and take from this article what is important to you, and ignore the rest.
OK?
Introduction
The Deagel corporation is a minor branch of US military intelligence, one of the many secretive organizations which collects data for high-level decision-making purposes and prepares confidential briefing documents for agencies like the National Security Agency, the United Nations, and the World Bank.
It’s a work of “love” from some retired intelligence assets, and like most of us ex-spooks, it’s hosted outside of the United States. Just like MM here. We have VERY good reasons to do so. Reasons that are far too complex to get involved in right this moment. But we DO KNOW what we are doing. Never doubt that.
Deagel is known, for example, to have contributed to a Stratfor report on North Korea. With this kind of pedigree, Deagel should be seen as a legitimate player in the intelligence community and not merely a disinformation asset.
If so, then it must be assumed that its population predictions for 2025, as well as its industrial output predictions on a nation-by-nation basis, are based on strategic assumptions which are shared and well understood by other players in the intelligence community.
Deagel predictions.
Until the start of the Covid ‘pandemic’ many commentators were perplexed by the Deagel spreadsheets.
Perhaps they were part of a psychological operation?
However, in light of recent events, we are obliged to consider a possible connection between the projected massive reduction in the population of certain countries, forecast by Deagel, and other trends going on right now.
Trends?
What trends?
Devaluation of the Dollar with an out of control American Congress.
Strange insistence in using a mRNA vaccine instead of a traditional “dead host” vaccine.
A global pandemic that America is just fucking up royally.
Desire for a war with China.
Desire for a war with Russia.
Desire for a war with Iran.
China, Russia and Iran forming a unified Asian block.
Race war in the United States.
Progressive onslaught and control of all electronic media.
Looming bubbles in just about every facet of American life.
And so on and so forth…
The Deagel scenario
The Deagel corporation was asked to explain the thinking behind its strange set of population and output figures. While we cannot take its response at face value, it nonetheless paints a picture that is very similar to the world we now see. And this is not an exaggeration at all.
Consider…
[1] A fake American GDP
In short, they argued that the US government has greatly over-stated the real level of US GDP. This means the country will be fatally exposed when the next economic crisis strikes.
They also take into account a “pandemic scenario” – their term – caused by Ebola or a similar pathogen. This, they say, would cause an exceptionally high death rate, placing extreme pressure on healthcare providers across America and greatly reducing economic output.
[3] A financial crisis with the US Dollar
This pandemic could quickly spiral out of control and create an international financial crisis:
“The collapse of the Western financial system will wipe out the standard of living of its population while ending Ponzi schemes such as the Stock Exchange and the pension funds.”
Trying to figure it out…
They try to explain the predicted dramatic fall in the population of the US by reference to a massive outward migration of millions of Americans seeking economic relief in other countries, but this is unconvincing.
They seem to concede this themselves when they add a further explanatory factor – widespread suicide in response to economic distress. But this too is unsatisfactory.
Their primary reason for predicting a colossal drop in the population of the US by 2025 – a fall of up to 70 percent – is the scale and severity of the alleged pandemic.
As they put it,
“the death toll will be horrible.”
Map
Here’s a map showing the predictions made in the forecast. You see that Asia is unscathed, while America and the West suffer horribly.
Japan will lose 1/5th of it’s population!
Australia will lose a full 1/3rd of it’s population!
Canada will lose 1/4th of it’s population!
The United States will lose almost 3/4ths of it’s population!
Timing
By all accounts, historically, the massive drop in population at this time is validated by the “Fourth Turning” predictions. The date and timing all agree with the Strauss and Howe model for America.
This model is United States centrist, and acknowledges that different societies and different cultures have different “turnings” and generational changes.
Casualty Figures
The casualty figures are gargantuan. They are over and above what one would associate with such things as…
Civil War = 2% to 10%.
Genocide = from 25% to 99% of the population.
For example; 77.0% of the Tutsi population of Rwanda. 85 percent of the population in the Hutu ethnic group. In Cambodia, 70% of the total Cham population, were exterminated.
World War = 6% to 9% of the population (World War II).
Global Military Empire = 11%
GenghisKhan’slegacyisoneofaruthless warrior who dominated unimaginable amounts of territory. He slaughtered about 40 million people and reduced the populationofEarthby 11 percent.
Pandemic = 15% to 60%
The Bubonic plague was a deadly pandemic that wiped out a massive chunk of population in the World during the mid-1300s. In Europe alone the plague wiped out nearly 50% of Europe’s population.
Nuclear War = 30% to 85%
Economic Collapse = 1% to 30%
An American centered fiasco
Based on historical precedents, and the Deagel predictions, these kinds of numbers and figures can only be associated with an American centered disaster. Not really a global one. Because if it was a global disaster, then the causality figures would be more uniform.
.
The most likely candidate is a combination of two (or possibly more) contributors listed above. Which are…
Candidate disaster combinations
Here are some of my suggested candidate combinations that allow us to better understand how those enormous population causality figures could be reached…
Global pandemic, AND genocide.
Global pandemic, AND civil war WITH genocide.
Global pandemic, AND collapsing Military Empire, WITH war.
Global Military Empire AND Nuclear War WITH Global pandemic.
So, in my mind, as I understand things, the ONLY way that the kinds of predictions (as determined by the forecast) can manifest is through a combination of some very horrific events that happens in one centered geographic area.
So how did they come up with these numbers?
Indeed, these are truly shocking numbers and values. So shocking, that it’s simply not an extrapolation of trends. As an extrapolation of trends show things either moving towards “infinity” or falling into a “black hole”. But there is no way to be able to quantify that data into numbers.
So, how the heck did they come up with these values that they are using? And they have come up with specific values and specific data. And it is all very, highly specific. Such as this…
Specific Data and values
Here’s some of the very specific data that they have come up with…
The countries that will suffer the greatest reduction in population, according to Deagel (as per 2014), are:
That’s pretty darn specific. Don’t you know.
Remote Viewing
Remote viewing is defined as the ability to acquire accurate information about a distant or non-local place, person or event without using your physical senses or any other obvious means.
It’s associated with the idea of clairvoyance, seemingly being able to spontaneously know something without actually knowing how you got the information.
It is also sometimes called “anomalous cognition” or “second sight.”
Many of us experience this from time to time as an intuitive flash of insight that turns out to be correct.
Many well-known entrepreneurs and business people, like George Soros, Conrad Hilton, Thomas Alva Edison and Akio Morita, the co-founder of Sony, have attributed their business success to this ability.
Remote Viewing Sketch.
And (of course) we’ve all seen natural psychics perform seemingly amazing feats of mental skill on TV.
The difference between natural psychic receptivity and remote viewing is that the latter is a trained skill, a controlled process, that the average person can learn to do, to some degree or another.
History of the Remote Viewing Program
Remote viewing in modern times originates from the U.S. Government’s interests in psychic espionage during the Cold War with the Soviet Union.
Back during World War II, the Soviets had heard rumors that the U.S. Military were using psychic communications at sea.
While it’s not clear now whether this was really true, the Soviets believed it. And that is, after all, all that matters.
They started their own psychic training within their military and intelligence agencies many decades ago.
The U.S. Government learned of this program and, in the early 1970’s, decided to create their own remote viewing CIA training program.
Stanford Research Institute Remote Viewing Tests
Money and resources (from the Federal government, and buried in the R&D section of the government) were given by the Central Intelligence Agency to Stanford Research Institute (SRI).
That that time, they were located on the campus of Stanford University. And their charter was to test the possibility of remote viewing.
The goal was to disprove that psychic functioning was real.
No one wanted it to exist.
It was the last thing that the military establishment wanted to worry about, especially if it was a new Soviet threat.
Physicists Russell Targ and Hal Putoff working at SRI were tasked with determining whether Extrasensory Perception (ESP) and related phenomena were real or not.
Physicists Russell Targ and Hal Putoff.
So they set about to locate some natural psychics and test them.
Their first subject was artist, psychic and scientist Ingo Swann of New York City. He had demonstrated an ability to accurately “remote view” weather in various American cities.
Ingo Swann.
He had published some articles about ESP and psychokinesis (the ability to mentally affect distant objects) when he worked with researcher Gertrude Schmeidler of City College, New York (and the American Society for Psychical Research.)
Working with Schmeidler, Swann had demonstrated that he could affect the temperature of thermistors sealed in insulated thermos canisters twenty-five feet away from him. Which (of course) was an amazing feat.
At a friend’s request, Swann sent his published findings to Putoff.
Upon reviewing them, Putoff asked Swann to come to SRI and demonstrate his abilities.
The first thing they had Swann do was to see if he could affect a super sensitive, (electromagnetically shielded) quark-detector buried five feet underground in a cement floor.
Every time Putoff asked Swann to think about the detector (used to detect subatomic particles), the readings from the device would noticeably deviate from the baseline readings.
Putoff was convinced that Swann had special abilities and so the program to test and develop remote viewing began.
Expanded Scope
At first they had Swann view objects in a box: this was a practice he was good at but quickly became bored with.
Swann said to them:
“I can view anything in the universe, this is a trivialization of my abilities.”
A few days later he came up with a new way to do remote viewing: viewing map coordinates.
Targ and Putoff went out and bought the biggest atlas they could find at the local book store.And so they started taking coordinates from the map, putting the coordinates in individual blank envelopes, and had Swann image the places at those coordinates at random.
Global Atlas.
Swann’s coordinate map viewing turned out to be a big success.
But, of course, critics were everywhere. No one in the military, or the government wanted to believe the findings. Indeed, a critic at the Central Intelligence Agency suggested that maybe he had memorized the entire global map.
Swann went on to use randomly chosen numerical coordinates to view randomly selected events, people and structures around the planet. He performed equally well using this coordinate-based viewing system.
Overview
Some quick notes on Remote Viewing.
Remote Viewing occurs in a sterile workspace. Most reports of paranormal events come from outside the science lab, and when research is done on these cousins of RV, it is somewhat like examining the natural history of some specimen brought in from the wild. When clairvoyance (RV’s closest relative) was done under controlled conditions for research purposes, it was generally targeted at such things as cards or colors, since these sorts of targets allowed easy scoring of experimental results. Remote viewing, on the other hand, was actually developed and first explored in a research setting . And the sorts of targets used for RV research differed from those typically used in other psi research. Targets chosen for “viewing” include geographic locations, hidden objects, and even such things as archaeological sites and space objects about which it was expected that ground truth would eventually become known, so that the viewer’s accuracy could be checked.
Remote Viewing is a combination of observed sensings. Unlike most other psi disciplines, remote viewing is not precisely one thing, but rather an integrated “cocktail” of various phenomena. Despite the “viewing” part of the term, remote viewing is only partly about experiences associated with what might be visible about a target. It also involves mental impressions pertaining to the other senses, such as sounds, tastes, smells, and textures, as well as limited telepathy-like effects, and in some cases just plain intuitive “knowing.” RV owes some of these qualities to the fact that lessons learned from research in clairvoyance, telepathy, and even out-of-body experiences — traditionally considered separate disciplines — played a role in its development. In remote viewing, the viewer not only verbalizes what he or she is perceiving, but usually also records in writing, in sketches, and sometimes even in three-dimensional modeling the results of the remote viewing episode, or “session.”
Remote Viewing is Structured. Remote viewing tends to be more structured than other psi disciplines. In some important varieties of remote viewing, viewers follow specific scripted formats. These formats are designed to enhance the viewer’s performance in various ways, such as to better deal with mental “noise” (stray thoughts, imaginings, analysis, etc. that degrades the “psychic signal”) or to allow incoming data to be better managed. Some of these structural methodologies are widely used. Other methods are more personal. An individual remote viewer, for example, might through trial and error develop his or her own customized approach.
Strict science-based protocol. Proper remote viewing is done within a strict science-based protocol. As mentioned, the remote viewer is kept unwitting of either the nature or identity of the target until after the session is completed. Except in training situations, the monitor (a sort of remote viewing “guide” or facilitator that may assist the viewer during the session) is also unwitting, and external clues or data about the target are carefully excluded. Sessions are conducted in a setting that prevents knowledge of the target “leaking” to the viewer. These measures are important to insure that the viewer does not receive hints or clues about the target in any way other than what would be considered “psychic.”
What is Remote Viewing?
Swann coined to term “remote viewing” to describe the process though you can question whether the information is actually remote to the viewer or whether the process is entirely visual.
Some people are more sensitive to auditory, kinesthetic or other types of sensory information and few viewers actually “see” the target very clearly.
Nonetheless, the name stuck and was sufficient to convince the intelligence agencies to fund the project.
Other viewers were also tasked to help Targ and Putoff understand remote viewing.
Pat Price, a former police commissioner from Burbank, CA also proved to be an excellent viewer. Price used his own system to view where he actually imagined that he was at the distant target site.
Pat Price.
His results were so good that the Central Intelligence Agency hired him to work for them directly.
Back East, another natural viewer Joe McMoneagle, also known as “Remote Viewer No. 1,” worked directly with the U.S. Army and the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Joe McMoneagle.
He was also tested and found to have amazing abilities to describe and sketch distant locations. Upon retirement, McMoneagle was awarded a Legion of Merit award, in part, for his five years of remote viewing missions for the military and various government agencies.
Coordinate Remote Viewing
However, Swann was able to describe, with great precision, what he was doing with his mind and attention as he was viewing, an ability other viewers did not have.
This allowed him to come up with a 6-stage system that could be taught to anyone, including you or me. It became known as CRV: Coordinate (or Controlled) Remote Viewing.
Swann’s CRV system is based on separating out signal from noise in your mind as you are viewing.
All the information is recorded during a session, but the viewer puts the noise in a different place on the paper than the signal.
At the end of the session, you can separate them from one another.
The method became the basis of the remote viewing protocols that the U.S. army taught to several groups of viewers.
The program lasted until 1995 when it was declassified; about $20 million was spent over the two decades. It is now part of "deep black" SAP programs and commercial programs for profit.
Princeton’s Random Number Generator Research
During this time, the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Lab (PEAR) at Princeton University, run by Bob Jahn and Brenda Dunn, also conducted twenty years of research into remote viewing.
They referred to this as the so-called “micro-psychokinesis”.
They conducted experiments on the effect of human intention on Random Number Generators (RNGs).
They found that, looking at the cumulative results of hundreds of thousands of trials, that their subjects could influence about 2 or 3 events per 10,000 random coin flip.
Thus being able to move the device away from true randomness by thought alone.
The odds of these results being by chance were an astonishing 375 trillion to one.
Open the Aperture of Your Perception
When someone asks you to describe something, you normally proceed to name what you’re perceiving using nouns and symbols.
"I see a man holding a dog". He is on a bench. He is in a park. The dog is hungry and barking at the food in the stall nearby.
Remote viewing is just the opposite.
You begin by describing your perceptions without trying to identify anything about what they mean or what the larger picture is.
Natural.
Noise.
Hungry feeling.
Green.
Resting.
You begin with basic gestalts: fundamental, general components of the target site like whether it’s manmade or living or natural. You then proceed to basic colors, smells, temperatures, shapes and sizes.
Only after you’ve been describing the target for a while can you proceed to more specific ideas and possibly names, nouns and more analytical types of information.
Follow the Ambiguity
Our minds are always attempting to draw conclusions from what we’ve perceiving at any given moment.
But this isn’t really desirable in a Remote Viewing exercise.
If you try to do this, you will always likely to be wrong. Which brings us to one of the great paradoxes of RV: the fainter the perception, the more likely it is to be accurate and the less likely you are to feel confident in that perception.
In other words, the more confident you are about your psychic perceptions during the session, the less likely those perceptions are to be correct!
And the less confident you feel, the more likely it is that your perceptions are right on. How’s that for a paradox?
Someone familiar with the military viewing program once told me that if a viewer finished a session and said with confidence “I nailed it!,” that viewer’s session would be thrown in the garbage. A good session is one in which the viewer has no idea what they’ve been doing or whether it’s accurate or not.
This is very different from the way our educational system, which stresses linear and rational thinking, trains us to deal with acquiring and processing information.
Eventually, you see the benefits: you learn to trust your intuition more and don’t necessarily need to rationalize everything before you take action. You become more spontaneous which can often be a good thing if you’re used to over-thinking things in your life.
Scientific Analysis of the Remote Viewing Program
When the RV program was declassified, one of the two people asked to evaluate the program was statistician Jessica Utts, the head of the American Statistical Association.
She concluded:
“Using the standards applied to any other area of science, it is concluded that psychic functioning has been well established. Arguments that these results could be due to methodological flaws in the experiments are soundly refuted.Effects of similar magnitude to those found in government-sponsored research at SRI and SAIC (another government sponsored think tank) have been replicated at a number of laboratories across the world. Such consistency cannot be readily explained by claims of flaws or fraud.”
And researcher Dean Radin, doing very complex meta-analyses using the results of many studies about psychic perception over many decades, came to the same conclusion.
Looking at the entire population, not just trained viewers, RV is a weak effect, about four to eight percent higher than expected if we were only using our physical senses to gather information: yet, it’s consistently there in everyone.
How Does Remote Viewing Work?
So RV is scientifically proven to work.
But how?
What’s going inside the viewer’s body and mind? How do they access far away information with such great accuracy?
You can pick your favorite explanation but the truth is, no one knows for sure. But my feeling is that it has something to do with resonance, vibration and frequency on the quantum level. And to this end I have generated explanatory template maps for the MWI.
Right brain thinking tends to be free flowing, intuitive and descriptive while left brain thinking is more analytical, linear and symbolic.
Good remote viewers learn to distinguish their own left and right-brain thinking.
They’re good at discerning the difference between the two and can separate signal from noise. Remote viewing tends to be more more accessible to the right-brain type.
Picking Up Signals Through Vibrational Resonance
Where does the information come from?
Well, if you look around the space wherever you are at the moment, the air will seem empty: you can’t see the air with your eyes. But you also know that it’s filled with electromagnetic information from cell phone signals, radio waves, TV signals, etc. So empty space can be filled with information coming to you from distance. Just because you can’t see it, doesn’t mean it isn’t there.
That information is coming to you through a type of vibrational resonance that fills space-time.
When you have a receiver that is tuned to the frequency of those signals, you’ll pick them up.
All you need to do after that is to amplify the signal.
Remote viewing doesn’t necessarily amplify the signal of what you’re viewing, but it does teach you how to reduce your own mental noise, your monkey mind.
Yeah, but what about Deagel? And the future?
I argue that there must have been some technique, other than “extrapolation of data applied to historical models“, to come up with the data that Deagel presented. And the only publicly known method is via Remote Viewing.
Of course, there is the time-travel, and 5th and 7th dimensional travel mechanisms.
I have discussed this elsewhere.
And those are indeed valid methods of "time travel;", but I do not believe that they are actually being used at this time, in this case.
Remote Viewing The Future
Remote viewing the future is possible because time does not exist and therefore it is possible to reach out and link with events that are happening in a future “now” upon the world-line MWI template map.
This can only be done for a relatively short period into the future because the further one looks into the future, the more variables can change what happens.
What happens is that, based on what has occurred or what is going on at the moment, a sort of inevitability occurs.
An Apple Tree Example
For instance, if an apple falls from a tree, there is a strong possibility that it will fall to the ground.
Now, if at a certain time a person walks towards the tree, is it possible to predict if the apple will hit the person on the head or not? Many variables will come into play that permit the apple to hit the person on the head – or not – so it is not usually possible to predict with absolute certainty such an event.
Under an apple tree.
A remote viewer looks out along timelines and picks up the most dramatic events that are likely to occur. Then the person tries to see what is likely to happen. But, as nothing is totally certain, they can only predict with greater or lesser accuracy.
The events along any timeline are quite simply projections of “now” events. The “now” moment is constantly altering but each succeeding “now” moment is dependent on the preceding one to a certain extent.
But given the over all MWI template that most people seem to be using, it can become relatively easy to Remote View upon this template and describe a future that will exist for a wide selection of people.
So, to describe it simply, if one looks at a series of single moments in time, for instance concerning the apple growing on a tree, we can see that the apple ripens and, eventually, falls from the tree. The exact moment when the apple will depart from the tree cannot be predicted but we know that it will eventually fall.
Once it starts to fall it is simple to imagine that it will hit the ground.
So, imagination is brought into play to predict the future from the last “now” moment. That is why remote viewing is so difficult. Once we start to use imagination, we are in murky waters.
World Line Template
While every consciousness has their own pre-birth template maps that they follow, most of the maps are derived from a “universal template”.
Most people all share the same "universal template" from which to develop their initial "pre-birth world-line maps" from.
And thus the “terrain” is similar to each others maps (more or less to some degree).
Even though every one is different, and everyone has their own world-line map that they are following, they are all very similar to each other for the vast bulk of humanity (well, at least geographical clusters of people, anyways.)
And people, on these MWI maps, follow them, interacting with other consciousnesses along the way, generating “clusters” or world-lines that are all tied together.
Most people find living on their world-line maps to be easy if they "just go with the flow". They just follow them and "don't climb those peaks" and just go along with what the relative "winds blow" in their lives. And this all creates a situation where world-lines (on different maps) cluster together.
Never the less, the vast bulk of humanity will act as herded animals and cluster together towards similar goals and objectives.
And thus, the Deagel forecast is one that is based upon this clustering of lines. They are apparently doing so for various corporate reasons, being profit forecasts and other such concerns. And to them the map would look similar to an individual map, only that the vector would be for a group of consciousnesses, not just for one singular consciousness.
Such as this…
The remote viewed future for America.
Of course, and I have stated this over and over again, you have the ability to change your world-line template map, and if you don’t like it you can “slide off it” and get on one that you do like.
Running affirmation prayer campaigns for safety.
Of course, the inertia of millions of people following “the herd” and the clustering of their world-lines is going to be rather difficult to stop. But what you can do is slide off their template and move on your own path. And while there might be all sorts of very bad things going on, and the “news” will amplify this, a person who is conducting their Affirmation Prayer Campaigns diligently will be able to avoid a great deal of hardship and turmoil.
Anyways, back to the matter at hand…
So Deagel came up with this forecast back in 2012 that pretty much stated that a lot of bad things were going to happen to America. And by 2025, the nations would not look anything like it looked like in 2012. They predicted a die off of a very significant proportion of the American population and a collapse of the economy, military might and governance.
Then come 2020, we have the Coronavirus.
And many of the things that they predicted, as outlandish as they sounded back then, now seems frighteningly plausible.
Because their predictions were so detailed, and outlandish, it gives one pause to think. Especially now, as Hard-Right, Religious Zealots are blaming China for trying to kill off Christianity. HERE. Jeeze!
I strongly suspect that this forecast was derived though Remote Viewing activity in association with other calculus. And to this end, I consulted with an MM influencer and contributor, our resident Remote Viewing Expert; Blue NarWhal.
Thinking.
Blue NarWhal Comments
Blue NarWhal is a professional in the Remote Viewing Industry, and has done work for both the United States government and private industry. I asked him for his thoughts and opinions. Edited for clarity and for this venue.
BlueNarwhal:
Knowing most of the top remote viewers on a first name basis I do have some input for you here.
As you know the typical result of civilian allied military development projects, where real operational capability is developed, go through a bifurcation.
It is a bifurcation where one strand goes SAP deep black, and the other goes public debunk.
(You know) there's nothing to see here Fred, these are not the droids you are looking for, move along.
This has been repeatedly confirmed by the best viewers, that there is a whole range of deep black remote viewing corps that...
BlueNarwhal:
...That has multiple purposes.
One purpose is human to alien communication.
Another is strategic advantage and nonlinear intelligence, called “quantum viewing” now.
Predictive viewing, is as Courtney says, subject the multiple worlds branching.
The targets are often collecting data from multiple MWI strands to see variations and research options.
BlueNarwhal:
Subject to the MWI factors.. (corrected).
Here below are my top ten candidate causality strands that could lead to major USA population die off in 4 years. I have gleaned these from my RV associates, and other sources, such as really good verified psychics I personally know, and meta analysis ...
Since each candidate has a lot of detail to go with it, I will start with the titles.
I think the push to write about this is we are at a global inflection point for breakdown and revolution 4th turning style (Howe and Strauss).
Following parsimony, certain candidates are just more likely and bakes in the cake.
But the essential question of where Edwin got his forecast from I think may well have been his contacts in shadow military and recently retired.
The benefactors and the malevolence on the non-human sources have been predicting this die off as well, and some even (have been) blaming the coming die on entirely ET allied to human elites.
The reason being to enact a scorched Earth policy in response to their getting defanged by the benefactor balance aliens.
But we don’t need ET in the mix to accomplish this. So likely other factors are more probable.
BlueNarwhal:
Now I know you are more likely to want to see how we can understand the dynamics from an entirely human causality POV, because that can hold more receptive water...
BlueNarwhal:
Source data candidate of the Deagel USA population reduction forecast and no it wasn’t a typo.
Forecasted for 2025 "top candidate causation" of drastic reduction in USA population ...
[1] Long time plans by globalist elite. Goal for population reduction to stave off CC ruining so much of their asset base in preparation, and thus predicting massive depopulation since the early 2000s.
[2] Long time plans for denationalizing the globe. With the de facto lead player winner likely China, having certain depopulation effects on the most resistant nationalists. (or in other words the "gun toting" USA population.)
[3] China retakes Taiwan. And (foolishly) Japan jumps in to defend them, USA jumps in to defend Japan. Chinese proxy North Korea nukes Hawaii and San Francisco. Followed by a myriad of tactical nuclear events (and chem warfare covertly) from western elite to make their own survival deal with new China global leadership
[4] Virtuous genocide of the vaxxed by the series binary weapon scheme.
[5] Virtuous genocide of the unvaxxed by the vaxxxed totalitarian biomedical martial law state proxy mobs. Since they cannot get the military to do the bidding, UN internment camps spring-up across the USA
[6] Societal Shift. A 4th turning Piscean top down group-schoolers to Aquarian bottom up individualist SOCs - societal shift
[7] Bubbles all break. Global currency crash, petrodollar crash, dollar hyperinflation.
[8] Natural calamities aggravated with the above. Combined with 5 year super drought, massive famine, urban die offs with no resources, more pandemic, more CC extremes, followed by mini ice age super freeze.
[9] Civil war population reduction outcome. With breakdown of US between red and blue, which are unvaxxed and vaxxxed as psychological warfare dehumanization victims in both directions
[10] Vaxxed mRNA die off from runaway variant evolution in the vaxxed bodies, though blamed on unvaccinated, within 4 years 65% of those vaxxed die.
- on this last one, my theory I developed through my own remote viewing is specifically sorcerers apprentice runaway that creates Monsanto like terminator seed immune systems.
I have a short detail on that, let me grab it...
BlueNarwhal:
But before detailing that, here is another ingredient...
CyberPolygon
OK. We are going to get off the subject for a spell. Don’t worry too much about it. Just go with the flow. If it interests you, then great. If not, then chill out.
BlueNarwhal:
On the Cyberpolygon, of which I have been aware for a long time.
After all, since I am a cybersecurity professional, I am well aware of this.
This will the incidence of a behemoth cyber attack.
This will occur soon after all the PR about Cyberpolygon cybersecurity (hits the "news"). As such, it will give the government authorities great “cover” so no one can claim they were asleep at the switch when a national scale false flag cyber attack occurs.
It will be an attack of such severity that it is create adequate national security threat pretext for an “internet martial law” to ensue.
A situation will occur that can more effectively suppress the so-called "Vaxx misinformation".
This will begin by opening the door to authorities literally shutting down the DNS of any and all websites.
As well as interdicting all text messaging traffic that is deemed misinformation by their algorithms.
No of course, nothing to see here, more along. Get help. Get back on your meds. Get jabbed immediately. To save us all!
A false flag cybersecurity attack is intended to accomplish the following objectives:
[1] Stop unsanctioned crypto-currency transactions,
[2] Stop any online resistance to vaxxing,
[3] Stop the ability for the vaccine resistant to organize, and
[4] Stop any dissent to the great reset that will occur when the stock market crashes (due in part to high rates of deaths among the vaccinated, and the seemingly endless new lockdowns.)
The great reset will be touted as virtuous and compassionate.
The creeping installation of UN run internment camps all over the US for the unvaccinated will be hailed as life saving.
This will be especially true as the unvaccinated are now defined as high risk and potential terrorists.
Dependence of the populace on the towing lines of the government narrative will reach an all time high and consolidation of totalitarian power will be complete!
https://threatpost.com/cyber-polygon-2021-towards-secure-development-of-digital-ecosystems/167661/omplete.
Welcome to George Orwell’s worst nightmare.
Monsanto-like “terminator seed” immune systems
And just like that, my sources become absorbed into the blob that has become the “great Vaxx vs. unVaxx debate”.
Sigh. It only happens with Americans inside of America. If you talk with people outside of America, you just won’t hear this kind of stuff.
I have no problem with use of an injection to control the population is feasible. I have no problem with evil people using it to control others. I have no problem with reading about the various ideas that people have on this.
But…
Keep in mind, that all of this is a side distraction from the “big event” what ever it might be. And I personally find it hard to believe that vaccinations are a major part of a big “shake down reset event”.
A part of it YES.
But the main part? NO.
Here, Blue NarWhal goes on…
The dirtiest secret is they installed Monsanto-like “terminator seed” immune systems on a large chunk of the planetary population.
How?
If you don’t get the next booster your immune system will no longer work and you will likely die next variant season. Taking the jab once makes it necessary to take jabs for life.
I told this to xXx and just a couple friends 6 months ago but felt it would be so incendiary to post it anywhere back then.
I still haven’t.
When I first thought of it this way it was too horrible a thought to even imagine and I thought I must be getting too paranoid. And I am not a paranoid person, just a good data collector.. like yourself MM:)
But now….
All the immune systems of the vaxxed incubate or evolve the next deadly variants that precisely escape the last booster just like poor use of antibiotics incubated and evolved antibiotic resistant bacteria. In the case of covid evolution of variants it is the exact same thing.
The only thing they desperately need to pull this multi trillion dollar caper off is to avoid blame for designing the entire thing to operate this way.
If they can mentally and emotionally program the vaxxed to believe only the unvaccinated are variant factories then they can get away with many trillions in profit.
Dehumanization of the unvaxxed gives them cover and profit to the moon.
The truth is the unvaxxed do not evolve the variants.
All variants have started soon after introductions of the vaxx in different countries or during the large trials in those countries.
The evidence is incontrovertible if one reads the real science that is not being faked.
The CDC even recently recommended creating nationwide internment camps for the unvaccinated to keep the vaxxed safe! See how insidious the plot really is?
Of course you do.
But now they will brazenly lie about variants only coming from the unvaxxed even when the evidence is becoming overwhelming to the contrary.
The mob will be programmed to literally want to exterminate the vermin unvaxxed.
They will - to the last - direct all the anger of the vaxxed dying from covid variants on the unvaxxed.
They will gin up a sense of being virtuous to want to send unvaxxed vermin to death camps.
You know this to be true.
History repeating itself now with the 4th Reich Blue Nazis. You feel me? It won’t be a yellow star but a red covid patch that the unvaxxed will be forced to wear. Don’t believe it will come to this?
Not long to wait and find out at this point.
The game is afoot
I totally am nauseous about being right about such terrible things! It’s really just too depressing and insane to believe. But I thought I was insane for thinking the shot was a terminator seed immune system ploy. Now it is becoming entirely true and will continue to be born out.
And sorry, no, you cannot reason with loved ones to not get boosters. The messenger will definitely be shot and reviled.
The lines have been drawn.
Please pretty please tell me I’m wrong about this - I’ve never ever wanted to be more wrong about something in my entire life!
But this I believe will become obvious when millions of vaccinated begin to die from the next variant their own bloodstreams evolved. I am so already grieving the future loss of my family relatives.
Seriously.
Because it’s a lose lose game - get the booster to live another 6 months but at the same time getting foreshortens ones overall life span by another 15 to 20% each shot (that is of course if side effects don’t kill one within 3 weeks of the jab each time).
They actually believe they have pulled off the perfect crime to make trillions and trillions of dollars. That’s more than Carl Sagan’s billions and billlions of stars!
In this case only the paranoid may survive and the innocent follower sheep will perish or at the least become so dumb that the idiocracy movie will seem like a probability.
Brawndo, it’s got electrolytes! =
Pfizer, it’s got electro-spikes!
That’s why Zelenko said it’s a billion x better to have natural immunity.
Weaponizing CORRELATION VS CAUSATION
I know that all of this is a meandering maze off “the beaten path” of what the question was all about. But follow the train of thought. Believe it if you want, or don’t if you want. What ever you do, do not get swept up too far in it.
Don’t get lost in the maze.
Remember that this source is an “insider” in these matters regarding the United States government, and you owe it to hear what he has to say, because SOMETHING has set his mind down these paths. Right or wrong. Factual or fantasy.
Good or bad.
Right or wrong.
Like a little more of my esteemed lunacy?
Weaponizing CORRELATION VS CAUSATION
The CDC policy guidance to doctors is any death after 3 hours of injection to as much as 1 week after is only correlation and not causation.
The only side effect admitted to is a little “very rare” anaphylaxis.
Assignment of causation just so happens to destroy many life insurance payouts - I have collected many reports of that.
The emerging science does not support correlation but causation.
I have links to videos by more than a dozen esteemed doctors and researchers that support causation. But these are not the droids you are looking for, move along says the mainstream biomedical cartel.
There is a 4 part unholy alliance between the government, the media, big tech, and biopharma industry to suppress speech.
Predominantly speech about promising therapeutics.
They will deny causational evidence and malign and de-platform anyone of influence that departs from the “100% safe and effective” narrative.
The normalcy bias is reinforced constantly.
If you follow the money and power it becomes obvious that the unholy alliance is both making a fuck-ton of money and getting untold control and power which will never want to be relinquished.
People in government + big tech + media ownership are heavily invested in biopharma stocks.
Is that correlation or causation?
Correlation only of course. The rising tide floats all boats they say. Sure! Move along nothing to see here. Get the jab.
Are the 450,000 VAERS reports about side effects of which many thousands of deaths and tens of thousands of life long infirmities happening soon after vaxxing just correlation and not causation?
Is the now repeatedly verified presence of EMF responsive graphene oxide found in large quantity in the vaxxes, which right after injected respond to both magnets and EMF detectors only in the injected site, is that correlation or causality?
Is the well established (but totally denied by the CDC “experts”) safety and efficacy of vitamin D and Ivermection and zinc, which when generally adopted shows dramatic drops in death rates (over 85%) in dozens of studies in many countries, is that correlation or causation?
In every case the mainstream government sanctioned experts refuse to even consider the research into these therapeutics (that are all expired patents so there is no money in it for them) and which if were admitted as being effective would quixkly end the FDA’s Emergency Use Authorization - is that just correlation or is it causation?
When any esteemed doctor or pathologist or epidemiologist or Nobel Prize winner or vaccine researcher that worked at the head with Gates foundation (Moderna) or for Pfizer - when they risk their jobs and reputation to report any science that impeaches the authoritarian narrative - are immediately cat-called, maligned, suppressed and deplatformed as misinformation terrorists for reporting their scientific conclusions - is their research data only correlation and not causation?
When every single time I am around vaccinated people I really want to hang out outdoors to visit (without masks on) results in my having lung pain, headache, sore throat for several hours afterward (which then abates right after I dose Vitamin D, Quercetin, and Zinc).. is that correlation or causation? (I am not responsive to placebo and never expected or was afraid of hanging with my friends and relatives. But that is the consequence every time).
Are all the bad science and respected scientific journals who are then later forced to retract their highly celebrated therapeutic-denial studies that support the idea that effective therapeutics are nonexistent and dangerous (even though they are safer than aspirin) - is that situation correlation or causation to prevent losing Emergency Use Authorization and to suppress the idea there are real alternatives to jabbing because it fuels the antivaxxers?
Is the fact of even discussing the virus being bio-engineered was totally suppressed for over a year but now finally being admitted only very quietly in the halls of power, is that denial good science or bad science?
Is the fact that Fauci and DARPA and other cohorts jointly and covertly funded the Wuhan gain of function research through Peter Daszak, and then patented the spike protein injection using mRNA technology in early 2019 merely correlation or is it causation?
You see, the entire presumption of correlation over causation truly serves the interests of making money and creating more control over the populace.
When any and all scientific evidence about the dangers of the vaxx or availability of effective and safe therapeutics is quickly dismissed by the vacination stakeholder extreme bias, is that mere correlation or causation?
If the vaxxed have ever never actually read a single source scientific study but only trust the mouthpiece experts which support their normalcy bias that the vax is perfectly safe and effective, and that there are no effective therapeutics - is that denial and dehumanization of anyone suggesting otherwise only correlation or causation?
Well if you are a nice, caring, good and decent person who simply cannot believe the government would lie to you, or that the unholy alliance is evil and greedy, and that there is nothing to see here.
Move along and get the jab and shut up or be dehumanized.
If you disagree - and believe it’s all just random unfounded conspiracy theory that at best is only remote unfounded correlation and never ever possibly causation, then there is no reasoning with you.
No science that will convince you.
No evidence you will ever admit to.
No room for any doubt.
And everyone who says otherwise are likely to be filthy vermin white supremacist domestic terrorists who should be placed in internment camps to protect the vaxxed, then guess what?
We will all just have to wait and see how it all turns out and agree to disagree!
Correlation vs Causation is the defensive talking point for all those in the unholy alliance.
But now that all people resisting or refusing or promoting anything other than the party line about the the vaxx are literally being defined as domestic terrorists.
Any evidence they report is labeled misinformation, well then, good luck with labeling 50% of the populace of the US as terrorists who should be dehumanized and interned to keep the vaxxed population safe.
Are these policies going to be correlation to and not causation of a potential civil war between the red check folks and the blue check folks?
What a pleasant thought. How unifying. How desperate. How immature. How greedy. How all so sweetly patriotic! Yeah sure, I got a couple bridges to sell you. In fact, I got a dozen bridges to sell you, Get in line! Big discounts available. 🪂
Jesus! Man. All I care about is the Deagel Forecast. And here we find that one of my top “to go” people on the Remote Viewing sciences has started connecting the vaccinations of Coronavirus in it’s mRNA form to a profit-scheme that will result in the deaths of millions.
It seems so far out.
But…
According to the 2012 Deagel Forecast, only those nations (that we see today) who are pushing the mRNA vaccine protocol (and who perhaps match up with the rant above) MATCH together.
BlueNarwhal:
H Christ! Are we having fun yet?
BlueNarwhal:
Just a few side notes I wrote over the last weeks... lol
BlueNarwhal:
And you my dear friend predicted all of it earlier this year and last year with the help of your benfactoring inputs as well!
Well, it is true that I predicted much of this kind of stuff. I will not deny that. But it doesn’t need to be so “in your face” and blunt. Does it?
My point is that I am being driven, and going crazy being pushed to push this article (about remote viewing and the Deagel Forecast) out the door as soon as possible, and as a side note, Blue NarWhal is dragging along this vaccination stuff alongside. So there MUST be a reason.
But is the reason important?
Let’s continue…
BlueNarwhal:
It’s war, not between China and US, but between elites and populace, between benefactors and malevolent overseers, between piscean and Aquarian change over, between satanic and holy, between horizontal and vertical evolution, and between last past patriarchy and future matriarchy, and between globalists and nationalists
BlueNarwhal:
We are arriving quite rapidly at the super size MEI inflection point where large scale global bifurcation occurs, and hence there is a tremendous urgency to communicate the big picture so the order and chaos agencies are seen for the agenda motivations they breathe MWI.
So human consciousness has more choices in the matter, so natural leaders that are needed will arise.
BlueNarwhal:
You of course have the Deagel 2020 change of heart write up right....? Worth pasting in here, since it is not nearly as wacky as my stack.
Amen to that!
Deagel 2020 revision to the original 2012 Deagel Forecast
BlueNarwhal:
Forecast disclaimer revision in 2020:
In 2014 we published a disclaimer about the forecast. In six years the scenario has changed dramatically.
This new disclaimer is meant to single out the situation from 2020 on-wards.
Talking about the United States and the European Union as separated entities no longer makes sense. Both are the Western block, keep printing money and will share the same fate.
After COVID we can draw two major conclusions:
[1] The Western world success model has been built over societies with no resilience that can barely withstand any hardship, even a low intensity one. It was assumed but now we’ve got the full hard confirmation beyond any doubt.
[2] The COVID crisis will be used to extend the life of this dying economic system through the so called “Great Reset.”
The Great Reset; like the climate change, extinction rebellion, planetary crisis, green revolution, shale oil (…) hoaxes promoted by the system; is another attempt to slow down dramatically the consumption of natural resources and therefore extend the lifetime of the current system.
It can be effective for awhile but finally won’t address the bottom-line problem and will only delay the inevitable.
The core ruling elites hope to stay in power which is in effect the only thing that really worries them.
The collapse of the Western financial system – and ultimately the Western civilization – has been the major driver in the 2012 forecast along with a confluence of crisis with a devastating outcome.
As COVID has proven Western societies embracing multiculturalism and extreme liberalism are unable to deal with any real hardship.
The Spanish flu one century ago represented the death of 40-50 million people.
Today the world’s population is four times greater with air travel in full swing which is by definition a super spreader.
The death casualties in today’s World would represent 160 to 200 million in relative terms but more likely 300-400 million taking into consideration the air travel factor that did not exist one century ago.
So far, COVID death toll is roughly 1 million people.
It is quite likely that the economic crisis due to the lock-downs will cause more deaths than the virus worldwide.
The Soviet system was less able to deliver goodies to the people than the Western one. Nevertheless Soviet society was more compact and resilient under an authoritarian regime. That in mind, the collapse of the Soviet system wiped out 10 percent of the population.
The stark reality of diverse and multicultural Western societies is that a collapse will have a toll of 50 to 80 percent depending on several factors.
But in general terms the most diverse, multicultural, indebted and wealthy (highest standard of living) will suffer the highest toll.
The only glue that keeps united such aberrant collage from falling apart is over-consumption with heavy doses of bottomless degeneracy disguised as virtue.
Nevertheless the widespread censorship, hate laws and contradictory signals mean that even that glue is not working any more.
Not everybody has to die.
Migration can also play a positive role in this.
The formerly (known as) second and third world nations are an unknown at this point. Their fate will depend upon the decisions they take in the future.
Western powers are not going to take over them as they did in the past because these (Western) countries won’t be able to control their very own cities let alone those countries that are far away.
If they remain tied to the former World Order they will go down along with the Western powers. However, they won’t experience the same kind of brutal decline that the Western powers will experience so brazenly. This is partially because they are poorer and (obviously) not diverse enough. Instead they are stronger than the Western powers because they are actually quite homogeneous. This is their advantage. And that they are used to deal with some sort of hardship. Though, not precisely the one that is coming.
If they switch to China they can get a chance to stabilize but will need to depend upon the management of their own resources.
We expected this situation to unfold and actually is unfolding right now.
With the November election triggering a major bomb if Trump is re-elected. (Did not happen.)
If Biden is elected there will very bad consequences as well.
There is a lot of bad blood in the Western societies and the protests, demonstrations, rioting and looting are only the first symptoms of what is coming.
However a new trend is taking place overshadowing this one.
The situation between the three great powers has changed dramatically.
The only relevant achievement of the Western powers during the past decade has been the formation of a strategic alliance, both military and economic, between Russia and China.
Right now the potential partnership between Russia and the European Union (EU) is dead with Russia turning definitively towards China. That was from the beginning the most likely outcome.
Airbus never tried to establish a real partnership but rather a strategy to fade away the Russian aerospace industry.
Actually Russia and China have formed a new alliance to build a long haul airliner.
Western Europe (not to mention the United States) was never interested in the development of Russia or forming anything other than a master slave relationship with Russia providing raw materials and toeing the line of the West.
It was clear then and today is a fact.
Russia has been preparing for a major war since 2008 and China has been increasing her military capabilities for the last 20 years. Today China is not a second tier power compared with the United States. Both in military and economic terms China is at the same level and in some specific areas are far ahead.
In the domain of high-tech 5G has been a success in the commercial realm but the Type 055 destroyer is also another breakthrough with the US gaining a similar capability (DDG 51 Flight IIII) by mid of this decade (more likely by 2030).
Nanchang, the lead ship of the Type 055 class, was commissioned amid the pandemic and lockdown in China.
Six years ago the likelihood of a major war was tiny.
Since then it has grown steadily and dramatically and today is by far the most likely major event in the 2020s.
The ultimate conflict can come from two ways.
[1] A conventional conflict involving at least two major powers that escalates into an open nuclear war.
[2] A second scenario is possible in the 2025-2030 time-frame. A Russian sneak first strike against the United States and its allies with the new S-500, strategic missile defenses, Yasen-M submarines, INF Zircon and Kalibr missiles and some new space asset playing the key role.
The sneaky first strike would involve all Russian missile strategic forces branches (bombers and ground-based missiles) at the different stages of such attack that would be strategic translation of what was seen in Syria in November 2015.
There was no report that the Russian had such a capability of launching a high precision, multiple, combined arms attack at targets 2,000+ kilometers away.
Western intelligence had no clue.
The irony is that since the end of the Cold War the United States has been maneuvering through NATO to achieve a position to be able to execute a first strike (nuclear) over Russia and now it seems that the first strike may still occur but the country finished would be the United States.
Another particularity of the Western system is that its individuals have been brainwashed to the point that the majority accept their moral high ground and technological edge as a given.
This has given the rise of the supremacy of the emotional arguments over the rational ones which are ignored or deprecated.
That mindset can play a key role in the upcoming catastrophic events.
At least in the Soviet system the silent majority of the people were aware of the fallacies they were fed up.
We can see the United States claims about 5G being stolen from them by China or hypersonic technology being stolen by Russia as the evidence that the Western elites are also infected by that hubris.
Over the next decade it will become obvious that the West is falling behind the Russia-China block and the malaise might grow into desperation.
Going to war might seem a quick and easy solution to restore the lost hegemony to finally find them into a France 1940 moment. Back then France did not have nuclear weapons to turn a defeat into a victory. The West might try that swap because the unpleasant prospect of not being Mars and Venus but rather a bully and his dirty bitch running away in fear while the rest of the world is laughing at them.
If there is not a dramatic change of course the world is going to witness the first nuclear war.
The Western block collapse may come before, during or after the war.
It does not matter.
A nuclear war is a game with billions of casualties and the collapse plays in the hundreds of millions.
He Concludes…
This website is non-profit, built on spare time and we provide our information and services AS IS without further explanations and/or guarantees. We are not linked to any government. Take into account that the forecast is nothing more than a game of numbers whether flawed or correct based upon some speculative assumptions. - Friday, September 25th, 2020
Interesting take and a refreshing relook at the Deagel Forecast
This 2020 is news to me.
BlueNarwhal:
Well then good food for thought to have the whole range of inputs for your writing️
BlueNarwhal:
The 2020 disclosure is plausible. I don’t know the Deagel folks but do know the Stratford
BlueNarwhal:
Stratfor folks and they are similar so I judge this statement from D to be a good picture on why their forecast changed, but it is just the cover story for the kind of crazy stuff I was thinking...
He continues discussing consciousness movement in the MWI.
Consciousness movement in the MWI by Blue NarWhal
BlueNarwhal:
Consciousness MWI
What if MWI travel physically nearly does not happen. Only Consciousness travel can change MWI multiverse bulk-phase lanes. (I think this is possible for many people. -MM)
Types of change:
Outer- The world changes and you don’t, mostly.
Inner- You change and the world stays the same, mostly.
Differences in both yourself and the world are apparent.
Sometimes multiverse A can fuse with an existing other you multiverse B and you find yourself situated in a life steam as you with additional foggy life memory if it’s a new you incoming to you.
So the physical idea of MWI consciousness sliding or jumping or transitioning between universes is all fine and good, if the universe fuses them while still remembering a bit of both for the transiting consciousness.
So what is happening in the balancing of consciousness?
The benefactors, [a]. prior to every substantial jump, and [b]. depending on the target MWI universe group the agency consciousness transited is going to, [c]. install locally entangled paraphysical sync kits in the target universe bodies.
If the small moves predict the large moves…
BlueNarwhal:
Or did I send this to you already and forgot who wrote it - I have too many unfinished and unsent drafts of stuff to you lol
BlueNarwhal:
I think I sent you this as I was assimilating your knowledge into my own framework of understanding... or does this contain specific paragraphs you wrote as I was working through my own take on it...?
BlueNarwhal continues in this interesting line of thought.
Please, everyone, realize that when I “get on a bender or am being pushed” to write or do something, it is SIGNIFICANT. This is most especially true if it is URGENT. It has been my experience that everything attached and associated with my actions may or may not be important, but that I need to include it in my calculus for some reason.
Remember, I only know what I know. The rest is up to youse guys.
Qubit qudit infinity cascade
Qubit qudit infinity cascade
The universal wave equation as the prime qubit/qudit operator
The superposition of hyperlight entangled with both all and one
The existence of alternate multiverse laminar access through qubit fields and spaces that preserve equal probability of all
The qic start of the universe
The bipolar symmetry as a collapsed expression of polar superposition archetype preservation inside local space.
And so on through all quantum wave guided evolutionary complexity manifest permutation
Where out of the seam of infinity and zero reflects dualistic possibility virtual states of plus one and minus one
The singular all encompassing quantum wave equation of the entire scope of the universe is a hyper qubit/qudit singularity function that entangles across all embedded sub wave time functions.
With that I’m alone inside my own quantum qubit infinity manifold, swaddled in my own bubble creation.
However, yet also paradoxically voluntarily and with love entirely embedded within a collective soul group alignment with and for whom I might sacrifice everything.
The distribution of probable and possible trajectories that deviate out our current world line all depend on soul relevance.
In the surface appearance of the other is a co-seeded by self created habitation for different groups of soul who are mutually co-anchoring commonality.
The Bipolar Multiverse
If I can change world lines…
The prime assumptions:
We each exist in our own fully independent universe, (or more properly stated we all live in our own multiverse probability of occurrence trajectories.)
Our consciousness interfaces own quantum creative agency with our present manifest reality.
Our consciousness is a step down of our soul energy into our physical existence.
The Soul could be synonymous with Higher consciousness, the physical reality synonymous with the unconscious and subconscious mind, and the personal self synonymous with the conscious mind relating to their own beliefs, choices, agreements which are in play, singularity issued from our soul.
On one pole you have each soul creating completely independent bubble universes for the habitation of consciousness in physicality.
On the other pole you have a vast population of people (and beings) in their independent universes all fervently believing they live together in a singular shared universe.
Searching for the better explanatory nomenclature.
One idea is there are many different possible collective worlds.
Each have independent persistence and existence separate from our local self awareness.
The dance of illusion of living in a shared universe doesn’t make it unreal, it just comports with how human consciousness creates its own Local Bubble universe.
There exists a spectrum of different novel Global Bubble universes within the multiverse – Earth for example. Their solidity and continuity is not dependent on just one soul’s creation.
That does not mean one’s soul cannot have its own Local Bubble universe make phantom copies of the mutual universes. No, not at all.
We each make illusory copies of whatever large scale mutual universe we believe we are in and do in our usual quarter second wave-particle personal universe lock-in tick rate.
We agree to adopt a set of influences associated to being there. We agree to allow our adoption include our own.
And out of resonant lock with those world lines.
This is really deep and takes the world-line narrative that I have been promoting to that of a mini-universe that we "copy" from the MWI template to live within. An interesting concept and something that I do need to think about. -MM
The multiverse offers all possibilities for soul and consciousness growth, but there is a landscape of alternate probability ‘movement options’ that can naturally occur.
In that landscape of options there are lesser and greater deviating alternate world line moves available to the consciousnesses.
A consciousness can naturally transit into greater degree world line deviance moves if their sum quantum resonance can both entrain and allow it to occur relative to its intrinsic greater/lower likelihood for the consciousness habitation should no active entrainment be engaged.
There are relative world line consciousnesses movement options – or quantum manifestation probabilities – within our personal universal quantum Everett wave function.
Wave function embedded harmonics that intersect with, and offer entrainment access pathways to different outcomes and sequences are a largely passive to activation by consciousness, despite all appearances to the contrary!
These world line trajectories exist out of all the possible alternate infinity qubits
I’m am able to couple with within the singular super wave function.
There are very far world-line variances or trajectories that could cause insanity to engage, except more safely in lucid dreams, but those are not readily accessible to manifest without extraordinary effort with relative shocking, disorienting as new subsumed manifest self-image and world-image radically shift into a new center of gravity of manifest conscious.
I entrain myself to, or am entrained by, various world line shifting options as I may choose, think and feel or choose to allow.
If I let it happen to me I am giving control over to my unconsciousness. If I make it happen I am controlling my own outcomes.
But my options are limited within the superpositional prepositional manifold of my consciousness encompassed by my soul.
It’s got a soul growth agenda.
I have a slight clue, and that’s it.
It about growing the capacity to selflessly nurture collective evolution, and to evolve the capacity to love, to intend, and to romance the soul of greater feminine archetype for inclusion and unity … or of the greater phi masculine archetype that expresses diversity and differentiation …across the many souls in the meta-verse of the multiverse.
Valiant match grids of entangled qubit superposition articulating ‘n’ spatial reduction (quantum collapse) possibilities accessing the multiverse diversity eternity continuum.
Embedded referential meaning and information
Single geometric symbols as containers of all that is sub-referentially defined and associated within its signularity symbols as culimated or concentrated.
Or, alternatively,
It’s subsumption symbols as instantiated singularity event horizon representations or gestalts of specific self-associated component elements held within their symbol mount.
Meaning, as you mount symbols over a subsumed domain of interrelated and contained data reference points…
You might get the accretion of information as explicit subsumption quantum linguistics…
…if that is such a thing…
Remote Viewing and the MWI
You all got a headache yet?
BlueNarwhal:
And this one on RV and MWI...
BlueNarwhal:A new working hypothesis:
Predictive remote viewer naturally quantum-couples or entangles their viewing range to be occur across multiple proximal world line probability trajectories in the multiverse.
Outlier world line target coupling by RVers occurs simply due to the collateral quantum attractive influence that higher relative disruptive novelty factors exert on selected souls and consciousnesses, e.g. a group of top viewers all view a disaster scenario that never happens in the world line from which the viewers viewed.
Yet it clearly happened in some nearby world line of greater variance to our own.
Some of these influences can be injected into remote viewing sessions.
This is due to the idea that individual remote viewers couple with targets via universal quantum field or “soul intelligence”.
This target coupling process can allow insertion of universal intent to bias the remote viewer to couple with a more novel world line but less likely or even unlikely the mutual world line viewers are viewing from.
This seems to a form of universal intent coupling with conscious individual.
The effect is to widen the multiple world line range of consideration aperture to provide high value insight about probabilities on other world lines about similar lurking but unmanifest novel high impact eventualities for the viewer world line. Could universal intent (being entangled for target coupling by remote viewers) be making individual intent see outcomes that might happen but likely won’t?
While working with universal intent sentient within the multiverse quantum super field encompassing all our souls and individual quantum clouds, there is no issue with requesting super sentience to limit target viewing hits to only the higher probability outcomes for the present world line in which the viewers reside. Universal intent is certainly willing to limit targeting to single world line or widen the reception aperture to proximal cluster of most probable but yet alternate world lines relative to an anchor referential consciousnesses.
Another different possibility is that remote viewing “picking up signals” of a proximal relative cluster of world lines is likely only possible because remote viewers are evolving souls and consciousness themselves. And despite their proclivity for rationally limiting future probabilities viewing to the world line in which they reside, multiple world lines will be viewed.
The viewers themselves, as do human beings in general, possess individually, in groups and even globally possess the natural ability to shift/move/migrate to different world lines. The quantum wave field of the soul focuses consciousness on inhabiting a physical embodiment existing in nearby variant world lines that furthers soul growth.
This is in turn depends on their in-body own associated outside influences, their own resonant thoughts, feelings, core beliefs and choices that normally bias target coupling to that which holds the greatest growth value for the viewer alone, unless they alter the target description to anchor its viewing parameters to exclude world line coupling that is less likely for the anchoring set of consciousnesses.
The result is remote viewing in any single timeline easily gets crosstalk from other multiverse proximal timelines. If proven, this may predict targeting protocols with means to bind multiverse RV target coupling range to viewing only the most probable eventuality for the timeline in which the remote viewer originates the session, thereby filtering the quantum coupling multiverse range to the most novel punctuated variations across a cluster of intersecting world lines.
For example, one may find some means to construct the RV target description to effectively limit multi-timeline target coupling to only the most large population probable common future for a selected anchor subjects in the timeline as of the session or as of an identified target date.
However, taskers for remote viewers can design target descriptions to block receptive coupling to less than large selected sample group collective likelihoods. This couples the target range to a more commonly desired and likely world line so that predictive RV sessions entangle only relative to and biased from the selected baseline group of anchor parties. It effects a proximal world line variance clamping function to block entanglement with less likely outcomes for this present world line.
World line entanglement blocking prevents viewer intermediaries drifting towards natural attraction of more novel world lines, regardless of present world line probability momentum and mass habitation factors. It simply works to exclude less likely world line outcomes relative to an anchor reference group of persons or beings to thereby yield more likely valid predictive data for the present world line.
And a few more curiosities written and vectored across our mutual fusion being derivatives., LOL!
Conclusions
Blue NarWhal is saying that using the MWI mapping, that it is obvious that in 2012 that more predominant surface topography features of the world-line template showed (at that time) that there was [1] a looming pandemic, and [2] economic crisis. Using available historical and economic data, Deagel extrapolated to a very disturbing forecast.
In truth, they were really close to the mark, and the clustering of the world-lines are STILL on a trajectory for a very unpleasant conclusion.
Now, we need to filter out the “noise” and consider the world-line template landscape topography.
In remote viewing out of America these days, the primary (peaks and topographical) landmarks viewed are related to [1] the strange imposition of mRNA vaccinations, and [2] a gathering storm of strange behaviors on the social / economic front out of Washington DC.
This “noise” of Vaxx, and economic “bubbles” make the current topographical landscape quite rugged and mountainous. Thus, Americans see the topographical mountains all around them, and they cannot see the larger looming mountains past those peaks. It’s a side effect of the incessant mind-controlling Main Stream and alternative media.
The mountains that surround Americans are predominantly ones of…
Greed.
Media manipulation.
Out of control government.
Economic bubbles
Social re-engineering.
Racial divides.
Hate. Hate. Hate.
While the mountains in the distance consist of other things, that most Americans are not focusing on. For instance; China. Or the “far away” South China Sea. Or what is going on in Russia. Or Africa. Or South America.
But they are real, and of great concern. For it is the real mountains that are the real issues and the real problems that lie ahead.
The real “mountains” are…
Nuclear war with a unified Asia.
End of the US Dollar as the global currency.
Iran allied with Russia and China, and the rest of the Mideast complies.
African middle class growing in favor of Asia.
Europe retreat from American influence.
Thus you can see the differences in all the analysis. Those inside the United States echo chamber are combining elements of the United States government narrative of “Hate China; Blame China; China is evil”, with forced mRNA vaccinations and complete incompetence of the Federal Government. Resulting in this bastardized fucked up narrative…
“China stole an American bio-weapon and it was accidentally released in Wuhan, and when caught, they decided to use it to destroy America and all Christians by forcing them to get mRNA vaccinations that will kill everyone!”
Jeeze!
Putting all this nonsense aside, let’s continue on our study.
Obviously the 2012 Deagel report used Remote Viewing activity and extrapolation of existing economic and social trends and transposed to the two together to arrive at their (horrific) conclusion. In 2012, they predicted a major event, that seems to indicate a pandemic or something similar coupled with an economic collapse.
I am sure that remote viewing of this pulled up those “Vaxx hills”, and “Coronavirus hills”, and when combined, the Deagel group flushed out their predictions as such. I am sure that they did not like it, but the data and the trends, supported by remote viewing substantiated this belief.
Then, last year, in 2020 they revised their forecast. Now, the hills and mountains further out are much closer and clearer.
Before I read the 2020 revised forecast, I believed the following outcomes to be predominant. As you can well read, I said…
Here are some of my suggested candidate combinations that allow us to better understand how those enormous population causality figures could be reached.
Global pandemic, AND genocide.
Global pandemic, AND civil war WITH genocide.
Global pandemic, AND collapsing Military Empire, WITH war.
Global Military Empire AND Nuclear War WITH Global pandemic.
And the 2020 revised forecast states…
Global pandemic, AND collapsing Military Empire, WITH war.
Global Military Empire AND Nuclear War WITH Global pandemic.
The only difference between the two (aside from the order of the wording) is HOW a nuclear exchange comes into being.
Either [1] America conducts a conventional attack against China or Russia (not realizing that it will be against both) and it evolving and escalating quickly into a nuclear war, or [2] A first strike against the out-of-control American government by Asia.
Looking at all the issues, we can make the following statements…
Statements of prediction
Including remote viewing into the calculus, and taking into account all the knowns…
The American leadership class does not contain diplomatic professionals. Instead there are unskilled political donors who are making life and death decisions.
The mRNA vaccination is a real mystery, and there HAS to be a reason behind using it instead of the traditional “Dead Host” vaccination.
The approved 2021 Federal budget includes an enormous military funding outlay that is obviously in preparation for a major war.
The American government, and their media are all talking about an upcoming major war with China.
American military is retreating from Afghanistan, and four bases in Korea, while making QUAD arrangements with Australia and Japan.
All of this is very disturbing, and considered alone would be cause enough to suggest that a major war is just on the horizon.
But…
America (The United States) is crumbling from rot from within…
Racial hate.
Proliferation of firearms, and the establishment of armed groups.
Balkanization.
Economic bubbles.
Social bubbles.
The wealth gap is enormous.
Infrastructure funding is too late.
Rules, regulations and laws are all off the charts.
Couple that with a failed bio-weapons attack on China, and the fiasco which was the Trump neocon administration, followed by the bumbling Biden administration… and hard-core Religious extremists, and industry interests desiring of conflict, war and strife (all for various reasons), and you have a poisonous stew.
The “Genie is out of the bottle”, and I do not think that the looming “mountains” on the horizon can be avoided. The inertia associated with the clustering of world-lines is way too strong. So my guess (and I hope that I am wrong) is that the United States will sleep-walk into a war with Asia, and then before it happens, Asia will strike preemptively.
No matter what the details are, the remote viewing forecast is quite clear.
The United States Military Empire is going to start another major war. It is intended to be a distraction from the domestic failures, and regardless as to how much money President Biden is plowing into the economy, it’s not going to make any difference.
America is toast.
Burnt to a crisp; blackened, burned toast.
America today.
And it’s only a matter of time…
And then when the moron, presses the button, flicks the switch, or twists the knob, all Hell will break loose.
All in all, the USA will suffer horribly, and the combination of everything else will only turn a fiasco into an Hellish nightmare.
But…
You can control YOUR reality. And maybe this mountain of turmoil is sitting off somewhere on your world-line template, you can still navigate around it. Remember, after all, for all the turmoil and strife during World War II, Canada, South America, and Africa was relatively left alone.
Maybe you don’t want to move to Greenland, Patagonia, or Zambia. But you don’t really need to. All you need to do is control your little bit of reality. And if you do that, then everything will work out just fine.
Some final thoughts
Keep in mind that the Deagel remote viewed the future correctly. They printed their results in 2012.
They PREDICTED a bio-warfare induced pandemic.
They PREDICTED an Australian alliance with the United States.
They PREDICTED that America would start entering a period of "popping" of the various economic bubbles.
All of which came true by 2020.
Deagel did NOT change their forecast for 2025. It still stands. They just changed their thinking on how it would come about.
They remote viewed 2025 in great detail.
There will be [1] a massive die off of people in America, and Australia. The rest of the world will fare much better. And, most importantly, a [2] bio-weapon or pandemic figured predominantly in their calculus.
In 2012, they believed that there would be some kind of bio-weapon or pandemic that would kill off so many Americans. But they couldn’t (for the life of them) answer why Australia of all places would also have a large die off. At that time they never could of imagined the QUAD set up by Mike Pompeo, and that the Morrison government would wholeheartedly want to declare war on China. Instead, they figured that it must be a very serious pandemic with some other mystery event that complicated things in a negative manner.
In 2020, in the midst of the (three agent) bio-weapon attacks on China, and the absolute failure of America in securing it’s homeland, as well as the strong alignment of the Australian Morrison government to the war-loving neocons in Washington DC, the revised reasoning became one of nuclear war. Thus they reasoned that since the 2020 pandemic wasn’t that bad, and the drums of war were beating so loudly, that it must be nuclear war and bio-weapons used simultaneously.
Whether there is a nuclear event, or a bio-weapon event, no matter who caused it, or who instigated it, America will be absolutely and totally devastated. A 70% kill off implies that America would indeed be thrown back to the bronze age.
My advice?
You cannot change what is going to happen. It is pretty much set in stone. The only thing that you can do is to save yourself.
Flee the United States as fast as you can.
Go to a nation with a safer rating on the Deagel scale.
Consider fleeing any nation that is allied with the United States as well. The UK, and those European nations that are part of NATO perform very poorly. Though you will probably have an easier time of it than being the United States, it will still be a very rough life in those places.
It will be a scene out of the movie “Threads“, and you all should get a copy of this movie and watch it right now. And when you watch it, keep in mind that what it portrays is EXACTLY what Deagal predicts will happen to America and it’s allies. Watch it and realize that you have two to three short years to save yourself and your family.
Bugging out.
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
It’s pretty obvious. Don’t you know. The propaganda onslaught. The “classified” documents, the full spread of dis-info plummeting the American citizenry to hate China as the great evil. Yeah. You have to be a blind moron not to see what is coming.
Now, I have repeatedly argued that the American government is a wreck, that it’s leadership are “brain dead”, and somehow the entire crooked mess is running on auto-pilot straight towards the abyss. Since I have been making these accusations, not one single person has been able to come forward and prove to me otherwise.
What we do know is that America is following a well documented historical progressing that leads towards a major war.
Massive propaganda campaign.
Hybrid warfare at all levels.
A setting up of where the fields of conflict will occur.
A manipulation of “allies” to engage conflict as proxies.
And finally…
A trigger event or “incident” that will set everything in motion.
I argue that this trigger event is the Coronavirus pandemic. With a secondary excuse for a “fall back” contingency to be Taiwan.
There is a full wide “shotgun approach” to provide a wide selection of potential incident vectors from with the Untied States can capitalize upon to use as an excuse to generate a war.
But, it’s proven that the Coronavirus was in the USA months before China…
Yes. That is very true.
But it does not matter.
The lies and the narrative is being driven top down in favor of a war, and it “ain’t stopping for shit”. Never the less, the “safe” inoculation strain was released in the United States a full six months before the deadly lethal version COVID-19B was released on CNY in China. As this video clearly states…
Yup, released in the USA months before the bio-weapons attack on China.
Lies, Lies, and then more lies…
If is functionally the case that every single article in the “West” must contain negative things about China. But this is wrong and it is really rather counter-productive. As China is spending it’s resources to make Asia successful, and to help everyone associated with it.
The only things that America can point to as accomplishments are wars and things that happened fifty years ago. There has been ZERO positive, good, supporting efforts in any ways, shape of form originating out of the Untied States for a long, long, LONG time.
If China buys a steel factory, the American media is all aghast and in hysterics!
Who or what is driving all the things that I have listed above? China, Iran? Russia? Nope every single one has a direct budget path that is directly traced to the United States Federal Budget out of the Untied States Congress.
This looming fiasco is being driven by the United States Congress.
Now, I have gone into great detail about the bio-weapons carpet bombing of China by the (then) head of the Bio-Weapons office, John Bolton.
I have also covered, also in great detail the failure of the Hong Kong “Color Revolution”.
As well as the Uighur Muslim insurgency in XinJiang.
Not to mention the collapse of the United States NGO-backed Tibet movement.
I have also spent time discussing what happened when the Trump assault flotilla / armada entered the South Pacific Sea in late 2020, and sailed home “with it’s tail between it’s legs”.
As well as the realities of what is going on in Taiwan.
Well, you know that these idiots in the United States Congress don’t read MM. Have no concept of anything other than their echo chambers, have never fought in a real war, and have no concept of who the fuck they are threatening.
A quick and dirty summary of some of the major elements…
Here’s a simple map of what has been going on regarding China. There are many more efforts involved, but if I put them all on the map it would be unreadable. So I greatly simplified it to this simple diagram.
A look at the results so far…
And now, here is the state of affairs. The United States was able to install “puppet military regimes” in both Myanmar, and Thailand, but was unsuccessful with Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. All the NGO and “color revolutions” inside of China failed. All of the bio-weapons attacks inside of China failed. All of the insurgency efforts inside of China failed.
It’s like a sickness
There is nothing that can stop this massive anti-China effort from coming to it’s natural conclusion. America will find an excuse. An “incident” will be triggered, and then Congress will declare war, and then all Hell is going to break out.
Though, in truth all the preparations will be in place long before Congress “rubber stamps” the war. Congressional approval will only be a formality.
But China is not run by morons, and idiots. It is meritocracy. You can we well assured that China will not wait to be attacked before making it’s own very substantial moves.
And it can really get you down.
All this negatively, the hopelessness of it, and your singular ability to do anything about it is frustrating and so very stressful.
America is so frustrating right now.
War is like a board-game I
So while (in the game of chess) the United States side is moving it’s rooks, pawns, knights and bishops in play for a check-mate…
America is playing Chess.
…the Chinese see this, and are playing Go. And they are moving their pieces in a very complex and intricate manner.
The Chinese play Go.
You know…
…there are so many interesting facets to this entire Geo-political arena right now, that we really need to sit down and look at things in a far simpler way. Like the games mentioned above, they cut away all those details and just look at the kinds of people who are pushing for war, and those who are pushing back.
Thus we have this substantially simplified narrative.
Never the less, if you really want to get down into the dirt and details, references abound. No, I am not talking about the flood of anti-China bullshit cascading out of the government mouthpieces in America. That is all just bullshit.
Instead, I am talking about writings from third party, supposedly (mainly) “disinterested parties” look at the entire thing askance from a distance. Like this article, for instance…
COVID-19, Hillary Clinton’s “mission” and neo-Lysenkoism. Column by Gennady Onishchenko
The main political outcome of the anthrax controversy story after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack was more than serious. The well-known Hillary Clinton, then a senator from New York, then Secretary of State and candidate for President of the United States, came to Geneva after the events of September 2001 to attend a meeting of the working group on the development of a mechanism for monitoring compliance with the Biological Weapons Convention. She came not just like that, but with a very specific “mission”.
Let me remind you that the origins of this convention, which was adopted in 1972 and then ratified by almost all UN countries, were the USSR, the United States and the United Kingdom. It was the first international disarmament treaty to prohibit the development, production and stockpiling of bacteriological and toxin weapons, as well as their destruction.
But after the ratification of this document, an important issue remained unresolved — a mechanism for monitoring compliance with the convention was needed. At that time, this mechanism was being developed by extremely reputable experts, including from Russia. And so Hillary Clinton, under the pretext that her country was the target of an attack using biological weapons, said that the United States is withdrawing from work on a control mechanism. And without their participation, this document could not be adopted. At the same time, Hillary knew perfectly well that it was in the United States that biological weapons were used against her people, even a congressional commission came to this conclusion, although their conclusions were half-truths.
And the truth was that in the United States, which considers itself a beacon of democracy and freedom, the first terrorist act using biological weapons in the third millennium was committed. And with a high degree of probability, the US military and, possibly, some politicians were behind this terrorist attack. And this was done solely to address political issues, including to justify US military operations abroad.
An investigation conducted in the United States itself proved conclusively that the anthrax strain used in mailings was developed back in the 1950s as a combat formulation. The research was conducted in the same military laboratory at Fort Detrick, from where, as the investigation found out, the most dangerous strain was leaked. Although Washington claimed that Fort Detrick had not been engaged in offensive biological weapons programs since the mid-1960s, from what we know, there is great doubt that this secret military laboratory has switched to flower breeding.
In addition, it was simply impossible to carry out an operation to distribute combat anthrax spores alone: the pathogen had to be not only isolated, but also cultivated, accumulated a sufficient amount of it, packaged, and so on. All of this was even theoretically impossible to do without anyone noticing.
Realizing that in the event of any international investigation, all this will come out, the United States decided to torpedo the creation of a mechanism for monitoring compliance with the convention. It was with this “mission” that Hillary Clinton came to Geneva. The Americans were very afraid that everything would come out: if there was a mechanism, they would have to host an international working group, which would not have representatives of the United States and which would have full authority to request any documents, question all witnesses, and so on. This is what the Americans were so afraid of. It was important for them to hide the fact that sending out spores was not the act of a lone terrorist, but the result of a conspiracy.
And now, in 2021, the United States is trying to get out of the situation in which it drove itself and the whole world in 2001. Everyone understands that today there is a danger not of biological warfare (this is still unlikely), but of what is much more terrible — biological terrorism. But in the absence of a legitimate internationally recognized control mechanism, which was never developed due to the fault of the United States, today this area is completely uncontrolled.
When a World Health Organization (WHO) commission arrived in China earlier this year to investigate where the COVID-19 pandemic started, it had no real authority. WHO tried to simulate the control mechanism, but they did not succeed. Well, there were market experts in Wuhan, interviewed someone, but they were not allowed in any laboratories, and China had every right to do so. As a result, the WHO published a helpless four-page report, on the basis of which no serious conclusions about the origin of the pandemic are simply impossible.
Russia sees all these dangers, so back in 2006 at the G8 summit, which was held in St. Petersburg, at the initiative of our country, a document was adopted concerning the spread of infectious diseases. The document emphasized that we are aware of all the risks in this area, including those associated with possible man-made cases of the spread of dangerous infections.
So all the accusations against China from the United States about the origin of COVID-19 are attempts by the Americans to regain priority in research in the field of the use of the most uncontrolled weapons of mass destruction to date — biological weapons. Two decades after the events of September 2001, the United States is trying to take revenge, which is why it is so actively “hitting” China.
At the same time, let’s not forget that the United States deliberately delayed the development of science in this area for two decades in order to conceal its crimes, which in its consequences is comparable to the famous Lysenkoism.
In fact, we are dealing with the phenomenon when the American civilization, which considers itself the greatest and most powerful, actually demonstrates a primitive conceit.
For no reason at all, the United States has assumed the right to decide everything for everyone, interfering in the affairs of other countries.
At the same time, for two decades now, they have been demonstrating their helplessness in terms of their willingness to bear responsibility even to their own people.
(Lysenkoism is a recognized anti-scientific concept, the founder of which is considered an academician Trofim Lysenko, which existed in the USSR in the 1930s-1960s. The consequence of this concept was the persecution of scientists, as well as the denial of the science of genetics, which had a detrimental effect on Soviet agriculture. In a figurative sense, the persecution of scientists for their "politically incorrect" scientific views is now called Lysenkoism or neo-Lysenkoism. — Approx. FAN).
Complex eh?
Yes, it is always so easy to get all caught up in the interesting details. When none of them really matter at all.
They do not matter.
What is actually going on is really quite simple. The American leadership is panicking. They have run the nation into the ground, and the people are very, very restless. The entire nation is coming apart at the seams, and the leadership must find some way to place blame. Because if they accept the blame, they will be hanging from nooses on light posts.
They chose China.
America is falling apart at the seams, and today the police must ride around in tanks and armored cars, as America is ripe for an explosion of anger as this video plainly shows…
America is falling apart at the seams.
America is a mess….
It is undeniable. America is a fucking mess. It really is. The people are brain dead either on drugs or electronic manipulation feeding a steady diet of hate, fear, and addiction. The oligarchy live inside well guarded and protected enclaves like the castles of yore. And when you see the reality it slaps you right in the face.
As in this reality video… go ahead watch it. I double-dare you.
America is a mess.
Blame it all on China…
The Chinese leadership is not having any of this, and knows full well where this is all leading towards.
They have had centuries of strife, hunger, starvation, looting and war. If you think that they will not fight for their place on the earth, you are sadly mistaken.
What China had to go through for the past 100 years is beyond imagination.
For a big part of it, China had to suffer shameless looting from Western imperialists, had land and resources stolen, and saw millions of its people massacred by Japanese invaders. All these atrocities left the China obliterated and the repercussions rung on for decades and set China into years of poverty and famine.
For a big part of the past 100 years China had been working their arse off to repair the damage and get their people out of poverty, increase the literacy rate and restore prosperity to the country.
And for 90 of the past 100 years you hardly hear the West talk about “human rights”, but all of a sudden when China’s economy seem to be threatening Western dominance of the world, the Western countries started to gang up on them with fabricated claims of human rights violation.
Only those countries who have been in the same boat as China, those who have been bullied, looted and taken advantage of by the shameless Western powers understand all the BS that China is getting.
-Jong Mun Goh
Distill everything
So really, if you want to distill everything into it’s simplest components, its really American Leaders want a war where the Chinese leaders die.
Sounds harsh. But it's accurate.
Trump era policy papers list specifics about targeting the Chinese leadership to institute a USA favorable "regime change".
It’s difficult to see any hope…
It certainly seems that way, doesn’t it?
No hope in America these days.
And now we have to cope with the reality…
These millions of dollars that is pouring towards Hate-hate-hate-china will manifest into something one way or the other. You simply do not irradiate the minds of 330 million people and not have something happen as a result of it.
Such as shown in this video.
Hate-hate-hate-China
And this hate is manifesting…
Black on Asian crime is up in triple digits, and it is horrible. And what is the American government doing? Why it is funding more and more hate. Well, sure it’s going to result in people getting hurt, but it’s going to also result in other things as well. Be careful what you wish for.
Check out this video…
This is the Internet MEME about the United States (out of China)…
A mere four years ago, everyone in China had a good opinion of America. That started to change under Trump, and Biden has just kicked that opinion to the ground and stomped on it. To most Americans it doesn’t matter. But the truth is that it DOES matter.
If America is ever going to catch up to the rest of the world it just cannot isolate and threaten. It just looks like some kind of sick mentally retarded psychopath prison escapee. Check out this video meme.
Video Meme
But you know…
Life, real life is nothing like the brain-dead, zombies that are trying to cope in America today. The reality is that the rest of the world is actually doing pretty well, and China is doing great. Precisely because they concentrate on the needs of the people and not grabbing everything for personal profit and fighting wars to make money. Which is the USA model.
I want to ram this idea home with a “bitch slap” of reality. Here’s a sexy “everyday” video of a typical Chinese girl, in her house, making delicious typical healthy Chinese food for her Chinese family.
You wonder why the Chinese are happy, and healthy? Well it is because they eat well, live a stress free life, and are not taxed and regulated into oblivion. To either die, want to die or quiver in nervous exhaustion on some street corner. That’s why!
Check out this great sexy video! There’s few things sexier than a happy woman and food, glorious food!
Typical Chinese housewife.
And in Russia
It’s not like the “entire world is going down the tubes”. the rest of the world is doing well. None of those “new” “progressive” ideas where everyone can be a slob and do “their own thing” as a sign of “freedom”. People elsewhere, outside of the “bastions of freedom” are living quite well.
Check out this article, translated from Russian HERE.
“Still then go to bed” Why an American is surprised how a Russian woman makes a bed (says an American)
In everyday moments, residents of Russia often surprise me, probably because they are more demanding of cleanliness in the house. Still, for an American, some habits that are unacceptable for a Russian at all are quite normal, for example, walking around the house in shoes or collecting dirty dishes. Yes, a lot depends on the person, but the mentality is also very influenced. Therefore, in this publication I want to write about a rather curious difference in such a simple action as making a bed.
To be honest, every time I was surprised that my girlfriend, even living alone, kept the bed made. But I attributed it to the fact that she does not want to look in front of me inappropriately, women 🙂 However, the other day I realized that making a bed is a routine thing. In the morning, the girl insistently asked me to get out of bed, because it was time to bring me to a “decent look”.
With this process, I helped, but in my head I wondered: “Why complicate it so much?” Before that, I did not even notice that many Russians have a bed made quite difficult. That is, it is not enough just to carefully lay the blanket on top and throw a few pillows on top. Russians are serious about this matter, so you need to perfectly lay the blanket evenly, use a blanket or blanket on top, decorate it with pillows.
Again, I wonder how picky the Russians are sometimes, especially when compared to the Americans. The fact is that most People in America do not fill the bed at all, because the bedroom is a personal space. If the owner does not want to carefully bring the bed in perfect order every day, then he will not do this. And overall, I also don’t see anything wrong with not making the bed, especially if there is a bedroom. But before you go to bed, you do not need to prepare a place for bed.
But I was much more amazed when the girl told how in childhood Russians were taught to make beds. In kindergarten, time was necessarily allocated after an hour of sleep, when children had to independently bring the beds to the desired appearance. It’s funny that the beloved shared the story with some discontent. Because even in kindergarten there were certain requirements, the blanket was folded in a certain way, the blanket was flat, and the pillow had to stand, while a little at an angle.
I listened, and I felt sorry and funny at the same time. So that’s where all this desire to perfectly make a bed before you have breakfast comes from. When, if not from an early age to accustom the child to order? Probably, there would be a similar practice in America, then maybe I would also not be able to safely leave the bed “as it happens”. Although there is an interesting observation about Americans, the older, the more likely the bed is to be made.
…
And in the Middle East…
Isn’t this just wonderful?
Life in the Middle East.
And back in China…
Han traditional period clothing has really become a fashion statement. China, being traditional and conservative in culture has embraced these styles. You cannot go a day without seeing someone wear these clothes, and the little girls love to wear them. Not only are they cool appearing, but they are super comfortable, and very elegant.
Chinese little girls.
Why is the rest of the world doing far better, being far happier while (on a GDP level) making far less money, and obeying social rules of “normal” behaviors and roles? What is going on?
The Western Financial Empire is collapsing
The financial empire that the “West” has created is a “house of cards”.
Aplan, organization, or other entity that is destined to fail due to a weak structure or foundation (likened to a literal house of cards, which is built by balancing playing cards against one another, and is very easily toppled).
-House of Cards Idiom
To keep it running, there must be inflation. As long as the inflation isn’t too bad (read: too noticeable; Keeping up with yearly employee raises of 2%) it is tolerated, and the entire corrupt system runs.
But when the leadership is incompetent, or crazy, or a disaster hits, and they make gargantuan sized budgets with no oversight, then inflation expands past this 2% marker. And it becomes noticeable.
Congress has authorized nearly $4 trillion in spending over the past year to help address the economic crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic, but only about $3 trillion of it has been spent.Roughly a third of that money went directly to struggling families through stimulus checks, expanded unemployment payments and food stamps.-Congress has already approved $4trillion
Initially, the way to control the “rabble” is to lie. The media would report that inflation is under control and not that bad. Such as this Forbes Article (always a mouth piece for the Federal Government).
Aug 11, 2021 · Is Inflation Under Control? The price of a number of products has been on the rise since the first wave ofthe pandemic in April 2020. However, despite the 500% increase in the cost of freight from China, the consumer price index for the 12 months ending June 2021 stood at 2.2% compared to 1.8% for the 12 months ending June 2020.
-Is Inflation Under Control?
Ah.
But it’s all just another puzzle piece in this large playing-board.
War is like a board-game II…
Well, Perhaps to better illustrate what is going on, we should consider that the Chinese are actually playing a layered strategy game such as Mahjong. Instead of Go (as I suggested earlier).
So maybe it’s better to visualize the Chinese playing Mahjong. Both Go and Mahjong are very simple games, that get very complex, very quickly with layers upon layers of strategic moves.
The Chinese play Mahjong.
And that while the United States have many very capable people, those in positions of power are actually simpletons drunk on power.
So by all observation, America is actually just playing checkers…
America is actually playing checkers.
And China is playing it expertly.
China has allied with China with the tightest relationship ever, and the agreements and the joint efforts are simply astounding. Right now units are being cross trained in use of each other’s equipment. So that Russian military can use Chinese equipment and the Chinese can use Russian equipment. Not to mention that the leaders of both nations are in the supreme military headquarters of each nation.
As is illustrated in this video. Not that any American would ever see it. These videos are banned in America. Well, they are, but luckily MM is a “small potatoes” operation.
China has allied with China with the tightest relationship ever, and the agreements and the joint efforts are simply astounding.
In this clamorous kaleidoscope of United States centered insanity…
We can see elements of reason from those who lie outside of irradiated, and bombarded nation. We can see that calm heads, and minds exist. We can see that thoughtful intentions are being manifested. We can see that there is a changing and a turning of the world towards something better. And over time, seriously, the USA looks more an more like a real cesspool.
Don’t believe me? Look at this video from the French Quarter in New Orleans, Louisiana…
New Orleans
And this video of New York City. This is the largest and most prized American cities. It is “the shining city on the hill”.
New York City
And this video from Boston, Massachusetts. Even in the safe “bedroom communities” guns are being fired. Robberies are being committed and no one is safe.
Boston, Massachusetts
And this video. I believe that it is Chicago, Illinois. Mob rule. Very little support of the government. Hatred abounds. Crime is normal.
Chicago, Il.
And this video from New York City. The police must go out in mass, as the people, all unemployed, mostly on drugs, are always in danger. It is mob or crime rule and those that desire safety and security have moved out of the city.
New York City
As you all can see, the United States is a mess. The government has very little control over the nation. It is falling apart at the seams, and the smart people are fleeing to safer areas where they can have some degree of control over their personal lives.
Meanwhile the government is demanding the rest of the world be like the Untied States because it is the “shining city on the hill”. It cannot get any more bizzaro than this!
War is like a board-game III
Yet, you know, judging from the just insane actions that we observe happening in the United States today, perhaps the game of checkers is really giving the Washington DC leadership more credit than what is due. By all accounts and purposes, it looks like America is playing a different kind of game. No, it’s not chess. No, it’s not checkers. It’s Tic-tac-toe.
Game of Tik-tac-toe.
And China, well they are far more sophisticated. No, they are not playing Go. Nor are they playing Mahjong. They are engaged in a competitive Sudoku puzzle.
When we first traveled to China, in the early 1990s, it was very different from what we see today. Even in Beijing many people wore Mao suits and cycled everywhere; only senior Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials used cars. In the countryside life retained many of its traditional elements. But over the next 30 years, thanks to policies aimed at developing the economy and increasing capital investment, China emerged as a global power, with the second-largest economy in the world and a burgeoning middle class eager to spend.
One thing hasn’t changed, though: Many Western politicians and business executives still don’t get China. Believing, for example, that political freedom would follow the new economic freedoms, they wrongly assumed that China’s internet would be similar to the freewheeling and often politically disruptive version developed in the West. And believing that China’s economic growth would have to be built on the same foundations as those in the West, many failed to envisage the Chinese state’s continuing role as investor, regulator, and intellectual property owner.
Why do leaders in the West persist in getting China so wrong? In our work we have come to see that people in both business and politics often cling to three widely shared but essentially false assumptions about modern China. As we’ll argue in the following pages, these assumptions reflect gaps in their knowledge about China’s history, culture, and language that encourage them to draw persuasive but deeply flawed analogies between China and other countries.
[ Myth 1 ]
Economics and Democracy Are Two Sides of the Same Coin
Many Westerners assume that China is on the same development trajectory that Japan, Britain, Germany, and France embarked on in the immediate aftermath of World War II—the only difference being that the Chinese started much later than other Asian economies, such as South Korea and Malaysia, after a 40-year Maoist detour. According to this view, economic growth and increasing prosperity will cause China to move toward a more liberal model for both its economy and its politics, as did those countries.
It’s a plausible narrative. As the author Yuval Noah Harari has pointed out, liberalism has had few competitors since the end of the Cold War, when both fascism and communism appeared defeated. And the narrative has had some powerful supporters. In a speech in 2000 former U.S. President Bill Clinton declared, “By joining the WTO, China is not simply agreeing to import more of our products, it is agreeing to import one of democracy’s most cherished values: economic freedom. When individuals have the power…to realize their dreams, they will demand a greater say.”
But this argument overlooks some fundamental differences between China and the United States, Japan, Britain, Germany, and France. Those countries have since 1945 been pluralist democracies with independent judiciaries. As a result, economic growth came in tandem with social progress (through, for example, legislation protecting individual choice and minority rights), which made it easy to imagine that they were two sides of a coin. The collapse of the USSR appeared to validate that belief, given that the Soviet regime’s inability to deliver meaningful economic growth for its citizens contributed to its collapse: Russia’s eventual integration into the global economy (perestroika) followed Mikhail Gorbachev’s political reforms (glasnost).
In China, however, growth has come in the context of stable communist rule, suggesting that democracy and growth are not inevitably mutually dependent. In fact, many Chinese believe that the country’s recent economic achievements—large-scale poverty reduction, huge infrastructure investment, and development as a world-class tech innovator—have come about because of, not despite, China’s authoritarian form of government. Its aggressive handling of Covid-19—in sharp contrast to that of many Western countries with higher death rates and later, less-stringent lockdowns—has, if anything, reinforced that view.
China has also defied predictions that its authoritarianism would inhibit its capacity to innovate. It is a global leader in AI, biotech, and space exploration. Some of its technological successes have been driven by market forces: People wanted to buy goods or communicate more easily, and the likes of Alibaba and Tencent have helped them do just that.
But much of the technological progress has come from a highly innovative and well-funded military that has invested heavily in China’s burgeoning new industries. This, of course, mirrors the role of U.S. defense and intelligence spending in the development of Silicon Valley.
But in China the consumer applications have come faster, making more obvious the link between government investment and products and services that benefit individuals. That’s why ordinary Chinese people see Chinese companies such as Alibaba, Huawei, and TikTok as sources of national pride—international vanguards of Chinese success—rather than simply sources of jobs or GDP, as they might be viewed in the West.
Thus July 2020 polling data from the Ash Center at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government revealed 95% satisfaction with the Beijing government among Chinese citizens. Our own experiences on the ground in China confirm this.
Most ordinary people we meet don’t feel that the authoritarian state is solely oppressive, although it can be that; for them it also provides opportunity. A cleaner in Chongqing now owns several apartments because the CCP reformed property laws. A Shanghai journalist is paid by her state-controlled magazine to fly around the world for stories on global lifestyle trends. A young student in Nanjing can study propulsion physics at Beijing’s Tsinghua University thanks to social mobility and the party’s significant investment in scientific research.
Many Chinese believe that the country’s recent economic achievements have actually come about because of, not despite, China’s authoritarian form of government.
The past decade has, if anything, strengthened Chinese leaders’ view that economic reform is possible without liberalizing politics. A major turning point was the financial crisis of 2008, which in Chinese eyes revealed the hollowness of the “Washington consensus” that democratization and economic success were linked. In the years since, China has become an economic titan, a global leader in technology innovation, and a military superpower, all while tightening its authoritarian system of government—and reinforcing a belief that the liberal narrative does not apply to China.
That, perhaps, is why its current president and (more crucially) party general secretary, Xi Jinping, has let it be known that he considers Gorbachev a traitor to the cause for liberalizing as he did, thereby destroying the Communist Party’s hold on the USSR. And when Xi announced, in 2017, that the “three critical battles” for China’s development would fall in the areas of reducing financial risk, addressing pollution, and alleviating poverty, he also made it clear that the objective of these reforms was to solidify the system rather than to change it. The truth, then, is that China is not an authoritarian state seeking to become more liberal but an authoritarian state seeking to become more successful—politically as well as economically.
In much Western analysis the verb most commonly attached to China’s reforms is “stalled.” The truth is that political reform in China hasn’t stalled. It continues apace. It’s just not liberal reform. One example is the reinvention in the late 2010s of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection. Empowered by Xi to deal with the corruption that had become so prevalent early in that decade, the commission can arrest and hold suspects for several months; its decisions cannot be overturned by any other entity in China, not even the supreme court.
The commission has succeeded in reducing corruption in large part because it is essentially above the law—something unimaginable in a liberal democracy. These are the reforms China is making—and they need to be understood on their own terms, not simply as a distorted or deficient version of a liberal model.
One reason that many people misread China’s trajectory may be that—particularly in the English-language promotional materials the Chinese use overseas—the country tends to portray itself as a variation on a liberal state, and therefore more trustworthy. It often compares itself to brands with which Westerners are familiar. For example, in making the case for why it should be involved in the UK’s 5G infrastructure rollout, Huawei styled itself the “John Lewis of China,” in reference to the well-known British department store that is regularly ranked as one of the UK’s most trusted brands.
China is also often at pains to suggest to foreign governments or investors that it is similar to the West in many aspects—consumer lifestyles, leisure travel, and a high demand for tertiary education. These similarities are real, but they are manifestations of the wealth and personal aspirations of China’s newly affluent middle class, and they in no way negate the very real differences between the political systems of China and the West.
Which brings us to the next myth.
[ Myth 2 ]
Authoritarian Political Systems Can’t Be Legitimate
Many Chinese not only don’t believe that democracy is necessary for economic success but do believe that their form of government is legitimate and effective. Westerners’ failure to appreciate this explains why many still expect China to reduce its role as investor, regulator, and, especially, intellectual property owner when that role is in fact seen as essential by the Chinese government.
Part of the system’s legitimacy in the eyes of the Chinese is, again, rooted in history: China has often had to fight off invaders and, as is rarely acknowledged in the West, fought essentially alone against Japan from 1937 until 1941, when the U.S. entered World War II. The resulting victory, which for decades the CCP spun as its solo vanquishing of an external enemy, was reinforced by defeat of an internal one (Chiang Kai-shek in 1949), establishing the legitimacy of the party and its authoritarian system.
Seventy years on, many Chinese believe that their political system is now actually more legitimate and effective than the West’s. This is a belief alien to many Western business executives, especially if they’ve had experience with other authoritarian regimes. The critical distinction is that the Chinese system is not only Marxist, it’s Marxist-Leninist. In our experience, many Westerners don’t understand what that means or why it matters. A Marxist system is concerned primarily with economic outcomes.
That has political implications, of course—for example, that the public ownership of assets is necessary to ensure an equal distribution of wealth—but the economic outcomes are the focus. Leninism, however, is essentially a political doctrine; its primary aim is control. So a Marxist-Leninist system is concerned not only with economic outcomes but also with gaining and maintaining control over the system itself.
That has huge implications for people seeking to do business in China. If China were concerned only with economic outcomes, it would welcome foreign businesses and investors and, provided they helped deliver economic growth, would treat them as equal partners, agnostic as to who owned the IP or the majority stake in a joint venture. But because this is also a Leninist system, those issues are of critical importance to Chinese leaders, who won’t change their minds about them, however effective or helpful their foreign partners are economically.
This plays out every time a Western company negotiates access to the Chinese market. We have both sat in meetings where business executives, particularly in the technology and pharmaceutical sectors, expressed surprise at China’s insistence that they transfer ownership of their IP to a Chinese company. Some have expressed optimism that China’s need for control will lessen after they’ve proved their worth as partners. Our response? That’s not likely, precisely because in China’s particular brand of authoritarianism, control is key.
A Leninist approach to selecting future leaders is also a way the CCP has maintained its legitimacy, because to many ordinary Chinese, this approach produces relatively competent leaders: They are chosen by the CCP and progress through the system by successfully running first a town and then a province; only after that do they serve on the Politburo.
You can’t become a senior leader in China without having proved your worth as a manager.
China’s leaders argue that its essentially Leninist rule book makes Chinese politics far less arbitrary or nepotistic than those of many other, notably Western, countries (even though the system has its share of back-scratching and opaque decision-making).
Familiarity with Leninist doctrine is still important for getting ahead. Entry to the CCP and to a university involves compulsory courses in Marxist-Leninist thought, which has also become part of popular culture, as evidenced by the 2018 TV talk show Marx Got It Right. And with handy apps such as Xuexi Qiangguo (“Study the powerful nation” and a pun on “Study Xi”) to teach the basics of thinkers including Marx, Lenin, Mao, and Xi Jinping, political education is now a 21st-century business.
The Leninist nature of politics is also evidenced by the language used to discuss it. Political discourse in China remains anchored in Marxist-Leninist ideas of “struggle” (douzheng) and “contradiction” (maodun)—both seen as attributes that force a necessary and even healthy confrontation that can help achieve a victorious outcome. In fact, the Chinese word for the resolution of a conflict (jiejue) can imply a result in which one side overcomes the other, rather than one in which both sides are content. Hence the old joke that China’s definition of a win-win scenario is one in which China wins twice.
China uses its particular authoritarian model—and its presumed legitimacy—to build trust with its population in ways that would be considered highly intrusive in a liberal democracy. The city of Rongcheng, for example, uses big data (available to the government through surveillance and other data-capturing infrastructure) to give people individualized “social credit scores.” These are used to reward or punish citizens according to their political and financial virtues or vices.
The benefits are both financial (for example, access to mortgage loans) and social (permission to buy a ticket on one of the new high-speed trains). Those with low social-credit scores may find themselves prevented from buying an airline ticket or getting a date on an app. For liberals (in China and elsewhere), this is an appalling prospect; but for many ordinary people in China, it’s a perfectly reasonable part of the social contract between the individual and the state.
Such ideas may appear very different from the outward-facing, Confucian concepts of “benevolence” and “harmony” that China presents to its international, English-speaking audience. But even those concepts lead to considerable misunderstanding on the part of Westerners, who often reduce Confucianism to cloying ideas about peace and cooperation. For the Chinese, the key to those outcomes is respect for an appropriate hierarchy, itself a means of control. While hierarchy and equality may appear to the post-Enlightenment West to be antithetical concepts, in China they remain inherently complementary.
Recognizing that the authoritarian Marxist-Leninist system is accepted in China as not only legitimate but also effective is crucially important if Westerners are to make more-realistic long-term decisions about how to deal with or invest in the country. But the third assumption can also mislead those seeking to engage with China.
[ Myth 3 ]
The Chinese Live, Work, and Invest Like Westerners
China’s recent history means that Chinese people and the state approach decisions very differently from Westerners—in both the time frames they use and the risks they worry about most. But because human beings tend to believe that other humans make decisions as they do, this may be the most difficult assumption for Westerners to overcome.
Let’s imagine the personal history of a Chinese woman who is 65 today. Born in 1955, she experienced as a child the terrible Great Leap Forward famine in which 20 million Chinese starved to death. She was a Red Guard as a teenager, screaming adoration for Chairman Mao while her parents were being re-educated for being educated. By the 1980s she was in the first generation to go back to university, and even took part in the Tiananmen Square demonstration.
Then, in the 1990s, she took advantage of the new economic freedoms, becoming a 30-something entrepreneur in one of the new Special Economic Zones. She bought a flat—the first time anyone in her family’s history had owned property. Eager for experience, she took a job as an investment analyst with a Shanghai-based foreign asset manager, but despite a long-term career plan mapped out by her employer, she left that company for a small short-term pay raise from a competitor.
By 2008 she was making the most of the rise in disposable incomes by buying new consumer goods that her parents could only have dreamt about. In the early 2010s she started moderating her previously outspoken political comments on Weibo as censorship tightened up. By 2020 she was intent on seeing her seven-year-old grandson and infant granddaughter (a second child had only recently become legal) do well.
Had she been born in 1955 in almost any other major economy in the world, her life would have been much, much more predictable. But looking back over her life story, one can see why even many young Chinese today may feel a reduced sense of predictability or trust in what the future holds—or in what their government might do next.
When life is (or has been within living memory) unpredictable, people tend to apply a higher discount rate to potential long-term outcomes than to short-term ones—and a rate materially higher than the one applied by people living in more-stable societies. That means not that these people are unconcerned with long-term outcomes but, rather, that their risk aversion increases significantly as the time frame lengthens. This shapes the way they make long-term commitments, especially those that entail short-term trade-offs or losses.
Thus many Chinese consumers prefer the short-term gains of the stock market to locking their money away in long-term savings vehicles. As market research consistently tells us, the majority of individual Chinese investors behave more like traders. For example, a 2015 survey found that 81% of them trade at least once a month, even though frequent trading is invariably a way to destroy rather than create long-term fund value.
That figure is higher than in all Western countries (for example, only 53% of U.S. individual investors trade this frequently); it’s also even higher than in neighboring Hong Kong—another Han Chinese society with a predilection for gambling and a similar, capital-gains-tax-free regime. This suggests that something distinctive to mainland China influences this behavior: long-term unpredictability that’s sufficiently recent to have been experienced by or passed on to those now buying stocks.
That focus on securing short-term gain is why the young asset manager in Shanghai left a good long-term job for a relatively small but immediate pay raise—behavior that still plagues many businesses trying to retain talent and manage succession pipelines in China. People who do take long-term career risks often do so only after fulfilling their primary need for short-term security. For example, we’ve interviewed couples in which the wife “jumps into the sea” of starting her own business—becoming one of China’s many female entrepreneurs—because her husband’s stable but lower-paid state-sector job will provide the family with security.
The one long-term asset class in which increasing numbers of Chinese are invested—that is, residential property, ownership of which grew from 14% of 25-to-69-year-olds in 1988 to 93% by 2008—is driven also by the need for security: Unlike all other assets, property ensures a roof over one’s head if things go wrong, in a system with limited social welfare and a history of sudden policy changes.
China’s rulers see foreign engagement as a source less of opportunity than of threat, uncertainty, and even humiliation.
In contrast, the government’s discount rate on the future is lower—in part because of its Leninist emphasis on control—and explicitly focused on long-term returns.
The vehicles for much of this investment are still the CCP’s Soviet-style five-year plans, which include the development of what Xi has termed an “eco-civilization” built around solar energy technology, “smart cities,” and high-density, energy-efficient housing. Ambition like that can’t be realized without state intervention—relatively fast and easy but often brutal in China. By comparison, progress on these issues is for Western economies extremely slow.
Decisions—by both individuals and the state—about how to invest all serve one purpose: to provide security and stability in an unpredictable world. Although many in the West may believe that China sees only opportunity in its 21st-century global plans, its motivation is very different. For much of its turbulent modern history, China has been under threat from foreign powers, both within Asia (notably Japan) and outside it (the UK and France in the mid 19th century). China’s rulers, therefore, see foreign engagement as a source less of opportunity than of threat, uncertainty, and even humiliation.
They still blame foreign interference for many of their misfortunes, even if it occurred more than a century ago. For example, the British role in the Opium Wars of the 1840s kicked off a 100-year period that the Chinese still refer to as the Century of Humiliation. China’s history continues to color its view of international relations—and in large part explains its current obsession with the inviolability of its sovereignty.
That history also explains the paradox that the rulers and the ruled in China operate on very different time frames. For individuals, who’ve lived through harsh times they could not control, the reaction is to make some key choices in a much more short-term way than Westerners do. Policy makers, in contrast, looking for ways to gain more control and sovereignty over the future, now play a much longer game than the West does. This shared quest for predictability explains the continuing attractiveness of an authoritarian system in which control is the central tenet.
. . .
Many in the West accept the version of China that it has presented to the world: The period of “reform and opening” begun in 1978 by Deng Xiaoping, which stressed the need to avoid the radical and often violent politics of the Cultural Revolution, means that ideology in China no longer matters. The reality is quite different. At every point since 1949 the Chinese Communist Party has been central to the institutions, society, and daily experiences that shape the Chinese people. And the party has always believed in and emphasized the importance of Chinese history and of Marxist-Leninist thought, with all they imply. Until Western companies and politicians accept this reality, they will continue to get China wrong.
Maybe, so says the Harvard Elite…
Here’s an article out of China. Commenting on Bloomberg saying that China WILL BE ISOLATED from the rest of the world. Yeah.As if you can isolate the world’s factory. Sure….
Dynamic zero-case route won’t get China ‘isolated’: Global Times editorial
Bloomberg reported that China’s zero-tolerance strategy of COVID-19 “risks leaving it isolated for years.” But on Tuesday, statistics published by China’s Ministry of Commerce showed that China’s foreign trade in the first seven months of this year reached a high compared with the same period last year, and last year saw a surge in China’s foreign trade. This is a slap on the face of the “China isolation” theory.
China did not close its door due to the pandemic. Economic exchanges are the core of the current international exchanges, which is proven by the growth in China’s foreign trade. As for people-to-people exchanges, there has been a major decline at the global level. China has done a good job in controlling its borders and explored a set of methods to achieve safe international exchanges during the pandemic. This set of methods is worth being improved and is expected to be valued by other countries.
China will host the Winter Olympic Games six months from now. It could be another peak of the infections of coronavirus. Beijing is determined to host the Games well – it will not allow large-scale infections in Chinese society, and ensure the pandemic does not spread among delegates from all the participating countries. We believe given China’s tight prevention and control, athletes for the Games will not fear coming to China.
US media outlets, represented by Bloomberg, have been holding a twisted mentality toward China’s anti-virus achievements. China has avoided serious losses of life, and its economic recovery is leading the world. They pretend not seeing these and are reluctant to admit them. Not long ago, Bloomberg released a wired COVID Resilience Ranking that put the US on top of the list, which has become the laughing stock of the international community.
China is capable of carrying on the dynamic zero-case route. With the development of vaccines, strong mobilization and organization ability has turned into welfare for the Chinese people. Many Western countries also want to minimize the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic – zero-case is better. The US once suspended flights with all European countries, and Australia has recently deployed defense force to help enforce lockdown. But they cannot reach the status of zero-case. Thus, it was a forced choice of them to downplay the pandemic.
Although the US has registered over 617,000 coronavirus deaths so far, the country still undertook a recent rebound in daily new cases – a daily average of over 124,000 new cases were reported in the past week. If Washington has the opportunity to put the number of new case down to zero, it will inject all efforts to tout about it.
We can hardly rule out the possibility that some American elites are jealous of China’s capability of having dynamic zero cases. They’d rather see China toppled by the COVID-19 epidemic just like the US. Then they would get a chance to clamor that China’s vaccines are not effective. Anyway, they don’t want to see any good from China. And when China does good, they will spare no efforts to mislead the international community to neutralize the influence of China’s success in fighting the virus.
China is a country that seeks truth from facts. The success of its dynamic zero-case policy has laid a solid foundation for China’s fight against the epidemic in the future. With the high rate of vaccination and a better preparation of the medical service system, China will have the ability to adjust its defensive strategy based on future needs. Many people have taken for granted that China fears getting back in touch with the rest of world because Chinese society has been accustomed to zero cases.
What China will do is to adapt to the world’s new normal due to an increase of global interactions while ensuring its domestic line of defense is robust enough against imported infections. The US has done nothing on this. But China has accumulated abundant experiences in the past year and beyond. Chinese people have managed what seemed impossible for Americans, and Chinese people will continue doing so.
Instead, it is hard to predict if the US – a super spreader of the pandemic – will face up to external pressure to hinder it from opening to the world. If the same number of Chinese and American people are traveling in a third country where the epidemic is mild, which group is more concerning to local people? Fortunately, the recent summer and winter Olympic games are not held in the US, or else how many countries dare to send delegations?
As China and the US follow their respective paths – taking into account their respective adjustment capabilities – time will tell which country will open up to the world more smoothly with better overall results. Time is neutral and its answer will be unbiased.
Meanwhile, while the United States screams and hollers and threatens…
Three Chinese think tanks published a joint research report on Monday criticizing the U.S. response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies of Renmin University, the Taihe Institute and Intellisia gathered dozens of former politicians, intellectuals, scholars, policy- and decision-makers and practitioners to contribute to the report.
According to the report titled “‘America Ranked First’?! The Truth about America’s Fight against COVID-19,” the United States deserves to be the world’s No. 1 anti-pandemic failure, the world’s No. 1 political-blaming country, the world’s No. 1 pandemic spreader, the world’s No. 1 politically-divisive country, the world’s No. 1 currency-abusing country, the world’s No. 1 turbulent country during the pandemic, the world’s No. 1 disinforming country, and the world’s No. 1 country advocating origin tracing terrorism.
The report said the U.S. failed to contain the virus and had the most COVID-19 cases and deaths in the world. As of August 7, 2021, the United States had reported 35,530,951 cumulative confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 613,658 deaths while some U.S. media still rated the country number one in the world for its pandemic response.
“The latest absurd example is the Bloomberg reporting on a ranking, COVID resilience ranking, the United States comes No. 1, this can’t be taken seriously,” Martin Jacques, a senior fellow from Cambridge University, said at a presser about the report via video link.
Jacques also argued if the coronavirus pandemic hadn’t happen amid fraying China-U.S. relations, the story could’ve been much different, adding, “COVID-19 is probably the greatest test of governance the world has seen since the Second World War, the United States and the West failed miserably.”
The COVID-19 pandemic has seen U.S. business closures and waves of unemployment occurring faster and on a larger scale than expected. The lower class and other vulnerable groups are facing higher risks of unemployment. The gap between rich and poor further widened as wealth flowed into the hands of a few more quickly, said the report.
It also noticed that social unrest is a “chronic disease” in the United States as the pandemic is acting as an “amplifier” to further exacerbate social tensions. This year, the U.S. topped the list of crime rates in developed countries, much higher than countries such as the United Kingdom, Canada, and Spain, as well as many developing countries. Social unrest manifests itself in three main ways: guns out of control, hate crimes and political chaos.
The report found that lack of common sense and scientific knowledge were direct causes for the U.S. failing to constrain the pandemic’s impact, and pointed the finger at former U.S. President Donald Trump for spreading fake news about the virus.
“Donald Trump might be the strongest driving force on creating fake COVID-19 information,” it said.
The report blamed the pandemic for tearing up U.S. society, with conspiracy theories about the origin of the virus exacerbating bully attitudes and discrimination towards Asian Americans.
Democrats and Republicans were divided on virus containment measures, especially mask mandates and America’s laissez-faire on containing the virus had also had a ripple effect on other countries. “After the outbreak of the pandemic, over 20 million U.S. citizens went abroad, accelerating the spread of the virus,” the report said.
Wang Wen, executive dean from Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies of Renmin University, said: “When it comes to issues like vaccination, social distancing, and almost any policies regarding COVID-19 containment, U.S. politicians have barely reached a consensus. This is the tragedy of America’s political and social system.”
It also identified a lack of responsibility from the U.S. in terms of providing COVID-19 vaccines to other countries. Duke University’s Global Health Innovation Center estimated that by the summer of 2021, the United States may have a surplus of 300 million or more doses of COVID-19 vaccine. The Wall Street Journal reported on May 17 that the United States had exported only 3 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine
“Exported vaccines from the U.S. take up less than one percent of its total vaccine production,” said the report.
Do you all know what this reminds me of?
Seriously. It reminds me of this…
Appearing on The Moment podcast, Tarantino shared a childhood story about how his mother used to side with his teachers after they called him out for writing screenplays in school.
According to Tarantino: "In the middle of her little tirade, she said, 'Oh, and by the way, this little 'writing career,' with the finger quotes and everything. This little 'writing career' that you're doing? That shit is over."
"When she said that to me in that sarcastic way, I go, 'OK, lady, when I become a successful writer, you will never see one penny from my success. There will be no house for you. There's no vacation for you, no Elvis Cadillac for mommy. You get nothing. Because you said that.'"
As for a true emergency? "Yeah. I helped her out with a jam with the IRS," Tarantino admitted. "But no house. No Cadillac, no house."
He added, "There are consequences for your words as you deal with your children. Remember, there are consequences for your sarcastic tone about what's meaningful to them."
Tarantino is absolutely right about that.
Negative comments parents make can have a lifelong impact on their children's lives — no matter how small they may seem to those hurling them. Consider this another reminder that you should always support your kids' dreams, no matter how far-fetched they may seem.
And that’s the USA today. It was a cocky arrogant, bullshit nation, ruled by psychopathic personalities that have done everything in it’s power to put the rest of the world down. Now it is collapsing and still being a jack-ass.
Here’s a golden gem from the old Seinfield television show…
No soup for you!
“No Soup For You” or “NO SOUP 4 U” is a catchphrase that was initially uttered in a 1995 episode of the American comedic sitcom Seinfeld. Online, the phrase is often used in the context of message boards and forums in reply to other users who have made requests or demands that are denied or cannot be fulfilled.
The USA is a mess. The UK is a mess. The South Africa is a mess. Israel is a mess. And the degree of how much of a mess it is is directly tied to how closely that nation is connected to the Untied States.
So Australia wants to be connect to the United States hip to hip, then you can expect Australia to collapse just like America is collapsing. Iceland, which isn’t, is not collapsing. Sweden which is following the EU led American directives, is a mixed bag. Like I said. The closer the nation is tied to America, the more of a fucked up mess it is today.
So what?
Well, to see what is actually going on, you have to take a couple of steps back and look at the Big BIG picture.
And how can you deal with this?
Well, you really don’t need to get into the details. You just need to concentrate on your life, and your family life selfishly. The only things that you have any control over is your immediate reality.
Guys, guys, guys. It seems like the world is coming apart at the seams. So what can you do?
You turn off the “news”. You walk outside. You listen to the birds. You go into a restaurant and have a delicious meal. You smell the air. You hop on a bicycle and ride. You play with your kitties, or romp with your dog.
After a few days of this, then you take in MEASURED “news”.
If you live in Idaho, what the Hell is going on in New York should be of no concern to you. If you read anything about China, but haven’t been there in the last two years, then discard it as noise. Who gives a fuck of Mr. XXXXX says YYYYY that will do ZZZZZ? It’s all just a blimp on the big picture.
People! The ONLY way for you all to get through this period of strife is to be a Rufus.
That’s the ONLY way.
How do you control your reality?
You be a Rufus.
Listen to me.
You center your mind. You shut down the “news”. You kick away all the negative influences in your life. You stop eating processed food and replace it with good delicious home cooked fresh foods. You perform meditations. You operate your affirmation campaigns. You spend time with loved ones and pets. You smile. You help people in your community. You make friends and associations in your community and you cultivate them. Be the best you can be. And you be a Rufus.
Or in an easier to read format…
You center your mind.
You shut down the “news”.
You kick away all the negative influences in your life.
You stop eating processed food and replace it with good delicious home cooked fresh foods.
You perform meditations.
You operate your affirmation campaigns.
You spend time with loved ones and pets.
You smile.
You help people in your community.
You make friends and associations in your community and you cultivate them.
Be the best that you can be.
And you be a Rufus.
Be the Rufus?
Be the Rufus. This is what I mean when I say that you must be part of something larger; be part of your community. Be a giver. Not a taker. Lord knows there are far too many money-grubbing taker in this world. Contribute. Help. Make the day of someone just a little bit better. Buy a coffee for a coworker. Smile.
Be the Rufus.
Yes. We must be the Rufus. Sure this guy would probably get in trouble for being late. Maybe his boss will dock his pay. If it was America, he might even lose his job. But not here. Not now. He’s a Rufus, and he “felt” that something was amiss. He did not wait. he did not call the police. He took action.
He selflessly helped others in need.
Be the Rufus.
In a world that is seemingly “off the rails”, with a terribly inefficient, corrupt and moronic government, where everything is going wrong and you are being pinched by all sides with a crazy media shouting at you “it’s China’s fault!”…
Be the Rufus.
A Rufus saves others.
That’s it really.
You must be the Rufus.
Be part of something bigger than yourself. Be the Rufus.
It doesn’t take much. All it takes is to be aware and contribute to the general well being of your community. If there is trash on the road in front of your house, you clean it up. You don’t wait for the government to do so. If your grass needs cut, you cut it. If your neighbor needs a hand you give it to him. If your mailbox is an eyesore, then spruce it up.
When an emergency happens, you as the Rufus, spring into action. Be the Rufus.
A Rufus is helpful.
Be the Rufus!
When an emergency happens, you take part and be helpful.
Be the Rufus.
Sometimes it’s easy and sometimes it’s hard. Like preventing an infant from having seizures. But a Rufus does what ever is necessary. Be that Rufus. Be the best you can be.
A Rufus does what ever it takes.
So yeah, the United States is collapsing. The leadership are a group of self-centered ignoramuses. And you might be stuck, trapped and inside this massive cesspool on fire. What can you do?
Again.
Focus on you. Be part of your community. Smile. Make other feel good about themselves and want to see you. Be helpful. Devote good efforts to make your house good, calm, strong and cohesive. Spend time with pets and loved ones. Eat healthy food. Do your affirmation campaigns. Be the Rufus.
Just being helpful is all it takes.
Just be helpful.
Sometimes you have to take extraordinary measures.
Here’s a military soldier abandoning his post to rescue a three year old from getting squashed by an income horde or cars and trucks. Yikes!
Save the baby!
A Rufus is there to help others.
A Rufus is part of the community. They are appreciated. They are loved. They are the organized person that everyone know that they can count on. They are the guiding light that everyone in need turns to.
A Rufus is there.
You see, once you change your mind and decide to participate within a community, and be helpful to others you change. Your mind; and then your entire being, becomes a service to others sentience. STO.
The madness in the United States today is mostly and primarily affecting three other sentience’s;
Service to self (STS).
Service for another (SFA).
Disjointed Sentience (DJS).
By changing your being, and by doing your prayer affirmation campaigns you are able to create a kind of “non-physical” zone around you and your family and community. It’s not ironclad, though. But it is certainly strong enough to take most of the hits and pings from the society that surrounds yours.
Certainly brute force assaults, and intentional disruptive attacks can damage what ever you can throw up, but if you just follow the basic format that I have provided, you all will be fine. You all will be just fine. You will be just fine.
The False Flag Event
The American “leadership” (whatever it leads is another question) seems to be intent in generating a false flag event to trigger a war with China. We all can prevent that within our affirmation campaigns, and we can isolate our communities from any successful chaos that might result as an effect of it.
Do not fear the insanity.
Just focus on you, your family and friends, and your community. Stick to the basics, and play the “long game”. Everything will be quite different one decade from now. All you all want to do is “ride it out” unscathed. To do this, just follow MM advice and Be The Rufus.
You don’t have to rescue anyone. You just need to be extra considerate. You need to be more humane and understanding. You need to be sensitive to the needs of those around you and be helpful to them.
Be the helpful Rufus.
A Rufus makes it his job to help others. To keep his community clean, and patrolled and away from crime. A Rufus holds his society responsible for what ever happens to it, and works to correct wrongs, and punish those who are selfish or corrupt at all levels. A Rufus participates…
A Rufus contributes.
A Rufus lends a hand to those in need.
A Rufus goes and visits a dying friend, no matter what the law says, and comforts him as only a meat-pie lady could A Rufus cares about the feeling of others. A Rufus helps the children; the animals; the cats; and the dogs. A Rufus is always there to make the community a better place to live in.
A Rufus helps others.
A Rufus doesn’t drive past an gawk at a car accident. They get out of their car and help. They do what ever they can. They are the people that make the community and their actions are attractive and contagious. All it takes is a few Rufus’s in the community and soon, others will start acting that way too.
Be the Rufus.
Make the world a better place.
Help others. Be the Rufus.
A Rufus volunteers.
When there is a need in the community, the Rufus doesn’t complain. They don’t bitch and moan, they go out and work. They volunteer, and if there isn’t any kind of organization to correct the problems, they set one up themselves.
A Rufus makes a difference.
Even if it is hot, and you are suffering from heat exhaustion. A Rufus “takes it on the chin”. A Rufus makes a difference in their community.
A Rufus is the person that you can count on.
A Rufus is not perfect, and is jut a human. But the Rufus strives to be more than just a user; a complainer, a parasite on society. A Rufus contributes.
A Rufus contributes.
Here’s some unpaid volunteers in China. They are working long, long days, and then collapse in the public areas to get some sleep before they begin again. A Rufus makes the world a better place.
Be the Rufus.
You can make the world a better place.
..
Be the Rufus.
Final words
You are never alone if you are part of a community. You might be weak in some areas, but the community will compensate. And your strengths can be used to make the community strong. Remember the rule of three. Three people make a community. Be part of your community. And the bigger; the better.
You WILL BE appreciated. As this video clearly shows.
Be part of your community.
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
Oh man! I was hoping that the fantasy that “America will regain it’s power and strength and continue to rule the world” will dissipate.
Not so.
Over the weekend, I have been bombarded with articles talking about how America is ready to fight for democracy™ and freedom™ again! This time against China.
And that, all that is needed is a few billions of dollars, and some pluck from “Allies”, and then China would “be toast“.
Bombarded. Non-stop cascade of news “articles” (disguised propaganda pieces) and comments (often with a sizable portion of ‘bots – there just can’t be that many brain-dead people in the United States, can there?)
As in what the fuck?
Can’t I just get a break.
I guess not. Sigh.
And then you have these gung-ho “patriots” who think that everyone else outside of America are rats that need to be stepped on and killed, like some kind of vermin.
Generational warrior culture, eh?
Ever hear of Genghis Khan?
Dude, I just and to enjoy my day. I want to walk, and relax. I want to eat fine delicious food. I want to drink some nice wine. I want to play with the pets, smell the lush moist air, and cavort with pretty girls.
But noooo…
I have to endue a flood of anti-China bullshit and endure comments on how America is going to kick-some -Chinese-ass. Sheech!
I know. I know. I KNOW.
You fund half a billion dollars in anti-China propaganda, of course it’s going to materialize. The only thing that I am surprised about is that there’s no Hollywood movies depicting Rambo-like American soldiers gloriously bayoneting the evil Chinese in a war picture.
Maybe. Soon.
Proud American soldiers to fight communism for liberty, freedom and democracy!
First off, let’s recognize the fact that the United States Military Empire believes that it can use nuclear weapons while avoiding a MAD all-out nuclear response.
Yup! That’s true.
These fucking moron “geniuses” in Washington DC actually believe that they can use nuclear weapons against either Russia or China, and that they will NOT shoot nuclear weapons back.
Can you fucking believe it?
Let’s look at this article to flush out this curious fantasy…
Dr. Strangelove’s Spoon Benders: How the U.S. Military Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
Cynthia Chung is the President of the Rising Tide Foundation and a writer at Strategic Culture Foundation, consider supporting her work by making a donation and subscribing to her substack page for free.
“MindWar must be strategic in emphasis, with tactical applications playing a reinforcing, supplementary role. In its strategic context, MindWar must reach out to friends, enemies, and neutrals alike across the globe…
...through the media possessed by the United States which have the capabilities to reach virtually all people on the face of the Earth…
State of the art developments in satellite communication, video recording techniques, and laser and optical transmission of broadcasts make possible a penetration of the minds of the world such as would have been inconceivable just a few years ago.
Like the sword of Excalibur, we have but to reach out and seize this tool; and it can transform the world for us if we have the courage and integrity to enhance civilization with it.
If we do not accept Excalibur, then we relinquish our ability to inspire foreign cultures with our morality.
If they can then desire moralities unsatisfactory to us, we have no choice but to fight them on a more brutish level.”
– “From PSYOP to MindWar: The Psychology of Victory” by Col. Paul Vallely and Maj. Michael Aquino, a document written to increase the influence of the “spoon-benders” in the U.S. military.
About one year ago, the U.S. military conducted a simulation of a “limited” nuclear exchange with…
…Russia.
This was strange news on several accounts.
For one, this sort of thing is not typically announced in the candid detail U.S. defense secretary Mark Esper described to journalists, giddy that he got to “play himself” in this war game scenario.
It was as if he were preparing for a Hollywood movie doing his best John Wayne impression:
“If you got them by the balls their hearts and minds will follow.”
However, the most concerning revelation of this simulated exercise was the announcement to the American people that;
“it might be very possible to fight, and win, a battle with nuclear weapons, without the exchange leading to an all-out-world-ending conflict.”
In other words, throw your cares to the wind, that is, the “spirit wind” known as kamikaze, because…
They explained that their confident calculation on being “victorious” in this exercise completely relied on the supposition that such a confrontation would remain “limited” in its nuclear exchange.
“It’s a very reasonable response to what we saw was a Russian nuclear doctrine and nuclear capability that suggested to us that they might use nuclear weapons in a limited way,”
It seems what senior Pentagon officials are really saying here about the predictability of the Russians, is that there seems to be a line the Russians won’t cross in the case of a nuclear conflict…
…but the Americans sure will.
Hans Kristensen, director of the nuclear information project at the Federation of American Scientists tried to play down the “rodeo circus” and reduce the high profile announcement of the U.S. military exercise.
Instead Hans stated it was simply a marketing gimmick to “justify” the new nuclear weapons since we are entering the new budget phase. “So all of this has been played up to serve that process.” stated Kristensen.
I don’t know about you but I am getting some serious déjà vu.
Didn’t we already go through all of this with the disastrous JIC-502 spookery?
JIC-502 intelligence report titled “Implications of Soviet Possession of Atomic Weapons” drafted in Jan 20th 1950, turned out not to be an intelligence report at all but rather a sales pitch.
It began in a dangerous manner, claiming that a nuclear-armed Soviet Union had introduced the notion that;
“a tremendous military advantage would be gained by the power that struck first and succeeded in carrying through an effective surprise attack.”
It was JIC-502 which would be the first to put forward [1] a justification for the preventive first strike concept, supported by [2] a massive military buildup under the pretense of pre-emptive war.
NSC-68 would be drafted the same year and called for a massive military buildup to be completed by 1954 dubbed the “year of maximum danger,” the year JIC-502 claimed the Soviets would achieve military superiority and be able to launch war against the U.S.
But the Soviets never did launch such a war, and all claims of their capabilities let alone their intentions turned out to be entirely fraudulent…
…so what was it all for?
Did the U.S. have to put everything into expanding their military, turning away from the concept of a nation at peace made up of citizen soldiers and instead towards a nation in perpetual war?
Isn’t this a made up of the Nietzschean fantasy of Übermensch (Beyond-Man) super soldiers, the very thing that Eisenhower warned against?
Did this all have to happen in defense of “peace and security” of the free world?
Why were the predictions of the JIC-502 completely unfounded?
Were the predictions based off of corrupted data?
Did the Soviets simply change their mind?
…Or was it never about a pre-emptive war but rather was always about global dominance.
What would the American people think if they knew the truth, that their entire military industrial complex was never built for the protection of the “free world” in opposition to dictators and despots but rather the very opposite? That it simply thought its ideology the superior one, the only lawful dictatorship that had the right to rule, even if it meant by force.
In the words of Vallely/Aquino:
“If we do not accept Excalibur, then we relinquish our ability to inspire foreign cultures with our morality. If they can then desire moralities unsatisfactory to us, we have no choice but to fight them on a more brutish level.”
This may look like just a “rodeo circus” but it is far far worst.
What do Jedi Warriors, Spoon-benders, the First Earth Battalion and Men Who Stare at Goats Have in Common?
For those who need a refresher of the film Dr. Strangelove’s synopsis, it is about what could happen if a lunatic had the authority to bypass the U.S. president and cause a nuclear escalation between the U.S. and USSR.
In the movie, it is U.S. Air Force General Jack Ripper who initiates a nuclear attack to destroy the USSR under the premise that once the U.S. government is briefed on the situation, they would have no choice but to commit 100% towards a hostile attack against the USSR, in order to prevent nuclear retaliation.
Air Force General Jack Ripper
The reason why General Jack Ripper is fully convinced that it is absolutely necessary to destroy the USSR is because he believes that the communists are conspiring to pollute the “precious bodily fluids” of the American people.
Fluoridation is the most monstrouslyconceived and dangerouscommunist plot we have ever had to face.
-GeneralJack D. Ripper
Gen. Jack Ripper
Gen. Jack Ripper goes on to describe how he first discovered this Soviet ploy, after sexual relations with a woman and how he felt empty inside but that luckily he was astute enough to be able to accurately deduce the cause of this feeling of emptiness as due to being drained of his “life essence”, all part of the communist conspiracy for sure.
General Jack D. Ripper: Mandrake, do you realize that in addition to fluoridating water, why, there are studies underway to fluoridate salt, flour, fruit juices, soup, sugar, milk... ice cream. Ice cream, Mandrake, children's ice cream.Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: [very nervous] Lord, Jack.General Jack D. Ripper: You know when fluoridation first began?Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: I... no, no. I don't, Jack.General Jack D. Ripper: Nineteen hundred and forty-six. 1946, Mandrake. How does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy, huh? It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual. Certainly without any choice. That's the way your hard-core Commie works.Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: Uh, Jack, Jack, listen... tell me, tell me, Jack. When did you first... become... well, develop this theory?General Jack D. Ripper: [somewhat embarassed] Well, I, uh... I... I... first became aware of it, Mandrake, during the physical act of love.Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: Hmm.General Jack D. Ripper: Yes, a uh, a profound sense of fatigue... a feeling of emptiness followed. Luckily I... I was able to interpret these feelings correctly. Loss of essence.Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: Hmm.General Jack D. Ripper: I can assure you it has not recurred, Mandrake. Women uh... women sense my power and they seek the life essence. I, uh... I do not avoid women, Mandrake.Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: No.General Jack D. Ripper: But I... I do deny them my essence.-- General Jack D. Ripper
In other words, Gen. Jack Ripper is unequivocally insane.
Gen. Jack Ripper is absolutely insane. Much like Washington DC is today.
Unfortunately, this type of thinking in the U.S. military is not reserved to pure fiction.
Sometime in the late 1980s then Col. Paul Vallely, Commander of the 7th Psychological Operations Group and then Maj. Michael Aquino, PSYOP Research & Analysis Team Leader authored a paper titled “From PSYOP to MindWar: The Psychology of Victory”, which discusses the necessity to wage perpetual psychological warfare against friend and enemy populations alike, and even against the American people.
As stated in the paper:
“MindWar must target all participants to be effective.
It must not only weaken the enemy; it must strengthen the United States.
It strengthens the United States by denying enemy propaganda access to our people, and by explaining and emphasizing to our people the rationale for our national interest in a specific war…
There are some purely natural conditions under which minds may become more or less receptive to ideas, and MindWar should take full advantage of such phenomena as atmospheric electromagnetic activity, air ionization, and extremely low frequency waves.”
Of course the terms “enemy” and “national interest” are not elaborated on, nor is the matter of free will even considered but rather that mind control is not only “natural”, it is essential.
Besides the overtly fascist and occultist content in the paper, the proposal had a disturbing similarity to the Total Information Awareness (TIA) program launched by the Donald Rumsfeld Pentagon.
TIA was a global propaganda and mega-data-mining plan that was supposedly scraped after a series of negative news stories.
On Aug 17th, 2005 The New York Times published an article that discussed how “a military intelligence team repeatedly tried to contact the FBI in 2000 to warn about the existence of an American-based terrorist cell that included the ring leader of the Sept. 11 attacks” as reported by veteran Army intelligence officer Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer.
The information came from the highly classified intelligence program “Able Danger”, which had successfully identified the terrorist ringleader Mohamed Atta and three other hijackers of the 9/11 terrorist attack in mid-2000, well over a year before the actual 9/11 attack.
According to New York Times article, Shaffer learned later that lawyers associated with the Special Operations Command of the Defense Department had canceled the FBI meetings “because they feared controversy if Able Danger was portrayed as a military operation that had violated the privacy of civilians who were legally in the United States.” (Able Danger was linked in its function to the TIA program)
However, this is only part of the truth, the by far uglier truth is that they were already fully aware of the 9/11 terrorist ring and didn’t want a wrench thrown into the gears so to speak.
In addition, Gen. Stubblebine III, Gen. Schoomaker, Gen. Downing and Gen. Boykin are the four names most often cited as promoters of programs like the “Goat Lab,” “Jedi Warriors,” “Grill Flame,” “Task Force Delta,” (aka the spoon-benders) and the “First Earth Battalion,” and have held top posts within the military intelligence and Special Operations commands.
Gen. Stubblebine III, Gen. Schoomaker, Gen. Downing and Gen. Boykin are the four names most often cited as promoters of programs like the “Goat Lab,” “Jedi Warriors,” “Grill Flame,” “Task Force Delta,” (aka the spoon-benders) and the “First Earth Battalion,” and have held top posts within the military intelligence and Special Operations commands.
These were the programs that promoted the idea that one could learn to bend a metal spoon, walk through walls, and burst the hearts of goats with the use of “mind over matter” techniques.
In 1979, Lt. Col. Channon presented a 125 page document called “The First Earth Battalion,” which outlined “non-lethal” techniques that would soon be adopted by the military.
These techniques were many and included the use of atonal noises as a form of combat psychological warfare and widespread experimentation with psychoelectronics and other means of debilitation.
On March 10th, 1991, then Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz while serving as chief policy advisor to then Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, wrote the memo “Do We Need a Non-Lethal Defense Initiative?” in which he wrote, “A U.S. lead in non-lethal technologies will increase our options and reinforce our position in the post-Cold War world.”
American military are strongly influenced by Washington DC politics.
Though no mention was made of Col. Alexander, who spear-headed the non-lethal weaponry campaign, Alexander at the time of the memo had retired from active duty and was heading the Non-Lethal Weapons Program at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
In 1990, Col. Alexander published “The Warrior’s Edge” and states its goal as to:
“unlock the door to the extraordinary human potentials inherent in each of us. To do this, we, like governments around the world, must take a fresh look at non-traditional methods of affecting reality.
We must raise human consciousness of the potential power of the individual body/mind system – the power to manipulate reality.
We must be willing to retake control of our past, present, and ultimately, our future.” (emphasis added)
Investigative journalist Jon Ronson, in his book “The Men Who Stare at Goats”, goes through how ‘psychic warriors’ such as Uri Geller and Jim Channon were called back into government service after 9/11, and that a series of meetings in 2004 were held between Gen. Schoomaker and Jim Channon to start a think tank which would utilize “First Earth Battalion” techniques in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The Non-Lethal Techniques of Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and al-Qa’im
According to a 1998 International Committee of the Red Cross presentation before the European parliament intended on evaluating how “non-lethal” the non-lethal technologies promoted by Alexander, Channon et al. actually are in reality, it was found that non-lethal weapons are simply defined as weapons with a less-than 25% fatality rate.
Perhaps this is what the senior Pentagon officials were referring to in their “limited” nuclear exchange scenarios.
Perhaps this is what the senior Pentagon officials were referring to in their “limited” nuclear exchange scenarios.
Included in the list of non-lethal weapons now widely used in the U.S. military are lasers, extremely low frequency (ELF) weapons, and various chemical, biological and audio stun weapons that can cause permanent damage such as blindness, deafness and destruction of the gastrointestinal system.
…
…
Sigh.
…
According to Ronson and The New Yorker writer Jane Mayer, many of the torture techniques employed at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and the less-well-known al-Qa’im near the Syrian border in Iraq, are based on Channon and Alexander’s non-lethal conceptions.
Jim Channon actually confirmed this in an email correspondence with Ronson.
At one point in his investigation, Ronson asks Stuart Heller, friend of Jim Channon, if he could name one soldier who was “the living embodiment” of the First Earth Battalion, to which Heller responds unhesitatingly “Bert Rodriguez.”
Ronson continues in his book, “In April 2001, Bert Rodriguez took on a new student. His name was Ziad Jarrah.”
Rodriguez taught Jarrah “the choke hold and the kamikaze spirit. You need a code you’d die for, a do-or-die desire.” Rodriguez added, “Ziad was like Luke Skywalker. You know when Luke walks the invisible path? You have to believe it’s there…
Yeah, Ziad believed it.
He was like Luke Skywalker.”
Rodriguez trained Ziad Jarrah for six months.
On Sept 11, 2001, Ziad Jarrah took control of the United Airlines flight 93 as part of the orchestrated 9/11 terrorist attack.
On Sept 11, 2001, Ziad Jarrah took control of the United Airlines flight 93 as part of the orchestrated 9/11 terrorist attack. Trained by the United States military.
Meet Dr. Strangelove
At the end of the film Dr. Strangelove we are finally confronted with the “top lunatic” so to speak who was really in charge this whole time.
For all the “top brass” in the war room, nobody was really in control of the situation this entire time since the entire “war scenario” was set-up as a positive feedback loop within the doomsday plan of a lunatic.
Dr. Strangeglove.
You see, the belief that one can bend spoons, walk through walls, and burst the hearts of goats is not the problem.
It is the belief held by top officials within the U.S. military industrial complex that their ideology of appropriate morality is to prevail.
Therefore, one must use these mind-over-matter techniques to achieve the ultimate goal, “the power to manipulate reality”, that global dominance can be achieved without wiping out the world.
Therefore, one must use these mind-over-matter techniques to achieve the ultimate goal, “the power to manipulate reality”, that global dominance can be achieved without wiping out the world.
That somehow “it might be possible to fight, and win, a battle with nuclear weapons, without the exchange leading to an all-out-world-ending conflict,” and if not…
…we may all die for a lunatic’s dream in the process.
Sweet Jesus!
Oh, but that’s only an appetizer. You see, not only is the entire city of Washington DC bat-shit crazy but they have corrupted the military rank and file. These once-brave soldiers now have become psychopathic “yes men” to mad-men.
And they are playing with dangerously power weapons.
Weapons that could launch a global pandemic (been there – done that.)
Weapons that could destroy and collapse trade (been there – done that.)
Weapons that could alter the reality of America (been there – done that.)
Weapons that could devastate entire nations …
…pending..
Here is an uber lucid article by Christopher Black on what the PBCs (Psychopathic Barbarian Crusaders) truly want.
.
I like that. Psychopathic Barbarian Crusaders. Sounds so apt.
I’m aware that I might be unfair because the vast majority of Western people don’t qualify to be PBCs (Psychopathic Barbarian Crusaders)…
.
…but unhappily, most of the western movers & shakers (either in a leadership position or being cowardly and ignorant sidekicks) qualify for such an inglorious denomination.
.
We are at a crossroad. Everyone reading this should be perfectly aware of the geopolitical Damocles’ sword hanging on us all.
.
It’s impossible for anyone to be fully disconnected from geopolitics, the one guided by philosophy and ethics but also the Real Politik one because living in a fantasy world (un monde de bisounours, as they say in France or un monde de câlinours as said in Quebec) never helped anybody living on Earth.
.
But having principles and at the same time being aware of the ruts of the world is maybe the Middle Way.
.
At least it might help us deal with the events that unfold due to the madness of men.
.
The madness of men.
General Jack D. Ripper: Your Commie has no regard for human life, not even his own. And for this reason, men, I want to impress upon you the need for extreme watchfulness. The enemy may come individually, or he may come in strength. He may even come in the uniform of our own troops. But however he comes, we must stop him. We must not allow him to gain entrance to this base. Now, I'm going to give you THREE SIMPLE rules: First, trust NO one, whatever his uniform or rank, unless he is known to you personally; Second, anyone or anything that approaches within 200 yards of the perimeter is to be FIRED UPON; Third, if in doubt, shoot first then ask questions afterward. I would sooner accept a few casualties through accidents rather losing the entire base and its personnel through carelessness. Any variation of these rules must come from me personally. Any variation on these rules must come from me personally. Now, men, in conclusion, I would like to say that, in the two years it has been my privilege to be your commanding officer, I have always expected the best from you, and you have never given me anything less than that. Today, the nation is counting on us. We're not going to let them down. Good luck to you all.-- General Jack D. Ripper
The US-Japanese Alliance Against China Risks World War
In 2003, when several lawyers, including myself, visited North Korea to learn more about socialism there, we were shown US Army documents captured in 1950 by the communist forces.
In 1950, the communist forces seized control of Seoul and overran the American Army headquarters.There, they secured all the documents, cypher’s, and data that they found.
The documents confirmed that it was the US and its puppets in South Korea that invaded the north, not the other way round.
Their objective was to crush the local communist forces. Set up strongly fortified launching zones, and then attacking China.
Their plan failed and ended in an American rout.
Battle for Seoul.
But what did surprise me was the evidence in the documents that the Americans also had the help and advice of Japanese Army officers who had remained in Korea at the end of the war between the US and Japan that ended in 1945.
Two growing empires went to war in the Pacific against each other but in the end the defeated and occupied Japanese soon joined the growing American empire.
And it was its drive for world domination and Korea was the first proof of their fealty to the US.
A fealty tolerated not only because of their defeat but also because American capital and Japanese capital have the same interest; the subjugation and exploitation of China.
The Japanese worked with the American military to take over Korea and launch towards China for eventual capture and domination.
On July 6, 2021 the Japanese Deputy Prime Minister stated at a Liberal Democratic Party function, that if China acted to take control of Taiwan…
… as is its right to do since it is an integral part of China…
… then Japan would defend Taiwan.
Why?
Well, because because such an action by China would represent an “existential threat to Japan.”
“If a major incident happened, it’s safe to say it would be related to a situation threatening the survival of Japan.
If that is the case, Japan and the US must defend Taiwan together.”
Why it would be an “existential threat to Japan” ?
He did not explain.
…
The Chinese will never forget what the Japanese did to China. They have never forgiven.
That he spoke for the leadership of Japan is clear.
Now keep in mind…
That any interference (by anyone) in China’s actions regarding the Chinese Provence of Taiwan…
…would be an aggression against China…
…and would be in absolute violation of the Japanese Constitution.
For this constitution prohibits Japanese Self-Defense Forces from taking any offensive actions.
And this is a quite clear violation of the UN Charter.
…
In response China has stated time and again that it is prepared to defeat both the US and Japan…
…if they try to interfere when China retakes control of Taiwan.
Which (unfortunately) every action by the Americans and Taiwanese is provoking them to do.
…
Of course…
The Americans recognize that they do not have enough strength in the region to interfere alone.
And so they have lured Britain, France, and Germany, as well as the ever-eager Australians, to send in naval forces to the South China Sea to support the American and Japanese assault plans.
It is more than ironic to see four nations that were bitter enemies of Imperial Japan in World War II, now colluding with Japan.
Not only that, but to once again attack China and that Germany, an ally of Japan in the Second World War, once again is attempting to throw its weight around in the world.
What is the matter with these people?
The Chinese have a long and bitter memory of the Japanese invasion and occupation of their lands in the 1930s and 40’s just as the Koreans have the same bitter memories of Japanese occupation.
The Chinese have a long and bitter memory of the Japanese invasion.
The Chinese have a long and bitter memory of the Japanese invasion.
But we realize now that the defeat of the fascists and militarists in Germany and Japan in 1945 was not their final defeat.
The governments who fought those two nations also had fascist elements within them.
These elements, these people, hoped that the Nazis would crush communism in the USSR and the Japanese would do the same in China.
…
Instead, the elements of world capital that supported or tolerated fascism and relied on imperialism to increase their profits.
And they quickly reorganized.
And, led by the far right in Washington, created the NATO military alliance to continue the assault on the USSR and now on Russia, China and other independent nations.
They wear different clothes now.
American neocons pushing for war.
But they use the same lies and techniques of propaganda as the Nazis and Japanese militarists as they prepare for another war against China and Russia.
…
On July 30, 2021 the Chinese government had to warn the British government and its naval task force, led by the new British aircraft carrier, Queen Elizabeth, to keep away from its territorial waters or face the consequences.
British aircraft carrier, Queen Elizabeth.
Yet, at the same time the US and France conducted military exercise with dozens of US F22s and French Rafale aircraft near Hawaii.
All this while the French beef up their forces in Tahiti.
And while the Americans have dispersed their fleet of bombers and fighters including F35s from their big base on Guam, which the Chinese can destroy quickly, to smaller bases, making it more difficult for China to destroy those aircraft.
This type of dispersal is usually seen in war settings, when war is on going or imminent.
At the same time the Germans announced that they will be sending a frigate to the South China Sea in support of the Americans and Japanese.
While the Americans sent more ships into the Taiwan Strait this week. Some may see all this as sabre rattling.
But that is a lot of sabres, and they are doing a lot more than just rattling them.
As Hans Rudiger Minow stated in German Foreign Policy,
“The intensification of western manoeuvres and their growing focus on combat missions, which are highly realistic under current circumstances, coincide with prognoses by high-ranking US military officials, predicting that a war between the United States and China is probable in the near future.
For example, recently NATO’s former Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), Ret. Adm. James G. Stavridis, was quoted with the prognosis that “our technology, network of allies and bases in the region, still overmatch China” – for now.
However, “by the end of the decade – if not sooner” the People’s Republic “will be in a position” to “challenge the US” at least “in the South China Sea.”
Recently Stavridis published a novel in which he depicted a fictional war erupting between the USA and China in 2034.
In the meantime, he considers “we may not have until 2034 to prepare for this battle – it may come much sooner.”
Some of his colleagues in the military are predicting that “it is not about 2034,” the Big War could come earlier – possibly even “2024 or 2026.”
But it is not China that is seeking a war.
So who is pushing this insanity?
American neocons.
Who is pushing for war…?
The propaganda machines in the west, all part of the military-industrial complex, are legion.
But one of the worst is the Hudson Institute.
Founded in 1961 by Herman Khan, formerly of the Rand Institute, who was famous for playing nuclear war games and theorizing on the possibilities of using nuclear weapons in war.
Its current leadership and membership include fascists like Mike Pompeo, Seth Cropsey and many others who served in various US government regimes or the US military establishment.
Seth Cropsey’s bio states,
“Cropsey began his career in government at the US Department of Defense as assistant to Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and subsequently served as deputy undersecretary of the Navy in the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, where he was responsible for the Navy’s position on efforts to reorganize DoD, development of the maritime strategy, the Navy’s academic institutions, naval special operations, and burden-sharing with NATO allies.
In the Bush administration, Cropsey moved to the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) to become acting assistant secretary, and then principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict. Cropsey served as a naval officer from 1985 to 2004.
“From 1982 to 1984, Cropsey directed the editorial policy of the Voice of America (VOA) on the solidarity movement in Poland, Soviet treatment of dissidents, and other issues. Returning to public diplomacy in 2002 as director of the US government’s International Broadcasting Bureau, Cropsey supervised the agency as successful efforts were undertaken to increase radio and television broadcasting to the Muslim world.”
In other words…
…
Cropsey penned a recent article published in The Hill, a US right wing journal covering events in Washington entitled ,“Japan Signals An Opening for US in Countering China”.
In it he praised the statement by Taro Aso that Japan will support Taiwan (in case of China acting to take control of its island).
The justification being [1] that China seeks “world dominance” and [2] that there will be a war with the USA in the near future (and Japan wants to be on the winning side).
LOL.
He further states that the Japanese have now made a “decisive shift” in foreign and military policy.
Is Japan an independent nation, or a proxy vassal of the United States?
He dismisses the Japanese constitutional prohibition on Japanese offensive actions and calls for Japan to increase it military forces and support to “counter” China.
He wrote:
“Defending Taiwan is a difficult proposition. The PLA is at its strongest within the First Island Chain, particularly around Taiwan, given Beijing’s concentration of naval, air, and missile forces.
To defend the island, the US and its allies would have to operate squarely within China’s missile range, jeopardizing the high-value capital assets upon which American combat power depends.“However, Japan and the US both field significant submarine fleets — Japan’s small but quiet battery-powered boats are an effective counterpart to America’s larger nuclear-powered attack submarines.
Submarines are immune to the missiles upon which the PLA would rely to gain sea and air control over Taiwan.
If supported by a sufficient fast-boat mining effort, and a robust enough network of mobile ground-launched anti-ship and anti-air missiles, a Japanese-American submarine surge could defeat a PLA invasion of Taiwan, or at minimum prevent the fait accompli for which China hopes.Given this strategic reality.”
He calls for more military exercises with the US and Japan, France, and Britain and their other allies to “prepare for war.”
He then adds the lie that “preparing for war is essential to deterring it” when what he really means is that America is preparing for war in order to wage war.
Come on!
Everyone knows that America is planning to attack China. Destroy it. Invade it, Conquer it, and then convert it into a vassal state. Let's be real. Please!
The forces of peace and reason in the world must denounce these war preparations as a danger to the entire world for a war on China…
….will bring in Russia…
…and others (nations that no one is thinking about)…
… it will lead to world war…
…then to nuclear war…
… and (possibly) the end of humanity.
…
And the author goes on to say…
We must denounce these criminals and demand the International Criminal Court prosecutor take action to warn the Americans, and indict the leaders of the US allies over which it has jurisdiction, their propagandists like Seth Cropsey, and all the rest who are conspiring to commit aggression, the supreme war crime, the final act of insanity, because it seems to me that is what war with China will be, the final act in the human drama.
We wont have to wait for abrupt climate change to finish us off.
But the ICC says nothing about all this and the UN Security Council is rendered impotent.
So who then is left to object, to say enough is enough, to hell with the criminals and their wars, except us, the people, But what can we the people do?
Yes, protest, petition, write, shout, cry, join peace groups like the one I belong to, the Canadian Peace Congress, do anything you can but get up, stand up, as Bob Marley called for us to do, and as John Lennon demanded, Give Peace A Chance.
…
Give peace a chance.
…
Noble thoughts, but it ain’t gonna happen.
Obviously he has been sleeping under a rock for the last 75 years. You cannot write letter or petition anyone. They are above all this. They are a run-away locomotive and it is fast approaching a rickety old bridge that is long in need of repair.
It will not go well.
What about Russia?
All the time all this “saber rattling” is going on by the United States Military Empire, and the hate-hate-hate narratives are flooding the “news” media, what else is going on that isn’t being reported?
Remember boys and girls. To know what is really going on, look for what IS NOT being reported.
Well, Russian and Chinese troops and military have been practicing and coordinating their military strategies ALL YEAR.
Of course you would NEVER hear about this on FOX “news”, CNN, BBC, or any other mainstream “news” website. Check out some of these videos…
Russian troops training in XinJiang and then eating fine Uighur food.
And then here’s another.
Russian and Chinese commanders address their troops.
Here’s a great movie showing how Russian soldiers are being trained to use Chinese weapon systems, while the Chinese are also being trained to use the Russian weapons systems.
Here’s a great movie showing how Russian soldiers are being trained to use Chinese weapon systems, while the Chinese are also being trained to use the Russian weapons systems.
Let’s dig a little deeper. Shall we?
This next article is from a pro-Japan, pro-American author that tries to rationalize Japan going to war with China over Taiwan. He comes to the conclusion that ABSOLUTELY Japan would go fight the Chinese…
…and with help from the USA, probably would win.
How Far Would Japan Really Go to Defend Taiwan?
Japan defense report says Taiwan's 'stability' is integral to its 'security', putting Tokyo's pacifist forces on a new collision course with Beijing
When Japanese Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso said on July 5, 2021 that Tokyo would come to Taiwan’s aid in the event of a Chinese invasion, Beijing’s sharp response was predictable.
“We will never allow anyone to meddle in the Taiwan question in any way,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said the day after Aso made his surprise remark.
“No one should underestimate the resolve, the will, and the ability of the Chinese people to defend their national sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
But Aso’s statement was no slip of the tongue. A week later, on July 13, Japan released its annual defense report, which for the first time mentioned the importance of maintaining “stability” around Taiwan because it “is important for Japan’s security.”
China’s response, again, was sharp and immediate.
The Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece Global Times ran an op-ed stating that “Japan will ‘lose badly’ if it defends Taiwan secessionists.”
…
…
China does not play. Do not take the warning lightly.
…
Chinese DF-41 armed with ten (x10) nuclear warheads well within the range of Japan. One missile launch of these independently directed, AI controlled, hypervelocity MIRV’s will completely destroy ten of Japan’s largest cities, and if not send Japan into the Iron age, will thrash it’s economy to zero.
The piece quoted an anonymous Beijing-based military analyst as saying, “Even the US could not defeat China militarily in the West Pacific region now, so what makes Japan believe it’s able to challenge China with force?”
Good question.
While the motivations behind Tokyo’s recent statements are unclear, Japan and Taiwan are openly on the same side.
In Asia’s intensifying new Cold War, where an increasingly assertive and militarily powerful China is the obvious but usually unspoken adversary.
Japan and Taiwan do not share official diplomatic relations — Tokyo recognizes Beijing as the sole legitimate government of China.
However, the two sides are known to share intelligence through back channels.
In May last year, as Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen began her second term in office, then-chief Cabinet secretary, now prime minister, Yoshihide Suga said that Japan is eager to develop its ties with Taiwan.
Eager.
(I wonder if American money played a role? Hum.)
…
…
Japan’s annual foreign policy report, known as the Diplomatic Bluebook, describes Taiwan in its latest edition released on April 27 this year as an “important partner and friend.”
It also said Japan backs Taiwan’s campaign to attend the World Health Assembly, the decision-making body of the World Health Organization (WHO).
The Bluebook stated diplomatically that Taiwan had been successful in fighting the Covid-19 virus and “there should be no blank spaces on the world map.” China, which considers Taiwan a renegade province that should be “reunited” with the mainland, strongly opposes Taiwan’s participation in any international bodies.
The Bluebook also said that Japan would cooperate with “more countries” to promote freedom of navigation and the rule of law in the Asia-Pacific region.
In matters of geostrategic importance, Japan already works closely with the US, India and Australia under the so-called “Quad.”
Yup. This is the Pacific "NATO" that was set up by neocon Mike Pompeo.
Taiwan could be seen as a silent partner, or at least an ally, to the strategic grouping because it is a vital link in the China-focused island chain of defense which stretches from Japan’s main islands to Okinawa, Taiwan, the Philippines and the Malaysian part of Borneo.
America Is Betting Big on the Second Island Chain | RANDSep 08, 2020 · The United States has deep and abiding interests in the Second Island Chain. But China's growing influence in the region could complicate U.S. plans. Washington will almost certainly seek to strengthen security cooperation with Pacific Island states in the Second Island Chain and bolster defensive positions on U.S. territories in the region.
However, the bigger question remains: what exactly would Japan be prepared to do if China did try to invade Taiwan?
What would Japan do?
Whatever the anonymous military analyst quoted in the Global Times might think, Japan certainly has the means to challenge China militarily.
On December 21, 2020, the Japanese government approved the ninth consecutive rise in military spending, marking a historic record of 5.34 trillion yen (US$51.7 billion.)
Japan’s Self-Defense Forces (JSDF), as they are formally known, are comprised of nearly 250,000 active personnel and another 50,000 in reserve, and are equipped with the latest weaponry and technology procured mainly from the US.
Hum. China has the world’s largest army, with more than 2 million active personnel
The Japanese Navy is believed by military analysts to be the strongest in the region after America’s…
…and thus superior to China’s still underdeveloped but steadily growing naval forces.
LOL. Don't be so sure.
China’s underdeveloped military forces…
Um. Sure. What ever you want to believe.
…
Some history
Do not negotiate with the United States.
I want to remind you all that when it seems like America is “losing”, then “the gloves come off”, and real nasty things will take place.
Like in Korea when the Chinese Army routed the American forces…
In late 1950 American forces suffered a series of disastrous defeats in Korea at the hands of Chinese troops, and the report from a Pentagon committee in early December emphasized the importance of accelerating the development of bioweapons such as Q Fever, plague, and anthrax together with the necessary delivery mechanisms for covert use, while especially praising the CIA for its effectiveness in that regard. This secret report was eventually declassified by a FOIA request in 1996.Around the same time that report was being written, a British sergeant retreating through a deserted North Korean village before advancing Chinese troops observed American military personnel, masked and gloved, carefully removing large quantities of feathers from special containers and flinging them into the empty houses before he was warned away by American MPs. He later stated that he had obviously witnessed “a clandestine operation” of some sort and mentioned that a few days afterward he was required to take an unspecified vaccine. This curious vignette appears in Unit 731, a 1989 historical account of Japan’s biowarfare program written by two BBC journalists, but oddly enough the incident was removed from the American edition of that same book.Months later, the North Korean foreign minister issued a formal complaint to the United Nations that America had used illegal biological warfare, attacking his own troops and those of China with smallpox. These mysterious outbreaks had occurred a few months earlier, but only in areas recently occupied by retreating American forces. The accusations briefly appeared in the Western media, but were ridiculed and hotly denied by American government spokesmen.Around the same time that Communist troops were sickening and dying, around two hundred American soldiers in the same theater had also been suddenly stricken by a mysterious outbreak of Songo fever, never before seen in Korea but with symptoms quite similar to smallpox and a specialty of America’s Japanese biowarfare mentors. Strict censorship prevented these stories from reaching the American media until many months later, at which point our government claimed that the illnesses had been spread by Chinese troops. But the disease seemed entirely absent from the hundreds of miles of Korean territory the enemy forces had traversed, and only appeared in a narrow belt along the front lines, with our stricken servicemen believing that they seemed to be spread by infected field mice or voles. Voles had long been regarded by American researchers as an excellent vector for their bioweapons, and when interviewed years later for a history of the Korean War, one of the leaders of our local CIA efforts explained that his covert operations had created a defensive belt along the front lines.
The use of bio-weapons, chemical weapons, and nuclear weapons will be the direct result if the United States is unable to achieve it’s objectives.
Thus, we see WHY after eight (8x) bio-weapons targeting livestock in China, John Bolton, the head of the Bio-Warfare office under President Trump) launched COVID-19B against the Chinese. As well as the two follow up bio-weapons in July and late August.
So now…
The “drums of war” are beating again. And they are louder than ever. They are so loud that it is giving me a headache.
What’s China (and Russia) to do?
According to the Washington-based think tank the Center for Strategic & International Studies, Beijing has made substantial progress in the construction of a third aircraft carrier as Type 003, which is …
“slated to become the largest surface combatant in the Chinese People’s Army Navy (PLAN) and significantly upgrade China’s naval capabilities.”
Type-003.
But the crux of the strategic matter is that Article 9 of Japan’s supposedly pacifist, post-World War II constitution.
it specifically outlaws war as a means to settle international disputes.
And the Japanese Self Defense Force (JSDF) are therefore legally only allowed to defend the country if it comes under attack.
Only if it comes under attack.
But Mr. Aso has argued that Taiwan is situated only 112 kilometers from some islands that are part of Okinawa prefecture and therefore a Chinese invasion could represent an “existential threat” to Japan’s security.
You know. Too close for comfort.
It's like having a restaurant next to a gas station. The gas station is robbed, so the restaurant owner gets his gun and goes over to the gas station to shoot everyone. You know. Just in case.
In that direction, the Japanese navy’s first aircraft carrier since World War II is nearly ready to deploy. It is designed to carry up to 28 light or 14 larger aircraft.
Woo woo.
Jeffrey Hornung, a political scientist at the US-based Rand Corporation, wrote in a May 10 paper that Japan would not need to get directly involved in a military conflict over Taiwan.
But, he suggests, if Washington sought to defend the democratic, self-ruled island, “at a minimum, the United States would require access to its bases in Japan, which would execute combat operations in, over and around Taiwan.”
Yada. Yada. Yada.
The JSDF would in that way “act as a force multiplier for any US-led operation. That means US requests for Japanese involvement would be almost certain.” In other words, Japan’s involvement would be limited to “non-combatant, rear-area support roles” in fields such as “supply, maintenance, transportation, engineering and medical services,” Hornung writes.
Okinawa is proximal to Taiwan and the US base there would be at the front of any military action against China.
…
….
If Japan wanted to get involved.
…
If China decided to attack Okinawa, or for argument’s sake any base on Japanese territory, such an attack could be interpreted as an act of aggression and Japan would have the right to act in self-defense.
But that scenario also raises another important question: would the US be prepared to intervene and defend Taiwan? The US and Taiwan, officially the Republic of China, shared a defense treaty before Washington established diplomatic relations with China on January 1, 1979.
..
On that day, the US withdrew its recognition of the Republic of China and terminated the 1955 “Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty between the United States and the Republic of China.” Because either party had to notify the other about the termination a year in advance, the treaty remained in place – at least nominally – until January 1, 1980.
Then it ENDED.
The now null-and-void 1955 treaty, which stipulated that if one country came under attack the other would provide military support, was in certain aspects replaced by the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act.
…
Under the Act, the US was no longer be obliged to defend Taiwan, the US embassy in Taiwan was closed and relations were maintained through a non-profit corporation registered in the District of Columbia known as the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), which functions as a de facto embassy.
…
The ambiguity of the relationship is evident in a Taiwan Relations Act clause that says that “the United States will make available to Taiwan such defense articles and defense services in such quantity as may be necessary to enable Taiwan to maintain sufficient self-defense capabilities.”
…
The Act’s intention appears to be to dissuade Taiwan from declaring independence from China, while at the same time discouraging China from invading Taiwan. But that all came into force when Jimmy Carter was America’s president and China was still a fairly poor country, not the regional superpower it has become today.
As Beijing celebrated the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party on July 1, President Xi Jinping reiterated his pledge to incorporate Taiwan into the mainland.
“Solving the Taiwan question and realizing the complete reunification of the motherland are the unswerving historical tasks of the Chinese Communist Party and the common aspiration of all Chinese people,” Xi said in a speech.
Every Chinese must work together, “resolutely smashing any ‘Taiwan independence plots,’” the Chinese leader added. China has recently flexed its muscles in that direction with air force jets and bombers making frequent incursions into Taiwan’s airspace.
…
In this new geopolitical environment, it would be impossible for the US to stay idle if Xi turned his tough rhetoric into military action and actually sent forces to invade Taiwan.
In that scenario, Japan could and would not stay neutral.
To be sure, Deputy Defense Minister Aso is known for his public gaffes, which are often corrected or denied by the government after being uttered.
But as Corey Wallace, a foreign policy expert at Kanagawa University in Yokohama was quoted saying in the July 12 issue of Foreign Policy, the slip this time may have been deliberate and reflect what Japanese officials have long believed privately.
Either way, Xi is playing with certain fire by talking about Taiwan’s “reunification” with the mainland.
LOL. Taiwan is PART of China. Xi Peng can say anything he wants about his nation. And the rest of the world can howl. He's not playing with fire. Just like Joe Biden is not playing with fire when he announces a new road project in West Virginia.
Even with China’s recent military and naval build-up, Beijing still faces formidable odds in invading Taiwan, which would almost inevitably result in a wider conflict – one Japan could inevitably play a crucial, military role.
…
Do not be so sure…
Don’t be so sure. Seriously. There are MANY things in play here. Keep in mind that a war with China, in such close proximity would devastate that nation to a point that it might turn into such a churned up mass of radioactive rubble that it would need to be renamed “Commode”.
…
Let’s keep in mind WHO we are talking about…
China is not some nation filled with bicycle riding peasants who were issued a cheap SKS clone. China is a fierce strong proud, and patriotic nation. Their children speak both English and Chinese by the time they are in middle school. Everyone attends scouts, and gets full-military training in elementary school. It is a nation that promotes STEM graduates by demonstrated merit, punishes those who violate the rules with extreme harshness, and never bluffs.
Chinese boy scouts… Check out the videos.
Chinese boy scouts 1
And, here’s another…
Chinese boy scouts 2
Still not convinced…
Scot training focuses on group communication, working together as a team, and mastery of fighting skills.
How about this one…
Chinese scouts are coed.
It is so easy to forget who the Chinese actually are…
With a non-stop anti-China barrage hitting everyone 24-7, all year it is so easy to villainize people who you only know by the two dimensional cardboard cut out that Mike Pompeo, John Bolton, and Tom Collins created. It’s not even remotely true.
Do not lulled into believing that the Chinese are backwards, and ill-prepared. Or that they are starving and cannot wait to be “liberated” for democracy™.
Not only are the Chinese skilled, work as a team (automatically) but there are BILLIONS of them, all working together for the common good. Anyone who wants to tangle with this dragon is seriously in need of a lobotomy.
There’s billions of Chinese. Don’t piss them off!
China is not a third-world military. They are peer-capable with the best that America has. What’s more they outnumber everything that the United States can compile against it. And never forget, they WILL USE nuclear weapons if attacked.
Count on it.
You are a fucking idiot if you don’t realize this.
China is a serious, serious nation that does not play.
It’s so easy to think that China would be an “easy kill”, if all you see and read in within your own bubble of isolation. Much like those kings who “pooh-pooh” the offers by Genghis Khan for trade. But then they found out that their large army of 20,000 knights on white horses were no match for 5,000,000 angry, pissed off, huns riding in at dawn.
Chinese soldiers.
And let’s not forget that the vast bulk of technology comes from China. China posses the vast number of factories, and consists of thousands of design centers. No, not the “technology centers” that you see in the USA which is really a nice building, and staffed with one or two engineers that outsource to China, the rest being marketing, finance, attorneys and IT folk. No, China is the place where the real things are designed and made.
Stuff that isn’t advertised. Like robotic “hand grenades”. How would you like your base or complex over-run with these little guys each one a bomb?
Cute robot hand-grenades.
.
Trying to avoid war…
Let’s look at how China is trying to avoid war. Let’s look at what they are doing to make any war with China a very, very costly mistake….
While China has not publicly released a new nuclear posture statement that supersedes the 2006 White Paper, the construction of new missile silos configured to hold solid-fuel ICBMs possessing multiple warheads changes the nuclear posture options for China.
The most likely change is to transition from a pure retaliatory strike capability (“counterattack in self-defense”) to a launch-on-warning posture.
This posture means the Chinese missiles would leave their silos when an attack was detected.
This differs from the previous posture, where the missiles would be waiting for a nuclear attack to actually occur.
Given China’s declared nuclear policy, a launch-on-warning posture allows China to retain its no-first-use policy while simultaneously ensuring the survivability of its nuclear forces.
A US-Sino nuclear arms race is already underway – and we know who the winner will be
Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and author of 'SCORPION KING: America's Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump.' He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf’s staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector.
Follow him on Twitter @RealScottRitter
Since the 1960’s, China has maintained a no-first-use nuclear policy and pledged never to engage in an arms race. However, thanks to the destabilizing impact of US nuclear policy, it has begun an arms race – and it plans on winning.
A quick history lesson: China detonated its first atomic weapon on October 16, 1964. In doing so, it became the fifth country – after the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and France – to possess nuclear weapons. Since then, China has developed and deployed a modest arsenal of strategic nuclear weapons delivery systems, with the goal of maintaining a minimum nuclear deterrent against other nuclear-armed powers, with a particular focus on the US.
The 2006 Defense White Paper, issued by China’s State Council Information Office, provides the most authoritative description of the country’s nuclear strategy.
China’s fundamental goal, the White Paper states,
“is to deter other countries from using or threatening to use nuclear weapons against China.”
This deterrence comes from
“principles of counterattack in self-defense” (i.e., “assured retaliation”.) China “remains firmly committed to the policy of no first use of nuclear weapons at any time and under any circumstances.”
Moreover, it
“unconditionally undertakes not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapon states or nuclear-weapon-free zones.”
The White Paper goes on to declare that China
“stands for the comprehensive prohibition and complete elimination of nuclear weapons,” and that it believes in the “limited development of nuclear weapons” while aiming “at building a lean and effective nuclear force capable of meeting national security needs.” In conclusion, the White Paper notes, “China exercises great restraint in developing its nuclear force,” and “it has never entered into and will never enter into a nuclear arms race with any other country.”
From its inception in 1966, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force has relied upon a single missile – the DF-5 – as its primary strategic nuclear delivery system.
A massive, two-stage liquid-fuel rocket which, depending on what variant one is talking about, can deliver a single warhead (DF-5A), three warheads (DF-5B) or 10 warheads (DF-5C) to targets 12,000 km (7,456 miles) from the point of launch.
Chinese silo-based, liquid fueled, MIRV, ICBM’s the DF-5B and DF-5C.
The DF-5, based in hardened concrete silos, was designed to be able to survive a nuclear attack in sufficient numbers to enable China to deliver a country-killing nuclear counter-strike.
The DF-5, however, had several operational drawbacks which, as the strategic nuclear capabilities of potential adversaries (i.e., the United States) improved, made its survivability in a nuclear conflict more problematic.
First and foremost, as a liquid-fuel rocket, it is loaded into its silo with empty fuel tanks (the fuel and oxidizer used are highly corrosive, and if stored in the missile, would make it unusable in a matter of months.) Before it can be launched, therefore, the DF-5 must be fueled, a process that can take several hours.
The Chinese also stored the DF-5 without its warheads. As such, while the missile is being refueled, special teams would be bringing the nuclear warheads from nearby storage shelters and mounting them on the missile body.
The DF-5 is extremely vulnerable during this time, and as the accuracy and time of flight capabilities of US nuclear forces (in particular the Trident D5 system) improved, the Chinese assessed that their DF-5 nuclear deterrent was vulnerable to being taken out by a first strike.
Beginning in the 1970’s, China began developing solid-fuel rockets for use as mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).
The first of these, the DF-31, was deployed in 2006, as a road-mobile system.
DF-31 mobile solid fueled ICBM.
By 2013, the Chinese produced and fielded an improved version, the DF-31A. The DF-31 is armed with a single nuclear warhead.
In 2016, China completed testing for a more modern solid-fuel ICBM, the DF-41, which has begun to enter service as a mobile missile. The DF-41 carries 10 independently targeted nuclear warheads.
DF-41 MIRV ICBM. This is the mainstay of the Chinese ICBM fleet. All have ten nuclear warheads, can reach anywhere in the globe, and can be launched in minutes.
Between the DF-5, DF-31, and DF-41 missile systems, China was assessed, as of 2019, of possessing around 218 nuclear warheads (It has an additional 68 nuclear warheads carried on submarines and manned bombers.)
But even with this mix of silo-based DF-5s and mobile DF-31/41 missiles, China believed its forces remained vulnerable to a pre-emptive strike by American nuclear and, increasingly, conventional forces.
After all, that is what all the military policy planners in Washington DC are discussing right now. A first strike attack against China prior to an invasion.
This concern appeared to be magnified in the aftermath of the American withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty in 2019, and the emerging threat of intermediate-range missiles appearing on the periphery of China’s borders.
The first sign that China was adapting to this new reality came in the form of significant improvements and additions to its massive Jilantai training area, located near the city of Jilantai in China’s Inner Mongolia province.
Constructed in 2013, the Jilantai training area was the premier training grounds for the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force, with specialized training constructed for both silo- and mobile-missile operations.
Around 2016, however, China began constructing new silos that appeared to be too small to hold the massive DF-5, leading Western analysts to assess that the Chinese were preparing to house their solid-fuel ICBMs, either the DF-31, DF-41 or both, in a silo configuration.
The importance of this distinction is that, while mobility provides for an element of survivability in a classic nuclear exchange scenario, the mobile missiles are vulnerable to loiter weapons.
Loiter weapons are in great use by the United States, such as armed drones, or precision stand-off weapons, such as the kind of ground-launched cruise missiles being developed by the US in the post-INF treaty era.
By placing some of its solid fuel ICBMs in silos, China virtually eliminates the threat from drones and cruise missiles, and because these missiles don’t have to be fueled, reduces the vulnerability to US strategic nuclear weapons such as the Trident D5.
The scope and scale of the silo construction led some analysts to conclude that perhaps the Jilantai training area was going to assume a limited operational posture, based upon the number of silos under construction.
This assessment was made moot, however, by the discovery of what many analysts believe is a massive missile base, containing 120 silos, under construction near Yumen in Gansu province, and another, containing a potential 110 additional silos, near the city of Hami in Eastern Xinjiang province.
Gansu province in China.
These silos appear to be similar to the new ones seen at the Jilantai training area, leading analysts to assess that the Chinese intend to load them with either the DF-31, DF-41 or both.
Many analysts believe that China may opt only to load a few of these silos with missiles, creating the potential for a “shell game” defense that would complicate nuclear targeting by the US.
But even if only 80 of these silos were loaded with DF-41 ICBMs, China’s warhead total would expand considerably, adding up to 800 new warheads to their arsenal.
Chinese nuclear weapons as understood by the West.
While China has not publicly released a new nuclear posture statement that supersedes the 2006 White Paper, the construction of new missile silos configured to hold solid-fuel ICBMs possessing multiple warheads changes the nuclear posture options for China.
The most likely change is to transition from a pure retaliatory strike capability (“counterattack in self-defense”) to a launch-on-warning posture.
This means the Chinese missiles would leave their silos when an attack was detected instead of waiting for a nuclear attack to actually occur.
Given China’s declared nuclear policy, a launch-on-warning posture allows China to retain its no-first-use policy while simultaneously ensuring the survivability of its nuclear forces.
However, if one is an American strategic nuclear planner, one cannot ignore the reality that China is edging close to having a legitimate first-strike capability, especially if it places missiles in every one of the silos under construction.
Faced with a potential first-strike capability from both Russia and China…
… and in light of the growing cooperation between Russia and China on defense issues…
…regarding what both nations view as the growing threat from the United States…
… the US may be compelled to look at increasing its nuclear arsenal, or dramatically altering its own nuclear force posture and composition, in order to match this emerging threat.
This, however, would be a prohibitively expensive proposition.
Which leaves arms control.
The Biden administration is currently trying to tie US arms control talks about reducing the strategic nuclear arsenals of the US and Russia to China.
Russia has rejected this out of hand, noting that it has nothing to do with the Chinese nuclear arsenal, and therefore the US should be approaching China directly on this matter.
US-China nuclear reduction talks, however, are impractical when one compares the relative threat posed by 200-plus Chinese ground-based ICBMs.
While the US arsenal of several thousand strategic warheads housed in a nuclear triad consisting of silo-based ICBMs, submarine-launched ballistic missiles and air-delivered nuclear weapons.
The level of reductions in the US arsenal that would make any strategic nuclear forces reduction talks viable for China could not be matched by China, and as such would be politically impossible for the US to agree to.
If, however, the Chinese were to complete the two new silo bases and fill them with DF-41s, each of which armed with 10 warheads, then the US and China could negotiate mutually acceptable reductions based on strategic parity.
Such negotiations would be complicated by the need to factor in not only Russia, but also the nuclear arsenals of France and the UK (as American NATO allies), as well as the nuclear arsenals of lesser powers such as Pakistan, India, Israel and North Korea.
The bottom line, however, is that China appears to have breached its commitment “never to engage in a nuclear arms race of any kind.”
The facts show that China entered this new phase of nuclear weapons development and deployment as a reaction to developments by potential adversaries (i.e., the US).
However, let there be no doubt – this is an arms race.
The placement of the Chinese silo bases appears, by intent, to be outside the range of anticipated US intermediate-range weapons, such as cruise missiles.
This means that there will be increased pressure placed on the States to field a new generation of silo-based ICBMs to replace the aging Minuteman III missiles.
As well as a new generation of submarine-launched missiles…
And missile-carrying submarines…
And a new generation of manned bomber…
… all in numbers greater than current forecasts call for.
The US cannot afford to enter this kind of arms race with China. Simply put, China has out Ronald Reagan-ed the US, flipping the Cold War theory that the US outspent the Soviet Union, bankrupting it, and accelerating its collapse on its head…
… so that it’s the US that’s being outspent, bankrupting itself, and pushing itself closer to collapse.
Hopefully, the US leadership is wiser than their Soviet counterparts before them. But, if history has shown us anything, the US is addicted to the power it believes it accrues by possessing a large nuclear weapons arsenal, and like any addict, liberating oneself from its drug of choice is difficult, if not impossible.
And keep in mind that the Chinese and the Russians possess hyper-velocity missile technology
Why Hypersonic Missiles Are Real Game Changers – by Gordog
A Technical Look at the Science Behind the Headlines
by Gordog
The Americans are now crying ‘uncle’ about Russia’s hypersonic weapons. After the most recent flight test of the scramjet-powered Zircon cruise missile, the Washington Post on July 11 carried a Nato statement of complaint:
"Russia’s new hypersonic missiles are highly destabilizing and pose significant risks to security and stability across the Euro-Atlantic area," the statement said.
At the same time, talks have begun on the ‘strategic dialog’ between the US and Russia, as agreed at the June 16 Geneva Summit of the two presidents. The two sides had already agreed to extend the START treaty on strategic weapons that has been in effect for a decade, but, notably, it was the US side that initiated the summit—perhaps spurred by the deployment of the hypersonic, intercontinental-range Avangard missile back in 2019, when US weapons inspectors were present, as per START, to inspect the Avangard as it was lowered into its missile silos.
But what exactly is a hypersonic missile—and why is it suddenly such a big deal?
We all remember when Vladimir Putin announced these wonder weapons in his March 2018 address to his nation [and the world]. The response from the US media was loud guffaws about ‘CGI’ cartoons and Russian ‘wishcasting.’ Well, neither Nato nor the Biden team are guffawing now. Like the five stages of grief, the initial denial phase has slowly given way to acceptance of reality—as Russia continues deploying already operational missiles, like the Avangard and the air-launched Kinzhal, now in Syria, as well as finishing up successful state trials of the Zircon, which is to be operationally deployed aboard surface ships and submarines, starting in early 2022. And in fact, there are a whole slew of new Russian hypersonic missiles in the pipeline, some of them much smaller and able to be carried by ordinary fighter jets, like the Gremlin aka GZUR.
The word hypersonic itself means a flight regime above the speed of Mach 5. That is simple enough, but it is not only about speed. More important is the ability to MANEUVER at those high speeds, in order to avoid being shot down by the opponent’s air defenses. A ballistic missile can go much faster—an ICBM flies at about 6 to 7 km/s, which is about 15,000 mph, about M 25 high in the atmosphere. [Mach number varies with temperature, so it is not an absolute measure of speed. The same 15,000 mph would only equal M 20 at sea level, where the temperature is higher and the speed of sound is also higher.]
But a ballistic missile flies on a straightforward trajectory, just like a bullet fired from a barrel of a gun—it cannot change direction at all, hence the word ballistic.
This means that ballistic missiles can, in theory, be tracked by radar and shot down with an interceptor missile. It should be noted here that even this is a very tough task, despite the straight-line ballistic trajectory. Such an interception has never been demonstrated in combat, not even with intermediate-range ballistic missiles [IRBMs], of the kind that the DPRK fired off numerous times, sailing above the heads of the US Pacific Fleet in the Sea of Japan, consisting of over a dozen Aegis-class Ballistic Missile Defense ships, designed specifically for the very purpose of shooting down IRBMs.
Such an interception would have been a historic demonstration of military technology—on the level of the shock and awe of Hiroshima! But no interception was ever attempted by those ‘ballistic missile defense’ ships, spectating as they were, right under the flight paths of the North Korean rockets!
The bottom line is that hitting even a straight-line ballistic missile has never been successfully demonstrated in actual practice. It is a very hard thing to do.
Consider that a modern combat rifle with a high-velocity cartridge can fire a bullet at a speed of about 1,200 meters per second [1.2 km/s]. That is barely one fifth the speed of an ICBM warhead, and only about half the speed of a short or intermediate-range ballistic missile. Clearly, intercepting anything that flies double or even five times the speed of a rifle bullet is going to be a daunting task. [Note from our previous discussion on the space race and the technicalities of orbital flight, that the ICBM does not reach orbital velocity, but flies on a suborbital trajectory—although it does exit the atmosphere].
Between the two, speed and maneuvering, the latter is much more effective in evading defensive interception.
We know this from many actual battlefield results. When the US launched large salvoes of subsonic Tomahawk cruise missiles at Syria in 2017 and again in 2018, a number of them were intercepted by Syrian air defenses. But not nearly all. Many did get through despite the T-Hawk’s relatively slow speed of about 500 mph, which is only about M 0.7. But the cruise missile’s ability to fly low to the ground and maneuver in flight, changing direction constantly, make it a tough target to hit. Likewise in the Falklands War, the Argentines used subsonic and fairly short-range, French-made Exocet sea-skimming cruise missiles to sink several large British warships, including a then-state-of-the-art Royal Navy destroyer, HMS Sheffield.
Even bird hunters know this, and will use a shotgun that scatters many pellets over a wide area rather than a bullet-firing rifle to take down slow-flying, but maneuvering, land and waterfowl! Obviously, if you combine high speed WITH maneuvering, you will have a missile that is going to be very difficult to stop. [If not impossible, with something like the Avangard, which reaches ICBM speeds of up to M 25!].
But let’s lower our sights a little from ICBMs and IRBMs [and even subsonic cruise missiles] to a quite ancient missile technology, the Soviet-era Scud, first introduced into service in 1957! A recent case with a Houthi Scud missile fired at Saudi Arabia in December 2017 shows just how difficult missile interception really is:
At around 9 p.m…a loud bang shook the domestic terminal at Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport.‘There was an explosion at the airport,’ a man said in a video taken moments after the bang. He and others rushed to the windows as emergency vehicles streamed onto the runway.Another video, taken from the tarmac, shows the emergency vehicles at the end of the runway. Just beyond them is a plume of smoke, confirming the blast and indicating a likely point of impact.
The Houthi missile, identified as an Iranian-made Burqan-2 [a copy of a North Korean Scud, itself a copy of a Chinese copy of the original Russian Scud from the 1960s], flew over 600 miles before hitting the Riyadh international airport. The US-made Patriot missile defense system fired FIVE interceptor shots at the missile—all of them missed!
Laura Grego, a missile expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists, expressed alarm that Saudi defense batteries had fired five times at the incoming missile.
‘You shoot five times at this missile and they all miss? That’s shocking,’ she said. ‘That’s shocking because this system is supposed to work.’
Ms Grego knows what she’s talking about—she holds a physics doctorate from Caltech and has worked in missile technology for many years. Not surprisingly, American officials first claimed the Patriot missiles had done their job and shot the Scud down. This was convincingly debunked in the extensive expert analysis that ran in the NYT: Did American Missile Defense Fail in Saudi Arabia?
This was not the first time that Patriot ‘missile defense’ against this supposedly obsolete missile failed spectacularly:
On February 25, 1991, an Iraqi Scud hit the barracks in Dharan, Saudi Arabia, killing 28 soldiers from the U.S. Army's 14’th Quartermaster Detachment.A government investigation revealed that the failed intercept at Dhahran had been caused by a software error in the system's handling of timestamps. The Patriot missile battery at Dhahran had been in operation for 100 hours, by which time the system's internal clock had drifted by one-third of a second. Due to the missile's speed this was equivalent to a miss distance of 600 meters.
Whether this explanation is factual or not, the Americans’ initial claims of wild success in downing nearly all of the 80 Iraqi Scuds launched, was debunked by MIT physicist Theodore Postol, who concluded that no missiles were in fact intercepted!
Shooting down Scud missiles is difficult, and governments have wrongly claimed success against them in the past.Governments have overstated the effectiveness of missile defenses in the past, including against Scuds. During the first Gulf War, the United States claimed a near-perfect record in shooting down Iraqi variants of the Scud.Subsequent analyses found that nearly all the interceptions had failed.
Why is shooting down Scuds so difficult? Because this was arguably the world’s first hypersonic missile [it flies at M 5 and does MANEUVER]!
If we take a closer look at this missile, we see that it is propelled nearly throughout its entire flight. This is the key. The warhead only separates from the missile body a few miles [mere seconds], before reaching its target. That missile body contains a means for maneuvering the missile, by means of thrust vector—using graphite paddles that move into and out of the rocket engine exhaust stream, as seen here. So it will be jinking and jibing as it enters the terminal phase of flight—making it a very hard target to radar track and shoot down!
Once the warhead separates, the spent missile body falls harmlessly to the ground, as it did just outside the Riyadh airport, landing on a nearby street. It is this now uselessly falling body that could be locked onto by air defense radars and hit by interceptor missiles—while the warhead itself sails unobstructed overhead.
The only real problem with those ancient Scuds was their accuracy. They could be off by hundreds of meters. But of course, accuracy and missile guidance systems have come a long way since then. The modern successor to the Scud, the Russian truck-launched Iskander, has an accuracy of about 5 meters! It too, is really a hypersonic missile that reaches M 7, but has a range of only 500 km—which was dictated by the now-defunct INF treaty, from which the Trump administration unilaterally withdrew.
The Russian Iskander-M cruises at hypersonic speed of 2,100–2,600 m/s [Mach 6–7] at a height of 50 km. The Iskander-M weighs 4,615 kg carries a warhead of 710–800 kg, has a range of 480 km and achieves a CEP [circular error probable] of 5–7 meters. During flight it can maneuver at different altitudes and trajectories to evade anti-ballistic missiles.
Iskander is generally described, at least in the west, as a ‘quasi-ballistic’ missile. But ‘quasi’ or not, the US considers the Iskander a very dangerous weapon, and a type of weapon which it does not yet possess. In fact, the US’ attempts to develop its very first hypersonic missile have been rather slow out of the blocks. Its first flight test attempt with the proposed Lockheed-Martin AGM183 [aka ARRW] in April of this year, did not even manage to release the rocket from the wing of the B52 carrier! The second attempt, on July 29, managed to get the rocket to release, but the engine failed to fire!
Clearly the US is many years away from fielding a working hypersonic missile. These early tests were only supposed to test the rocket, and carried a dummy ‘glide vehicle’ which is supposed to separate from the rocket once it reaches a speed of about M 6 or so, and then glide to its target while maneuvering.
The prototype missile would carry a frangible surrogate for that [glide] vehicle that would disintegrate after release.
However, it is unclear how an unpowered gliding body is going to accomplish aerodynamic maneuvering INSIDE the atmosphere. The concept of boost-glide, which is used by Avangard, works by hoisting the glide vehicle up above the atmosphere, at ICBM speed, where the ‘glider’ can then skip off the upper layers of the atmosphere like a flat pebble skipping over the surface of a still pond.
The overall flight range of AGM183 is a claimed 1,000 miles [1,600 km]. Clearly such a short-range missile, and reaching a speed of only about M 8 at most [based on statements of reaching its target in a flight time of 10 to 12 minutes] is not going to be able to use the boost-glide means of maneuvering, which requires exiting the atmosphere.
The Technical Deep Dive (If you are not inclined to follow technical details jump to the conclusions.)
So let’s look at Russian hypersonic technology in a little more detail, so that we may understand more than just what the technically-challenged media are telling us. From what the Russian military has already fielded, we can see that hypersonic missiles come in all shapes and sizes. Some, like Avangard, are launched by powerful ICBM rockets and have ICBM-like striking range. Others, like Zircon, are more like a Tomahawk or Kalibr cruise missile, powered by an air-breathing engine, and able to aerodynamically maneuver throughout their flight to the target—but flying about ten times faster.
Others, like Kinzhal, which appears to be an evolution of the Iskander [itself an evolution of the Scud] are powered by relatively small rockets and are designed to maneuver gas-dynamically [thrust vectoring], again, during all phases of flight, right up to the target.
These are the three primary types for purposes of basic classification. They all fly very fast [up to M 25 for Avangard], but they use different propulsion systems, and different means of maneuvering. Let’s begin with the Kinzhal, since we already understand the basics of how a Scud or Iskander works. In the case of Kinzhal, it is launched from a very high speed and height by a MiG31 interceptor aircraft, which is designed to fly up to 1,500 km at a cruising speed of M 2.4, at a height of about 20 km.
By carrying even an unmodified Iskander up to this speed and height, its range could easily double, to about 1,000 km—since the rocket chemical energy required to reach that height and speed would be saved, and could be expended on increasing its flight range.
The range given for Kinzhal is 2,000 km, but it is not clear if that includes the flight range of the MiG31 carrier aircraft. My guess would be that it does. The MiG has a combat radius of over 700 km at its M 2.4 cruise speed. That means that after release, the Kinzhal would need to fly for about 1,300 km before hitting its target—for an overall system range of 2,000 km. In fact, the MiG could fly a significant portion of its flight subsonically, saving fuel, and accelerate up to supersonic cruise speed, or even its top speed of M 2.8, only in the last couple of hundred km, before launching Kinzhal. It would then circle back and return to base subsonically again. This would increase range even more.
Either way, it is a safe bet that the overall range to a target, say a US aircraft carrier, from the takeoff point of the MiG [now deployed in Syria], is realistically going to be no less than the stated 2,000 km, if not more. This is certainly a game-changer for US naval dominance! Carrier-based aircraft would have no chance to fly far enough from their floating airfield to intercept a MiG31 launching a Kinzhal at 1,000 km or more distance from the ship. The F/A-18 has a combat radius for air-to-air missions of only 740 km. Obviously, it is not going to be able to reach the MiG launching from outside of 1,000 km.
Now let us look at the Zircon cruise missile that Nato is complaining about. So far, this missile has been successfully test-flown at target distances of up to about 450 km. The Russian MoD says its range is actually in excess of 1,000 km, and that flight tests to maximum range will be forthcoming.
This too is a game-changer. The Zircon will be carried by Russia’s new class of surface warships in the frigate or ‘small destroyer’ size, as well as on the new Yasen-class cruise missile nuclear subs that are now coming into service. These state-of-the-art subs will also carry subsonic Kalibr cruise missiles with a maximum range of 4,500 km! Combined with the air-launched Kinzhal, the US Navy will face some very stiff challenges—from the air, from the sea, and even from under the sea. It should be noted that both the Zircon and Kinzhal are not exclusively anti-ship missiles. They can just as readily target land objects, including Nato command and control centers—which Putin has said Russia will do, in the event of any kind of western aggression!
But Zircon is also a technological tour de force. The unique feature of the Zircon is its scramjet engine. This is the first time that the world has a production engine of this type—something which has long been a goal for both the US and Russia.
Not surprisingly, the Russians flew the world’s first scramjet prototype back in 1991—the Kholod, which means ‘cold’ in Russian. Remarkably, in the Yeltsin détente atmosphere of the early nineties, the Russian developers of the world’s first functional scramjet engine, the Central Institute of Aviation Motors [CIAM] invited Nasa to participate in the flight tests at the Sary Shagan test range in Kazakhstan. The results were published in the US professional literature, here, and here.
But despite this technology boost from Russia, the US has not been able to keep up. Its experiments with scramjet engines, although wildly hyped in the media, have been dormant for several years. It appears that the US has given up on the idea of building a working scramjet engine for the time being—much as they gave up, decades ago, on the idea of building a closed-cycle rocket engine, having deemed the technology ‘impossible.’
So what is a scramjet engine anyway? To fully understand this, let’s first look at how a turbojet engine works. Here is a picture that is worth a thousand words. Air enters the front of the engine and is then compressed by a number of rotating blades on a series of wheels, similar to a fan or propeller. The compressed air is then passed into the burner, or combustion chamber, where fuel is squirted in and the result is a high temperature and high-pressure gas that then drives the turbine wheels—which are bladed in a way similar to the compressor wheels up front.
The turbine wheels and compressor are on a single shaft and rotate at the same speed—so it is the energy of the gas driving the turbines, that drives the compressors. The remaining energy in the gas is squeezed out through a nozzle, which accelerates the gas flow, which, in turn, creates thrust—on the principle of Newton’s Third Law, action-reaction. The force of the fast-moving mass flow of gas out the nozzle, must be compensated by a REACTION force in the opposite direction [forward thrust], as per the conservation of momentum principle. Hence all jet engines, whether air-breathing or rocket, are called reaction engines.
[Incidentally, the heart of any liquid-fuel rocket engine is a turbopump, which is basically a gas turbine engine. It has a burner, where some amount of the fuel and oxidizer are burned, supplying gas to drive a turbine wheel or wheels, which then drive two ‘compressor’ pumps [also wheels], that pressurize the oxidizer and fuel, which is then delivered to the main combustion chamber under great pressure.]
Now what happens when you want to go very fast with a turbojet engine? Well, you basically hit a wall, due to the physics of airflow]. The faster you go, the greater the ram pressure on the front of the engine. This ram pressure [technically called dynamic pressure, or ‘Q’] is like kinetic energy—it increases by the square of speed. [KE = M x V^2 / 2; Q = rho x V^2 / 2; they are the same except mass is replaced by density, rho, since we are dealing with a flowing fluid instead of a solid particle!]
In simple terms, dynamic pressure [aka ram pressure] is what you feel on your hand when you stick your hand out the window of your car while driving on the highway.
The results of this quadratic pressure rise with speed are profound! At a typical passenger jet cruise speed of 450 knots, or M 0.8, the pressure increase from ram effect, at the front of the engine fan, is about 1.5. Also, the engine inlet must SLOW the airflow down to about M 0.5, so that the rotating blades can work efficiently.
If you increase flight speed to M 2, the pressure rise at the engine face due to ram effect is seven-fold! At this speed, you don’t even need a compressor or turbines.
This is the idea of the ramjet engine—you need no moving parts, just an air inlet that is designed to slow down the airflow to below sonic velocity, turning kinetic energy into pressure energy. The combustion chamber is simply a pipe with fuel squirters, where that compressed air is burned with fuel, and then expelled through a nozzle, exactly as on the turbojet. In fact the afterburner on supersonic fighter jets works exactly like a ramjet engine—fuel is squirted in and combusts with air that was used for cooling the combustion chamber walls upstream [only a small amount of air is burned in a turbojet engine, with air to fuel ratios of over 50, compared to about 15 for a car engine.] An illustration of an afterburner shows the simple basic geometry.
But the ramjet hits a speed limit too, just like the turbojet. In both cases it has to do with the falling efficiency of the engine inlet at higher speeds: more of the kinetic energy of the high-speed airflow is converted into heat, rather than usable pressure. In a turbojet, the heat limit is reached by about Mach 3, when the heat of that incoming air exceeds the materials limit of the compressor blades. In the ramjet, eliminating those unneeded blades and all the other moving parts raises the temperature limit to a much higher value—so flight up to about Mach 5 is possible.
Above those speeds, the Ramjet faces a different kind of problem. As flight speeds continue to increase, the efficiency of turning that kinetic energy into pressure continues to decrease steeply. This pressure loss is due to a series of shockwaves generated by slowing down the airflow in the engine inlet passage, upstream of the combustion chamber. The biggest shockwave and biggest pressure loss happens when the flow finally transitions to below sonic velocity. This is called the normal shockwave, because it is perpendicular [normal] to the inlet wall, as seen in this illustration of a supersonic inlet and its shockwaves.
So the speed limit comes because most of that ram pressure is not recoverable—it is simply dissipated into heat by the inlet shockwaves.
Enter the scramjet. Here, the flow is never actually slowed to below sonic velocity. That’s why it’s called a SCramjet, for supersonic combustion—the airflow through the combustion chamber is well above Mach 1, perhaps closer to Mach 2. By comparison, the flow in a turbojet enters the burner at just M 0.2, ten times slower—and in the afterburner and ramjet, it is about M 0.5.
This solves the speed limit issue of not having any more pressure energy available. But it comes with HUGE challenges. At a flight speed of M 6 or 7, the craft is moving at a speed of about 2,000 m/s. The main challenge is the flame front speed of combustion. Even if it took only one hundredth of a second to combust the air-fuel mixture, it would require a combustion chamber 20 meters long! That is hardly practical of course, but is in line with the flame propagation speed of aviation kerosene. That is why the afterburner jetpipes on supersonic aircraft are several meters long.
So we see that each type of airbreathing engine, turbojet, ramjet and scramjet, has its own speed limit, as shown graphically here. Even the scramjet will run into a wall at some point. The vertical measure is specific impulse [ISP], which is engine efficiency, per mass of fuel burned. We see that ISP decreases the faster we go, in any type of engine—it simply means that fuel use rises much faster than flight speed!
But back to the main challenge of the scramjet, which is flame speed. This is strictly a limit of the chemical physics of fuel combustion. Hydrogen burns ten times as fast as kerosene, but is not a practical fuel—it must be cooled to near absolute zero to be liquid, and so is not storable, and cannot be launched at will without time-consuming fueling. All of the previous scramjet experimental prototypes, both US and Russian, used cryogenic liquid hydrogen fuel. But the Zircon uses a kerosene-based fuel innovation that the Russians call Detsilin-M.
The exact means by which the Russians have achieved this fuel chemistry is of course a tightly held secret, but it is clearly a remarkable breakthrough in chemical engineering—comparable to the breakthrough in materials science that led to the closed-cycle, oxygen-rich staged combustion rocket engine in the 1960s [which the US still has not demonstrated].
In a previous discussion here, the technically-inclined commenter and longtime gyroplane pilot PeterAU1, dug up some interesting material about ‘doping’ kerosene with certain additives to enhance flame front speed. But the technicalities of that subject are beyond the scope of this relatively brief introductory discussion. [Although I’m sure we may hear more in the comments section!]
Conclusions:
The bottom line is that the Zircon represents not only a formidable and very deadly weapon—but it is indicative of the engineering capabilities of the Russian aerospace industry. It is an impressive achievement that is in fact groundbreaking. As mentioned already, Zircon is only the beginning of scramjet engine use by the Russian military. The next generation of such missiles, like the already mentioned Gremlin, will be even smaller and more capable in range and speed. At some point in the future, we may even see scramjet engines on superfast civil aircraft—but that is probably a long way off yet.
An even bigger engineering accomplishment is the astonishing Avangard boost-glide vehicle. But I will leave that remarkable story for another discussion.
The bottom line is that these new Russian technologies are in fact tilting the global military balance going forward. They are game-changing because they are UNSTOPPABLE with today’s air defense technology. Just like the Plains Indians couldn’t hope to stop, with their bows and arrows, the US cavalry with their repeating rifles.
Even more profound may be the psychological effect that Russia’s engineering accomplishments must be exerting on the American psyche, which is used to assuming that they have the smartest engineers and make the best military hardware.
That is demonstrably NOT the case anymore.
And that may be the biggest game-changer of all!
China’s hyper-velocity missile.
The smart thing…
Knowing the Chinese, it’s just a simple matter of treating the Taiwanese as brothers and sisters. Inviting them over to China (as they can travel easily back and forth now) and let the Taiwanese decide for themselves if they want to reunify with China or not.
Face it.
China is doing so much better than Taiwan is.
Oh, sure, Taiwan is wealthy. But it is Western wealth. All the money is concentrated in the hands of a few greedy oligarchs. It’s not spread out among the people. And when the Taiwanese come into China they see the life that they SHOULD be living in Taiwan. They see what COULD happen in Taiwan, if the nation unified together.
Like in this amazing video here… A Taiwanese girl comes to China for the first time and here’s her impressions…
Taiwanese girl comes to China for the first time. These are her impressions.
Conclusion
If America “jumps the gun” and initiates hostilities before 2023, it will quickly escalate and go nuclear and Russia and China together would level America. The QUAD allies might talk big, but one the nuclear detonations start to happen, you can pretty much expect them to sit “the game” out.
If the United States holds off on hostilities past into 2023, what we would see is an economic contraction in the United States and the Western client states. A decline in the value of the US dollar and rampant inflation. Depending on American actions, the military budget will be seen as bankrupting the country, and meanwhile China is prospering and looking like some kind of space-age utopia. This comparison between the two would be strikingly obvious, and exacerbated with the 2022 Olympic games. This would be a very dangerous time indeed. This is the time where it is difficult to predict.
If the hostilities delay to 2025 or later, then there won’t be much that America can do. It has shot it’s last wad, and spent up all it’s fuel. The nation is running on vapors right now, and whatever advantages it once had, it has been squandered away by the greedy and evil.
Now matter how you look at it, China is clearly the superior governance model…
This is America in 2021. This is it. Look closely at the video…
America in 2021.
And this is China in 2021. Watch the video…
Quick Summary
Technology has completely changed the balance of forces globally. Yet the evil, corrupt and powerful somehow believe that they can prevent this new reality, and capitalize upon it for personal profit. By all accounts, they are about two decades too late, and they understanding of reality is inaccurate.
How the world adjusts to this new reality is open to conjecture, as it could go very bad to just a minor discomfort. It all depends on a number of variables that are in play right now. Stay tuned.
And keep in mind…
Next time you read some gung-ho neocon advocating war because America is strong, and has perfected small unit warfare…
… remember this video of Chinese boy and girl scouts…
Chinese boy and girl scouts.
And this one too…
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
Somehow, everyone is assuming that those nations that “signed up to support the United States in the “containment” of China, would actually do so. And, I have argued “don’t be so sure”.
And while there might be a few “hanger’s on” such as Australia (only if the Morrison government remains in power), the chances are slim that the QUAD would exist and remain viable.
…Were there to be a conflict between the USA and China.
To Americans, it seems that America is still strong and powerful and has a trio of “toadies” (nations that it can “push around”) and who will “stand by the United States” and do what ever it wants.
This is not true.
It’s not 1980.
No matter what the American mainstream and alternative media wants to say. The truth is that the rest of the world really doesn’t give a shit about America. They don’t care about Americans. They want America bullshit out of their lives, and are only going along with America now, out of survival. Once America shows signs that it can no longer punish these people, they will abandon America faster than you can shake a leg.
Asia has united into one enormous and powerful group. And all the nations bordering on this entity either wants to be part of it, or be independently respected by it. They most certainly do not want to piss off this massive, enormous united Asia.
The rest of the world is not at all like it is portrayed in the American media.
It’s an exciting period full of CHANGE.
The United States Military Empire is collapsing in upon itself. And this is creating voids where the rest of the world can rejoice and start living “normal” lives again. This is not just some nice phrases. It’s the absolute truth. The United States has become the world’s captor, torturer and all-around bully. Americans call this “policing the world for democracy”.
As shown in this micro-video…
In this article, we look at the probable alignments with the United States Military Empire construction known as “The QUAD”. And we put it in context with the great global realignments that are taking place.
How the USA views China
But this narrative is for American consumption. It is a fantasy. It is a lie. And it will end up getting a lot of Americans killed.
This isn’t your standard BBC or CNN, or FOX “news” fare.
This is the real deal and what is actually going on.
The following is from Fred Reed, and judging from the comments in the comments section, about 75% of the American commenters are indigent and aghast that Fred would write something other than “American Rambo can kick anyone’s ass”. It’s a great read. Check it out…
How Taiwan Will Fall Into Beijing’s Lap, Like an Overripe Mango
I will now explain war, or some of it. If you wonder how some mutt in Mexico with a computer thinks he knows about strategy, well, look at what we have in Washington. How could I be worse?
In geopolitical circles, blather swirls over whether the United States can defend Taiwan against a Chinese invasion in a regional war. Sez I, it doesn’t matter whether it can if it won’t, and China will likely get the island without invading. The key is to think about how things look from Taiwan.
Washington is vague about whether it would militarily defend Taiwan. Taiwan presumably has noticed. Further, America does not recognize Taiwan as an independent country. More waffling. The implication is that Washington might, or might not, do something, or something else, depending on unspecified things, probably or at least possibly.
This sounds like hedging, a disguised American recognition that this isn’t 1955, and China is no longer a bamboo republic that makes pencils and cheap plastic buckets for Walmart. As China’s military power grows, and thus the cost of a war, America’s equivocation will likely become more equivocal. Throw in that America does $550 billion in commerce annually with the Middle Kingdom, including countless things America doesn’t make but can’t do without, and war with China doesn’t look real feasible. This too has probably occurred to Taipei.
The fashion in naval circles is to talk about the First Island Chain, which is a sort of barrier along the coast of China, the Kuriles, Japan, Okinawa in the Ryukyus, Taiwan, the Philippines, and even Borneo. The idea, apart from some fairly silly notions about “containing China,” is that these islands will want to join with Washington, which is somewhere else, to fight China, which is right there, to defend Taiwan, which also is right there.
Now, who would actually defend Taiwan—that is, go to war with China? Japan? Note that Japan is within missile range of China, and probably does not want missiles of large warhead raining down on Tokyo. Japan gets ninety percent of its petroleum from the Persian Gulf and, If Tokyo’s reserves of oil run out, Japan stops. All of it. China has pretty good submarines these days. The beltway Hawklets might say, “Don’t worry. We have magic anti-submarine stuff, no prob.” Given America’s military record, would you buy a used car from these people?
Do you suppose the Japanese have thought of this?
Washington might say, not to worry, we have antimissile gadgets, THAAD, and Patriot, and Aegis, and we can escort your tankers. But none of these weapons has much of a track record, and neither does America.
Further energizing Japan’s likely unenthusiasm for fighting Washington’s wars is that trade with China is crucial to the Japanese economy, and that Taiwan isn’t all that valuable to Tokyo. Today Japan trades with Taiwan, and with China. If Taiwan became part of China, this trade would probably continue with nothing changing but the letterhead.
Lastly, Japan may have noticed America’s propensity for getting its vassals (or allies, clients, or poodles, take your choice) into wars and then leaving them in the lurch. Think Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Afghanistan and, soon, Syria and Iraq. This would leave Japan in a shooting war with China, all by itself. If the gringos lose a war, they can just go home. Japan is not mobile.
The Japanese might whisper into American ears, “All cool, Round Eye. But it’s just your empire on the line. It’s our ass. we’ll sit this one out.”
South Korea might think similar thoughts regarding use of its air bases, especially given that the Korean peninsula has a land border with China. Washington doesn’t. Seoul needs a war with the Middle Kingdom like it needs smallpox. “Tell you what, Round Eye, bugger off….”
Taiwan would get wind of this through back channels if not by sheer deduction.
How would a regional war over the Taiwan Strait look to an adult commander of an aircraft carrier? He might think, “Hmmm. Squinty-eyed rascals good engineers. Make’m Mars probe, worke’m. Train go three hundred sixty miles hour. Work’em. Maybe make’m missiles work’em good too. Hmmmm. Bad juju.”
The Navy’s PR operation will say that Chinese missiles don’t really amount to anything, this to protect the budget for its favorite bathtub toys and the only surface ship that justifies the existence of the Navy. But of course China can build swarms of missiles to arrive simultaneously.
Further, realists in Washington might ask themselves what would happen if the war didn’t go as planned, as wars usually don’t, and a carrier and three destroyers became marine barbecues before sinking. War games and Pentagon studies suggest that this is quite likely. To save face, the hawks would have to turn a regional war into a world war, which America would win. “Win.” Millions would die and the world economy stop. Never underestimate the influence of vanity in world affairs.
Taiwan could divine all of this. It could also divine that the Navy had divined it.
In recent years China has shown itself to be very good at engineering all manner of things, and has emphasized antiship missiles, including but not limited to terminally guided ballistic missiles of range far greater than that of carrier aviation. Do they work as advertised? We don’t know. A carrier captain would probably want someone else to find out.
Despite growly aphasic pronunciamientos from the White House, and chirpy assurance from Navy PR, grownups in the Pentagon might think, “You know…maybe a war with China isn’t a great idea. How about lunch instead at a really good rib joint on the Hill?”
Taiwan would know of these doubts. This would further undermine hope of American defense.
Now, suppose that China keeps on doing what to all appearances it is doing: increasing its amphibious- assault assets, improving and enlarging its already highly non-negligible air force, building missiles and increasing its number of marines. Meanwhile the Chinese navy grows like kudzu on a Georgia road cut. China can increase its forces across the Strait virtually without limit. The US cannot. At some point, past or future, Taiwan will face assault forces it has no chance whatever of repelling by itself. Taipei would notice this.
Further suppose that China keeps doing what else it has been doing for some time: practicing amphibious assaults that could at any moment become real assaults. Thus no one—read, America—would know whether the attack would come in two months, five years, or never. This would require keeping defensive forces, such as carriers, on station constantly and at a high state of readiness. Militaries do not do this well, and it is expensive. Moreover, after long periods of peace militaries do not mobilize quickly as it is discovered that there aren’t many of things there ought to be lots of because of some budget cut, or something, and the whole enterprise turns into a gargantuan goat-rope.
What kind of attack might Taiwan expect? I haven’t talked to the Chinese General Staff for weeks now, and so am making this up. But the goal would probably be to get the war over before America had time to react. Keeping invaders out is one thing, getting them out another. So, maybe a sudden attack with ballistic missiles to crater runways with simultaneous mass missile attack on air defenses with amphib ships simultaneously setting sail. At fifteen knots it would take about eight hours to reach the island. With heavy air support from China’s highly non-negligible air force, Chinese troops might well get ashore and into cities before America’s hypergalactic indomitable military could get its thumb out of…well, never mind. The Americans would be caught flatfooted by a fait accompli. Washington would face the joyful choice of bombing Chinese soldiers inside Taiwanese cities, or—this is Saturday Night Live territory—undertaking a land war in Asia against China.
It may be that Taiwan has thought of this.
Finally, there is TSMC, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. While little known in America, TSMC makes most of the world’s high-end chips, including those of Apple and…the Pentagon. America currently is not able to make its own.
This throws a fascinating wild card into things. If in an attack, TSMC were destroyed, by either side, or captured and held hostage, the effects would be no end entertaining. Today’s world, perhaps more than most people know, depends on chips. An astonishing proportion of advanced chips come from the island. Replacing its fab lines somewhere else would take years. The other, though lesser, source of chips is Samsung in South Korea, also in Chinese missile range. Washington is trying to cripple China’s tech by not allowing it access to advanced chips. Presumably this increases Beijing’s incentive to annex Taiwan.
Anyway, Biden couldn’t risk losing Taiwan as it would affect the midterms. But what it comes to is that with China being the largest trading partner of something like 165 countries, war isn’t real practical. The Taiwanese have probably figured this out.
So what does Taiwan do, seeing an overwhelming invasion force looming and not believing that Washington is really going to go to war to defend it? The choice would be to fight, be devastated as it lost, and face harsh conditions after—or to come to the best agreement it could and surrender without fighting. Anyone want to make bets?
Correction: Last week, in a moment of brainlock, I said that Pompeo was in the Navy. No, the Army. Mea culpa.
Some selected comments…
I’ve a hunch that, that is a key factor in China’s desire in getting its “lost province” back?. Taiwan integrated into China proper would then have a huge share, even a near monopoly on certain high capacity chips.
Since we’ve allowed a great bulk of our industrial/infrastructure base to be outsourced, we’ve become dangerously dependent on others to maintain this menagerie.
We could eventually (maybe) rebuild our capacity but is the skill set even here anymore to do that or sustain it?.
We may go berserk & launch a war against China but if China does indeed have those hypersonic missiles available then they could send much of the pacific fleet to Davy Jones’ locker. And since it takes years to build those naval vessels we, out of desperation may go nuclear?. Then it’s Adios Muchachos..
So, me thinks that we’re rapidly approaching a scenario that there is very little we can do about it. Accept that we screwed the pooch big time in allowing so much our productivity base to be so gutted & in doing so, hamstrung our very future (we’ll never admit that!).
We can swallow our pride & acknowledge what we’ve done to ourselves? (fat chance!).
Gracefully accept we’re a waning power? (fat chance!).
Or, freak out & go berserk that we’re no longer the top dog & launch a conflagration that’ll turn this world into a charnel house? (Most likely).
I really don’t think most Americans realize how completely batsh*t insane & evil their leaders & the psychos in the Pentagon truly are?. Maybe sanity will prevail, but looking at the zio-America lunatic asylum, it doesn’t bode well..
-BluEidDvl
The ‘junk’ sold in Walmart and Target, most of which are now being sourced OUTSIDE of China, are ‘AMERICAN’ goods, albeit made in foreign countries such as Vietnam.
Chinese companies hardly sell to the US market which has become marginal to the Chinese economy, as ‘Chinese’ exports now account for less than a few percent of China’s GDP.
Those so-called ‘Chinese’ exports to the USA consist mostly of ‘AMERICAN’ goods such as Apple’s iPhones, manufactured in China by Asian contract manufacturers like Foxconn. But those contract factories are now being relocated to lower-cost countries such as Vietnam.
The rest of ‘Chinese’ exports which consist of industrial commodities such as LED panels are now being routed to Mexico where OEMs assemble them into final products such as TVs.
In a few more years, ‘Chinese’ exports to the USA, while still large, in total volume will nevertheless decline further to less than 1% of China’s GDP which will be driven more by domestic consumption and internal demand over the next few decades.
The days when China was the ‘factory of the world’ is over.
-antibeast
What this author misses is that many Chinese-based manufacturers have their plants in Taiwan. The companies are headquartered in Beijing or Shanghai, and use Taiwan for manufacturing because labor is actually cheaper and more skilled than many places in China.
So, would China bomb the crap out of Taiwan, knowing they’re destroying their own factories?
How about another thought – would China bomb the crap out of Taiwan in an effort to control it’s government – only to then turn around and rebuild it?
Look at what happened in Hong Kong; China assimilated the former colony almost without a fight.
As much as I hate to do this – I sort of agree with Alfred Thayer Fred, I think. Once the real pressure is on, Taiwan will come to an “agreement” with the PRC and allow itself to be subsumed into greater China. Thereby ending the “Two-China” position that’s lasted since the early 1950s.
-RonCharest
Let someone in one of the QUAD nations explain…
The issue is whether or not the QUAD nations will stick with the USA and go against China. It’s so easy to find armchair strategists. Especially in America where they have been fed a steady diet of “American exceptionalism” and “military might”.
Let’s see what some of the more influential people (who speak English) in these QUAD nations have to say…
And then there’s Russia
Of course, the Ignorant Americans are all thinking that Russia and China are somehow enemies…
Russia has no love for China so don’t be so sure about them coming to China’s aid.
-MarkinLA
Hardly.
The Russian-China Alliance
Merry Christmas and Happy new Year, from China and Russia with love! This analysis by “Larchmonter” in 2014. Written seven years ago. He’s a contributor of the site, “The Vineyard of the Saker”, a describes what may be a game-changer in terms of the geopolitical status quo. In short, The American Empire dying a fast death, and Russia and China may be able to pick up the pieces and create a system not based on cold, brutal, myopic psychopathy.
Article HERE. All credit to him, and realize that it is very dated. China and Russia have make considerable joint progress since this was written.
Vladimir Putin said it clearly: “Russia and China will have a significant effect on the entire system of international relations. The relationship will be a significant factor in world politics and will affect the contemporary architecture of international relations . . .” And to state precisely what this relationship means in geopolitical sea change, President Putin continued: “Russia and China have never had such trusting relations in the military field as they do now. Military exercises have been in joint war games at sea and ground both in Russia and China.” (1)
Update: Russia and China have vastly increased the strength of their relationship.
Russia and China are celebrating their “strategic partnership”, and have beenvastly expanding their cooperation since 2014. Their closealliance is based oneconomic and geopolitical considerations. While it is mutually beneficial, it alsohas its limitations. However, in the mid-term, both China and Russia appear tobewilling to overlook potential fields of tension, for instance in Central Asia.
-Russia and China: The Potential of Their Partnership
The mega trade deals we have seen this year and military exercises are more than normal cross-border trade or cooperative events between neighbors or partners. (2) The ‘relationship’ is affecting the global order. The two nations are forming a resistance front against destabilization and the weapons of chaos of a unipolar system.
Update: China and Russia has vastly increased military cooperation; to include military liaison in each military headquarter, trade in the latest military weapons systems, and avionics, and engines.
The closeness of ChinaandRussia’s cybersecurity relationship is not dependent on their ties with each other, but is defined in relation to the US. Just as China and Russiaadvocate for multipolarity to challenge the perceived US’s unipolarworld view and values, their cooperation in cyberspacedemonstratesthe same focus on the US.
-China-RussiaCybersecurityCooperation
Russia and China are working together to stabilize international trade, diplomacy and military balances; yet, ironically, this is disruptive.
Russia and China are sovereign nation resistance fighters against the Hegemon. The Hegemon is the unipolar Empire of the United States.
Hegemon = United States Military Empire
This context of geopolitical strategies is paramount to bear in mind. The Hegemon is threatening to contain both Russia and China economically with exclusionary trade agreements (TPP and TTIP) that leave China and Russia out or marginalized as second tier members, while each is bordered militarily with nuclear weapons on missiles of the trade partners, Hegemon’s allies and vassals. (This is the so-called missile defense shield of the West.)
Update: This United States effort has failed and collapsed.
These hegemonic trade agreements will shut out China and Russia from further integration with the two groups. Limits for growth, suppression of development due to monopoly of intellectual properties, oppressive clean energy and pollution control regimes, limits on construction and sale or purchase and use of certain commodities will slow infrastructure projects, not only within both nations, but constrict each nation from contracting for projects in other nations (their own partners that are emerging or developing nations).
Update: The Trump efforts to conduct these suppressive actions have all collapsed completely.
Thus, the Hegemon has the strategic intention to limit the elimination of poverty in the world, and control trade everywhere on the globe. The unipolar world will be finalized and secured by the Hegemon. There will be Elites and there will be poverty forever for most of the remaining nations.
Update: This was written during President Obama's term in office, and before President's Trump and Biden. Today in August 2021, it is clear that the attempt to create a unipolar world has utterly and completely failed.
Of course, the resistance and evolutionary partnering by Russia and China has made this hegemonic outcome impossible, unless one or both Russia and China are destabilized and/or regime change ensues. Therefore, what both nations face is an economic and military challenge that clearly is existential in threat level. Russia is first, and China is next on the hegemonic hit list.
Update: The United States Military Empire has attacked both Russia and China using every weapon at it's disposal, short of direct military engagement. Including bio-weapons authorized by John Bolton, who tried to induce starvation in China, and then the three lethal viruses unleashed in China in 2020. All efforts have so far, failed dramatically.
Full Spectrum Battlefield
The threat against China and Russia is a full spectrum battlefield: they are facing potential AirSeaSpaceCyberElectromagnetic warfare, not exempting chemical, biological and nuclear; soon to include laser and hypersonic weapons; economic warfare; and war by proxy armies, NGO organizations, covert operators and agents, with global media demonization and propaganda in psyops mode.
Update: China has perfected shutting down all these expensive systems. I have written extensively on it. And it is the primary reason why the Trump 8-carrier battle armada went home in 2020 in defeat.
Each nation in the resistance partnership had to permit the other to look, touch and feel deeply into one another’s most treasured defense secrets, once armed against the other, now united with a new partner.
Update: This is true, and partially the reason why Russia and China are so close right now.
They knew they were in the same ‘foxhole’ facing the same enemy. And they both understood, that in time, neither would survive without the other. There had never been a hegemon so desperate or so fundamentally weak, yet so powerfully equipped to destroy all normalcy, perhaps, most of humanity, if need be, for it to survive. China-Russia had to protect one another and then try to save humanity and world order.
The initial United States attack was economic, not military. It hit Russia.
Background of the Resistance to the United States Military Empire
Neither Russia nor China presented themselves as rivals to the Hegemon, and both considered they had trade partnerships, geopolitical cooperative relationships and multitudinous common interests with the Hegemon. There were some irritations at the edges, but nothing was truly confrontational, except that which was instigated, paid for, planned and managed by the Hegemon with its vassals.
Update: This was the case in 2014. From 2016 to present, it's been a full-spectrum hybrid-war against both China and Russia. With China taking the brunt of the assaults.
So, economy, military and terrorism are the main battlefields in this full spectrum containment and destabilization against the Hegemon’s two greatest resistors. (This resistance is to unipolar domination in all its manifestations.)
Thus, we came to 2014. Because of the Sochi Olympics, the year 2014 became the focus of the color revolution rebirth in Ukraine. The ‘planners’ in the State Department and CIA had eight years to aim a two-prolonged destabilization that turned the failed Orange Revolution in Kiev into the Maidan. We all are very aware that this transformation was evil at its core, illegal, murderous, unconstitutional and had only one aim – to present Russia with an armed, psychologically-tuned, xenophobic Ukrainian force that would, first sweep away the Russian language, then the Russian speakers, i.e., Ukrainian citizens, in East Ukraine, next to Rostov and along a virtual open border, with nominally few defenses, merely, formal ‘crossings’ with no vestige of militarization on either side.
This violent upheaval was timed perfectly while President Putin presided over a $50 Billion investment in developing Sochi, hosting the 2014 Winter Olympics, eight years of stewardship identifiable as his greatest public project and intended to lift the internal spirits of his people, while demonstrating, as the Chinese had in 2008 with a Summer Olympics, that Russia, too, was back to greatness, accomplished and peaceful, a tourist attraction year-round in Sochi, and all troubles were in the past.
President Xi had announced he would attend the opening ceremonies. China and Russia were coming of age and were proud to show support in all matters of interest to both. They had voted as one to stop the American air attack on Syria, vetoing the resolution in the Security Council, and demanding resolution of the conflict by diplomatic means. So, in peace and war, sports and commerce, the two leaders scheduled six meetings for 2014. Some would be bi-lateral, some within the context of multi-lateral groups in which both held membership.
Update: Over the last seven years since this article was written both Russia and China operated as a singular block to oppose any United States Military Empire moves against each other. This block has been largely successful.
But Ukraine and the Maidan coup also attacked China in its pocketbook and its plans for East Ukraine and Crimea. China has a long history of interaction with Ukraine. Not just the modern ‘state’ of Ukraine, peeled off from the Russian Federation, in 1991, by Yeltsin in the Belovezha Accords. They were linked by technology and science study in the days before the Soviet Union threatened China and the two had hot shooting border wars, 1960-1989.
In December 2013, the Chinese and Ukraine had signed a strategic partnership agreement that was inclusive of guarantees of a shield against nukes because Ukraine has signed the non-proliferation treaty. China was guaranteeing Ukraine protection from any aggressor, quite unusual in China’s foreign policy actions. This was signed on December 5, 2013.
Update: Contrary to what the American "news" media says, President Putin says Russians and the Ukraine are "brothers". Here.
Chinese scientists and technicians trained in Ukraine, studied in Ukraine, and purchased from Ukraine when it was the home base of rockets, missiles, aircraft engines, and other software and metallurgically-supported systems.
Ukraine was where Russia (Soviet Union) had invested hundreds of billions of dollars in institutes and industries for computation, mathematics and weapons development. Ukraine was from whom the Chinese bought the incomplete aircraft carrier that China has since finished and called the Liaoning.
The Chinese recently were coming back to Ukraine and the Black Sea wealthier than ever, and desiring to help Ukraine with infrastructure while getting food from the fertile fields, grains, vegetables and fruits.
In Crimea, the Chinese were interested in the Kerch Bridge project and possible tunnel from Russia to Crimea.
These are China’s strengths today – infrastructure, roads, rail, fibre optic, ports, bridges, and building what they saw as the western depot for the Eurasian Economic Belt, and New Silk Road.
China understood Ukraine was Russian, at least the east and south were Russian. They had the contracts with Ukraine in Russian and Chinese. These contracts and diplomatic partnerships were part and parcel the Chinese connecting the dream of President Xi’s Eurasian Silk Road with the Putin Eurasian Union dream.
Ukraine was crucial because both dreams had merged into one gigantic Eurasia Development concept to be powered with Russian energy sources and Chinese wealth.
Update: This week.Aug 05, 2021 · OnJune 30, ChinaandtheUkraine signed a major agreement regarding the financing and construction of transport infrastructure. China-Ukrainerelations have improved considerably since the blocking by Kyiv of a Chinese takeover of the Motor Sich company in March 2021.
-AnewChina-Ukrainepartnership - OBOReurope
Ukraine was to function as the turntable to Europe, north, west, east and south. Ukraine benefited from the gas pipeline to Europe. It could have become a very rich transit point. Instead, Kiev chose suicide and began to kill its own citizens, going into virtual bankruptcy, losing its sovereignty, and festering into freakish and zombified ghoulery. Ukraine embraced fascism and Nazism, as it waged a war of attrition upon its entire nation. So far, Ukraine is losing the war against Ukraine, predictably, logically and tragically. However, it did stop China’s investments, forestalled the Ukrainian development projects, and does not permit itself to trade with anyone the Hegemon does not approve. (We all remember ‘Czech apples’, a sad consequence of similar vassal behaviour by the Czechs.)
Update: Substantial changes in the Ukraine has made most of this ancient history.
As events developed in late winter, two things happened on Feb. 23, 2014: Kiev fell to the junta’s snipers and the Olympics ended. The Sochi Olympics were a huge, resplendent success, despite the unprecedented West’s media campaign to disparage and nullify the actuality. The media might as well have declared the sun gone from the sky and all the oceans had dried.
Sochi and Putin had triumphed, no disaster, no terrorism, just a brilliant project with a superb display of Russian culture and expertise. The Russians also dominated the winter sports and competitively defeated American athletes in most venues. Sochi has since hosted the Formula 1 race in August.
The facility has been declared by the racers and the industry as the best racetrack facility in the world. Again, you can’t make this stuff up. Putin was on a roll. The more the West demonized him the greater Russia looked, the higher his approval ratings and the more China wanted him as a partner, a unique partner.
China’s Unique Partnership
China has 58 or so partnership agreements with various nations. There are many categories. They created a new definition for its supreme category with Russia: Comprehensive Strategic Collaborative Partnership.
Since there is this unique partnership that sets it apart, we should look closer at what is going on since 2014.
This should be seen an evolutionary event, not merely a resistance movement against the United States Military Empire.
Update: Call it what you may, the Russia and China alliance is much stronger than other other treaty and relationship in the history of the world.
Nature provides what it needs for a species to survive. Humanity is seeing this within the relationship of China and Russia.
I call it the Double Helix, merely because it is apt as a metaphor, not because every biologic or chemical fact in DNA is represented in the relationship. But similarities exist and Double Helix depicts this evolution nicely.
Update: President Putin has referred to the relationship between Russia and China as "symbiotic". A symbiosis is an evolved interaction or close living relationship between organisms from different species, usually with benefits to one or both of the individuals involved.
To decode the DNA of the relationship in this Double Helix of Bear and Dragon, we can look closer at the ‘base pair molecules’ of each strand.
First, there are the ‘helices’ that each strand comprises. These are the complimentary characteristics that make this new genetic partnership work. They are what we would normally evaluate to decode any single nation’s ‘DNA’.
Some nations have similar, some less.
But none have as much as or as profoundly essential to sustain continued growth and development and separation from the United State Military Empire.
Helices
Geography that spans thousands of miles of common borders (2,607 mi.), natural resources and multi-ethnic masses of peoples, large defensive militaries, recent emergence as developing economies, self-reliant market capitalist systems with state-managed controls, millionaires and billionaires and relatively modest middle class tiers, deep distrust of Communism as an economic solution, and massive state-owned enterprises in the key industries.
What one nation lacks, the other has.
What one nation excels in, the other aspires.
What one nation needs immediately, the other is ready to deliver.
What one nation needs over time, the other is prepared to supply or access for the duration.
And most clearly, both nations have the same existential threat from the same source, using the same means to threaten both. Ergo, the unique partnership.
A quote from Lu Shiwei, a senior research fellow with the Institute of Modern International Relations at Tsinghua University: “The close relationship between China and Russia is not only out of economic concerns, as the two complement each other’s economy. These active efforts are also a reflection of political necessity and desire.” (emphasis mine)
Wealth, energy, military, finance, banking, Space, satellites, education, IT, chemicals, microelectronics, water, agriculture, transportation, infrastructure, and a common dream, while confronting a common enemy are the significant molecules. Upon these markers, the Double Helix was formed. It was a process, not a sudden event. But it was evident in 2014 as a repeated event. It was to geopolitics as Sochi was to sport. It was unique and it happened.
Let’s visit these ‘molecules’ and look at what has transpired just in this momentous year of 2014.
Molecules
We’ll turn on the lights with energy molecules. Oil, gas and coal, nuclear and LNG acquisition, provisioning, transport, pipelines, storage, exploration, resource development, innovation and technological development, and, probably, reverse engineering of Western tools, as well as investment, loans, advanced payments, equity purchases, and job creation. The following ‘deals’ are ‘base paired’, not merely supply-purchase deals. This is far beyond vendor-customer in nature.
Gas: Two gigantic projects, the Power of Siberia and the Altai Pipeline.
The first is in Eastern Siberia. It will is delivering gas from terminal in Vladivostok to China, and at Blagoveshchensk across Amur River. It was signed May 21, 2014 between Gazprom and CNPC. It is a 30-year deal, later extended 5 years by agreement in October.
The second project is in Western Siberia and will bring is bringing gas to North-western China. Gazprom and CNPC signed the deal originally in 2006, it was put on hold, restarted in 2014 at APEC by Putin, November 9th.
What is key to these are the establishment of infrastructure, manufacture and supply of pipe, construction crews, job creation in support of two of the largest projects in mankind’s history, simultaneously. This along a border that historically has been a hotspot, where wars have been fought between the two nations.
Presidents Putin and Xi said do it.
And, it is done.
September, it began with Russian shovels and Chinese advance payments, $25 Billion. Once connected, the two nations will are receiving ‘marrow’ transfers each requires to continue growth. Siberia and the Far East come alive as viable sectors of the Russian economy; China receives clean energy and moves people into its Northwest and North, and some into Far East Russia.
Its foreign investments in Russia pay dividends, and Chinese capital grows. The plans go deeper, and involve more than finance, acquisition of commodities and exploitation of natural resources. More, later, in this energy section.
Update: It appears that Russia will be supplying all the gas needs of China.
The Russian energy project, "Power of Siberia", one of the largest gas pipeline projects on the planet, will begin by the end of 2019, expected to not only meet China’s heavy demand for gas but also benefit both sides as a large amount of jobs will be created.
-China-Russia energy cooperation deepens - CGTN
Someone had best tell this ill-informed commenter;
You are perhaps forgetting that China imports nearly all of its oil, and about 40% of its food (mostly from the U.S.) It also imports a great deal of coal from the U.S. for its coal-fired generators. And most of its alfalfa hay for feeding livestock. (Yes, really.)
Cut off China’s oil imports, and stop exporting food, hay, and coal to China (and freeze its U.S. assets, like Smithfield pork) and suddenly China is no longer in a position to wage war against anyone.
-The Scarlet Pimpernel
Oil: Rosneft has access to Chinese ‘advance payments’ and is accessing them to pay its off-shored loans coming due in December and first quarter 2015.
This mechanism is a product of deals signed in early 2014. The loans were to buy TNK-BP for $31 Billion and are not a result of falling prices.
The acquisition deal was encouraged by China, and China indicated at the time it would buy equity in Rosneft so the liquidity to complete the deal was in Rosneft’s hands in timely fashion. These agreements now seem prescient as the economic war ensues using oil price collapse, off-shore credit denial and rubble shorting in Forex trading.
China has now received much greater supplies of Russian oil and an increased involvement with Rosneft shares and has an alliance to develop technologies in exploration, drilling, extraction and transport. Rosneft and CNPC, likewise, are seen to be less rivals for oil and more partners. This has been indicated in the works for Arctic exploration and development and off-shore Crimea for oil and gas.
Update: Oil and Gas are flowing from Russia into China.
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China, Japan and South Korea are major buyers of Russian oil, various long pipelines, then, are built to transport the oil from Europe to East Asia.
With more than 4,800 kilometers, the ESPO pipeline, also known as the Eastern Siberia-Pacific Ocean oil pipeline, starts from Tayshet central-south Russia to northeast China's oil city of Daqing, able to supply about 15 million tons of oil every year.
The Yamal LNG is China's first large-scale energy cooperation project with Russia under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). China also built tankers to ship LNG through sea routes thanks to China-Russia cooperation on Arctic exploration.
China and Russia are poised to further deepen their energy cooperation as their top leaders both pledged provide policy support during a bilateral energy business forum in June.
As comprehensive strategic partners of coordination, China and Russia enjoy deepening cooperation in all spheres, which has forcefully promoted the two nations' common development and revitalization, Chinese President Xi Jinping said.
Describing energy cooperation as the "most significant, most fruitful and most wide-ranging" area of bilateral cooperation, Xi said the two sides' close coordination has played a positive role in safeguarding the fair, just, reasonable and orderly international energy order.
To consolidate and deepen their energy cooperation, Xi made four proposals.
Firstly, business entities should lead the cooperation and stick to the principles of mutual benefits, win-win results and being commercially viable. Financial insurance and energy cooperation should be enhanced for mutual support and mutual promotion.
Secondly, new potentials should be tapped to upgrade the cooperation. Cooperation in energy technical standard should be strengthened for mutual recognition and synergy. Technological innovation, the integration of information technology with the energy sector, and cooperation in energy research and development (R&D) should all be deepened. Experience sharing, capacity building and think tank exchanges should be enhanced for mutual learning.
Thirdly, the cooperation should promote the integration of interests, and aim for a more comprehensive and integrated cooperation along the whole industrial chain. The two sides should focus on the present while looking into the future, stick to complementary advantages and win-win results to expand and deepen their cooperation.
Fourthly, cooperation in global energy governance should be stepped up for the sustainable development of energy. The two sides should work together to firmly safeguard multilateralism and actively conduct multilateral cooperation to play a constructive role in the global energy governance system.
Xi said China and Russia enjoy broad prospects and tremendous potentials in energy cooperation. "I would like to work with President Putin to lead and promote our governments in creating an even better business environment for our enterprises and provide more comprehensive policy support."
He expressed belief that companies of the two countries, under the shield of the comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for a new era, will work together to further promote their cooperation to benefit the two peoples.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said the energy business forum was jointly initiated by him and Xi last year as a platform for the two sides to explore expanding cooperation in oil and gas, electric power and renewable energy.
Energy cooperation has become an important and integral part of the Russia-China comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination, and the fastest growing area of bilateral cooperation, and it is mutually beneficial, Putin said.
The two countries have made positive progress in energy cooperation in infrastructure construction, trade, and technological R&D, Putin said, adding that important oil and gas pipelines and large-scale cooperation projects are making headway as scheduled.
"The Russian government will improve related laws, regulations and policies to create a favorable market environment for foreign companies to invest and operate in Russia," he said.
-China-Russia energy cooperation deepens
Coal: Siberian and Far East coal development, Rostech and Shenhua Group agreed to are exploring and develop coal deposits in Siberia and Far East. They will are constructing coal-fired plants that will sell electricity in Russia, China and other Asian countries.
The two companies will also build has built a marine coal terminal at Port Vera in the Primorsky Territory, Far East. That project begins 2015, operational 2018-2019.
Update: Russia helps China when the Australian Morrison government stops coal exports.
Mar 11, 2021 · In December, Elgaugol, the company behind the Elga coal project in the Russian Far East, agreed to launch a joint venture with China’s Fujian Guohang Ocean Shipping Group that will export metallurgical coal to China. The Elga project aims to ship 30 million tons of coal to China in 2023, almost doubling Russia’s total coal exports to China, which stood at around 33 million tons in 2019.
-Russia looks to replace banned Australian coal exports to China.
They will build are building high voltage transmission lines to China. Social and transport infrastructure will be are being developed concurrently.
So, this coal ‘deal’ is not a typical commodity deal. It is long-term, and builds the Far East and North China. It brings a permanent electrical utility produced in Russia to the people and industries of China. It expands a port; it uses trucks, rail, and GPS systems that are co-developed.
Update: More agreements and treaties between Russia and China on coal.
In December 2020, Russia’s Elgar Coal Company and China’s Fujian Air China Ocean Shipping (Group) Co., Ltd. signed an agreement to establish a joint venture to export coking coal to China. The related project is expected to supply 30 million tons of coal to China from 2023-this will nearly double Russia's total coal exports to China from about 33 million tons in 2019.
-Russia wants to increase coal exports to China and replace ...
Nuclear: Rosatom will is building the Tianwan NPP (nuclear power plant), 7th and 8th power blocks. They are already building have completed the 3rd and 4th power blocks.
They will build have built in Harbin two power units.
Rosatom may will participate in VVER reactors (pressurized water) with two fast breeder reactors, floating nuclear power plants.
Presently, China has deals with Westinghouse for 26 nuclear units. Clearly, the Chinese would prefer to have their inland reactors Russian-design and supplied than locked into Westinghouse technology. (The two are different and fuel sources are particularly mutually exclusive, as Ukraine is finding out as it turns to the U.S. for refueling.)
Update: China and Russia are increasing their nuclear technology exchanges.
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May 20, 2021 · The Tianwan plant in Jiangsu Province is the biggest such project between China and Russia, which is a joint venture by Jiangsu Nuclear Power Corporation and Atomstroy, a subsidiary of Russia's nuclear power giant Rosatom. The Xudapu plant in Liaoning Province is a new joint project between the two countries.
-China-Russia cooperation: A new type of major-country ...
LNG: Construction of a plant in Northern Russia. Yamal LNG and CNPC and development of South Tambeiskoye field. Equity stake for China in Vladivostok LNG is part of the deal.
Update: Ever since Trump and Biden initiated a hybrid-war against China, Russia has stepped in and forged strong relationships with China all across the board.
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Jun 02, 2021 · Russian energy giant Novatek and China's Zhejiang Energy signed an agreement on long-term liquified natural gas (LNG) supplies from the Arctic LNG 2 project at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) on Wednesday.
-Russia’s Novatek agrees long-term Arctic LNG supplies to China
Things That Fly
Some military, some dual use, some civilian.
But we’ll begin with GPS and see how the ‘Double Helix’ is working in Space.
Satellites: Both China and Russia have GPS satellite systems. GLONASS is the Russia system. Beidou is the Chinese system. The Russian system is larger, more mature and covers the entire globe. The Chinese system is new, limited in coverage and not mature nor densely accurate and improving every month.
The Chinese often do things in measured, metric, stages. An agreement to place ground stations inside China by Russia will gives China a global GPS capability for its defense and second strike weapons, as well as for its commercial use for the world’s soon to be largest navy and the world’s largest most diverse ocean and fishing fleet. (Two teens swapping kisses couldn’t get closer.)
Update: Russia and China will explore space together.
With their agreement, the partners are signaling an alternative to a U.S.-led order in space. On March 9, 2021, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) and Russian Space Agency (ROSCOSMOS) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the joint construction of an autonomous lunar permanent research base.
-The Strategic Implications of the China-Russia Lunar Base
Russia will has put GLONASS stations in one of China’s airfields and on a navigable river as pilot projects to develop cooperation in the field of navigation.
The airport project will currently aids landing and signal monitoring systems using zonal-navigation methods that will be working on GLONASS and Beidou constellations. (It should be noted that most airfields in China are dual-use military-civilian and the PLA controls most traffic in the air.)
Russia’s advanced systems and experience will enable provide training for Chinese air traffic controllers and aero navigation teams to learn modern satellite technologies. The river navigation project will currently monitors and correct and track boats on internal water routes.
Auspiciously, Beidou was named for the Great Bear constellation.
Space: Roscosmos Federal Space agency. China is interested engaged in building Russian rocket engines and joining manned space exploration, navigation satellite and remote sensing projects.
Production of electronic component parts, materials science, construction of spacecraft and rocket engines are in the works in process.
Exchange of manned spacecraft visits to Russian and Chinese orbiting stations and joint expeditions to deep space are beginning talks mature. Space is a battlefield according to the U.S. defense doctrine.
The Double Helix sees dual use potential.
Update: China and Russia are both going to be part of the Chinese space station, and the Lunar Moon Base.
Aircraft: Nov. 11, 2014, Aviation Industry Corp China and Rostec signed an agreement. Russia and China are forming possess a working group to carry out a project to distribute products, and prepare and implement projects in Russia, China, and 3rd countries, and to provision for warranty servicing and ensuring post-warranty service of equipment.
Update: China and Russia are forming a massive joint aerospace industry. It is trans-borders, and will have the strengths of both nations participating.
The China-Russia International Aircraft Cooperation, or CRAIC, wants to begin constructing the first CR929 before the end of the year. The collaboration has already shortlisted several subcontractors, most of whom are reportedly subsidiaries of China’s state-owned Aviation Industry Corporation (AVIC).
-China And Russia Want To Start Building The 1st CR929
This creates strategic cooperation in development of aircraft, helicopters, engines, aircraft materials, avionics and radar equipment. This brings a new phase and transition to comprehensive cooperation between two state-owned corporations.
Long haul aircraft: Joint venture, similar to Russian-Italian JV for Sukhoi SuperJet 100. $10 Billion project to compete with Boeing and Airbus.
Update: In process. Mature.
May 30, 2016 · The project is part of a reported $13 billion aviation cooperation deal signed in 2014 during President Vladimir Putin’s visit to China. The long-haul plane will be developed inRussia and assembled in China.A special engineering center will be created inRussiatoundertake technical and electronics production.
-Russian-Chinese passenger jet to take on Boeing & Airbus
Dual use aircraft heavy helicopter: Russia and China will build is building a heavy helicopter probably based on the Mi-26 from Russian Helicopoter-Rostvertol. It will be for China and third parties, initially.
Update: Mature and in process.
Aug 30, 2019 · China and Russia have fully agreed upon and signed a commercial contract on a joint heavy helicopter development project, said Miao Wei, China's Minister of Industry and Information Technology, on Wednesday. "For the next step, the Chinese government will accelerate the progress for a project approval and finish it as…
-China, Russia Sign Heavy Helicopter Deal | DefenceTalk
S400: Triumf air defense missile systems; six battalions. Delivery will be started in 2016, $3 Billion. Rosboronexport and Chinese Defense Ministry signed on 11-26-14.
China gets state of the art missile defense. This nullifies Japan’s air power, U.S. air power, and protects the Double Helix’s Asian Pacific flank. Nothing in the missile defense arsenal of any nation is as important as this system, and now, China will get it.
Russia is was building the S500 for itself. That is the nature of technology capacity intrinsic to Russia. It has marched for forty years with derivations, updates, refinements and new systems that have protected the Motherland and the territories of its allies. Russian defense is the world standard.
Update: Forget about the S400. Already these systems have been delivered to China and are in operation. It seems that the production of the S400 has stopped, and it looks like the most advanced S500 systems are now being supplied to China. Especially since the United State Military Empire is Hell-bent on a war.
Apr 08, 2021 · Pondering whether China should consider the S-500 for its own air and space defense arsenal, Lin recalled the long history of Russian-Chinese cooperation …
- Chinese Media Impressed by Russia’s S-500
Now, from the Arctic to Vietnam, Russia and China will have has a defense system facing the U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force missile command. Similarly, these systems will proliferate along the New Silk Road as Eurasia infrastructure develops. Force multiplication for Russia’s southern underbelly on China’s investment means a safer more secure Russia.
Submarines: AIP technology, propulsion acoustic stealth and long duration submergence technology transfer with the sale of an Amur 1650.
Update: Amazing developments in submarine technology and massive shipbuilding events have placed substantially modernized and capable submarines in both the Russia and Chinese fleets.
According to RIA Novosti, a state-controlled Russian news agency, Russia and China are collaborating on a new submarine design (in Russian). The project is being coordinated by Russia's Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation.
-China And Russia In Mysterious New Submarine Project
Air-independent propulsion using electrochemical generators and new combat systems for electronic warfare, a passive antenna sonar to detect silent targets at long range make this a submarine platform for defensive second strike (MAD).
Update: Amazing developments in submarine systems age going on in response to the belligerence of the United States Military Empires desire for war.
Aug 25, 2020 · On Tuesday, Russia's Sputnik news agency quoted an official as saying Russia was designing a 'non-nuclear' submarine with China. Viktor Kladov, Director for International Cooperation and Regional Policy of the state arms export corporation
-Russia working with China to design submarine, missile ...
Russia is pursuing this sea-based deterrence and China also is expanding its extensive submarine fleet for a second deterrence platform system.
Tests of Russian Bulava ICBM from submerged sub, the Vladimir Monomakh, signaled this capability for Russia back in 2013.
Update: Amazing developments in submarine systems age going on in response to the belligerence of the United States Military Empires desire for war.
Aug 27, 2020 · According to RIA Novosti, a state-controlled Russian news agency, Russia and China are collaborating on a new submarine design (in Russian). The project is being coordinated by Russia's …
- China And Russia In Mysterious New Submarine Project
This transfer of technology assures that China will have it also.
An Amur 1650 would be equipped with 18 missiles. China has been testing MIRV-ed warheads for its missiles since 2010.
Update: Amazing developments in submarine systems age going on in response to the belligerence of the United States Military Empires desire for war.
Aug 26, 2020 · "We are currently cooperating with the Chinese side on a joint project of a new generation non-nuclear submarine," Viktor Kladov, a director of Russian state-owned defense corporation Rostec, told...
-Russia and China Working Together on Advanced Weaponry ...
This deal calls for 4 submarines, joint development and construction, to begin 2015, 2 built in Russia, 2 built in China.
Update: Amazing developments in submarine systems age going on in response to the belligerence of the United States Military Empires desire for war.
Aug 20, 2020 · That cooperation in air and missile defense could also support the submarine component of Russia-China strategic cooperation in the Arctic is reasonably clear, but the analyst then makes the most...
-China and Russia Might Be Headed Towards Naval Supremacy …
IT and Microelectronics: Russian rocket, space and defense enterprises will buy electronic components from China worth $1 Billion.
Update: Russia and Chinese trade, agreements and research in the high-technology fields are astounding in their scope and breadth.
While Russia and China are signing joint agreements to develop high-tech research centers and initiatives, the outlook is more complex beneath the surface. These trends reflect the result of mutual interests and alignment of technological imperatives, which have contributed to the expansion of high-tech efforts between the two countries.
- The Resilience of Sino-Russian High-Tech Cooperation ...
Working with China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp for dozens of items as alternatives to U.S.-sourced parts.
Update: Russia and Chinese trade, agreements and research in the high-technology fields are astounding in their scope and breadth.
In our new report, A new Sino-Russian high-tech partnership: authoritarian innovation in an era of great-power rivalry, published today by ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre, we map out the unique ecosystem underpinning expanding technology cooperation between Moscow and Beijing. China and Russia have not only expanded their military cooperation but are also undertaking more extensive technological cooperation, including in 5G, artificial intelligence, robotics, biotechnology, new media and the digital economy -A new Sino-Russian high-tech partnership emerges as US tensions mou…
Russia will need to purchase these alternative items for 2-2.5 years until their own industry can manufacture electronic components that are radiation-resistant for Space and match military standards for mil systems. This has been a $2 billion American supply in the past.
No Longer.
China is now supplying those parts.
Update: Russia and Chinese trade, agreements and research in the high-technology fields are astounding in their scope and breadth.
May 25, 2021 · Russia is developing an array of autonomous weapons platforms utilizing artificial intelligence as part of an ambitious push supported by high-tech cooperation with neighboring China. - Russia Is Building an Army of Robot Weapons, and China's ...
Technology Parks: October 14, 2014 a memorandum to jointly build high-tech parks in each country to further innovation in science and technology. In Shaanxi, China, in the town of Xixian Fendong, a technology park of four square kilometers, and in Moscow, at the Skolkovo Innovation Center, 200,000 sq. meters of buildings will be built.
China and Russia are deepening and expanding their ties — economic, military, technological — as external pressures limit their access to overseas markets and technology. Both countries hope the collaboration will help to compensate for domestic deficiencies and to compete successfully with the United States in today’s critical technologies. This bilateral relationship, currently celebrating its 70th anniversary, has ebbed and flowed in the decades since the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China opened diplomatic relations. This relationship, now upgraded to and characterized as a “comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for a new era,” is continuing to evolve amid today’s great power rivalry. For Moscow, certain Chinese products, services and experience may be the lifeline for its industry, government, and military need to wean themselves from high-tech Western imports. For Beijing, Russia’s skilled engineers and mathematicians are a valuable resource for tech and defense industry giants that are hungry for talent and faced with increasingly unfavorable conditions in the United States and Europe. And its military hopes to draw on Russian proficiency in designing advanced weapons and experience using emerging capabilities on today’s battlefields.Consequently, the Sino-Russian strategic partnership has increasingly concentrated on technology and innovation. In the wake of Xi Jinping’s visit to Moscow in May 2015, the Chinese and Russian governments have signed a series of agreements to develop new realms of cooperation. In June 2016, China’s Ministry of Science and Technology and Russia’s Ministry of Economic Development signed the “Memorandum of Understanding on Launching Cooperation in the Domain of Innovation.” The notion of these nations as linked in a “science and technology cooperation partnership for shared innovation” has been elevated as a major pillars of this relationship.-Defense One
Satellite offices for the Chinese park in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong and Heilongjiang will follow on.
In Russia, offices in Kaliningrad, Vladivostok and the Russian republic of Tatarstan. Two sovereign wealth funds, the Russian Direct Investment Fund, and the Chinese Investment Corporation are leading the investments.
Cyber Security: International cyber security agreement is set for was set up during the first half 2015. Prevention of cyber incidents developing into full-scale conflict, collaboration in the operation of nation Internet segments, closer interaction on international platforms dedicated to cyber security issues.
It is going to be broader than a cyber non-aggression pact.
The Russians and Chinese are discussing a new Internet to break the monopoly and intrusion by the U.S. and NSA, CIA, etc.
Update: Russia and China are both working together to fight the United States Military Empire's control of cyber-warfare and blaming it on them. Remarkable progress is being made to this end.
Dec 16, 2020 · Russia and China concluded a bilateral cybersecurity agreement in May 2015, described by some media as a „non-aggression pact.“ While the framework of the pact was largely borrowed from its previous agreement under the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the effectiveness of implementing its „commitment not to hack fighting each other“ remains in question.
- Russia China Cybersecurity Agreement
Education: 100,000 student exchange program. Already 25,000 Chinese in Russian higher education, 15,000 Russians in Chinese education and internships.
Far Eastern Federal University will teach Russian to Chinese students.
Joint University in China will have Moscow State University curriculum as core. Already Moscow State and Beijing University of Technology opened a university in the city of Shenzhen. It opened in Sept. 2016.
Update: The centers for education, research, technology and development are located inside of both Russia and China.
Jun 20, 2019 · The agreement between Tsinghua and Saint Petersburg will lead to the creation of a Russian Research Institute at the Beijing university, which will conduct research on Russia-China relations in areas such as industrial development, education, science and technology.
-Academic ties grow between Russia and China
China as Russia’s Bank
It is evident from the nature and size of interactions between China and Russia, China has determined to construct a floor for the Russian economy. Just as the Federal Reserve secretly saved the EU banking systems by QE and passage of funds to select banks in the EU, China is doing similarly with Russia during the sanctions regime.
Update; Apr 09, 2021 · China and Russia each scaled back their U.S. Treasury holdings, with Russia channeling cash into renminbi holdings. And China has ramped up the digital currency drive it began in 2014, with the ...
-Analysis | China and Russia announced a joint pledge to ...
Instead of creating debt, it is swapping currencies and keeping corporations liquid, taking equity positions in state-owned enterprises, making loans and advances on deals both within Russia and between Russia and China.
Update: China, Russia move to unseat the dollar as the No.1 currency. China is not slackening its pace in mounting Beijing’s challenge to the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency. Now that the International Monetary Fund has included the yuan (renminbi) in the Special Drawing Rights (the currency basket that provides additional support to ...
-China, Russia move to unseat the dollar as the No.1 currency
There were three wounds to the Russian economy.
First, prior to United States sanctions there was heavy flight of foreign investment out of Russia.
Second, United States sanctions brought on more of that loss of capital investment and a credit crunch.
Third, the drop in the price of oil affected the ruble. So, credit loss, liquidity loss, tax revenue loss and a battered currency has slowed growth and caused inflation inside Russia.
Not so today.
Update: Jul 14, 2021 · China cheers Russia’s move away from US dollar in favor of yuan. Beijing has welcomed Russia’s decision to cut the US currency from its National Wealth Fund and give the yuan a bigger role, China’s Foreign Ministry has announced. Last week, Russia fully eliminated the US dollar from its National Wealth Fund, reducing its share from 35% to ...
-China cheers Russia’s move away from US dollar in favor of ...
Both Russia and China have invested heavily in gold, manufacturing capability, and discharging the American debt that they have acquired over the last few decades. The end result has not only make their economies stronger, but enabled them to implement electronic currency, and in China this is a mature technology that 99.5% of the people use.
China’s Capacity
China has the wealth to manage these issues in the short term. Russia’s reserves and gold cache, natural resources and intellectual property are collateral for any contingency.
Russia’s economic size (GDP) is comparable to the sum of 3 provinces in China – Guangdong, Jiangsu and Shanghai taken as one economy. The Chinese have 31 provinces and autonomous regions. So, managing a floor for Russia economically as a reserve force is easy for the Chinese.
Premier Li indicated that, “China may be able to help reduce the damage (of sanctions) as Russia looks east for business and financing, but it is far from a total offset.” Oct. 13, 2014
The intention is clear. China needs Russia, not just Russian gas and oil.
Update: Mar 27, 2020 · China and Russia have used the new coronavirus pandemic as an opportunity to lead efforts at the United Nations to lift American and European sanctions against a number of countries, including Syria. They have sized on UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ recent call for a nationwide ceasefire in Syria to demand sanctions relief.
-Exclusive - China, Russia Lead Campaign to Avoid ...
Currency: Currency swap agreement signed by Premier Li Oct.13, 2014, duration 3 years, extendable.Yuans and rubbles will be used as settlements of trade. This deal is empowering for the yuan as an international currency, likewise Russia’s rubble. It also empowers the BRICS nations to have more input in international finance as it diminishes the dollar’s use for settlements.
Update: Jun 06, 2019 · Russia and China sign deals worth US$20 billion as Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin’s growing friendship bears fruit ... security and trade. After six years' working overseas in Brussels and ...-Russia and China sign deals worth US$20 billion as Xi ...
Sberbank financing letters of credit in yuans with Russian companies. Provides safety through diversification of currencies. Pairing on the Moscow and Shanghai stock exchanges since Dec. 2010. Russian firms have been using HKD and yuan.
Banking: Agreement between Russian VTB Bank and Bank of China.
Another deal is VTB, VEB and Russian Agriculture Bank, all hit by sanctions, signed framework agreement with Export-Import Bank of China to open credit lines.
Update: Jun 17, 2019 · Another alternative is China’s CIPS (China International Payments System), which several Russian banks have also connected to, especially to ease banking operations between the two countries, according to Vladimir Shapvalov, also of the CBR, who said at last week’s SPIEF conference: “As for the cooperation on payment systems, a range of banks are already connected to CIPS, …
-Russian & Chinese Alternatives For SWIFT Global Banking ...
Credit Card: Union Pay of China has replaced Visa and Mastercard, while Russia develops its own national brand credit card system. The Russian credit card system UEC (universal electronic card) was implemented in 2017. Both Russia and China “leapfrogged” the credit card system with QR based electronic e-payments.
Update: The China National Advanced Payment Systems (CNAPS) 中国人民银行现代化支付系统 is the primary domestic electronic payment system in China. Unlike the separation of ACH and wire payment systems in the United States., CNAPS encompasses both ACH-type (low-value) payments and wire-type (Real Time Gross Settlement “RTGS”) payments.
-Treasurer’s Guide to China Payments | PNC Insights
Finance: China Development Bank (CDB) agreed to financing $500 million for Russian mobile phone operator MegaFon. CDB also agreed on annual financing of $1 Billion to the Russian Grid.
FDI Equity stakes: A stake in Gazprom’s Vladivostok liquid natural gas terminal, and shares purchased by CNPC in oil producer Rosneft. New privatization of part of Rosneft, maybe up to 9%. Already China holds 0.6% since 2006. Not only state-owned enterprises, but large private corporations and entrepreneurs are poised with capital investment in Russia.
Russia is rated one of the top economies (despite sanctions, ruble drop, threats and vodka weaknesses) by leading analysts and investment gurus. Russia should begin to show GDP growth rates that seem unthinkable today (5-6%) in 4-5-6 years. China will pump-prime large sectors of this, and get excellent returns on its investments. Further out, 10-15 years, Russia will be robust and stable with a growth outlook and diversified line-up of products and services and a nearby Eurasian market easy to service.
Motor Vehicles: Great Wall Motors plant in central Russian Tula Region to build 150,000 Haval four-wheel drive vehicles/yr. $522 million per year investment, 2500 jobs.
Petrochemical Technologies: Joint venture construction of a rubber production plant between petrochemical companies Sibur and Sinopec, oil company, to be based on Russian technologies located in Shanghai. Rus-China split 25.1-74.9. Technology transfer. The two have previously worked together in Rasnoyarsk for rubber production in Siberia. Split is reversed in Russia’s favour there. Rubber produced will be supplied to China.
Construction: Bridges and transport links across Russian-Chinese border. Rail companies Russian Railways and China Railway Corp. have agreed on logistics centres, development of passenger traffic and reduction of tariffs.
Update: Apr 28, 2021 · Three of the six ‘economic corridors’ of the BRI pursue this goal: the New Eurasia Land Bridge aims to connect China to Poland by rail links through Kazakhstan, Russia and Belarus, the China, Mongolia, Russia Economic Corridor aims to build rail and road links through Russia to Estonia and Finland, and the China, Central Asia, West Asia Economic Corridor would link Central Asia to Turkey, …
-Ambivalent partners: The complex Russia-China relationship
Infrastructure: High Speed Rail project: Moscow to Kazan 770 kilometers. It will ultimately link to Beijing. The China side is Beijing to Urumqi, Xinjiang.
Moscow subway extensions to be built by Chinese investors, New Moscow district. Total deal for $10 Billion, signed May 19, 2014; 93 miles, 70 stations.
This is a key foreign investment partnership project. Deal between Mosinzhproekt and China Railway and Construction and China International Fund.
Housing: 460,000 housing units (25 million sq. meters of housing) to be built for Russian Family Housing program of the Construction, Housing and Utilities Ministry, June 25, 2014. Talks began in China in May 2014.
Kostroma Region: China’s interest in jewellery industry, agriculture and wood processing. Investors and manufacturers form Shandong and Guangdong provinces have made tours. Work on organizing modern agriculture enterprises, developing agritourism and logistics.
Thus, there was organic necessity for the evolutionary change in the relationship of China and Russia. The commodities and energy deals between the two are annual at $40 Billion, but now will go to $200 Billion/yr. Trade between the two is at $90 Billion. Comparatively, the EU trade is $413 Billion. China is in danger with EU dependency. China’s own economic slowdown is completely the result of the EU being generally in recession.
As Russia develops and trade expands, China will have an economy it can influence and, partially, remotely manage, especially in its growth sectors and technological innovations. These sectors and innovations will spur China’s internal growth, and that follows its five-year plan to substitute export dependence with internal development.
It helps stabilize China’s economy.
SCO Eurasian Security
Barely known to most people, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization will become the key Eurasian organization through which the diverse national interests of India, Pakistan, China, Russia, Iran, and Vietnam are served in a cooperative environment.
United in their economic development through the reality of Eurasia Economic Belt, all their security issues versus terrorism, separatism and criminal drug and human trafficking are handled within SCO. Though it is not a military alliance, it uses joint military and policing activities in an interesting array.
Ultimately, SCO is a defensive layer against destabilization proxies (think ISIS, Taliban, AQ, East Turkistan Islamic Movement, PKK, PUK Kurds) that may be mounted against any one or more member states. Should Turkey finally come into the fold of SCO, along with Iran, NATO will be neutralized against member states. These SCO developments are in the cards. It takes time, but India and Pakistan are in line to full membership in 2015, and then Iran and Turkey will complete a powerhouse of SCO members, all with the same interests, no matter how diverse the cultures and ideologies.
There is a generally unspoken tool of destabilization – Islamic terror in the form of direct Wahhabi-driven conflict (AQ, ISIS, Taliban, etc.) and the more covert separatist programs that affect both nations (and in Russia’s case, its Middle East allies and customers, who just happen to be investment partners with China for oil and infrastructure projects).
China was susceptible to destabilization in Xinjiang, Tibet, Taiwan, Hong Kong and, perhaps, Inner Mongolia, though unlikely in any to be remotely eventful while China is a vibrant economy. Full bellies and fat wallets don’t arm rebellions.
Xinjiang. China has won the hearts and minds of the Uighur Muslims there. And have located enormous military presence there designed to counter any United States Military Empire NGO / CIA efforts there.
Tibet. China has crushed the Untied States backed insurgency and terrorist cells, and have increased trade and travel to that once isolated region with high speed trains, and generous investments to the local indigenous peoples there.
Taiwan. Still in play, but it is unlikely that the desire for independence will survive in the next decades.
Hong Kong. China completely suppressed the United States Military Empire backed NGO’s and terror cells. IN 2020, Donald Trump threw up his hands and announced “We lost Hong Kong”.
It was so generally peaceful in Xinjiang, that up until 2012, unarmed police were the rule for security forces in the Province (Autonomous Region). Until several unarmed policewomen and men were stabbed to death by terrorists-separatists trained by AQ and Taliban in Pakistan, the Chinese never used repression or harsh tactics. Now that the terrorists get Syria-based training by off-shoot Wahhabi fanatics, the PLA military is being used, specially trained police teams and a regime of control is being brought to parts of Xinjiang.
China is using Chechnyan Republic President Kadyrov’s tactics with terrorists. They are killing them on sight in large numbers whenever possible. Those who go to trial, if violent or plotters of violence, get the death penalty.
Actually, three years of organ harvesting while doing hard labor and then killed with a single bullet to the back of the head after you eat a McDonald's Happy Meal.
Eurasia development faces embedded potential ethnic, tribal, Islamic and criminal forces that will have to be dealt with as China pushes into Central Asia and works with Afghanistan and Pakistan. Rubbing their “hands together”, the U.S. and NATO remnants and paid allies in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan have been planning to stir security problems.
Update. All this has failed. The United States Military Empire has pulled out of Afghanistan, and all the neighboring nations are enthusiastically embracing the BRI.
Not Global Military Alliance
Most profoundly, the Double Helix is not a global military alliance. Both nations eschew military alliances beyond regional.
However, the test of the double helix bonding had to work out the military affinities, or the existential threat would not be blunted and turned away. Both militaries had to be able to imagine a force structure and force protection that conjoined their defenses, systems, intelligence, communication and command integration if needed.
This unity might take years, but they had no time to waste. This could not be superficial, so they had to permit intrusive sharing. This might be difficult because their languages were so different. They overcame all obstacles because of necessity and leadership. President Putin and President Xi had identical needs. Their nations were subjects of containment by the United States Military Empire with its allies who surrounded their nations with an array of full spectrum platforms and systems that challenged them 24/7, any weather, any phase of the moon.
China and Russia were growing rich while the United States Military Empire was growing poor, and China and Russia were growing, while the United States Military Empire was shriveling its once-great economy with endless wars, debt, waste and corrupt practices.
Surprise
The great expanse of Russia from the Baltic and Black and Caspian seas to the Pacific, Yellow Sea and Sea of Japan as an east-west territory now had an East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia and Central Asia adjunct – China.
Russia could be seen as even larger than largest geographically. Her pipelines, highways, airports, seaports and weapons systems would be connecting and protecting nations from the Arctic to the Indian Ocean, as well as from the Eastern Europe borders to the Kurill Islands and Vladivostok, touching China for border crossings at Zabikalsk-Manzhouli and Pogranichy-Suifenhe in Heilongjiang Province along the Black Dragon/Amur River.
This unity is about much more than Harbin’s massive ice sculptures or Russia’s massive oil and gas reserves buried deep below snow, ice and frozen rock. This Double Helix was going to be about strategic surprise.
China had surprised the United States Military Empire twice before with weapons.
One was its satellite killer (kinetic hit-to-kill vehicle) that took out one of its own old satellites in 2007. Another more advanced test was launched in 2013. What made this tough for the Intel agencies to know in advance was the missile carrying the ASAT weapon was launched from a road mobile launcher.
The other surprise was China’s carrier killer missile, land based, that could take out a carrier from one thousand miles away. The Mach 10 DF-21D is indefensible except by electronic countermeasures and luck.
Both weapons were exactly what China needed to shock the U.S. Space command and the U.S. Navy. They are still stunned and worried by the Chinese capacity and their own Intel failure. Both weapons are land-based and mobile, making the Chinese defenses agile and elusive.
While threats abound, the Double Helix grows
On the Chinese side are people, masses of people, one third of whom have been raised from serfdom to middle class in just 30-plus years. The Chinese have also mastered ‘opening up’ their economy to venture capital, industrialization and service sector organizations, without losing control to foreign interests.
They have kept a central bank separated from IMF and from the Federal Reserve and western central bank systems.
They have kept state management control of all strategic industries.
They have used foreign direct investment to spectacular advantage, forcing joint ventures to ultimately share intellectual property, patents and design copyrights.
The Chinese have forced technology transfers wherever they needed to have state-of-the-art and could not reverse engineer it.
They learned every capitalist trick from studiously analyzing the American rise from frontier agricultural nation to the greatest global economic power. The Chinese admire America’s rise into an economic behemoth while fearing its government and global hegemony.
Most importantly, the Chinese protected the RMB, the yuan, from manipulation.
They carefully introduced the yuan to trading partners, but never allowed their currency to fully trade as a Forex currency. China pegs its yuan to the U.S. dollar, thus restricting manipulation and speculation. There is no float rate and interest rates are state-controlled. The yuan gradually became convertible from dollars, yens, Swiss francs, Euros, Hong Kong dollars and rubbles. The Chinese use RMB for bilateral settlement, case by case.
The China-Russia plan for international reserved currency is to propose a bundle of currencies, not one, as the dollar serves today. If the IMF does not act favorably, there may be turmoil coming to that system.
China has many allies for such a move. This clearly signals, though they are the largest economy, they do not desire or plan for dominance or to expose themselves to the concept of being the unipolar nation by replacing the United States. They want influence and cooperative leadership positions in new international institutions, and the Chinese signal that policy in every way. The Dragon prefers to be the Panda, most of the time.
Rise of Shanghai
The Chinese shrewdly used the Hong Kong dollar and Hong Kong stock exchange and the former royal colony’s banks for their own flexibility until they were ready to dwarf what once was thought to be Asia’s financial heart.
Shenzhen, next door to Hong Kong, had been selected by Deng Xiaoping for the initial showcase of ‘opening up’ for a good reason. Hong Kong was the enormous port for imports and exports, and Hong Kong was the last ‘western’ banking centre that capitalists trusted doing business with Beijing.
Now that center of finance and banking would be Shanghai; a Shanghai stock market and the RMB that would soon rule Asia because Beijing had the scale to do it. One of the unmentioned realities of the recent Occupy Central and the ‘yellow umbrella’ circus in Hong Kong is the city will be second to Shanghai soon, and it will be at the economic mercy of Beijing. Shanghai will be the new world center of banking and finance in a decade or two. This is now assured with Eurasia development, New Silk Road, Maritime Silk Road and the Double Helix.
London, desperately grasped a piece of the Chinese currency action just in time. It will be a RMB clearing house, an offshore RMB center. New York’s financial industry may not yet understand that it, too, will succumb to the Dragon’s wealth creation sometime in the coming decades.
These are reasons for containment and destabilization by the United States Military Empire and the Elites who do understand this inevitability. But, Eurasia tips the globe to the East. And the ‘Double Helix’ is one centrifugal force spinning the power toward Asia and Eurasia.
Scale–Size Matters
Scale matters if a nation knows how to use it (for example, China does, India doesn’t). Scale in factory output, cheap labor, high savings rate, massive infrastructure development, and logistics were things never seen on earth until China.
Even the U.S. during WWII could not match what China was now doing.
And all the while, the earnings were piling up by the trillions in the Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of China, China Construction Bank, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, and the People’s Bank of China (Central Bank of PRC).
In terms of cash on hand, China’s horde of cash and U.S. Treasury Bills and purchases of gold was unprecedented.
The dynamics has changed the Dragon not only into ‘the factory of the world’. China became one of the shrewdest bankers of the world.
China’s state-managed economy enables it to do things other countries don’t do. China can direct its state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to invest in projects domestically or in foreign projects.
This is actually another form of geopolitical financial power.
The treasuries of those SOEs are like bank accounts at the disposal of the Central Government. The Premier, presently, Li Keqiang, is the economic Czar, so to speak. The seven members of the Standing Committee of the Politburo execute the five-year plans, with President Xi Jinping setting the targets philosophically and Premier Li directing the government bureaucracy, banks and SOEs to achieve the goals.
Growth Matters
Growth is everything to Chinese new-born capitalists. Growth is a word and event that is not happening in the Empire of the United States Military Empire .
EU is in reverse and the U.S. is a phantom economy, sucking assets from the middle class and expanding a dependent base in a highly vertical reformation of the economy.
Elites have it all.
The good jobs and careers are gone. Social conflict is rising. America has lost its way. No five-year plan for growth, no one-year plan, not even a plan for the next quarter.
The U.S. economy has been built to serve the Elites and their need for greed.
All processes serve that need well.
The markets are rigged in dark pools, derivatives and criminality that goes unchecked, save a few ‘insider trading prosecutions’ and ‘big bank fines’ that feed the government with ‘revenues’ or transfers of wealth from stockholders (middle class) that are not direct taxes.
Wealth Matters
In China, the wealth is in the control and management of the state. Savings are used for the wealth development of the nation and its people.
Yes, one million millionaires and hundreds of billionaires have done well in the rapid growth of China.
However, they do not have elite control of the economy.
They play their role in the public and private sectors, and in foreign investments and tourism, but they don’t alter the public plans or manipulate the public markets (though they try, as it is human nature to be greedy or criminal or irresponsible).
The revenues in the coffers of capitalist China enable President Xi to make any project in any country happen.
He is bankrolling the BRICS development bank, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the Eurasian Economic Belt and Maritime Silk Road development.
These are like multiple Marshall Plans without the military conquest.
They are meant to transform other trading partners from dirt poor into middle class economies capable of buying Chinese products, using Chinese expertise, and ultimately, purchasing services from China.
It is elementary economics. Invest in a nation, build its infrastructure, expand trade with it, educate their young; then that nation emerges from poverty, develops its own production capacity, and matures.
All the while, the trade partner climbs the value chain of products and services China offers.
China can do this on a scale unlike any nation ever.
It does it in Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia, South Asia and the Middle East (except the U.S. has pushed back with ISIS to destroy Iraq and Syria, and with AQ in Libya where China has massive infrastructure and oil investments. Likewise, China has previously agreed upon Ukraine and Crimea development investments pre-the junta coup.)
So, with Russia so close and in need of what China can do on such large scales, the gigantic natural resources exploitation and infrastructure needs of Russia have met the gigantic financial capacity and commodity needs of China. The resolution of the hegemonic threat through peaceful means was logical and a product of the minds of Presidents Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. Thus, the Double Helix.
The Result facing the United States Military Empire
The U.S. and NATO would need Michael the Archangel to defeat China-Russia, and from all signs, he’s aligned with the Bear and its Orthodox culture.
There is no weapon, no strategy, no tactic conceivable in the near future (which is all the Double Helix needs) to damage either of these rising economies now that they are ‘base pairs’.
China will get stronger and bigger.
Russia will get stronger and bigger.
And within the next three to five years, the international systems of finance and banking and trade settlement, currencies and credit ratings and development loans will be thoroughly changed.
It is tantamount to disarmament of the United States Military Empire ‘s most dangerous weapons.
Ironically, only the United States Military Empire ‘s military will remain.
The United States Military Empire will lose its most devastating weapons that enslave, subject, humiliate, ruin and change regimes – its economic weapons.
Future
The better part of the world’s nations will have moved on to solving problems. Nations will think in different terms and relationships. Sovereignty and regions will matter again. Cooperation will regulate competition.
Win-win will replace domination.
What was once ‘honorable and necessary’ will be looked at as criminal, if war and chaos is the only solution a former United States Military Empire or alliance can offer.
Perhaps, some form of NATO and its Islamic Wahhabi terror forces it has been cultivating with the Saudis, Qataris and other devils with billions of dollars will persist. But they will ultimately grow cold and brittle and not be viable unless they become pirate marauders. There will be no economic sustenance available for such forces.
China acting in its own interests?
Of course, China is acting in its own interests.
But any organism – and a nation is not an edifice, it is an organism – has life-sustaining needs. And the China organism needs blood.
That blood is oil and gas.
The China organism needs a nervous system that can’t be shut down by shock wave or sabotage. IT security and radars, satellites and on-ground defense systems are imperative components of such a nervous system.
And the organism of China, huge as it is, packed densely with people, needs stability for sleep, for rest, for meditation.
Russia, as powerful a nuclear force in the world, has China’s enormous back, adds to its blue water defenses, mans the digital and electronic turrets, and changes and hardens the geographic, economic and financial targets that the United States Military Empire could use to contain, destabilize and cause regime change in Beijing, thereby, toppling the state governance by the Communist Party of China.
There are no substitutes for the decades ahead of such a vital molecular bonding as the Double Helix.
Equality of Effect
So, the double helix metaphor works for both in equanimous ways.
Russia receives its blood through yuans, loans, use of Union Pay credit card system, joint ventures, advance payments, dependable contracts and logistical solutions.
China provides a territorial shield and additional force multiplication for Russia’s nervous system.
Finally, stability, too, is necessary for Russia to breathe and get forward momentum in critical areas of development.
There will always be housing for Russians in Russia now that China is close.
China can put up tens of thousands of housing units in a few months, if not days.
There will be alternate sources of food.
The most basic needs of Russian people are secured with the double helix pairing. China bought the largest pork producer in America and is already shipping pork to Russia.
China is so efficient in some food processes that American scallops are shipped to China for cleaning, then come back to U.S.
Foreign Policies and Societies
Metaphor or not, the Double Helix is real.
It serves as the new DNA structure but does not change the external policies or internal societies of either nation. It merely is the new organism architecture against which the United States Military Empire will flail.
Now the two sovereign nations will be presenting themselves as one double helix.
This ‘one’ is not a merger, not an alliance, not even a commonality of interests.
Those are represented through SCO, APEC, etc.
This ‘one’ is force multiplication and projection of power within a fourth dimension of geopolitics. It multiplies all the molecules or magnifies them. To attack or target the IT or satellites of either is to strike both.
Destabilize either, and both are struck.
Contain one, both are contained. Demonize one, both are vilified.
Custer found that it was not just Lakota Sioux he faced. He faced Arapaho, Arikara, Cheyenne, Crow, Santee and seven bands of Lakota (Blackfeet, Brule, Hunkpapa, Oglala, Minniconju, Sans Arc and Two Kettle).
This was an object lesson.
Historically, on the plains of America, Native Americans had done the same as China and Russia. Their error was not to do it much sooner and everywhere long before they were overwhelmed by the invading immigrants.
China and Russia have acted in timely fashion.
Dragon-Bear
China-Russia have become impossible to defeat militarily, impregnable to sanctions and economic destabilization, and have created a unique partnership.
China and Russia are co-ventures into a new international architecture built on sovereign states’ responsiveness to each nation’s own people.
Looking across the Black Sea from Romania or across Ukraine from Poland, Lithuania or Germany, or from across the Atlantic like Canada or the United States, you see the Bear-Dragon.
Likewise, looking across the Pacific or the East China Sea or South China Sea at China you will see the Dragon-Bear.
The United States Military Empire and its vassals will understand that attacking one is an attack on both.
The Double Helix cannot be undone. Russia and China are the founders of the Eurasian Economic Marketplace of 3.5 billion (half the world). It has a thirty-year initial mission.
And during those thirty years they will have built the New Silk Road, the Maritime Silk Road, the Eurasian Economic Belt, and lifted Iran, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Stans of Central Asia, Mongolia, the Southeast Asian nations and probably, fixed parts of Ukraine, and parts of Eastern Europe, some southern European nations and, maybe, some North African nations in the meanwhile.
China and Russia are unified as one.
Geopolitical Surprise
Now, let’s return to the Shoigu in Zhongnanhai mystery. And let’s think of geopolitical surprise. Imagine if General Shoigu and Premier Li Keqiang were discussing North Korea. Background: Putin has been reaching out to Glorious Leader Kim’s regime, and we know the deal Putin would want to get done with Pyongyang’s regime: Give up the nukes, and the Double Helix will protect you.
Give up the nukes and we’ll force the U.S. to leave the Korean peninsular.
Give up the nukes and China and Russia will develop your infrastructure.
Give up the nukes and begin integration with the South economically and that process will include Russia and China.
Give up the nukes and you will never walk alone.
North Korea could look at Iran and see that Russia and China have shielded Iran. And if Iran moves away from nukes, the Double Helix protects her. Syria has given up chemical weapons and Syria, for all the ISIS and NATO chaos, stands because of Russia and China.
Let us take a look again at General Shoigu’s itinerary. Who did Shoigu go to after Beijing? Pakistan. Who aids North Korean nuke program? Pakistan. Shoigu was not traveling this route in this sequence by happenstance.
China is drawing Pakistan away from the U.S. and wants to coordinate anti-terror operations with Islamabad. There also is the withdrawal of NATO and the U.S. from Afghanistan. Russia, China and Pakistan will take on this burden in order to get development of the Eurasian Silk Road and Economic Belt established. Everything is changing in South Asia. China and Russia will fill the vacuum.
It is quite the nature of China to encourage Russia to send symbolic messages to those who might need another tap on the head. Iran and North Korea are regional and global threats that the Double Helix wants to turn into partners and markets.
Tough Cop?
Shoigu went forward with that “portfolio”. He represented ‘the base-paired one’. The Chinese know their limits and their weaknesses. They might bully the Southeast neighboring fishermen and even cut off an American naval ship. But they are not the tough cop Russia is.
The Chinese are the soft interlocutor, the mollifier. The only time China gets tough is in business negotiations or if you insult the Party or the People.
However, this nuclear disarming or chemical weapons disarming small regimes is the rough and tumble of the street and alleys, something Russia knows and China does not aspire to.
It takes a 8th Dan martial arts President who destroys opponents with his armed forces in real world combat to get the focused attention of Pyongyang and Islamabad. He did in Syria and is doing it in Iran. He generally uses military protective shield with economic development deals.
North Korea is desperately trying to weaponize their atomic devices. Pakistan would be the bearer of this technology. It is conceivable Pakistan’s military assistance deal with Russia, signed by Shoigu, would have ‘rewards’ for staying out of North Korea’s nuclear program.
The meeting in Beijing just may have been to assure Shoigu that all the financing needed to stabilize the Korean peninsula will be available if and when Putin gets Kim to join with the sovereignists and force the Hegemon off the Korean Peninsula.
Regional Effect
What this would mean for China and Russia beyond safety and security is a new market, more easily exploited mineral resources, a fast developing economy that can use what both nations have.
North Korea can add additional military as regional reserve forces should the Hegemon linger in Asian Pacific.
Nuclear disarmament automatically means South Korea is actively drawn into the Eurasian Economic Belt. It leaves the region with no threat against the Hegemon’s allies, Japan and Philippines. America’s Pacific Century ends when the nukes go away in North Korea.
Vladimir Putin might think this way. For what is North Korean’s regime but a criminal gang (oligarchs wrapped in dead communist rhetoric and delusional arrogance)? Putin knows this species and how to deal with it. Only the Double Helix could make this transformation happen. Neither nation alone has been able to influence the Kim dynasty by itself.
The Chinese have been insulted by Pyongyang and frustrated by Kim. The Chinese public laughs at the buffoonery of the North Korean regime. Beijing only wants him around so the U.S. does not move closer up the Peninsula. But the new reality of Eurasia emerging changes the outlook for Kim. Opportunity and advantage turn his way. A mortal threat to his regime can be removed, and he can still have sovereign security. Win-win-win in a deft surprise move.
Such a cataclysmic geopolitical event of Pyongyang surrendering its nukes would force the U.S. to concede its raison d’etre for a presence on the landmass in the Asia Pacific region. South Korean public pressure for U.S. forces to leave would be rising. Okinawa would want the U.S. out. Eventually, the U.S. would be merely ‘one of several’ using the blue waters of the Western Pacific and Asian coastal seas. The U.S. would logically have to return to Hawaii as its most western outpost. After all, it would be protecting no one from any threat any longer.
Russia and China would be the regional defenders of peace and stability, and further south, India and Vietnam would join, not the U.S. Navy.
The U.S. may be an Asian Pacific nation, but no more so than Chile or Mexico. What the U.S is not is an Asian nation, nor a Eurasian nation. What the U.S. would become is what it always should have constrained itself to – a North American nation.
Japan
Everything becomes harmonized economics after such an event. Japan needs Eurasian assistance. The West has used up two generations of young people in Japan, manipulating its economy and government. Its dynamic innovation and growth is moribund. They cannot even manufacture a safe vehicle airbag or run a nuclear power plant safely.
It’s all manufactured, designed, and packaged in China.
Philippines
Perhaps, the Philippines would remain close to the U.S., but it will be a singular Asian vassal in the South China Sea.
Manila may align with Australia, but eventually the Maritime Silk Road and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank will entice them to choose progress with Asia or perpetual colonization by the United States Military Empire.
Update: Jul 27, 2021 · In her brief remarks, Philippine Ambassador to China Erlinda Basilio expressed to the Chinese guests the Filipino people’s commitment to their centuries-old friendship with the Chinese people, and she explained that, inspired by a popular Filipino song, the Embassy chose the theme “Hawak Kamay” to convey how Filipinos will not abandon their Chinese friends in their time of need.
-Philippines - China Friendship Day: A Day of Smiles in Beijing
What happens in Taiwan?
Taiwan will remain the last Chinese choke bone if China is foolish enough to open wide the Dragon’s mouth and take the bait. The latest local Taiwan city elections which damaged the KMT powerbase heightens the U.S. ‘Free China’ agitators. It certainly sets back Cross-Straits progress. However, if that means Xi will have to play rough, he has the economic leverage as the tool to use, not his military.
Taiwan is in perpetual recession. The once great ‘grey box’ and pirate copyist economy of the 80’s and 90’s has been eclipsed by South Korean semi-conductor, device and chip manufacturing and soon will feel the rise of Vietnam, Malaysia and other South-east and South Asia players in Taiwan’s national electronic sport. Most Taiwanese investment capital seems to be heading to the Mainland, Brazil or Taiwan’s nearby competitors. Foxconn is everywhere but Taiwan, including Brazil.
This leaves angry Taiwanese students for the U.S. to manipulate. And perhaps there will be strident resistance groups against Cross-Straits unification, but hunger and despondency will change the dynamics once the U.S. retreats and all those young minds see Eurasia develop as China has on the other side of the narrow straits. They can Skype and Tweet for revolution, even hold coloured umbrellas, but that does not bring in foreign investment to rebuild their own economy.
The Dragon typically has endless patience. Taiwan will test President Xi’s patience for certain. He hoped to see Taiwan in a Hong Kong-like arrangement of ‘One China-Two systems’. That is not going to happen before the U.S. retreats to Hawaii.
The U.S. has infinite capacity to inflict pain and suffering on its most loyal vassals. No one in America, except Taiwanese-Americans, will even know of the pain suffered in Taipei, Kaohsiung, Taichung and Tainan until the U.S lets go.
North Korea changes everything.
The Far East and Siberia, the North of China, Mongolia, the Arctic, the Yellow Sea and Sea of Japan become a zone of trade, tourism and growth when North Korea steps down from the precipice. If Iran with nukes is unacceptable to Russia and China, certainly North Korea is worse. Both nations, Russia and China, have worked assiduously to prevent proliferation. And they have immediately rewarded nations that give up WMDs.
The Sony False Flag
Sony is hacked! It has to be the North Koreans! Demonization of North Korea is predictable. The FBI says so. However, nearly all independent hacking experts, those with vast experience in government security of IT and anti-hacking work, agree the Sony hack is not North Korean.
First, understand the Internet connections in Asia. North Korea has one ISP. Just as China has second tier status on the Internet and all connections go through only Shanghai, North Korea can get on and off the Internet only through one route. Easy for NSA to monitor. Easy to prove. But we get no hard proof, easy to provide. We get a short form handout white paper-like slice of FBI baloney. So, unless the hack came from a 3G phone network, it had one port of entry to the Internet, namely Star Joint Venture Co.
The U.S. must make certain North Korea remains nuclear. And it is swiftly moving to put ‘terror status’ back on Pyongyang. The hope within the Hegemon’s brain trust, to use the term lightly, is that this will stop Russia and China from offering economic help in return for the nukes. But the result will be whatever the double helix can arrange if they can arrange it with Kim.
What would follow?
With North Korea emptied of its arsenal, the Double Helix may move next to expose the secret program the Japanese have for nukes. Fukishima melt down was a double disaster, because like Dimona in Israel, the nuclear secrets leaked out for the world to know that what Japan, like Israel, was desperate to cover up was a weapons program abetted by the U.S. and France.
Whatever comes from the Double Helix of China-Russia, it will be a surprise that stuns the Hegemon, for certain. That is the style of both nations. The world has gotten closer to ‘better’ in 2014, while it has gotten ‘worse’. That is because, though bad things will always happen, better things will always happen, also. Flames and death in Ukraine and the Middle East are terrible, but the emergence of Eurasia is a budding flower, and it is poison only to the Hegemon.
Civilizations Win
Most of us will live to see a new international, global dynamic. Some of us will feel its nourishment. Some of us will be stuck in the cavern of Elites who have run the world for centuries. Just as the North Pole shifts, geopolitical poles shift. Economic poles shift, also. A containment policy or exclusionary trade treaty or covert destabilization program cannot stop 3.5 billion people inspired by two enlightened leaders who have the same metaphorical DNA. The tectonic shift is too much for mere mortals of the West who have run out of ideas, lies, bullets, bombs, false flags and proxies to win and control mankind. The Hegemon has bad DNA that cannot adapt to the fresh air and sunlight of the truth. Humanity will win its freedom and civilizations will prosper.
Russians and Chinese Win
Russians and Chinese citizens will look within their own civilizations for solutions to the challenges and threats cast at them by the United States Military Empire. The motivations exist to create wise solutions that are not martial, nor dominant, nor exploitative nor unjust.
Relying on experts and NGOs of the West will be understood as opening the doors to the enemy and housing the terrorists and saboteurs sent by the United States Military Empire.
The resistance to United States Military Empire is an historic lesson to the civilizations of Russia and China. The allure of the West is stripped off once-empowering words, models and ideals like ‘democracy’, ‘freedom’, ‘friendship’, ‘allies’, ‘partners’, ‘success’, and ‘security’. The patina of ‘exceptional’ and ‘greatness’ has worn away.
The peoples of Russia and China are heirs to great civilizations. They have cultures and institutions that are grounded in sage principles and centuries of profound accomplishments in art, science, technology and human endeavors. They need not emulate any other nation or culture or educational system.
Sovereignty, like individuality, is the unique identity that must be cherished. Then, international cooperation and partnership is grounded on strengths of those choosing to join with others out of free choice not coercion.
What to look forward to…
The events to look forward to in Russia-China relations in 2021 include the continued growth of Russian-Chinese trade, the signing of a docking agreement between the Eurasian Economic Union and China, Chinese investments in the Russian Far East, and the strengthening of cooperation between the two countries in the process of solving international problems.
Strategic partnership
Russian President Vladimir Putin gave the most accurate commentary on the relations between the two countries at his annual press conference in December.
There is a national consensus in Russia on the development of relations with China and that regardless of the election results, Russia and China will be strategic partners in the long historical period ahead. The logic of a comprehensive strategic partnership between Russia and China has been formed, and relations between the two countries are moving forward in all spheres.
Common challenges and threats in the international arena
In 2021, Russia and China will maintain the same position on major global issues, including the resolution of the Korean crisis and the Syrian conflict. 2020 saw the joint initiative of Russia and China on the ‘double pause’. This position is constructive and is the only initiative that so far promises to achieve a peaceful settlement of the Korean crisis.
Cooperation between the two countries on the situation on the Korean Peninsula is the most successful example of foreign policy coordination between independent and sovereign powers in the world today. The two countries can use this experience to develop a consistent policy on Syria and focus on the settlement of the situation in that country after the conflict.”
The U.S. Factor
Foreign policy factors will also help strengthen Russian-Chinese relations, while both countries will have to encounter tough challenges.
In the U.S. National Security Strategy announced by Biden, Russia and China are described as countries that issue serious challenges to Washington. This means that the U.S. will develop a corresponding strategy for our two countries and those regions in which we are interested.”
The U.S. will try to prevent China and Russia from consolidating their positions in these regions. However, that factor will only contribute to the strengthening of Russian-Chinese relations.
Investment in the Far East
The trend of steady growth in the volume of trade between the two countries is seen as one of the achievements of Russian-Chinese relations in 2017. According to data from China’s General Administration of Customs, in the first 11 months of 2017, the trade volume between Russia and China grew by 21.8% compared to last year, reaching $76.06 billion.
It should be noted that our trade volume is less significant today and more attention should be paid to the structure of trade. At the moment that structure has not changed and is dominated by energy.”
Trade volume may grow in 2021 due to an increase in Russian exports of non-raw materials to China, including electronic platforms.
There is demand in the Chinese market for Russian sunflower oil, as well as for expanded trade in flour and flour products. There is a need for dialogue with China on the issue of expanding quotas for Russian producers.” Cooperation in the Far East could also be a driver for the development of Russian-Chinese trade and economic relations in 2021.
Chinese investments currently amount to $4 billion, accounting for 7% of total investments in the region and 85% of total foreign investments.
The increase in Chinese investments in the region is likely to come from the development of LNG projects, cross-border infrastructure development, the development of over-development zones, and the active participation of Chinese companies in housing construction.”
Eurasian Economic Union agreement with China
The Eurasian Economic Union’s economic partnership agreement with China is almost ready to be signed, probably in early 2022.
One of the most anticipated events is the agreement between the Eurasian Economic Union and China. However, the agreement still needs to be improved in terms of its practical content. For a long time, the significance of the docking has remained only at the political level and should involve specific economic projects.”
This is a non-preferential agreement, i.e. it does not provide for reduction of tariffs. But it is very important for the Eurasian Economic Union, because the integration union needs to be legitimized, including for the World Trade Organization and the integration process in the Asia-Pacific region. This is politically important.
Increased tourist traffic
The Russian tourism industry is very much looking forward to the 2018 group travel visa-free agreement being modified due to current conditions. Under the new agreement, the minimum group size will be reduced to three people and the possible in-country stay was extended to 21 days, and no Russian invitation is required.
With the introduction of electronic document delivery methods, the work of tour companies will be simplified. Russian tourists will be able to travel to China in small groups without individual visas, and Chinese tourists will be able to recuperate and treat in sanatoriums in Russia that offer a 21-day course of treatment.
Much of the growth of Chinese tourists is being pinned on electronic visas. The system was introduced within the Vladivostok Free Port in 2020. It is expected that the system will be extended to eight regions from 2021. The system is most popular among Chinese citizens: 2,300 Chinese tourists have already used it to travel to Vladivostok.
E-visa is an important initiative to attract individual tourists to Russia. It is expected that the electronic visa system will be introduced in Kaliningrad, the westernmost point of Russia, and in Murmansk and Arkhangelsk, which are popular with Chinese tourists.
Finally, let’s summarize…
Asia has united. America is not the “bright and shining city on the hill” that stands for freedom and “democracy”, but rather a corrupt military empire that is thrashing about as it collapses.
The entire world can see this.
And while the United States Military Empire has been trying to set up the QUAD, and a list of vassal states to fight it’s wars for them, the leaders who agree to do so, can kiss their sweet nations good-by. A unified Russia-china alliance would render their entire nations into radioactive rubble.
Thus my argument that (for the most part) the QUAD would collapse, and what ever military effort that the United States Military Empire would cobble together would be lost in quick flashes of light and enormous causalities.
Finally, the state of decay of the US state might already be so advanced that we can consider it as profoundly dysfunctional and basically collapsing/collapsed.
The first option (soft landing) is unlikely, yet highly desirable.
The second option (chaos-induced retreat) is more likely, but much less desirable as it is only a single step back to then make several steps forward again.
The last option (profoundly dysfunctional and basically collapsing/collapsed) is, alas, the most likely, and it is also, by far, the most perilous one.
For one thing, options #2 and #3 will make US actions very unpredictable and, therefore, potentially extremely dangerous. Unpredictable chaos can also quickly morph into a major war, or even several major ones, so the potential danger here is very real (even if totally unreported in Zone A).
This, in turn, means that Russia, China, Iran, the DPRK, Venezuela or Cuba all have to keep their guard up and be ready for anything, even the unthinkable (which is often what total chaos generates).
What do you think?
Of course, the Ignorant Americans are all thinking that Russia and China are somehow enemies…
Russia has no love for China so don’t be so sure about them coming to China’s aid.
-MarkinLA
Hardly.
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
Go to the sewer pit of zerohedge and check the comments on any China article, or to Unz and its China article comments, or for that matter to Kunstler where antiChina accusations seem to be mandatory once per article.
You could also try any YouTube video on China's space agency's stunning successes and check the comments.
The oozing racism, ignorance and hatred shown by some - in the case of zerohedge most - replies is a signal lesson on why their regimes think the way they do.
Posted by: Biswapriya Purkayast | Jul 20 2021 22:37 utc | 54
We will start our little exploration in China “stuff” with…
Chinese Robots
All of this is “flying under the radar screen”. No one is interested in it. But China is leading in robotic technology. Sorry Boston Dynamics. But it is true. I have a small zipped up file that has a few videos of some of the more personable robots being developed in China these days.
While I was writing this post, my daughter went to my computer and published it. Before, I could flush it out 68 people read the article. Sigh. I guess that I am committed. It’s like bacon and eggs. The chicken was involved, but the pig was committed.
“Chinese astronauts floated into the country’s new Tiangong space station Thursday, becoming the first people to board China’s outpost in orbit after a successful launch from a military base in the Gobi Desert to start a three-month mission.”
Chinese Astronauts Enter Space Station.
When the International Space Station was being fomented, the Chinese wanted to take part. The US blocked them. So they built their own. The ISS is to be decommissioned in a few years, presumably leaving China as having the only functioning space station. It is notable that all of these off-earth efforts, to include the placing of a lander on the dark side of the moon, have worked.
Some Chinese Girls
Some technology, huh?
You can see a nice little collection of a cross section in this zip file HERE. I think that if a woman is “built like a battleship” that they deserve to be placed in the technology section. Don’t you?
I have been in the Shanghai Maglev train - it's elevated and banked and is very smooth and quiet, taking under 10mins to go 50km. The digital readout in the carriage got up to 432 kmh on my journey.
Posted by: anonymous | Jul 21 2021 2:54 utc | 77
China begins construction of its fifth rocket launch site
“BEIJING (Reuters) – A port city in eastern China has launched an ambitious plan to build the country’s fifth rocket launch site, under a longer-term goal to ramp up space infrastructure to meet the demands of an expected boom in commercial missions.”
Why can the Chinese do all of these things at once? Because they have money and many smart engineers.
Why do they have money? Because they make stuff and sell it.
America doesn’t have money because it spends it all on aircraft carriers, and doesn’t make stuff because it sent its factories to…
…China.
Why doesn’t America have more and better engineers? Because it has a far smaller base of STEM-capable young and because it is dumbing down its schools and universities for the gratification of unproductive minorities.
Whose fault is all of this?
Why…
China’s. Who could doubt it?
On GDP, the Outlaw US Empire's is grossly overstated by trillions such that GDP has actually shrunk over the last 30 years. So doing any sort of comparative analysis using GDP as a metric will yield a false result. Trillions of dollars that amount to the Fraudulent Financial Free Lunch are actually negatives that must be subtracted from overall GDP, which we've discussed here rather often. Again, the closest depiction is Shadowstats GDP chart whose blue line would look even worse if all the Enron Accounting was eliminated.
As I wrote @59, China has the Outlaw US/Anglo Empire by the balls--dependent upon China--geoeconomically as Trump's failed Trade War proved beyond doubt. There is a solution, but it will never be implemented by the Neoliberal Duopoly, which will never be overcome by the popular vote.
Posted by: karlof1 | Jul 20 2021 23:36 utc | 60
“Linglong One is a pressurized water reactor with a capacity of 125 MW – the first small commercial onshore modular reactor or SMR to be constructed in the world. After being launched, the SMR will be able to generate enough power to meet the energy demands of approximately 526,000 households annually.”
Dutch Boy says:
July 15, 2021 at 10:53 pm GMT • 5.3 days ago • 100 Words ↑
Not only were the lower-paying assembly-type scutwork jobs sent to China but also the technical design and engineering that goes with the manufacturing (at the insistence of the Chinese and with the cooperation of the American corporations).
There are plenty of clever young people who could do those jobs here (most STEM grads here must find work in other fields) but the jobs are in China.
Physics.org: Chinese achieve new milestone with 56 qubit computer
“A team of researchers affiliated with multiple institutions in China, working at the University of Science and Technology of China, has achieved another milestone in the development of a usable quantum computer.”
The world’s first 100,000-ton deep-sea semi-submersible oil production and storage platform, China’s self-developed “Deep Sea No 1” energy station, has successfully completed installation of all equipment and is expected to start production at the end of June, China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) said on Saturday.
China maintains ‘artificial sun’ at 120 million Celsius for over 100 seconds, setting new world record
Another step in the quest for fusion power. Other countries, inclusing America, are working on this, but there was a time when the US would have been the clear leader. Times change.
Geez people,
China has had maglev trains connecting shanghai to its airport, its been running for years and cuts the usual 1.5hr road travel to 30 our so minutes. I've been on it numerous times.
This 600kph model is just a further development.
I don't know if you've all noticed, the recent Chinese tech development model has been rapid iterations instead of spending years or decades to design the perfect mouse trap. It plays well into their strengths and it's the only to find out if there's some gating tech they haven't figured out yet. They've learnt that hard lesson with semiconductors and jet engines.
For example with the aircraft carrier, everyone was pissing on China for relaunching an old soviet hull, before the laughter died out they've already built a second, improved one with what they've learnt. Then the same people laughed at the ski jump deck, and soon an EM catapult flattop will be launched.
Same with civil projects, space flight, aviation, submarines etc etc.
Keep on laughing.
Posted by: A.L. | Jul 20 2021 21:45 utc | 47
Lunar Return Mission
BBC: China’s Chang-e Five Mission returns lunar samples
This was a sophisticated, automated endeavor involving a lunar orbiter, a lander that collected samples, a unit that took the samples back to the orbiter, and a return vehicle that parachuted into Mongolia. It was nontrivial engineering. And: It worked. Note how quickly this and the achievements mentioned in the following have come.
Tunneling Machine in a Panda outfit
China Launches Largest Self-Built Shield tunneling machine with adorable ‘panda’ outfit
The machine has a diameter of 12.79 meters and weighs 3,000 tons. It will be used in the construction of Jinxiu Tunnel, an essential component of the highspeed railway from Chengdu to Zigong in Southwest China’s Sichuan Province, which is known for being a home to pandas.”
Roving Mars
Chinese Mars Rover Begins Roaming the Red Planet
“China’s Mars rover drove from its landing platform and began exploring the surface on Saturday, state-run Xinhua news agency said, making the country only the second nation to land and operate a rover on the Red Planet.”
Very impressive, like beating Murphy’s Law in straight sets. First, it was an orbiter, circling Mars and doing orbiter things. Second, a lander. Third, a rover. Americans are ahead still in some respexts, but not by much. The riveting thing is how fast the Chinese are catching up.
Meanwhile in America…
Death throes…
“City Journal: “Identity politics has engulfed the humanities and social sciences on American campuses; now it is taking over the hard sciences.
"The STEM fields—science, technology, engineering, and math—are under attack for being insufficiently “diverse.” The pressure to increase the representation of females, blacks, and Hispanics comes from the federal government, university administrators, and scientific societies themselves. That pressure is changing how science is taught and how scientific qualifications are evaluated. The results will be disastrous for scientific innovation and for American competitiveness”
”Such an effort would involve faculty holding well-performing students back, even while pushing their less intellectual peers forward (as if they were all indeed equal in abilities). Potentially stranding a group of gifted individuals in a situation where they are held back by a single child who simply can’t get a problem right and needs endless special instruction is hardly something to be proud of….”
Stupidity beyond a certain point becomes entertaining.
Bayviking says:July 15, 2021 at 11:34 pm GMT • 5.3 days ago↑
Holy crap, this does not look good for the arrogant Americans. I understand that 5G in the US will never operate up to specs because the US defense department refuses to surrender the bandwidth it controls necessary to function properly.
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
I have presented the PDF titled “Alien Interview” to the readership. It is supposed to be the transcripts of the interview that a nurse had with an extraterrestrial entity that was recovered from a spaceship crash in Roswell, New Mexico. There is a lot of good stuff there, and some things that run counter to what I know and understand to be true. My intention here is to parse the entire book, and compare it to what I know. Where the two diverge, it will be up to you (the readership) to sort it out.
In the transcript the extraterrestrial jumps all over. And in many instances he seems to reflect normal regular human feelings and attitudes about issues (such as the platypus) and you can read it and miss many things as it is a dated document translated by a nurse in 1947. In order to best sort it out, to a frame of reference that we can all understand, I am now (in this series of articles) going to separate the “Alien Interview” document into sections categorized by dates.
The extraterrestrial discussed period of time in…
Trillions of years. (Birth of consciousness, universe creation.)
Billions of years. (Galaxy creation, and early civilizations.)
Millions of years. (Local events in our region, and mankind.)
Thousands of years. (A scope most important to humans.)
In this article we will discuss the time scope of thousands of years.
Because the text will be taken out of the document, there might be some discontinuity in the text. In any case, I would advise reading the entire full document for a better understanding of context. Further, keep in mind that the purpose of this particular post / article is to separate the transcript into wide categories depending on the span of times discussed. I fear that the extraterrestrial was talking about a few thousand years in the past, then jumped to trillions of years ago, jumps to millions of years ago, jumps to decades, and then back to billions of years ago. This effort is to help sort things out chronologically.
The text segments…
"What would you like to say, Airl?", I asked. "I have been a part of the Domain Expeditionary Force in this sector of space for several thousand years. However, I have not personally had intimate contact with beings on Earth since 5,965 BCE. It is not my primary function to interact with inhabitants of planets within The Domain. I am an Officer, Pilot and Engineer, with many duties to perform. Nonetheless, although I am fluent in 347 other languages within The Domain, I have not been exposed to your English language.
The last Earth language with which I was conversant was the Sanskrit language of the Vedic Hymns. At that time I was a member of a mission sent to investigate the loss of a Domain base located in the Himalaya Mountains. An entire battalion of officers, pilots, communications and administrative personnel disappeared and the base destroyed.
…
One of my duties involved interrogation of the human population that inhabited the adjoining area at that time. Many of the people in that region reported sighting "vimanas" or space craft in the area.
Following the logical extension of evidence, testimony, observation, as well as the absence of certain evidence, I led my team to the discovery that there were still "Old Empire" ships and well-hidden "Old Empire" installations in this solar system of which we had been completely unaware.
…
"Airl told me her reasons for coming to Earth and for being in the area of the 509th Bomber Squadron. She was sent by her superior officers to investigate the explosions of nuclear weapons which have been tested in New Mexico. Her superiors ordered her to gather information from the atmosphere that could be used to determine the extent of radiation and potential harm this might cause to the environment. During her mission, the space craft was struck by a lighting, which caused her to lose control and crash.
…
Airl was, and still is, an officer, pilot and engineer in an expeditionary force which is part of a space opera civilization which refers to itself as "The Domain". This civilization controls a vast number of galaxies, stars, planets, moons and asteroids throughout an area of space that is approximately one-fourth of the entire physical universe! The continuing mission of her organization is to "Secure, control and expand the territory and resources of The Domain".
Airl pointed out that their own activities were very similar in many ways to the European explorers who "discovered" and "claimed" the New World for The Holy Father, The Pope and for the kings of Spain, Portugal and later, Holland, England, France and so forth. Europe benefited from the property "acquired" from the native inhabitants. However, the native inhabitants were never consulted with or asked for their permission to become a part of the "domain" of European nations and the soldiers and priests they sent to acquire territory and wealth in order to advance their interests.
Airl said she read in a history book that the Spanish king regretted the brutal treatment of the native inhabitants by his soldiers. He feared retribution from the gods he worshipped, as described in the various testaments of the Bible. He asked the Pope to prepare a statement called "The Requirement" which was supposed to be read to each of the newly encountered native inhabitants.
The king hoped that the statement, whether it was accepted or rejected by the natives, would absolve the King of all responsibility for the resulting slaughter and enslavement of these people. He used this statement as justification to confiscate their lands and possessions by his soldiers and the Pope's priests. Apparently, the Pope, personally, did not have any feelings of guilt or responsibility in the matter.
Airl thought that such actions were those of a coward and that it is no surprise that the territory of Spain was diminished so quickly. Only a few years later the king was dead and his empire had been assimilated by other nations.
Airl said that this sort of behavior does not occur in The Domain. Their leaders assume full responsibility for the actions of The Domain, and would not denigrate themselves in this fashion. Nor do they fear any gods or have any regret for their actions. This idea reinforces my earlier suggestion that Airl and her people are probably atheists.
In the case of the acquisition of Earth by The Domain, the rulers of The Domain have chosen not to openly reveal this intention to the "native inhabitants" of Earth until a later time when it may, or may not, suit their interests to reveal themselves. For the present time, it is not strategically necessary to make the presence of The Domain Expeditionary Force known to Mankind. In fact, until now, it has been very aggressively hidden, for reasons that will be revealed later.
The asteroid belt near Earth is a very small, but important location for The Domain in this part of space. Actually, some of the objects in our solar system are very valuable for use as low-gravity "space stations". They are interested primarily in the low gravity satellites in this solar system which consists mainly of the side of the moon facing away from Earth and the asteroid belt, which was a planet that was destroyed billions of years ago, and to a lesser degree, Mars and Venus. Domed structures synthesized from gypsum or underground bases covered by electromagnetic force screens are easily constructed to house the Domain forces.
Once an area of space is acquired by The Domain and becomes a part of the territory under its control, it is treated as the "property" of The Domain. The space station near the planet Earth is important only because it lay along a path of The Domain expansion route toward the center of the Milky Way galaxy and beyond. Of course, everyone in The Domain is aware of this -- except for the people of Earth."
…
"Airl described the abilities of an IS-BE officer of The Domain to me, and she demonstrated one to me when she contacted -- telepathically -- a communications officer of The Domain who is stationed in the asteroid belt.
The asteroid belt is composed of thousands of broken up pieces of a planet that once existed between Mars and Jupiter. It serves as a good low-gravity jumping off point for incoming space craft traveling toward the center of our galaxy.
She requested that this officer consult information stored in the "files" of The Domain, concerning the history of Earth. She asked the communications officer to "feed" this information to Airl. The communications officer immediately complied with the request. Based on the information stored in the files of The Domain, Airl was able to give me a brief overview or "history lesson". This is what Airl told me that The Domain had observed about the history of Earth:
She told me that The Domain Expeditionary Force first entered into the Milky Way galaxy very recently -- only about 10,000 years ago. Their first action was to conquer the home planets of the "Old Empire" (this is not the official name, but a nick-name given to the conquered civilization by The Domain Forces) that served as the seat of central government for this galaxy, and other adjoining regions of space. These planets are located in the star systems in the tail of the Big Dipper constellation. She did not mention which stars, exactly.
About 1,500 years later The Domain began the installation bases for their own forces along the path of invasion which leads toward the center of this galaxy and beyond. About 8,200 years ago The Domain forces set up a base on Earth in the Himalaya Mountains near the border of modern Pakistan and Afghanistan. This was a base for a battalion of The Domain Expeditionary Force, which included about 3,000 members.
They set up a base under or inside the top of a mountain. The mountain top was drilled into and made hollow to create an area large enough to house the ships and personnel of that force. An electronic illusion of the mountain top was then created to hide the base by projecting a false image from inside the mountain against a "force screen". The ships could then enter and exit through the force screen, yet remain unseen by homo sapiens.
Shortly after they settled there the base was surprised by an attack from a remnant of the military forces of the "Old Empire". Unbeknownst to The Domain, a hidden, underground base on Mars, operated by the "Old Empire", had existed for a very long time. The Domain base was wiped out by a military attack from the Mars base and the IS-BEs of The Domain Expeditionary Force were captured.
You can imagine that The Domain was very upset about losing such a large force of officers and crew, so they sent other crews to Earth to look for them. Those crews were also attacked. The captured IS-BEs from The Domain Forces were handled in the same fashion as all other IS-BEs who have been sent to Earth. They were each given amnesia, had their memories replaced with false pictures and hypnotic commands and sent to Earth to inhabit biological bodies. They are still a part of the human population today.
After a very persistent and extensive investigation into the loss of their crews, The Domain discovered that "Old Empire" has been operating a very extensive, and very carefully hidden, base of operations in this part of the galaxy for millions of years. No one knows exactly how long. Eventually, the space craft of the "Old Empire" forces and The Domain engaged each other in open combat in the space of the solar system.
According to Airl, there was a running battle between the "Old Empire" forces and The Domain until about 1235 AD, when The Domain forces finally destroyed the last of the space craft of the "Old Empire" force in this area. The Domain Expeditionary Force lost many of its own ships in this area during that time also.
About 1,000 years later the "Old Empire" base was discovered by accident in the spring of 1914 AD. The discovery was made when the body of the Archduke of Austria was "taken over" by an officer of The Domain Expeditionary Force. This officer, who was stationed in the asteroid belt, was sent to Earth on a routine mission to gather reconnaissance.
The purpose of this "take over" was to use the body as a "disguise" through which to infiltrate human society in order to gather information about current events on Earth. he officer, as an IS-BE, having greater power than the being inhabiting the body of the Archduke, simply "pushed" the being out and took over control of the body.
However, this officer did not realize how much the Hapsburgs were hated by feuding factions in the country, so he was caught off guard when the body of the Archduke was assassinated by a Bosnian student. The officer, or IS-BE, was suddenly "knocked out" of the body when it was shot by the assassin. Disoriented, the IS-BE inadvertently penetrated one of the "amnesia force screens" and was captured.
Eventually The Domain discovered that a wide area of space is monitored by an "electronic force field" which controls all of the IS-BEs in this end of the galaxy, including Earth. The electronic force screen is designed to detect IS-BEs and prevent them from leaving the area.
If any IS-BE attempts to penetrate the force screen, it "captures" them in a kind of "electronic net". The result is that the captured IS-BE is subjected to a very severe "brainwashing" treatment which erases the memory of the IS-BE. This process uses a tremendous electrical shock, just like Earth psychiatrists use "electric shock therapy" to erase the memory and personality of a "patient" and to make them more "cooperative".
On Earth this "therapy" uses only a few hundred volts of electricity. However, the electrical voltage used by the "Old Empire" operation against IS-BEs is on the order of magnitude of billions of volts! This tremendous shock completely wipes out all the memory of the IS- BE. The memory erasure is not just for one life or one body. It wipes out all of the accumulated experiences of a nearly infinite past, as well as the identity of the IS-BE!
The shock is intended to make it impossible for the IS-BE to remember who they are, where they came from, their knowledge or skills, their memory of the past, and ability to function as a spiritual entity. They are overwhelmed into becoming a mindless, robotic non-entity.
After the shock a series of post hypnotic suggestions are used to install false memories, and a false time orientation in each IS-BE. This includes the command to "return" to the base after the body dies, so that the same kind of shock and hypnosis can be done again, and again, again -- forever. The hypnotic command also tells the "patient" to forget to remember.
What The Domain learned from the experience of this officer is that the "Old Empire" has been using Earth as a "prison planet" for a very long time -- exactly how long is unknown -- perhaps millions of years.
So, when the body of the IS-BE dies they depart from the body. They are detected by the "force screen", they are captured and "ordered" by hypnotic command to "return to the light". The idea of "heaven" and the "afterlife" are part of the hypnotic suggestion -- a part of the treachery that makes the whole mechanism work.
After the IS-BE has been shocked and hypnotized to erase the memory of the life just lived, the IS-BE is immediately "commanded", hypnotically, to "report" back to Earth, as though they were on a secret mission, to inhabit a new body. Each IS-BE is told that they have a special purpose for being on Earth. But, of course there is no purpose for being in a prison -- at least not for the prisoner.
Any undesirable IS-BEs who are sentenced to Earth were classified as "untouchable" by the "Old Empire". This included anyone that the "Old Empire" judged to be criminals who are too vicious to be reformed or subdued, as well as other criminals such as sexual perverts, or beings unwilling to do any productive work.
An "untouchable" classification of IS-BEs also includes a wide variety of "political prisoners". This includes IS-BEs who are considered to be noncompliant "free thinkers" or "revolutionaries" who make trouble for the governments of the various planets of the "Old Empire". Of course, anyone with a previous military record against the "Old Empire" is also shipped off to Earth.
A list of "untouchables" include artists, painters, singers, musicians, writers, actors, and performers of every kind. For this reason Earth has more artists per capita than any other planet in the "Old Empire".
"Untouchables" also include intellectuals, inventors and geniuses in almost every field. Since everything the "Old Empire" considers valuable has long since been invented or created over the last few trillion years, they have no further use for such beings. This includes skilled managers also, which are not needed in a society of obedient, robotic citizens.
Anyone who is not willing or able to submit to mindless economic, political and religious servitude as a tax-paying worker in the class system of the "Old Empire" are "untouchable" and sentenced to receive memory wipe-out and permanent imprisonment on Earth.
The net result is that an IS-BE is unable to escape because they can't remember who they are, where they came from, where they are. They have been hypnotized to think they are someone, something, sometime, and somewhere other than where they really are.
The Domain officer who was "assassinated" while in the body of Archduke of Austria was, likewise, captured by the "Old Empire" force. Because this particular officer was a high powered IS-BE, compared to most, he was taken away to a secret "Old Empire" base under the surface of the planet Mars. They put him into a special electronic prison cell and held him there.
Fortunately, this Domain officer was able to escape from the underground base after 27 years in captivity. When he escaped from the "Old Empire" base, he returned immediately to his own base in the asteroid belt. His commanding officer ordered that a battle cruiser be dispatched to the coordinates of the base provided by this officer and to destroy that base completely. This "Old Empire" base was located a few hundred miles north of the equator on Mars in the Cydonia region.
Although the military base of the "Old Empire" was destroyed, unfortunately, much of the vast machinery of the IS-BE force screens, the electroshock / amnesia / hypnosis machinery continues to function in other undiscovered locations right up to the present moment. The main base or control center for this "mind control prison" operation has never been found. So, the influences of this base, or bases, are still in effect.
The Domain has observed that since the "Old Empire" space forces were destroyed there is no one left to actively prevent other planetary systems from bringing their own "untouchable" IS-BEs to Earth from all over this galaxy, and from other galaxies nearby. Therefore, Earth has become a universal dumping ground for this entire region of space.
This, in part, explains the very unusual mix of races, cultures, languages, moral codes, religious and political influences among the IS-BE population on Earth. The number and variety of heterogeneous societies on Earth are extremely unusual on a normal planet. Most "Sun Type 12, Class 7" planets are inhabited by only one humanoid body type or race, if any.
In addition, most of the ancient civilizations of Earth, and many of the events of Earth have been heavily influenced by the hidden, hypnotic operation of the "Old Empire" base. So far, no one has figured out exactly where and how this operation is run, or by whom because it is so heavily protected by screens and traps.
Furthermore, there has been no operation undertaken to seek out, discover and destroy the vast and ancient network of electronics machinery that create the IS-BE force screens at this end of the galaxy. Until this has been done, we are not able to prevent or interrupt the electric shock operation, hypnosis and remote thought control of the "Old Empire" prison planet.
Of course all of the crew members of The Domain Expeditionary Force now remain aware of this phenomena at all times while operating in this solar system space so as to prevent detection and the capture by "Old Empire" traps."
…
"The Domain Expeditionary Force has observed a resurgence in science and culture of the Western world since 1150 AD when the remaining remnants of the space fleet of the "Old Empire" in this solar system were destroyed.
The influence of the remote control hypnosis operation diminished slightly after that time, but still remains largely in force.
Apparently a small amount of damage was done to the "Old Empire" remote mind control operation which resulted in a small decrease in the power of this mechanism.
As a result, some memory of technologies that IS-BEs already knew before they came to Earth started to be remembered. Thereafter the oppression of knowledge that is called the "Dark Ages" in Europe began to diminish after that time.
Since then knowledge of the basic laws of physics and electricity have revolutionized Earth culture virtually overnight.
The ability to remember technology by many of the geniuses in the IS-BE population of Earth was partially restored, when not so actively suppressed as it was before 1150 AD. Sir Isaac Newton, is one of the best examples of this. In only a few decades he single-handedly reinvented several major and fundamental scientific and mathematical disciplines.
The men who "remembered" these sciences already knew them before they were sent to Earth. Ordinarily, no one would ever observe or discover as much about science and mathematics in a single life-time, or even in a few hundred life-times. These subjects have taken civilizations billions and billions of years to create!
IS-BEs on Earth have only just begun to remember small fragments of all the technologies that exist throughout the universe. Theoretically, if the amnesia mechanisms being used against Earth could be broken entirely, IS-BEs would regain all of their memory!
Unfortunately, similar advances have not been seen in the humanities as the IS-BEs of Earth continue to behave very badly toward each other. This behavior, however, is heavily influenced by the "hypnotic commands" given to each IS-BE between lifetimes.
And, the very unusual combination of "inmates" on Earth - criminals, perverts, artists, revolutionaries and geniuses - is the cause of a very restive and tumultuous environment. The purpose of the prison planet is to keep IS-BEs on Earth, forever. Promoting ignorance, superstition, and war between IS-BEs helps to keep the prison population crippled and trapped behind "the wall" of electronic force screens.
IS-BEs have been dumped on Earth from all over the galaxy, adjoining galaxies, and from planetary systems all over the "Old Empire", like Sirius, Aldebaron, the Pleiades, Orion, Draconis, and countless others. There are IS- BEs on Earth from unnamed races, civilizations, cultural backgrounds, and planetary environments. Each of the various IS-BE populations have their own languages, belief systems, moral values, religious beliefs, training and unknown and untold histories.
These IS-BEs are mixed together with earlier inhabitants of Earth who came from another star system more than 400,000 years ago to establish the civilizations of Atlanta and Lemuria. Those civilizations vanished beneath the tidal waves caused by a planetary "polar shift", many thousands of years before the current "prison" population started to arrive. Apparently, the IS-BEs from those star systems were the source of the original, oriental races of Earth, beginning in Australia.
On the other hand, the civilizations set up on Earth by the "Old Empire" prison system were very different from the civilization of the "Old Empire" itself, which is an electronic space opera, atomic powered conglomeration of earlier civilizations that were conquered with nuclear weapons and colonized by IS-BEs from another galaxy.
The bureaucracy that controlled the former "Old Empire" was from an ancient space opera society, run by a totalitarian confederation of planetary governments, regulated by a brutal social, economic, and political hierarchy, with a royal monarch as its figurehead.
This type of government emerges with regularity on planets where the citizens abandon personal responsibility for autonomous, self-regulation. They frequently lose their freedom to demented IS-BEs who suffer from an overwhelming paranoia that every other IS-BE is their enemy who must be controlled or destroyed. Their closest friends and allies, whom they espouse to love and cherish, are literally "loved to death" by them.
Because such IS-BEs exist, The Domain has learned that freedom must be won and maintained through eternal vigilance and the ability to use defensive force to maintain it.
As a result, The Domain has already conquered the governing planet of the "Old Empire". The civilization of The Domain, although considerably younger and smaller in size, is already more powerful, better organized, and united by an egalitarian esprit de corps never known in the history of the "Old Empire".
The recently despoiled German totalitarian state on Earth was similar to the "Old Empire", but not nearly as brutal, and about ten thousand times less powerful. Many of the IS- BEs on Earth are here because they are violently opposed to totalitarian government, or because they were so psychotically vicious that they could not be controlled by "Old Empire" government.
Consequently, the population of Earth is disproportionately comprised of a very high percentage of such beings. The conflicting cultural and ethical moral codes of the IS-BEs on Earth is unusual in the extreme.
The Domain conquest of the central "Old Empire" planets was fought with electronic cannon. The citizens of the planets forming the core of government for the "Old Empire" are a filthy, degraded, slave society of mindless, tax-paying workers, who practice cannibalism. Violent automotive race tracks and bloody, Roman circus type entertainments are their only amusements.
Regardless of any reasonable justification we may have had for using atomic weapons to vanquish the planets of the "Old Empire", The Domain is careful not to ruin the resources of those planets by using weapons of crude, radioactive force.
The government of the "Old Empire", before being supplanted by The Domain, was comprised of beings who possessed a very craven intelligence, very much like the Axis powers during your recent world war. Those beings manifested precisely the same behavior as the galactic government that exiled them to eternal imprisonment on Earth. They were a gruesome reminder of the ageless maxim that an IS-BE will often manifest the treatment they have received from others.
Kindness fosters kindness. Cruelty begets cruelty. One must be able and willing to use force, tempered with intelligence, to prevent harm to the innocent. However, extraordinary understanding, self- discipline and courage are required to effectively prevent brutality, without being overwhelmed by the malice that motivated the brutality.
Only a demonic, self-serving government would employ a "logic" or "science" to conceive that an "ultimate solution" to any problem is to murder and permanently erase the memory of every artist, genius, skilled manager, and inventor, and cast them into a planetary prison together with political opponents, killers, thieves, perverts, and disabled beings of an entire galaxy!
Once the IS-BEs expelled from the "Old Empire" arrived on Earth, they were given amnesia, and hypnotically tricked into thinking that something else had happened to them. The next step was to implant the IS-BEs into biological bodies on Earth. The bodies became the human populations of "false civilizations" which were designed and installed in the minds of IS-BEs to look completely unlike the "Old Empire".
All of the IS-BEs of India, Egypt, Babylon, Greece, Rome, and Medieval Europe were guided to pattern and build the cultural elements of these societies based on standard patterns developed by the IS-BEs of many earlier, similar civilizations on "Sun Type 12, Class 7" planets that have existed for trillions of years throughout the universe.
In the earliest times the IS-BEs sent to prison Earth lived in India. They gradually spread into Mesopotamia, Egypt, Mesoamerica, Achaea, Greece, Rome, Medieval Europe, and to the New World. They were hypnotically "commanded" to follow the pattern of a given civilization by the "Old Empire" prison operators. This is an effective mechanism to disguise the actual time and location from the IS-BEs imprisoned on Earth. The languages, costumes and culture of each false civilization are intended to reinforce amnesia because they do not remind the IS-BEs on Earth of the original "Old Empire" planets from which they were deported.
On the very far back-track of time these types of civilizations tended to repeat themselves over and over because the IS-BEs who created them become familiar with certain patterns and styles, and stayed with them. It is a lot of work to invent an entire civilization, complete with culture, architecture, language, customs, mathematics, moral values, and so forth. It is much easier to replicate a copy based on a familiar and successful pattern.
A "Sun Type 12, Class 7" planet is the designation given to a planet inhabited by carbon-oxygen based life forms. The class of the planet is based on the size and radiation intensity of the star, the distance of the planetary orbit from the star, and the size, density, gravity, and chemical composition of the planet.
Likewise, flora and fauna are designated and identified according to the star type and class of planet they inhabit.
On the average, the percentage of planets in the physical universe with a breathable atmosphere is relatively small. Most planets do not have an atmosphere upon which life-forms "feed", as on Earth, where the chemical composition of the atmosphere provides nutrition to plants, and other organisms, which in turn support other life forms.
When the Domain Force brought the Vedic Hymns to the Himalayas region 8,200 years ago, some human societies already existed. The Aryan people invaded and conquered India , bringing the Vedic Hymns to the area.
The Vedas were learned by them, memorized and carried forward verbally for 7,000 years before being committed to written form. During that span of time one of the officers of The Domain Expeditionary Force was incarnated on Earth as "Vishnu". He is described many times in the Rig-Veda. He is still considered to be a god by the Hindus. Vishnu fought in the religious wars against the "Old Empire" forces. He is a very able and aggressive IS-BE as well as a highly effective officer, who has since been reassigned to other duties in The Domain.
This entire episode was orchestrated as an attack and revolt against the Egyptian pantheon installed by "Old Empire" administrators. The conflict was intended to help free humankind from implanted elements of the false civilization that focused attention on many "gods" and superstitious ritual worship demanded by the priests who "managed" them. It is all part of the mental manipulation by the "Old Empire" to hide their criminal actions against the IS-BEs on Earth.
A priesthood, or prison guards, were used to help reinforce the idea that an individual is only a biological body and is not an Immortal Spiritual Being. The individual has no identity. The individuals have no past lives.
The individual has no power. Only the gods have power. And, the gods are a contrivance of the priests who intercede between men and the gods they serve. Men are slaves to the dictates of the priests who threaten eternal spiritual punishment if men do not obey them.
What else would one expect on a prison planet where all prisoners have amnesia, and the priests themselves are prisoners?
The intervention of The Domain Force on Earth has not been entirely successful due to the secret mind-control operation of the "Old Empire" that still continues to operate.
A battle was waged between the "Old Empire" forces and The Domain through religious conquest. Between 1500 BCE and about 1200 BCE, The Domain Forces attempted to teach the concept of an individual, Immortal Spiritual Being, to several influential beings on Earth.
One such instance resulted in a very tragic misunderstanding, misinterpretation and misapplication of the concept. The idea was perverted and applied to mean that there is only one IS-BE, instead of the truth that everyone is an IS-BE! Obviously, this was a gross incomprehension and an utter unwillingness to take responsibility for one's own power.
The "Old Empire" priests managed to corrupt the concept of individual immortality into the idea that there is only one, all-powerful IS-BE, and that no one else is or is allowed to be an IS- BE. Obviously, this is the work of the "Old Empire" amnesia operation.
It is easy to teach this altered notion to beings who do not want to be responsible for their own lives. Slaves are such beings. As long as one chooses to assign responsibility for creation, existence and personal accountability for one's own thoughts and actions to others, one is a slave.
As a result, the concept of a single monotheistic "god" resulted and was promoted by many self-proclaimed prophets, such as the Jewish slave leader -- Moses -- who grew up in the household of the Pharaoh Amenhotep III and his son, Akhenaten and his wife Nefertiti, as well as his son Tutankhamen.
The attempt to teach certain beings on Earth the truth that they are, themselves, IS-BEs, was part of a plan to overthrow the fictional, metaphorical, anthropomorphic panoply of gods created by the "Old Empire" mystery cult called "The Brothers of The Serpent" known in Egypt as the Priests of Amun. They were a very ancient, secret society within the "Old Empire".
The Pharaoh Akhenaten was not a very intelligent being, and was heavily influenced by his personal ambition for self- glorification. He altered the concept of the individual spiritual being and embodied the concept in the sun god, Aten. His pitiful existence was soon ended. He was assassinated by Maya and Parennefer, two of the Priests of Amun, or "Amen", which the Christians still say, who represented the interests of the "Old Empire" forces.
The idea of "One God" was perpetuated by the Hebrew leader Moses while he was in Egypt. He left Egypt with his adopted people, the Jewish slaves. While they were crossing the desert, Moses was intercepted by an operative of the "Old Empire" near Mt. Sinai. Moses was tricked into believing that this operative was "the" One God through the use of hypnotic commands, as well as technical and aesthetic tricks which are commonly used by the "Old Empire" to trap IS-BEs. Thereafter, the Jewish slaves, who trusted the word of Moses implicitly, have worshiped a single god they call "Yaweh".
The name "Yaweh" means "anonymous", as the IS- BE who "worked with" Moses could not use an actual name or anything that would identify himself, or blow the cover of the amnesia / prison operation. The last thing the covert amnesia / hypnosis / prison system wants to do is to reveal themselves openly to the IS-BEs on Earth. They feel that this would restore the inmates memories!
This is the reason that all traces of physical encounters between operatives of space civilizations and humans is very carefully hidden, disguised, covered-up, denied or misdirected.
This "Old Empire" operative contacted Moses on a desert mountain top and delivered the "Ten Hypnotic Commands" to him. These commands are very forcefully worded, and compel an IS-BE into utter subservience to the will of the operator. These hypnotic commands are still in effect and influence the thought patterns of millions of IS-BEs thousands of years later!
Incidentally, we later discovered that the so- called "Yaweh" also wrote, programmed and encoded the text of the Torah, which when it is read literally, or in its decoded, form, will provide a great deal more false information to those who read it.
Ultimately, the Vedic Hymns became the source of nearly all of Eastern the religions and were the philosophical source of the ideas common to Buddha, Laozi, Zoroaster, and other philosophers. The civilizing influences of these philosophies eventually replaced the brutal idolatry of the "Old Empire" religions and were the true genesis of kindness and compassion.
You asked me earlier why The Domain, and other space civilizations do not land on Earth or make their presence known.
Land on Earth? Do you think we are crazy or want to be crazy?
It takes a very brave IS-BE to come down through the atmosphere and land on Earth, because this is a prison planet, with a very uncontrolled, psychotic population. And, no IS-BE is entirely proof against the risk of entrapment, as with the members of The Domain Expeditionary Force who were captured in the Himalayas 8,200 years ago.
No one knows what IS-BEs on Earth are going to do.
We are not scheduled to invest the resources of The Domain to take total control of all the space surrounding the area at this time. This will occur in the not-too-distant future -- about 5,000 Earth years -- according to the time schedule of The Domain. At this time we do not prevent transports from other planetary systems or galaxies from continuing to drop IS-BEs into the amnesia force screen area. Eventually, this will change.
In addition, Earth, inherently, is a highly unstable planet. It is not suitable for settlement or permanent habitation for any sustainable civilization. This is part of the reason why it is being used as a prison planet. No one else would seriously consider living here for a variety of simple and compelling reasons:
The continental land masses of Earth are floating on a sea of molten lava beneath the surface which causes the land masses to crack, crumble and drift
Because of the liquid nature of the core, the planet is largely volcanic and subject to earthquakes and volcanic explosion
The magnetic poles of the planet shift radically about once every 20,000 years. This causes a greater or lesser degree of devastation as a result of tidal waves, and climatic
Earth is very distant from the center of the galaxy and from any other significant galactic civilization. This isolation makes it unsuitable for use, except as a "pit stop" or jumping off point along the way between galaxies. The moon and asteroids are far more suitable for this purpose because they do not have any significant gravity.
Earth is a heavy gravity planet, with heavy metallic soil and a dense atmosphere. This makes it treacherous for navigational That fact that I am in this room, as the result of an in flight accident, in spite of the technology of my craft and my extensive expertise as a pilot, are proof of these facts.
There are approximately sixty billion Earth- like (Sun Type 12, Class 7) planets in the Milky Way galaxy alone, not to mention the vast expanses of The Domain, and the territories we will claim in the future. It is difficult to stretch our resources to do much more than a periodic reconnaissance of Earth. Especially when there are no immediate advantages to invest resources
On Earth most beings are not aware that they are IS-BEs, or that there are spirits of any kind. Many other beings are aware of this, but nearly everyone has a very limited understanding of themselves as an IS-BE.
One of the reasons for this is that IS-BEs have been waging war against each other since the beginning of time. The purpose of these wars have always been to establish domination by one IS-BE or group of IS-BEs over another. Since an IS-BE cannot be "killed", the objective has been to capture and immobilize IS-BEs.This has been done in an nearly unlimited variety of ways. The most basic method to capture and immobilize an IS-BE is through the use of various kinds of "traps".
IS-BE traps have been made and put in place by many invading societies, such as the one that established the "Old Empire", beginning about sixty-four trillion years ago. Traps are often set up in the "territory" of the IS-BEs being attacked.Usually a trap is set with the electronic wave of "beauty" to attract the interest and attention of the IS-BE. When the IS-BE moves toward the source of the aesthetic wave, such as a beautiful building or beautiful music, the trap is activated by the energy put out by the IS-BE.
One of the most common trap mechanism uses the IS-BE's own thought energy output when the IS- BE tries to attack or fight back against the trap. The trap is activated and energized by the IS-BE's own thought energy. The harder the IS-BE fights against the trap, the more it pulls the IBS toward it and keeps them "stuck" in the trap.
Throughout the entire history of this physical universe, vast areas of space have been taken over and colonized by IS-BE societies who invade and take over new areas of space in this fashion. In the past, these invasions have always shared common elements:
(1) the overwhelming use of force of arms, usually with nuclear or electronic mind control of the IS-BEs in the invaded area through the use of electroshock, drugs, hypnosis, erasure of memory and the implantation of false memory or false information intended to subjugate and enslave the local IS-BE
(2) takeover of natural resources by the invading IS-BEs.
(3) political, economic and social slavery of the local population.
These activities continue in present time. All of the IS-BEs on Earth have been members of one or more of these activities in the past, both as an invader, or as part of the population being invaded. There are no "saints" in this universe. Very few have avoided or been exempted from warfare between IS-BEs.
IS-BEs on Earth are still the victims of this activity at this very moment. The between- lives amnesia administered to IS-BEs is one of the mechanisms of an elaborate system of "Old Empire" IS-BE traps, that prevent an IS-BE from escaping.
This operation is managed by an illicit, renegade secret police force of the "Old Empire", using false provocation operations to disguise their activities in order to prevent detection by their own government, The Domain and by the victims of their activities.
They are mind-control methods developed by government psychiatrists.
Earth is a "ghetto" planet. It is the result of an intergalactic "Holocaust". IS-BEs have been sentenced to Earth either because:
They are too viciously insane or perverse to function as part of any civilization, no matter how degraded or
Or, they are a revolutionary threat to the social, economic and political caste system that has been so carefully built and brutally enforced in the "Old Empire". Biological bodies are specifically designed and designated as the lowest order of entity in the "Old Empire" caste system. When an IS-BE is sent to Earth, and then tricked or coerced into operating in a biological body, they are actually in a prison, inside a...
In an effort to permanently and irreversibly rid the "Old Empire" of such "untouchables", the eternal identity, memory, and abilities of every IS-BE is forcefully erased. This "final solution" was conceived and carried out by the psychopathic criminals who are controlled by the "Old Empire".
The mass extermination of "untouchables" and prison camps created by Germany during World War II were recently revealed. Likewise, the IS-BEs of Earth are the victims of spiritual eradication and eternal slavery inside frail, biological bodies, inspired by the same kind of craven hatred in the "Old Empire".
The kind and creative inmates of Earth are continuously tortured by butchers and lunatics who are controlled by the "Old Empire" prison operators. The so-called "civilizations" of Earth, from the age of useless pyramids to the age of nuclear holocaust, have been a colossal waste of natural resources, a perverted use of intelligence, and an overt oppression of the spiritual essence of every single IS-BE on the planet.
If The Domain sent ships to every corner of the universe in search of "Hell", their quest could end on Earth. What greater brutality can be inflicted on anyone than to erase the spiritual awareness, identity, ability, and memory that is the essence of oneself?
The Domain has, as yet, been unable to rescue the 3,000 IS-BEs of the Expeditionary Force Battalion either.
They are forced to inhabit biological bodies on Earth. We have been able to recognize and track most of them for the past 8,000 years. However, our attempts to communicate with them are usually futile, as they are unable to remember their true identity.
The majority of lost members of The Domain force have followed the general progression of Western civilization from India, into the Middle East, then to Chaldea, and Babylon, into Egypt, through Achaia, Greece, Rome, into Europe, to the Western Hemisphere, and then all around the world.
The members of the lost Battalion and many other IS-BEs on Earth, could be valuable citizens of The Domain, not including those who are vicious criminals or perverts. Unfortunately, there has been no workable method conceived to emancipate the IS-BEs from Earth.
Therefore, as a matter of common logic, as well as the official policy of The Domain, it is safer and more sensible to avoid contact with the IS-BE population of Earth until such time as the proper resources can be allocated to locate and destroy the "Old Empire" force screen and amnesia machinery and develop a therapy to restore the memory of an IS-BE."
…
"The actual history of Earth is very bizarre. It is so nonsensical that is it is incredible to anyone on Earth who attempts to investigate it. A myriad of vital information is missing from it. A huge conglomeration of non sequitur relics and mythology has been arbitrarily introduced into it. The volatile nature of the Earth itself cyclically covers, drowns, mixes and shreds physical evidence.
These factors, combined with amnesia and post- hypnotic suggestions, false facades and covert manipulation make a reconstruction of the factual origins and history of Earth civilizations virtually indecipherable. Any investigator, no matter how brilliant, is doomed to wallow in a quagmire of inconclusive assumptions, unworkable hypotheses, and perpetual mystery.
Since The Domain does not suffer these afflictions, having the advantage of memory, longevity and an exterior point of view, I will add some clarification to your fragmentary knowledge of the history of Earth.
These are some of the dates and events that are not mentioned in Earth history textbooks.
These dates are significant because they provide some information concerning the influences of the "Old Empire" and of The Domain on Earth.
Although I have attended several briefings by our mission control personnel on the general background of Earth within the past few hundred years, I will rely principally on data gathered from records captured after our invasion of the "Old Empire" planetary headquarters. Since that time The Domain Expeditionary Force has tracked the general progress of events on Earth.
As I mentioned, in some cases The Domain has chosen to intervene in certain affairs on Earth in order to ensure the success of our long term expansion plans. Although The Domain has no interest in Earth, per se, or in the population of IS-BEs on this planet, it does serve our interests to ensure that the resources of Earth are not destroyed or spoiled. To that end, certain officers of The Domain have been sent to Earth on reconnaissance missions from time to time to gather information.
However, the following dates and events have been extrapolated from the accumulated information in the data files of The Domain -- at least those that are accessible to me through the space station communications center.
208,000 BCE --
The establishment of the "Old Empire", whose headquarters were located near one of the "tail stars" in the Ursa Major (Big Dipper) Constellation of this galaxy. The "Old Empire" invasion force conquered the area with nuclear weapons sometime earlier. After the radioactivity subsided and the clean-up and restoration were completed, it received the immigration of beings from another galaxy into this galaxy. Those beings set up a society that kept going until about 10,000 years ago when it was superseded by The Domain.
Very recently Earth civilization has come to resemble aspects of that civilization, now that it has fallen out of its immediate control. In particular, the appearance and technology of transportation such as planes, trains, ships, fire engines, and automobiles, as well as what you consider to be "modern" or "futuristic" architecture, which emulate the design of buildings in the major cities of the "Old Empire".
Before 75,000 BCE --
The Domain records contain very little information about the civilizations on the continental land masses of Atlanta and Lemur, except to note that they did coexist on Earth at more or less the same time. Apparently, both civilizations were founded by remnants of electronic, space opera cultures who fled from their native planetary systems to escape political or religious persecution.
The Domain knows that a long-standing edict of the "Old Empire" prohibits unauthorized colonization of planets. Therefore, it is possible that their destruction was caused by police or military forces who pursued the colonists as criminals and destroyed them. Although this seems a likely supposition, no conclusive evidence exists that explains the complete destruction and disappearance of two entire electronic civilizations.
Another possibility is that a massive submarine volcanic eruption in the region of Lake Toba, in Sumatra and Mt. Krakatoa in Java caused the destruction of Lemur. The flood waters caused by the eruption overwhelmed all the land masses, including the highest mountains. Survivors of the destruction of the civilization, the Lemurians, are the earliest ancestors of the Chinese. Australia and the ocean areas to the north were the center of the Lemurian civilization and are the source of Oriental races. Both civilizations possessed electronics, flight and similar technologies of space opera cultures.
Apparently, the volcanic eruption expelled such a significant mass of molten rock that the resulting vacuum beneath the crust of Earth caused great areas of the land masses to sink below the oceans. The continental areas occupied by both civilizations were covered with volcanic matter, and then submerged, leaving very little evidence that they ever existed except for legends of a global flood which prevail in every culture of the Earth, and for survivors who are the genus of oriental races and cultures.
That kind of colossal volcanic explosion fills the stratosphere with toxic gases which are carried around the whole planet. The usual refuse of these volcanic eruptions can easily cause a rain that lasts for "40 days and 40 nights" due to atmospheric pollution as well as an extensive period during which radiation from the sun is deflected back into space, and cause global cooling. Certainly such an event would cause an ice age, extinctions of life forms and many other relatively long-term changes lasting thousands of years.
Due to the myriad types of naturally occurring global cataclysmic events which are indigenous to Earth, it is not a suitable planet for habitation by IS-BEs. In addition there have been occasional global cataclysms caused by IS- BEs such as the one that destroyed the dinosaurs more than 70 million years ago. That destruction was caused by intergalactic warfare during which time Earth, and many other neighboring moons and planets, were bombarded by atomic weapons. Atomic explosions cause atmospheric fallout much like that of volcanic eruptions. Most of the planets in this sector of the galaxy have been uninhabitable deserts since then.
Earth is undesirable for many other reasons: heavy gravity and dense atmosphere, floods, earthquakes, volcanoes, polar shifts, continental drift, meteor impacts, atmospheric and climatic changes, to name a few. What kind of lasting civilization could any sophisticated culture propose to develop in such an environment?
In addition, Earth is a small planet of a "rim star" of a galaxy. This makes Earth very isolated geographically from the more concentrated planetary civilizations which exist toward the center of the galaxy. These obvious facts have made Earth suitable for use only as a zoological or botanical garden, or for its current use as a prison -- but not much else.
Before 30,000 BCE --
Earth started being used as a dumping ground and prison for IS-BEs who were judged "untouchable", meaning criminal or non- conformists. IS-BEs were captured, encapsulated in electronic traps and transported to Earth from various parts of the "Old Empire". Underground "amnesia stations" were set up on Mars and on Earth in the Rwenzori Mountains in Africa, in the Pyrenees Mountains of Portugal, and in steppes of Mongolia.
These electronic monitoring points create force screens designed to detect and capture IS-BEs, when the IS-BE departs the body at death. IS- BEs are brainwashed using extreme electronic force in order to maintain Earth's population in state of perpetual amnesia. Further population controls are installed through the use of long range electronic thought control mechanisms.
These stations are still in operation and they are extremely difficult to attack or destroy, even for The Domain, which will not maintain a significant military force in this area until a later date.
The pyramid civilizations were intentionally created as part of the IS-BE prison system on Earth. The pyramid is alleged to be the symbol for "wisdom". However, the "wisdom" of the "Old Empire" on planet Earth is intended to operate as part of the elaborate amnesia "trap" consisting of MASS, MEANING and MYSTERY. These are opposite to the qualities of an Immortal Spiritual Being which have no mass, or meaning. An IS-BE "is" solely because it thinks that it "is".
MASS represents the physical universe, including objects such as stars, planets, gases, liquids, energy particles and tea cups. The Pyramids were very, very solid objects, as were all of the structures created by the "Old Empire". Heavy, massive, dense, solid objects create the illusion of eternity. Dead bodies wrapped in linen, soaked in resin, placed inside engraved golden coffins and entombed with Earthly possessions amid cryptic symbols create an illusion of eternal life. However, dense, heavy physical universe symbols are the exact opposite of an IS-BE. An IS-BE has no mass or time. Objects do not endure forever. An IS-BE "is" forever.
MEANING: False meanings prevent knowledge of the truth.
The pyramid cultures of Earth are a fabricated illusion. They are nothing more than "false civilizations" contrived by the "Old Empire" mystery cult called the Brothers of the Serpent. False meanings were invented to create the illusion of a false society to further reinforce the amnesia mechanism among the intimates in the Earth prison system.
MYSTERY is built of lies and half-truths.
Lies cause persistence because they alter facts which are comprised of exact dates, places and events. When truth is known, a lie no longer persists. If the exact truth is revealed, it is no longer a mystery.
All of the pyramid civilizations of Earth were carefully contrived of layer upon layer of lies, skillfully combined with a few truths. The priest cult of the "Old Empire" combined sophisticated mathematics and space opera technology, with theatrical metaphors and symbolism. All of these are complete fabrications of truth, baited with the allure of aesthetics and mystery.
The intricate rituals, astronomical alignments, secret rites, massive monuments, marvelous architecture, artistically rendered hieroglyphs and man-animal "gods" were designed to create a unsolvable mystery for the IS-BE prison population on Earth.
The mystery diverts attention away from the truth that IS-BEs have been captured, given amnesia and imprisoned on a planet far, far away from their home.
The truth is that every single IS-BE on Earth came to Earth from some other planetary system. Not one person on Earth is a "native" inhabitant. Human beings did not "evolve" on Earth.
In the past, Egyptian society was run by the prison administrators or priests, who, in turn, manipulated a Pharaoh, controlled the treasury and kept the inmate population enslaved physically and spiritually. In modern times, the priests have changed, but the function is the same. However, now the priests are prisoners too.
Mystery reinforces the walls of the prison. The "Old Empire" feared that the IS-BEs on Earth might regain their memory. Therefore, one of the primary functions of The "Old Empire" priesthood is to prevent IS-BEs on Earth from remembering who they really are, how they came to Earth, where they came from.
The "Old Empire" operators of the prison system, and their superiors, do not want IS-BEs to remember who murdered them, captured them, stole all of their possessions, sent them to Earth, gave them amnesia and condemned them to eternal imprisonment!
Imagine what might happen if all of the inmates in the prison suddenly remembered that they have the right to be free! What if they suddenly realized that they have been falsely imprisoned and rise up as one against the guards?
They are afraid to reveal anything that looks like the civilization of the inmates home planets. A body, a piece of clothing, a symbol, a space ship, an advanced electronics device, or any other remnant of civilization from a home planet could "remind" a being and rekindle his memory.
Sophisticated technologies of entrapment and enslavement, which were developed over millions of years in the "Old Empire", have been applied to the IS-BEs on Earth with the intention to create a false facade for the prison. These facades were installed on Earth in totality, all at once. Every piece is a fully integrated part of the prison system.
This includes a religion of mumbo-jumbo double- speak. Every pyramid civilization uses this as part of a control mechanism to keep the population enslaved by force, by fear and by ignorance. The indecipherable muddle of irrelevant information, geometric designs, mathematical calculation, astronomical alignments, are part of a false spirituality based on solid objects, rather than immortal spirits, in order to confuse and disorient the IS-BEs on Earth.
When the body of a person died they were buried with their Earthly possessions, including their former body wrapped in linen, to sustain their "soul" or "Ka" after death. An IS-BE does not "have" as soul. An IS-BE is a soul.
On the home planet of an IS-BE their material possessions were not lost, stolen or forgotten when the being died or left the body.
An IS-BE could return and claim the possessions. However, if the IS-BE has amnesia, they will not remember that they had any possession.
So, governments, insurance companies, bankers, family members and other vultures can pick their possessions clean without fear of retribution from the deceased.
The only reason for these false meanings is to instill the idea that an IS-BE is NOT a spirit, but a physical object! This is a lie. It is a trap for an IS-BE.
Countless people have spent endless hours attempting to solve the jig-saw puzzle of Egypt and other "Old Empire" civilizations. They are puzzles made of pieces that do not fit. A question states its own answer. What is the mystery of Egypt and other pyramid cultures? Mystery!
circa 15,000 BCE --
The "Old Empire" forces supervised the construction of a hydraulic mining operation in the Andes Mountains in present day Bolivia near Lake Titicaca (Lake of Tin Stones) at Tiahuanaco including construction of the massive stone complex of carved stone buildings known as Kalasasaya and its "Gate of the Sun" at an elevation of nearly 14,000 feet.
11,600 BCE --
The Polar Axis of Earth shifted to a sea area. The last Ice Age came to an end abruptly as the polar ice caps melted and the level of the ocean rose to submerge large sections of the land masses of Earth. The last remaining vestiges of Atlantis and Lemuria were covered by water. Massive extinctions of animals occurred in the Americas, Australia and the Artic Regions due to the shift of the poles.
10,450 BCE --
Plans were made by the "Old Empire" IS-BE called Thoth for construction of a Great Pyramid of Giza. The 4 "air shafts" of the pyramid point precisely to key stars in the "Old Empire" as seen from Giza in this year. The alignment of the Pyramids of Giza on the ground matches perfectly the alignment of the constellation of Orion as seen in the sky from Giza relative to the Nile as the earthly representation of the Milky Way in the sky.
10,400 BCE --
According to the Earth historian, Herodotus, records from the ruined civilization of Atlantis, containing electronic technology and other technology of that society, were buried in a vault beneath the paws of The Sphinx. The Greek historian wrote that he was told this by some of his friends who were Priests of Anu, the Sumerian god, at the Egyptian city of Heliopolis. However, it is highly unlikely that any traces of an electronic civilization would be allowed to be left intact on Earth by the "Old Empire" prison system administrators.
8,212 BCE --
The Veda or Vedic hymns are a set of religious hymns that were introduced into the societies of Earth. They came forward in spoken tradition, memorized, from generation to generation. "The Hymn to the Dawn Child'' includes an idea called the "cycle of the physical universe": the creation, growth, conservation, decay and death or destruction of energy and matter in a space. These cycles produce time. The same set of hymns describes the "theory of evolution". Here is a tremendous body of knowledge which contains a great deal of spiritual truth.
Unfortunately, it has been incorrectly evaluated by humans and altered with lies and reversals of fact by priests which are a booby trap to prevent anyone from using the wisdom to discover a way to escape from the prison planet.
8,050 BCE --
Destruction of the "Old Empire" home planet government in this galaxy. This was the end of the "Old Empire" as a political entity in the galaxy. However, the vast size of the "Old Empire" will take many thousands of years for The Domain to conquer completely. The inertia of the political, economic and cultural systems of the "Old Empire" will remain in place for some time to come.
However, remnants of the "Old Empire" space fleet in the solar system of Earth were finally destroyed in 1,230 AD. In addition to operatives of the "Old Empire" who run the Earth prison operation, there were other beings from the "Old Empire" who came to Earth.
Since Earth was no longer under the control of the "Old Empire" after their defeat by The Domain Forces, there was no police force to control military renegades, space pirates, miners, merchants and entrepreneurs who came to Earth to exploit the resources of the planet for personal gain, and many other nefarious reasons.
For example, the history of Earth, according to the Jewish people, describes the "Nephilim". Chapter 6 of The Book of Genesis, describes the origin of the "Nephilim" :
"Now it came about, when men began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them, that the "sons of God" saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose.
The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown."
The ancient Jewish people who wrote the history book called the Old Testament were slaves, herders and gatherers. Any modern technology, even a simple flashlight, would seem astounding and miraculous to them. They attributed any unexplainable phenomenon or technology to the workings of a "god". Unfortunately, this behavior is universal among all IS-BEs who have been given amnesia, and cannot remember their own experiences, training, technology, personality or identity.
Obviously, if these were men, and they mated with Earth women, they were not "sons of god". They were IS-BEs who inhabited biological bodies in order to take advantage of the political situation in the "Old Empire", or simply to indulge in physical sensation. They set up small colonies of their own on Earth beyond the reach of the police and tax authorities.
Coincidentally, one of the most serious crimes an IS-BE could commit in the "Old Empire" was to violate income tax regulations. Income taxes were used as a slavery mechanism and as a punishment in the "Old Empire". The slightest error in a tax report made an IS-BE "untouchable", followed by imprisonment on Earth.
6,750 BCE --
Other Pyramid civilizations were set up by the "Old Empire" on Earth. These were established in Babylon, Egypt, China and Mesoamerica. The Mesopotamian area provided service facilities, communication stations, space ports, and stone quarry operations for these false civilizations.
Ptah was the name given to the first in a succession of administrators from the "Old Empire" who represented themselves to the Earth population as "divine" rulers.
Ptah's importance may be understood when one learns that the word "Egypt" is a Greek corruption of the phrase "Het-Ka-Ptah," or "House of the Spirit of Ptah". Ptah, was nick- named "The Developer". He was a construction engineer. His high priest was given the title 'Great Leader of Craftsmen'.
Ptah was also the god of reincarnation in Egypt. He originated the "opening of the mouth ceremony" which was performed by priests at funerals to "release souls" from their corpses. Of course, when the "souls" were released, they were captured, given amnesia, and returned to Earth again.
The so-called "Devine" rulers who followed Ptah on Earth were called "Ntr", meaning "Guardians or Watchers" by the Egyptians. Their symbol was the Serpent, or Dragon which represented a secret priesthood of the "Old Empire" called the "Brothers of the Serpent".
"Old Empire" engineers used cutting tools of highly concentrated light waves to quickly carve and excavate stone blocks. They also used force fields and space craft to lift and transport blocks of stone weighing hundred or thousands of tons each. The placement on the ground of some of these structures will be found to have geodetic or astronomical significance relative to various stars in this galactic region.
The buildings are crude and impractical, compared to building standards on most planets. As an engineer of The Domain, I can attest that make-shift structures like these would never pass inspection on a planet in The Domain. Stone blocks such as those used in the pyramid civilizations can still be seen, partially excavated, in the stone quarries in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Most of the structures were hastily built "props", much like the false facades of a western town on the set of a motion picture. They appear to be real, and to have some use or value, however, they have no value. They have no useful purpose. The pyramids and all of the other stone monuments erected by the "Old Empire" could be called "mystery monuments". For what reason would anyone waste so many resources to construct so many useless buildings? To create a mysterious illusion.
The fact of the matter is that each one of the "divine rulers" were IS-BEs who served as operatives of the "Old Empire". They were certainly not "divine", although they were IS- BEs.
6248 BCE --
The beginning of active warfare between The Domain Space Command and the surviving remnants of the "Old Empire" space fleet in this solar system that lasted nearly 7,500 years. It began when an installation was established in the Himalaya mountains by a battalion of the 3,000 officers and crew members of The Domain Expeditionary Force. The installation was not fortified as The Domain was not aware that the "Old Empire" maintained Earth as a prison planet.
The Domain installation was attacked and destroyed by space forces of the "Old Empire" who continued to operate in the solar system of Earth. IS-BEs of The Domain battalion were captured, taken to Mars, given amnesia, and sent back to Earth to inhabit human biological bodies. They are still on Earth.
5,965 BCE --
Investigations into the disappearance of Domain forces in this solar system led to the discovery of "Old Empire" bases on Mars and elsewhere. The Domain took over the planet Venus as a defensive position against the space forces of the "Old Empire". The Domain Expeditionary Force also monitors life forms on Venus which has a very dense, hot and heavy atmosphere of sulfuric acid clouds. There are a few life forms on Earth that can endure an atmospheric environment like Venus.
The Domain also established secret installations or space stations in the Earth solar system. This solar system has a planet that is broken up -- the asteroid belt. It provides a very useful low-gravity platform for take off and landing of space craft. It is used as a "galactic jump" between the Milky Way and adjoining galaxies. There aren't any planets at this end of the galaxy that can serve as a good galactic entering spot for incoming transport, and other ships. But this broken up planet makes a very ideal space station. As a result of our war against the "Old Empire", this area of the solar system is now a valuable possession of The Domain.
3,450 - 3,100 BCE --
The intervention into the affairs on Earth by the "Old Empire" operatives or "divine gods" was disrupted at this time by The Domain Forces. They were forced to replace themselves with human rulers. The First Dynasty of human Pharaohs who united Upper and Lower Egypt began with the rule of a Pharaoh who, coincidentally, was named "MEN". He established the capital city called Men-Nefer, "The Beauty of Men" in Egypt. This started the first succession of 10 human Pharaohs and a period of 350 years of chaos that followed in the administrative ranks of the "Old Empire".
3,200 BCE --
As I mentioned earlier, Earth was under attack between The Domain and the "Old Empire" forces during this period. Of course this does not make any sense to archaeologists or historians on Earth, because the Egyptian period is a space opera era period. Since Earth historians have amnesia, they assume that this was only a religious period.
Further, because the technology and civilizations installed on Earth during this period were "pre-packaged", they did not "evolve" on Earth. Of course, there is no evidence anywhere on Earth of an evolutionary transition which resulted in sophisticated mathematics, language, writing, religion, architecture, cultural traditions in Egypt or any of the pyramid civilizations. These cultures, complete with all of the details of racial body types, hair-styles, facial make-up, rituals, moral codes and so forth, just "appeared" as complete integrated packages.
The physical evidence suggests that all evidence of the intervention of The Domain or "Old Empire" Forces, or any other extraterrestrial activity, has been carefully "cleaned up", so as not to create suspicion. The "Old Empire" force does not want the IS-BEs of Earth to suspect that they have been captured, transplanted to Earth and brainwashed.
So, Earth historians continue to assume that Egyptian priests were not supposed to have "ray guns" or other technology of the "Old Empire". And, they suppose that there was nothing going on, on Earth, except some priests walking around saying 'Amen', which the Christians still say.
3,172 BCE --
Layout of the astronomical grid that joins the key mining sites and astronomical buildings of 'the gods' in the Andes Mountains such as Tiahuanaco, Cuzco, Quito, the cities of Ollantaytambu, Machupiccu and Pachacamac for the mining of rare metals, including tin for use in making bronze. Metals were the property of "the gods", of course.
A great variety of entrepreneurial mining was done on Earth at that time due to the war between the "Old Empire" force and The Domain. These miners did carve a few sculptures of themselves. They are seen wearing mining helmets. The Ponce Stela sculpture in the sunken courtyard of the Kalasasaya temple is a crude rendering of a stone worker using an electronic, light-wave emitting stone cutter and carving tools, held in a holster.
The "Old Empire" has also maintained mining operations on planets throughout the galaxy for a very long time. The mineral resources of Earth are now a property of The Domain.
2,450 BCE --
The "great" pyramid and complex of pyramids near Cairo were completed. An inscription created by the "Old Empire" administrators can be seen in the so-called Pyramid texts. The texts say that the pyramid was built under the direction of Thoth, Son of Ptah. Of course there was never a King buried in the chamber, since the pyramids were never intended to be used as a burial chamber.
The great pyramid was located precisely at the exact center of all of the land masses of Earth, as viewed from space. Obviously such precise measurements require aerial perspective and a view of the land masses of Earth from space. Purely mathematical calculations of the geodetic center of the continents of Earth could not be made otherwise.
Shafts were constructed inside the pyramid to align with the configuration of stars in the constellation of Orion, Canus Majora, and specifically Sirius. The shafts are also aligned to the Big Dipper, where the home planet of the "Old Empire" existed. Also, Ainitak, Alpha Draconis and Beta Ursa Minor. These stars are each one of the key systems in the "Old Empire" from which IS-BEs were brought to Earth and dumped, as unwanted merchandise.
The configuration of all the pyramids of the Giza Plateau was intended to create a "mirror image", on Earth of the solar system and certain constellations within the "Old Empire".
2,181 BCE --
MIN, became the God of Fertility of Egypt. The IS-BE, also known as Pan, was also a Greek god. Min or Pan, was an IS-BE who somehow managed to escape from the "Old Empire" amnesia system.
2,160 - 2040 BCE --
One of the results of the intensifying battle between The Domain Forces and the "Old Empire" forces was that the control of the "divine rulers", was broken at this time. They finally left Egypt and returned to the "heavens", so to speak, in defeat. Human beings took over the ruling role as Pharaohs. The first human pharaoh moved the Capital city of Egypt from Memphis to Heracleopolis.
1,500 BCE --
This is the date for the destruction of Atlantis given by the Egyptian high-priests, Psenophis of Heliopolis, and Sonchis of Sais, to the Greek sage Solon. The Priests of Anu recorded that the Mediterranean area was invaded by "Atlantean" people about this time. Of course, these people were not from the ancient continent of Atlanta, in the Atlantic Ocean, which existed more than 70,000 years earlier.
These were refugees from the Minoan civilization on Crete escaping from the volcanic eruption and tidal waves of Mt. Thera that destroyed their civilization.
Plato's references to Atlantis were borrowed from the writings of the Greek philosopher Solon, who was given the information by the Egyptian priest who called Atlantis "Kepchu", which also happens to be the Egyptian name for the people of Crete. Some of the survivors of the Minoan volcanic disaster asked Egypt for help, since they were the only other civilization with high culture in the Mediterranean area at the time.
1351 BCE - 1337 BCE --
The Domain Expeditionary Force actively waged a war of religious conquest against the Egyptian mystery cult called the Priest of Amun, also known as the "Old Empire" Brothers of The Serpent. During this time the Pharaoh Akhenaten abolished the priesthood of Amun, and moved the capital of Egypt from Thebes to the new location at Amarna, at the exact geodetic center of Egypt. However, this plot to overthrow the "Old Empire" religious control was quickly spoiled.
1,193 BCE --
In the Near East and Achaea, the Greeks and Trojans fought for supremacy, which ended in the destruction of Troy as the finale of the Trojan War. During this same time, war was being fought out in the space of the solar system between two forces for control of the "space stations" surrounding Earth. That period of 300 years was a very violent resistance to The Domain Forces by the remnants of the "Old Empire" forces. It did not last long however, as it is futile to resist The Domain.
850 BCE --
Homer, the blind Greek poet, wrote the stories 'the gods' as borrowed and modified from earlier sources in Vedic texts, Sumerian texts, Babylonian and Egyptian mythology. His poems, as well as many other "myths" of the ancient world are very accurate descriptions of the exploits of IS-BE's on Earth who were able to avoid the "Old Empire amnesia operation and operate without biological bodies.
700 BCE --
The Vedic Hymns were first translated in the Greek language. This was the beginning of a cultural revolution in Western civilization that transformed crude and brutal tribal cultures into democratic republics based on more reasonable conduct.
638 - 559 BCE --
Solon, a wise man from Greece, reported the existence of Atlantis. This was information he received from the "Old Empire" high-priests, Psenophis of Heliopolis and Sonchis of Sais, with whom he studied in Egypt.
630 BCE --
Zoroaster created religious practices in Persia around an IS-BE called Ahura Mazda. This was yet another of the growing number of "monotheistic" gods put in place by operatives of The Domain to displace a panoply of "Old Empire" gods.
604 BCE --
Laozi, a philosopher who wrote a small book called "The Way", was an IS-BE of great wisdom, who overcame the effects of the "Old Empire" amnesia / hypnosis machinery and escaped from Earth. His understanding of the nature of an IS-BE must have been very good to accomplish this.
According to the common legend, his last lifetime as a human was lived in a small village in China. He contemplated the essence of his own life. Like Guatama Siddhartha, he confronted his own thoughts, and past lives. In so doing, he recovered some of his own memory, ability and immortality.
As an old man, he decided to leave the village and go to the forest to depart the body. The village gatekeeper stopped him and begged him to write down his personal philosophy before leaving. Here is a small piece of advice he gave about "the way" he rediscovered his own spirit:
"He who looks will not see it; He who listens will not hear it; He who gropes will not grasp it. The formless nonentity, the motionless source of motion. The infinite essence of the spirit is the source of life. Spirit is self. Walls form and support a room, yet the space between them is most important. A pot is formed of clay, yet the space formed therein is most useful. Action is caused by the force of nothing on something, just as the nothing of spirit is the source of all form.
One suffers great afflictions because one has a body. Without a body what afflictions could one suffer? When one cares more for the body than for his own spirit, One becomes the body and looses the way of the spirit. The self, the spirit, creates illusion. The delusion of Man is that reality is not an illusion. One who creates illusions and makes them more real than reality, follows the path of the spirit and finds the way of heaven".
593 BCE --
The Genesis story written by the Jewish people describe "angels" or "sons of god" mating with women of Earth, who bore them children. These were probably renegades from the "Old Empire". They may also have been space pirates or merchants from a system outside the galaxy who came to steal mineral resources, or smuggle drugs.
The Domain has observed that there are many visitors to Earth from neighboring planets and galaxies, but they rarely stop and live here. What kind of beings would live on a prison planet if they were not forced to do so?
The same book also reports the story of a human named Ezekiel who witnessed a spacecraft or aircraft landing near Chebar River in Chaldea. His description of the craft uses very archaic language, technically, but is nevertheless, quite an accurate description of an "Old Empire" saucer or scout craft. It is similar to the sighting of "vimanas" by the people in the foothills of the Himalayas.
Their Genesis story also mentions that "Yahweh" designed biological bodies to live for 120 years on Earth. Biological bodies on most "Sun Type 12, Class 7" planets are usually engineered to last for an average of about 150 years. Human bodies on Earth last only about one half as long. We suspect this is because the prison administrators have altered the biological material of human bodies on Earth to die more frequently so that the IS-BEs who inhabit them will recycle through the amnesia mechanism more frequently.
It should be noted that much of the "Old Testament" was written during the captivity of the Jews who were enslaved in Babylon, which was very heavily controlled by priests of the "Old Empire". The book introduces a false sense of time and a false concept of the origin of the creation.
The serpent is the symbol of the "Old Empire". It appears in the beginning of their creation story, or as the Greeks say, "Genesis", and causes the spiritual destruction of the first human beings, who are metaphorically represented by Adam and Eve.
The Old Testament, clearly influenced by the "Old Empire" Forces, gives a detailed description of the IS-BEs being induced into biological bodies on Earth. This book also describes many of the "Old Empire" brainwashing activities, including the installation of false memories, lies, superstitions, commands to "forget" and all manner of tricks and traps designed to keep IS-BEs on Earth. Most importantly, it destroys the awareness that humans are Immortal Spiritual Beings.
580 BCE --
The Oracle at Delphi was one temple in a network of many oracle temples. Each temple was a communication center. The "Old Empire" priests designated a local "god" for each temple. Each of the temples in this network were located at precisely 5 degrees of latitude intervals from the capital city of Thebes throughout the Mediterranean area as far north as the Baltic Sea.
The shrines served, among other things, as a grid, housing electronic beacons, later called "Omphalus Stones". The grid arrangement of Oracle sites can only be seen from miles above the Earth. The original network of electronic communications beacons were disabled when the priesthood was dispersed, and were replaced by carved stones.
The symbol of the "Old Empire" priesthood is a Python, dragon or serpent. It was called the "earth-dragon" at Delphi, which is always represented in sculpture and vase-paintings as a serpent.
In Greek mythology the guardian of the Omphalus Stone at the temple at Delphi was an oracle whose name was Python, the serpent. She was an IS-BE, who was conquered by a "god" named Apollo. He buried her under the Omphalos stone. This is a case of one "god" setting up his temple on the grave of another. This is a very accurate euphemism for The Domain Force that detected and disabled the "Old Empire" temple network on Earth. It was one of the fatal blows to the "Old Empire" Force in the solar system of Earth.
559 BCE --
The Commanding Officer of The Domain Battalion who was lost in 5,965 BCE was detected and located by a search party sent to Earth from The Domain Expeditionary Force. He was incarnated as Cyrus II of Persia during this time.
A unique system of organization was used by Cyrus II and the members of that Battalion who followed him from India through his progression of human lives on Earth. In part, it enabled them to build the largest empire in the history of the Earth to that date.
The Domain Search Party who located him traveled around the Earth searching for the lost Battalion for several thousand years. The party consisted of 900 officers of The Domain, divided into teams of 300 each. One team searched the land, another team search the oceans and the third team searched the space surrounding Earth.
There are many reports made in various human civilizations concerning their activities, which humans did not understand, of course.
The Domain Search Party devised a wide variety of electronic detection devices needed to track the electronic signature or wavelength of each of the missing members of the Battalion. Some were used in space, others on land, and special devices were invented to detect IS-BEs under water.
One of these electronic detection devices is referred to as a "tree of life". The device is literally a tool designed to detect the presence of life, which is an IS-BE. This was a large electronic screen generator designed to permeate wide areas. To the ancient humans on Earth it resembled a sort of tree, since is consists of an interwoven lattice of electronic field generators and receivers. The electronic field detects the presence of IS-BEs, whether the IS-BE is occupying a body, or if they are outside a body.
A portable version of this detection device was carried by each of the members of The Domain Search Party. Stone carvings in Sumeria show winged beings using pinecone-shaped instruments to scan the bodies of human beings. They are also shown carrying the power unit for the scanner which are depicted as stylized baskets or water buckets, being carried by eagle- headed, winged beings.
Members of the aerial unit of The Domain Search Party, led by Ahura Mazda, were often called "winged gods" in human interpretations. Throughout the Persian civilization there are a great many stone relief carvings that depict winged space craft, that they called a "faravahar".
Members of the Aquatic Unit of The Domain Search Party were called "Oannes" by local humans. Stone carvings of the so-called Oannes are shown wearing silver diving suits. They lived in the sea and appeared to the human population to be men dressed to look like fish. Some members of the lost Battalion were found in the oceans inhabiting the bodies of dolphins or whales.
On land, The Domain Search Party members were referred to as "Annunaki" by the Sumerians, and "Nephilim", in the Bible. Of course, their true mission and activities were never disclosed to homo sapiens. heir activities have been purposefully disguised. Therefore, the human stories and legends about the Annunaki, and the other members of The Domain Search Party have not been understood and were badly misinterpreted.
In the absence of complete and accurate data, anyone observing a phenomenon will assume or hypothesize explanations in an attempt to make sense of the data. Therefore, although mythology and history may be based on factual events, they are likewise full of misunderstood and misinterpreted evaluations of the data, and embellished with assumptions, theories and hypotheses which are false.
The space unit of The Domain Expeditionary Force are shown flying in a "Winged-Disc". This is an allusion to the spiritual power of the IS-BEs, as well as to the space craft used by The Domain Search Party.
The Commander of the lost Battalion, as Cyrus II, was an IS-BE who was regarded as a messiah on Earth by both the Jews, and the Muslims. In less than 50 years he established a highly ethical, and humanitarian philosophy which pervaded all of Western Civilization.
His territorial conquests, organization of people and monumental building projects were unprecedented before or since. Such sweeping accomplishments in a short period of time could only have been achieved by a leader and a team of trained officers, pilots, engineers and crew members of a unit of The Domain, acting as a team, who had been trained and worked together for thousands of years.
Although we have discovered the location of many of the IS-BEs in the lost Battalion, The Domain has been unable to restore their memory and return them to active duty as yet.
Of course we cannot transport IS-BEs who are inhabiting biological bodies to the space stations of The Domain since there is no oxygen in our space craft. Also we do not maintain life support facilities for biological entities there. Our only hope has been to locate and rekindle the awareness, memory and identity of the IS-BEs of the Lost Battalion. One day they will be capable of rejoining us.
200 BCE --
The last remnant of the "Old Empire" pyramid civilization is at "Teotihuacán". The Aztec name means “place of the gods” or “where men were transformed into gods”. Like the astronomical configuration of the Giza pyramids in Egypt, the entire complex is a precise scale-model of the solar system that accurately reflects the orbital distances of the inner planets, the asteroid belt, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. Since the planet Uranus had only been "discovered" with modern Earth telescopes in 1787, and Pluto not until 1930, it is apparent that the builders had information from "other sources".
A common element of the Pyramid Civilizations around the Earth is the constant use of the image of the snake, dragon, or serpent.
This is because the beings who planted these civilizations here want to create an illusion that the "gods" are reptilian. This is also a part of an illusion designed to perpetuate amnesia.
The beings who placed false civilizations on Earth are IS-BEs, just like you. Many of the biological bodies inhabited by IS-BEs in the "Old Empire" are very similar in appearance to the bodies on Earth. The "gods" are not reptiles, although they often behave like snakes.
1,034 - 1,124 AD --
The entire Arab world was enslaved by one man: Hasan ibn-al-Sabbah , the Old Man of the Mountain. He established the Hashshashin who operated a part of Mohammedanism which controlled by terror and fear much of India, Asia Minor and most of the Mediterranean Basin. They became a priesthood that used an extremely effective mind-control mechanism and extortion tool that enabled the "Assassins" to control the civilized world for several hundred years.
Their method was simple. Young men were kidnapped and knocked unconscious with hashish. They were taken to a garden filled with beautiful black-eyed houris in a harem decorated with rivers of milk and honey. The young men were told that they were in paradise. They were promised they could return and live there forever if they sacrificed themselves as an assassin of whomever they were commanded to kill. The men were knocked out again, and shoved out into the world to carry out the assassination mission.
Meanwhile, the Old Man of the Mountain sent a messenger to the caliph or, whatever wealthy ruler from whom they demanded payment, demanding camel-loads of gold, spices, incense or other valuables. If payment did not arrive on time, the assassin would be sent to kill the offending party. There was virtually no defense against the unknown assailant who wanted nothing more than to carry out his mission, be killed and return to "heaven".
This is a very crude example of how simple and effective a brainwashing and mind-control operation can be when it is used skillfully, and forcefully. It is a small scale demonstration of how the amnesia mind-control operation is used against the entire IS-BE population of Earth by the "Old Empire".
1119 AD --
The Knights Templar was established as a Christian military unit after the First Crusade but quickly transformed into the basis for the international banking system to accumulate money to conduct the agenda of operatives for vestiges of the "Old Empire" on Earth.
1135 - 1230 AD --
The Domain Expeditionary Force completed the annihilation of the remaining remnants of the "Old Empire" space fleet operating in the solar system around Earth. Unfortunately, their long established thought control operation remains largely intact.
1307 AD --
The Knights Templar was disbanded by King Philip IV of France, who was deeply in debt to the Order. He pressured Pope Clement V to condemn the Order's members, have them arrested, tortured them into giving false confessions, and burned them at the stake in an effort to erase his debt by seizing all of their wealth.
A majority of the Templars fled to Switzerland where they established an international banking system which secretly controls the economy of Earth.
"Old Empire" operatives act as an unseen influence on international bankers. The banks are operated covertly as a non-combatant provocateur to covertly promote and finance weapons and warfare between the nations of Earth. Warfare is an internal mechanism of control over the inmate population.
The purpose of the senseless genocide and carnage of wars financed by these international banks is to prevent the IS- BEs of Earth from sharing open communication, cooperate together in activities that might enable IS-BEs to prosper, become enlightened, and escape their imprisonment."
…
This was compounded by the fact that The Vedic Hymns were brought to Earth 8,200 years ago by The Domain Expeditionary Force. While they were based in the Himalaya Mountains, the verses were taught to some of the local humans who memorized them. However, I should note that this was not an authorized activity for the crew of The Domain installation, although I am sure it seemed like an innocent diversion for them at the time.
The verses were passed along verbally from one generation to the next for thousands of years in the foothills and eventually spread throughout India. No one in The Domain credits any of the material in the Vedic Hymns as factual material, any more than you would use "Grimm's Fairy Tales" as a guide for rearing children. However, on a planet where all of the IS-BEs have had their memory erased, one can understand how these tales and fantasies could be taken seriously.
Unfortunately, the humans who learned the Vedic verses passed them along to others saying that they came from "the gods". Eventually, the content of the verses were adopted verbatim as "truth". The euphemistic and metaphorical content of the Veda were accepted and practiced as dogmatic fact. The philosophy of the verses were ignored and the verses became the genesis of nearly every religious practice on the planet, especially Hinduism.
As an officer, pilot and engineer of The Domain, I must always assume a very pragmatic point of view. I could not be effective or accomplish my missions if I were to use philosophical dogma or rhetoric as my operations manual. Therefore, our discussion of history is based on actual events that occurred long before any IS-BEs arrived on Earth, and long before the "Old Empire” came into power.
…
Coincidentally, a friend and engineer with whom I used to work with at the Arcadia Regeneration Company -- a long time after I left the company -- told me that one of the projects they contracted to do, in more recent times, was to deliver life forms to Earth to replenish them after a war in this region of the galaxy devastated most of the life on the planets in this region of space. This would have been about seventy million years ago.
The skill required to modify the planet into an ecologically interactive environment that will support billions of diverse species was an immense undertaking. Specialized consultants from nearly every biotechnology company in the galaxy were brought in to help with the project.
…
"Today Airl told me about some very technical things. I took a few notes to remind myself, so I can repeat what she said as closely as possible. She began with an analogy about scientific knowledge:
Can you imagine how much progress could have been made on Earth if people like Johannes Gutenberg, Sir Isaac Newton, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington Carver, Nicola Tesla, Jonas Salk, and Richard Trevithick, and many thousands of similar geniuses and inventors were living today?
Image what technical accomplishments might have been developed if men like these never died? What if they were never given amnesia and made to forget everything they knew? What if they continued to learn and work forever?
What level of technology and civilization could be attained if Immortal Spiritual Beings like these were allowed to continue to create -- in the same place and at the same time -- for billions or trillions of years?
Essentially, The Domain is one civilization that has existed for trillions of years with relatively uninterrupted progress. Knowledge has been accumulated, refined, and improved upon in nearly every field of study imaginable
-- and beyond imagining.
Originally, the interaction of IS-BE illusions or inventions created the very fabric of the physical universe -- the microcosm and the macrocosm. Every single particle of the universe has been imagined and brought into existence by an IS-BE. Everything created from an idea -- a thought with no weight or size or location in space.
Every speck of dust in space, from the size of the tiniest subatomic particle, to the size of a sun or a magelantic cloud the size of many galaxies, was created from the nothingness of a thought. Even the tiniest, individual cells were contrived and coordinated to enable a microbial entity to sense, and navigate through infinitesimally small spaces. These also came from an idea thought up by an IS-BE.
You, and every IS-BE on Earth, have participated in the creation of this universe. Even though you are now confined to a fragile body made of flesh; you live for only 65 short rotations of your planet around a star; you have been given overwhelming electric shock treatments to wipe out your memory; you must learn everything all over again each lifetime; in spite of all these circumstances, you are who you are and will always be. And, deep down, you still know that you are and what you know. You are still the essence of you.
How else can one understand the child prodigy? An IS-BE who plays concertos on a piano at three years of age, without formal training? Impossible, if they did not simply remember what they have already learned from thousands of lives spent in front of a keyboard in times untold, or on planets far away. They may not know how they know. They just know.
Humankind has developed more technology in the past 100 years than in the previous 2,000 years. Why? The answer is simple: the influence of the "Old Empire" over the mind and over the affairs of Mankind has been diminished by The Domain.
A renaissance of invention on Earth began in 1,250 AD with the destruction of the "Old Empire" space fleet in the solar system. During the next 500 years, Earth may have the potential to regain autonomy and independence, but only to the degree that humankind can apply the concentrated genius of the IS-BEs on Earth to solve the amnesia problem.
However, on a cautionary note, the inventive potential of the IS-BEs who have been exiled to this planet is severely compromised by the criminal elements of the Earth population. Specifically, politicians, war-mongers and irresponsible physicists who create unlimited weapons such as nuclear bombs, chemicals, diseases and social chaos. These have the potential to extinguish all life forms on Earth, forever.
Even the relatively small explosions that were tested and used in the past two years on Earth have the potential to destroy all of life, if deployed in sufficient quantities. Larger weapons could consume all of the oxygen in the global atmosphere in a single explosion!
Therefore, the most fundamental problems that must be solved in order to ensure that Earth will not be destroyed by technology, are social and humanitarian problems. The greatest scientific minds of Earth, in spite of mathematical or mechanical genius, have never addressed these problems.
Therefore, do not look to scientists to save Earth or the future of humanity. Any so-called "science" that is solely based on the paradigm that existence is composed only of energy and objects moving through space is not a science. Such beings utterly ignore the creative spark originated by an individual IS-BE and collective work of the IS-BEs who continually create the physical universe and all universes. Every science will remain relatively ineffective or destructive to the degree that it omits or devaluates the relative importance of the spiritual spark that ignites all of creation and life.
Unfortunately this ignorance has been very carefully and forcefully instilled in human beings by the "Old Empire" to ensure that IS- BEs on this planet will not be able to recover their innate ability to create space, energy, matter and time, or any other component part of universes. As long as awareness of the immortal, powerful, spiritual "self" is ignored, humanity will remain imprisoned until the day of its own, self-destruction and oblivion.
Do not rely on the dogma of physical sciences to master the fundamental forces of creation any more than you would trust the chanted incantations of an incense-burning shaman. The net result of both of these is entrapment and oblivion. Scientists pretend to observe, but they only suppose that they see, and call it fact. Like the blind man, a scientist can not learn to see until he realizes that he is blind. The "facts" of Earth science do not include the source of creation. They include only the result, or byproducts of creation.
The "facts" of science to not include any memory of the nearly infinite past experience of existence.
The essence of creation and existence cannot be found through the lens of a microscope or telescope or by any other measurement of the physical universe. One cannot comprehend the perfume of a flower or the pain felt by an abandoned lover with meters and calipers.
Everything you will ever know about the creative force and ability of a god can be found within you -- an Immortal Spiritual Being.
How can a blind man teach others to see the nearly infinite gradients that comprise the spectrum of light? The notion that one can understand the universe without understanding the nature of an IS-BE is as absurd as conceiving that an artist is a speck of paint on his own canvas. Or, that the lace on a ballet shoe is the choreographer's vision, or the grace of a dancer, or the electric excitement of opening night.
Study of the spirit has been booby-trapped by the thought control operation through religious superstitions they instill in the minds of men. Conversely, the study of the spirit and the mind have been prohibited by science which eliminates anything that is not measurable in the physical universe. Science is the religion of matter. It worships matter.
The paradigm of science is that creation is all, and the creator is nothing. Religion says the creator is all, and the creation is nothing. These two extremes are the bars of a prison cell. They prevent observation of all phenomenon as an interactive whole.
Study of creation without knowing the IS-BE, the source of creation, is futile. When you sail to the edge of a universe conceived by science, you fall off the end into an abyss of dark, dispassionate space and lifeless, unrelenting force. On Earth, you have been convinced that the oceans of the mind and spirit are filled with gruesome, ghoulish monsters that will eat you alive if you dare to venture beyond the breakwater of superstition.
The vested interest of the "Old Empire" prison system is to prevent you from looking at your own soul. They fear that you will see in your own memory the slave masters who keep you imprisoned. The prison is made of shadows in your mind. The shadows are made of lies, and pain, and loss, and fear.
The true geniuses of civilization are those IS- BEs who will enable other IS-BEs to recover their memory and regain self-realization and self-determination. This issue is not solved through enforcing moral regulation on behavior, or through the control of beings through mystery, faith, drugs, guns or any other dogma of a slave society. And certainly not through the use of electric shock and hypnotic commands!
The survival of Earth and every being on it depends on the ability to recover the memory of skills you have accrued through the trillenia; to recover the essence of yourself. Such an art, science, or technology has never been conceived in the "Old Empire". Otherwise, they would not have resorted to the "solution" that brought you to your current condition on Earth.
Neither has such technology ever been developed by The Domain. Until recently, the necessity of rehabilitating an IS-BE with amnesia has not been needed. Therefore, no one has ever worked on solving this problem. So far, unfortunately, The Domain has no solution to offer.
A few officers of The Domain Expeditionary Force have taken it upon themselves to provide technology to Earth during their off duty time. These officers leave their "doll" at the space station and, as an IS-BE, assume or take over a biological body on Earth. In some cases an officer can remain on duty while they inhabit and control other bodies at the same time.
This is a very dangerous and adventurous undertaking. It requires a very able IS-BE to accomplish such a mission, and return to base successfully. One officer who did this recently, while continuing to attend to his official duties, was known on Earth as the electronics inventor, Nicola Tesla.
It is my intention, although is not a part of my mission orders, to assist you in your efforts to advance scientific and humanitarian progress on Earth. My intention is to help other IS-BEs to help themselves. In order to solve the amnesia problem on Earth you will need much more advanced technology, as well as social stability to allow enough time for research and development of techniques to free the IS-BE from the body, and to free the mind of the IS-BE from amnesia.
Although The Domain has a long term interest in maintaining Earth as a useful planet, it has no particular interest in the human population of Earth, other than its own personnel here. We are interested in preventing destruction, as well as accelerating the development of technologies that will sustain the infrastructures of the global biosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere.
To this end, you will discover, on very careful and thorough examination, that my space craft contains a wide assortment of technology that does not yet exist on Earth. If you distribute pieces of this craft to various scientists for study, they will be able to reverse engineer some of the technology to the extent that Earth has the raw materials required to replicate these components.
Some features will be indecipherable. Other features cannot be duplicated as Earth does not have the natural resources required to replicate them. This is especially true of the metals used to construct the craft. Not only do these metals not exist on Earth, the refining process required to produce these metals took billions of years to develop.
It is also true of the navigation system which requires an IS-BE whose own personal wavelength has been specifically attuned to the "neural network" of the craft. The pilot of the craft must possess a very high order of energy volition, discipline, training and intelligence to manipulate such a craft. IS-BEs on Earth are incapable of this expertise because it requires the use of an artificial body specifically created for this purpose.
Certain individual Earth scientists, some of whom are among the most brilliant minds in the history of the universe, will have their memory of this technology jogged when they examine the craft components. Just as some of the scientists and physicists on Earth have been able to "remember" how to recreate electric generators, internal combustion and steam locomotion, refrigeration, aircraft, antibiotics, and other tools of your civilization, they will also rediscover other vital technology in my craft.
The following are the specific systems embodied in my craft that contain useful components:
There is an assortment of microscopic wiring or fibers within the walls of the craft that control such things as communications, information storage, computer function, and automatic navigation.
The same wiring is used for light, sub- light and ultra-light spectrum detection and vision.
The fabrics of the interior of the craft are far superior to any on Earth at this time and have hundreds or thousands of applications.
You will also find mechanisms for creating, amplifying and channeling light particles or waves as a form of...
As an officer, pilot and engineer of The Domain Forces, I am not at liberty to discuss or convey the detailed operation or construction of the craft in any way, other than what I have just disclosed. However, I am confident that there are many competent engineers on Earth who will develop useful technology with these resources.
I am providing these details to you in the hope that the greater good of The Domain will be served."
...
Although The Domain will not hesitate to destroy any active vestiges of the "Old Empire" operations where ever they are discovered this is not our primary mission in this galaxy. I am sure that the "Old Empire" mind-control mechanisms can be deactivated and destroyed eventually. However, it is not possible to estimate how long this make take, as we do not understand the extent of this operation at this time.
We do know that the "Old Empire" force screen is vast enough to cover this end of the galaxy, at least. We also know from experience that each force generator and trapping device is very difficult to detect, locate and destroy. Also, it is not the current mission of The Domain Expeditionary Force to commit resources to this endeavor.
The eventual destruction of these devices may make it possible for your memory to be restored, simply by virtue of not having it erased after each lifetime. Fortunately, the memory of an IS-BE cannot be permanently erased.
There are many other active space civilizations who maintain various nefarious operations in this area...
... not the least of which is dumping unwanted IS-BEs on Earth.
None of these craft are hostile or in violent opposition to The Domain Forces. They know better than to challenge us!
For the most part The Domain ignores Earth and its inhabitants, except to ensure that the resources of the planet itself are not permanently spoiled. This sector of the galaxy was annexed by The Domain and is the possession of The Domain, to do with or dispose of as it deems best.
The moon of Earth and the asteroid belt have become a permanent base of operations for The Domain Forces.
Needless to say, any attempt by humans or others to interfere in the activities of The Domain in this solar system -- even if it were possible, which it definitely is not -- will be terminated swiftly. This is not a serious concern, as I mentioned earlier, since homo sapiens cannot operate in open space.
Of course we will continue with the next steps of The Domain Expansion Plan which has remained on schedule for billions of years. Over the next 5,000 years there will be increasing traffic and activity of The Domain Forces as we progress toward the center of this galaxy and beyond to spread our civilization through the universe.
If humanity is to survive, it must cooperate to find effective solutions to the difficult conditions of your existence on Earth. Humanity must rise above its human form and discover where they are, and that they are IS- BEs, and who they really are as IS-BEs in order to transcend the notion that they are merely biological bodies. Once these realizations have been made, it may be possible to escape your current imprisonment. Otherwise, there will be no future for the IS-BEs on Earth.
Although there are no active battles or war being waged between The Domain and the "Old Empire", there still exists the covert actions of the "Old Empire" taken against Earth through their thought control operation.
When one knows that these activities exist, the effects can be observed clearly. The most obvious examples of these actions against the human race can be seen as incidents of sudden, inexplicable behavior. A very recent instance of this occurred in the United States military just before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Just three days before the attack, someone in authority ordered all the ships in Pearl Harbor to go into port and secure for inspection. The ships were ordered to take all the ammunition out of their magazines, and store it below. On the afternoon before attack all of the admirals and generals were attending parties, even though two Japanese aircraft carriers were discovered standing right off Pearl Harbor.
The obvious action to take would have been to contact Pearl Harbor by telephone to warn them of the danger of a fight starting and to put the ammunition back and order the ships to get out of port into open sea.
About six hours before the Japanese attack began, a U.S. navy ship sank a small Japanese submarine right outside the harbor. Instead of contacting Pearl Harbor by telephone to report the incident, a warning message was put into top secret code, which took about two hours to encode, and then it took another two hours to decode. The word of warning to Pearl Harbor did not arrive until 10:00 AM Pearl Harbor time, Sunday -- two hours after the Japanese attack destroyed the U.S. fleet.
How do things like this happen?
If the men who were responsible for these obviously disastrous errors were stood up and asked bluntly to justify their actions and intentions you would find out that they were quite sincere in their jobs. Ordinarily, they do the very best they can do for people and nations. However, all of a sudden, from some completely unknown and undetectable source enters these wild, unexplainable situations that just 'can't exist'.
The "Old Empire" thought control operation is run by a small group of old "baboons" with very small minds. They are playing insidious games with no purpose and no goal other than to control and destroy IS-BEs who could otherwise manage themselves perfectly well, if left alone.
These types of artificially created incidents are being forced upon the human race by the operators of the mind-control prison system. The prison guards will always promote and support oppressive or totalitarian activities of IS-BEs on Earth. Why not keep the inmates fighting between themselves? Why not empower madmen to run the governments of Earth? The men who run the criminal governments of Earth mirror the commands given them by covert thought-controllers of the "Old Empire".
The human race will continue to shadow box with this for a long time -- as long as it remains the human race.
Until then, the IS-BEs on Earth will continue to live a series of consecutive lives, over and over and over. The same IS-BEs who lived during the rise and fall of civilizations in India, China, Mesepotamia, Greece, and Rome are inhabiting bodies in the present time in America, France, Russia, Africa, and around the world.
In between each lifetime an IS-BE is sent back again, to begin all over, as though the new life was the only life they had ever lived. They begin anew in pain, in misery, and mystery.
Some IS-BEs have been transported to Earth more recently than others. Some IS-BEs have been on Earth only a few hundred years, so they have no personal experiences with the earlier civilizations of Earth. They have no experiences of having lived on Earth, so could not remember a previous existence here, even if their memory was restored. They might, however, remember lives they lived elsewhere on other planets and in other times.
Others have been here since the first days of Lemuria. In any case, the IS-BEs of Earth are here forever, until they can break the amnesia cycle, conquer the electronic traps set up by their captors and free themselves.
Because The Domain has three thousand of their own IS-BEs in captivity on Earth also, they have an interest in solving this problem. This problem has never been encountered or effectively solved before in the universe, as far as they know. They will continue their efforts to free those IS-BEs from Earth, where and when it is possible, but it will require time to develop an unprecedented technology and the diligence to do so.'
…
Summary and conclusion
The vast bulk of the narrative in the “Alien Interview” contained references and information relative to the conventional situation. When a need to elaborate on certain points occurred, the extraterrestrial used personal stories and data to “flush it out” so as to clarify the situations involved.
This article contains the vast bulk of the narrative as it pertains to contemporaneous humans on Earth devoid of any older historical references.
Do you want more?
You can find many more videos in my “Extraterrestrial Species index” over here…
I have presented the PDF titled “Alien Interview” to the readership. It is supposed to be the transcripts of the interview that a nurse had with an extraterrestrial entity that was recovered from a spaceship crash in Roswell, New Mexico. There is a lot of good stuff there, and some things that run counter to what I know and understand to be true. My intention here is to parse the entire book, and compare it to what I know. Where the two diverge, it will be up to you (the readership) to sort it out.
In the transcript the extraterrestrial jumps all over. And in many instances he seems to reflect normal regular human feelings and attitudes about issues (such as the platypus) and you can read it and miss many things as it is a dated document translated by a nurse in 1947. In order to best sort it out, to a frame of reference that we can all understand, I am now (in this series of articles) going to separate the “Alien Interview” document into sections categorized by dates.
The extraterrestrial discussed period of time in…
Trillions of years. (Birth of consciousness, universe creation.)
Billions of years. (Galaxy creation, and early civilizations.)
Millions of years. (Local events in our region, and mankind.)
Thousands of years. (A scope most important to humans.)
In this article we will discuss the largest and most alien time scope; trillions of years.
Because the text will be taken out of the document, there might be some discontinuity in the text. In any case, I would advise reading the entire full document for a better understanding of context. Further, keep in mind that the purpose of this particular post / article is to separate the transcript into wide categories depending on the span of times discussed. I fear that the extraterrestrial was talking about a few thousand years in the past, then jumped to trillions of years ago, jumps to millions of years ago, jumps to decades, and then back to billions of years ago. This effort is to help sort things out chronologically.
The text segments…
"Personally, it is my conviction that all sentient beings are immortal spiritual beings. This includes human beings. For the sake of accuracy and simplicity I will use a made-up word: "IS-BE".
Because the primary nature of an immortal being is that they live in a timeless state of "is", and the only reason for their existence is that they decide to "be".
No matter how lowly their station in a society, every IS-BE deserves the respect and treatment that I myself would like to receive from others. Each person on Earth continues to be an IS-BE whether they are aware of the fact or not."
…
"Before you can understand the subject of history, you must first understand the subject of time. Time is simply an arbitrary measurement of the motion of objects through space.
Space is not linear. Space is determined by the point of view of an IS-BE when viewing an object. The distance between an IS-BE and the object being viewed is called "space".
Objects, or energy masses, in space do not necessarily move in a linear fashion. In this universe, objects tend to move randomly or in a curving or cyclical pattern, or as determined by agreed upon rules.
History is not only a linear record of events, as many authors of Earth history books imply, because it is not a string that can be stretched out and marked like a measuring tool. History is a subjective observation of the movement of objects through space, recorded from the point of view of a survivor, rather than of those who succumbed.
Events occur interactively and concurrently, just as the biological body has a heart that pumps blood, while the lungs provide oxygen to the cells, which reproduce, using energy from the sun and chemicals from plants, at the same time as the liver strains toxic wastes from the blood, and eliminates them through the bladder and the bowels.
All of these interactions are concurrent and simultaneous. Although time runs consecutively, events do not happen in an independent, linear stream.
In order to view and understand the history or reality of the past, one must view all events as part of an interactive whole. Time can also be sensed as a vibration which is uniform throughout the entire physical universe.
Airl explained that IS-BEs have been around since before the beginning of the universe. The reason they are called "immortal", is because a "spirit" is not born and cannot die, but exists in a personally postulated perception of "is - will be". She was careful to explain that every spirit is not the same. Each is completely unique in identity, power, awareness and ability.
The difference between an IS-BE like Airl and most of the IS-BEs inhabiting bodies on Earth, is that Airl can enter and depart from her "doll" at will. She can perceive at selective depths through matter. Airl and other officers of The Domain can communicate telepathically. Since an IS-BE is not a physical universe entity it has no location in space or time.
An IS-BE is literally, "immaterial". They can span great distances of space instantly.
They can experience sensations, more intensely than a biological body, without the use of physical sensory mechanisms. An IS-BE can exclude pain from their perception. Airl can also remember her "identity", so to speak, all the way back into the dim mists of time, for trillions of years!
She says that the existing collection of suns in this immediate vicinity of the universe have been burning for the last 200 trillion years. The age of the physical universe is nearly infinitely old, but probably at least four quadrillion years since its earliest beginnings.
Time is a difficult factor to measure as it depends on the subjective memory of IS-BEs and there has been no uniform record of events throughout the physical universe since it began. As on Earth, there are many different time measurement systems, defined by various cultures, which use cycles of motion, and points of origin to establish age and duration.
The physical universe itself is formed from the convergence and amalgamation of many other individual universes, each one of which were created by an IS-BE or group of IS-BEs.
The collision of these illusory universes commingled and coalesced and were solidified to form a mutually created universe. Because it is agreed that energy and forms can be created, but not destroyed, this creative process has continued to form an ever-expanding universe of nearly infinite physical proportions.
Before the formation of the physical universe there was a vast period during which universes were not solid, but wholly illusionary. You might say that the universe was a universe of magical illusions which were made to appear and vanish at the will of the magician. In every case, the "magician" was one or more IS-BEs. Many IS-BEs on Earth can still recall vague images from that period. Tales of magic, sorcery and enchantment, fairy tales and mythology speak of such things, although in very crude terms.
Each IS-BE entered into the physical universe when they lost their own, "home" universe. That is, when an IS-BE's "home" universe was overwhelmed by the physical universe, or when the IS-BE joined with other IS-BEs to create or conquer the physical universe.
On Earth, the ability to determine when an IS- BE entered the physical universe is difficult for two reasons:
1) the memory of IS-BEs on Earth have been erased, and
2) IS-BEs arrival or invasion into the physical universe took place at different times, some 60 trillion years ago, and others only 3 trillion.
…
The Domain has conducted a periodic survey of the galaxies in this sector of the universe since it developed space travel technologies about 80 trillion years ago.
A review of changes in the complexion of Earth reveal that mountain ranges rise and fall, continents change location, the poles of the planet shift, ice caps come and go, oceans appear and disappear, rivers, valleys and canyons change. In all cases, the matter is the same. It is always the same sand.
Every form and substance is made of the same basic material, which never deteriorates.
…
"The origins of this universe and life on Earth, as discussed in the textbooks I have read, are very inaccurate. Since you serve your government as a medical personnel, your duties require that you understand biological entities. So, I am sure that you will appreciate the value of the material I will share with you today.
The text of books I have been given on subjects related to the function of life forms contain information that is based on false memories, inaccurate observation, missing data, unproven theories, and superstition.
…
The correct information about the origins of biological entities has been erased from your mind, as well as from the minds of your mentors. In order to help you regain your own memory, I will share with you some factual material concerning the origin of biological entities.
I asked Airl if she was referring to the subject of evolution. Airl said, "No, not exactly".
You will find "evolution" mentioned in the ancient Vedic Hymns. The Vedic texts are like folk tales or common wisdoms and superstitions gathered throughout the systems of The Domain. These were compiled into verses, like a book of rhymes. For every statement of truth, the verses contain as many half-truths, reversals of truth and fanciful imaginings, blended without qualification or distinction.
The theory of evolution assumes that the motivational source of energy that animates every life form does not exist. It assumes that an inanimate object or a chemical concoction can suddenly become "alive" or animate accidentally or spontaneously.
Or, perhaps an electrical discharge into a pool of chemical ooze will magically spawn a self- animated entity.
There is no evidence whatsoever that this is true, simply because it is not true. Dr. Frankenstein did not really resurrect the dead into a marauding monster, except in the imagination of the IS-BE who wrote a fictitious story one dark and stormy night.
No Western scientist ever stopped to consider who, what, where, when or how this animation happens. Complete ignorance, denial or unawareness of the spirit as the source of life force required to animate inanimate objects or cellular tissue is the sole cause of failures in Western medicine.
In addition, evolution does not occur accidentally. It requires a great deal of technology which must be manipulated under the careful supervision of IS-BEs. Very simple examples are seen in the modification of farm animals or in the breeding of dogs. However, the notion that human biological organisms evolved naturally from earlier ape-like forms is incorrect. No physical evidence will ever be uncovered to substantiate the notion that modern humanoid bodies evolved on this planet.
The reason is simple: the idea that human bodies evolved spontaneously from the primordial ooze of chemical interactivity in the dim mists of time is nothing more than a hypnotic lie instilled by the amnesia operation to prevent your recollection of the true origins of Mankind. Factually, humanoid bodies have existed in various forms throughout the universe for trillions of years.
…
Immortal Spiritual Beings, which I refer to as "IS-BEs", for the sake of convenience, are the source and creators of illusions. Each one, individually and collectively, in their original, unfettered state of being, are an eternal, all-powerful, all-knowing entity.
IS-BEs create space by imagining a location. The intervening distance between themselves and the imagined location is what we call space.
An IS-BE can perceive the space and objects created by other IS-BEs.
IS-BEs are not physical universe entities. They are a source of energy and illusion. IS- BEs are not located in space or time, but can create space, place particles in space, create energy, and shape particles into various forms, cause the motion of forms, and animate forms. Any form that is animated by an IS-BE is called life.
An IS-BE can decide to agree that they are located in space or time, and that they, themselves, are an object, or any other manner of illusion created by themselves or another or other IS-BEs.
The disadvantage of creating an illusion is that an illusion must be continually created. If not continually created, it disappears. Continual creation of an illusion requires incessant attention to every detail of the illusion in order to sustain it.
A common denominator of IS-BEs seems to be the desire to avoid boredom.
A spirit only, without interaction with other IS-BEs, and the unpredictable motion, drama, and unanticipated intentions and illusions being created by other IS-BEs, is easily bored.
What if you could imagine anything, perceive everything, and cause anything to happen, at will? What if you couldn't do anything else? What if you always knew the outcome of every game and the answer to every question?
Would you get bored?
The entire back time track of IS-BEs is immeasurable, nearly infinite in terms of physical universe time.
There is no measurable "beginning" or "end" for an IS-BE.
They simply exist in an everlasting now.
Another common denominator of IS-BEs is that admiration of one's own illusions by others is very desirable.
If the desired admiration is not forthcoming, the IS-BE will keep creating the illusion in an attempt to get admiration. One could say that the entire physical universe is made of unadmired illusions.
The origins of this universe began with the creation of individual, illusionary spaces. These were the "home" of the IS-BE.
Sometimes a universe is a collaborative creation of illusions by two or more IS-BEs. A proliferation of IS-BEs, and the universes they create, sometimes collide or become commingled or merge to an extent that many IS-BEs shared in the co-creation of a universe.
IS-BEs diminish their ability in order to have a game to play. IS-BEs think that any game is better than no game.
They will endure pain, suffering, stupidity, privation, and all manner of unnecessary and undesirable conditions, just to play a game. Pretending that one does not know all, see all and cause all, is a way to create the conditions necessary for playing a game: unknowns, freedoms, barriers and/or opponents and goals. Ultimately, playing a game solves the problem of boredom.
In this fashion, all of the space, galaxies, suns, planets, and physical phenomena of this universe, including life forms, places, and events have been created by IS-BEs and sustained by mutual agreement that these things exist.
There are as many universes as there are IS-BEs to imagine, build and perceive them, each existing concurrently within its own continuum. Each universe is created using its own unique set of rules, as imagined, altered, preserved or destroyed by one or more IS-BEs who created it. Time, energy, objects and space, as defined in terms of the physical universe, may or may not exist in other universes. The Domain exists in such a universe, as well as in the physical universe.
One of the rules of the physical universe is that energy can be created, but not destroyed. So, the universe will keep expanding as long as IS-BEs keep adding more new energy into it. It is nearly infinite. It is like an automobile assembly line that never stops running and none of the cars are ever destroyed.
Every IS-BE is basically good.
Therefore, an IS-BE does not enjoy doing things to other IS- BEs which they themselves do not want to experience. For an IS-BE there is no inherent standard for what is good or bad, right or wrong, ugly or beautiful. These ideas are all based on the opinion of each individual IS-BE.
The closest concept that human beings have to describe an IS-BE is as a god: all-knowing, all-powerful, infinite. So, how does a god stop being a god?
They pretend NOT to know. How can you play a game of "hide and seek" if you always know where the other person is hiding?
You pretend NOT to know where the other players are hiding, so you can go off to "seek" them. This is how games are created. You have forgotten that you are just "pretending". In so doing, IS-BEs become entrapped and enslaved inside a maze of their own devising.
How does one create a cage, lock one's own self inside the cage, throw away the key, and forget there is a key or a cage, and forget there is an "inside" or "outside", and even forget there is a self? Create the illusion that there is no illusion: the entire universe is real, and that no other universe exists or can be created.
On Earth, the propaganda taught and agreed upon is that the gods are responsible, and that human beings are not responsible. You are taught that only a god can create universes. So, the responsibility for every action is assigned to another IS-BE or god. Never oneself.
No human being ever assumes personal responsibility for the fact that they, themselves -- individually and collectively -- are gods. This fact alone is the source of entrapment for every IS-BE.
…
Some comments on this.
These discussions, and text narratives, refer to a time where our universe (via the “Big Bang”) was not yet created. And in that land of no time (yet the extraterrestrial refers to time…?) and no space, the IS-BE consciousness existed. And this is what it was like.
Do you want more?
You can find many more videos in my “Extraterrestrial Species index” over here…
I have presented the PDF titled “Alien Interview” to the readership. It is supposed to be the transcripts of the interview that a nurse had with an extraterrestrial entity that was recovered from a spaceship crash in Roswell, New Mexico. There is a lot of good stuff there, and some things that run counter to what I know and understand to be true. My intention here is to parse the entire book, and compare it to what I know. Where the two diverge, it will be up to you (the readership) to sort it out.
In the transcript the extraterrestrial jumps all over. And in many instances he seems to reflect normal regular human feelings and attitudes about issues (such as the platypus) and you can read it and miss many things as it is a dated document translated by a nurse in 1947. In order to best sort it out, to a frame of reference that we can all understand, I am now (in this series of articles) going to separate the “Alien Interview” document into sections categorized by dates.
The extraterrestrial discussed period of time in…
Trillions of years. (Birth of consciousness, universe creation.)
Billions of years. (Galaxy creation, and early civilizations.)
Millions of years. (Local events in our region, and mankind.)
Thousands of years. (A scope most important to humans.)
In this article we will discuss the time scope of billions of years.
Because the text will be taken out of the document, there might be some discontinuity in the text. In any case, I would advise reading the entire full document for a better understanding of context. Further, keep in mind that the purpose of this particular post / article is to separate the transcript into wide categories depending on the span of times discussed. I fear that the extraterrestrial was talking about a few thousand years in the past, then jumped to trillions of years ago, jumps to millions of years ago, jumps to decades, and then back to billions of years ago. This effort is to help sort things out chronologically.
Perspective
According to the learned “experts” the “big bang” hit around 14 – 15 billion years ago. Eventually forming our galaxy which absorbed other galaxies in the process. Based on the composition of stars, they have estimated that most stars in our universe today are fourth or fifth generation.
Our solar system is around 4 – 5 billion years old.
The text segments
Every once in a short while, a few million years, an area or planet will be taken over by another group of IS-BEs entering into the area.
Sometimes they will capture other IS-BEs as slaves. They will be forced to inhabit bodies to perform menial, or manual work -- especially mining mineral ores on heavy-gravity planets, such as Earth.
Airl says that, when she became a pilot for a biological survey mission which included occasional visits to Earth. She can remember her entire career there, and for a very long time before that.
She told me that Earth scientists do not have an accurate measuring system to gauge the age of matter. They assume that because certain types of materials seem to deteriorate rather quickly, such as organic or carbon-based matter, that there is a deterioration of matter. It is not accurate to measure the age of stone, based on the measurement of the age of wood or bone. This is a fundamental error. Factually, matter does not deteriorate. It cannot be destroyed. Matter may be altered in form, but it is never truly destroyed.
…
I can relate part of this history from personal experience:
Many billions of years ago I was a member of a very large biological laboratory in a galaxy far from this one. It was called the "Arcadia Regeneration Company". I was a biological engineer working with a large staff of technicians. It was our business to manufacture and supply new life forms to uninhabited planets. There were millions of star systems with millions of inhabitable planets in the region at that time.
There were many other biological laboratory companies at that time also. Each of them specialized in producing different kinds of life forms, depending on the "class" of the planet being populated. Over a long span of time these laboratories developed a vast catalogue of species throughout the galaxies. The majority of basic genetic material is common to all species of life. Therefore, most of their work was concerned with manipulating alterations of the basic genetic pattern to produce variations of life forms that would be suitable inhabitants for various planetary classes.
The "Arcadia Regeneration Company" specialized in mammals for forested areas and birds for tropical regions. Our marketing staff negotiated contracts with various planetary governments and independent buyers from all over the universe. The technicians created animals that were compatible with the variations in climate, atmospheric and terrestrial density and chemical content. In addition we were paid to integrate our specimens with biological organisms engineered by other companies already living on a planet.
In order to do this our staff was in communication with other companies who created life forms. There were industry trade shows, publications and a variety of other information supplied through an association that coordinated related projects.
As you can imagine, our research required a great deal of interstellar travel to conduct planetary surveys. This is when I learned my skills as a pilot. The data gathered was accumulated in huge computer databases and evaluated by biological engineers.
A computer is an electronic device that serves as an artificial "brain" or complex calculating machine. It is capable of storing information, making computations, solving problems and performing mechanical functions. In most of the galactic systems of the universe, very large computers are commonly used to run the routine administration, mechanical services and maintenance activities of an entire planet or planetary system.
Based on the survey data gathered, designs and artistic renderings were made for new creatures. Some designs were sold to the highest bidder. Other life forms were created to meet the customized requests of our clients.
The design and technical specifications were passed along an assembly line through a series of cellular, chemical, and mechanical engineers to solve the various problems. It was their job to integrate all of the component factors into a workable, functional and aesthetic finished product.
Prototypes of these creatures were then produced and tested in artificially created environments. Imperfections were worked out, modifications made and eventually the new life form was "endowed" or "animated" with a life force or spiritual energy before being introduced into the actual planetary environment for final testing.
After a new life form was introduced, we monitored the interaction of these biological organisms with the planetary environment and with other indigenous life-forms. Conflicts resulting from the interaction between incompatible organisms were resolved through negotiation between ourselves and other companies. The negotiations usually resulted in compromises requiring further modification to our creatures or to theirs or both. This is part of a science or art you call "Eugenics".
In some cases changes were made in the planetary environment, but not often, as planet building is much more complex than making changes to an individual life form.
…
What you see now on Earth is the huge variety of life forms left behind. Your scientists believe that the fallacious "theory of evolution" is an explanation for the existence of all the life forms here. The truth is that all life forms on this and any other planet in this universe were created by companies like ours.
How else can you explain the millions of completely divergent and unrelated species of life on the land and in the oceans of this planet? How else can you explain the source of spiritual animation which defines every living creature? To say it is the work of "god", is far too broad. Every IS-BE has many names and faces in many times and places. Every IS-BE is a god. When they inhabit a physical object they are the source of Life.
For example, there are millions of species of insects. About 350,000 of these are species of beetles. There may be as many as 100 million species of life forms on Earth at any given time. In addition, there are many times more extinct species of life on Earth than there are living life forms. Some of these will be rediscovered in the fossil or geological records of Earth.
The current "theory of evolution" of life forms on Earth does not consider the phenomena of biological diversity. Evolution by natural selection is science fiction. One species does not accidentally, or randomly evolve to become another species, as the Earth textbooks indicate, without manipulation of genetic material by an IS-BE.
…
Factually, some organisms on Earth, such as Proteobacteria, are modifications of a Phylum designed primarily for "Star Type 3, Class C" planets. In other words, The Domain designation for a planet with an anaerobic atmosphere nearest a large, intensely hot blue star, such as those in the constellation of Orion's Belt in this galaxy.
Creating life forms is very complex, highly technical work for IS-BEs who specialize in this field. Genetic anomalies are very baffling to Earth biologists who have had their memory erased. Unfortunately, the false memory implantations of the "Old Empire" prevent Earth scientists from observing obvious anomalies.
The greatest technical challenge of biological organisms was the invention of self- regeneration, or sexual reproduction. It was invented as the solution to the problem of having to continually manufacture replacement creatures for those that had been destroyed and eaten by other creatures. Planetary governments did not want to keep buying replacement animals.
The idea was contrived trillions of years ago as a result of a conference held to resolve arguments between the disputing vested interests within the biotechnology industry. The infamous "Council of Yuhmi-Krum" was responsible for coordinating creature production.
A compromise was reached, after certain members of the Council were strategically bribed or murdered, to author an agreement which resulted in the biological phenomenon which we now call the "food chain".
The idea that a creature would need to consume the body of another life form as an energy source was offered as a solution by one of the biggest companies in the biological engineering business. They specialized in creating insects and flowering plants.
The connection between the two is obvious. Nearly every flowering plant requires a symbiotic relationship with an insect in order to propagate. The reason is obvious: both the bugs and the flowers were created by the same company. Unfortunately, this same company also had a division which created parasites and bacteria.
The name of the company roughly translated into English would be "Bugs & Blossoms" . They wanted to justify the fact that the only valid purpose of the parasitic creatures they manufactured was to aid the decomposition of organic material. There was a very limited market for such creatures at that time.
In order to expand their business they hired a big public relations firm and a powerful group of political lobbyists to glorify the idea that life forms should feed from other life forms. They invented a "scientific theory" to use as a promotion gimmick. The theory was that all creatures needed to have "food" as a source of energy. Before that, none of the life forms being manufactured required any external energy. Animals did not eat other animals for food, but consumed sunlight, minerals or vegetable matter only.
Of course, "Bugs & Blossoms" went into the business of designing and manufacturing carnivores. Before long, so many animals were being eaten as food that the problem of replenishing them became very difficult. As a 'solution', "Bugs & Blossoms" proposed, with the help of some strategically placed bribes in high places, that other companies begin using 'sexual reproduction' as the basis for replenishing life-forms. "Bugs & Blossoms" was the first company to develop blueprints for sexual reproduction, of course.
As expected, the patent licenses for the biological engineering process required to implant stimulus-response mating, cellular division and pre-programmed growth patterns for self-regenerating animals were owned by "Bugs & Blossoms" too.
Through the next few million years laws were passed that required that these programs be purchased by the other biological technology companies. These were required to be imprinted into the cellular design of all existing life- forms. It became a very expensive undertaking for other biotechnology companies to make such an awkward, and impractical idea work.
This led to the corruption and downfall of the entire industry. Ultimately, the 'food and sex' idea completely ruined the bio-technology industry, including "Bugs & Blossoms". The entire industry faded away as the market for manufactured life forms disappeared. Consequently, when a species became extinct, there is no way to replace them because the technology of creating new life forms has been lost. Obviously, none of this technology was ever known on Earth, and probably never will be.
There are still computer files on some planets far from here which record the procedures for biological engineering. Possibly the laboratories and computers still exist somewhere. However, there is no one around doing anything with them. Therefore, you can understand why it is so important for The Domain to protect the dwindling number of creatures left on Earth.
The core concept behind 'sexual reproduction' technology was the invention of a chemical/electronic interaction called "cyclical stimulus-response generators". This is an programmed genetic mechanism which causes a seemingly spontaneous, recurring impulse to reproduce. The same technique was later adapted and applied to biological flesh bodies, including Homo Sapiens.
Another important mechanism used in the reproductive process, especially with Homo Sapiens type bodies, is the implantation of a "chemical-electrical trigger" mechanism in the body. The "trigger" which attracts IS-BEs to inhabit a human body, or any kind of "flesh body", is the use of an artificially imprinted electronic wave which uses "aesthetic pain" to attract the IS-BE.
Every trap in the universe, including those used to capture IS-BEs who remain free, is "baited" with an aesthetic electronic wave.
The sensations caused by the aesthetic wavelength are more attractive to an IS-BE than any other sensation. When the electronic waves of pain and beauty are combined together, this causes the IS-BE to get "stuck" in the body.
The "reproductive trigger" used for lesser life forms, such as cattle and other mammals, is triggered by chemicals emitted from the scent glands, combined with reproductive chemical- electrical impulses stimulated by testosterone, or estrogen.
These are also interactive with nutrition levels which cause the life form to reproduce more when deprived of food sources. Starvation promotes reproductive activity as a means of perpetuating survival through future regenerations, when the current organism fails to survive. These fundamental principles have been applied throughout all species of life.
The debilitating impact and addiction to the "sexual aesthetic-pain" electronic wave is the reason that the ruling class of The Domain do not inhabit flesh bodies. This is also why officers of The Domain Forces only use doll bodies. This wave has proven to be the most effective trapping device ever created in the history of the universe, as far as I know.
The civilizations of The Domain and the "Old Empire" both depend on this device to "recruit" and maintain a work force of IS-BEs who inhabit flesh bodies on planets and installations. These IS-BEs are the "working class" beings who do all of the slavish, manual, undesirable work on planets.
As I mentioned, there is a very highly regimented and fixed hierarchy or "class system" for all IS-BEs throughout the "Old Empire", and The Domain, as follows:
The highest class are "free" IS-BEs. That is, they are not restricted to the use of any type of body and may come and go at will, provided that they do not destroy or interfere with the social, economic or political structure.
Below this class are many strata of "limited" IS-BEs who may or may not use a body from time to time. Limitations are imposed on each IS-BE regarding range of power, ability and mobility they can exercise.
Below these are the "doll body" classes, to which I belong. Nearly all space officers and crew members of space craft are required to travel through intergalactic space. Therefore, they are each equipped with a body manufactured from lightweight, durable materials. Various body types have been designed to facilitate specialized functions. Some bodies have accessories, such as interchangeable tools or apparatus for activities such as maintenance, mining, chemical management, navigation, and so forth. There are many gradations of this body type which also serve as an "insignia" of rank.
Below these are the soldier class. The soldiers are equipped with a myriad of weapons, and specialized armaments designed to detect, combat and overwhelm any imaginable foe. Some soldiers are issued mechanical bodies. Most soldiers are merely remote controlled robots with no class designation.
The lower classes are limited to "flesh bodies". Of course, it is not possible for these to travel through space for obvious reasons. Fundamentally, flesh bodies are far too fragile to endure the stresses of gravity, temperature extremes, radiation exposure, atmospheric chemicals and the vacuum of space. There are also the obvious logistical inconveniences of food, defecation, sleep, atmospheric elements, and air pressure required by flesh bodies, that doll bodies do not require.
Most flesh bodies will suffocate in only a few minutes without a specific combination of atmospheric chemicals. After 2 or 3 days the bacteria which live internally and externally on the body cause severe odors to be emitted. Odors of any kind are not acceptable in a space vessel.
Flesh can tolerate only a very limited spectrum of temperatures, whereas in space the contrast of temperatures may vary hundreds of degrees within seconds. Of course flesh bodies are utterly useless for military duty. A single shot from a hand-held, electronic blast gun instantly turns a flesh body into a noxious vapor cloud.
IS-BEs who inhabit flesh bodies have lost much of their native ability and power. Although it is theoretically possible to regain or rehabilitate these abilities, no practical means has been discovered or authorized by The Domain.
Even though space craft of The Domain travel trillions of "light years" in a single day, the time required to traverse the space between galaxies is significant, not to mention the length of time to complete just one set of mission orders, which may require thousands of years. Biological flesh bodies live for only a very short time -- only 60 to 150 years, at most -- whereas doll bodies can be re-used and repaired almost indefinitely.
The first development of biological bodies began in this universe about seventy-four trillion years ago. It rapidly became a fad for IS-BEs to create and inhabit various types of bodies for an assortment of nefarious reasons: especially for amusement, this is to experience various physical sensations vicariously through the body.
Since that time there has been a continuing "de-evolution" in the relationship of IS-BEs to bodies. As IS-BEs continued to play around with these bodies, certain tricks were introduced to cause IS-BEs to get trapped inside a body so they were unable to leave again.
This was done primarily by making bodies that appeared sturdy, but were actually very fragile. An IS-BE, using their natural power to create energy, accidentally injured a body when contacting it. The IS-BE was remorseful about having injured this fragile body. The next time they encountered a body they began to be "careful" with them. In so doing, the IS-BE would withdraw or minimize their own power so as not to injure the body. A very long and treacherous history of this kind of trickery, combined with similar misadventures eventually resulted in a large number of IS-BEs becoming permanently trapped in bodies.
Of course this became a profitable enterprise for some IS-BEs who took advantage of this situation to make slaves of others. The resulting enslavement progressed over trillions of years, and continues today. Ultimately the dwindling ability of IS-BEs to maintain a personal state of operational freedom and ability to create energy resulted in the vast and carefully guarded hierarchy or class system. Using bodies as a symbol of each class is used throughout the "Old Empire", as well as The Domain.
The vast majority of IS-BEs throughout the galaxies of this universe inhabit some form of flesh body. The structure, appearance, operation and habitat of these bodies vary according to the gravity, atmosphere, and climatic conditions of the planet they inhabit. Body types are predetermined largely by the type and size of the star around which the planet revolves, the distance from the star, the geological, as well as the atmospheric components of the planet.
On the average, these stars and planets fall into gradients of classification which are fairly standard throughout the universe. For example, Earth is identified, roughly, as a "Sun Type 12, Class 7 planet". That is a heavy gravity, nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere planet, with biological life-forms, in proximity to a single, yellow, medium-size, low-radiation sun or "Type 12 star". The proper designations are difficult to translate accurately due to the extreme limitations of astronomical nomenclature in the English language.
There are as many varieties of life forms as there are grains of sands on the beach. You can imagine how many different creatures and types of bodies have been manufactured by the millions of companies such as "Bugs & Blossoms" for all of the myriad planetary systems during the course of seventy-four trillion years!"
…
As Airl mentioned previously, a very rigid and distinctive hierarchy of social, economic and cultural classes exists throughout The Domain which has remained unvaried and inviolate for many millennia. The body type and function assigned to an IS-BE officer varies specifically according to the rank, class, longevity, training level, command level, service record, and meritorious citations earned by each individual IS-BE, as with any other military insignia.
The body used by Airl is specifically designed for an officer, pilot and engineer of her rank and class. The bodies of her companions, which were destroyed in the crash, were not of the same rank or class, but of a junior rank. Therefore, the appearance, features, composition and functionality of those bodies were specialized, and limited to the requirements of their duties.
The junior officers whose bodies were damaged in the crash have left their bodies and returned to their duties on the space station. The damage suffered by their bodies was due primarily to the fact that they were officers of lower rank. They used bodies which were partially biological and therefore far less durable and resilient than hers.
…
Some thoughts
In general, we can consider these selected text extracts to represent the time period from when the “Big Bang” happened to the early years in the formation of our solar system.
You can see that The Domain (or what ever it called itself then) was very busy creating life templates or systems, or archetypes for our universe. And most of the discussions during this period involved this activity. You can also see that it had created organizations that had similar names to what we refer to as companies, groups, marketing and scientists.
All in all it is very interesting. And in many ways is near equal to my understanding of this time period.
Do you want more?
You can find many more videos in my “Extraterrestrial Species index” over here…
I have presented the PDF titled “Alien Interview” to the readership. It is supposed to be the transcripts of the interview that a nurse had with an extraterrestrial entity that was recovered from a spaceship crash in Roswell, New Mexico. There is a lot of good stuff there, and some things that run counter to what I know and understand to be true. My intention here is to parse the entire book, and compare it to what I know. Where the two diverge, it will be up to you (the readership) to sort it out.
In the transcript the extraterrestrial jumps all over. And in many instances he seems to reflect normal regular human feelings and attitudes about issues (such as the platypus) and you can read it and miss many things as it is a dated document translated by a nurse in 1947. In order to best sort it out, to a frame of reference that we can all understand, I am now (in this series of articles) going to separate the “Alien Interview” document into sections categorized by dates.
The extraterrestrial discussed period of time in…
Trillions of years. (Birth of consciousness, universe creation.)
Billions of years. (Galaxy creation, and early civilizations.)
Millions of years. (Local events in our region, and mankind.)
Thousands of years. (A scope most important to humans.)
In this article we will discuss the time scope of millions of years.
Because the text will be taken out of the document, there might be some discontinuity in the text. In any case, I would advise reading the entire full document for a better understanding of context. Further, keep in mind that the purpose of this particular post / article is to separate the transcript into wide categories depending on the span of times discussed. I fear that the extraterrestrial was talking about a few thousand years in the past, then jumped to trillions of years ago, jumps to millions of years ago, jumps to decades, and then back to billions of years ago. This effort is to help sort things out chronologically.
Millions of years ago.
Our solar system is around 4 – 5 billion years old (according to the “experts”). And our planet Earth really wasn’t much of anything worthwhile up until the last one billion years. Up until around 800 million years ago or so, it was just a hot smoggy mess.
Most Earth humans cannot picture a span of time in the millions of years. But to put things in context, you can use this handy guide…
Most of the stars and planets that we can see through our telescopes were pretty much also visible millions of years ago. Though many had changed and gone through “life cycles” in the process.
On the Earth, life fit into these broad categories…
800m – 500m Early life
500m – 70m Dinosaurs
70m – 10m Mammals
10m – 3m Proto-apes
3m – present Humans
Now there are all sorts of ways to splice and dice these categories up, so I’m not gonna want to hear your arguments one way or the other. This is just a very rough (ROUGH) rule of thumb to put things into context when you are reading the text extracted from the “Alien Interview” document.
The following text refers to stories, experiences, and narratives that took place when the world was rather young. As the extraterrestrial entity narrates, please keep in mind that the earth at this particular time was primitive. If it had life, the chances were that the life was dinosaurs or something similar.
The text segments
Several million years ago I was trained and served as an Investigation, Data Evaluation and Program Development Officer for The Domain. Because I was experienced in that technology, I was sent to Earth as part of the search team. (around 8,000 years ago.)
…
A simple example of IS-BE intervention is the selective breeding of a species on Earth. Within the past few hundred years several hundred dog breeds and hundreds of varieties of pigeons and dozens of Koi fish have been "evolved" in just a few years, beginning with only one original breed. Without active intervention by IS-BEs, biological organisms rarely change.
The development of an animal like the 'duck- billed platypus' required a lot of very clever engineering to combine the body of a beaver with the bill of a duck and make a mammal that lays eggs. Undoubtedly, some wealthy client placed a "special order" for it as a gift or curious amusement. I am sure the laboratory of some biotechnical company worked on it for years to make it a self-replicating life form!
The notion that the creation of any life form could have resulted from a coincidental chemical interaction moldering up from some primordial ooze is beyond absurdity!
…
Thoughts and conclusions
This article discusses extracted quotes relating to a period of time on the order of millions of earth years. Roughly 100 million to 1 million years ago.
The extraterrestrial did not mention much about this period of time. There were only two separate instances that include dates in this time frame.
What we do know, or can infer, is that during this period of time that [1] “The Domain” existed. And that this particular extraterrestrial was involved in various roles to include [2] “training”, “working” and “learning”.
Do you want more?
You can find many more videos in my “Extraterrestrial Species index” over here…
I have presented the PDF titled “Alien Interview” to the readership. It is supposed to be the transcripts of the interview that a nurse had with an extraterrestrial entity that was recovered from a spaceship crash in Roswell, New Mexico. There is a lot of good stuff there, and some things that run counter to what I know and understand to be true. My intention here is to parse the entire book, and compare it to what I know. Where the two diverge, it will be up to you (the readership) to sort it out.
This is part 8.
This is part eight of the parsing of this document
“It is my personal belief that the truth should not be sacrificed on the altar of political, religious or economic expediency.
As an officer, pilot and engineer of The Domain it is my duty to protect the greater good of The Domain and its possessions.
However, we cannot defend ourselves against forces of which we are not aware.
The extraterrestrial wants to discuss truths as it understands them, but realizes that there are limitations on what it can say, and barriers in understanding what is related.
The isolation of Earth from the rest of civilization prevents me from discussing many subjects with you at this time.
The forced isolated of Earth, makes it very difficult to discuss matters of importance. Most of what would be discussed would be new, strange or incomprehensible to humans.
Security and protocol prevent me from revealing any but the broadest, general statements about the plans and activities of The Domain.
It is a military officer in an organization with limitations are requirements that it must meet.
However, I can give you some information that you may find useful.
But, and never the less, some information can be provided that will be useful.
I must return to my assigned duties on the “space station” now.
This "Alien interview" was a distraction. Not a major event. It it time for the extraterrestrial to return to it's normal duties.
I have provided as much help as I feel ethically able to offer, given the requirements and constraints of my duties as an officer, pilot and engineer of The Domain Forces. Therefore, I will depart, as an IS-BE, from Earth within the next 24 hours.’
It is time for it to leave.
Notes
(EDITOR'S NOTE: The following several paragraphs appear to be personal comments made by Matilda to the stenographer regarding her interview with Airl.)
What this means is that Airl will leave her “doll” with us, as her craft is damaged beyond repair. We can examine, dissect and study the body at our leisure. She does not have any further use for it, nor does she have any personal feelings or attachments to it as others are readily available for her use.
Airl does not recommend that there is any technology in the body that Earth scientists will find useful, however. The technology of the body is simple, yet vastly beyond the reckoning of our current ability to analyze or reverse engineer any facet of it. The body is neither biological or mechanical, but a unique fabrication a materials and ancient technologies not found on any Earth-type planet.
As Airl mentioned previously, a very rigid and distinctive hierarchy of social, economic and cultural classes exists throughout The Domain which has remained unvaried and inviolate for many millennia. The body type and function assigned to an IS-BE officer varies specifically according to the rank, class, longevity, training level, command level, service record, and meritorious citations earned by each individual IS-BE, as with any other military insignia.
The body used by Airl is specifically designed for an officer, pilot and engineer of her rank and class. The bodies of her companions, which were destroyed in the crash, were not of the same rank or class, but of a junior rank. Therefore, the appearance, features, composition and functionality of those bodies were specialized, and limited to the requirements of their duties.
The junior officers whose bodies were damaged in the crash have left their bodies and returned to their duties on the space station. The damage suffered by their bodies was due primarily to the fact that they were officers of lower rank. They used bodies which were partially biological and therefore far less durable and resilient than hers.
Transcript resumes
(EDITOR'S NOTE: At this point, the transcript appears to resume with statements made by Airl.)
Although The Domain will not hesitate to destroy any active vestiges of the “Old Empire” operations where ever they are discovered this is not our primary mission in this galaxy.
The Domain primary mission is something else. It will destroy "Old Empire" remnants where ever it finds them.
I am sure that the “Old Empire” mind-control mechanisms can be deactivated and destroyed eventually.
I agree with this.
However, it is not possible to estimate how long this make take, as we do not understand the extent of this operation at this time.
I also agree with this, though I do believe that things has changed substantially with MAJestic assistance from the 1960's to present.
We do know that the “Old Empire” force screen is vast enough to cover this end of the galaxy, at least.
It is not limited to the Earth. Nor is it limited to the solar system. But it extends much further than that and includes a region of space with numerous solar systems. I can tell you that there are at least five "sentience nurseries" or recovering "prison planets" in this neighborhood.
We also know from experience that each force generator and trapping device is very difficult to detect, locate and destroy.
Not a good thing.
Also, it is not the current mission of The Domain Expeditionary Force to commit resources to this endeavor.
Not a good thing.
The eventual destruction of these devices may make it possible for your memory to be restored, simply by virtue of not having it erased after each lifetime.
The destruction of the devices will probably and likely prevent the erasure of memories. But it will not be able to recover previously lost memories unfortunately.
Fortunately, the memory of an IS-BE cannot be permanently erased.
So, the memories will still be dormant, sitting there. They just will not be easily recovered.
There are many other active space civilizations who maintain various nefarious operations in this area, not the least of which is dumping unwanted IS-BEs on Earth.
There are many other space civilizations similar to the "Old Empire" that acts in this geographic area of our solar system.
None of these craft are hostile or in violent opposition to The Domain Forces. They know better than to challenge us!
They are war-mongering with evil intent, but they are afraid of the Domain. Which is probably why the Type-1 greys are so dominant in the solar system with MAJestic.
For the most part The Domain ignores Earth and its inhabitants, except to ensure that the resources of the planet itself are not permanently spoiled.
They do not want the earth to be radioactive, or swamped with incurable biological weapons.
This sector of the galaxy was annexed by The Domain and is the possession of The Domain, to do with or dispose of as it deems best.
This entire region, including the Earth is the property of The Domain.
The moon of Earth and the asteroid belt have become a permanent base of operations for The Domain Forces.
Permanent bases of operations for the Domain exist on the moon and in the asteroid belt. You all might want to read my article on The Hollow Moon.
Needless to say, any attempt by humans or others to interfere in the activities of The Domain in this solar system – even if it were possible, which it definitely is not – will be terminated swiftly.
Up front warning to the military leadership at Roswell.
This is not a serious concern, as I mentioned earlier, since homo sapiens cannot operate in open space.
Still the warning is there.
Of course we will continue with the next steps of The Domain Expansion Plan which has remained on schedule for billions of years. Over the next 5,000 years there will be increasing traffic and activity of The Domain Forces as we progress toward the center of this galaxy and beyond to spread our civilization through the universe.
This region of space will see more type-1 grey activities and will become more important as time moves on.
If humanity is to survive, it must cooperate to find effective solutions to the difficult conditions of your existence on Earth.
Humanity must cooperate with the Domain. Which is probably why MAJestic was established.
Humanity must rise above its human form and discover where they are, and that they are IS-BEs, and who they really are as IS-BEs in order to transcend the notion that they are merely biological bodies.
Once these realizations have been made, it may be possible to escape your current imprisonment.
Otherwise, there will be no future for the IS-BEs on Earth.
Thus anyone or anything that dwells on the carnal things of the flesh and the physical takes away from the notion of consciousness and purpose. Be the Rufus, or try to become filthy rich and popular like the media says. there is no in between.
Although there are no active battles or war being waged between The Domain and the “Old Empire”, there still exists the covert actions of the “Old Empire” taken against Earth through their thought control operation.
Covert actions are engaged on the earth.
When one knows that these these activities exist, the effects can be observed clearly.
The most obvious examples of these actions against the human race can be seen as incidents of sudden, inexplicable behavior.
A very recent instance of this occurred in the United States military just before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Such as carpet bombing China with bio-weapons, and the Coronavirus, and the strange behaviors of American and British Naval vessels.
Just three days before the attack, someone in authority ordered all the ships in Pearl Harbor to go into port and secure for inspection. The ships were ordered to take all the ammunition out of their magazines, and store it below. On the afternoon before attack all of the admirals and generals were attending parties, even though two Japanese aircraft carriers were discovered standing right off Pearl Harbor.
The obvious action to take would have been to contact Pearl Harbor by telephone to warn them of the danger of a fight starting and to put the ammunition back and order the ships to get out of port into open sea.
About six hours before the Japanese attack began, a U.S. navy ship sank a small Japanese submarine right outside the harbor. Instead of contacting Pearl Harbor by telephone to report the incident, a warning message was put into top secret code, which took about two hours to encode, and then it took another two hours to decode.
The word of warning to Pearl Harbor did not arrive until 10:00 AM Pearl Harbor time, Sunday – two hours after the Japanese attack destroyed the U.S. fleet.
How do things like this happen?
If the men who were responsible for these obviously disastrous errors were stood up and asked bluntly to justify their actions and intentions you would find out that they were quite sincere in their jobs. Ordinarily, they do the very best they can do for people and nations. However, all of a sudden, from some completely unknown and undetectable source enters these wild, unexplainable situations that just ‘can’t exist’.
Such unexplainable actions by otherwise sensible people can and will occur.
The “Old Empire” thought control operation is run by a small group of old “baboons” with very small minds. They are playing insidious games with no purpose and no goal other than to control and destroy IS-BEs who could otherwise manage themselves perfectly well, if left alone.
It's an apt description of a very low mental state of humanoid.
These types of artificially created incidents (as recently) are being forced upon the human race by the operators of the mind-control prison system. The prison guards will always promote and support oppressive or totalitarian activities of IS-BEs on Earth.
Think of America today, and South Africa.
Why not keep the inmates fighting between themselves?
Why not empower madmen to run the governments of Earth?
The men who run the criminal governments of Earth mirror the commands given them by covert thought-controllers of the “Old Empire”.
Directions from their controllers who are well hidden and dispersed throughout the Old Empire. Even though it is in ruin, they still work their roles.
The human race will continue to shadow box with this for a long time – as long as it remains the human race. Until then, the IS-BEs on Earth will continue to live a series of consecutive lives, over and over and over. The same IS-BEs who lived during the rise and fall of civilizations in India, China, Mesopotamia, Greece, and Rome are inhabiting bodies in the present time in America, France, Russia, Africa, and around the world.
Sigh. This sucks.
In between each lifetime an IS-BE is sent back again, to begin all over, as though the new life was the only life they had ever lived. They begin anew in pain, in misery, and mystery.
Sigh. This sucks.
Some IS-BEs have been transported to Earth more recently than others. Some IS-BEs have been on Earth only a few hundred years, so they have no personal experiences with the earlier civilizations of Earth. They have no experiences of having lived on Earth, so could not remember a previous existence here, even if their memory was restored. They might, however, remember lives they lived elsewhere on other planets and in other times.
A very interesting statement. If the person had a life on another planet and was then transported to earth and had the memories erased, the memories of the prior planet might still exist and be easier to acquire.
Others have been here since the first days of Lemuria.
In any case, the IS-BEs of Earth are here forever, until they can break the amnesia cycle, conquer the electronic traps set up by their captors and free themselves.
It is a four step plan on what to do.
[1] Break the amnesia cycle.
[2] Conquer the electronic traps.
[3] free themselves from this region.
Because The Domain has three thousand of their own IS-BEs in captivity on Earth also, they have an interest in solving this problem.
This problem has never been encountered or effectively solved before in the universe, as far as they know.
It is a new problem as of 1947.
They will continue their efforts to free those IS-BEs from Earth, where and when it is possible, but it will require time to develop an unprecedented technology and the diligence to do so.
(EDITOR’S NOTE: The following statement is a comment by Matilda.)
I think it is Airl’s sincere desire, as one IS-BE to another, that the rest of our eternity will be as pleasant as possible.”
End of Part eight
It’s all a pretty interesting discussion. What’s up? Well, now I am going to parse this entire document all over, but in a format for us contemporary humans to understand. Actually the “Alien Interview” as well written and narrated as it is, is actually “all over the place” and jumps back and froth from great swaths of time and situations. My next series of articles will correct this uncomfortable situation.
Do you want more?
You can find many more videos in my “Extraterrestrial Species index” over here…
I have presented the PDF titled “Alien Interview” to the readership. It is supposed to be the transcripts of the interview that a nurse had with an extraterrestrial entity that was recovered from a spaceship crash in Roswell, New Mexico. There is a lot of good stuff there, and some things that run counter to what I know and understand to be true. My intention here is to parse the entire book, and compare it to what I know. Where the two diverge, it will be up to you (the readership) to sort it out.
This is part 6.
This is part seven of the parsing of this document
Immortal Spiritual Beings, which I refer to as “IS-BEs”, for the sake of convenience, are the source and creators of illusions. Each one, individually and collectively, in their original, unfettered state of being, are an eternal, all-powerful, all-knowing entity.
IS-BEs create space by imagining a location. The intervening distance between themselves and the imagined location is what we call space. An IS-BE can perceive the space and objects created by other IS-BEs.
IS-BEs are not physical universe entities. They are a source of energy and illusion. IS-BEs are not located in space or time, but can create space, place particles in space, create energy, and shape particles into various forms, cause the motion of forms, and animate forms. Any form that is animated by an IS-BE is called life.
I have no problem with this. Though I do realize just how difficult it is to understand.
An IS-BE can decide to agree that they are located in space or time, and that they, themselves, are an object, or any other manner of illusion created by themselves or another or other IS-BEs.
I have no problem with this.
The disadvantage of creating an illusion is that an illusion must be continually created. If not continually created, it disappears. Continual creation
of an illusion requires incessant attention to every detail of the illusion in order to sustain it.
Indeed. Entire books can be written on this subject.
A common denominator of IS-BEs seems to be the desire to avoid boredom. A spirit only, without interaction with other IS-BEs, and the unpredictable motion, drama, and unanticipated intentions and illusions being created by other IS-BEs, is easily bored.
This is a deep statement, and I guess, that it is wholly above the heads and minds of the Roswell military leadership present at the facility at that time.
What if you could imagine anything, perceive everything, and cause anything to happen, at will?
What if you couldn’t do anything else?
What if you always knew the outcome of every game and the answer to every question?
Would you get bored?
Yes. You would.
The entire back time track of IS-BEs is immeasurable, nearly infinite in terms of physical universe time. There is no measurable “beginning” or “end” for an IS-BE. They simply exist in an everlasting now.
Yes. I have no problems with this statement.
Another common denominator of IS-BEs is that admiration of one’s own illusions by others is very desirable.
If the desired admiration is not forthcoming, the IS-BE will keep creating the illusion in an attempt to get admiration.
One could say that the entire physical universe is made of unadmired illusions.
This is so very deep that it deserves complete indexes of articles to investigate further.
The origins of this universe began with the creation of individual, illusionary spaces.
Also known as the "Big Bang".
These were the “home” of the IS-BE.
Sometimes a universe is a collaborative creation of illusions by two or more IS-BEs.
A proliferation of IS-BEs, and the universes they create, sometimes collide or become commingled or merge to an extent that many IS-BEs shared in the co-creation of a universe.
Here we are discussing the creation of heavens and universes. And most strangely, I have dim recollections of events similar to what is described. Dim, curious, "memories" of a "something else".
IS-BEs diminish their ability in order to have a game to play.
Of course. You give up omnipotence for physical sensation.
IS-BEs think that any game is better than no game.
They will endure pain, suffering, stupidity, privation, and all manner of unnecessary and undesirable conditions, just to play a game.
Pretending that one does not know all, see all and cause all, is a way to create the conditions necessary for playing a game: unknowns, freedoms, barriers and/or opponents and goals.
Ultimately, playing a game solves the problem of boredom.
Reincarnation as a mortal being solves the problem of boredom. If you don't know what he is talking about, then perhaps a re-watching of the old Sean Connery movie "Zardoz" is in order.
In this fashion, all of the space, galaxies, suns, planets, and physical phenomena of this universe, including life forms, places, and events that have been created by IS-BEs…
…and sustained by mutual agreement that these things exist.
Sustained by mutual agreement.
There are as many universes as there are IS-BEs to imagine, build and perceive them, each existing concurrently within its own continuum.
Each universe is created using its own, unique set of rules, as imagined, altered, preserved or destroyed by one or more IS-BEs who created it.
This idea has been adopted by the scientific community as a given concerning "bubble universes".
Time, energy, objects and space, as defined in terms of the physical universe, may or may not exist in other universes.
Very true, and this is something that MM has stated repeatedly.
The Domain exists in such a universe, as well as in the physical universe.
Big stuff here. The Domain exists within a non-physical universe, and the physical universe as well.
One of the rules of the physical universe is that energy can be created, but not destroyed.
E=mc2
So, the universe will keep expanding as long as IS-BEs keep adding more new energy into it.
This physical universe is ever expanding.
It is nearly infinite. It is like an automobile assembly line that never stops running and none of the cars are ever destroyed.
Every IS-BE is basically good.
Therefore, an IS-BE does not enjoy doing things to other IS-BEs which they themselves do not want to experience.
A consciousness does not enjoy doing things to others which they do not want to experience. Hum. Unless, they have no recollection of their past.
For an IS-BE there is no inherent standard for what is good or bad, right or wrong, ugly or beautiful. These ideas are all based on the opinion of each individual IS-BE.
Beauty is in the beholder. Good and bad is as determined by the consciousness.
The closest concept that human beings have to describe an IS-BE is as a god: all-knowing, all-powerful, infinite. So, how does a god stop being a god? They pretend NOT to know.
How can you play a game of “hide and seek” if you always know where the other person is hiding?
You pretend NOT to know where the other players are hiding, so you can go off to “seek” them.
This is how games are created.
You have forgotten that you are just “pretending”.
In so doing, IS-BEs become entrapped and enslaved inside a maze of their own devising.
All of this is very deep and a very in-depth discussion and conversation that must have been way, way above the heads of the Roswell military leadership at that time.
How does one create a cage, lock one’s own self inside the cage, throw away the key, and forget there is a key or a cage, and forget there is an “inside” or “outside”, and even forget there is a self?
How to do this?
Create the illusion.
As in the Earth Sphere.
On Earth, the propaganda taught and agreed upon is that the gods are responsible, and that human beings are not responsible. You are taught that only a god can create universes. So, the responsibility for every action is assigned to another IS-BE or god.
Never oneself.
No human being ever assumes personal responsibility for the fact that they, themselves – individually and collectively – are gods. This fact alone is the source of entrapment for every IS-BE.
Thus, as I have repeatedly stated in MM, it's all your life and soul and consciousness and pre-birth world-line template. And you have the means and the ability to define your life, your future and your happiness. You do. No others.
End of Part seven
You can visit part eight HERE.
Do you want more?
You can find many more videos in my “Extraterrestrial Species index” over here…
The new book, ” The Ganymede Hypothesis” is meant as a replacement for the earlier “Cosmos in Collision”, beginning with the .PDF/download edition. The new book is substantially better organized then the earlier book, flows better, is easier to read, contains updated material, and a number of better images.
"The experience of the last few years has cured me of wanting to deal with ebooks or the companies involved in the e-book business. Those have acted like anchors to prevent the earlier book from going anywhere and the ideas involved in this work are too important to allow that to go on.Moreover, ebooks are difficult for users to deal with both to read and to copy from for quoting, while anybody with any kind of a Computing device at all can easily manage and deal with .PDF files. The Ganymede Hypothesis is thus being released as a free download from this site."
Paperback and/or hardbound copies will be available as time and conditions permit.
The download is in the form of a .zip file since having large numbers of people trying to read the document itself in a web browser could crash goDaddy and this website. The idea is to download the file, unzip it, and read it in a normal pdf reader such as Adobe Acrobat
I have known Theodore A Holden for years, and he has the most amazing resource on information that would be of interest to MM searchers. I highly recommend that everyone take a look at his website HERE.
Do you want more?
You can find many more videos in my “Extraterrestrial Species index” over here…
I have presented the PDF titled “Alien Interview” to the readership. It is supposed to be the transcripts of the interview that a nurse had with an extraterrestrial entity that was recovered from a spaceship crash in Roswell, New Mexico. There is a lot of good stuff there, and some things that run counter to what I know and understand to be true. My intention here is to parse the entire book, and compare it to what I know. Where the two diverge, it will be up to you (the readership) to sort it out.
“Today Airl told me about some very technical things. I took a few notes to remind myself, so I can repeat what she said as closely as possible. She began with an analogy about scientific knowledge:
Can you imagine how much progress could have been made on Earth if people like Johannes Gutenberg , Sir Isaac Newton, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington Carver, Nicola Tesla, Jonas Salk, and Richard Trevithick, and many thousands of similar geniuses and inventors were living today?
Image what technical accomplishments might have been developed if men like these never died? What if they were never given amnesia and made to forget everything they knew? What if they continued to learn and work forever?
What level of technology and civilization could be attained if Immortal Spiritual Beings like these were allowed to continue to create – in the same place and at the same time – for billions or trillions of years?
Essentially, The Domain is one civilization that has existed for trillions of years with relatively uninterrupted progress.
This is TRUE.
Knowledge has been accumulated, refined, and improved upon in nearly every field of study imaginable – and beyond imagining.
This is TRUE.
Originally, the interaction of IS-BE illusions or inventions created the very fabric of the physical universe – the microcosm and the macrocosm. Every single particle of the universe has been imagined and brought into existence by an IS-BE. Everything created from an idea – a thought with no weight or size or location in space.
This is MM language. Consciousness can do only ONE singular thing; think. This is all it can do in wave form.
Every speck of dust in space, from the size of the tiniest subatomic particle, to the size of a sun or a magelantic cloud the size of many galaxies, was created from the nothingness of a thought.
This is TRUE.
Even the tiniest, individual cells were contrived and coordinated to enable a microbial entity to sense, and navigate through infinitesimally small spaces. These also came from an idea thought up by an IS-BE.
This is TRUE.
You, and every IS-BE on Earth, have participated in the creation of this universe. Even though you are now confined to a fragile body made of flesh; you live for only 65 short rotations of your planet around a star; you have been given overwhelming electric shock treatments to wipe out your memory; you must learn everything all over again each lifetime; in spite of all these circumstances, you are who you are and will always be. And, deep down, you still know that your are and what you know. You are still the essence of you.
This is TRUE.
How else can one understand the child prodigy? An IS-BE who plays concertos on a piano at three years of age, without formal training?
Impossible, if they did not simply remember what they have already learned from thousands of lives spent in front of a keyboard in times untold, or on planets far away.
They may not know how they know. They just know.
This is TRUE.
Humankind has developed more technology in the past 100 years than in the previous 2,000 years. Why? The answer is simple: the influence of the “Old Empire” over the mind and over the affairs of Mankind has been diminished by The Domain.
This appears to certainly be the case. It's like shackles have been removed, and people are allowed to grow; to fly, to develop and to grow.
A renaissance of invention on Earth began in 1,250 AD with the destruction of the “Old Empire” space fleet in the solar system.
A major encounter. It had great influences throughout our solar system.
During the next 500 years, Earth may have the potential to regain autonomy and independence, but only to the degree that humankind can apply the concentrated genius of the IS-BEs on Earth to solve the amnesia problem.
Starting in 1947, the next 500 years has the potential to be astounding.
However, on a cautionary note…
… the inventive potential of the IS-BEs who have been exiled to this planet is severely compromised by the criminal elements of the Earth population.
All you need to do is look at the United States today to see how true this is.
Specifically, politicians, warmongers and irresponsible physicists who create unlimited weapons such as nuclear bombs, chemicals, diseases and social chaos. These have the potential to extinguish all life forms on Earth, forever.
Oh, and aren't we facing these three threats right here, right now?
Even the relatively small explosions that were tested and used in the past two years on Earth have the potential to destroy all of life, if deployed in sufficient quantities. Larger weapons could consume all of the oxygen in the global atmosphere in a single explosion!
No reasonable person wants nuclear war. The problem is that America is run by idiotic psychopaths.
Therefore, the most fundamental problems that must be solved in order to ensure that Earth will not be destroyed by technology, are social and humanitarian problems.
And which nation is handling the social and humanitarian problems?
United States - War, money, power, rich oligarch greed.
China - Social systems, reduction of poverty, humanitarian issues.
The greatest scientific minds of Earth, in spite of mathematical or mechanical genius, have never addressed these problems.
Not in 1947. But they are being addressed by China from 1980 to the present.
Therefore, do not look to scientists to save Earth or the future of humanity. Any so-called “science” that is solely based on the paradigm that existence is composed only of energy and objects moving through space is not a science.
"Science" without a understanding of how quantum consciousness animates the physical is just voodoo-woo-doo.
Such beings utterly ignore the creative spark originated by an individual IS-BE and collective work of the IS-BEs who continually create the physical universe and all universes.
You cannot ignore the quantum consciousness.
Every science will remain relatively ineffective or destructive to the degree that it omits or devaluates the relative importance of the spiritual spark that ignites all of creation and life.
This is TRUE.
So anyone who has ideas or wants to promote the information that they obtain from "their handlers" or contacts as they try to disseminate the information MUST REALIZE that unless they include the aspects germane to the mechanism of consciousness within their calculus, they are heading down the road to a dead end.
Unfortunately this ignorance has been very carefully and forcefully instilled in human beings by the “Old Empire”.
(This is) to ensure that IS-BEs on this planet will not be able to recover their innate ability to create space, energy, matter and time, or any other component part of universes.
As long as awareness of the immortal, powerful, spiritual “self” is ignored, humanity will remain imprisoned until the day of its own, self-destruction and oblivion.
It's a dangerous destructive cycle. And we are watching it in "real time" with a "front row seat".
Do not rely on the dogma of physical sciences to master the fundamental forces of creation any more than you would trust the chanted incantations of an incense-burning shaman.
Any "science" that does not include the spark of consciousness is just mumbo-jumbo.
The net result of both of these is entrapment and oblivion.
Which is the way that the "prison planet" operates.
Scientists pretend to observe, but they only suppose that they see, and call it fact.
I have argued this point for years.
Like the blind man, a scientist can not learn to see until he realizes that he is blind.
The “facts” of Earth science do not include the source of creation. They include only the result, or byproducts of creation.
The “facts” of science to not include any memory of the nearly infinite past experience of existence.
These omissions are serious ones. It's like have a beautiful nice car, but without an engine, transmission, radio, air conditioning, or electrical system.
The essence of creation and existence cannot be found through the lens of a microscope or telescope or by any other measurement of the physical universe.
It cannot be discerned through observation, which is the technique used by science through all these centuries. As you cannot observe thought. You cannot observe soul. You cannot observe emotions or feelings. You cannot observe attachments.
One cannot comprehend the perfume of a flower or the pain felt by an abandoned lover with meters and calipers.
As I have said.
Everything you will ever know about the creative force and ability of a god can be found within you – an Immortal Spiritual Being.
It's all inside of you.
But you are unaware of it. This is by design and intent. And by evil destructive people. It is a horrible situation.
How can a blind man teach others to see the nearly infinite gradients that comprise the spectrum of light?
The notion that one can understand the universe without understanding the nature of an IS-BE is as absurd as conceiving that an artist is a speck of paint on his own canvas.
Or, that the lace on a ballet shoe is the choreographer’s vision, or the grace of a dancer, or the electric excitement of opening night.
Study of the spirit has been booby-trapped by the thought control operation through religious superstitions they instill in the minds of men.
A very true statement and worthy of discussion off-line.
Conversely, the study of the spirit and the mind have been prohibited by science which eliminates anything that is not measurable in the physical universe. Science is the religion of matter. It worships matter.
So very TRUE. It is the study of the observation of physical matter. Anything that happens in the non-physical simply does not exist according to science.
The paradigm of science is that creation is all, and the creator is nothing.
Religion says the creator is all, and the creation is nothing.
These two extremes are the bars of a prison cell. They prevent observation of all phenomenon as an interactive whole.
Study of creation without knowing the IS-BE, the source of creation, is futile.
When you sail to the edge of a universe conceived by science, you fall off the end into an abyss of dark, dispassionate space and lifeless, unrelenting force.
On Earth, you have been convinced that the oceans of the mind and spirit are filled with gruesome, ghoulish monsters that will eat you alive if you dare to venture beyond the breakwater of superstition.
This is true.
The vested interest of the “Old Empire” prison system is to prevent you from looking at your own soul.
This is true.
They fear that you will see in your own memory the slave masters who keep you imprisoned.
This is true. Just like the oligarchy in Washington DC are all afraid of the vast bulk of American citizens who have had enough with the mindless game of around-and-around-and-around.
The prison is made of shadows in your mind. The shadows are made of lies, and pain, and loss, and fear.
This is true.
The true geniuses of civilization are those IS-BEs who will enable other IS-BEs to recover their memory and regain self-realization and self-determination.
I hope that I am able to live up to this standard. -MM
This issue is not solved through enforcing moral regulation on behavior, or through the control of beings through mystery, faith, drugs, guns or any other dogma of a slave society.
Moral regulation, or the regulation of morals, is a characteristic of a slave society.
And certainly not through the use of electric shock and hypnotic commands!
Indeed.
The survival of Earth and every being on it depends on the ability to recover the memory of skills you have accrued through the trillenia; to recover the essence of yourself.
The survival of the Earth is up to us. We must all do our part, no matter how small.
Do not be confused by the lies in the "news" media. You do not need to be a millionaire oligarch to enact change, nor some kind of crazed radical protestor. You just need to be yourself, be helpful, and be the Rufus.
Such an art, science, or technology has never been conceived in the “Old Empire”. Otherwise, they would not have resorted to the “solution” that brought you to your current condition on Earth.
Very True.
Neither has such technology ever been developed by The Domain.
This technology about mind-wipe, and shocks, and erasure amnesia, has never been developed by the Domain; the type-1 greys.
Until recently, the necessity of rehabilitating an IS-BE with amnesia has not been needed.
Until 1947.
Therefore, no one has ever worked on solving this problem. So far, unfortunately, The Domain has no solution to offer.
In 1947.
A few officers of The Domain Expeditionary Force have taken it upon themselves to provide technology to Earth during their off duty time.
These officers leave their “doll” at the space station and, as an IS-BE, assume or take over a biological body on Earth. In some cases an officer can remain on duty while they inhabit and control other bodies at the same time.
This is understood.
This is a very dangerous and adventurous undertaking.
Yes it is.
It requires a very able IS-BE to accomplish such a mission, and return to base successfully.
It is extremely dangerous.
One officer who did this recently, while continuing to attend to his official duties, was known on Earth as the electronics inventor, Nicola Tesla.
Interesting.
It is my intention, although is not a part of my mission orders, to assist you in your efforts to advance scientific and humanitarian progress on Earth.
It's intention, but not it's orders.
My intention is to help other IS-BEs to help themselves.
The purpose of MM is to give everyone the tools to better your lives, and to free yourself to what ever level or degree that you desire.
In order to solve the amnesia problem on Earth you will need much more advanced technology, as well as social stability to allow enough time for research and development of techniques to free the IS-BE from the body, and to free the mind of the IS-BE from amnesia.
From the point of view from the type-1 grey commander in 1947, the task to free the trapped IS-BE's on Earth is herculean.
It requires...
[1] Much more advanced technology.
[2] Social stability.
[3] Time to develop the necessary R&D baselines.
Although The Domain has a long term interest in maintaining Earth as a useful planet, it has no particular interest in the human population of Earth, other than its own personnel here.
The Domain has it's own issues and directives to follow. The situation on Earth, as bad as it is, is rally not of critical importance to the Domain.
We are interested in preventing destruction, as well as accelerating the development of technologies that will sustain the infrastructures of the global biosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere.
It can offer, as a Domain officer,...
...technologies that can prevent destruction of the world. As well as technologies that can sustain the infrastructures of the global environment.
To this end, you will discover, on very careful and thorough examination, that my space craft contains a wide assortment of technology that does not yet exist on Earth.
If you distribute pieces of this craft to various scientists for study, they will be able to reverse engineer some of the technology to the extent that Earth has the raw materials required to replicate these components.
Some of the components. Not all.
Some features will be indecipherable.
Other features cannot be duplicated as Earth does not have the natural resources required to replicate them.
This is especially true of the metals used to construct the craft.
Not only do these metals not exist on Earth, the refining process required to produce these metals took billions of years to develop.
This is true. But I can tell you that MAJesic has been working on these technologies for years now. Decades, even.
It is also true of the navigation system which requires an IS-BE whose own personal wavelength has been specifically attuned to the “neural network” of the craft. The pilot of the craft must possess a very high order of energy volition, discipline, training and intelligence to manipulate such a craft.
Understood.
IS-BEs on Earth are incapable of this expertise because it requires the use of an artificial body specifically created for this purpose.
Understood.
Certain individual Earth scientists, some of whom are among the most brilliant minds in the history of the universe, will have their memory of this technology jogged when they examine the craft components.
Just as some of the scientists and physicists on Earth have been able to “remember” how to recreate electric generators, internal combustion and steam locomotion, refrigeration, aircraft, antibiotics, and other tools of your civilization, they will also rediscover other vital technology in my craft.
And they are. All over the place.
I posit that there are members of the "Old Empire", either formally, or of like mind, embedded within the Earth civilian population. They control the West. They control Washington DC. And in this control, they have purposely created a world of fiat paper money, and a destruction of science, technology and manufacturing.
And we see this in real time.
The following are the specific systems embodied in my craft that contain useful components:
1) There is an assortment of microscopic wiring or fibers within the walls of the craft that control such things as communications, information storage, computer function, and automatic navigation.
2) The same wiring is used for light, sub-light and ultra-light spectrum detection and vision. 3) The fabrics of the interior of the craft are far superior to any on Earth at this time and have hundreds or thousands of applications.
4) You will also find mechanisms for creating, amplifying and channeling light particles or waves as a form of energy.
As an officer, pilot and engineer of The Domain Forces, I am not at liberty to discuss or convey the detailed operation or construction of the craft in any way, other than what I have just disclosed.
Understood. We all have our limitations.
However, I am confident that there are many competent engineers on Earth who will develop useful technology with these resources.
I am providing these details to you in the hope that the greater good of The Domain will be served.”
Provided so that the Earth will be maintained, and not be destroyed, and that eventually, the imprisoned IS-BE's on Earth will be able to free themselves.
Conclusion
As I parse though this entire document, sentence by sentence, I have come to revise some of my beliefs and understandings. I have obtained numerous “Eureka!” moments where events and experiences fall into place and explain things. Yes, I can honestly say. Everything herein is accurate and is exactly what has occurred.
I have presented the PDF titled “Alien Interview” to the readership. It is supposed to be the transcripts of the interview that a nurse had with an extraterrestrial entity that was recovered from a spaceship crash in Roswell, New Mexico. There is a lot of good stuff there, and some things that run counter to what I know and understand to be true. My intention here is to parse the entire book, and compare it to what I know. Where the two diverge, it will be up to you (the readership) to sort it out.
This is part 5.
Key point – Document appears to be genuine
And I can tell you all that the more that I parse this document, the clearer it is (to me) that it is genuine.It is exactly what it says it is. And the extraterrestrial is actually telling the truth, so far.
Key point – Errors
However, there are some errors in translation, and confusion in the interpretation of what is being stated. Anything concerning “time” and the translation of dates seems to have some errors. The translator was having difficulty with those areas.
Humans think of time as “shared” and “linear”.
The type-1 greys think of time as circular and repeating. As in, consciousness enters and exits different world lines” and if you graph that movement of consciousness you will see a “corkscrew” movement through the MWI. Which is what it was referring to. All of which was WAY beyond the concepts of anyone in Roswell at that time.
Therefore all dates and time, and anything associated with these characteristics might in error. If you are having trouble in these areas, treat them as non-resolved issues and can be ignored.
Key point – This document predates MAJestic
Also take note that this document pre-dates MAJestic, and it is crystal clear to me now, that my role was, and still is, in the rehabilitation aspects of moving the Earth from a Hellish “Prison Planet” to that of a “sentience nursery”.
This document has (for me, personally) helped to clarify elements and aspects of my role that were “blurred” and obscured from me. To that I am eternally grateful.
Look at the dates on my articles, and look at what I covered. You will see that they match up nearly perfectly with this “Alien Interview” transcript. And this is the first time that I have ever heard of this document. The timing was transcendental.
“The origins of this universe and life on Earth, as discussed in the textbooks I have read, are very inaccurate.
I have no problem with this statement.
Since you serve your government as a medical personnel, your duties require that you understand biological entities. So, I am sure that you will appreciate the value of the material I will share with you today.
I have no problem with this statement.
The text of books I have been given on subjects related to the function of life forms contain information that is based on…
false memories,
inaccurate observation,
missing data,
unproven theories,
and superstition.
For example, just a few hundred years ago your physicians practiced bloodletting as a means to release supposed ill-humors from the body in an attempt to relieve or heal a wide variety of physical and mental afflictions.
Although this has been corrected somewhat, many barbarisms are still being practiced in the name of medical science.
In addition to the application of incorrect theories concerning biological engineering, many primary errors that Earth scientists make are the result of an ignorance of the nature and relative importance of IS-BEs as the source of energy and intelligence which animate every life form.
No medical textbook includes the relationship between consciousness and the body and how they interact.
Although it is not a priority of The Domain to intervene in the affairs of Earth, The Domain Communications Office has authorized me to provide you with some information.
(It is) in an effort to provide a more accurate and complete understanding of these things and thereby enable you to discover more effective solutions to the unique problems you face on Earth.
I have no problems with these statements.
The correct information about the origins of biological entities has been erased from your mind.
As well as from the minds of your mentors.
In order to help you regain your own memory, I will share with you some factual material concerning the origin of biological entities.
I have no problem with these statements.
I asked Airl if she was referring to the subject of evolution. Airl said, “No, not exactly”.
You will find “evolution” mentioned in the ancient Vedic Hymns.
The Vedic texts are like folk tales or common wisdoms and superstitions gathered throughout the systems of The Domain.
Hum. This makes me want to add the Vedic Texts to MM.
These were compiled into verses, like a book of rhymes. For every statement of truth, the verses contain as many half-truths, reversals of truth and fanciful imaginings, blended without qualification or distinction.
Unfortunately.
The theory of evolution assumes that the motivational source of energy that animates every life form does not exist.
It assumes that an inanimate object or a chemical concoction can suddenly become “alive” or animate accidentally or spontaneously.
Or, perhaps an electrical discharge into a pool of chemical ooze will magically spawn a self-animated entity.
There is no evidence whatsoever that this is true, simply because it is not true.
Dr. Frankenstein did not really resurrect the dead into a marauding monster, except in the imagination of the IS-BE who wrote a fictitious story one dark and stormy night.
This extraterrestrial did have quite the word power.
No Western scientist ever stopped to consider who, what, where, when or how this animation happens.
Complete ignorance, denial or unawareness of the spirit as the source of life force required to animate inanimate objects or cellular tissue is the sole cause of failures in Western medicine.
Obviously, as I have stated herein throughout MM. The physical (body and world-line(s)) are just physical containers. It is the consciousness that animates them.
In addition, evolution does not occur accidentally.
It requires a great deal of technology which must be manipulated under the careful supervision of IS-BEs.
Evolution does not occur naturally. It requires a consciousness to make it happen and form into place.
So, for example, you are desirous of a new kind of frog. One that is yellow with horns, then a consciousness must work over long swaths of time to manifest the changes to create such a creature. This is what evolution is.
Very simple examples are seen in the modification of farm animals or in the breeding of dogs.
However, the notion that human biological organisms evolved naturally from earlier ape-like forms is incorrect.
No physical evidence will ever be uncovered to substantiate the notion that modern humanoid bodies evolved on this planet.
Humans DID NOT evolve on Earth. Nor did they evolve from primates as is the current belief.
The reason is simple: the idea that human bodies evolved spontaneously from the primordial ooze of chemical interactivity in the dim mists of time…
…is nothing more than a hypnotic lie…
…instilled by the amnesia operation…
….to prevent your recollection of the true origins of Mankind.
I have no problem with this statement, no matter how ungainly wordy it is.
Factually, humanoid bodies have existed in various forms throughout the universe for trillions of years.
The human form is an archetype. But the issue of consciousness and sentience makes the utility of that archetype vary.
So there are "people" that look like humans all over the universe, and in every corner of the galaxy.
This was compounded by the fact that The Vedic Hymns were brought to Earth 8,200 years ago by The Domain Expeditionary Force.
The Vedic Hymns originated from the type-1 greys.
While they were based in the Himalaya Mountains, the verses were taught to some of the local humans who memorized them.
However, I should note that this was not an authorized activity for the crew of The Domain installation, although I am sure it seemed like an innocent diversion for them at the time.
This is the second time it mentioned this. The Domain has a policy of non-intervention, but some of the Domain information activity was passed down as part of a kind of recreational pastime.
The verses were passed along verbally from one generation to the next for thousands of years in the foothills and eventually spread throughout India.
No one in The Domain credits any of the material in the Vedic Hymns as factual material, any more than you would use “Grimm’s Fairy Tales” as a guide for rearing children.
However, on a planet where all of the IS-BEs have had their memory erased, one can understand how these tales and fantasies could be taken seriously.
Unfortunately, the humans who learned the Vedic verses passed them along to others saying that they came from “the gods”.
Eventually, the content of the verses were adopted verbatim as “truth”.
The euphemistic and metaphorical content of the Veda were accepted and practiced as dogmatic fact.
The philosophy of the verses were ignored and the verses became the genesis of nearly every religion practice on the planet, especially Hinduism.
The philosophy of the Vedic verses are what is important. Not the content.
As an officer, pilot and engineer of The Domain, I must always assume a very pragmatic point of view.
I could not be effective or accomplish my missions if I were to use philosophical dogma or rhetoric as my operations manual.
The extraterrestrial begins to discuss very ancient history that predates the "Old Empire", and certainly pre-dates humans on the Earth.
Therefore, our discussion of history is based on actual events that occurred long before any IS-BEs arrived on Earth, and long before the “Old Empire” came into power.
I can relate part of this history from personal experience:
Many billions of years ago I was a member of a very large biological laboratory in a galaxy far from this one.
It was called the “Arcadia Regeneration Company”.
I was a biological engineer working with a large staff of technicians.
It was our business to manufacture and supply new life forms to uninhabited planets.
There were millions of star systems with millions of inhabitable planets in the region at that time.
The creation of lifeforms to inhabit worlds and planets that have no life, but will potentially be able to thrive with custom made life.
There were many other biological laboratory companies at that time also.
Each of them specialized in producing different kinds of life forms, depending on the “class” of the planet being populated.
Over a long span of time these laboratories developed a vast catalogue of species throughout the galaxies.
Also known as approved archetypes.
The majority of basic genetic material is common to all species of life.
Therefore, most of their work was concerned with manipulating alterations of the basic genetic pattern to produce variations of life forms that would be suitable inhabitants for various planetary classes.
You take a basic form, and then you modify it to fill a unique and specialized planetary environment.
The “Arcadia Regeneration Company” specialized in mammals for forested areas and birds for tropical regions.
Our marketing staff negotiated contracts with various planetary governments and independent buyers from all over the universe.
The technicians created animals that were compatible with the variations in climate, atmospheric and terrestrial density and chemical content.
There are many worlds that are similar, but have variations that run from the comfortable to the uncomfortable. This effort produced animals and creatures that were stable and able to thrive in a very broad and diverse range of planetary environments.
In addition we were paid to integrate our specimens with biological organisms engineered by other companies already living on a planet.
You take local organism "A", then you integrate specific changes taken from a catalog of "attributes" and you end up with an organism "A++".
In order to do this our staff was in communication with other companies who created life forms.
There were industry trade shows, publications and a variety of other information supplied through an association that coordinated related projects.
As you can imagine, our research required a great deal of interstellar travel to conduct planetary surveys.
This is when I learned my skills as a pilot.
The data gathered was accumulated in huge computer databases and evaluated by biological engineers.
All this happened billions of years ago. Could the Domain be the same thing as the progenitors?
Mind BLOWN!
A computer is an electronic device that serves as an artificial “brain” or complex calculating machine.
It is capable of storing information, making computations, solving problems and performing mechanical functions.
In most of the galactic systems of the universe, very large computers are commonly used to run the routine administration, mechanical services and maintenance activities of an entire planet or planetary system.
Based on the survey data gathered, designs and artistic renderings were made for new creatures.
Some designs were sold to the highest bidder. Other life forms were created to meet the customized requests of our clients.
The design and technical specifications were passed along an assembly line through a series of cellular, chemical, and mechanical engineers to solve the various problems.
It was their job to integrate all of the component factors into a workable, functional and aesthetic finished product.
Prototypes of these creatures were then produced and tested in artificially created environments.
Imperfections were worked out, modifications made and eventually the new life form was “endowed” or “animated” with a life force or spiritual energy before being introduced into the actual planetary environment for final testing.
This is the basic procedure. Can you just imagine the shock on the faces of the Roswell military leadership?
After a new life form was introduced, we monitored the interaction of these biological organisms with the planetary environment and with other indigenous life-forms.
Obviously, sometimes things didn't work out so well.
Conflicts resulting from the interaction between incompatible organisms were resolved through negotiation between ourselves and other companies.
The negotiations usually resulted in compromises requiring further modification to our creatures or to theirs or both.
This is part of a science or art you call “Eugenics”.
In some cases changes were made in the planetary environment, but not often, as planet building is much more complex than making changes to an individual life form.
This is understandable.
Coincidentally, a friend and engineer with whom I used to work with at the Arcadia Regeneration Company – a long time after I left the company – told me that one of the projects they contracted to do, in more recent times, was to deliver life forms to Earth to replenish them after a war in this region of the galaxy devastated most of the life on the planets in this region of space. This would have been about seventy million years ago.
About 70 million years ago was a major war in our region of space and many solar systems were affected. Many planets were devastated beyond casual repair, and efforts were made to not only replace the lost life forms, but also to improve and add new forms.
"One of the planet’s largest extinctions, which wiped out non-flying dinosaurs and most other species 66 million years ago, was caused by a “one-two punch” of volcanic eruptions and meteorite impacts, a new reconstruction of Antarctic Ocean temperatures suggests."
-From HERE.
The skill required to modify the planet into an ecologically interactive environment that will support billions of diverse species was an immense undertaking.
Specialized consultants from nearly every biotechnology company in the galaxy were brought in to help with the project.
For this region, or for the Earth proper? I wonder.
What you see now on Earth is the huge variety of life forms left behind.
Your scientists believe that the fallacious “theory of evolution” is an explanation for the existence of all the life forms here.
The truth is that all life forms on this and any other planet in this universe were created by companies like ours.
Now this is just a "kick in the teeth" for evolutionary theory.
How else can you explain the millions of completely divergent and unrelated species of life on the land and in the oceans of this planet?
How else can you explain the source of spiritual animation which defines every living creature?
To say it is the work of “god”, is far too broad.
Every IS-BE has many names and faces in many times and places. Every IS-BE is a god. When they inhabit a physical object they are the source of Life.
For example, there are millions of species of insects.
About 350,000 of these are species of beetles.
There may be as many as 100 million species of life forms on Earth at any given time.
In addition, there are many times more extinct species of life on Earth than there are living life forms. Some of these will be rediscovered in the fossil or geological records of Earth.
The current “theory of evolution” of life forms on Earth does not consider the phenomena of biological diversity.
Evolution by natural selection is science fiction.
One species does not accidentally, or randomly evolve to become another species, as the Earth textbooks indicate, without manipulation of genetic material by an IS-BE.
Consciousness creation of life is what animates it.
Fundamental.
A simple example of IS-BE intervention is the selective breeding of a species on Earth. Within the past few hundred years several hundred dog breeds and hundreds of varieties of pigeons and dozens of Koi fish have been “evolved” in just a few years, beginning with only one original breed.
Without active intervention by IS-BEs, biological organisms rarely change.
The development of an animal like the ‘duck-billed platypus’ required a lot of very clever engineering to combine the body of a beaver with the bill of a duck and make a mammal that lays eggs.
Undoubtedly, some wealthy client placed a “special order” for it as a gift or curious amusement.
I am sure the laboratory of some biotechnical company worked on it for years to make it a self-replicating life form!
This "cracks me up"!
The notion that the creation of any life form could have resulted from a coincidental chemical interaction moldering up from some primordial ooze is beyond absurdity!
Factually, some organisms on Earth, such as Proteobacteria, are modifications of a Phylum designed primarily for “Star Type 3, Class C” planets.
This differs from our solar system which is a "Sun Type 12, Class 7" planet.
In other words, The Domain designation for a planet with an anaerobic atmosphere nearest a large, intensely hot blue star, such as those in the constellation of Orion’s Belt in this galaxy.
The three bright stars that form the Orion’s Belt are Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka. The stars are believed to have formed from the same nebula in Orion constellation, and they are roughly the same age.
Creating life forms is very complex, highly technical work for IS-BEs who specialize in this field.
Genetic anomalies are very baffling to Earth biologists who have had their memory erased.
Unfortunately, the false memory implantations of the “Old Empire” prevent Earth scientists from observing obvious anomalies.
This is the core, underlying theme, of the extraterrestrial.
The greatest technical challenge of biological organisms was the invention of self-regeneration, or sexual reproduction.
It was invented as the solution to the problem of having to continually manufacture replacement creatures for those that had been destroyed and eaten by other creatures.
Planetary governments did not want to keep buying replacement animals.
The idea was contrived trillions of years ago as a result of a conference held to resolve arguments between the disputing vested interests within the biotechnology industry.
The infamous “Council of Yuhmi-Krum” was responsible for coordinating creature production.
Such a story. I am just positive the the Roswell military leadership were besides themselves in incredulity.
A compromise was reached, after certain members of the Council were strategically bribed or murdered, to author an agreement which resulted in the biological phenomenon which we now call the “food chain”.
The idea that a creature would need to consume the body of another life form as an energy source was offered as a solution by one of the biggest companies in the biological engineering business. They specialized in creating insects and flowering plants.
The connection between the two is obvious. Nearly every flowering plant requires a symbiotic relationship with an insect in order to propagate. The reason is obvious: both the bugs and the flowers were created by the same company. Unfortunately, this same company also had a division which created parasites and bacteria.
Hum...
The name of the company roughly translated into English would be “Bugs & Blossoms”.
Hum...
They wanted to justify the fact that the only valid purpose of the parasitic creatures they manufactured was to aid the decomposition of organic material. There was a very limited market for such creatures at that time.
Interesting.
In order to expand their business they hired a big public relations firm and a powerful group of political lobbyists to glorify the idea that life forms should feed from other life forms.
They invented a “scientific theory” to use as a promotion gimmick.
The theory was that all creatures needed to have “food” as a source of energy.
Before that, none of the life forms being manufactured required any external energy.
Animals did not eat other animals for food, but consumed sunlight, minerals or vegetable matter only.
Very, very interesting.
Of course, “Bugs & Blossoms” went into the business of designing and manufacturing carnivores.
Before long, so many animals were being eaten as food that the problem of replenishing them became very difficult.
As a ‘solution’, “Bugs & Blossoms” proposed, with the help of some strategically placed bribes in high places, that other companies begin using ‘sexual reproduction’ as the basis for replenishing life-forms.
“Bugs & Blossoms” was the first company to develop blueprints for sexual reproduction, of course.
Curious, and fascinating.
As expected, the patent licenses for the biological engineering process required to implant stimulus-response mating, cellular division and preprogrammed growth patterns for self-regenerating animals were owned by “Bugs & Blossoms” too.
Of course.
Through the next few million years laws were passed that required that these programs be purchased by the other biological technology companies.
These were required to be imprinted into the cellular design of all existing life-forms.
It became a very expensive undertaking for other biotechnology companies to make such an awkward, and impractical idea work.
This led to the corruption and downfall of the entire industry.
Ultimately, the ‘food and sex’ idea completely ruined the bio-technology industry, including “Bugs & Blossoms”.
The entire industry faded away as the market for manufactured life forms disappeared.
Consequently, when a species became extinct, there is no way to replace them because the technology of creating new life forms has been lost.
Here we are talking about the "worlds and the realities of the Gods".
Obviously, none of this technology was ever known on Earth, and probably never will be.
There are still computer files on some planets far from here which record the procedures for biological engineering. Possibly the laboratories and computers still exist somewhere. However, there is no one around doing anything with them. Therefore, you can understand why it is so important for The Domain to protect the dwindling number of creatures left on Earth.
Understandable.
The core concept behind ‘sexual reproduction’ technology was the invention of a chemical/electronic interaction called “cyclical stimulus-response generators”.
This is very interesting. It is what drives humans to reproduce.
This is an programmed genetic mechanism which causes a seemingly spontaneous, recurring impulse to reproduce. The same technique was later adapted and applied to biological flesh bodies, including Homo Sapiens.
Also known as "going into heat". It cause the female to go into a Lordosis posture.
Another important mechanism used in the reproductive process, especially with Homo Sapiens type bodies, is the implantation of a “chemical-electrical trigger” mechanism in the body.
The “trigger” which attracts IS-BEs to inhabit a human body, or any kind of “flesh body”, is the use of an artificially imprinted electronic wave which uses “aesthetic pain” to attract the IS-BE.
An "artificially imprinted electronic wave" used to attract a consciousness to inhabit a physical body.
Every trap in the universe, including those used to capture IS-BEs who remain free, is “baited” with an aesthetic electronic wave.
Very interesting.
The sensations caused by the aesthetic wavelength are more attractive to an IS-BE than any other sensation. When the electronic waves of pain and beauty are combined together, this causes the IS-BE to get “stuck” in the body.
Avoid them if you want to be free.
The “reproductive trigger” used for lesser life forms, such as cattle and other mammals, is triggered by chemicals emitted from the scent glands, combined with reproductive chemical-electrical impulses stimulated by testosterone, or estrogen.
Well understood.
These are also interactive with nutrition levels which cause the life form to reproduce more when deprived of food sources.
Interesting. China's population sky-rocketed during famines. As did India's.
Starvation promoted reproductive activity as a means of perpetuating survival through future regenerations, when the current organism fails to survive. These fundamental principles have been applied throughout all species of life.
All species of life.
The debilitating impact and addiction to the “sexual aesthetic-pain” electronic wave is the reason that the ruling class of The Domain do not inhabit flesh bodies.
This is also why officers of The Domain Forces only use doll bodies.
This wave has proven to be the most effective trapping device ever created in the history of the universe, as far as I know.
It is the MOST effective trapping snare in the universe.
The civilizations of The Domain and the “Old Empire” both depend on this device to “recruit” and maintain a work force of IS-BEs who inhabit flesh bodies on planets and installations.
These IS-BEs are the “working class” beings who do all of the slavish, manual, undesirable work on planets.
Class System
As I mentioned, there is a very highly regimented and fixed hierarchy or “class system” for all IS-BEs throughout the “Old Empire”, and The Domain, as follows:
The highest class are “free” IS-BEs. That is, they are not restricted to the use of any type of body and may come and go at will, provided that they do not destroy or interfere with the social, economic or political structure.
Below this class are many strata of “limited” IS-BEs who may or may not use a body from time to time. Limitations are imposed on each IS-BE regarding range of power, ability and mobility they can exercise.
Below these are the “doll body” classes, to which I belong. Nearly all space officers and crew members of space craft are required to travel through intergalactic space. Therefore, they are each equipped with a body manufactured from light weight, durable materials. Various body types have been designed to facilitate specialized functions. Some bodies have accessories, such as interchangeable tools or apparatus for activities such as maintenance, mining, chemical management, navigation, and so forth. There are many gradations of this body type which also serve as an “insignia” of rank.
Below these are the soldier class. The soldiers are equipped with a myriad of weapons, and specialized armaments designed to detect, combat and overwhelm any imaginable foe. Some soldiers are issued mechanical bodies. Most soldiers are merely remote controlled robots with no class designation.
The lower classes are limited to “flesh bodies”. Of course, it is not possible for these to travel through space for obvious reasons. Fundamentally, flesh bodies are far too fragile to endure the stresses of gravity, temperature extremes, radiation exposure, atmospheric chemicals and the vacuum of space. There are also the obvious logistical inconveniences of food, defecation, sleep, atmospheric elements, and air pressure required by flesh bodies, that doll bodies do not require.
Flesh Bodies
Most flesh bodies will suffocate in only a few minutes without a specific combination of atmospheric chemicals.
After 2 or 3 days the bacteria which live internally and externally on the body cause severe odors to be emitted. Odors of any kind are not acceptable in a space vessel.
Flesh can tolerate only a very limited spectrum of temperatures, whereas in space the contrast of temperatures may vary hundreds of degrees within seconds. Of course flesh bodies are utterly useless for military duty. A single shot from a hand-held, electronic blast gun instantly turns a flesh body into a noxious vapor cloud.
IS-BEs who inhabit flesh bodies have lost much of their native ability and power. Although it is theoretically possible to regain or rehabilitate these abilities, no practical means has been discovered or authorized by The Domain.
Even though space craft of The Domain travel trillions of “light years” in a single day, the time required to traverse the space between galaxies is significant, not to mention the length of time to complete just one set of mission orders, which may require thousands of years.
Biological flesh bodies live for only a very short time – only 60 to 150 years, at most – whereas doll bodies can be re-used and repaired almost indefinitely.
Development of biological bodies
The first development of biological bodies began in this universe about seventy-four trillion years ago.
It rapidly became a fad for IS-BEs to create and inhabit various types of bodies for an assortment of nefarious reasons: especially for amusement, this is to experience various physical sensations vicariously through the body.
Since that time there has been a continuing “de-evolution” in the relationship of IS-BEs to bodies.
As IS-BEs continued to play around with these bodies, certain tricks were introduced to cause IS-BEs to get trapped inside a body so they were unable to leave again.
Very interesting.
This was done primarily by making bodies that appeared sturdy, but were actually very fragile. An IS-BE, using their natural power to create energy, accidentally injured a body when contacting it. The IS-BE was remorseful about having injured this fragile body. The next time they encountered a body they began to be “careful” with them. In so doing, the IS-BE would withdraw or minimize their own power so as not to injure the body. A very long and treacherous history of this kind of trickery, combined with similar misadventures eventually resulted in a large number of IS-BEs becoming permanently trapped in bodies.
Now, who would think of such a thing?
Of course this became a profitable enterprise for some IS-BEs who took advantage of this situation to make slaves of others.
The resulting enslavement progressed over trillions of years, and continues today.
Ultimately the dwindling ability of IS-BEs to maintain a personal state of operational freedom and ability to create energy resulted in the vast and carefully guarded hierarchy or class system.
Sigh.
Using bodies as a symbol of each class is used throughout the “Old Empire”, as well as The Domain.
Sigh.
The vast majority of IS-BEs throughout the galaxies of this universe inhabit some form of flesh body.
The structure, appearance, operation and habitat of these bodies vary according to the gravity, atmosphere, and climatic conditions of the planet they inhabit.
Body types are predetermined largely by the type and size of the star around which the planet revolves, the distance from the star, the geological, as well as the atmospheric components of the planet.
All well understood parameters now. But at that time must have been enlightening and shocking.
On the average, these stars and planets fall into gradients of classification which are fairly standard throughout the universe.
Archetypes.
For example, Earth is identified, roughly, as a “Sun Type 12, Class 7 planet”. That is a heavy gravity, nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere planet, with biological life-forms, in proximity to a single, yellow, medium-size, low-radiation sun or “Type 12 star”.
The proper designations are difficult to translate accurately due to the extreme limitations of astronomical nomenclature in the English language.
Understood.
There are as many varieties of life forms as there are grains of sands on the beach. You can imagine how many different creatures and types of bodies have been manufactured by the millions of companies such as “Bugs & Blossoms” for all of the myriad planetary systems during the course of seventy-four trillion years!”
(MATILDA O’DONNELL MACELROY PERSONAL NOTE)
“When Airl finished telling me this “story”, there was a long, silent pause while I muddled through all this in my mind. Had Airl been reading science fiction books and fantasy stories during the night? Why would she tell me something so incredibly far-fetched?
The science fiction stories of the pulp magazines of that day wouldn't even begin to consider the things this extraterrestrial was saying.
If there had not been a 40 inch tall alien, with gray “skin”, and three fingers on each hand and foot sitting directly across from me, I would not have believed a single word of it!
In retrospect, over the 60 years since Airl gave me this information, Earth doctors have begun to develop some of the biological engineering technology that Airl told me about right here on Earth. Heart bypasses, cloning, test tube babies, organ transplants, plastic surgery, genes, chromosomes, and so forth.
One thing is very sure: I have never looked at a bug or flower the same way since then, not to mention my religious belief in Genesis.”
Conclusion
As I parse though this entire document, sentence by sentence, I have come to revise some of my beliefs and understandings. I have obtained numerous “Eureka!” moments where events and experiences fall into place and explain things. Yes, I can honestly say. Everything herein is accurate and is exactly what has occurred.
End of Part five
You can visit part six HERE.
Do you want more?
You can find many more videos in my “Extraterrestrial Species index” over here…
I have presented the PDF titled “Alien Interview” to the readership. It is supposed to be the transcripts of the interview that a nurse had with an extraterrestrial entity that was recovered from a spaceship crash in Roswell, New Mexico. There is a lot of good stuff there, and a lot of things that run counter to what I know and understand to be true. My intention here is to parse the entire book, and compare it to what I know. Where the two diverge, it will be up to you (the readership) to sort it out.
This is part 4.
Key point – Document appears to be genuine
And I can tell you all that the more that I parse this document, the clearer it is (to me) that it is genuine.It is exactly what it says it is. And the extraterrestrial is actually telling the truth, so far.
Key point – Errors
However, there are some errors in translation, and confusion in the interpretation of what is being stated. Anything concerning “time” and the translation of dates seems to have some errors. The translator was having difficulty with those areas.
Humans think of time as “shared” and “linear”.
The type-1 greys think of time as circular and repeating. As in, consciousness enters and exits different world lines” and if you graph that movement of consciousness you will see a “corkscrew” movement through the MWI. Which is what it was referring to. All of which was WAY beyond the concepts of anyone in Roswell at that time.
Therefore all dates and time, and anything associated with these characteristics might in error. If you are having trouble in these areas, treat them as non-resolved issues and can be ignored.
Key point – This document predates MAJestic
Also take note that this document pre-dates MAJestic, and it is crystal clear to me now, that my role was, and still is, in the rehabilitation aspects of moving the Earth from a Hellish “Prison Planet” to that of a “sentience nursery”.
This document has (for me, personally) helped to clarify elements and aspects of my role that were “blurred” and obscured from me. To that I am eternally grateful.
Look at the dates on my articles, and look at what I covered. You will see that they match up nearly perfectly with this “Alien Interview” transcript. And this is the first time that I have ever heard of this document. The timing was transcendental.
“The actual history of Earth is very bizarre. It is so nonsensical that is it is incredible to anyone on Earth who attempts to investigate it. A myriad of vital information is missing from it. A huge conglomeration of non sequitur relics and mythology has been arbitrarily introduced into it. The volatile nature of the Earth itself cyclically covers, drowns, mixes and shreds physical evidence.
I have no problem with this.
These factors, combined with amnesia and post-hypnotic suggestions, false facades and covert manipulation make a reconstruction of the factual origins and history of Earth civilizations virtually indecipherable.
I have no problem with this.
Any investigator, no matter how brilliant, is doomed to wallow in a quagmire of inconclusive assumptions, unworkable hypotheses, and perpetual mystery.
I have no problem with this.
Since The Domain does not suffer these afflictions, having the advantage of memory, longevity and an exterior point of view, I will add some clarification to your fragmentary knowledge of the history of Earth.
Stand by for clarification of our fragmentary knowledge.
These are some of the dates and events that are not mentioned in Earth history textbooks.
These are significant dates. All of which are not mentioned in any of the history books that were provided to the extraterrestrial.
These dates are significant because they provide some information concerning the influences of the “Old Empire” and of The Domain on Earth.
They are significant as they introduce the role of both the "Old Empire" and the "Domain" regarding Earth.
Although I have attended several briefings by our mission control personnel on the general background of Earth within the past few hundred years, I will rely principally on data gathered from records captured after our invasion of the “Old Empire” planetary headquarters. Since that time The Domain Expeditionary Force has tracked the general progress of events on Earth.
"The Domain" was unaware of Earth and what was going on. This all changed when "The Domain" conquered "The Old Empire". When "The Domain" took over the main capital, they acquired substantive documents regarding Earth. Most of what the extraterrestrial is relaying is in regards to what the records of the "Old Empire" has recorded.
As I mentioned, in some cases The Domain has chosen to intervene in certain affairs on Earth in order to ensure the success of our long term expansion plans.
I have no problem with this statement.
Although The Domain has no interest in Earth, per se, or in the population of IS-BEs on this planet, it does serve our interests to ensure that the resources of Earth are not destroyed or spoiled.
Important points;
"The Domain" has [1] no interest in the Earth or the population of IS-BE on the planet.
[2] However, they do not want to see the Earth destroyed as a result of uncontrolled activity of it's population. They want to see a "green" planet that takes care of it's environment, and does not destroy the world in a global wide nuclear holocaust.
For those of you who are wondering where some of these media narratives come from, perhaps you all should be looking at a grand strategy to turn the Earth into a Sentience Nursery.
To that end, certain officers of The Domain have been sent to Earth on reconnaissance missions from time to time to gather information.
I have no problem with this.
However, Moreover, the following dates and events have been extrapolated from the accumulated information in the data files of The Domain – at least those that are accessible to me through the space station communications center.
208,000 BCE — Old Empire Established
The establishment of the “Old Empire”, whose headquarters were located near one of the “tail stars” in the Ursa Major (Big Dipper) Constellation of this galaxy. The “Old Empire” invasion force conquered the area with nuclear weapons sometime earlier.
From the point of view of humans on the earth, this statement is loaded with information.
[1] We know that the Earth was seeded way, way a long time ago by the progenitors.
[2] We also know that intelligent sentient beings, native to earth, grew and developed and either died out or changed.
[3] We know that (according to this extraterrestrial) that there were large colonies of humanoid extraterrestrials that established the colonies of Lemuria, and Atlantis, around 400,000 years ago.
[4] We know that proto-humans started to develop at that time, with the earliest monkey-like creatures two million years earlier. And tool-making humanoids around 200,000 years ago.
This statement then says that after the extraterrestrial colonies of Atlantis and Lemuria were long gone, and proto-humans were starting to use tools, the "Old Empire" came to power. Their base of power, or primary settlement, is at a cluster of stars that we identify as the "tail stars" in the Ursa Major (Big Dipper) Constellation.
It does not mean that the huge enormous O, B, and A stars were the ones that harbored the civilization seat. But rather that this was the geographic region for the planets, where ever their existed or orbited.
They were brutal in conquering the previous civilizations and nuclear weapons and other very dangerous weapons of destruction were utilized, and we can well imagine that they completely devastated the civilizations that they encountered in severe "space opera" style.
After the radioactivity subsided and the clean-up and restoration were completed, it received the immigration of beings from another galaxy into this galaxy. Those beings set up a society that kept going until about 10,000 years ago when it was superseded by The Domain.
Again, this is just full of information. We don't know what the "Old Empire" was. But what we do know is that right after they had conquered the major civilizations in this section of our galaxy, they started to import or migrate other species from another galaxy to here.
This "other group of immigrants" were either of the same type, species, or sentience of the "Old Empire" and thus were able to occupy the conquered worlds of that empire.
This continued for 10,000 years.
Then the "Domain" entered the region, and took over, and conquered them. We know from (part 3) that they did not use nuclear weapons, but rather highly powerful disruptive beans that affected the IS-BE consciousnesses directly.
Very recently Earth civilization has come to resemble aspects of that civilization, now that it has fallen out of its immediate control.
I personally find this statement alluring. This was 1947. This was right before the 1950's and the 1960's in America. What he is referring to is the creation of central-power governments that controlled all else.
Hitler and the Nazi Germans out of Berlin.
Mao and China out of Beijing.
Stalin and Russia out of Moscow.
The United States out of Washington DC
A central European "block".
From this we can extrapolate that the central power model with very little control locally represents the fundamental structural elements of the "Old Empire".
In particular, the appearance and technology of transportation such as planes, trains, ships, fire engines, and automobiles, as well as what you consider to be “modern” or “futuristic” architecture, which emulate the design of buildings in the major cities of the “Old Empire”.
Again, very interesting. It is saying that all the "modern" advancements of technology resemble those which defined the "Old Empire".
Before 75,000 BCE — Colonies on Earth
The Domain records contain very little information about the civilizations on the continental land masses of Atlanta and Lemur, except to note that they did coexist on Earth at more or less the same time.
The records of the "Domain" were just cursory reviews of the solar system as a whole. And between 400,000 and 75,000 years ago, both Atlantis and Lemuria colonies existed at that time.
Apparently, both civilizations were founded by remnants of electronic, space opera cultures who fled from their native planetary systems to escape political or religious persecution.
So we can well imagine a solid science-fiction narrative where an escaping group of settlers leave a harsh "space opera" galactic empire. Where they fled to an out-of-the-way planet, in a generally not well traveled part of the galaxy.
The Domain knows that a long-standing edict of the “Old Empire” prohibits unauthorized colonization of planets.
At this time of the founding of the "Old Empire" was the same time as the colonies of Atlantis and Lemuria came into being. Since the "Old Empire" did not authorize these colonies, they must have been illegal.
We can imagine that when the "Old Empire" came into being, that some of the people or creatures that they conquered, fled the ruins and devastation and came to earth to start a new life.
And apparently, for many years they had good, prosperous societies upon the earth. But eventually we know that both were destroyed suddenly and with a complete violence that left very little remaining.
Therefore, it is possible that their destruction was caused by police or military forces who pursued the colonists as criminals and destroyed them.
The extraterrestrial hypothesise that the destruction of the "renegade" colonies was conducted by the "Old Empire".
Although this seems a likely supposition, no conclusive evidence exists that explains the complete destruction and disappearance of two entire electronic civilizations.
It's just a hypothesis. There isn't any proof for it. What is interesting is that both civilizations of Atlantis and Lemuria were both "entire electronic civilizations" which would be well understood to be similar to what exists around the world today.
Another possibility is that a massive submarine volcanic eruption in the region of Lake Toba, in Sumatra and Mt. Krakatoa in Java caused the destruction of Lemur.
The flood waters caused by the eruption overwhelmed all the land masses, including the highest mountains.
Survivors of the destruction of the civilization, the Lemurians, are the earliest ancestors of the Chinese.
This is very interesting. The Chinese race then are descended from the survivors of the Lemuria colony, which were survivors of a previous civilization that was conquered by the "Old Empire", and who thus fled to Earth.
Australia and the ocean areas to the north were the center of the Lemurian civilization and are the source of Oriental races. Both civilizations possessed electronics, flight and similar technologies of space opera cultures.
Both of the colonies of Atlantis, and Lemuria were fully modern and electronic civilizations possessing great technology.
Now, aside from the idea that the "Old Empire" eradicated and destroyed the colonies of those that fled when the "Old Empire" took over, the extraterrestrial posits that there might be another explanation. The loss of the colonies could be the result of natural geologic forces...
Apparently, the volcanic eruption expelled such a significant mass of molten rock that the resulting vacuum beneath the crust of Earth caused great areas of the land masses to sink below the oceans.
The continental areas occupied by both civilizations were covered with volcanic matter, and then submerged, leaving very little evidence that they ever existed except for legends of a global flood which prevail in every culture of the Earth, and for survivors who are the genus of oriental races and cultures.
That kind of colossal volcanic explosion fills the stratosphere with toxic gases which are carried around the whole planet. The usual refuse of these volcanic eruptions can easily cause a rain that lasts for “40 days and 40 nights” due to atmospheric pollution as well as an extensive period during which radiation from the sun is deflected back into space, and cause global cooling.
Certainly such an event would cause an ice age, extinctions of life forms and many other relatively long-term changes lasting thousands of years.
The extraterrestrial states that aside from [1] the systematic destruction of the two colonies by the "Old Empire", the only remaining potential cause for the destruction is [2] a natural event, and in this case, it offers the idea of a global wide volcanic eruption of significant magnitude and duration.
Due to the myriad types of naturally occurring global cataclysmic events which are indigenous to Earth, it is not a suitable planet for habitation by IS-BEs.
The Earth is not a suitable environment for IS-BE's. This is because of natural events. And that these natural events can cause global cataclysmic calamities.
In addition there have been occasional global cataclysms caused by IS-BEs such as the one that destroyed the dinosaurs more than 70 million years ago.
This extraterrestrial states that the Cretaceous–Paleogene Extinction was not a natural event, but rather an intentional event made by IS-BE's.
About 66 million years ago, 75% of species became extinct during the Cretaceous–Paleogene Extinction. Rates of extinction broadly swept the land, sea, and air.
In the oceans, ammonites disappeared. All non-avian dinosaurs became extinct. But avian dinosaurs survived because it was birds that descended from theropod dinosaurs. Eventually, mammals emerged as dominant large land animals.
It is believed that the cause of this extinction event was from an asteroid impact which left an impact called the Chicxulub Crater. Also, giant floor basalts aggravated called Deccan Traps.
That destruction was caused by intergalactic warfare during which time Earth, and many other neighboring moons and planets, were bombarded by atomic weapons.
This is also an interesting statement. So in the extraterrestrials' narrative, which is talking about the "Old Empire" from 400,000 BCE to 10,000 BCE.
Now, the narrative suddenly jumps to a point in time, long before the period of discussion.
At this point in time, 66 - 70 million years ago, long before the "Old Empire", and "The Domain", there was a terrible war in our solar system. It is not mentioned who were involved in this war, or why.
Atomic explosions cause atmospheric fallout much like that of volcanic eruptions. Most of the planets in this sector of the galaxy have been uninhabitable deserts since then.
Another interesting point. This war of 66 - 70 million years ago was not limited to our solar system, but rather involved multiple star systems. It also was devastating. Many otherwise habitable planets were turned into wasteland and barren deserts as a result of it.
An old 3D map showing the many of the stars in a 20 light year radius from our solar system. Since this graphic map was made substantial numbers of very cool brown dwarfs have been discovered that makes this map obsolete. Never the less, we can assume that many of the (once inhabitable) stars are shown on this map.
Earth is undesirable for many other reasons: heavy gravity and dense atmosphere, floods, earthquakes, volcanoes, polar shifts, continental drift, meteor impacts, atmospheric and climatic changes, to name a few.
An interesting point, and something that I have stated elsewhere.
[1] heavy gravity
[2] dense atmosphere,
[3] floods,
[4] earthquakes,
[5] volcanoes,
[6] polar shifts,
[7] continental drift,
[8] meteor impacts,
[9] atmospheric and climatic changes,
The changes that greatly affect the Earth for many thousands of years after the event are shown in bold.
What kind of lasting civilization could any sophisticated culture propose to develop in such an environment?
Good point. I have no problem with this.
In addition, Earth is a small planet of a “rim star” of a galaxy.
Not really true; geographically. The solar system is smack dab in one of the major "arms" of the galaxy geographically. You can see this on a map.
Location in our galaxy.
However, if you look at the statement from the point of view of the population centers of the galaxy in our region, then you can find some answers.
The extraterrestrial stated that an enormous war took place in our section of the galaxy 70 million years ago and it resulted in many neighboring solar system to lose what ever habitable worlds that existed.
Imagine that in all that devastation, nothing much remains, and the Earth solar system is one of the few "oasis" in a sea of death, destruction and wasteland.
This makes Earth very isolated geographically from the more concentrated planetary civilizations which exist toward the center of the galaxy.
These obvious facts have made Earth suitable for use only as a zoological or botanical garden, or for it’s current use as a prison – but not much else.
Which is also something that I have stated in my previous articles.
Before 30,000 BCE — Misfits started arriving to the Earth
I can tell you that I have long known about the presence of "federation" craft in and around our Earth at 30,000 years ago. Its just that I assumed that they were type-1 grey vehicles. This disclosure clarifies my information. It states that the visitations to the earth at 30,000 BCE were "Old Empire" vehicles performing specific activities in and around the Earth.
Earth started being used a dumping ground and prison for IS-BEs who were judged “untouchable”, meaning criminal or non-conformists.
IS-BEs were captured, encapsulated in electronic traps and transported to Earth from various parts of the “Old Empire”.
Underground “amnesia stations” were set up on Mars…
…and on Earth in the Rwenzori Mountains in Africa…
… in the Pyrenees Mountains of Portugal…
Pyrenees Mountains of Portugal.
… and in steppes of Mongolia.
Mongolian Mountains.
These electronic monitoring points create force screens designed to detect and capture IS-BEs, when the IS-BE departs the body at death.
The way these devices work is it [1] senses when a person dies, and the consciousness departs the body at death. Then, [2] it attracts, snares or captures that consciousness.
IS-BEs are brainwashed using extreme electronic force in order to maintain Earth’s population in state of perpetual amnesia.
A high enough, or powerful enough, electronic force can do anything. This then provides amnesia for the consciousness.
However, there is evidence that it no longer is wholly functional.
You see, according to the extraterrestrial, the devices (the electronic amnesia screens) only work when the person departs the body as consciousness, they lose all memories and then are reshuffled back to the Earth.
Yet, we know, that through various techniques (such as hypnosis) we can recover these memories of time before lives, and within other lives.
I have copied complete books of Robert Newton in this regard. You can see my articles here;
Thus the works by the great Doctor Michael Newton who studied the geography of Heaven through regression hypnosis. It might be something that most people would discount as "tin foil hat" nonsense, but his works absolutely and accurately describe what I have observed personally in my MAJestic dealings.
Though, please take note that he did not understand the MWI, and some of his assumptions are in error. What he did was try to map out what Heaven was from the basis of what "time" and "reality" is. Still the best reads out there.
The first book is considered “ground breaking”, I however thought that it was rather elementary. Thus, I strongly urge any reader to read this book first before you tackle the second…
Unfortunately, this first book has all kinds of “new age” things inside of it that pretty much “turned off” my readership. It also had some misconceptions. So I went ahead and annotated the book and explained things so that my base readership would understand what is going on, relative to MAJestic and the entire universe. Here are the posts broken down for easy reading and study…
The second book is full of “red meat” and is just packed with information. However, most readers will not be able to understand it unless they read the first book. This book, due to the size and complexity has been broken down into three posts. A lot of good stuff is here.
Again, realize that he and his patents did not understand what “time”, “realities” and the concept of “quantum shadows”. Please take his misconceptions into account when you read his works.
So in summary, my point is that [1] things have certainly changed since 1947. And that [2] during the 1970's all sorts of discoveries were starting to be made regarding regaining memories of past lives, and the interim period between lives.
Combined, this offers [3] the suggestion that efforts of MAJestic and the Domain extraterrestrials have been successful in greatly reducing the influences of these force screens.
Yet, some questions remain.
[4] Being able to recall past lives, that occurred before 10,000 years ago suggests that the shield amnesia effect is not permanent.
[5] However, most human subjects that I have read in the Dr. Newton studies suggest that their memories are more recent than that. Which suggests that it was only after the shield was turned off that they were able to remember memories that happened after 10,000 years.
But,
I can tell you that MM has partial memory retention, and that MM memories date back to around 250,000 years.
What does this mean?
[6] I have a EBP that (perhaps) assists in memory retention.
[7] If the memory can be recalled under hypnosis earlier than 1150AD (the destruction of a major "old Empire" base), it means that your memory amnesia is not permanent.
[8] If your memory can be recalled under hypnosis earlier than 8,000 BCE, it means that you are probably not part of the 3,000 domain expeditionary forces that had complete memory wipes. For they had a complete and permanent wipe that was (at 1947) unrecoverable.
Obviously there are many unanswered questions.
Could it be lying, or could things have changed substantially since 1947 and with MAJestic support and assistance starting one year later in 1948? I personally believe that things have changed, and I also believe that the world-line clustering, slides to anchor world-lines were very effective in the support of bringing about a recovery of memories.
But that is just me.
Further population controls are installed through the use of long range electronic thought control mechanisms.
So it is not just one or two facilities or bases that run these devices, but an entire constellation of them, with many located far away geographically.
These stations are still in operation and they are extremely difficult to attack or destroy, even for The Domain, which will not maintain a significant military force in this area until a later date.
That later date may have already happened. Most certainly things have changed substantially since 1947.
The pyramid civilizations were intentionally created as part of the IS-BE prison system on Earth.
Interesting. The Egyptian pyramids are part of the prison structure? Tell me more.
The pyramid is alleged to be the symbol for “wisdom”. However, the “wisdom” of the “Old Empire” on planet Earth is intended to operate as part of the elaborate amnesia “trap” consisting of MASS, MEANING and MYSTERY.
These are opposite to the qualities of an Immortal Spiritual Being which have no mass, or meaning. An IS-BE “is” solely because it thinks that it “is”.
A consciousness consists of:
[1] Thoughts. Not physical mass.
[2] Formlessness. Not tangible meaning.
[3] Clarity. Not mystery.
MASS: represents the physical universe, including objects such as stars, planets, gases, liquids, energy particles and tea cups. The Pyramids were very, very solid objects, as were all of the structures created by the “Old Empire”. Heavy, massive, dense, solid objects create the illusion of eternity.
Dead bodies wrapped in linen, soaked in resin, placed inside engraved golden coffins and entombed with Earthly possessions amid cryptic symbols create an illusion of eternal life.
However, dense, heavy physical universe symbols are the exact opposite of an IS-BE. An IS-BE has no mass or time. Objects do not endure forever. An IS-BE “is” forever.
I have absolutely no problem with these statements.
MEANING: False meanings prevent knowledge of the truth. The pyramid cultures of Earth are a fabricated illusion. They are nothing more than “false civilizations” contrived by the “Old Empire” mystery cult called the Brothers of the Serpent.
False meanings were invented to create the illusion of a false society to further reinforce the amnesia mechanism among the intimates in the Earth prison system.
I have absolutely no problem with these statements.
MYSTERY: is built of lies and half-truths. Lies cause persistence because they alter facts which are comprised of exact dates, places and events. When truth is known, a lie no longer persists. If the exact truth is revealed, it is no longer a mystery.
I have absolutely no problem with these statements.
All of the pyramid civilizations of Earth were carefully contrived of layer upon layer of lies, skillfully combined with a few truths. The priest cult of the “Old Empire” combined sophisticated mathematics and space opera technology, with theatrical metaphors and symbolism. All of these are complete fabrications of truth, baited with the allure of aesthetics and mystery.
I have absolutely no problem with these statements.
The intricate rituals, astronomical alignments, secret rites, massive monuments, marvelous architecture, artistically rendered hieroglyphs and man-animal “gods” were designed to create an unsolvable mystery for the IS-BE prison population on Earth. The mystery diverts attention away from the truth that IS-BEs have been captured, given amnesia and imprisoned on a planet far, far away from their home.
I have absolutely no problem with these statements. It is the common misdirection technique deployed by black program, and the American media mechanism today.
The truth is that every single IS-BE on Earth came to Earth from some other planetary system.
This is very curious. Every single person... every single human on Earth is an immigrant or a descendant of an immigrant.
Not one person on Earth is a “native” inhabitant. Human beings did not “evolve” on Earth.
Humans did not evolve from primates.
Primates evolved, and went into various "dead ends".
But the humans that existed upon the earth were transplants. None of them evolved per the common belief that everyone holds. Monkeys did not eventual evolve into humans.
In the past, Egyptian society was run by the prison administrators or priests, who, in turn, manipulated a Pharaoh, controlled the treasury and kept the inmate population enslaved physically and spiritually. In modern times, the priests have changed, but the function is the same. However, now the priest are prisoners too.
This system of religion controlling the leadership is an on-going theme throughout the human cultures and societies, and it has only been most recently that this has changed.
Mystery reinforces the walls of the prison. The “Old Empire” feared that the IS-BEs on Earth might regain their memory. Therefore, one of the primary functions of The “Old Empire” priesthood is to prevent IS-BEs on Earth from remembering who they really are, how they came to Earth, where they came from.
And so they destroyed the mere idea of reincarnation...
The “Old Empire” operators of the prison system, and their superiors, do not want IS-BEs to remember who murdered them, captured them, stole all of their possessions, sent them to Earth, gave them amnesia and condemned them to eternal imprisonment!
Well, of course not!
Imagine what might happen if all of the inmates in the prison suddenly remembered that they have the right to be free! What if they suddenly realized that they have been falsely imprisoned and rise up as one against the guards?
Yikes!
They are afraid to reveal anything that looks like the civilization of the inmates home planets. A body, a piece of clothing, a symbol, a space ship, an advanced electronics device, or any other remnant of civilization from a home planet could “remind” a being and rekindle his memory.
So they did everything in their power to keep everyone primitive. When Greece started to advance, it was destroyed. When Persia started to advance, it was destroyed. When Rome started to advance it was destroyed. When the Chinese kingdoms advanced, they were destroyed. But it all came to an end, more or less around 1150 ad.
Sophisticated technologies of entrapment and enslavement, which were developed over millions of years in the “Old Empire”, have been applied to the IS-BEs on Earth with the intention to create a false facade for the prison. These facades were installed on Earth in totality, all at once. Every piece is a fully integrated part of the prison system.
This idea that everything was established all at once is highly suggestive of a pre-designed system of prison construction. This goes along with my strong belief that there are five "sentience nurseries" in this region of space.
All of which occupy the formerly ruined worlds of the catastrophic space wars of 66 million years ago.
This includes a religion of mumbo-jumbo double-speak.
Every pyramid civilization uses this as part of a control mechanism to keep the population enslaved by force, by fear and by ignorance.
The indecipherable muddle of irrelevant information, geometric designs, mathematical calculation, astronomical alignments, are part of a false spirituality based on solid objects, rather than immortal spirits, in order to confuse and disorient the IS-BEs on Earth.
I have no problem with these statements.
When the body of a person died they were buried with their Earthly possessions, including their former body wrapped in linen, to sustain their “soul” or “Ka” after death. An IS-BE does not “have” as soul. An IS-BE is a soul.
I agree.
On the home planet of an IS-BE their material possessions were not lost, stolen or forgotten when the being died or left the body. An IS-BE could return and claim the possessions.
Nothing is ever lost in our universe it only changes shape.
However, if the IS-BE has amnesia, they will not remember that they had any possessions. So, governments, insurance companies, bankers, family members and other vultures can pick their possessions clean without fear of retribution from the deceased.
This is something that the Roswell leadership could well understand. And something that I too understand most perfectly.
The only reason for these false meanings is to instill the idea that an IS-BE is NOT a spirit, but a physical object!
This is a lie.
It is a trap for an IS-BE.
And, isn't that exactly what is taught in schools and religions?
Countless people have spent endless hours attempting to solve the jig-saw puzzle of Egypt and other “Old Empire” civilizations. They are puzzles made of pieces that do not fit. A question states its own answer.
Everything is an intentional "dead end".
What is the mystery of Egypt and other pyramid cultures? Mystery!
circa 15,000 BCE – Bolivia mining operations
The “Old Empire” forces supervised the construction of a hydraulic mining operations in the Andes Mountains in present day Bolivia near Lake Titicaca (Lake of Tin Stones) at Tiahuanaco including construction of the massive stone complex of carved stone buildings known as Kalasasaya and its “Gate of the Sun” at an elevation of nearly 14,000 feet.
No problem with this.
11,600 BCE – Polar Axis Shift
The Polar Axis of Earth shifted to a sea area. The last Ice Age came to an end abruptly as the polar ice caps melted and the level of the ocean rose to submerge large sections of the land masses of Earth. The last remaining vestiges of Atlantis and Lemuria were covered by water. Massive extinctions of animals occurred in the Americas, Australia and the Arctic Regions due to the shift of the poles.
10,450 BCE — Plans for the Great Pryramid were created.
Plans were made by the “Old Empire” IS-BE called Thoth for construction of a Great Pyramid of Giza. The 4 “air shafts” of the pyramid point precisely to key stars in the “Old Empire” as seen from Giza in this year. The alignment of the Pyramids of Giza on the ground matches perfectly the alignment of the constellation of Orion as seen in the sky from Giza relative to the Nile as the earthly representation of the Milky Way in the sky.
No problem with this. This date is in alignment with Graham Hancock. Like the Cayce Association, he continues to argue for a 10,500 B.C. "origin" of the Great Pyramid and Giza Plateau.
10,400 BCE – Herodotus records that Atlantis records are buried under the Sphinx.
According to the Earth historian, Herodotus, records from the ruined civilization of Atlantis, containing electronic technology and other technology of that society, were buried in a vault beneath the paws of The Sphinx.
The Greek historian wrote that he was told this by some of his friends who were Priests of Anu, the Sumerian god, at the Egyptian city of Heliopolis.
However, it is highly unlikely that any traces of an electronic civilization would be allowed to be left intact on Earth by the “old empire” prison system administrators.
No problem with this.
8,212 BCE — Veda Hymns created.
The Veda or Vedic hymns are a set of religious hymns that were introduced into the societies of Earth. They came forward in spoken tradition, memorized, from generation to generation. “The Hymn to the Dawn Child” includes an idea called the “cycle of the physical universe”: the creation, growth, conservation, decay and death or destruction of energy and matter in a space. These cycles produce time. The same set of hymns describes the “theory of evolution”.
Here is a tremendous body of knowledge which contains a great deal of spiritual truth. Unfortunately, it has been incorrectly evaluated by humans and altered with lies and reversals of fact by priests which are a booby trap to prevent anyone from using the wisdom to discover a way to escape from the prison planet.
No problem with this.
8,050 BCE — Old Empire Home Planet is conquered and destroyed.
Destruction of the “Old Empire” home planet government in this galaxy.
This was the end of the “Old Empire” as a political entity in the galaxy.
However, the vast size of the “Old Empire” will take many thousands of years for The Domain to conquer completely.
The inertia of the political, economic and cultural systems of the “Old Empire” will remain in place for some time to come.
No problem with this.
However, remnants of the “Old Empire” space fleet in the solar system of Earth were finally destroyed in 1,230 AD.
Massive destruction in the solar system at 1230 AD. Meanwhile on Earth everyone was fighting everyone else. See HERE.
In addition to operatives of the “Old Empire” who run the Earth prison operation, there were other beings from the “Old Empire” who came to Earth.
Since Earth was no longer under the control of the “Old Empire” after their defeat by The Domain Forces, there was no police force to control military renegades, space pirates, miners, merchants and entrepreneurs who came to Earth to exploit the resources of the planet for personal gain, and many other nefarious reasons.
No problem with this. After the government collapsed, everyone came to take advantage of the situation, loot and acquire power.
For example, the history of Earth, according to the Jewish people, describes the “Nephilim“. Chapter 6 of The Book of Genesis, describes the origin of the “Nephilim” :
“Now it came about, when men began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them, that the “sons of God” saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose.
The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.”
The ancient Jewish people who wrote the history book called the Old Testament were slaves, herders and gatherers. Any modern technology, even a simple flashlight, would seem astounding and miraculous to them. They attributed any unexplainable phenomenon or technology to the workings of a “god”.
Unfortunately, this behavior is universal among all IS-BEs who have been given amnesia, and cannot remember their own experiences, training, technology, personality or identity.
Obviously, if these were men, and they mated with Earth women, they were not “sons of god”.
They were humans that mated with human Earth women who had no recollections of their true nature.
They were IS-BEs who inhabited biological bodies in order to take advantage of the political situation in the “Old Empire”, or simply to indulge in physical sensation.
They set up small colonies of their own on Earth beyond the reach of the police and tax authorities.
I am sure... all over the world.
Coincidentally, one of the most serious crimes an IS-BE could commit in the “Old Empire” was to violate income tax regulations. Income taxes were used as a slavery mechanism and as a punishment in the “Old Empire”. The slightest error in a tax report made an IS-BE “untouchable”, followed by imprisonment on Earth.
These were established in Babylon, Egypt, China and Mesoamerica. The Mesopotamian area provided service facilities, communication stations, space ports, and stone quarry operations for these false civilizations.
Ptah was the name given to the first in a succession of administrators from the “Old Empire” who represented themselves to the Earth population as “divine” rulers.
Ptah’s importance may be understood when one learns that the word “Egypt” is a Greek corruption of the phrase “Het-Ka-Ptah,” or “House of the Spirit of Ptah”. Ptah, was nick-named “The Developer”. He was a construction engineer. His high priest was given the title ‘Great Leader of Craftsmen’.
Ptah was also the god of reincarnation in Egypt. He originated the “opening of the mouth ceremony” which was performed by priests at funerals to “release souls” from their corpses. Of course, when the “souls” were released, they were captured, given amnesia, and returned to Earth again.
The so-called “Devine” rulers who followed Ptah on Earth were called “Ntr”, meaning “Guardians or Watchers” by the Egyptians. Their symbol was the Serpent, or Dragon which represented a secret priesthood of the “Old Empire” called the “Brothers of the Serpent”.
“Old Empire” engineers used cutting tools of highly concentrated light waves to quickly carve and excavate stone blocks. They also used force fields and space craft to lift and transport blocks of stone weighing hundred or thousands of tons each. The placement on the ground of some of these structures will be found to have geodetic or astronomical significance relative to various stars in this galactic region.
The buildings are crude and impractical, compared to building standards on most planets.
As an engineer of The Domain, I can attest that make-shift structures like these would never pass inspection on a planet in The Domain. Stone blocks such as those used in the pyramid civilizations can still be seen, partially excavated, in the stone quarries in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Most of the structures were hastily built “props”, much like the false facades of a western town on the set of a motion picture. They appear to be real, and to have some use or value however, they have no value. They have no useful purpose. The pyramids and all of the other stone monuments erected by the “Old Empire” could be called “mystery monuments”.
Good points. Why create these enormous stone structures unless to support some kind of an illusion of power? The people lived in wood structures. Why make these big stone creations that apparently served no functional purpose?
Most of these discussions sound very familiar as the "alternative history" of the world. People point to the alternative "historians" as the folk that started these beliefs, but aside from the Edgar Cayce narratives, everything actually began at this "Alien Interview". And it was kept secret from the general population for decades.
For what reason would anyone waste so many resources to construct so many useless buildings? To create a mysterious illusion.
The fact of the matter is that each one of the “divine rulers” were IS-BEs who served as operatives of the “Old Empire”. They were certainly not “divine”, although they were IS-BEs.
6248 BCE – Battles for the Solar System
The beginning of active warfare between The Domain Space Command and the surviving remnants of the “Old Empire” space fleet in this solar system that lasted nearly 7,500 years.
So for the firm dates, we can say that the warfare began in 6278 BCE, and ended in 1150 AD. Or roughly 7500 years.
It began when an installation was established in the Himalaya mountains by a battalion of the 3,000 officers and crew members of The Domain Expeditionary Force. The installation was not fortified as The Domain was not aware that the “Old Empire” maintained Earth as a prison planet.
So the Domain set up a undefended base. And it was destroyed and the members imprisoned.
The Domain installation was attacked and destroyed by space forces of the “Old Empire” who continued to operate in the solar system of Earth.
IS-BEs of The Domain battalion were captured, taken to Mars, given amnesia, and sent back to Earth to inhabit human biological bodies. They are still on Earth.
5,965 BCE — Dominion bases on Venus set up to fight the Old Empire forces
Investigations into the disappearance of Domain forces in this solar system led to the discovery of “Old Empire” bases on Mars and elsewhere.
The Domain took over the planet Venus as a defensive position against the space forces of the “Old Empire”.
When the warfare began, the Domain set up defensive positions on Venus.
The Domain Expeditionary Force also monitors life forms on Venus which has a very dense, hot and heavy atmosphere of sulfuric acid clouds. There are a few life forms on Earth that can endure an atmospheric environment like Venus.
This provided them protection from the "Old Empire" forces, which were, after all, all humans.
The Domain also established secret installations or space stations in the (Earth) solar system.
This solar system has a planet that is broken up – the asteroid belt. It provides a very useful low-gravity platform for take off and landing of space craft. It is used as a “galactic jump” between the Milky Way and adjoining galaxies.
This asteroid belt is in the "frost zone" and planetary formation in this area is not stable.
There aren’t any planets at this end of the galaxy that can serve as a good galactic entering spot for incoming transport, and other ships. But this broken up planet makes a very ideal space station.
As a result of our war against the “Old Empire”, this area of the solar system is now a valuable possession of The Domain.
So as a side effect of cleaning out the "rat's nest" that was the "Old Empire" was the ability to set up staging locations for on-ward progress towards the more populated sections of the galaxy.
The intervention into the affairs on Earth by the “Old Empire” operatives or “divine gods” was disrupted at this time by The Domain Forces.
They were forced to replace themselves with human rulers.
The Warden(s) for the "Prison planet" of Earth now had to leave. They could no longer maintain their roles and their positions. If they did, the Domain, would secure them, and remove them. So the roles were taken over by the "inmates".
The First Dynasty of human Pharaohs who united Upper and Lower Egypt began with the rule of a Pharaoh who, coincidentally, was named “MEN”. He established the capital city called Men-Nefer, “The Beauty of Men” in Egypt.
This started the first succession of 10 human Pharaohs and a period of 350 years of chaos that followed in the administrative ranks of the “Old Empire”.
I have no problem with this statement.
3,200 BCE — Open war between the Domain and the Old Empire on Earth
As I mentioned earlier, Earth was under attack between The Domain and the “Old Empire” forces during this period.
Of course this does not make any sense to archaeologists or historians on Earth, because the Egyptian period is a space opera era period. Since Earth historians have amnesia, they assume that this was only a religious period.
Archaeologists who study ancient Egypt assume all the writings are not technical or historical. Instead they view it as religious and superstitious.
Further, because the technology and civilizations installed on Earth during this period were “prepackaged”, they did not “evolve” on Earth.
Of course, there is no evidence anywhere on Earth of an evolutionary transition which resulted in sophisticated mathematics, language, writing, religion, architecture, cultural traditions in Egypt or any of the pyramid civilizations.
These cultures, complete with all of the details of racial body types, hair-styles, facial makeup, rituals, moral codes and so forth, just “appeared” as complete integrated packages.
This is something that I too have commented about.
The physical evidence suggests that all evidence of the intervention of The Domain or “Old Empire” Forces, or any other extraterrestrial activity, has been carefully “cleaned up”, so as not to create suspicion.
I would agree with this as well.
The “Old Empire” force does not want the IS-BEs of Earth to suspect that they have been captured, transplanted to Earth and brainwashed.
I have no problem with this statement.
So, Earth historians continue to assume that Egyptian priests were not supposed to have “ray guns” or other technology of the “Old Empire”. And, they suppose that there was nothing going on, on Earth, except some priests walking around saying ‘Amen’, which the Christians still say.
3,172 BCE – Astronomical grid layout
Layout of the astronomical grid that joins the key mining sites and astronomical buildings of ‘the gods’ in the Andes Mountains such as Tiahuanaco, Cuzco, Quito, the cities of Ollantaytambu, Machu Picchu and for the mining of rare metals, including tin for use in making bronze.
Metals were the property of “the gods”, of course.
Graham Hancock discussed this in one of his books.
A great variety of entrepreneurial mining was done on Earth at that time due to the war between the “Old Empire” force and The Domain.
These miners did carve a few sculptures of themselves.
They are seen wearing mining helmets.
The Ponce stela sculpture in the sunken courtyard of the Kalasasaya temple is a crude rendering of a stone worker using an electronic, light-wave emitting stone cutter and carving tools, held in a holster.
Ponce stela sculpture.
The “Old Empire” has also maintained mining operations on planets throughout the galaxy for a very long time. The mineral resources of Earth are now a property of The Domain.
2,450 BCE — Great pyramid complex finished
The “great” pyramid and complex of pyramids near Cairo were completed.
I am a little bit confused with this.
Earlier he started talking or discussing the creation of pyramids in Egypt at around 10,000 BCE. Now he is saying that they were completed at 2450 BCE, which is about 7,500 years later.
An inscription created by the “Old Empire” administrators can be seen in the so-called Pyramid texts.
The pyramid texts inscription.
The texts say that the pyramid was built under the direction of Thoth, Son of Ptah.
Of course there was never a King buried in the chamber, since the pyramids were never intended to be used as a burial chamber.
The great pyramid was located precisely at the exact center of all of the land masses of Earth, as viewed from space.
Obviously such precise measurements require aerial perspective and a view of the land masses of Earth from space. Purely mathematical calculations of the geodetic center of the continents of Earth could not be made otherwise.
Of course. This is one of the many arguments made by alternative historians.
Shafts were constructed inside the pyramid to align with the configuration of stars in the constellation of Orion, Canus Majora, and specifically Sirius.
The shafts are also aligned to the Big Dipper, where the home planet of the “Old Empire” existed.
Also, Ainitak, Alpha Draconis and Beta Ursa Minor. These stars are each one of the key systems in the “Old Empire” from which IS-BEs were brought to Earth and dumped, as unwanted merchandise.
Well, now another point of confusion. All the stars listed are huge, hot, short lived and energetic stars. Certainly not the kind of a place that one could assume humans would live. But I will pause my incredulity, and make the statement that there is much that we do not know about stars, and the technological abilities of the "Old Empire".
I am now going to diverge a small bit from the narrative to take a closer look at the stars that the extraterrestrial mentioned.
I have color coded the information to make it easier to understand.
Orion Constellation
Great Pyramid alignment
The constellation of Orion is among the oldest recognized constellations in the world. Among the earliest known depictions of Orion lies in a prehistoric Aurignacian mammoth ivory carving dated to be between 32,000 to 38,000 years old. The constellation of Orion is probably the most prominent, and amongst the oldest constellations in the night sky, hosting numerous bright stars, nebulae, clusters, and more.
The distinctive pattern of Orion is recognized in several cultures around the world, and thus many myths and legends are associated with it.
Canis Major
Great pyramid alignment
(Latin: “Greater Dog”) constellation in the southern sky, at about 7 hours right ascension and 20° south in declination. The brightest star in Canis Major is Sirius, the brightest star in the sky and the fifth nearest to Earth, at a distance of 8.6 light-years. This constellation is also home to the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy, which at a distance of 25,000 light-years is the closest galaxy to Earth. Because of its proximity to Orion, the constellation was identified as one of Orion’s hunting dogs. Canis Major was also thought to represent other dogs in Greek mythology, such as one of the hounds of Actaeon.
Sirius System Summary
Great pyramid alignment
Also known as Alpha Canis Majoris, Sirius is the fifth closest system to Sol, at 8.6 light-years (ly) away. It is located in the north central part (06:45:08.92-16:42:58.02, ICRS 2000.0) of Constellation Canis Major, the Larger Dog. Sirius is also the lower left member of the "Winter Triangle" of first magnitude stars, whose other components are Procyon (Alpha Canis Minoris) at upper left and Betegeuse (Alpha Orionis) at right center.
The bright star is the title member of the Sirius stellar moving group (also known as the Sirius Super Cluster or Ursa Major star stream), which include all five stars of the Great Dipper as well as Gemma and are mostly around 490 million years old and all moving towards the galactic center.
Although Ejnar Hertzsprung (1873-1967) claimed that Sirius was a likely member of the Ursa Major moving group as early as 1909, a 2003 study of possible moving group members using HIPPARCOS' parallax data led by Jeremy King was not able to confirm the system's membership (Ken Croswell, Astronomy.com, March 2005), and the Sirius system appears to be too young, only about half the apparent age of the Ursa Major star stream (Liebert et al, 2005; and Ken Croswell, 2005).
And now for the systems that the extraterrestrial says were home solar systems for the various "Old Empire" citizenry.
Alnitak 3
This star is one of the key systems in the "Old Empire" from which IS-BEs were brought to Earth and dumped, as unwanted merchandise.
Once thought to be around 1,500 to 1,600 light-years (ly) away, the Alnitak, or Zeta Orionis, system is now estimated to be located around 820 +/- 170 ly from Sol (based on a HIPPARCOS Plx= 3.99 +/- e_Plx= 0.79 mas).
It lies in the south central part (5:40:45.5-1:56:34 for Stars Aab, J2000, or 5:40:45.5-1:56:33.3, ICRS 2000) of Constellation Orion (see chart and labelled photo), the Hunter.
There, Alnitak can be found at: left or immediately southeast of the neighboring belt stars of Alnilam (Epsilon Orionis) and Mintaka (Delta Orionis); southwest of Betelgeuse (Alpha Orionis), northeast of Rigel, and northwest of Saiph (Kappa Orionis).
In addition to wide binary companion Star B, Alnitak's primary also has a close stellar companion Ab, (USNO press release). However, the star (sometimes called "C") that has a separation of around 57.6" away is thought to be a optical companion.
Alnitak lies in a region crowded with several dusty clouds of interstellar gas actively forming new stars, including the famous "Horsehead Nebula" to the south. The system is a member of the "Orion OB1 Association," where massive young objects with over 10 times the Sol's mass can be found in abundance (more on OB associations and stellar nurseries).
Zeta Orionis A or Aa
Detailed information.
Alnitak Aa is a blue supergiant star of spectral and luminosity type O9.7 Ibe (with "peculiar" emission lines), where O-type stars are the hottest stars in the spectral sequence excluding white dwarfs. The star may have as much as 28 times Sol's mass (Hummel et al, 2000, in pdf), perhaps 20 times Sol's diameter (Remie and Lamers, 1982, page 87; as reported in Pasinetti-Fracassini et al, 2001), and around 100,000 times its bolometric luminosity, which is much greater than its visual luminosity of around 10,500 times Solar.
The European Space Agency's astrometry satellite HIPPARCOS has measured Zeta Orionis Aab's distance from Earth to be around 820 light years, giving it an absolute visual magnitude of -5.25 (based on a HIPPARCOS Vmag= 1.74), somewhat under-luminous for stars of its class; however, these measurements may have been significantly affected by the presence of the recently discovered, dimmer close stellar companion Ab (described below). Even so, Alnitak Aa is the brightest O-type star in Earth's night sky (according to Professor Jim Kaler's excellent Stars' web page on Alnitak). Its 31,000-degree-Kelvin surface, however, radiates mostly ultraviolet wavelengths that are invisible to Human eyes.
Type-O supergiants show strong stellar winds that produce optical spectral emission lines and thermal radio and X-ray emissions. How these stars produce high-energy X-rays, however, is still subject to intense research because they lack significant magnetic fields and are not sufficiently hot despite their very high surface temperatures.
Alnitak Aa seems to generate and maintain magnetic loops like Sol, which is difficult for astronomers to explain. Although O-type stars have inner convection zones in their core, they are believed to lack outer convection zones, which astronomers considered necessary to create the hot and energetic plasmas confined in magnetic loops. Convection zones are internal regions where most of the energy is transported by fluid motions from hotter regions to cooler ones.
Without such zones located near a star's surface, astronomers are currently unable to explain how high-density knots of X-rays could exist. On the other hand, shock waves created in the turbulent stellar wind flow are an important part of current theories. Like all O stars, Alnitak Aa's X-rays may come from a wind that blows from its surface at nearly 2,000 km (1,200 miles) per second, which produces x-rays when blobs of gas in the wind crash violently into one another (Donati et al, 2002; Waldron and Cassinelli, 2001, and 2000 in pdf; and CXC press release, 10/18/2000).
Massive stars use their fuel quickly and do not live very long. Although Alnitak Aa may only be around six million years old, hydrogen fusion may already have ceased at its core. The star will eventually become a red supergiant somewhat like Betelgeuse and will probably explode as a supernova. Useful catalogue numbers and designations for the star include: Zet Ori A, 50 Ori A, HR 1948/9, HIP 26727, HD 37742, BD-02 1338, SAO 132444, STF 774 A, and ADS 4263 A.
In a wide orbit around the primary is a 4th magnitude visual companion, a B-type giant star that is currently separated by about 2.3 arcseconds (USNO press release, 4/15/1998). The pair orbits each other with a period estimated around 1,500 years long. According to old calculations (from J. Hopmann in 1967) cited in the Sixth Catalog of Orbits of Visual Binaries, Star "B" is separated on average from the primary by around 680 AUs (a semi-major axis of a= 2.728" at a distance of 817 ly), with an estimated orbital period of 1,508.6 years. Their highly circular orbit (e= 0.07) is inclined 72.0° from the perspective of an observer from Earth.
In 1998, Star A was found to have a close stellar companion ("Ab") only around 11 AUs away (0.042" in February and March 1998 at a distance of 820 ly). The close companion is only two magnitudes fainter and would be easily visible to the naked eye from Earth if it was farther from its brighter neighbor. The relative motion of the inner stellar pair has been detected, which was "most likely due to their being gravitationaly bound with an orbital period of only a few years" (Hummel et al, 2000, in pdf; and USNO press release).
The distance from the star pair Aab where an Earth-type planet would be "comfortable" with liquid water is at least 300 AUs -- over seven times the orbital of Pluto in the Solar System. Given that the stars are only a few million years old, however, they are too probably young for any forming planets to have cooled off sufficiently to have much surface water instead of superheated steam. Astronomers would find it very difficult to detect an Earth-sized planet around this star using present methods.
Zeta Orionis Ab
Detailed information
As Star Ab has a high visual magnitude (around 4) and a presumably youthful age of a few million years shared with the primary, it may be a late O-type main sequence dwarf (Hummel et al, 2000, in pdf). Hence, it should have a much greater mass (e.g., 23 times Solar), diameter, and visual luminosity (over 1,300 times Solar) than Sol.
According to the Yale Bright Star Catalogue, 1991 5th Revised Edition notes entry for HR 1948 and 1949, Star B is a blue-white giant star of spectral and luminosity type B2 III. It may have 14 times Sol's mass, a much larger diameter, and around 1,100 times its visual luminosity, based on an apparent magnitude of 4.2 with an even greater bolometric luminosity due to the high ultraviolet emission of its spectral type (Hummel et al, 2000, in pdf).
As with the inner star pair Aab, the orbit of an Earth-like planet (with liquid water) around Star B would be centered beyond the orbital distance of Pluto in the Solar System. Given the youth of the host star (which should be similar to that of the primary), moreover, such a planet is unlikely to have cooled sufficiently to have much surface water instead of steamon its surface. Useful catalogue numbers and designations for the star include: Zet Ori B, 50 Leo B, HD 17743, and ADS 4263 B.
Thuban (α Draconis) Facts
This star is one of the key systems in the "Old Empire" from which IS-BEs were brought to Earth and dumped, as unwanted merchandise.
Thuban is a relatively inconspicuous star in the night sky of the Northern Hemisphere, located at around 305 light-years away from the Sun. Thuban, also designated as Alpha Draconis, is a double star system located in the constellation of Draco. Thuban is historically significant since it was the north pole star from the 4th to 2nd millennium BCE. Based upon it metallicity, the interstellar medium from which Thuban formed, was somewhat metal-poor. Thuban’s exact age is uncertain. However, it has ceased hydrogen fusion in its core, and it is no longer in the main-sequence.
Distance, Size, and Mass
Thuban is located at around 303 light-years / 93 parsecs away from the Sun. The primary component star is both more massive and several times bigger than our Sun.
Thuban has 2.8 solar masses, or 280% of the Sun’s mass, and a radius of 3.4 solar radii, or 340% of the Sun’s radius. Based upon its radius, Thuban should be around six times, or more, bigger than our Sun. Thuban’s companion star has 2.6 solar masses or 260% of our Sun’s mass.
Other Characteristics
Thuban is a white giant star of spectral class A0III, indicating similarities to Vega in temperature and spectrum, but more luminous and massive.
Thuban has been used as an MK spectral standard for the A0III type. It has ceased hydrogen fusion in its core and started to expand. It has an apparent magnitude of 3.6 and an absolute magnitude of -1.20.
Thuban is 479 times brighter than our Sun and has average surface temperatures of around 10,100 K, or 1.7 times hotter than our Sun.
Thuban’s companion, Alpha Draconis B, is 40 times brighter than our Sun, being 1.83 magnitudes fainter than the primary star. Not much is known about the companion, though it is speculated that it is a main-sequence star slightly cooler than Thuban, and possibly of spectral type A2.
Stellar System
The Thuban / Alpha Draconis star system is a single-lined spectroscopic binary star system, which means that only the spectral liens of the primary component are visible.
The two stars orbit each other once every 51.5 days and have an orbital eccentricity of 0.43. The two components are separated from one another by about 0.46 AU.
This system is an eclipsing binary star system. The eclipses displayed are only partial, with an inclination of slightly less than 90 degrees, with depths of 9% and 2%. These eclipses last for only six hours.
Thuban is one of the stars that take turns as the North Star during the Earth’s precession cycle. Thuban was the Pole Star from 3942 BCE to 1793 BCE, during the creation of some of Egypt’s largest pyramids.
Thuban was closest to the pole in 2830 BCE, coming closest to the north celestial pole out of all the other pole stars. However, Thuban was among the faintest pole stars.
In comparison, the current pole star, Polaris, comes within 0.5 degrees of the north celestial pole and has an apparent magnitude of 1.98.
As the North Star, Thuban was preceded by Edasich (Iota Draconis) and succeeded by the brighter Kochab (Beta Ursae Minoris), one of the stars of the Little Dipper, and the fainter Kappa Draconis. Thuban has slowly drifted away from true north over the last 4,800 years.
Location
Thuban is located in the constellation of Draco, the eighth largest constellation in the sky and the fourth largest northern constellation, occupying an area of 1,083 square degrees.
Thuban is easy to spot though, from light-polluted areas, this can become a challenge. Thuban lies about halfway between Mizar, the middle star of the Big Dipper’s handle, and Kochab and Pherkad, the stars that form the outer side of the Little Dipper’s Bowl.
44 Boötis System Summary
This star system is one of the key systems in the "Old Empire" from which IS-BEs were brought to Earth and dumped, as unwanted merchandise.
This triple star system is located about 41.6 light-years (ly) away from our Sun, Sol. It lies in the northwestern part (15:3:47.3+47:39:14.6, ICRS 2000.0) of Constellation Boötes, the Herdsman or Bear Driver -- north of Nekkar (Beta Boötis), east of Lamda Boötis, northeast of Seginus (Gamma Boötis), southwest of Edasich (Iota Draconis), southeast of Theta Boötis and Alkaid (Eta Ursae Majoris), and west of Tau and Nu Herculis.
The "star" was noted to be variable in 1785 by Sir William Herschel (1738-1822), who was born Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel. According to Robert Burnham, Jr. (1931-93), the system was confirmed to be a visual binary in 1832 by Friedrich Georg Wilhelm Struve (1793-1864).
In 1926, the fainter component itself was found to be an eclipsing binary by Jan Schilt by photographic observations, which had already been suspected from a spectrum that showed rotationally broadened absorption lines.
The system has the variable star designation i Boötis and is often confused with Iota Boötis, a Delta-Scuti-type variable star of spectral and luminosity type A9 V.
All three stars of the 44 Boötis system are similar to Sol in size, brightness, and color. The annual proper motion of the system is about 40" in PA 274°, and it's radial velocity is around 24 km per second (15 miles per second) in approach. It is visible to the naked eye. All three are believed to be more than a billion years old (Alan Hale, 1994, pp. 312 and 314).
44 (i) Boötis A
This star is a yellowish main sequence dwarf star of spectral and luminosity type F5-G1 Vn (Nikolic et al, 1997; based on Frans van't Veer, 1971; and Kurpinska and van't Veer, 1970; versus Hill et al, 1989, page 89). It may be as massive as (or slightly more so than) Sol, with about the same diameter -- 1.03 to 1.05 percent Solar (Johnson and Wright, 1983, page 683; and Hill et al, 1989) and around 1.14 times its luminosity. Useful star catalogue numbers and designations for 44 Boötis A include: 44 Boo, i Boo, 44i Boo, HR 5618*, Gl 575 A, Hip 73695, HD 133640, BD+48 2259, SAO 45357, Struve 1909 A, and ADS 9494 A.
From the perspective of an observer on Earth, the orbit of Star A and the BC tight binary pair exhibit a very elongated and narrow ellipse whose separation has varied from 4.7" in 1880 to less than 0.4" in 1969 (Kaj Aage Gunnar Strand, 1937; A. Gennaro, 1940; L. Bennendijk, 1955; Worley and Heintz, 1983; and Wulff Dieter Heintz, 1963 to 1997; among others). According to new measurements (Staffan Soderhjelm, 1999) found in the new Sixth Catalog of Visual Orbits of Binary Stars, Stars A and B are separated by an "average distance" of about 48.5 AUs (semi-major axis of 3.8" with a HIPPARCOS distance estimate of 41.6 ly), or more than the average of orbital distance of Pluto in the Solar System. They move in a highly elliptical orbit (e= 0.55) that takes about 206 years to complete. Their orbit is inclined about 84° from the perspective of an observer on Earth. These elements are similar to Heintz's 1997 elements of: P=220.0 years; a=3.70"; e= 0.451; and i=83.7 (Wulff Dieter Heintz, 1997). (See an animation of the orbits of Stars A, B, and C and their potentially habitable zones, with a table of basic orbital and physical characteristics.)
44 (i) Boötis B
This star is a yellow-orange main sequence dwarf star of spectral and luminosity type G2 V (Nikolic et al, 1997; and Hill et al, 1989). This star may have around the same mass as Sol, 87 to 89 percent of its diameter (Johnson and Wright, 1983, page 683; and Hill et al, 1989), and as little as 54 percent of its luminosity. Useful catalogue numbers for the star include: Gl 575 B, Struve 1909 B, and ADS 9494 B.
44 Boötis is classified as an eclipsing variable of W Ursae Majoris type (that also resembles U Pegasi) because Star B has a double-lined, spectroscopic companion that is close enough to be considered a (weak thermal) shallow contact binary (Hill et al, 1989, page 96; and Jan Schilt, 1926). Since the outer gas envelopes of the stars are in contact (overflowing their Roche lobes), they essentially share a common photosphere despite having two distinct nuclear-burning cores. Indeed, Stars B and C are separated by only some 0.008 AU, around three quarters of a million miles (more than one million km) or about three times the distance between the Earth and its Moon. They are revolving in a highly circular orbit (e~ 0) that takes only 6.427 hours to complete. Moreover, from the perspective of an observer on Earth, Stars B and C eclipse each other twice at every revolution (every three hours). (See an animation of the orbits of Stars A, B, and C and their potentially habitable zones, with a table of basic orbital and physical characteristics.)
X-ray emission from stellar coronal material has been observed around Stars B and C with the Chandra X-Ray Observatory (press release; Brickhouse et al, 2001; and Nikolic et al, 1997; among others). According to the Yale Bright Star Catalogue's notes entry for HR 5618, a variation in the light curve for this close spectroscopic binary pair appears to be caused by mass transfer, which is supported by observations of gaseous streams between the stars. Eclipsing variables of this type may develop into eruptive "dwarf novae" similar to U Geminorum and SS Cygni, and U Pegasi has been observed to exhibit flares or eruptions of small amplitude that may presage more violent activity at a later stage of evolution. (More discussion on W Ursae Majoris type binaries is available from: Maceroni and van't Veer, 1996.)
44 (i) Boötis C
This star is a yellow-orange main sequence dwarf star of possibly spectral and luminosity type G V (Nikolic et al, 1997; and Hill et al, 1989), or later spectral type. This star probably has less mass than Sol, as little as 66 percent of its diameter (Hill et al, 1989), and significantly lower luminosity than Star B. Useful catalogue numbers for the star include Gl 575 C and NS 1503+4739 C.
Hunt for Substellar Companions
Since at least one of the stars of 44 Boötis is fairly similar to our Sun, some speculate whether the system might contain planets that harbor life. The distance from Star A where an Earth-type planet would be "comfortable" with liquid water is centered around 1.07 AU -- just beyond the orbital distances of Earth in the Solar System, with an orbital period of more than an Earth year. For close-orbiting Stars B and C, the liquid water zone may be centered around 0.73 AU -- between the orbital distances of Venus and Earth, with an orbital period around half a year. Astronomers would find it very difficult to detect an Earth-type planet around either of these stars using present methods.
Sorry for the detailed stellar data, but I couldn't help myself. Let's get back to the extraterrestrial narrative.
The configuration of all the pyramids of the Giza Plateau was intended to create a “mirror image”, on Earth of the solar system and certain constellations within the “Old Empire”.
2,181 BCE — Some manage to escape
MIN, became the God of Fertility of Egypt. The IS-BE, also known as Pan, was also a Greek god. Min or Pan, was an IS-BE who somehow managed to escape from the “Old Empire” amnesia system.
2,160 – 2040 BCE — Old Empire Rulers left
One of the results of the intensifying battle between The Domain Forces and the “Old Empire” forces was that the control of the “divine rulers”, was broken at this time.
They finally left Egypt and returned to the “heavens”, so to speak, in defeat.
Human beings took over the ruling role as Pharaohs. The first human pharaoh moved the Capital city of Egypt from Memphis to Heracleopolis.
I have no problem with this.
1,500 BCE – Destruction of Crete
This is the date for the destruction of Atlantis given by the Egyptian high-priests, Psenophis of Heliopolis, and Sonchis of Sais, to the Greek sage Solon.
This is the date of the destruction of the colony of Atlantis provided by the Egyptians. It differs from that provided by the extraterrestrial, who stated that Atlantis was destroyed.
While the extraterrestrial stated that between 400,000 and 75,000 years ago, both Atlantis and Lemuria colonies existed.
The Priests of Anu recorded that the Mediterranean area was invaded by “Atlantean” people about this time. Of course, these people were not from the ancient continent of Atlanta, in the Atlantic Ocean, which existed more than 70,000 years earlier.
These were refugees from the Minoan civilization on Crete escaping from the volcanic eruption and tidal waves of Mt. Thera that destroyed their civilization.
Here, the extraterrestrial clarifies the discrepancy.
Plato’s references to Atlantis were borrowed from the writings of the Greek philosopher Solon, who was given the information by the Egyptian priest who called Atlantis “Kepchu”, which also happens to be the Egyptian name for the people of Crete.
Nicely clarified.
Some of the survivors of the Minoan volcanic disaster asked Egypt for help, since they were the only other civilization with high culture in the Mediterranean area at the time.
1351 BCE – 1337 BCE — Earth Warfare
The Domain Expeditionary Force actively waged a war of religious conquest against the Egyptian mystery cult called the Priest of Amun, also known as the “Old Empire” Brothers of The Serpent.
While the space fleet of the "Old Empire" was destroyed in the solar system much earlier. We can say that the warfare began in 6278 BCE, and ended in 1150 AD. Or roughly 7500 years.
The "Old Empire" IS-BE's maintained occupancy in the human bodies on Earth.
As the leaders were removed, one by one, their cohorts formed "fifth column activities and "secret societies" that needed to be rooted out and eliminated.
During this time the Pharaoh Akhenaten abolished the priesthood of Amun, and moved the capital of Egypt from Thebes to the new location at Amarna, at the exact geodetic center of Egypt. However, this plot to overthrow the “Old Empire” religious control was quickly spoiled.
1,193 BCE — Greek wars / battle for control of space stations
In the Near East and Achaea, the Greeks and Trojans fought for supremacy, which ended in the destruction of Troy as the finale of the Trojan War.
During this same time, war was being fought out in the space of the solar system between two forces for control of the “space stations” surrounding Earth.
That period of 300 years was a very violent resistance to The Domain Forces by the remnants of the “Old Empire” forces. It did not last long however, as it is futile to resist The Domain.
I have no problem with this.
850 BCE — Homer wrote about IS-BE’s
Homer, the blind Greek poet, wrote the stories ‘the gods’ as borrowed and modified from earlier sources in Vedic texts, Sumerian texts, Babylonian and Egyptian mythology.
His poems, as well as many other “myths” of the ancient world are very accurate descriptions of the exploits of IS-BE’s on Earth who were able to avoid the “Old Empire amnesia operation and operate without biological bodies.
Interesting. Homer wrote stories about IS-BE's that escaped the amnesia operations. They were accurate descriptions. And so it was absolutely possible to undo the Empire amnesia operations.
700 BCE – Vedic Hymns translated into Greek
The Vedic Hymns were first translated in the Greek language. This was the beginning of a cultural revolution in Western civilization that transformed crude and brutal tribal cultures into democratic republics based on more reasonable conduct.
638 – 559 BCE — Atlantis reported to exist
Solon, a wise man from Greece, reported the existence of Atlantis. This was information he received from the “Old Empire” high-priests, Psenophis of Heliopolis and Sonchis of Sais, with whom he studied in Egypt.
630 BCE – Domain replacements for Old Empire religions
Zoroaster created religious practices in Persia around an IS-BE called Ahura Mazda. This was yet another of the growing number of “monotheistic” gods put in place by operatives of The Domain to displace a panoply of “Old Empire” gods.
604 BCE -Laozi
Laozi, a philosopher who wrote a small book called “The Way”, was an IS-BE of great wisdom, who overcame the effects of the “Old Empire” amnesia/hypnosis machinery and escaped from Earth. His understanding of the nature of an IS-BE must have been very good to accomplish this.
According to the common legend, his last lifetime as a human was lived in a small village in China. He contemplated the essence of his own life. Like Gautama Siddhartha, he confronted his own thoughts, and past lives. In so doing, he recovered some of his own memory, ability and immortality.
As an old man, he decided to leave the village and go to the forest to depart the body. The village gatekeeper stopped him and begged him to write down his personal philosophy before leaving.
Here is a small piece of advice he gave about “the way” he rediscovered his own spirit:
"He who looks will not see it;
He who listens will not hear it;
He who gropes will not grasp it.
The formless nonentity,
the motionless source of motion.
The infinite essence of the spirit is the source of life.
Spirit is self.
Walls form and support a room,
yet the space between them is most important.
A pot is formed of clay,
yet the space formed therein is most useful.
Action is caused by the force of nothing on something,
just as the nothing of spirit is the source of all form.
One suffers great afflictions because one has a body.
Without a body what afflictions could one suffer?
When one cares more for the body than for his own spirit,
One becomes the body and looses the way of the spirit.
The self, the spirit, creates illusion.
The delusion of Man is that reality is not an illusion.
One who creates illusions and makes them more real than reality,
follows the path of the spirit and finds the way of heaven".
593 BCE – Genesis Story
The Genesis story written by the Jewish people describe “angels” or “sons of god” mating with women of Earth, who bore them children. These were probably renegades from the “Old Empire”. They may also have been space pirates or merchants from a system outside the galaxy who came to steal mineral resources, or smuggle drugs.
The Domain has observed that there are many visitors to Earth from neighboring planets and galaxies, but they rarely stop and live here. What kind of beings would live on a prison planet if they were not forced to do so?
The same book also reports the story of a human named Ezekiel who witnessed a spacecraft or aircraft landing near Chebar River in Chaldea. His description of the craft uses very archaic language, technically, but is nevertheless, quite an accurate description of an “Old Empire” saucer or scout craft. It is similar to the sighting of “vimanas” by the people in the foothills of the Himalayas.
Their Genesis story also mentions that “Yahweh” designed biological bodies to live for 120 years on Earth. Biological bodies on most “Sun Type 12, Class 7” planets are usually engineered to last for an average of about 150 years.
Human bodies on Earth last only about one half as long.
We suspect this is because the prison administrators have altered the biological material of human bodies on Earth to die more frequently so that the
IS-BEs who inhabit them will recycle through the amnesia mechanism more frequently.
It should be noted that much of the “Old Testament” was written during the captivity of the Jews who were enslaved in Babylon, which was very heavily controlled by priests of the “Old Empire”. The book introduces a false sense of time and a false concept of the origin of the creation.
The serpent is the symbol of the “Old Empire“. It appears in the beginning of their creation story, or as the Greeks say, “Genesis”, and causes the spiritual destruction of the first human beings, who are metaphorically represented by Adam and Eve.
The Old Testament, clearly influenced by the “Old Empire” Forces, gives a detailed description of the IS-BEs being induced into biological bodies on Earth.
This book also describes many of the “Old Empire” brainwashing activities, including the installation of false memories, lies, superstitions, commands to “forget” and all manner of tricks and traps designed to keep IS-BEs on Earth. Most importantly, it destroys the awareness that humans are Immortal Spiritual Beings.
I have no problem at all with these statements.
580 BCE — Communication centers
The Oracle at Delphi was one temple in a network of many oracle temples. Each temple was a communication center.
The “Old Empire” priests designated a local “god” for each temple.
Each of the temples in this network were located at precisely 5 degrees of latitude intervals from the capital city of Thebes throughout the Mediterranean area as far north as the Baltic Sea.
The shrines served, among other things, as a grid, housing electronic beacons, later called “Omphalus Stones”. The grid arrangement of Oracle sites can only be seen from miles above the Earth.
An Omphalus Stone
The original network of electronic communications beacons were disabled when the priesthood was dispersed, and were replaced by carved stones.
Very interesting. The original network of electronic communications beacons were disabled when the priesthood was dispersed, and were replaced by carved stones.
The symbol of the “Old Empire” priesthood is a Python, dragon or serpent. It was called the “earth-dragon” at Delphi, which is always represented in sculpture and vase-paintings as a serpent.
In Greek mythology the guardian of the Omphalus Stone at the temple at Delphi was an oracle whose name was Python, the serpent.
She was an IS-BE, who was conquered by a “god” named Apollo.
He buried her under the Omphalos stone.
This is a case of one “god” setting up his temple on the grave of another. This is a very accurate euphemism for The Domain Force that detected and disabled the “Old Empire” temple network on Earth.
It was one of the fatal blows to the “Old Empire” Force in the solar system of Earth.
As I parse this document, I find more and more tidbits of extreme interest. You must keep in mind that all of this was recorded after ten days in captivity and after scanning some books.
559 BCE – Lost Commander of The Domain Battalion was rediscovered
The Commanding Officer of The Domain Battalion who was lost in 5,965 BCE was detected and located by a search party sent to Earth from The Domain Expeditionary Force.
He was incarnated as Cyrus II of Persia during this time.
A unique system of organization was used by Cyrus II and the members of that Battalion who followed him from India through his progression of human lives on Earth.
In part, it enabled them to build the largest empire in the history of the Earth to that date.
The Domain Search Party who located him traveled around the Earth searching for the lost Battalion for several thousand years.
The party consisted of 900 officers of The Domain, divided into teams of 300 each.
One team searched the land, another team search the oceans and the third team searched the space surrounding Earth.
There are many reports made in various human civilizations concerning their activities, which humans did not understand, of course.
The Domain Search Party devised a wide variety of electronic detection devices needed to track the electronic signature or wavelength of each of the missing members of the Battalion.
Some were used in space, others on land, and special devices were invented to detect IS-BEs under water.
One of these electronic detection devices is referred to as a “tree of life”.
The device is literally a tool designed to detect the presence of life, which is an IS-BE. This was a large electronic screen generator designed to permeate wide areas.
To the ancient humans on Earth it resembled a sort of tree, since is consists of an interwoven lattice of electronic field generators and receivers.
The electronic field detects the presence of IS-BEs, whether the IS-BE is occupying a body, or if they are outside a body.
A portable version of this detection device was carried by each of the members of The Domain Search Party.
Stone carvings in Sumeria show winged beings using pinecone-shaped instruments to scan the bodies of human beings. They are also shown carrying the power unit for the scanner which are depicted as stylized baskets or water buckets, being carried by eagle-headed, winged beings.
Stone carvings in Sumeria show winged beings using pinecone-shaped instruments to scan the bodies of human beings.
Members of the aerial unit of The Domain Search Party, led by Ahura Mazda, were often called “winged gods” in human interpretations.
Throughout the Persian civilization there are a great many stone relief carving that depict winged space craft, that they called a “faravahar”.
A faravahar.
Members of the Aquatic Unit of The Domain Search Party were called “Oannes” by local humans.
Stone carvings of the so-called Oannes are shown wearing silver diving suits. They lived in the sea and appeared to the human population to be men dressed to look like fish. Some members of the lost Battalion were found in the oceans inhabiting the bodies of dolphins or whales.
Stone carvings of the so-called Oannes.
Very interesting stuff.
Therefore, although mythology and history may be based on factual events, they are likewise full of misunderstood and misinterpreted evaluations of the data, and embellished with assumptions, theories and hypotheses which are false.
The space unit of The Domain Expeditionary Force are shown flying in a “Winged-Disc”. This is an allusion to the spiritual power of the IS-BEs, as well as to the space craft used by The Domain Search Party.
I have no problem with this statement.
The Commander of the lost Battalion, as Cyrus II, was an IS-BE who was regarded as a messiah on Earth by both the Jews, and the Muslims. In less than 50 years he established a highly ethical, and humanitarian philosophy which pervaded all of Western Civilization.
Be the Rufus!
His territorial conquests, organization of people and monumental building projects were unprecedented before or since. Such sweeping accomplishments in a short period of time could only have been achieved by a leader and a team of trained officers, pilots, engineers and crew members of a unit of The Domain, acting as a team, who had been trained and worked together for thousands of years.
Although we have discovered the location of many of the IS-BEs in the lost Battalion, The Domain has been unable to restore their memory and return them to active duty as yet.
Of course we cannot transport IS-BEs who are inhabiting biological bodies to the space stations of The Domain since there is no oxygen in our space craft.
Also we do not maintain life support facilities for biological entities there.
Our only hope has been to locate and rekindle the awareness, memory and identity of the IS-BEs of the Lost Battalion. One day they will be capable of rejoining us.
So this differs from what many "more conventionally minded" readers might think. The Domain cannot ever rescue or recover a amnesiac IS-BE member that is in the human form. They have to find other methods to recover their memories, and then extract them from the prison system that exists. Or that did exist in 1947.
200 BCE — Teotihuacan
The last remnant of the “Old Empire” pyramid civilization is at “Teotihuacan“. The Aztec name means “place of the gods” or “where men were transformed into gods”.
Like the astronomical configuration of the Giza pyramids in Egypt, the entire complex is a precise scale-model of the solar system that accurately reflects the orbital distances of the inner planets, the asteroid belt, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto.
Since the planet Uranus had only been “discovered” with modern Earth telescopes in 1787, and Pluto not until 1930, it is apparent that the builders had information from “other sources”.
A common element of the Pyramid Civilizations around the Earth is the constant use of the image of the snake, dragon, or serpent. This is because the beings who planted these civilizations here want to create an illusion that the “gods” are reptilian.
This is also a part of an illusion designed to perpetuate amnesia.
The beings who placed false civilizations on Earth are IS-BEs, just like you. Many of the biological bodies inhabited by IS-BEs in the “Old Empire” are very similar in appearance to the bodies on Earth.
The “gods” are not reptiles, although they often behave like snakes.
I have no problem with these statements.
1,034 – 1,124 AD – Hasan ibn-al-Sabbah
The entire Arab world was enslaved by one man: Hasan ibn-al-Sabbah, the Old Man of the Mountain. He established the Hashshashin who operated a part of Mohammedanism which controlled by terror and fear much of India, Asia Minor and most of the Mediterranean Basin. They became a priesthood that used an extremely effective mind-control mechanism and extortion tool that enabled the “Assassins” to control the civilized world for several hundred years.
Their method was simple. Young men were kidnapped and knocked unconscious with hashish. They were taken to a garden filled with beautiful black-eyed houris in a harem decorated with rivers of milk and honey.
The young men were told that they were in paradise.
They were promised they could return and live there forever if they sacrificed themselves as an assassin of whomever they were commanded to kill. The men were knocked out again, and shoved out into the world to carry out the assassination mission.
Meanwhile, the Old Man of the Mountain sent a messenger to the caliph or, whatever wealthy ruler from whom they demanded payment, demanding camel-loads of gold, spices, incense or other valuables.
If payment did not arrive on time, the assassin would be sent to kill the offending party.
There was virtually no defense against the unknown assailant who wanted nothing more than to carry out his mission, be killed and return to “heaven”.
This is a very crude example of how simple and effective a brainwashing and mind-control operation can be when it is used skillfully, and forcefully. It is a small scale demonstration of how the amnesia mind-control operation is used against the entire IS-BE population of Earth by the “Old Empire”.
Very interesting.
1119 AD — The Knights Templar
The Knights Templar was established as a Christian military unit after the First Crusade.
But (it) quickly transformed into the basis for the international banking system to accumulate money.
(With a purpose of) conducting funding the agenda of operatives for vestiges of the “Old Empire” on Earth.
I have no problem with this.
1135 – 1230 AD – Old Empire Space Fleet completely removed from the solar system
The Domain Expeditionary Force completed the annihilation of the remaining remnants of the “Old Empire” space fleet operating in the solar system around Earth.
Unfortunately, their long established thought control operation remains largely intact.
I have no problem with this. Just keep in mind that it was narrated back in 1947.
1307 AD – Knights Templar disbanded
The Knights Templar was disbanded by King Philip IV of France, who was deeply in debt to the Order. He pressured Pope Clement V to condemn the Order’s members, have them arrested, tortured them into giving false confessions, and burned them at the stake in an effort to erase his debt by seizing all of their wealth.
A majority of the Templars fled to Switzerland where they established an international banking system which secretly controls the economy of Earth.
“Old Empire” operatives act as an unseen influence on international bankers.
The "traditional" West banking system, that controls the US dollar, and all that fiat currency, isn't so much as controlled by "Jews" as it is controlled by elements of the "Old Empire" that need to fund their efforts and activities.
It is no wonder that the "Old Empire" operatives are scared shitless with the advent of e-yuan and all those electronic currency options now being implemented.
The banks are operated covertly as a on-combatant provocateur.
(It is designed) to covertly promote and finance weapons and warfare between the nations of Earth.
Warfare is an internal mechanism of control over the inmate population.
This was written in 1947, and most people today in 2021 realize this with the crazy shit coming out of America today.
The purpose of the senseless genocide and carnage of wars financed by these international banks is to prevent the IS-BEs of Earth from sharing open communication, cooperate together in activities that might enable IS-BEs to prosper, become enlightened, and escape their imprisonment.”
I have no problem with these statements.
End of part 4
Sure, there are miss-translations on time, confusions in regard to galaxies and universes, and a mish-mash of confusion between consciousness+, humans, and some confusion regarding galactic “ownership” and “power projection” between different species, however this is the real deal. It fits in perfectly with everything that I know about MAJestic.
The more I parse it in detail, the clearer to me that this is exactly what it is claimed to be.
I will admit that I was unaware of the “Old Empire”, and the role that the Earth had as a “prison planet” for it. I am also unaware of the details regarding it.
But as I compare what I know, and what I have experienced with what I have parsed, I have been able to “open doors” so to speak, and suddenly mysteries that I have been part of have now been explained. I can tell you that this document has really been a real benefit to me personally.
Please do NOT read the document without reading my parsing. I think my parsing will help you all move foreword with this.
Key Points
Never the less, I believe the following to be true in regards to this parsing of this section of the book…
Everything here is true.
Earth is no longer a “prison planet”
Earth is now a “sentience nursery”.
Fear not an “abduction”. It’s actually a good thing. Not a bad thing.
Type-1 greys of “the Domain” are service-for-others sentience.
MAJestic is changing everything, hand in hand with the Type-1 greys.
In regards to much of this “historical data” it is very interesting, and rings true to those of us who have read the alternative-histories that abound in the books and the internet. Yet, we must always keep in mind that this document was recorded from an extraterrestrial that had only ten or so days in interrogation, and this is it’s statement made in 1947.
I have presented the PDF titled “Alien Interview” to the readership. It is supposed to be the transcripts of the interview that a nurse had with an extraterrestrial entity that was recovered from a spaceship crash in Roswell, New Mexico. There is a lot of good stuff there, and a lot of things that run counter to what I know and understand to be true. My intention here is to parse the entire book, and compare it to what I know. Where the two diverge, it will be up to you (the readership) to sort it out.
This is part 3.
Document appears to be genuine
And I can tell you all that the more that I parse this document, the clearer it is (to me) that it is genuine.It is exactly what it says it is. And the extraterrestrial is actually telling the truth, so far.
Errors
However, there are errors in translation, and confusion in the interpretation of what is being stated. Anything concerning “time” and the translation of dates are all wrong.
Humans think of time as “shared” and “linear”.
The type-1 greys think of time as circular and repeating. As in, consciousness enters and exits different world lines” and if you graph that movement of consciousness you will see a “corkscrew” movement through the MWI. Which is what it was referring to. All of which was WAY beyond the concepts of anyone in Roswell at that time.
Therefore all dates and time, and anything associated with these characteristics are in error, and can be ignored.
This document predates MAJestic
Also take note that this document pre-dates MAJestic, and it is crystal clear to me now, that my role was, and still is, in the rehabilitation aspects of moving the Earth from a Hellish “Prison Planet” to that of a “sentience nursery”.
This document has (for me, personally) helped to clarify elements and aspects of my role that were “blurred” and obscured from me. To that I am eternally grateful.
Look at the dates on my articles, and look at what I covered. You will see that they match up nearly perfectly with this “Alien Interview” transcript. And this is the first time that I have ever heard of this document. The timing was transcendental.
This is part three of the parsing of this document
“The Domain Expeditionary Force has observed a resurgence in science and culture of the Western world since 1150 AD when the remaining remnants of the space fleet of the “Old Empire” in this solar system were destroyed.
No problem with this.
The influence of the remote control hypnosis operation diminished slightly after that time, but still remains largely in force.
By removing the local leadership, the impact on the "electromagnetic force projection field" wasn't really affected. It still remained in place as of 1948. Therefore, there must have been other systems, facilities, bases, and operations scattered in and around the Earth that were still functional.
Apparently a small amount of damage was done to the “Old Empire” remote mind control operation which resulted in a small decrease in the power of this mechanism.
This offered a clue as to the techniques and methodologies involved, but at the time of the interview little else was understood.
As a result, some memory of technologies that IS-BEs already knew before they came to Earth started to be remembered.
It appears to me that the methodology seemed to be stratified. And by taking out the leadership, a great deal of the suppression system disappeared.
Thereafter the oppression of knowledge that is called the “Dark Ages” in Europe began to diminish after that time.
Since then knowledge of the basic laws of physics and electricity have revolutionized Earth culture virtually overnight.
No problem with this.
The ability to remember technology by many of the geniuses in the IS-BE population of Earth was partially restored, when not so actively suppressed as it was before 1150 AD. Sir Isaac Newton, is one of the best examples of this. In only a few decades he single-handedly reinvented several major and fundamental scientific and mathematical disciplines.
The men who “remembered” these sciences already knew them before they were sent to Earth.
No problem with this.
Ordinarily, no one would ever observe or discover as much about science and mathematics in a single life-time, or even in a few hundred life-times. These subjects have taken civilizations billions and billions of years to create!
No problem with this. Genius level skills and abilities point to much deeper understandings and connections. Much the same way that I discuss world-line travel int he MWI. I did not "invent" it. It's knowledge that lies all around us, it's just that the suppression field keeps this knowledge from us.
IS-BEs on Earth have only just begun to remember small fragments of all the technologies that exist throughout the universe. Theoretically, if the amnesia mechanisms being used against Earth could be broken entirely, IS-BEs would regain all of their memory!
We can only hope! But it will take time, and it cannot happen too quickly, as the result would be catastrophic. So things need to be nurtured into place.
Unfortunately, similar advances have not been seen in the humanities as the IS-BEs of Earth continue to behave very badly toward each other.
I have no problem with this statement.
This behavior, however, is heavily influenced by the “hypnotic commands” given to each IS-BE between lifetimes.
I have no problem with this. The pre-birth world-line template is what he is talking about. Though in different terms, adjusted to the mindset of Roswell military leadership in 1948. Specifically, he is referring the the consciousness components that are established and associated with the pre-birth world-line template.
And, the very unusual combination of “inmates” on Earth – criminals, perverts, artists, revolutionaries and geniuses – is the cause of a very restive and tumultuous environment.
No problem with this.
The purpose of the prison planet is to keep IS-BEs on Earth, forever.
I have no problem with this.
Promoting ignorance, superstition, and war between IS-BEs helps to keep the prison population crippled and trapped behind “the wall” of electronic force screens.
I have no problem with this.
IS-BEs have been dumped on Earth from all over the galaxy, adjoining galaxies, and from planetary systems all over the “Old Empire”, like Sirius, Aldebaran, the Pleiades, Orion, Draconis, and countless others.
I am sure that he is referring to star names that the pitiful astronomic knowledge of the Roswell military leadership would recognize. In truth, most civilizations are around much cooler, older, and stable stars. Not the short lived, blazing, and highly transitory stars that he specifically named.
There are IS-BEs on Earth from unnamed races, civilizations, cultural backgrounds, and planetary environments. Each of the various IS-BE populations have their own languages, belief systems, moral values, religious beliefs, training and unknown and untold histories.
I have no problem with this.
These IS-BEs are mixed together with earlier inhabitants of Earth who came from another star system more than 400,000 years ago to establish the civilizations of Atlanta and Lemuria.
Do not get too caught up in the conventional narratives about "Atlantis" and "Lemuria". That is sure as Hell a route to send you all down into a black hole that you will have a difficult time extracting yourself from.
All evidence, all over the world, points to tool making humanoids around 400,000 years ago. This predates the normally accepted histories of the rise and evolution of man.
The sudden appearance of these humanoid civilizations at 400,000 BCE is clearly indicative of transplanted civilizations.
The size, magnitude and locations of their communities are (as of now) lost in time. Do not get too worked up about the details. Just realize the most basic history.
Those civilizations vanished beneath the tidal waves caused by a planetary “polar shift”, many thousands of years before the current “prison” population started to arrive.
Important points here.
Humanoid colonies were established on the Earth. These eventually were destroyed or collapsed by natural events.
Following that destruction was the rise of native proto-humans.
It was during that period came the creation of the Earth as "Prison Planet" as part of the "Old Empire".
Apparently, the IS-BEs from those star systems were the source of the original, oriental races of Earth, beginning in Australia.
The "oriental races", such as the Chinese, the Japanese, the Koreans, and the Indians were all descended from the pre-deluge colonies.
On the other hand, the civilizations set up on Earth by the “Old Empire” prison system were very different from the civilization of the “Old Empire” itself.
I have no problem with this statement.
Which is an electronic space opera, atomic powered conglomeration of earlier civilizations that were conquered with nuclear weapons and colonized by IS-BEs from another galaxy.
The civilizations set up on Earth differed from the "Old Empire". They are "artificial" and retarded societies.
This was intentional.
The idea (I am sure) was to create a place of perpetual hardship and torture. A place where everyone was constantly fighting, where starvation, and hardship was normal.
The Earth was set up to be a perpetual prison where the inmates were trapped to relive Hell over and over again.
The bureaucracy that controlled the former “Old Empire” was from an ancient space opera society, run by a totalitarian confederation of planetary governments, regulated by a brutal social, economic, and political hierarchy, with a royal monarch as its figurehead.
It appears to me that this is exactly the kinds of societies that have been setup throughout human history, with the most advanced and strongest manifestations being the current United States, and Western Europe.
Were I to be an administrator of the "Old Empire" that was in charge of this Earth "Prison Plant", and realized that "The Domain" has invaded and taken control, I would flee. But where to? It seems to me that the most likely location would be on Earth itself and to occupy the bodies of the ruling classes. There I could live a life as I have become accustomed to living.
This type of government emerges with regularity on planets where the citizens abandon personal responsibility for autonomous, self-regulation.
I have no problem with this statement.
They frequently lose their freedom to demented IS-BEs who suffer from an overwhelming paranoia that every other IS-BE is their enemy who must be controlled or destroyed.
I have no problem with this statement.
Their closest friends and allies, whom they espouse to love and cherish, are literally “loved to death” by them.
I have no problem with this statement.
Because such IS-BEs exist, The Domain has learned that freedom must be won and maintained through eternal vigilance and the ability to use defensive force to maintain it.
I have no problem with this statement. Additionally, I believe that the military leadership at Roswell, would have agreed with this comment as well.
As a result, The Domain has already conquered the governing planet of the “Old Empire”.
I was unaware about any of the information regarding the "Old Empire", but I do believe what is being stated.
The civilization of The Domain, although considerably younger and smaller in size, is already more powerful, better organized, and united by a egalitarian esprit de corps never known in the history of the “Old Empire”.
I have no problem with this, and I am sure that the Roswell military leadership would recognize this as well.
The recently despoiled German totalitarian state on Earth was similar to the “Old Empire”, but not nearly as brutal, and about ten thousand times less powerful.
This statement is directly directed to the Roswell military leadership.
Many of the IS-BEs on Earth are here because they are violently opposed to totalitarian government, or because they were so psychotically vicious that they could not be controlled by “Old Empire” government.
Which tends to be the case in most American prisons today.
Consequently, the population of Earth is disproportionately comprised of a very high percentage of such beings. The conflicting cultural and ethical moral codes of the IS-BEs on Earth is unusual in the extreme.
I have no problem with this statement.
The Domain conquest of the central “Old Empire” planets was fought with electronic cannon.
I think that many readers will not understand. They will probably think of some "new" type of weapon, or a weaponized ray gun based on Nikola Tesla technology.
This is wrong.
What he is actually talking about is a weapon that disrupts the consciousness+ in much the same way that the "electromagnetic force screen" disrupted the lives of the consciousnesses on Earth. This type of weapon would be very powerful against consciousness, but do little damage to physical structures.
The citizens of the planets forming the core of government for the “Old Empire” are a filthy, degraded, slave society of mindless, tax-paying workers, who practice cannibalism. Violent automotive race tracks and bloody, Roman circus type entertainments are their only amusements.
Pretty much sounds like America today.
America today.
Regardless of any reasonable justification we may have had for using atomic weapons to vanquish the planets of the “Old Empire”, The Domain is careful not to ruin the resources of those planets by using weapons of crude, radioactive force.
The Domain did not use massive weapons like we would associate with war.
They used disruptive electromagnetically designed beam weapons that upset the consciousness stability in the physical realms.
The current U.S. civilization is beginning to mimic some of the trappings of that civilization, especially in the design of airplanes, automobiles, ships, trains, and telephones. Likewise, buildings in the cities of Earth are thought to be “modern” or “futuristic” if their design resembles the architecture of the “Old Empire”.
Yes. I believe this. And this statement was made in 1947.
The government of the “Old Empire”, before being supplanted by The Domain, was comprised of beings who possessed a very craven intelligence, very much like the Axis powers during your recent world war. Those beings manifested precisely the same behavior as the galactic government that exiled them to eternal imprisonment on Earth.
A bit confused wording.
The ruling class of the "Old Empire" very much resembled Nazi Germany.
And the Nazi Germans exhibited the same behaviors that the leadership of the "Old Empire" maintained.
I can see this information resonating with the Roswell generals and leadership in 1947.
They were a gruesome reminder of the ageless maxim that an IS-BE will often manifest the treatment they have received from others. Kindness fosters kindness. Cruelty begets cruelty.
No problem with this.
One must be able and willing to use force, tempered with intelligence, to prevent harm to the innocent.
No problem with this.
However, extraordinary understanding, self-discipline and courage are required to effectively prevent brutality, without being overwhelmed by the malice that motivated the brutality.
It takes a special kind of sentience to rise above the brutality that you suffered through. Not necessarily to find and giver forgiveness, but to prevent it from ever happening again.
Only a demonic, self-serving government would employ a “logic” or “science” to conceive that an “ultimate solution” to any problem is to murder and permanently erase the memory of every artist, genius, skilled manager, and inventor, and cast them into a planetary prison together with political opponents, killers, thieves, perverts, and disabled beings of an entire galaxy!
"Tell me about it."
Oh how well I know this! If you have any doubts about my experience on this, read about how I was "retired" from MAJestic.
Once the IS-BEs expelled from the “Old Empire” arrived on Earth, they were given amnesia, and hypnotically tricked into thinking that something else had happened to them.
It discusses the process. I have no problem with this.
The next step was to implant the IS-BEs into biological bodies on Earth. The bodies became the human populations of “false civilizations” which were designed and installed in the minds of IS-BEs to look completely unlike the “Old Empire”.
I have no problem with this. It's a logical extension.
All of the IS-BEs of India, Egypt, Babylon, Greece, Rome, and Medieval Europe were guided to pattern and build the cultural elements of these societies based on standard patterns developed by the IS-BEs of many earlier, similar civilizations on “Sun Type 12, Class 7” planets that have existed for trillions of years throughout the universe.
I have no problems with this. The civilization archetypes are quite standard.
In the earliest times the IS-BEs sent to prison Earth lived in India.
When Earth was used as a "Prison Planet", the very first convicts were sent to ancient India. At that time, my guess is that this was the most populated, or densely populated area on the Earth. Certainly not like it is today, but more populated than say Africa, or Europe.
They gradually spread into Mesopotamia, Egypt, Mesoamerica, Achaea, Greece, Rome, Medieval Europe, and to the New World.
It stated that the migration and expansion of the prison population moved Westward not East. Eventually moving into the Mediterranean Sea, and associated civilizations there. Into Europe, and then into the Americas.
They did not move into the East, as these areas had descendants of prior civilizations (Atlantis and Lemuria) which maintained the Asian genetic code.
They were hypnotically “commanded” to follow the pattern of a given civilization by the “Old Empire” prison operators.
This would be pre-structuring, or "front-loading" the pre-birth world-line template by consciousness component attributes.
This is an effective mechanism to disguise the actual time and location from the IS-BEs imprisoned on Earth. The languages, costumes and culture of each false civilization are intended to reinforce amnesia because they do not remind the IS-BEs on Earth of the original “Old Empire” planets from which they were deported.
This make sense. You remove anything that might trigger a memory. You make everything, new, different and contentious.
On the very far back-track of time these types of civilizations tended to repeat themselves over and over because the IS-BEs who created them become familiar with certain patterns and styles, and stayed with them.
I have no problem with this.
It is a lot of work to invent an entire civilization, complete with culture, architecture, language, customs, mathematics, moral values, and so forth. It is much easier to replicate a copy based on a familiar and successful pattern.
I have no problem with this.
A “Sun Type 12, Class 7” planet is the designation given to a planet inhabited by carbon-oxygen based life forms.
This is in 1947. Long, long before the television series "Star Trek". No one ever thought like this back then. Not even in the wildest dreams of the scientists of the day, no one ever thought like this.
The class of the planet is based on the size and radiation intensity of the star, the distance of the planetary orbit from the star, and the size, density, gravity, and chemical composition of the planet. Likewise, flora and fauna are designated and identified according to the star type and class of planet they inhabit.
I have no problem with this.
On the average, the percentage of planets in the physical universe with a breathable atmosphere is relatively small.
I have no problem with this. While life abounds in the universe, the idea that there are lifeforms identical to what we have on the Earth isn't as common as we would hope for.
Most planets do not have an atmosphere upon which life-forms “feed”, as on Earth, where the chemical composition of the atmosphere provides nutrition to plants, and other organisms, which in turn support other life forms.
I have no problem with this.
Though, when it was addressing the Roswell leadership it was speaking in terms that they could understand, such as human-like creatures and intelligence's. Today, we would widen up the scope a bit, and include all types of microbes and other bacterial forms.
When the Domain Force brought the Vedic Hymns to the Himalayas region 8,200 years ago, some human societies already existed. The Aryan people invaded and conquered India, bringing the Vedic Hymns to the area.
What was discussed by the Type-1 extraterrestrial in 1947 is common knowledge today.
Population migration out of India.
The Vedas were learned by them, memorized and carried forward verbally for 7,000 years before being committed to written form.
During that span of time one of the officers of The Domain Expeditionary Force was incarnated on Earth as “Vishnu”. He is described many times in the Rig-Veda. He is still considered to be a god by the Hindus.
Vishnu fought in the religious wars against the “Old Empire” forces. He is a very able and aggressive IS-BE as well as a highly effective officer, who has since been reassigned to other duties in The Domain.
This Domain officer inhabited a human body and was involved in the teaching and changing the conditions of the human civilization at that time. It was never erased, and never sentenced to the "Prison Planet" and is now performing other duties within the Domain.
This entire episode was orchestrated as an attack and revolt against the Egyptian pantheon installed by “Old Empire” administrators.
The type-1 greys planned and orchestrated this and other series of battles and Geo-political posturings to help break the grip of the "electro-magnetic force screen" that had so completely incarcerated them.
The conflict was intended to help free humankind from implanted elements of the false civilization that focused attention on many “gods” and superstitious ritual worship demanded by the priests who “managed” them. It is all part of the mental manipulation by the “Old Empire” to hide their criminal actions against the IS-BEs on Earth.
I have no problem with this.
A priesthood, or prison guards, were used to help reinforce the idea that an individual, is only a biological body, and is not an Immortal Spiritual Being. The individual has no identity. The individuals have no past lives. The individual has no power. Only the gods have power. And, the gods are a contrivance of the priests who intercede between men and the gods they serve.
It's a power control mechanism,. I have no problem with this.
I have no problem with this. This is a theme that has been repeated over, and over, and over again. From the Americas, to Europe, to Egypt, to Rome, to today inside of America, and televangelists.
What else would one expect on a prison planet where all prisoners have amnesia, and the priests themselves are prisoners?
I have no problem with this.
The intervention of The Domain Force on Earth has not been entirely successful due to the secret mind-control operation of the “Old Empire” that still continues to operate.
As of 1947, the Dominion has not been all that successful erasing the programming and changing the destructive paths that mankind was set upon.
A battle was waged between the “Old Empire” forces and The Domain through religious conquest.
The attempts to change the planetary system began around 8,000 BCE, and wasn't really all that successful.
Between 1500 BCE and about 1200 BCE, The Domain Forces attempted to teach the concept of an individual, Immortal Spiritual Being to several influential beings on Earth.
A new avenue, or methodology was attempted during a 300 year span of time. It started around 1500 BCE.
One such instance resulted in a very tragic misunderstanding, misinterpretation and misapplication of the concept. The idea was perverted and applied to mean that there is only one IS-BE, instead of the truth that everyone is an IS-BE! Obviously, this was a gross incomprehension and an utter unwillingness to take responsibility for one’s own power.
What a fiasco!
The “Old Empire” priests managed to corrupt the concept of individual immortality into the idea that there is only one, all-powerful IS-BE, and that no one else is or is allowed to be an IS-BE. Obviously, this is the work of the “Old Empire” amnesia operation.
I have no problem with this statement.
It is easy to teach this altered notion to beings who do not want to be responsible for their own lives. Slaves are such beings. As long as one chooses to assign responsibility for creation, existence and personal accountability for one’s own thoughts and actions to others, one is a slave.
Which is a major issue going on inside the United States today.
As a result, the concept of a single monotheistic “god” resulted and was promoted by many self-proclaimed prophets, such as the Jewish slave leader – Moses -who grew up in the household of the Pharaoh Amenhotep III and his son, Akhenaten and his wife Nefertiti, as well as his son Tutankhamen.
I am not well versed in the lineages of Ancient Egypt. However, I can see how this could take place.
The attempt to teach certain beings on Earth the truth that they are, themselves, IS-BEs, was part of a plan to overthrow the fictional, metaphorical, anthropomorphic panoply of gods created by the “Old Empire” mystery cult called “The Brothers of The Serpent” known in Egypt as the Priests of Amun.
News to me, but I can see it happening.
They were a very ancient, secret society within the “Old Empire”.
I have no problem with this statement.
The Pharaoh Akhenaten was not a very intelligent being, and was heavily influenced by his personal ambition for self-glorification. He altered the concept of the individual spiritual being and embodied the concept in the sun god, Aten. His pitiful existence was soon ended. He was assassinated by Maya and Parennefer, two of the Priests of Amun, or “Amen”, which the Christians still say, who represented the interests of the “Old Empire” forces.
I am not well versed in Ancient Egyptian history, but this does make sense and could very well have happened.
The idea of “One God” was perpetuated by the Hebrew leader Moses while he was in Egypt. He left Egypt with his adopted people, the Jewish slaves. While they were crossing the desert, Moses was intercepted by an operative of the “Old Empire” near Mt. Sinai. Moses was tricked into believing that this operative was “the” One God through the use of hypnotic commands, as well as technical and aesthetic tricks which are commonly used by the “Old Empire” to trap IS-BEs.
I have no problem with this statement.
Thereafter, the Jewish slaves, who trusted the word of Moses implicitly, have worshiped a single god they call “Yaweh“.
I have no problem with this statement.
The name “Yaweh” means “anonymous”, as the IS-BE who “worked with” Moses could not use an actual name or anything that would identify himself, or blow the cover of the amnesia/prison operation. The last thing the covert amnesia/hypnosis/prison system wants to do is to reveal themselves openly to the IS-BEs on Earth. They feel that this would restore the inmates memories!
I have no problem with this statement.
This is the reason that all traces of physical encounters between operatives of space civilizations and humans is very carefully hidden, disguised, covered-up, denied or misdirected.
I have no problem with this statement.
This “Old Empire” operative contacted Moses on a desert mountain top and delivered the “Ten Hypnotic Commands” to him. These commands are very forcefully worded, and compel an IS-BE into utter subservience to the will of the operator. These hypnotic commands are still in effect and influence the thought patterns of millions of IS-BEs thousands of years later!
So, and if you read this exactly as written. It states that any of the ten commandments trigger hypnotic commands. And thus are used by the "Old Empire" to influence the will of the people who thus believe them. Petty powerful, and yes, even dangerous stuff.
Is it true or not? I do not know.
Incidentally, we later discovered that the so-called “Yaweh” also wrote, programmed and encoded the text of the Torah, which when it is read literally, or in its decoded, form, will provide a great deal more false information to those who read it.
The type-1 extraterrestrial is saying that all of the major religions at that time spouted writings which were trigger hypnotic commands, and thus influenced all the people who read or listened to them.
Ultimately, the Vedic Hymns became the source of nearly all of Eastern the religions and were the philosophical source of the ideas common to Buddha, Laozi, Zoroaster , and other philosophers.
So it spread throughout the world...
The civilizing influences of these philosophies eventually replaced the brutal idolatry of the “Old Empire” religions and were the true genesis of kindness and compassion.
You asked me earlier why The Domain, and other space civilizations do not land on Earth or make their presence known. Land on Earth? Do you think we are crazy or want to be crazy?
Obviously, it knew very well how to respond to the questions poised by the Roswell military leadership.
It takes a very brave IS-BE to come down through the atmosphere and land on Earth, because this is a prison planet, with a very uncontrolled, psychotic population.
Well stated, and factually correct.
And, no IS-BE is entirely proof against the risk of entrapment, as with the members of The Domain Expeditionary Force who were captured in the Himalayas 8,200 years ago.
As powerful as the type-1 greys of the Dominion are, they can be hurt and harmed. And they need to be very cautious when they are in dangerous situations and dangerous people.
No one knows what IS-BEs on Earth are going to do.
I think that is is a very accurate statement.
We are not scheduled to invest the resources of The Domain to take total control of all the space surrounding the area at this time.
This should be well understood.
This will occur in the not-to-distant future – about 5,000 Earth years – according to the time schedule of The Domain.
I believe that this time-line has sped up substantially with the formation of MAJestic, and with people such as MM, and Sebastian providing "boots on the ground" and performing various "anchoring" activities.
At this time we do not prevent transports from other planetary systems or galaxies from continuing to drop IS-BEs into the amnesia force screen area.
A couple of points here.
[1] In 1947, the Domain did not prevent interstellar "drop offs". I do know that that policy changed when I was active in MAJestic.
[2] The "amnesia force screen area" is a specific region. It is not infinite. It has geographic boundaries, and limits.
Eventually, this will change.
In addition, Earth, inherently, is a highly unstable planet. It is not suitable for settlement or permanent habitation for any sustainable civilization. This is part of the reason why it is being used as a prison planet.
This is a serious point that no one, in any analysis that I have read really understands. Contrary to the other statements about O, B and A stars, (Those were proximity locations for civilization anchors, not the homes of specific species themselves) most civilizations prefer the cooler, longer life, K, M and drown dwarfs for civilization stability.
The next point(s) are all very important and you all should read them, and pay attention to them.
No one else would seriously consider living here for a variety of simple and compelling reasons:
The continental land masses of Earth are floating on a sea of molten lava beneath the surface which causes the land masses to crack, crumble and drift continually.
Because of the liquid nature of the core, the planet is largely volcanic and subject to earthquakes and volcanic explosions.
The magnetic poles of the planet shift radically about once every 20, 000 years. This causes a greater or lesser degree of devastation as a result of tidal waves, and climatic changes.
This was written long before "Worlds in Collision".
Earth is very distant from the center of the galaxy and from any other significant galactic civilization. This isolation makes it unsuitable for use, except as a “pit stop” or jumping off point along the way between galaxies. The moon and asteroids are far more suitable for this purpose because they do not have any significant gravity.
Our solar system is in a relatively "rural area" in our galaxy. Though, the center of our galaxy is rather dangerous for us humans, it isn't for other species that have adapted to that environment.
Earth is a heavy gravity planet, with heavy metallic soil and a dense atmosphere. This makes it treacherous for navigational purposes. That fact that I am in this room, as the result of an in flight accident, in spite of the technology of my craft and my extensive expertise as a pilot, are proof of these facts.
There are approximately sixty billion Earth-like (Sun Type 12, Class 7) planets in the Milky Way galaxy alone, not to mention the vast expanses of The Domain, and the territories we will claim in the future. It is difficult to stretch our resources to do much more than a periodic reconnaissance of Earth. Especially when there are no immediate advantages to invest resources here.
On Earth most beings are not aware that they are IS-BEs, or that there are spirits of any kind. Many other beings are aware of this, but nearly everyone has a very limited understanding of themselves as an IS-BE.
One of the reasons for this is that IS-BEs have been waging war against each other since the beginning of time.
I have no problem with this.
The purpose of these wars have always been to establish domination by one IS-BE or group of IS-BEs over another. Since an IS-BE cannot be “killed”, the objective has been to capture and immobilize IS-BEs. This has been done in an nearly unlimited variety of ways. The most basic method to capture and immobilize an IS-BE is through the use of various kinds of “traps”.
I prefer the use of the term "snare" instead. But I am sure that the point was made in the communication narrative.
IS-BE traps have been made and put in place by many invading societies, such as the one that established the “Old Empire”, beginning about sixty-four trillion years ago.
Again, ignore the dates and time. They are wholly messed up and incomprehensible to the translator and the Roswell military leadership audience.
Traps are often set up in the “territory” of the IS-BEs being attacked. Usually a trap is set with the electronic wave of “beauty” to attract the interest and attention of the IS-BE. When the IS-BE moves toward the source of the aesthetic wave, such as a beautiful building or beautiful music, the trap is activated by the energy put out by the IS-BE.
A trap or snare of beauty, or attractiveness. Yikes!
One of the most common trap mechanism uses the IS-BE’s own thought energy output when the IS-BE tries to attack or fight back against the trap. The trap is activated and energized by the IS-BE’s own thought energy. The harder the IS-BE fights against the trap, the more it pulls the IBS toward it and keeps them “stuck” in the trap.
It's like trying to stop smoking, by just smoking the last pack instead of throwing it away.
Throughout the entire history of this physical universe, vast areas of space have been taken over and colonized by IS-BE societies who invade and take over new areas of space in this fashion.
Not just the "Old Empire", but many others. The universe has a history of consciousness dominance.
In the past, these invasions have always shared common elements:
the overwhelming use of force of arms, usually with nuclear or electronic weapons.
mind control of the IS-BEs in the invaded area through the use of electroshock, drugs, hypnosis, erasure of memory and the implantation of false memory or false information intended to subjugate and enslave the local IS-BE population.
take over of natural resources by the invading IS-BEs.
political, economic and social slavery of the local population.
These activities continue in present time.
I have no problem with these statements.
All of the IS-BEs on Earth have been members of one or more of these activities in the past, both as an invader, or as part of the population being invaded. There are no “saints” in this universe. Very few have avoided or been exempted from warfare between IS-BEs.
I have no problem with these statements.
IS-BEs on Earth are still the victims of this activity at this very moment. The between-lives amnesia administered to IS-BEs is one on the mechanisms of an elaborate system of “Old Empire” IS-BE traps, that prevent an IS-BE from escaping.
I have no problem with these statements.
This operation is managed by an illicit, renegade secret police force of the “Old Empire”, using false provocation operations to disguise their activities in order to prevent detection by their own government, The Domain and by the victims of their activities.
All this is news to me, but it does explain the fear and concern that the Type-1 grey has when dealing with humans. I can tell you that things have improved significantly once MAJestic became involved. And movement with the type-1 greys and other species proceeded unhindered and unmolested.
They are mind-control methods developed by government psychiatrists.
Of course. I have no problem with this statement.
Earth is a “ghetto” planet. It is the result of an intergalactic “Holocaust”.
This is news to me, but I can see it happening by a very big, very corrupt and very powerful "Old Empire".
IS-BEs have been sentenced to Earth either because:
They are too viciously insane or perverse to function as part of any civilization, no matter how degraded or corrupt.
Or, they are a revolutionary threat to the social, economic and political caste system that has been so carefully built and brutally enforced in the “Old Empire”. Biological bodies are specifically designed and designated as the lowest order of entity in the “Old Empire” caste system. When an IS-BE is sent to Earth, and then tricked or coerced into operating in a biological body, they are actually in a prison, inside a prison.
In an effort to permanently and irreversibly rid the “Old Empire” of such “untouchables”, the eternal identity, memory, and abilities of every IS-BE is forcefully erased. This “final solution” was conceived and carried out by the psychopathic criminals who are controlled by the “Old Empire”.
I have no problem with these statements.
The mass extermination of “untouchables” and prison camps created by Germany during World War II were recently revealed. Likewise, the IS-BEs of Earth are the victims of spiritual eradication and eternal slavery inside frail, biological bodies, inspired by the same kind of craven hatred in the “Old Empire”.
I have no problem with these statements.
The kind and creative inmates of Earth are continuously tortured by butchers and lunatics who are controlled by the “Old Empire” prison operators. The so-called “civilizations” of Earth, from the age of useless pyramids to the age of nuclear holocaust, have been a colossal waste of natural resources, a perverted use of intelligence, and an overt oppression of the spiritual essence of every single IS-BE on the planet.
I have no problem with these statements.
If The Domain sent ships to every corner of the universe in search of “Hell”, their quest could end on Earth. What greater brutality can be inflicted on anyone than to erase the spiritual awareness, identity, ability, and memory that is the essence of oneself?
I have no problem with these statements.
The Domain has, as yet, been unable to rescue the 3,000 IS-BEs of the Expeditionary Force Battalion either. They are forced to inhabit biological bodies on Earth. We have been able to recognize and track most of them for the past 8,000 years. However, our attempts to communicate with them are usually futile, as they are unable to remember their true identity.
I have no problem with these statements. However, I do know that there is a program with "abductees" who are taken to type-1 grey facilities and undergo biological monitoring, cleansing techniques, and other procedures designed to rehabilitate them.
MAJestic members (such as myself) participate in various ways. Sometimes assisting, sometimes providing <redacted> and sometimes being part of the procedure ourselves.
I myself have taken part in these rehabilitation procedures, and I even wrote up about one. I think I wrote about it last year or so.
Wouldn't it truly be something if I was one of the lost legion!
Anyways, all this stuff about "abductions" are misinterpretations of important efforts made to take care of the consciousnesses+ that inhabit this Earth wide region.
The majority of lost members of The Domain force have followed the general progression of Western civilization from India, into the Middle East, then to Chaldea, and Babylon, into Egypt, through Achaia, Greece, Rome, into Europe, to the Western Hemisphere, and then all around the world.
I can tell you that all MAJestic members must be of service-to-others sentience, and that is the sentience that all of the Type-1 greys that I have encountered possessed. I cannot help but to believe that any members of the lost members of the Domain would also possess this sentience.
The members of the lost Battalion and many other IS-BEs on Earth, could be valuable citizens of The Domain, not including those who are vicious criminals or perverts. Unfortunately, there has been no workable method conceived to emancipate the IS-BEs from Earth.
As of 1947. I believe that this situation has changed somewhat. I can tell you that <redacted>.
Therefore, as a matter of common logic, as well as the official policy of The Domain, it is safer and more sensible to avoid contact with the IS-BE population of Earth until such time as the proper resources can be allocated to locate and destroy the “Old Empire” force screen and amnesia machinery and develop a therapy to restore the memory of an IS-BE.”
I agree with this, and I personally believe that this situation changed one year later when MAJestic was formed. And that substantial strides and changes were made and implemented throughout the 1980's and 1990's up until my retirement as well as the mass retirement of everyone within my cluster of cells.
End of part 3
Sure, there are miss-translations on time, confusions in regard to galaxies and universes, and a mish-mash of confusion between consciousness+, humans, and some confusion regarding galactic “ownership” and “power projection” between different species, however this is the real deal. It fits in perfectly with everything that I know about MAJestic.
The more I parse it in detail, the clearer to me that this is exactly what it is claimed to be.
I will admit that I was unaware of the “Old Empire”, and the role that the Earth had as a “prison planet” for it. I am also unaware of the details regarding it.
But as I compare what I know, and what I have experienced with what I have parsed, I have been able to “open doors” so to speak, and suddenly mysteries that I have been part of have now been explained. I can tell you that this document has really been a real benefit to me personally. I have seen and read many, many, MANY faked bullshit nonsense on the internet. But folks, this is the real deal. It has been able to unlock some things that only I know, and open them and suddenly all sorts of puzzle pieces that I have participated in, like <redacted> and the time that <redacted> with the particular <redacted> explains the ancient <redacted> and the especial oddity that I encountered when dealing with the Oxia Palus <redacted>.
I well remember an event that I had regarding a world-line slide, and it really was a mystery to me. Most of the time, I would just brush them off as just odd things that I had to endure, but on one occasion it seemed to me that they all fit together, and when <redacted> which brought me to the understanding of the anchoring process for world-line groupings, and at this time the <redacted> along with a type-1 grey were involved in <redacted> and it clearly showed to me that there MUST have been a previous or prior Empire or federation” of some sort, or of some type that were involved in <redacted> to such an extent. All requiring some kind of “work around” to accomplish specific goals and changes. Now I know.
The solution to the reversal of the amnesia was tied to the “world-line” anchoring that I have been so painfully involved in these last three decades. And with that, and the understanding that the <redacted> of the various attributes <redacted> fit in the consciousness <redacted> collaboration <redacted> reconfiguration by region, time, and <redacted>.
I just cannot express myself in any way that you can understand. Guys! This is the missing cypher.
Please do NOT read the document without reading my parsing. I think my parsing will help you all move foreword with this.
Key Points
Never the less, I believe the following to be true in regards to this parsing of this section of the book…
Everything here is true.
Earth is no longer a “prison planet”
Earth is now a “sentience nursery”.
Fear not an “abduction”. It’s actually a good thing. Not a bad thing.
Type-1 greys of “the Domain” are service-for-others sentience.
MAJestic is changing everything, hand in hand with the Type-1 greys.
Part four
You can visit part four HERE.
Do you want more?
You can find many more videos in my “Extraterrestrial Species index” over here…
I have presented the PDF titled “Alien Interview” to the readership. It is supposed to be the transcripts of the interview that a nurse had with an extraterrestrial entity that was recovered from a spaceship crash in Roswell, New Mexico. There is a lot of good stuff there, and a lot of things that run counter to what I know and understand to be true. My intention here is to parse the entire book, and compare it to what I know. Where the two diverge, it will be up to you (the readership) to sort it out.
“Before you can understand the subject of history, you must first understand the subject of time. Time is simply an arbitrary measurement of the motion of objects through space.
No problem with this.
Space is not linear. Space is determined by the point of view of an IS-BE when viewing a object. The distance between an IS-BE and the object being viewed is called “space”.
No problem with this.
Objects, or energy masses, in space do not necessarily move in a linear fashion. In this universe, objects tend to move randomly or in a curving or cyclical pattern, or as determined by agreed upon rules.
No problem with this.
History is not only a linear record of events, as many authors of Earth history books imply, because it is not a string that can be stretched out and marked like a measuring tool. History is a subjective observation of the movement of objects through space, recorded from the point of view of a survivor, rather than of those who succumbed.
No problem with this.
Events occur interactively and concurrently, just as the biological body has a heart that pumps blood, while the lungs provide oxygen to the cells, which reproduce, using energy from the sun and chemicals from plants, at the same time as the liver strains toxic wastes from the blood, and eliminates them through the bladder and the bowels.
All of these interactions are concurrent and simultaneous. Although time runs consecutively, events do not happen in an independent, linear stream. In order to view and understand the history or reality of the past, one must view all events as part of an interactive whole. Time can also be sensed as a vibration which is uniform throughout the entire physical universe.
No problem with this.
Airl explained that IS-BEs have been around since before the beginning of the universe. The reason they are called “immortal”, is because a “spirit” is not born and cannot die, but exists in a personally postulated perception of “is – will be”. She was careful to explain that every spirit is not the same. Each is completely unique in identity, power, awareness and ability.
No problem with this.
The difference between an IS-BE like Airl and most of the IS-BEs inhabiting bodies on Earth, is that Airl can enter and depart from her “doll” at will. She can perceive at selective depths through matter. Airl and other officers of The Domain can communicate telepathically. Since an IS-BE is not a physical universe entity it has no location in space or time. An IS-BE is literally, “immaterial”.
No problem with this.
They can span great distances of space instantly.
No problem with this.
They can experience sensations, more intensely than a biological body, without the use of physical sensory mechanisms. An IS-BE can exclude pain from their perception. Airl can also remember her “identity”, so to speak, all the way back into the dim mists of time, for trillions of years!
No problem with this.
She says that the existing collection of suns in this immediate vicinity of the universe have been burning for the last 200 trillion years. The age of the physical universe is nearly infinitely old, but probably at least four quadrillion years since its earliest beginnings.
Not true.
You can calculate the age of a star based upon how long it takes to burn. A star is like this big tureen of fuel, that is on fire. The fire will burn and burn until all the fuel is gone. There is a relationship between the mass of the star, the size of the star, and it's longevity.
The oldest stars in our Milky Way galaxy are 13.4 billion years, give or take 800 million years. This is somewhat close to what the age of the Universe is (which hovers around 13.7 billion years).
Personally, I believe that this paragraph is an error in understanding by the translator.
All the statements leading up to this point discussed consciousness+. And then suddenly "out of the blue" comes this discussion about physical stars. It is totally and completely out of place, and out of context to the thought stream. Thus, I believe that the translator miss-translated it.
My best guess is that the extraterrestrial was trying to continue on this statement...
"Airl can also remember her "identity", so to speak, all the way back into the dim mists of time, for trillions of years!"
In which case the proper translation should have been...
"She says that the existing collection of consciousness+ in this (particular) immediate vicinity of the universe have been in existence for the last 200 trillion years."
It far out-dates the physical universe. Which is something that I agree with.
Time is a difficult factor to measure as it depends on the subjective memory of IS-BEs and there has been no uniform record of events throughout the physical universe since it began.
No problem with this.
As on Earth, there are many different time measurement systems, defined by various cultures, which use cycles of motion, and points of origin to establish age and duration.
No problem with this.
The physical universe itself is formed from the convergence and amalgamation of many other individual universes, each one of which were created by an IS-BE or group of IS-BEs.
No problem with this. A universe is created as a tool by a consciousness, or a group of consciousnesses.
The collision of these illusory universes commingled and coalesced and were solidified to form a mutually created universe.
No problem with this.
Because it is agreed that energy and forms can be created, but not destroyed, this creative process has continued to form an ever-expanding universe of nearly infinite physical proportions.
No problem with this.
Before the formation of the physical universe there was a vast period during which universes were not solid, but wholly illusionary. You might say that the universe was a universe of magical illusions which were made to appear and vanish at the will of the magician.
No problem with this. There was a point in time where the only thing that existed was thoughts and consciousnesses. Then over time, the consciousnesses began to construct physical realities as tools to obtain experiences within, and thus further their individual growth.
In every case, the “magician” was one or more IS-BEs. Many IS-BEs on Earth can still recall vague images from that period. Tales of magic, sorcery and enchantment, fairy tales and mythology speak of such things, although in very crude terms.
No problem with this.
Each IS-BE entered into the physical universe when they lost their own, “home” universe. That is, when an IS-BE’s “home” universe was overwhelmed by the physical universe, or when the IS-BE joined with other IS-BEs to create or conquer the physical universe.
This understanding differs from mine. But only slightly. I was always under the impression that a physical universe (bubble) was a stable and constant thing. This extraterrestrial says that once the consciousness+ leaves that physical universe that it ceases to exist.
As I see it, a "soul" anchors itself in the original physical universe, then creates a consciousness+ that migrates from that universe to another one to obtain experiences in. Since the consciousness+ and the soul are still connected by quantum entanglement, both physical universes exist simultaneously.
On Earth, the ability to determine when an IS-BE entered the physical universe is difficult for two reasons:
the memory of IS-BEs on Earth have been erased, and
IS-BEs arrival or invasion into the physical universe took place at different times, some 60 trillion years ago, and others only 3 trillion. Every once in a short while, a few million years, an area or planet will be taken over by another group of IS-BEs entering into the area.
At this point, the extraterrestrial is discussing the injection of consciousness+ into the bodies of creatures in the Earth sphere of influence.
What we can gather from this discussion is that...
[1] Entry point for consciousness+ injection into physical bodies in and around the Earth is difficult to determine both geographically, and by date and time.
[2] Consciousness+ injections in this region came in waves from different points and from different locations in geographical location and in time.
Sometimes they will capture other IS-BEs as slaves. They will be forced to inhabit bodies to perform menial, or manual work – especially mining mineral ores on heavy-gravity planets, such as Earth.
No problem with this. I work about this is a similar vein regarding "farming sentience's".
Airl says that she has been a member of The Domain Expeditionary Force for more than 625 million years, when she became a pilot for a biological survey mission which included occasional visits to Earth. She can remember her entire career there, and for a very long time before that.
No problem with this. For a non-corporal being the enormous spans of time involved are given and expected.
She told me that Earth scientists do not have an accurate measuring system to gauge the age of matter. They assume that because certain types of materials seem to deteriorate rather quickly, such as organic or carbon-based matter, that there is a deterioration of matter. It is not accurate to measure the age of stone, based on the measurement of the age of wood or bone.
No problem with this. In all of this, I see a fundamental difference in dating things from the point of view of a non-corporal entity, and that of cycling biological creatures.
This is a fundamental error. Factually, matter does not deteriorate. It cannot be destroyed. Matter may be altered in form, but it is never truly destroyed.
No problem with this. Einstein E=mc2.
The Domain has conducted a periodic survey of the galaxies in this sector of the universe since it developed space travel technologies about 80 trillion years ago.
Actually it should be written as:
"The Domain has conducted periodic surveys of this sector of the universe. It has done so ever since it first developed space travel technologies."
A review of changes in the complexion of Earth reveal that mountain ranges rise and fall, continents change location, the poles of the planet shift, ice caps come and go, oceans appear and disappear, rivers, valleys and canyons change. In all cases, the matter is the same. It is always the same sand.
Every form and substance is made of the same basic material, which never deteriorates.
I have no problem with this.
“Airl described the abilities of an IS-BE officer of The Domain to me, and she demonstrated one to me when she contacted – telepathically – a communications officer of The Domain who is stationed in the asteroid belt.
No problem.
The asteroid belt is composed of thousands of broken up pieces of a planet that once existed between Mars and Jupiter. It serves as a good low-gravity jumping off point for incoming space craft traveling toward the center of our galaxy.
No problem. Sure the asteroid belt is a region of the "frost line" in our solar system, and rocky planets are not stable there. They tend to break up.
She requested that this officer consult information stored in the “files” of The Domain, concerning the history of Earth. She asked the communications officer to “feed” this information to Airl. The communications officer immediately complied with the request. Based on the information stored in the files of The Domain, Airl was able to give me a brief overview or “history lesson”.
No problem with this.
This is what Airl told me that The Domain had observed about the history of Earth:
She told me that The Domain Expeditionary Force first entered into the Milky Way galaxy very recently – only about 10,000 years ago.
This does not match my understanding.
As I understand things, the type-1 greys have been around for much longer than that. And as far as Earth goes, they have been around for at least 30,000 years.
From the human point of view, there has been observations and contacts with space vehicles, and their crews for all of human history. Whether or not they are Type-1 greys, members of the "Old Empire", or something else is unknown.
Their first action was to conquer the home planets of the “Old Empire” (this is not the official name, but a nick-name given to the conquered civilization by The Domain Forces) that served as the seat of central government for this galaxy, and other adjoining regions of space.
As I interpret this, the extraterrestrial is saying that they are from outside of the Milky Way Galaxy. When they entered our galaxy, the first thing that they needed to do was conquer the ruling "federation" or national communities on this side of the galaxy first. That this "federation" was the seat of the central government of our galaxy, and nearby regions of space.
This idea of conquering a region of space, and becoming the ruler of that area is something that the military leadership in Roswell New Mexico would well understand. After all, they just finished a long war with the Nazi Germans and the Japanese.
Yet, it makes no sense.
These extraterrestrials are non-corporal creatures. They exist as waves and inhabit manufactured bodies as they desire. They do not need to "claim" any geographic region for any purpose.
My "gut instinct" is that there is a very complicated and complex relationship of governance between different species, and the physical and non-physical realms. Whether this results in "space opera" type galactic battles or not is hard to say, but my guess, unlikely.
At least "unlikely" as described by this entity in how it was depicted to the Roswell military leadership.
I suspect other situations, truths and considerations were in play. And this entire detailed bit of narrative was just simply to evoke specific reactions from the military leadership.
To me, it appears that the extraterrestrial wanted to make some strong points apparent to the Roswell Military members...
[1] It is an officer of a large and powerful military empire.
[2] This military empire is so powerful that it completely broke and took over the massive galactic empire that ruled this section of space.
These planets are located in the stars systems in the tail of the Big Dipper constellation. She did not mention which stars, exactly.
"Within Ursa Major the stars of the Big Dipper have Bayer designations in consecutive Greek alphabetical order from the bowl to the handle.
Near Mizar is a star called Alcorr and together they are informally known as the Horse and Rider. At magnitude 4.1, Alcor would normally be relatively easy to see with the unaided eye, but its proximity to Mizar renders it more difficult to resolve, and it has served as a traditional test of sight. In the 17th century, Mizar itself was discovered to be a binary star system — the first telescopic binary found.
The component stars are known as Mizar A and Mizar B. In 1889, Mizar A was discovered to in fact be a binary as well, the first spectroscopic binary discovered, and with the subsequent discovery that Mizar B itself is also a binary, in total Mizar currently is known to be at least a quadruple star system."
About 1,500 years later The Domain began the installation bases for their own forces along the path of invasion which leads toward the center of this galaxy and beyond.
Based on what is being stated, I made up this simple drawing of our physical galaxy; The Milky Way. On it, I located the solar system, and the purported movement of the invasion forces.
Invasion path.
If this is the true case, and what he said is correct, then the dominance of the galaxy by his "federation" would look something like this...
About 8,200 years ago The Domain forces set up a base on Earth in the Himalaya Mountains near the border of modern Pakistan and Afghanistan. This was a base for a battalion of The Domain Expeditionary Force, which included about 3,000 members.
So this base would be inside of China in the Tibet (XiZang) autonomous region.
Regions of China.
They set up a base under or inside the top of a mountain. The mountain top was drilled into and made hollow to create an area large enough to house the ships and personnel of that force. An electronic illusion of the mountain top was then created to hide the base by projecting a false image from inside the mountain against a “force screen”.
The ships could then enter and exit through the force screen, yet remain unseen by homo sapiens.
This is standard, well known, Type-1 grey technology.
Shortly after they settled there the base was surprised by an attack from a remnant of the military forces of the “Old Empire”. Unbeknownst to The Domain, a hidden, underground base on Mars, operated by the “Old Empire”, had existed for a very long time. The Domain base was wiped out by a military attack from the Mars base and the IS-BEs of The Domain Expeditionary Force were captured.
You can imagine that The Domain was very upset about losing such a large force of officers and crew, so they sent other crews to Earth to look for them. Those crews were also attacked.
This is most certainly an interesting story. But whether or not it is true is something else entirely.
On one hand, the story does nothing aside from provide background information on a battle between two groups of opposing forces, and establishes a narrative in support of the reasoning behind the presence of Type-1 greys in this section of the galaxy.
On the other hand, it could be a delicious fiction that would be accepted and acknowledged by the Roswell military leadership at the base at that time.
The captured IS-BEs from The Domain Forces were handled in the same fashion as all other IS-BEs who have been sent to Earth. They were each given amnesia, had their memories replaced with false pictures and hypnotic commands and sent to Earth to inhabit biological bodies. They are still a part of the human population today.
Here we see that the "Old Empire" has constructed systems (in this region of Earth) to interrupt the the ability of consciousness+ to easily migrate in and out of world-lines, and an established life-line.
After a very persistent and extensive investigation into the loss of their crews, The Domain discovered that “Old Empire” has been operating a very extensive, and very carefully hidden, base of operations in this part of the galaxy for millions of years.
No one knows exactly how long.
Eventually, the space craft of the “Old Empire” forces and The Domain engaged each other in open combat in the space of the solar system.
No problem with this. If the story about this war is true, this is the logical conclusion that you can expect.
According to Airl, there was a running battle between the “Old Empire” forces and The Domain until about 1235 AD, when The Domain forces finally destroyed the last of the space craft of the “Old Empire” force in this area. The Domain Expeditionary Force lost many of its own ships in this area during that time also.
About 1,000 years later the “Old Empire” base was discovered by accident in the spring of 1914 AD.
The dates and all of the matters regarding "time" are suspect as they do not make any sense. 1235AD + 1000 = 2235AD. Not 1914AD.
The discovery was made when the body of the Archduke of Austria, was “taken over” by an officer of The Domain Expeditionary Force. This officer, who was stationed in the asteroid belt, was sent to Earth on a routine mission to gather reconnaissance.
The extraterrestrial goes into some detail how a non-corporal entity can take over the body of a physical person. I am quite sure that this astounded, and "blew the minds" of the military leadership at the Roswell base.
The purpose of this “take over” was to use the body as a “disguise” through which to infiltrate human society in order to gather information about current events on Earth. The officer, as an IS-BE, having greater power than the being inhabiting the body of the Archduke, simply “pushed” the being out and took over control of the body.
No problem with this. Though it might have scared the living Dejesus out of the Roswell leadership at that time.
However, this officer did not realize how much the Hapsburgs were hated by feuding factions in the country, so he was caught off guard when the body of the Archduke was assassinated by a Bosnian student. The officer, or IS-BE, was suddenly “knocked out” of the body when it was shot by the assassin. Disoriented, the IS-BE inadvertently penetrated one of the “amnesia force screens” and was captured.
And that is how this species learned about the "electronic force field" that prevents wave form data transfer, consciousness+ movement, and all other associated elements.
"Franz Ferdinand (December 18, 1863 - June 28, 1914) was an Archduke of Austria-Este, Prince Imperial of Austria and Prince Royal of Hungary and Bohemia, and from 1896 until his death, heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne. His assassination in Sarajevo precipitated the Austrian declaration of war. This caused countries allied with Austria-Hungary (the Central Powers) and countries allied with Serbia (the Entente Powers) to declare war on each other, starting World War I.
In 1889, Franz Ferdinand's life changed dramatically. His cousin Crown Prince Rudolf committed suicide at his hunting lodge in Mayerling, leaving Franz Ferdinand's father, Archduke Karl Ludwig, as first in line to the throne. However his father renounced his succession rights a few days after the Crown Prince's death. Henceforth, Franz Ferdinand was groomed to succeed.
On June 28, 1914, at approximately 11:15 am, Franz Ferdinand and his wife were killed in Sarajevo, the capital of the Austro-Hungarian province of Bosnia and Herzegovina, by Gavrilo Princip, a member of Young Bosnia and one of several (a few) assassins organized by The Black Hand (UpHa pyKa/Tsrna Ruka). The event, known as the Assassination in Sarajevo, triggered World War I.
Franz and Sophie had previously been attacked when a bomb was thrown at their car. It missed them, but many civilians were injured. Franz and Sophie both insisted on going to see all those injured at the hospital. As a result of this, Princip saw them and shot Sophie in the abdomen. Franz was shot in the jugular and was still alive when witnesses arrived to his aid, but it was too late; he died within minutes.
The assassinations, along with the arms race, nationalism, imperialism, militarism, and the alliance system all contributed to the beginning of World War I, which began less than two months after Franz Ferdinand's death, with Austria-Hungary's declaration of war against Serbia."
Eventually The Domain discovered that a wide area of space is monitored by an “electronic force field” which controls all of the IS-BEs in this end of the galaxy, including Earth. The electronic force screen is designed to detect IS-BEs and prevent them from leaving the area.
Using the prison analogy, you can liken it to walls, barbed wire, and search lights.
If any IS-BE attempts to penetrate the force screen, it “captures” them in a kind of “electronic net”. The result is that the captured IS-BE is subjected to a very severe “brainwashing” treatment which erases the memory of the IS-BE.
No problem with this.
This process uses a tremendous electrical shock, just like Earth psychiatrists use “electric shock therapy” to erase the memory and personality of a “patient” and to make them more “cooperative”.
"The story of electric shock began in 1938, when Italian psychiatrist Ugo Cerletti visited a Rome slaughterhouse to see what could be learned from the method that was employed to butcher hogs. In Cerletti's own words, "As soon as the hogs were clamped by the [electric] tongs, they fell unconscious, stiffened, then after a few seconds they were shaken by convulsions.... During this period of unconsciousness (epileptic coma), the butcher stabbed and bled the animals without difficulty
"At this point I felt we could venture to experiment on man, and I instructed my assistants to be on the alert for the selection of a suitable subject."
Cerletti's first victim was provided by the local police - a man described by Cerletti as "lucid and well-oriented." After surviving the first blast without losing consciousness, the victim overheard Cerletti discussing a second application with a higher voltage. He begged Cerletti, "Non una seconda! Mortifierel" ("Not another one! It will kill me!")
Ignoring the objections of his assistants, Cerletti increased the voltage and duration and fired again. With the "successful" electrically induced convulsion of his victim, Ugo Cerletti brought about the application of hog-slaughtering skills to humans, creating one of the most brutal techniques of psychiatry.
'Electric shock is also called electro-convulsive "therapy" or treatment (ECT), electroshock therapy or electric shock treatment (EST), electrostimulation, and electrolytic therapy (ELT). All are euphemistic terms for the same process: sending a searing blast of electricity through the brain in order to alter behavior."(Reference: http://www.sntp.net/ect/ect3.htm)
Today Electroshock therapy (ECT) is most often used as a treatment for severe major depression which has not responded to other treatment, and is also used in the treatment of mania, catatonia, schizophrenia and other disorders. It first gained widespread use as a form of treatment in the 1940s and 50s. Today, an estimated 1 million people worldwide receive ECT every year, usually in a course of 6-12 treatments administered 2 or 3 times a week.
Electroconvulsive therapy has "side-effects" which include confusion and memory loss for events around the time period of treatment. ECT have been shown to cause persistent memory loss. It is the effects of ECT on long-term memory that give rise to much of the concern surrounding its use. The acute effects of ECT include amnesia.
Registered nurse Barbara C. Cody reports in a letter to the Washington Post that her life "was forever changed by 13 outpatient ECTs I received in 1983. Shock 'therapy' totally and permanently disabled me. "EEGs [electroencephalograms] verify the extensive damage shock did to my brain. Fifteen to 20 years of my life were simply erased; only small bits and pieces have returned. I was also left with short-term memory impairment and serious cognitive deficits. "Shock 'therapy' took my past, my college education, my musical abilities, even the knowledge that my children were, in fact, my children."
Ernest Hemingway, American author, committed suicide shortly after Electric Shock treatment at the Menninger Clinic in 1961. He is reported to have said to his biographer, "Well, what is the sense of ruining my head and erasing my memory, which is my capital, and putting me out of business? It was a brilliant cure but we lost the patient...."
On Earth this “therapy” uses only a few hundred volts of electricity. However, the electrical voltage used by the “Old Empire” operation against IS-BEs is on the order of magnitude of billions of volts!
"The general public may consider household mains circuits (100-250 V AC), which carry the highest voltages they normally encounter, to be high voltage. For example, an installer of heating, ventilation and air conditioning equipment may be licensed to install 24 Volt control circuits, but may not be permitted to connect the 240 volt power circuits of the equipment.
Voltages over approximately 50 volts can usually cause dangerous amounts of current to flow through a human being touching two points of a circuit.
Voltages of greater than 50 V are capable of producing heart fibrillation if they produce electric currents in body tissues which happen to pass through the chest area. The electrocution danger is mostly determined by the low conductivity of dry human skin. If skin is wet, or if there are wounds, or if the voltage is applied to electrodes which penetrate the skin, then even voltage sources below 40 V can be lethal if contacted."
This tremendous shock completely wipes out all the memory of the IS-BE. The memory erasure is not just for one life or one body. It wipes out the all of the accumulated experiences of a nearly infinite past, as well as the identity of the IS-BE!
I wrote about this before. This is how you take subjects, and "farm them", and then capture their experiences. Then erase and then send them back to relive the experiences.
The shock is intended to make it impossible for the IS-BE to remember who they are, where they came from, their knowledge or skills, their memory of the past, and ability to function as a spiritual entity. They are overwhelmed into becoming a mindless, robotic nonentity.
No problem with this.
After the shock a series of post hypnotic suggestions are used to install false memories, and a false time orientation in each IS-BE.
"The ability of a human to be induced into a form of behavior or thinking pattern after coming out of the hypnotic state. Post hypnotic suggestions are administered by the hypnotist and may optionally include a time scope. An altered sense of perception or behavioral pattern may be "programmed" into the person under hypnosis. Certain sequences of events may be set as triggers to enter or exit the post-hypnotic pattern. The behavior patterns resemble conditioned reflexes, though administered without classical behavior alteration techniques.
Examples:
Any number, color, object, etc. may be induced to be ignored by the patient after full consciousness. A certain keyword starts the suggestion and a different word ends it. The patient will not know nor use the item to be ignored. He/she may state that the sea is colored red, if suggested to ignore the color blue. A count of eleven may be achieved if asked to count ones fingers if a number -say 5- is suggested to be ignored. Thus the patient counts 1-2-3-4-6-7-8-9-10-11
Different type of behavior patterns may be induced such as forcing the patient to recite a certain sentence whenever anyone says out loud the special keyword. The patient is fully aware of the conditioned action but it is very difficult, if not impossible, to restrain from doing it. Sweating, loss of coordination and full lack of concentration plagues the patient until he/she performs the programmed action.
An object may be set to be perceived as invisible and it will be fully ignored and evaded during the period of suggestion. Experiments may be performed with a coffee mug, induced to be invisible. If the mug is put on top of a page with writing, the patient will only read the parts not covered by the mug. Even though the sentences may make no sense, nothing is seemingly wrong to the suspected. It is difficult to suggest an object be invisible, yet stay tactile. Usually the object is completely ignored by all senses. Thus, the mug in the example will reportedly not exist, even when the patient is touching it.
Stage hypnotists will sometimes perform shows in which they hypnotize participants to think they are some celebrity and behave exactly like them. John Mohl, stage hypnotist and member of The National Guild of Hypnotists, says that he has often hypnotized people to become someone else! Mohl noticed that adults often became a celebrity while Middle or High School students usually become something much more creative or imaginative."
What I find most interesting about this is that this concept of "brain washing" and suggestion to control others was NEW information provided to the Roswell military leadership in 1947.
From it, was spawned Monarchprogramming.
I can clearly see a straight line military development from this interrogation, to the Monarch mind control program. And since I do, it lends credibility to this entire disclosure.
This includes the command to “return” to the base after the body dies, so that the same kind of shock and hypnosis can be done again, and again, again – forever. The hypnotic command also tells the “patient” to forget to remember.
No problem with this.
What The Domain learned from the experience of this officer is that the “Old Empire” has been using Earth as a “prison planet” for a very long time – exactly how long is unknown – perhaps millions of years.
This is not what I understand. I think that "Prison Planet" is much too strong a term. I prefer the term "sentience nursery".
Aside from a completely different connotation, it helps us to understand that this area is a place for growth and development. While the idea of a "prison planet" is one of isolation and punishment.
It is very important that the reader understand the difference, between these two, and the relationship and role that thy have here in this life that they are living. While it might be true that this earth once might have been a "prison plant", today it is in the process of being reformed, and the Type-1 greys are working with other entities to make sure that this happens.
In fact, I am 100% convinced that the Earth being a "sentience nursery" is the recovery effort initiated by the Type-1 greys to rehabilitate the human species and get them out from under this horrible "electromagnetic force field". Which is why the Mantids are involved in dealing on a person-to-person, consciousness-to-consciousness basis.
So, when the body of the IS-BE dies they depart from the body. They are detected by the “force screen”, they are captured and “ordered” by hypnotic command to “return to the light“.
No problem with this.
The idea of “heaven” and the “afterlife” are part of the hypnotic suggestion – a part of the treachery that makes the whole mechanism work.
(Read “The Invisible College – War in Heaven – A Completely New And Revolutionary Conception of The Nature of Spiritual Reality”).
After the IS-BE has been shocked and hypnotized to erase the memory of the life just lived, the IS-BE is immediately “commanded”, hypnotically, to “report” back to Earth, as though they were on a secret mission, to inhabit a new body. Each IS-BE is told that they have a special purpose for being on Earth. But, of course there is no purpose for being in a prison – at least not for the prisoner.
No problem with this.
Any undesirable IS-BEs who are sentenced to Earth were classified as “untouchable” by the “Old Empire”.
"In the Indian caste system, a Dalit, often called an untouchable, or an outcaste, is a person who according to traditional Hindu belief does not have any 'varnas". Varna refers to the Hindu belief that most humans were supposedly created from different parts of the body of the divinity Purusha.
The part from which a varna was supposedly created defines a person's social status with regard to issues such as whom they may marry and which professions they may hold. Dalits fall outside the varnas system and have historically been prevented from doing any but the most menial jobs. (However, a distinction must be made between lower-caste people and Pariahs.) Included are leather-workers (called chamar), carcass handlers (called mahar), poor farmers and landless labourers, night soil scavengers (called bhangi or chura), street handicrafters, folk artists, street cleaners, dhobi, etc.
Traditionally, they were treated as pariahs in South Asian society and isolated in their own communities, to the point that even their shadows were avoided by the upper castes.
Discrimination against Dalits still exists in rural areas in the private sphere, in ritual matters such as access to eating places and water sources. It has largely disappeared, however, in urban areas and in the public sphere, in rights of movement and access to schools. The earliest rejection of discrimination, at least in spiritual matters, was made as far back as the Bhagavada Gita, which says that no person, no matter what, is barred from enlightenment There are an estimated 160 million Dalits in India."
Reference: Wikipedia.org
"Human rights abuses against these people, known as Dalits, are legion. A random sampling of headlines in mainstream Indian newspapers tells their story: "Dalit boy beaten to death for plucking flowers"; "Dalit tortured by cops for three days"; "Dalit 'witch' paraded naked in Bihar"; "Dalit killed in lock-up at Kurnool"; '7 Dalits burnt alive in caste clash"; "5 Dalits lynched in Haryana"; "Dalit woman gang-raped, paraded naked"; "Police egged on mob to lynch Dalits".
"Dalits are not allowed to drink from the same wells, attend the same temples, wear shoes in the presence of an upper caste, or drink from the same cups in tea stalls," said Smita Narula, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch, and author of Broken People: Caste Violence Against India's "Untouchables." Human Rights Watch is a worldwide activist organization based in New York. India's Untouchables are relegated to the lowest jobs, and live in constant fear of being publicly humiliated, paraded naked, beaten, and raped with impunity by upper-caste Hindus seeking to keep them in their place. Merely walking through an upper-caste neighborhood is a life-threatening offense. Nearly 90 percent of all the poor Indians and 95 percent of all the illiterate Indians are Dalits."
Reference: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/06/0602_030602_untouchables.html
This included anyone that the “Old Empire” judged to be criminals who are too vicious to be reformed or subdued, as well as other criminals such as sexual perverts, or beings unwilling to do any productive work.
No problem with this.
An “untouchable” classification of IS-BEs also includes a wide variety of “political prisoners”.
"A political prisoner is someone held in prison or otherwise detained, perhaps under house arrest, for his/her involvement in political activity.
political prisoners are arrested and tried with a veneer of legality, where false criminal charges, manufactured evidence, and unfair trials are used to disguise the fact that an individual is a political prisoner. This is common in situations which may otherwise be decried nationally and internationally as a human rights violation and suppression of a political dissident. A political prisoner can also be someone that has been denied bail unfairly, denied parole when it would reasonably have been given to a prisoner charged with a comparable crime, or special powers may be invoked by the judiciary.
Particularly in this latter situation, whether an individual is regarded as a political prisoner may depend upon subjective political perspective or interpretation of the evidence. Governments typically reject assertions that they hold political prisoners.
Examples:
In the Soviet Union, dubious psychiatric diagnoses were sometimes used to confine political prisoners. In Nazi Germany, "Night and Fog"prisoners were among the first victims of fascist repression. In North Korea, entire families are jailed if one family member is suspected of anti-government sentiments."
-- Reference: Wikipedia.org
This includes IS-BEs who are considered to be noncompliant “free thinkers” or “revolutionaries” who make trouble for the governments of the various planets of the “Old Empire”. Of course, anyone with a previous military record against the “Old Empire” is also shipped off to Earth.
No problem with this.
A list of “untouchables” include artists, painters, singers, musicians, writers, actors, and performers of every kind. For this reason Earth has more artists per capita than any other planet in the “Old Empire”.
No problem with this.
“Untouchables” also include intellectuals, inventors and geniuses in almost every field. Since everything the “Old Empire” considers valuable has long since been invented or created over the last few trillion years, they have no further use for such beings. This includes skilled managers also, which are not needed in a society of obedient, robotic citizens.
No problem with this.
Anyone who is not willing or able to submit to mindless economic, political and religious servitude as a tax-paying worker in the class system of the “Old Empire” are “untouchable” and sentenced to receive memory wipe-out and permanent imprisonment on Earth.
Is it just me? But it just seems like the United States is trying to replicate The "Old Empire".
The net result is that an IS-BE is unable to escape because they can’t remember who they are, where they came from, where they are. They have been hypnotized to think they are someone, something, sometime, and somewhere other than were they really are.
No problem with this.
The Domain officer who was “assassinated” while in the body of Archduke of Austria was, likewise, captured by the “Old Empire” force. Because this particular officer was a high powered IS-BE, compared to most, he was taken away to a secret “Old Empire” base under the surface of the planet Mars. They put him into a special electronic prison cell and held him there.
No problem with this.
Fortunately, this Domain officer was able to escape from the underground base after 27 years in captivity. When he escaped from the “Old Empire” base, he returned immediately to his own base in the asteroid belt.
No problem with this.
His commanding officer ordered that a battle cruiser be dispatched to the coordinates of the base, provided by this officer, and to destroy that base completely.
(The following internet links shows maps of a complex of artificial looking structures which some people have referred to a the "Pyramid Complex, The Face on Mars, and other geological features that are strikingly similar to symbols and architecture found in Mesoamerican and Egyptian pyramid civilizations. Notice how the "pyramids and face structures look as though they have been partially destroyed! Had there been an "Old Empire" base at this location, which was destroyed by a cruiser attack from The Domain Force, it base would have been significantly damaged.)
http://www.greatdreams.com/cydonia.htm
http://www.qtm.net/~geibdan/cydonia.html
"In addition, a team of scientists from the United States Geological Survey reported at the recent annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, Texas, that images taken by NASA s Mars-orbiting spacecraft Mars Odyssey show what appear to be cave entrances where primitive life forms - "past or present microbial life" - could have been sheltered, and where water could exist in liquid form.
A more detailed perusal of the report reveals that the spacecraft actually photographed, in both visual and infrared, puzzling dark circular structures associated with these caves -structures ranging in size from 100 to 250 meters (330 to 825 feet). Picking up the hardly-noticed story in its June 2007 issue, the prestigious journal Scientific American has now provided additional information: Seven such "football size" caverns were identified; they are 425 feet deep. "
Although the military base of the “Old Empire” was destroyed, unfortunately, much of the vast machinery of the IS-BE force screens, the electroshock / amnesia / hypnosis machinery continues to function in other undiscovered locations right up to the present moment. The main base or control center for this “mind control prison” operation has never been found. So, the influences of this base, or bases, are still in effect.
No problem with this.
The Domain has observed that since the “Old Empire” space forces were destroyed there is no one left to actively prevent other planetary systems from bringing their own “untouchable” IS-BEs to Earth from all over this galaxy, and from other galaxies nearby.
Therefore, Earth has become a universal dumping ground for this entire region of space.
Well, maybe, but who really knows?
This, in part, explains the very unusual mix of races, cultures, languages, moral codes, religious and political influences among the IS-BE population on Earth. The number and variety of heterogeneous societies on Earth are extremely unusual on a normal planet. Most “Sun Type 12, Class 7” planets are inhabited by only one humanoid body type or race, if any.
No problem with this.
In addition, most of the ancient civilizations of Earth, and many of the events of Earth have been heavily influenced by the hidden, hypnotic operation of the “Old Empire” base. So far, no one has figured out exactly where and how this operation is run, or by whom because it is so heavily protected by screens and traps.
No problem with this.
Furthermore, there has been no operation undertaken to seek out, discover and destroy the vast and ancient network of electronics machinery that create the IS-BE force screens at this end of the galaxy.
No problem with this.
Until this has been done, we are not able to prevent or interrupt the electric shock operation, hypnosis and remote thought control of the “Old Empire” prison planet.
No problem with this.
Of course all of the crew members of The Domain Expeditionary Force now remain aware of this phenomena at all times while operating in this solar system space so as to prevent detection and the capture by “Old Empire” traps.”
End of part 2
There are miss-translations on time, confusions in regard to galaxies and universes, and a mish-mash of confusion between consciousness+, humans, and some confusion regarding galactic “ownership” and “power projection” between different species.
The more I parse it in detail, the clearer to me that this is exactly what it is claimed to be.
Key Points
Never the less, I believe the following to be true in regards to this parsing of this section of the book…
Most of what was stated was factually accurate… provided that the war between the “Dominion” and the “Old Empire” is correct. But this has never been a key knowledge base for my role, and thus I know nothing at all about it.
The information about “time” is also correct. It is wholly misunderstood by most humans.
Since the 1980’s MAJestic has taken a major role in working with this species and <redacted>, <redacted> and the Mantids towards the maintenance and development of this “Prison Planet” into a “Sentience Nursery”.
The Roswell leadership should be able to understand and relate to the military aspects of the narrative.
The aspects regarding consciousness+ movement would probably simply terrify the Roswell leadership, and confuse them. But they are really actually very accurate.
So far, in parsing this document, I see no reason to describe it as a fictional work. It appears to be exactly what it said it is.
Apparently the writings about “Mind Control” ended up spawning American covert effort in the Monarch Program.
There is no reason for the Type-1 grey extraterrestrial to lie. None.
The information provided had / has a purpose. It appears that the background information is truthful, but tailored to the limitations of the target audience, and worded to appeal to their understandings.
And finally…
Because MAJestic was established, and my role involved strong interaction with this species, and you all in MM land can see the content and the direction of my articles, it should be obvious that [1] MAJestic believed what the extraterrestrial said, and [2] my role is part of this reconstruction effort.
I have presented the PDF titled “Alien Interview” to the readership. It is supposed to be the transcripts of the interview that a nurse had with an extraterrestrial entity that was recovered from a spaceship crash in Roswell, New Mexico. There is a lot of good stuff there, and a lot of things that run counter to what I know and understand to be true. My intention here is to parse the entire book, and compare it to what I know. Where the two diverge, it will be up to you (the readership) to sort it out.
Website
There is a website devoted to this book. You can visit it HERE.
They seem to make posts based of passages from the book, and then delve into greater detail from there.
I do not (personally) believe that this is warranted. From what I know of the Type-1 greys they tell us what we want to hear, for the most part. And if you look at the content of the book, you can easily see fraudulent elements that were remnants of the popular culture at the time.
Never the less I believe the transcript to be authentic.
The bibliotecapleyades on-line version of the book. HERE.
Introduction
A Mrs. MacElroy presented an envelope of transcripts to a publisher in 2007. In the envelope and over the phone she asked the publisher to do what he could to get them to be published. She claimed to be the duty nurse at the Roswell Army base in New Mexico in 1947. And further, she claimed that she was the sole interpreter / translator of the sole surviving extraterrestrial fro the wreckage.
The content of this book is primarily excerpted from the letter, interview transcripts and personal notes I received from the late Matilda O'Donnell MacElroy. Her letter to me asserts that this material is based on her recollection of communication with an alien being, who "spoke" with her telepathically.
During July and August of 1947 she interviewed an extraterrestrial being who she identifies as "Airl", and whom she claims was and continues to be an officer, pilot and engineer who was recovered from a flyer saucer that crashed near Roswell, New Mexico on July 8th, 1947.
She was late in age and was ready to die. This, apparently, was her effort to make sure that the experience that she had would not be forgotten.
The initial letter from Mrs. MacElroy was received on September 14th, 2007, together with a package of documents. The package contained three types of documents:
Hand-written notes in cursive on ordinary, lined, 8 1/2″ X 11″school notebook paper, which I assume had been written personally by Mrs. MacElroy.
Notes typed on a manual typewriter on plain, white 20 lb. bond paper, which I am assume were prepared personally by her. At least both had the appearance of having been written in the same hand writing, and / or typed on the same typewriter consistently throughout. The writing in the notes I received also appeared to be the same as the writing on the address and return address of the manila envelope I received from Navan, Ireland, which was postmarked on 3 September, 2007. Since I am not a forensic expert, or handwriting analyst, my opinion in these matter is not a professionally qualified judgment.
Many pages of typewritten transcriptions of her interview with the alien. These were obviously typed on a different typewriter. These pages were typed on a different type of paper and showed apparent signs of age and repeated handling.
There is a lot, especially in the front 1/3 of the document, that seems credible to me an MAJestic “operator”. There is also quite a lot that is alien to me, and a substantial amount that does not match what I know to be the truth.
Thus, I must rightfully conclude that a large bulk of the information follows the type-1 grey MAJestic warning:
“They tell you what you want to believe, not necessarily the truth.“.
All in all, I think that [1] the truth is this is that these are actual transcripts from the Roswell event. However, [2] the content is tailored to the interpreter and her superiors. Thus, [3] most of it’s content is inaccurate, or misleading to us reading it 70 years later.
I have first-hand experience with these type-1 greys. I have worked with them. I have been at their facilities. I have interacted them in both the physical and the non-physical. So I do have more than just a little bit of knowledge concerning this subject.
However, my EBP entanglement was with another species known as the Mantids, and they view things quite differently. Though, truthfully, it was THIS species that manufactured the EBP, installed it inside my skull (off world), and laid out the “training” that I had at NAS, NASC China Lake.
From the MM point of view, this [4] entire exercise offers us a great “spring board” for investigation, and I would like to use what I know to sort out this document and turn it into something that is useful for all of us to learn from.
Finally, [5] there are errors in understanding of a 1948 nurse and terminology and lexicon, that I will try to resolve here.
Limitations
I am not going to reprint the entire book here. The same does for the notes by the nurse, and the various supporting documents held within the PDF.
Instead, I am going to parse the transcript of what the type-1 grey had to say. I will do so based on my role in MAJestic, and what I know through the EBP entanglements.
SUBJECT: ALIEN INTERVIEW, 9. 7. 1947
QUESTION – “Are you injured?”
ANSWER -NO
QUESTION – “What medical assistance do you require?”
ANSWER -NONE
QUESTION – “Do need food or water or other sustenance?”
ANSWER -NO
QUESTION – “Do you have any special environmental needs, such as air temperature, atmospheric chemical content, air pressure, or waste elimination?”
ANSWER – NO. I AM NOT A BIOLOGICAL BEING.
At this point, early on in the interview we see that the body is a construct used by a being in wave form. It does not require any of the support equipment needed by biological creatures.
QUESTION – “Does your body or space craft carry any germs or contamination that may be harmful to humans or other Earth life forms?”
ANSWER -NO GERMS IN SPACE.
QUESTION – “Does your government know you are here?”
ANSWER – NOT AT THIS TIME
QUESTION – “Are others of your kind going to come looking for you?”
ANSWER – YES
QUESTION – “What is the weapons capability of your people?”
ANSWER – VERY DESTRUCTIVE.
QUESTION – “Why did your space craft crash?”
ANSWER – IT WAS STRUCK BY AN ELECTRICAL DISCHARGE FROM THE ATMOSPHERE WHICH CAUSED US TO LOSE CONTROL.
This differs from my understanding. I was told that radar technology developed by the Germans during World War II were being tested in New Mexico, and they are what brought the vehicle down. Aircraft getting hit by lightening is a common event and rarely causes the crash of a vehicle.
QUESTION – “Why was your space craft in this area?”
ANSWER – INVESTIGATION OF “BURNING CLOUDS” / RADIATION /
EXPLOSIONS
The first test of a nuclear weapon was in the atmosphere on July 16, 1945, in a remote part of New Mexico on what was then the Alamogordo Bombing Range, and is now the White Sands Missile Range. The site is 55 miles northwest of Alamogordo, New Mexico.
QUESTION – “How does your space craft fly?”
ANSWER -IT IS CONTROLLED THROUGH “MIND”. RESPONDS TO “THOUGHT COMMANDS”.
QUESTION – “How do your people communicate with each other?”
ANSWER –
THROUGH MIND /THOUGHT.
QUESTION – “Do you have a written language or symbols for communication?”
ANSWER -YES
QUESTION – “What planet are you from?”
ANSWER – THE HOME / BIRTHPLACE WORLD OF THE DOMAIN
QUESTION – “Will your government send representatives to meet with our leaders?”
ANSWER -NO
QUESTION – “What are your intentions concerning
Earth?”
ANSWER -PRESERVE / PROTECT PROPERTY OF THE DOMAIN
QUESTION – “What have you learned about Earth governments and military installations?”
ANSWER – POOR / SMALL. DESTROY PLANET.
Earth governments are "poor" and "small", but they have the power to destroy the entire planet.
QUESTION – “Why haven’t your people made your existence known to the people of Earth?”
ANSWER – WATCH / OBSERVE. NO CONTACT.
QUESTION – “Have your people visited Earth’s previously?”
ANSWER – PERIODIC / REPEATING OBSERVATIONS.
QUESTION – “How long have you known about Earth?”
ANSWER – LONG BEFORE HUMANS.
Pre-historic humanoids date back to 400,000 years. At that time they were tool making, cart making creatures that seemed to have an appreciation of music, speaking, and society. Though no written language. Proto-humans date back even further, going back 2 million years. This knowledge will be useful to explain other statements made later on.
QUESTION – “What do you know about the history of civilization on Earth?”
ANSWER – SMALL INTEREST / ATTENTION. SMALL TIME.
QUESTION – “Can you describe your home world to us?”
ANSWER – PLACE OF CIVILIZATION / CULTURE / HISTORY. LARGE PLANET. WEALTH / RESOURCES ALWAYS. ORDER. POWER.
KNOWLEDGE / WISDOM. TWO STARS. THREE MOONS.
QUESTION – “What is the state of development of your civilization?”
ANSWER – ANCIENT. TRILLIONS OF YEARS. ALWAYS. ABOVE ALL OTHERS. PLAN. SCHEDULE. PROGRESS. WIN. HIGH GOALS / IDEAS.
Our universe is roughly 14 billion years old. While a soul and consciousness can be much older than that, I take the term "trillions" to mean "an unfathomably long period of time".
QUESTION – “Do you believe in God?”
ANSWER – WE THINK. IT IS. MAKE IT CONTINUE. ALWAYS.
QUESTION – “What type of society do you have?”
ANSWER – ORDER. POWER. FUTURE ALWAYS. CONTROL. GROW.
QUESTION – “Are there other intelligent life forms besides yourself in the universe?”
ANSWER – EVERYWHERE. WE ARE GREATEST / HIGHEST OF ALL.
Thoughts from the first interview
Obviously the book has the notes hand written on the paper that pretty much helped explain her thoughts and impressions. I left those out.
As you can see, not much was gleaned from the first interview.
But as it was, it was very productive. At that time, the entire Army base was abuzz with soldiers all of which just finished fighting a bloody global war with fanatical Nazi’s and Japanese. Their mind-set was militaristic, aggressive, defensive, protective, and nationalistic. It was a hostile environment for an extraterrestrial species to enter.
The extraterrestrial pilot, who like all type-1 greys, can read the non-physical world about it, fully understood the situation and was actively reading and absorbing the thoughts of everyone around it. And like all type-1 greys, assimilated the knowledge, and made the appropriate physical actions.
Which was do nothing. Wait in the room.
The next day…
SUBJECT: ALIEN INTERVIEW, 10. 7. 1947
“QUESTION – “Why have you stopped communicating?”
ANSWER -NO STOP. OTHERS. HIDDEN / COVERED. SECRET FEAR.
SUBJECT: ALIEN INTERVIEW, 11. 7. 1947
“QUESTION – Can you read or write any Earth languages?
ANSWER -NO.
QUESTION – Do you understand numbers or mathematics?
ANSWER – YES. I AM OFFICER / PILOT / ENGINEER
QUESTION – Can you write or draw symbols or pictures that we may be able to translate into our own language?
ANSWER –UNCERTAIN
QUESTION – Are there any other signs or means of communication you can use to help us understand your thoughts more clearly?
ANSWER -NO.”
QUESTION – Can you show us on a map of the stars which is the star of your home planet? ANSWER -NO.
As discussed, this question is based on the assumption that there is one singular planet that the species departed, and that is it's "home planet". Which is false, and if you understand that this species is a non-physical species that creates physical bodies for use in physical space, you can recognize what an impossible question this is to answer.
This species is part of a wide organization, with many, many regions that they inhabit. This includes both the physical and non-physical. Most of which 99.999% were unknown to the military and scientists at that time. In fact, at that time, they didn't know about brown dwarfs, or even if there were planets around stars. And many thought that the earth was the center of the universe.
QUESTION – How long will it take your people to locate you here?
ANSWER -UNKNOWN.
QUESTION – How long would it take your people to travel here to rescue you?
ANSWER – MINUTES OR HOURS.
QUESTION – How can we make them understand that we do not intend to harm you?
ANSWER – INTENTIONS ARE CLEAR. SEE IN YOUR MIND / IMAGES /FEELINGS.
At this point, the more astute should realize that they were absolutely transparent to this being. And that their plans, thoughts, secrets and desires were open and presented to it and they had no defense against it.
QUESTION – If you are not a biological entity, why do you refer to yourself as feminine?
ANSWER – I AM A CREATOR. MOTHER. SOURCE.”
“QUESTION – “What assurance or proof do you require from us that will make you feel safe enough to answer our questions.”
ANSWER – ONLY SHE SPEAKS. ONLY SHE HEARS. ONLY SHE QUESTIONS. NO OTHERS. MUST LEARN / KNOW / UNDERSTAND.”
There it is. The type-1 grey defines who, what, when, why, how and where. No one else.
Then, according to the notes;
“On the afternoon of the 16th day Airl and I sat next to each other as she read. She closed the last page of a book she was reading and placed it aside. I was about to hand her the next book from a large pile waiting to be read, when she turned and said or “thought” to me, “I am ready to speak now”. At first I was a little confused by the remark. I gestured for her to continue and she began to teach me my first lesson.”
Up to this point, everything was very matter-of-fact, clear, cut and dry. Now we enter “the twilight zone” and start getting into the real “meat” of the interview. And it is this part that REALLY NEEDS to be sorted out and put into context.
“I have been a part of the Domain Expeditionary Force in this sector of space for several thousand years. However, I have not personally had intimate contact with beings on Earth since 5,965 BCE. It is not my primary function to interact with inhabitants of planets within The Domain. I am an Officer, Pilot and Engineer, with many duties to perform. Nonetheless, although I am fluent in 347 other languages within The Domain, I have not been exposed to your English language.
Said very interestingly. However, let's parse this statement to it's basics.
This officer
[1] has been assigned to this region for a long stretch of time (from a human perspective).
[2] Hasn't interacted with humans for roughly 8,000 years.
[3] Is an officer, a pilot, and an engineer.
[4] Is fluent in numerous languages spoken within their "nation" / "federation".
[5] Does not speak English until now.
The last Earth language with which I was conversant was the Sanskrit language of the Vedic Hymns. At that time I was a member of a mission sent to investigate the loss of a Domain base located in the Himalaya Mountains. An entire battalion of officers, pilots, communications and administrative personnel disappeared and the base destroyed.
This officer learned the local Earth language when investigating the loss of one of their outposts. This was in the Himalaya mountains, and at that time 8,000 years ago, the locals spoke Sanskrit. It was a large outpost.
Knowing what I know, I can tell you that this was a sizable installation. It was large, and it maintained a large contingent of personnel, and they were active in doing what ever they were active in doing. A facility this size has a purpose. And what it was, or what it was doing, is not specified.
Several million years ago I was trained and served as an Investigation, Data Evaluation and Program Development Officer for The Domain. Because I was experienced in that technology, I was sent to Earth as part of the search team.
Again, do not get all caught up on the specific numbers and terms. Just look at the basics what it was saying.
The type-1 extraterrestrial had training in the specialties needed to investigate the mystery of the lost outpost. So it was sent down to the area to investigate.
One of my duties involved interrogation of the human population that inhabited the adjoining area at that time.Many of the people in that region reported sighting “vimanas” or space craft in the area.
Thus the reason why the "non-contact" protocols were breached. The local humans needed to be interviewed, and they needed to be understood. So it learned the local language at that time.
In interviewing them (not specified how), the humans reported seeing spaceships and vehicles in the area. Which was telling. As the type-1 greys have a "non-contact" / "non-interference" policy and all their ships are hidden from view (cloaked).
This means that they were observing space vehicles of another nation / civilization / species.
Following the logical extension of evidence, testimony, observation, as well as the absence of certain evidence, I led my team to the discovery that there were still “Old Empire” ships and well-hidden “Old Empire” installations in this solar system of which we had been completely unaware.
It makes reference to an "old empire". This is entirely plausible, however, it does seem to be contrived to fit the mind-set of the military at the facility at that time.
For all of military at the base (at that time) had just spent the last few years fighting the Nazi Germans and the Japanese empires. It seems logical to me that the Type-1 grey would carefully construct a narrative that the human base commanders would relate to, accept and understand.
You and I were unable to communicate in your language because I, personally, have not been exposed to your language. However, now that I have scanned the books and material you provided me this data has been relayed to our space station in this region and processed by our communications officer through our computers. It has been translated into my own language and relayed back to me in a context that I can think with. I have also received additional information from the files stored in our computers about the English language and Domain records concerning Earth civilization.”
It obtained the books. Scanned the content. Relayed it to "the cloud" at the base. Massaged it, cross-indexed it with known available records, and now is able to converse in English at a more professional level.
“Now I am prepared to give you certain information that I feel will be of great value to you.
Up until this point in time, I believe that all the information was wholly accurate, and truthful to the understanding of the people in the Roswell facility.
It is at this juncture, that it decides to "give certain information" that might benefit humans.
I will tell you the truth. Although truth is relative to all other truth, I wish to share with you as honestly and accurately as possible, truth as I see it, within the boundaries of my integrity to myself, to my race and without violating my obligations to the organization I serve and have sworn to uphold and protect”.
The key phrase is "truth is relative to other truths". And that is the KEY to unlocking and understanding all which was stated.
It is [1] providing a mixture of information that [2] will be believable to the military leadership at the base, all intended to convey [3] various points that it wants to establish.
Knowing what I know, the points that it wanted to establish were...
[A] The Type-1 greys are a old, advanced species.
[B] The Type-1 greys own the Earth and everything surrounding it.
[C] The Type-1 greys are very strong militarily.
[D] Avenues for further communication will be made possible but on the terms established by the Type-1 greys.
Everything else is clouded in a mish-mash of mercurial and seemingly unrelated, but highly detailed (trigger) subjects designed to evoke a certain degree of emotional and mental reactions from the military staff at the facility.
“OK”, I thought. “Will you answer questions from the gallery now?”
“No. I will not answer questions. I will provide information to you that I think will be beneficial to the well-being of the immortal spiritual beings who comprise humanity, and that will foster the survival of all the myriad life forms and the environment of Earth, as it is a part of my mission to ensure the preservation of Earth.
As part of it's role and mission to ensure the preservation of the Earth, it will provide a narrative. This narrative will provide "information" which will eventually be beneficial to the souls of the humans that exist on the Earth.
“Personally, it is my conviction that all sentient beings are immortal spiritual beings. This includes human beings. For the sake of accuracy and simplicity I will use a made-up word: “IS-BE“. Because the primary nature of an immortal being is that they live in a timeless state of “is”, and the only reason for their existence is that they decide to “be”.
What it is talking about is "individual consciousness" which is a creation of soul.
This term "IS-BE" is confusing. For our purposes here, we will simply refer to it as "consciousness+".
It describes consciousness as it has decided to enter various life-lines through various world-lines. Of course, this understanding was well-beyond the military minded folk right after world war 2. So it made up it's own term.
No matter how lowly their station in a society, every IS-BE deserves the respect and treatment that I myself would like to receive from others. Each person on Earth continues to be an IS-BE whether they are aware of the fact or not.”
Continued, and with personal notes from the interpreter.
“Airl told me her reasons for coming to Earth and for being in the area of the 509th Bomber Squadron. She was sent by her superior officers to investigate the explosions of nuclear weapons which have been tested in New Mexico. Her superiors ordered her to gather information from the atmosphere that could be used to determine the extent of radiation and potential harm this might cause to the environment. During her mission, the space craft was struck by a lighting which caused her to lose control and crash.
This was covered earlier (above).
While investigating nuclear detonations in the New Mexico region, the vehicle experienced some kind of wave frequency / electro-magnetic interference. The type-1 extraterrestrial believed that it was due to natural weather irregularities. But, within two years, they will realize that it was due to radar interference with their electrical control systems.
The space craft is operated by IS-BEs who use “doll bodies” in much the same way that an actor wears a mask and costume. It is a like a mechanical tool through which to operate in the physical world. She, as well as all of the other IS-BEs of the officer class and their superiors, inhabit these “doll bodies” when they are on duty in space. When they are not on duty, they “leave” the body and operate, think, communicate, travel, and exist without the use of a body.
Not stated in the transcripts, but in the personal notes of the nurse is the understanding that these constructed bodies are just like suits of clothing that the type-1 grey extraterrestrial entities wear.
The bodies are constructed of synthetic materials, including a very sensitive electrical nervous system, to which each IS-BE adjusts themselves or “tune in” to an electronic wave length that is matched uniquely to the wavelength or frequency emitted by each IS-BE.
Each IS-BE is capable of creating a unique wave frequency which identifies them, much like a radio signal frequency. This serves, in part, as identification like a finger print. The doll body acts like a radio receiver for the IS-BE. No two frequencies or doll bodies are exactly the same.
The bodies of each IS-BE crew member are likewise tuned into and connected to the “nervous system” built into the space craft. The space craft is built in much the same way as the doll body. It is adjusted specifically to the frequency of each IS-BE crew member. Therefore, the craft can be operated by the “thoughts” or energy emitted by the IS-BE. It is really a very simple, direct control system. So, there are no complicated controls or navigation equipment on board the space craft. They operate as an extension of the IS-BE.
When the lightning bolt struck the space craft this caused a short circuit and consequently “disconnected” them from the control of the ship momentarily which resulted in the crash.
Again, the belief is that the default explanation for the crash was a natural phenomenon based upon assumption.
Were the type-1 greys to investigate the crash and wreckage, they would (and eventually will) identify the root cause failure. Which was a real surprise to them, I am sure. And resulted in changes to the control systems of the spacecraft.
Airl was, and still is, an officer, pilot and engineer in an expeditionary force which is part of a space opera civilization which refers to itself as “The Domain”.
I have no problem calling the type-1 greys part of a "space opera civilization".
Firstly [1] because they are one of the dominant species in our region. Secondly [2] that the military leadership at Roswell would easily understand this reference. And thirdly [3] all the subsequent information provided illustrates this point most clearly.
This civilization controls a vast number of galaxies, stars, planets, moons and asteroids throughout an area of space that is approximately one-fourth of the entire physical universe!
It could be. Or it could not. No one really actually knows.
My understanding from this differs substantially.
As I understand it, this species can travel the universe, and has control over regions of space in other galaxies. But as far as our galaxy is concerned, it's control is about 25% of it, and our solar system is somewhere off to the side of the central area of control. The are expanding inward towards the center from the outer rim.
This nurse, is making a common mistake associating "the universe" with "the galaxy".
The continuing mission of her organization is to “Secure, control and expand the territory and resources of The Domain”.
Airl pointed out that their own activities were very similar in many ways to the European explorers who “discovered” and “claimed” the New World for The Holy Father, The Pope and for the kings of Spain, Portugal and later, Holland, England, France and so forth.
Europe benefited from the property “acquired” from the native inhabitants. However, the native inhabitants were never consulted with or asked for their permission to become a part of the “domain” of European nations and the soldiers and priests they sent to acquire territory and wealth in order to advance their interests.
Airl said she read in a history book that the Spanish king regretted the brutal treatment of the native inhabitants by his soldiers. He feared retribution from the gods he worshiped, as described in the various testaments of the Bible. He asked the Pope to prepare a statement called “The Requirement” which was supposed to be read to each of the newly encountered native inhabitants.
The king hoped that the statement, whether it was accepted or rejected by the natives, would absolve the King of all responsibility for the resulting slaughter and enslavement of these people. He used this statement as justification to confiscate their lands and possessions by his soldiers and the Pope’s priests. Apparently, the Pope, personally, did not have any feelings of guilt or responsibility in the matter.
Airl thought that such actions were those of a coward and that it is no surprise that the territory of Spain was diminished so quickly. Only a few years later the king was dead and his empire had been assimilated by other nations.
While this entire narrative and story was not included in the interview transcripts, I do not doubt that it occurred in silent unspoken communication between the two.
Souls are constructed and grow from the experiences that consciousness generates.
If your consciousness (in whatever form you take) creates destructive, unwarranted and unfair actions, tumult, pain, sadness, and emotional and physical strife...
...this creation will reside upon all your works, and your soul construct no matter how pleasant and beautiful you (and your works) look on the outside.
Eventually, it will try to find a point of lowest energy potential and all will manifest and come down hard on your "great works". It is no surprise that the type-1 grey talked in these terms.
Airl said that this sort of behavior does not occur in The Domain. Their leaders assume full responsibility for the actions of The Domain, and would not denigrate themselves in this fashion. Nor do they fear any gods or have any regret for their actions.
This idea reinforces my earlier suggestion that Airl and her people are probably atheists.
Missing the point.
Say that you kidnapped someone when you were in your 20's. You raped them, then you killed them, you hid the body, and no one knew anything at all about it.
For sixty years you raised a family, went to church, and worked at your job and got your gold watch at retirement.
On your death bed, you made a last confession. You told the priest about the murder, and he "absolved you of all your sins", and you died and expected to go into Heaven.
What's next?
A mantid (angel) comes and you go in front of a committee and they review your life. They see the good works, the bad works, and the terrible works.
Are your sins absolved?
No. They are not.
Buy doing those terrible things, you have "hoisted a huge grand piano, with a strong hemp rope, a full 80 stories above your head".
(This is a figurative illustration that suggests that you have created a very dangerous situation and now lie under the threat of this situation that you created.)
Until you resolve your deeds, you will have that danger with you always, and it attracts people who have sharp knives and who love to cut ropes.
(Again, figuratively, you will attract to you events, and things that will trigger a release of that danger that you created.)
You will need to resolve that, and the best way is a role reversal in your next life. The second best, is to take on a positive and helpful role doing good deeds and making great things happen. A third way is to accept it, and allow the piano to fall on you as that is the consequence for your actions.
Now all of this would have been totally alien to the military leadership at Roswell at that time.
In the case of the acquisition of Earth by The Domain, the rulers of The Domain have chosen not to openly reveal this intention to the “native inhabitants” of Earth until a later time when it may, or may not, suit their interests to reveal themselves. For the present time, it is not strategically necessary to make the presence of The Domain Expeditionary Force known to Mankind. In fact, until now, it has been very aggressively hidden, for reasons that will be revealed later.
Simple. The Earth is owned by the type-1 greys. There is no need to tell any of the Earth inhabitants of this truth. Maybe sometime in the future, the Type-1 greys will work and communicate with humans in various nations of the world, but not in 1948.
I can tell you that this occurred with the United States in the 1970's and MAJestic was formed as a result of this level of communication.
I can also tell you that both China, and Russia have also been in contact with the Type-1 greys. But I cannot elaborate on the extent of that communication.
The asteroid belt near Earth is a very small, but important location for The Domain in this part of space. Actually, some of the objects in our solar system are very valuable for use as low-gravity “space stations”. They are interested primarily in the low gravity satellites in this solar system which consists mainly of the side of the moon facing away from Earth and the asteroid belt, which was a planet that was destroyed billions of years ago, and to a lesser degree, Mars and Venus.
Nothing new here. The Type-1 greys are interested in the asteroid belt, and the moon (on the "far side").
Doom Domed structures synthesized from gypsum or underground bases covered by electromagnetic force screens are easily constructed to house the Domain forces.
Bases and facilities are easily created in this solar system. They consist of domed structures, or underground facilities hidden by electromagnetic force screens.
Once an area of space is acquired by The Domain and becomes a part of the territory under its control, it is treated as the “property” of The Domain. The space station near the planet Earth is important only because it lay along a path of The Domain expansion route toward the center of the Milky Way galaxy and beyond.
Nothing new. And this information can be well understood by the Roswell military at that time.
End of part 1
So far there is NOTHING in this transcript that I can find fault with.
There’s some minor errors in translation, and misconceptions, but most of what is going on is what you would expect. In this first part, there wasn’t any intentional misdirection, falsehoods, or deceptions that I can identify.
Of course, this information would have been an absolute SHOCK to the world at that time. And no one was ready for the idea that [1] there were other species in universe, or that [2] they owned us lock, stock and barrel.
In this article, I tried to put things into perspective with what I know, and added some insight. I also purposefully omitted much of the opinions, thoughts and clutter that the book has. I just wanted to “get to the meat” of it.
The next section(s) describe some very difficult things to absorb. Mostly because you (and most MM readers) do not have the mind-set of a 1947 military officer. And THAT was the target audience for the narrative presented.
We will continue with a parsing of this document / book in part 2.
Key Points
The Roswell military event that acquired a UFO is not a fiction.
A Type-1 grey extraterrestrial craft crashed and was recovered by military personnel.
One creature was captured and interrogated.
The person who was able to ask him questions and record the answers was an Army nurse.
She kept all records of the event, including the actual transcripts, and disclosed them on her death-bed.
The creature was a construct and the species wore the animated creature like we would wear clothing.
The creature claims to be very ancient, and that they own the Earth, and their role is to protect it and make sure that it is maintained
There is another extraterrestrial group. This group is referred to as the “old empire” and it has been administrating this region of space for a long time.
Do you want more?
You can find many more videos in my “Extraterrestrial Species index” over here…
A type 1 grey extraterrestrial was acquired from the vehicle wreckage in Roswell, New Mexico. One Army nurse was able to interview it. When the nurse was in her 80’s she moved to England and got ready to die, and left behind this document that describes her encounter with this creature, and all of her interrogations with it.
I was exposed to this document on the fourth of July, 2021, and when I read the book I was astounded how much matched MAJestic knowledge and understanding, and how much matched what I was exposed to through entanglement. I would say that it’s a solid 98% match.
For me, personally, it reaffirms (from a secondary source) the validity of my experiences, purpose and writings today.
Some notes
Sometimes, when the nurse refers to "the universe", I think she actually means "our galaxy". When you look at the writings, in this light, many things come into focus.
Other times, when she refers to "the universe", she is referring to the entire "universe" as we know it to be.
Dating is confusing. Enormous dates like "trillions of years" is again meaningless as we humans are not using the same "yard stick" for comparative measurement.
The "old empire" is a service-for-self species that farms the sentience on Earth. The way it is presented is more accurate than anything that I have said.
Both MM and this document, when combined together, establishes a solid framework towards understanding our place in this universe and YOUR ultimate role in it. I am presenting it here in PDF form.
I hope that you enjoy it as much as I have. And answers the questions that I have been unable to answer for you.
Do you want more?
You can find many more videos in my “Extraterrestrial Species index” over here…
While my story is filled with all sorts of issues and elements, this particular article will discuss a time in my life where I was in the “Parole System”.
When I was “retired” from three decades in the MAJ (which is a branch of the ONI) under the United States department of the Navy, I was placed under the control of the Arkansas state prison system. Also known as “the ADC”. And under that system, I was accused, tried, convicted, and sent off to be a “sex offender” working at hard labor.
I spent roughly two years in the hot Arkansas sun and then was granted parole. This is the story of that brief period of time. Roughly two years in duration, before I returned back to the ADC to finish my sentence
My story
In my darkest days while I was still in the Prison system, I was granted parole under very rigid limitations on everything that I could do. Parole is a good thing. We all wanted it. It was the “rehabilitation” portion of our prison sentence. While “hard labor” was the punishment phase.
Parole can ONLY be granted to a relative or a close friend (with no criminal background). Barring that, you can be sent to a “half way” house. That is, as long as you are not a “sex offender”.
Quick Tip
Half-way houses, religious organizations (that accept federal funding), state organizations, or private organizations (that accept state funding) are barred from accepting "sex offenders".
I had one option. My father.
And he gladly took on that role, and welcomed me into his house. He did so under the objections of my step-mother who grudgingly went along with the arrangement.
From left to right; My step-mother, My father, and then me (MM) way off to the right.
Terms of Parole
Under parole my freedom was severely curtailed.
I couldn’t have a cell phone, or be near one. I couldn’t go to a restaurant that served alcohol, nor could I apply for a job that had access to a telephone, computer, printer, or camera. And I couldn’t watch any movies unless it was “G” rated. Any violations would cause me to go right back to prison.
It’s very difficult as a “sex offender” because not only are you a undesirable felon, but the non-stop anti sex offender barrage on the media turned you into a shunned leper.
Things fell apart
After about four months living at my long-retired father’s house (He was in his late 70’s at the time.), his wife (my step mother) decided that I was a “grown adult” and kicked me out of the house. I tried to explain that my parole was contingent on living with my father. But she didn’t care. She no longer wanted me there.
I was part of his “old life” and his “old wife” and I was a constant reminder of that.
She would have no part of it.
My father, and you know I must give him credit, put up a cursory defense on my behalf. But the situation was unstable, and I was escorted out of the house with my meager belongings in a small suitcase.
I was kicked out on Christmas eve. (Again, long time MM readers will recognize the significance of this event.) And that is how I spent my Christmas in 2007.
Not just losing my jobs on Christmas eve, over and over, and over again, but also getting kicked out of the house as well. Sigh.
Some background
For those of you who are unaware, it just seemed that the preferred date to lay me off from work in industry was right before Christmas. This included Delco Electronics, Magnavox, Poulan Weedeater, Pollak, Grote, Guardian Glass, and Holmes Products.
To quote "John McClain" from the "Die Hard" series of movies. "What are the odds?"
Aside from being a total dick about the entire thing, she made pronouncements that she wanted me to rot in prison, get raped in prison, and have my life totally and utterly destroyed. And that she hoped that she could make this happen personally.
I well remember telling her that “Oh, you are just angry. You don’t mean what you are saying.”
To which she replied. “Oh, yes I do. I know exactly what I am saying and exactly what I want.”
(To make a long story short) I ended up in a “flop house” for until after Christmas when the Parole staff could deal with my case.
Flophouse.Anyhouse/apartment/frat house /trailer/etc. which is used for individuals to crash (sleep, chill, hang out, lurk, etc.) for a period oftime. In order to "crash", one must not actually live there (e.g. have their name on the lease, own saidflophouse,etc.). Flophouses are typically used by college students, drug addicts, transients, vagrants, or other unsavorycharacters.
The entire staff at the parole office were all celebrating the holidays, don’t you know.
So I had to wait in a limbo state. Locked in a room. I called the 1-800 hot line which instructed me to go to the designated address and stay inside the room and do not leave for any reason until they would get back to work after the holiday.
Eventually they came back from holiday. Picked me up in a van, and hauled me off to a monastery to live.
A monasteryis a building or complex of buildings comprising the domestic quarters and workplaces of monastics, monks or nuns, whether living in communities or alone.
A monastery generally includes a place reserved for prayer which may be a chapel, church, or temple, and may also serve as an oratory, or in the case of communities anything from a single building housing only one senior and two or three junior monks or nuns, to vast complexes and estates housing tens or hundreds.
A monastery complex typically comprises a number of buildings which include a church, dormitory, cloister, refectory, library, balneary and infirmary, andoutlying granges.
Depending on the location, the monastic order and the occupation of its inhabitants, the complex may also include a wide range of buildings that facilitate self-sufficiency and service to the community.
These may include a hospice, a school, and a range of agricultural and manufacturing buildings such as a barn, a forge, or a brewery.
-Wikipedia
Actually, it was a really good thing. But at the time I knew nothing about it and was petrified.
A talk with my father
Anyways, my father came to visit me while I sat alone in that bare hotel room. All the light bulbs were burnt out, so I opened the blinds to let the street light illuminate the room.It was a pretty dismal hotel room. It had a very tiny commode in the corner with a beaded curtain separating it from the room, and a old black and white television with “rabbit ears” on the top that didn’t work.
The television looked something like this.
My father sat down on the lumpy bed while I sat on the low 1940’s style chair with mattress springs that jut up from below. He tried to explain his situation, while acknowledging (all the time repeatedly) that his wife was being a horrible bitch to me. But really, he was old and really wasn’t able to handle all the discord.
I understood his situation.
I really did.
This was his life, his family, and I was not wanted by his wife, and he (at his age) did not need the strife and aggravation.
But, I did tell him the truth. I told him what the parole officers told me. that he was incapable of being a “guardian” for me during parole. That he was not behaving like a father. That they were not behaving like a functional family, and there was no way that that environment was healthy for me.
He failed.
He lied to the parole board.
He promoted himself as a good father, and a loving and nurturing home for me to recover and start the long road towards rehabilitation. But the parole office disagreed. Real functional families do not kick family members out of the house, and they most certainly do not do so under the conditions and situation that I was in. Frankly, I was a “basket case”. You don’t go from white-collar professional to slave laborer in the deep South surrounded with urban blacks, SA’s and other misfits of society.
Basketcase
informal : a person who is functionally incapacitated from extreme nervousness, emotional distress, mental or physical overwork, etc.
And he didn’t like to hear it, and told me that he was going to have a “word with them on my behalf”.
I told him not to bother. The decision was already made.
And then the next day, he visited me crestfallen. And he just repeated what they told me. In fact, they suggested that he and his wife go to couples counseling, and see a sociologist to straighten out their dysfunction.
All of which was a major slap in his face.
Anyways, both he and his wife passed on. (They died. My father in late December 2008) and my step-mother sometime in 2010. All I really want to do is to give some background to the situation at hand.
A dark night of soul
For me, it was a dark night of soul. And I sat there awaiting my next form of incarceration. I went from Jail to Prison, to Parole, and now was facing some kind of rehabilitation camp in the deep forests of Pennsylvania.
I didn’t know what to expect.
I was very down and pretty gloomy and my father tried to cheer me up. He said that he was never in my shoes, and did not know what it was like to lose everything, go to a hard labor prison, and then be scorned and rejected by family…
…but he said, that he knew that eventually all this would end. I would will exit it stronger and a better person.
But you know, I didn’t want to hear any platitudes. I didn’t want to hear any excuses. He failed me. And nothing he could say could comfort my crumpled and broken heart. And I certainly didn’t want the sympathy from a person who offered words instead of physical and tangible assistance.
But he was right.
It took a long time. A damn long time.
It took some time to adjust to, and I had to really adapt and configure things, but eventually I thrived inside the monastery. And then when I exited it and was able to live inside a joint men’s home as part of my parole I was doing better, and I was stronger.
Coping and Adaptation
Other parolees, that were “sex offenders” were not doing so well. They tried to adapt to their life before prison, and were having problems. They just couldn’t do it.
I knew their stories because state law mandated that I attend a three hour long counseling session every week to help us readjust back to society as fourth-rate citizens. You know; the “slave class”. Or better yet; “The destitute class”.
Work
They tried to find work as accountants, plumbers, doctors, dentists, managers and other white-collar professions. And simply couldn’t find work. No one would hire them. But they still kept at it, day in and day out. As far as I know (from the circle that I communicated with) no one was ever able to return to their former professions.
But, I was a little different. I knew that I couldn’t work as an engineer or a manager. We used computers, all the time. No one would hire me with that kind of limitation. So, I applied for the jobs that no one wanted. I scrubbed bathrooms. Cleaned up murder crime scenes, I cleaned toilets, I scrubbed up vomit, dug out sewers and hauled trash. I did the dirty and grimy work that no one wanted to do.
Transportation
They (the other parolee “sex offenders”) tried to get a car to get around in, but being a “sex offender”, and parolee, the best they could do is get a “junker”, a “clunker” and pay in cash. And as a result it was like riding in a ratty old junk yard that was forever breaking down.
But I was different. I bought a used bicycle, and rode it everywhere. It was good exercise, healthy, and fun. And cost nothing to drive, and never broke down. And because it was old, and ugly, no one wanted it. So it was never stolen.
Loneliness
Right off the bat just everyone got a girlfriend, but I have always been choosy. Much to my personal lament (when I look back in my memories). And while I had opportunity to make some new friends, and started to get involved with some of them, I quickly realized that there was some kind of quanta “stuff” that was sticking to me that attracted all kinds of negative people to me. Most of which were double and triple trouble. And in our weekly counseling sessions, the other parolees would lament their relationship complexities.
I shied away from women. I got a cat. His name was Coco. He was black. And he was easy to take care of, was there when I was lonely. And was so very happy to see me.
Coco.
Food
Many of my fellow parolees were living with a girlfriend, and this involved all sorts of drama. For meals, most tended to eat out more than their meager budgets would allow, and when they did eat out, they would eat cheap and fast food. Often burgers, fried chicken, or what ever cheap food could be bought in bulk. All heavily laden in sugar, super-processed, and often deep fried.
I sponsored a formal sit-down meal in our jointly shared home. Everyone contributed to the pantry, and we all took turns making dinner. The rule was simple, the person would choose the meal, but it had to have a main dish, and two sides, and that we would all sit down and eat it together. Lunches were on our own, as were breakfasts, and for me, I frequently obtained “subway sandwiches” for lunch.
Simple basic healthy American food.
Your life is now transitional
And all, in all, I did much better than my parolee peers.
This article / podcast is for people who are having trouble coping with their situation in life. And (of course) everyone is different, and I can offer no hard direction. I can tell you all that how you deal with the situation that you are in, will determine how successful you will be in moving out of that situation.
Keep in mind that the situation that you are in now is TRANSITIONAL.
You are moving from one OLD LIFE to a NEW LIFE.
Much like a caterpillar goes into chrysalis to be come a butterfly. This period of time in your life is that chrysalis.
The transformation of a caterpillar to a butterfly takes place in the chrysalis or pupa. Butterflies goes through a life cycle of five stages: egg, larva, pupa and adult. Inside the chrysalis, several things are happening and it is not a “resting” stage.
-What Happens Inside the Chrysalis of a Butterfly?
It is not a passive time.
It is a time of activity.
So STOP thinking about what you were before. And stop thinking about what your life is now. Look forward to what you will become. And I gave you all the tools. You WILL become it. I fucking promise you.
How you handle and deal though this transitional period will define what your new life will become.
An example
This is an example. This is a true example, it’s the real deal, but many people will not be able to relate to it because it is so personal.
After I left the monastery I was living in a shared men’s house, and working as a midnight to 4am housekeeper / janitor.
I lived in a shared “men’s house” with five others. This is the living room. You can see some of my paintings on the wall.
I had enough money to make rent, pay for meals, and utilities and a lot of time on my hands in the daytime. In fact, I only worked four hours a night, and everything was taken cared for. No one bothered me. So I scrubbed toilets, and showers. Big deal. It was an easy life and no one bothered me.
During the day time I would ride my bicycle along the city streets of Erie, Pennsylvania, check out and visit the beaches and just go home and paint. I read a lot. I practiced my art. I wrote poetry, learned Chinese and enjoyed life.
Many of my other fellow parolees were constantly embroiled in relationship issues, substance issues, and going in and out with the seedier and bad groups of people that frequented our neighborhood.
I just kept focused.
Anyways, everyday I had a routine where I would ride my bicycle to the library, and read for a spell, then grab a “subway sandwich” (which is a long sandwich full of cold-cuts and vegetables) and then ride back home.
Subway sandwich.
While I did this, I had a iPod full of music that I would listen to. Most of which were Korean, Japanese and Chinese with a healthy mix of 70’s rock, Country and Western, and Reggie.
And this is the song that I listened to the most, when I was riding my bike at that time. It set the pace for my life-transition. I purposely filled my life with happy up-beat music. Even if I didn’t speak the language. And you can well imagine the looks of the passersby as I sang in Japanese as I rode my bicycle through town.
Riding my bicycle.
And doing so…
I filled myself with upbeat, positive music.
And sometimes I rode with tears running down my face. It was not always easy. In fact, it was often very, very difficult.
Lyrics (English translation)
Obviously the song is in Japanese. But here is what it is all about. It’s about taking on the world with a good, and great attitude. And this is what I filled myself day in and day out was I went through this transitional period. And as I have said, imagine me, an older guy in his 50’s, pedaling around on a bicycle with ear buds and singing in Japanese along the empty residential streets…
Good Morning The east sky is bright again, Yeah Yeah.
Good Morning Let's Go Meet New MySelf (Yeah!)
It's not like yesterday. I'm excited about the sun shining more, Yeah.
What kind of day is waiting for the future that is likely to start today...
Good morning alarm is admony
I'm not going to do it.
Dozens of options. It's still going well.
A new journey begins where the morning sun and the cityscape begin to cross each other.
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New Sneakers Exhilarating Freedom
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Japanese morning Brazil follows last night's tears emptyly
Today is more important than today. It's a waste to have something.
so every day birthday morning shot can coffee
I swallow it and jump into the morning burn.
Good Morning The east sky is bright again, Yeah Yeah.
Good Morning Let's Go Meet New MySelf (Yeah!)
It's not like yesterday. I'm excited about the sun shining more, Yeah.
What kind of day is waiting for the future that is likely to start today...
Sunrise with bright blue sky
"If today is a good day..." What a toothpaste to think about
In the morning zooming in, milk and bread salad.
Dressing is Southern Island, let's stand by.
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Birds chirping in 2 seconds when the entrance is opened (Chun Chun ♪)
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Even if you wake up and have a dull face, at the very most, only feelings are positive...
...so certainly the world is serious still stretched and take a deep breath
Junior high and high school students on the salaried man Run with a dream chuo line
Good Morning The east sky is bright again, Yeah Yeah.
Good Morning Let's Go Meet New MySelf (Yeah!)
It's not like yesterday. I'm excited about the sun shining more, Yeah.
What kind of day is waiting for the future that is likely to start today...
Even if it rains yesterday, but today it's high pressure, and there's nothing else.
Hope alone makes dreams possible The morning sun lights up the way
Good Morning This call has reached you again, Yeah Yeah.
Good Morning There's a lovely event to come to you (Yeah!)
Good Morning The east sky is bright again, Yeah Yeah.
Good Morning Let's Go Meet My New Person (Yeah!)
It's not like yesterday. I'm excited about the sun shining more, Yeah.
What kind of day is waiting for the future that is likely to start today...
And I would ride to my house, and my cat Coco would run up to me. So very happy to see me.
My cat Coco was so very happy to see me.
What kind of new day is waiting for me…
…I’ve shown you all what my life is like.
Have faith. Grit and hold on. Adapt and cope. YOU WILL MAKE IT.
I believe in you.
Keep in mind…
If you are experiencing hardship, that MEANS that you are in transition.
The size of the discomfort is equal to the magnitude of change. If you are a MM follower and you are experiencing discomfort, then recognize that you are in chrysalis. This is a good thing.
What you will eventually become…
…is determined how you adapt to the chrysalis phase.
The Podcast
I made up a podcast and placed it here. My app that links the podcast to the articles suddenly became a for-profit venture (after my “free trial”) and will delete all my existing podcasts unless I pay them healthy piles of money every month. Meanwhile, they were never able to really host the videos. They never were able to stream to MM as promised.
Never the less, here’ my podcast. Please watch and download. Then check out the rest of this article below.
Direct Download
You can download the entire podcast directly HERE.
Postscript – Janitorial Job on Parole
Well, that job that I had being a janitor eventually ended.
All jobs end, but being fired for scrubbing toilets has to be a new low for me.
A new person was put in charge of the program (that employed us felons in transition), and she would not have any “sex offenders” working for her.It was her decision, and she had the power to implement her desires.
She let me and a few other sex offenders go as well. Of course, not with the excuse that we were “sex offenders”. No. That would be illegal.
She came up with other excuses.
Each one of us were fired with a different excuse.
One “sex offender” was fired for “stealing the trash bags” that we used when emptying the trash. She claimed that of the 1000 bags that we used, there were ten or fifteen missing and she blamed him.
One “sex offender” was let go for taking too long a break at 2am. Apparently she called his work location at 2:25am and they answered the phone from the office instead of being on the floor mopping.
And I was let go because I allowed my crew to finish early.
Loss of the job violated my parole. I mean just how hard is it to get in trouble working scrubbing toilets at 3am in the morning? But, that was what happened, and by losing my job, I violated my parole.
And guess when this happened?
Yup. You guessed right. Yet another Christmas eve. And that is how I spent my Christmas in 2009.
Die Hard has become my life. And the base commander at NAS, NASC Pensacola, Fla told me never to forget “Yippee Ki Yay.” Ah. The one-liner “Yippee Ki Yay, motherfucker” is one of John McClane’s most famous lines. And it become my fucking life.
And eventually after a bunch of nonsense that really isn’t necessary to get into now, I ended up being hauled back to Arkansas and finished the rest of my sentence.
Postscript – Mother in law.
In regards to my mother in law that kicked me out of the house; she died while I was in prison. I knew that she was dying, when I went back to the ADC. I also knew that she wanted to die and elected not to undergo any type of treatment for her cancer, just to die with pain medicine to control the pain.
And I was in prison, while she elected to die in comfort without strife and pain.
Felon (2008)
And you know, being entangled like I am (provides me with insight and events that most people do not get a chance to experience. And so I experienced “an event.”
Explanation
The EBP enables me to peer into the non-physical reality when approved. I can "see" things that most non-implanted people cannot.
You all probably do not want to hear this, but when a person dies, they tend to review their life with other entities.
These other entities, well I call them Mantids, but others refer to them as Angels.
And sure enough, an EbenezerScrooge event took place. It’s a tour of her life by her mantid. When she was exposed to the consequences of her life, the past the future and the present.
And in the present she came to me.
And I was in prison.
Yeah. And she could see that I fully saw her, heard her, and knew what was going on. And she was not surprised, though she was happy to see it occur.
(Which is strange, you would figure that she would realize that I must a be a pretty "special" person to be able to see her in the non-physical body while I was in the physical. But she wasn't all that aware, I guess.)
Anyways, to make a long story short; she said that she was sorry and wanted me to forgive her. She was remorseful from the point of view of a person who is in a disembodied spirit and can feel no pain, nor worry. To me, at that point in time, and knowing what I knew, seemed like “cheating”. No. There was no easy way out.
And I said no.
I said FUCKING NO!
I told her (thought to her, but you all know what I mean) that she was a real “dick” to me and caused me all sorts of grief that was undeserving, and that I would not forgive her.
I specifically told her that our karma has ended.
I will neither bless or condemn her, but that from that moment on-wards, I did not want anything to do with her in any way. And I do not care about what centuries of entanglements and relationships that we may or may not have had in the past. Our relationship was OVER, and the karma that is due her (in whatever form or shape) must be handled by another different consciousness, and another soul. Not by me. And if it cannot be resolved, then she will have to correct the damage to her soul manually.
And I know that will NOT be easy.
And at that the Mantid let her away and I was back in the prison barracks lying in my rack.
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.
Please kindly help me out in this effort. There is a lot of effort that goes into this disclosure. I could use all the financial support that anyone could provide. Thank you very much.
I have long argued that the reason why the West; and yeah that means America, wants the fierce anti-China propaganda campaign about the poor Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang is to prevent the BRI.
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You see, the BRI originates in Xinjiang, and this fact, and the completion of the BRI offers a land trade route to Europe and Africa that completely bypasses the threat of American naval blockade.
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As shown in this map…
The BRI passes right through XinJiang, and it is the home of the Uighur Muslims who are ready to enjoy the fruits of their association with China. And the USA does not like this one bit.
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I have argued that once the BRI is fully operational, those in XinJiang would become wealthy. Simply because they sit on the major trade route between the Chinese manufacturing sites, and Europe. Just like Singapore, Hong Kong, Dubai, and other similar cities do.
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I further argue that they would all become filthy rich in the process. Not just Singapore rich, but Dubai rich.
Big News Everyone!
Guess what?
It turns out the Xinjiang is just loaded with huge and vast deposits of oil. It’s of a quality, and a quantity that makes the Middle East look small in comparison. And what’s more, it’s easy to extract. No need to get involved an the use of any fracking technologies.
Of course you won’t hear about this in the MSM (Western Main Stream Media). Americans are to be kept stupid, ignorant, and ready to go to war at any moment!
Check out the video.
Pretty cool huh?
China in Space….
China is doing a lot right now, and it’s really worthy to take note.
One of my favorite websites is MoA and it’s run by a singular guy who has a passion like myself. I have to admit that many of the articles tend to be boring to me personally. They deal with obscure issues that I am not interested in, but when one comes across my desk that I am interested it, it shines like a beacon.
Such as this one.
This is a full reprint. All credit to the MoA, edited to fit this venue, and disseminated as found. Also I am including a host of comments as they really flush out the subjects in an interesting manner.
Since the U.S. Excluded China From International Space Projects – It Built Its Own
There was a time when the U.S. was open to international cooperation in space. It gained prestige and influence from these projects. But fear of competition from China and Russia have led to attempts to exclude these countries from international projects.
A two-sentence clause included in the U.S. spending bill approved by Congress a few weeks ago threatens to reverse more than three decades of constructive U.S. engagement with the People's Republic of China.
...
Representative Frank Wolf (R-VA), a long-time critic of the Chinese government who chairs a House spending committee that oversees several science agencies, inserted the language into the spending legislation to prevent NASA or the Office of Science and Technology Policy from using federal funds "to develop, design, plan, promulgate, implement or execute a bilateral policy, program, order, or contract of any kind to participate, collaborate, or coordinate bilaterally in any way with China or any Chinese-owned company."
The European Space Agency as well as NASA were at that time favoring future cooperation with China on the International Space Station and on a planned Mars mission.
Since then other laws and sanctions have made the continuing cooperation with Russia on the International Space Station more difficult.
Banned from international space projects in which the U.S. is involved China went its own way. Ten years later it put a lander on the far side of the moon where the rover Yutu, the jade rabbit, is now pounding moon stones in his mortar to look for the elixir of life.
Last year China sent Tianwen, Heavenly Questions, and another rover named Zhurong, a god of fire, to Mars. It landed there in February:
"Tianwen-1 is going to orbit, land and release a rover all on the very first try, and coordinate observations with an orbiter," mission managers wrote before launch in the journal Nature Astronomy. "No planetary missions have ever been implemented in this way. If successful, it would signify a major technical breakthrough."
A week ago Zhurong, the fire god, took a selfie and sent it back to earth:
The camera, originally fitted to the rover bottom, was released by the rover at 10 meters south of the platform and captured the video footage of the rover returning to the platform and took the selfie. The camera then used a wireless signal to transmit the pictures and videos to the rover, which beamed them back to Earth via the orbiter.
“China will publish the related scientific data in a timely manner to let humankind share in the fruits of the country’s space exploration development,” said Zhang Kejian, head of the CNSA.
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That is the best FU selfie I have seen. I showed it to a 15 year old and was told at first glance that it was China saying FU to the USA. Plus they pointed out the three China flags.
I like the virtual grin on the camera head.
Well done China. This has dramatically liberated the space exploration science and simultaneously stated the east's equivalence with all nations.
Posted by: uncle tungsten
Yesterday China’s space agency announced another success as three astronauts arrived at Tianhe, the Harmony of Heavens, which is the first module of Tiangong, the Heavenly Palace space station:
Three Chinese astronauts have entered the core module of China's permanent space station to embark on their three-month mission, becoming the module's first occupants and pioneers in one of the nation's grandest space endeavors.
...
Tianhe, the biggest and heaviest spacecraft China has constructed, is 16.6 meters long and has a diameter of 4.2 meters. The craft's weight, at 22.5 tons, is equal to the combined weight of 15 standard size automobiles. It has three parts－a connecting section, a life-support and control section and a resources section.
Meanwhile the International Space Station develops more and more technical problems and is becoming obsolete. Russia is now thinking of building its own one. It may alternatively add its own modules to the Chinese station.
Russia and China will also cooperate to build a permanent station on the moon:
China and Russia have agreed to jointly construct a lunar space station that will be "open to all countries," the China National Space Administration said in a statement on Tuesday.
...
A statement from Russian space agency Roscosmos said the two organizations planned to "promote cooperation on the creation of an open-access ILRS for all interested countries and international partners, with the goal of strengthening research cooperation and promoting the exploration and use of outer space for peaceful purposes in the interests of all mankind."
The attempts to keep China and increasingly also Russia away from international space projects have only led to them starting competing projects. These are likely to gain more countries to cooperate with them.
The exclusionary policy of the U.S. has not been successful. In the end it resulted in a loss of influence over future projects for which China and Russia are inviting everyone but the U.S.
Humanity would be better off if we avoided such splits.
American nationalists hate this rise of China
It is a purely racist reaction to the rise of China. Even now, go to sites like zerohedge and you'll find foaming mouthed rants against China, belittlement of Chinese achievements, and openly racist desires to eradicate the Chinese.
Given the relative competence of China and America, China is much better off with Amerikastani sanctions that forced it to develop its own capabilities.
Posted by: Biswapriya Purkayast
Criticism from America really hurts the feelings of the Chinese people. They used to really look up to America. It is not so much that they take America's malicious criticism to heart, but more that it pains them to see their hero turn into a petty and whiny little bitch.
At least that is the way it seemed to me last time I was there.
Posted by: William Gruff
But America went to the moon!
Big deal! So what if China is doing this. America mastered that a half a century ago.
A common comment I see over and over again on UToob and other such fora is "Yeah? Well we went to the Moon in... well, a long time ago!"
What these slack-faced, degenerate, devolved, chest-beating baboons in America ignore is that nobody like them has ever gone to the Moon, and none ever will.
The people who went to the Moon were scientists and engineers.
And real ones at that.
It has been mentioned many times, and I suspect the seriousness of the issue eludes many people, but China is producing nearly 5 million STEM graduates each year! Before the pandemic the United States was producing little more than half a million STEM grads per year, and if the scale of this workforce disaster for the US isn't already apparent to you then just remember that MORE than half of all graduate students in the STEM fields in the US are international students. The US would be lucky to be producing a quarter million domestic STEM grads per year... around one twentieth of what China is producing.
China produces 20 times the number of STEM graduates than America does.
If that hasn't given exceptional American readers a chill yet, then you need to pay closer attention to efforts being made by so-called "liberals" in the US to improve "diversity" in American STEM studies.
Are they addressing the harsh economic realities that lumpenize and discourage large sections of America's youth so that they might aspire to be more than a street thug? Of course not! They are dumbing down STEM studies so that a lumpenized street thug with no real academic foundations can "succeed" in those programs!
"You're racist!" exclaims the woke liberal.
"You don't have to know Calculus to be an engineer! That's what calculators are for!"
Let me tell you a little story.
I once taught a bridge program at a state feeder college for the big universities. The objective of this program was to shepherd students with "weak" (as in none) math backgrounds through freshman Calc so that they could go on to enter a STEM field at one of the big state universities. Obviously that ambitious project failed. The gulf between what the students needed to succeed even just in first year Calculus and what knowledge and skills they came to class on day one equipped with was just too great.
Taking a step back, the calculation aid from little over half a century ago would be the slide rule. It's useless for addition and subtraction. The student had to master arithmetic before a slide rule even became useful to them, and then using the slide rule would help build, at a gut level, an understanding of logarithmic, trigonometric, and other relationships. Students then would develop an ever more complex intellectual ability that math teachers refer to as "number sense". The student with "number sense" would be able to look at a mathematical expression and see meaning in it. At the lowest level they can tell that one number is larger or smaller than another number, and at a slightly higher level they can visualize curves from a polynomial, and at a slightly higher level again they can visualize things like the rate of change of a curve and so on. More importantly, they could visualize what these polynomials and curves and such represented back in the real world.
But to get to this level the student has to internalize arithmetic. All of the higher levels of number sense have as their foundations all of the lower levels. You cannot skip the basics and jump straight to "the good stuff" like Calculus. Or rather, you can memorize formulas and also memorize a number of different situations in which certain numbers get plugged into certain locations in the formula, and then be trained to know how to punch that into a calculator, but without the acquired number sense it is all just meaningless busy work.
Sadly, few of the disadvantaged students in the STEM bridge program that I worked in for a while had even the most basic of number sense. Teachers all through their primary and secondary educations had developed countless clever little tricks to get the students through the current math lesson plan without having to require the student know any arithmetic. The students become good at punching keys on a keypad in accordance with instructions on a worksheet, but then promptly forget the procedure after the lesson because all they were doing was hitting keys in a certain sequence and writing down whatever appeared on the screen. If they hit a wrong key or the calculator malfunctioned and gave them an answer of 2 million instead of 2, they lacked the number sense to suspect that the calculator is wrong and would just write whatever was on the screen no matter what.
You simply cannot make up for twelve years of lost learning time in a few hours in a college classroom. I eventually gave up and went to teach at one of the big universities where supposedly the incoming students would not have blown off their previous twelve years of education. Few of my students there were domestic students.
The point that I am making here is that not only is there no talent in the academic pipeline to fix things in America, but that pipeline itself is broken. There is all of this talk about a new space race, but America is like the obese couch potato in this race, and the Chinese have been training for running space race marathons for a generation. There is not going to be any race. There cannot be. When the US did its "space race" against the Soviet Union that happened at a very unique time when the American labor market was flooded with a wave of demobilized service personnel who eagerly took advantage of the GI Bill to get themselves educated, and that in a period of US history when scientists and engineers had something like rockstar status, motivating students in their STEM studies. None of these conditions exist today.
All of the carping you hear from Americans about China's space program successes is nothing more than the bitter bitching of the fat kid hurling abuse at athletes as they pass him by. It is impotent and cannot amount to anything.
Posted by: William Gruff
When the US did its "space race" against the Soviet Union that happened at a very unique time when the American labor market was flooded with a wave of demobilized service personnel who eagerly took advantage of the GI Bill to get themselves educated, and that in a period of US history when scientists and engineers had something like rockstar status, motivating students in their STEM studies. None of these conditions exist today.
Posted by: William Gruff | Jun 18 2021 20:06 utc | 20
I was lucky enough to graduate from the school of mechanical and aerospace engineering that produced the founder of the company, the project manager and all the engineering team leaders that created the Apollo Lunar Lander (LEM).
Which if you think about it was the most amazing part of landing man on the moon.
It is the part that has not been replicated by the U.S. or anyone else in the last 50 years.
It could not be tested in actual conditions, and had to work perfectly the first time.
The tiniest flaw, bad gasket, bent landing leg or hose leak and two astronauts would have crashed in to the surface or been left on the surface of the moon to die a slow agonizing death.
It worked perfectly the first time, and every time after that.
Musk blows every third rocket he tries out despite radically better control technology, computers and knowledge from the past.
That is what makes this achievement so improbable, and leads some to believe it was faked.
But what it took was dedication, a quest for perfection, and 650 of the best engineers the world has ever produced. I had many of the same profs these pioneers did ( several years later) and can attest to the mastery and perfection they demanded.
ziu`Current US stem students would go crying to their Mama if they had to face the hair shirt rigor these Apollo era engineers did.
Our time has passed as we now turn out financial husksters, shoe designers and people who write code to post cat videos instead of first rate engineers.
Good luck to the Chinese as perhaps they have the dedication we did back in the day.
Posted by: Seneca’s Cliff
But America leads in Intellectual property
'If you take IPs literally, the USA still is light-years ahead of China and Russia.'
Not all ‘technology’ carries the same weight. ‘IP’ applies only to commercial products. Consumer electronics like smartphones, chips, software etc is all well and fine but has nothing to do with national strength, which is strictly a function of two technology domains: aerospace and nuclear.
Capabilities in these two areas are what separates the handful of major powers from the rest. Those are also the two most challenging technologies, and in both of them the US is losing ground quickly, without any direction from the top, while China is making big strides [with plenty of direction from the top], and Russia has got back into its Soviet-era stride.
Things like the physics-defying Avangard intercontinental boost-glide vehicle that skips along the top of the atmosphere at Mach 25 are not going to be found in any published IP. Nor is the scramjet engine in the Tsirkon hypersonic missile. Nor any of SpaceX’s secrets.
We still live in a world where force is the ultimate decider. Making lots of smartphones like Korea does, may mean a good standard of living. But if you are a major power, with major rivals [aka sworn enemies], you first have to LIVE, before you can think about living well.
It all comes down to the higher educational output like Mr Gruff mentioned above. China is graduating a lot of engineers and scientists. Only a few out of any group will do anything notable, so the bigger your pool, the more game-changing people you will produce.
I cried when Skylab was abandoned to just crash into Australia, but that period was still far more optimistic than today, even with all of the backsliding that America was doing after the Apollo program. American kids have no brightness in the future that they can see today.
On the other hand, Chinese kids today are on fire. Their optimism and enthusiasm for the future is palpable and pours out of them like a kind of psychic Cherenkov radiation. It is difficult not to develop sympathetic excitement when working with them. A year teaching there, or even just a single term, is highly recommended if one can spare the time. It refreshes the hope for humanity even of cynics like me.
Posted by: William Gruff
Some people still keep up the belief that China is backwards.
Both China and Russia are significantly behind overall. However, both are gaining with critical technologies which will help both leapfrog in the coming years. And, for the Lunar Missions, China and Russia are coordinating their major Lunar Base project.
Posted by: Red Ryder
Where are China and Russia “significantly behind overall”?
Does the Outlaw US Empire or ESA have a heavy lift rocket?
If not, how will it return to the moon?
Then we have the realm of Atomics–fission and fusion–where the Empire lags very far behind as my recent commentary and discussion of that topic have shown.
Most significantly, where will NASA find the funds to return to the moon or build another space station–the privateers are mere glory hounds that aren’t really going anywhere.
Perhaps the biggest constraint on the Outlaw US Empire is its Neoliberal ideology. This ideology doesn’t do any long term planning. And long term planning is precisely what must be done with a space program.
Thus the issue of funding for NASA were trashed with Neoliberalism’s ascendency over industrial capitalism. And that began the downward slide of its political-economy that’s resulted in the ongoing crisis that began in 2007.
As b’s article shows, the main problem resides within the Outlaw US Empire’s Congress.
Where very damaging language can be slipped into massive budget legislation that’s never completely read and goes unpurged. The same is true with illegal sanctions on Iran that must be removed if the JCPOA is ever to be revived.
Congressional zealots like Frank Wolf do more damage to the nation in their fanatical attempts they believe are made in its defense. And thanks to the Anti-Communist and Anti-Iranian Crusades, it’s extremely difficult politically to attempt to get such idiocy removed from the books where they’ll remain and damage the domestic economy as well as international relations.
A Red Ryder #1 who says: 'Both China and Russia are significantly behind overall.'
This is exactly opposite of the facts. It is the US that is far behind Russia in crucial space technologies like engines and space station tech. China has now surpassed the US in engines [more on that in a moment] and space stations.
It is easy to understand why the layman would draw the conclusion you have done---due to massive hype in the US media about SpaceX. But consider this: the current US mars mission with the impressive Perseverance Rover got there with Russian engines on the Atlas V rocket. So did the previous US mars mission in 2011 which carried the Curiosity rover, and also the mars mission before that, plus ALL of the high-profile Nasa missions in the last couple of decades.
Despite all of Musk's lip-flapping about Mars, his spacecraft have never been chosen by Nasa for any mars mission.
The same is true for the US Space Force, which includes the National Security Space Launch program. The Russian-powered Atlas V has flown nearly all of these critical missions, which include the X37 spaceplane, high tech spysats, and even missile early warning sats. Nearly 90 successful flights in all.
SpaceX has been given just three NSSL launches, for only the fairly pedestrian GPS sats. It also launched one out of the six X37 missions. That's it.
Quite clearly the advanced Russian rocket engine technology is the workhorse for both Nasa and the Space Force, with SpaceX nothing more than a sideshow!
And let's not forget that the US was unable to fly humans into space for nearly an entire decade! A big Nasa technology contribution finally resulted in the SpaceX Crew Dragon, which has now made three flights---but Nasa is still booking seats on Soyuz, just in case!
And as for the ISS, that is in actuality a Russian space station. From the wikipedia entry on the Russian Orbital Segment ROS:
'The ROS handles Guidance, Navigation, and Control for the entire Station.'
That is the space station. The American and ESA modules are completely superfluous add-ons. The ROS is in fact MIR2, which was built already by the time the US abandoned its own effort to build a MIR knockoff, called the Freedom space station---which was killed on the drawing board due to serious technical shortcomings.
The US simply bought its way into MIR2 at the time that Russia was in dire straits in the 1990s. China also benefited greatly from the Russian space tech fire sale. Look up the Shenzhou program: they Chinese bought their entire manned program from Russia, lock stock and barrel---including the Soyuz spacecraft, life support systems, astronaut training, even space suits.
The Chinese also bought an advanced Russian rocket engine at that time, the RD120, which they developed into their own YF100. It first flew in 2015 and is an advanced, staged combustion cycle engine that the Russians invented and have been perfecting since the 1960s.
The US has yet to fly a staged-combustion engine, despite getting ten key technologies, plus a license to manufacture their own RD180s. Supposedly, the SpaceX Raptor engine is a staged design, also known as closed-cycle due to its high efficiency. But this engine has yet to fly into space. It is also a much smaller engine, about half the thrust of the RD180. And btw, the RD180 is one half the thrust of its bigger brother the RD170/171, which has been flying for decades, and puts out a monstrous 1.8 million pounds of thrust---the most powerful [and most advanced] engine ever built.
Engines are the heart of space technology, just as they are in aviation or even automobiles. The US is nowhere in this game. A lot of hype, but nothing to show yet. The SpaceX workhorse is the Merlin engine which is only 200,000 pounds of thrust, not even one quarter the RD180, and one-eighth the RD170.
And what about the reusability factor, which is supposed to be a game-changer? Well, nothing in engineering is free. It takes lots of propellant to land that rocket back down---propellant which could have been used to launch a much bigger payload. Go to wikipedia and look up Falcon 9. The expendable payload is 22.8 tons for the latest version, versus just 15.5 tons when landed back. That's a 46 percent increase in payload for the non-reusable version. And that's when the booster is landed downrange on a sea barge. If it has to come back to the launch site, the penalty is much higher yet.
Plus those engines must be torn down and rebuilt anyway, so there is little to be gained, except in certain situations where you don't need the full payload. But this is wasteful in other ways. It does result in lower costs, which is a real advantage---but if you have very valuable payloads that are worth several hundred million dollars, like advanced sats, then your main priority is reliability, not saving a little on launch cost. The Russian engines have an unbelievable 100 percent reliability record in 87 launches.
The bottom line is that the US capability, when examined from a professional perspective, has huge gaps in core technologies. That's not to write off SpaceX---they have a decent small, old-technology [gas generator cycle] engine in the Merlin and the Falcon 9 has made 121 flights, with only a few failures. It's a pretty good step up from where the US was after those two Shuttle disasters.
But it's still a long way from the technology that Russia has. And yes, even China has built on the Russian tech to now surpass the US in both engines and space stations.
Posted by: Gordog
A video showing the new Chinese spacestation
Nice. It doesn’t look like the ISS. Maybe China should have copied the USA ISS Space station so that the MSM (main stream media) can say that China is copying space technology.
Perhaps one of those alumni was Thomas J. Kelly, who wrote a great little book called 'Moon Lander' about the Grumman team that built the LEM.
My favourite bit:
A story about the challenges of building space technology in the Jim Crow-Era South. Once the LEM program advanced to the testing stage it was necessary for Grumman to assemble a staff at Cape Canaveral, Florida.
The problem?
Grumman was based in Bethpage, NY, and a sizeable chunk of their engineering and technical workforce was Black.
Hotels in Florida were very enthusiastic about helping to stick it to the Ruskies in space until this fact was mentioned. After being turned down everywhere, they had to fall back on NASA's political connections to secure rooms in Florida's 'Whites Only' hotels.
Westerners usually take such a condescending attitude to Russian and Chinese space technology: "I guess it's quite impressive what they achieved in their totalitarian hell-hole" etc.
I like to remember that story every time I hear sentiments like that.
Posted by: S.P. Korolev
Here’s another video…
And yet another…
And still another. Why with so many videos of the Chinese space station, why is the Western Media (MSM) not providing anything?
Why China is building it’s own systems…
The U$A wants to protect its technological comparative advantage. However, where there is a will there’s a way! Necessity is the mother of innovation. China is determined to develop its technological competencies. BeiDou’s launch marked China’s rise to ‘major space power’ and military independence.
“In 1996, during the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis, China fired three missiles to locations on the Taiwan Strait as a warning signal against Taiwan’s moves for independence and full internationally recognized statehood. While the first missile hit about 18.5 kilometers from Taiwan’s Keelung military base as a warning, China lost track of the other two missiles. China asserts that the United States had cut off the GPS signal to the Pacific, on which China was dependent at that time for missile tracking. Consequently, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) woke up to the strategic vulnerability of having such critical military space infrastructure in the hands of a foreign power.
On June 23, 2020, China completed construction of its BeiDou Positioning and Navigation System (BDS) by launching the 55th and final satellite for its BDS3 navigation constellation. With this launch, China now enjoys a fully independent self-reliant global navigation satellite system (GNSS) as an alternative to the U.S. Space Force-maintained Global Positioning System (GPS). An independent BeiDou offers China augmented precision navigation and timing (PNT) for its military space forces.”
BeiDou’s completion does signal a new phase for China’s space capabilities. Also, it is a declaration of technical independence. Having a sovereign GNSS eliminates the problem of relying on the U$A or Europe for satellite navigation. China has incorporated state of the art anti-jamming and anti-spoofing capabilities in it. It gains a technological edge by developing its platforms.
Posted by: Max
Robotic AI automation to ferry supplies to and from the space station
Also not being reported in that China has mastered the full automation process of ferrying supplies to and from the space station. Here is a video. Also not being shown in the MSM.
The videos of the Chinese space station are really nice. It’s pretty big, and resembles the interior of the ISS in many ways. But it’s completely different, and the Chinese took different developmental paths in the design and it shows.
America must stop China at all costs!!!!
Thanks for articulating what is assumed in my analysis of the situation--there must be money and minds, as neither goes far solo. And that's present in most other areas related to a MAGA-type policy proposal.
I don't know if you viewed any of the video related to the construction of the Amur Gas facility I posted, but the entire process was the results of billions of engineering calculations given the project's immensity.
What new innovation is being built within the Outlaw US Empire? Can you think of any cause I can't?
Oh wait, I completely forgot the wave energy project that just started being implemented @ 10 miles up the highway from me based on technologies designed 15+ years ago but never allowed to leave the lab. And yes, the chief engineer/scientist in charge is a female immigrant from Eastern Europe.
After 1970, NASA lacked a vision that would keep the budget flush and the public--particularly youth--curious and eager about the next phase. You'll recall those years and the resulting clusterfuck that was Skylab, although the drama of its salvage into something useful was a bright spot for awhile.
Maybe it's all for the best; if the Outlaw US Empire had established a lunar base, we'd certainly have space-based weapons now and a host of related problems--we might not even have made it this far given the Empire's First Strike mindset.
Posted by: karlof1
Well, that is what the neocon narrative is. And they are so ignorant and deluded that it’s a joke. Here is an American movie; a comedy that makes fun of this belief. Check it out…
The problem with the USA is that it can't put those designs to work anymore. It simply doesn't have the industrial capacity to put all those designs into practice.
There's an interview with a retired Chinese PLAAF general for Dangdai, from 2009, which I linked in this blog last year, in which he explains why China would easily win a war against the USA over the retake of Taiwan. His explanation is exactly that. Grandiose plans and designs are worthless in warfare if you can't mass produce them.
Now you would think: but then let's just restore Trump's "bring manufacture back"/"Made in America" policy and all is well.
That's not the case: the USA is a capitalist country, and capitalism only decides to put something for mass production if its profitable.
But thanks to Karl Marx, we know that, the more advanced the technology, the less profitable it is (Law of the Tendency of the Profit Rate to Fall). Capitalism has a historical period of ascension where technology marries perfectly with profitability, but, after that, a deleterious period commences (financialization period).
And profit rates in the USA have been falling for well over 100 years: in fact, if it wasn't for the money injected by the Fed, profit rates in the USA would've fallen by 35% during the first year of the pandemic (2020).
Manufacturing is never coming back to America, with or without the threat of communism.
Posted by: vk
Debunking A ‘Chinese Defector’ Story
It is sad to see how much Col. Pat Lang’s intelligence judgment has deteriorated.
Here he goes crazy over a story of an alleged Chinese high level defector who allegedly brought all kinds of materials with him:
This man, as Chinese counter-intelligence boss looked around the IC and decided that he was most likely to survive an internal leak if he defected to DIA. That means that in spite of the fact that DIA had an internal Chinese mole (recently arrested at DIA request by the FBI), the rest of the agencies are worse in the level in Chinese intelligence penetration not only of their analytic people but also of their operations staff. How do I know that? Material from the defector (Dong) would not normally be shared with analysts if it had his name in it. His identity would be held in operational channels.
Clearly, this man believes that; CIA. army intelligence, naval intelligence, USAF intelligence and all the rest are heavily penetrated. pl.
Lang took the defector story from Zerohedge.com which took it from Redstate.com where managing editor Jennifer Van Laar made it up by mixing her fantasies, a Freebacon report about Chinese students returning to The U.S. and a rumor about a defection reported by Spytalk:
Chinese-language anti-communist media and Twitter are abuzz this week with rumors that a vice minister of State Security, Dong Jingwei (董经纬) defected in mid-February, flying from Hong Kong to the United States with his daughter, Dong Yang.
Dong is, or was, a longtime official in China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS), also known as the Guoanbu. His publicly available background indicates that he was responsible for the Ministry’s counterintelligence efforts in China, i.e., spy-catching, since being promoted to vice minister in April 2018. If the stories are true, Dong would be the highest-level defector in the history of the People’s Republic of China.
The rumor is false.
How do I know?
I copied “vice minister of State Security, Dong Jingwei” into Google Translate with the output language set to Chinese (simplified). That results in this string: “国家安全部副部长董经纬”. The big Chinese search engine is Baidu.com. After pasting the string into Baidu it delivered these results:
The first search result is from September 2020 but the second on is from yesterday. As is the third.
The second result goes to a Baidu news report. I copied the story from there and back into Google Translate – this time from Chinese to English. Here is the outcome:
Ministry of National Security: It is necessary to catch spies as well as "traitors" and "behind the scenes."
China Changan Net
Release time: 06-1815:29 China Changan Net
On the morning of June 18, 2021, Vice Minister Dong Jingwei of the Ministry of National Security presided over a symposium to study and implement the "Regulations on Anti-espionage Security Work" that came into effect on April 26 this year, and make arrangements for anti-rape and anti-espionage work.
The symposium pointed out that the Party Central Committee attaches great importance to national security work and has made a series of important decisions and arrangements for counter-espionage work. As the competent authority for counter-espionage work, the Ministry of National Security has formulated and promulgated regulations that are a realistic need to prevent, stop, and crack down on illegal and criminal activities that endanger national security in accordance with the law, which are conducive to further consolidating the responsibility of counter-espionage security prevention and better organizing and mobilizing all social forces. Fight the "People's War" against espionage. ...
The expression “anti-rape” seems to be a machine translation artifact and probably means “anti-infiltration”.
The third Baidu result has the same report from a different news outlet though the video attached to it is not of Dong Jingwei. A Chinese government site also carries the same story.
So the guy who allegedly defected to the Defense Intelligence Agency apparently just talked about counterespionage at a symposium in presumably Beijing.
On December 14, 2020, the China-Belarus Intergovernmental Cooperation Committee met in Beijing. Dong Jingwei (middle), the Vice Minister of the Ministry of National Security and the Chinese Chairman of the Security Cooperation Sub-Committee, also participated in the meeting. The Minister and the Chinese Chairman of the Cultural Cooperation Sub-Committee Zhang Xu sat together. (Image source: Internet)
The Dong Jingwei and his public activities are regular news. Still some will claim that the Chinese report about the symposium is false and was only launched to divert from the defection which therefore must be real.
Well, consider all the stuff the defector, according to Redstate ‘sources’, allegedly brought with him:
In addition, Dong has provided DIA with the following information:
Early pathogenic studies of the virus we now know as SARS-CoV-2
Models of predicted COVID-19 spread and damage to the US and the world
Financial records detailing which exact organizations and governments funded the research on SARS-CoV-2 and other biological warfare research
Names of US citizens who provide intel to China
Names of Chinese spies working in the US or attending US universities
Financial records showing US businessmen and public officials who’ve received money from the Chinese government
Details of meetings US government officials had (perhaps unwittingly) with Chinese spies and members of Russia’s SVR
How the Chinese government gained access to a CIA communications system, leading to the death of dozens of Chinese people who were working with the CIA
Dong also has provided DIA with copies of the contents of the hard drive on Hunter Biden’s laptop, showing the information the Chinese government has about Hunter’s pornography problem and about his (and Joe’s) business dealings with Chinese entities.
That sounds as much like a wet dream for Republicans as the pee-tape Steele Dossier was a wet dream for Democrats.
How would a Chinese counter-espionage guy, who’s job it is to catch U.S. spies in China, have access to all those claimed materials, especially to the names of Chinese spies in the U.S.? What would be his need to know those? Spying and counter spying are always compartmentalized from each other. They don’t know each others secrets.
How could Pat Lang fall for this nonsense?
Think People! Think!
I read this story somewhere, too, and I had the same thoughts. A super secret Chinese defector to the USA who knows everything. In fact so super secret that not even the CIA knew his name. Hmm. Sure.
But what`s even more amazing than people taking such claims at face value is how easy it is possible to fact-check them in the age of internet. Good job!
Posted by: m
What we're witnessing is a slow motion picture of the demise of an empire. No worries.
Posted by: Steve
Anything will do at this point, these boomers are desperate for any news at all to sink China.
Posted by: Smith
The thing that immediately jumped out at me when I read the zerohedge story was the idea that a Chinese counter-intelligence official had access to the names of Chinese spies in the USA.
Say Whaaaaaaaat?
Does the Director of the FBI have access to the names of all CIA assets inside China?
I.Think.Not.
Posted by: Yeah, Right
I knew immediately something was amiss when I read the reports on different sites and it used the word "defector".
That is old Cold War language that reeks of McCarthyism.
Then in a report was this quote:
"Again, according to sources, Dong told DIA debriefers that at least a third of Chinese students attending US universities are PLA assets or part of the Thousand Talents Plan and that many of the students are here under pseudonyms. One reason for using pseudonyms is that many of these students are the children of high-ranking military and party leaders."
First, that seems unlikely to me. One third of Chinese students being spies sounds absurdly high, yet right inline with accusations thrown about on far-right conspiracy websites.
Second, so many spies being children of high ranking CCP leaders also sounds unlikely. Why put their own children at risk overseas?
I attended a world class engineering school with many Chinese students. They are a force to be reckoned with academically. They were all, as a rule, quiet introverts. They always studied together and made straight A's.
They were there to learn and that is all they did. They never seemed to assimilate or ingratiate themselves with authorities or do anything other than study. They were fantastic students and would certainly make outstanding professors at home. Why waste all that time and effort becoming spies when they could legitimately serve China better as engineers and scientists?
Maybe a few were CCP intelligence, but one third of them? Doubtful.
In short, only consorting with each other, never being overly friendly and never asking questions, I think they would have made terrible spies.
Posted by: Mar man
Lots of supposition all the way around. But what a story! So inscrutable! So many wet dreams! I certainly hope when I pick-up at the local Chinese, and they give such a generous portion of WonTon they are grooming me for recruitment into the "communist" way of life. Because frankly, for years I tried to get on Putin's payroll, dutifully offering the best counter-narrative to Empire I could muster, but nada, zilch.
Qualifications? I love Chinese Food, and admire the accomplishment of the Great Wall. Another wet dream of so many. And Bruce Lee. What's not to love? Call me maybe.
Posted by: gottlieb
I think the success of China's space station blastoff made another fake story attacking China necessary.
You know, to kill the buzz.
Posted by: Bemildred
This is one more for the "I don't know how to read Chinese, therefore China is a totalitarian State with a history of complete secrecy and brutal censorship" Western collection.
China (PRC) is one of the most transparent and open-minded States that have ever existed. I know what the CPC will do for the next five, ten, twenty and even fifty years in advance because they publish everything. I also know the reason why they want to do everything, because they open the debate in their due channels (many of which are translated to English directly from the source).
The PRC is transparent because their predecessor - the RKP (B) (Bolsheviks) - were also very transparent. The history of the RSFSR/USSR from 1917-1929 is one of the most well-documented periods we have because the Bolsheviks were very honest and very open about their policy. We could fill an entire book just telling three months of Soviet History. It was just after the consolidation of Stalin to power and the Cold War that documentation ceased to reach the West.
Communist parties are very transparent because they need to be. Their power, by definition, rests on the supremacy of the proletariat or the alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry, therefore every policy - no matter if it was decided from the top, by the Politburo - must be put to the discussion in some kind of conference and put to ratification by some kind of congress (even if just to be approved by acclamation). Both processes presuppose the publication of the policy in at least one official communication vehicle, which then reaches the historian.
China's history - old and contemporary - and Chinese daily politics are mysterious to the West simply because Westerners don't know how to read and write in Chinese (and the few ones who do are paid to ignore and distort them). This is sold by the Western MSM as evidence China is totalitarian, but the reality is the polar opposite: China is the democratic State, the West is the totalitarian State. In History we call this evidence/archaeology bias (e.g. Roman History that survived to us essentially portrays the point of view of the Senate).
Posted by: vk
vk @16: "This is one more for the "I don't know how to read Chinese, therefore China is a totalitarian State with a history of complete secrecy and brutal censorship" Western collection."
I laughed hard at that because it is so true.
Remember early in the pandemic last year all of the news reports based upon satellite imagery of Wuhan? I was stunned by the ignorance, incompetence, and provincialism that displayed. These "journalists" need satellite imagery to guess what is going on in a major first-tier city of 11 million people? Can't these impostor syndrome victim media people just pick up a phone and call someone there? You'd think from the way these "journalists" handled the stories that Wuhan was a city on Mars, or secluded in the heart of the Dark Continent or something similarly silly. Could anyone imagine using satellite imagery to concoct sensationalist speculative stories about happenings in London or Paris? It is pure lunacy.
Posted by: William Gruff
Strange kind of morons you are. Beneath that none of you speaks much less reads the language, I bet you never were in China. I felt less harrassed by the government there, and orders less scared of the police in your "democratic states". The Chinese police don't shoot dead over 1000 compatriots every year, in fact, deadly incidents inflicting police are in the low double digits per year, with their 1.4b pppl.
And during the pandemic, ppl were quarantined for weeks, no more. The authoritharian "health" regime here goes into the second year, with doctor's clinics searched, even a judge's house and office because he ruled against the government. Democrazy, my ass.
Posted by: aquadraht
I had the same impression as you, B. This is the same nonsense, just as delusional and impossible, as the Russiagate / Steelde dossier was for Trump. In both cases, it's people unable to understand why their Chosen One managed to lose the election.
The Dong bogus affair makes no sense because the "China made Covid on purpose as a biological weapon against the US" is just ridiculous on its face: had the Chinese be crazy enough to launch a pandemic on their own country first (for plausible deniability reasons), then there's no fucking way they would've done it in Wuhan; having the pandemic starting in the city the virus had been designed is supremely idiotic if you want plausible deniability that you definitely didn't engineer it - people were going to make a link, imagined or real. If China really wanted to launch a self-engineered virus from China, they would've picked Chongqing, Chengdu or some other major city that would be far closer to the bat reservoir of coronavirus, a major city without a biolab that would raise suspicions.
What's also funny is the alleged list of Wuhan scientists who got "covid" back in 2019: if they became ill with covid, then it's definitely proof the leak was accidental and not deliberate, not some kind of bio-economic warfare but just shitty management of lab security. Though even then odds would still greatly favor an accidental release of a naturally-evolved virus, and not a human-designed one. In fact, iff these few scientists genuinely got our SARS-2 back in late 2019, odds would be that some guy working in bat caves to find new viruses accidentally got infected with a version that could hit humans, and then spread it to his lab buddies back in Wuhan. Though at the end of the day, odds are even higher that some random Chinese dude caught it near Yunnan and a couple of infected people later, it found its way in Wuhan...
Posted by: Clueless Joe
I hear ya, but logic and reason is not what this is about.
This wishlist is just a forward staging of their fake news ammo chest. The contents will be metered out in due course to bury and trump any bad news domestically like record inflation or good news from China like the recent space launch.
If this defection was true, which it is not by the looks of things, do you think the largest intelligence coup of the century will not be hushed away and used for leverage and counter intelligence purposes? D notices have been issued on much, much less.
Its all just diversionary BS and consensus manufacturing by a bunch of delusional wannabe hacks having a circle jerk over their collective wet dream of a resurgent US.
Posted by: A.L.
Despite their hysterical "partisan politics," the Republicans and Democrats are mirror images of each other and share a lot more in common than they want to admit.
Democrats: Russia, Russia, Russia!
Republicans: China, China, China!
Or as Prof. Richard Wolff recently stated,
"Hillary Clinton focused blame on Russia as the external enemy. Trump chose China instead. Biden blames them both.Blame games serve to distract us from a declining US capitalism, its problems and tensions. Blaming others is now a truly bi-partisan effort."https://twitter.com/profwolff/status/1405709097064935431
The mighty American super-duper power and self-styled Indispensable Nation and "Leader of the Free World" is now reduced to the moral equivalent of a guy babbling to himself on a street corner carrying "The End is Nigh" sign.
America is truly a lunatic asylum.
Or as Donald Trump might say, sad.
Posted by: ak74
This may be nothing more than a trivial affair, but I'll tell it anyway: I have been visiting China often (up until the pandemic broke out) for a number of years on the heels of academic conferences.
Following a Shanghai conference around August 20th in 2014, I took a tour of the typical Chinese tourist sites in a number of cities.
During our Beijing excursion, I noticed that our guide (a youngish fellow) had engaged a few tourists about political matters.
From his conversation I derived that he was sympathetic to the Tiananmen square protests.
I drew closer and listened to him speak glowingly of the United States, while parroting all the propaganda one would expect he might get from something like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
I joined the conversation which soon turned towards the recent armed conflict in the Donbas region.
Sure enough, he voiced antipathy towards the Russians and had bought the propaganda that Russian troops had invaded Ukraine, hook, line and sinker.
I had been following those developments on my lap-top, particularly from Pat Lang's blog since it miraculously was one of the few sites which wasn't blocked in China.
I had read Lang's documented rebuttal of the propaganda concerning the Russian "invasion" of Ukraine. So... I became irritated at our Chinese guide's parroting of the "NED propaganda" about Russia so I countered him: I said that Russia had not invaded Ukraine, which of course intrigued him.
Incredulous, he asked me where I got my information.
You can imagine his surprise when I said I got it from a United States colonel, who held high-level posts in military US intelligence.
He asked to see the source and I gave him Lang's URL.
Now this is where it gets interesting: At that time, Lang had added a neat little feature (an app.) to his blog site. It was one of those world maps which registers a "dot" from the location of anyone who accesses it.
Since my entry to China more than a week earlier, there were no "dots" on mainland China. Hence one could conclude that despite the availability of his blog in China, nobody was accessing it.
That changed the afternoon I gave the URL to my inquisitive tour guide.
Dots started appearing all over the place, and not only in Beijing. Maybe the guy passed it on to friends he had in other cities. Maybe he was being surveilled by the government (which at some level was undoubtedly following developments in the Donbas).
Just an intriguing story of mine.
Posted by: Maracatu
My guess is that it is neither of the above. You might be well surprised at the AI controlled monitoring of the intranet in China. And the training these “guides” get and what their real purposes are.
Is America capable?
Well, America has changed substantially over the years. So many things that are a common sight would be repugnant and disgusting a mere two or three decades ago. This is America today…
A treasured, and valuable member of the community.
Many Americans have become slothful and lazy. They just pretty much have given up. And they live their lives as the winds blow. There was a time when you would rarely come across a slovenly person. But today in America you can find these individuals everywhere. What happened?
I don't get the impression that they (the Chinese) spend nearly as much time thinking about the US as Americans spend thinking...
... and griping,
... and spitting about China.
Posted by: Billb
A mobile garbage car.
I used to liken AmeriKKKa's PTB to spiteful 10 year-old schoolgirls. But that modus operandi has been superceded by devotion to acting like tantrum-throwing 2 1/2 year-olds in a supermarket.
Smart Mums just keep walking to the end of the isle, turn right, and wait for the kid to re-connect with reality and Humble Pie.
Keep it up, Yankees! Nobody cares!
-Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer
America is out of control in every area, and by every measure. And you can see it. Even if you are too stupid to read the signs right in front of your face…
An irresponsible non-representative government that is totally focused on making money for the oligarchy and waging wars is a dangerous government.
China is showing everyone that there is an alternative.
And the American oligarchy trembles in fear over this.
Still don’t get it? Think! People. Think!
It took 200 years, but finally America used up it’s natural resources and was forced to steal from the rest of the world. The last fifty years America has been a very bad Military Empire seizing resources from the rest of the world to exist.
The oligarchy created a system of debt serfs from which to fund the Empire, but when it outsourced all manufacturing and abused the few STEM graduates by treating them to “Office Space” environments and abusing them, eventually the “house of cards” would have to collapse.
They do not understand that they changed the American people. No longer are Americans the rough and sturdy folk that forged America from the wilderness. Americans are now a new kind of person.
China surpassed "the USSR-level" long ago.
In regards to alleviating poverty, China has surpassed all nations that have ever existed.
Yes.
Exactly. The next decades and hopefully centuries belong to those that have the civility and maturity to follow that path.
Posted by: uncle tungsten
America is a real mess.
It really is, and the entire rest of the globe can see this. Though most Americans cannot.
I think Americans care about other countries when their Government tells them they must care about them, e.g. the Invasion of Iraq, Invasion of Afghanistan, Destruction of Libya, Invasion of Syria, Destruction of the Ukraine.
In all of those cases, the factor in common is imperialism: Americans tend to believe and rally behind their Central Government against other nations (Federal Government) when they associate the need of subjugation of said nations with the maintenance of their way of life (American Dream, American Way of Life). For example, the direct association between destroying Iraq with vengeance against 9/11 AND ("while we're at it...") lowering the price of the gallon of gas to less than USD 0.90 (therefore, restoring American purchase power). That those adventures ended up fueling anti-Muslim hate and fundamentalist Christianism is just the inevitable collateral effects of such kind of operations, the small price to pay to keep the vibrancy of the Empire.
A clear parallel of this phenomenon can be observed through Bernie Sanders' last tweet on China: in just one paragraph, he associated the need 1) to effectively destroy China through economic sanctions because of the fake Xinjiang Uighur genocide, 2) fight slave/forced labor worldwide and 3) the promotion of the typical trade-unionist/social-democratic agenda within the USA. He went from your bread-and-butter labor rights activism to an outright imperialist agenda against China (and every other nation that dares to get into the way of the Empire). No mention, of course, of slave children labor in cocoa extraction in Ivory Coast - one of the oldest worst kept secret of post-war capitalism.
Now, it's true that the degeneration of the Empire resulted has started to manifest itself into the fragmentation of that method. Americans are now polarized between liberal leftists (Democrats) and fascist rightists (GOP), and each side is using this same method of association to advance not the interests of the Empire per se, but of their own faction - each of which claim to embody the true essence of the Empire as a whole. That means that, in the name of the whole Empire, each of the two factions are using their own carefully crafted imperialist narrative to advance their own factional interests, and not the Empire's. Examples of this are Russiagate and, during Trump, Anti-China hysteria.
So, my take is this: Americans don't see - and can't see - any distinction between foreign and domestic policy. To them, domestic policy is foreign policy, and foreign policy is domestic policy. They're an empire after all, and to a hammer everything smaller is a nail.
Posted by: vk
I think at this juncture Americans are having a hard time distinguishing much of anything, a condition symptomatic of detachment and ignorance.
I can no longer tell how resourceful they are.
Posted by: john
The Strength of China
If you have been following MM you will be aware that on numerous occasions that China has intercepted American advanced aircraft in Chinese airspace and completely rendered them inoperable. As was described in many articles. This comment here on MM is typical. (from Bo Chen)
In the early morning of June 4, Japan’s TBS TV station suddenly interrupted the broadcast situation, saying: “Yesterday (3rd) early morning, an RC-135U electronic reconnaissance plane of the U.S. Air Force took off from Kadena Base in Okinawa, Japan, and proceeded to the southeast coast of China.
Before dawn, near the northern mouth of the Taiwan Strait, in the airspace less than 55 nautical miles from Fujian Xiapu Air Force Base in the Eastern Theater of China, he was suddenly intercepted and rounded up by three electronic counter-reconnaissance aircraft “Falcon 1” of the Chinese Air Force. This is the Chinese Air Force’s first appearance in the war.
The Japanese media were really dedicated, as if they were on the scene, reporting the whole process as eye-catching and clear as their own military exercises: “The situation was very urgent at the time. The U.S. Air Force’s RC-135U reconnaissance plane was in China. Under the pursuit and interception of the Air Force “Falcon 1”, a very real aerial “cat and mouse game” was staged.
The RC-135U reconnaissance aircraft was “throated” time and time again.
All reconnaissance equipment on the aircraft failed; several times The aircraft was unable to control and fell into the sea out of control; several times it fell into a state of collapse of the navigation system.
Japanese media exclaimed: “If the Taiwan Strait really does, the US military’s RC-135U reconnaissance plane has only two options, either to be captured or shot down to the sea.”
In this regard, the only official source of our “South China Sea Strategic Situational Awareness” think tank stated: “In the early morning of June 3, there was indeed a U.S. Air Force RC-135U electronic reconnaissance plane that took off from Kadena Base in Okinawa, Japan, and secretly entered Fujian. The electronic reconnaissance in the East China Sea airspace near Xiapu Air Force Base was promptly and resolutely expelled by our Air Force fighters. As for what type of fighter planes the People’s Liberation Army dispatched to expel them, I officially kept silent.”
At the same time, China’s official media has been very low-key, with almost no reports about the US RC-135U reconnaissance aircraft invading the airspace of the air defense identification zone near the military sensitive area of Fujian. It’s just that the World Wide Web reprinted the “South China Sea Strategic Situation Awareness” news:
However, overseas media have responded strongly to this. In the past few days, media in Japan, the United States, South Korea, and the French and German media in Europe have all reported and commented on it.
Especially for the first time that the Chinese Air Force deployed the mysterious anti-electronic reconnaissance aircraft “Falcon 1”, and the sword was used for the first time, it severely frustrated the most advanced U.S. military RC-135U reconnaissance aircraft, which caused a shock from the Western media.
On the morning of the 4th, the US military’s Global Air Defense media platform stated: “RC-135U is the most advanced reconnaissance aircraft currently in service in the US military. The biggest weapon and “housekeeper” to seize air supremacy.
However, when facing China’s “Falcon 1″ yesterday, it was suddenly completely electronically suppressed. The entire aircraft was completely out of control, but the Kadena base camp, which was close at hand, did not know it.”
On the evening of the 3rd, Major Rodriguez, a spokesman for the US military at Kadena Base, reluctantly said to the media, “Before, we had almost no knowledge of China’s Falcon 1.
Our intelligence agency was actually the best in China. In front of advanced weapons, he became blind and deaf.
This time it was only when it flew in front of us that he suddenly knew its existence.” He added: “Even the name’Falcon 1′, our intelligence department It also took a huge price to find out. As for its specific aviation technical information, we know very little.”
Major Rodriguez said at the briefing: “According to the specific introduction of the pilot flying the RC-135U reconnaissance aircraft, we learned what happened in the early hours of yesterday.
Our RC-135U reconnaissance aircraft, as usual, was at 3 Taking off in the early morning of the day, from Kadena Base to the high seas airspace near Xiapu Air Force Base in Fujian, China, for routine electronic reconnaissance flights. Their main task on this trip is still to detect the deployment of the Chinese military in the coastal areas of Fujian and Zhejiang and to detect them The deployment situation and combat performance of weapons and equipment, the frequency of collecting their electronic communication signals, and so on.
“After about an hour of flying, our RC-135U reconnaissance plane arrived in the established airspace and was preparing to carry out reconnaissance work.
At this time, the pilot suddenly perceived with his naked eyes that there were three moving flying objects in the air from the top, front, and back directions. Outflank it.
But what is surprising is the advent of such a serious air strike, the eyes can see, and the RC-135U reconnaissance aircraft’s own anti-electronic jamming system and reconnaissance system did not respond. Everything is too late, because the other party The RC-135U has been surrounded and locked, the reconnaissance equipment has failed, the communication system has failed, the aircraft is out of control, can’t move at all, the communication system has failed, the aircraft has lost control of navigation, and can’t move at all. It feels like being stifled by the throat.
This way. In the next flight, the situation of danger was continuously staged and appeared three times. In desperation, we followed international practice and repeatedly expressed goodwill to the Chinese military aircraft several times before the other party finally allowed our aircraft to fly out of the dangerous airspace quickly. “.
Major Rodriguez finally emphasized: “I feel like we are being teased by the other side again and again in the air like mice. At the same time, it also shows that the Chinese Air Force’s Falcon 1 is very terrible. We ate a complete one. Lost in the air. This is an extremely rare humiliation and humiliation that the U.S. Air Force has suffered since World War II.”
Major Rodriguez’s briefing was quickly spread to many media around the world, and aroused international public opinion in exclamation and shock. According to the comment from the web client of South Korea’s “Seoul Arms”:
“In the past 20 years, China’s weapons and equipment have seen rapid development, just like its national strength. Especially this time, the mysterious weapon “Falcon 1″ has been revealed, which is low-key. There will certainly be many weapons like the Chinese military.”
The South Korean intelligence agency also issued a statement on the same day: “According to what we know, the Chinese Air Force “Falcon 1″ is the world’s newest and most advanced anti-electronic reconnaissance aircraft. Its main task is to target the US military’s frequent attacks on China’s coastal areas and Taiwan Electronic reconnaissance in the sea and the South China Sea is used for aerial countermeasures.
In addition to electronic countermeasures and intelligence collection, it also has powerful anti-electronic reconnaissance functions. The most frightening thing is that it not only has the most advanced stealth and protection It also has powerful electronic coverage, electronic blocking, and electronic destruction capabilities.
This is the most advanced electronic countermeasure technology in the world that has surpassed the United States and the West. This technology will directly destroy all electronic communication systems of the target aircraft. The opponent’s high-altitude aircraft completely turned into a headless fly out of control.”
In the afternoon of the same day, Professor Kudur Riffert from the Munich Army Military Academy, Germany, commented through the media: “According to the current technical assessment of China’s air force, the flight range and combat radius of the Falcon 1 are expected to reach 3800-4500. Kilometers. If air refueling is implemented, the farthest may exceed 8000 to 12000 kilometers. It can easily fly over the US military base in Hawaii, and even directly reach Los Angeles or San Francisco on the west coast of the US, and the US military’s existing radar cannot detect it at all. It can be said to be A stealthy and proud intercontinental aircraft.”
“What a terrible weapon. China has mastered this weapon manufacturing technology before the United States and put it into combat before the United States. The United States and the United States Air Force have become the targets of China’s advanced weapons testing. And the proving ground.” Finally, Professor Liffeyt pointed out: “The United States and the West must admit that China will soon be strong if it blocks China; if it challenges China, China will quickly defeat what; and if it suppresses China, China Soon to surpass something; China’s strength and rise, the United States and the West can no longer stop it.
But you know what. It’s pretty much well understood throughout China. Though inside America and “The West” no one knows “Jack Shit”. Because the MSA (American main stream media) won’t report anything good about China. Never the less the Chinese joke about this.
Have you ever watched the Tom Cruse movie “Top Gun”? In it is this iconic scene where Tom Cruse the fighter pilot Ace does an inverted flyover a Russian MIG and takes a picture of the cockpit.
Well, if you do, and you also been following MM, then you will find this Chinese short video hilarious!
What’s next for America?
Well, it seems that America wants to provoke and engage in a full scale war with the rest of the world. In an earlier post HERE, I argue that this war would have the reverse effect than what the elites plan. Instead of unifying Americans against a common enemy, it will accelerate the fragmentation of America and the results would be a Second American Civil War. It would be horrific. As this short video clip illustrates…
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
About eight weeks ago, I got a contact request from one of my literary connections. He said that there was this guy who was pestering him to get in contact with me. This guy apparently runs hundreds of You-Tube video channels and wanted to interview me. So I connected to him and wanted to find out more about what he wanted.
He said that he had a “big network” of You-tube channels and he wanted to get me on because exposure would bring a lot of visitors to my MM site, and would help me become famous…
Obviously, he wasn’t a regular or even a cursory reader to the site. Fame, or a lot of traffic is low on my agenda.
But, I went along with him. I actually like having interviews. And if the subject is a good one, I do love to prepare for it, and say my piece. So I said, “OK. Please send me a list of questions so that I can organize up a script, and then we can establish a time and place for the interview.”
A few weeks passed. Nothing.
Then out of the blue he sends a very brief email. He said that he was sorry, but that he was so busy.
But he still wanted to interview me.
He said that he didn’t have any questions to ask me. That we would just “wing it”, and I should be prepared. He wanted to talk about the origins of the Coronavirus.
Hum.
No questions.
No time to prep.
No narrative, nor dialog.
Sounds squirmy.
OK. So I told him, lets talk face to face over Zoom or SkyPE before hand to get a flavor of what to expect. Let’s talk before hand and see what he has in mind and what I could do to facilitate it.
Two more weeks passed.
He sends me an e-mail. “Oh”, he says “no need for a pre-interview meeting. Let’s do it during his operation hours New York time, between 9am and 3pm.”
Which is my 9 at night, a time for me to drink, rest and relax. And there is no fucking way that I am going to provide him free “cannon fodder” at my 3 am without a pre-screening.
Yet another two weeks pass.
He sends me another e-mail. He said he was really busy. Jesus! He thinks he’s busy? But wants to just call me at HIS convenience, and have the interview on the spot when HE is ready.
What nerve!
What’s the matter with Americans these days? Is this what goes for a business connection, a dialog, or a discussion?
Anyways. Fuck him. He blew it. I really have many more things on my plate, and I really do not need the DISRESPECT, and amateurish behaviors, no matter what this beta-cluck intends.
Let’s talk about what is going on in America to create such losers. Because if he is typical…
…and I think he is…
… China will eat his lunch. And that’s a fact, Jack.
Dmitry Orlov
Dmitry Orlov is an immigrant from Russia who moved to the United States. He lives in Boston, Massachusetts, and has written a host of articles about the United States based on his experiences, his knowledge of history, and what he sees around him. Aside from being well-written, easy to read, they are “spot on” and tend to pre-date events that the rest of us are only starting to notice.
He is one of the better-known thinkers The New Yorker has dubbed ‘The Dystopians’ in an excellent 2009 profile, along with James Howard Kunstler, another regular contributor to RI (archive). These theorists believe that modern society is headed for a jarring and painful crack-up.
Personally I think Biden Administration was stunned at almost having instigated WW3 within 100 days of taking office. They looked fairly like amateur idiots even to the unwashed such as myself. Then they realized that it would be difficult and given their evident ineptness they chose the well proven political tactic of taking the loss and making it a win. Voila they are genious - why didnt Trump think of that?We in the US must accept that our government is craven incompetents and have to hope that they might accidentally do something good by virtue of being so incompetent.Posted by: jared | May 20 2021 17:10 utc | 8
He is best known for his 2011 book comparing Soviet and American collapse and in it, he thinks America’s collapse will be much worse. He is a prolific author on a wide array of subjects, and you can see his work by searching him on Amazon.
This article is a collection of his most recent musings, and I find most of them to be valuable. You can access his archive HERE. Of course, all credit to him, his hosting organization, Articles were edited to fit this venue, and the usual disclaimers apply.
We will start with this article which was written two years into the Donald Trump Presidency, which was about three years ago. And unlike most Americans he had no hopes or belief that Donald Trump would turn the massive ship of America around. Instead he viewed it as a continuation of a nation’s death throes…
The Suicidal American Empire Is Collapsing Fast, But Its Death Now Would Cause Unacceptable Collateral Damage
Which is why its vassals and even rivals are forced, for now, to try and keep it afloat
There are a lot of behaviors being exhibited by those in positions of power in the US that seem disparate and odd.
We watch Trump who is imposing sanctions on country after country, dreaming of eradicating his country’s structural trade deficit with the rest of the world.
We watch pretty much all of US Congress falling over each other in their attempt to impose the harshest possible sanctions on Russia.
People in Turkey, a key NATO country, are literally burning US dollars and smashing iPhones in a fit of pique.
Confronted with a new suite of Russian and Chinese weapons systems that largely neutralize the ability of the US to dominate the world militarily, the US is setting new records in the size of its already outrageously bloated yet manifestly ineffectual defense spending.
As a backdrop to this military contractor feeding frenzy, the Taliban are making steady gains in Afghanistan, now control over half the territory, and are getting ready to stamp “null and void,” in a repeat of Vietnam, on America’s longest war.
A lengthening list of countries are set to ignore or compensate for US sanctions, especially sanctions against Iranian oil exports.
In a signal moment, Russia’s finance minister has recently pronounced the US dollar “unreliable.”
Meanwhile, US debt keeps galloping upwards, with its largest buyer being reported as a mysterious, possibly entirely nonexistent “Other.”
Although these may seem like manifestations of many different trends in the world, I believe that a case can be made that these are all one thing:
The US—the world’s imperial overlord—standing on a ledge and threatening to jump, while its imperial vassals—too many to mention—are standing down below and shouting “Please, don’t jump!”
To be sure, most of them would be perfectly happy to watch the overlord plummet and jelly up the sidewalk.
But here is the key point: if this were to happen today, it would cause unacceptable levels of political and economic collateral damage around the world.
Does this mean that the US is indispensable?
No, of course not, nobody is.
But dispensing with it will take time and energy, and while that process runs its course the rest of the world is forced to keep it on life support no matter how counterproductive, stupid and demeaning that feels.
What the world needs to do, as quickly as possible, is to dismantle the imperial center.
Which is in Washington politically and militarily and in New York and London financially, while somehow salvaging the principle of empire.
“What?!” you might exclaim, “Isn’t imperialism evil.”
Well, sure it is, whatever, but empires make possible efficient, specialized production and efficient, unhindered trade over large distances.
Empires do all sorts of evil things—up to and including genocide—but they also provide a level playing field and a method for preventing petty grievances from escalating into tribal conflicts.
The Roman Empire, then Byzantium, then the Tatar/Mongol Golden Horde, then the Ottoman Sublime Porte all provided these two essential services…
…unhindered trade and security…
…in exchange for some amount of constant rapine and plunder and a few memorable incidents of genocide.
The Tatar/Mongol Empire was by far the most streamlined: it simply demanded “yarlyk”—tribute—and smashed anyone who attempted to rise above a level at which they were easy to smash.
The American empire is a bit more nuanced: it uses the US dollar as a weapon for periodically expropriating savings from around the world by exporting inflation while annihilating anyone who tries to wiggle out from under the US dollar system.
All empires follow a certain trajectory.
Over time they become corrupt, decadent and enfeebled, and then they collapse.
When they collapse, there are two (possibly three) ways to go.
One is to slog through a millennium-long dark age—as Western Europe did after the Western Roman Empire collapsed.
Another is for a different empire, or a cooperating set of empires, to take over, as happened after the Ottoman Empire collapsed.
You may think that a third way exists: of small nations cooperating sweetly and collaborating successfully on international infrastructure projects that serve the common good. Such a scheme may be possible, but I tend to take a jaundiced view of our simian natures.
We come equipped with MonkeyBrain 2.0, which has some very useful built-in functions for imperialism, along with some ancillary support for nationalism and organized religion.
These we can rely on; everything else would be either a repeat of a failed experiment or an untested innovation.
Sure, let’s innovate, but innovation takes time and resources, and those are the exact two things that are currently lacking.
What we have in permanent surplus is revolutionaries: if they have their way, look out for a Reign of Terror, followed by the rise of a Bonaparte. That’s what happens every time.
Lest you think that the US isn’t an empire—a collapsing one—consider the following.
The US defense budget is larger than that of the next ten countries combined, yet the US can’t prevail even in militarily puny Afghanistan. (That’s because much of its defense budget is trivially stolen.)
The US has something like a thousand military bases, essentially garrisoning the entire planet, but to unknown effect.
It claims the entire planet as its dominion: no matter where you go, you still have to pay US income taxes and are still subject to US laws.
It controls and manipulates governments in numerous countries around the world, always aiming to turn them into satrapies governed from the US embassy compound, but with results that range from unprofitable to embarrassing to lethal.
It is now failing at virtually all of these things, threatening the entire planet with its untimely demise.
What we are observing, at every level, is a sort of blackmail:
“Do as we say, or no more empire for you!” The US dollar will vanish, international trade will stop and a dark age will descend, forcing everyone to toil in the dirt for a millennium while mired in futile, interminable conflicts with neighboring tribes.
MM comment. This was written three years before the March 2021 Alaska summit with the "obey our rules-based order" or suffer the consequences meeting.
None of the old methods of maintaining imperial dominance are working; all that remains is the threat of falling down and leaving a huge mess for the rest of the world to deal with.
The rest of the world is now tasked with rapidly creating a situation where the US empire can be dealt a coup de grâce safely, without causing any collateral damage—and that’s a huge task, so everyone is forced to play for time.
MM comment. And this is exactly the case, and why Russia, China and Iran have all teamed up. The EU is trying to sit on the fence. And the Asian nations are paying "lip service".
There is a lot of military posturing and there are political provocations happening all the time, but these are sideshows that are becoming an unaffordable luxury: there is nothing to be won through these methods and plenty to be lost.
Essentially, all the arguments are over money.
There is a lot of money to be lost.
The total trade surplus of the BRICS countries with the West (US+EU, essentially) is over a trillion dollars a year.
SCO—another grouping of non-Western countries—comes up with almost the same numbers.
That’s the amount of products these countries produce for which they currently have no internal market.
Should the West evaporate overnight, nobody will buy these products.
Russia alone had a 2017 trade surplus of $116 billion, and in 2018 so far it grew by 28.5%.
China alone, in its trade just with the US, generated $275 billion in surplus. Throw in another $16 billion for its trade with the EU.
Those are big numbers, but they are nowhere near enough if the project is to build a turnkey global empire to replace US+EU in a timely manner.
Also, there are no takers.
Russia is rather happy to have shed its former Soviet dependents and is currently invested in building a multilateral, international system of governance based on international institutions such as SCO, BRICS and EAEU.
Numerous other countries are very interested in joining together in such organizations: most recently, Turkey has expressed interest in turning BRICS into BRICTS.
Essentially, all of the post-colonial nations around the world are now forced to trade away some measure of their recently won independence, essentially snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
The job vacancy of Supreme Global Overlord is unlikely to attract any qualified candidates.
What everyone seems to want is a humble, low-budget, cooperative global empire, without all of the corruption and with a lot less life-threatening militarism.
MM comment. Sounds good to me, and the world is turning to China for this.
It will take time to build, and the resources to build it can only come from one place: from gradually bleeding US+EU dry.
In order to do this, the wheels of international commerce must continue to spin.
But this is exactly what all of the new tariffs and sanctions, the saber-rattling and the political provocations, are attempting to prevent: a ship laden with soya is now doing circles in the Pacific off the coast of China; steel I-beams are rusting at the dock in Turkey…
But it is doubtful that these attempts will work.
The EU has been too slow in recognizing just how pernicious its dependence on Washington has become, and will take even more time to find ways to free itself, but the process has clearly started.
For its part, Washington runs on money, and since its current antics will tend to make money grow scarce even faster than it otherwise would, those who stand to lose the most will make the Washingtonians feel their pain and will force a change of course.
As a result, everyone will be pushing in the same direction: toward a slow, steady, controllable imperial collapse.
All we can hope for is that the rest of the world manages to come together and build at least the scaffolding of a functional imperial replacement in time to avoid collapsing into a new post-imperial dark age.
MM Comment; This article is "spot on" and was written three years ago, pre-pandemic, and pre-USA collapse.
Since then, China has shown superiority in just about every arena, and the USA reactions to that has been hysterical.
You will not see Dmitry Orlov write about China because he has no direct experience with China, and what he sees and hears comes from the USA government microphone.
Here’s another article…
Killing for the Sake of It: The Grisly Reality of the Failing US Empire
Mired in financial collapse, moral decay, and lack of leadership & direction, the last sole superpower is lashing out in every direction, spreading brutal destruction throughout the world for nothing more than its own depraved sake
This article from our archives was first published on RI in April 2015. Dmitry Orlov(Club Orlov)Fri, Apr 30 2021|1230 words 29,386Comments
The story is the same every time: some nation, due to a confluence of lucky circumstances, becomes powerful — much more powerful than the rest — and, for a time, is dominant.
But the lucky circumstances, which often amount to no more than a few advantageous quirks of geology, be it Welsh coal or West Texas oil, in due course come to an end.
In the meantime, the erstwhile superpower becomes corrupted by its own power.
As the endgame approaches, those still nominally in charge of the collapsing empire resort to all sorts of desperate measures.
All, that is, except one:
They will refuse to ever consider the fact that their imperial superpower is at an end and that they should change their ways accordingly.
George Orwell once offered an excellent explanation for this phenomenon: as the imperial end-game approaches, it becomes a matter of imperial self-preservation to breed a special-purpose ruling class — one that is incapable of understanding that the end-game is approaching.
Because, you see, if they had an inkling of what’s going on, they wouldn’t take their jobs seriously enough to keep the game going for as long as possible.
The approaching imperial collapse can be seen in the ever-worsening results the empire gets for its imperial efforts.
After World War II, the U.S. was able to do a respectable job helping to rebuild Germany, along with the rest of Western Europe.
Japan also did rather well under U.S. tutelage, as did South Korea after the end of fighting on the Korean peninsula.
With Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, all of which were badly damaged by the U.S., the results were significantly worse: Vietnam was an outright defeat, Cambodia lived through a period of genocide, while amazingly resilient Laos — the most heavily bombed country on the planet — recovered on its own.
The first Gulf War went even more badly: fearful of undertaking a ground offensive in Iraq, the U.S. stopped short of its regular practice of toppling the government and installing a puppet regime there and left it in limbo for a decade.
When the U.S. did eventually invade, it succeeded — after killing countless civilians and destroying much of the infrastructure — in leaving behind a dismembered corpse of a country.
Similar results have been achieved in other places where the U.S. saw fit to get involved: Somalia, Libya and, most recently, Yemen.
Let’s not even mention Afghanistan, since all empires have failed to achieve good results there.
So the trend is unmistakable: whereas at its height the empire destroyed in order to rebuild the world in its own image, as it nears its end it destroys simply for the sake of destruction, leaving piles of corpses and smoldering ruins in its wake.
Another unmistakable trend has to do with the efficacy of spending money on “defense” (which, in the case of the U.S., should be redefined as “offense”).
Having a lavishly endowed military can sometimes lead to success, but here too something has shifted over time.
The famous American can-do spirit that was evident to all during World War II, when the U.S. dwarfed the rest of the world with its industrial might, is no more.
Now, more and more, military spending itself is the goal — never mind what it achieves.
And what it achieves is …
The latest F-35 jet fighter that can’t fly;
The latest aircraft carrier that can’t launch planes without destroying them if they are fitted with the auxiliary tanks they need to fly combat missions;
The most technologically advanced AEGIS destroyer that can be taken out of commission by a single unarmed Russian jet carrying a basket of electronic warfare equipment;
And another aircraft carrier that can be frightened out of deep water and forced to anchor by a few Russian submarines out on routine patrol.
But the Americans like their weapons, and they like handing them out as a show of support.
But more often than not these weapons end up in the wrong hands:
The ones they gave to Iraq are now in the hands of ISIS;
The ones they gave to the Ukrainian nationalists have been sold to the Syrian government;
The ones they gave to the government in Yemen is now in the hands of the Houthis who recently overthrew it.
And so the efficacy of lavish military spending has dwindled too.
At some point it may become more efficient to modify the U.S. Treasury printing presses to blast bundles of U.S. dollars in the general direction of the enemy.
With the strategy of “destroying in order to create” no longer viable, but with the blind ambition to still try to prevail everywhere in the world somehow still part of the political culture, all that remains is murder.
The main tool of foreign policy becomes political assassination: be it Saddam Hussein, or Muammar Qaddafi, or Slobodan Milošević, or Osama bin Laden, or any number of lesser targets, the idea is to simply kill them.
MM Comment. This was written before the USA assassinated an Iranian general in his car, and was involved in other take-downs in Russia. As well as the pronounced desire to decapitate the entire leadership of China.
While aiming for the head of an organization is a favorite technique, the general populace gets its share of murder too.
How many funerals and wedding parties have been taken out by drone strikes?
I don’t know that anyone in the U.S. really knows, but I am sure that those whose relatives were killed do remember, and will remember for the next few centuries at least.
This tactic is generally not conducive to creating a durable peace, but it is a good tactic for perpetuating and escalating conflict.
But that’s now an acceptable goal, because it creates the rationale for increased military spending, making it possible to breed more chaos.
Recently a retired U.S. general went on television to declare that what’s needed to turn around the situation in the Ukraine is to simply “start killing Russians.”
The Russians listened to that, marveled at his idiocy, and then went ahead and opened a criminal case against him.
Now this general will be unable to travel to an ever-increasing number of countries around the world for fear of getting arrested and deported to Russia to stand trial.
MM Comment. As what happened to those war-mongering anti-China neocons that wanted to attack China. Try stepping out of the USA, you Jackasses.
This is largely a symbolic gesture, but non-symbolic non-gestures of a preventive nature are sure to follow.
You see, my fellow space travelers, murder happens to be illegal.
In most jurisdictions, inciting others to murder also happens to be illegal.
Americans have granted themselves the license to kill without checking to see whether perhaps they might be exceeding their authority.
We should expect, then, that as their power trickles away, their license to kill will be revoked, and they will find themselves reclassified from global hegemons to mere murderers.
As empires collapse, they turn inward, and subject their own populations to the same ill treatment to which they subjected others.
Here, America is unexceptional: the number of Americans being murdered by their own police, with minimal repercussions for those doing the killing, is quite stunning.
When Americans wonder who their enemy really is, they need look no further.
But that is only the beginning: the precedent has already been set for deploying U.S. troops on U.S. soil.
As law and order break down in more and more places, we will see more and more U.S. troops on the streets of cities in the U.S., spreading death and destruction just like they did in Iraq or in Afghanistan.
The last license to kill to be revoked will be the license to kill ourselves.
The West Resembles a Decapitated Rooster, Wings Still Flapping, Barely Flying
“Democratic elections are but a recent innovation, and a most uncertain one. For instance, during the 2016 election in the US, the establishment trotted out an entire array of craven, feckless, corrupt opportunists, and Trump knocked them all out with a feather …”
This article from our archives was first published on RI in November 2018. Dmitry OrlovTue, Apr 13 2021|1900 words 9,773Comments
When I was five and spending the summer in a small village a couple of time zones east of Moscow I witnessed the execution of a rooster.
My brother and I walked over to a neighbor’s house to pick up some eggs.
Just as we arrived the neighbor finally caught the rooster and chopped his head of.
The now headless rooster then put on quite an aerobatic performance that was quite amazing.
After doing an unlimited takeoff he repeatedly soared and plummeted, executed several touch-and-gos (more like crash-and-goes, actually) and was undeterred by what previously would have been head-on collisions.
I was by then quite familiar with the poor aerodynamic qualities of barnyard fowl and was duly impressed with the energetic and breathtakingly erratic behavior of a bird liberated from the mental straitjacket of its brain.
Unfortunately, the performance only lasted for a minute or so.
A word to the wise: I later learned that it is possible to prolong the show, should the need ever arise, by heating up the hatchet so as to cauterize the severed neck. More recently, I have learned that such sans-têteaerobatics are not restricted to chickens.
Figurative birds, of the mechanical variety, can exhibit something similar.
A prime example is the greatest boondoggle in the history of military aviation, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
It too is liable to losing its head, in the sense of the pilot blacking out.
In addition to being ridiculously expensive (over $1.5 trillion in projected project costs)…
…and plagued with problems, only half of the built planes are considered ready for any sort of mission…
… there are over a thousand known defects that haven’t been fixed.
Including ones that make it useless for air-to-air combat or ground support F-35 pilots often report feeling sick and there have been many incidents where they lost consciousness, probably due to oxygen starvation and circulation problems.
In response, the fatally flawed jet’s maker Lockheed Martin, whose motto seems to be “One boondoggle deserves another,” has decided to add a subsystem.
Called Auto-GCAS (for Ground Collision Avoidance System), it takes over automatically if it detects the danger of ground collision and the pilot fails to respond to the alarm and take corrective action.
Auto-GCAS then throttles up and directs the plane upward, pulling a maximum of five g’s.
What does that do to a pilot who is already feeling sick or is unconscious?
Once a safe altitude is reached, the plane levels out and Auto-GCAS shuts off.
If the pilot happens to be offline for good, the process repeats until the plane runs out of fuel and crashes.
I hope that you are impressed with the sheer brilliance of the plan.
A show designed to impress was recently staged at an airfield in Utah, where 35 F-35s took off, one right after the other.
It has not been independently verified how many of them landed.
Auto-GCAS is slated to be ready for use by 2024, but Pentagon’s planners are hoping to accelerate the process.
All of this made me wonder about the general behavior to be expected of hierarchically organized, centrally controlled systems once they are deprived of their control module.
Auto-GCAS is by no means the worst case.
For instance, there is the Russian Perimetr system, a.k.a. Dead Hand.
If it detects that the Russian military leadership has been incapacitated by a nuclear strike, it will launch an all-out nuclear attack, obliterating the aggressor.
This may seem like a really bad plan, but then attacking Russia is a really bad plan too, and one bad plan deserves another.
What makes this plan bad is that it doesn’t elicit the right response.
The right response is: “Oh, we see, attacking Russia is sheer suicide, so let’s not do that.”
But where’s the money in not planning to attack Russia?
And so instead the “One boondoggle deserves another” crew sets forth to build anti-ballistic missile systems (which don’t work) and deep underground bomb shelters stocked with years’ worth of supplies (which is gold-plating; a large shallow grave to jump into when the time comes would work just as well).
And yet as far as planning for decapitation goes, Dead Hand is state of the art.
Most other large-scale centrally controlled systems are woefully unprepared for the loss of their command modules.
For instance, look at finance.
After the financial collapse of 2008 it quickly became obvious that nobody competent or responsible was in charge.
The “solution” was for central banks to start blowing financial bubbles by zeroing out interest rates and flooding the world with new debt.
Debt that expands much faster than the economy is garbage debt, and it gave rise to various other kinds of garbage:
Garbage energy from shale and tar sands,
Garbage money in the form of cryptocurrencies,
Garbage real estate investment schemes,
Garbage corporate balance sheets bloated with debt used up in stock buybacks,
A large crop of garbage oligarchs gorging themselves on all of this garbage “wealth” and much else.
Things look good while all this garbage is packaged up in financial bubbles, but once they pop…
…and as all children know all bubbles pop eventually…
… everyone will end up wearing the garbage.
There are plenty of examples of political auto-decapitation as well.
In the US, Trump realized that he can become president simply by insulting all of his competitors (who richly deserved such treatment) and so he did.
But now the hive mind of Washington is deeply at odds with the bumblebee-mind of Trump, and neither qualifies as any sort of a head, except perhaps in a strictly symbolic sense.
Things are no better in Europe.
In the UK, an anti-Brexit team is in charge of negotiating Brexit, struggling to make it as anti-Brexit a Brexit as possible.
That doesn’t seem like any sort of “headedness.”
In Germany, Merkel is on her way out, and her replacement has the unenviable task of hammering together a governing coalition out of parties that are too busy knocking heads with each other.
The multi-headed bureaucratic hydra in Brussels is not exactly popular with anyone.
What is the recourse?
Emperor Macron of France, perhaps?
Is Europe ready to be headed by a diacritical character? (A macron is a horizontal line you place over vowel letters to represent a long vowel: Mācron.)
There are systems that are properly headless: flocks of birds, schools of fish, communes of anarchists, etc.
They are anarchically structured and individuals within them take on temporary, task-based leadership roles as the situation demands and can only expect to be obeyed in accordance with their competence in executing the tasks.
But most of the human systems we have are hierarchically structured and require to be headed by someone.
Democratic elections are but a recent innovation, and a most uncertain one.
For instance, during the 2016 election in the US, the establishment trotted out an entire array of craven, feckless, corrupt opportunists, and Trump knocked them all out with a feather, not because he is any sort of proper leader, but because it was so easy.
For an even more amazing example of democratic failure, look at today’s Ukraine—the most recent experiment in Western democracy.
There, a constitutionally elected, though remarkably corrupt and indecisive president was violently overthrown in 2014 in a US-managed coup.
And replaced with an American puppet.
A puppet so unpopular that yesterday he was forced to introduce martial law.
Just in order to be able to cancel the elections scheduled in three months and to remain in office de facto.
To produce a rationale for declaring martial law he sent some small boats on a truly idiotic mission.
The boats sailed into a Russian-controlled high traffic zone in the Black Sea, refused to respond when hailed and then pointed weapons at Russian border patrol.
For this they were duly arrested and hauled off to jail, and their boats confiscated.
Previously, an ongoing civil war instigated by this same president resulted in some fifty thousand casualties, but no martial law was ever deemed necessary.
What’s different now?
Oh, the elections, of course!
If these are the fruits of democracy, perhaps the Ukrainians should consider going back to a monarchy.
Dynastic succession has worked much better and for much longer periods of time.
For instance, at the time of its annexation by Russia in 1783, Crimea was ruled by Shahin Girei, a descendant of Genghis Khan who was born around 1155.
That one dynasty, spanning 628 years, ruled the largest empire that ever was.
At one point it included all of China, most of Russia, Korea, Persia and India, plus many lands in between.
Genghis had decreed that no part of the Mongol Empire could be ruled by anyone who wasn’t a direct descendant of his, and so it was.
The Mongol Empire ended peacefully, with Shahin Girei abdicating his throne and accepting protection from Catherine the Great.
Maybe that’s the plan, then: install a Ukrainian Emperor and immediately have him abdicate his throne and accept protection from Putin the Great.
Then Putin will turn the heat and the hot water back on, the armed thugs will be marched off to someplace safe for disarming and de-thugging, and the nuke plants will stop breaking down.
Since we seem to be headed (no pun intended) for unstable and disrupted times, it bears pointing out that while democracy may be very nice when everything is going along according to plan…
… it is not particularly resilient in the face of severe disruption.
And what is the plan now—in the US, or in the EU (or what will be left of it)?
We have some truly ghastly examples of the fruits of democracy in the form of the Weimar Republic in Germany or the Interim Government between February and October of 1917 in Russia.
If you don’t fancy being ruled by headless chickens, consider picking a leader using whatever ad hoc procedure that works.
The idea is to avoid any more Robespierrian Reigns of Terror, Reichstag fires or October Revolutions—because we already know what those are like.
Russia’s New Nukes Check-Mate a War-Happy US, and Make the World Safer
Now that its aircraft carrier fleet, global ABM systems, and NATO has been rendered useless, the US can get on with dismantling its entire bloated, over-stretched, global network of military bases.
This article from our archives was first published on RI in March 2018 . Dmitry Orlov(Club Orlov)Sun, Apr 11 2021|3400 words 14,816Comments
A lot of people seem to have lost the thread when it comes to nuclear weapons.
They think that nuclear weapons are like other weapons, and are designed to be used in war.
But this is pure mental inertia.
According to all the evidence available, nuclear weapons are anti-weapons, designed to prevent weapons, nuclear or otherwise, from being used.
In essence, if used correctly, nuclear weapons are war suppression devices.
Of course, if used incorrectly, they pose a grave risk to all life on Earth.
There are other risks to all life on Earth as well, such as runaway global warming from unconstrained burning of hydrocarbons; perhaps we need to invent a weapon or two to prevent that as well.
Some people feel that the mere existence of nuclear weapons guarantees that they will be used as various nuclear-armed countries find themselves financially, economically and politically in extremis.
As “proof” of this, they trot out the dramaturgical principle of Chekhov’s Gun.
Anton Chekhov wrote:
“Если вы говорите в первой главе, что на стене висит ружье, во второй или третьей главе оно должно непременно выстрелить. А если не будет стрелять, не должно и висеть.»”
[“If you say in Act I that there is a gun hanging on the wall, then it is a must that in Act II or III it be fired. And if it won’t be fired, it shouldn’t have been hung there in the first place.”]
And if you point out that we are talking about military strategy and geopolitics, not theater, they then quote Shakespeare’s
“All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances…”
and believe that it is QED.
Now, I happen to agree wholeheartedly with Chekhov, when it comes to dramaturgy, and I agree with the Bard as well, provided we define “the world” as “the world of theater,” from which the worlds of geopolitics and nuclear physics are both dramatically different.
Let me explain it in terms that a drama major would understand.
If there is a nuclear bomb hanging on the wall in Act I, then, chances are, it will still be hanging on that wall during the final curtain call.
In the meantime, no matter how many other weapons are present on stage during the play, you can be sure that none of them would be used.
Or maybe they will be, but then the entire audience would be dead, in which case you should definitely ask for your money back because this was billed as a family-friendly show.
Back in the real world, it is hard to argue that nukes haven’t been useful as deterrents against both conventional and nuclear war.
When the Americans dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they only did this because they could do so with complete impunity.
Had Japan, or an ally of Japan, possessed nuclear weapons at the time, these attacks would not have taken place.
There is a considerable body of opinion that the Americans didn’t nuke Japan in order to secure a victory (the Japanese would have surrendered regardless) but to send a message to Joseph Stalin.
Stalin got the message, and Soviet scientists and engineers got cracking.
There was an uncomfortable period, before the USSR successfully tested their first atomic bomb…
… when the Americans were seriously planning to destroy all major Soviet cities using a nuclear strike…
… but they set these plans aside…
…because they calculated that they didn’t have enough nukes at the time to keep the Red Army from conquering all of Western Europe in retaliation.
But in August 29, 1949, when the USSR tested its first atomic bomb, these plans were set aside…
…not quite permanently, it would later turn out…
…because even a singular nuclear detonation as a result of a Soviet response to an American first strike…
…. wiping out, say, New York or Washington, would have been too high a price to pay for destroying Russia.
Since then—continuously except for a period between 2002 and two days ago—the ability of nuclear weapons to deter military aggression has remained unquestioned.
There were some challenges along the way, but they were dealt with.
The Americans saw it fit to threaten the USSR by placing nuclear missiles in Turkey; in response, the USSR placed nuclear missiles in Cuba.
The Americans didn’t think that was fair, and the result was the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Eventually the Americans were prevailed upon to stand down in Turkey, and the Soviets stood down in Cuba.
Another threat to the deterrent power of nuclear weapons was the development of anti-ballistic weapons that could shoot down nuclear-tipped missiles (just the ballistic ones; more on that later).
But this was widely recognized to be a bad thing, and a major breakthrough came in 1972, when the USA and the USSR signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
Over this entire period, the principle that kept the peace was Mutual Assured Destruction: neither side would provoke the other to the point of launching a nuclear strike, because such a move was guaranteed to be suicidal.
The two sides were reduced to fighting a series of proxy wars in various countries around the world…
… which were so much the worse for it…
… but there was no danger of these proxy conflicts erupting into a full-scale nuclear conflagration.
In the meantime, everybody tried to oppose nuclear proliferation, preventing more countries from obtaining access to nuclear weapons technology—with limited success.
The cases where these efforts failed testify to the effective deterrent value of nuclear weapons.
Saddam Hussein of Iraq didn’t have any “weapons of mass destruction” and ended up hung.
Muammar Qaddafi of Libya voluntarily gave up his nuclear program, and ended up tortured to death.
But Pakistan managed to acquire nuclear weapons, and as a result its relations with its traditional nemesis India have become much more polite and cooperative.
To the point that in June of 2017 both became full members of Shanghai Cooperation Organization, along with China, Russia and other Eurasian nations.
And then North Korea has made some breakthroughs with regard to nuclear bombs and ballistic missiles.
As a result of that the US has been reduced to posturing and futile threats against it while South Korea has expressed some newfound respect for its northern neighbor and is now seeking rapprochement.
In 2002 the prospect of continued nuclear deterrence was set a major setback when the US pulled out of the ABM treaty.
Russia protested this move, and promised an asymmetrical response.
American officials ignored this protest, incorrectly thinking that Russia was finished as a nuclear power.
Since then, the Americans spent prodigious amounts of money—well into the trillions of dollars—building a ballistic missile defense system.
Their goal was simple: make it possible to launch a first strike on Russia, destroying much of its nuclear arsenal; then use the new American ABM systems to destroy whatever Russia does manage to launch in response.
On February 2, 2018 the Americans decided that they were ready, and issued a Nuclear Posture Review in which they explicitly reserved the right to use nuclear weapons to prevent Russia from using its nuclear deterrent.
And then, two days ago, all of that came to a happy end when Vladimir Putin gave a speech in which he unveiled several new weapons systems that completely negate the value of US missile defense shield.
…among other things.
That was the response the Russians promised to deliver when the US pulled out of the ABM treaty in 2002.
Now, 16 years later, they are done.
Russia has rearmed with new weapons that have rendered the ABM treaty entirely irrelevant.
The ABM treaty was about ballistic missiles—once that are propelled by rockets that boost the missile to close to escape velocity.
After that the missile follows a ballistic trajectory—just like an artillery shell or a bullet.
That makes its path easy to calculate and the missile easy to intercept.
The US missile defense systems rely on the ability to see the missile on radar, calculate its position, direction and velocity, and to launch a missile in response in such a way that the two trajectories intersect.
When they cross, the interceptor missile is detonated, knocking out the attacking missile.
None of the new Russian weapons follow ballistic trajectories.
The new Sarmat is an ICBM minus the “B”—it maneuvers throughout its flight path and can fly through the atmosphere rather than popping up above it.
It has a short boost phase, making it difficult to intercept after launch.
It has the range to fly arbitrary paths around the planet—over the south pole, for instance—to reach any point on Earth.
And it carries multiple maneuverable hypersonic nuclear-armed reentry vehicles which no existing or planned missile defense system can intercept.
Among other new weapons unveiled two days ago was a nuclear-powered cruise missile which has virtually unlimited range and goes faster than Mach 10.
And a nuclear-powered drone submarine which can descend to much larger depths than any existing submarine and moves faster than any existing vessel.
There was also a mobile laser cannon in the show, of which very little is known, but they are likely to come in handy when it comes to frying military satellites.
All of these are based on physical principles that have never been used before.
All of these have passed testing and are going into production; one of them is already being used on active combat duty in the Russian armed forces.
The Russians are now duly proud of their scientists, engineers and soldiers.
Their country is safe again; Americans have been stopped in their tracks, their new Nuclear Posture now looking like a severe case of lordosis.
This sort of pride is more important than it would seem.
Advanced nuclear weapons systems are a bit like secondary sexual characteristics of animals: like the peacock’s tail or the deer’s antlers or the lion’s mane, they are indicative of the health and vigor of a specimen that has plenty of spare energy to expend on showy accessories.
In order to be able to field a hypersonic nuclear-powered cruise missile with unlimited range, a country has to have a healthy scientific community.
This means lots of high-powered engineers, a highly trained professional military and a competent security establishment that can keep the whole thing secret, along with an industrial economy powerful and diverse enough to supply all of the necessary materials, processes and components with zero reliance on imports. Now that the arms race is over, this new confidence and competence can be turned to civilian purposes.
So far, the Western reaction to Putin’s speech has closely followed the illogic of dreams which Sigmund Freud explained using the following joke:
1. I never borrowed a kettle from you
2. I returned it to you unbroken
3. It was already broken when I borrowed it from you.
A more common example is a child’s excuse for not having done her homework: I lost it; my dog ate it; I didn’t know it was assigned.
In this case, Western commentators have offered us the following:
1. There are no such weapons; Putin is bluffing
2. These weapons exist but they don’t really work
3. These weapons work and this is the beginning of a new nuclear arms race
Taking these one at a time:
1. Putin is not known to bluff; he is known for doing exactly what he says he will do. He announced that Russia will deliver an asymmetric response to the US pulling out of the ABM treaty; and now it has.
2. “They don’t work”. These weapons are a continuation of developments that already existed in the USSR 30 years ago but had been mothballed until 2002. What has changed since then was the development of new materials, which make it possible to build vehicles that fly at above Mach 10, with their skin heating up to 2000ºC, and, of course, dramatic improvements in microelectronics, communications and artificial intelligence. Putin’s statement that the new weapons systems are going into production is an order: they are going into production.
3. “It’s all political talk”. Most of Putin’s speech wasn’t about military matters at all. It was about such things as pay increases, roads, hospitals and clinics, kindergartens, nurseries, boosting retirements, providing housing to young families, streamlining the regulation of small businesses, etc. That is the focus of the Russian government for the next six years: dramatically improving the standard of living of the population. The military problem has already been resolved, the arms race has been won, and Russia’s defense budget is being reduced, not increased.
Another line of thought in the West was that Putin unveiled these new weapons, which have been in development for 16 years at least, as part of his reelection campaign (the vote is on March 18).
This is absurd.
Putin is assured of victory because the vast majority of Russians approve of his leadership.
The elections have been about jockeying for a second place position between the Liberal Democrats, led by the old war horse Vladimir Zhirinovsky, and the Communists.
The Communists have nominated a non-communist oligarch businessman Pavel Grudinin, who has promptly disqualified himself by failing to disclose foreign bank accounts and other improprieties and now appears to have gone into hiding.
Thus, the Communists, who were previously slated for second place, have burned themselves down and Zhirinovsky will probably come in second.
If Americans don’t like Putin, then they definitely wouldn’t like Zhirinovsky.
Putin is practical and ambivalent about “our Western partners,” as he likes to call them.
Zhirinovsky, on the other hand, is rather revenge-minded, and seems to want to inflict pain on them.
At the same time, there is now a committee, composed of very serious-looking men and women, who are charged with monitoring and thwarting American meddling in Russian politics.
It seems unlikely that the CIA, the US State Department and the usual culprits will be able to get away with much in Russia.
The age of color revolutions is over, and the regime change train has sailed… all the way back to Washington, where Trump stands a chance of getting dethroned Ukrainian-style.
Another way to look at the Western reaction to Russia’s new weapons is using Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’s stages of grief.
We already saw denial (Putin is bluffing; weapons don’t work) and the start of anger (new arms race).
We should expect a bit more anger before moving on to bargaining (you can have the Ukraine if you stop building Sarmat).
Once the response comes back (“You broke the Ukraine; you pay to get it fixed”) we move on to depression (“The Russians just don’t love us any more!”) and, finally, acceptance.
Once the stage of acceptance is reached, here is what the Americans can usefully do in response to Russia’s new weapons systems.
First of all, Americans can scrap their ABM systems because they are now useless.
Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu had this to say about it:
«То, что сегодня создаётся в Польше и Румынии, создаётся на Аляске и предполагается к созданию в Южной Корее и Японии — этот "зонтик" противоракетной обороны, получается, "дырявый". И не знаю, зачем за такие деньги теперь этот "зонтик" им приобретать.»
[“What is being built in Poland and Romania, and in Alaska, and is planned in South Korea and Japan—this missile defense ‘umbrella’—turns out to be riddled with holes. I don’t know why they should now buy this ‘umbrella’ for so much money.”]
Secondly, Americans can scrap their aircraft carrier fleet.
All it’s useful now for now is threatening defenseless nations, but there are much cheaper ways to threaten defenseless nations.
If Americans are still planning to use them to dominate sea lanes and control world trade…
…then the existence of hypersonic cruise missiles with unlimited range and drone submarines that can lurk at great ocean depths for years…
…make the world’s oceans off-limits for American navy’s battle groups…
…in the event of any major (non-nuclear) escalation…
…because now Russia can destroy them from an arbitrary distance without putting any of their assets or personnel at risk.
Lastly, Americans can pull out of NATO, which has now been shown to be completely useless, dismantle their thousand military bases around the world, and repatriate the troops stationed there.
It’s not as if, in light of these new developments, American security guarantees are going to be worth much to anyone, and America’s “allies” will be quick to realize that.
As far as Russian security guarantees, there is a lot on offer:
…unlike the US, which is increasingly seen as a rogue state…
…and an ineffectual and blundering one at that…
…Russia has been scrupulous in adhering to its international agreements and international law.
In developing and deploying its new weapons systems, Russia has not violated any international agreements, treaties or laws.
And Russia has no aggressive plans towards anyone except terrorists.
As Putin put it during his speech,
«Мы ни на кого не собираемся нападать и что-то отнимать. У нас у самих всё есть.»
[“We are not planning to attack anyone or take over anywhere. We have everything we need.”]
I hope that the US doesn’t plan to attack anyone either, because, given its recent history, this won’t work.
Threatening the whole planet and forcing it to use the US dollar in international trade …
…and destroying countries, such as Iraq and Libya, when they refuse…
… running huge trade deficits with virtually the entire world…
…and forcing reserve banks around the world to buy up US government debt…
… leveraging that debt to run up colossal budget deficits…
…now around a trillion dollars a year…
… and robbing the entire planet by printing money…
…and spending it on various corrupt schemes…
…that, my friends, has been America’s business plan since around the 1970s.
And it is unraveling before our eyes.
I have the audacity to hope that the dismantling of the American Empire will proceed as copacetically as the dismantling of the Soviet Empire did.
(This is not to say that it won’t be humiliating or impoverishing, or that it won’t be accompanied by a huge increase in morbidity and mortality.)
One of my greatest fears over the past decade was that Russia wouldn’t take the US and NATO seriously enough and just try to wait them out.
After all, what is there to really to fear from a nation that has over a 100 trillion dollars in unfunded entitlements…
… that’s full of opioid addicts…
… with 100 million working-age people permanently out of work…
… with decrepit infrastructure and poisoned national politics?
And as far as NATO, there is, of course, Germany, which is busy rewriting “Deutschland, Deutschland, über alles” to be gender-neutral.
What are they supposed to do next?
March on Moscow under a rainbow banner and hope that the Russians die laughing?
Oh, and there’s also NATO’s largest Eurasian asset, Turkey, which is currently busy slaughtering America’s Kurdish assets in Northern Syria.
But simply waiting them out would have been a gamble, because in its death throes the American Empire could lashout in unpredictable ways.
I am glad that Russia chose not to gamble with its national security.
Now that the US has been safely checkmated using the new Russian weapons systems, I feel that the world is in a much better place.
If you like peace, then it seems like your best option is to also like nukes—the best ones possible, ones against which no deterrent exists, and wielded by peaceful, law-abiding nations that have no evil designs on the rest of the planet.
The USA is Cracking Up Just Like the USSR Did – In Fact, They Are Related
“You see, ideology is a product of intellectuals, and intellectuals tend to be idiots, … We are born equipped with MonkeyBrain 2.0 that can handle abstraction only too well but always fails when attempting to reconcile it with messy physical reality.”
“And so it would be a grave error to think that, just because communist ideology is idiotic, capitalist ideology is any less so.”
This article from our archives was first published on RI in November 2017. Dmitry OrlovSat, Mar 27 2021|1440 words 27,999Comments
Today is the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution of 1917. It caused a lot of death and destruction, which I won’t go into because you can read all about it elsewhere. It also caused a great outpouring of new art, literature, architecture and culture in general, putting the previously somewhat stodgy Russia securely in the world’s avant-garde.
It also resulted in a tremendous surge of industrialization, rapidly transforming a previously mostly agrarian, though gradually industrializing nation into a global industrial powerhouse (at great human cost).
But perhaps most importantly, the revolution destroyed all of the previously dominant institutions of privilege based on heredity, class and wealth and replaced them with an egalitarian social model centered on the working class.
And it demonstrated (as much through propaganda as by actual example) how this new model was more competitive: while the West wallowed in the Great Depression, the USSR surged ahead both economically and socially.
For all of its many failings, the USSR did serve as a shining city on the hill to the downtrodden millions around the world, including in the USA, fermenting rebellion, so that even there the one-percent ownership class eventually had to stop and think.
Reluctantly, they decided to stop trying to destroy organized labor movements, introduced state old-age pensions (misnamed “Social Security”) and declared a euphemistic “war on poverty.”
And with that a “middle class” was created—so called because it was literally in the middle, having risen out of poverty but still safely walled off from the one-percent ownership class.
But as we shall see this effect was temporary.
Eventually the USSR evaporated, as artificial, synthetic political entities often do.
The reasons for this disappearing act are too numerous to mention, but one of the main ones was that the Soviet political elite turned itself into a much-hated, privileged caste, and then failed to reproduce, turning into a moribund gerontocracy.
MM Comment. Sounds like the USA today, eh?
When the old cadres finally started dying out, the new generation that came in included plenty of traitors who did their best to destroy the system and grab a piece for themselves.
This effect was plain to see, but was it the root cause?
When a complex system collapses, every part of it is touched to one extent or another, and it becomes impossible to say which one played the key role in precipitating the collapse.
With the USSR gone, the owners of the USA had no one to compete against and were no longer under any sort of pressure to maintain the illusion of an equitable and egalitarian society.
Instead, they concentrated on two projects, one [1] ideological, the other [2] economic.
[1] The ideological project involved wrecking what was left of the USSR to the greatest extent possible. And to do so in order to paint a convincing picture of the horrible consequences of communism or socialism. It’s intention was to herd everyone toward wholeheartedly embracing unfettered capitalism.
[2] The economic project involved eviscerating the American middle class—a process that by now has largely run its course.
Since the creation of the middle class was a multigenerational project, so is its destruction.
But the effects of this process on society are already plain to see: there is an overhang of still relatively well-off retirees while their children and grandchildren have greatly diminished economic and social prospects.
Meanwhile, the hastily erected scaffolding that created the appearance of egalitarianism has been knocked out.
Organized labor is all but finished.
Borders have been thrown open to foreign labor and cheap imports.
Entry into the middle class has been blocked through a variety of measures.
These measures include [1] the relentless dumbing down of public education, [2] the equally relentless overpricing of higher education, [3] the health care extortion scheme, [4] the rationing of justice based on wealth and privilege, [5] wealth confiscation using a succession of artificial real estate market bubbles and so on.
Overall, the former middle class is being whittled down to nothing the same way that the Chinese “coolies” were dealt with once the railroads had been built…
…don’t feed them much but give them plenty of opium (now being grown in Afghanistan under the watchful eye of Western troops).
To sum it up: if you aren’t happy with the way things are going in the US, you have a choice.
You can of course blame Russia and / or China.
Or you can blame your owners—your one percent—who have owned you ever since the King of England appointed the Lords Proprietors.
Within Russia itself the commemoration of the October Revolution is no longer a public holiday.
But there was a sort of commemoration held on the vast Palace Square in St. Petersburg, which I attended with my five-year-old son on my shoulders.
It was his first time in a crowd of 35,000, and he was duly impressed.
It was a light-and-sound extravaganza consisting of two shows which played in alternation.
On the vast semicircular facade of the General Staff building was broadcast a multimedia retrospective of the October Revolution that included the reading of historical documents (such as the abdication of Nicholas II) and works of poetry.
It ended on an upbeat note—yes, many horrible events took place, but Russia is now reborn—with the General Staff’s façade painted in the Russian tricolor.
A different show was presented on the façade of the Winter Palace across the square.
Here, multimedia artists from across Europe (including France, Italy, Spain and Poland) used projected light to decorate and transform the palace to music that sung praises to the beauty of St. Petersburg.
The audience was invited to use their phones to vote for the best one.
After the show, as we filtered out of the Palace Square and walked home along the Palace Embankment, my five-year-old son asked some good questions that he had formulated while watching the show.
“Did a lot of people die?” (Yes.)
“But Russia was then and is now?” (Yes, Russia has been around for a 1000 years and will probably be around for 1000 years more.)
“Why do people have to die?” (Because otherwise we we would be full-up with useless old people and there wouldn’t be enough room for young people.)
And then the obvious follow-up: “Why are we full-up with useless old people anyway?” (???)
And finally: “Why do we bury dead people?” (Because they smell really bad.) “Ah…”
A rather unsentimental youth, wouldn’t you say?
But he was only one of the thousands of quite similar-minded ones who were in attendance that day, riding on their fathers’ shoulders or marching along.
Welcome to Russia…
One of the reasons why the USSR failed was because the idiocy of the ideology of Soviet communism became too painful to tolerate.
In a sense, this was inevitable.
You see, ideology is a product of intellectuals, and intellectuals tend to be idiots, making “intellectual idiocy” something of an oxymoron.
We are born equipped with MonkeyBrain 2.0 that can handle abstraction only too well but always fails when attempting to reconcile it with messy physical reality.
And so it would be a grave error to think that, just because communist ideology is idiotic, capitalist ideology is any less so.
By now most thinking people realize that capitalism has failed just has communism had.
We can only hope that one day the US will do with its capitalist legacy what Russia has done with its communist one: turn it into a festive art installation that both children and adults can enjoy.
Dear America – You Are Delusional, and Failing at Everything You Undertake
Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan, Russia sanctions – “All of these harebrained schemes, hatched in Washington, have backfired grandly.”
“Those who have pushed for them are now reduced to just two face-saving maneuvers: blaming their political opponents; and blaming Russia. And these two maneuvers are set to backfire as well.”
This article from our archives was first published on RI in November 2017. Dmitry OrlovMon, Mar 22 2021|1610 words 46,492Comments
Back in the days when I was still trying to do the corporate thing, I regularly found myself in a bit of a tight spot simply by failing to keep my mouth shut.
I seem to carry some sort of gene that makes me naturally irrepressible.
I can keep my mouth shut for only so long before I have to blurt out what I really think, and in a corporate setting, where thinking isn’t really allowed, this causes no end of trouble.
It didn’t matter that I often turned out to be right.
It didn’t matter what I thought; it only mattered that I thought.
American involvement in the middle-eastern project is now limited to Putin’s sporadic courtesy calls to Trump, to keep him updated.
Of all the thoughts you aren’t allowed to think, perhaps the most offensive one is adequately expressed by a single short phrase: “That’s not gonna work.”
Suppose there is a meeting to unveil a great new initiative, with PowerPoint presentations complete with fancy graphics, org charts, timelines, proposed budgets, yadda-yadda, and everything is going great until this curmudgeonly Russian opens his mouth and says…
“That’s not gonna work.”
And when it is patiently explained to him (doing one’s best to hide one’s extreme irritation) that it absolutely has to work because Senior Management would like it to…
… that furthermore it is his job to make it work and that failure is not an option…
… he opens his mouth again and says “That’s not gonna work either.”
And then it’s time to avoid acting flustered while ignoring him and to think up some face-saving excuse to adjourn the meeting early and regroup.
I lasted for as long as I did in that world because once in a while I would instead say “Sure, that’ll work, let’s do it.”
And then, sure enough, it did work, the company had a banner year or two, with lots of bonuses and atta-boy (and atta-girl) certificates handed out to those not at all responsible for any of it.
Flushed with victory, they, in turn, would think up more harebrained schemes for me to rain on, and the cycle would repeat.
America seems to be blissfully unaware of how it comes across to the rest of the world
It is probably one of the main saving graces of corporations that they do sometimes (mainly by mistake) allow some thought to leak through. The mistake in question is a staffing error in promoting those constitutionally incapable of keeping their mouths shut or shutting off their brains. Such errors create chinks in the monolithic phalanxes of corporate yes-men and yes-women.
Trump is too old to be a reformer or a revolutionary. He is of an age when men are generally mostly concerned about the quantity and consistency of their stool and how it interacts with their enlarged prostates.
The likelihood of such mistakes increases with the agony of defeat, which causes attrition among the ranks of qualified yes-sayers, creating holes that can only be plugged by promoting a few non-yes-sayers.
However, this only seems to work in the smaller, hungrier corporations; the larger, better-fed ones seem to be able to avoid experiencing the agony of defeat for a very long time by moving the goal posts, outlawing any discussion of said defeat or other similar tactics.
Eventually the entire organization goes over the cliff, but by then it is of no benefit to anyone to attempt to inform them of their folly.
It is much the same with governments, except here the situation is even worse.
While the smaller, hungrier governments, and those blessed with a fresh institutional memory of extreme pain, do not have the luxury of lying to themselves.
The larger political agglomerations—the USSR, the EU, the USA—have the ability to keep themselves completely immunized against the truth for historically significant periods of time.
The USSR clung to the fiction of great socialist progress even when it was clear to all that the cupboard was bare and there were rats gnawing through the rafters.
The EU has been able to ignore the fact that its entire scheme is one of enriching Germany while impoverishing and depopulating eastern and southern Europe, neglecting the interests of the native populations throughout.
And the amount of self-delusion that is still currently in effect in the USA makes it a rather large subject.
Regardless of how great the lies are and how forcefully they are defended, a moment always comes when the phalanx of truth-blocking yes-men and yes-women stops marching, turns and runs.
This event results in a tremendous loss of face and confidence for all involved.
It is the crisis of confidence, more than anything else, that precipitates the going-off-a-cliff phenomenon that we could so readily observe in the collapse of the USSR in the early 1990s.
I have a very strong hunch that similar cliff-diving exercises are coming up for the EU and the USA.
But for the time being I am just another disembodied voice on the internet, watching from the sidelines and periodically saying the unfashionable thing, which is: “This isn’t gonna work.”
However, I’ve said this a number of times over the years, on the record and more or less forcefully, and I feel vindicated most of the time.
Internationally, for example:
• Carving the Ukraine away from Russia, having it join the EU and NATO and building a NATO naval base in Crimea “wasn’t gonna work.” The Ukraine is a part of Russia, the Ukrainians are Russian, and the Ukrainian ethnic identity is a Bolshevik concoction. Look for a reversion to norm in a decade or two.
• Destroying and partitioning Syria with the help of Wahhabi extremists and foreign mercenaries supported by the US, Saudi Arabia and Israel while Russia, Iran, Turkey and China stand idly by “wasn’t gonna work”; and so it hasn’t.
• Giving Afghanistan “freedom and democracy” and turning it into a stable pro-Western regime with the help of invading NATO troops “wasn’t gonna work,” and hasn’t. Western involvement in Afghanistan can go on, but the results it can achieve are limited to further enhancing the heroin trade.
• Destroying the Russian economy using sanctions “wasn’t gonna work,” and hasn’t. The sanctions have helped Russia regroup internally and achieve a great deal of self-sufficiency in energy production and other forms of technology, in food and in numerous other sectors.
All of these harebrained schemes, hatched in Washington, have backfired grandly. Those who have pushed for them are now reduced to just two face-saving maneuvers: blaming their political opponents; and blaming Russia. And these two maneuvers are set to backfire as well.
In the meantime, the world isn’t waiting for the US to shake itself out of its stupor.
The fulcrum of American influence in the Middle East is Saudi Arabia and the petrodollar. In turn, Saudi Arabia rests on three pillars: the Saudi monarchy, Wahhabi Islam and the petrodollar.
As I write this, the next king, Mohammed bin Salman, is busy hacking away at all three: robbing, imprisoning and torturing his fellow-princes, working to replace the Wahhabi clerics with moderate ones and embracing the petro-yuan instead of the now very tired petrodollar.
Not that any of these three pillars were in good shape in any case: the defeat of ISIS in Syria was a defeat for the Saudi monarchy which supported it, for the Wahhabi clerics who inspired it and, consequently, for the petrodollar as well, because Saudi Arabia was until now its greatest defender.
The new guarantors of peace in the region are Russia, Iran and Turkey, with China watching carefully in the wings. American involvement in the middle-eastern project is now limited to Putin’s sporadic courtesy calls to Trump, to keep him updated.
And so here’s my latest prediction: Trump’s goal of “making America great” “isn’t gonna work” either.
The country is so far gone that just taking the first step—of allowing the truth of its condition to leak through the media filters—will undermine public confidence to such an extent that a subsequent cliff-dive will become unavoidable.
It’s a nice slogan as slogans go, but Trump is too old to be a reformer or a revolutionary. He is of an age when men are generally mostly concerned about the quantity and consistency of their stool and how it interacts with their enlarged prostates.
Perhaps he will succeed in making America great… big piles of feces, but I wouldn’t expect much more than that.
MM Conclusion
Of course, these articles were written by a Russian inside the USA, and his observations at times seem dated. Things have certainly advanced in the last year or so. All of the articles here pre-dates the Coronavirus, the Biden Presidency, and the March 2021 meeting in Anchorage. they are also Russian centric.
Taken as a whole, we can see other elements in the global struggle that is is bracing for the collapse of America. And in hindsight it looks like the world is trying to let the United States suffer slowly and calmly. Some, like Dmitry here, argue that it is best to put the thrashing wounded old animal to bed with a short quick bullet to the head, but I remain guarded in regards to that.
There could well be a considerable amount of collateral damage.
Keep in mind that things are now moving into place and alliances and black operations forming. The USA is doing it’s best to entangle the rest of the world with it’s madness, like a schizophrenic lunatic who cannot see the absurdity of their actions, and the rest of the would holding a “clothespin to their noses” and trying to say out of arm’s reach. With the sole exception of Australia for reasons that are not disclosed publicly lest the government leaderships be hung from the rafters.
In any event this is pretty good stuff, and I do hope that you all enjoyed it.
Let this stuff sit a spell in the back of your mind. I have a follow up article that I will release later on this week concerning exactly where we are, precisely, in regards to the Fourth Turning.
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
This article / post is going to be all over the place. The theme behind it is that the largest and most powerful nation of the planet is thrashing about and imploding, and we all are watching it happen in real time.
We will cover various aspects through some other articles that I have dredged up from the internet. The first article discusses how China and Russia now view the Untied States and it is not flattering. In fact, both are accusing the United States fro waging wars, assassinations, and attacks against them. From the NGO “color revolutions”, to the bio-weapons carpet bombing of China, to the black operations in Russia, both nations are starting to get really irritated.
Diplomacy is a way that nations work and interact with each other. To fail in diplomacy is to risk war.
With this understood, just how capable is the United States in dealing with other nations on a diplomatic level?
American Diplomats Are Outclassed
“Butting Heads with China and Russia” with a sub heading of “American Diplomats Are Outclassed” written by Philip Giraldi on May 13, 2021. Edited to fit this venue, all credit to the author, and the usual disclaimers retain.
With the exception of the impending departure of U.S. and NATO forces from Afghanistan, if it occurs, the White House seems to prefer to use aggression to deter adversaries rather than finesse.
The recent exchanges between Secretary of State Tony Blinken and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi at a meeting in Alaska demonstrate how Beijing has a clear view of its interests which Washington seems to lack.
Blinken initiated the acrimonious exchange when he cited…
“deep concerns with actions by China, including in Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Taiwan, cyber attacks on the United States, economic coercion toward our allies. Each of these actions threaten the rules-based order that maintains global stability. That’s why they’re not merely internal matters, and why we feel an obligation to raise these issues here today.”
He then threatened …
“I said that the United States relationship with China will be competitive where it should be, collaborative where it can be, adversarial where it must be”
“I’m hearing deep satisfaction that the United States is back, that we’re reengaged with our allies and partners. I’m also hearing deep concern about some of the actions your government is taking.”
The Chinese Foreign Minister responded sharply, rejecting U.S. suggestions that it has a right to interfere in another country’s domestic policies,
“I think we thought too well of the United States, we thought that the U.S. side will follow the necessary diplomatic protocols.
The United States does not have the qualification to say that it wants to speak to China from a position of strength.
We believe that it is important for the United States to change its own image, and to stop advancing its own democracy in the rest of the world.”
In another more recent interview Blinken has accused the Chinese of acting “more aggressively abroad” while President Biden has claimed that Beijing has a plan to replace America as the world’s leading economic and military power.
U.S. United Nations envoy Linda Thomas-Greenfield has also delivered the same message that Washington is preparing to take no prisoners, pledging to push back against what she called China’s “authoritarian agenda” through the various agencies that make up the UN bureaucracy.
Indeed, the United States seems trapped in its own rhetoric, finding itself in the middle of a situation with China and Taiwan where warnings that Beijing is preparing to use force to recover its former province leave Washington with few options to support a de facto ally.
Peter Beinart in a recent op-ed observes how the White House has been incrementally increasing its diplomatic ties with Taiwan even as it both declares itself “rock solid” on defending while also maintaining “strategic ambiguity.”
China understands its interests while the U.S. continues to be bewildered by Beijing’s successful building of trade alliances worldwide.
Meanwhile Russian President Vladimir Putin, reputedly an excellent chess player, is able to think about genuine issues in three dimensions and is always at least four moves ahead of where Biden and his advisers are at any time.
Biden public and video appearances frequently seem to be improvisations as he goes along guided by his teleprompter while Putin is able to explain issues clearly, apparently even in English.
A large part of Biden’s problem vis-à-vis both China and Russia is that he has inherited a U.S. Establishment view of foreign and national security policy options.
It is based on three basic principles.
First, that America is the only superpower and can either ignore or comfortably overcome the objections of other nations to what it is doing.
Second, an all-powerful and fully resourced United States can apply “extreme pressure” to recalcitrant foreign governments and those regimes will eventually submit and comply with Washington’s wishes.
And third, America has a widely accepted leadership role of the so-called “free world” which will mean that any decision made in Washington will immediately be endorsed by a large number of other nations, giving legitimacy to U.S. actions worldwide.
What Joe Biden actually thinks is, of course, unknown though he has a history of reflexively supporting an assertive and even belligerent foreign policy during his many years in Congress.
Kamala Harris, who many believe will be succeeding Biden before too long, appears to have no definitive views at all beyond the usual Democratic Party cant of spreading “democracy” and being strong on Israel.
That suggests that the real shaping of policy is coming from the apparatchik and donor levels in the party.
These include the neocon-lite Zionist triumvirate at the State Department consisting of Tony Blinken, Wendy Sherman and Victoria Kagan.
As well as the upper-level bureaucracies at the Pentagon and intelligence agencies.
All of which all support an assertive and also interventionist foreign policy to keep Americans “safe” while also increasing their budgets annually.
Such thinking leaves little room for genuine national interests to surface.
Biden’s Secretary of State Tony Blinken is, for example, the perfect conformist bureaucrat, shaping his own views around established thinking and creating caveats to provide the Democratic Party leadership with some, though limited, options.
Witness for example the current White House attitude towards Iran, which is regarded, along with Russia, as a permanent enemy of the United States.
President Biden has expressed his interest in renegotiating a non-nuclear proliferation treaty with the Iranians, now being discussed by diplomats without direct contact in Austria.
But Blinken undercuts that intention by wrapping the talks in with other issues that are intended to satisfy the Israelis and their friends in Congress that will make progress unlikely if not impossible.
They include eliminating Iran’s alleged role as a regional trouble maker and also ending the ballistic missile development programs currently engaged in by the regime.
The downside to all of this is that having a multilateral agreement to limit Iranian enhancement of uranium up to a bomb-making level is very much in the U.S. interest, but it appears to be secondary to other politically motivated side discussions which will derail the process.
A foreign and national security policy based on political dogma rather than genuine interests can obviously generate some disconnects.
Which is unlike either Russia or China, where red-lines and national interests are clearly understood and acted upon.
To cite yet another dangerous example of playing with fire that one is witnessing in Eastern Europe, the simple understanding that for Russia Belarus and Ukraine are front-line states.
States that could pose existential threats to Moscow if they were to move closer to the west and join NATO appears to be lacking.
The U.S. prefers to stand the question on its head and claims that the real issue is “spreading democracy,” which it is not.
Policy makers in Washington might consider what Washington would likely do if Mexico and Canada were to be threatened with foreign interference that might bring about their joining a military alliance hostile to the United States.
The American Establishment-driven foreign policy thinking clearly has trouble in accommodating the obvious understanding that the U.S. actually becomes more vulnerable…
…every time it interferes in China’s trade practices …
…or gives the green light for alliances like NATO to expand.
Expansion of the national security policy components often brings in another client state. And it is a client state that rarely has anything whatsoever to contribute and which, on the contrary, becomes a burden.
This client state ends up relying for their own security on overstretched American military resources.
In return, the expansion itself guarantees that a hostile and genuinely threatened Russia will take steps of its own to counter what it sees as a potential grave threat to its own security and national identity.
Quite simply, America’s national security should dictate that the United States treat China as a competitor rather than an enemy…
…while also disengaging from support and encouragement of Ukraine’s irredentist ambitions as quickly as possible.
A recent shipment of offensive weapons to Kiev should become the last such initiative and speeches by American politicians pledging “unwavering support” for Ukraine should be considered unacceptable.
Washington should meanwhile reject any clandestine attempts to overthrow Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus and make clear to Vladimir Putin that it will not support any NATO expansion into Eastern Europe…
… which admittedly was a pledge already made when the Soviet Union collapsed that was subsequently ignored by President Bill Clinton.
Thanks to Bill, America is now obligated to defend not only Western Europe but also Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, North Macedonia, the Baltic States and tiny little Montenegro.
In short, United State engagement in complicated overseas quarrels should be limited to areas where genuine vital interests are at stake.
In fact, by that standard one should begin to emphasize the security impact of the crisis on America’s southern border, which has a completely different genesis and is being driven by politics.
As British statesman Lord Palmerston said in 1848 …
“We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.”
The United States government would be very wise to be guided by that advice.
And Russia and China are taking notice and standing up to the US Bully
This article goes on, and on as many do. But please pay attention to the interesting dynamic here.
America, the United States, is out of control. There is a deeply embedded oligarchy group that is running amok and pushing all the buttons that are saying “WE DEMAND WAR!” And there is nothing, absolutely nothing that can stop them, control them, or mitigate them. They are out of control.
And the rest of the world are taking notice and deciding to work together, far away outside the clutches of the American military empire.
So in order to reason with these psychopathic entities, both the Soviet Union and China have established “red-lines” that will result in ferocious military action.
All in all, I think that both Russia and China have been very tolerant so far. But they cannot keep this situation stable for long. The United States is flailing about wildly with no control. It’s only a matter of time when things will go from dangerous to…
…death.
Consider this article, and when you do, keep in mind how the rest of the world view the insanity that is now the United States.
Only indirectly, or via a delightful metaphor, Kipling’s Jungle Book. Foreign policy was addressed only at the end, almost as an afterthought.
For the best part of an hour and a half, Putin concentrated on domestic issues, detailing a series of policies that amount to the Russian state helping those in need – low income families, children, single mothers, young professionals, the underprivileged – with, for instance, free health checks all the way to the possibility of an universal income in the near future.
Of course he would also need to address the current, highly volatile state of international relations.
The concise manner he chose to do it, counter-acting the prevailing Russophobia in the Atlanticist sphere, was quite striking.
First, the essentials.
Russia’s policy…
“is to ensure peace and security for the well-being of our citizens and for the stable development of our country.”
Yet if …
“someone does not want to ...
...engage in dialogue...
... but chooses an egoistic and arrogant tone, Russia will always find a way to stand up for its position.”
He singled out …
“the practice of politically motivated, illegal economic sanctions”
…to connect it to…
“something much more dangerous”,
…and actually rendered invisible in the Western narrative:
“the recent attempt to organize a coup d’etat in Belarus and the assassination of that country’s president.”
Putin made sure to stress,
“all boundaries have been crossed”.
The plot to kill Lukashenko was unveiled by Russian and Belarusian intel – which detained several bad actors…
…who were backed, by who else, yes, the US intel.
The US State Department predictably denied any involvement.
Putin:
“It is worth pointing to the confessions of the detained participants in the conspiracy...
...that a blockade of Minsk was being prepared...
... including its city infrastructure and communications, the complete shutdown of the entire power grid of the Belarusian capital.
This, incidentally means preparations for a massive cyber-attack.”
And that leads to a very uncomfortable truth:
“Apparently, it’s not for no reason that our Western colleagues have stubbornly rejected numerous proposals by the Russian side to establish an international dialogue in the field of information and cyber-security.”
“Asymmetric, swift and harsh”
Putin remarked how to…
“attack Russia”
…has become…
“a sport, a new sport, who makes the loudest statements.”
And then he went full Kipling:
“Russia is attacked here and there for no reason.
And of course, all sorts of petty Tabaquis [jackals] are running around like Tabaqui ran around Shere Khan [the tiger]
– everything is like in Kipling’s book –
...howling along and ready to serve their sovereign. Kipling was a great writer”.
The – layered – metaphor is even more startling as it echoes the late 19th century geopolitical Great Game between the British and Russian empires, of which Kipling was a protagonist.
Once again Putin had to stress that…
"we really don’t want to burn any bridges.
But if someone perceives our good intentions as indifference or weakness and intends to burn those bridges completely or even blow them up, he should know that Russia’s response will be asymmetric, swift and harsh”.
So here’s the new law of the geopolitical jungle – backed by Mr. Iskander, Mr. Kalibr, Mr. Avangard, Mr. Peresvet, Mr. Khinzal, Mr. Sarmat, Mr. Zircon and other well-respected gentlemen, hypersonic and otherwise, later complimented on the record.
Those who poke the Bear to the point of threatening …
“the fundamental interests of our security will regret what has been done, as they have regretted nothing for a very long time.”
All now… now coalesce into a stark new reality: the era of a unilateral Leviathan imposing its iron will is over.
The era of the Powerful Leviathan United States imposing it’s will is over.
For those Russophobes who still haven’t got the message, a cool, calm and collected Putin was compelled to add…
"clearly, we have enough patience, responsibility, professionalism, self-confidence, self-assurance in the correctness of our position...
... and common sense when it comes to making any decisions.
But I hope that no one will think about crossing Russia’s so-called red lines.
And where they run, we determine ourselves in each specific case.”
Back to realpolitik, Putin once again had to stress the…
“special responsibility”
of the
“five nuclear states”
to seriously discuss
“issues related to strategic armament”.
It’s an open question whether the Biden-Harris administration…
… behind which stand a toxic cocktail of neo-cons and humanitarian imperialists…
… will agree.
Putin:
“The goal of such negotiations could be to create an environment of conflict-free coexistence...
... based on equal security, covering not only strategic weapons such as intercontinental ballistic missiles, heavy bombers and submarines, but also...
... I would like to emphasize...
... all offensive and defensive systems capable of solving strategic tasks, regardless of their equipment.”
As much as Xi’s address to the Boao forum was mostly directed to the Global South, Putin highlighted how
“we are expanding contacts with our closest partners in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the BRICS, the Commonwealth of Independent States and the allies of the Collective Security Treaty Organization”,
and extolled
“joint projects in the framework of the Eurasian Economic Union”,
billed as
“practical tools for solving the problems of national development.”
In a nutshell: integration in effect, following the Russian concept of a
… actually the combo telling him what to do, complete with earpiece and teleprompter…
… promising Ukraine’s President Zelensky that Washington would …
“take measures”
…to support Kiev’s wishful thinking of retaking Donbass and Crimea.
There are several eyebrow-raising issues with this EO.
It denies, de facto, to any Russian national the full rights to their US property.
Any US resident may be accused of being a Russian agent engaged in undermining US security.
A sub-sub paragraph (C), detailing “actions or policies that undermine democratic processes or institutions in the United States or abroad”, is vague enough to be used to eliminate any journalism that supports Russia’s positions in international affairs.
Purchases of Russian OFZ bonds have been sanctioned.
As well as one of the companies involved in the production of the Sputnik V vaccine.
Yet the icing on this sanction cake may well be that from now on all Russian citizens, including dual citizens, may be barred from entering US territory except via a rare special authorization on top of the ordinary visa.
Which is very similar to the EO that made the same demands on Chinese citizenry that have toes to the Chinese government.
The Russian paper Vedomosti has noted that in such paranoid atmosphere the risks for large companies such as Yandex or Kaspersky Lab are significantly increasing.
Still, these sanctions have not been met with surprise in Moscow.
The worst is yet to come, according to Beltway insiders: two packages of sanctions against Nord Stream 2 already approved by the US Department of Justice.
The crucial point is that this EO de facto places anyone reporting on Russia’s political positions as potentially threatening
“American democracy”.
As top political analyst Alastair Crooke has remarked, this is a
“procedure usually reserved for citizens of enemy states during times of war”.
Crooke adds,
“US hawks are upping the ante fiercely against Moscow. Tensions and rhetoric are skirting wartime levels.”
It’s an open question whether Putin’s State of the Nation will be seriously examined by the toxic lunatic combo of neocons and humanitarian imperialists bent on simultaneously harassing Russia and China.
But the fact is something extraordinary has already started to happen: a “de-escalation” of sorts.
Even before Putin’s address, Kiev, NATO and the Pentagon apparently got the message implicit in Russia moving two armies, massive artillery batteries and airborne divisions to the borders of Donbass and to Crimea…
… not to mention top naval assets moved from the Caspian to the Black Sea.
NATO could not even dream of matching that.
Facts on different grounds speak volumes.
Both Paris and Berlin were terrified of a possible Kiev clash directly against Russia, and lobbied furiously against it, bypassing the EU and NATO.
Then someone – it might have been Jake Sullivan – must have whispered on Crash Test Dummy’s earpiece that you don’t go around insulting the head of a nuclear state and expect to keep your global “credibility”.
So after that by now famous “Biden” phone call to Putin came the invitation to the climate change summit, in which any lofty promises are largely rhetorical, as the Pentagon will continue to be the largest polluting entity on planet Earth.
So Washington may have found a way to keep at least one avenue of dialogue open with Moscow.
At the same time Moscow has no illusions whatsoever that the Ukraine/Donbass/Crimea drama is over.
Even if Putin did not mention it in the State of the Nation.
And even if Defense Minister Shoigu has ordered a de-escalation.
The always inestimable Andrei Martyanov has gleefully noted the
“cultural shock when Brussels and D.C. started to suspect that Russia doesn’t ‘want’ Ukraine.
What Russia wants is for this country (Ukraine) to rot and implode without excrement from this implosion hitting Russia.
West’s paying for the clean up of this clusterf**k is also in Russian plans for Ukrainian Bantustan.”
The fact that Putin did not even mention Bantustan in his speech corroborates this analysis.
As far as “red lines” are concerned, Putin’s implicit message remains the same: a NATO base on Russia’s western flank simply won’t be tolerated.
Paris and Berlin know it.
The EU is in denial.
NATO will always refuse to admit it.
We always come back to the same crucial issue: whether Putin will be able, against all odds, to pull a combined Bismarck-Sun Tzu move and build a lasting German-Russian entente cordiale (and that’s quite far from an “alliance’).
Nord Stream 2 is an essential cog in the wheel – and that’s what’s driving Washington hawks crazy.
Whatever happens next, for all practical purposes Iron Curtain 2.0 is now on, and it simply won’t go away.
There will be more sanctions.
Everything was thrown at the Bear short of a hot war.
It will be immensely entertaining to watch how, and via which steps, Washington will engage on a “de-escalation and diplomatic process” with Russia.
The Hegemon may always find a way to deploy a massive P.R. campaign and ultimately claim a diplomatic success in “dissolving” the impasse.
Well, that certainly beats a hot war.
Otherwise, lowly Jungle Book adventurers have been advised: try anything funny and be ready to meet “asymmetric, swift and harsh”.
What about American allies?
What do the American allies think? Here we look at the new rabid anti-China neocon Oz-land; a new American territory filled with people who are willing to die for “freedom”, “democracy”, and Washington DC!
I know, I know.
But apparently the Morrison government believes that having a war with China will be great for the people. Which surprises me. I always thought that Australians were hard-scrabble folk, with good heads on their shoulders and a easy-going fair-dink um’ attitude.
I guess that I need to readjust my thinking.
Like I said, I am often wrong about things. A good 50% of the time.
Once was a hegemon: Australia and the decline of the US
All credit to the author, and the usual disclaimers.
Australia’s Indo-Pacific obsession hides a radical global geopolitical shift. Australian policymakers will persist in making poor choices unless they accept that the US hegemony has passed a tipping point, and America has already become just one great power among others.
Australia’s policy community has become comfortable with the familiar, distinctive, and acceptable pattern of world order the Americans established. The universalist claims of the US’s order are now internalised and any alternative seems unthinkable.
Unthinkable!
Ah. Many things in Australia are unthinkable!
Ian Clark maintains “that hegemons are much more than dominant powers”. Denis Florig writes hegemony
“requires not only the hard military and economic power to enforce dominance when necessary, but also the ideological, political, and institutional power to persuade others to accept the rules and norms of a system largely designed and operated by the hegemon and its allies.”
This is the rules-based order over which Australia is nostalgic.
Hegemony is deep and pervasive.
Michael Mazarr refers to indirect power, which “involves influencing how people think—how they conceive their interests and very identities—rather than trying to coerce or bribe them into making a specific choice. It shapes what others believe they want, and why”.
This has been the flavour of American hegemony since the middle of last century.
A very typical Australian Summer.
America has shaped a weltanschauung and embed norms and values among other political cultures, and its hegemony has come to be seen as a legitimate, and an appropriate and rightful, use of its power. Any other organising framework for politics, society, or international relations other than the US promoted market-based capitalism and its evangelising democracy has become unimaginable. Life in the American hegemony has seemed natural and ordained, especially for Australians.
However, the democracy and capitalism America promoted have lost their lustre and Americans themselves have lost the passion for promoting democracy abroad. Now majorities or very substantial minorities in the US, France, Germany, and the UK believe their political systems need a major overhaul. In addition, half of all Americans, Germans, and British believe their economic system requires major reform. That figure is 70% in France. The ideological engine of the hegemony is spluttering.
America now displays a seemingly irredeemable racism and growing anti-democratic illiberalism, in a violent and divided nation where wealth is over-concentrated and poverty entrenched. Externally America has established a record of military overreach and failed adventures, and is increasingly reduced to using the coercive power of the dollar and sanctions where once it could have persuaded and relied on shared views. However, whether consciously or not, the slogans “Make America Great Again” and “Build Back Better” are admissions of loss.
Europeans doubts have grown about the US’s willingness and capacity to come to their aid in a crisis following the Trump interregnum and the American obsession with the Indo-Pacific. The US cannot commit to the security of Europe and confront China at the same time, this will necessitate a significant reshaping of the strategic environment. This unease is pronounced among both experts and the public; as seen in the recent increase in publications on European strategic autonomy (see here, here, here, here, and here for example) and opinion polls. These concerns haven’t been alleviated by Joe Biden’s election.
That the US is no longer the hegemon doesn’t mean it won’t be an important actor for a long time to come, although history shows economic and military prominence can collapse relatively quickly. However, America remains rich and powerful with enormous economic, military, and social capital. But its loss of capacity to shape world events, deliver security and democracy, and determine the global order is on show on Ukraine’s borders, and in the Black and Azov Seas, Venezuela, Iran, Afghanistan, North Korea, Yemen, and Tigray, where its influence is marginal.
Most tellingly has been the inability of the US to take a multilateral leadership role over the illegal Israeli actions against Gaza, which will set back Middle East politics a generation, or to resolve the egregious human rights abuses and destruction of democracy in Myanmar, a part of the ASEAN purported to be at the centre of the US’s Indo-Pacific strategy. Multilateralism, democracy, and human rights are the banners of the Biden Administration.
The understanding of hegemony put forward by Clark, Florig, and Mazarr effectively excludes a succession of hegemony to China.
Certainly China aims for international pre-eminence and seeks the diminution of America’s dominant role in world affairs. Many of the norms, values and institutions America has spread will outlast its hegemony. Even where China’s ambition to succeed it, which it’s not, the US would be capable of stifling its prospects.
The waning of a hegemony is an unpredictably complex matter and it presents new and difficult foreign policy challenges.
There is a cognitive dissonance about the power shift in the current US Administration, and a sense that replicating past actions and behaviors will restore the former situation.
A mistaken belief that the hegemony can be rehabilitated and that legitimacy can be regained.
Cleaving too close to America will find Australia in awkward or irretrievable positions.
The state capitalist model might out compete, or at least match, the US in technology, trade, and investment across the globe. Not only the Europeans, but nations generally will act in the interests of their own populations and seek benefits from great powers opportunistically in the absence of a hegemon.
Increasingly Australia will have to navigate a world where there are multiple versions of events and differences over right and wrong, and where states will line up in accord with their interests as they interpret them. The decisive great power actor(s) in any situation will be context specific. The delineation of spheres of influence and shifting balance of power arrangements among powers will require Australia to be nimble, smart, and independent.
A hegemon free environment will be more fluid and offer more chances for middle powers to play-off great powers and engage in temporary alliances to advantage.
It’s about time Australia lifted it’s vision and saw the bigger picture.
What’s the worst that could happen?
And there is the effort to “contain” China using Australia and NGO efforts…
And so we have this article. Written on May 9, 2021, Found HERE, and all the regular disclaimers apply.
Tensions between Washington and Beijing are not merely the recent results of former US President Donald Trump’s time in office – but rather just the latest chapter in US efforts to contain China that stretch back decades.
Indeed, US foreign policy has for decades admittedly aimed at encircling and containing China’s rise and maintaining primacy over the Indo-Pacific region.
The “Pentagon Papers” leaked in 1969 would admit in regards to the ongoing US war against Vietnam that:
…the February decision to bomb North Vietnam and the July approval of Phase I deployments make sense only if they are in support of a long-run United States policy to contain China.
The papers also admitted that China, “looms as a major power threatening to undercut [American] importance and effectiveness in the world and, more remotely but more menacingly, to organize all of Asia against [America].
The papers also made it clear that there were (and still are), “three fronts to a long-run effort to contain China: (a) the Japan-Korea front; (b) the India-Pakistan front; and (c) the Southeast Asia front.”
Since then, it is clear that from the continued US military presence in both Japan and South Korea, the now two decades-long US occupation of Afghanistan on both Pakistan’s and China’s borders, and the emergence of the so-called “Milk Tea Alliance” aimed at overthrowing Southeast Asian governments friendly with China and replacing them with US-backed client regimes – this policy to contain China endures up to today.
Assessing US activity along these three fronts reveals the progress and setbacks Washington faces – and various dangers to global peace and stability Washington’s continued belligerence pose.
The Japan-Korea Front
Military.com in their article, “Here’s What It Costs to Keep US Troops in Japan and South Korea,” reports:
In all, more than 80,000 U.S. troops are deployed to Japan and South Korea. In Japan alone, the U.S. maintains more than 55,000 deployed troops — the largest forward-deployed U.S. force anywhere in the world.
The article notes that according to the US Government Accountability Office (GAO), the US spent “$34 billion to maintain military presences in Japan and South Korea between 2016 and 2019.”
The article cites the GAO providing an explanation as to why this massive US military presence is maintained in East Asia:
“…U.S. forces help strengthen alliances, promote a free and open Indo-Pacific region, provide quick response to emergencies and are essential for U.S. national security.”
“Alliances” that are “strengthened” by the physical presence of what are essentially occupying US forces suggests the “alliance” is hardly voluntary and claims of promoting a “free and open Indo-Pacific region” is highly subjective – begging the question of to whom the Indo-Pacific is “free and open” to.
And as US power wanes both regionally in the Indo-Pacific as well as globally, Washington has placed increasing pressure on both Japan and South Korea to not only help shoulder this financial burden, but to also become more proactive within Washington’s containment strategy toward China.
Japan is one of three other nations (the US itself, Australia, and India) drafted into the US-led Quadrilateral Security Dialogue – also know as the “Quad.”
Rather than the US solely depending on its own military forces based within Japanese territory or supported by its Japan-based forces, Japan’s military along with India’s and Australia’s are also being recruited to take part in military exercises and operations in and around the South China Sea.
India’s inclusion in the Quad also fits well into the US 3-front strategy that made up Washington’s containment policy toward China as early as the 1960s.
The India-Pakistan Front
In addition to recruiting India into the Quad alliance, the US helps encourage escalation through political support and media campaigning of India’s various territorial disputes with China.
The US also targets Pakistan’s close and ongoing relationship with China – including the support of armed insurgents in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province.
Recently, a bombing at a hotel in Quetta, Baluchistan appears to have targeted China’s ambassador to Pakistan, Ambassador Nong Rong.
The BBC in its article, “Pakistan hotel bomb: Deadly blast hits luxury venue in Quetta,” would claim:
Initial reports had suggested the target was China’s ambassador. Ambassador Nong Rong is understood to be in Quetta but was not present at the hotel at the time of the attack on Wednesday.
The article also noted:
Balochistan province, near the Afghan border, is home to several armed groups, including separatists. Separatists in the region want independence from the rest of Pakistan and accuse the government and China of exploiting Balochistan, one of Pakistan’s poorest provinces, for its gas and mineral wealth.
Absent from the BBC’s reporting is the extensive and open support the US government has provided these separatists over the years and how – clearly – this is more than just a local uprising against perceived injustice, but yet another example of armed conflict-by-proxy waged by Washington against China.
As far back as 2011 publications like The National Interest in articles like, “Free Baluchistan” would openly advocate expanding US support for separatism in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province.
The article was written by the late Selig Harrison – who was a senior fellow at the US-based corporate-financier funded Center for International Policy – and would claim:
Pakistan has given China a base at Gwadar in the heart of Baluch territory. So an independent Baluchistan would serve U.S. strategic interests in addition to the immediate goal of countering Islamist forces.
Of course, “Islamist forces” is a euphemism for US-Persian Gulf state sponsored militants used to both fight Western proxy wars as well as serve as a pretext for Western intervention. Citing “Islamist forces” in Baluchistan, Pakistan clearly serves as an example of the latter.
In addition to op-eds published by influential policy think tanks, US legislators like US Representative Dana Rohrabacher had proposed resolutions such as (emphasis added), “US House of Representatives Concurrent Resolution 104 (112th): Expressing the sense of Congress that the people of Baluchistan, currently divided between Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan, have the right to self-determination and to their own sovereign country.”
There is also funding provided to adjacent, political groups supporting separatism in Baluchistan, Pakistan as listed by the US government’s own National Endowment for Democracy (NED) website under “Pakistan.” Organizations like the “Association for Integrated Development Balochistan” are funded by the US government and used to mobilize people politically, constituting clear interference by the US in Pakistan’s internal political affairs.
The Gwadar Port project is a key juncture within China’s growing global network of infrastructure projects as part of its One Belt, One Road initiative. The US clearly opposes China’s rise and has articulated robust strategies to counter it; everything up to and including open war as seen in the Pentagon Papers regarding the Vietnam War.
The recent bombing in Baluchistan, Pakistan demonstrates that this strategy continues in regards to utilizing local militants to target Chinese-Pakistani cooperation and is one part of the much wider, region-wide strategy of encircling and containing China.
The Southeast Asia Front
Of course the US war against Vietnam was part of a wider effort to reassert Western primacy over Southeast Asia and deny the region from fueling China’s inevitable rise.
The US having lost the war and almost completely retreating from the Southeast Asia region saw Southeast Asia itself repair relations amongst themselves and with China.
Today, the nations of Southeast Asia count China as their largest trade partner, investor, a key partner in infrastructure development, a key supplier for the region’s armed forces, as well as providing the majority of tourism arrivals throughout the region. For countries like Thailand, more tourists arrive from China than from all Western nations combined.
Because existing governments in Southeast Asia have nothing to benefit from by participating in American belligerence toward China, the US has found it necessary to cultivate and attempt to install into power various client regimes. This has been an ongoing process since the Vietnam War.
The US has targeted each nation individually for years. In 2009 and 2010, US-backed opposition leader-in-exile Thaksin Shinawatra deployed his “red shirt” protesters in back-to-back riots – the latter of which included some 300 armed militants and culminated in city-wide arson across Bangkok and the death of over 90 police, soldiers, protesters, and bystanders.
In 2018, US-backed opposition groups took power in Malaysia after the US poured millions of dollars for over a decade in building up the opposition.
Daniel Twining of the US National Endowment for Democracy subsidiary – the International Republican Institute – admitted during a talk (starting at 56 minutes) by the Center for Strategic and International Studies that same year that:
… for 15 years working with NED resources, we worked to strengthen Malaysian opposition parties and guess what happened two months ago after 61 years? They won.
He would elaborate on how the NED’s network played a direct role in placing US-backed opposition figures into power within the Malaysian government, stating:
I visited and I was sitting there with many of the leaders the new leaders of this government, many of whom were just our partners we had been working with for 15 years and one of the most senior of them who’s now one of the people running the government said to me, ‘gosh IRI you never gave up on us even when we were ready to give up on ourselves.’
Far from “promoting freedom” in Malaysia – Twining would make clear the ultimate objective of interfering in Malaysia’s internal political affairs was to serve US interests not only in regards to Malaysia, but in regards to the entire region and specifically toward encircling and containing China.
Twining would boast:
…guess what one of the first steps the new government took? It froze Chinese infrastructure investments.
And that:
[Malaysia] is not a hugely pro-American country. It’s probably never going to be an actual US ally, but this is going to redound to our benefit, and and that’s an example of the long game.
It is a pattern that has repeated itself in Myanmar over the decades with NED money building a parallel political system within the nation and eventually leading to Aung San Suu Kyi and her US-backed National League for Democracy (NLD) party taking power in 2016.
For Myanmar, so deep and extensive is US backing for opposition groups there that elections virtually guarantee US-backed candidates win every single time. The US National Endowment for Democracy’s own website alone lists over 80 programs and organizations receiving US government money for everything from election polling and building up political parties, to funding media networks and “environmental” groups used to block Chinese-initiated infrastructure projects
The move by Myanmar’s military in February this year, ousting Aung Sang Suu Kyi and the NLD was meant to correct this.
However, in addition to backing political groups protesting in the streets, the US has – for many decades – backed and armed ethnic rebels across the country. These rebels have now linked up with the US-backed NLD and are repeating US-backed regime change tactics used against the Arab World in 2011 in nations like Libya, Yemen, and Syria – including explicit calls for “international intervention.”
Watch the following clip from CSIS panel discussion where DC policy operatives admit how the US use ‘democracy promotion’ front organizations like the NED and USAID in order to meddle and gain covert influence over politics in key strategic countries like Malaysia:
A US-Engineered “Asia Spring”
Just as the US did during the 2011 “Arab Spring” – the US State Department, in a bid to create synergies across various regime change campaigns in Asia, has introduced the “Milk Tea Alliance” to transform individual US-backed regime change efforts in Asia into a region-wide crisis.
The BBC itself admits in articles like, “Milk Tea Alliance: Twitter creates emoji for pro-democracy activists,” that:
The alliance has brought together anti-Beijing protesters in Hong Kong and Taiwan with pro-democracy campaigners in Thailand and Myanmar.
Omitted from the BBC’s coverage of the “Milk Tea Alliance” (intentionally) is the actual common denominators that unite it – US funding through fronts like the National Endowment for Democracy and a unifying hatred of China based exclusively on talking points pushed by the US State Department itself.
Circling back to the Pentagon Papers and recalling the coordinated, regional campaign the US sought to encircle China with – we can then look at more recent US government policy papers like the “Indo-Pacific Framework” published in the White House archives from the Trump administration.
The policy paper’s first bullet point asks:
How to maintain US strategic primacy in the Indo-Pacific region and promote a liberal economic order while preventing China from establishing new, illiberal spheres of influence, and cultivating areas of cooperation to promote regional peace and prosperity?
The paper also discusses information campaigns designed to “educate” the world about “China’s coercive behaviour and influence operations around the globe.” These campaigns have materialized in a propaganda war fabricating accusations of “Chinese genocide” in Xinjiang, China, claims that Chinese telecom company Huawei is a global security threat, and that China – not the US – is the single largest threat to global peace and stability today.
In reality US policy aimed at encircling China is predicated upon Washington’s desire to continue its own decades-long impunity upon the global stage and the continuation of all the wars, humanitarian crises, and abuses that have stemmed from it.
Understanding the full scope of Washington’s “competition” with China helps unlock the confusion surrounding unfolding individual crises like the trade war, the ongoing violence and turmoil in Myanmar, bombings in southwest Pakistan, students mobs in Thailand, riots in Hong Kong, and attempts by the US to transform the South China Sea into an international conflict.
Understanding that these events are all connected – then assessing the success or failure of US efforts gives us a clearer picture of the overall success Washington in encircling China. It also gives governments and regional blocs a clearer picture of how to manage policy in protecting against US subversion that threatens national, regional, and global peace and stability.
And inside of the United States what do the sheeple think?
Indeed, the rest of the world is starting to put it’s collective feet down, and they are turning to the combined might of Russia and China which now together is a massive and formidable force to put America in it’s place.
But the dumb-asses don’t quite get it.
They are that fucking stupid.
Of course, Joe and Suzy average in the United States know none of this. They are all lost in some kind of Twilight Zone adventure that they are living. But as the United States thrashes about, certainly the people; the citizenry must be aware of what is going on. Right?
It’s difficult to tell from what constitutes “news” these days…
They keep telling us that economic conditions are improving, but if that is true why are the shortages worse than ever?
For a moment, I would like to take you all the way back to 2019.
Before the pandemic came along, we didn’t have any shortages.
If you wanted something, you just went to the store and got it or you ordered it online. Prices were low, global supply chains were functioning smoothly, and to most people it seemed like it would stay that way for the foreseeable future.
But then the pandemic hit, and “panic buying” caused short-term shortages of certain items such as toilet paper and hand sanitizer.
It was understandable that people would want to hoard those things, because there was a lot of fear in the air. But we also knew that those shortages were only going to be temporary.
Now here we are in 2021, and we were told that things would be getting back to normal by now.
But instead, there are severe shortages everywhere around us.
In fact, the shortages are far worse than anything that we experienced in 2020.
For example, did you know that dozens of important drugs are in short supply?
According to the official FDA website, there are shortages of more than 100 drugs in the United States right now…
Right now there are currently about 120 drugs listed as having a shortage.
On the website, if you type in a drug name in the database search field you can see if and why it’s in short supply. You can also see whether it is scheduled to be discontinued, and when the supply may start flowing again.
“Builders are delaying starting new construction because of the marked increase in costs for lumber and other inputs,” said Mike Fratantoni, senior vice president and chief economist with the Mortgage Bankers Association, in a report Tuesday.
He added that supply shortages for appliances are also putting a damper on new home building activity.
Just over our northern border, the shortages have gotten really severe. In some cases, the construction of homes “is months behind schedule” because the shortages have gotten so bad…
Home builders across Canada are getting hit by a string of supply-chain disruptions, resulting in widespread product shortages and explosive costs for the industry.
In some cases, home construction is months behind schedule as developers struggle to source everything from lumber to PVC pipes, insulation to windows. Builders are also holding back on presales, unable to accurately price their homes too far in advance, given that material costs can fluctuate wildly on a daily basis.
“The whole supply chain is out of whack,” said Matt McCurrach, president of Homex Development Corp. in Kamloops, B.C.
“It’s getting worse and worse every day,” added Sue Wastell, president of Wastell Homes in London, Ont. “Literally every day, we’re finding out something else is not arriving when it was scheduled to. … We’ve never seen anything like this.”
Of even greater concern is the global shortage of computer chips.
Just about every industry that you can name is extremely dependent on equipment that uses computer chips, and CNN is telling us that this shortage “is going from bad to worse”…
The shortage is going from bad to worse, spreading from cars to consumer electronics. With the bulk of chip production concentrated in a handful of suppliers, analysts warn that the crunch is likely to last through 2021.
According to Goldman Sachs, 169 US industries embed semiconductors in their products. The bank is forecasting a 20% average shortfall of computer chips among affected industries, with some of the components used to make chips in short supply until at least this fall and possibly into 2022.
Actually, as I pointed out the other day, many executives now expect the computer chip shortage to extend into 2023.
For automakers, this is rapidly becoming a complete and total nightmare.
During the first quarter, global auto production was down by about 10 percent due to the chip shortage, but Ford has announced that production in the second quarter will be down by about 50 percent…
Investors have heard plenty about the current state of capacity problems for months. Roughly 2 million cars—or about 10% of quarterly global automotive production—weren’t built in the first quarter because of no chips. Ford Motor (ticker: F), one of the auto makers feeling the shortage most acutely, said in late April that it expects to lose about 50% of planned second-quarter production.
A 50 percent decline in production?
That is nuts!
If automakers can’t make vehicles, then they will have to start laying off workers.
Unfortunately, that is precisely what just happened at one factory in northern Illinois…
Some 1,600 jobs are being cut at a Jeep Cherokee factory in northern Illinois as automakers continue being plagued by the global shortage of semiconductors.
The U.S. arm of Stellantis, formerly known as Fiat Chrysler, said Friday it was cutting one of the two work shifts at its Belvidere Assembly Plant as of July 26. That could result in the layoffs of 1,641 workers, company spokeswoman Jodi Tinson said.
The economic optimists keep telling us that better days are right around the corner, but those better days never seem to materialize.
Instead, employment is still way below pre-pandemic levels, global supply chains are in a state of complete and utter chaos, and we are facing severe shortages of just about everything…
Copper, iron ore and steel. Corn, coffee, wheat and soybeans. Lumber, semiconductors, plastic and cardboard for packaging. The world is seemingly low on all of it. “You name it, and we have a shortage on it,” Tom Linebarger, chairman and chief executive of engine and generator manufacturer Cummins Inc., said on a call this month. Clients are “trying to get everything they can because they see high demand,” Jennifer Rumsey, the Columbus, Indiana-based company’s president, said. “They think it’s going to extend into next year.”
The difference between the big crunch of 2021 and past supply disruptions is the sheer magnitude of it, and the fact that there is — as far as anyone can tell — no clear end in sight. Big or small, few businesses are spared. Europe’s largest fleet of trucks, Girteka Logistics, says there’s been a struggle to find enough capacity. Monster Beverage Corp. of Corona, California, is dealing with an aluminum can scarcity. Hong Kong’s MOMAX Technology Ltd. is delaying production of a new product because of a dearth of semiconductors.
In my entire lifetime, I have never seen such widespread shortages.
Those that are running things keep insisting that they have everything totally under control and that things will eventually get back to normal.
You can believe them if you want, but millions of others are preparing for a future in which their optimistic assessments of the future turn out to be very, very wrong.
Do You Get The Feeling That Events Happening Now Are Leading Us Into An Endless Global Nightmare?
2021 was supposed to be the year that life went back to normal.
Obviously that is not happening, and so a lot of prominent voices out there are going to be forced to update their narratives.
Global events have really started to accelerate, and so many of the things that the “doom and gloomers” have been warning about are starting to happen right in front of our eyes.
For example, on my websites I have been talking about Israel a lot in recent months, and now it appears that the region is on the brink of war.
So far, more than 700 rockets have been fired into Israel from Gaza, but by the time you read this article that number will probably be even higher. In response, the IDF has conducted a series of dramatic strikes inside Gaza, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is promising “to attack harder and increase the pace of attacks”…
‘Hamas will be hit in ways that it does not expect,’ Netanyahu said. ‘We have eliminated commanders, hit many important targets and we have decided to attack harder and increase the pace of attacks.’
Joe Biden and other world leaders are begging for peace, but neither side appears to be inclined to back down.
Every time Israel retaliates, Hamas just launches even more rockets at Israeli cities, and they are insisting that this is their “right”…
“We have the right to respond to the Israeli offensive and protect the interests of our people as long as the Israeli occupation continues the escalation,” Hamas said in a statement.
So here we go.
As I discussed yesterday, this situation has the potential to get wildly out of control very rapidly.
If that was happening in this country, millions of Americans would be screaming for Biden to nuke somebody.
Meanwhile, the Colonial Pipeline cyberattack has caused massive gasoline shortages up and down the east coast of the United States. On Tuesday evening, the Drudge Report breathlessly declared that more than 1,000 gas stations had run out of gasoline, and Zero Hedge was reporting that some people were waiting in line for up to five hours in a desperate attempt to fill up their vehicles.
Up until recently, just about the only thing that we were missing from the economy of the 1970s was the long gas lines, but now here we are.
North America’s largest petroleum pipeline has been shut down for just a few days, and now much of the southeastern quadrant of the country is absolutely paralyzed.
Do you think that there is a lesson to be learned here?
Of course there is. Once again we see how incredibly vulnerable we are to any sort of a major disruption. If the unprecedented power grid failure in Texas a few months ago was not enough of a wake up call for you, this definitely should be.
At this point, we are being told it is uncertain whether or not the Colonial Pipeline will be able to restore operations by this weekend…
If the Colonial Pipeline is not back in business by the weekend, prices could continue to rise at the pump and there will be broader localized fuel shortages across the southeast and mid-Atlantic regions.
Eventually, the flow of gasoline will be restored and everyone along the east coast will be able to fill up their vehicles again.
But the crazy inflation that we are witnessing right is not going to go away.
For years, economic “doom and gloomers” have been warning that if we kept recklessly creating, borrowing and spending money that really bad things would happen.
How many times have we heard about “the death of the dollar” and the dangers of wildly inflating our currency?
Well, it turns out that the “doom and gloomers” were dead on accurate. Inflation is one of the biggest stories of 2021 so far, and we just got another confirmation of how bad things are getting out there…
The median price for a single-family home in the U.S. rose the most on record in the first quarter, as buyers fought over a dearth of inventory, according to the National Association of Realtors.
Prices jumped 16.2% from a year earlier to a record high of $319,200. The growth eclipsed the 14.8% rate in the fourth quarter, which was the highest in data going back to 1989, the group said in a report Tuesday.
But at least home prices are not rising as fast as the price of cotton is.
If you can believe it, the price of cotton is up more than 50 percent over the past year.
Of course the price of corn is rising even more rapidly. As I discussed the other day, the price of corn is up about 50 percent just since the turn of the year.
Needless to say, lumber still has everyone else beat. The price of lumber has actually risen more than 200 percent over the past 12 months.
A lot of comparisons have been made to the horrible inflation that the U.S. experienced during the 1970s, but really I think that we need to go all the way back to the 1930s for a more accurate parallel to our current situation.
At this point, we are becoming more like the Weimar Republic with each passing day.
Everywhere you look, systems are failing, society is crumbling and evil is growing. Even the Secret Service, who are supposed to be the best of the best, are now plagued by endless scandals and widespread incompetence.
This is not a drill. A widespread societal collapse is now underway, and it is going to get progressively worse.
This is the time of our endless nightmare, but nobody is going to ever be allowed to wake up from it.
It Took Just A Couple Of Days For Madness To Descend Upon America Once Gas Shortages Began
Did you react calmly when you learned that a cyberattack against one of our most important pipelines was causing thousands of gas stations to run out of gasoline?
Sadly, lots of Americans didn’t.
There was yelling, there was screaming, there was lots of hoarding, vehicles were waiting in line for hours at stations that still had gas, and there were reports that brawls were even breaking out between frustrated motorists.
Even though we knew that the shortages were just going to be temporary, people were “panic buying” gasoline as if the apocalypse had arrived.
“This is the worst panic buying for gasoline since the Carter Administration,” said Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis at the Oil Price Information Service.
Kloza said outages at more than 10,000 gas stations are spreading “like a bad rash” on the East Coast. Much of the problem is people are buying gasoline at twice the normal rate in the Florida peninsula, as well as in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
For some individuals, just filling up their tanks with gasoline was not enough. Motorists began to fill up any containers that they had on hand with gasoline, and some of the things we witnessed were incredibly stupid. For example, you should never, ever try to fill up plastic bags with gasoline.
I know that sounds obvious, but apparently so many people were doing this that the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission felt that it had to send out a tweet telling people to stop.
The more gas stations that ran dry, the worse the panic buying frenzy became.
In certain major cities, nearly all of the gas stations have run dry. Just check out these numbers…
The supply crunch appears to be much worse in some major metro areas. GasBuddy reported outages Wednesday morning impacting 71% of the stations in metro Charlotte, nearly 60% in Atlanta, 72% in Raleigh and 73% in Pensacola.
All of this happened because a single pipeline got shut down by a cyberattack.
The Colonial Pipeline is 5,500 miles long, and it supples approximately half of the gasoline for the east coast. On Wednesday evening, the company finally announced that operations were restarting, but they warned that it is going to take several days for things to “return to normal”…
Colonial Pipeline initiated the restart of pipeline operations today at approximately 5 p.m. ET.
Following this restart, it will take several days for the product delivery supply chain to return to normal. Some markets served by Colonial Pipeline may experience, or continue to experience, intermittent service interruptions during the start-up period. Colonial will move as much gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel as is safely possible and will continue to do so until markets return to normal.
But something doesn’t add up here. The pipeline is being restarted, but the company has announced that it has absolutely no plans to pay the ransom to the hackers…
Colonial Pipeline reportedly has no plans to pay rumored $5 million-plus ransom to Russian hackers who have paralyzed the key gas pipeline, as President Joe Biden vows to get the fuel crisis ‘under control’ with pressure mounting on his administration to do more.
Do the hackers no longer pose a threat to the pipeline?
I don’t understand.
Either the pipeline never needed to be shut down in the first place, or the hackers are still in a position to cause major damage if they carry through on their threats.
Someone needs to explain which of those alternatives is true.
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer says Enbridge Inc. has until Wednesday to shut a huge crude pipeline that crosses the Great Lakes. The Canadian company says it’s got the law on its side, and the oil will keep flowing.
The standoff is the latest milepost in the increasingly tense dispute over Line 5, a 540,000 barrel-a-day line that supplies half of the oil and propane used by parts of the U.S. Midwest and Ontario.
Is she crazy?
Needless to say, we have had the answer to that question for quite some time.
But what she is trying to do now is beyond insane. Why in the world would anyone try to shut down a pipeline when there are gas shortages happening all over the country?
Whitmer argues the pipeline, built in 1953, is too exposed to potential accidents where it crosses at the Straits of Mackinac in the northern part of the state. But the two sides are in a court-ordered mediation, and Enbridge plans to keep the line running while that plays out — prompting Whitmer to threaten to sue to take any profits it makes.
Are you kidding me?
She could have waited until this current crisis has passed, but Whitmer has decided that action must be taken immediately before any “potential accidents” are allowed to happen.
Is Whitmer really this incompetent, or is another agenda at work?
We really don’t know what is going on behind the scenes. We are told that a “ransomware gang” attacked the Colonial Pipeline, but it actually could have been anyone.
It could have been terrorists, it could have been another county, it could have been an attack from inside our own country, or it could have been the work of some smelly overweight guy chomping down Oreo cookies in his mother’s basement.
We just don’t know.
But this just shows us how deeply vulnerable we are.
If disrupting a single pipeline for just a few days can cause this much chaos, what in the world is going to happen when we are facing multiple long-term national emergencies?
To me, this is another major league wake up call.
Global events are starting to spiral out of control, our enemies know where our weak spots are, and this crisis has once again shown how easy it is to push American citizens into a state of utter madness.
What does all this mean?
Here’s my MM executive summary.
The United States is a corrupt oligarchy-ruled military empire.
Those at the functional leadership level are impotent at a number of levels.
The entire government mechanism is careening out of control.
Other nations are observing this.
The USA solution to domestic unrest is to engage in a major war.
Russia, and China have established “red lines” that are fixed and which will result in terrible consequences if crossed.
America is prepping for a major war anyways.
If you were Russia or China, what would you do? I argue that much of what they are doing is not being publicized, and are hidden from most people. And common sense dictates that proper thought and careful measures be taken.
Work at a frenzied pace to fortify all defensive measures. Militarily, socially, electronically, technologically, and politically.
Put military leadership in both command centers, and work together.
Test your offensive and defensive capabilities.
But what else?
Strengthen and enlarge intel collection operations.
Enlarge and expand black operations targeting regional threats.
Prepare a “first strike” doomsday plan.
And as far as the sheeple inside of America, what is going on?
Keep them ignorant.
Have them “chasing their tail” regarding vaccinations, politics, and social re-engineering.
Create a frenzy of hate towards both China and Russia so that many Americans want to go to war.
Make life difficult for Americans so that they will get very angry.
Provide a scapegoat of China / Russia to blame all the discomfort upon.
Meanwhile inflation is starting to eat everything, and prices are rising.
The trade war has been a fiasco for American industry and the American consumer.
Unemployment levels already high are going to increase.
Now, with all that being stated on the global politics side of things, let’s take a look at this article…
…because there is a “wild card” at play here that is not being reported.
Several years ago, one thing became clear — that if Keshe technology was real, the world would change, and hydrocarbons would be a thing of the past as fuel, and that our world economy, an energy slave economy, was dead. It goes further.
What Is Keshe Plasma Technology?
Keshe plasma technology gives us access to the uncontrollable open source technology that builds our universe, and is transforming our lives.
Click to download KESHE_TECH_SUMMARY_v10.pdf
Governments, the US, Israel and Britain, have been contacted about “sharing” technology that would, if Keshe is right, make the planes, missiles and even the billion dollar cradle to grave surveillance nightmare useless.
Now we can share what we do know, the basis for Keshe theory.
For the Keshe machines…
… for Keshe’s irritating language of “magravs” and “plasma” is very real.
His “crap” actually makes electricity “out of thin air” just like he said and, if that is true…
… and it is…
… then the whole thing is going to burn to the ground, the whole sick mess.
As of today, we can categorically state that Keshe tech is very real, that physics we are taught in school, physics the US publicly espouses as valid, is not.
We had known that several major aerospace companies were involved in projects, not only outside conventional science but much further, including time travel, thought inducement and deep space exploration, all using capabilities beyond conventional reality.
We now know that though it all may not be true, much of it is now “probably” true and some of the “impossible” is certainly true.
We begin:
Iranian nuclear physicist and peace activist, Mehran Keshe, has officially announced that it was his technology that brought down an American RQ170 Sentinel drone over Iran and disabled the AEGIS destroyer, the USS Donald Cook, in the Black Sea.
The US has given no plausible explanation for the downing of the RQ 170:
We have, during the past few weeks, been able to verify that Keshe energy units do actually work. We had test results from other sources, but we did our own:
Veterans Today began investigating Mehran Keshe several years ago.
Some of this story we have told before, so please be patient.
Keeping it short as possible, I assigned Colonel Hanke, who works with DARPA on energy projects, along with Mike Harris, to work with the Keshe group.
Then I sent Dr. Riccardo Maggiore of MIT to visit Keshe in Italy.
We then went further and there was a good reason.
Iran had captured an American RQ170 stealth drone, something impossible.
Moreover, Keshe had two groups of painfully inept detractors, a pair of cabals from the “free energy community,” a group that makes the new “truther” groups seem impressive. For those unaware, there is a huge online community of fraudsters who haunt the anti-vacc and natural medicine websites.
To learn about these folks, simply google “keshe” and you can list them.
One in Morocco was picked up and questioned last week about missing children and another, in Belgium (and Netherlands, depending on day of the week) showed up on an INTERPOL notice tied to a “trafficking and slavery” complaint.
Our partnerships with ECIPS, DESI and Center for Counter Terrorism have been very useful. They have given us full access to agencies across Europe. This has been a nasty business with some very nasty people and, quite frankly, dealing with this kind of thing is child’s play for the VT gang.
Where my notice was tweaked was when MI 6 started to trip over themselves in their usual delightfully “oh so British” fashion, as Michael Shrimpton puts it.
We knew this…
Keshe had worked in Iran with a massive budget on projects unrelated to anything arms inspectors have looked at.
Keshe doesn’t do missiles or bombs.
We also know that China has taken a strong interest in Keshe.
Our concern is how China is volunteering to throw endless funding to move Keshe medical and “other” tech from the “imaginary physics” stage to operation.
Either we all trust China, something I am not totally averse to doing, or begin playing with governments we long ago discovered can’t be trusted.
There is no easy way out of this.
Trust China/Iran/Russia or Trust America
Let’s move on to something less dark, something more fun to talk about, and I will turn this over to Ian Greenhalgh:
We suspect that the Keshe technology is…
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[1] The result of reverse-engineering Alien hardware;
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We further suspect that…
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[2] The Iranians found this hardware during archaeological exploration and it is millenia old.
Sharing this technology with Russia may have been a case of Iran lacking the resources to reverse-engineer whatever they found and the Russians are the acknowledged experts at reverse-engineering.
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Sources indicate that Gordon Duff had been briefed on ancient “technology dumps” in both Iran and Ukraine but he is unwilling to discuss this.
A little over two years ago, Preston James wrote an article that seems almost prescient in light of recent intelligence:
Russian President Vladimir Putin seems to be walking with a prideful swagger in his step lately.
“Unsubstantiated rumors have been seeping out of deep contacts inside Russian Space Command the last few weeks that, not only does the new Putin’s Russia have a well developed Secret Space war Program, but that this Program provides substantial ultra-high-tech back-engineered offensive and defensive weaponry.
And that such advanced weaponry can and will be deployed if Israel is able to once again deploy their hijacked American War Machine to start another Proxy War, this time in the Ukraine against Putin’s New Russia.”
This advanced weaponry appears to have been deployed against the USS Sitting Duck in the Black Sea, an event that sent very real shivers down the spines of American and Israeli military and political leaders (if they possess spines, that is). Preston goes on to ask:
“Do Russians now have access to Space War Weapons based on back-engineered Alien ET technology gained through a new treaty negotiated between Putin and a certain group of Alien ETs who are enemies of the group controlling the World Zionists (WZs) and the International Zionist Crime Syndicate (IZCS)?”
The answer to this appears to be a definite ‘maybe’;
It would certainly explain why Russia has stood firm against the Zionists and the criminal operations in Ukraine and Syria, despite wide-ranging sanctions that, despite denials, have undoubtedly damaged their economy and the ruble and an ever-growing belligerence on the part of certain figures in NATO such as Gen. Breedlove. In short, maybe Putin is standing up to the criminals because someone does have his back.
Preston also made a good guess at what some of the offensive weapons that have resulted from back-engineering might be:
The actual state of back-engineered Alien ET technology for Russian weapons systems is not known by American Intel at this time.
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But estimates are constructed using advanced algorithms on advanced computers to make estimates.
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And the latest version of the Russian Sunburn Missile System is a good example of an advanced weapons system that can be used to project what could be considered a fairly good estimate of the current state of Russian Secret Space war weaponry that has been deployed.
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Some military technology experts believe that the Sunburn is based on Alien ET back-engineered technology.
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Why would they think this?
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Because the latest versions of the Sunburn are believed to have hiving capability and the ability to travel at speeds up to 7,000 to 9,000 miles per hour.
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That is a lot more than the officially released figures of Mach 2.1.
“Hiving” is the ability of these missiles when launched in mass to remain in constant communication with one another on special scrambled frequencies which constantly change.
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If one or more Sunburn missile is shot down or interfered with, the rest adjust in response to the threat, re-target, and resort to random defensive maneuvers to make sure every target is still covered and attacked by priority of importance. .
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Some of these maneuvers are so gravity-defying, it is suspected that anti-gravity technology has been utilized in the latest model of the Sunburn missiles.
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It is also suspected that new anti-matter light and time warping technologies are used to provide advanced “cloaking” for these Sunburns.
If these rumors are even close to accurate it means that any USN ships within range of these Sunburns (which may be substantially greater than the claimed 1200 miles), could be sunk within mere minutes.
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Some experts believe that the USAF (or the USN) has nothing that can adequately respond to the Sunburn.
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Even the Rail guns and high-powered particle beams which have been secretly deployed on some carriers and destroyers and kept under wraps until needed, or on special Space war orbital platforms, cannot respond fast or accurately enough to stop all of a hive of Sunburns that are launched.
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“Now here is the grim truth. No matter how good American Intel has been about the Russian’s Secret Space War Program and the level of advanced back-engineered Alien ET technology, which now has been deployed, it is limited.
And it is unlikely that the full story has been gained by American Intel, due to the various levels of secrecy and “need to know” installed around the Russian’s secret Space War Program.
Of course this kind of layered secrecy has been installed around America’s Secret Space War Program. America’s secret Space War program is unfortunately now run by foreign offshore-controlled, private defense Contractors, most of whom are deeply infiltrated by Israeli Intel, some of whom are actually deep cover spies who report directly to Russian Intel, unbeknownst to the Israelis who are cocky and getting quite careless lately.”
Part Two
Hi, this is Gordon back again. Figure it is spring here, half a foot of snow on the ground, and we are trying to find a way to lead where this will go, where it must go. I have friends in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere without electricity half the time, often without water, and we now know we can produce electricity not quite out of nothing but genuinely free energy.
What is unique about Keshe’s program is its direction.
When he talks about peace, he means it.
You know, what has irritated so many about Iran and China is their unwillingness to, despite their burgeoning military spending, threaten neighbors or build offensive capabilities.
Yes, Iran has missiles but Israel and Saudi Arabia, not the best neighbors for anyone, have nuclear weapons and a reputation for bad behavior.
If Keshe tech can take down an RQ170, what would it do with an F18 or even an F35 as Keshe reminds us in Video 2?
(Video was taken down on you-tube and is no longer available. Which is why I always tell people, set up your own website and install your own videos there, or similar systems.)
The key is going to be, based on the assumption that we are dealing with something real, how we can make this something more than a military game or, worse still and a scenario we are prepared to deal with as best possible, how long do we wait until defense contracting firms and the secret society types move from “trolling” to poisoning or let’s say shooting at Keshe and his wife Carolyn while they are in their car.
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No, wait…
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…that’s already been done.
I am not “at home” around Keshe people but what are “Keshe people?” There is an article out there accusing me and the CIA (funny?) of running the upcoming Keshe “event” later this month. I did, however, review applicants to attend, a list that was carefully screened based on the requirement of the hosting country, one that has very strong policies on things like terrorism and crime.
I found lots of engineers, world experts on nanotechnology, more than a couple, but curiously, oil and chemical company execs who seem to really want to be there.
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What this can be, and maybe what it is, above all things is a way for people to find each other and, without government handouts and permission from the Wizard of Oz, take control of their lives, their future and their way of life.
I don’t see room for what we have learned to recognize as “government” in this scenario. I will cry when the last one is shut down.
So what is the “wild card” and how does it play out?
Well, whether it is this technology or something else, or whether it is reverse engineered or home-gown, or whether it is an invention by a mad scientist does not matter.
What does matter is that there is a very high likelihood that the Chinese / Russians and Iranians are in possession of technologies that the United States / UK, and Israel do not have. This gives them advantage.
As we have seen during the 2020 Naval flotilla fiasco in the South China Sea.
Those that run the United States oligarchy and it’s minions are not technology, nor military people. They are of a different disposition. And they are flailing wildly about. The American people are caught up in a vice and they will be the ones who will pay the prices that these maniac oligarchy generate.
While times are certainly testy, they are never the less, still following the fourth turning predictions.
…
If you can believe this; we are just building up to the event. There is still a couple of years to go yet.
The danger period is approaching; 2023 through 2026, centered around 2025.
Hold on to your britches boys and girls. Dicy times are a coming.
Taking note of “The Fourth Turning” and the Strauss and Howe generational theory of predictive behavior in America, we note that they predicted a Crisis Catalyst in 2005 and a Climax in 2020.
If the Crisis catalyst comes on schedule, around the year 2005, then the climax will be due around 2020, the resolution around 2026. What will America be like as it exits the Fourth Turning? History offers no guarantees. Obviously, things could go horribly wrong—the possibilities ranging from a nuclear exchange to incurable plagues, from terrorist anarchy to high-tech dictatorship. We should not assume that Providence will always exempt our nation from the irreversible tragedies that have overtaken so many others: not just temporary hardship, but debasement and total ruin. Since Vietnam, many Americans suppose they know what it means to lose a war. Losing in the next Fourth Turning, however, could mean something incomparably worse. It could mean a lasting defeat from which our national innocence—and perhaps even our nation—might never recover. As many Americans know from their own ancestral backgrounds, history provides numerous examples of societies that have been wiped off the map, ground into submission, or beaten so badly they revert to barbarism.
Indeed, the dates are close but seem to be off by a few years.
In our case, it appears that the “Crisis catalyst” did not occur in 2005 as predicted. It occurred in 2008 with the Wall Street “too big to fail” debacle.
That is three years later.
What does Mr. Howe say?
Below is a brief essay originally published on 3/11/19 by Neil Howe discussing the typical progression of each “Turning”. It remains more relevant than ever amidst our current zeitgeist. It was written nearly a year before 2020 showed it’s ugly, ugly face.
NH: We live in a tumultuous time in American history.
The 2008 financial crisis and all its hardships, was the catalyst that tipped us into this age of uncertainty. It marked the start of a generation-long era of secular upheaval that will continue to run its course over the next decade or so. This is the generational theory I laid out in “The Fourth Turning,” a book I co-authored with William Strauss in 1997.
The Fourth Turning explains the rise of a figure like President Trump. In Trump’s Inauguration Day speech, he painted a bleak picture of “American carnage,” of “rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation” with “mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities.”
Looking abroad, it’s unclear whether America will turn inward and fall prey to nativism or maintain it’s nearly seventy year role as leader of the Free World. Other countries are becoming similarly insular. Britain voted to exit the European Union and we’ve heard anti-E.U. rumblings echoed throughout Europe from France to the Netherlands.
Other nations and peoples around the world are looking to either fill the vacuum in global leadership or exploit it to advance their own ambitions. We’ve seen the thunderous rise of Chinese economic clout, the calculating geopolitical maneuvering of a resurgent Russia, and the barbarous chaos wrought by the so-called Islamic State.
In many ways, this era of uncertainty follows the natural order of things. Like Nature’s four seasons, the cycles of history follow a natural rhythm or pattern. Over the past five centuries, Anglo-American society has entered a new era – a new turning – every two decades or so.
At the start of each turning, people change how they feel about themselves, the culture, the nation, and the future. Turnings come in cycles of four. Each cycle spans the length of a long human life, roughly eighty to one hundred years, or a unit of time the ancients called the saeculum.
The First Turning is called a High.
This is an era when institutions are strong and individualism is weak. Society is confident about where it wants to go collectively, even if those outside the majoritarian center feel stifled by the conformity.
America’s most recent First Turning was the post-World War II American High, beginning in 1946 and ending with the assassination of John Kennedy in 1963, a key lifecycle marker for today’s older Americans.
The Second Turningis an Awakening.
This is an era when institutions are attacked in the name of personal and spiritual autonomy. Just when society is reaching its high tide of public progress, people suddenly tire of social discipline and want to recapture a sense of personal authenticity. Young activists and spiritualists look back at the previous High as an era of cultural poverty.
America’s most recent Awakening was the “Consciousness Revolution,” which spanned from the campus and inner-city revolts of the mid 1960s to the tax revolts of the early ‘80s.
The Third Turning is an Unravelling.
The mood of this era is in many ways the opposite of a High. Institutions are weak and distrusted, while individualism is strong and flourishing. Highs follow Crises, which teach the lesson that society must coalesce and build. Unravelings follow Awakenings, which teach the lesson that society must atomize and enjoy.
America’s most recent Unraveling was the Long Boom and Culture Wars, beginning in the early 1980s and probably ending in 2008. The era opened with triumphant “Morning in America” individualism and drifted toward a pervasive distrust of institutions and leaders, an edgy popular culture, and the splitting of national consensus into competing “values” camps.
And finally we enter the Fourth Turning, which is a Crisis.
This is an era in which America’s institutional life is torn down and rebuilt from the ground up—always in response to a perceived threat to the nation’s very survival. Civic authority revives, cultural expression finds a community purpose, and people begin to locate themselves as members of a larger group.
In every instance, Fourth Turnings have eventually become new “founding moments” in America’s history, refreshing and redefining the national identity. Currently, this period began in 2008, with the Global Financial Crisis and the deepening of the War on Terror, and will extend to around 2030.
If the past is any prelude to what is to come, as we contend, consider the prior Fourth Turning which was kicked off by the stock market crash of 1929 and climaxed with World War II.
Just as a Second Turning reshapes our inner world (of values, culture and religion), a Fourth Turning reshapes our outer world (of politics, economy and empire).
To be clear, the road ahead for America will be rough. But I take comfort in the idea that history cycles back and that the past offers us a guide to what we can expect in the future. Like Nature’s four seasons, the cycles of history follow a natural rhythm or pattern.
Make no mistake. Winter is coming. How mild or harsh it will be is anyone’s guess but the basic progression is as natural as counting down the days, weeks and months until Spring.
Exerpts from the book The Fourth Turning
In 1860-1861 southern states took the Lincoln victory as a de-facto proof that the North would increasingly seek to impose its will upon the south (they were right, but losing the war actually made it happen faster and more completely).
What people generally forget is that all states had large militias that were beholden ONLY to the states, and people had much more belief and legal adherence to the individual states, than now.
Terrorist actions do not start a war, because you cannot really go to war conventionally against terrorism. What happened in the 1860's is that state governments formed a new nation in rebellion.
Personally I don't think the Left or the Right, as a whole, have the balls to do this today. But I guess we'll see. Eventually the threats become real enough that it's hard to ignore them and just hope everything goes back to normal.
-Aerindel, SoJ_51 and Observer
This is straight from the book …
“Something happened to America at that time,” recalled U.S. Senator Daniel Inouye on V-J Day in 1995, the last of the 50-year commemoratives of World War II. “I’m not wise enough to know what it was. But it was the strange, strange power that our founding fathers experienced in those early, uncertain days. Let’s call it the spirit of America, a spirit that united and galvanized our people.” Inouye went on to reflect wistfully on an era when the nation considered no obstacle too big, no challenge too great, no goal too distant, no sacrifice too deep. A half-century later, that old spirit had long since dissipated, and nobody under age 70 remembered what it felt like. When Joe Dawson reenacted his D-Day parachute drop over Normandy, he said he did it “to show our country that there was a time when our nation moved forward as one unit.”
The Eternal Return
On the earthen floors of their rounded hogans, Navajo artists sift colored sand to depict the four seasons of life and time. Their ancestors have been doing this for centuries. They draw these sand circles in a counter-clockwise progression, one quadrant at a time, with decorative icons for the challenges of each age and season. When they near the end of the fourth season, they stop the circle, leaving a small gap just to the right of its top. This signifies the moment of death and rebirth, what the Hellenics called ekpyrosis. By Navajo custom, this moment can be provided (and the circle closed) only by God, never by mortal man. All the artist can do is rub out the painting, in reverse seasonal order, after which a new circle can be begun. Thus, in the Navajo tradition, does seasonal time stage its eternal return.
Like most traditional peoples, the Navaho accept not just the circularity of life, but also its perpetuity. Each generation knows its ancestors have drawn similar circles in the sand—and each expects its heirs to keep drawing them. The Navaho ritually reenact the past while anticipating the future. Thus do they transcend time.
Modern societies too often reject circles for straight lines between starts and finishes. Believers in linear progress, we feel the need to keep moving forward. The more we endeavor to defeat nature, the more profoundly we land at the mercy of its deeper rhythms. Unlike the Navajo, we cannot withstand the temptation to try closing the circle ourselves and in the manner of our own liking. Yet we cannot avoid history’s last quadrant. We cannot avoid the Fourth Turning, nor its ekpyrosis. Whether we welcome him or not, the Gray Champion will command our duty and sacrifice at a moment of Crisis. Whether we prepare wisely or not, we will complete the Millennial Saeculum. The epoch that began with V.J.-Day will reach a natural climax—and come to an end.
An end of what?
The next Fourth Turning could mark the end of man. It could be an omnicidal armageddon, destroying everything, leaving nothing. If mankind ever extinguishes itself, this will probably happen when its dominant civilization triggers a Fourth Turning that ends horribly. But this end, while possible, is not likely. Human life is not so easily extinguishable. One conceit of linear thinking is the confidence that we possess such godlike power that—at the mere push of a button—we can obliterate nature, destroy our own seed, and make ourselves the final generations of our species. Civilized (post-Neolithic) man has endured some 500 generations, prehistoric (fire-using) man perhaps 5,000 generations, Homo Erectus ten times that. For the next Fourth Turning to put an end to all this would require an extremely unlikely blend of social disaster, human malevolence, technological perfection, and bad luck. Only the worst pessimist can imagine that.
The Fourth Turning could mark the end of modernity. The Western saecular rhythm—which began in the mid-fifteenth century with the Renaissance—could come to an abrupt terminus. The seventh modern saeculum would be the last. This too could come from total war, terrible but not final. There could be a complete collapse of science, culture, politics, and society. The “Western Civilization” of Toynbee and the “Faustian Culture” of Spengler would come to the inexorable close their prophesiers foresaw. A new dark ages would settle in, until some new civilization could be cobbled together from the ruins. The cycle of generations would also end, replaced by an ancient cycle of tradition (and fixed social roles for each phase of life) that would not allow progress. As with an omnicide, such a dire result would probably happen only when a dominant nation (like today’s America) lets a Fourth Turning ekpyrosis engulf the planet. But this outcome is well within the reach of foreseeable technology and malevolence.
The Fourth Turning could spare modernity but mark the end of our nation. It could close the book on the political constitution, popular culture, and moral standing that the word America has come to signify. This nation has endured for three saecula; Rome lasted twelve, Etruria ten, the Soviet Union (perhaps) only one. Fourth Turnings are critical thresholds for national survival. Each of the last three American Crises produced moments of extreme danger: In the Revolution, the very birth of the republic hung by a threat in more than one battle. In the Civil War, the union barely survived a four-year slaughter that in its own time was regarded as the most horrible war in history. In World War II, the nation destroyed an enemy of democracy that for a time was winning; had the enemy won, America might have itself been destroyed. In all likelihood, the next Crisis will present the nation with a threat and a consequence on a similar scale.
Or the Fourth Turning could simply mark the end of the Millennial Saeculum. Mankind, modernity, and America would all persevere. Afterward, there would be a new mood, a new High, and a new saeculum. America would be reborn. But, reborn, it would not be the same.
The new saeculum could find America a worse place. As Paul Kennedy has warned, it might no longer be a “great power.” Its global stature might be eclipsed by foreign rivals. Its geography might be smaller, its culture less dominant, its military less effective, its government less democratic, its Constitution less inspiring. Emerging from its millennial chrysalis, it might evoke nothing like the hope and respect of its “American Century” forbear. Abroad, people of goodwill and civilized taste might perceive this society as a newly dangerous place. Or they might see it as decayed, antiquated, an Old New World less central to human progress than we now are. All this is plausible, and possible, in the natural turning of saecular time.
Alternatively, the new saeculum could find America, and the world, a much better place. Like England in the Reformation Saeculum, the Superpower America of the Millennial Saeculum might merely be a prelude to a higher plane of civilization. Its new civic life might more nearly resemble that “shining city on a hill” to which its colonial ancestors aspired. Its ecology might be freshly repaired and newly sustainable, its economy rejuvenated, its politics functional and fair, its media elevated in tone, its culture creative and uplifting, its gender and race relations improved, its commonalities embraced and differences accepted, its institutions free of the corruptions that today seem entrenched beyond correction. People might enjoy new realms of personal, family, community, and national fulfillment. America’s borders might be redrawn around an altered but more cogent geography of public community. Its influence on world peace could be more potent, on world culture more uplifting. All this is achievable as well.
Conclusion
2020 was not the Climax; the Crisis of the Forth Turning in America. That still lies ahead of us.
I hope it never comes to this. In lieu, I can see the Balkinization of the country take place, sides would move to designated areas and set up permanent camp. There may be 2, 3 or more countries within the US before the dust settles.
-Survivalist Boards
A climax is a major event. It is typically marked by full-scale discord and absolute totality of full-scale war. That did not occur in 2020. That is not occurring now.
2020 was marked by a “pandemic”.
It was actually an intentionally released bio-weapon on China to “suppress it”, while unleashing a mild strain on Americans to inoculate them.
Most Americans (through their media) believe that either [1] it is a hoax, or [2] it is a new strain of flu that is sweeping the globe.
It is neither.
It is a bio-weapon attack on China by the neocon Trump administration, lead by John Bolton, gone terribly wrong.
Xi Peng and Putin do not get their intel from Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones, and CNN. They get it from their Intel divisions. And both nations have a full picture of what is going on, has gone on and will go on further.
Both nations (China and Russia) filed a formal complaint against the United States for launching this bio-weapon (and all the others that it launched in late 2020). And while Americans ignored this complaint, pretending that it is meaningless, it did do something.
It marked the start of Russia and China teaming up militarily against the United States.
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United States. (With the UK, Canada, Israel, and Australia.) Today there is isolated America. Confused. Arrogant. Thrashing and moaning. Demanding all sorts of things.
The Rest of the World. And the rest of the world, lead by Russia, and China, that are very carefully and very precisely planning to stop all this nonsense once and for all.
Adjusting the dates
“It seems I always underestimate the ability of sociopathic central bankers and their willingness to destroy the lives of hundreds of millions to benefit their oligarch masters. I always underestimate the rampant corruption that permeates Washington DC and the executive suites in mega-corporations across the land. And I always overestimate the intelligence, civic mindedness, and ability to understand math of the ignorant masses that pass for citizens in this country. It seems that issuing trillions of new debt to pay off trillions of bad debt, government sanctioned accounting fraud, mainstream media propaganda, government data manipulation and a populace blinded by mass delusion can stave off the inevitable consequences of an unsustainable economic system.”
-The Burning Platform
Adjusting the Strauss and Howe dates to account for the delay in the catalyst, messes things up a bit.
There is a nice graphic that I composed for your purposes of planning out the next few years. I hope that it is helpful. Adding three years, gives us…
“Crisis catalyst” in 2008.
Climax in 2023.
Resolution in 2029.
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Of course, you could argue the 2020 was the “climax” simply because it was one Hell of a shitty year. But you all know, it was a shitty year for everyone on the globe. Not just Americans. I argue that it was just foreplay for bigger stuff to come.
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
And America, well, it’s somewhere else. I mean. Really. It’s off somewhere in La-La-Land.
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You know, today I want to talk about discoveries.
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Discoveries like this note that was found taped to the back of a heating duct that the homeowner removed so that he could paint the grill…
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It’s beautiful outside.
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It used to be that I was always looked inside on beautiful days. It would be a beautiful day at elementary school, and sure as shit, I found myself locked inside. I would only look out the windows in wonder and day dream.
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Same was true in High school. Only it just seemed that I spent a lot of time in Study Hall, and there I just sat doodling on paper and looking out the windows.
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Then at work. Sure enough. it would be a beautiful day and I would be stuck inside.
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Here’s a view from my office right now.
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I don’t have to stay inside. I can get up and go out and walk about.
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But I am not.
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My oomph hasn’t got the push.
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I cannot express how tired I am right now. I just don’t feel like doing anything. At most, all I want to do is go sit on a chair and veg-out. I’ve gotten to this state where I could just use a beer, a bowl of chili and some crackers.
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I mean, don’t you know, like what I used to do when I worked in the steel mills. When the lunch whistle blew, we would all gather ourselves together and troop off to the bars across the street and get a fine bowl of chili, a couple of slices of Italian bread, and a beer or two. We all did that.
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A fine bowl of chili.
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Or, maybe a nice creamy bowl of cream of asparagus soup, and a club sandwich. And with a nice tall iced tea… and a beer.
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And what’s wrong with that? Did you know that when I worked at Delco Electronics (It’s who we are), which was a division of General Motors, that they had all sorts of rules on behaviors. And one of which was zero alcohol on your free time. If someone “snitched” on you for drinking a beer after work, or anything like that, you could lose your job.
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Yeah. I really did live “The Office Space” experience.
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A club sandwich…
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Now, reminiscing about beer… crackers… soups, and sandwiches sounds so trivial. But I can assure you that it is not trivial at all. If you take away these elements that make our lives important, and makes our lives precious, then what remains?
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Seriously. What remains if you take away all the small pleasures in your life? What if you cannot drink alcohol, smoke, walk around barefoot? What if you cannot take your dog with you when you go out for a stroll, and want to stop in at a diner for a cup of coffee and a monte cristo sandwich? What then?
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You start to miss out discovering the few precious things about life. That’s what.
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Monte Cristo sandwich.
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As I get older, I am starting to come to the realization that the most important things to me are the very simple little things that I have always taken for granted.
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It’s the free newspaper at the end of the counter in the diner.
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It’s the way that a well balanced screwdriver feels in your hand.
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It’s a cloth handkerchief in your pocket, and your favorite shirt that fits you like a well worn glove.
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And it’s those little discoveries that make your day.
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When I was younger, I was always in a rush. To go here, to go there. To do this, and to do that. And so I ate fast. I drank fast. I walked fast. I drove fast. It was always go, go, go.
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I didn’t savor anything.
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I consumed.
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For I was an American consumer….
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Now I wish to savor life. Live it in big gulps. Take it in. Splash it all over, and relish in it’s glory. I want to sing, and dance, eat, and cavort. And I mean to do so with gusto!.
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I am talking about serious cavorting, you all.
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Oh, were I to still have my orange GTO, I would pop some Boston in the 8-track player, and go out cruising. The trunk would be filled with Bud, Miller (pony bottles), Michelob, and Iron City beer. Two bags of ice to chill it all out, and a well used frisbee in the back with a library card to sort the wheat from the chaff.
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I miss my orange “goat”.
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But those days are gone.
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And they just evaporated. And in the rush (at the time) to build a life, make a career, and dream the big dreams it all sort of passed on like some kind of hazy dream. We were all living this weird state of mind. Life was some kind of Peter Frampton song “Do you feel like we do”, and we were all there. Living it.
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We didn’t savor.
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We didn’t appreciate.
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And life did move on.
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I do like my life now, but there are things that are gone and I probably will never experience them again. Like piling into a van at a keg-party when it started to rain at night. About thirty of us all jammed in the back. Led Zepplin cranked up loud and Alice Cooper singing that “School’s Out for Summer”.
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Party like it’s 1976!
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Our life is precious.
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Living it is important.
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Relishing in what we have… AT THAT VERY MOMENT… is of extreme importance. And if you see an opportunity to make your life better, or someone else’s life better, the go for it. Don’t be a “wall flower”.
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Note handed to a woman.
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Live life.
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Live it well.
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And discover what lies around you.
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And relish in the uniqueness of the moments presented to you. Like this…
Whassup?
Let’s face it: Budweiser was absolutely on fire when it came to advertising in the 90s. I still think about those three delightfully laconic frogs “Bud”, “Weis,” and “Er,” and even their less-popular frenemy the chameleons.
Then in 1999, Anheuser-Busch rolled out the “Whassup?” ad, which took their advertising dominance to new levels. The commercial won a Clio, the Oscars of advertising, and was even inducted into the Clio hall of fame. And everyone saw this commercial.
You know they did because everyone started saying whassup constantly, always making it raspier, longer, and more unintelligible.
I was a preteen at the time, and this meant that every person in my school said “whassup” every day—in the hallway, in the cafeteria, at recess. Then I would come home and my dad’s friends would be saying it.
It was the type of cultural wildfire that forced news anchors to learn the word ‘memetic’—a decade before they learned the word ‘meme.’
-Listverse
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Here, I discovered a precious comment. And I want to place it here. It’s… well… precious. It’s something you will never find in the United States media, but it ACCURATELY reflects how the rest of the world views China.
Comment by Ahino Wolf Sushanti
I’m from Malaysia.
China has traded with Malaysia for 2000 years. In those years, they had been the world’s biggest powers many times. Never once they sent troops to take our land. Admiral Zhenghe came to Malacca five times, in gigantic fleets, and a flagship eight times the size of Christopher Columbus’ flagship, Santa Maria. He could have seized Malacca easily, but he did not. In 1511, the Portuguese came. In 1642, the Dutch came. In the 18th century the British came. We were colonized by each, one after another.
When China wanted spices from India, they traded with the Indians. When they wanted gems, they traded with the Persian. They didn’t take lands.
The only time China expanded beyond their current borders was in Yuan Dynasty, when Genghis and his descendants Ogedei Khan, Guyuk Khan & Kublai Khan concurred China, Mid Asia and Eastern Europe. But Yuan Dynasty, although being based in China, was a part of the Mongolian Empire.
Then came the Century of Humiliation. Britain smuggled opium into China to dope the population, a strategy to turn the trade deficit around, after the British could not find enough silver to pay the Qing Dynasty in their tea and porcelain trades. After the opium warehouses were burned down and ports were closed by the Chinese in ordered to curb opium, the British started the Opium War I, which China lost. Hong Kong was forced to be surrendered to the British in a peace talk (Nanjing Treaty). The British owned 90% of the opium market in China, during that time, Queen Victoria was the world’s biggest drug baron. The remaining 10% was owned by American merchants from Boston. Many of Boston’s institutions were built with profit from opium.
After 12 years of Nanjing Treaty, the West started getting really really greedy. The British wanted the Qing government:
To open the borders of China to allow goods coming in and out freely, and tax free.
Make opium legal in China.
Insane requests, Qing government said no.
The British and French, with supports from the US and Russia from behind, started Opium War II with China, which again, China lost.
The Anglo-French military raided the Summer Palace, and threatened to burn down the Imperial Palace, the Qing government was forced to pay with ports, free business zones, 300,000 kilograms of silver and Kowloon was taken.
Since then, China’s resources flew out freely through these business zones and ports. In the subsequent amendment to the treaties, Chinese people were sold overseas to serve as labor.
In 1900, China suffered attacks by the 8-National Alliance (Japan, Russia, Britain, France, USA, Germany, Italy, Austria-Hungary). Innocent Chinese civilians in Peking (Beijing now) were murdered, buildings were destroyed & women were raped. The Imperial Palace was raided, and treasures ended up in museums like the British Museum in London and the Louvre in Paris.
In late 1930’s China was occupied by the Japanese in WWII. Millions of Chinese died during the occupancy. 300,000 Chinese died in Nanjing Massacre alone.
Mao brought China together again from the shambles. There were peace and unity for some time. But Mao’s later reign saw sufferings and deaths from famine and power struggles.
Then came Deng Xiao Ping and his infamous “black-cat and white-cat” story. His preference in pragmatism than ideologies has transformed China. This thinking allowed China to evolve all the time to adapt to the actual needs in the country, instead of rigidly bounded to ideologies. It also signified the death of Communism in actually practice in China. The current Socialism+Meritocracy+Market Economy model fits the Chinese like gloves, and it propels the uprise of China. Singapore has a similar model, and has been arguably more successful than Hong Kong, because Hong Kong being gateway to China, was riding on the economic boom in China, while Singapore had no one to gain from.
In just 30 years, the CPC have moved 800 millions of people out from poverty. The rate of growth is unprecedented in human history. They have built the biggest mobile network, by far the biggest high speed rail network in the world, and they have become a behemoth in infrastructure.
They made a fishing village called Shenzhen into the world’s second largest technological center after the Silicon Valley. They are growing into a technological power house. It has the most elaborate e-commerce and cashless payment system in the world.
They have launched exploration to Mars. The Chinese are living a good life and China has become one of the safest countries in the world. The level of patriotism in the country has reached an unprecedented height.
For all of the achievements, the West has nothing good to say about it. China suffers from intense anti-China propaganda from the West. Western Media used the keyword “Communist” to instill fear and hatred towards China.
Everything China does is negatively reported.
They claimed China used slave labor in making iPhones. The truth was, Apple was the most profitable company in the world, it took most of the profit, leave some to Foxconn (a Taiwanese company) and little to the labor.
They claimed China was inhuman with one-child policy. By the way absolutely recommended by the UN-Health-Organization at that time. At the same time, they accused China of polluting the earth with its huge population. The fact is the Chinese consume just 30% of energy per capita compared to the US.
They claimed China underwent ethnic cleansing in Xinjiang. The fact is China has a policy which priorities ethnic minorities. For a long time, the ethnic minorities were allowed to have two children and the majority Han only allowed one. The minorities are allowed a lower score for university intakes. There are 39,000 mosques in China, and 2100 in the US.
China has about 3 times more mosque per Muslim than the US.
When terrorist attacks happened in Xinjiang, China had two choices:
Re-educate the Uighur extremists before they turned terrorists.
Let them be, after they launch attacks and killed innocent people, bomb their homes.
China chose option 1 to solve problem from the root and not to do killing. How the US solve terrorism? Fire missiles from battleships, drop bombs from the sky.
During the pandemic, when China took extreme measures to lock-down the people, they were accused of being inhuman.
When China recovered swiftly because of the extreme measures, they were accused of lying about the actual numbers.
When China’s cases became so low that they could provide medical support to other countries, they were accused of politically motivated.
Western Media always have reasons to bash China.
Just like any country, there are irresponsible individuals from China which do bad and dirty things, but the China government overall has done very well. But I hear this comment over and over by people from the West: I like Chinese people, but the CPC is “evil”\’. What they really want is the Chinese to change the government, because the current one is too good.
Fortunately China is not a multi-party democratic country, otherwise the opposition party in China will be supported by notorious NGOs (Non-Government Organization) of the USA, like the NED (National Endowment for Democracy), to topple the ruling party.
The US and the British couldn’t crack Mainland China, so they focus on Hong Kong.
Of all the ex-British colonial countries, only the Hong Kongers were offered BNOs by the British.
Because the UK would like the Hong Kongers to think they are British citizens, not Chinese.
It’s a divide-and-conquer strategy, which they often used in their “Color Revolutions” around the world.
They resort to low dirty tricks like detaining Huawei’s CFO & banning Huawei.
They raised a silly trade war which benefits no one.
Trade deficit always exist between a developing and a developed country.
The USA is like a luxury car seller who ask a farmer: why am I always buying your vegetables and you haven’t bought any of my cars?
When the Chinese were making socks for the world 30 years ago, the world let it be. But when Chinese started to make high technology products, like Huawei and DJI, it caused a red-alert.
Because when Western and Japanese products are equal to Chinese in technologies, they could never match the Chinese in prices. First world countries want China to continue in making socks.
Instead of stepping up themselves, they want to pull China down.
The recent movement by the US against China has a very important background story.
When Libya, Iran, and China decided to ditch the US dollar in oil trades, Gaddafi’s was killed by the US, Iran was being sanctioned by the US, and now it’s China’s turn.
The US has been printing money out of nothing.
The only reason why the US Dollar is still widely accepted, is because it’s the only currency which oil is allowed to be traded with.
The US has an agreement with Saudi that oil must be traded in US dollar ONLY.
Without the petrol-dollar status, the US dollars will sink, and America will fall.
Therefore anyone trying to disobey this order will be eliminated.
China will soon use a gold-backed crypto-currency, and the alarms in the White House are going off like mad.
China’s achievement has been by hard work. Not buy looting the world.
I have deep sympathy for China for all the suffering, but now I feel happy for them.
China is not rising, they are going back to where they belong.
Good luck China.
Conclusion
My life today is quite different than it was fifty years ago, but there are charms all around us. You just need to take the time to appreciate them. Maybe I’m not jammin’ to Roy Buchanan, or Listening to the Alan Parson’s Project, Genesis, Peter Gabriel or quaffing GeneseeCreamAle (in the green cans), but I am loving what I have right now.
I’m going out.
I’m gonna eat some delicious Chinese food, and have some TsingtaoBeer.
And it might not sound exciting, but it will fill my belly, put a smile on my face, and make the day right.
This comment that I read was precious. And it’s unique for this moment in time. I just wanted to share it with you all, and remember that everyone contributes to make the world what it is today.
Be good you all.
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
I mean absolutely, and positively surreal. China has decided to move at “warp speed”, and the insane level of advancement and building all throughout China has been stepped up to near frantic pace. It’s no longer just “fast”, it’s gone “hyper velocity”. Factories are all expanding, and international investors, flush with cash, and pouring into China to invest and get a “piece of the action” while the opportunity to do so exists.
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None of this is being reported in the Western media. It’s all “just the same song and dance”, and “dog and pony show”.
A songanddance.Alongandelaborate explanation or presentation. PrimarilyheardinUS.
Dog And Pony ShowMeaning of Idiom ‘Dog and Pony Show’ A dog and pony show is a presentation, marketing event, or any other event which has a lot of style and seems very polished and professional, but which has no real content. In a dog and pony show, no real information is presented, and nothing much is accomplished.
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And you can SEE the changes. You really can.
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And for me, who is used to the enormous tidal-waves of change within China, I find it nearly incomprehensible.
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I had a discussion with a friend of mine this afternoon. We shared a few smokes and talked about business over tea. He told me that one of our mutual friends is married to a woman who is now living in America.
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As is the case with many business owners. Once their business gets "off the ground", they send their families off to other nations "for a better life". I guess she thought that the USA would somehow be better. - I don't. I attribute this belief to be an emotional reaction due to a massively funded pro-America propaganda campaign that has been in place for decades.
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Anyways, she said that monthly checks are being cut by the US government every month, and handfuls of money are being handed out by the Biden administration to anyone who owns or runs a factory.
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I find that hard to believe. America is many things, but generous with money is not one of them. If any American MM readers can confirm or deny this impression, I would be very grateful.
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Never the less, there’s this belief that American companies are being given nearly “blank checks” for expansion, innovation and for hiring people. And since America is the same size as China, it means (in the minds of the Chinese) that “finally” America has decided to gear-up, and start trying to be really competitive on the global stage. And thus, here in China, the factory bosses, and owners are taking this very seriously.
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Their attitude is “OK, so America wants to compete. We will COMPETE.”.
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And everyone seems to be doing this.
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At least it just seems that way. And maybe there are other reasons for the expansion, for after all there are all sorts of directives regarding technology development, green energy, and domestic expansion that is going on right now.
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And as I mentioned earlier; you can see the growth, the changes, and all the many, many improvements.
Pollution
China as described by Western media.
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For instance. I have ranted on about pollution in my other posts. Most it is about how China is depicted as this smoggy filthy cesspool, and then I show pictures of what it is actually like. The narrative is not even remotely close.
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Did you know that the Chinese have the cleanest Coal-fired power plants in the world? Here’s a comparison between American coil-fired power-plants and Chinese ones.
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To better understand where China’s coal fleet is going, CAP compared the top 100 most efficient coal-fired power units in the United States with the top 100 in China. The difference is astounding.
Compared with the Chinese coal fleet, even the best U.S. plants are running older, less efficient technologies. Coal-fired power plants can generally be broken down into three categories:
Subcritical: In these conventional power plants, coal is ignited to boil water, the water creates steam, and the steam rotates a turbine to generate electricity. The term “subcritical” indicates that internal steam pressure and temperature do not exceed the critical point of water—705 degrees Fahrenheit and 3,208 pounds per square inch.
Supercritical: These plants use high-tech materials to achieve internal steam temperatures in the 1,000–1,050 degrees Fahrenheit range and internal pressure levels that are higher than the critical point of water, thus spinning the turbines much faster and generating more electricity with less coal.
Ultra-supercritical: These plants use additional technology innovations to bring temperatures to more than 1,400 degrees Fahrenheit and pressure levels to more than 5,000 pounds per square inch, thus further improving efficiency.
The U.S. coal fleet is much older than China’s: The average age of operating U.S. coal plants is 39 years, with 88 percent built between 1950 and 1990. Among the top 100 most efficient plants in the United States, the initial operating years range from 1967 to 2012. In China, the oldest plant on the top 100 list was commissioned in 2006, and the youngest was commissioned in 2015.
The United States only has one ultra-supercritical power plant. Everything else is subcritical or, at best, supercritical.
In contrast, China is retiring its older plants and replacing them with ultra-supercritical facilities that produce more energy with less coal and generate less emissions as well. Out of China’s top 100 units, 90 are ultra-supercritical plants.
Coal is one of my passions. I used to work in the mines in my youth, and I have numerous projects involving this most interesting of ores.
Anyways…
Here, I discovered another precious comment. And I want to place it here. It’s… well… precious.
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It’s something you will never find in the United States media, but it ACCURATELY reflects how the rest of the world views China.
Comment by FromSerbia
Thank you for clearly explaining the parallels between Euromaidan and the current upheaval in the USA.
Since very few Americans paid attention to what their government did across the globe, they cannot recognize the whole “what goes around comes around” now happening to them.
Donald Trump will not suffer from any of this.
He is obscenely rich, and the worst thing that can happen to him is that he won’t be president anymore. All this anti-Trump talk will disappear the moment he is gone. Who truly suffers from this new American helscape?
From the looks of it, small business owners and low paid employees. Poor and middle class folk. Their business and places of employment are getting looted and torched.
Not Mar-a-Lago (or w/e the spelling of it may be) nor Microsoft, nor Facebook or Twitter HQ. Not Ford plants or Boeing and Lockheed assembly lines.
Here’s an observation from my years in the USA.
I lived there long enough to gain a clear understand of the depth of depravity of its power structures.
I moved to Chicago circa 2007 and made many friends. I lived in a suburb, surrounded almost exclusively by white people.
Before learning how to drive over poor people’s heads by using the highway to get downtown, I drove from the suburb to downtown in a straight line almost, through the city.
The scenes along the way and the neighborhoods were surreal.
I started in a rich neighborhood, eventually entering a middle class neighborhood.
I can tell because houses get smaller along the way.
They still looked fancy and well kept.
Then into a neighborhood where poor white people live.
The state of their infrastructure made it clear that this is such a place. The faces I saw where mostly white.
Then comes the Mexican neighborhood. The state of their infrastructure was even worse, but they seemed to make the best of it. They decorated everything with colorful lights, there were street vendors and other people all over the street. Kids were playing everywhere and the atmosphere was generally positive. I had no qualms about stopping, parking the car and grabbing a bite to eat at local mom & pop restaurant.
Then come the black neighborhoods. I could not believe my eyes that people live like that in the USA. Their infrastructure looked worse than 1995 Bosnia. Most of you probably do not understand what that means, and I hope you never have to learn from personal experience. I believe that the correct term for their state of infrastructure is dilapidated. As in, all of it. Falling apart. There were no valuable businesses in these neighborhoods, save for an occasional McDonalds or Taco Bell, and a post office, free clinic and other such absolutely necessary establishments.
There were liquor stores *everywhere* and crowds in front of every one of them.
I’m not exactly sure what is the point of concealing a bottle of liquor in a paper bag anymore, but that tragically classic scene was on display throughout these neighborhoods. People, sitting on the curb, wasted, or getting there before nightfall.
The only word that can accurately summarize the state of Chicago’s black neighborhoods is “depression.” Total, permanent, and seemingly irreversible depression.
The solution to this catastrophe?
If we are to believe the current news cycle, the solution is to make the rest of USA look like those parts of Chicago.
I can’t tell you how many times I heard…
”Obama is in charge now, he’ll fix everything. My president is black, my lambo is blue, if you say anything against Obama, you’re not cool.”
This was before cancel culture swept across USA and I could still speak my mind freely.
I suppose the results are in and Obama didn’t fix anything.
I still read about Chicago war zones, 20 dead, 50 wounded every other weekend. This was common news in the years preceding the current upheaval.
There is something a friend of mine said back then that stayed with me to this day.
We were driving back home from a bar one evening and all of us were legally drunk. He was very careful to drive the speed limit. He was complaining about cops.
He said how even a few years ago, if cops caught you drunk driving, they wouldn’t make an arrest. They would drive you home, or, at least, have you call someone to come get you.
In a worst case scenario, you sober up in a local precinct and then you can go.
Sure, your car might get taken to a pound lot, but that was a low price to pay (about $150 to get your car back) for committing a felony.
I don’t know if this same treatment was afforded to minorities, but I can’t imagine that most cops wanted to cause a situation like what happened at that Wendy’s in Atlanta recently.
What happened Americans?
How did you get to the point where even rich white people now dislike cops? Well, I lived in Illinois long enough to gain some insights.
Simple answer – “politics”.
Democrats rule Illinois, and they have total control of Chicago.
For decades, they maintained this rule through sheer bribery. Of course, not in a classic sense.
They enacted laws and agreements where every state employee has privileges and benefits that most common folk can only dream to have.
High salaries, early and very generous retirements, top notch healthcare, and the works.
That whole mantra, repeated on every Hollywood cop show and movie, how it’s tough living on a cop salary – it is a massive load of bullshit.
Maybe, just maybe, grunts who just joined the force don’t have it that good. They will, eventually.
This was promised to everybody across the board.
Cops, firefighters, post office employees, clerks, politicians and their mistresses, etc.
Massive spending of monies they did not have.
By year 2000, USA was more or less completely de-industrialized.
Northern Illinois, once a prime target for a Soviet nuclear strike due to its high industrial production capacity, resembled scenes from apocalyptic movies and video games by the time I saw it.
The situation is the following: politicians made promises to gain power.
In order to maintain power, they kept those promises, spending money they don’t have.
So, they issued bonds and borrowed senseless amounts of cash.
Borrowed more than they needed to pay off all those promises.
Because, why wouldn’t they take some of that sweet sweet cash?
Sure, they didn’t pay it directly into their bank accounts. They took it by giving public and city contracts, totaling large sums of money, to their buddies and family business.
Some of these companies were formed, what, a day before they got the city contract?
My family left Serbia only to find the *exact same* method of political corruption permeating the USA.
Don’t take this as an indictment of Democrats only. I have no doubt that this is how Republicans also work. At least, most of them.
Eventually, the debts built up to the point where they could not service them with tax revenue.
So, they raised taxes on everything and invented new taxes.
However, that didn’t work.
What’s left to tax?
Walmart and McDonalds employees making $7 an hour? They certainly were not going to tax WalMart and McDonalds corporate profits.
The situation was growing dire.
So, the solution was to sic the police on the people. To squeeze every $ they could from poor folks.
$100 ticket for not wearing a seat belt.
Why?
If I want to risk my own life, what business is it of yours?
I say this as a person who needs no convincing to wear a belt. But why must you force me to do it?
DUI became a nightmare.
Instead of friendly neighborhood officer who wants to help you get home safe, we now have stalkers who want to ruin your life.
DUI arrest, jail, lawyer, court, trial, plea deal, maybe more jail.
All in all, a nightmare, a criminal record, lots of $$ spent on nothing.
I understand the dangers of drunk driving, but I also understood that the politicians were not thinking about the safety and well being of their communities when they enacted such laws.
I can only guess that there are many more such laws that flay the poor while the rich simply do not care.
It’s not like extra police patrols will be deployed to rich neighborhoods to catch drunk drivers or those not wearing seat belts.
So, what you have in the end is a mess made by corrupt and absolutely incompetent politicians, where the police force was used akin to how mafia bosses use enforcers to collect “protection” rackets.
Except, with the mafia, at least you can point the finger and say “that’s the bad guy.”
Of course, the police went along with it.
(It’s) Not like they were threatened.
And its not like they are wiling to risk their salaries, health benefits, and large retirement funds (either).
If people had to be flayed for $100 every time they didn’t put on a seat belt for a cop to guarantee his salary, so be it.
Why, I was even told by my peers that cops had quotas to keep!
As in, each of them had to issue at least $2000 worth of tickets and citations per month, or week, or whatever.
Now, when the situation reached a boiling point (with no small help from Soros & Co.) the politicians do what they do best. Lie, cheat, and steal.
They just blame the cops and story finished.
Media says it is so and the idiots on the streets eat it up.
They literally cannot see past that which is right in front of them.
Cop writes ticket = cop bad.
No matter the fact that cops enforce laws made by elected politicians.
The paid mercenaries revel in this orgy of stupidity as they lead those idiots into looting, burning, fighting, and generally destroying their own infrastructure and job opportunities.
I apologize for cursing again.
The system in the state of Illinois is such a tangled clusterfuck that there is no untangling it without changing the system.
The politicians in power will never allow this.
They will sooner disband the police and enact law of the jungle.
The survival of the fittest.
After all, Darwin’s teachings are now gospel in the USA. Why not live like that? Disbanding the police will also (possibly?) wipe off all of those enormous salaries, pensions, healthcare, and other obligations.
It’s a good thing American forefathers had the foresight to enshrine the 2nd amendment in the bill of rights.
One more observation, about the police.
I had interacted with police on numerous occasions. Most cops are decent folk, working a tough job in a terrible system.
The jerks among them are of all colors, not just white. There is one very common theme among cops, though.
Most are not well-educated.
I watched and worked with a lot of high-schoolers in the USA.
Also younger kids at times. I noticed a pattern.
Simply put, there are kids at these schools (I worked at public schools only) who are just bullies.
Violent for the sake of violent gratification.
I suspect that this is a result of decades-long indoctrination.
Back in 50s and 60s, kids watched as cowboys slaughtered “Indians” a word which makes me feel dirty every time I use it.
Then they watched war movies.
Then came the violence of 80s television and movies.
As the society went into 90s, violent video games were added to the mix, alongside increasingly violent depictions of fighting on TV and in movies. The tech allowed for portrayal of incredibly graphic violence. Guts and brains and alike.
I am not claiming that movies and video games incite violence.
I am claiming that such graphic depictions of violence make a bad situation worse.
Bullies became ever more violent.
I also noticed that these bullies were generally not intelligent. After free high school education, there was nothing left for them. What are they to do?
Three choices: work $7 an hour job; join the army; become a cop.
Joining the army is out of question. Them A-rabs shoot back. Hell, sometimes you don’t even see them coming. A bomb just blows up near you.
So, it’s either $7 an hour at WalMart or become a cop.
So, they join the police forces.
It is a job tailor made for a bully.
You can dish out abuse all you want, and if somebody dares fight back, shoot them dead.
No consequences.
If not shot dead, ruin someone’s life through arrest, criminal record, constant harassment.
Why not?
The politicians gave such power to them. Add to this mix the fact that they have to meet quotas for issuing tickets and a bully is in paradise.
Derek Chauvin certainly seems like a textbook example of this. I generally reserve my judgment. Not in this case. I can’t tell you how many Derek Chauvin’s passed before my eyes in USA high schools, planning to become cops.
I would also add racists to this mix. Being a cop in the USA is a perfect job for a creature scraping the barrel of human intellect.
A racist is given a free reign to do as he/she pleases.
I have no solution to offer to Americans. I am no genius. However, I do not wish to see the country disintegrate.
The worst case scenario is nukes falling into hands of green-haired, 16 piercings on face, gender-less lunatics. They will have no qualms about nuking those “like terrible racist privileged” people all across the USA, before they threaten the rest of humanity.
American people were pious folk once long ago, both blacks and whites and just about every color in between. The weight of our sins can never be greater than Father’s love and willingness to forgive.
Remember that before it is too late.
Conclusion
He had a lot to say. Perhaps the one thing that snagged my attention was this statement;
"Since very few Americans paid attention to what their government did across the globe, they cannot recognize the whole “what goes around comes around” now happening to them."
Well, it hasn’t even started yet.
America has been VERY, VERY BAD. And for things and karma to be just and fair, the real pain has yet to be felt.
I don’t know what is going on in the USA. Not really. I just get bit’s and pieces. Like this.
Would you believe that I actually used to stay glued to the “news” to absorb all this garbage. How many beers could I have drank? How many dates could I have shared with an attractive lady? How many pizza could I have eaten? How many parks and hiking trails could I have walked on? How many adventures could I have had? How many fish could I have caught? And how many new and exciting friends could I have made?
But…no.
I was seduced by the “dark side” and instead I was addicted to the “news” that colored the life that I would lead. And that “news” was always saying the same thing; America is great. the rest of the world is evil.
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
I remember when I used fffound, before I discovered Tumblr.
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And then, abandoned it when Yahoo! bought it out, promising never to change it.
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Yeah. Right. Like that happened! Yeah NOT!
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And still reading the “news” on the Free Republic feeds. As if they were full of precious information that mattered in my life.
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Nope.
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It didn’t matter at all.
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It’s tough knowing one thing, and knowing how things really work, and then reading what passes for “news” out of the West. Especially the nonsense spewing forth out of America. Jeeze!
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Louise!
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Honestly, the American “news” is like a dog chasing it’s tail. And those that follow it seem dumber with each passing day. I will tell you all the truth, the longer that I am out of the United States and away, the more idiotic the American public appears to me. I am so sorry guys, and especially for many of the American MM readers, but I am just getting floored at the level of ignorance that exists inside of America today.
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You have John Bolton… hard-core neocon… known for his quote where he compared the Chinese to cockroaches that needed to be repeatedly stepped on to show them the superiority of “the American way”…
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…being put in charge of the US Military strategic bio-weapon agency in 2016.
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It’s just a coincidence!
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And then from 2016 through 2019 China experienced eight crop and livestock viruses, with the swine flu propagated by drones with parts manufactured using American tooling.
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Why, it’s just a coincidence!
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Ah, and then in 2020, the COVID20 appears on CNY eve (what a coincidence!), in the most populous area in China (what a coincidence!) that hit all of the nations living in the same dorm as the American troops at the Wuhan Olympic games (what a coincidence!)…
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…and all of the “enemies” of the United States getting hit with the COVID-19B, the super deadly R0=20%, while America and it’s allies getting the (cold and sniffle) version R0=0.01%…
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…and we’re expected to believe that it’s China’s fault? That they were clumsy to steal an American bio-weapon and mishandle it, at a facility that is open to the public on a major thoroughfare and unguarded too boot. Why, it’s just a coincidence!
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Ugh. Only a FUCKING MORON would believe anything promoted out of Washington DC these days. But you know, most American believe. And I must tell you all, MAJestic leadership was absolutely correct.
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Most Americans are corralled sheep with the brains of a potato.
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So imagine my pleasant surprise when I read this article by Fred Reed. He’s become one of my favorite writers, don’t you know, and this one had me waving my hands, spilling my precious alcohol on the desktop, and banging on the keyboard! Shouting Yes!
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Right!, That’s right!
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Over and over.
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You all have to understand. Here in China… you can actually SEE the changes… and if you have any association at all with industry, robotics, aircraft design, AI, or international finance you will see…
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…irregardless of what the American “news” prints, the rest of the world is turning towards China. It’s where the future of the human species resides.
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Here’s a reprint, shared using the regular disclaimers.
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A Dolorous Imbalance
America Makes Aircraft Carriers, China Makes Money
First, America increasingly relies on strong-arm tactics instead of competence.
For example, in the de facto 5G competition, Washington cannot offer Europe a better product at a better price, so it forbids European countries to buy from China.
The US cannot compete with China in manufacturing, so it resorts to a trade war.
The US cannot make the crucial EUV lithography equipment to make advanced semiconductors, as neither can China, but it can forbid ASML, the Dutch company, from selling to China.
Similarly, the US cannot compete with Russia in the price of natural gas to Europe, so by means of sanctions it seeks to keep Europe from buying from Russia.
This is not reassuring.
Second, the Chinese are a commercial people, agile, fast to market, cutthroat, known for this throughout Asia.
America is a bureaucratized military empire, torpid by comparison.
America has legacy control over a few important technologies, most notably the crucial semiconductor field and the international financial system.
Washington is using these to try to cripple China’s advance.
A consequence has been a realization by the Chinese that America is not a competitor but an enemy, and (this realization has resulted in) a subsequent explosion of investment and R&D aimed at reducing dependence on American technology.
There is the well-known 1.4 trillion-dollar five-year plan to this end.
One now encounters a flood of stories about advances in tech “to which China has intellectual-property rights” or similar wording.
They seem deadly serious about this.
Given that Biden couldn’t tell a transistor from an ox cart, I wonder whether he realizes that every time the US pushes China to become independent in x, American firms lose the Chinese market for X, and later get to compete with Chinese X in the international market.
The above beast, developed entirely in China, is the first to use high-temperature superconducting magnets to keep the train floating just above the rails.
HTSC magnets are a Big Deal because they can achieve superconductivity using liquid nitrogen as coolant instead of liquid helium for classic superconductivity, this costing, say the Chinese, a fiftieth of the price of using helium.
The use of HTSC is very, very slick.
The train will extensively use carbon-fiber materials to keep weight down, suggesting that the Chinese cannot distinguish between a train and an airplane.
Asia Times “China’s Hydrogen Dream is taking Shape in Shandong”
“A detailed pilot plan being worked out to transform Shandong, a regional industrial powerhouse, into a “hydrogen society” holds out much hope of delivering on the green promise.”
The article, hard to summarize in a sentence, is worth reading.
As so often, the Chinese do things, try things, while the US talks, riots, imposes sanctions, sucks its thumb, and spends grimly on intercontinental nuclear bombers.
The American budget. After all, America is a Military Empire.
“Huawei is Developing Smart Roads Instead of Smart Cars”
Keep that in mind when the American news reports on Huawei phones. The phone business is but a small part of the Huawei industrial segment.
“Multiple sensors, cameras, and radars embedded in the road, traffic lights, and street signs help the bus to drive safely, while it in turn transmits information back to this network-“
China read Ed Snowden’s book on NSA’s snooping, realized it had a problem, and set out to correct it. If this spreads to other countries—see below—much of the world could go black to American intel agencies.
Ed Snowden
The Chinese may have thought of this.
“…colleagues will further expand the network by working with partners in Austria, Italy, Russia and Canada. The team is also developing low-cost satellites and ground stations for QKD.”
The last sentence is interesting. If China begins selling genuinely secure commo gear abroad, it is going to make a lot of Western intel agencies very unhappy.
Did I mention that the Chinese are a commercial people?
Further:
“Chinese scientists achieve quantum information masking, paving way for encrypted communication application.”
My knowledge of this might rise to the level of blank ignorance after a good night’s sleep and three cups of coffee. However, the achievement made the American technical press, and suggests Chinese seriousness about gaining privacy.
The video below shows how China constructs high-speed rail lines as if painting a stripe on a highway. <sarcasm>Since they can’t innovate, they have to get by with inventing things. </sarcasm>
“Over 10,000 trains and 927,000 containers were forwarded via the China-EU-China route in 2020, China Railways has announced. The current volume of traffic has grown by 98.3% year-to-year, covering 21 countries and 92 cities in Europe.”
America makes aircraft carriers. China sells stuff.
NikkeiAsia: “What China’s Rapidly Expanding Nuclear Industry Means for the West”
One Chinese reactor in Pakistan just went live, with another expected in a few months.
Says Nikkei,
“The Karachi reactor is just the latest of these to come onstream, with the World Nuclear Organization listing a dozen different projects at the development or planning stage across a dozen countries from Argentina to Egypt in its recent survey. Many more are under discussion.”
In addition, says Nikkei, China intends to have the whole industry from technology to materials indigenous to China and outside of American sanctions.
See above, about forcing China to make things themselves.
“Summary. China is quickly closing the once formidable lead the U.S. maintained on AI research.
Chinese researchers now publish more papers on AI and secure more patents than U.S. researchers do.
The country seems poised to become a leader in AI-empowered…”
Some argue that Chinese patents are of low quality.
Maybe so…
But don’t bet the college funds on it.
“China begins construction of world’s longest superconducting cable project”
“China’s first 35 kV high-temperature superconducting cable demonstration project has started construction by State Grid in Shanghai and it is expected to be completed by the end of the year.
This is the world’s largest transmission capacity, the longest distance, 2000A current the highest commercial 35 kV superconducting cable project.”
Regarding the 5G War;
Trump could have bought 5G from Huawei, gotten a sweetheart deal, great prices, factories in America, and so on.
Instead he banned Huawei from the US and then twisted arms of the vassal states of Europe.
Thus neither America or Europe has the service, but China is rolling it out fast.
Brilliant, Don.
This gives China a running start on smart factories, smart cities, autonomous vehicles, and the like. As well as the rest of the world, while American allies are stuck with rapidly aging technology and substandard service.
“An almost entirely automated port in China, during unload of a container ship. “
“The port is an example of how operator China Merchants Group has been working to automate and mechanize more operations using ultrafast fifth-generation wireless technology.
By developing innovative ways to run the port as efficiently as possible, the company aims to accelerate overseas expansion.”
Aviation Week “Face It: The J-20 is a Fifth Generation Fighter”
Says AvWeek:
“Clearly, Chengdu’s engineers understand the foundation of fifth-generation design: the ability to attain situational awareness through advanced fused sensors while denying situational awareness to the adversary through stealth and electronic warfare.
The J-20 features an ambitious integrated avionics suite consisting of multispectral sensors that provide 360-deg. coverage.
This includes a large active, electronically scanned array radar designed by the 14th Research Institute, electro-optical distributed aperture system, electro-optical targeting system, electronic support measures system and possibly side-array radars.
“In a 2017 CNTV interview, J-20 pilot Zhang Hao said: “Thanks to the multiple sensors onboard the aircraft and the very advanced data fusion, the level of automation of J-20 is very high. . . . The battlefield has become more and more transparent for us.”
Most of the story is visible only if you have a subscription to AvWeek.
Asia Times: Tesla loses lead to local upstart in China’s EV market
The headline is kidding.
The car that is outselling Tesla is a $4,200 el cheapo for short-haul shopping and picking up the kids in the city.
Sexy as a truss ad, but…rather useful.
I’m telling you, put the college funds in this company, not truss ads. Made by an SAIC-GM partnership, majority owned by China, where it was designed and made.
It will be sold internationally.
“Unlike Tesla, which requires purpose-built charging stations, the Mini can be plugged into a home power system to charge, which takes about nine hours. It has a range of about 120 kilometers and a top speed of 100 kilometers per hour, according to the carmaker’s promotional materials.”
Designed and put into production in one year. (Did I mention that the Chinese are a commercial people?)
Reports Chinese design. How close it is to being ready for prime time is not clear, but it is flying. An inability to make high-end engines has been a problem for China.
China’s Y-20 strategic transport aircraft.
The WS’20 is a high-bypass turbofan of Chinese design.
Finally,
Global Times”, Beijing’s news site: “China’s trade volume increases 37% y-o-y in April, marking 11 consecutive months of positive growth”
Nuff said.
Conclusion
It’s difficult being an American in China. I see what is going on, and then I read the “news” out of America and its like some kind of parody of “Captain Hook”. It’s La-La-Land where everyone is in this real God-forsaken reality that just doesn’t exist.
People, the future belongs to China.
Do you know how easy it would be for me to make my children American citizens? Yup, I fill out a bunch of forms, show proof that I lived int eh USA for five years, provide documentation that my kids are genetically mine and then wait for Washington to approve after I pay the application fee. And Boom!
My kids are American citizens. All now subject to taxation no matter where they live, what they do, and tied to the the American government.
In twenty years…
…which nation will be healthier, stronger, and provide more opportunities in a safer environment?
The USA? Or China?
Do you really think so?
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
Most people have never heard of the term “Rules Based Order” until the March 2021 meeting in Alaska between the United States and China. It was at that meeting where the United States demanded that China abide to American led, “Rules Based Order”, or suffer the consequences.
Well, up until that point in time, it was well understood that the world should follow the United Nations in global disputes. Every nation in the world would have their say at this one-world government body, and avoid conflicts, trade disputes and cultural errors.
The single outlier to this system has been the United States which has, since the 1970’s violated the UN charter at will. It has done so in the following manner;
If the UN agrees with American actions, then the USA will observe UN protocols.
If the UN disagrees with American actions, then America will ignore the UN.
This is known as “rubber stamping” in the United States. After a while it becomes the expected way of conducting business.
Rubber Stamp
A person or organizationthatautomaticallyapproves or endorses a policywithoutassessingitsmerit;also,such an approval or endorsement.Forexample,Thenominatingcommittee is merely a rubberstamp;theyapproveanyonethechairmannames , or Thedeangavehisrubberstamp to therecommendations of thetenurecommittee. Thismetaphorictermalludes to therubberprintingdeviceused to imprintthesamewordsoverandover.[Early1900s]
-The Free Dictionary
Which has been increasingly the case over the last few decades, accumulating to the Donald Trump administration which pretty much said that the UN was worthless and America will do what it it feels like, and the UN be damned.
The brash harshness of this reality was codified in American policy and made public at the March 2021 Alaska summit. Where as a “Rules Based Order” was demanded of China.
A Rules Based Order states…
America makes the rules.
You will follow and obey American rules.
You will not listen to the United Nations.
If you fail to obey American demands, America reserves the right to obliterate you.
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Yikes!
It sounds so harsh.
Well… that’s because it is.
It is harsh.
But that’s EXACTLY what is going on, and thus it is no wonder why China, and Russia and the rest of the global community reacted so harshly to the fiasco that was the Alaska meeting.
A few weeks have passed, and people around the world are “getting their heads” around this situation. They have pretty much determined that the United States has decides to act on it’s own, and not follow the United Nations. This is known as “unilateralism“, and is very very dangerous. It is the thing that started World War I, World War II, and all genocides that has ever occurred in history.
Unilateralism
Unilateralism is any doctrine or agenda that supports one-sided action.
Such action may be in disregard for other parties, or as an expression of a commitment toward a direction which otherparties may find disagreeable.
As a word, unilateralism is attested from 1926, specifically relating to unilateral disarmament.
Thecurrent, broader meaning emerges in 1964. It stands in contrast with multilateralism, the pursuit of foreign policy goals alongside allies.
-Wikipedia
The following are three articles that describe what the rest of the world thinks of this posture by the Biden Administration in America today.
First Article.
This is a very timely and well written editorial that is “spot on” and demands reprinting. It’s one of those clear-as-day, and simple-as-shit, articles that takes a complex issue and spells it out in black and white as plain as day.
I enjoyed reading this, and couldn’t wait to post on MM. It was forwarded to me by a dear friend and it is truly worth every consideration. Of course, it comes from here, all credit to the author and please take note that it was modified to fit this venue for editing purposes. So without much fanfare, here’s the article…
Rules-Based Order’ Is Cover for Destructive Western Hegemonic Ambitions
Hegemony
...ascendancy or domination of one power or state within a league, confederation, etc., or of one social class over others
Editorial
The future of world peace and security depends on the vast majority of nations succeeding in upholding the UN against Western malign efforts.
Since Joe Biden became U.S. president, the new administration in Washington has made repeated references to “rules-based order” in international relations, accusing Russia and China of undermining this putative order.
This is as audacious as a poacher appointing himself to be the gamekeeper. For there is no power as rogue and reckless as the United States and its Western minions when it comes to eviscerating international law. The litany of illegal wars, destroyed nations, and inhumane economic sanctions is testimony to that.
However, what is going on here is a daring cosmetic facelift for the same old ugly conduct. The Biden administration’s lofty rhetoric is meant to distinguish the new administration from the previous Trump White House and its “America First” mantra.
President Biden and his aides are trying to project a seeming return to multilateralism as opposed to Trump’s in-your-face nationalism. And so we hear a lot about the U.S. vowing to uphold the rules-based order.
The difference is merely rhetorical.
The consistent reality is that the United States and its Western allies are seeking to pursue a unilateral approach to international relations. The Biden administration is just a little more adept compared with Team Trump at public relations and media spin to cover this reality of American hegemonic ambitions.
Lest we forget, hegemonic ambitions are anathema to a democratic world order based on equality among nations and universal respect for international law.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov nailed the charade this week in public comments following a meeting with United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in Moscow.
“We noted that Russia sees some Western countries’ attempts to promote unilateral approaches in circumvention of the established collective mechanisms for developing international law-based solutions as one of today’s key challenges. We consider developing certain rules behind the back of the greater part of the international community and then imposing them on others as universal norms unacceptable and dangerous practice.”
Lavrov went on with more biting comments:
“We are witnessing situational coalitions and partnerships being created outside the UN, which arrogate to themselves the right to speak and act on behalf of everyone else”.
This was a veiled reference to the United States trying to deploy the G7, NATO, the Quad, Five Eyes, and so on, as hostile geopolitical instruments to hamper Russia and China.
What is happening at an accelerated rate under the Biden administration is highly corrosive to international law and threatening global security.
The United Nations and the global architecture of international relations established after the Second World War are being substituted by Western ad hoc definition of rules.
The so-called “rules-based order” is in reality rules defined by the U.S. and its allies which make others conform to their desired order.
As Lavrov points out, this is tantamount to usurping the United Nations, the UN Charter and the already existing body of international law by a wholly new Western-defined regimen which is then imposed on others.
Such an outcome would be a complete negation of the postwar order that has existed.
Far from “order”, it is a dive into disorder and confrontation, the like of which preceded the UN in the 1930s leading to world war.
Russia, China and other nations are well aware of the deception being perpetrated by the United States and its European and other Western allies.
Last week in an address to the United Nations Security Council, Lavrov elucidated further the bankrupt rationale of the Western powers.
It is worth quoting him at length. He said:
“Realizing that it is impossible to impose their unilateral or bloc priorities on other states within the framework of the UN, the leading Western countries have tried to reverse the process of forming a polycentric world and slow down the course of history…
“Toward this end, the concept of the rules-based order is advanced as a substitute for international law. It should be noted that international law already is a body of rules, but rules agreed at universal platforms and reflecting consensus or broad agreement. The West’s goal is to oppose the collective efforts of all members of the world community with other rules developed in closed, non-inclusive formats, and then imposed on everyone else. We only see harm in such actions that bypass the UN and seek to usurp the only decision-making process that can claim global relevance.”
The supreme irony is that virtue-signaling Western powers are accusing Russia and China of undermining international “order” when they are the ones who are wielding an axe at the only truly universal system of multilateralism – the United Nations and the UN Charter.
The Charter, established after the war in 1945, mandates all nations to respect equal sovereignty, to repudiate illegal military force without the authorization of the UN Security Council, and to desist from interfering in the internal affairs of other states.
The unilateral use of military force and imposition of economic sanctions against other nations has become a routine, egregious violation of the UN Charter by the United States and its Western allies.
If the United States and others really did believe in upholding rules and order then they would abide by the only universally recognized rules of international law that already exist as enshrined in the UN Charter.
It is because Russia and China are strong enough to insist on the UN Charter and international law…
…that the rogue states of the U.S. and its Western accomplices are compelled to make up other rules in order to satisfy their dictatorial hegemonic desires.
In attempting such a de facto coup against the United Nations, the Western powers are endangering global security. They are trying to turn the clock back to a law of the jungle era akin to the 1930s.
The future of world peace and security depends on Russia, China and the vast majority of nations succeeding in upholding the UN against Western malign efforts.
How paradoxical is arrogant Western propaganda.
Second Article
There’s a lot of nonsense on Zero Hedge, with a lot of “doom porn”, but many of the contributors have very good things to say. Many were refugees from the Free Republic platform that kicked them off for not touting a pro-America-always line in their articles.
The rapidly shifting international distribution of power creates problems that can only be resolved with real diplomacy. The great powers must recognize competing national interests, followed by efforts to reach compromises and find common solutions.
Over the past week the Biden administration has intensively reached out to Europe to revitalize the transatlantic alliance.
In the following on-topic interview, Professor Glenn Diesen explains how the United States is opposed to the emerging reality of a multipolar world because of its winner-takes-all ideology. In doing so, Washington is predisposed to antagonize and militarize relations, primarily with Russia and China.
The confrontational policy is aimed at driving a wedge between Europe on the one hand, and Russia and China on the other.
The problem for Washington is that such a confrontational policy is unfeasible in a multipolar world.
European allies are pressured to align with the U.S., but geoeconomic realities inevitably mean there is a practical limit to the American strategy.
Using rhetoric about “values” and “human rights” is just a ploy to gain a false moral authority over rivals.
The West’s unilateral use of sanctions is the corollary.
But such a strategy is only further forging multipolar reality which is leading to weakness and self-isolation for the United States – and the European Union if the latter chooses to go down that futile route.
Professor Diesen contends that without compromise and mutual respect among world powers, the ultimate risk could be catastrophic war.
And he says the onus is on the United States and Europe to recognize competing national interests beyond their own, followed by efforts to reach compromises and find common solutions.
Glenn Diesen is a professor at University of South-Eastern Norway. He is also editor of ‘Russia in Global Affairs’ and is a contributing expert at the Valdai Discussion Club. His research focus is the geoeconomics of Greater Eurasia and the crisis of liberalism. He specializes in Russia’s approach to European and Eurasian integration, as well as West-China dynamics. He is the author of several books: ‘The Decay of Western Civilisation and Resurgence of Russia: Between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft’ (2018); ‘Russia’s Geoeconomic Strategy for a Greater Eurasia’ (2017); and ‘EU and NATO relations with Russia: After the collapse of the Soviet Union’ (2015).
His latest two books are ‘Russian Conservatism’ (January 2021, see this link); and ‘Great Power Politics in the Fourth Industrial Revolution’ (March 2021, see this link).
* * *
Interview
Question: The Biden administration is making strenuous efforts at rallying Europe and NATO to take a more adversarial position toward Russia and China: what are Washington’s geopolitical objectives?
Glenn Diesen: Biden’s “America is back” and Trump’s “Make America Great Again” both aim to reverse the relative decline of the United States in the international system. While Trump believed that providing collective goods to its allies as the cost of a hegemon was making the U.S. lose its competitiveness, Biden believes the U.S. must rally its allies against rising adversaries. The geopolitical objectives remain constant: preserving a dominant position for the U.S. in the international system.
The main challenge to U.S. leadership position is geoeconomic as its rivals are developing alternative technologies, strategic industries, transportation corridors and financial instruments.
However, the U.S. has not been successful in converting the security dependence of allies into geoeconomic loyalty.
This is evident as the European Union uses Chinese technologies and capital, and Germany is working with Russia to construct the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.
There are strong incentives for the U.S. to militarize a geoeconomic rivalry as it strengthens solidarity and loyalty among allies.
NATO is therefore a good instrument even though Russian tanks are not heading towards Warsaw and Chinese troops are not about to invade Paris.
Question: Will Washington succeed in pushing what appears to be a new Cold War drive?
Glenn Diesen: Washington is certainly worsening relations with both Moscow and Beijing, although it is not clear that they will get the Europeans to follow their lead.
The Europeans share many of America’s concerns, although they do not wish to retreat under U.S. protection in a new U.S.-China bipolar system.
The EU has defined its interest as pursuing “strategic autonomy” to develop “European sovereignty”.
U.S. efforts to rally the Europeans against Russia and China rely on rhetoric over security challenges or human rights issues, although it is meant to translate into reducing economic connectivity with the two Eurasian giants.
However, the interests of the Europeans and the U.S. diverge over China, and the Europeans are also growing more concerned over pushing Russia towards China.
Question: You’ve mentioned before how the United States’ goals are: a) to prevent Europe from partnering with Russia for energy trade; and b) to prevent Europe partnering with China for new technology, trade and investment. Is such a divisive U.S. aim possible to achieve in a multipolar, integrated global economy?
Glenn Diesen: U.S. policies aim to prevent the emergence of a multipolar order.
In my opinion, this is a misguided objective as Washington must adjust to the changing international distribution of power.
I have argued that the U.S. is confronted with a dilemma – it can either facilitate and shape a multipolar system where the U.S. is the “first among equals”, or it can aim to contain rising powers to extend its hegemonic position although then a multipolar system will emerge in direct opposition to the U.S.
By containing the rise of both Russia and China, the U.S. encourages Moscow and Beijing to define their partnership often in opposition to the U.S.
The global economy is subsequently fragmenting.
The geoeconomic dominance of the U.S. has rested on [1] its leading technologies that buttress its strategic industries, [2] control over the maritime corridors of the world, and [3] control over the main development banks and the world’s trade/reserve currency.
Russia and China have therefore developed a strategic partnership [1] to develop their own technological ecosystems, [2] new Eurasian transportation corridors by land and sea, and [3] new financial instruments such as banks, payment systems and de-dollarizing their trade.
The U.S. will therefore discover that the effort to isolate China and Russia will result in the U.S. isolating itself.
Question: You’ve also mentioned that the United States may be trying a re-run of the Nixon-era policy from the 1970s of forcing a division between China and Russia. Is such a U.S. objective possible today?
Glenn Diesen: It seems highly unlikely. Nixon was able to split the Soviet Union and China by reaching out to the weaker part, China, based on mutual misgivings towards the power of the Soviet Union. The U.S. therefore accommodated the weaker adversary to balance the stronger adversary.
Today, the stronger adversary is China and the U.S. would therefore have to reach out to Russia. Beijing has no reason to turn against Moscow as Russia does not pose a threat to the Chinese, and Russia’s partnership is vital for China’s geoeconomic rise.
Much can be gained from reaching out to Moscow, although it will be very difficult, and Russia will not turn against China.
The U.S. leading role in Europe is reliant on excluding Russia from the continent, and the anti-Russian sentiments in the U.S. make it impossible to find common ground. Also, it is hard to overstate the resentment in Moscow over relentless NATO expansionism towards its borders.
Future historians will likely recognize the historical blunder of not accommodating Russia in Europe. After the Cold War, Russia’s principal foreign policy objective was to be included in a Greater Europe. The remaining hopes for incremental integration with Europe ended in 2014, when the West supported the coup in Ukraine.
Russia is now pursuing the Greater Eurasia Initiative and its leading partner toward that end is China.
Reaching out to Moscow will enable Russia to diversify its economic relations and avoid excessive reliance on China, although Russia will not join any partnership aimed against China.
Question: The Biden administration’s overtures for a stronger transatlantic alliance and a more unified NATO appear to be lapped up by various European leaders. For example at the NATO summit of foreign ministers in Brussels on March 23-24, the French top diplomat Jean-Yves Le Drian gushed about a renewed alliance under Biden, declaring that NATO had “rediscovered” itself. Why are European politicians seemingly so ready to appease Washington even when it is at the cost of undermining their own relations with Russia and China?
Glenn Diesen: The Europeans only developed unity after the Second World War under U.S. leadership.
Europe has thus only existed as a cohesive sub-region within the larger transatlantic region.
During the Cold War this partnership was directed towards balancing the Soviet Union, and after the Cold War the trans-Atlantic partnership enabled collective hegemony. The Europeans have prospered under U.S. leadership and been able to develop regional European autonomy.
The multipolar system challenges the foundation for the internal cohesion of both Europe and the trans-Atlantic region.
On one hand, the Europeans want to align their policies with the U.S. to preserve solidarity within Europe and the West.
On the other hand, the Europeans desire “strategic autonomy” as they recognize that U.S. and EU interests diverge in a multipolar world.
Confronting Russia and China weakens the economic competitiveness of Europe and increases its dependence on the U.S.
Question: Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, speaking during a visit to China this week, remarked that the European Union had unilaterally destroyed relations with Russia due to recent actions, presumably imposing sanctions. Would you agree that the EU has taken unprecedented harmful steps against Russia?
Glenn Diesen: Yes. The sanctions do not provide a solution, rather they undermine the possibility for a partnership to find common solutions. Sanctions are designed to force Russia to make unilateral concessions as opposed to finding mutually acceptable solutions through compromise.
It must be recognized that every conflict has two sides, yet Brussels tends to treat all conflicts as transgressions by Russia that must be punished and corrected by the EU.
I often make the argument that Russia is largely a status-quo power in Europe that reacts to Western revisionism.
Russia intervened in Crimea in response to the West’s support for the coup, and Russia intervened in Syria in response to Western efforts to topple the government.
The problem behind these conflicts is that Russian security interests were never included, and the sanctions are a mere extension of this hegemonic mentality.
The sanctions are condemning Europe to reduced relevance in the multipolar world. A divided Europe creates systemic pressures for the EU to retreat under U.S. protection, and Russia must similarly diversify its economy away from Europe and instead align itself closer with China.
Question: Do you see any prospect of the European Union waking up to the realization that the bloc needs to repair relations with Russia, and China for that matter? Presumably that would require the EU asserting geopolitical independence from the United States, and the question is: has Europe’s political class got the will or even the imagination for this?
Glenn Diesen: How can relations be repaired?
The source of all problems with Russia was the failure to reach a mutually acceptable post-Cold War settlement. Efforts to create a Europe-without-Russia inevitably became a Europe-against-Russia.
Initially, Russian apprehensions could be ignored as Russia was weak and did not have anywhere else to go. This is no longer the case.
The EU can either treat the underlying problem of excluding the largest state in Europe from Europe, or it can aim to treat the symptoms that include Russia’s pivot to the east – primarily China.
Both France and Germany have become more vocal about the folly of continuing to push Russia towards China. France has been more ambitious in terms of rethinking relations with Russia to resolve the underlying problems, while Germany has been more focused on treating the symptoms by maintaining economic connectivity with Russia.
What can the EU do?
Suspending NATO expansion towards Russian borders or ending anti-Russian sanctions would undermine both EU and NATO solidarity as it is opposed by the U.S. and certain Central and Eastern European countries. The EU and the West were not designed for a multipolar world and so risk its internal cohesion no matter what is done.
The EU is not demonstrating any intentions of altering its subject-object relationship with Russia, and seeking solutions through mutual compromise. When the EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell went to Moscow last month, the effort to improve relations with Russia was therefore limited to lecturing Russia about its domestic affairs and transgressions in international affairs, which, it was inferred, Russia should correct in order to earn the EU’s forgiveness and improve relations.
Question: Finally, are you concerned that deteriorating international tensions could lead to war?
Glenn Diesen: Yes, we should all be concerned.
Tensions keep escalating and there are increasing conflicts that could spark a major war. A war could break out over Syria, Ukraine, the Black Sea, the Arctic, the South China Sea and other regions.
What makes all of these conflicts dangerous is that they are informed by a winner-takes-all logic.
Wishful thinking or active push towards a collapse of Russia, China, the EU or the U.S. is also an indication of the winner-takes-all mentality.
Under these conditions, the large powers are more prepared to accept greater risks at a time when the international system is transforming.
The rhetoric of upholding liberal democratic values also has clear zero-sum undertones as it implies that Russia and China must accept the moral authority of the West and commit to unilateral concessions.
The rapidly shifting international distribution of power creates problems that can only be resolved with real diplomacy. The great powers must recognize competing national interests, followed by efforts to reach compromises and find common solutions.
The only solution for this coming fiasco is for the rest of the world to come together and isolate the dangerous elements; the unilateral American nationalists from destroying the world.
Thus, now for this gem…
Centuries-old Washington’s ‘Rules-Based Order’ is COVER for Deceptive, Destructive, & Hypocritical Hegemonic Ambitions
SCFon
The future of world peace and security depends on the vast majority of nations succeeding in upholding the UN against Western malign efforts.
Since Joe Biden became U.S. president, the new administration in Washington has made repeated references to “rules-based order” in international relations, accusing Russia and China of undermining this putative order.
This is as audacious as a poacher appointing himself to be the gamekeeper.
For there is no power as rogue and reckless as the United States and its Western minions when it comes to eviscerating international law.
The litany of illegal wars, destroyed nations, and inhumane economic sanctions is testimony to that.
However, what is going on here is a daring cosmetic facelift for the same old ugly conduct.
The Biden administration’s lofty rhetoric is meant to distinguish the new administration from the previous Trump White House and its “America First” mantra.
President Biden and his aides are trying to project a seeming return to multilateralism as opposed to Trump’s in-your-face nationalism.
And so we hear a lot about the U.S. vowing to uphold the rules-based order.
The difference is merely rhetorical.
The consistent reality is that the United States and its Western allies are seeking to pursue a unilateral approach to international relations.
The Biden administration is just a little more adept compared with Team Trump at public relations and media spin to cover this reality of American hegemonic ambitions.
Lest we forget, hegemonic ambitions are anathema to a democratic world order based on equality among nations and universal respect for international law.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov nailed the charade this week in public comments following a meeting with United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in Moscow.
“We noted that Russia sees some Western countries’ attempts to promote unilateral approaches in circumvention of the established collective mechanisms for developing international law-based solutions as one of today’s key challenges. We consider developing certain rules behind the back of the greater part of the international community and then imposing them on others as universal norms unacceptable and dangerous practice.”
Lavrov went on with more biting comments:
“We are witnessing situational coalitions and partnerships being created outside the UN, which arrogate to themselves the right to speak and act on behalf of everyone else”.
This was a veiled reference to the United States trying to deploy the G7, NATO, the Quad, Five Eyes, and so on, as hostile geopolitical instruments to hamper Russia and China.
What is happening at an accelerated rate under the Biden administration is highly corrosive to international law and threatening global security.
The United Nations and the global architecture of international relations established after the Second World War are being substituted by Western ad hoc definition of rules.
The so-called “rules-based order” is in reality rules defined by the U.S. and its allies which make others conform to their desired order.
As Lavrov points out, this is tantamount to usurping the United Nations, the UN Charter and the already existing body of international law by a wholly new Western-defined regimen which is then imposed on others.
Such an outcome would be a complete negation of the postwar order that has existed.
Far from “order”, it is a dive into disorder and confrontation, the like of which preceded the UN in the 1930s leading to world war.
Russia, China and other nations are well aware of the deception being perpetrated by the United States and its European and other Western allies.
Last week in an address to the United Nations Security Council, Lavrov elucidated further the bankrupt rationale of the Western powers.
It is worth quoting him at length.
He said:
“Realizing that it is impossible to impose their unilateral or bloc priorities on other states within the framework of the UN, the leading Western countries have tried to reverse the process of forming a polycentric world and slow down the course of history…”
“Toward this end, the concept of the rules-based order is advanced as a substitute for international law. It should be noted that international law already is a body of rules, but rules agreed at universal platforms and reflecting consensus or broad agreement. The West’s goal is to oppose the collective efforts of all members of the world community with other rules developed in closed, non-inclusive formats, and then imposed on everyone else. We only see harm in such actions that bypass the UN and seek to usurp the only decision-making process that can claim global relevance.”
The supreme irony is that virtue-signaling Western powers are accusing Russia and China of undermining international “order” when they are the ones who are wielding an axe at the only truly universal system of multilateralism – the United Nations and the UN Charter.
The Charter, established after the war in 1945, mandates all nations to respect equal sovereignty, to repudiate illegal military force without the authorization of the UN Security Council, and to desist from interfering in the internal affairs of other states.
The unilateral use of military force and imposition of economic sanctions against other nations has become a routine, egregious violation of the UN Charter by the United States and its Western allies.
If the United States and others really did believe in upholding rules and order then they would abide by the only universally recognized rules of international law that already exist as enshrined in the UN Charter.
It is because Russia and China are strong enough to insist on the UN Charter and international law that the rogue states of the U.S. and its Western accomplices are compelled to make up other rules in order to satisfy their dictatorial hegemonic desires. In attempting such a de facto coup against the United Nations, the Western powers are endangering global security.
They are trying to turn the clock back to a law of the jungle era akin to the 1930s.
The future of world peace and security depends on Russia, China and the vast majority of nations succeeding in upholding the UN against Western malign efforts.
How paradoxical is arrogant Western propaganda.
***
Conclusion
And there you have it. The United States has decided to act aggressively as the sole remaining Military Empire. It demands that the rest of the world do as it demands or it will devastate the targeted nation with it’s large and enormous military.
The rest of the world are rightly afraid.
They are waiting, apparently for some sanity to return to Washington DC, or barring that internal discord that will force the American government to focus on domestic matters at home.
But, the major governments are not taking any chances. You can rest assured that if the “mad dog” of the neighborhood breaks from it’s chain and starts biting the neighborhood children that the local “dog catcher” will be called in to put the rabid dog down. (Kill him completely.)
It’s a testy time for certain.
Do you want more?
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
The ten rules of war propaganda were set forth by the historian Anne Morelli in her book The Principles of War Propaganda. Well, let’s look at these rules.
In doing so, we will see that our mainstream media follow them exactly.
Anyone who follows the media reports in the West must realize that our German media, free, objective, and critical, are engaged in war propaganda.
There are 10 fundamental well-known rules of American war propaganda that are easy to verify.
Rule 1: We don’t want war
Fun fact: Every war that American has been in for the last seventy five years involved a discussion with the (eventual) enemy where the United States made the statement (word for word) exactly stated "We don't want war".
It's so obvious that it has become the "Calling Card of America".
The West supposedly never wants wars. Even so, the West wages more wars than all other states put together. Germany is fighting in Mali to supply the French nuclear power plants with uranium (officially against terrorists, of course). Germany fought in Afghanistan for 20 years, so long that most have already forgotten what it was all about. Germany has been militarily active in Kosovo for over 20 years to build democracy, but the Albanian mafia still rules there under the protection of the Bundeswehr. And so on.
All of these – and also the other – wars of the US-dominated West in Iraq, Syria, Libya, and on, all have one thing in common: Of course, the West did not want them at all, but was forced to war by the evil rulers. This is the official reading every time, and none of the “rulers” has ever attacked a country in the West.
It was always the other way around, the West attacked.
“We don’t want war”
If you want a fun activity, read the transcript of the March 2021 meeting in Anchorage Alaska between the United States and China. Look for the announcement statement “We don’t want war” coming from the American side.
That is how the rest of the world knows that American has decided to wage a hot war, soon to become world war III, nuclear style with China.
Look for the specific wording.
That’s exactly how you know that America plans to attack China under some kind of excuse and that a propaganda barrage to justify that attack is being conducted.
Rule 2: The opposing camp is solely responsible for the war
It's all their fault.
See point one.
Assad is allegedly responsible for the war in Syria, although the media in the West consistently keep silent about the CIA operation “Timber Sycamore” with which the CIA started the war. If this is new to you, it’s no wonder. Der Spiegel, for example, has never reported on how you can find the term “Timber Sycamore” when you search the Spiegel archive. The relevant documents of the CIA were published in Washington years ago. If this is new to you, check it out.
It is always done that way. So it was with Iraq, Libya and all other wars in which the West is fighting. The blame was placed on the other side, concealing that the West started the wars itself.
Rule 3: The leader of the opposing camp has the face of the devil
This is the classic. The choice of words is crucial. Putin, Assad and whoever are “potentates”, “autocrats”, “dictators” who commit all the deadly sins of the world. When a war is imminent, the media bring – in order to make the population ready for war – the inevitable formulations of the “Second Hitler”, from whom the world must be saved.
Of course, the enemies do not have “governments”, they are “regimes”. With all these formulations the “enemy” is dehumanized, the public should feel hatred and be ready to overthrow such an evil person, even at the cost of thousands of lives.
Anti-China bullshit from the American media.
This is what is called “hatespeech” in modern German and what the same media, that use this hate propaganda against unloved heads of government, always find very bad.
.
"America doesn't hate the Chinese people, just the Chinese government."
Rule 4: We defend a good cause and not special interests
Of course, the US wanted to bring human rights, democracy and prosperity to Iraq. Of course, it wasn’t about the oil wells that US corporations have secured for themselves. Not even in Libya, where France (one of the driving forces in the war) has secured many oil wells. And Mali is about the fight against terrorism, not the uranium on which the French nuclear industry depends. And of course Syria is not about oil or the only Russian naval base in the Mediterranean, it is only about democracy, human rights and prosperity.
Wherever a government is critical of the West and where there are also natural resources (or where one of the main enemies China and Russia can be harmed), the West finds democracy and human rights very important. But if a government is pro-Western and allows the West access to natural resources, such as the absolutist Saudi dictatorship, then democracy and human rights are not so important.
Regime change in China The last major policy shift in China caught many off guard; we are at another such turning point. For the past ten years or so, bad newsin China was usually good news. Growth shocks triggered sizable stimuli, leading to asset price rebounds in China, emerging markets and the world more broadly.-Chinaregimechange
Incidentally, this is the key to understanding why Russia, which was a political friend under Yeltsin, has become enemy number one again under Putin: Under Yeltsin, Western corporations had secured control of Russian oil and gas. Putin ended that by 2003, and suddenly he was the number one villain. It doesn’t say that in the “quality media”, but it was actually so banal.
Rule 5: The enemy commits atrocities deliberately; on the other hand, when we cross the line, it is unintentional
We experience this one all the time. If the US is undoubtedly bombing a hospital in Afghanistan, then that is “collateral damage” and it was an accident. Nobody is punished, the “quality media” quickly forget it and do not ask for clarification.
On the other hand, it is enough if someone claims without evidence that Russia or Syria bombed a hospital and the media in the West are reporting not only for days, but also afterwards, so that the public does not forget who it must hate.
.
Rule 6: The enemy uses illegal weapons
That is also a classic.
We have all heard many times that Assad uses “barrel bombs”. Nobody really knows what that actually is, but it sounds pretty nasty. The USA constantly uses barrel bombs, except they are called “cluster bombs” and the “quality media” are almost always shyly silent about them, because these weapons are internationally banned.
Whether Assad uses this weapon has not been proven at all, but as a precaution the media have come up with a separate word for it so that the readers don’t even get the idea that the West could also use such weapons. ‘But he does that all the time.
Rule 7: We suffer only slight losses; the enemy’s losses are enormous
This rule only applies when the war has entered its critical phase. Before the war it was the other way around. Before the war it was reported that the enemy was aggressive and, for example, had killed so many of “our” soldiers again when violating a ceasefire. This is to prepare the public for a war.
We have been seeing this in Ukraine for years. The “quality media” always report when it gets “hotter” there that the rebels have killed so many Ukrainian soldiers. In doing so, they keep silent about the fact that the mostly Ukrainian shelling of residential areas preceded them, in which civilians were killed.
But you don’t find out about that from the “quality media”, you have to read the reports of the OSCE. The “quality media” did not consider the fact that the OSCE presented a report in November 2020 in which it stated that almost 75 percent of civilian casualties in Donbass were due to the Ukrainian armed forces.
Rule 8: The artists and intellectuals support our cause
Notice how often celebrities have their say in the media who think the Western wars are good for moral reasons. Celebs have spoken out against Assad, Gaddafi, and Saddam in recent years. This is particularly evident in the American media.
John Wayne fights the demon heathen communists in Vietnam in the movie The Green Berets.
In 2019 a prominent “benefit concert” for Venezuela took place in the Colombian border town of Cucuta. Famous artists appeared in the middle of the jungle to sing against Maduro. Conveniently right next to the US military base there.
And for Navalny, for example, Western celebrities wrote an open letter to Putin in April 2021. It did not contain any truths and probably hardly anyone has read it. It was just important to be able to name the celebrities in the headlines of the media who are against Putin.
There are innumerable examples of this method of war propaganda.
But none of this has anything to do with politics, after all, what politician is interested in a singer’s opinion? These reports only have the purpose of giving the public the feeling that the position of the West is morally correct and thus the fans of the stars are to be influenced accordingly and to follow their idol. It’s all about emotions, not the actuality.
Rule 9: Our concern is something sacred
Of course, after all, it is supposedly about the “holy” values of the West, that is to say about democracy and human rights. You can also kill people for this.
This is probably the oldest means of war propaganda in world history. In ancient Rome one had to bring civilization to the barbarians, of course it was not about the enrichment of the generals. Caesar moved to Gaul as a practically bankrupt man and came back very rich.
Later the Spaniards had to bring the “savages” in America the right faith so that they would not burn in the hell to which the Spaniards sent them on the occasion. It wasn’t about the gold, of course. And the British Empire wanted to bring civilization back to the “backward” colonies, because the poor, backward people in the colonies couldn’t rule themselves.
What I am writing here so ironically is true. You can read it in the documents from the corresponding periods. There was always a “sacred” reason for urgently going to war.
And today the “holy” concerns are democracy, human rights, women’s rights and so on. It’s still the same principle as in antiquity, only the “sacred” concern changes every now and then.
Rule 10: Anyone who questions our propaganda is a traitor
Today the word “traitor” is out of date.
Today you can choose to say “Putin understanders”, “Kremlin trolls”, “conspiracy theorists”, “anti-Americans” and whatever other names are currently circulating.
Anyone who disagrees is demonized and marginalized.
But all of these terms have one thing in common: They identify the named person as an opponent of “Western values” or democracy.
Ergo: it’s a traitor.
It’s shocking, but the German media is actually doing war propaganda like in the darkest times in history. And not just since yesterday, it happened in 1991 in the First Gulf War with the incubator lie and has not been less since then, on the contrary, it has become more, and the techniques have been refined more and more.
Do you think it is a coincidence that the media works exactly according to the propaganda textbook?
The Conclusion
The United States has already decided to wage war with China.
The initial attempts, have all failed, resulting in (as best as I can determine) five HOT-level Assaults…
Carpet bombing using 8 bio-weapons to destroy livestock 2016 through 2020.
A hard attack using the COVID19 B-strain “death by brain seizure” during CNY 2020, with herd immunity for US allies using the inoculation A-strain . The “three day sniffles” variant.
A follow up (two punch) “desperation” (vindictive) bio-weapon attack(s) targeted on Beijing using the “death by vomiting” virus known as the Jingmen tick virus (JMTV), and the “death by diarrhea” virus. Which is itself being a human version of (ASF version of the H1N1) people transmittable Swine-flu 2020 virus. Also (curiously) disseminated by “criminal elements” using drones to spray the virus all over China. Good thing for China that the CIA assets turned themselves into the authorities.
The “tit-for-tat” minor assault carrier fires. China’s first big-deck amphibious assault ship, a type 075; a huge vessel that was built in a miraculously short amount of time, mysteriously caught fire on Saturday, April 11th, 2020. And then the gutting of the U.S. Navy amphibious assault ship USS Bonhomme Richard.
And the enormous late Summer US Navy armada that sailed to the South China Sea in 2020. And the return back to the USA with their “tail between their legs”. The USA was unprepared to to deal with the kinds of defensive capabilities that the Chinese had arrayed in the South China Sea.
Additionally, there are failures in collapse of particular cities, and Chinese efforts…
Color Revolution in Hong Kong.
Color Revolution in Tibet.
Turn XinJIang and the Uighur Muslims into a Syria-like battlefield.
The attempts to destabilize Chinese allies are a mixed bag…
Myanmar “regime change” to a pro-American anti-China nation.
Thailand “regime change” to a pro-American anti-China nation.
Chinese BRI construction in the Beirut port (destroyed by missiles).
And so on and so forth.
It’s a big effort, with the blocking the Suez canal, and mysterious fires in IC factories, and the like…
The propaganda is still in full active attack mode.
Which pretty much means that more, and worse events are scheduled to occur.
I think that the United States should realize that China is NOT a nation that is an easy target and that it would be in the best interests for America to work with China rather than try to destroy it. But what else can I say? America is run by idiots.
That’s the only thing that you can conclude.
They are all maniacs you see. Maniacs. Pure maniacs.
Do you want more?
This article is going into a new sub-index that I am creating for it titled VLOG. You can access it here.
I think that is important to address the issue of Taiwan and China. I believe that I need to do so because the USA is trying to start a war there. The drums for war are beating loudly. Really, really loudly. What the HELL is going on?
America is a military empire and it needs a war to exist. It’s always wanted one, two or three, as well well know. Right now the USA is involved in eight simultaneous wars, which could be reduced to seven if the (so called Afghanistan pull out) actually occurs.
But yeah. All evidence is that the United States is “throwing it’s weight around” trying to provoke a mighty World War.
(To) throw one's weightaround, to To use one’s wealth or standing to manipulateothers; to act officiously.
This expression dates from the early twentiethcenturyand uses weight in the sense of “authority.” John P. Marquand had it in H. M. Pulham, Esquire (1941): “Bo-jo was a bastard, a big bastard.
-Throwweightaround - Idiomsby The FreeDictionary
All you need to do is read the slant of the “news” out of America. Such as this piece of reprehensible trash…
I will admit that the anti-China articles have improved in their “sneakiness”. All you need to do is read the text to pull out the “boiler plate” anti-China screeds. Like this one from my Tech channels…
And the source for all this information? Why it’s the “United States Government”. That’s it. No other information on names or actual validation channels. Jeeze!
So the USA is busily running their anti-China screed, and they are still poking the Panda. But will it result in a hot war over Taiwan?
We should look into this. Here we tie together some most excellent articles and then weave them together for a better, more comprehensive picture about what is going on, why and who the culprits are.
We will start with this, it is one of the better articles on the subject. Edited to fit in this venue and all credit to the author.
We are witnessing the fourth Cross-Strait Crises. Chinese and American armed forces are undertaking dangerous, spectacular and threatening show of military might. What makes the present crisis different from the previous ones is the fact that it happened during and after the mutual cold-war declaration by Washington and Beijing in Anchorage, Alaska on March 18-19, 2021
The world is wondering how far this military show will go. Many are afraid of a shooting war involving China, Taiwan and the U.S. Indeed, many are even afraid of the possibility of the third world war which will kill us all.
However, I do not share such pessimistic views. My view is that the inter-China cold war is likely to remain cold, not hot, because none of the three actors involved in the conflict – two Chinas and the U.S.- will gain from the shooting war.
The Sino-American shooting war – if there will be one – will be ignited somewhere else.
Summary
My argument may be summarized as follows.
First, the U.S. does not want the inter-China hot war, because through its ambiguous Taiwan policy, it can continue to sell weapons to Taiwan and, at the same time, keep Taiwan as the primary outpost of its China containment policy.
Second, China is not eager to declare a hot war with Taiwan, because Taiwan has not provided the reasons for China’s Taiwan invasion.
What would force an invasion of Taiwan by China?
There are four reasons for China’s Taiwan invasion including [1] the declaration of Taiwan independence, [2] internal turmoil inside of Taiwan, [2] military alliance with another country, [3] acquisition of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and [4] negotiations under the violation of the 1992 Consensus for “one-China”.
None of these conditions are present.
Therefore, China has no reason to invade Taiwan.
Taiwan does not want a war with China
Third, Taiwan does not want the hot war with China for the reason that it will be most likely defeated. As well as the cost of such defeat will be too high in terms of economic development and the loss of its identity. In fact, if and when China wins, it is extremely likely that both of the two China’s will be united under the banner of PRC.
The U.S. does not want inter-China hot War
To understand Washington’s role in the inter-China conflict, it is important to understand its Taiwan policy.
Washington’s Taiwan policy is based on [1] the three joint communiqués, [2] the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 (TRA) and [3] the Six Assurances imposed by Ronald Reagan in 1982.
The followings are the contents of the three Communiqués, TRA and the Six Assurances.
The First China-U.S. Communiqué (28 February 1972)
The U.S. Government acknowledges (not accept or recognize) that all Chinese in either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but One China
Taiwan is a part of China
The U.S. Government does not challenge this position
. It reaffirms its interest in peaceful settlement of the Taiwan question by Chinese themselves
With this prospect in mind, it affirms its ultimate objective of the withdrawal of all the U.S. forces and military installations from Taiwan.
The Second China-U.S. Communiqué (January 1, 1979)
Neither should seek hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region or any other region of the world.
Each is opposed to efforts by any other country or group of countries to establish such hegemony
The government of the USA acknowledges the Chinese position that there is but one China and that Taiwan is part of China
PRC is the sole legal government of China
Third China-U.S. Communiqué (August 17, 1982)
The U.S. Government attaches great importance to its relation with China.
It has no intention of infringing on Chinese sovereignty and territorial integrity or interfering in China’s internal affairs or pursuing a policy of ‘two Chinas’ or ‘one China, one Taiwan.’
The U.S. Government states that it does not seek to carry out a long-term policy of arms sales to Taiwan
Its arms sale to Taiwan will not exceed, either in qualitative or in quantitative terms the level of those supplied in recent years
It intends to reduce gradually its sales of arms to Taiwan, leading over a period of time to a final solution.
The U.S. Taiwan policy cannot be changed by the president and requires the consent of the Congress.
The Taiwan Relations Act (enacted by the U.S. Congress on April 10, 1979)
The principal contents of the Act is in Section 2 of the Act
Taiwan is treated as a country, a nation or a state as sub sovereign nation
Informal diplomatic relations are carried out by the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT)
The U.S. Government normalizes its diplomatic relations with PRC (Beijing) under the condition that the future of Taiwan will be determined by peaceful means.
Any efforts to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means including by boycotts, or embargoes, a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific are grave concern to the U.S.
The Sino (Taiwan)-U.S. Mutual Defence Treaty is terminated.
The U.S. Government does not intervene in case of invasion by People’s Republic of China (PRC)
The U.S. Government provides arms of defensive character and maintains the capacity to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security, or the social or economic system, of the people on Taiwan
The decision related to the quantity and the quality of defence articles and services is determined by the Congress and the president.
The Six Assurances
The administration of Ronald Reagan unilaterally added in 1982 “Six Assurances” to the TRA and this has become the mains part of the U.S. Taiwan policy
The U.S. Government has not agreed to set a date of the termination of its arms sale to Taiwan.
The U.S. Government has not agreed to consult with PRC (China) or ROC (Taiwan) for arms sales to Taiwan.
The U.S. Government does not perform the mediation role between ROC and PRC
The U.S. Government has not agreed to revise the TRA
The U.S. Government has not revised its position regarding the sovereignty of Taiwan
The U.S. Government will not exercise pressure on Taiwan to enter into negotiation with PRC.
The positive aspect of Washington’s Taiwan policy is the termination of the bloody civil war between ROC and PRC which caused the two cross-strait crises (1954 and 1958); the civil war lasted until 1979.
But, the end of the inter-China civil war was also desirable for Washington as well, because Washington badly needed China to counter the aggressive assertiveness of the Soviet Union in Asia.
So, Washington and Beijing were strange bed fellows with different dreams. Another possible reason for the U.S. initiative to end the inter-China civil war was the fear of Beijing’s victory over Taipei, which means the loss of a lucrative American arms market and reliable outpost of China containment strategy.
On the other hand, Washington’s Taiwan policy is characterized by the amazing ambiguity of Washington’s perception of the cross-strait problems and tactics which was most likely designed to maximize the American interests at the expense of China’s interests.
What comes out of the three communiqués, the TRA and the six assurances may be summarized in terms of the issue of regional hegemony, the legal status of Taiwan and the American arms sales.
Regional ambiguity
In the second communiqué of 1979, there are items preventing China from becoming a hegemonic power in the region. Neither the U.S. nor China should seek for hegemonic power in Asia. But the U.S was already the hegemonic power there.
The second feature of Washington’s Taiwan policy is its contradictory and ambiguous position regarding the legal status of Taiwan.
In the joint communiqués, the U.S. acknowledges that China is one and Taiwan is a part of China and that Beijing is the sole legal government of China. But this should mean that since Taiwan is a part of China, Beijing should also govern Taiwan.
But, in the Taiwan Relations Act, Taiwan is given the status of a de facto sovereign country.
China can argue that Washington did not respect the contents of the joint communiqués. But Washington can say this: “We have never accepted one-China regime, we said we acknowledged the regime”. Here, we see the strategic political ambiguity of Washington.
In fact, in the TRA, it says that Taiwan is treated as a nation of sub sovereignty. The U.S. has established de facto diplomatic relations with Taiwan conducted through the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT).
Here, Washington’s position regarding the sovereignty of Taiwan is not clear. The hidden purpose of the U.S. could be to make the sovereignty issue ambiguous so that it can change its position in function of needs.
Washington’s Arms Sales to Taiwan
Now, as for the issues of arms sales to Taiwan, the U. S. is even more ambiguous.
In the third communiqué, the U.S. says that it has no long-run plan of arms sales to Taiwan.
Yet in the same communiqué, the U.S. says that it will reduce arms sales, which contradicts each other.
In the TRA, the Sino (ROC)-U.S. defence Treaty is terminated.
This is a very, very important point. One that is purposely being left out of all media communication originating out of the United States. The TRA ended Taiwan as a US Protectorate.
Therefore, Washington should not intervene militarily if and when Taiwan is in armed conflict with Beijing.
But, already, in media, the US intervention in case of PRC’s Taiwan invasion is openly discussed.
One wonders what the reliability of the joint communiqués, the TRA and the Six Assurances is. It’s as if the United States simply ignores inconvenient rules, treaties, and agreements that it has signed.
Now, in the Six Assurances, it is written that the U.S. has no date for the ending of its arms sales to Taiwan. The U.S. is not obliged to consult PRC or ROC for its arms sales to Taiwan. So, Washington has absolute freehand in handling the arms sales to Taiwan.
In short, the U.S. Taiwan policy is so confusing and so ambiguous that it has useful flexibility for the sales of arms to Taiwan. The following table shows the pattern of American arms sales to Taiwan.
Table: Washington’s arms sales to Taiwan by U.S. Presidents
The table above allows these observations.
Washington’s arms sales to Taiwan has increased over the years, which is contrary to what the U.S. Government had promised.
The Trump administration spent as much as US$ 4.45 billion per year which represents as much as 30% of Taiwan’s annual defense budget of $15 billion
By and large, the Republican Party sells more than the Democrats.
Washington sells more when the anti-Beijing liberal party of Taiwan, the Democratic and Progressive Parry (DPP) is in power, that is, under the DPP government of Chen Shui-bian (2000-2008) and under the DPP government of Tsai Ying-wen (2016-2021)
This has an important meaning.
Remember that the DPP is the party which seeks independence of Taiwan.
Hence, the data can be interpreted as Washington’s strategy of encouraging the independence movement leading to ROC-PRC tension and more U.S. arms sales to Taiwan.
So the United States is actively encouraging an armed conflict between Taiwan and China. Though everyone realizes that ultimately Taiwan would be absorbed into China as a result of the conflict.
So, Does the USA want a Hot War over the Taiwan strait?
Now, coming back to the question of whether the U.S. wishes hot war over the Taiwan Strait, the answer is that it will not want the hot war.
The USA does not really want a Hot War, even though it is provoking one.
The reason is because, the hot war means the unification of China and Taiwan will no longer be able to play the role of Washington’s primary China-containment outpost and its function of being the lucrative market of American military equipment’s.
Neither PRC (People’s Republic of China) nor ROC (Republic of China-Taiwan) wants the hot War.
Are Taiwan and China enemies as described in the Western media?
When we discuss Taiwan and China, it is important to remember that they once were enemies. This was around fifty years ago.
The army of the ROC was defeated in 1949 and Chiang Kai-sek fled to Taiwan and continued the Republic of China which was created in 1912 by Sun Yat-sen. The civil war between ROC and PRC continued until 1979.
Even though the civil war was terminated, the ROC and PRC relations have not been smooth partly because of the past history and partly because of different political and economic regimes. In other words, there are always the possibilities of hostility in the cross-strait relations.
However, they have established viable relations which have been beneficial to both through political and economic cooperation.
The Risk of full Taiwan Independence from China
Aside from the American and British media harping on the desire for Taiwan to be free of the “oppressive yoke” of the “brutal Communist Dictatorship”, the real truth is something else entirely.
The evolution of the Taiwanese political orientation may be measured in terms of the way in which its presidents consider the legal status of Taiwan vis-à-vis PRC.
The evolution of Taiwanese political leaders’ perceptions of Taipei-Beijing political relations is shown below. By and large, such relations have evolved by the following periods.
The civil war period (1949-1979)
The period of good relations (1979-1998)
The period of hostility (1998-2008)
The resumption of high level dialogue period (2008-2016)
The frozen relation period (2016-2021)
The period of civil war (1949-1979) was characterized by two cross-strait crises and never ending armed conflict between two Chinas.
During the friendly relation period (1979-1998), Deng Xiaoping met frequently the head of the Nationalist Party, Kuomintang (KMT) in order to develop cooperative relations.
President Chiang Ching-kuo (1980-1988) of KMT, son of Chiang Kai-shek, declared the three NOs:
No declaration of independence,
No unification of Chinas and
No use of force between the two Chinas.
On July 9, 1999, President Lee Teng-hui (1988-2000) of KMT defined the ROC-PRC relation as “country to country relations.” So, there is no need for the independence declaration.
However, Lee’s visit to the Cornel University Alumni in 1995 alarmed Beijing and it led to the 1996 show of military might of People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of PRC.
This was, in fact, the third Taiwan Strait crisis.
During the period of hostility (1998-2008), President Chen Shui-bian (2000-2008) of the anti-PRC party, DPP, changed the name of “Chunghwa Post Co.” to “Taiwan Post Co.” He changed also the name of “China Petroleum Corporation” to “Taiwan Petroleum Corporation.”
But, under KMT president Ma Yong-Jeou (2008-2016), the old names came back. This episode shows how Taiwanese people are sensitive about the identity of Taiwan vis-à-vis China of main land.
In 2008, Ma Ying-Jeou of KMT (2008-2016) took over the power and the friendly relations across the Strait were resumed.
The year 2008 was marked by the efforts of PRCs president Hu Jintao to improve the bilateral relations across the Taiwan Strait. On March 26, 2008, he talked to President G.W. Bush, who endorsed the 1992 consensus on “One China”..
President Hu Jintao also met the Chairman of the KMT, Wu Po-hsing, who also accepted the 1992 Consensus.
As for President Ma, he defined the bilateral relations as “One Country on each side” or “two states in the same nation.”
In 2016 began the current period of contention. The power went back to DPP and Tsai Ying-wen became President. Tsai’s perception of Taiwan’s legal status was not more certain than those of other Taiwan presidents.
Her victory has put Beijing in even uncomfortable position. In 2016, Beijing cut all communications with ROC.
But, in the same year, some leaders in Taiwan being aware of the deteriorating cross-strait relations formed a Taiwanese delegation composed of eight magistrates and city mayors went to Beijing to improve the relations.
However, the cross-strait relations were not peaceful. In 2018, PLA conducted military exercises which surely alarmed Taiwan.
In 2019, Xi Jinping reaffirmed his position in favor of “one China, two systems.”
President Tsai Ying-wen refused Xi Jinping’s idea.
To the surprise of the world, in 2020 Tsai Ying-wen won the election again; the world was expecting that she would take more radical position regarding Taiwan’s independence.
True, her victory has encouraged the independence movement in Taiwan and pro-independence political parties and civic organizations asked for a referendum on independence.
However, Tsai maintained her position that since Taiwan is already independent country, there is no need for the declaration of independence.”
To sum up, none of the presidents of the major parties, the KMT and the DPP, opted for the declaration of Taiwan’s independence.
True, there are some pro-independence parties such as The Taiwan Independence Party, the Taiwan Solidarity and the Formosa Alliance, but they have no electoral support.
Thus, the danger of Taiwan’s declaration of independence seems nonexistent and therefore, Beijing has no reason to invade for now.
Taiwan People’s Perception
What has intrigued me is the Taiwanese people’s perceptions regarding Taiwan’s legal or political status. There are four public opinion polls which are meaningful.
In the poll of 2008 by the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) no less than76% of the respondents rejected the idea of “one China, two systems.”
In the 2017 poll by MAC, 85% of the respondents said that the future of Taiwan should be determined by the Taiwanese themselves.
In the 2019 poll by MAC, 75% of the respondents rejected the 1992 Consensus (There is only one China which should be governed by PRC).
In the 2020 poll by the Academia Sinica, one finds very interesting phenomena.
73% of the respondents identified themselves as Taiwanese.
27.5% of them identified themselves as Chinese-Taiwanese
2.4% of them identified themselves as Chinese
52.3% of them would prefer the postponement of the question of Taiwan independence and keep the status quo
35.1% of them prefer immediate independence
5.5% of them would prefer immediate or eventual unification of China.
In the Poll of MAC, 90% of the respondents refused PLA’s military threats.
To sum up, the Taiwanese are eager to greater autonomy, even independence, but they seem to avoid military confrontation by postponing the solution of the independence issue.
In short, Taiwan does not want a shooting war with China.
Economic Cooperation
There is another reason why the ROC-PRC hot war will not take place. It is the cross-strait economic cooperation.
Taiwan has achieved a remarkable success in economic development.
In the 1960s, the per capita GDP was as low as $60. Now, in 2020, its GDP (nominal) was $730 billion USD and the per capita GDP was $32,000. This is, in fact, the miraculous achievements of the Taiwanese people.
The information industries account for 35 % of the country’s industrial production. The semi-conductor producers such as Taiwan Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) and the United Microelectronic Corporation (UMC) are world leaders. Taiwan is the 13th largest producer of steel; its steel products are exported to 130 countries. The most spectacular entrepreneurial performance has been shown by the SMEs accounting for 85% of industrial outputs.
Such achievement has been possible because of the courage, the innovative entrepreneurial spirit, the productivity and, especially the hard work of the Taiwanese.
However, Washington’s economic aid, its imports of Taiwanese products and technology transfer have all contributed. In addition, we should not forget the cooperation between Mainland China and Taiwan.
Under President Chiang Ching-kuo (1978-1988), two important semi-official organizations were was established: the Strait Exchange Foundation (SEF) under ROC’s Mainland Affairs Council and the Association of Relations across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) under PRCs Taiwanese Affairs Office.
These two organizations have been the center of bilateral political and economic cooperation. They have initiated the three links: postal services, transportation and trade.
The Taiwan’s Investment Guidelines and similar measures taken by ROC have led to mutual business investments.
In fact, 40 % of Taiwan’s outbound FDI stock went to Mainland China. Chinese tourists contribute to more than 40% of ROCs tourist industry. The Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement of 2010 is another mechanism of the bilateral economic relations.
Above all, Taiwan depends heavily on China for trade. In 2020, the value of Taiwan’s total exports was $ 345 billion of which 29.7% went to China. In the same year, the value of Taiwan’s total imports was $ 286 billion of which 22% came from China.
It is true that the RCO-PRC relations are not peaceful. But these economic relations are beneficial enough to keep the status quo as long as possible.
The conclusion of my analysis is that none of the three actors involved in the cross-strait drama wants shooting war.
China doesn’t
Taiwan doesn’t
The United States doesn’t.
The United States. The U.S. does not want the hot war because it will mean [1] the unification of China, [2] the loss of Taiwan as the primary China-containment outpost and [3] the loss of the lucrative arms market.
Taiwan. Taiwan does not want the shooting war, because it will mean the complete destruction of its economy, and the loss of its autonomy becoming one of the Chinese provinces.
China. China does not risk the hot war because [1] Taiwan prefers the status quo; [2] it has no intention of getting weapons of mass destruction; [3] there is no internal turmoil; [4] it does not seek military alliances.
But the United States wants high stress and tension
However, even without the shooting war, as long as the Sino-U.S. cold war continues, the cross-strait tension will continue.
Washington will sell more military equipment and services and Taiwan will have to play the dangerous role of Washington’s the primary outpost of China containment strategy and that of main buyer of American military weapons.
I wish to add this.
The bilateral conflict between two Chinas like all other major bilateral conflicts is an integral part of Washington’s strategy of global hegemony. One of the most productive components of the American global hegemony is the proxy war, that is, some member country of Washington’s alliances will fight for the U.S.
Japan might be asked to play this role, because Japan is the best qualified for such task; it is a world class military power and it has the ambition of dominating Asia again; to do so, Japan has to destroy China. I hope I am wrong in thinking such an awful thing.
Finally, I would like add this too…
Taiwan is a country which has achieved an amazing economic miracle of which all Chinese should be proud. Taiwan has established viable democracy under very challenging conditions; this is a regime which will surely contribute to the further advancement of China’s socio-political system.
…
Well, perhaps it is the Taiwan oligarchy that is pushing this issue. Not the Taiwanese government, and not the American government. Perhaps it is the oligarchy inside of Taiwan, and the greedy evil neocons in America that is driving up the stress levels in the Taiwan strait.
Because if Taiwan, China and the USA doesn’t want a war, then why are we talking about this?
Twenty years ago, a group of neoconservative think tanks used their power to push for disastrous wars in the Middle East. Now, a new set of think tanks staffed with many of the same experts and funded by Taiwanese money is working hard to convince Americans that there is a new existential threat: China.
At MintPress, we have been at the forefront of exposing how Middle Easterndictatorships and weapons contractors have been funneling money into think tanks and political action committees, keeping up a steady drumbeat for more war and conflict around the world.
Yet one little-discussed nation that punches well above its weight in spending cash in Washington is Taiwan.
By studying Taiwan’s financial reports, MintPress has ascertained that the semi-autonomous island of 23 million people has, in recent years, given out millions of dollars to many of the largest and most influential think tanks in the United States.
This has coincided with a strong upsurge in anti-China rhetoric in Washington, with report after report warning of China’s economic rise and demanding that the U.S. intervene more in China-Taiwan disputes.
These think tanks are filled with prominent figures from both parties and have the ears of the most powerful politicians in Washington.
It is in their offices that specialists draw up papers and incubate ideas that become tomorrow’s policies.
They also churn out experts who appear in agenda-setting media, helping to shape and control the public debate on political and economic issues.
Twenty years ago, a group of neoconservative think tanks like the Project for a New American Century, funded by foreign governments and weapons manufacturers, used their power to push for disastrous wars in the Middle East.
Now, a new set of think tanks, staffed with many of those same experts who provided the intellectual basis for those invasions, is working hard to convince Americans that there is a new existential threat: China.
The Brookings Institute
In 2019, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States (TECRO) — for all intents and purposes, the Taiwanese embassy — donated between $250,000 and $499,999 to the Brookings Institute, commonly identified as the world’s most influential think tank.
Taiwanese tech companies have also given large sums to the organization.
In turn, Brookings Institute staff like Richard C. Bush (a former member of the National Intelligence Council and a U.S. national intelligence officer for East Asia) vociferously champion the cause of Taiwanese nationalists and routinelycondemn Beijing’s attempts to bring the island more closely under control.
TECRO featured prominently among myriad defense interests on the donor rolls for both the Atlantic Council, left, and Brookings Institute
In mid-April 2021, Brookings held an event called “Taiwan’s quest for security and the good life,” which began with the statement that…
“Taiwan is rightly praised for its democracy. Elections are free, fair, and competitive; civil and political rights are protected.”
...
“most consequential” challenge to the island’s liberty and prosperity is “China’s ambition to end Taiwan’s separate existence.”
According to another organization’s latest financial disclosure, TECRO also gave a six-figure sum to the Atlantic Council, a think tank closely associated with NATO.
The Atlantic Council
It is unclear what the Atlantic Council did with that money, but what is certain is that they gave a senior fellowship to Chang-Ching Tu, an academic employed by the Taiwanese military to teach at the country’s National Defense University.
In turn, Tu authored Atlantic Council reports describing his country as a “champion [of] global democracy,” and stating that “democracy, freedom and human rights are Taiwan’s core values.”
A menacing China, however, is increasing its military threats, so Taiwan must “accelerate its deterrence forces and strengthen its self-defense capabilities.”
Thus he advises that the U.S. must work far more closely with Taiwan’s military, conducting joint exercises and moving towards a more formal military alliance.
In 2020, the U.S. sold $5.9 billion worth of arms to the island, making it the fifth-largest recipient of American weaponry last year.
Other Taiwan-employed academics have chided the West on the pages of the Council’s website for its insufficient zeal in “deter[ring] Chinese aggression” against the island. “A decision by the United States to back down” — wrote Philip Anstrén, a Swedish recipient of a fellowship from the Taiwanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs — “could damage the credibility of U.S. defense guarantees and signal that Washington’s will to defend its allies is weak.”
Anstrén also insisted that “Europe’s future is on the line in the Taiwan Strait.” “Western democratic nations have moral obligations vis-à-vis Taiwan,” he added on his blog, “and Western democracies have a duty to ensure that [Taiwan] not only survives but also thrives.”
The reason this is important is that the Atlantic Council is an enormously influential think tank.
Its board of directors is a who’s-who in foreign policy statecraft, featuring no fewer than seven former CIA directors.
Also on the board are many of the architects of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and James Baker. When organizations like this begin beating the war drums, everybody should take note.
…
The Hudson Institute
Perhaps the most strongly anti-Beijing think tank in Washington is the conservative Hudson Institute, an organization frequented by many of the Republican Party’s most influential figures, including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former Vice-President Mike Pence and Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton.
The words “China” or “Chinese” appear 137 times in Hudson’s latest annual report, so focused on the Asian nation are they. Indeed, reading their output, it often appears they care about little else but ramping up tensions with Beijing, condemning it for its treatment of Hong Kong, Taiwan and Uyghur Muslims, and warning of the economic and military threat of a rising China.
Over the years, Hudson’s efforts have been sustained by huge donations from TECRO.
The Hudson Institute does not disclose the exact donations any sources give, but their annual reports show that TECRO has been on the highest tier of donors ($100,000+) every year since they began divulging their sponsors in 2015. In February, Hudson Senior Fellow Thomas J. Duesterberg wrote an op-ed for Forbes entitled “The Economic Case for Prioritizing a U.S.-Taiwan Free Trade Agreement,” in which he extolled Taiwan’s economy as modern and dynamic and portrayed securing closer economic ties with it as a no-brainer. Hudson employees have also traveled to Taiwan to meet and hold events with leading foreign ministry officials there.
The Hudson Institute also recently partnered with the more liberal Center for American Progress (CAP) to host an event with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, who took the opportunity to make a great number of inflammatory statements about the “ever more challenging threats to free and democratic societies” China poses; applaud the U.S.’ actions on Hong Kong; and talk about how Taiwan honors and celebrates those who died at the Tiananmen Square massacre. TECRO gave the CAP between $50,000 and $100,000 last year.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
It is the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), however, that appears to receive the most Taiwanese money.
According to its donor list, Taiwan gives as much money to it as the United States does — at least $500,000 last year alone.
Yet all of the Taiwanese government money is put into CSIS’s regional studies (i.e., Asia) program. Like Hudson employees, the CSIS calls for a free trade agreement with Taiwan and has lavished praise on the nation for its approach to tackling disinformation, describing it as a “thriving democracy and a cultural powerhouse.”
Although acknowledging that the reports were paid for by TECRO, CSIS insists that “all opinions expressed herein should be understood to be solely those of the authors and are not influenced in any way by any donation.”
In December, the CSIS also held a debatesuggesting that “[w]ithin the next five years, China will use significant military force against a country on its periphery,” exploring what the U.S. response to such an action should be.
Like the Atlantic Council, the CSIS organization is stacked with senior officials from the national security state. Its president and CEO is former Deputy Secretary of Defense John Hamre, while Henry Kissinger — former secretary of state and the architect of the Vietnam War — also serves on its council.
The Taiwan Foundation for Democracy (TFD)
The CSIS accepts money from the Global Taiwan Institute and the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy (TFD) as well. The former is a rather shadowy pro-Taiwanese group that appears not to disclose its funding sources.
The latter is a government-funded organization headed by former Taiwanese President You Si-kun.
Every year, the TFD publishes a human rights report on China, the latest of which claims that “the Chinese Communist Party knows no bounds when it comes to committing serious human rights violations” — accusing it of “taking the initiative” in “promoting a new Cold War over the issue of human rights” and trying to “replace the universal standing of human rights values around the world.”
Ultimately, the report concludes, China “constitutes a major challenge to democracy and freedom in the world.”
Joseph Hwang of The War College in Taiwan speaks at a CSIS about how Taiwan acts a buffer to protect US data infrastructure from China
The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation
The TFD has also been a major funder of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, a far-right pressure group that insists that Communism has killed over 100 million people worldwide.
Last year, the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation added all global COVID-19 fatalities to the list of Communist-caused deaths on the basis that the virus started in China.
The Foundation also employs Adrian Zenz, a German evangelical theologian who is the unlikely source of many of the most controversialandcontested claims about Chinese repression in Xinjiang province.
Other funded anti-China Think-Tanks
In the past 12 months, TECRO has also donated six-figure sums to many other prominent think tanks, including…
MintPress reached out to a number of these think tanks for comment but has not received any response.
“It would be naive to believe that Taiwan’s funding of think tanks is not pushing them to take pro-Taiwan or anti-China positions,” Ben Freeman, the director of the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative at the Center for International Policy, told MintPress, adding:
After all, why would Taiwan keep funding think tanks that are critical of Taiwan? There’s a Darwinian element to foreign funding of think tanks that pushes foreign government funding to think tanks that write what that foreign government wants them to write. Taiwan is no exception to this rule.”
TECRO is not just sponsoring American think tanks, however.
the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)
It has also given funds to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), a hawkish and controversial group described as “the think tank behind Australia’s changing view of China.” The country’s former ambassador in Beijing described ASPI as “the architect of the China threat theory in Australia” while Senator Kim Carr of Victoria denounced them as working hand-in-hand with Washington to push “a new Cold War with China.”
ASPI was behind Twitter’s decision last year to purge more than 170,000 accounts sympathetic to Beijing from its platform.
“We must be ready to fight our corner as Taiwan tensions rise,” ASPI wrote in January, having previously castigated the West for being “no longer willing to defend Taiwan.”
Who is behind all this money, ultimately?
ASPI — like Brookings, the Atlantic Council and others — are directly funded by weapons manufacturers, all of whom also have a direct interest in promoting more wars around the world.
Thus, if the public is not careful, certain special interests might be helping move the United States towards yet another international conflict.
While the situation outlined above is concerning enough, the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative’s research has shown that around one-third of think tanks still do not provide any information whatsoever about their funding, and very few are completely open about their finances.
Freeman maintains that, while there is nothing inherently wrong with foreign governments funding Western think tanks, the lack of transparency is seriously problematic, explaining:
This raises a lot of questions about the work they’re doing. Are their secret funders saying what the think tank can do in a pay-for-play scheme? Are the funders buying the think tanks silence on sensitive issues? Without knowing the think tank’s funders, policymakers and the public have no idea if the think tank’s work is objective research or simply the talking points of a foreign government.”
Freeman’s study of the Taiwanese lobby found that seven organizations registered as Taiwan’s foreign agents in the U.S.
Those organizations, in turn, contacted 476 Members of Congress (including almost 90% of the House), as well as five congressional committees.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was their most frequent contact, the Californian being contacted 34 times by Taiwanese agents. Pelosi has been a great supporter of Taiwanese nationalists, successfully promoting pro-Taiwan legislation and proudly announcing that the U.S. “stands with Taiwan.”
Foreign agents working on behalf of Taiwan also made 143 political contributions to U.S. politicians, with former Alabama Senator Doug Jones the lead recipient (Pelosi was third).
Losing China, regaining Taiwan?
The reports listed above understand the dispute as purely a matter of Chinese belligerence against Taiwan and certainly do not consider U.S. military actions in the South China Sea as aggressive in themselves.
That is because the world of think tanks and war planners sees the United States as owning the planet.
America has the right to go and do anything that it desires anywhere on the globe at any time.
To this day, U.S. planners bemoan the “loss of China” in 1949 (a phrase that presupposes the United States owned the country).
After a long and bloody Second World War, Communist resistance forces under Mao Tse-tung managed to both expel the Japanese occupation and overcome the U.S.-backed Kuomintang (nationalist) force led by Chang Kai-shek. The United States actually invaded China in 1945, with 50,000 troops working with the Kuomintang and even Japanese forces in an attempt to suppress the Communists. However, by 1949, Mao’s army was victorious; the United States evacuated and Chang Kai-shek retreated to Taiwan.
The Kuomintang ruled the island for 40 years as a one-party state and remains one of the two major political groups to this day.
The war between the Communists and the Kuomintang never formally ended, and Taiwan has now lived through 70 years of estrangement from the mainland. Polls show a majority of Taiwanese now favor full independence, although a large majority still personally identify as Chinese.
While many Taiwanese welcome an increased U.S. presence in the region, Beijing certainly does not.
American military is getting ready for a war
In 2012, President Barack Obama announced the U.S.’ new “Pivot to Asia” strategy, moving forces from the Middle East towards China. Today, over 400 American military bases encircle China.
In recent months, the United States has also taken a number of provocative military actions on China’s doorstep.
In July, it conducted naval exercises in the South China Sea, with warships and naval aircraft spotted just 41 nautical miles from the coastal megacity of Shanghai, intent on probing China’s coastal defenses.
And in December, it flew nuclear bombers over Chinese vessels close to Hainan Island.
Earlier this year, the head of Strategic Command made his intentions clear, stating that there was a “very real possibility” of war against China over a regional conflict like Taiwan.
China, for its part, has also increased its forces in the region, carrying out military exercises and staking claims to a number of disputed islands.
A new Director of National Intelligence (DNI) report notes that China is the U.S.’ “unparalleled priority,” claiming that Beijing is making a “push for global power.” “We expect that friction will grow as Beijing steps up attempts to portray Taipei as internationally isolated and dependent on the mainland for economic prosperity, and as China continues to increase military activity around the island,” it concludes.
In an effort to stop this, Washington has recruited allies into the conflict. Australian media are reporting that their military is currently readying for war in an effort to force China to back down, while in late April 2021 President Joe Biden met with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga to shore up a united front against Beijing vis-a-vis Taiwan.
In February, the Atlantic Council penned an anonymous 26,000-word report advising Biden to draw a number of red lines around China, beyond which a response — presumably military — is necessary. These included any military action or even a cyber attack against Taiwan. Any backing down from this stance, the council states, would result in national “humiliation” for the United States.
American fantasy dreams
Perhaps most notably, however, the report also envisages what a successful American China policy would look like by 2050:
[T]he United States and its major allies continue to dominate the regional and global balance of power across all the major indices of power;… [and head of state Xi Jinping] has been replaced by a more moderate party leadership; and … the Chinese people themselves have come to question and challenge the Communist Party’s century-long proposition that China’s ancient civilization is forever destined to an authoritarian future.”
In other words, that China has been broken and that some sort of regime change has occurred.
Forked tongue speak
Throughout all this, the United States has been careful to stress that it still does not recognize Taiwan and that their relationship is entirely “unofficial,” despite claiming that its commitment to the island remains “rock solid.”
Indeed, only 14 countries formally recognize Taiwan, the largest and most powerful of which is Paraguay.
Along with a military conflict brewing, Washington has also been prosecuting an information and trade war against China on the world stage.
Attempts to block the rise of major Chinese companies like Huawei, TikTok and Xiaomi are examples of this.
Others in Washington have advised the Pentagon to carry out an under-the-table culture war against Beijing.
This would include commissioning “Taiwanese Tom Clancy” novels that would “weaponize” China’s one-child policy against it.
And, bombarding citizens with stories about how their only children will die in a war over Taiwan.
Republicans and Democrats constantly accuse each other of being in President Xi’s pocket, attempting to outdo each other in their jingoistic fervor.
Last year, in 2020, Florida Senator Rick Scottwent so far as to announce that every Chinese national in the U.S. was a Communist spy and should be treated with extreme suspicion.
As a result, the American public’s view of China has crashed to an all-time low.
Only three years ago, the majority of Americans held a positive opinion of China. But today, that number is only 20%. Asian-Americans of all backgrounds have reported a rise in hate crimes against them.
Cash rules everything around me
How much of the United States’ aggressive stance towards China can be attributed to Taiwanese money influencing politics?
It is difficult to say.
Certainly, the United States has its own policy goals in East Asia outside of Taiwan.
But Freeman believes that the answer is not zero. The Taiwan lobby “absolutely has an impact on U.S. foreign policy,” he said, adding:
At one level, it creates an echo-chamber in D.C. that makes it taboo to question U.S. military ties with Taiwan.
While I, personally, think there are good strategic reasons for the U.S. to support this democratic ally — and it’s clearly in Taiwan’s interest to keep the U.S. fully entangled in their security — it’s troubling that the D.C. policy community can’t have an honest conversation about what U.S. interests are.
But, Taiwan’s lobby in D.C. and their funding of think tanks both work to stifle this conversation and, frankly, they’ve been highly effective.”
Other national lobbies affect U.S. policy.
The Cuban lobby helps ensure that the American stance towards its southern neighbor remains as antagonistic as possible.
Meanwhile, the Israel lobby helps ensure continuing U.S. support for Israeli actions in the Middle East.
Yet more ominously with Taiwan, its representatives are helping push the U.S. closer towards a confrontation with a nuclear power.
While Taiwanese money appears to have convinced many in Washington, it is doubtful that ordinary Americans will be willing to risk a war over an island barely larger than Hawaii, only 80 miles off the coast of mainland China.
Despite hopes by some that with Joe Biden a new US foreign policy will follow – US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has reaffirmed Washington’s committment to seeking conflict in the South China Sea under the guise of “standing with Southeast Asian claimants.”
Reuters in their article, “US stands with SE Asian countries against China pressure, Blinken say” would claim:
.
Secretary Blinken pledged to stand with Southeast Asian claimants in the face of PRC pressure,” it said, referring to the People’s Republic of China.
China claims almost all of the energy-rich South China Sea, which is also a major trade route. The Philippines, Brunei, Vietnam, Malaysia and Taiwan have overlapping claims.
The United States has accused China of taking advantage of the distraction of the coronavirus pandemic to advance its presence in the South China Sea.
The US announcement confirms that a confrontational posture toward China will continue regardless of who occupies the White House – as US tensions with China are rooted in unelected Western special interests and their desire to remove China as a competitor and potential usurper in what US policy papers themselves call “US primacy in Asia.”
US Primacy in Asia
One such paper titled, “Revising US Grand Strategy Toward China,”…
…published by the Council on Foreign Relations in 2015…
…not only spelled out the US desire to maintain that primacy in Asia vis-a-vis China…
… but also how it would use overlapping claims in the South China Sea as a pretext to justify….
…an expanded military presence in the region and as a common cause to pressure China’s neighbors into a united front against Beijing.
The paper would note specific US goals of militarizing Southeast Asia and integrating the region into a common US-led defense architecture against China.
It is a policy built upon the US “pivot to Asia” unveiled as early as 2011 and a policy that has been built upon in turn during the last four years under the Trump administration – demonstrating the continuity of agenda that permeates US foreign policy.
Turning Disputes into Conflict
Maritime disputes are common throughout the world – even in the West.
Just at the end of last year, the Guardian in an article titled, “Four navy ships to help protect fishing waters in case of no-deal Brexit,” would report:
Four Royal Navy patrol ships will be ready from 1 January to help the UK protect its fishing waters in the event of a no-deal Brexit, in a deployment evoking memories of the “cod wars” in the 1970s.The 80-metre-long armed vessels would have the power to halt, inspect and impound all EU fishing boats operating within the UK’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ), which can extend 200 miles from shore.
In terms of such disputes, the waters of the South China Sea are no exception.
Not only does China have overlapping claims with the nations mentioned in the Reuters article – each nation listed has overlapping claims with one another.
This results in sporadic disputes between all of these nations – occasionally resulting in the seizing of vessels and the temporary detaining of boat crews.
However – these disputes are regularly settled through bilateral methods – including disputes between Southeast Asian nations and China itself.
A high-profile example of this unfolded in 2015 where a US-led legal case was brought to the Hague on behalf of the Philippines regarding Chinese claims over the South China Sea.
While the Hague ruled in the Philippines’ favor – Manila declined to use the ruling as leverage against Beijing or to seek Washington’s assistance – and instead pursued bilateral talks with Beijing directly on its own.
It is a case that demonstrates the desire by Washington to escalate what are ordinary maritime disputes, into a regional or even international crisis – not unlike the US’ strategy in the Middle East which it uses to justify its perpetual military occupation there.
More recently the issue of the South China Sea has come up at ASEAN Summits.
Al Jazeera in its article, “ASEAN summit: South China Sea, coronavirus pandemic cast a shadow,” would cite Malaysia’s take on the issue, noting:
“The South China Sea issue must be managed and resolved in a rational manner,” Malaysia’s Foreign Minister Hishammuddin Hussein told the meeting. “We must all refrain from undertaking activities that would complicate matters in the South China Sea. We have to look at all avenues, all approaches to ensure our region is not complicated further by other powers.”
While the US poses a champion for Southeast Asia – it is clear that its efforts are unwelcome and viewed instead as a source of instability – not a path toward resolution.
It is almost certain that it is Washington the Malaysian foreign minister was referring to when he mentioned “other powers.”
Just as the US nominated itself as protector of European “energy security” in its bid to obstruct the Russian-German Nord Stream 2 pipeline – the US has inserted itself into relatively routine maritime disputes in the South China Sea – not to “stand with” the nations of the region, but to serve as an excuse to impose its “primacy” over them.
The nations of Southeast Asia count China among their largest trade partners, sources of tourism, and for several – a key military and infrastructure partner.
The prospect of a regionally destabilizing conflict originating over long-standing disputes in the South China Sea benefits no one actually located in Asia – and only serves the interests of those beyond Asia seeking to divide and reassert their rule over it.
Who are these people?
Who are these Taiwan Oligarchs that want to start World War III? Most are old men. The youngest is in their 60’s. Most are in their mid to late 70’s and much older. What are they trying to do, and why? Are they so fixated in what happened fifty years ago that they cannot see what is going on right now, and what a bright future lies ahead for them?
MM is providing their names right here for you all to see.
Yeah. I wonder how much of a shame it would be for these people to suddenly stop provoking a war beacause of other issues that they need to deal with.
Conclusion to all of this
The governments do not want wars or conflict in the South China Sea, but the oligarchs do.
They are pushing, and pushing, and pushing for a war.
And “red lines” have been established.
For China to invade Taiwan.
For China to attack American cities.
For Taiwan to get involved with the United States.
And the wealthy oligarchy are pushing these limits.
And this is what is going on right now.
How successful will the oligarchy be? It’s a matter up to the government leadership.
A final word…
It’s propaganda that is pushing the world towards world war III. And this propaganda is very devious and very destructive.
The following is from the US defense department. It shows the nuclear delivery systems of American, China and Russia compared. Imagine that, the only nuclear delivery systems that America has according to the media are airborne!
From the US Department of Defense Nuclear Posture Review.
Do you believe it?
You shouldn’t. It’s false; it’s a lie.
But many do believe it. And that why there is an inherent danger in all these oligarchs pushing the world towards world war III.
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.
It's true, and as time goes on it appears that America is just the big bad neighborhood bully that everyone is afraid of, and that no one ever stands up to. That is until one day...
This is a pretty damning and frightening title, don’t you think? Well, it’s true and it’s accurate. But you won’t ever see anyone be so absolutely blunt as MM here. This isn’t salacious and eye catching as some kind of “click bait” for “doom porn”. Never the less, it’s a real and serous issue. And we are talking about it here, simply because the “drums of war” are beating loudly inside of America.
American war drums are beating loudly.
#7 ·
It's a shame that everyone is China bashing these days, and all of that is based on the USA government controlled press.
If anyone were to do some research on the subject of China's claim to sovereignty over these South China Sea Islands, then they would quickly agree with China's stance.
However, almost all are like "LindaLou" who watched "some" of a morning program "Inside China" and immediately made up his/her mind that China was bad and should be condemned for standing up for their rights.
If this were the USA, making these claims, then ALL of the pandering USA citizens would be following the government press and saying "YES, YES, YES".
The citizens of the USA should be very mindful of the fact that you're being manipulated to believe whatever the government wants you to believe.
Ever watched "1984" ?
Listen to me.
.
Please.
.
America is not able, and is not capable, of fighting either Russia, or China on their territory. And would suffer catastrophic losses at a horrific level. Probably one that would result in the absolute collapse of the country (the entire United States as a nation) to a point where it is completely unrecognizable afterwards.
And you know, many, many people are starting to wake up to this fact. Even the most deluded sheeple. Some Americans. Maybe in numbers as high as 1% are scratching their heads and asking… what? You want to fight?
Why?
You're not suggesting that taking out China would be as easy, are you?
I guarantee you that the US cannot defeat China. We are no longer the world's leading super power and, in fact, we're on the verge of becoming #3.
China is #1 and we're close to coming in behind Russia.
#18 ·
Any of the following areas of American provocation would result in the nuclear detonation upon American cities…
China over Taiwan.
China over Tibet.
China over Hong Kong.
China over Xinjiang.
China over the South China Sea.
Russia over the Ukraine.
The American military planners are aware of this fact. And so they have been conducting all sorts of studies, and war games, to find solutions where America would win a war again either Russia, China or both simultaneously.
They can’t find ANY.
Many in the know, believe America has two options when it comes to winning a world war against China and Russia. Also, what most agree on is the fact that America cannot win a conventional war against either power, or both.
- Can America Win World War III? A Critical Analysis
Of course, because everyone is “dancing around it” and refuses to look at the issue “face to face” the actual study results (studies… many) are coded in euphemisms. Instead of saying that the United States military was wiped off the face of the globe, the studies say…
"...there were challenges and difficulties that were encountered..."
Instead of saying that all the United States carriers were non-functional after three days, the reports read…
"...the Navy needs to invest money to improve defensive capabilities in a new and contentious environment...".
Instead of saying that half of the expensive and elaborate high cost weapons and equipment were no longer operable, the reports stated…
"...challenges in training must be addressed..."
These euphemisms have become the “New Speak” of American Imperial Policy. As this quote outlays…
"Question: So you think that the United States can no longer be called a democracy?"Answer: Democratic countries do not engage in blackmail and threats against other sovereign states, do not interfere in their internal affairs. They do not violate international law, do not use military force and economic sanctions bypassing the UN. They do not trample on human rights or restrict freedom of speech on their territory and abroad. They do not try to use racism of all stripes to solve internal problems, nor do they lure extremists and terrorists to their side for geopolitical purposes. They do not allow transnational corporations to interfere in the work of the government, imposing their own interests on the country and society, much less block the legitimate head of state in social networks and mass media. In democratic countries, the administration that came to power does not disavow the decisions of its predecessors simply because there has been a personal antagonism between them."
But a "democratic country" is whatever America defines it as--at any given moment!
America is just like Humpty Dumpty in Alice in Wonderland: “When I use a word ... it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less."
Torture is Enhanced Interrogation.
Coup D'etats are Regime Change.
Kill Lists are a Disposition Threat Matrix.
Wars of Aggression are Wars of Choice (or Pre-emptive kinetic military action).
Ignorance is Strength....
As a former high-level Bush Regime official boasted, “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
Welcome to the American Rules-Based Order.
-Posted by: ak74 | May 4 2021 23:21 utc | 30
And this use of euphemisms has been seriously misinterpreted by the American leadership elite who mistakenly believe that they can fight either or both Russia and China simultaneously and win in any conflict. And here you have Metallicman saying that this is simply not true.
Fifty years of fighting small, lightly armed military, in under-developed nations that rely on obsolete technology and who, at best engage in GuerillaWarfareshould not be considered the same thing as fighting a determined, skilled, peer capable military in Asia.
Well, this is well understood.
But whether or not American military is able to fight a war is not a concern to the bureaucracy in Washington DC. Whether they are able to profit from the threat of war is. And thus we have this curious article…
Warships sink. Bases burn. F-35s die on the runway. Can $24 billion a year — 3.3 % of the Pentagon budget — fix the problem?
WASHINGTON: The US keeps losing, hard, in simulated wars with Russia and China. Bases burn. Warships sink. But we could fix the problem for about $24 billion a year, one well-connected expert said, less than four percent of the Pentagon budget.
“In our games, when we fight Russia and China,” RAND analyst David Ochmanek said this afternoon, “blue gets its ass handed to it.”
In other words, in RAND’s wargames, which are often sponsored by the Pentagon, the US forces — colored blue on wargame maps — suffer heavy losses in one scenario after another and still can’t stop Russia or China — red — from achieving their objectives, like overrunning US allies.
No, it’s not a Red Dawn nightmare scenario where the Commies conquer Colorado.
But losing the Baltics or Taiwan would shatter American alliances, shock the global economy, and topple the world order the US has led since World War II.
Hey! Boys and Girls! I've got news for you all. The US no longer leads the world. It just thinks it does. The American Leadership shill haven't read the reports yet. -MM
Body Blows & Head Hits
How could this happen, when we spend over $700 billion a year on everything from thousand-foot-long nuclear-powered aircraft carriers to supersonic stealth fighters?
Well, it turns out US superweapons have a little too much Achilles in their heels.
“In every case I know of,” said Robert Work, a former deputy secretary of defense with decades of wargaming experience, “the F-35 rules the sky when it’s in the sky, but it gets killed on the ground in large numbers.”
Even the hottest jet has to land somewhere.
But big airbases on land and big aircraft carriers on the water turn out to be big targets for long-range precision-guided missiles.
Once an American monopoly, such smart weapons are now a rapidly growing part of Russian and Chinese arsenals — as are the long-range sensors, communications networks, and command systems required to aim them.
So, as potential adversaries improve their technology, “things that rely on sophisticated base infrastructure like runways and fuel tanks are going to have a hard time,” Ochmanek said. “Things that sail on the surface of the sea are going to have a hard time.”
That’s why the 2020 budget retires the carrier USS Truman decades early and cuts two amphibious landing ships, as we’ve reported.
It’s also why the Marine Corps is buying the jump-jet version of the F-35, which can take off and land from tiny, ad hoc airstrips, but how well they can maintain a high-tech aircraft in low-tech surroundings is an open question.
While the Air Force and Navy took most of the flak today at this afternoon’s Center for a New American Security panel on the need for “A New American Way of War.” the Army doesn’t look too great, either.
Its huge supply bases go up in smoke as well, Work and Ochmanek said. Its tank brigades get shot up by cruise missiles, drones, and helicopters because the Army largely got rid of its mobile anti-aircraft troops, a shortfall it’s now hastening to correct.
And its missile defense units get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of incoming fire.
“I think it’s unanimous from all the soldiers involved that we got this one right,” said the Army’s project manager for the Future Tactical Unmanned Aerial System. Manned aircraft, FARA and FLRAA, are also moving out sharply.
- Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
“If we went to war in Europe, there would be one Patriot battery moving, and it would go to Ramstein. And that’s it,” Work growled. “We have 58 Brigade Combat Teams, but we don’t have anything to protect our bases, so what different does it make?”
Worst of all, Work and Ochmanek said, the US doesn’t just take body blows, it takes a hard hit to the head as well.
Its communications satellites, wireless networks, and other command-and-control systems suffer such heavy hacking and jamming that they are, in Ochmanek’s words, “suppressed, if not completely shattered.”
The US has wargamed cyber and electronic warfare in field exercises, Work said, but the simulated enemy forces tend to shut down US networks so effectively that nothing works and nobody else gets any training done.
“Whenever we have an exercise and the red force really destroys our command and control, we stop the exercise,” Work said, instead of trying to figure out how to keep fighting when your command post gives you nothing but blank screens and radio static.
The Chinese call this “system destruction warfare,” Work said: They plan to “attack the American battle network at all levels, relentlessly, and they practice it all the time.”
In short, if Biden rashly sends the military to Taiwan’s defense, he could be sending us to our greatest naval defeat in our history.
If the president’s military advisers convince him to attack military targets on the mainland, the results would be mushroom clouds over U.S. cities.
-1945
The $24 Billion Fix — And Cuts
So how do you fix such glaring problems?
The Air Force asked RAND to come up with a plan two years ago, and, surprisingly, Ochmanek said, “we found it impossible to spend more than $8 billion a year.”
That’s $8 billion for the Air Force. Triple that to cover for the Army and the Navy Department (which includes the US Marines), Ochmanek said, and you get $24 billion.
Yes, these are very broad strokes, but that’s only 3.3 percent of the $750 billion defense budget President Trump will propose for the 2020 fiscal year.
Work was less worried about the near-term risk — he thinks China and Russia aren’t eager to try anything right now — and more about what happens 10 to 20 years from now. But, he said, “sure, $24 billion a year for the next five years would be a good expenditure.
So what does that $24 billion buy?
To start with, missiles. Lots and lots of missiles. The US and its allies notoriously keep underestimating how many smart weapons they’ll need for a shooting war, then start to run out against enemies as weak as the Serbs or Libyans. Against a Russia or China, which can match not only our technology but our mass, you run out of munitions fast.
Specifically, you want lots of long-range offensive missiles. Ochmanek mentioned Army artillery brigades, which use MLRS missile launchers, and the Air Force’s JAGM-ER smart bomb, while Work touted the Navy’s LRASM ship-killer. You also want lots of defensive missiles to shoot down the enemy‘s offensive missiles, aircraft, and drones. One short-term fix there is the Army’s new Maneuver Short-Range Air Defense (MSHORAD) batteries, Stinger missiles mounted on 8×8 Stryker armored vehicles. In the longer term, lasers, railguns, and high-powered microwaves could shoot down incoming missiles much less expensively.
The other big fix: toughening up our command, control, and communications networks. That includes everything from jam-proof datalinks to electronic warfare gear on combat aircraft and warships. The services are fond of cutting corners on electronics to get as many planes in the air and hulls in the water as possible, Ochmanek said, but a multi-billion dollar ship that dies for lack of a million-dollar decoy is a lousy return on investment.
In the longer run, Work added, you want to invest heavily in artificial intelligence: not killer robots, he said, but “loyal wingmen” drones to support manned aircraft and big-data crunchers to help humans analyze intelligence and plan. Of course, you have to find the money for new stuff somewhere, which means either raising the defense budget even further — unlikely — or cutting existing programs. Ochmanek was unsurprisingly shy about specifics, saying only that the services could certainly squeeze out $8 billion each for new technologies.
Work was a little harder-edged. He said cutting a carrier and two amphibious ships over the forthcoming 2020-2024 budget “seems right to me.” He argued the US Army has way too many brigade combat teams — tanks and infantry — and way too little missile defense to protect them. And he bemoaned reports the US Air Force will retire the B-1 bomber, one of its few long-range strike aircraft: If the Air Force doesn’t want them, he said, give them to the Navy, revive the old VPB “Patrol Bomber” squadrons, and load them with Long-Range Anti-Ship Missiles to sink the Chinese navy. Pentagon leaders should challenge the armed services to solve very hard, very specific problems.
Work said: Sink 350 Chinese navy and coast guard vessels in the first 72 hours of a war, or destroy 2,400 Russian armored vehicles. Whoever has the best solution gets the most money. Those are hardly easy goals, Work said, but they’re also doable with technology now in development.
Easy Solution. The immediate problems could be fixed with technology already in production, Ochmanek said. For $24 billion, “I can buy the whole kit,” he said. “It’s all mature technologies and it would scare the crap out of adversaries, in a good way.”
It’s all about the money…
According to Washington DC K-Street neocons, the solution is more money. Not, instead, to rethink the value of conducting war against a peer-capable enemy. Especially one that has no intention on invading America. And they should think about the consequences…
No matter how one calculates it, fighting China over Taiwan would harm American interests and security without even holding the potential for benefit.
We must resist the temptation to act on the presumption that we can always choose to fight because we will always win.
The future of our country might hinge on getting this right.
-1945
The only threat to America these days is domestic. Internally, America is collapsing and the rest of the world isn’t. But… Let’s suppose that the money-grabbing Washington “think tanks” have made the necessary Power Point PPT presentations and convinced, actually convinced, those that control the utilization of the military that it is indeed possible to win a war. What then? Well let’s look at the situation from this point of view…
Biden Can’t Assume America Beats China in a Taiwan War
Joe Biden will face a host of difficulties and challenges when he assumes office on January 20, but perhaps none more consequential than deteriorating China-U.S. relations.
It is the potential flashpoint of Taiwan that will have the greatest urgency. Many in Washington are advocating a shedding of the decades’ old policy of “strategic ambiguity,” in favor of an overt declaration that we would come to the defense of Taiwan if China ever seeks to reunify the island by force.
Well. According to the UN, and both China and Taiwan, Taiwan is Han Chinese and part of China. It operates independently like Hong Kong does. But in no way is it an American territory. Which is something that the United States media and the neocons in Washington DC wants everyone to believe.
Assumed in such advocacy is the presumption the U.S. Armed Forces would be able to successfully accomplish that mission. For at least three major reasons, those assumptions are badly misplaced.
First, the risk is high that on purely military fundamentals, the United States would fail to successfully prevent a resolute and committed Chinese assault. As the most recent Department of Defense annual report to Congress on China details, China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) – remains on a multi-decade modernization push that has seen them develop a substantial defensive capability, known as anti-access, area-denial (A2/AD).
China’s A2/AD strategy, the Pentagon report explains, is designed to “dissuade, deter, or, if ordered, defeat third-party intervention during a large-scale, theater campaign such as a Taiwan contingency.”
Their strategy includes the use of modern weaponry including warships, new fighters, increasingly lethal missile forces, heavy armor, and cyberattack capability.
When comparing the armed forces of the United States and China, we are still substantially more capable than China. Our ability to project power, for example, remains ahead of China.
Critically, however, the balance of power near China’s shores would give them virtually EVERY military advantage.
Repeated wargames conducted in the United States pitting the U.S. against China in a Taiwan scenario reveal the ugly truth.
Former Assistant Secretary of Defense and current RAND analyst David A. Ochmanek revealed earlier this year that simulation exercises have exposed troubling results when the U.S. intervenes in war between China and Taiwan.
The American side, Ochmanek admitted, has “had its ass handed to it for years.”
The reasons for the simulated combat losses aren’t hard to understand.
Over the past few decades, the Chinese have developed modern weapons of war and have improved the quality of their fighting force substantially above where they were when the U.S. dismantled Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi army in 1991.
Though our military is globally superior any fight within the so-called “first island chain” near China’s coast would play to Beijing’s tactical advantage.
As if 2020, this is now obsolete. According to the United States military, and the Trump White House the "first island chain" delimitation line is no longer an American advantage.
It is an area of Chinese military advantage.
Our conventional and nuclear power deter China from ever attacking the U.S. mainland or Armed Forces – but if we choose to intervene in their back yard, they would have the advantage.
Second, in the event of war, Taiwan may defend itself not merely by targeting the attacking Chinese forces, but by hitting military bases on the Chinese mainland.
If the U.S. joins the fight against China, it is unlikely China would differentiate whether an attack against its mainland came from a Taiwanese or American source and may well prompt a Chinese retaliation against U.S. targets either in the region (such as in Japan, South Korea, Guam, or Hawaii) or directly on our continental homeland. The risk would then rise precipitously of a nuclear response against American Cities on American soil.
Third, even if we overcame all the difficulties and imposed an outright defeat on the Chinese, there’s no guarantee China wouldn’t try again and we would be saddled with permanently garrisoning Taiwan, indefinitely making its security our responsibility. It would also all but guarantee a new war with China, as an American military presence across the Strait would entice Beijing to prepare for the next round. Taiwan is a core interest of China and they would never quit fighting.
As China has repeatedly warned the brain-dead American leadership, that Taiwan is Chinese territory.
Any American killing of Chinese people on Chinese soil would result in American deaths on American soil.
Of course, the idea that China would stick to a conventional strategy and isolate Taiwan and allow it to work with the United States unencumbered is another major illusion.
There is a much higher chance of San Fransisco turned to a flat, glassed over radioactive plain than this scenario coming into being. The Chinese leadership does not think like an American oligarch.
We would have to spend scores of billions annually to perpetually defend Taiwan, placing severe strain on our economy, diverting military forces and resources from everywhere else in the world, and require a major increase in the size of our military and thus base defense budget.
Undertaking such a burden as the “prize” for successfully preventing China from taking Taiwan could literally bankrupt our country and leave us more vulnerable than we’ve been since before World War I.
If you thought that Afghanistan's trillions of dollars was a waste, you ain't seen nothing yet.
China would make that look like play-money.
China could turn Taiwan into Verdun if it wanted to. And America would be trapped in throwing trillions of dollars into that sink hole, all to the glee of the neocons on K-street.
It should be beyond clear that it is not in America’s interests to take such an enormous risk. Naturally, the United States is a genuine advocate for freedom and self-determination across the globe.
It is not, however, our responsibility to be the global guarantor of every land and peoples’ freedom on the planet.
It would be a tragedy beyond compare if in trying to defend one country’s freedom, we put at risk our ability to guarantee our own.
Why are we even talking about this?
Well? Why?
Like him or hate him. Bernie Sanders made a great point thirty years ago (30 years!) that is even more pointed now. And it describes exactly what is going on right now. It describes the WHY everyone in Washington DC is talking about war with China, or War with Russia…
This video was made exactly 30 years ago.
Now, China at that time was truly third world. Over 90% of it’s people lived in poverty. But the government did exactly what Bernie Sanders proposes in this video, and now look at China today.
Now we have America looking to start a major war.
Idiots!
The next war will reduce all of America to slag. All of it. And the nations… nations… fractured remains that rise up, will be fourth world nations working hard to become more than just a radioactive banana republic.
How a War Against China Could Cripple the United States
Once China has decided to use military force to reunify Taiwan, their first actions will be covert actions designed to quietly set the stage for the assault of their main combat forces.
The assumption is...
The first action that will signal a full-on war has begun will be an initial, major barrage of ballistic missiles screaming across the strait at multiple civilian and military targets.
Once that happens, everything happens at warp speed.
The first barrage of missiles will target critical infrastructure and seek to destroy Taiwan’s ability to respond to the Chinese onslaught.
They will target military airfields to make them unusable, seek to destroy aircraft on the ground, especially those with the ability to conduct command and control and to direct other weapons (like AWACs-type craft); missile boats and Aegis-type destroyers in their births; anti-air and missile batteries on the ground.
“We warn those ‘Taiwan independence’ elements – those who play with fire will burn themselves, and Taiwan independence means war.”
— Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Wu Qian
In the early hours of the battle, Taiwanese troops are shocked, confused, lack clear communications, and are fighting in the rear and from the front at the beaches.
Also an assumption.
China’s initial objectives will be to secure at least one of the three airfields and capture one or more beach landing sites by the end of the first day of fighting.
If they do, they will have a chance to open an airbridge and beach landing site through which they can pour more and more material with limited opposition. Like at the Normandy beach landings in 1944, once the invading force breaks through at the beach, it is almost impossible for the defenders to win.
The defenders’ primary objective is to identify and destroy all Chinese efforts on the island as quickly as possible, retain control of all airfields, and keep the beaches impregnable.
If China is not successful in landing the knock-out blow within the first 48 hours, it will likely have to switch its efforts to dramatically increasing its use of ballistic and cruise missiles, fighter and bomber sorties, and ship-to-shore missiles to try and force an opening at one or more beach landing zones.
They will try to overwhelm the island through brute force. If Taiwan is successful at preventing any large scale incursions either on the beach or via airborne or air-assault operations, their chances of thwarting the invasion increase dramatically. But they still won’t be out of the woods.
If China cannot penetrate the beach after two weeks of fighting, they may shift to a siege mentality, in which they will continue sustained bombing of the island, but at a reduced rate while putting into effect a naval blockade.
If things broke well for Taiwan, it is entirely possible that they could prevent China from opening any beachheads against their defenses. A naval blockade, however, will be more difficult to overcome.
Without any ability to replace the missiles and other ammunition they expend, no way to medically evacuate their wounded, or to import oil to power their warships, fuel their armored vehicles, and generate electricity – not to mention feed the population.
Though Taiwan can inflict serious damage to the PLA military, China’s capacity to absorb the damage and replace losses – while maintaining a blockade – is unlikely to be enough to stave off eventual defeat.
Taipei’s hope that by holding out long enough the U.S. will come riding to a the rescue will, one way or another, be dashed.
Constraints on U.S. Response
As Admiral Philip Davidson said in recent Congressional testimony, it would take American ships based in Alaska 17 days to reach Taiwan; 21 days from the U.S. West Coast.
Which is the entire idea behind the QUAD. To have massive military forces within close proximity of China. And thus American military would stream from Australia into the South Pacific Sea.
Beijing’s attack will require a no-notice launch to minimize the Taiwanese defender’s ability to man their positions, but possibly the greater purpose will be to ensure the U.S. Navy and Air Force are caught flat-footed and unable to mount an effective response.
To even have a chance at success, U.S. Forces in the Pacific region would have to have months to prepare.
They would have to bring personnel strength up near 100%, make all their ships and aircraft combat ready and fully supplied with wartime ammunition and fuel stocks.
That will never happen. At best American equipment is at 35% readiness, with a goal of some day reaching 50% readiness.
Any shortfalls in personnel, ships, and planes would have to be redeployed from other theaters to bring the Pacific naval and air fleets up to full capacity. None of those will be possible with a no-notice surprise attack by Beijing – and that vulnerability will put the U.S. president in a real bind.
Crisis in the White House Situation Room
The instant the first report reaches the Situation Room, the White House will assemble a crisis response team of senior advisors to begin analyzing the situation and debating potential responses.
Some will suggest the president order immediate long-range missile attacks against Chinese invasion air and naval forces in an attempt to aid the defenders.
Others may advocate hitting the Chinese bases supporting the invasion.
China will likely warn Biden that any attack on China-proper will result in missile strikes on American cities with conventional warheads* (still very lethal).
Word is that America HAS been warned. And the type of weapon used has not be specified.
*One of the biggest problems that Americans make is assuming that everyone else thinks like them.
As Mike Sweeny recently wrote for Defense Priorities, such attacks against targets on the Chinese mainland will inflame the Chinese domestic audience against the United States in increase the pressure for a nuclear response.
Again. There is a serious fundamental difference between China and America. In China, day to day public option does not matter. Decisions are not made by mob rule. They are made by merit-appointed true experts and the decisions are always sound. If China believes that the advantage would be to eviscerate New York City with a cluster of six nuclear war heads, then it will do so, and what the newspaper reader on the street thinks will not factor into the equation.
The risk of a war between Washington and Beijing escalating to nuclear is higher than many understand.
Duh!
But the president will face enormous pressures to act militarily in the face of Chinese aggression.
Taiwanese officials will certainly be pleading for the U.S. to intervene. Those in the United States who are already China hawks will almost certainly advocate “limited” military retaliation.
They will argue that Washington cannot stand passively by while China swallows a leading democratic country in Asia.
To refuse to act would be tantamount to Neville Chamberlain’s infamous appeasement at Munich and encourage China to try and conquer other nations militarily. In all fairness, such concerns would not be without merit.
But Biden’s ability to respond militarily would be far more limited than would be commonly understood.
If Congress declared war on China or gave Biden authority to launch a military strike, the best he could do would be to unleash a relatively few cruise missiles and order some long-range bombing sorties from regional bases.
Those would have some impact but be insufficient to stop China’s invasion.
“China’s navy is viewed as posing a major challenge to the U.S. Navy’s ability to achieve and maintain wartime control of blue-water ocean areas in the Western Pacific.”
—Congressional Research Service analysis
To engage in sustained operations in support of Taiwan’s defenses, it would take the U.S. Navy and Air Force months to properly enter the war theater.
Trying to rush our military into a fight as soon as it can reach Taiwan would be near suicidal, as we would be arriving to the fight in sub-optimal condition, not fully resourced – and would face the full brunt of the Chinese air and naval forces (which are about double the size of the U.S. Pacific fleets). As importantly, PRC air and naval forces have long had existing plans to fight a U.S. force sent to aid Taiwan and have conducted countless computer simulations and field exercises.
We would be outnumbered, out-prepared, and out-gunned while fighting a motivated enemy engaged in what it considers an existential battle.
Duh! If Texas was Attacked how would American react? The same kind of visceral reaction should be expected of China.
All of the recent U.S.-based computer simulations reach similar conclusions.
In short, if Biden rashly sends the military to Taiwan’s defense, he could be sending us to our greatest naval defeat in our history.
If the president’s military advisers convince him to attack military targets on the mainland, the results could be mushroom clouds over U.S. cities.
The leaders in Washington DC believe that the loss of a city like Los Angles would be acceptable “collateral losses” in the quest to maintain Democracy off the coast of China.
Fortunately, however, there are superior options for Biden to choose that don’t involve dead Americans.
Preserving U.S. Military Power, Maintaining Security and Freedom
If China bull-headedly turns to violence to take Taiwan by force, the U.S. Government’s overriding priority will be to safeguard American security, freedom, and prosperity.
America's "freedom", and "prosperity"? Americans are so used to repeating the narrative that they no longer know what the words mean.
If Biden resists the temptation to respond immediately, he can dramatically shift the balance of power back in America’s favor by adopting realistic and attainable diplomatic and military strategy that features isolating, resisting, and containing China.
LOL. As if that is going to happen. Did you see any reasoning or strategy in the Alaskan meeting in April 2021 between Washington and China?
If China is foolish enough to gamble its future by attacking Taiwan – and America is smart enough to stay out of the war – the PRC will be severely weakened from its current status.
I disagree.
The entire world relies on Chinese manufacturing. And factories do not grow on trees. There are no quality alternatives for precision manufacturing, high technology products or innovation. Everything has been outsourced to China, and that includes Japanese products and design, German products and design, Korean products and design and all the rest.
The United States has, for some time, championed Taipei building a defensive fortress that would make any Chinese attempt to invade prohibitively expensive.
If anything, (America) should encourage Taiwan to expand further their defenses.
Even if China were successful in catching Taiwan unprepared, the surprise would not be complete, and Taipei would still have the ability to launch retaliatory strikes against the Chinese.
Unlike the United States, Taiwan would have no incentive to resist attacking mainland targets and would attack mainland airfields, naval bases, rocket and missile launch sites, and Chinese defense industry targets.
It would be very difficult seeing that the Chinese can render all missiles inactive by energy beam weapons.
They would also successfully sink some Chinese warships, knock out some fighter jets, and destroy thousands of their troops.
Maybe.
But China does not think like that.
Let me tell you what is more probable.
Nothing happens. Then one day the news says that Taiwan has embraced China as a co-family member. And has decided to get closer to the mainland.
That is the kind of level of strategy that we are dealing with here. Not the crude "blow 'em up" Rambo style of neocon warfare.
The net result of even a successful attack would gouge the PLA, severely weakening their ability to wage war; if Taiwan somehow held out and prevented an island takeover, the PLA would be set back decades and the PRC itself at risk of falling internally.
Um. Not even remotely realistic.
Any nation that can build two (x2) 4000 bed hospitals in ten days, or a 80 story skyscraper in a week, would have no problem replenishing military forces.
In either event, America’s advantage over China would be significantly increased, our ability to protect U.S. interests global continue to be unmatched, and our people continue in complete freedom.
Americans living in "freedom"? Obviously he was doing drugs when he wrote this. I think that he is just rolling off some trite sayings without thinking, rather than adding constructive dialog to make his points with.
Moreover, we would then have decades to increase our defenses from Guam to Hawaii to the West Coast – should that be deemed necessary – to ensure China could never, even decades into the future, successfully mount a cross-Pacific attack.
With what money? When it would take a wheel-barrel full of $100 bills to buy a hamburger?
What Americans think China’s military is like…
This is exactly what Americans think that the Chinese military is today. It’s what most people think. It’s a group of peasant, illiterate, with little training using 1980’s era hand-me-down old Soviet Union weapons. Where, their only strength is in their enormous numbers of people.
What China’s military is actually like…
This has rapidly become my favorite video. This is what the Chinese military is actually like.
This is a singular unit in XinJiang, you know the place; where the gateway to the BRI is, and where America must stop at nothing to disrupt it.
You probably know of it though the propaganda campaign about Uighur Muslims in Concentration Camps and other bullshit. You know. That America “must do something to help those poor oppressed Muslims”. As if the American oligarchy ever cared about Muslims at all, ever.
And some of the technologies that China has. Their quads operate and behave quite differently than what the American units do. And it’s very interesting. You have to keep in mind that all, and every Chinese person is a member of the irregulars. They all have military training, and the enormous size of the Chinese military is only the active “professional” warrior class. Not the irregulars.
And every squad has one of these curious weapons. They also have this other “neato” gun which is sort of a pocket howitzer that is the size of a rifle.
Chinese knives are sure cool, eh?
A personal mortar. Also standard with all squads…
The jeep howitzers are pretty cool too…
And aside from the regular training, and the mandatory of all military train for every single 14 year old boy and girl in China, you have elements of training that is simply not present in the United States, such as being able to shoot, and load a weapon with one hand. As in this movie…
And of course, since all the parts and engines, and subsystems of all the latest military hardware is contracted out to China, it should be no surprise that their home-gown, home-design, and home-manufactured weapons systems would be equal or better than the American ones that spawned them…
All the videos
If you cannot access all or some of the videos you can get them all HERE. Some good stuff, especially if you are a military buff.
Conclusion
In sum, by staying out of a China vs. Taiwan war, not only would America maintain our current strength, our national security would be stronger.
Conversely, if we foolishly insert ourselves into their fight, we will suffer severe damage to our Armed Forces at a minimum, placing our national security around the world at higher risk; in a worst-case, American cities could smolder in radioactive waste for years to come.
No matter how one calculates it, fighting China over Taiwan would harm American interests and security without even holding the potential for benefit.
We must resist the temptation to act on the presumption that we can always choose to fight because we will always win.
The future of our country might hinge on getting this right.
MM Comments
Ah. Perhaps. I can parse though many of his comments and poke holes through them.
(Taiwan) "...would attack mainland airfields, naval bases, rocket and missile launch sites, and Chinese defense industry targets."
Perhaps if he looked at a map he would see how ridiculous this statement is.
Taiwan would try.
And the planes wouldn’t be able to fly with directed energy beam weapons causing them to fall out of the sky.
And even if they could make it back, where would they land.
All the airfields would be cratered.
Ok. You can never predict the outcome of a military operation.
Certainly [1] the failure of the Trump administration to cause starvation in China by using drone launched bio-weapons against livestock didn’t work. The [2] aggressive “color revolution” in Hong Kong didn’t work. The [3] attempt at destabilizing Xinjiang didn’t work, and most certainly [4] the COVID bio-weapon attack against China on CNY with the lethal B-strain did not work.
Any military action in defense of Taiwan… … has a very small likelihood of working.
Chances are that it would not be successful.
And the participation of the American military against China WILL LAUNCH a hot war against America. Which would have at least a few of the following characteristics.
Destruction of Guam
Destruction of Diego Garcia
End of all trade with China… resulting in a collapse of many American industries as they still rely on Chinese trade to operate.
Probable war with Australia and the destruction of Australian Cities.
Russian involvement for certain as an ally of China.
Destruction of the cities in Hawaii.
And a high chance of nuclear destruction of American cities.
I would suggest the destruction of every city over a population of 750,000 in America. That would include all the “big names”. Perhaps the capital of the United States could relocate to Salina , Kansas.
All of these potential issues have an over 65% chance of happening if the USA gets involved and tries to provoke a war regarding China.
So the question really is… …just how out of touch, insane and crazy is the United States leadership? Would they be that foolish to tangle with Russia and China over some South China Sea incident?
Well…
Maybe this next article will provide the answer…
CIA Wokeness
Michael Tracey writes about a weird CIA video that is making the rounds (emphasis added):
In a mind-blowing marketing video first published on March 25, but which had escaped widespread notice until recent days, the CIA enthusiastically endorsed several key tenets of what has now indisputably become a hegemonic left/liberal ideological and rhetorical construct:
“I am a woman of color,” the video’s protagonist, an unnamed CIA officer, triumphantly proclaims. “I am a cisgender millennial who’s been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder. I am intersectional, but my existence is not a box-checking exercise.”
She continues, “I used to struggle with imposter syndrome. But at 36, I refuse to internalize misguided patriarchal ideas of what a woman can or should be. I am tired of feeling like I’m supposed to apologize for the space I occupy.”
I have to admit that I do not know what the words are supposed to mean. (Nor does my Firefox spellchecker. It flags them.) I also do not understand the phrases. To me they sounds like utter bullshit. But if the CIA wants to hire more such people I am all for it. Folks who can not leave their personal issues at the door typically muck up their workplace and create productivity problems. A less effective CIA will be a plus for the rest of the world.
But it will certainly enable the already insane leadership to go blindly towards a very dangerous path.
And that path looks, more and more everyday, like a high-speed rail straight to Hell.
It’s all over the chat rooms. America has the best training, the most capable leaders, the strongest military, and the best manufacturing in the world. While China is what? “A third world, has been nation, that has stolen more than it contributes”, right? That’s the narrative. This is typical…
(This article is) Complete BS. You don't understand how military power and capability works.
China doesn't have any Carrier groups, not one. That is a BIG deal.
They can't project any significant sea / air power.
They also don't have any significant amphibious assault capabilities such as the USMC.
Their air-force isn't close in capability.
The majority of their service members have very rudimentary training at best. There is much more to "staff" a military than just hand a rifle to a 16 year old peasant. A 155mm artillery shell or 1000 lb air delivered bomb takes care of numbers.
#34 ·
But the interesting retort is here…
I completely understand how military power and capability works. I didn’t say they could or would invade the US. I said we couldn’t defeat them in a context of their island building in the South Pacific. They’ve been testing and demonstrating anti-satellite weapons for over a decade. They don’t have a lot of carriers but they have a lot of submarines to take out carriers. They don’t have the capability to deliver an invasion force on the US but they definitely have that capacity throughout the South Pacific.They have massive manufacturing capacity and we have dwindled ours to virtual non-existence. In WWII, our fleet was decimated in short order but we had massive manufacturing capacity and we cranked out ships and carriers in droves. Where are we going to do that today? Where are we going to make the electronic components to drive a modern fleet?
Read that carefully. We get our legitimate Mil-Spec electronic parts from China and we get fake parts from China. Where are we going to get them when we go to war with China and have to rebuild a fleet?What about training? We’re training them on how to defeat us:
If you think of China as a backwards country where the soldiers would be 16-year-old peasants, I think you’re wrong.Then you have to consider the likelihood of China using a tactical nuke. Are they crazy enough? They don’t have to be; they need only convince our President that they might be.
But it doesn’t matter. Decades of anti-China propaganda and an onslaught in the belief that America is a nation of Rambo’s has created a situation where everyone is living in this fantasy world…
They would not stand a chance vs the US today.
China has never won a war. They are defensive by nature, they are not an offensive power. historically they build walls. Their "islands" are an example of that. They don't plan on projecting force, they plan on defending what they see as their's.
China can't build a jet engine worth a poop. China can't come up with their own ideas and relies on stealing to make their military products - so how do you conclude they can figure out how to out-think the west?
China has virtually NO access to oil/gas/coal should a war happen. Sounds like a short war.
Their navy would have a fair fight with japan.
If I recall correctly, Japan was beaten without any foot troops...
Ah. A bunch of “arm chair” warriors debating some war that is on the other side of the world. A place where they never visited, and a society and culture that they know nothing about. It’s 2021. China has been very clear about what would happen;
Taiwan, and the SCS islands are all Chinese territory.
Kill one Chinese person on Chinese land, and China will retaliate in an equal measured manner.
They have already demonstrated this…
April 2020 China’s first Type-075 amphibious assault carrier, designed for launching helicopters, caught fire. It was mysterious how it happened. The Chinese Navy put out the fire, and repaired the damage and launched the ship as scheduled.
Then…
July 2020 The Navy’s USS Bonhomme Richard burned for days at its pier in San Diego. After the fire was put out, the Navy registered the destruction as “total” and wrote off the vessel as a total loss.
The Chinese Do Not Play.
A fine reminder…
Here’s a fine reminder for all the jack-asses that believe that American could shoot and kill Chinese people, on Chinese land, and somehow go unscathed…
And let’s continue…
We need to look at the full scope about what it going on…
The full scope
American leadership are clueless psychopaths.
Their toadies are sociopaths that run the levels of government.
The bureaucracy that serves them has been politically and socially corrupted beyond usefulness.
Never the less, all studies point to catastrophic consequences if the United States tries to get involved in a war with either Russia or China.
And Russia and China have signed mutual military treaties so that they will work together if the USA tries to instigate a war.
The public is not aware of this. And because of that, we have a situation where American and their leadership wants a war. And this was made obvious in the April 2021 meeting in Anchorage Alaska.
Meanwhile, the Chinese are not FOOLS. They know exactly what the stakes are, and they will absolutely not permit any “wars of democracy” to land anywhere near them. And if they do… oh, Lordy. God help the American citizenry. There will not be any mercy.
Why?
Because the Chinese know history…
.
Make no mistake.
The Chinese will fight to the death to guarantee that they will not be exterminated like vermin by the psychopaths in Washington DC. They will guarantee it.
Like it or not, but Trump has a real chance of winning the 2024 elections. This in fact will be the best thing ever because the whole world will immediately turn their backs on USA the way they did.
Personally I can't wait for him to f*ck USA up and try to start a war with either China or/and Iran. About time USA get its ass whipped.
Do not worry, the “new and improved” military forces are more than ready to deal with 16 year old goat-herders with malfunctioning cheapo Chinese AK-47 clones…
Check out what the fuck happened to the enormous Armada that steamed to China in 2020. Nope, it did not go as planned. It was a fiasco, and President Trump sacked the top military brass for not following through on his wishes.
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.
This is a MAJestic post. In this article I look at some of the aspects of operations and how it impacted my life within the MWI.
This article opens up an entire “can of worms”.
You see, nothing is like Hollywood movies. It’s not some lone brave hero with no background, relationships, or friendships. We all have relationships, families, friends, pleasures, pastimes and interests.
And when you join any program (not just MAJestic) that just doesn’t disappear.
You remain who you are. Your interests stay the same. Your family stays the same, and your relationships stay the same.
This is true regardless to what happens to you on a personal level. You just don’t chuck it all away when you “sign on the dotted line”, enter into a facility, or start interacting with other people, species or events.
This is very true.
And for me (for instance), I would be involved in some calibration training exercises with a <redacted> discussing and going through a <redacted> procedure, yet at the end of the day, I would go home. I would fill my motorcycle with gas, pick up some Betamax tapes to watch, and grab a bucket of KFC chicken and a 30-pack of Budweiser beer.
Your life doesn’t change. You just add experiences, events and knowledge to what you already possess.
KFC in Ridgecrest, CA, right outside the Main Gate to China Lake NWC.
Relationships are more than what you think
Everyone realizes what “love” is, and the bond that two people have when they are together and when they get married. It’s a bond; an understanding, a shared behavior, and a degree of comfort.
But what people do not realize is that on the quantum level this bond is a very important two-way communication stream. It’s a very strong and powerful communication channel.
Yes, it is complex, and yes it is interesting. And Yes, I am going to get really “deep” into this subject on two particular levels.
Level one is the idea about “quantum shadows” being your loved ones and family members.
And …
Level Two is the idea of what it was like for me to go through all these “slides” and “anchoring” events as part of MAJestic. All the while still maintaining a quantum level bond and connection with my spouse and my family.
Level One – Anchoring activity for MAJ while conducting “slides”
As I have explained elsewhere, every moment that your consciousness occupies a world-line, it is (for the most part) alone. All those “other” people are just empty shells and they really don’t have the same kind of consciousness density as you have.
It’s easy to misunderstand this. It’s easy to believe that we occupy a singular lonely world. But that’s not really the case.
And, yes, I have used this simplification in my early posts when introducing this concept.
It’s just a simplification for our minds to understand a very complex reality. Which is that consciousness is not a point, a blob, or a ghostly vaporous something. It is a shared construction, established by your soul, that operates on a multitude of world-lines simultaneously.
And when you are upon any given specific world-line, what that means is that your consciousness density for YOU at that point in time is the dominant density within that particular world-line. All the other consciousness’s within that world-line have a much lighter and trivial density.
It’s not exactly zero.
But it’s not as dominant as yours is.
Now that you understand this point then you can understand how the family bonding occurs. Your particular consciousness bonds, or sets up a quantum line of communication, with other consciousness’s within that particular world-line. The density does not matter.
All that matters is that one consciousness is connected to another.
So…
When I am going through rapid world-line cycling and slides, my wife and my pets seemingly go through it with me. I am with my wife, and my cat is on a chair. A slide occurs and suddenly I am wearing white socks with these big black dots on them (do not laugh, it actually occurred). My wife is still there, except that she has much longer hair, and my cat looks up at me inquiringly. (as if to say, “what?”)
But they actually don’t travel with me. They appear to. But their thoughts and memories are unaware of the transposition of realities.
Are you confused?
It looks that way because when I arrive at the new world-line their quantum shadows are there. They seem, they appear, to go with me.
And since each quantum shadow has a trivial level of consciousness, the bonding methodology remains intact. You still love your spouse, and your pets no matter how strange the rest of the world-line appears to you.
So you can go through a “slide” and you can be in a really deep dive.
The world around you can be very unusual. Like having green(!) chili sauce for your hotdog (also really happened. But at least on this world-line ketchup is the normal red color that we have grown to love), with odd colored deep fried yams instead of French Fries.
And with this would be comparable changes to the physical appearance (and memories) of your spouse.
In my case, she might be shorter, or taller. She might have different colored hair, or eyes, and a different figure entirely. But she was still my spouse. I was always able to recognize her as that. No matter how strange she appeared to me.
Different body shapes for women, simplified and illustrated.
I attribute that to the conscious bonding mechanism of quantum entanglement between closely associated consciousness’s.
And the same is true with my pets as well. Though, seriously, I swear that my cats knew what was going on all the time with me. They would sort of look at me with this expression “What? Again!”
And you all know that things can really change.
Cars can change, houses can change, entire landscapes can change, and along with all of that are entire histories and the past. Not only of the body that your consciousness occupies, but also of the entire world-line.
And yes, mental processes as well.
You spouse might be a crack genius one moment, and then a slide will turn her into a simpleton, with no education or understandings.
One minute you are on a world-line where Gerald Ford is President, and the next moment your world-line has Ross Perot as President. And yes, it did happen, and sometimes it can be extraordinarily confusing. Not to mention extremely frustrating.
On a personal note that I can tell you that while my wife would change from slide to slide, it was never far too radical. Or in other words, she didn’t go from a “Whoopi Goldberg” to a Alessandra Ambrosio during a slide.
I was always able to recognize her.
But that being said, that actually could have happened. She could have looked like Whoopi and then ended up looking like Alessandra. She could have. It’s just that in my experience, she didn’t.
That doesn’t mean that she didn’t have cosmetic surface differences. Sometimes her skin color was different, the hair style and color would be different, and yes, her body would change. Sometimes rather drastically. Yet, though all of this, she “felt” right.
I well remember one time there was a slide and while we were having sex (it happened at all times, I had no control of it) she ended up becoming shorter. Like really shorter. Maybe three inches shorter (9 cm). But her boobs got much bigger, so it was one of those cases of a little of this, and a little of that, you know.
And don’t ask me how I dealt with it.
I am a human, when you start to experience changes, you learn to adapt to them. And so I did. I adapted.
This is true for my cats, and my dogs. They might have physically changed, but I was immediately able to identify who they were. Our internal relationships were not altered by the MWI taskings. Though it could be frustrating. I once was used to having my dog go out for walks with me, and he would keep close by, then there would be a slide, and I would need to take him out of a leash each time, because otherwise he would run away.
So, what I am trying to say is that everything is inner-connected. You don’t go from being a middle-class noob driving an average car, to suddenly living in a high-rise penthouse with a movie-starlet in your bed. All slides happened for reasons, and when I was involved in the slides, the changes were always in equal amounts of good with bad, new changes with old familiars, and situations that resembled where I departed from.
Level Two – The relationships
Now, as I have stated, this bond; this connection between my consciousness and the consciousness’s of my family, loved ones and pets did not change.
It still existed.
And because it did, I was able to identify them and their association with me. This was true no matter how messed up the rest of the world appeared to me, to be.
Yet…
Bonds and quantum level communication is a two-way street. Even though my wife had no idea what was going on, aside from what I told her, she was able to “feel” or sense changes.
In fact, she was an unusually sensitive person. She possessed this nearly 6th or 7th sense that at times amazed me. For instance, she knew that the earthquake in San Francisco was going to occur. She knew what I was doing when I was at the other end of the world on business travel. She even knew if I had indigestion if I was in a hotel room miles away. She knew, in great detail, if I was being a very “bad boy”. And she knew if I was missing her and my little family.
And strangely she could sense when I went to the bathroom, and would always, absolutely always, call me when I left my desk to go to the toilet. (She didn’t realize that this was going on, but it drove me nuts. And in those days, we didn’t have cell phones.)
She was special like that.
Because even though the world-lines changed, and the bonds did not, the bonds themselves were altered by the environmental changes.
And she could sense this.
So she would compensate.
Her brain, affected by what her “quantum shadow” was at the time, would also create changes in the bonding between us individuals. And that slowly drove her crazy.
She started to manifest strange behaviors around 1987.
Was diagnosed with Schizoaffective personality in the early 1990’s, and exhibited full schizophrenia around 1998.
Which is one of the reasons why I was so very upset by the comments by “Osiander” on 30APR21.
"It seems to me to be hearing the thought stream of a schizophrenic person."
A person with this illness is very sick indeed, and their loved ones have a herculean task in dealing with them, on top of everything else.
For me, personally, not only did I need to endure the slides via MAJestic, but I held some very competitive and hard-charging technical positions in the industry. It was awful.
You are making a presentation in a meeting, you are standing in front of the white-board, and the secretary breaks into the room with a phone call. It's the hospital and my wife tried to kill herself, and they needed me to go to the hospital immediately and sign the necessary papers. So I would need to excuse myself from the meeting, and run off to the emergency room at the hospital, and sign the necessary papers to put her under observation and then into the hospital for treatment. Sometimes as short as a few weeks, but towards the end of the 1990's lasting months inside a high-security ward.
Not a fun life.
And add that to the fact that the role I had was not changing. I had to deal through all the slides and changes while everyone else just lived their normal day-to-day life. Ugh!
In the world-lines, they (the world-line itself) always seemed to adjust to our situations.
Not the other way around.
And things changed.
The past would change each time we went though a slide.
Not, typically big changes. But all those little details that can add up to a very fundamentally strange life.
When we first met, her family were normal, middle class. Then over the slides and jumps, things started to change. Her family history migrated to lower class. And then her family started to have “a past”, and a history of mental illnesses. Where earlier there wasn’t any.
And indeed she was having a hard go at it. If I was involved in a deep-dive, you can pretty much guarantee that she would suffer the consequence for in on some way, one way or the other.
New subject.
The fantasies
All men have these fantasies of encountered strange, interesting and fun women and having sex with them.
The porn industry isn’t a billion dollar industry for nothing.
And if you fully understand what I am relating you can see that there is this real distinct possibility that this kind of thing can seemingly happen when you are involved in a slide.
But I can tell you that while there is a certain element of that that POSSIBLY could occur, it just never materialized in the way that you would it that it would. At least not in my situation.
My wife was always my wife.
She might look thin and tall, or short and round, but she was always my wife. You immediately recognize her as “the wife”.
Though she might be tall and thin, or short and round. She was always easily identifiable to me as my wife, my spouse and I immediately knew her by close proximity “feeling”, not by visual confirmation.
When the alarm went off in the morning, you woke up with your wife. Regardless of how she looked, the length of her hair, the colors of her eyes, or the way she was built. She was your spouse for good or for bad.
I will admit that there is a certain excitement having sex with a spouse that one day looks like an athletic gymnast, and the next day looks like someone who lounges on the sofa eating bon-bons, and then the day after that was a prissy doll-faced scold. But the bonding of family members goes far deeper than the physical appearance, and that I can tell you (first hand) is really the fundamental case.
In fact, during really crazy times, when the cycling was “off the charts”, all I really wanted to do is sort of get back to the woman who I married, not what ever quantum shadow she was at that particular time.
So much for the fantasy. Eh?
However, for the record, for the vast majority of the time we were married she was always attractive and upscale in that particular area. This was the result of many things that are too involved to get into at this time.
It’s like all those fancy promotions of the life of the “jet set” businessmen. The people that travel three or five times a week, always flying to one city or to the other.
It looks so glamorous and exciting.
The life of the “jet set” businessmen.
But as someone who actually did it, nope, it’s something else altogether different.
Truthfully, it’s a pain in the ass and all you want is a nice home-cooked meal, a rest on your couch, and maybe some time in the backyard with your family. The life of a “road warrior” is not fun.
It sucks.
It’s mostly a world of lonely restaurants, airports, rental cars, and hotel-rooms.
This was me. High tech road warrior.
That’s the way life is.
How you picture something is usually not the way it actually is.
So what am I saying?
Look, if you are able to conduct prayer campaigns, you can navigate the MWI successfully and end up with the kind of life that you desire.
And if you have a role, such as I have had, where you have zero navigation control, you can still grasp the reigns of power and steer your life in the direction that you want. You just need to alter the programming. As I did in ADC Pine Bluff.
What ever you do, just remember that we are all connected together.
For you to navigate you must be aware of your interpersonal relationships and then leverage them for mutual satisfaction. NEVER discount the interpersonal relationships that you are involved in. They have a great deal of influence on how your desires and wishes manifest.
In the meantime, as best as you can… just enjoy that life that you are living right now. It’s a blessing that might not come your way again.
Do you want more?
I have more posts like this in my MAJestic Index here…
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.
Please kindly help me out in this effort. There is a lot of effort that goes into this disclosure. I could use all the financial support that anyone could provide. Thank you very much.
As a technology geek I cannot help but admire the work that goes into all these weapons systems. Especially those that are novel or new. And thus, with this framework in mind, I present the Russian efforts to defend their space station and operations from American military activities.
And you know, this kind of thing has only gone into hyper-drive when President Trump announced the formation of a new branch of the military known as the “Space Force”.
And so here is our first look at a Russian anti-weapon platform for space use…
Of course, as I say with all reprints, all credit to the authors. I reprint exactly as found and the credit to go to the person writing the article, and note that some things were changed to fit within the MM venue.
The Shchit-2 was a missile-like system designed to protect Soviet military space stations from attack.
he Russian Ministry of Defense’s official television station, TV Zvezda, has given the world the first-ever public look at the Shchit-2, or at least a mockup thereof. This was a Soviet-era missile-like space weapon primarily intended to protect Almaz military space stations from incoming threats. The Shchit-2 was a follow-on project to the Shchit-1 self-defense system, which featured a 23mm cannon and is the only gun to have been fired in space, at least that we know about.
The most recent episode of TV Zvezda‘s “Military Acceptance” program was focused on the Almaz series and associated developments, including both the Shchit-1 and the Shchit-2. Examples of both systems, among other things, were on display in a restricted area at NPO Mashinostroyenia when TV Zvezda‘s reporter visited recently. NPO Mashinostroyenia is a Russian state-run space development firm, which evolved from a Soviet entity, known simply as OKB-52, that was responsible for, among other things, the development of the Almaz space stations.
A televised visit by Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to NPO Mashinostroyenia earlier this year had already yielded the best and most complete view of the Shchit-1 system to date. You can read more about that gun, as well as the Almaz program, here. Anatoly Zak, a Russian author who also manages the website RussianSpaceWeb.com, had been among the first to notice that new look at the Shchit-1 system, as well as this public debut of the Shchit-2.
The Almaz program was a covert effort to develop military space stations, primarily outfitted to conduct intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions, hidden within the Saylut civilian space station project. The Almaz effort, which began in the 1960s, was only officially declassified in the early 1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union.
The Soviets had planned to arm the Almaz stations from the very beginning, fearing attacks by American anti-satellite weapons, including small, but highly maneuverable “killer satellites” and more traditional interceptors. An example of the Shchit-1 system actually made it into space attached to the Almaz OPS-2 satellite. The Soviets conducted a live-fire test of that gun remotely on January 24, 1975, the station’s last day in orbit.
The outcome of that test remains classified and the next Almaz space station, OPS-3, launched without any weapons installed. OPS-4, which never made it to space, was supposed to carry the Shchit-2 system. There’s no indication Shchit-2, the general existence of which has been known before know, ever went into space, either, though details about the system remain extremely limited.
As to the weapon itself, Leonard Smirichevsky, the current head of NPO Mashinostroyenia, described it to TV Zvezda‘s reporter as having four major components. The base of the system is a solid-fuel rocket motor, which is then attached to a spin-stabilization system consisting of a rotating wheel with blade-like fins. There there is a hybrid propulsion-warhead section, which we will come back to in a moment, followed by a proboscis-like radar seeker at the front.
By far, the propulsion-warhead section is the most interesting part. Outwardly, it has what appears to be a circular array of small, grenade-like charges, which one would imagine would unleash a cloud of shrapnel that would particularly dangerous to other objects in the vacuum of space. However, these projectiles are actually solid and are designed to act as hard-kill interceptors, destroying whatever they hit through the sheer force of the impact, according to Anatoly Zak. More interestingly, Smirichevsky made clear to TV Zvezda that this portion of the weapon was also used to propel it in some fashion, though he did not elaborate.
“Upon their ignition, the chambers/grenades might have fed hot propulsive gas into a single or multiple combustion chambers at the center of the contraption, producing either the main thrust and/or steering the vehicle,” Anatoly Zak wrote on RussianSpaceWeb.com. “When the missile reached the proximity of the target, according to its guiding radar, the entire vehicle would explode and the small solid chambers would eject under their own propulsive force in every direction acting as shrapnel.”
How Shchit-2, which is said to have had an expected maximum effective range in space of just over 62 miles, was supposed to be launched is also not entirely clear. “The weapon was stored in the coffin-like container, which appeared to a [sic] have a remote control for the activation by the crew aboard the Almaz and a spin-up mechanism, which could be activated at the release of the weapon in orbit,” Zak noted. The reported plan was for the Almaz OPS-4 station to carry two of these missile-like weapons.
What happened to Shchit-2 after the end of the Almaz program in 1978 is entirely unknown. It’s also not clear why the Russians have decided to offer a look at the system now.
It does come amid renewed discussion about on-orbit anti-satellite weapons, including interceptors and directed energy weapons, as well as killer satellites, and the development of these systems, both in Russia and the United States, among other countries. Last year, Chief of Space Operations General John “Jay” Raymond, U.S. Space Force’s top uniformed officer, publicly accused the Russian government of carrying out an on-orbit anti-satellite weapon test wherein one of its very maneuverable and small “inspector” satellites fired an unspecified projectile. The U.S. government has already expressed concern that these orbital inspectors, ostensibly designed to check up on other Russian satellites in space, could have an offensive capability.
There is no indication one way or another that the projectile launched from this Russian satellite was in any way related to the Shchit-2 weapon, a design that is now more than four decades old, at the very least. At the same time, it certainly underscores the potentially significant knowledge base in Russia with regards to the development of such systems.
Whatever the reasons the Russian government has for disclosing the Shchit-2 design publicly now, and no matter what the current state of on-orbit anti-satellite weapons in Russia might be, it is absolutely fascinating to get our first glimpse of this previous top-secret Soviet space missile.
Conclusion
Pretty cool huh? Yeah. Let’s hope that they never get used.
The reader should realize by now that Russia and China are not lazy “slouches”, and the over-whelming military superiority that the United States enjoys has many cracks and fault-lines. It is in the best interests of the world to avoid conflict at all costs. And not play to the childish dreams of massive superiority in the field of battle.
My guess is that things will not come out as planned.
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.
Lately I have been really driven to throw things out. It’s almost like a real crush. I feel that I must send out as much as I possibly can, for some strange compulsion. It’s darn strange and tiring me out.
Seriously.
You all would be surprised at the rate my fingers are typing and the pace that these darn articles are coming out.
It’s a good thing that I have to go to a couple of factories and give my typing fingers a rest. It’s wearing me out. I’m set up for some fun in my near future. Some great friends, some fantastic food. A goodly amount of booze, and some friendly environments from where I can make some new friends in. I’m trembling in anticipation, I’ll tell you what.
I think that it’s a fair time to go play with some dice, make some new friends, and sing a song or two.
Anyways, I would suggest that all of you all also take the time to spend with some friends and play some games. Talk a little bit, chat some and have a good time. Don’t forget the food. And don’t buy cheap booze. Life is too short to waste on cheap booze.
And if you have the means, go ahead and make some new friends. There’s an entire world of interesting and colorful people to meet.
The world is filled with all kinds of interesting and colorful people. Everyone has a story, and everyone likes food. So what is stopping you?
Anyways…
The thing that I have been trying to underline all week is a very simple point.
Which is…
Make no mistake. A war with a major military power will result in the complete annihilation of America.
I’ve really been somewhat fixated in driving this point home. I don’t understand why. I don’t think that I have tapped into any kind of non-physical data stream or anything like that. But never the less, I am driven. Who’d figure.
So…
Don’t poke the Panda, or kick the bear.
Not that anyone will listen to me. It seems that either the United States leadership has a death wish, or that they are seriously retarded morons without a lick of sense.
…
Consider just how dangerous the “deep state” has become.
Now… imagine that a serious REAL war takes place. Missiles are flying back and forth. Entire cites are blasted out of existence, and evil people at the local level take up arms to defend their little patches of land and territory. Here and there.
What do you think the “deep state” would do?
You just cannot assume that they would all disappear, or slink under a rock, or go a hiding in the bushes. they will still exist, and given their (former) levers of power… what do you think they would be capable of? And how far do you think that they would go to exert full regional control in a nation that is in the process of going absolutely mad?
…
It’s bad enough that they are poking the bear and panda…
…but they will utilize what ever happens to their own personal benefit.
Military, Deep State and the American Naivety
While only 11% of Americans trust Congress, a whopping 74% have a “great deal or quite a lot of” trust in the military, which also vastly outperforms newspapers (23%) and even the US Supreme Court (37%).
Similarly, the CIA and the FBI get an “excellent” rating from 58% of Americans.
While reverence to military is quite common all over the world — perhaps related to evolutionary fear — it behooves us to be a bit more critical and objective.
Like the Old Testament characters who never asked Moses for evidence regarding the burning bush, Americans blindly accept all verdicts from the intelligence agencies.
The rise of the colossal military and the “Deep State” are new phenomenons in American history, and a dispassionate scrutiny underscores the need for more vigilance on our part.
Military-Industrial Complex – Eisenhower
While many Americans consider it heretical to question the US military, none other than a five-star military general and US president did just that.
“we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”
Such a speech would now be derided as a conspiracy theory and even labeled as treasonous.
CIA – Truman
Guess who thought that the CIA had turned into an American Gestapo?
Harry Truman, the US president who created the CIA.
“Those fellows in the CIA don’t just report on wars, they go out and make their own (wars), and there’s nobody to keep track of what they’re up to. They spend billions of dollars on stirring up trouble. The CIA has become a government all of its own.”
Former Director of the CIA, William Colby, described CIA’s culture in his memoir as follows:
“cult of intelligence … that held itself to be above the normal processes of society, with its own rationale and justification, beyond the restraints of the Constitution …”
Election Meddling and Coups by the CIA
Since World War II, the CIA has meddled in more than 80 foreign elections around the world (doesn’t include coups and regime changes!).
And the RAND corp has the nerve to refer to Russia as a "rogue state". I discussed this HERE.
The US Senate’s Church Committee in 1975 documented several instances of US meddling in other nations.
The operations included suitcases of cash to bribe politicians and voters, manuals for psychological warfare, sensational fake news, organized mass protests, armed violent oppositions etc.
Starting in the 1980’s, the Deep State refined its plans for regime changes, resorting to the use of sophisticated NGO’s such as the USAID, NED and Open Society Foundations of George Soros, which all specialize in mass propaganda and color revolutions.
When asked a few months ago, if we still meddle in other countries’ elections, CIA director James Woolsey grinned and responded, “myum, myum, myum.”
There are incontrovertible proofs for some of the coups, thanks to declassified CIA documents – for example, the overthrow of democratically elected leaders in Iran in 1953 and in Guatemala in 1954.
Assassinations
Recently released “JFK Files” from the CIA archives show detailed plans to assassinate Fidel Castro that included exploding cigars and tuberculosis-laced diving suit.
Other leaders targeted in these documents include General Trujillo of Dominican Republic and Patrice Lumumba of Congo.
William Blum has done extensive research and documented numerous foreign assassinations – successful and attempted – by the CIA and/or the US military.
Theoretically, nothing stops the killing machine in operating within the US.
Even intellectuals like David Talbot — founder of Salon magazine and editor of Time magazine — are convinced that some from the top echelons of the CIA assassinated JFK.
President Truman also seemed to suggest the same when he wrote an extraordinary op-ed in Washington Post one month after JFK’s assassination saying that CIA’s covert operations must be terminated.
By the way, the phrase “conspiracy theorist” was invented by the CIA in 1967 to discredit anyone challenging the official narratives!
The US has supported and installed numerous brutal tyrants and authoritarians all over the world in the last century.
Suharto in Indonesia, for example, killed two million people, but was loved by the West, since he let western corporations exploit his people and plunder his country.
Nazis and Jihadists
After the defeat of Hitler, the US recruited more than 1000 Nazis, including high-ranking officials, to work against the Soviet Union.
Under Operation Paperclip, the CIA brought numerous Nazi scientists into the US.
As I explain in my book, Deconstructing the Syrian War, the US has trained, armed and funded Islamic terrorists in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Libya, Syria etc. to wage proxy wars.
Drug Trafficking
From 1950 to 1975, the CIA — using a fleet of planes and helicopters known as Air America — was involved in massive heroin trafficking from the Golden Triangle area in Myanmar, Thailand and Laos.
After the Vietnam War, the Deep State in the 1980s used heroin in Afghanistan to fight the USSR and cocaine in Central America to fight leftist leaders. According to Gary Webb, the CIA also imported cocaine into the US.
In 1998, a Congressman entered into official records a shocking document called “A Tangled Web: A History of CIA Complicity in Drug International Trafficking” that summarizes CIA’s nefarious drug activities from 1947 to 1996.
Since the US invasion of Afghanistan after 9/11, opium cultivation there has exploded. Correlation or causation? As a NY Times investigation revealed in 2009, the biggest Afghan drug dealer was on the CIA payroll.
Propaganda & Psy Ops
America did this for “democracy”. What do you think that a leader would do to you and your family for his own personal power.
CIA’s Operation Mockingbird was an extensive operation to infiltrate and control all the major news organizations.
Over the decades, the CIA and the Pentagon have actively participated in over 800 major movies and 1000 TV shows to make sure that the right (propaganda) message reaches the audience!
Declassified documents on MK-Ultra and other mind-control and brainwashing programs and experiments –LSD and numerous other drugs, hypnosis, electric shock etc. – are right out of a sci-fi horror movie.
Wars and Lies
Remember all the deceit and fearmongering that convinced us to go to Iraq war after 9/11?
He could launch chemical weapons against Israel and British soldiers (in Cyprus) in just 45 minutes
Through innuendos and bold lies, the Establishment convinced 70% of Americans that Saddam was responsible for 9/11 and even the Anthrax attack that followed.
Go back in history, there are many such lies, including the Gulf of Tonkin claim that helped the US launch the Vietnam War.
Wars and Corporatism
America did this for “democracy”. What do you think that a leader would do to you and your family for his own personal power.
Every American should read General Smedley Butler’s amazing testimony titled, “War is a Racket.”
John Perkins’ book, “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man” is another must read to understand how banks and corporations drive geopolitics, coups, regime changes and wars in the 21st century.
False Flag Attacks
Somehow, it’s psychologically hard for people to think that their government might stage false flag attacks.
However, as recently declassified documents show, the CIA had many such ideas – killing boatloads of Cuban refugees or blowing up ships and then blaming Fidel Castro;
…carrying out “terror campaigns” – their own words – with bombs in Miami and Washington D.C. to frame Castro;
…and buying Russian planes to attack US soldiers to start a war with the Soviet Union.
Shockingly, these plans got approved all the way up to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and only got stopped by JFK or his brother.
There are convincing evidence to prove the CIA carried out similar false flag attacks — Operation Gladio — in Europe in the 1950’s through the 1970’s to blame the communists and shift the political landscape to the right.
In recent years in Libya, Syria and Ukraine, false flag attacks were used to launch the regime change operations.
Wild accusations such as the Novichok poisoning in the UK by Russia also bear all the hallmarks of fake or false flag attacks.
Torture and Human Experiments
America did this for “democracy”. What do you think that a leader would do to you and your family for his own personal power.
While our politicians are skilled at crying crocodile tears over human rights abuses by our geopolitical adversaries, the CIA runs secret torture prisons in many countries to avoid scrutiny.
Sometimes we do it ourselves, like in Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib, Iraq.
According to a 1994 government report, hundreds of thousands of Americans were subjected to unethical radiological, chemical, biological and medical experiments between 1940 and 1974.
The US military even conducted biological warfare testing on the entire city of San Francisco!
Nuking 1200 Cities
Another deeply held American belief is that our elites always hold high moral standards, value lives and are compassionate.
In September 1945, merely one month after Nagasaki and Hiroshima, the US military drew up plans to drop 204 atomic bombs on 66 cities in the USSR, who was our ally during World War II and still an ally at that time!
Then a decade later, in 1956, the US military had detailed plans to drop 2,000+ atom and hydrogen bombs on 1,200 cities in Russia, China and Eastern Europe.
This would have immediately killed 500 million people, 99% innocent civilians.
Think about what kind of evil monsters and sociopaths would come up with such genocidal ideas.
Also, if they had carried out their psychopathic plan, the nuclear fallout might have ended the entire human race.
Perpetual Wars
Since 9/11, the US/NATO wars have already cost $5.6 trillion and killed 5 to 7 million people, but clever propaganda hide or justify such atrocities.
In the 1990s, half a million Iraqi children died from US sanctions, which Sec. of State Madeleine Albright said was “worth it.”
Wars and conflicts are extremely profitable for the military-banking-intelligence complex, which uses the soldiers as pawns. 2.7 million Americans have fought in Iraq and Afghanistan since 9/11; and more than 400,000 of them suffer from PTSD.
If diplomacy, free trade and fair wages become the norm, we wouldn’t need 800 military bases in 140 countries to prop up friendly dictators, bully competitors, and enforce the Ponzi scheme of the Petrodollar regime.
The unsustainable Empire thrives because we cannot question or challenge it.
Mass Surveillance
America did this for “democracy”. What do you think that a leader would do to you and your family for his own personal power.
In the land of the free, Americans don’t mind NSA spying on them.
While many assume that it’s to protect us from terrorists, Edward Snowden revealed that the mass collection of phone calls has been going on since 1985.
If the spooks have dirt on every single American, it’s no wonder that no politician speaks out against the Orwellian nightmare.
The attacks on Wikileaks and Julian Assange also reveal how much the Deep State hates transparency and accountability.
Conclusion
The zeitgeist in America demands blind support for military, defense industry and the intelligence community.
Like fish in the water, Americans have lost the ability to notice the pervasive and omnipresent propaganda.
However, we owe it ourselves to be more knowledgeable and objective in processing and reacting to information.
We also need to be more cynical about our government and the mass media.
Freedom, liberty and prosperity are not achieved and maintained through willful ignorance, blind allegiance and naïve faith.
Now, when a full SHTF event occurs, these very same people will capitalize on the situation and turn it into their own personal benefit. You all need to be ready and aware of that. For this is what always happens after the dust settles and the war subsides.
Where will you be when that happens, and will you be ready to handle the new leaders that rise up out of the ashes? Are you ready?
I’m getting ready. I’m spending my time getting drunk and making all sorts of new friends. Because, as I have stated over and over again, it is your friends that will be able to help you when you need it the most. Nothing else.
I’m spending my time getting drunk and making all sorts of new friends.
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.
The soaring contempt and smug exceptionalism made me almost gag on my weetbix as I read this. I've never met an empire more in dire need of a slap down...
-Posted by: Patroklos | Apr 14 2021 19:50 utc | 6
For shits and giggle, I often read some of the policy papers that are generated out of Washington DC. They are fantastical and outlandish and shows that either [1] America is a nation run by herd-mentality idiots, or [2] that they are so enraptured in their own echo chamber that they don’t realize what fresh-air is. Here is one such policy paper.
It is from RAND.
Which is a big “Think Tank” out in Washington DC that loves war, like I love sex, pizza and wine.
I love sex, pizza and wine.
It’s a hoot. I’ll tell you what.
Here’s access to the document yourself, and a nice summary with my MM comments thrown in for some points of stability.
Russia Is a Rogue, Not a Peer; China Is a Peer, Not a Rogue
How do Russia and China challenge U.S. national security and global influence?
How can the United States meet those challenges?
Russia and China represent distinct challenges to U.S. national security.
Russia is not a peer or near-peer competitor but rather a well-armed rogue state that seeks to subvert an international order it can never hope to dominate.
So Russia; enormous Russia with a population larger than the United States is a "well armed" rogue state.I can agree that it is well-armed. But, a rogue state?Arogue state otherwise known as an outlaw state, is a term appliedby some international theorists to states that they consider threatening to "the world's peace".
This means being seen to meet certain criteria, such as [1] being ruled by authoritarian or totalitarian governments. [2] That severely restrict human rights. That [3] sponsors terrorism and [4] seeking to proliferate weapons of mass destruction.
By these criteria, it is America that is a rogue state.
Yet, the term is used most by the United States, and in his speech at the United Nations in 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump reiterated this phrase.
In contrast, China is a peer competitor that wants to shape an international order that it can aspire to dominate.
Yes. China is a peer competitor with the Untied States, and in many areas it has surpassed the Untied States.
But this idea that it wants to "shape an international order" that it can dominate is flat-out false.
It wants to follow confucianism values in cooperation and harmony so that all can benefit. Of course China wants to put the Chinese people first. This is the function of all governments. But to call a peaceful nation that hasn't been involve din a war for over 50 years desirous of dominating others is really outlandish.
4 Confucian principles that are integral to a moral life and a moral society[1] Development of the self. The development of the self and the cultivation of virtue and morality are crucial to Confucius’ vision of a harmonised world.[2] Filial Piety. Filial piety is a love and respect for one’s parents. ...[3] Theimportanceof tradition. ...[4] We must behumane. ...
No wonder that RAND and those psychopathic personalities in Washington DC are confused with China. these values are completely alien to them.
Both countries seek to alter the status quo.
But only Russia has attacked neighboring states, annexed conquered territory, and supported insurgent forces seeking to detach yet more territory.
Russia assassinates its opponents at home and abroad.
Russia interferes in foreign elections.
Russia subverts foreign democracies.
Russia works to undermine European and Atlantic institutions.
And so does the United States. Historically this is known as spy-craft, international politics, and intrigue. It's not a reason to go to war over.
In contrast, China’s growing influence is based largely on more-positive measures: trade, investment, and development assistance. These attributes make China a less immediate threat but a much greater long-term challenge.
True. China is not an immediate military threat.
But the only challenge here is whether the Untied States is able to compete with it. After throwing away it's scientists and engineers, it's going to be a hard slog trying to compete with "diversity directors" and "accountants".
In the military realm, Russia can be contained, but China cannot.
Its military predominance in east Asia will grow over time, compelling the United States to accept greater costs and risks just to secure existing commitments.
But it is geoeconomics, rather than geopolitics, in which the contest for world leadership will play out.
It is in the domain of geoeconomics that the balance of global influence between the United States and China has begun shifting in China’s favor.
Key Findings
China presents a greater geoeconomic challenge to the United States than Russia does
China’s per capita GDP approaches Russia’s; its population is eight times Russia’s, and its growth rate three times.
As of 2017, China’s economy was the second largest in the world, behind only that of the United States. Russia’s was 11th.
Russia’s military expenditure is lower than China’s, and that gap is likely to grow.
Russia is far smaller, has poorer economic prospects, and is less likely to dramatically increase its military power in the long term.
You can tell just how out of sync this entire paper is when they start using GDP instead of PPP for comparison values. I argue, rather convincingly I must add, that if you remove the top 0.1% of the super-billionaires out of America in your GDP calculations, the GDP slides way down to a value that is half of China's GDP.
Also the level of crime and corruption is far lower than what you see in America. Thus you can make and create things with far, far less effort and money.
Thus you really cannot make the comparisons that are being made here.
It truly is like comparing apples with bananas.
Russia is a more immediate and more proximate military threat to U.S. national security than China is but can be countered
Russia will probably remain militarily superior to all its immediate neighbors other than China.
Russia is vulnerable to a range of nonmilitary deterrents, such as sanctions on the Russian economy and limiting Russian income from exports of fossil fuels; multilateral efforts would be more effective than U.S.-only operations, however.
China presents a regional military challenge and a global economic one
Militarily, China can be contained for a while longer; economically, it has already broken free of regional constraints.
Russia backs far-right and far-left political movements with a view to disrupting the politics of adversarial societies and, if possible, installing friendlier regimes. China, in contrast, seems basically indifferent to the types of government of the states with which it interacts, increasing its attractiveness as an economic partner.
Recommendations
In the security sphere, the United States should continue to hold the line in east and southeast Asia, accepting the larger costs and risks involved in counterbalancing growing Chinese military capabilities. Meanwhile, Washington should help its regional allies and partners to field their own antiaccess and area denial systems. Finally, the United States should take advantage of any opportunities to resolve issues and remove points of Sino-American tension, recognizing that its bargaining position will gradually deteriorate over time.
In the economic realm, the United States needs to compete more effectively in foreign markets, persevere and strengthen international norms for trade and investment, and incentivize China to operate within those norms. Given China’s efforts to take technological leadership in the long term and the potential advantages that such leadership brings, the United States also needs to improve its innovation environment. Measures could include greater funding for research, retention of U.S.-educated foreign scientists and technologists, and regulatory reforms that ease the introduction of product and process improvements into businesses and the market.
In responding to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the United States should move to secure its own preferential access to the world’s largest markets, the industrialized countries of Europe and Asia; assist nations in increasing connectivity with the world economy; work with partners to ensure more transparency in China’s Belt and Road projects; and increase support to U.S. exporters and investors.
In all these challenges, the United States will be more successful coordinating action with allies and trading partners.
This report is part of the RAND Corporation perspective series. RAND perspectives present informed perspective on a timely topic that address the challenges facing the public and private sectors. All RAND perspectives undergo rigorous peer review to ensure high standards for research quality and objectivity.
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.
There’s a lot of talk in the United States these days. It’s all about how “evil” the Chinese are, and how “evil” the Russians are, and how “evil” the Iranians are. And along with this well publicized narrative is the flood of articles about “how strong” and “how invincible” the American military is. It’s almost like, well it’s exactly like, America is on a war-footing and is readying the population for a long drawn out, multi-generational war, with Asia.
It’s a big mistake.
I guess that the American “leadership” wasn’t paying attention in history class. Perhaps they should ask the ghosts of NapoleonBonaparte and Hitler how that all worked out.
But one of the unspoken realities is the illusion that Asia won’t fight back. That it is inconceivable. And that any far in far-away Russia, or far-away China, or far-away Iran will stay far away.
Far… far… away.
And that, even if it did somehow manage to “throw a few punches” back at the United States, that the (good ol’) USA will manage to absorb them, quickly recover, and continue living a great and exceptional life as the “leader of the free world”, and that “brilliant city on the hill”. America is “exceptional” don’t you know…
And I for one am going to tell you that this is delirious wishful thinking.
Back in the day
This attitude that “we are strong and invincible” and that “we can tell the world what to do, or else” is thuggish bullying. And it’s more than just irritating, it’s disgusting. But for historians (well, I am an amateur, but you all know what I mean) it’s frightening.
History is full of stores of the proud rulers of nations. They would live inside their huge stone forts. they would have these huge banners fluttering in the azure blue skies, and they would have gaggles of beautiful maidens attending to them. And they would have large armies of “Heavy Cavalry” and “Knights in singing armor” . They would have thousands of these armed knights.
And they would sit inside their castles, on their thrones, and eat their lamb, drink their mead, and cavort with their wenches. They would make proclamations. They would be delirious and drunk with power, and totally and completely unaware of true and real dangers elsewhere in the world.
I feel a lecture coming on…
Genghis Khan and the “Brilliant Cities on the hill”
Genghis Khan was the Emperor of the Mongol Empire. He must have been one of the most ferocious people ever to live on the planet Earth. Genghis marked his reign with blood, feasts, and love of different women. People like Napoleon, Hitler, or Stalin look like amateurs when we compare them to Genghis Khan.
This fierce Mongol knew how to rule, and he successfully did it for many years in the 13th century. There wasn’t a person back in the day, who would not be scared of Genghis Khan’s power.
But before he came to power, he was not all that well known. And, as such he was dismissed as a “uncouth”, “uncultured” barbarian. Which he pretty much was…
The knights at their tournaments, in their finery, armor and emblems of ancestry, believed they were the foremost warriors in the world, while Mongol warriors thought otherwise.
Mongol horses were small, but their riders were lightly clad and they moved with greater speed. These were hardy men who grew up on horses and hunting, making them better warriors than those who grew up in agricultural societies and cities.
Their main weapon was the bow and arrow. And the Mongols of the early 1200s were highly disciplined, superbly coordinated and brilliant in tactics.
The Mongols were illiterate, religiously shamanistic and perhaps no more than 700,000 in number. Their language today is described as Altaic, a language unrelated to Chinese, derived from inhabitants in the Altay mountain range in western Mongolia.
They were herdsmen on the grassy plains north of the Gobi Desert, south of Siberia's forests. Before the year 1200, the Mongols were fragmented, moving about in small bands headed by a chief, or khan, and living in portable felt dwellings.
The Mongols endured frequent deprivations and sparse areas for grazing their animals. They frequently fought over turf, and during hard times they occasionally raided, interested in goods rather than bloodshed. They did not collect heads or scalps as trophies.
-Genghis Khan
…but that is besides the point.
The Mongol Empire conquered all Asia, and no enemy could withstand Genghis Khan and his bloodthirsty army. Oh yes, even though Mongols loved to compromise, they were known for their brutal physical power.
But they were much more than that. The Mongols under Genghis Khan were fair, just and orderly. You just don’t get on their bad side.
Genghis Khan created a body of law that he was to work on throughout his life. This included outlawing the tradition of kidnapping women. The kidnapping of women had caused feuds among the Mongols, and, as a teenager he had suffered from the kidnapping of his young wife, Borte, and he had devoted himself to rescuing her.
In addition, Genghis Khan declared all children legitimate, whomever the mother. He made it law that no woman would be sold into marriage. The stealing of animals had caused dissension among the Mongols, and Temujin made it a capital offense. A lost animal was to be returned to its owner, and taking lost property as one's own was to be considered thievery and a capital offense. Temujin regulated hunting – a winter activity – improving the availability of meat for everyone. He introduced record keeping, taking advantage of his move years before to have his native language put into writing. He created official seals. He created a supreme officer of the law who was to collect and preserve all judicial decisions, to oversee the trials of all those charged with wrongdoing and to have the power to issue death sentences. He created order that strengthened his realm and improved his ability to expand its territory.
-Genghis Khan
People believed that one Mongolian man could defeat ten or more warriors of other culture. And that was true. Genghis Khan proved many times how strong his army was, defeating his enemies against all the odds.
Nowadays, the only news we can hear about Mongolia is that Russians are trying out their nuclear weapons in the steppes of this ancient empire. Or that the Chinese are placing farming robots to herd cattle in inner Mongolia.
We forget that modern Chinese, and modern Russians are the direct descendants of the Mongol warriors of Genghis Khan.
What about this “uncouth barbarian”…
Genghis Khan was one of the most deeply feared historical figures in the world for a good reason. Historians estimate that Genghis Khan is responsible for over 40 million deaths, and at that time it was equal to 11 percent of the world’s population. For comparison, we can look at World War II, which has put “only” around three percent of the world’s population, 60-80 million people, to the graveyard. What Genghis Khan did is downright scary when we put it in perspective, right?
Not bad for an “evil” uncouth barbarian.
Genghis Khan was the most feared human of the 13th century, who could destroy dynasties just by moving his little finger. He created the Mongol Empire all by himself and earned his eternal spot in the history books. However, a lot of people had to suffer for Genghis Khan to succeed.
In cities the Mongols were forced to conquer, Genghis Khan divided the civilians by profession. He drafted the few who were literate and those he could use as translators. Those who had been the city's most rich and powerful he wasted no time in killing, remembering that the rulers he had left behind after conquering the Tangut and the Jurchens had betrayed him soon after his army had withdrawn.
It is said that the Genghis Khan's military did not torture, mutilate or maim. But his enemies are reported as having done so. Captured Mongols were dragged through streets and killed for sport and to entertain city residents. Gruesome displays of stretching, emasculation, belly cutting and hacking to pieces were something European rulers were using to discourage potential enemies – as was soon to happen to William Wallace on orders from England's King Edward I. The Mongols merely slaughtered, and preferred doing so from a distance.
The city of Nishapur revolted against Mongol rule. The husband of Genghis Khan's daughter was killed, and, it is said, she asked that everyone in the city be put to death, and, according to the story, they were.
-Genghis Khan
Oh yes, the Mongolians were known for their horrendous torturing techniques. One of the most popular was pouring molten silver down the throat and ears of a victim.
Genghis Khan also liked bending his enemy’s back until the backbone snapped. If that sounds barbaric, skip this next part. So, the Mongols once celebrated victory over Russians in a very bizarre way. They picked all the Russian survivors, dropped them on the ground and put a heavy wooden gate on top of them. Then, Genghis Khan and the entire Mongol army had a huge banquet on that wooden gate. They ate, drank, and watched how Russians were dying one by one from the suffocation, pressure, and wounds.
Genghis Khan had so much power that he could do whatever he wanted. For instance, when Genghis occupied some new area, he would kill or enslave all the men and share all the women amongst his tribe.
Genghis Khan would even make beauty contests of captured women to decide which woman is the most beautiful one. Yeah, he was having his Miss Universe competition before it was cool. So, the queen of those beauty competitions would win the privilege to become one of many Genghis Khan’s women.
The rest of the Mongolian army would share all the other contestants. It shows us once again how cruel and barbaric Mongols were. I suppose that it was a different time and a different place, but the fact remains that when you have lost, your cities destroyed, and sacked, the victor can do whatever they want. And they wanted sex.
Lots and lost of sex.
Genghis Khan was able to destroy entire “impenetrable” cities easily.
When we look at what Genghis Khan achieved with the Mongol Empire, we cannot help but appreciate his mastermind as a warlord. It surely looks like Genghis Khan had three dragons with him just like Khaleesi.
I cannot find any other explanation of Genghis Khan’s success.
I mean, he defeated Jin Dynasty’s one million troops with only 90,000 Mongolians by his side. Yes, Genghis Khan managed to win a war with ten times fewer troops than his opponent’s army.
Jin Dynasty.
On top of that, he was invading China, so he had to overcome all the “little” problems such as the Great Wall of China.
Genghis Khan with his army had destroyed over 500,000 of Chinese troop before getting control of Northern China and Beijing. The rest of the Chinese army had to surrender to the power of Genghis Khan.
Destroying Jin Dynasty is only one of many examples of how great of a warlord Genghis Khan was. Also, he had some brutal and loyal men by his side, so let’s not rule out the dragon theory.
Physical force is not enough to achieve something as great as Genghis Khan did.
Yes, there is no doubt that he is the greatest and most brutal warlord in history, but he was also a very wise man. In 1201, during a battle, Genghis Khan was shot by an enemy archer. Needless to say, he was not happy about it.
So, after the Mongolian army won the battle, Genghis Khan spent some time looking for the man that shot him. He even pretended that it was not him who got shot, but his horse, so the enemy archer would have the courage to confront Genghis.
An unbelievable thing happened when the archer finally stepped out of the crowd and confessed shooting Genghis Khan.
Instead of killing his enemy, Genghis Khan recognized his talent and asked him to join the Mongolian army. The archer became a great general and loyally served Genghis for many years. That is one of the reasons why Mongol Empire was such a success back in the 13th century.
It is not a secret that Genghis Khan loved to have some bedroom time with all the different women. Whenever Genghis would conquer new land (he did it more frequent than people scroll Facebook nowadays), he would also get himself a couple of new wives.
As well as a gaggle of some “playthings”.
Genghis did that because he liked beautiful women, but it was also a very convenient way to demonstrate his power. Spreading his blood line all over Asia ensured peace in the entire Mongol Empire.
So, how many children did Genghis Khan have? It is pretty much impossible to tell the number, but historians estimate that today, around eight percent of men from Asia are his descendants. I cannot even start to process this number, but apparently, Genghis Khan was a great lover. No one in the history is even close to having such a wide family tree. So, next time when you talk about Genghis Khan, remember that it is a great chance that he is your ancestor.
Torture time.
Genghis Khan was a man of reason. He let the people in the Mongol Empire live a happy life as long as they followed his rules.
However, Genghis Khan cruelly punished everyone who tried to break those rules.
In Hungary and Poland the Mongols were outnumbered but tactically superior. They defeated several Hungarian armies. In early April, 1241, at the Battle of Lenica (Liegnitz) in Poland, they defeated an army that is said to have included heavily armored Teutonic knights. Dying in the battle was the most powerful of Polish dukes, Henryk II (Henry II).
-Genghis Khan
For example, when the governor of one of the cities in the Khwarazmian Empire took over Genghis Khan’s trade caravan and killed all the traders, Genghis Khan went berserker.
He sent 100,000 Mongols to the Khwarazmian Empire and killed thousands of people, including the governor.
Genghis Khan poured molten silver into the governor’s eyes and mouth until the poor guy roasted from the inside. That was a clear sign that anyone, stupid enough to harm the Mongol Empire, would have to face devastating consequences.
While Genghis Khan was consolidating his conquests in what had been the Khwarezmian Empire, a force of 40,000 Mongol horsemen pushed through Azerbaijan and Armenia. Without Genghis Khan they defeated Georgia's Christian crusaders, captured a Genoese trade-fortress in the Crimea and spent the winter along the coast of the Black Sea. In 1223, as they were headed back home, they met 80,000 warriors led by Prince Mstislav of Kiev. The Battle of Kalka River (map location) commenced. Staying out of range of the crude weapons of peasant infantry, and with better bows than opposing archers, they devastated the prince's standing army. Facing the prince's cavalry, they faked a retreat and drew the prince's armored cavalry forward, taking advantage of the over-confidence of the mounted aristocrats. Lighter and more mobile, the Mongols strung out and tired the pursuers and then attacked, killed and routed them.
-Genghis Khan
History shows that spreading fear worked perfectly in Genghis Khan’s favor. He still needed to invade some rebellious places from time to time, but for the most of the time, people in The Mongol Empire behaved really well.
Genghis Khan could be as powerful and respected as he wanted, but he still had to surrender to the laws of nature. Genghis Khan died in 1227, at the age of 65.
And why is all this important?
History tells us that psychopathic personalities in charge of nations that possess science, technology, and modern works tend to be blinded to the realities of the world. They become drunk with power, and forget that there are “bigger fish in the sea” and that you should not discount them because they are different…
…or they look different…
…or that they are “book worms”…
…or are drunk on vodka all the time…
…or whatever bullshit reinforcements that you want to believe. Genghis Khan serves as a stark and frightening reminder that there is always someone bigger, and better, and stronger than you are. And you should mistake their polite actions, their calm words, their soft tone of voice for a sign of weakness.
The result could be lethal.
"Let me control the media and I will turn any nation into a herd of pigs"
- Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels
Consider the reality
I could type until my fingers fall off, and no one is going to believe the statistics that pretty much show that a FIRE based economy isn’t capable of rebuilding, creating, or structuring anything. I can show you historical examples, you you all would ignore them. I can show you charts and graphs, but they will remain oblivious.
A FIRE economy is any economy based primarily on the finance, insurance, and real estate sectors. Finance, insurance, and real estate are United States Census Bureau classifications. Barry Popik describes some early uses as far back as 1982. Since 2008, the term has been commonly used by Michael Hudson and Eric Janszen. It is New York City's largest industryand a prominent part of the service industry in the United States overall economy and other Western developed countries.
-Wikipedia
I argue that strategically, a nation that makes, creates and builds things is far superior to that that talks about things, writes about things, and tabulates numbers on spreadsheets. And this superiority manifests in numerous ways.
The historical displacement of America’s industry for replacement by lawyers, economists, bankers and real estate tycoons.
But rather than get into all the charts and the graphs, it get’s tiresome don’t you know, instead we are going to greatly simplify things and look at the far simpler model.
So what we are going to so is simplify the equations.
An exercise in simplification
We are going to create an imaginary nation, roughly the the same size and structural organization of the United States. We are going to call it “Freedom United!”.
And…
We are also going to create another nation, this is going to be a unified Asia that includes Russia, China and Iran. We will call it “Asia First!”
And…
Does this map remind you of anything?
How about this…
Genghis Khans empire.
Comparisons
What we are going to do is compare the two collective communities. For each one is comprised of a group of separate states or independent nations, all brought together under a common banner.
And when we do compare them, we see this…
Ah…
And the first thing that should strike the reader is that there is a major “real estate difference” involved.
Asia First! is much larger, geographically, than Freedom United! is.
But it’s more than that…
"Early in life I have noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper, but in Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as the heroes of imaginary victories; and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that had never happened. I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various ‘party lines’."
- George Orwell, Looking back on the Spanish War, Chapter 4
The second thing that you must note it it is not only bigger, but it has more people, more factories, and more resources.
But let’s simplify things and note that while Freedom United! and Asia First! both have factories and R&D centers, the nature of them, and the location of them within the geographical territories are quite different.
Freedom United! has pretty much “offshored” it’s manufacturing capability to other nations and places, and what remains are “think tanks”, “conceptional Research” and “study centers”. They are staffed by bankers, accountants and highly paid diversity directors. Further, their location tends to be centralized to the major cities within the nation body.
Cities like Yorker City, San Chicago, and New Angles have their “industry” very close to the densely packed urban centers. And while there are certainly scattered factories and manufacturing center peppered throughout the nation, the vast bulk of them at located at the urban city centers.
Something like this…
Meanwhile, Asia First! not only has more factories, but they are scattered throughout the entire nation. Furthermore, they tend to make real physical things. Not spreadsheets, Power Point Presentations, and accounting evaluations. The owners and the executives are all merit driven as it is their culture. All the leadership can, if needed, go onto the factory floor and make the parts and equipment products themselves.
Like Freedom United!, they also tend to cluster, but instead of clustering with the major population centers, they cluster inside manufacturing communities that are widely separated and located in the vast tracks of the countryside.
Here’s a map of Guangdong. It is a collection of many, many, many smaller towns that host many, many, many factories. This area is a designated Tier 1 city in China and it is north of the principal city of Shenzhen. For your shit’s and giggles, MM used to live in one of these cities here in this region. It’s all factories, and hills. Factories and hills. Factories and hills.
Dongguang
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The Human bridge is really a hassle I will tell you what. That’s the icon at the far lower left of the picture. I go over it maybe once ever few months. It’s traffic as far as the eye can see!
Now for our purposes, we will consider ASIA FIRST! to be much like this. Which regions of scattered communities and factories all spread out over wide expansive terrain.
It looks something like this…
Now…
Let’s compare the two nation states
"The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of the masses."
- Malcolm X
When you compare the two nations you notice something very important to our calculus here. No matter how smart, how prosperous, how beautiful or how exceptional one nation is compared to the other… a nation with a bigger population, and more factories, and resource will be able to out-produce and out-survive a lesser nation.
It’s the “Risk” strategy.
IntheRiskgame, the goal is simple: playersaimto conquer their enemies’ territories by building an army, moving their troops in, andengaginginbattle. Depending on therollofthedice, a player will either defeat the enemy or be defeated. This exciting game isfilledwithbetrayal, alliances, and surprise attacks.
We saw that during World War II with the Nazi Germans. While their military weapons industry was top rate, and the quality of their equipment was the best in the world, it was the ill-trained, masses and hordes of soldiers from Russia that was able to overwhelm Germany.
This idea that huge quantities of “average” soldiers, and mediocre equipment can compensate for very specialized, and efficient, and expensive weapons systems is not new. It’s just not well reported as the Freedom United! military-industrial lobby is desirous of keeping this issue quiet and “under wraps”.
Let’s compare the two nations side by side…
All this is very interesting, but let’s get to the point.
A comparison with the events of the last few years leading up to today.
America takes on Asia…
Freedom United! is just getting “clobbered” on the international scene. It is a military empire that has few remaining exports of value. It exports aircraft, and wheat, and some very specialized machines, but that’s about it. It’s primary revenue generating venue is in the banking, finance and real estate venues.
This nation has been fighting numerous wars all over the globe, and it’s leadership are drunk with power, and oblivious to the true realities of the world.
So, where they got this idea is unknown, they get this idea that they can take on and fight with Asia First! And that they would win!
What’s more, they seriously believe that they could draw out the battle and fighting for a long, long time.
Not just years and decades, but generations…
Mike Pompeo in India working on the QUAD to fight against China.
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Now they know that it would be very difficult to fight on the geographical territory of Asia First! as it would result in a complete nuclear retaliation.
Asia First! combined has an enormous nuclear arsenal. It is far bigger, more technologically advanced, and with a larger military than what Freedom United! has.
Thus, they need to be able to fight Asia First! is such a way that Nuclear MAD doctrine is avoided.
They also know that they need to “bleed out” Asia First! in such a way as to give them time to overtake the nation through attrition. So they have established other areas by which the fighting can take place.
Create a MAJOR “false flag” event to ignite a war-footing.
Keep the fighting conventional. Avoid nuclear weapons.
Fight by proxies on predetermined proxy nation locations.
Bleed Asia First! through dominance on the oceans, and in Space.
Isolate Asia First! in all ways and means.
Prevent war from hitting the mainland Freedom United!
The battles are designed to occur on proxy locations.
The idea is to have wars and battles taking place in far-away lands, so that no one in Freedom United! is harmed, and a direct nuclear strike with Asia First! can be avoided. These proxy war locations (already decided upon by FREEDOM UNITED!) are shown in gold.
And of course, the idea is that Freedom United! would fight Asia First on these designated battlefields. These areas are known as the QUAD.
It’s a brilliant plan.
Except one thing.
Some of those QUAD areas are considered to be Asian First! territory. And pretending that they are not is a egregious mistake. And Asia First! has said so explicitly. These are “RED LINES” that one dare not cross.
But the leadership of Freedom United! just chucked, and pretended that they didn’t hear the statements.
A Battle Rages
So let’s go through the logical progression of things.
Logical.
Progression.
Of events as we know them.
Freedom United! creates a series of “false flags” to justify a war with Asia First!. There are a number of events stacked up that are ready to go. The question is which one will Freedom First! use to “get the ball rolling”?
And within a short period of time there are global military actions globally.
Initially, it looks like everything is going to plan. One or two QUAD members decide to “sit the conflict out”, but the rest support the effort in varying degrees.
Trade slows to a trickle and even stops.
The people of Freedom United! are all in gleeful patriotism, and conventional fighting is occurring all along the “doorsteps” of Asia First!. As planned! Off in far-away lands!
American media constantly pushes for war because they have no idea what real war is. To them, going to war is like spanking a child: possibly backfiring socially, but no real danger to their own lives. Most of the time, they just send bombers and take cool videos. When guys have to be sent on the ground, their deaths can be used to fuel the national hard-on America has for its military. I call it the "thank you for your service culture.
America has waged war on minor nations for so long that they can't even imagine that fighting another nation might result in aunt Nancy meeting her creator early. To them, Afghanistan, Iraq, China, Russia, it's all the same.
Also, the infantile thinking in terms of good and bad doesn't help.
Posted by: Eeny | Apr 12 2021 18:32 utc | 12
They can sit down in front of their televisions set, and social media feeds and feel so proud and patriotic about how strong and powerful their military is, and finally doing something about all those evil dirty filthy Asia First! people.
But then something happens.
Those “neutral” QUAD nations are not all independent. Some of them are actually geographically part of Asia First! They are not considered to be “protectorates of Freedom United!” instead they are recognized by the UN as actual sovereign territory of Asia First!, and…
…when the military operations in support of the False Flag events start to occur, action starts to unfold very rapidly.
Asia First! decides that enough is enough, and that this bullshit must end. So it unleashes a combined military horror upon Freedom United!.
All Hell breaks loose.
The event was is brief and is over quickly. All in all an equal exchange of nuclear conflagration occurs to both nation states. No one is spared.
But…
The nuclear strike has been planned for decades. It’s not spontaneous.
And one nation decides to end it, and it remains the victor who lays the terms of surrender of the other nation.
Which nation would be the winner, and which would be the loser, do you suppose?
It looks like this…
Global Devastation
We can see what happens.
Not only are the designated battlefields (pre-established by Freedom United!) hit with crippling nuclear salvos, but the “untouchable” cities of Freedom United! are also targeted. In fact, ALL of the major urban ares of Freedom United! are erased from the globe.
All of the major cites of Freedom United are erased from the map. All of the military bases in support of the military empire of Freedom United! are turned into slag and glass. The capital, and all the leadership locations are craters surrounded by radioactive wasteland.
Freedom United! ceases to be a nation.
The world is in big trouble.
It did come at a price.
Asia First! also took some hits and they did not survive unscathed. But we can clearly see that even though there was an equal exchange of hostilities, the nation that suffered the worst was Freedom United! by the simple geography of it’s cities and manufacturing base.
The Aftermath
Now consider the years following this nuclear exchange.
How was the globe able to recover, and which nations recovered the best?
And…
Which nations are best able to recover?
Which nations would be able to recover within a decade?
Which nations would be able to recover within 50 years?
Let’s take a look at that…
Recovery Suggestions
Well, there are far too many variables at play to make any kind of reasonable determine what could happen. All we have are the numbers and the proportions. Asia First! could lose 75% of it’s population and still be better off than Freedom United! And then there is the destruction of factories and cities, and the ability to rebuild. In all aspects, Asia First! would be far better equipped to rebuild, stabilize the situation, and begin all over.
Not so with Freedom United!
Because of this, and the fact that Freedom United! is already balkanized, it seems logical that whatever the condition of Freedom United! would be after a major nuclear exchange, it would fracture into many different singular, independent cities, and independent nations. Some would be healthier than others. Some would be absolutely horrible and horrid places to live, while others might be generally unscathed.
We can also say that there would probably be some serious internal domestic conflict as a nation of “independence” (and high levels of gun ownership and decades of “race bating”) and government actions that pit one group against another…
… that there would be a relatively long period of adjustment to the new normal.
There might be efforts to maintain the original constitution, while there might be efforts to maintain the independence of the individual states. There might be efforts to carve out new states and new territories, as well as neighboring nations deciding to annex some of the lands that are now “up for grabs”.
No matter, how contentious, how difficult, how problematic, and how confused, one thing is certain, the Federal Government will no longer exist, and it would take a herculean effort to keep the Freedom United! national unity intact after a global nuclear exchange.
Conclusion
Humanity is at a dangerous crossroads. Nuclear war has become a multi-billion dollar undertaking, which fills the pockets of US defense contractors. What is at stake is the outright “privatization of nuclear war”. Massive amounts of money have been allocated by the Joe Biden Administration to feed the weapons industry including the Pentagons’ 1.3 trillion dollar nuclear weapons program first launched under Obama, is ongoing under the Biden administration.Michel Chossudovsky, April 12, 2021
This post looks at the world like the simplified game of “Risk”. The nation with the bigger population and armies will be able to offset what ever technical advantage you might possess. This is not always true, of course. (Consider the Incas when they met the Spanish in search of gold.) But it is often true enough to say that perhaps 80% of modern conflict follows this rule.
We can wish that advantage can be mitigated by brilliant generals (Carl von Clausewitz, and Rommel), or exciting cutting edge technology (radar, sonar, stealth, cruse missile, hyper-glide technology, drones, nuclear weapons), and elite and specialized training (Seals, Green Berets) but for the most part these advantages are on the Tactical level, not on the Strategic level.
Avalon Hill’s game “Squad Leader” simulates tactical level military warfare on the Eastern Front between Germany and Russia during World War II.
But we have to take into account something else. This is something that is rarely if ever addressed…
… incompetence at the leadership level.
The public faces change, but the stupidity remains because, like Rome, you can change the leadership… but the system is faulted and humans will abuse it.
When Germany ran over France in 1941 the French generals were ill prepared to deal with the Germans. When World War II broke out, Stalin was so incompetent, that he locked himself in the room and got drunk waiting for people to haul him away and arrest him.
When Genghis Khan attacked Europe, and the Silk Road, many nations and city state had an unrealistic understanding of the threat that was facing them, and they had an artificially inflated idea of what they were capable of.
Like the 20,000 armored knights that rode into battle to take on 4 million angry Huns... none survived.
In this overly simplified scenario we discount advantages on the tactical level.
Instead we compare geography and leadership (only). In this set of goggles it is quite obvious that Asia First! has a decided advantage over Freedom United!. Yet, as much fun as this very frightening scenario plays out, we do not know what to expect, and our guesses can be wildly inaccurate.
But, and yet, given the little what we know, and what we have learned from history, there is a case that the scenario presented here has a 60% likelihood of occurring. The Freedom Forever! nation will not easily recover at any pre-confligation level, and it is ridiculous to assume that it would. No matter what “secret weapon” the neocons in control of the nation might think.
We need only review the catastrophic mistakes of the Hungarians when they encountered the Huns of Genghis Khan to underline this point.
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It’s an exciting time. If you can ignore the howls of fright, and fear, from the oligarchy in the United States you can clearly see that the world is uniting and coming together. Roadblocks have been set aside. nations are unifying, sharing resources, and working together for the mutual benefit of all. And it’s long overdue.
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Key to this is the BRI. And all the nations that are connected to the BRI will profit handsomely. But here (in this article) we will concentrate on the main lines or corridors between the big three; Russia, China and Iran. Of course, everyone else near by stands to profit and benefit from all of this. Indeed, it’s a real exciting time.
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Here’s some “meat” as to what the BRI contains. Noting that much is still left out, the roads, the bridges, the tunnels, the high-speed rail lines, and the local community infrastructure. Indeed the scope of the BRI project is vast, just vast. It’s sort of like a major effort to go to the moon, kind of “vast”.
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The following is an article titled “How Eurasia will be interconnected”. I was written by Pepe Escobar. I edited it to fit this venue, and all credit to the author. You also might want to visit the UNZ where most of his articles reside and where there are many other articles of great interest.
The extraordinary confluence between the signing of the Iran-China strategic partnership deal and the “Ever Given” saga in the Suez Canal is bound to spawn a renewed drive to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and all interconnected corridors of Eurasia integration.
"Ever Given" saga in the Suez Canal
EverGiven is one of the largest container ships in the world. The ship is owned by Shoei Kisen Kaisha, and is time chartered and operated by container transportation and shipping company Evergreen Marine, headquartered in Luzhu District, Taoyuan City, Taiwan.
In April 2021, it blocked the Suez Canal for days leading onto weeks, and put a halt to most sea-traffic using the canal.
Iran-China strategic partnership
The Iran-China bilateral 25-year Comprehensive Strategic Partnership was signed in Tehran by foreign ministers Javad Zarif and Wang Yi on 27 March 2021.
While specific details of the agreement are unknown, the joint statement released on signing refers to strengthening political and parliamentary ties, the recognition and pursuit of mutual strategic interests, increased cooperation in defense training, equipment, technology, and intelligence, increased cooperation in counterterrorism and counter-narcotics, and expanded economic ties, especially in finance, mining, energy, agriculture, and infrastructure.
Infrastructure includes ports and railway networks and is linked to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
This is the most important geoeconomic development in Southwest Asia in ages – even more crucial than the geopolitical and military support to Damascus by Russia since 2015.
Multiple overland railway corridors across Eurasia featuring cargo trains crammed with freight (the most iconic of which is arguably Chongqin-Duisburg) are a key plank of BRI. In a few years, this will all be conducted on high-speed rail.
The chongqing duisburg railway.
ChinaandEurope: Reconnecting Across a New Silk Roaddigitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1129&context=facpub
Chongqing Duisburg BELARUS GERMANY POLAND Venice Athens GEORGIA ARMENIA AZERBAIJAN Colombo TRANS-EURASIA RAILROADThe 11,179-kilometre rail line is the most important connection to Europe.
Launched in 2011 by a joint venture with Germany, China, Kazakhstan, and Russia, the rail goes from the city of Chongqing in southwestern China to Duisburg,Germany.
The key overland corridor is Xinjiang-Kazakhstan. (As shown in the map below.)
And then onwards to Russia and beyond outbound to Europe.
The other overland corridor traverses Central Asia and Iran, all the way to Turkey, the Balkans and Eastern Europe. It may take time – in terms of volume – to compete with maritime routes, but the substantial reduction in shipping time is already propelling a massive cargo surge.
The Iran-China strategic connection is bound to accelerate all interconnected corridors leading to and crisscrossing Southwest Asia.
A visual comparison of maritime travel compared to rail travel.
Crucially, multiple BRI trade connectivity corridors are directly linked to establishing alternative routes to oil and gas transit, controlled or “supervised” by the Hegemon since 1945: Suez, Malacca, Hormuz, Bab al Mandeb.
HegemonyHegemony (UK:, US:) is the political, economic, or military predominance or control of one state over others.
In ancient Greece (8th century BC – 6th century AD), hegemony denoted the politico-military dominance of a city-state over other city-states. The dominant state is known as the hegemon.
In the 19th century, hegemony came to denote the "Social or cultural predominance or ascendancy; predominance by one group within a society or milieu". Later, it could be used to mean "a group or regime which exerts undue influence within a society".
Also, it could be used for the geopolitical and the cultural predominance of one country over others, from which was derived hegemonism, as in the idea that the Great Powers meant to establish European hegemony over Africa, Asia and Latin America.-Wikipedia
Black Ops for the Ever Given Blockage in the Suez Canal?
Informal conversations with Persian Gulf traders have revealed huge skepticism about the foremost reason for the Ever Given saga.
The Ever Given, the 200,000-ton cargo ship that became stuck in the Suez Canal on March 23, was finally freed Monday after blocking the waterway for nearly a week, according to the Associated Press. The ship garnered international media attention and has become the subject of online conspiracy theories.
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Merchant marine pilots agree that winds in a desert storm were not enough to harass a state of the art mega-container ship equipped with very complex navigation systems.
The pilot error scenario, induced or not, is being seriously considered.
Then there’s the predominant shoptalk: stalled Ever Given was…
No wonder cynics, addressing the whole episode, are asking, Cui Bono?
Cui BonoCui bono? (Classical Latin: [kui̯ ˈbɔnoː]), in English "to whom is it a benefit?", is a Latin phrase about identifying crime suspects.
Itexpresses the view that crimes are often committed to benefit their perpetrators, especially financially. Which party benefits may not be obvious, and there may be a scapegoat.
-Wikipedia
Persian Gulf traders, in hush hush mode, also drop hints about the project for Haifa to eventually become the main port in the region. This would be in close cooperation with the Emirates. It would connect via a railway to be built between Jabal Ali in Dubai to Haifa, bypassing Suez.
Back to facts on the ground, the most interesting short-term development is how Iran’s oil and gas may be shipped to Xinjiang via the Caspian Sea and Kazakhstan – using a to-be-built Trans-Caspian pipeline.
Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline (TCP) is a proposed pipeline which would transport gas from Turkmenistan to Azerbaijan across the Caspian sea via an undersea pipeline.[1] It is also known as the South Caucasus Pipeline Future Expansion (SCPFX), due to its connection with the South Caucasus Gas Pipeline. It is similar to the proposed Trans-Caspian 2 Gas Pipeline.
In May 2019 a pre-FEED (front end engineering and design) study began for a plan to build two Trans-Caspian pipelines. The first pipeline would follow an expanded SGC route (South Caucasus Pipeline, Tanap and Tap) to a final destination of Italy. The Trans-Caspian 2 Gas Pipeline would follow the White Stream route from the Georgian coast, entering the EU in Romania and reaching western Europe via existing pipelines in Romania, Moldova, Ukraine, Slovakia and onwards.
- Global Fossil Infrastructure Tracker, a project of Global Energy Monitor
That falls right into classic BRI territory.
Actually more than that, because Kazakhstan is a partner not only of BRI but also the Russia-led Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU).
From Beijing’s point of view, Iran is also absolutely essential for the development of a land corridor from the Persian Gulf to the Black Sea and further to Europe via the Danube.
It’s obviously no accident that the Hegemon is on high alert in all points of this trade corridor…
“Maximum pressure” sanctions and hybrid war against Iran;
An attempt to manipulate the Armenia-Azerbaijan war;
The post-color revolution environment in both Georgia and Ukraine – which border the Black Sea;
NATO’s overarching shadow over the Balkans;
It’s all part of the plot.
Now get me some Lapis Lazuli
Another fascinating chapter of Iran-China concerns Afghanistan.
According to Tehran sources, part of the strategic agreement deals with Iran’s area of influence in Afghanistan and the evolution of still another connectivity corridor all the way to Xinjiang.
And here we go back to the always intriguing Lapis Lazuli corridor – which was conceptualized in 2012, initially for increased connectivity between Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey.
Lapis Lazuli corridor
LapisLazuliisan international transit route openedin 2018 linking Afghanistan toTurkeyviaTurkmenistan, Azerbaijan andGeorgia. The name “Lapis Lazuli” isderived from the historic route that Afghanistan'slapislazuliand other semiprecious stones were exported along, over 2,000 years ago, to the Caucasus, Russia, the Balkans, Europe, and North Africa along the ancient Silk Road. The initiative will serve to reinforce the Afghan Government's Infrastructure and Connectivity Development, Energy, and Private Sector Development National Priority Programs. The Lapis Lazuli corridor is funded by the Asian Development Bank. Currently, the transit project’s budget is estimated at $2 billion.-Wikipedia
Lapis Lazuli, wonderfully evocative, harks back to the export of an array of semiprecious stones via the Ancient Silk Roads to the Caucasus, Russia, the Balkans and North Africa.
Now the Afghan government sees the ambitious 21st century remix as…
Departing from Herat (a key area of Persian influence),
Continuing to the Caspian Sea port of Turkmenbashi in Turkmenistan,
Via a Trans-Caspian pipeline to Baku,
Onwards to Tblisi,
And through the Georgian ports of Poti and Batumi in the Black Sea,
And finally connected to Kars and Istanbul.
This is really serious business; a drive that may potentially link the Eastern Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean.
Since Russia, Iran, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan signed the Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea in 2018, in the Kazakh port of Aktau…
…what’s interesting is that their major issues are now discussed at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), where Russia and Kazakhstan are full members.
Iran will soon be;
Azerbaijan is a dialogue partner;
and Turkmenistan is a permanent guest.
Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea ...Publish Year: 2019
Author: Rizal Abdul Kadir
Published: Apr 25, 2019
After twenty-two years of negotiations, in Aktau on August 12, 2018, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Iran, Russia, and Turkmenistan signed the Convention onthe Legal Status of the Caspian Sea. The preamble of the Convention stipulates, amongother things, that the Convention, made up of twenty-four articles, was agreed on by the five states based on principles and norms of the Charter of theUnited Nations and International Law.
The Iranian Caspian Sea Canal
Construction of a navigable channel linking the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf is underway. It is expected the project will be completed in the 2020s.
The project is particularly interesting for Russia due to the cold spell with Turkey, but European and post-Soviet states will also benefit from it.
But it seems the US is worried about this alternative to the Suez Channel.
"The West and Turkey have directly or indirectly tried to block the waterway [from being created]. As a matter of fact, the United States imposed sanctions" on companies that have been involved in the project, economic analyst Alexei Chickin wrote.
-Sputnik News
One of the key connectivity problems to be addressed is the viability of building a canal from the Caspian Sea to Iran’s shores in the Persian Gulf.
Another issue is the imperative transition towards container cargo transport in the Caspian.
In SCO terms, that will…
Increase Russian trade with India via Iran
As well as offering an extra corridor for China trade with Europe.
Now, with Azerbaijan prevailing over Armenia in the Nagorno-Karabakh flare up…
…while finally sealing a deal with Turkmenistan over their respective status in the Caspian Sea…
… impetus for the western part of Lapis Lazuli is now in the cards.
The eastern part is a much more complicated affair, involving an absolutely crucial issue now on the table not only for Beijing but for the SCO: the integration of Afghanistan to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).
And then…
In late 2020, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan agreed to build what analyst Andrew Korybko delightfully described as the PAKAFUZ railway. PAKAFUZ will be a key step to expand CPEC to Central Asia, via Afghanistan. Russia is more than interested.
This can become a classic case of the evolving BRI-EAEU melting pot.
Crunch time – serious decisions included – will happen this summer, when Uzbekistan plans to host a conference called “Central and South Asia: Regional Interconnectedness. Challenges and Opportunities”.
So everything will be proceeding interconnected:
A Trans-Caspian link;
The expansion of CPEC;
Af-Pak connected to Central Asia;
An extra Pakistan-Iran corridor (via Balochistan, including the finally possible conclusion of the IP gas pipeline) all the way to Azerbaijan and Turkey;
With China deeply involved in all these projects.
Beijing will be building roads and pipelines in Iran, including one to ship Iranian natural gas to Turkey.
Iran-China, in terms of projected investment, is nearly ten times more ambitious than CPEC.
Call it CIEC (China-Iran Economic Corridor).
In a nutshell: the Chinese and Persian civilization-states are on the road to emulate the very close relationship they enjoyed during the Silk Road-era Yuan dynasty in the 13th century.
INSTC or bust
An extra piece of the puzzle concerns how the International North-South Transportation Corridor (INSTC) will mix with BRI and the EAEU.
Iran, Russia and India have been discussing the intricacies of this 7,200 km-long ship/rail/road trade corridor since 2002.
INSTC technically starts in Mumbai and goes all the way via the Indian Ocean to Iran, the Caspian Sea, and then to Moscow.
As a measure of its appeal, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine, Oman, and Syria are all INSTC members.
Much to the delight of Indian analysts, INSTC reduces transit time from West India to Western Russia from 40 to 20 days, while cutting costs by as much as 60%.
It’s already operational.
But not yet as a continuous, free flow sea and rail link.
New Delhi already spent $500 million on a crucial project: the expansion of Chabahar port in Iran, which was supposed to become its entry point for a made in India Silk Road to Afghanistan and onward to Central Asia.
But then it all got derailed by New Delhi’s flirting with the losing United States “Quad” proposition.
Mike Pompeo (USA) with Subrahmanyam Jaishankar (India).
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India also invested $1.6 billion in a railway between Zahedan, the key city in southeast Iran, and the Hajigak iron/steel mining in central Afghanistan.
This all falls into a possible Iran-India free trade agreement which is being negotiated since 2019 (for the moment, on stand-by).
Iran and Russia already clinched a similar agreement.
And India wants the same with the EAEU as a whole.
Following the Iran-China strategic partnership, chairman of the Iranian Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, Mojtaba Zonnour, has already hinted that the next step should be an Iran-Russia strategic cooperation deal, privileging…
What Moscow is already seriously considering is to build a canal between the Caspian and the Sea of Azov, north of the Black Sea. Meanwhile, the already built Caspian port of Lagan is a certified game-changer.
Thisisbecause one of the twocanals connecting the Caspian Sea to the outside worldistheVolga–Don Canal, which links the Caspian Sea with the Sea of Azov. Russia hasused the Volga–Don Canal to move warships between the Caspian Sea andtheSea of Azov.
-Russian dominancein the Black Sea: TheSeaofAzov
Volga–Don Canal.
Lagan directly connects with multiple BRI nodes.
There’s rail connectivity to the Trans-Siberian all the way to China.
Across the Caspian, connectivity includes Turkmenbashi in Turkmenistan and Baku in Azerbaijan, which is the starting point of the BTK railway through to the Black Sea and then all the way from Turkey to Europe.
On the Iranian stretch of the Caspian, Amirabad port links to the INSTC, Chabahar port and further on to India. It’s not an accident that several Iranian companies, as well China’s Poly Group and China Energy Engineering Group International want to invest in Lagan.
What we see in play here is Iran at the center of a maze progressively interconnected with Russia, China and Central Asia.
When the Caspian Sea is finally linked to international waters, we will see a de facto alternative trade/transport corridor to Suez.
Himalaya Silk Road
Post-Iran-China, it’s not far-fetched anymore to even consider the possible emergence in a not too distant future of a Himalaya Silk Road uniting BRICS members China and India (think, for instance, of the power of Himalayan ice converging into a shared Hydropower Tunnel).
Himalaya Silk Road to the BRI.
.
As it stands, Russia is very much focused on limitless possibilities in Southwest Asia, as Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov made it clear in the 10thMiddle East conference at the Valdai club.
The Hegemon’s treats on multiple fronts – Ukraine, Belarus, Syria, Nord Stream 2 – pale in comparison.
21st Century Geopolitics
The new architecture of 21st century geopolitics is already taking shape, with China providing multiple trade corridors for non-stop economic development…
…while Russia is the reliable provider of energy and security goods, as well as the conceptualizer of a Greater Eurasia home…
… with “strategic partnership” Sino/Russian diplomacy playing the very long game.
Southwest Asia and Greater Eurasia have already seen which way the (desert) winds are blowing.
And soon will the masters of international capital. Russia, China, Iran, India, Central Asia, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Korean Peninsula, everyone will experience a capital surge – financial vultures included.
Following the Greed is Good gospel, Eurasia is about to become the ultimate Greed frontier.
…if left unencumbered.
The United States has a say…
The problem with the BRI is that it links Europe to Russia, Persia and China and permits local currency use instead of the USD and oceanic maritime trade. Over a period of time, the value of the USD will decrease due to it no longer being the global currency, and in order to maintain it’s value the United States would have to revert back tot he “gold standard”.
Which shouldn’t be a problem. Right?
I’m sure that the United States has 30 trillion dollars worth of gold stashed here and there. Somewhere. <\sarcasm>
Of course, it is in the best interests of the United States to prevent any kind of prosperity, or changes at any level from occurring in Asia. Any and all changes will have a negative effect on America at all levels. The only way that America can maintain it’s “rules based hegemony” (The USA makes the rules, and you either follow them or be destroyed) is for it to be the dominant and preeminent ruling structure on the globe.
Here is a couple of links to thorough, in-depth analysis </sarcasm> of this situation from America;
Nah. They pretty much say the same tired old thing. China is doing this because it is evil and wants to ensnare the world like a spider trapping a fly in it’s web. Yada, yada, yada.
The only way to stop this is militarily
And that, in itself open up a “whole can of worms”.
Rick0Sheaon April 10, 2021 · at 5:56 pm EST/EDT
I watched an excellent documentary on war a fews years ago. They talked about wars going back thousands of years to the present. When an army is going to attack, all the plans and logistics are carefully put in place. Once all the preparations have been made the only thing left is to trigger it off. The instigators do not want to be seen as the aggressors so they fabricate (false flag) something so they claim they were attacked first — and off they go. The war they planned and wanted so bad is underway.The Russian military would see all this unfolding – it’s on rails. But what could they do? The USA won’t be deterred. The only way this could have been avoided that I can see is that if the USA feared a nuclear war with Russia to the extent they would not take such ridiculously dangerous chance.
Here’s a great article by John Paul Roberts that is certainly worth a read regarding the sum total of military options that the USA has…
In Continuation of a Conversation with Paul Craig Roberts
Andrei Martyanov • April 7, 2021
.
Here are few numbers, we’ll start with two: 447 million and 4.67 billion. These two numbers speak volumes, and are in the foundation of the America’s decline and increasingly irrational behavior which may, quoting Bachman Turner Overdrive’s famous hit, get us to the point of a proverbial ain’t seen nothing yet.
The first number is a population of European Union, while the second one is a population of Asia.
Second place in this count is taken by Africa, around 1.37 billion, and the third–by Latin America and Caribbean with respectable 659 million which is considerably larger still than the population of the European Union. The Northern America’s population is around 371 million, which in the larger scheme of things doesn’t look that impressive. In fact, it isn’t.
The history of colonialism—I deliberately omit here this qualifier “Western”, there were all kinds of colonialisms—as related to classic capitalism was more than just about exploitation of colonies for the benefit of metropole.
While images of extraction of natural resources from colonies and shipping those to metropoles are correct, they do not form a complete picture.
In the end, colonies were viewed as markets where metropole would sell its products. The larger the colony, the more numerous its population was, the larger was the market for products manufactured in metropole.
This all made a complete, however often bloody, economic sense in the times of a good ol’ industrial capitalism when metropole would get resources from colony and turn them into finished product and then will ship this finished product, with a huge value added, to be sold in colony.
For Native Americans who sold Manhattan to Dutch in 1626 for allegedly, and hotly contested by historians, $24 worth in finished goods, whatever was offered was a huge value for them because they could not produce those items, be that, as mythology states, shiny glass bids or whatever else much more technologically advanced Dutch would offer them.
That is how it worked more or less for centuries.
The more and better items one produced the richer one would become.
That is until FIRE economy and simulacrum of the post-industrialism were revealed to the world by people most of who would have difficulty passing a general contractor exam, not to speak of getting industrial engineering degree.
FIRE economyA FIRE economy is any economy based primarily on the finance, insurance, and real estate sectors.
Finance, insurance, and real estate are United States Census Bureau classifications. Barry Popik describes some early uses as far back as 1982. Since 2008, the term has been commonly used by Michael Hudson and Eric Janszen.
It is New York City's largest industry and a prominent part of the service industry in the United States overall economy and other Western developed countries.
-Wikipedia
Fast forward to May 2000 to the passage of House Resolution 4444 China Trade Bill. In one of the most profoundly mindless and ignorant statements of America’s foreign and economic policy, Bill Clinton proclaimed that:
“Today the House of Representatives has taken an historic step toward continued prosperity in America, reform in China and peace in the world. If the Senate votes as the House has just done, to extend permanent normal trade relations with China, it will open new doors of trade for America and new hope for change in China. Seven years ago, when I became president, I charted a new course for a new economy—a course of fiscal discipline, investment in our people and open trade. I have always believed that by opening markets abroad we open opportunities at home. We’ve worked hard to advance that goal of more open and more fair trade since 1993, all the way up to the landmark legislation I signed just a few days ago to expand trade with Africa and the Caribbean Basin.”
Cringeworthy in its sheer falsity and insufferable pathos…
…the economic equivalent of Chamberlain’s “Peace in Our Time” 1938 proclamation, after signing the Munich capitulation to Hitler…
…Clinton’s declaration rattled even those who otherwise wouldn’t even pay much attention to the economic affairs of the United States.
China, wasn’t upset; why would it be?
Both NAFTA and China’s accession to the WTO served as a massive vacuum cleaner sucking the life from American industries and, to be sure, these weren’t banking or financial consulting “industries” which were being shipped abroad.
American manufacturing started to leave its own shores.
America started to lose its only tool which was and even today remains the only valid mean to an end of economic prosperity—manufacturing capacity.
A concept which is beyond the grasp of most American economists and political pseudo-scientists most of who today wear Chinese tailored suits, carry iPhones manufactured in China and use laptops and PCs assembled there as well.
To be sure, America still produces some things—civilian aircraft, as an example.
But since the whole Boeing 737 Max affair, which can only be described in strongest profanity, the shining from the polished outward façade of Boeing is largely gone and the stalwart of the American commercial aviation has de facto lost competition to its EU rival Airbus.
Cars?
Sure. America still remains competitive at manufacturing trucks.
The rest?
America’s sedans are not competitive and lose out to Japanese and Korean car makers both domestically and internationally, enough to take a look at Ford losing Russian market to Asian, Russian and EU automakers, with the last Ford Focus plant closed in Russia recently.
In other, rather startling development, America’s main soft power export, Hollywood is losing its piercing power in China and in Russia.
In fact, it is not just losing it, it already lost it.
Hollywood’s “values” of a radical feminism, anti-male misogyny and promotion of the sexual deviancy are hardly in demand in largely conservative Chinese and Russian societies.
Sure, there are some items which the United States manufactures today which are in demand, or, if one gets to the reality of it all, forcefully imposed on customers—America’s hugely overpriced and dubiously effective weapon systems.
This is what remains of once America’s mighty industrial plant which could produce anything from socks and kitchen combines to good combat and excellent commercial aircraft.
Today this capacity is no more, since it is China who is the world’s consumer goods main manufacturer, and the only way the United States is capable to secure any market for its weapons is to retain Europe, NATO that is, as its main customer and vassal.
NATO will gladly (if not, color revolutions are a good tool for convincing those who have doubts) “buy” America’s weapons and “defense” of Europe…
… but America needs Europeans to believe that hordes of democracy-hating, only two-gender accepting, backward bearded Russian Ivans are ready to pounce to deny Europe her favorite values of a complete sexual depravity…
… her cities, also known as dirty multicultural cloacae…
…and declining economy for the reasons only Americans know…
So, to convince those 447 million EU’s residents that they need America’s protection and weapons, America needs Russia to get into the war in Ukraine.
And if it will end up with utter destruction, and it will if Russia really decides so, of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and, likely, Ukrainian statehood, so be it.
Americans never really cared how many aborigines die, as long as it works for the US bottom line.
Or, if one may, a condition of American condition…
… which is deteriorating steadily because not only the United States increasingly has very little of substance, that is of high value added, to sell to the world…
… but forming economic and military monster of Eurasia removes the United States from its (grossly exaggerated to start with), self-proclaimed status of global hegemon…
…to the status of, at best, one of the few big shots on the planet.
At worst, the United States is removed from Eurasia as a viable competitor and is relegated to a status of a regional power…
…still powerful relative to its continental neighbors…
…but not having a shot at this second number of 4.67 billion.
This is a big chunk of population and customers.
Now imagine if the United States loses EU.
Suddenly 4.67 billion become 4.67 billion + 447 million = 5.117 billion, it is 65% of Earth’s population.
It is a huge majority of world’s population and, most importantly, population much of which can pay for goods, unlike it is the case with gigantic population of Africa.
Moreover, this population is concentrated within a single continental mass which is insulated from the United States by two oceans.
The United States cannot allow this consolidation of the market to happen and the loss of Europe, Washington’s thinking goes, is tantamount to capitulation.
So, the United States must hold on to EU, or whatever it will become once EU inevitably collapses, and NATO remains the only tool to drive European weaklings into submission.
Making Russia obliterate Ukrainian Armed Forces is a perfect way to scare Europeans into abandoning any attempts to economically compete with the United States and deny them access to Russia’s energy.
Considering an extremely low level of Western scholarship in the field of practical geopolitics and its pseudo-scientific offspring—geoeconomics…
…which failed for the last 30 years to come up with even the fuzziest description of the emerging world…
… it doesn’t matter if the United States “retains” Europe or not anymore.
The reasons for the utter failure of those “academic” predictions and resulting policies are numerous but few of them are worth focusing on.
Europe is not anymore a crucial trade partner for Russia and mutual trade plummeted in the last few years. The trend will continue and it is not only due to America’s pressure, albeit that too, on EU but is a result of Russia steady change of both economic model and her reorientation towards Asia which is now largely complete. Russia simply doesn’t need anymore many goods she used to buy in the EU. The policy of import substitution on average is a success and Russia economically insulating herself from the West will continue.
A much-discussed pipeline of Nord Stream 2 is, actually, not a crucial economic project for Russia anymore. Russia can absorb losses if the project eventually sabotaged by the United States and its European poodles such as Poland, but for Germany, and EU in general, this sabotage will result in catastrophe, due to European greens’ suicidal energy policies which make European goods costs extremely energy-dependent. In realty, America’s attempts to sabotage Nord Stream 2 are primarily directed against EU in general, and Germany in particular, not against Russia per se.
The United States lost the arms race. America’s weapons acquisition process and military doctrine-mongering cannot be viewed anymore as a normal, that is logical and justified, process. While still being able to produce some state-of-the-art platforms and enablers, such as signal processing, combat computer and communications networks, recon assets, in terms of actual weapons the United States begins to lag behind Russia not just in years but in generations. As recent, February 2021, Congressional Budget Office report on missile defense admitted, the United States is defenseless against salvo of combination of new Russia’s cruise missiles and that there is nothing to stop them. There isn’t. US air defense systems lag behind Russian ones dramatically and the gap only grows with Russia’s S-500 getting into serial production and the latest S-350 already being deployed into the first line units.
The United States simply cannot develop modern supersonic anti-shipping missile and the US Navy is forced, incomprehensibly, to buy Norwegian Kongsberg Naval Strike Missile—an underwhelming subsonic missile which is no match for modern high supersonic and hypersonic strike weapons Russia deploys, and is not survivable in modern air defense and ECM environment.
Lastly, the intellectual level and the level of awareness of modern American elites is in a precipitous decline, which inevitably resulted in the embarrassment of America’s last elections, especially scandalous debate between two geriatric candidates in 2020, which paraded the US as Springeresque tawdry TV show. Resultant loss of a legitimacy and yet another confirmation of the America’s position as a non-agreement capable entity hardly serve as boosters for America’s already tarnished reputation as a big-mouth bully and its elites being uncultured and uneducated.
The United States already fails to meet a number criteria imperative for the status of superpower, among which a military one is crucial.
If some American military “strategists” still exercised a suicidal idea of fighting Russia conventionally in Ukraine in 2014, today in 2021 such an idea is downright mad, because the United States cannot win conventional war in Russia’s vicinity and any US force will be annihilated.
This leaves the United States only two options:
Indeed, believing its own propaganda, try to unleash mayhem in Ukraine, provoke Russia into a direct military operation and then introduce whatever the force US and NATO will muster into the theater of operations. Any such plan is bound to fail miserably because not only such a force will be annihilated but participating NATO nations will face the possibility of their military installations destroyed by stand-off weapons. That raises the possibility of US escalating to nuclear threshold which means that the United States may cease to exists as a country. This is an undesirable plan and majority of US policy makers, bar some severe cases of psychological Russophobic disorders which are numerous in the current Administration and America’s elites, understand what it means. So, while not completely impossible, a probability for such a plan being implemented is fairly low. Not to mention the fact that for the US to fight conventionally around Russia will require assembly of the force which will dwarf whatever was assembled for the First Gulf War. There, the United States had almost 6 months to do so.
So, what’s left realistically is to push Ukraine into the suicidal campaign with Russia being designated aggressor before even the first shots are fired. What the United States does not recognize is the fact that this unties Russia’s hands who already has an overwhelming escalation dominance not only over Ukraine, but whatever might be attempted in terms of “support” for irrational regime in Kiev. Russia has many options, the United States has one—it needs war in Donbass, which, Washington’s thinking goes, will allow to drive Europeans into submission, which allegedly should allow the United States to save her hegemonic status. It will not even if Europe is driven into submission.
United States today has the only one resource left which allows it to stay relevant—virtual reality of both money “printing” press and of the media propaganda which is increasingly ineffective.
One could hide America’s decrepit cities, mass riots, destruction of the education system, incompetence of political and military top echelons, suicidal social practices and breakdown of law and order, aggravated by huge lines to food banks for only so long.
Now it is in the open and even subjugation of Europe and, allegedly, opening Europe’s markets to those few items the United States can still provide for its clients there…
… does not change the fact that the United States as it exists today has no future with or without Europe…
…and that it still has to recon with China’s immense manufacturing capacity…
…and Russia’s advanced military might…
…which drive unification of the Eurasian market whether the United States unleashes war in Ukraine or not.
Even without EU this market dwarfs whatever the United States will be able to “salvage” in order to avoid relegation to a lower league.
It cannot stop a process which was ongoing for years now…
…once Russia, after, the bloody coup in Ukraine…
… understood that there is nobody to talk too in the combined West…
…which apart from losing its military and economic power…
… started to disintegrate from the inside due to Western societies becoming increasingly totalitarian…
…and unable to face the reality that we still live in the highly industrialized world which needs energy, industrial plant and weapons which will defend them.
Both China and Russia seem to accumulate all that and with it the fate of the United States is sealed.
Bill Clinton may have thought that he “charted the new course for a new economy” in 2000, too bad for him, and the US, the “new economy” turned out to be an old one.
What?
You didn’t think that jeans, smartphones and rocket engines grow on the trees, did you?
But let us go back to the collision of warships. Why would a diversity-admit junior officer open fire on China? Proximately, because he is frightened and panicky. A bit more remotely, because he has been told over and over and over that the Chinese are dangerous and aggressive and want to do terrible things, seldom specified. The military tells them this because you cannot prepare the troops for war by telling them that there is no reason for it.Why would a President allow a war, knowing (if in a lucid moment) that it would produce absolute unshirted havoc in the economy even if it didn’t go nuclear? He wouldn’t. That is, he wouldn’t all at once choose Armageddon. But he couldn’t afford to seem soft on China, not with the midterms looming, so he couldn’t back off. If in the ensuing shootout the Navy got trounced, he most assuredly couldn’t drop the matter, and would have to double down. So, of course, would the Chinese for the same sorts of reasons. Off to the races.Deeper in the forest of causation is that the pathologically aggressive, amoral, manipulative, and crafty tend to rise to power. We select as rulers those who are least fit to rule. In America this is often done a bit differently, with the unscrupulous and powerful choosing cardboard leaders whose strings they can pull. The effect is the same.Why would war seem reasonable? Because Americans have never seen one, and believe their forces to be invincible. If you think that you can’t lose a fight, why avoid one? And because those in comfortable circumstances know that a war in Asia would be fought by the lower economic classes, about whom they care nothing and don’t much like. American elites do not fight. Note the list of draft dodgers during Vietnam: Bush II, Cheney, Bolton, Trump, Biden.These men, knowing almost nothing of the military, war or, very likely, military history, are quickly hijacked mentally by the Pentagon. The firm handshake, the steely gaze, the clean shaven, confident, and patriotic warriors (if only via Powerpoint) are impressive to pols who…well, you know…haven’t done that. They project strength and realism, without necessarily having either. Listening to them, you can easily get a sense of being accepted into a special, manly club. They say that America has the most powerful, invincible, best trained, tra la, tra la, and if you haven’t been there it is easy to believe. The Chinese? A cakewalk. Iran? Coupla weeks.Another reason for easily blundering into a war poorly understood is the very low quality of American government. Congress and the President are chosen by popularity contests, not according to competence. A congressman who worked his way up the political ladder in Wheeling or Baton Rouge knows state politics. He is unlikely to know anything about the first Island Chain or what a terminally guided ballistic missile is. A friend in a position to know estimates that ninety percent of the Senate do not know where Myanmar is. No one without a grasp of geography has more than a child’s understanding of military, economic, or strategic reality. But they vote on these things.Sez I, we are well and truly screwed. But there is little we can do about it.
Conclusion
You all can believe what you want. I know full well what is going on. If China is surrounded by peaceful and successful trading partners, then China will be safe and secure from conflict, invasion or NGO-sponsored “color revolutions”. Like Switzerland, like Germany, like Italy, and like Finland are today. Its a belief in the win-win possibilities of long term planning, cooperation and leadership by merit.
And nations that make physical things, that provide physical services, and that partner for joint success for their peoples will invariably be more successful, and longer lasting than ones that retain their existence on supporting a small patricidal oligarchy leadership that makes nothing of substance, but trades in invisible vapor ideas, and numbers on large elaborate spreadsheets.
But, you know, the United States is ruled by idiots.
And no matter how much we can reason, we can pray, or we can justify our actions and ideas and thoughts, the wildcard of an insane morn like Mike Pompeo with his finger on the military operations is a serious and real danger….
…as opined by this commenter…
A. Daneon April 11, 2021 · at 9:24 am EST/EDTWhat will happen next?
In June, During the NATO exercise Defending Europe 21, the Ukro NAZIs or Turkish controlled head-choppers will launch a falls flag attack.
This could be a chemical weapon launched against Ukrainian soldiers, claiming that the attack was launched by the Donbass militia, and that the chemical weapon was supplied by Russia.
The western MSN will blame Russia for the aggression.
While Russia is busy defending itself against the unjust accusations from the so called international community, the NATO exercise will go live and invade Donbass, claimed as humanitarian intervention.
The only way this can be avoided is if the US really fears a nuclear attack on American soil.
As soon as the first falls flag attack occurs in Ukraine, Russia should launch a nuclear weapon on American soil.
A good target will be the HAARP facility located in desolate Alaska. The facility is operated by the private Global Elite, and hated world wide for its clandestine operations.
When the facility is reduced to rubble, and nuclear radiation is traveling the northern hemisphere via the Jet stream, the western MSN will go into hysteria, calling for a ceasefire.
Mass demonstrations against war and COVID Lock Down will quickly turn into Riots and civil war, devastating every major city in Europe and America.
If the NATO do not stop its invasion of Donbass by then:
Russia will send missiles against every NATO Command center located in Ukraine and Poland.
And then hell will break loose:
China will attack US Navy vessels in the South China Sea and invade Taiwan.
North Korea will attack South Korea.
Nationalist in Japan will attack US deployments in Japan.
The Philippines will attack US assets like Al Qaeda in the region and invade Indonesia.
The Taliban will attack US and NATO deployments in Afghanistan.
India will enter into war with Pakistan.
Iraq will attack the US deployment in Bagdad, and northern Iraq.
Iran will attack US-NATO vessels in the Gulf, ending all oil supply to the west.
Yemen will attack Saudi Arabia.
Somalia will attack all ships in the bay of Aden.
Egypt will close the Suez Canal.
Syria will launch an attack against Turkish troops in Northern Syria.
Russia will shoot down every Fighter jet and drone entering Syrian airspace.
Lebanon will attack Israeli forces in the Golan.
Hezbola will attack Israel from Gaza.
Libya will launch attacks against Turkish troops in Libya.
Armenia will launch major attack against Turkish forces in eastern Anatolia.
Greece will attack Turkish transgression of Greek airspace and Turkish vessels near Cyprus.
Civil war will erupt in the Balkan, Serbia will retake Kosovo, and enter war with Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Civil war will erupt in Spain, and Catalonia will secede from Madrid.
Paris will enter into chaos, and Macron will flee.
Al-Qaeda will launch a major attack on French troop in West Africa.
Venezuela will attack US navy vessels in the Caribbean sea.
Argentina will invade the Falkland Islands.
American Patriots will storm Washington for real. The National Guard protecting DC will defect.
CIA and FBI Agent will be hunted down by American Patriots. Many states will secede from the US.
Most western government will be forced to step down. The EU and NATO will disintegrate.
All Nordic Nations will enter into a Nordic defense Alliance.
As the American Fascist Empire collapses, the multi polar world will be reborn.
Do you want more?
I have more posts in my BRI sub-index within my China index…
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Naval Aviation is a small club. As it should be. Here’s a great write up of the experiences of Paco and his experiences with the A-6 Intruder.
This guy flew “shake n’ bakes” in pursuit of “crispy critters”. Or at least that’s what we used to call it decades ago… “in the day”…
It's a great read. All credit to him for his autobiography, note that this was edited to fit this venue. The original article was found on The War Zone.
Confessions Of An A-6 Intruder Pilot
Strap in alongside veteran pilot Francesco “Paco” Chierici for a trip back in time when A-6s still rocketed through canyons in the black of night.
It may not be as well known as its maker’s point-nosed, swing-wing counterpart, the F-14 Tomcat, but Grumman’s A-6 Intruder was also a movie star and served as the backbone of the carrier air wing’s all weather, deep strike capability for decades. The all-business A-6 was capable of doling out a very heavy punch far from its home at sea and it was most at home down low, deep in the weeds, barrelling through enemy territory under the darkness of night.
One A-6 pilot, Francesco “Paco” Chierici, flew the blunt-nosed attack jet during the twilight of its career and is about to share exactly what it is like to strap into the ‘flying drumstick’ and take it over hostile territory, down deep and dark ravines, and into the history books as it began to fade from the Navy’s inventory once and for all.
Paco’s experiences at the controls of the Intruder are especially noteworthy as he would go on to fly higher-performance aircraft, transitioning into the F-14 and later becoming an aggressor pilot in the F-5—areas we will discuss in part two of this series. So, suffice it to say, with thousands of hours in fast jets, Chierici has plenty to compare the A-6 to.
Francesco “Paco” Chierici
Paco has thousands of hours in fast jets, with the A-6 being the first fleet aircraft he was assigned to fly.
This tell-all feature also comes just as Paco released his first novel, Lions Of The Sky. If what you are about to read is any indication, his novel should be outstanding and we look forward to reviewing it soon.
So, without further ado, let’s climb the intakes and step into the side-by-side cockpit of Grumman’s legendary deep strike phenom, and launch on alongside Paco on a ride to remember.
So ugly you had to force yourself to be fiercely proud of it
I’ll never forget the first time I walked up to an A-6. It was huge compared to the TA-4 Skyhawk jet trainer I had most recently flown. Nearly three times heavier. Two engines, versus one. Whereas the TA-4 was sleek and spindly on its tall landing gear, the Intruder was beefy and serious. The TA-4 looked nimble, the Tomcat was movie-pretty, the Intruder looked like what it was—a war club.
The cockpit of the Intruder was radically different as well. The visibility over the big bulbous nose wasn’t as good as the Skyhawk, but the side glass went all the way down to my hip. It was insane, you could practically see underneath the plane without even rolling.
USN
The instrument panel was much more serious, as well. It was absolutely filled with screens and switches. It was clearly a huge step up from the trainers I’d spent the last few years mastering. Now it would be less about the flying and more about the mission.
The biggest difference in the Intruder cockpit was the seat to my right, though. The Bombardier/Navigators (BNs) sat just below and aft of the pilot, but basically beside us. It was initially irritating to give up half of the cockpit, sacrificing visibility and primacy, to the BN, but I soon discovered that the camaraderie in that cockpit was unlike anything I would ever experience again. We would literally high-five after rolling off-target and spotting the bomb hit.
It was awesome.
Bill Abbott/Wikicommons
The Intruder’s unique side-by-side seating layout
One of my favorite stupid-pilot tricks was asking the BN to check the right side just before coming into the overhead break. While he was looking out, I would disconnect his G-suit hose just before break-turning at 6.5Gs. I got Gradymon Hackwith to pass out a couple of times. He would punch me in the arm until I rolled into the groove and he was forced to let me fly the ball to landing.
I would be laughing so hard there were tears.
The exterior of the Intruder was dominated by its giant nose. The plane was quite obviously built around the enormous terrain-following radar. We also had an extremely prominent refueling probe permanently jutting out from where the radome met the lower part of the windscreen.
The plane was kind of like a bulldog, so ugly you had to force yourself to be fiercely proud of it.
USN
A heavy hitter
One of the great things about the Intruder was its punch. During its heyday, it was second only to the B-52 in payload. That was remarkable because she was only 54 feet long with a wingspan of 53 feet, as compared to the BUFF, which is 159 feet long and 185 feet wide. Also, she was launching off of a 1,100-foot carrier, whereas the BUFF rumbled down a two-mile runway before it was able to claw itself into the sky.
Without any modifications, the A-6 could carry 28 MK-82 500-pound bombs. If the gear doors were removed, it was an even 30. That was 15,000 pounds of ordnance on a plane that only weighed 27,000 pounds empty. Fill her up with gas and we were launching off the deck in 300 feet, zero to 160 knots, at 60,000 pounds of gross weight.
That was quite a ride.
USN
One of the advantages of having such an aerodynamically challenged airframe was that she didn’t handle much differently fully loaded than when she was clean. Alright, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but in all honesty, she was a dream to fly low, fast, and laden with weapons.
The wing root, where the wing attached to the fuselage, was enormously thick. We could fly all day (and night) with a serious bomb load-out at low-level and pull five Gs or more. The Intruder was impervious.
The addition of the FLIR (Forward Looking Infrared) pod—which happened well before my time—enabled the A-6 to transition from a mere heavy-hitter to a precision striker. Whereas before there were two basic modes of delivery, the pilot doing a visual dive and the BN using the radar to drive the plane to a bomb release point, the FLIR introduced a level of precise aim-point fine-tuning that was completely unique at the time.
In the target area, the BN would transition from the radar picture to the FLIR. Using the laser and the crosshairs in the FLIR picture he would fine tune the information the pilot used to arrive at the proper delivery point. Those capabilities enabled the Intruder to precisely deliver iron bombs and laser-guided bombs in almost any weather conditions and at night.
USN
A-6Es releasing thousands of pounds of Mk82 Snakeye bombs.
A dark wizard by your side
The Intruder was unlike any other plane I flew in that it was built with the other crew in mind—the BN. The A-6 was an all-weather, low-level, day/night, medium attack plane. Basically, a bad-ass bomber that could fly at treetop level through the enemy’s backyard and drop tons of ordnance.
To accomplish that mission we had an amazing terrain following radar—again that big ugly thing on the nose. We also had a super-capable FLIR gimbaling pod under the chin. The FLIR pod didn’t add anything to the appearance, it looked like a wart on a witch’s chin, but it did add precision to the already impressive payload.
The BN was responsible for using the radar to navigate through steep valleys and canyons using the raw returns. The pilot used computer-generated information on the screen in front of him to hand fly the plane along the general path the BN laid out. Once the target area was penetrated, the BN would activate the FLIR ball. He would ‘laze’ the target, both for accurate ranging regardless of what weapons were delivered, and as a target designator for laser-guided ordnance. He would also slew the crosshairs of the FLIR to sweeten up the final phase of targeting. The pilot would again follow the computer-generated guidance on our screens derived from all of the BNs efforts, flip the Master Arm on, and then pickle off the weapon.
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We would routinely do this at night, though the mountains, in the clouds and rain, and at 200 feet and 420 knots. There was zero automation, the pilot hand-flew the plane at all times. But to me, the craziest aspect was that the BNs stuck their heads in the boot covering the radar and FLIR screens through the whole mission.
The boot was essentially a shroud with a padded hole where the BN would stick his face. It shielded the cockpit from the light of the radar so it wouldn’t blind the pilot during night flying. But when using it, the BN couldn’t see what was going on outside in the real world. So we would be flying through steep ravines at seven miles a minute at night as low as we dared, I would be glancing nervously at the granite cliff wall I could barely make out and the BN was stuck with his head down, arms spinning dials and switches like some dark wizard, immersed in his virtual world of radar returns and seemingly oblivious to the violent yanking and banking as we jinked through the low-level route.
The flying became even more aggressive once we entered the target area and executed any number of dynamic weapons delivery pops, all while the BN kept his head glued in his boot.
Craziness.
Because of that dedication to the mission and the simple fact that the Intruder was designed to be optimized by the BN, the community was as flat as any I’ve ever seen. Meaning that there was almost no greater weight placed on whether someone was a pilot or a BN. This was definitely not true in the fighter communities, where pilots considered themselves far superior to anyone, whether they were in aviation or not.
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An accidental fighter pilot
I was as close as you can be to an accidental fighter pilot. As a kid, I built plane models and hung them from the ceiling of my room in a huge Battle of Britain dogfight. But as I got older, I drifted away from the romance of aviation.
I didn’t grow up around planes. No one I knew was a pilot. I wasn’t one of those kids who washed Pipers at the local airport for gas money. Fortunately, I needed money to pay for college and I joined the Navy ROTC. What began as a means to an end morphed into an opportunity of a lifetime.
As a Midshipman, I was exposed to all of the communities that were available to me after graduation. After a couple of years, I was strongly inclined to pursue Naval Aviation and then something decisive happened the summer before Junior year. I got a back-seat ride in an F-14 with VF-51 and it was love at first flight. I couldn’t imagine doing anything else after I got a taste.
I was obsessed.
In the spring of our senior year, we received our community assignments. All the graduating ROTC and Naval Academy kids were ranked, then the slots were given out in order. It was, and is, extremely competitive to get aviation and I was beyond thrilled to receive my dream shot.
Hundreds of SNAs—Student Naval Aviators—gathered in the Cradle of Naval Aviation—Pensacola, Florida—that summer and we churned our way through the sausage factory that was flight school. I made it through all the fail points: academics, physical training, and primary training in the T-34. After all that I was selected for jets.
I went through intermediate training in the T-2 Buckeye, where I saw the carrier for the first time, and finally advanced flight training in the TA-4J Skyhawk. After carrier qualifying in the Skyhawk, I had finally completed the multi-year odyssey that began when I was first smitten.
The winging ceremony was an emotional, momentary personal victory. I was finally a Naval Aviator sporting wings of gold.
Little did I realize that the real work was about to begin.
Francesco Chierici
A young Paco standing in front of his mount.
The night is dark and full of terrors
The A-6 was super honest to land. It had a great combination of wing sweep, responsive engines, and drag which allowed for quick and fine corrections while flying the meatball.
Near the completion of training, we would carrier qualify, day and night. It was a big deal, our final exam. In the Intruder community, we would go to the boat for the first time with a fellow student, a BN that was our classmate. I was lucky enough to go with my good friend Gradymon. It was an intense experience for both of us, but especially for Grady since he had never seen an aircraft carrier from the air. The first time the BNs ever got to land on a ship was with a fellow knucklehead student (who routinely disconnected his G-suit hose at inappropriate times) piloting him.
Those guys were either crazy or brave as shit.
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The day landings were awesome and similar to the landings I had done in the T-2 and TA-4, but the night landings were going to be a completely new ballgame for me. It was going to be a huge comfort to have Grady by my side. Unfortunately, we didn’t make it up that night.
We spent the evening on the USS Ranger, having dinner and waiting for our turn to climb into a jet. The plan was for us to hot-switch into a plane that our classmates were currently flying. After their last night landing, they would be chained to the deck. With the engines still running, we would switch crews one at a time until Grady and I were safely strapped into the still running jet. Then we’d get fueled up and taxi to the catapult to take our turn at six night traps.
We tracked our jet as she went around the pattern, successfully landing five times. After she took off for the last time, we made our way up to flight deck control to await the last landing and the hot-switch. There were multiple TVs and a window facing the landing area.
I’ll never forget watching my jet on the TV as she was about to land. I leaned over to tighten my chest strap and she hit the deck and caught a wire. As I stood up, I could see her through the window. One moment she was decelerating with both engines howling at full power, just as normal. The next, the pilot and BN ejected, the jet angled out of the landing area toward a row of parked F/A-18s, slammed into them, then flipped into the water.
One of the F/A-18s snapped out of her chains and flipped into the water as well. Another was impacted so hard it also snapped its chains and spun 180 degrees, managing to barely stay on the deck. I stood there in Flight Deck Control with my hands still on my straps, my jaw hanging open.
The Intruder I was supposed to climb into and fly my very first night carrier landings had just broken its tailhook, smashed into three Hornets, and flipped into the sea.
Welcome to naval aviation!
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At home in the weeds
In the Intruder, flying nap-of-the-earth was our bread and butter. We did it during the day, free and loose, darting down the tiniest riverbeds and through the slightest cracks we could find. During the night and in bad weather, we also flew low and fast, but in a much more prescribed manner.
The low levels we flew were delineated in a huge manual, which contained the lat/long fixes defining the routes themselves. For the most part, the routes were ten miles wide, five miles to each side of the center-line running from fix to fix. A ten-mile corridor actually gives a pilot a tremendous amount of leeway to find the most tactically relevant course through the terrain, as well as the most fun. So, even the same route was not always the same.
Night low levels were a different beast. To become night proficient, a pilot and BN crew would have to complete three steps within a week. First, they would have to fly a route in the dome simulator. Then they would fly the same route during the day, and finally at night. This gave the crew two opportunities for the BN to familiarize himself with the radar picture before flying the actual route in darkness.
Once you were night low-level qualified, you could then fly any route, day or night.
Unknown
A-6 Intruder rocketing through a very deep canyon as seen from the BN’s position.
Nuclear chariot
One of the missions the A-6 was initially designed for was nuclear delivery of the B61 tactical nuclear bomb, affectionately known as the ‘dial-a-yield.’ There was literally a rotating switch inside a panel where the ordnancemen could select from .3 to 340 kilotons for when the bomb detonated. It was an incredible amount of power in a weapon that measured only twelve feet by one-foot and weighed just 700 pounds. By comparison, ‘Little Boy’ which was dropped on Hiroshima, weighed almost 10,000 pounds and had a defined yield of 15 kilotons.
It was chilling to imagine that something so diabolically versatile and powerful could be carried on a small jet and weigh less than an AGM-88 Hight-Speed Anti-Radiation Missile (HARM).
The main method of delivering the B61 was through a specific maneuver selectable in the computer, the LABS-IP, which stood for Low Altitude Bombing System – Initial Point. To practice this delivery, we would ingress to the target at low-level, usually at 480 knots, and once reaching the target area, we would accelerate to 540 knots.
DOE
B61 and its components.
At a certain distance from the target, which the BN was constantly fine-tuning through the radar and FLIR, the computer would command the pilot to pitch up. We would get guidance on our primary instrument commanding us into a 4G pull and we had to correct the horizontal flight path as well. Despite the Gs, we had to be as smooth as possible because at some point during the pull, 50-75 degrees nose high, the computer would release the weapon into a massive loft. The pilot would then keep his pull through a Half Cuban Eight, ending the maneuver heading in the direction they came from, at 200 feet, pedaling as fast as they could go.
The bomb would be lofted as high as six miles into the sky, and depending on the programming for the specific target, a parachute would open allowing the B61 to float toward earth, thus giving the delivery aircraft valuable time to race away before detonation.
The procedures called for each crew to close one eye at the time of detonation, in case the flash caused blindness. We used to joke that the pilots would close both eyes and the BNs would keep theirs open, since their jobs were done.
It was a heartless crowd.
I came into the fleet just after Gulf War I, in the summer of 1991. The Cold War was done, and we had just shed the onerous nuke delivery mission. I was one of the first pilots in my squadron not to have to go through the two-month drudgery of getting my ‘Nuke Cert.’
FAS.ORG
The Navy was out of the tactical nuclear bomb delivery business by the early 1990s.
Joining the fleet
I joined VA-155 the day they triumphantly flew in from their Gulf War cruise. The Silver Foxes were heroic in the conflict. They flew the first-night sorties into Bagdad at low-level, attacking vital military targets as surface-to-air missiles flew in all directions overhead. Throughout the forty-day air campaign, they were instrumental in completely demolishing Saddam’s military. Tragically, they lost one plane in combat in the waters just off Kuwait.
After combat ended, they partied their way home through various exotic ports of call, drunk from all their death-defying exploits. I remember swelling with pride as I stood in my khaki uniform on the flight line and watched them fly in.
The next six months, on the other hand, sucked as bad as any in my Navy career.
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VA-145 A-6E on the ramp in 1992.
I was the first new pilot the Foxes had gotten in over a year. They were all heroes and I was just the FNG (F’n New Guy). It was almost impossible to penetrate the camaraderie they had naturally forged. It took a few of the older guys rotating out and an additional influx of new guys, including a bunch of my classmates, for us to finally feel like we belonged.
The Foxes ended up being an amazing experience for me, filled with incredible adventures and great people.
The work-ups for our first cruise were instrumental in building the new collection of Foxes into a cohesive squadron. The experienced aviators trained the new guys well and we quickly bonded into an effective unit.
It was during this early stage of my fleet career that I first experienced the shattering pain of loss. Air Wing Two lost a Tomcat during a night mission while we were all at NAS Fallon. And much closer to home, my good friend Grady and his pilot Dewey, fellow Silver Foxes, perished in a low-level training accident.
Of the twenty-plus friends I lost during my career, Grady’s was one of the most difficult to endure. We had come up through the RAG together as fast friends. I had flown with Grady more than any other single BN in my brief career. We rejoiced when we were both assigned to VA-155 and looked forward to three more years of fun and flying.
The sudden shock of his death shook me to my core, damaging my confidence for months.
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Intruder’s place in the Air Wing
When I cruised on the Ranger, we were the last of the all-Grumman Air Wings [read all about this unique arrangement in this past post of ours]. There were a number of other NSFW and non-PC terms that were used to reference the absence of the new kid on the block, the F/A-18 Hornet.
Air Wing Two was composed primarily of two squadrons of Tomcats and two of Intruders. My first squadron assignment was with VA-155, the Silver Foxes. Our sister squadron was VA-145, the Swordsmen.
Air Wing Two on the Ranger was basically the last of the old-school air wings. The division of labor was absolutely clear, if you needed the skies swept of enemy jets, the Tomcats took to the air. If you needed bridges demolished, buildings leveled, hardened bunkers penetrated, ground-armor destroyed, troops-in-the-open decimated, or SAM sites taken out, then the Intruder was on the job.
Though in the competition between Top Gun and Flight of the Intruder movies, the f^@%!*g Tomcats clearly won the battle. But the long list of accomplishments achieved by the Intruders in Air Wing Two during the first Gulf War clearly overshadowed their more glamorous Grumman brethren.
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Ranger with its Grumman Air Wing.
All that gas
Most of my career was spent operating in the Persian Gulf where we had ample Air Force tanker support, but I flew a handful of tanker hops where we would strap four 2,000-pound drop-tanks and a centerline mounted D-704 refueling-pod, which aside from containing the retracting hose and basket, held another 2,000-pounds of gas.
The most fun tanker hops were the daytime yo-yo missions where you would launch before the fighters and strikers, meet them a couple hundred miles from the carrier along their strike route, give them almost all of your gas (18,000-20,000 pounds of give!) and then race back to the carrier for a solo shit-hot break.
The most rewarding tanker hops were when you were assigned as a recovery tanker for the last event of the night. Your job was to orbit overhead and be prepared to offer emergency gas to the planes that were coming down to land in the event they boltered (missed all the wires) or were waved off.
During Blue-Water ops, when we operated beyond the range of possibility to divert to a land-based runway, it was particularly challenging and a massive responsibility. Carrier-based jets are fuel-critical from the moment we start our engines. When we fly far enough out to sea where calling ‘uncle’ and landing on a runway isn’t possible, every ounce of gas becomes precious.
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An A-6E Intruder about to tank from a KA-6D Intruder. The KA-6Ds were uniquely configured with an internal hose and drogue system and were notoriously hard worn with extreme limits on their flight envelope due to being passed around from deployment to deployment. By the time Paco was flying Intruders, the A-6E carrying a refueling pod was the common ‘buddy tanker’ setup.
Once the night missions are complete and it’s time to land, the jets have enough gas for maybe two attempts to catch a wire. Throw in some weather, a pitching deck, a dark night and the knowledge that you either are landing safely on the ship, or ejecting into the frigid ocean, a pilot can get so tense that they practically suck the seat cushion up their butt.
Everyone I know has had a ‘night-in-the-barrel,’ a night where they had difficulty beyond normal catching a wire. And after every miss, the tension became more intense. You knew that five-thousand people were watching your every failed attempt, including your peers, your CO, the Skipper of the ship, and most likely the Strike-Group Admiral.
As the recovery tanker you were the last line of hope for a strung-out pilot who had already failed to land a few times. His, or her, nerves were surely shattered and confidence was in their boots. On the last pass before the troubled plane would need to refuel, the recovery tanker would drop down to shadow, or ‘hawk,’ the jet.
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You would have to maneuver yourself to time it perfectly so that if the jet failed to land once again you would be just in front of them at 2,000 feet. Then that shaky, panicky pilot could spot you immediately as they cleaned up and climbed to your altitude right behind you. Then they would have to perform an activity just slightly less challenging than landing on a carrier at night, they would have to plug their refueling probe into a basket dangling into the slipstream fifty feet behind the tanker at night, maybe in bad weather, at 2,000 feet. Or, they were going swimming. And the reward for a successful plug and refuel was another look at the boat.
Yay.
I know a guy who had to go around so many times he plugged the hawking tanker three times. After he finally landed, he was so wrung out he had to be helped from the cockpit.
And after all the drama was complete for the night, the recovery tanker had to come in and land. And there was no one hawking you with extra gas if you couldn’t make it aboard.
I didn’t love flying tanker missions and thankfully I didn’t have to fly many, but the yo-yo, and especially the recovery tanker missions were always gratifying.
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Ranger into the storm
By the time our workups were complete and we headed out on my first deployment I felt very comfortable in the Intruder and in the squadron. There was an undeniable thrill about leaving on my first deployment. It felt very grown-up, even though I was barely twenty-five. I was a junior officer, though we had had enough new guys where I wasn’t an FNG anymore. I had been in the squadron for over a year and become a Landing Signals Officer (LSO) as well, which was a fantastic position of responsibility and a job I thoroughly enjoyed.
After multiple detachments to Fallon and working from the Ranger I also felt extremely comfortable as a member of the Air Wing. Many of my friends from flight school ended up in the same Air Wing, scattered throughout the Tomcat, Intruder, Prowler, and Hawkeye squadrons. It was one of the closest Air Wings I was a part of, with great friendships and camaraderie across all the squadrons.
We pulled into Yokosuka, Japan. I climbed Mt. Fuji after a big night at the O-Club, which ended up being more of a challenge than it should have. Many of us spent five days partying in Tokyo, which was amazing. The ship left Japan for Busan, Korea, spending a few days at sea so the pilots could all fly at night.
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Ranger pulling into Yokuska in 1992 with Paco and VA-155 onboard.
At sea, each pilot is required to get a minimum of one night trap aboard the ship every seven days. One of the lesser-known pains of leaving port after four to five days of hard-charging was climbing into the cockpit for a night ‘re-qual’ all exhausted and hung over.
It was in Busan, on our second day of a planned four-day visit, where the cruise ratcheted up in intensity. The entire Strike Group was emergency recalled to their ships. We were pulling out immediately. Saddam had repeatedly violated the terms of the 1991 Cease Fire agreement. The powers that be demanded a US carrier on scene in the Persian Gulf to keep the dictator in check. The Ranger and her Strike Group sped away from the Korean Peninsula with great urgency.
It seemed there was action to be had again.
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Leadership was so intent to have a carrier presence as soon as possible that Ranger was sent directly through a Category 4 typhoon while en route. All of the other ships in the Strike Group were sent far south in the Indian Ocean to skirt around the massive storm, delaying them by many days. The Ranger rocked like a cork for three straight days. All non-essential activities were suspended, inside and out. The galleys closed and the only food available was sandwiches and cereal.
The ship was rolling so steeply that when you walked along the passageways it felt as if you were walking on the walls at times. We stuck our flight boots under the edges of our mattresses so we wouldn’t roll out of the bunk beds.
I’ll never forget watching the TV footage of the flight deck. During the peak of the storm, the Ranger, an 80,000-ton displacement, 1,000-foot, Forrestal class supercarrier with 70 aircraft on board, was hitting the waves so steeply that we were taking green water over the bow. Not sea spray, not splashes. The bow of the huge ship, with an entire Air Wing worth of airplanes exposed and chained to the deck, was digging into the oncoming waves so deeply that it was briefly submerged.
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Needless to say, after we came out the other side, the planes were a mess. Our incredible maintainers had a week to perform a miracle. They essentially had to rebuild a third of the planes that had been bathed in corrosive salt water. It was one of the most incredible feats of dedication I witnessed in my career. Those guys worked around the clock untill they dropped so that when we arrived in the Gulf we would have up jets to cross the beach with.
The transit from Korea to the Gulf was an amazing feat in itself. The Ranger steamed over 7,000 NM in undertwo weeks. A trip that would normally have taken three weeks, plus a port call in Singapore, to accomplish.
Sound asleep over Iraq
I’ll never forget the excitement that was building those last few days before we relieved the Independence on-station in the Persian Gulf. The other new guys and I were certain we were going to leap right into combat missions. My new BN, Pauly B, and I were tasked with planning the first mission in country. This was a huge honor and responsibility—or so I thought.
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Ranger relieving Independence on station in Persian Gulf in 1992.
Pauly and I stayed up for two days straight planning a 25-plane mission that involved three KC-135 Air Force tankers and two laps around Southern Iraq. I was so spooled up I couldn’t sleep the night before. Pauly and I briefed a packed ready room full of aircrew from the entire Wing. We were putting Saddam on notice, the Ranger and Air Wing Two were on station and we were ready to play.
The brief ended in the early afternoon and Pauly and I grabbed a quick dinner. We dressed and launched as the sun hung low on the horizon. I was fielding massive waves of excitement and trepidation as we flew toward the tanker rendezvous on the Saudi/Iraqi border. Not only was I leading my first mission in-country, but I had never before tanked off the feared KC-135, known as the ‘Iron Maiden.’
It certainly didn’t help my nerves that night was falling rapidly. If I failed to tank, I would have to return to Ranger in shame. If I damaged the basket by being ham-handed, the entire evolution could be scrapped.
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An A-6E approaches a KC-135E equipped with the dreaded Iron Maiden. The basket, which is attached to the KC-135’s boom via an adapter, is made of metal instead of the softer materials found on other hose and drogue systems. This makes it far less forgiving and it can even wheel around in turbulence and smash into the aircraft causing damage. Hence its other nickname—The Wrecking Ball.
Fortunately, I was able to fight my way through the ordeal and get my gas.
Once the whole package had tanked, Pauly conducted the roll call and we were off, heading into Iraq for our first lap.
I’ve had never seen anything as black as western Iraq. There wasn’t a light on the ground for a thousand miles. It was a moonless night and the stars were the brightest I had ever seen, but they provided no illumination of the earth below. I felt as if we were flying into a black hole.
The Intruder had a basic autopilot, just heading and altitude, and I engaged it once we were on the correct heading. After two sleepless nights and the excitement of the mission and stress of meeting the Iron Maiden under such intense circumstances, I was absolutely drained. My eyes blinked longer and longer until I actually fell asleep in a combat-loaded A-6E Intruder flying through hostile territory while leading a strike package.
Not one of my prouder moments. But as it turned out, Pauly B was dead asleep right next to me, too.
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I still get shivers thinking about how long we would have flown on that heading. How far we would have gone. We were pointed directly at Syria, which surely would not have appreciated a U.S. Navy strike package coming close to its border. Ultimately, we were saved by chance, though it nearly gave me a heart attack.
While I was sleeping on a hard ejection seat in a cramped cockpit as deeply as I’ve ever slept in my life, our ALR-67 radar warning receiver (RWR) began a high warble. We had been locked up by a radar. I woke with my heart in my mouth disengaged the autopilot and jinked hard.
I looked down at the ALR-67 screen to determine the direction of the radar and saw that we had been locked up by one of the F-14s in our group. The RIO came up on the secure radio and quickly apologized. It was one of their new guys screwing around with his radar. He hadn’t meant to lock us up.
Pauly and I looked at each other, realizing we had both been asleep and that we had just dodged a virtual bullet. We were wide awake, but it only lasted fifteen minutes before exhaustion set in again. We worked really hard telling dirty jokes and stories for the next four hours till the terror of the night trap was enough to bring us fully awake again.
The remainder of our four months in the gulf was a series of similar patrol missions punctuated by port calls in Dubai. Though I never saw any action in Iraq, I did achieve a measure of detente with the KC-135’s Iron Maiden. She never bit off my probe or shattered my canopy, I never ripped off her basket.
How to kill MiGs in an Intruder
At its prime, which unfortunately coincided with its retirement from service, the Intruder could carry just about every piece of air-to-mud ordnance in the US inventory. And, the AIM-9 Sidewinder.
Being a frustrated fighter pilot, I devised a game plan for how I would get the first Intruder air-to-air kill should any Iraqi MiG-29 be so foolish as to come at us. If we were flying a counter-radar mission our standard loadout was an AGM-88 High-Speed Anti-Radiation Missile (HARM) missile and an AIM-9 Sidewinder.
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Silver Foxes’ sister squadron, the Swordsman, seen carrying an AIM-9 Sidewinder during a mission over the Persian Gulf in 1992.
My plan of record was to go nose-to-nose with the Fulcrum, wait till he got to three miles on our nose then shoot the HARM in his direction. The big missile with a huge smoke trail would spook the Iraqi fighter into break turning just in front of me. When he was close enough, I would fire the Sidewinder for the victory.
In the folly of youth, I thought this was an excellent plan and no so secretly hoped an unwitting MiG-29 would come poking around. Thankfully it never became an issue. Though I still like to think it might have worked.
The glory!
Intruding into Somalia
As we were nearing the end of our time in the Gulf, another global hot-spot flared up and Ranger was, once again, tasked with being on-station. In early December of 1992, the feeble government of Somalia completely collapsed and the warlords were battling each other for primacy. The thugs were stealing farmers’ crops immediately after harvest and the country was on the verge of massive starvation. The United Nations was sending in relief but the warlords were stealing those supplies, as well.
The Ranger and Air Wing Two skipped our last port call in Dubai and made for the coast off Mogadishu at high speed. It was exciting to plan for a new mission in a new country. We were initially tasked with providing high cover and close-air-support for the U.N. personnel. The threat to us was minimal, ground fire from technicals—civilian pickup trucks modified with heavy guns. There was also a slim possibility of shoulder-launched SAMs, though none had been reported in the area. For the most part, we expected to operate with impunity, so long as we stayed above the range of the heavy guns.
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USS Ranger taking part in Operation Restore Hope in 1992.
The Commander of the Air Wing set the floor at 5,000 feet for normal operations and as low as we wanted for special circumstances. Those included low, fast fly-bys called ‘shows of force’ designed to strike fear into the hearts of bad actors on the ground below. We would come in at 50 feet and 500 knots, sneaking in from behind their position. It was a hugely effective and non-lethal tactic.
We were briefed that the biggest threat to our health was the diseases on the ground in the event we ejected. Since the Somalia visit was unplanned, none of us had received the proper inoculations. I’ll never forget our flight doc briefing the ready room about two additions to our flight gear. Two pre-filled syringes loaded with a cocktail of who-knows-what designed to keep us reasonably safe should our boots actually hit Somali soil. If we punched out, the moment we landed we were supposed to yank out the syringes, pop the tops and inject ourselves straight through our G-suits into the meat of our thighs.
What a trip.
By this time, the various squadron crews in the Wing had become very close. The E-2 Hawkeye guys were not allowed to cross feet-dry. One day, while we were telling them about the incredible views we were enjoying as we flew, they told us they couldn’t see us on their radars after we were a certain distance inland. Naturally, we devised a code word so we could break the 5,000-foot deck and fly low, where the Intruder was meant to be.
Whenever we flew with all junior officer crews, we would skim over the Somali heartland marveling at the change in topography. We saw giraffes and camels and strange chimney-like structures that, after some time, we determined were actually massive anthills. It was depressing to see fertile farm fields filled with water and crops, but devoid of farmers. They were starving because the warlords stole their harvest, not a lack of production.
My most enduring memory from the three weeks over Somalia was flying high cover for the amphibious landing. My BN and I began orbiting at 0400 in the pitch-black directly over the landing spot on the beach, loaded with laser-guided bombs. The BN scanned the shoreline with his FLIR, ensuring there was no opposition while dozens of landing craft came ashore disgorging trucks, APCs, and Marines.
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VA-155’s sister squadron seen flying over Somalia during the Ranger’s mission there in 1992.
Over the course of a couple of hours watch the empty beach fill with troops and machinery in an orderly manner and organize into a massive formation. As the sun peeked over the horizon, the headlights came on and the mechanized columns snaked away, dispersing in various directions into the countryside. It was an impressive and slightly emotional display.
A few days later, the Ranger and her Strike Group were released from Operation Restore Hope and we proceeded to Perth, Australia for our first port call in over six weeks.
Six quick interesting thoughts on flying Intruders
1) The Intruder was super fun to fly low and fast. It was like a Cadillac, smooth, powerful, and stable, with great visibility.
2) There were a number of landmarks along low-level routes that were traditional check-in-the box items. For instance, a derelict red pickup truck rusting away high in the Cascade Mountains in Washington. My personal favorite was checking the price of unleaded gas on a station marquee just before Winnemucca, Nevada when flying to Fallon.
3) We had the Pickle Barrel bombing patch. To earn it the pilot had to literally drop a Mk-76 ‘Blue Death’ practice bomb into a barrel on the Boardman, Oregon target range on his first visual delivery of the month. Only one chance every month.
Took me forever to get that damn patch.
USN
4) We had a not-so-stealthy manner of doing awesome fly-bys of the Officer’s Club, which was on the beach at NAS Whidbey Island. Coming back to base you could request an “Intruder Attack.” If the pattern was clear, it was generally approved. Ostensibly, we were conducting a practice bombing run on the valuable assets of the base. In reality, it was a license to do a 200 foot, 420-knot run right over all your buddies heads at the club.
Everyone would come out to watch. It was truly awesome.
5) Even though we had spin/departure procedures in the event of out-of-control flight, in reality, all the pilot had to do was release any pressure on the stick and rudders. The giant nose was an Earth-seeking magnet. Eventually, you ended up pointed at the dirt and the plane was flying again.
6) When we flew through clouds and rain at night, as we often did in the Pacific Northwest, we would frequently get arcing blue static electricity across the windscreen called Saint Elmo’s Fire. What was unique to the Intruder was that the refueling probe sticking up prominently between the windscreen panels would also be affected, developing a bizarre cone of blue static electricity pointed aft.
Retiring the Intruder to conquer the Cat
Shortly after returning from the ’92-’93 cruise, VA-155 was decommissioned. It had been planned for a long time so it was no surprise, but it still stung.
Most of the junior officers were dispersed into other fleet squadrons. I was lucky, I got to go to our sister squadron in Air Wing Two, VA-145 The Swordsmen. I showed up for work in April of ’93 only to discover that the Swordsmen had just been put on the chopping block, as well. VA-145 was to be decommissioned five months later, at the end of September.
The nice thing was that they were a good squadron whom we were familiar with and we all flew our butts off in those few months together. The challenge was that now there would be another thirty pilots on the streets looking for a home.
I had not-so-secretly always wanted to fly the Tomcat since my backseat ride as a Midshipman. I spent many weeks putting together a bulletproof transition package to submit to the board, which was ultimately approved. I left for the east coast RAG (Replacement Air Group training squadron) in September of ’93 as excited for a move as I had ever been.
USN
Going through a RAG the second time was almost stress-free, even though I was completing the full, new-guy syllabus. The basic systems were almost identical—thank you Grumman Iron Works—so the academic portion was fairly rote. But quite obviously, despite sharing a huge amount of DNA, the Tomcat was a significantly different beast than the Intruder. And I was absolutely thrilled to the core!
The power differential even in just the F-14A-model with the TF-30 engines was so insanely superior I didn’t stop smiling for three months. The B-model with the F110 engines was just ludicrous.
During my B-model demo hop I was flying in the Whiskey areas, about a hundred miles east over the ocean. The RIO (Radar Intercept Officer) had me go down to 200 feet, accelerate to 450 knots, then pull 4 Gs till I was straight up as I plugged in full afterburner. The plane had no tanks nor rails—slick as a newborn—and she leaped into the sky like a Saturn-5 rocket. Maybe 30 seconds later I was rolling over to level at 50,000 feet while still doing 250 knots.
USN
The air-to-air mission was also completely new to me. But I found it intuitive and creative in a manner that felt very natural. I loved working with the RIO to solve the angles for the long-range intercepts and missile employment and I had waited my whole life to dogfight in the visual arena. If I had been half as skilled at dogfighting as I was enthusiastic, I would have been pretty good.
All in all, I enjoyed the three-year head start in flying fleet jets over my classmates immensely, but all of that came to a screaming halt when it came time to bring the beast aboard the ship, especially at night.
I already had a couple hundred fleet traps in the Intruder and I was an experienced LSO. The ship didn’t intimidate me, in fact I had been the Top Nugget – the best new guy – on my first cruise. But landing the Tomcat was a completely different, and quite humbling, affair.
Where the Intruder was instantly responsive to power, angle of attack (AOA), and glide slope corrections, the Tomcat was anything but. The TF-30 engines had a nasty lag, which made power corrections a combination of guesswork and experience. The wings stuck out to 20 degrees in the landing configuration, which was much more than the Intruder. Combined with a massive, flat fuselage designed in itself to provide significant lift, the airframe had a tendency to float and decelerate when power was removed.
USN
Lastly, the Tomcat had a massive hook-to-eye distance meaning that as the pilot sat far head, at the very tip of the jet, maneuvering to keep his eyeballs on the glide-slope, sixty-three feet behind him was a hook which hung about fifteen feet below. With even the slightest movement of the nose, the hook could move many feet at the end of that moment-arm causing the pilot to either catch a 1-wire or completely miss all the wires even if he could still see the meatball in the center.
In short, the F-14 was a huge challenge to land aboard the ship, much less to do it actually well consistently.
Bombcat’s brain trust
A few of my former Intruder peers and I were drafted into VF-213, the Blacklions, after the Tomcat RAG to help them spool up their air-to-ground program. As much as I’d always wanted to be a ‘fighter-guy’ flying nothing but BFM and air-to-air sorties at supersonic speeds, it was my experience in air-to-ground that brought me to the ‘World Famous Blacklions.’
VF-213 was in the process of integrating the LANTIRN targeting pod with the Tomcat and eager to get smart on air-to-mud tactics. The LANTIRN was a massively capable FLIR pod that was easily mounted on a shoulder station. It proved to be an immensely capable pairing between off-the-shelf technology and a legacy air-superiority fighter that extended the F-14’s service life for another fifteen years. With the LANTIRN pod the F-14 became the most capable platform in the Navy to deliver LGBs, far exceeding the F/A-18C’s targeting capabilities, speed, loiter time, and range.
Also, the Tomcat looked a billion times more badass.
USN
Having a thorough background in delivering ground ordnance and weaponeering certainly made for an easy integration into the fighter Ready Room. We former A-6 folks were welcomed and tasked with sharing best practices with the rest of the squadron. But I thirsted for BFM missions more than anything.
Anytime I could get in the air for some high-aspect air combat maneuvering, I was happy. So, I made sure to include an off-target aerial engagement scenario at the end of the bombing hops whenever I could get away with it.
The age of the Intruder had come and gone
The newest jets I ever flew in the Navy were Intruders in VA-155. We began receiving newly winged SWIP (System Weapon Improvement Program) jets as soon as I checked in on board. Many had come right out of the factory, then diverted into the program to upgrade them with new wings and digital integration. I flew jets that had barely ten hours on them, with none of the paint worn off and all of the labels for the buttons and switches still visible.
Yet even with the upgrade in capabilities, the Intruder was not survivable in the modern battlespace. With the advent of the newest Russian SAM systems, the sanctuary of low-flight was removed. The Intruder could carry a massive bomb load, but modern warfare demanded precision over quantity. Anyone could carry LGBs at that point and the introduction of GPS-aided JDAM made delivering ordnance precisely in any weather almost as simple as entering GPS coordinates.
The mission the Intruder had been designed for and had excelled at, all weather, day/night, low-level delivery of tons of ordnance, had disappeared.
USN
A huge thanks to Paco for sharing his incredible experiences with us. And make sure to pick up a copy of his new book, Lions Of The Sky.
Do you want more?
I have more in my Happiness Index under my Aviation Sub-Index here…
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Please kindly help me out in this effort. There is a lot of effort that goes into this disclosure. I could use all the financial support that anyone could provide. Thank you very much.
Hows’ that for a mouthful? Yeah, it’s a long title, but it has to be. You know with what “news” has actually become over the last few decades, most Americans are the most ignorant and uninformed people on the planet. Sure they have tons and tons of media outlets… but all the outlets originate from one or two main sources. And those are all controlled by the United States government.
Sad to say.
Anyways…
Grab a glass of wine and some delicious pizza and listen to a little story that I want to tell…
Pizza and wine go together nicely.
Firstly, for those of you that are unaware of the background, here’s a brief overview…
The Trump Administration was engaged in a hybrid war with China that included carpet-bombing of Chinese food and livestock with bio-weapons (8 strains). HERE.
It was planned to be a minimum of 8 years in duration, and 2020 was the year that was to “kick off” the “hot” (shooting) portion of the war. HERE.
The Coronavirus was a really devilish plot using and A-strain to inoculate four “friendly” nations, and the B-strain to attack four “enemy” nations. HERE.
Tin foil hat stuff, eh?
Nah.
Let me tell you all a nice little story…
When Donald Trump was elected there were some high hopes that a “businessman” would be able to conduct global and international trade and relationships from a business point of view with China. That is, as opposed to a political viewpoint as was displayed by the Obama administration when it was in Washington. Many nations, specifically China, believed that America would (finally) join the rest of the world in being a reasonable partner in trade and a steward for the planet.
That did not happen.
Instead, he staffed his administration with “hard Right” neocons and went on a ‘war footing” regarding China. Publicly, it was a series of “failed negotiations” and an increase in tariffs on Chinese made goods. Privately it was a complete “hybrid-war” gearing up for a “hot war” event that was to be “kicked off” in late 2019.
The idea was to to create all kind of stresses on the Chinese people, and then when the nation was at it’s weakest, America could invade under the pretext of saving “democracy” all “for the people”.
The public actions are well known. that included tariffs, censorship, attacks on Huawei, etc. This includes the “pro democracy” (NGO-sponsored) “color revolutions” in Hong Kong, and the military incursions to destabilize the Uighur population in Xinjiang.
The non-public actions are not that well known. These included carpet bombing of Chinese livestock with bio-weapons agents, the use of drones to hit remote villages, the destruction and suppression of chip-making equipment to China, interruption of precious mining operations, behind-the-scenes manipulations and black-mailing of “friendly” national leaders, and military probes into Chinese territory and systems.
Now, around 2019 China received word that a “big event” was planned to occur on or during CNY (Chinese New Year), and whether they knew exactly what it was, or how it would manifest, they knew something was up somehow. So once they received word, they immediate began reconnaissance efforts.
These reconnaissance efforts are just now coming to light…
The following article is from The Drive. Reprinted as found, and all credit to the author. Edited to fit this venue.
Mysterious Drone Incursions Have Occurred Over U.S. THAAD Anti-Ballistic Missile Battery In Guam
It's yet another reminder of just how vulnerable highly strategic assets, even air defense systems, are to low-end drones.
Earlier this year, it came to The War Zone‘s attention that a series of bizarre and highly concerning events took place in the late Winter of 2019 at Andersen Air Force Base on the Island of Guam.
Map of Guam.
As we understand it, between late February and early March of last year, the massive installation experienced repeated incursions by unmanned aircraft. The aircraft that appeared to be extremely interested in one highly sensitive area of the highly strategic base. This area of interest is the U.S. Army’s Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery that is tasked with defending the island from ballistic missile attacks.
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The incursions, which were said to have occurred in late March and early April 2019, had been observed by personnel manning the guard towers that loom over the highly secure THAAD area. This area, situated towards the northern end of the air base, is often referred to as “North West Field.” Andersen itself takes up the northern and western reaches of the entire island.
U.S. THAAD Anti-Ballistic Missile Battery, showing the deployment of the radar module and the launcher tubes.
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The intruding craft were described as “quadcopter-like” vehicles with bright spotlights that flew from over the water and then across the North West Base area. They flew at not much higher than treetop level, about 20 to 30 feet above the ground. On a number of nights, the craft would make multiple incursions in the very early morning hours. They would show up, disappear, then come back a few hours later.
Quad rotor drone with camera.
The spotlight that shone down from the craft made it hard for personnel to make out a detailed description of the craft, although estimates range from being three to five feet in diameter largely based on the size of the spotlight.
The craft would maneuver dynamically, appearing with the spotlight on, then disappearing, just to reappear moments later over to one side or another with the spotlight on, which was unsettling to those that witnessed it.
Supposedly, there was a concerted effort to identify, track, and down the mysterious craft, but it doesn’t seem that those efforts were successful based on our understanding of events.
U.S. THAAD Anti-Ballistic Missile Battery.
This information was highly interesting if not downright alarming, but we had to find hard evidence that at least something similar did indeed happen during this timeframe.
We got just that straight from the U.S. Air Force.
The United States will compete, deter, and win in the #IndoPacific.
The #THAAD system I visited on Friday, is one of our most advanced missile defense systems. It enables the defense of #Guam against short, medium and intermediate-range ballistic missiles.
#TaskForceTalonpic.twitter.com/g8C2b602aT
— Archive: Dr. Mark T. Esper (@EsperDoD) August 31, 2020
The War Zone was able to confirm that at least one of the incidents described above did occur through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), by which we obtained a copy of the relevant entry from the Air Force’s 36th Security Forces Squadron’s internal crime blotter. The is unit is part of the 36th Wing at Andersen Air Force Base.
The entry describes the “possible drone” as being of an
"unknown color and size, [with a] bright white light."
Army personnel at “THAAD Tower #2” had radioed in at
"2315," or 11:15 PM to report "a bright white light was seen from [their] LOCATION hovering over a field and quickly disappeared."
"Tower #2 personnel were unable to provide any further description,"
.
U.S. THAAD Anti-Ballistic Missile Battery. Showing the missiles in the pre-launch configuration.
The “JET PATROLS” that are referenced in the document are not aircraft, but are Jungle Enforcement Teams of the 36th Security Forces Squadron.
…the blotter entry continues.
"At 2318, JET PATROLS were in the vicinity conducting covert operations. None of the JET PATROLS were able to locate the suspicious white light."
The Air Force describes the teams as being
"tasked with preventing security breaches, apprehending poachers, and securing the perimeter around the jungle."
U.S. THAAD Anti-Ballistic Missile Battery showing a launch.
The team’s personnel move silently through the jungle that permeates much of the base at night and have unique human tracking skills. You can read all about this specialized security force in this official media release.
Interestingly, the 36th Security Force Squadron’s blotter lists this incident as
which implied that there was at least one other similarly classified drone incident at Andersen Air Force Base before this one by that point in the early 2019 calendar or fiscal year.
Radar for a U.S. THAAD Anti-Ballistic Missile Battery.
Another FOIA request confirmed that there was a “2019-1” blotter entry, but the Air Force withheld information about that event citing privacy and law enforcement exemptions.
Agencies typically withhold records for law enforcement reasons because of a potential risk of exposing sensitive tactics, techniques, or procedures, or because of an ongoing investigation.
It is then doubly interesting that the March 2019 incident near the Army’s THAAD battery at North West Field was not also subject to the exemptions.
U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) forwarded a separate FOIA request regarding this incident, any other similar occurrences around the same timeframe, to the U.S. Army. The War Zone is still awaiting a response to that request, as well as another one to the Guam Police Department. We inquired directly to the 36th Wing and INDOPACOM, but never got a response.
A general diagram showing how a U.S. THAAD Anti-Ballistic Missile Battery operates.
We found this information to be highly troubling for a number of reasons.
The most important is that this craft was able to penetrate its way over an air defense system that is tasked with defending the highly strategic island from ballistic missile attacks.
In other words, that THAAD battery is largely what stands in the way of a country like North Korea from holding the island at imminent risk.
The system is even capable of shielding against a lower volume barrage from a peer state competitor, such as China.
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Guam would be near the top of Beijing’s targeting list during a conflict with the United States and its growing ballistic missile arsenal has been developed largely to deny the U.S. the utility of its regional bases during the open stages of a conflict.
U.S. THAAD Anti-Ballistic Missile Battery.
The thing is that destruction of enemy air defenses (DEAD) is not defined by a platform, it is a mission.
Traditionally we associate the objective of destroying enemy air defenses with standoff cruise missile attacks and ‘wild weasel’ fighter jet operations, but DEAD can be carried out by a team of special operators with some well-placed explosives or via a barrage of naval gunfire.
Even carefully deployed malware that targets the software that an air defense system and its mechanical component run on could potentially be destructive enough to be considered a DEAD method.
U.S. THAAD Anti-Ballistic Missile Battery showing the inception stage.
With that said, America’s preeminent adversaries in the entire region would make taking out the THAAD battery on Guam a top priority during a conflict or even as part of a limited demonstration of force.
Why barrage it with ballistic missiles or attempt a cruise missile launch from a forward-deployed submarine or even a clandestine commando raid when you can just fly a drone loaded with explosives into it?
A diagram of an ICBM showing and indicating interception stages.
And no, you don’t need some high-end drone system to do this as real-world events have highlighted many times over.
Somewhat more sophisticated types can be launched from longer distances and can even home in on radar or other RF emissions sources, like THAAD’s powerful AN/TPY-2 Radar and data-links, autonomously, beyond just striking a certain point on a map.
U.S. THAAD Anti-Ballistic Missile Battery.
Simply put, ‘shooting the archer,’ in this case an advanced anti-ballistic missile system that protects America’s most strategic base in the entire region, via a relatively cheap drone is both an absurdly obvious and terrifyingly ironic tactic—the U.S. can shoot down ballistic missiles, but the critical systems used to do so remain extremely vulnerable to the lowliest of airborne threats—cheap drones.
For those that follow our work, this is not news. The U.S. military was dangerously aloof when it came to the threat posed by low-end drones.
We spent years highlighting this threat while seeing the U.S. military do very little to actually counter it, that is until ISIS was constantly dropping bomblets from drones or just flying explosive-laden drones into allied positions during the Battle of Mosul, Iraq.
U.S. THAAD Anti-Ballistic Missile Battery showing the three points and opportunities for interception.
The radar unit of a U.S. THAAD Anti-Ballistic Missile Battery.
In the meantime, it’s abundantly clear that even America’s most capable air defenses are vulnerable to the most meager of aerial capabilities—commercially available drones.
If anything else, this is yet another, but possibly the biggest example of just how misplaced the U.S. military’s priorities had become when it comes to investments in air defense over the last two decades or so.
The components of a U.S. THAAD Anti-Ballistic Missile Battery minus the launcher truck module.
You can read how the Pentagon let its short-range air defense (SHORAD) capabilities wither on the vine to an appalling degree while concentrating on higher-profile, ‘sexier,’ and drastically more lucrative weapon systems in this past feature of ours.
The Pentagon’s appalling lack of vision regarding the emergence of this threat has made quickly ramping-up efforts to counter it that much more of a scramble, which is ongoing now.
The radar and command and power modules for a U.S. THAAD Anti-Ballistic Missile Battery.
Still, America’s potential enemies are already a step ahead, working on swarming low-end drone concepts that will overwhelm most countermeasures currently in the works.
A comparison of three anti-ballistic missile batteries deployed by the United States; the Patriot, Thaad, and Ages.
In the meantime, the events on Guam in 2019 serve as maybe the most outstanding reminder of how the Pentagon’s fixation on high-end threats, and the huge gold plated weapons programs that are put into play to counter them, have left even those very capabilities remarkably vulnerable to far less advanced attacks.
As to quote the character from “Laugh In”… “Very Interesting…”
So what does this mean?
Well, strangely…
…immediately before the bio-weapons attack on CNY 2020 there were incursions of a reconnaissance nature on Guam investigating the THAAD missile batteries. These incursions were visible. They intentionally turned on flood and spot lights and were not secretive. Which is a very UNUSUAL way to conduct reconnaissance operations.
One must wonder what was actually going on.
Who operated the drones? Was it the Chinese? Or an American operation that was testing the defenses? Was it someone else?
Where were the drones controlled from? Was it from a civilian located on the South end of the island, or was it from a submarine or some other vehicle?
Why did the drones turn on the lights? Was it to be noticed, or was it to take quick photographs?
Why isn’t the American military concerned? Perhaps this event is really nothing to worry about. You can trust the United States government, right?
The thing is, however, this is not the only event leading up to the 2020 CNY bio-weapon attack on China. Throughout 2019, American bases, and Naval ships were being probed.
Such as described in this article. Reprinted as found. All credit to the writer, and edited to fit this venue.
Navy’s Top Officer Says ‘Drones’ That Swarmed Destroyers Remain Unidentified
A series of bizarre events off Southern California in 2019 remain unexplained according to the Chief of Naval Operations.
At a roundtable with reporters today, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Michael Gilday, the U.S. Navy’s top officer, was asked about a series of bizarre incidents that took place in July 2019 and involved what only have been described as ‘drones’ swarming American destroyers off the coast of Southern California.
American destroyer USS Winston S. Churchill
The War Zone was the first to report in detail on this series of mysterious events after the incident was originally uncovered by filmmaker Dave Beaty.
Asked by Jeff Schogol of Task & Purposeif the Navy had positively identified any of the aircraft involved, Gilday responded by saying:
“No, we have not. I am aware of those sightings and as it’s been reported there have been other sightings by aviators in the air and by other ships not only of the United States, but other nations – and of course other elements within the U.S. joint force.”“Those findings have been collected and they still are being analyzed," Gilday added. "I don’t have anything new to report, Jeff, on what those findings have revealed thus far. But I will tell you we do have a well-established process in place across the joint force to collect that data and to get it to a separate repository for analysis.”
At the time of writing, it is unclear if Admiral Gilday was referring to the Department of Defense’s Navy-led Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF), created last August to examine “incursions by unauthorized aircraft into our training ranges or designated airspace.”
A Senate-requested report on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena is expected later this year. Representatives from the UAPTF could not be reached for comment.
Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS McCampbell (DDG 85)
A preliminary response to our Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) inquiries indicates that the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) possesses documents about the incident and that they are intermingled with records from several other agencies. This would make sense as the UAPTF was established within ONI, according to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
Schogol also asked if there was any suspicion that the aircraft described as drones were “extraterrestrial.” Gilday responded,
“No, I can’t speak to that - I have no indications at all of that.”
American destroyer USS Winston S. Churchill
The War Zone has reached out to the Navy, Coast Guard, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation for further details regarding the drones flying near Navy destroyers in 2019. Members of the intelligence and armed services committees in both the Senate and the House were asked for comment, as well. While at least some elected officials indicated they were aware of the issue, none were able to make a statement at this time regarding the encounters off the coast of Southern California two years ago.
So What is going on?
Well, you know that throughout the Pacific in 2019, drones were “buzzing” and observing United States military operations. They studied defense operations, ship capabilities, and base operations.
This all occurred simultaneously while the Trump Administration was ramping up a “war stance” towards China.
2010 – 2016 Obama setting up bases that surrounded China.
2017 – 2019 Trump media march for war, color revolutions, tariffs, and induce famine inside of China.
2020 was to be the year for actual military operations, kicked off by a full-scale bio-weapon attack with R0=20% lethal COVID-19B strain. (Not the “safe” American R0=0.01% COVID-19A strain.)
Also simultaneously during this time period was a complete restructuring of the American military…
Combined we see a picture that is quite disturbing.
A Washington DC establishment desirous of a “Hot War” with China. Not only one of the largest nations on the planet, but the home of most of the factories, technology, and and military on the planet.
A realization that China has Intel that indicates activities that might happen in the future. Somehow they found out about the CNY plans a year earlier.
Scanning and recon of American Naval forces, bases and defenses in the South Pacific right before the CNY 2020 Bio-weapon attack.
A politically focused restructuring of the military.
An over emphasis in American technical superiority, and a discounting of the basic physical standards of the military.
One cannot help to remember stories about similar events in the past and how they all turned out.
I am reminded of Babylon. Not the city written about in the Bible, but the much later incarnation. The Babylon of the Islamic Empire. It was the center of all society, technology, and manufacturing in the ancient world.
But it was ruled by self-absorbed fools.
And out from the East came a “rough and tumble” people that DID.NOT.PLAY. They wanted to align with the Islamic nation, they wanted to expand but incorporate the nation and peoples in with their society.
Nope!
Says the self-absorbed Babylon ruler drinking his wines. Singing his songs, dancing with his friends…
The following is from HERE. All credit to the author, and reprinted as found and edited to fit within this venue.
The Mongol conquest of the Abbasid Caliphate culminated in the horrific sack of Baghdad that effectively ended the Islamic Golden Age.
The Islamic Golden Age—from the 8th to the mid-13th century—was one of the greatest periods of human flourishment in knowledge and progress, with Baghdad as its focal point.
A truly global repository of human knowledge, this Arab-Muslim imperial capital also welcomed—indeed encouraged—scholars from across the known world. As its wealth and fame grew, more and more scholars and engineers were drawn to the city from all over civilization.
But in January 1258, a vast Mongol army reached the city’s perimeter and demanded that the caliph—al-Musta’sim, the nominal spiritual authority of the Islamic world—surrender.
History of Baghdad: The Greatest City in the World
If you can imagine the shock waves, were London razed to the ground tomorrow, you’d be getting close to the horror that was about to accompany the Sack of Baghdad in 1258.
Founded 500 years earlier, Baghdad’s population had reached one million within a century, making it the world’s largest, most prosperous, and celebrated city. If one thinks of London in 1897—the year when Queen Victoria celebrated her Golden Jubilee—the English city on the Thames was by then the largest and most important city on earth. In 1897, London was peerless in the world, with nowhere else coming close to matching its power and influence. It was the capital, and the fulcrum, of the British Empire.
A Devastating Moment in History for Muslims in the Middle East
For many historians, the arrival of the Mongols into the heart of the Muslim faith and empire is the single most devastating moment in the history of the Muslim Middle East. It’s easy to see why—and hard to argue otherwise—because the Sack of Baghdad would mark the end of the Islamic Golden Age.
Rather than submit, the Abbasid caliph challenged the Mongols to attempt to storm his city, if they dared. The nomadic army from Asia—led by Hulagu Khan, one of Genghis Khan’s grandsons—did indeed dare. Doing what they are most famous for, the Mongols thrashed Baghdad. In 10 days of unremitting violence and destruction, Baghdad and its inhabitants were completely and utterly vanquished. Almost without exception, the population was either put to the sword or sold into slavery. The River Tigris ran red—to cite one of the most over-quoted, and overwrought phrases in history—with the blood of slaughtered men, women, and children.
After this, every building of note in Baghdad—including mosques, palaces, and markets—was utterly destroyed, among them the world-famous House of Wisdom. Hundreds of thousands of priceless manuscripts and books were tossed into the river, clogging the arterial waterway with so many texts, according to eyewitnesses, that soldiers could ride on horseback from one side to the other. Of course, the river turned from red to black with ink.
Who Were the Mongols?
The Sack of Baghdad fits, like a hinge, almost exactly in the middle of two defining dates in the history of Islam, from the founding of the faith in the year 622 to the end of the last caliphate in 1924. Even by the standards of the day, the destruction was shocking, and the results long-lasting, if not permanent. The Mongols’ name during this period in history was a byword for destruction. Who were they and where did they come from? Is there any reason to think that they were any more destructive than other peoples at the time?
The Mongols, an ethnic group, originating in north and central Asia, were typically pastoral peoples, whose nomadic lifestyle inevitably brought them into conflict with more settled populations. Probably the best example of how settled peoples tried to restrict their otherwise free movement is the Great Wall of China. The wall was essentially built to hold back incursions of their Mongolian neighbors to the north.
This preference for nomadism over a settled existence is central to the view of the Mongols as especially destructive. As one writer put it, while Muslims built cities—Baghdad and Cairo, for example—Mongols destroyed them. Does this mean that the Mongols were inherently more ruthless or violent than Muslims or crusading Christians? Not necessarily. Rather, it shows that their priority, in terms of conquest, was for land, for grazing—for space even—rather than for cities and confinement.
As one writer put it, while Muslims built cities—Baghdad and Cairo, for example—Mongols destroyed them.
One thing that came out of the Mongols’ lack of interest in seizing cities was their enhanced mobility. Often living on a diet of mare’s milk—or blood, if the mares were not lactating—Mongol custom meant that they never washed their clothes. This, along with a heavy fat diet—both milk and meat—no doubt accounted for the Mongols’ reputation as a very smelly, as well as scary, foe.
The Fierce Mongol Warriors
Contemporary chroniclers tell us that Mongol warriors were most comfortable in the saddle, literally, it seems. If they had to move more than a hundred yards, or so, they’d jump on a horse and ride. Also, all warriors owned numerous mounts, allowing them to cover larger distances than more traditional cavalry found in the Near East and Europe. While they rode light into battle, the Mongols used harnessed oxen to pull their heavier and more cumbersome possessions from place to place.
An important facet of the Mongol way of war and conquest was their use of terror as a tactic. The banging of metal pots and the rattling of bells was the usual way of announcing the start of a battle. This created such a din that defenders of a city under siege would find it almost impossible to hear their officers’ commands.
Whenever they entered new territory, the Mongols would offer the local rulers an opportunity to surrender. But in the language of many a salesman, this was a one-time offer. For those foolish enough not to surrender immediately, conquest and destruction without quarter would be their lot, and the people of Baghdad knew this.
Setting the Scene for Catastrophe Before the Sack of Baghdad
In 1206, just 52 years before the Sack of Baghdad, the Mongol Empire was formed and led by the legendary Genghis Khan. Khan is originally a Mongolian word that means military leader, or sovereign, a king, in English. Being accepted as the Great Khan effectively elevated Genghis to the status of an emperor. His grandsons now ruled the Mongolian Empire. In addition to Hulagu Khan, who led the attack against Baghdad, there was Kublai Khan, conqueror of China, and Mongke Khan, who became the Great Khan and sent his brother Hulagu to Baghdad.
Hulagu marched at the head of perhaps the largest Mongolian army ever assembled, consisting of as many as 150,000 troops, with Baghdad one of several goals for this mission. First, Hulagu was told to subdue southern Iran, which he did. Next, he was to destroy the infamous Assassins.
A breakaway Nizari-Ismaili-Shia sect, founded in the 11th century, the Assassins had achieved infamy for the political assassinations—hence, the term we use today—carried out by certain of their number. Although it was known that the Assassins were based at the castle of Alamut in northwestern Iran, many of their adversaries thought they were somehow invincible because of the stealth they typically employed. Hulagu Khan proved this was not the case. After destroying the Assassins and their castle fortress at Alamut, Baghdad was the next stop on his list.
The majority of Hulagu Khan’s men were Mongolian warriors, but the force also contained Christians, including soldiers led by the king of Armenia, Frankish Crusaders from the Principality of Antioch, and Georgians.
The majority of Hulagu Khan’s men were Mongolian warriors, but the force also contained Christians, including soldiers led by the king of Armenia, Frankish Crusaders from the Principality of Antioch, and Georgians. There were also Muslim soldiers from various Turkic and Persian tribes, and 1,000 Chinese engineers—artillery specialists, who were always in demand when the need arose to reduce walls to rubble.
The Abbasid Caliphate
The Abbasids—the third Islamic caliphate to rule the Muslim Middle East since the death of Muhammad—had risen to power in 750, after overthrowing their rivals, the Damascus-based Umayyads. Taking their name from one of Muhammad’s uncles, Abbas, the Abbasids quickly took control of almost all Umayyad lands, and so found themselves ruling over an enormous empire that covered the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, the Levant, Syria, Iraq, Persia and beyond to modern Afghanistan.
A new Abbasid caliphate deserved a new capital, which they established in Baghdad, in 762, and immediately built it into an imperial city worthy of their greatness.
A new Abbasid caliphate deserved a new capital, which they established in Baghdad, in 762, and immediately built it into an imperial city worthy of their greatness. Within a couple of generations, Baghdad had attracted some of the world’s greatest scholars. Alongside Persian scholarship and cultural traditions—and Arab authority—one saw people from other parts of Asia, Europe, and Africa. Numerous Jews and Christians also pursued studies there.
Baghdad: A City of Learning
Among the greatest of them all was founded by the early Abbasid caliphs. Called the Bayt al-Hikma—or House of Wisdom—this was the place that the best scholars and professors aspired to reach—not just Muslims from the Islamic world. Imagine if you will, all of America’s Ivy League Colleges rolled into one; add to those the science and technological power of Carnegie Mellon, MIT, Stanford, and Berkley, then add Oxford and Cambridge to the mix, and the world’s great non-English-speaking universities. It comes close to what the House of Wisdom was like—except it was even more influential.
Imagine if you will all of America’s Ivy League Colleges rolled into one; add to those the science and technological power of Carnegie Mellon, MIT, Stanford, and Berkley, then add Oxford and Cambridge to the mix, and the world’s great non-English-speaking universities. It comes close to what the House of Wisdom was like—except it was even more influential.
There were two distinct sides to scholarship in Baghdad. One was translation work, with texts from India, Persia, and Greece gathered in huge numbers. Texts originally composed in Persian, Sanskrit, Greek, Syriac, and Chinese were all eagerly rendered into Arabic. Combined with this extensive translation work, however, was a wealth of original scholarship, funded and encouraged by the caliphs. The arts and sciences alike were covered, so that advances were made in almost every imaginable subject, including mathematics, medicine, astronomy, physics, cartography, zoology, and poetry.
A Weak-Willed Caliph in Thirteenth-Century Baghdad
In the year 1242, al-Musta’sim became the 37th caliph in the Abbasid line. Baghdad’s glory days were behind it. By this stage, the Abbasid caliphs were largely figureheads, propped up by outside forces. If they were important at all, it was as the inheritors of Islamic orthodoxy and as beacons of cultural greatness, but not as a political power to be obeyed nor a military force to be feared. Indeed, the Abbasids already were in the habit of paying an annual tribute to the Mongols. Despite this, the city was still large and prosperous.
A weak-willed, even dissolute character, al-Musta’sim was happier hanging out with musicians and drinking wine than he was ruling…
Alas for Baghdad, the court of history doesn’t rate the caliph as the greatest of his line. A weak-willed, even dissolute character, al-Musta’sim was happier hanging out with musicians and drinking wine than he was ruling an already weakened empire. In 1251, the Abbasids sent a delegation to pay homage on the coronation of Hulagu’s brother, Mongke, when he became the Great Khan, but this was no longer considered enough.
Mongols Demand Submission by Abbasid Caliph al-Mustasim
Mongke insisted that the Abbasid Caliph al-Musta’sim come in person to Karakorum, the 13th century capital of the Mongol Empire, in the north of modern Mongolia, to fully submit to Mongol rule. The Caliph al-Musta’sim refused to do so. The final showdown between the Mongols and the Abbasids was set. With the Mongol horde marching on Baghdad, a clash was inevitable, although this wouldn’t be the first encounter between the Abbasids and the Mongols.
In the recent past, the Abbasids had managed a couple of small-scale military victories against Mongol forces; however, these were soon overturned and weren’t part of any trend of a militarily resurgent Abbasid Empire. Their days of martial glory were long gone. Adding fuel to the fire, al-Musta’sim is said to have slighted Shia Muslims by various acts and decrees. He should have known better, as his grand vizier, or senior advisor, was himself a Shia Muslim. This vizier is said to have sided with the Mongols, encouraging their takeover of the city, perhaps imagining that he’d be given control of Baghdad by a grateful Hulagu. If this is what he thought, he didn’t know anything about Hulagu.
A Difficult Decision for the Caliph to Surrender to the Mongols
The caliph was faced with a choice between surrendering to the Mongol leader and presumably saving his city, or building up his army, and riding out to meet the invading warriors in combat. It likely never crossed the caliph’s mind that he should probably surrender rather than send threats to Hulagu. Al-Musta’sim discovered a third option: Doing nothing.
Baghdad was surrounded, and al-Musta’sim realized too late that the Mongol army was far larger and stronger than he’d been told. The rest of the Muslim world wasn’t about to rush to his rescue either. The siege of Baghdad began on January 29, 1258. The Mongols quickly built a palisade and ditch and brought siege engines, such as covered battering rams that protected their men from the defenders’ arrows and other missiles, and catapults to attack the city’s walls. At this stage, al-Musta’sim made a last-ditch attempt to negotiate with Hulagu and was rebuffed. Al-Musta’sim surrendered Baghdad to Hulagu five days later, on February 10. Adding to the distress of those inside the city, Hulagu and his horde didn’t make any attempt to enter the city for three days.
A Glimmer of Compassion for Baghdad Christians
Late in life, Hulagu became a Buddhist. At this moment, however, the only sign of compassion he showed was towards Baghdad’s Nestorian Christian community. Nestorianism was a form of Christianity that church authorities had declared heretical in the 5th century. It stressed that the divine and human aspects of Jesus’s nature were separate. Many Nestorians had moved to Persia, where they’d lived ever since. Hulagu, upon entering Baghdad, told the Nestorians to lock themselves in their church and ordered his men not to touch them. What was the reason for this act of kindness before the bloodbath that was to follow? Simply that Hulagu’s mother and his favorite wife were both Nestorian Christians.
Mongols Execute Baghdad Notables
About 3,000 of Baghdad’s notables—including officials, members of the Abbasid family, and the caliph himself—pleaded for clemency. But all 3,000 were put to death without compunction…
With the Nestorians secure, Hulagu allowed his army an unfettered week of rape, pillage, and murder to celebrate their victory. About 3,000 of Baghdad’s notables—including officials, members of the Abbasid family, and the caliph himself—pleaded for clemency. But all 3,000 were put to death without compunction; all, that is, except for the caliph. He was held prisoner for a little while longer, perhaps in part so that he could see the full extent of what befell his capital.
Estimates of the death toll range from 90,000 at the lowest end to one million at the other. Apart from being a conveniently round number, the population of Baghdad was around a million, and the historical record tells us not everyone was killed. Whatever the actual number, it included the army that had dared resist Hulagu’s advance, and the civilians, who had no choice either way. Men, women, and children down to babes in arms were put to the sword or clubbed to death. Little mercy was shown unless it was of a quick rather than a lingering death.
Death of a Caliph
The Caliph al-Musta’sim was forced to watch these murders and the plundering of his treasury and palaces. Hulagu taunted him that, with so much gold and so many jewels, he’d have been better off spending some of these riches on building up a bigger army. As for how the caliph met his end, one account says he was locked in his treasury, surrounded by his wealth, and left alone to starve to death. As colorful as this account is, it doesn’t sound likely, given the widespread looting that took place, nor is it corroborated by any sources.
A more plausible account, as reported by several chroniclers, goes like this: Hulagu had been warned by his astronomers that royal blood shouldn’t be spilled onto the earth. If it were, the earth would reject it, and earthquakes and natural destruction would follow. If we consider his record, one might not think Hulagu an especially cautious man. However, in this case, he plotted the safer course. The caliph was rolled in carpets, which would catch any blood spilled, and then he was trampled to death by his cavalry. For the first time since the death of Muhammad, 636 years earlier, Islam had no Caliph whose name could be quoted in Friday prayers.
Destruction of the City of Baghdad
If you’re looking for an example of a city razed to the ground, Baghdad in 1258 would be a good choice.
Apart from the human casualties, there was the destruction of the 500-year old city itself. Fires were set so that the fragrant scent of sandalwood and other aromatics was smelled up to 30 miles away. If you’re looking for an example of a city razed to the ground, Baghdad in 1258 would be a good choice. After a week, Hulagu ordered his camp out of the city, and moved upwind, away from the stench of rotting corpses.
Hulagu left Baghdad a broken and depopulated city. Even if those left alive had wanted to rebuild, they lacked the numbers, the resources, and the skills to do so. The death and destruction were such that it would be more than a decade before anyone from Baghdad performed the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. In attacking Baghdad, Hulagu also destroyed the network of canals that irrigated the arable land thereabouts. Famine and plague followed the Mongol horde to Baghdad as elsewhere. Their scorched-earth tactics make it easy to see why they’re often tagged with a reputation as the most destructive of all the great empires.
Conclusion
All things taken into account, and the knowledge that history tends to repeat itself…
…it seems that the entire United States is Hell-bent on duplicating the fall of the “Golden Age of Islam” and the destruction of Baghdad.
Which is a bitter-sweet thing. After all, there are many great people in the United States, and it is a beautiful land, with some wonderful cities, some great food, and basically decent culture. Taken a a whole.
But…
On the other hand…
Can you imagine what happens if the United States does NOT correct it’s posture. That it does not correct it’s desire to rule over the world. That it does not change it’s social structure, it’s ownership by corporations, and it’s basic inequalities. What if it implements “The Long Telegram” and it is successful in doing so; where the entire world becomes like Detroit or Baltimore and ruled by a 0.001% of psychopathic individuals under a global plutocracy?? Can you just imagine it?
Burrrr!
I get shivers just thinking about it.
Ugh!
It’s time to think about something else. If any one asks. I’ll be jammin’.
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.
Please kindly help me out in this effort. There is a lot of effort that goes into this disclosure. I could use all the financial support that anyone could provide. Thank you very much.
The world is moving ever forward. Such as this notice on MoA. This and these kinds of things are becoming more and more common in the West these days…
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/
Maintenance mode
Temporary Blog Closure
March 24, 2021 in Uncategorized by craig
In view of our understanding that the High Court has found some articles on this blog to be in contempt of court, and in view of the fact that the Crown Office had sought to censor such a large range of articles, this blog has no choice but to go dark from 15.00 today until some time after tomorrow’s court hearing, when it will be specified to us precisely how much of the truth we have to expunge before we can bring the blog back up.
This is a dark day for the entire team here. We will be looking to appeal this to the Supreme Court and if required (though we very much doubt it will be) to the European Court of Human Rights.
-Posted by: Bluedotterel | Mar 24 2021 16:46 utc | 1
Bang, bang, and then bang. One after another things have started to happen faster and faster. It began in Alaska with a stunning, just stunning insulting display of ignorance and rudeness from the United States. Followed quickly by the military, social, industrial, and cultural realignments between Russia and China. With then Iran getting on board, creating the combined enormous Asian block.
Belt and Road isn’t going away. China is making more rigorous lending decisions while focusing somewhat less on heavy-duty construction and more on digital technology, says a Council on Foreign Relations task force report released on March 23. The 190-page report, titled China’s Belt and Road: Implications for the United States, was written by Jennifer Hillman and David Sacks of the CFR based on the findings of an independent task force chaired by former Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew and retired Admiral Gary Roughead.For the U.S., calibrating an effective response to Belt and Road is tricky. The Obama administration pursued constructive engagement with China. As Belt and Road ramped up and became more of a threat, the Trump administration was more confrontational, but without allies’ support. The Biden administration aims to build more of a united front of nations to counter Chinese influence. Reflecting the difficulty of striking the right balance, the Council on Foreign Relations report says the U.S. response “has been too little, too late,” but also says “its blanket condemnation risks alienating partners.”
The American leviathan has set up the pieces, and is going full bore toward international global conflict. All stops have been pulled. All fail-safes have been removed. And now, it’s a matter of getting the minions and toadies in line so that the wars can be fought on their national geography instead of inside of America.
Um…
It’s not going to happen that way, but you just cannot reason with idiots.
I always knew there was something fundamentally wrong with the world.
-Posted by: William Gruff | Mar 24 2021 19:57 utc | 36
The Article
This is a great article. Just great.
As Patrice says…
It's clear from the tone of the author, which mirrors much of independent, assaulted and outraged humanity, that many observers are waiting with bated breath...
...for the emergence of a powerful and invincible countervailing alliance...
...(one that is) capable of finally stopping the reign of brutal violence and disgusting hypocrisy imposed by the US empire.
And that alliance, perforce, as to be the sinorussian alliance.
The blood-curdling hypocrisy of the West leaves truly decent and sovereign nations no choice.
As Pepe Escobar puts it in this remarkable and indispensable dispatch:
One has to applaud the gall of the “Western partners”. It’s 18 years since Shock and Awe – the start of the bombing, invasion and destruction of Iraq. It’s 10 years since the start of the total destruction of Libya by NATO and its GCC minions, with Obama-Biden “leading from behind”. It’s 10 years since the start of the savage destruction of Syria by proxy – complete with jihadis disguised as “moderate rebels”. Yet now the “Western partners” are so mortified by the plight of Muslims in Western China!
This is a complete reprint of a most excellent article from Pepe, and reproduced from HERE. All credit to the author. Please kindly note that it was reformatted to fit this venue but aside from that left intact in all of it’s glory.
With a Russia-China-Iran triple bitch slap on the hegemon, we now have a brand new geopolitical chessboard
It took 18 years after Shock and Awe unleashed on Iraq for the Hegemon to be mercilessly shocked and awed by a virtually simultaneous, diplomatic Russia-China one-two.
March 2021: The FMs of the two greatest powers defying Washington meet for close strategic consultation.
How this is a real game-changing moment cannot be emphasized enough; 21st century geopolitics will never be the same again.
Yet it was the Hegemon who first crossed the diplomatic Rubicon. The handlers behind hologram Joe “I’ll do whatever you want me to do, Nance” Biden had whispered in his earpiece to brand Russian President Vladimir Putin as a soulless “killer” in the middle of a softball interview. [Conducted by ABC News maggot, George Stephanopoulos, although media stenographers and propagandists in the Western bloc are all fully interchangeable. —Ed]
Not even at the height of the Cold War the superpowers resorted to ad hominem attacks. The result of such an astonishing blunder was to regiment virtually the whole Russian population behind Putin – because that was perceived as an attack against the Russian state.
Then came Putin’s cool, calm, collected – and quite diplomatic – response, which needs to be carefully pondered. These sharp as a dagger words are arguably the most devastatingly powerful five minutes in the history of post-truth international relations.
In For Leviathan, it’s so cold in Alaska, we forecasted what could take place in the US-China 2+2 summit at a shabby hotel in Anchorage, with cheap bowls of instant noodles thrown in as extra bonus.
China’s millennial diplomatic protocol establishes that discussions start around common ground – which are then extolled as being more important than disagreements between negotiating parties. That’s at the heart of the concept of “no loss of face”. Only afterwards the parties discuss their differences.
Yet it was totally predictable that a bunch of amateurish, tactless and clueless Americans would smash those basic diplomatic rules to show “strength” to their home crowd, distilling the proverbial litany on Taiwan, Hong Kong, South China Sea, “genocide” of Uighurs.
Oh dear. There was not a single State Dept. hack with minimal knowledge of East Asia to warn the amateurs you don’t mess with the formidable head of the Foreign Affairs Commission at the CCP’s Central Committee, Yang Jiechi, with impunity.
Visibly startled, but controlling his exasperation, Yang Jiechi struck back. And the rhetorical shots were heard around the whole Global South.
They had to include a basic lesson in manners: “If you want to deal with us properly, let’s have some mutual respect and do things the right way”. But what stood out was a stinging, concise diagnostic blending history and politics:
The United States is not qualified to talk to China in a condescending manner. The Chinese people will not accept that. It must be based on mutual respect to deal with China, and history will prove that those who seek to strangle China will suffer in the end.
And all that translated in real time by young, attractive and ultra-skilled Zhang Jing – who inevitably became an overnight superstar in China, reaping an astonishing 400 million plus hits on Weibo.
The incompetence of the “diplomatic” arm of the Biden-Harris administration beggars belief. Using a basic Sun Tzu maneuver, Yang Jiechi turned the tables and voiced the predominant sentiment of the overwhelming majority of the planet.Stuff your unilateral “rules-based order”. We, the nations of the world, privilege the UN charter and the primacy of international law.
So this is what the Russia-China one-two achieved almost instantaneously: from now on, the Hegemon should be treated, all across the Global South with, at best, disdain.
An inevitable historical process
Pre-Alaska, the Americans went on a charming offensive in Japan and South Korea for “consultations”. That’s irrelevant. What matters is post-Alaska, and the crucial Sergey Lavrov-Wang Yi meeting of Foreign Ministers in Guilin.
Lavrov, always unflappable, clarified in an interview with Chinese media how the Russia-China strategic partnership sees the current US diplomatic train wreck:
As a matter of fact, they have largely lost the skill of classical diplomacy. Diplomacy is about relations between people, the ability to listen to each other, to hear one another and to strike a balance between competing interests. These are exactly the values that Russia and China are promoting in diplomacy.
The inevitable consequence is that Russia-China must “consolidate our independence: “The United States has declared limiting the advance of technology in Russia and China as its goal. So, we must reduce our exposure to sanctions by strengthening our technological independence and switching to settlements in national and international currencies other than the dollar. We need to move away from using Western-controlled international payment systems.”
Russia-China have clearly identified, as Lavrov pointed out, how the “Western partners” are “promoting their ideology-driven agenda aimed at preserving their dominance by holding back progress in other countries. Their policies run counter to the objective international developments and, as they used to say at some point, are on the wrong side of history. The historical process will come into its own, no matter what happens.”
As a stark presentation of an inevitable “historical process”, it doesn’t get more crystal clear than that. And predictably, it didn’t take time for the “Western partners” to fall back into – what else – their same old sanction bag of tricks.
Here we go again: a US, UK, EU, Canada “alliance” sanctioning selected Chinese officials because, in Blinken’s words, “the PRC [People’s Republic of China] continues to commit genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang.” [sic]
The EU, UK, and Canada didn’t have the guts to sanction a key player: Xinjiang party chief Chen Quanguo, who’s a Politburo member. The Chinese response would have been – economically – devastating.
Still, Beijing counterpunched with its own sanctions – targeting, crucially, the German far-right evangelical nut posing as “scholar” who produced the bulk of the completely debunked “proof” of a million Uighurs held in concentration camps.
Once again, the “Western partners” are impermeable to logic. Adding to the already appalling state of EU-Russia relations, Brussels chooses to also antagonize China based on a single fake dossier, playing right into the Hegemon’s not exactly secret Divide and Rule agenda.
Mission (nearly) accomplished: Brussels diplomats tell me the EU Parliament is all but set to refuse to ratify the China-EU trade deal painstakingly negotiated by Merkel and Macron. The consequences will be immense.
So Blinken will have reasons to be cheerful when he meets assorted eurocrats and NATO bureaucrats this week, ahead of the NATO summit.
One has to applaud the gall of the “Western partners”. It’s 18 years since Shock and Awe – the start of the bombing, invasion and destruction of Iraq. It’s 10 years since the start of the total destruction of Libya by NATO and its GCC minions, with Obama-Biden “leading from behind”. It’s 10 years since the start of the savage destruction of Syria by proxy – complete with jihadis disguised as “moderate rebels”.
Yet now the “Western partners” are so mortified by the plight of Muslims in Western China.
At least there are some cracks within the EU illusionist circus. Last week, the French Armed Forces Joint Reflection Circle (CRI) – in fact an independent think tank of former high officers – wrote a startling open letter to cardboard NATO secretary-general Stoltenberg de facto accusing him of behaving as an American stooge with the implementation of NATO 2030 plan. The French officers drew the correct conclusion: the US/NATO combo is the main cause of appalling relations with Russia.
These Ides of March
Meanwhile, sanctions hysteria advance like a runaway train. Biden-Harris has already threatened to impose extra sanctions on Chinese oil imports from Iran. And there’s more in the pipeline – on manufacturing, technology, 5G, supply chains, semiconductors.
And yet nobody is trembling in their boots. Right on cue with Russia-China, Iran has stepped up the game, with Ayatollah Khamenei issuing the guidelines for Tehran’s return to the JCPOA.
1. The US regime is in no position to make new demands or changes regarding the nuclear deal.
2. The US is weaker today than when the JCPOA was signed.
3. Iran is in a stronger position now. If anyone can impose new demands it’s Iran and not the US.
And with that we have a Russia-China-Iran triple bitch slap on the Hegemon.
In our latest conversation/interview, to be released soon in a video + transcript package, Michael Hudson – arguably the world’s top economist – hit the heart of the matter:
The fight against China, the fear of China is that you can’t do to China, what you did to Russia. America would love for there to be a Yeltsin figure in China to say, let’s just give all of the railroads that you’ve built, the high-speed rail, let’s give the wealth, let’s give all the factories to individuals and let the individuals run everything and, then we’ll lend them the money, or we’ll buy them out and then we can control them financially. And China’s not letting that happen. And Russia stopped that from happening. And the fury in the West is that somehow, the American financial system is unable to take over foreign resources, foreign agriculture. It is left only with military means of grabbing them as we are seeing in the near East. And you’re seeing in the Ukraine right now.
To be continued. As it stands, we should all make sure that the Ides of March – the 2021 version – have already configured a brand new geopolitical chessboard. The Russia-China Double Helix on high-speed rail has left the station – and there’s no turning back.
Conclusion
Oh, Pepe said it so clearly and so wonderfully. Today there is a massive new Geo-political alignment, and it is the direct result of insanity and poor leadership from the West. And they are so very incompetent that they have no idea with the kind of “fire” that they are playing with.
Even with an enormous military, control of all media and communication, and some hidden ultra-powerful technology, the leadership is so seriously incompetent, the systems so hopelessly flawed, and the participants so absolutely corrupted that a catastrophic collapse of their government is imminent.
I hope and pray that I am wrong.
That all this will “blow over” and just go away, and I can fall into the “dust bin” with the rest of the “doom and gloom” predictors throughout history. Let’s hope the MM is wrong.
Meanwhile, the insanity of what the West is today is gearing up. It’s the same-old, same-old. Only on a bigger scale. So the carpet bombing of China by biological weapons dis not work. So the aggressive attacks on trade and technology did not work. So the enormous armada of ships to the South China Sea did not work. So the riots and revolution in Hong Kong did not work…
…and neither will “boots on the ground” in Xinjiang either.
…nor “saving” Taiwan from China.
…nor a strong QUAD.
But they still have dreams of conducting “the rape of Nanjing” in modern Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Shanghai. They still have dreams of invading and seizing Chinese held islands. They still have the dreams of sinking all cargo ships on the high seas. They still believe that all this can be ignored…
…as long as they control the American media.
EXCEPT…
Only Americans read American media.
They do not control the thoughts of the world. And the world is getting mightily pissed. Gosh! It’s going to be one fuck of a year.
As a reminder. This is what a “double tap” looks like. As this video from Boston, Massachusetts clearly shows…
Be careful of your neighbors when you shovel your driveway.
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.
Please kindly help me out in this effort. There is a lot of effort that goes into this disclosure. I could use all the financial support that anyone could provide. Thank you very much.
If you take a casual glance at the American media you will be exposed to the ideas of “genocide”, “concentration camps”, “slave labor”, and other abuses by China in the Xinjiang province. And, if you are an American, you will believe them. After all, the “news” never lies … right? Well, in this post we are going to look at the reason WHY there is such an uproar in the USA over this patch of land in Western China. And the reasons behind it is NOT anything presented to the American citizenry. It’s something else entirely.
Where is Xingjiang?
Xinjiang is in China. It is a State / province of China. It’s a kind of “China’s version of America’s New Mexico”.
First of all, let’s look at where Xinjiang is. Because a picture will tell you more than any write up that I can compile will. So check out this map of China showing the Xinjiang region…
So, those of you all in the MM audience that somehow believe that American neocon narrative that US military troops can tromp into the region and “liberate” the Chinese people there. (For “democracy”® and “freedom”®.) Had best think long and hard if you want to deal with half of the Untied States rendered into radioactive waste.
China does not play.
This area is owned, controlled, and a fundamental part of China, and has been so for many… many years.
China will treat any “forces of liberation” with the same level of violence as Washington DC would do to defend Texas from invasion. If you all think that a “color revolution” is possible there, or that “American troops can liberate it” you had best get back on your medicines. Those fantasies are for ignorant children and the feeble-minded.
Now, let’s take a look at the BRI, shall we?
Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)
China ’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) (一带一路) is a strategy initiated by the People’s Republic of China that seeks to connect Asia with Africa and Europe via land and maritime networks with the aim of improving regional integration, increasing trade and stimulating economic growth.
The BRI is a very involved trade route into the heart of Asia that is designed to replace or supplement the sea-lane shipping routes out of China. (And subject to American Naval Blockades.)
There are many aspects of it, and it is very comprehensive.
In short, it leverages all of the neighbors to China, and builds upon robust lines of communication, trade and investment. And thus maps depicting such efforts tend to be rather convoluted and messy, such as this map from France…
The belt and road initiative.
Now, let’s simplify all this.
Let’s [1] concentrate on the land routes only, and [2] paint the canvas in broad brush strokes showing the areas of development, and influence in the BRI. And [3] lets do so taking note of the locations of China, Russia and Iran.
And when we do so, we end up with this (greatly simplified) map…
BRI simplified, showing only the land routes.
Now what can you see, when you simplify everything down and distill it into it’s simplest components?
You see the BRI as a unification of the nations of China, Russia and Iran. And internally upon the vast landmasses. Well… well, out of the reach of the “long arms” of the United States Navy.
Now, with the BRI the entire trade situation changes.
Now, Aside from trading with the Americas, China can trade with the rest of the world by land routes only. Not only is [1] logistic costs via rail cheaper than by sea, but [2] they are protected from piracy, ship damage and loss, and naval blockades by rogue nations (read; The United States and Britain.)
Sep 20, 2020 · Ifanavalblockadeisa feasible strategy, it strengthens the American system of deterrenceand dilutes any potential attempts by ChinatocoercetheUnitedStatesoritsallies.
-CouldTheU.S. NavyBlockadeChinaIntoSubmission?
Apr 06, 2019 · If a naval blockade is a feasible strategy, it strengthens the American system of deterrence and dilutes any potentialattemptsbyChinatocoercetheUnitedStatesoritsallies.
- HowaMassiveNavalBlockadeCouldBringChinaToIts Knees...
The National Interest is THE publication that you read if you desire to feel the “pulse” of the war-mongering neocons in Washington DC. Some of their typical reads are;
Now, let’s take a look at the American neocon plans to isolate and suppress China. Let’s look at what their plans have been…
Why do I feel like the planners in Washington DC like to play with little toy soldiers, fancy electronics and high technology, and fail to see the human side of their insanity? Interesting isn’t it?
Now, let’s take a look at the above map showing the BRI…
I am sure that most MM readers can read maps. And when you do, you can clearly see that the BRI renders the complete American military; Air, Land, and sea impotent.
It removes the threat of naval blockades on China.
It lowers the prices in trade goods. It enriches and uplifts the lives of millions of people in the most poverty stricken areas of the world, and connects China with it’s biggest customers for the next decade.
…
So since the BRI puts American military might at a disadvantage, it becomes critically important that the BRI be stopped at all costs.
And…
Now, boys and girls, look at where the “gateway” to the BRI is located at. Yup. That’s right.
It’s located in Xinjiang.
A map of the BRI showing the location of the “gateway” at Xinjiang.
Are the puzzle-pieces falling in place for ya? Are things getting a little clearer for you all to understand?
All this propaganda onslaught against China and Uighur Muslims isn’t about what they say it is. It’s about stopping China from building the BRI at all costs, and set in place a narrative to justify military action there.
Of course, not directly.
By proxy.
Well that is the plan at least.
And when you look at the bigger scope of things then you can understand why the military is suddenly pouring more money, more equipment and more manpower into both Afghanistan and Syria.
You just look at the map.
So what’s all this narrative all about?
Well, let’s look at another article titled “Is China committing genocide?” Reprinted as found, and all credit to the author.
XINJIANG PROVINCE, CHINA — Up is down. War is peace. And the U.S., Canada and the Netherlands have accused China of genocide.
“This is forced labor, this is forced sterilization, this is forced abortions, …the kind of thing we haven’t seen in an awfully long time in this world,” declared then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
To be fair, the accusers are experts in genocide: the U.S. and its junior imperial partner, Canada, wiped out their indigenous populations. Today the U.S. is responsible for the three biggest human rights catastrophes in the world in Afghanistan, Syria and Yemen. And the Netherlands is just coming to terms with its massacres in Indonesia.
Mike Pompeo’s successor at the State Department, Antony Blinken, is sticking with the genocide claim. That’s despite the State Department’s top lawyers stating that whatever might be happening in Xinjiang, it’s not genocide. That’s right. Chinese Communist Party genocide denialists have infiltrated the U.S. State Department to impurify our precious bodily fluids.
My goodness!
Dr Strangelove Precious Bodily Fluids Quote
Aug 12, 2020 · Everyone loves to quote famous lines from movies so having a good knowledge of good movie quotes. Arguably the greatest black comedy ever made stanley kubrick s cold war classic is the ultimate satire of the nuclear age. A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual and certainly without any choice.
Pure Zenz
So what did Pompeo and Blinken base their accusations of genocide on? There must have been a pretty strong body of on-the-ground reporting and research. Or not. It turns out that one guy is pretty much responsible for the whole narrative. His name is Adrian Zenz.
“Adrian’s research, as many of you know, has been key in establishing the existence of the camps in the first place, and in documenting the buildup of the PRC police state,” explained Hudson Institute fellow Eric Brown.
Zenz appeared almost overnight as a go-to expert on Xinjiang and Uighurs. Now he’s a regular on mainstream outlets and even on supposedly progressive news show Democracy Now. In fact, in Mike Pompeo’s official statement accusing China of genocide, he directly credited Zenz.
But most of his so-called research has been discredited, and he’s been revealed to be a straight-up fabulist. A Grayzone Newsinvestigation showed that Zenz’s claims of 1 million Uighur detained in camps were based “on a single report by Istiqlal TV, a Uyghur exile media organization based in Turkey, which was republished by Newsweek Japan.” In other words, no evidence, and not even an attempt.
Meanwhile, Zenz’s study accusing China of forced sterilizations didn’t contain any proof of coercion. The Grayzone showed how “Zenz consistently framed the expansion of public healthcare services in Xinjiang as evidence of a genocide in the making.”
Characterizing expanded access to birth control as genocide is what the Christian Right does.
So it makes perfect sense that Zenz – an evangelical fundamentalist himself – holds this view.
Jesus will cleanse the world of the infidels, and the righteous will go to Heavenly paradise.
Zenz’s first book is a psychedelic trip through the mind of a Rapture-ready Christer.
The tome is entitled “Worthy to Escape: Why All Believers Will Not Be Raptured Before the Tribulation.”
In it, the book claims that in the end times, “God’s refining process will wipe out all unbelieving Jews who refuse to come to Christ.”
So Zenz writes racist fantasies about Jews, like me. Who knows what he thinks will happen to Uighur Muslims! Yikes!
Jesus will cleanse the world of the infidels, and the righteous will go to Heavenly paradise.
He also says that Satan is using postmodernism to attack gender-authority structures and undermine what he believes are God’s unique but different role assignments for men and women.
Clearly, he is against women’s rights.
So does he support criminalizing birth control in his native Germany and here in the U.S. where he now resides?
Even more deranged, Zenz’s big genocide study claimed that women in Xinjiang receive 800 to 1600 IUD insertions per capita. That means every Uighur woman is surgically implanted with 4 to 8 IUDs every single day of the year.
It’s not even possible.
Evidently, none of the outlets that feverishly published his claims bothered to give even a cursory examination to the evidence, or lack thereof, that he presents.
Other reasons (besides genocide) for having fewer kids
In reality, the decrease in birth rate is a normal, predictable outcome of economic development. When people are more financially secure, they choose to have fewer kids and do it later in life.
In fact, China is pouring money into Xinjiang to develop its economy.
According to a 2015 U.S. government study, “To decrease ethnic instability in Xinjiang, the Chinese government’s plan is to economically develop the region.”
That’s right. Chinese Communist Party agents have also time-traveled to 2015 to infiltrate the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School and write a study trying to justifying genocide. Damn you Xi!!!
As a result of this economic development, China’s birth rate is falling at rapid rates in all regions, which comes with its own set of problems, like an aging population – similar to what the U.S. is dealing with. So Chinese lawmakers are now pushing for the universal two-child policy to be changed to three.
But this rapture-ready fanatic Adrian Zenz isn’t the only source for these claims of genocide, right?
How about CNN: the self-described most trusted name in news? CNN says its reporting found that some Uyghur women were being forced to use birth control and undergo sterilization… There it is. Can’t argue with that.
…The article was “based on a report by Adrian Zenz.”
Uh oh.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum accuses China of crimes against humanity and genocide against Uighurs. They reference “leaked government documents” and “researchers,” …
Of course, referring to Zenz.
Zenz and the Genocide Choir
With Zenz at the center, a cast of shady characters have promoted this disinformation to support the phony genocide claim:
Rushan Abbas — former Pentagon contractor who worked for Radio Free Asia, a U.S. propaganda mouthpiece started by the CIA.
Darren Byler — a fellow at the Wilson Center, which is funded by the U.S. government and a host of other NATO governments, big banks and corporations. His resume shows he has also been funded to the tune of 100,000 dollars through the U.S. Department of Education.
He does panels with Louise Greve — the former vice president of the CIA cutout National Endowment for Democracy, who now runs the NED-funded Uyghur Human Rights Project.
There’s Human Rights Watch China Director Sophie Richardson — this cold-warrior wrote an op-ed in the liberal interventionist Foreign Affairs magazine calling for Biden to confront China over human rights. What the hell are the people at Human Rights Watch smoking to believe the guy who just bombed Syria and sponsors Israel’s project of apartheid has a shred of crediblity on human rights?
Then there’s the Australian Strategic Policy Institute – the self-declared independent, non-partisan think tank, which is totally dependent on funding from the Australian and American departments of defense, NATO, weapons makers, the Embassy of Japan, and the Embassy of Israel, among others.
All with the blessings of Jesus.
2018 and the sudden “genocide” drumbeat
The Uighur genocide claim was virtually unheard of before 2018. Up until that point, Western media coverage of the issue was dramatically different.
Take The New York Times. In the 1980s, it published a series of articles about how Uighur Muslims were actually prospering and Islam was flourishing under Chinese rule.
By the 1980s, this separatist movement was becoming violent. In one 1997 incident, the Times reported on, about a thousand Muslim separatists of the Uighur ethnic minority rampaged through the town Yining on Wednesday, smashing cars, burning shops and beating up ethnic Chinese to protest Beijing’s rule.
In 1994, the Times reported that Uighur extremists were returning from Afghanistan, where the CIA spent a billion dollars arming what it called a “University of Jihad.” The Times noted that “Afghan veterans have fought in two western provinces, Uighur and Xinjiang, where they have armed and trained Chinese Muslim rebels.”
In the wake of the U.S. destruction of Yugoslavia, the Times noted the separatists fantasized about a NATO bombing campaign
This Uighur separatist movement, its violent anti-Han rampages, or the militants returning from Afghanistan are barely mentioned in any of the contemporary Times reports claiming genocide.
In 1981, The Washington Postwrote about growing ethnic tensions in Xinjiang, noting that “Peking has taken pains to ensure ethnic rights and elevate minority group members to leadership positions. In Xinjiang, a kind of affirmative action program has been started at the provincial university to guarantee that 60 percent of new students are from ethnic backgrounds.” Today, none of this gets mentioned in the Post’s coverage.
How about Newsweek? Back in 2000, it reported that Xinjiang was a weak point that threatened to fragment China along ethnic lines, that Uighur separatists threatened the security of Beijing, and some might even join forces with Islamic “holy warriors.” Now it’s all genocide, all the time.
With these misleading or outright false claims based on manipulated statistics, the only evidence for a Uighur genocide is anecdotal, which is hard to prove or disprove. But the testimony in Western media is often full of contradictions.
Take the case of Sayragul Sauytbay. In 2019, she told the UK tabloid The Daily Mail that she witnessed concentration camp “inmates being flayed, raped by guards in front of other prisoners, given injections that made them infertile and force-fed pork.” Keep in mind this is the same tabloid that has spent years peddling Islamophobic hysteria and once warned about Muslim fanatics hijacking the royal wedding. Sauytbay has told similar stories in more respectable newspapers like Foreign Policy,Haaretz and Deutsche Welle.
But back in 2018, Sauytbay told the Globe and Mail that “She did not personally see violence.” For some reason, she completely changed her story. Maybe she was fearful and traumatized, or maybe she falsified it. Apparently, none of the outlets that published her testimony bothered to check into that discrepancy.
Then there’s Tursunay Ziyawundun. She’s the central character in the forced-sterilization narrative cooked up by Adrian Zenz. She’s delivered teary testimonies for the BBC, CNN and Democracy Now. A few months before those reports, however, she told Buzzfeed News, “I wasn’t beaten or abused.” Again, why did she change her story? And why did all of these media outlets fail to do a basic check into her past statements?
Older rumblings
In my research, the first mention of Uighur genocide took place back in 1997, when several so-called “Chinese dissidents” testified to Congress. One woman named Rizvangul Uighur claimed that China’s birth control policy involved murdering babies as soon as they were born. She said the one-child policy was so strictly enforced that “babies are being killed in [the] delivery room without seeing the mother’s face and world.”
Representative Chris Smith (R-NJ) – a homophobic bigot from the Christian right – claimed that Uighur women “are often taken physically to the abortion mill. Forced abortions can be performed very late in pregnancy, even in the ninth month. Sometimes the baby’s skull is crushed with forceps as it emerges from the birth canal. Either the woman or her husband may then be forcibly sterilized.”
That’s the same Chris Smith who several months before was railing against abortion rights at the so-called March For Life rally and accusing Bill Clinton of murdering unborn children:
You are and your legacy will be abortion president. You know, mister president, that the scriptures admonish us to pray for those in authority. And we will be faithful to that. As believers we will pray and fast, and sincerely hope, that you reject the culture of death.”
Neither Rizvangul Uighur nor Smith bothered to mention that in 1997 Uighurs and other ethnic minorities were not subject to the one-child policy. So the birthrate in Xinjiang province was 19.66 – meaning there were nearly 20 births per 1,000 people. Meanwhile, in Beijing, the birthrate was 7.91.
Of course, there was a clear political goal in the bogus testimony delivered in Congress. It was coordinated to be released on the day that Bill Clinton met with President of China Jiang Zemin.
Members of Congress were demanding Clinton take a hardline approach to China, some even using racist epithets to warn of a Chinese invasion. “The White House will not wise up until there’s a full blown rice paddy on the east lawn,” warned Democratic Ohio Congressman James Traficant, whose career ultimately ended in a bribery conviction and expulsion from Congress.
After that, save for a couple of Voice of America articles, there was no mention in Western media about the Uighur genocide — until 2018…
…And the Donald Trump “War on China”.
The contemporary hypocritical propaganda barrage
It’s worth pointing out that the vast majority of American politicians taking up the supposed Uighur genocide cause are totally supportive of U.S.-sponsored genocides around the world. Like Chris Smith (yup, he’s still there).
The same Chris Smith who welcomed Benjamin Netanyahu with a statement of “unequivocal support for Israel” just a few months after it killed 551 Palestinian children in Gaza.
Or Florida Senator Rick Scott – also a bestie of the butcher of Gaza, Benjamin Netanyahu.
The neocon Michael Pillsbury – the same Michael Pillsbury who in the 1980s, as a state department official, oversaw the CIA’s arming of the Afghanistan mujahideen with Stinger missiles, the same mujahideen who would train Uighur jihadists.
The Uighur genocide is almost perfectly tailored for right-wing agitators who want to portray socialism as a totalitarian system akin to Nazism. “When people say ‘never again’ they were (sic) full of crap. They’re just full of crap. This is one area where the United States should be taking a leading role… shaving people’s heads, shipping them on trains and to concentration camps where you force them into labor and/or sterilize them,” declared Ben Shapiro.
“Many of them women who, of their own volition, had the Chinese government paramilitary forcefully end those pregnancies. Forcefully sterilize,” said Tim Pool. “They’re trying to sterilize the Uighur population but force the Han population genetic code into other Uighur women,” his fellow podcaster claimed.
Should I mention here that the U.S. government forcibly sterilized 1,400 Black women in a California prison? Haven’t seen any U.S. government officials or news media talk about that!
This propaganda deluge is having a powerful impact on U.S. public opinion. In 2017, just before the Uighur genocide narrative kicked into high gear, 53% of Americans had a favorable view of China – the highest in three decades. Now, a new poll shows it’s down to 20% – a historic low. That was accompanied by a 150% increase in anti-Asian hate crimes in U.S. cities.
It’s the “sheeple effect“. It’s when zombie population mindlessly regurgitate the media narratives about things that they themselves have NEVER personally experienced. They just repeat without thinking. They regurgitate without consideration. They have no personal experiences to justify their beliefs.
"Oh, China is terrible."
How do you know this?"Everyone knows this. What a silly question."
Did you experience something bad while you were in China?"I've never been to China, but I have a friend of a friend who has. And he says it's terrible".
How do you know that the third hand information is correct, and accurate?"I know. I feel it in my bones, besides everyone knows that China is terrible."
Sheeple drink Brawndo. It has electrolytes.
Trillions of dollars worth of “caring”
So what is this all about?
Why did corporate media and militaristic right wing politicians, along with a surprising number of progressive dupes, suddenly start freaking out about a supposed genocide in China?
Why?
Xinjiang is the heart of China’s Belt and Road initiative, the economic plan that connects Asia to Europe and the Middle East. It’s an alternative model to the dictatorship of the U.S. dollar, where the World Bank and International Monetary Fund turn countries into neo-colonies for American corporations – a system backed up with the constant threat of military invasion.
The U.S. can’t deal with legitimate competition, so it’s resorting to smears in an attempt to isolate China diplomatically and slow its economic growth.
It’s either that, or the government and military that forcibly sterilized minority women in prisons, tortured in Abu Ghraib, relies on prison labor, and is waging genocidal wars against multiple Muslim-majority countries, just simply cares a whole lot about the Uighurs.
Sure…
But you know, China is starting to fight back
While they have been passively building, and negotiating, studying, researching, and making, other things are a-foot…
Companies, individuals in Xinjiang to sue rumormongering Adrian Zenz for causing reputation damage, economic losses
By Global Times Published: Mar 09, 2021 10:23 AM
A number of enterprises and individuals in Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region have directed lawyers to sue German national Adrian Zenz (who calls himself Zheng Guoen in Chinese), Xinjiang local news outlet ts.cn reported.
Local people said that Zenz spread "forced labor" and other rumors related to Xinjiang, which damaged their reputation and caused them to suffer economic losses.
They have filed a civil lawsuit with a local court in Xinjiang, demanding that Zenz apologize, restore their reputation and compensate them for their losses.
Adrian Zenz, born in 1974, is an infamous anti-China pseudo-scholar. He is a German far-right fundamentalist Christian who believes he is "led by God" on a "mission" against China, member of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, a far-right organization established by the US government in 1993, and senior fellow in a research group set up by the US intelligence community against the vocational education and training centers in Xinjiang.
In 2018 when he was still a faculty member of the European School of Culture and Theology at Columbia International University, Korntal, he has gone almost overnight from an unknown researcher into a go-to pundit on Xinjiang, as the US steps up its disinformation campaign against China.
In recent years, Zenz has produced multiple sensational "reports" on Xinjiang on social media platforms like Twitter, and fabricated false academic research on Xinjiang, in which he spread rumors such as large-scale monitoring of local ethnic minorities and forced labor of the Uygurs.
These false claims have been pursued by Western media. Misled by such rumors on Xinjiang, some countries and companies have reduced or even halted imports of cotton and cotton products from Xinjiang, causing some cotton farmers and cotton processing enterprises in Xinjiang to suffer great economic losses.
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There’s this belief (in the West) that China is so God-darn awful that it “need’s to be put in it’s place”, and that a hot war with it is justified. American ships can sail freely in the South China Sea, and defend “democracy” in Taiwan, and Hong Kong. You know to stop the evil Chinese! It must happen soon! It must happen Now! Freedom is at stake! Now. Now! NOWWW!
It’s all bullshit.
It’s what you can expect for over four years of massively funded anti-China propaganda barraging the “news” with this nonsense. By now, most sheeple are “foaming at the mouth” ready to “kick some slant-eyed butt”. And the neocons are already planning how they will seize and then cart away the loot from a “ripe for the pickings” China.
Um.
MM readers know better.
A war against China over some nameless islands in the South China Sea to defend for “democracy” and “freedom” will result in nuclear destruction of the United States by the combined forces of Russia, China, and Iran. What ever remains standing will be subjugated in the most horrific manner. As in sacked. As in destroyed, enslaved, and subjugated so that English becomes a forgotten language that no one dares utter.
You would think that people would be aware of this. I mean, where does everyone think their electronics comes from? Silicon valley? Nope. It’s all made in China. Not just your iPhone (outsourced now to India, but the key components are still made in China and shipped to India), but all those fancy electronics in the top end military aircraft and missiles that America uses. F-22 key components. Made in China. iPhone internals. Made in China. Tesla car batteries. Made in China.
You would think that Americans would be aware. But they are not. And the neocons are just ready for a fight.
It will be their last.
I can say “watch out“, and the uneducated will respond “oh, let China try“. But all that bravado becomes meaningless when you haven’t eaten in weeks, your body is covered with pustules and sores, and all the water is radioactive. And you are engaged in a street battle between roving bands of urban youths riding brand new Toyota pickups with M134GAU-17GatlingGuns. All over some moldy turnips that rumor says that you hoarded before the war.
These neocons are insane and they believe what they tell each other.
The Rapture, in Christianity, the eschatological (concerned with the last things and Endtime) belief that both living and dead believers will ascend into heaven to meet Jesus Christ at the Second Coming (Parousia).
The belief in the Rapture emerged from the anticipation that Jesus would return to redeem all members of the church. The term rapture, however, appears nowhere in the New Testament. In his First Letter to the Thessalonians, the Apostle Paul wrote that the Lord will come down from heaven and that a trumpet call will precede the rise of “the dead in Christ” (4:16). Thereafter, “we who are still alive and are left will be caught up” (in Latin, rapio, the standard translation of Paul’s original Koine Greek) “together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air” (4:17). The Synoptic Gospels (Mark, Matthew, and Luke) mention Jesus’ return to earth from heaven; e.g., The Gospel According to Mark cites Jesus as foretelling a “ ‘coming in clouds’ with great power and glory” (13:26).
Belief in the Rapture is often connected with a belief in the literal coming of the millennium, the 1,000-year rule of Jesus Christ after his return, as mentioned in chapter 20 of The Revelation to John (also known as The Book of Revelation), although there are also amillennial interpretations of the belief that reject that notion. There is also a divide among pre-tribulationists, who believe that the Rapture will occur before a period of tribulation on earth mentioned in Daniel (12:1) and Matthew (24:21) and preceding the End, and post-tribulationists, those who believe that it will come after that period. Finally, dispensationalism, the notion that God periodically enters into a new covenant with his people, has had some influence on the belief, insofar as some believers in the Rapture consider themselves to be dispensationalists.
Along with the epistles of Paul and the Revelation to John, apocalyptic literature and millennialist thinking have long maintained a hold on the Christian imagination, even when they have been variously interpreted or—in the case of millennialism—even rejected by some of the major figures in the history of Christian theology. The 16th-century movement called Futurism, expounded by the Jesuit Francisco Ribera, stressed the future fulfillment of the prophecy of the End as mentioned in scripture with both the rise of the Antichrist and the return of Christ. Another historical event whose ideas may have had some influence on the later evolution of the idea was the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony by Puritans seeking to build a “City upon a Hill” in anticipation of the Second Coming. The evangelical fervour of the Great Awakening (early 18th century) and Second Great Awakening (late 18th to early 19th century) in the United States widely promoted ideas about the millennium, about a new dispensation, and about the imminence of Christ’s return. The most famous of such thinkers was William Miller, whose prediction that the Second Coming would occur in 1843 inspired the subsequent formation of Adventist churches.
The idea of the Rapture persisted through the remainder of the 19th century and throughout the 20th century, gaining popularity among some evangelical and fundamentalist Christians as well as among some other Christian and even non-Christian new religious movements. During the Cold War, between the United States and the Soviet Union, particularly as the threat of nuclear war grew, prophecies about the Rapture gained currency. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries the idea was prominent in popular culture, in part because of the millennialist fervour that arose as the year 2000 approached. The so-called “Chick Pamphlets” (illustrated tracts authored by the evangelist Jack Chick) and the Left Behind (1995–2007) novel and movie franchise were two examples of that phenomenon. Meanwhile, Endtime prophecies promoting a specific date for the Rapture—most notably the two dates in 2011 predicted by the American evangelist Harold Camping—proliferated.
-The Rapture
You see, in their mind, world War III is a win-win.
[1] If they push and successfully create strife in the South China Sea, and it is limited to that region, they can capitalize upon it. Make money off it. And it can turn into a long-drawn out quagmire. Or fine money pipeline into their coffers.
[2] If the strife leaves the predetermined area of conflict, no problem. What’s China gonna do? Eh? They are no match for the Great and Powerful US! They USA could “just sit off the coast and launch cruse missiles and plink at the pitiful Chinese as they run from hidy-hole to hidy-hole”.
[3] Even if the worst came about; No problem, either. God has blessed the United States, and then Jesus will come down from heaven and save all the American believers, and let the rest of the earth cook into a poisonous stew of radioactivity and destruction. Good!
With Trump in office, and the appointment of key neocon radical fanatics, Their anti-China crusade went mainstream and has most of the Western allied world’s population hating the Chinese. Yeah, it’s destined to dissipate, but right now the PTB are using everything in their power to keep the hate alive. They are keeping this monster, this nightmare illusion, ALIVE!
Oh, baby! This is extremely dangerous.
This ideology calls on anointed “Christian” leaders to take over the state and make the goals and laws of the nation “biblical.” It seeks to reduce government to organizing little more than defense, internal security and the protection of property rights.
It fuses with the Christian religion the iconography and language of American imperialism and nationalism, along with the cruelest aspects of corporate capitalism.
The intellectual and moral hollowness of the ideology, its flagrant distortion and misuse of the Bible, the contradictions that abound within it — its leaders champion small government and a large military, as if the military is not part of government — and its laughable pseudoscience are impervious to reason and fact. And that is why the movement is dangerous.
-The Radical Christian Right
I cannot stress it enough. This kind of thinking is dangerous. And there are some very important people, in key positions in the American government which believes these insane narratives. They believe. They are real believers.
Yikes!
Now, from time to time, I come across something other than one of the major neocon articles that announce plans for the suppression of China, and how America will remain the dominant superpower in the world. They are few and far between. Seriously. But when you find one, it’s not only refreshing but discusses the reality.
Here is one such rare article. Read it slowly. Absorb it carefully. They are not trying to manipulate sheeple. They are not trying to justify anything. They are telling and stating things AS THEY ARE today. Not what they might be, or what they wish to become.
And while they urge you to participate to “spread the word”, they do so out of concern that America is leading the world towards a new “Dark Ages”; one here the world might never recover from.
And they spell it out clearly…
The U.S. is Set on a Path to War with China. What Is to be Done?
In this meticulously researched exposé, KJ Noh traces the genealogy of U.S. geopolitical strategy in Asia and the Pacific, giving us an inside view of both the realpolitik of U.S. imperial expansion and the architects behind it. Concluding with an analysis of 21st century U.S. total informational warfare, Noh argues that the path to a kinetic war against China has been decades in the making. Once triggered, it could rapidly turn nuclear.
It was a gripping, stunning testimony. Before Congress, a 15 year old volunteer nurse, Nayirah, struggled to compose her trembling voice, barely holding back tears, as she testified that marauding soldiers had thrown babies out of incubators in a hospital, leaving them to die on the floor.
Later, Amnesty International confirmed authoritatively that 312 babies had been killed this way. [1] All the news agencies ran with the story, and the country and Congress were in a total uproar.
There was only one problem: it was completely, utterly, totally fraudulent. It was engineered, perjured, coached testimony concocted by PR experts, designed to manufacture consent for a U.S. war on Iraq.
At the time, it was also crystal clear that the claims were absurd—Kuwait had a population of less than 1.5 million at the time, and given its birth rate, would have had a few hundred premature babies a year. It’s inconceivable that over 300 of them could have been clustered in a single hospital on a single day.
Nevertheless, this was the story that was sold to the U.S. people. Representative John Porter stated,
“We have never heard…[such] a record of inhumanity and brutality and sadism…I don’t know how the people of the civilized countries of this world can fail to do everything within their power to remove this scourge from the face of the earth.”
Not long afterward, the U.S. went to war with Iraq. It would wage war again, 12 years later, doubling down with even more monstrous lies about weapons of mass destruction.
Today, we are facing a similar situation: the U.S. is escalating rapidly towards a shooting war with China, and similar absurd, astonishing, and monstrous lies are being spread. In fact, the U.S. is already engaged in “multi-domain” “hybrid warfare” with China. This is warfare just below the threshold of direct military engagement.
On the ground this involves:
Economic Warfare: trade sanctions and tariff war, as well as technological warfare: attempted seizure of Chinese companies (TikTok); attacks on China’s international 5G contracts; sanctions on the primary & secondary supply chains of key sectors of Chinese industry (e.g. Huawei’s semiconductor supply chain); attacks on Ant Financial’s IPO.
Legal Warfare, or “lawfare,” including over 380 anti-China bills in Congress, and 14 individual and state lawsuits against China for over $30 trillion in “Covid damages”; the long arm “legal” kidnapping of Huawei’s executive
Diplomatic Warfare, including consulate shutdowns, harassment of diplomats, breaching of diplomatic pouches and compounds, and calls for regime change.
Military Brinksmanship and posturing in the South China Sea, the East China Sea, the Taiwan straits; complete encirclement of China with strategic weapons, surveillance, and 400 offensive bases (“The Pacific Pivot”), the use of air bases in Taiwan for military surveillance, and plans to station intermediate range nuclear missiles all along China’s periphery. [2]
Civil Subversion: color revolution, urban terror, destabilization and delegitimation operations in Hong Kong (and other places where China has interests), including millions of dollars of funneled for organization & training, and encrypted communications infrastructure built to coordinate anti-government activities.
Academic Warfare: through the FBI’s China Initiative, every 10 hours a case is opened against a Chinese student or researcher in the U.S. (currently 2700 cases) and all Chinese students are considered potential “non-traditional” “collectors” and “spies” involved in a “thousand grains of sand” collection strategy.
Information Warfare: last but not least, we are seeing total Information warfare.
The stories about so-called “massive human rights abuses,” “Chinese concentration camps,” “Chinese-made-and-released Covid,” “China has harmed us economically,” “China has stolen its way to the top,” “China is oppressing independent Hong Kong,” are part of this information warfare.
He left out biological warfare. But we'll give this author a pass on this glaring omission.
This mass propaganda incites people to hate China irrationally and unconditionally, to manufacture consent for war. The U.S. military calls this information warfare, “the firehose of falsehoods” and we are all being drenched with these lies. This is necessary to justify war against an enemy and to curtail any rational discussion or questioning.
Some of the questions that the public are kept from asking are:
Are these allegations supported by any facts?
Has China threatened us?
Is the U.S. at risk from China?
Is this war justifiable by any means?
Is it legal?
Do the citizens of the U.S. want to go to war?
Could the U.S. even fight, let alone win a war with China?
A careful, reasoned approach to these questions, would lead one to say, No.
Before we try to play whack-a-mole with the blatant war propaganda, a more useful and clarifying approach is to ask, why is the U.S. telling these lies to go to war?
For this, we have to look at history.
Why The U.S. Is At War: Culture shock and the challenge to supremacy
The earliest European travelers were astonished to discover in China a country, in many ways, far more advanced than the West: a rich, diverse, multi-cultural civilization with sophisticated systems of governance, and vibrant cities built with complex systems of planning and management.
Above all, they marveled at a harmonious multi-religious, multi-ethnic society, free of sectarian strife, and an inclusive merit-based [3] system of political power that selected the most competent people to govern and rule, regardless of creed, color, background, or religion.
[4] This contrasted the Western system of hereditary aristocratic rule within a society torn apart regularly with religious strife.
These ideas of diversity, tolerance, inclusion, and earned—not inherited–privilege, would strongly influence the leaders of the Enlightenment, so much so that Western philosophers such as Voltaire and Leibnitz believed that the Chinese had “perfected moral science,” and that Chinese statecraft was the model for the West to emulate if it wanted to develop into an enlightened civilization.
These discoveries struck a hard blow at Christian and Western supremacy.
Western colonization was built on a foundational belief that the West was more advanced, more evolved—closer to God—than the “barbarous” countries it was invading, subjugating, exploiting, and destroying.
It needed at least the pretense of being more “advanced” to justify its colonial “civilizing mission.”
Reactionary thinkers like Herder—who had never visited China—lashed back rapidly by propagating a theory of the depravity of Chinese: that China was an “immoral land with no honor,” an “embalmed mummy” characterized by stagnation, in contrast with Western “dynamism.”
In addition, the Chinese system of meritocratic government was deeply troubling to a West built on stratified class privilege.
A civilization without hereditary aristocrats was unfathomable and terrifying to the Western ruling class.
Montesquieu, (borrowing from Giovanni Botero) thus concocted the trope that China’s more egalitarian system had to be “despotic”—despotic for him because it threatened the “liberties” (aristocratic privileges) of his class.
Hegel chiseled this canard into the Western consciousness with an armchair theory of “Oriental Despotism,” whereby the Chinese had failed to evolve due to inherent, characterological flaws in its people and its political culture.
Marx chimed in with the “Asiatic mode of production,” and Weber and Wittfogel also reinforced it. These allegations of “despotism”—despite being total distortions of Chinese governance–have infused all Western discourses about China since.
A civilization without hereditary aristocrats was unfathomable and terrifying to the Western ruling class. Montesquieu, (borrowing from Giovanni Botero) thus concocted the trope that China’s more egalitarian system had to be “despotic”—despotic for him because it threatened the “liberties” (aristocratic privileges) of his class. These allegations of “despotism”—despite being total distortions of Chinese governance–have infused all Western discourses about China since.
Enter the Bandits
At the same time, “embalmed” Chinese “inferiority” notwithstanding, the West craved the exquisite consumer goods of China—tea, silk, porcelain—and this created huge trade imbalances.
The Western response to balance the books was narco-trafficking: smuggling in industrial amounts of opium—at its peak, up to 9 million pounds a year.
When China objected and opposed this on sovereign and moral grounds and confiscated the drugs, war was declared.
Reparations were forced, concessions extracted, and the country plundered, looted, and destroyed.
In one show of force to the Chinese, the Summer Palace of the Emperor was sacked by Lord Elgin, which Victor Hugo described thus:
There was, in a corner of the world, a wonder of the world…. All that can be begotten of the imagination…was there…. Build a dream, a dazzling cavern of human fantasy with the face of a temple and palace…. This edifice, as enormous as a city, had been built by the centuries…. This wonder has disappeared.
One day two bandits entered the Summer Palace. One plundered, the other burned.
All the treasures of all our cathedrals put together could not equal this formidable and splendid museum of the Orient. It contained not only masterpieces of art, but masses of jewelry…. One of the two victors filled his pockets...the other…filled his coffers. And back they came to Europe, arm in arm, laughing away. Such is the story of the two bandits [England & France].
This violence, banditry, and racism, justified by the belief in the subhuman nature of the Chinese, became normalized practice against the Chinese over two centuries, and great American fortunes—Perkins, Astor, Forbes, Cabot, Delano (Roosevelt)—and Ivy league institutions at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia were built on this extraction and narco-trafficking.
Hewing to the belief that the Chinese were less than human, enterprising Euro-American drug barons pushed opium that addicted 10% of the population, essentially “roofie-ing” an entire nation and stealing its wealth.
Just as U.S. Southern wealth had been built on the decimation of black bodies through the slave trade, U.S. East Coast wealth was built on the destruction of Chinese bodies through the drug trade, in what historian John K. Fairbank described as
“the most long-continued and systematic international crime of modern times.”
Dehumanization, humiliation, assault, theft, rape, colonization, appropriation–these became the standard Western approach towards China and the Chinese; the Chinese people were “filthy yellow hordes,” an inferior, subhuman race, lacking agency, fit only to be colonized, exploited, enslaved, lynched, erased, and wherever possible, extinguished through race war.
It would get worse.
Cold and Hot war: A Chinaman’s Chance
Inside U.S. territory itself, the mythology of “yellow peril”—originally a German colonial war trope—became pervasive.
Newspaper editor Horace Greeley, argued that the Chinese were “uncivilized, unclean, and filthy beyond all conception, without any of the higher domestic or social relations; lustful and sensual in their dispositions; every female is a prostitute of the basest order.”
Greeley, a progressive (who employed a young Marx as a reporter), was simply mouthing the platitudes of his day; much worse than rhetoric was the routine violence.
Prefiguring similar present-day fears that Chinese were stealing jobs, wealth, or threatening America, thousands of Chinese were massacred, lynched, set on fire, expelled from their communities in the late 19th Century:
In 1871, the LA Chinatown massacre,
In 1880, the Denver Yellow Peril pogrom,
In 1885 Wyoming Rock Springs massacre,
The Issaquah Valley attack,
The Arson of Seattle’s Chinatown,
The Tacoma riot,
In 1886 the Seattle Riot of 1886,
The Oregon Hell’s Canyon massacre.
“A Chinaman’s chance” became a common term: to be Chinese was to be subject to sudden death at any time at the whim of white people.
In response, the Chinese hid themselves inside ghettos where they could, fled pogroms, arson, and mass lynchings, and kept their heads down, “eating bitter” and trying to stay alive.
Where they managed to settle down without being killed, they were subjected to cultural erasure, economic blockade, social isolation, a ban on owning property and businesses, and a proscription on marrying and having children, in short, planned elimination.
A minor respite during WWII, when the U.S. allied itself with the Chinese KMT (Kuomintang) against the Japanese gave a small glimmer of reprieve, as local leaders tried to establish breathing space, and the Japanese took on the role of the “bad Asians.”
This lasted until the Chinese communists liberated themselves in 1949, and wrested back their own country.
“China has stood up,” Mao declared, igniting jubilation throughout the third world and sending shockwaves of horror through the colonial west.
This arrant act of self-liberation and self-determination—along with the U.S.’s astonishment that the monstrous KMT fascists they had courted and funded had been trounced–unleashed a hysterical new wave of Sinophobia during the McCarthy era.
High-ranking Congressional committees demanded “Who lost China?”—as if it had been theirs—and purged the State Department of the moderate “China-hands,” who had been sympathetic or informed about China and its political institutions.
A paroxysm of anti-China and anti-Asian hatred would shiver and fester throughout the cold war, burning, stoking and consuming itself through…
Ttwo hot wars (the Korean war and the Vietnam war),
Counterinsurgencies (Malaya),
Politicide (Indonesia), and…
…smoldering on through the Nixon era, and crackling back alive to the flushed, red hot heat of the current moment.
In a country built on settler-colonial racism, this violent, racist, anti-China hatred—one of the most enduring legacies and traditions of the West—is the noxious Petri dish in which this propaganda for war is being cultured and vectored.
To this day, these stereotypes—ideological templates–are readily applied, for example, as regards Covid-19. In the Sinophobic Western press, Covid-19 is allegedly caused by dirty Chinese eating habits, dishonest cover-up, depraved indifference to life, despotic suppression of information, and dangerous intent towards the West.
In a word, the Chinese are dirty, dishonest, depraved, despotic, and dangerous.
Every day, these racist slanders are plastered and repeated, ad nauseam and ad infinitum, in Western outlets like The Guardian, The Washington Post, or TheNew York Times, and then catapulted into orbit by Twitter and Facebook.
White supremacy and its attendant anti-Asian fear and hatred are some of the oldest, most enduring, most deep-rooted hatreds in the Western mind.
Underneath the shallow topsoil of civility and liberal tolerance, it festers and simmers in angry, molten layers of the subconscious, quick to flare up in white-hot violence at any perceived slight or challenge to white superiority, and rapidly weaponized as political expediency requires.
Realpolitik: Opening And Closure
Miraculously, during the 70’s, a battered and bruised U.S., humbled from defeats in the Vietnam war, and seeking a realpolitik to untangle the quagmire, decided to open relations with China to counterbalance the Soviet Union.
Despite over a century of hatred, and the containment of the Russians for being an “Asiatic Race,” the U.S. normalized relations with Chinese, and thus began a short, temporary, realist honeymoon, a brief respite from this race-baiting and race hatred.
This idyll was not to last.
After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989, two things became readily apparent: 1) there was no further political need to engage with China, since the primary reason (the threat of the Soviet Union) had gone away, and 2) it was clear for anyone understanding history and geography that China could become a challenger to the United States itself, due to its size, capacity, and dynamism.
Thus the long, unabated, and persistent thread of anti-China hatred—red-scare-yellow-peril-thinking, reinvigorated again with the persistent white fragility about new challenges to supremacy—came back with a vengeance.
Despite continued engagement with China from the Nixon to the Clinton era, Sinophobia remained a silent, underground political force with a tremendous gravitational pull.
Two groups were important in giving these forces concrete shape and form.
He was the Pentagon’s Oracle, directing its secretive internal think tank, the Office of Net Assessment, for 42 years, and was top advisor to 12 Secretaries of Defense.
Originally part of an elite group of econometric thinkers at RAND (Herman “Strangelove” Kahn, James Schlesinger, Daniel Ellsberg, Albert Wohlstetter), they worked on game theoretic & stochastic modeling of complex phenomena, and on how to strategize the unthinkable and the insane: how to win at nuclear Armageddon.
Throughout his long tenure at the inner sanctum, Marshall had two key obsessions: U.S. military supremacy, first against the Soviet Union, then after the fall of the USSR, against China.
Post-1991, he became singularly obsessed with preventing China’s rise to power.
Using a deft mixture of threat inflation (through recondite “net” assessments & heterodox “team B” reviews), classified white papers, cryptic pronouncements to the power elite, and the incessant cultivation of a cult of loyalists, Marshall kept the Pentagon’s gravy train running on time, while instilling in his followers a paranoid, “long durée” mindset of endless and moving threat inflation.
Throughout his long tenure at the inner sanctum, Marshall had two key obsessions: U.S. Military supremacy, first against the Soviet Union, then after the fall of the USSR, against China. Post-1991, he became singularly obsessed with preventing China’s rise to power.
Marshall’s proteges, Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Cohen, Krepinevich, Pillsbury, Herman Kahn, Richard Perle, Richard Armitage, Michael O’Hanlon, and countless other neocon heavyweights were graduates of “St. Andrew’s Prep School” or the “Church of St. Andrew,” and mentored into Marshall’s world view and strategies.
These ideologues had suckled at the woozy philosophical teat of Leo Strauss (imagining they were imbibing Plato, Hegel, or Kojeve) and graduated from Ivy institutions funded from Chinese opium smuggling.
Marshall fed them solid food, C-rations, and the bloody red meat that cut and sharpened their fangs for ideological and political battle.
In 1992, a fully teethed group of Marshall’s neocon protegés penned the Defense Guidance Planning (DPG) document that came to be known as the “Wolfowitz Doctrine.”
A preposterous, overweening document, embarrassing upon leakage for its hubris, irrationality, and illegality, it was immediately disavowed but not discarded.
A few years later, it was redacted and upgraded into the PNAC (“The Project for a New American Century”)’s Mein Kampf-like document, “Rebuilding Americas Defenses.”
This was, in essence, an unhinged plan for total world domination (“unipolar global dominance”) in all domains of war (“full spectrum dominance”), unfettered by international law or any sense of proportion, rationality, or morality.
Borrowing from the DPG its call for the unencumbered use of aggressive, pre-emptive war, including the use of nuclear and biological warfare, it postulated a “Pearl Harbor-like” incident to operationalize.
Not long after, this doctrine became realized under Rumsfeld and Cheney, bringing us the chaos, murder, tragedy of Iraq and Afghanistan and the endless catastrophic wars of the post-Bush years.
Contemporaneously, with the Soviet Union dissolved, and the U.S. pressing NATO right up against the flank of Russia, the U.S. also began to cross-hatch the contours of a containment strategy against an emerging China, the next potential challenger to U.S. global domination.
Marshall and his Jedis began explicit, long term countermoves.
Even as the Middle East continued to spiral into chaos, yet more wide-ranging and ambitious plans were hatched against the Middle Kingdom.
A strategy to withdraw from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) was initially floated (and later, with the blessing of the CFR, circulated, and eventually implemented).
Aggressive forward bases were planned in the early 2000’s, then built in East Asia along the first island chain, placing deadly and destabilizing strategic weaponry right up against China’s throat and belly.
New alliances and strategies were drawn up, and old alliances reinforced and rekindled, and a dangerously empire-nostalgic Japan was enabled in erasing history and remilitarizing to the hilt as the spear tip against China.
Eventually, as all these pieces fell into place, Hillary Clinton would stage the coming out party: the declaration in 2011, of the “Pacific Pivot/Pivot to Asia” in Foreign Policy Magazine.
Clinton’s debutante declaration was a dog-whistle marvel of cant and obfuscation.
A plan to move 60% of U.S. firepower to encircle and contain China through bases, weaponry, and alliances, while engaging in multi-domain hybrid warfare, was sold as a “historical rebalancing.”
With the blessing of Obama’s cabinet, Marshall’s China threat was finally getting policy primetime.
During this time, another of Marshall’s busy, brainy proteges, military officer Andrew Krepinevich, started to work out the nuts and bolts of actual war with China.
At the CSBA (Center for Strategic Budgetary Assessment), Krepinevich, under Marshall’s guidance and funding, wrote out the details of the war doctrine against China, “AirSea Battle”—a China-directed counterpart to the Soviet-era “AirLand Battle”—involving decapitating and blinding strikes deep into Chinese territory, and instantiating Marshall’s “revolution in military affairs” for U.S. supremacy in the Western Pacific theater of war.
RAND and the CFR chimed in, rendering into granular and global detail the strategies and order of battle.
Another of Andrew’s powerful proteges was Michael Pillsbury.
A serious operator, Pillsbury had assisted in the creation of the regime change “governmental” NGO known as the NED, the weaponization of the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, the implementation of politicide in Latin America (known as the Reagan Doctrine), but most importantly, he was credited with initiating the idea of the “China card” in 1973.
Under the good offices of Marshall, Pillsbury published a book called “The Hundred Year Marathon,” scripting a fact-free document of paranoid threat inflation, racist scare-mongering, and orientalist slander that is now standard China doctrine.
In an alphabetic royal flush of Sinophobes (Lighthizer-Mnuchin-Navarro-O’Brien-Pillsbury-Pompeo-Pence-Ross), Pillsbury was the most important “China authority” of Everything Under the Heavens in the Trump Kingdom of Sinophobia.
China Syndrome: Blue team, Red Peril
As the original U.S. reason for allying with Beijing—to counterbalance Moscow—became moot, another group of China-bashers, far-right ideologues with sharp axes to grind from the Cold War also began to crawl out of the cracks.
Calling themselves the “blue team” or “panda sluggers,” they derided the U.S. “panda-hugging” business class who wanted continued engagement with China, seeing China only as a mortal and irreconcilable communist threat.
During the Clinton administration, they formed a loose coalition, coming together with funding under PNAC, using the Washington Times and Weekly Standard as their platforms.
Although the “Blue Team” had no official members, published no formal policy statements, and had no offices—initially meeting in a garage, then at the Tabard Inn on N Street—they included key Congress members and staff, think tankers, journalists, and lobbyists.
Among them, former CIA analyst William C. Triplet and congressional staffer Edward Timperlake went on to write a lurid series of conspiracy books alleging quid-pro-quo between Clinton and China (Year of the Rat; Red Dragon Rising).
This was a bizarro world where Taiwanese lobbyists with Chinese Mafia connections were acting as agents for the PRC government and manipulating the White House.
They also alleged Chinese theft of military secrets, slave labor, the proliferation of WMD to Iran and other “rogue” states, and insinuated that Clinton’s “constructive engagement” was knowingly undermining the U.S. for the benefit of the Chinese.
These allegations put into ink a conspiratorial mythology about a dangerous, corrupt, and belligerent China, echoes that fed into an existing subterranean current of paranoid lies about China.
These “blue team” members, cross-pollinating with Marshall’s proteges, were a rogues gallery of high-powered political operators: Michael Ledeen, Frank Gaffney, Robert Kagan, Bill Kristol, Michael Pillsbury, Bill Gertz, Gary Bauer, Peter Navarro, Elliot Abrams, Richard Scaiffe, John Bolton were among those listed as “members.” Dana Rohrabacher, Tom DeLay, Nancy Pelosi, Robert Byrd were also considered to be fellow travelers.
The Taiwan Security Enhancement Act was also written during this time.
In particular, the CECC appointed itself watchdog of Chinese trade, technology, labor and human rights, saturating Congress with an unending “blue team” litany of Chinese “abuses.”
The most virulent and extreme of all these China hawks was Frank Gaffney, who recycled the alarmist Cold War group, “Committee on the Present Danger,” into the current “Committee on the Present Danger: China,” contending that “there is no hope of coexistence with China.”
Gaffney’s ideology and guiding principles coincide with official positions on China and key U.S. foreign policy; moreover, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s speech and actions on China reflect his close affiliation and affinity with Gaffney.
What the Pivot is: the Geostrategy of China-bashing
Much of the “blue team’s” ideology and theorizing followed pre-existing currents of ideological posturing and hate-speech but have incorporated sharper geopolitical and geo-economic dimensions.
Western history can be seen as having several inflection points: one was 1492, the advent of the “Columbian Era.”
The Columbian era is the era of sea-faring, sea-power-based Western colonial and imperial empires.
The demise of the Columbian era was foreshadowed by an Oxford geographer in 1904 who put forth what is now known as the “Heartland Theory.”
In a nutshell, it is a land-based theory of power that predicts the end of sea-based powers:
“Who rules East Europe (Eurasia) commands the Heartland;
who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island;
who rules the World-Island commands the world.”
It also concluded that
“Were the Chinese [to] conquer its territory [of the Russian Empire], they might constitute the yellow peril to the world’s freedom.”
This maxim and the anxiety it provoked was red-lined in Brezinski’s “Grand Chess game”: “No Eurasian challenger should emerge that can dominate Eurasia and thus also challenge U.S. global pre-eminence.”
In 1992, Marshall’s protégé, Paul Wolfowitz formulated the above strands into a formal doctrine, in the above mentioned DPG (Defense Planning guidance) document:
Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival…that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union…to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region to generate global power…. The U.S. must…protect a new order that [convinces] potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests. In non-defense areas, we must…discourage them from challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn the established political and economic order. We must maintain the mechanism for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.
This can be better understood by looking at a map:
This is a map of the world, drawn from a topologist’s eye. It shows relationships, not distances or area. From this map you can note the following things:
China has more borders than any other country in the world. This also gives it the possibility of connecting with more countries than any other.
Blue lines/corridors are oceans: The top two thirds is the “world island” or “pivot state”–it contains most of the world’s population, resources, and wealth, and it can be connected as a single entity through overland routes or short ocean hops.
The bottom is the Americas. It is topologically isolated from the world island. As sea lane control becomes less important, it will also lose prominence and relative power if the world island unifies. It’s clear that unifying power will probably arise in China, whose overland paths using high-speed rail, roads, pipelines, and ports can be easily built and connected, in a “new silk road.”
The U.S. needs to fracture the world island to maintain its global power. If you color in the places where China is encircled, or where the US is waging war/fracturing societies/creating chaos, this is exactly where the fault lines of the global conflict are, and reveal what U.S. strategy is.
Here is a second map:
CSBA: Shipping Lanes through the South China Sea.
The U.S. has actually surrounded China with 400 military bases, bristling with strategic and tactical weaponry. It also has war-gamed out China’s key vulnerability: the chokepoint of the South China Sea. War in the South China Sea would disrupt $5.3 Trillion of China’s external trade and 77% of China’s oil imports. In this scenario, the U.S. does not have to win a shooting war with China in the South China Sea. The war just has to happen, and the disruption to trade could crash China’s economy.
The U.S. has actually surrounded China with 400 military bases, bristling with strategic and tactical weaponry.
It also has war-gamed out China’s key vulnerability: the chokepoint of the South China Sea.
War in the South China Sea would disrupt $5.3 Trillion of China’s external trade and 77% of China’s oil imports. [5]
In this scenario, the U.S. does not have to win a shooting war with China in the South China Sea.
The war just has to happen, and the disruption to trade could crash China’s economy.
The map shows the shipping lanes that would be disrupted.
China’s first response to the U.S. pivot and encirclement, especially in the South China Sea—its key choke point—was to build defensive military facilities along some of the islands, to deter U..S incursion and to raise the cost of interference.
Its other, much more ambitious response was the Belt & Road Initiative (BRI), which constitutes a long overland escape from the encirclement, similar to its “long march” during its encirclement by the fascist KMT.
The BRI travels through Southeast Asia, then overland through Central Asia, to the Mediterranean, and then Europe and Africa. In particular:
CMEC (China-Myanmar Economic Corridor) travels through Rakhine State and exits to the Indian Ocean at Kyaukphyu port (bypassing the Strait of Malacca).
CPEC (China-Pakistan Economic Corridor) to Gwadar port transits directly to the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf.
Xinjiang is the key overland route for BRI to exit China to Central Asia, with Iran also a key node.
Djibouti at the horn of Africa is the entry node to Africa (the Sahel, and the South)
As it does this, BRI becomes the physical realization of Mackinder’s “heartland” in Eurasia—the “pivot state” connecting the “world island” into a single economic bloc and raising China to the status of the key regional power, accomplishing exactly what Brezinski and Wolfowitz sought to prevent.
Mercator Institute for China Studies: Belt and Road Initiative.
Mindful of this development, and aware of the rapidly ticking biological clock on U.S. power, the U.S. is currently rapidly escalating hostilities in the South China Sea (SCS), most recently with…
War games,
U2 incursions,
Belligerent passages of aircraft carriers,
Belligerent guided missile destroyers,
Hunter-killer submarines.
China’s response has been to launch “carrier killer” missiles into the region.
Until recently, the U.S. claimed that it was not an interested party to the SCS, just that it was concerned about “Freedom of Navigation.”
It has also recently conducted drone war exercises for assaulting islands in the South China Sea, with down-to-the-smallest detail precision and preparation.
The U.S. is also going directly after the BRI.
It is sanctioning the Chinese companies alleged to have done construction in the SCS (all the claimants have done construction, including building airfields; China is not unique).
These companies are also involved in construction of the BRI; for example, China Communications Construction Company (CCCC) alone is reportedly involved in 923 projects in 157 countries.
Likewise, the “Five Eyes” have made moves to block other “road” of the BRI, its accompanying “digital silk road” (communications-5G-blockchain infrastructure).
This is yet another of the reasons why Huawei has been targeted for destruction.
The U.S. is also in the process of stationing intermediate range missiles all across the South China Sea, and around the first island chain surrounding China, as well as attempting to press gang South Korea into hosting them.
This is yet another layer of dangerous escalation, and it will prove to be very, very destabilizing.
Twilight of Capitalism
The final dimension to the U.S.-China competition is economic: this is the uncanny fact that China’s “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics” works and outclasses Western neoliberal capitalism by leaps and bounds.
In terms of developing an economy, raising living standards, creating public wealth, serving and meeting its people’s needs, and dealing with crises, China beats the capitalist West hands down.
Even as they claimed that such a state-led economy could never compete against the superior free-market economy of the U.S., the Trump administration has insistently demanded that China dismantle their planned economy in trade negotiations, because of its superior advantages over capitalism.
This was not supposed to be: Clintonite “Panda Huggers” had always justified, hubristically, that their engagement with China would result in China’s liberalization and total transformation—the inevitable, inexorable result of engaging with a superior Western political ideology and economic system.
They also insisted that if China continued as it had with its planned economy and ”autocratic“ ways in a modern era, it would simply fail: it would end up like the Soviet Union or North Korea—it had no choice but to become more Western, more neoliberal, more capitalist.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the market.
China built a system that has brought more than 850 million people out of poverty in a few short decades, ended domestic extreme poverty in 2020, and has already surpassed the U.S. in PPP economy size and healthy life expectancy.
China’s thriving, effective Central government—with a 93.1% approval rate—breaks all Western conceptions of development, governance, legitimacy, and of course, superiority.
With 80% of its top leadership scientists or engineers, China also outranks the U.S. in patents filed, top scientific papers published, and is a world leader in fields such as AI, robotics, quantum computing, 5G, highspeed rail, advanced industrial production, next generation IT, materials science, and sustainable energy development, low-carbon eco-cities, and reforestation.
It has also pledged to go carbon neutral by 2060, essentially giving the world an outside chance to still beat global warming—despite being a historical carbon creditor.
With its scientific leadership, whole-of-society public health strategies, and its valuing of every human life, it has also shown that it can organize to defeat a mass pandemic in weeks—and by overriding capitalist markets whenever and wherever it sees fit.
Meanwhile the U.S. still struggles with the largest number of cases and deaths from Covid-19—a death rate 200 times that of China’s—and is incapable of preventing Covid-19 among its own top leadership.
To boot, first in 2008, and then in 2020, the U.S. neoliberal capitalist economy was shown up to be a jacked-up deck of cards, rescued only by massive Chinese debt-purchasing and endless printing of fiat money.
In contrast, China has demonstrated that it has developed an alternative, non-Western, non-capitalist model of development—without war, invasion, colonization, slavery, regime change, primitive accumulation—that the world can emulate and follow.
Once you realize that, you understand why the U.S. ruling classes are so desperate to erase China and its example:
China offers a threatening alternative model of development that is non-capitalist, non-Western, and non-colonial.
As such, it undermines the West’s neocolonial domination of the Third World and its debt-trap-based forced underdevelopment, subservience, and expropriation.
It also offers a model of state-led ecological development.
All this signals new possibilities of hope and transformation for the world.
The ruling classes in the West will go to war to prevent this.
China offers a threatening alternative model of development that is non-capitalist, non-Western, and non-colonial. As such, it undermines the West’s neocolonial domination of the Third World and its debt-trap-based forced underdevelopment, subservience, and expropriation.
Where Does This All End?
Despite China’s assurances that it does not want war, hot or cold, that it seeks win-win cooperation and co-existence with all countries, and that it disdains hegemony, the U.S. continually escalates, provokes, and threatens China, all the while dismantling off-ramps channels of communication and global institutions for cooperation and de-escalation.
The conclusion to draw is hard, but obvious: if things continue as they have, this can only lead to direct military confrontation and kinetic war.
Doubling down on racism, sexism, capitalism, and militarism, the Democratic regime not only silences demands for viable reform and abolition by the Sandernistas, BLM, and Me Too, but also ignores the non-interventionist, peace-demanding wishes of the majority of voters, dismissing their demands for a better system and less violent foreign policy.
Biden’s doctrine toward China will be a continuation of the noxious arc of history and planning begun by Marshall in the late 1970s. The think tank advising Biden on foreign policy, CNAS, a near-rhyming clone to PNAC, has grandfathered in most of existing anti-China doctrine, and has mapped out in obsessive detail, the next steps of a highly destructive and dangerous strategy of confrontation with China.
The key difference is that Biden’s regime will “unite” countries more skillfully against China, pivot away from Trump’s neomercantilism towards a more “globalist” approach, and likely implement some revised version of the TPP, the 12 nation economic bloc against China.
Here are some key points to understand:
Escalation to war is bipartisan: there is no lesser evil here. The racist, capitalist, imperial ruling classes cannot and will not tolerate a rising or equal China in a multi-polar world. They would rather see the end of the world than an end to capitalism or white supremacy.
One subset of this group believes that they can actually win a war against China, or at the very least force its subjugation to the U.S. This submission will not happen, given the actual balance of forces and Chinese determination to resist.
The U.S. wants global supremacy but if the ruling class can’t have ordered supremacy, they are not averse to global disintegration and chaos. Proteges of Hayek and Leo Strauss, they thrive on “revolutionary disorder.” One fallback model of U.S. supremacy is to plunge the rest of the world back into the dark ages through hybrid warfare—while the U.S. controls the key systems of communication, information, surveillance, finance, rent extraction, along with the corridors of maritime transport.
There is a third group of elite hawks who are millenarian Christians. Although a minority, they hold powerful positions. These believe in the salvation and rapture of the faithful as existing “contradictions” are heightened into Armageddon. These are religious zealots with no brakes or constraints on their appetite for war.
War, if it happens, would rapidly turn nuclear. The U.S. no longer has “overmatch” in conventional weapons, and no longer subscribes to deterrence. Instead, its declaratory policy allows nuclear weapons to be used against “significant non-nuclear strategic attacks.” [6] Since the 2002 Nuclear Posture Review, the U.S. has explicitly prepared for nuclear war with China, and threatens “intolerable damage” in response to “non-nuclear or nuclear aggression.” [7] The Chinese have disavowed nuclear first strike—their nuclear capacity is currently minimal and purely defensive—but in case of war the US military could easily resort to the use of low-yield nuclear weapons[iii] or even decapitating nuclear first strikes [8] to overcome its conventional weaknesses. China’s deterrence would then have to shift to “hair trigger,” “launch on warning.” This means that war could rapidly escalate to large scale nuclear strikes, which many scientists predict would result in nuclear winter, dooming most forms of organic life on the planet.
Modern “democracies” require constant media manipulation and propaganda, to manufacture consent for war. As a result, we are living in time of total deceit, as Orwell put it: “Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac…. Political language…is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” William Casey, CIA director summarized this succinctly: “We’ll know when our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.” [9]
War, if it happens, could rapidly turn nuclear. Since the 2002 Nuclear Posture Review, the U.S. has explicitly prepared for nuclear war with China, and threatens “intolerable damage” in response to “non-nuclear or nuclear aggression.”
What Then, Is To Be Done?
Our work is cut out for us: “In war, the first casualty is truth.”
Our task is to prevent the first casualty, challenge the lies; the second, to organize and work for peace.
As we approach elections, the possibility of an October surprise increases. Remember:
Information war precedes, justifies, and enables kinetic war, therefore you must think critically and defensively; do not take anything attacking China at face value.
Evaluate everything for a) source b) logic, sense, rationality c) bracket & evaluate emotional triggers or trigger words d) look at counter-evidence/arguments
Make your own judgments, draw your own conclusions: seek truth from facts
Don’t be fooled by the engineering of “truthiness”:
Stories and lies seem credible when they are 1) repeated incessantly 2) resemble pre-existing stories (especially ones that are projected from our own disowned flaws), 3) have some tiny grain of plausibility mixed in 4) seem coherent or manufacture coherence through multiple sources, and 5) tug at your heartstrings.
This means that we have to:
Watch out for memes and repetition: watch out for stories that seem self-replicating, self-distributing, repetitive, and create an echo chamber—qualities that make them seem real and convincing even when they are lies. Even debunked stories serve as compost for more lies. Remember also that U.S. social media is handmaiden to the war machine—the worst is Twitter [10]—it promotes war propaganda and routinely purges counter-narratives.
Distinguish the coherence and validation of a story that has multiple sources of verification from planted-and-echo-chambered-stories (for example, anything about China connected to WUC (World Uyghur Congress)-Adrian Zenz–ASPI-Nathan Ruser-nexus; the Lausan-Jacobin-Nation-DemocracyNow-tendency; or The Guardian-NYTimes-Washington Post-CFR-cabal or other combinations thereof). Outlets like these are not channels of independent verification; they are often a set of single sourced memes skillfully distributed out and repeated through different channels, part of the fire hose [11] strategy of war propaganda.
Watch out for emotional trigger words: “genocide,” “slavery,” “concentration camp,” “trafficking,” “sterilization,” “theft/IP theft,” “espionage,” “cyber warfare,” attributed without any proof. These are trigger words designed to bypass critical evaluation, appealing to your emotions: fear, pity, and outrage.
Watch out for projection and gaslighting: the U.S. has a long history of slave and prison slave labor [12], of Third World debt-traps, of mistreating/torturing/killing Muslims, of genociding Indigenous peoples, of mass incarceration, of police brutality, of cultural genocide, mass sterilization, medical testing without consent [13]. If you see these words or allegations alleged against China, especially in a context where it makes no sense, evaluate [14] whether it seems real because there is actual proof, or because it is a convenient projection of the U.S./West’s own disowned violence, criminality, and brutality.
Speak up and simply call out the propaganda for what it is: lies to enable war and war-profiteering. But don’t get trapped in the weeds of debunking—they will spread a 1000 new lies before you’ve refuted a single one: “Don’t expect to counter the firehose of falsehood with the squirt gun of truth”—cut it off at the root.
Do not allow yourself to be silenced. Be prepared to be criticized as a “human rights denier.” Not having truth on their side, this is what the worst human rights abusers will always resort to: shut the f*ck up [or else]. Don’t be intimated, and don’t let them silence you. Make your voice heard!
Last but not least, organize! Despair is not an option! The following are good places to start:
[10] As news of horrific assaults by HK rioters on journalists spread through the mediasphere on June 12th, within hours, Twitter shut down 170,000 accounts on the ground that they were “promoting narratives favorable to the CPC”: https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/information-operations-june-2020.html. According to the Guardian, “The major themes of the tweets were that that Hong Kong protesters were violent, and the US was interfering with the protests; accusations about Guo; the Taiwan election; and praise of China’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic”—which turned out to be true. Twitter coordinates with ASPI, a key source of anti-China propaganda.
[12] For example, ASPI makes unfounded allegations of Chinese slave labor while being funded by US corporations that are confirmed to use US prison slave labor
[13] For example, the NY Times concocted an article on “non-consensual” Chinese vaccine testing, which doesn’t hold up to any scrutiny. Among other things, it confounds the risk profiles of Western m-RNA & ADV-vectored vaccines that have never been approved for human use, with the time-tested inactivated vaccines that the Chinese are using.
[14] Some good resources are available at Qiao Collective:
When I passed this on to some friend to review, they had some interesting things to say. Such as this…
This is a good article, but an important part is missing. China is not the same China, and the world is not the same world anyone. The United States and the West can no longer do what they please anymore. The price they have to pay for a war with China would be more than they or the world can afford. If it is not for that reason, China would have ceased to exist long ago.
-Han Dongping
Well, maybe if if the United States was lead with reason, was led by knowledge and skills, and was led by those with the best interests of the American people in their minds.
But that is not the case, America is lead by different kinds of people. And man, oh man, do they think differently…
To be sure, the world as we know it will have its end (2 Peter 3:10; Revelation 21:1). But when it ends it will be replaced by a new heaven and new earth. The Noahic covenant seems to rule out universal devastation short of Christ’s coming.
Thus, nuclear war is the opening salvo to enable the return of Jesus Christ our savior and Lord.
But, let us beware of presuming that the day of the Lord will come with a shower of nuclear warheads only. My own feeling is that the crack at Christ’s coming will make our weapons seem like maypops and firecrackers.
Woe to us if we fornicate and proselytize prior to invoking his return!
Even if we succeed, we will be found on the wrong side at his appearing: only the peacemakers are sons of God (Matthew 5:9). There is but one way, and only one way, to “hasten” his appearing: “This gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come” (Matthew 24:14).
We must pledge to use nuclear weapons only to hasten the arrival of Heaven on Earth. Not to use it for any other purpose. We must engage in war under the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savor. For according to 1 Timothy 2:1-4, the peace after war makes the best pathway for evangelism, not the war itself.
And they view things quite differently.
And I shake my head in disbelief.
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This article is a bit of a ramble-on meandering stream of disjointed thoughts and wanderings. It concerns the WTF concept and idea that the USN would take a Naval Aviator, implant them, train them to interface with an artifice, and then let them wander about the United States as an “average Joe” experiencing life. It makes no sense, and then to be “retired” in the manner that I have (previously) described, adds complexity to a really basic question. What was this all about?
And yes, I have mentioned all this before.
Nothing makes sense
I described my experiences. I described my travels. I described my work experience. I described how the systems worked. I described my “retirement”, and I described what I know of our benefactors, and their understanding of the universe. I’ve described it all.
But yet none of it makes sense.
I mean, I can understand that it doesn’t make sense to “sheeple”. They are automatons that are born and bred to serve. But it just doesn’t make sense to me. I mean, come on, even the bullshit narratives of “Space Marines”, and “Reptilians” make better sense.
There’s no clear cut answers.
Instead, all I find myself doing is writing reams upon reams of lore here on MM. And I seem to be driven to describe things related to how the universe works, and how thoughts work, and the quantum aspects of our associations within this nursery that the human species seems to be so damn attached to.
What’s the point?
What’s the point?
I am reminded of a scene from the Woody Allen movie “Annie Hall”.
Annie Hall is one of the truest, most bittersweet romances on film. In it, Allen plays a thinly disguised version of himself: Alvy Singer, a successful--if neurotic--television comedian living in Manhattan.
Annie (the wholesomely luminous Dianne Keaton) is a Midwestern transplant who dabbles in photography and sings in small clubs.
When the two meet, the sparks are immediate--if repressed.
Alone in her apartment for the first time, Alvy and Annie navigate a minefield of self-conscious "is-this-person-someone-I'd-want-to-get-involved-with?" conversation.
As they speak, subtitles flash their unspoken thoughts: the likes of "I'm not smart enough for him" and "I sound like a jerk."
Despite all their caution, they connect, and we're swept up in the flush of their new romance.
Allen's antic sensibility shines here in a series of flashbacks to Alvy's childhood, growing up, quite literally, under a rumbling roller coaster.
His boisterous Jewish family's dinner table shares a split screen with the WASP-y Hall's tight-lipped holiday table, one Alvy has joined for the first time.
His position as outsider is uncontestable he looks down the table and sizes up Annie's "Grammy Hall" as "a classic Jew-hater." The relationship arcs, as does Annie's growing desire for independence.
It quickly becomes clear that the two are on separate tracks, as what was once endearing becomes annoying.
Annie Hall embraces Allen's central themes--his love affair with New York (and hatred of Los Angeles), how impossible relationships are, and his fear of death.
But their balance is just right, the chemistry between Allen's worry-wart Alvy and Keaton's gangly, loopy Annie is one of the screen's best pairings. It couldn't be more engaging.
--Susan Benson
In the scene a young Woody Allen is seeing a (school) psychologist because he doesn’t seem to be interested in anything. No matter what his parents or his teachers do, he just cannot get motivated. The dialog goes like this…
Indeed.
If the universe is going to expand in a hundred trillion, billion years, and then all collapse upon it’s self a trillion, trillion leaders later…
….What’s the point?
Yeah. The movie is a trip. If you haven’t seen it, go ahead and watch it. It’s pretty bizarre, and I must of watched it about four times while in University.
Alvy Singer: You know, even as a kid, I always went for the wrong women. I think that's my problem. When my mother took me to see Snow White, everyone fell in love with Snow White. I immediately fell for the Wicked Queen.
So, all jokes aside, I’ve been wondering about all this.
Nothing makes sense to me.
The harsh retirement just doesn’t seem to fit. The purposes, as I understand it to be doesn’t seem to fit either. I mean (to say), “Anchoring world-lines”, heck! Most people don’t even know what the population of the United States is, and I’m supposed to describe a role in manipulation of world-line clusters?
When I lived in Arkansas, they actually thought that Boston was a city outside of Kentucky. I kid you not. They didn’t even know how many inches were in a foot, or how many inches were in a meter for goodness sakes!
And yet, I am to try to explain all this…!
And what I do end up explaining is so fundamental simple that it defies the imagination the I would be tasked to write on about it. Like “time” for instance, or the relation of the non-physical to the physical. Or how different species think differently, or even the very nature of thoughts! All of these things are so obvious that it doesn’t make sense that I would configured as some sort of tool to disseminate this information.
The point is really clear.
Why am I tasked to explain the outrageously simple to my fellow humans via this venue?
After all, and it seems quite clear right now, that the PTB that rule over the levers of power (that ultimately control MAJ) do not give a flying fuck about Americans, humanity, knowledge or spirit. They just do not care.
They. Just. Do. Not Care.
So it makes little sense (to me) that they would allow or approve of my “retirement”, yet at the same time making it so that I must continually and passionately discharge, and de-gorge my “knowledge” to the public. They do not care. They make no money off of it.
Why set me to full-on gouge?
Questions
An influencer asked this question…
“Likewise, something doesn't sit right with me when the Gov takes its best, brightest, and most competitive aviators & engineers, put's 'em through a brutal career including war, implants, and obscene responsibilities, and then turns around and wants to put 'em in the garbage disposal when they go to retire. That is really bizarre. Maybe you can write more about that one of these days. “
Indeed. And I pretty much responded much like this…
Indeed, to me it seems like America and many of it’s agencies are run by psychopathic idiots or… perhaps (better yet) sycophants appointed by psychopathic idiots. It really seems that way.
What was my purpose?
What was it? To anchor world-lines?
Well, if that was the case, perhaps the MAJestic leadership could have found more “average” folk to perform that “heavy lifting”. It seems that in that particular role, being average was a mandated requirement. So it just doesn’t seem that the performance criteria was all that well mapped out … if that was the sole objective.
Perhaps THIS is the sole objective. THIS, right now, all this…..
Maybe this MM is the sole accumulation of over forty years in MAJestic. Maybe my purpose is to (for what ever reason) is to help the human species understand their place in a universe that is way outside of their ability to grasp. Maybe its to help give a little nudge towards some pretty fundamental understandings that most humans haven’t a clue about. Maybe…
Maybe…
Or, maybe not.
Really. What’s the point of a mechanic realizes that thoughts can bend reality? What benefit does mankind obtain when a Uber Driver knows that time is nothing more than the accumulation of world-line travels? What benefit to mankind is it that there are different kinds of sentience, and that there are approved archetypes? How important is it that a carpenter, a computer technician, an accountant, a bus driver, and a housewife understands that we humans are growing and learning inside a policed nursery?
Nothing, I must add, really is all that clear.
The entire internet is filled with hordes of folk that are selling “snake oil” to a gullible audience. Some of it is “magic crystals”, some of it is “advice about reptilians”, some of it is “how to get rich”, while others talk about other things…
Ai!
And then to top it all off…
…what about my retirement. I mean, I get it. MAJ outsources the retirement. Just take the “best and brightest” and then when you are finished your toss them out into the dumpster with no fanfare. I mean, that’s the “American Way”, as illustrated in such timeless classic movies and “Office space” and “Joe vs the Volcano“.
But seriously, do you do that to people who you have invested millions, of not billions of dollars, on?
It’s like the spoiled, petulant child that pulls a temper tantrum and destroys the massive big-screen television by throwing an iPad at it. Everything is gone and wasted, and the child continues in complete oblivion as to the value and worth of the loss.
A discussion with a friend
I was having a discussion with a friend, not too long ago. In it we were talking about certain people we knew, and certain bosses. And one of the things that kept on cropping up was the idea that there are these people, bosses, people in power, that have zero ability to emote or see the consequences of their acitions.
As my friend said…
"A guy works for twenty years. You know his family, you see him day in and day out. you go through good times and bad times together. Then well, you need to cut head count. So you fire him. And that's that. And suddenly he no longer exists."
And there is no remorse. No compassion. No guilt. No understanding. It’s almost like you press the DEL key and Poof! all your association with him is gone in a nano-second.
Yeah. We know that these people abound.
What is so absolutely frightening is just how common it is in the United States today that they exist, and that they are thriving within enormous positions of absolute power.
Merit advancement only so far
It appears that advancement through merit only goes so far. Then you hit a “glass ceiling”, and you just cannot pass through that barrier. For above you lies the realm of the “special” people, and you do not belong there.
In that realm, other rules apply.
It’s sort of like this…
It seems like you must work really hard to be promoted though merit to get anywhere in America today. Then when you have achieved so much, there is this invisible glass ceiling that you hit. And no matter what you do, you cannot break through that invisible barrier.
Now above that barrier are the “anointed ones”. These are the people who are appointed by the upper-level bosses. We often don’t know what the appointment criteria is because many of them are absolutely clueless. I call them “the toadies”.
And of course, the “Bosses” are over all.
And that is how it appears the United States works today.
Sorry to say.
That is the impression that I get.
Answers
And with that impression comes some answers. You see, as long as you believe that the systems in place for control, power and advancement are the same for everyone, then my story and my experience makes no sense.
But, when you come to the conclusion that the leadership is stratified, and that each strata has it’s own set of systems for advancement, control, monitoring and understandings, then EVERYTHING falls into place. The toadies could care less about the underlings below them. They no more care about them than a cow cares about ants in the grass. Check off some boxes, and move on. No need to stop and take heed.
And when I look at things in that manner, it all makes sense. Everything makes sense.
The US elite, as the stupidest ruling class in the world, won't be able to stop relative or absolute decline.
Yup! Main reason is because the American ruling class is one that does not deserve to be in that class. Just look at the top layer of people in that class. They are no more than mouthpieces having memorized buzz words and cliches, who got to where they are because of the stupidity of a dumbified populace. Oh, the same can be said of the rest of the so-called West.
-Posted by: Oriental Voice | Mar 3 2021 19:28 utc | 35
And you can pretty much see the overall scheme of things. Right?
The Leadership are appointees
Yup, and they put their sycophant toadies in top levels of their organizations.
Here's a nice rambling rant along these lines, more or less from the Burning Platform blog. It is titled The ship of Theseus. Reprinted as found. All credit to the author. Edited to fit this venue, and I do believe that it's a pretty good read.
“Here is a rule to remember in the future when anything tempts you to feel bitter: not ‘This is misfortune’, but ‘To bear this worthily is good fortune.’” – Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Somewhere between elementary school and fifth grade my parents bought a townhouse in a brand-new community built on a former farm field in East Windsor. The development was named Twin Rivers and it sat about a half a mile from Exit 8 of the New Jersey Turnpike. The project was designed to capitalize on commuters to NYC fifty miles to the north and young Boomer families fleeing the urban jungle of the late 1960’s.
The word townhouse makes it sound sophisticated, but it was just a plywood box in a long string of plywood boxes banged out under the Mid-Atlantic sun by the last of the old-school tradesmen that dominated the sprawl of suburbia; Italian masons, Polish plumbers, Piney carpenters. In the field in front of my house they built a monstrosity of a school, a squatting, gold, geodesic dome fixed to the ground like a cross between a UFO and a Bucky Fuller fever dream.
It was called the Ethel McKnight School after a local teacher who had served the community for over 45 years. For her efforts she received, as a token of respect and admiration, the world’s noisiest, hottest, asbestos-sprayed middle school, named in her honor.
We’d moved in from our former residence at Northgate Garden Apartments which featured no gardens and served as a gate to an endless plain of potato farms that happened to be to the north. We were, by today’s standards, fairly low on the economic ladder and the new home in a slightly nicer location was a mark of my parent’s upward mobility. It cost them a whopping twenty-seven thousand dollars and it was a stripped-down minimalist dwelling, but it had two floors and basement with a backyard-not much larger than a one car garage surrounded by fence to separate from the neighbors on either side.
I had my own room; my parents had a bigger one with its own bathroom and from the moment they moved in they went at it, one project after another to turn it into our own home. I spent most of my time in those first couple of months before school started exploring my surroundings. At the end of the row of houses that marked Bennington Drive was a freshly dug lake filled with murky brown water and snapping turtles. All of the streets had historical names based on the American Revolution as a way of giving some history to what was otherwise a brand-new town.
The place was saturated with history. I regularly picked up jasper arrowheads and grooved axes pecked from river cobbles in the adjoining field, ancient relics turned up by brand new activity and I kept them lined neatly on the shelves above my desk. Sometimes I’d turn up white, lead musket balls and verdigris colonial coppers, bits of broken Delftware, and blackened silver shoe buckles, wondering about the people who’d left them behind and where they’d gone. Just up the road was the site of Washington’s decisive blow against the retreating British columns at the battle of Monmouth, and on the other side of Route 1 to the west was Princeton where my own ancestors had fought so long ago.
And everywhere you looked there were scores of granite monuments and weathered memorial plaques commemorating one famous colonial figure or another. Washington Slept Here was an actual sign planted in the middle of Quaker Bridge Road, rooted beside a massive oak tree that had stood there for at least three centuries until it was removed years later, disappeared into the bowels of some State of New Jersey storage locker, the tree soon to follow to make room for more lanes, for more cars.
My father had taken a job with a Wall Street helping to integrate a computer language for business named COBOL into the mainframe computers that were just beginning to come on line. He took the bus every morning to Port Authority and in the evenings my mother and I would drive to the parking lot of Mom’s Peppermill and wait for him to climb off the orange and black striped Suburban Express, his pant cuffs filled with pale yellow punched tape chads.
Those years were, for me at least, the idyllic American childhood. I rode my bike, a blue Schwinn Stingray Deluxe with a banana seat and a sissy bar to deliver The Trenton Times to a couple dozen customers every morning of the week and twice that number on Sundays. I don’t remember how much I earned, it couldn’t have been much, but I remember having money of my own, of being able to buy a slice of pizza- only thirty-five cents, that I recall- and a cold 8 oz. Coca-Cola in the green glass bottle for another dime.
I held on to some of the change I earned, Mercury dimes and Standing Liberty quarters, not because they were made of silver, but because they looked like Roman coins to me; classic, beautiful. I didn’t like the Roosevelt dimes because they had little ridges, called reeding, that ran around the perimeter and because right down the road there was a gigantic sculpture of his head in the town bearing his name right on the edge of Lake Etra and every time we passed by it to go to the lumber yard, I’d look at his baleful stare, looking out across the lily pads like he was watching a bobber waiting for a strike.
I could never understand why they’d put that pensive face on a coin instead of the graceful Mercury with his winged cap and I have held a strange grudge ever since. And so, I grew up there for a time, solitary mostly, studiously aware of the world around me, imbued by the long trail of people that had been here before me, their artifacts and statues scattered about.
In the field between our home and the school was an old MIG, a captured North Korean jet stripped down to nothing more than the fuselage and canopy, dropped there on a small concrete pad by the local VFW post for kids to climb on. The skin was a sun-scorched olive drab and on each wing, there was a faded red start that vibrated in contrast to the rest. It was pretty big to an 11-year-old and I’d seen more than a few kids take a bad fall from the wings, divots of kid skin dug out on the raised rivets and bolts, heads split open climbing in and out of the derelict cockpit, little tufts of children’s hair sprouting from every metal snag.
Beyond that sat my school, its gilded dome oddly reminiscent of the shells on the giant snappers that lurked in the muddy lake beside it. I could walk across the field in a couple of minutes and be home before the rest of the kids finished filling the seats on the bus each afternoon. That year featured a lot of fragmented memories, some of which were clear as day to me half a century later while others remain concealed by a darkness that never abates.
At night the radio in my room played a mix of AM music that came in clear as a bell, 77 WABC and Cousin Brucie playing a constant mix of the greatest music I had ever heard; Black Magic Woman, The Long and Winding Road, Your Song, Green-Eyed Lady and The Tears of a Clown. The songs were always about some kind of love, but there was an innocence to it that fit the time, from I Want You Back sung by a kid my own age, to the heartbreaking words of a much older lady who’d lost out again in One Last Bell to Answer.
I would listen to those tunes, memorizing every line and then just before I fell asleep, I’d turn the dial to WOR and listen to Jean Shepherd from the opening music, the trumpet trill from some far off race track that led into the heart pumping tempo of Authur Fiedler and the Boston Pops knocking out one minute and fifty-seven seconds of Richard Stauss’ Bahn Frei Polka. He’d shill for a few minutes for his sponsor, General Tires (sooner or later you’ll own General) and then he’d launch into yet another nightly shaggy dog story from his own childhood in far off Gary, Indiana, an impossibly wonderful and far off place from my darkened bedroom in central New Jersey.
A few years later my parents moved us again. My mother had taken a course in bookkeeping at Trenton State College and began to do work for a string of shady businesses along Route 130. A banana importer with a name right out of a Scorcese movie and an aluminum siding sales company that morphed into an above ground swimming pool company when the weather warmed up. There was a retired boxer and sometime mentioned in the newspapers Gambino associate that had a couple of car washes and a TV rental outfit that did an early version of the check cashing business on the side and half dozen others besides.
I have no idea if my mother knew about the kind of work she was doing but there’s no way she couldn’t and now, looking back on her life through the rearview mirror of the years since she died, there’s no doubt that she was both smart enough and shrewd enough to parlay that skill set to our benefit. She had been born into abject poverty moving as she described it, from pillar to post her entire life until she met my father and fell in love. My father for his part continued to please his employers with his acumen and capacity to solve complex problems simply.
Eventually my parents, who’d married as teenagers and with nothing, bought a beautiful home in Princeton where I spent my teenage years attending a celebrated prep school and reaping the benefits of the American dream come to fruition. I went from memorizing the times tables and dressing like a pilgrim each Autumn, to learning Latin that I cannot forget even though I cannot use it; bo, bis, bit, bamus, bantus, bantur. I, isti, it, imus, istus, erunt.
My parents, descended from 11 generations of impoverished founders that struggled from the first colonies on the edge of the Hudson and the Millstone and through the centuries that followed, had finally reached the Promised Land. Where they had spent their lives sitting down to supper in the kitchen, we could now eat our dinner in the dining room.
Plutarch told the story of ship which sailed under Theseus and the youth of Athens, returned from Crete and continued to sail until the time of Demetrious Phalereus. And in that time whenever the boards would rot or the oars grow old, each piece was replaced one by one, over time until no part of that original ship remained, but that ship appeared to all who looked upon it to be the same as she ever was from the outside.
Philosophers Heraclitus, Plato, Plutarch, Hobbes and Locke have revisited the question over time, questioning that it either was or was not the same ship and thus the paradox arose. Old things go away, and once the living die. What was real becomes a memory, and then is forgotten, leaving little more than shards and fragments from which we can only surmise at their original purpose.
I did not turn out as my mother had hoped. I did well in school, nearly aced the SAT’s bound for an Ivy League education and shot for the gold ring but I chose to follow another path and enlisted in the Army to become a paratrooper, just like my uncle had. I wanted to serve my country like the long line of men in my family who’d gone before me, fighting and sometimes dying in places like Pleiku and Anzio, Kasserine and The Somme, Fredricksburg and Trenton.
I had, like all those singers I had listened to on the radio in my room at night, fallen in love, not with a girl but with my country, or at least the image I had of it in my mind. All of those trips to the Shore with its salty air and thundering waves and the moonlit drives home through the Pine Barrens, the picnics at Washington’s Crossing on the Delaware, the sight of New York City rising in the distance like some modern Camelot on those day trips my father would take us on, to see the museums and shop at Macy’s and FAO Schwartz, they all added up to something much bigger than any ambition my mother may have had for me.
And I followed it along gladly, expectantly, filled with pride, resolute. The tales told by my relatives under the apple tree in my grandparent’s yard while the sky dimmed and lightning bugs glowed, the hikes up to Bowman’s Tower not far from the old glassworks where my great-grandfather drowned, the camp-outs in backyards, the squirrel hunts with .22’s and later, frosty mugs of Stewart’s root beer brought to you on a tray they’d hook to the driver’s side window while you sat on the big leather seats in the big green Dodge and listening to the gentle sound of a parent’s laughter on a Summer night, they weighed more than the Universe in the balance of life as I rode the scale from the bottom to the top and back down again.
Near the end of my grandfather’s life, he told me that he was ready to go. He said that he had outgrown his time and I joked with him that he had years left, even at 95. I have spent my lifetime in love with my country but that is not the same thing as it once was. I feel like that woman singing that song about having one less bell to answer, one less egg to fry. I don’t choke up at the National Anthem anymore and the military haircut I have worn my entire adult life has grown out like the old man banging the drum in The Spirit of ’76, not out of fashion, but because no one will cut my hair unless I wear a mask.
I have become an anachronism in the country of my birth and every part of the contract I had between what I was taught to respect and uphold, to serve and protect has been breached and in bad faith, not by me, but my own government, by my own people. They have moved on to some other place while I march on to the beat of a different drummer, another time. It’s not easy to become an anachronism, but I understand my grandfather’s words now in a way I could never have known then.
I drove into Boston with my son today to visit a friend and to look at a greenhouse to dismantle and bring back home. It has been a good while since I have left the farm, never mind visit a city, but it was a shock to me. Everyone wearing their masks, resignedly, in complete capitulation to some obscene diktat that makes a mockery of everything I have ever believed about freedom, about liberty.
It broke my heart, not for me, but for the future my children will inherit. And though I kept it to myself the entire drive home, I could not help but wish for another outcome, a different course that we could have taken somewhere along the way. But this is our time and so I will make the very best of it that I can so that my children will have the kind of memories I have before they too discover those truths that everyone must at some point face.
America is the ship of Theseus. For all appearances it resembles the country in which I was born, in which my father and his father before him were born, grew up, lived and prospered in, but it has been replaced, board by board, nail by nail, until it is a paradox built of nothing more than memories of what it once was.
…
Oh isn’t that the truth?
Yes it is.
And people are getting FED UP with the United States today. Consider this rant by Frank Scott…
Ring Out The Old: Ring In The Old
By Frank Scott
While our sacred democracy was allegedly being served by a stupid attempt to unsuccessfully impeach an ex-president for the second time and essentially tell more than 70 million Americans that they might as well vote for Pavlov, FDR, Hitler or Oprah Winfrey since any alleged exercise of supposed freedom on their part would be meaningless in the rape of language we call a democracy.
You know, the one with a billionaire class getting richer by the second and Americans across the board sinking lower by the minute.
But enough good news, let’s move on to the even better signs of our political economic progress against logic, morality and majority rule, something that vanished in practice the moment our euro ancestors arrived and the people who’d lived here for millennia were brutally forced out of their homelands.
The world’s most expensive medical wealth-care system has killed more than 500,000 Americans while we’re being told that China has only created protection for its people that makes us look like bloodthirsty private profit fanatics because it is run by authoritarians and isn’t a sacred democracy like ours.
You know, the one where your vote and mine are equal to the vote of any billionaire, if you believe nose picking is a way to perform a self lobotomy or you are a venture capitalist interested in a start up called Butt Coin which operates on a revolutionary AI system (Amoral Intelligence) called Blockhead.
Its stock just went up 23 billion points ten minutes ago so college graduates should start investing and show just how good your education was and how strong your belief is in capitalist democracy.
After all, how can any formally indoctrinated American not appreciate the incredible logic of our free market in which milk is more expensive than gasoline.
What could make more economic sense?
Milk comes from a cow, which produces more of it on a daily basis while petroleum takes millions of years to reproduce its supply. Even without consideration of either ones affect on the environment, that makes at least as much sense as nose picking self-lobotomies.
Or are you one of those deplorables concerned about our environment and the market green profit ventures said to be our only hope for useless long-term change to save humanity and not just its upper classes?
Who is most responsible for creating the destruction of nature reduced to a branding title of Climate Change?
A menacing American socialist gang has pointed out that the wealthiest billion people on earth produce 60% of greenhouse gases while the poorest billion produce only 5%.
But who can trust a murderous institution like The National Academy of Sciences?
Worse, another unholy representative of global communism reports that the tens of trillions of dollars in debt carried by earth residents collectively – whether we like it or not – represent a threat to the entire human race while the 2,000 richest people on earth have amassed more wealth than 4.5 billon human beings combined.
But who can believe a communist conglomeration of the richest institutions on earth and calling itself The World Bank?
Both institutions were talking about something much bigger than the egocentric American chosen people mythology since we play a major role in creating that inequality but also suffering it, with a public debt of 19 trillion and private debt of 27 trillion.
And if we believe, as too many of us still do, in what consciousness control and its professional staff of mind managers tell us, it’s all due to greedy union labor getting far too much in wages, salaries and pensions while a struggling investor class has to wait anxious moments for their deliveries of pet food, cosmetics, weapons, bitcoins, jewelry, and leisure wear.
And this with union membership which has been dwindling for the past forty years under assault by minority capital while the affluent top ten percent has seen its wealth skyrocket with the support of that same minority.
Isn’t the free market a marvel of democracy?
Yes, if you are among those who find rape a cost effective form of dating that avoids dinner and a movie and gets right to the sex.
While pondering this, be sure to participate in a round of democratic marketing called the 2022 elections with requests for money…
… the real stuff of our financially sacred democracy…
… coming along with any and all messages about how we need to elect progressives or regressives to maintain the system of two party politics that makes sure the capitalist market continues…
…setting us against one another to prevent us from ever uniting as a people…
…and not a collection of reduced-to-less-than human minorities who compete with one another across identity groups with common interest…
….hidden by the tiniest minority in the country: the incredibly richest of the rich and their wealthy – and diverse – servant class.
The warfare state continues without the fiery if intellectually empty rhetoric of the last president replaced by the most recent who quietly, if he had any idea what the hell was going on, presided over another bombing of a foreign country- Syria- to protect American lives.
Those not yet reduced to total brain death under the abuse of consciousness by anti-social corporate and personal media might well ask: what the hell are Americans doing in Syria?
And if there are Syrians in America does Syria now have the right to bomb America in their defense?
But logic has no place in our government market where laws of political supply and demand assure continued profits for the tiny ruling minority and its well-paid servants in corporate business.
The real menace, we are warned by the triumphant sector of the ruling class representing the best educated bigots in America, are terrifying groups with names that make them sound like gay dance troupes.
Of course the horrible fears we are taught to react to when told of blood thirsty white supremacist* groups like the “Proud Boys” are nothing compared to the corporate investor class which would never dream of attacking our revered national capital: they already own it.
Make no mistake, the new team at the helm of our titanic ship of state isn’t nearly as dumb, domestically, as the last egotist led cabal with a leader who at least spoke like a populist while acting like a pampered rich brat.
But the warfare state in which Israel exercises far more power in our sacred democracy than the average American citizen, will continue and hundreds of billions of our tax dollars will be rubber stamped by a hired staff of corporadoes in order to fend off alleged menaces like China…
… which has ended urban poverty in a population of more than 850 million…
… three times greater than our total, while we suffer rising poverty among millions of families in a population of less than 330 million.
Quick, more bombs, death rays, drones, and especially propaganda from our free press which is available for a price, like the bombs, pet food, health care, entertainment, sports and democracy like no other in the world.
We have a new board of directors which still serves the same corporation with an experienced if nearly addle pated leader replacing the most dangerous one ever…
…in that he bluntly acted as the boorish at best murderous at worst executive of an imperial danger to humanity…
…masked as a democracy by psycho-neurotic therapists and other professionals.
Every few years we are indulged in moving from fundamentalist theologians of the market-church to fundamentalist economists of the church-market and we call that belief system our democracy.
Who else can perform self-lobotomies and pay more for milk than gasoline?
Just wait until the pandemic is overcome, more likely if we asked China to help us organize a more cooperative…
…than individualistic gang of identity groups, each with beliefs that it transcends humanity…
…and will best be served by accepting slavery as long as it works in the house and not in the fields.
No wonder China is such a menace to the gods of capital when it ought to be a lesson to the people of earth.
Especially Americans who are propagandized by their mind managers to mind too many other people’s business in imperial fashion while being told it’s all about democracy.
You know, like cheap gas, self-lobotomies and all that other good stuff.
The real thing and the demand for it is growing, worldwide, and the sooner we end our alienated domination and begin working together as members of the one and only human race, the better for the future.
And that future cannot be run, as it still is, for the benefit of private profit but for the public good.
*White supremacist and white privilege are among the favorite all-encompassing labels attached to lesser beings by people of higher intellectual and moral awareness made obvious by the fact that they are all members of the more privileged bigot class.
It’s one thing, me writing about my experiences and the seemingly disjointed, and off-scale, way that I was “retired”, and another thing entirely about how you (the reader) and your friends and family deal with this situation. Yes, the USA is sinking. And yes, 2020 was a God-awful year. And ye, there are so many things going on…
…and the “news’ is amplifying everything to a fever pitch WTF? What is going on?
I’ll tell you. Listen up.
They want you IN A STATE OF PANIC. Then, while you are in a “reactive” and “receptive” mode, they can do what ever they want. Just like the shock after the 9-11 event, had George Bush create the largest police state in history, and clamp down all all the bill of rights. When people are scared, or in a state of panic, they are easily led; easily manipulated.
The corrupt leadership, the PTB and their toadies want this.
Please do not feel that way. It’s not as bad as it appears. Not by a long shot.
So, one of the first things that you MUST do is stop reading “news”. Alternative, Right, Left, Foreign. What ever. Please stop. It’s got so much bullshit that no one is getting accurate and timely information. And much of that is exactly that lies, distortions and just plain bullshit.
Look back through history, did any of the howling and screeching narrative come to pass?
Y2K. When your toaster would burn your house down. Your radio would start yelling at you.
3G radiation. Yes. that dangerous 3G radiation would cause you to have radiation burns on your brain, seizures, and cancer.
Mad Cow. Yup, one day you are eating a hamburger, the next moment you go to work and don’t know how to turn on your computer.
WMD. Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction, one of the largest armies in the world, and desperately wants to kill American infidels!
TikTok. Watching cat videos is a forms of sly mind control. Before you know it, they will take over our “democracy”!
And now…
COVID Vaccine. It’s dangerous, and can cause cancer. It’s a way to alter DNA and turn Americans into mind-controlled robot sheeple!
Hey! I’ve got news for you all. Most Americans are already “mind controlled sheeple”. So don’t get all hot and bothered about it. Ok?
The ruling class wants the citizenry in a state of panic.
That is what is going on.
For you to survive this period of time you need to be calm, and frosty. You need to be able to know and see what is going on, and do so as a third-person observer so that you can handle the changes as they arrive. Don’t be the freaked out pet that starts running across a busy four lane intersection in panic. Be alert, be aware. Be calm.
The Lathe of Heaven
America is collapsing, and it’s every-person for themself. Or so it appears…
In a future world racked by violence and environmental catastrophes, George Orr wakes up one day to discover that his dreams have the ability to alter reality. He seeks help from Dr. William Haber, a psychiatrist who immediately grasps the power George wields. Soon George must preserve reality itself as Dr. Haber becomes adept at manipulating George’s dreams for his own purposes.
So get this… when this guy falls asleep, his dreams are so strong that he switches world-lines and arrives on the reality that he dreamed about. Yikes! And of course if he has a nightmare he wakes up to a nightmare, and if he has a happy dream, he wakes up to a happy life.
Well, this guy sees what is happening and decides to hypnotize him and thus be able to manually control what the world will become… all with good intentions, don’t you know. But of course, everything goes to shit.
In so many ways this resembles the world that we are inhabiting right now. Big, rich and powerful people are controlling things, and others are trying to sound the alarm. All of it is like a slow-motion car wreck and it’s terrifying. It really is. Our lives, our mental health, our families, our incomes are all disrupted. We don’t know what to do and we are going and moving towards a panic state.
You are in this state right now.
And it is awful.
A must see for science fiction fans - be careful what you dream aboutDilip12
March 2001
I had public television on several days ago (March 10, 2001) and "Lathe of Heaven" was starting on their series "Movies Worth Taping". I'm glad I happened to turn the TV on, as it was a movie well worth watching! It was made in 1987 as the first made-for-public-TV film, and is based on a novel by Ursula Le Guin.
This movie explores the notion of "effective dreaming", where one's dreams actually come true. It explores the strange dreams of George Orr (Bruce Davison). When he has these dreams, he wakes to find that his dreamt-up situations are now not only reality, but other people suddenly have adapted as if this reality has been with the world for some time.
George is traumatized by these dreams, and seeks the help of Dr. William Haber (Kevin Conway). Dr. Haber's intentions are good, to harness the power of these effective dreams to the betterment of the world, but he clearly abuses the doctor-patient relationship and hypnotizes George to have specific kinds of dreams. One motto of this film might be "be careful what you dream about"!
I found the special effects sometimes interesting, but often heavy-handed and not so smoothly executed. The setting, sometime in the near future in Portland, Oregon, was inexplicably dreary, beyond the rain that the city is well known for. The character development could have been stronger, with ancillary characters like Dr. Haber's secretary and the very few others seeming to be made out of cardboard and lacking emotion. George and Heather LeLache (Margaret Avery), however, enjoyed more solid and believable depictions.
In spite of these criticisms, the film was an exciting journey into inner space that indulges us to think about deep philosophical questions.
What is reality?
Are there parallel realities?
What is or should be knowable about the nature of existence (to me reminiscent a bit of "2010", one of my favorite science fiction films)?
What happens if we dream each other into or out of reality?
"The greatest good for the greatest number" or rights of the individual?
Can we design a utopia or will we be doomed to experience accidents we never considered that render such a proposed utopia much less than ideal?
“The Lathe of Heaven” doesn’t have the fresh and exciting visual effects of earlier science fiction films like “2001” or later ones, but is an interesting film that is a must see for science fiction fans.
Interesting look at the consequences of playing god.maochichi
22 June 2000
This was finally re-shown here on OPB in Portland during the spring membership drive after it's first and only showing in 1980 or so (apparently it was the most requested show of all time) and it is a rather effective piece of science fiction.
George Orr, a simple man by most standards, has dreams that change the world, and after overdosing on drugs trying to quell these dreams, he is charged to the care of Dr. Haber -- a well meaning and philanthropic therapist. Dr. Haber recognizes George's ability to change the future via dreaming of alternate realities, and he adopts a plan to create a perfect world by suggesting dreams of ridding humanity of the scourges that plague it (overpopulation, racism, war, etc) to George through hypnosis.
The world created by George and Dr. Haber is alternately perfect and irrevocably flawed as it is soon revealed that the consequences fixing one problem that plagues humanity only creates another equally serious dilemma. George in his simplicity realizes that there is no "perfect world", and that the meaning of human existence is not necessarily to create a perfect world, a concept that Dr. Haber fails to grasp.
If there is one movie that I can suggest best represents what is going on TODAY, it is this movie.
It really is.
Powerful, rich people. People who have evolved to be something else (other than human) and want to redo, remake the world into their idea of utopia are pushing all the buttons, and removing all the stops to make it happen. They are purposely inciting panic. They are purposely trying to alter the thinking patterns of people.
The good news is that it is all an illusion.
It really is. Sure things are happening, but what is happening regarding you, and your family will not, and does not resemble the narrative that you are reading about.
Step by step
So the first thing that you must do is turn off “THE NOISE”. Stop the “news” feeds and all that nonsense. It’s not gonna be as bad as everyone with a microphone is yelling about.
Second thing. Go to my post about Hemi-sync. Download one or all of the files. Put them on a player, and lie in bed and listen to them. Why? Well all this howling noise is moving your center of consciousness about. It is no longer centered on the pinealgland. It is off somewhere else. The hemi-sync will recenter it to where you need it to be.
It might take two or three sessions to get the effect, but I guarantee that the first session WILL ABSOLUTELY make a difference and you will see and feel the difference. You won’t be so caught up and your panic will be way, way down.
I am not saying that there is nothing to worry about. I am not saying that you need not be concerned. What I am saying is that your family needs you right now.
They need you to be alert, strong, composed and in control. You must fake it, show a good happy face. And show some leadership. You have a role and this is the time for you to shine.
When you are in a plane you don’t want to hear the airline pilot screaming into the microphone…
..."we're all going to die!".
No. You want to hear (in a calm, clear and confident voice) …
"...hello folks, we have a minor technical alert. It's probably nothing. But the policy is to land at the nearest airport. Sorry for the delay."
Remember the key take aways…
The Take Aways
The “ruling class” running the entire Western group of nations (led by America) is all in a state of collapse, or barring that, an organized and function intentional state of disorder. They are typing to induce change to happen, and it is frightening. And part of this change is to induce panic. They want the people to react on emotion, and not by reason.
It’s not right. It’s not fair. It’s not pleasant.
But that’s the way it is.
And if you want to see exactly what is going on, then watch the 197
0’s movie “The Lathe of Heaven”.
A Science Fiction Classic reclaimed from the vaults.Klaatu-1812 August 2000
Last night I got a chance to see one of my favorite SF movies, and it only took 20 years.
Back in 1978, I was working at a mom-and-pop bookstore in Dallas called Taylors. One day one of the customers bought a book by Ursula K. LeGuin: "The Lathe of Heaven". I told her that she was one of my favorite authors, and that I loved the book. She said that she was involved in the production of a film of the book that was to be done locally.
Early in 1980 it was aired. Bruce Davison (recently the Senator in "X-men") played the protagonist, George Orr. And various Metroplex locations stood in for Portland in the near-future year of 2002. City Hall (later the OCP HQ in "Robocop"), Reunion Arena and the Water Gardens in FW (previously used in "Logan's Run").
George Orr has a problem: dreams. He doesn't want to have any. He takes drugs to try and thwart his unconscious so that he can sleep but not dream. Because if he does dream a special kind of dream, an "effective" dream, it changes reality "all the way back to the Stone Age".
Dr. William Haber is an oneirologist: a dream specialist. He doesn't believe George's story, of course. He thinks that George is sick, not cursed. He eventually comes around to the realization that George is right. A power struggle ensues to decide who will be in charge of deciding who gets to make the decisions of how to use this power.
The story touches on race relations, psychology, Taoism and more. And all on a miniscule budget of 250K.
An added bonus was the addition of interviews with Bruce Davison and Ms. LeGuin, the latter with Bill Moyers. She rarely does interviews, and it was wonderful hearing her add little behind-the-scenes details and commenting on the story and film. Since my understanding of Taoism is limited to readings of "The Tao of Pooh", I didn't realize the use of Taoism until I heard UKL mention it.
If I had had 90 bucks to blow on a KERA membership, I could have gotten the video from them. In fact, the on-air weasel said that the tape was "only available through public TV". If you check amazon.com, as I did last night, you will find that this is a bald-faced lie: TLoH will be released on VHS and DVD later this month, with the interviews and all.
The only thing that burned my butt about the film that I saw last night was the one change they made. Originally, they used Ringo Starr's version of the Beatles tune "A Little Help from My Friends". The new version has a different cover version. One of the reviews on amazon.com stated that this was because it would cost too much to get the rights from Michael Jackson, who now owns the entire Beatle catalog. This doesn't work. IMHO, MJ would get money no matter who did it.
Uncle Steve says check it out.
Panic to war
Why does the ruling class want Americans and their subservient nations to be in a state of panic?
It was a gripping, stunning testimony. Before Congress, a 15 year old volunteer nurse, Nayirah, struggled to compose her trembling voice, barely holding back tears, as she testified that marauding soldiers had thrown babies out of incubators in a hospital, leaving them to die on the floor.
Later, Amnesty International confirmed authoritatively that 312 babies had been killed this way. [1] All the news agencies ran with the story, and the country and Congress were in a total uproar.
There was only one problem: it was completely, utterly, totally fraudulent. It was engineered, perjured, coached testimony concocted by PR experts, designed to manufacture consent for a U.S. war on Iraq.
At the time, it was also crystal clear that the claims were absurd—Kuwait had a population of less than 1.5 million at the time, and given its birth rate, would have had a few hundred premature babies a year. It’s inconceivable that over 300 of them could have been clustered in a single hospital on a single day.
Nevertheless, this was the story that was sold to the U.S. people. Representative John Porter stated, “We have never heard…[such] a record of inhumanity and brutality and sadism…I don’t know how the people of the civilized countries of this world can fail to do everything within their power to remove this scourge from the face of the earth.”
Not long afterward, the U.S. went to war with Iraq. It would wage war again, 12 years later, doubling down with even more monstrous lies about weapons of mass destruction.
Today, we are facing a similar situation: the U.S. is escalating rapidly towards a shooting war with China, and similar absurd, astonishing, and monstrous lies are being spread. In fact, the U.S. is already engaged in “multi-domain” “hybrid warfare” with China. This is warfare just below the threshold of direct military engagement. On the ground this involves:
Economic Warfare: trade sanctions and tariff war, as well as technological warfare: attempted seizure of Chinese companies (TikTok); attacks on China’s international 5G contracts; sanctions on the primary & secondary supply chains of key sectors of Chinese industry (e.g. Huawei’s semiconductor supply chain); attacks on Ant Financial’s IPO.
Legal Warfare, or “lawfare,” including over 380 anti-China bills in Congress, and 14 individual and state lawsuits against China for over $30 trillion in “Covid damages”; the long arm “legal” kidnapping of Huawei’s executive
Diplomatic Warfare, including consulate shutdowns, harassment of diplomats, breaching of diplomatic pouches and compounds, and calls for regime change.
Military Brinksmanship and posturing in the South China Sea, the East China Sea, the Taiwan straits; complete encirclement of China with strategic weapons, surveillance, and 400 offensive bases (“The Pacific Pivot”), the use of air bases in Taiwan for military surveillance, and plans to station intermediate range nuclear missiles all along China’s periphery. [2]
Civil Subversion: color revolution, urban terror, destabilization and delegitimation operations in Hong Kong (and other places where China has interests), including millions of dollars of funneled for organization & training, and encrypted communications infrastructure built to coordinate anti-government activities.
Academic Warfare: through the FBI’s China Initiative, every 10 hours a case is opened against a Chinese student or researcher in the U.S. (currently 2700 cases) and all Chinese students are considered potential “non-traditional” “collectors” and “spies” involved in a “thousand grains of sand” collection strategy.
Information Warfare: last but not least, we are seeing total Information warfare. The stories about so-called “massive human rights abuses,” “Chinese concentration camps,” “Chinese-made-and-released Covid,” “China has harmed us economically,” “China has stolen its way to the top,” “China is oppressing independent Hong Kong,” are part of this information warfare.
This mass propaganda incites people to hate China irrationally and unconditionally, to manufacture consent for war. The U.S. military calls this information warfare, “the firehose of falsehoods” and we are all being drenched with these lies. This is necessary to justify war against an enemy and to curtail any rational discussion or questioning.
Some of the questions that the public are kept from asking are:
Are these allegations supported by any facts?
Has China threatened us? Is the U.S. at risk from China?
Is this war justifiable by any means? Is it legal?
Do the citizens of the U.S. want to go to war? Could the U.S. even fight, let alone win a war with China?
A careful, reasoned approach to these questions, would lead one to say, No.
Before we try to play whack-a-mole with the blatant war propaganda, a more useful and clarifying approach is to ask, why is the U.S. telling these lies to go to war?
War and change
It’s a dangerous path and very, very dangerous game that the PTB are playing. Emotional manipulation, economic squeeze, followed by tyrannical suppression so that a hot war can distract and eliminate threats.
One fallback model of U.S. supremacy is to plunge the rest of the world back into the dark ages through hybrid warfare—while the U.S. controls the key systems of communication, information, surveillance, finance, rent extraction, along with the corridors of maritime transport.
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It’s 2021. The Trump neocon war-loving administration has been run out of Washington DC in a most spectacular fashion. And the new Bideon administration is left picking up the pieces left by the “wrecking balls” of Trump, Pompeo, Tom Cotton, and John Bolton. We are truly lucky the world is not engulfed in nuclear flames. Never the less the international damage they have created has been substantial, critical, long-lasting, and visceral.
The diplomats have returned to the negotiating tables, and have found them all broken, smashed, on fire, and in many cases damaged beyond repair. In some cases the entire rooms have been demolished, and a wrecking ball has dissembled the entire structure. All that remains is bare earth, with broken shards of pottery, a few tangled branches, and a heavily salted surface. No life can grow there ever again.
Here is a diplomat, Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.), the new incoming ambassador to China discussing the new world of China-USA relationships. He does so after the horrific damage of the Trump administration from 2017 through 2020.
It’s a great read.
It’s nice to see articulate diplomats talking instead of bullies, thugs, and religious ideological zealots trying to invoke the “second coming of Christ” through provoking global thermonuclear warfare.
In the belief mind you, that any war with China will be on American terms, American defined battle field, with the weapons that America would choose, and that everyone in the world would side with America. Because America is "exceptional", has "freedom" and "liberty" because of it's wonderful "democracy".
Now the ambassador is a diplomat, and he is talking to a group of policy planners in Washington DC. This is an important speech as it gives the policy planners direction. It is their “marching orders” (so to speak) telling them what areas that need to be worked on and how to go about it.
So, obviously, he can not talk about the “black” side of the Trump administration’s attacks upon China. Such as…
Bio-weapon, COVID-19 the plan to suppress China while keeping America intact.
“Tit for tat” destruction of aircraft carriers. First China then it’s retaliation on US soil.
Hong Kong riots, death, destruction and mayhem. “I want to see HK burn.“
Drones to spray biological weapons to kill all Chinese livestock.
Biological viruses to kill off grains and induce famine.
Assassinations and “Black operations” in Taiwan.
MIA of elite forces who attempted landings on Chinese territorial islands.
Destruction and rerouting of IC chip manufacturing equipment destined for China.
…For starters.
But this is a public forum, and the comments are not intended to be a complete review of all the actions by the Trump Administration to attack China. It is to present the publicly observed efforts, and put them into perspective relative to the new direction that the Biden Administration has undertaken.
This is necessary. After all, the American, UK, Australia, and Indian press has been swamped with a “fire-hose of disinformation” that basically stated that Biden will continue the same actions, paths, and behaviors regarding China as the Trump Administration…
But as I have repeatedly stated, this disinformation is all bullshit. That is the way democracies work. If you don’t like the policies of one President, you elect a different on, and the policies will change appropriately.
So ignore the idea that the Biden administration is going to continue the Trump / Pompeo / Cotton and John Bolton “hybrid-war” with China. This formal and public announcement says otherwise.
Remarks to the Washington Institute of Foreign Affairs
Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.)
Visiting Scholar, Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown University. By video link, Washington, D.C. 11 February 2021
Fifty years ago, Richard Nixon decided to ignore Napoleon’s advice to “let [China] sleep, for when it wakes it will astonish the world.”[1] I was there when China opened its eyes. And I have watched it transform the various orders of the world and become an American obsession.
Every generation of Americans feels obliged to reinvent the China policies it inherits from its predecessor. We can be sure our country will eventually get its policies right – after we’ve exhausted all the alternatives. But we have not yet done so. And, for many reasons, our latest policies toward China are almost certain to prove self-defeating.
We have just exited the most bizarre presidency in our history. One of its distinguishing characteristics was the substitution in our foreign relations of unrestricted economic warfare for diplomacy. Bluster and bullying replaced dialogue and reason aimed at convincing the recalcitrant to see that it could be in their interest as well as ours for them to do things our way.
In the last half of the last century, we Americans made the rules. Others got into the habit of following us. To some extent, that habit – though fading – has outlasted our adherence to the principles we once stood for. So military posturing, economic intimidation, diatribe, and attempted regime change are becoming the norm in international relations. China is a case in point. Sino-American relations now exemplify Freeman’s third law of strategic dynamics: for every hostile act there is an even more hostile reaction.
Americans have an inbuilt missionary impulse. We enjoy protecting, tutoring, lecturing, and hectoring other peoples on how to correct their character to approximate our idealized image of ourselves. We are offended when others insist on independence from us and on preserving their own political culture. China has never wavered in its determination to do both, wishful thinking by American politicians and pundits notwithstanding.
In America’s pas de deux with China, we have consistently been the initiator of the dance and taken the lead. We developed some well-founded complaints about Chinese economic behavior, so we launched a trade war with it. We were alarmed about China’s potential to outcompete us internationally, so we decided to try to cripple it with an escalating campaign of “maximum pressure.” We saw China as a threat to our continued military primacy, so we sought to contain and encircle it. Cumulatively, we have:
declared China to be an adversary and called for regime change in Beijing;
launched an invective-filled global propaganda campaign against China, its ruling Communist Party, and its fumbled initial response to COVID-19;
sanctioned allies and partners for failing to curtail their own dealings with China;
replaced market-driven trade with China with government management of economic exchanges based on tariffs, quotas, sanctions, and export bans;
abandoned or attempted to sabotage international organizations in which we deemed Chinese influence to be greater than ours;
kneecapped the WTO, trashing the rule-bound order for international economic relations we had taken seven decades to elaborate;
attempted to block Chinese investment and lending in third countries;
blacklisted Chinese companies and delisted them on our stock markets;
curtailed visas, criminalized scientific exchanges, and banned technology exports to China;
closed a Chinese consulate (losing one of our own as a result) and initiated tit-for-tat reductions in reporting by journalists;
sought to terminate Chinese sponsorship of language teaching in our country, and discouraged in-country study by potential federal employees;
reidentified the United States with Beijing’s civil war adversary in Taipei and violated the Taiwan-related terms of U.S. normalization with Beijing;
stepped up provocative air and sea patrols along China’s borders; and
begun to reconfigure both our conventional and nuclear forces to fight a war with China in its near seas or on its claimed and established territory.
These actions have gotten China’s attention, much as they got Japan’s when we applied a range of considerably less hostile measures to it in 1941. Japan reacted by attacking Pearl Harbor. China has not yet lost its cool. But it has:
reciprocated U.S. tariffs and sanctions;
begun to diversify its sources of essential agricultural and industrial products to end dependence on the United States, which it now regards as its supplier of last resort;
broadened and accelerated its effort to become scientifically and technologically self-reliant and independently innovative;
courted countries and international organizations alienated by U.S. unilateralism;
created new international institutions to complement existing bodies, in which it is now increasingly assertive;
refocused its foreign policy toward the development of cooperative relationships with Europe, Southeast and West Asia, Africa, and Latin America;
joined other countries aggravated by unilateral U.S. sanctions based on dollar hegemony in seeking a new world monetary order in which the dollar is no longer the dominant medium of trade settlement;
adopted an obnoxiously uncivilized demeanor in its foreign relations while remaining risk averse on issues like Taiwan and U.S. naval harassment of its presence in the South China Sea; and
continued to modernize its military to fend off and defeat an American attack on its homeland or near seas.
If this were a game of chess, we’d be easy to spot. We’re the player with no plan beyond an aggressive opening move. That is not just not a winning strategy. It’s no strategy at all. The failure to think several moves ahead matters. The protracted struggle we have launched with China is not a board game, but something vastly more serious. It is not in any respect a repeat of our victorious competition with the sclerotic USSR. And the days when we could act internationally without incurring consequences are past.
So far in the contest with China, not so good.
Our farmers have lost most of their $24 billion market in China, perhaps permanently. Our companies have had “to accept lower profit margins, cut wages and jobs for U.S. workers, defer potential wage hikes or expansions, and raise prices for American consumers or companies.”[2] Our tariff increases and turn to government-managed trade have cost an estimated 245,000 American jobs,[3] while shaving something like $320 billion off our GDP.[4] On average, American families are paying as much as $1,277 more each year for everything from apparel and shoes to toys, electronic goods, and household appliances.[5]
In 2017, when we launched the first of our wave of economic attacks on China, our trade deficit with it was $375 billion. Last year, it appears to have fallen to about $295 billion. Over the same period, however, our global trade deficit rose from $566 billion to an estimated $916 billion. This reflects a shift of Chinese production to Taiwan, the EU, Southeast Asia, Mexico, and elsewhere. There has been almost no “reshoring” of the industrial jobs American companies originally outsourced to China. According to an Oxford Economics study, if the Biden administration leaves current policies in place, the United States can expect cumulative job losses of 320,000 by 2025, and our GDP will be $1.6 trillion less than it would otherwise be.[6]
As is normal in wars, whether economic or military, the other side has also taken some casualties, but they appear to have been considerably lighter than ours. China’s overall trade surplus last year rose to a new high of $535 billion. Beijing improved its international position by lowering tariff barriers to imports from sources other than the United States, striking free trade deals with other Asian countries and the EU, and helping to sponsor a trade dispute-settlement mechanism to replace the US-sabotaged WTO. China is expected to contribute one-third of global growth this year. It is becoming an innovation powerhouse. Forty percent of global venture capital investments are now Chinese – on a par with our own.
The U.S. focus has been on tripping up China rather than improving our own international competitiveness. This is an expression of complacent hubris rather than a plan. It is a sure way to lose ground, not gain it. The United States continues to disinvest in education, infrastructure, and science. We are making no effort to curtail the anti-competitive impact of domestic oligopolies or reform the corporate culture that drives companies to offshore work instead of retaining and retraining American workers to use more efficient technologies. Our country is more closed to foreign talent and ideas than ever before. The United States is still among the most innovative societies on the planet, but others are overtaking us. It does not help that we have come to value financial engineering more than the real thing.
Recent polling shows that most of the world now sees our political system as broken, our governance as incompetent, our economic and racial inequalities as perniciously debilitating, our policies as domineering, and our word as unreliable. Ranting and raving about China’s initial mishandling of the outbreak in Wuhan a bit over a year ago of a previously unknown coronavirus has not made the world less impressed by Beijing’s amazing ability to recover from a bungled start and counter and control the pandemic on its territory.[7] Nor has it obscured the contrast between China’s performance and the catastrophically incompetent U.S. response to the virus. Even our closest allies, partners, and friends now expect China to surpass us in wealth and power within the decade. Last year, in the culmination of a trend that preceded the pandemic, China passed the United States to become the world’s largest recipient of foreign companies’ investments. If we do not fix our domestic embarrassments, other countries may come to see us as a problem to be avoided rather than a partner to be courted.
Meanwhile, China has not broken stride. Its students’ performance in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) is already among the best in the world. It is investing 8 percent more each year in education. China already accounts for one-fourth of the world’s STEM workforce and is widening its lead. Measured in purchasing power, its investment in science is now almost on a par with our own and rising at an annual rate of 10 percent, as ours continues to fall. China’s infrastructure is universally envied. It already accounts for 30 percent of the world’s manufactures, versus our 16 percent, and the gap is growing. Last year it became the world’s largest consumer market. Its economy is, for the most part, not dominated by monopolies or oligopolies, but fragmented and ferociously competitive.
In short, China has many problems, but it has its act together and appears, by and large, to be on top of them.
China’s principal challenge to us is not military but economic and technological. But our country is geared up to deal only with military threats. So, China has become both the antidote to our post-Cold War enemy deprivation syndrome and a gratifying driver of U.S. defense spending. If you think you’re St. George, everything looks like a dragon. We have been unable to tame China, so we now dream of slaying it. The dragon is alert to this. We are in China’s face. It is not in ours. Not yet anyway. But if you go abroad in search of dragons to arouse, they may eventually follow you home.
There are American aircraft and ships aggressively patrolling China’s borders, but no Chinese aircraft and ships off ours. American bases ring China. There are no Chinese bases near us. Still, we are upping our defense budget to make our ability to overwhelm China’s defenses more credible. We do so in the name of deterring Chinese aggression against China’s Asian neighbors. But military assault is not the threat from China that agitates its neighbors.
The countries of the Indo-Pacific are universally apprehensive about China’s increasingly bullying demands for deference, but none fears Chinese conquest. We are distraught that we can no longer breeze through China’s increasingly effective defenses to strike it. We have counted on being able to do so if the unfinished civil war with the newly democratized descendant of Chiang Kai-shek’s regime in Taiwan resumes. We seem to think that a war with China over Taiwan could be limited like Korea and Vietnam. But such a war would begin on Chinese territory and be fought directly with Chinese forces, not in third countries or by allies or proxies of either China or the United States.
It’s comforting to assume that we are so powerful that, if we strike another people’s homeland, they will refrain from retaliating against ours. We prefer not to think about China’s capacity to reach out and hurt us, including with nuclear weapons, if we hurt it. But this is delusional and it misses the point. We cannot hope to deal with China’s politico-economic, diplomatic, and technological challenge by engaging it in armed combat or threatening to do so. We cannot outspend it militarily. And we can no longer hope to beat it on its home ground.
Rivalry, in which each side competes to outdo another, can raise the competence of those engaged in it. So, it is potentially beneficial. But adversarial antagonism, in which competitors seek to win by hamstringing each other, is not. It entrenches hostility, justifies hatred, injures, and threatens to weaken both sides.
If we are to compete effectively with China and other rising and resurgent powers, we must upgrade many aspects of our performance. This will require a serious effort at domestic reform and self-strengthening. And it will take time. Trying to bring down foreign countries to prevent them from surpassing us is more likely to backfire than to succeed. We need to take a hard look at where we are falling behind and make the changes necessary to power ahead.
The United States is endowed with unexampled geopolitical, human, ideological, and physical advantages. With the right policies, we can outcompete any challenger, however formidable. But, if we seek to hamstring our competitors, we should expect them to respond in kind. If we treat China as our Nemesis, China has the capacity to become Her.
In the third decade of the 21st century, Americans can no longer reliably command international support for our preferred approaches to international issues. Others have come to doubt the wisdom, propriety, and constancy of our policies and suspect they are formulated without taking their interests into account.
Many countries are apprehensive about the growth of China’s wealth and power. But – without exception — they want multilateral or plurilateral backing to balance and cope with this challenge, not unilateral, confrontational American activism. They seek to expand trade with China, not contract it. They want to accommodate China on terms that maximize their own independent sovereignties, not make China an enemy or reinstate America as their overlord.
If the United States persists in defining our contest with China in confrontational bilateral terms, we will find ourselves increasingly isolated. Given the unconvincing state of our democracy at present, if we misdefine our China policy as an effort to combat authoritarianism, we will alienate, not attract most other nations. Only if we are willing to be a team player and can credibly claim to be serving the interests of partner powers as well as our own will they stand behind us in support of perceived common interests.
China is an increasingly formidable world power with interests that range from some that parallel ours to others that are antithetical, and still others that are of no consequence to us. We should treat China as the disparate bundle of challenges it is. There are many issues of concern to us that cannot be effectively addressed without Chinese participation. We need to leverage Chinese capacities that serve our interests and counter or immobilize those that don’t. Specifically, we should:
stop pushing China and Russia together in opposition to us;
let market forces – rather than paranoid plutocrats, xenophobic politicians, and ideological crackpots – play the major part in governing trade and investment;
create a predictable framework for trade with China in strategically sensitive sectors, like semiconductors, that safeguards U.S. defense interests while taking advantage of China’s contributions to global supply chains;
compete with China and other countries for influence in international organizations, rather than withdrawing from them because we can no longer dominate them;
seek to cooperate with China to address planetwide problems of common concern like:
the mitigation of climate and environmental degradation;
the reinforcement of global capacity to respond to pandemics and other public health challenges;
the inhibition and, if possible, reversal of nuclear proliferation;
the reconstruction of a globally agreed framework to manage the international transfer of goods, services, and capital;
the maintenance of global economic growth amid financial stability;
the healthy development of the world’s poorer countries;
the setting of standards for new technologies and competition in new strategic domains; and
the reform of global governance.
We should:
work with China and others to ease the now inevitable transition from dollar hegemony to a multilateral monetary order in ways that preserve maximum American influence and independence;
leverage, not boycott, China’s “Belt and Road Initiative,” to ensure that we benefit from the business opportunities and connectivities it creates;
promote cross-Strait negotiations and mutual accommodation rather than military confrontation between Beijing and Taipei;
expand consular relations, restore journalistic exchanges, and promote Chinese language and area studies to enhance both our presence and our understanding of China.
China and the United States began 2021 in different moods. This year, China will celebrate the 100th anniversary of its ruling Communist Party. Chinese associate the Party with the astonishingly rapid transformation of their country from a poor and beleaguered nation to a relatively well off and strong one. Most Chinese have set aside their traditional pessimism and are optimistic that the enormous progress they have experienced in their lifetimes will continue. China’s decisive handling of the pandemic has bolstered its citizens faith in its system. Morale is high. China is focused on the future.
By contrast, the United States entered this year in an unprecedented state of domestic disarray and demoralization. A plurality of Americans disputes the legitimacy of the newly installed Biden administration, which faces an uphill battle with a Congress well-practiced at gridlock and evading its constitutional responsibilities. Despite a booming stock market supported by cheap money and chronic deficit spending, we are in an economic depression. So far, our answer to this has been limited to subsidizing consumption rather than investing in the rejuvenation of our political economy through attention to infrastructure, education, and reindustrialization. We have our eyes fixed firmly on the immediate, rather than the long term. But, without serious repairs to restore a sound American political economy, our future is in jeopardy, and we will be in no condition to compete with the world’s rising and resurgent great powers, especially China.
Doubling down on military competition with Beijing just gives its military-industrial complex a reason to up the ante and call our bluff. An arms race with China leads not to victory but to mutual impoverishment. As President Eisenhower reminded us sixty years ago, “every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” And stoking China’s neighbors’ dependency on us rather than helping them become more self-reliant implicates them in our conflicts of interest with China without addressing their own. They need our diplomatic support even more than our military backing to work out a stable modus vivendi with China, which is not going away.
Our China policy should be part of a new and broader Asia strategy, not the main determinant of our relations with other Asian nations or the sole driver of our policies in the region. And to be able to hold our own with China, we must renew our competitive capacity and build a society that is demonstrably better governed, better educated, more egalitarian, more open, more innovative, and healthier as well as freer than all others.
To paraphrase Napoleon, let China take its own path while we take our own. We need to fix our own problems before we try to fix China’s. If we Americans get our priorities right, we can once again be the nation to rise and astonish the world
This fellow is a diplomat, and so his words must be of careful construction. However you can clearly see the angst that he has to deal with after the “wrecking ball” that was Trump / Pompeo.
One of the things that was carefully worded was the idea that any hot war with China WOULD NOT be confined to the South China Sea. That it would open up a Pandora’s Box that the USA is ill-equipped to deal with. What?
Yes. The war-hawks left the room. And a deep understanding is beginning to hit. If the USA attacks China, China would retaliate with nuclear detonations on American soil, and all the largest American cities would be destroyed.
Try to initiate a “brush war”, “police action”, or “drone event” upon China, and most of America will lie in rubble minutes afterwards. China. Does. Not. Play.
Not only that, but they would do so in partnership with Russia, and America would be lucky to withstand the resulting “double tap”, “triple taps” and subsequent bitch-slap into the stone-age.
Look.
It’s 2021. There is a new American administration. They are going to try to work with other nations, and hopefully (in some way) make the world a better place to live. This gives me hope.
But…
Don’t “count your chickens before your eggs hatch”. There are still many challenges that await all of us, and a large number of undefined futures that can still materialize. While it is possible that 2020 under Trump was the Fourth Turning crisis that we all feared, my guess is that this reckoning still lies ahead and we all must be guarded, cautious and open to the realistic possibilities that the future might still hold.
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This post talks about the world going to shit fast, and our frustrations and fears that it is beyond our control. That is not true at all. In fact, we are in control of it, it just looks like we are powerless.
Back in 2016, grassroots white Americans voted anti-establishment Trump into the Oval Office. For the first time, long-held ideals of American democracy have been challenged. Pledging to “Make America Great Again”, Trump's solution was straightforward – waging trade wars on friends and foes alike; withdrawing the country from global pacts, and avoiding responsibilities for international affairs.
The consequences have been catastrophic. Populist policies originally introduced to woo American voters were ironically implemented at the sacrifice of blue-collar workers – the same group of people who supported Trump in 2016. Establishment forces are also fed up with Trump's "madness."
The 2020 election was more a fight between Biden-represented American institutions and anti-establishment forces with Trump being the spokesperson than a partisan battle. Biden, although a Democrat, has high hopes pinned on him by establishment politicians of both parties to bring the United States back to the right track. This requires the new president to restore multilateralism, intensify cooperation with allies, and mend ties with China.
-When will U.S. anti-China hysteria come to an end?
It all began with a comment;
“…our consciousness.”
It appears that my consciousness is being overwhelmed (or over-ruled) by the 99.99% who believe that shit on “TV” or “News”.
Again:
Other than your prayers to nowhere, is there simply a method to say “I’ve had enough of this charade”? Like “Help Mr. Wizard… I don’t wanna be a peon human anymore.” Suicide, is that it? Seriously, what the fuck am I learning these days (in the “sentience nursery”) that I had not known years and years ago?
And I responded with…
In reply to DSKlausler.
I want to take more time to answering your question. Unfortunately I was busy with personal things and all I could do was throw off a quick response. But I have been thinking about you and your last few emails. I can sense a great deal of frustration and angst. And I do understand it.
Do not be under the impression that the reality that you see is ruled and controlled by the masses…the manipulated masses. That point was made very clearly by the base commander when I joined MAJestic. Most of the world is populated by sheeple. Or just folk that haven’t a clue, and who graze upon the lands in a reactive way. Only a handful of people are actually really in control. these are the cowboys, the unappreciated and the under-deserved. You never hear about them, because they are not attracted to fame and fortune.
Look at 2020. Was a fucking year, right?
During the entire year, just about every other article in the United States, mainstream Alt-Right and Alt-left was all HATE CHINA! and it was non-stop. By the end of the year, the 330 million American either totally despised China, (and wanted to go to war) or were guardedly neutral. No one put up any kind of a fight when Trump started kicking the Chinese out of America, banning things, and launched a huge flotilla to attack China.
330 million people HATING China. COVID-19B launched as part of a 8-strain biological attack, a military flotilla…
…but no war happened. Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo were kicked out of office.
The American economy is in shambles. And China is bigger and stronger than ever. Not only that, but it has grown and the world is now turning it’s back on the broken promises of Trump and look at the ruins of the United States… with incredulity and disgust.
Do you actually believe that this is the result of the combined HATRED of 330 million people? Or, maybe that a MAJestic operator that happened to live inside China had a Prayer Affirmation Campaign that said…
[1] Donald Trump will not be able to harm China.
[2] All American military ventures to China will fail.
[3] The harder that Donald Trump tries to break or destroy China, the same and equal effect will hit him and his family personally.
[4] Any WMD’s implemented by America to hurt China will boomerang to the USA a hundred-fold and more.
And yeah. It doesn’t make sense. Except it does if you read everything that I am saying.
COVID-19B deaths China = 4634
COVID-19A deaths USA = 397,600
As far as you and other MM readers. I will not allow any harm to come to you all. Not if I can help it. You all are true believers. So relish in that.
[5] Followers of MM are protected with the same kind of protections that I utilize for my family provided that it is their desire.
If the shadow people thoughts have an equal power as a single person, and there at 330,000,000 of them then it is logical to say (just what you stated) that the tyranny of the majority will define the reality that we all inhabit. After all, that is the primary theory behind propaganda. But I argue quite differently. It is the strength of the thoughts of an individual consciousness that controls the reality that maintains the power to shape and shift the reality that surrounds us.
If you do not understand, I will provide more information.
After the response above, I have received some positive responses.
First from ULTan
I get it, Mr Man. Couldnt be clearer. If folks read your Maj and MWI sections thoroughly, all these concerns are addressed.
I should add again, though, if I may and IMHO: Stop watching MMMedia whatever ya’ll do. And don’t fight the masses head on. Lie low and observe their madness. Learn from it. Is it something that’s happened to them? Or does it just reveal what they really were all along. (Quantum shadows? Existing only to teach u personally? Or is that too far out for ya?) Do not get dragged into arguments with zombified and terrified normies over masks, rules, etc. Work out a method of avoidance. They’ve been driven crazy by Wizards at the top of the pile. Their pile, that is. Avoid this at all costs. Surf that wave, look after your loved ones and especially pets, other critters nearby, too. They need you at this time of year.
Trust in the Plan. And I don’t mean the Qtard one.
How is that working out for ya’ll by the way? Sealed indictments opened yet? Mass paedophilia arrests? America great again, yet?
Trump the saviour avatar?
Ehhh, not really.
Be more careful what you read and follow next time.
And if you were a Qfan and are still sane: please read about how cults work. Start with Jim Jones or the Moonies. Pentacostals, too.
Scary stuff. I assure you.
And thanks again, Mr Man. My cats– each and every one of ’em– say a bigggg hi!
Stay safe,
U.
And again from the original poster, Mr. DSKlausler…
In reply to congjing yu.Thanks for that… and I DO read everything you publish.
It just doesn’t seem right… can’t the simple folks just be left alone to live and grow at their own pace without a bunch of twits ruining the world?
I will give the affirmation deal another go.
Just switch me to the world line where people aren’t so stupid.
Let’s look at the situation
The world seems to be going to Hell. The “news”, the media, the people in Charge and everyone around you are seemingly idiots. “What is their malfunction”, you ask. And you are in fear for your life, your livelihood, and your family. Not to mention your community and your nation.
It doesn’t matter what side of the American Political Spectrum you reside on, everything is seemingly going to Hell straight away. You yearn for stability, a return to quieter and more peaceful times, and management by reason and reasonable people. And when you read the “news” it only amplifies your concerns…
That last link reflects the concerns of many, many Americans (and perhaps many people around the world). “Give me something. Give me hope. Give me Xanax.” Seemingly the population is ready for change…
…and this is a dangerous time. Eh?
Because Change is always uncomfortable, and can usher is a wonderful life, or an indescribably worse on. As we used to say in the United States “jump from the frying pan into the fire”.
Can’t quite put my finger on why. Oh yes, I just flipped on ‘MSDNC’ and opened my Failing New York Times, and now I remember: because I’ve been watching my country set ablaze, and Donald Trump and his faithful Trumpsters are holding the flamethrower.
By now, we’ve all sat rapt and horrified, watching the highlights: the MAGA-bots following the Dear Leader’s call to riot, invading the Capitol building, smashing windows, battering down doors, stealing the Speaker’s lectern and literally covering the floors in shit, for fans of too-on-the-nose metaphors. They accosted police, threatened to hang the traitor Mike Pence and trotted through the legislative chamber in full tactical gear holding flex cuffs in the hope of taking hostages. (Possibly before executing them: someone did erect a gallows on the grounds.) Five people died. Four of them Trump supporters, one of them a Capitol Police officer, hit in the head with a fire extinguisher.
I doubt Mr Trump wanted anybody to die. He just wanted to put a good scare into Congress, while trying to overturn a free and fair election, the very bedrock without which the whole system collapses. So nothing to see here, folks. Let’s talk about what really matters, Trump getting banned from Twitter!
If you haven’t gathered by now, I’ve had it. Plenty of us have always been Trump skeptical; my skepticism dates all the way back to 1999. But it’s time for his acolytes to reckon with the cancer that they’ve let metastasize. I haven’t been terribly subtle, so let’s just go ahead and lay it out: Donald Trump is a sociopathic cult leader, a moral black hole with a weird tan and a combover. Yes, I know it’s old hat to make fun of his hair, but his confidantes have told me it wounds him. And I just want him to hurt like he’s hurt America.
So now that we’re coming to the conclusion of DJT’s first and only term — which has ended in impeachment and could include imprisonment — it’s time to legacy-assess the effects of Trumpism. As several have already noted, after everything from Trump’s social-media meltdowns to him falling asleep at the wheel during the deadliest pandemic in a century, Americans are now poorer, angrier, dumber, meaner, more divided, sicker (both physically and mentally) and deader than they were four years ago. But how ’bout that wall?! (The one that’s one-fourth of the way built, that Mexico didn’t pay for.)
I wasn’t a big fan of The Establishment, either. But we threw them over for this?
I don’t detest Trumpsters: that would leave me hating roughly 60 percent of my friends and 80 percent of my family. But I would like to know how so many good people of my acquaintance could be so blind to the glaringly obvious. You edit American Greatness, one of the house organs of the movement. But by my lights, America isn’t looking so great right now. Feels more like American Mediocrity. Or America Needs Improvement. Lots of it. Give me something. Give me hope. Give me Xanax. Give me shelter from the storm. Or I might do something truly unthinkable, like quote Dylan lyrics in print. Nobody wants to see that.
Ah…
Pointing a nice big finger on a figurehead. Ah. It’s all Trump’s fault, and it’s his followers fault…
No it’s not.
It’s the way that governments crumble. They start young and youthful, they go through a “middle age”, they get old, and senile, and then they die. We are watching America die, and no singular person is at fault. So stop blaming the person at the helm. A doomed ship is going to hit that iceberg, and while the captain might be able to steer the ship somewhat, if he doesn’t hit THAT particular iceberg, he will hit the next one instead, or the one after that. A doomed ship is a doomed ship.
The one thing I’ve noticed over the past five years is that the only people more consumed by the person of Donald Trump — from his psychology to his physiognomy — than the most diehard, plan-trusting, steal-stopping, Trump super-fans are his obsessive detractors. However large the number of actual Trump cultists is, the anti-Trump cult is orders of magnitude larger, more intense and more powerful. That’s not surprising, because Trump’s rise to power is less a direct threat to the established order and the ruling class it serves than it is an indictment of their failure. Of course they react with visceral hatred. Perhaps we can stipulate that a country with a healthy culture and competent, trusted (and trustworthy) institutions would not have elected Donald Trump as president. Yet, Donald Trump has received more votes than any other Republican ever. Twice.
That suggests two possibilities. Either half the country is comprised of Deplorables, reprobates, morons or sociopaths (I’d love to see the Venn Diagram). Or something has gone quite wrong and America isn’t working very well for a lot of Americans.
Option one is the default answer of the ruling class and its aspirants and retainers. But in fact something has gone wrong. Late-stage liberalism isn’t able to keep its promises. That’s why both Trump and Bernie Sanders were so popular. That’s why there is so much social and political conflict. And Trump-obsession of any kind is a distraction and a coping mechanism.
Over the past 50 years median real wages have barely budged. Worse, the growth that has occurred has all happened at the top. The top 10 percent did OK, the top 1 percent did very well and the top 0.1 percent blasted way ahead of everyone else. Everyone except the very top fell a little behind the group ahead of them, but the group below the top 10 percent fell further and faster. This made it harder to get married, buy a house and raise a family. The cost of being middle class kept rising faster than middle class wages. That created — and continues to create — a lot of people who are socially and economically precarious.
You say ‘I wasn’t a big fan of The Establishment, either. But we threw them over for this?’ Yes. Why? Because there wasn’t a better option. Look at the group of Republicans running in 2016 and Democrats in 2020. All of them are standard-bearers for a shattered consensus. And there are a lot of mediocrities and has-beens. Biden himself is a retread of a retread. The ‘uniparty’ that runs the country either doesn’t know or doesn’t care that for a lot of people the American Dream is dead. In the cohort of people born in 1940, about 95 percent did better economically than their parents. For the cohort born in 1980 (border line millennials), only about 40 percent of those raised in middle-class families are better off than their parents at the same stage of life. These are people who were raised mostly by boomer parents to follow the program that worked so well for them: go to college, maybe grad school, trust the plan and you’ll have a life filled with grilling and long weekends. But it hasn’t worked out that way. It’s been tough. And for those that didn’t go to college, it’s even worse.
What do we do about it? That’s a big subject. But Trump offered answers in 2016 that made some intuitive sense and resonated with a lot of people. We sent our factories and their high-paying jobs to China? Let’s bring them back. Mass immigration undercuts wages? Let’s slow it down. The ruling class is corrupt, self-serving and doesn’t give a damn about anyone else? Let’s take the country back from them.
Trump accomplished some of the good things he was talking about back then, though not as many as I would have liked. But he was often stymied by a combination of internal incoherence and external opposition. In 2017, Trump had both unified government and the most political capital to spend. The fact that the Republican party’s primary goal and signature achievement was a reduction in corporate tax rates says something about the depth of institutional decay that Trump had taken advantage of when he sought the nomination.
Yes. There’s all sorts of things wrong with America right now. It’s a fucking mess. It really is. And the people want out of this mess. And the people in control aren’t really up to taking on that job. They really aren’t.
The uniparty is in control and they are not what the nation needs. It needs leadership, understanding, and merit-based managers who know how systems work and how to clean out the entire clogged up and gutted system.
I'm going to use a Chinese reference, that most Americans are unaware of...
America needs a Mr. Deng-style revolution.
In the 1980's Mr. Deng single-handedly implemented American-style Reaganomics to China. He got rid of hard-core Marxism. He tossed much of the state-mandated industries and implemented private controls. He built cities, disposed political corruptions and changed China from a hard-core Marxist Communist nation to something else.
He changed it to a single-party, traditional values, merit-based system that serves the people, and that is policed by harsh systems to makes sure that the ruling class does not move away from these values.
Ok. Let’s not get too bogged down here.
China changed, and it was hard-core Marxist. America too can change. In fact, if America is what everyone says it is, whether a “democracy” or a “republic”, it should be rather easy to change. But it’s not. You know it. I know it. And it has corrupted well past the point of band-aides and minor surgery. One half of the nation wants to burn it down, and the other half wants to restructure it into something really different.
And thus the fear.
Elements on both the LEFT and the RIGHT are scaring the living daylights out of everyone. And those in charge of the United States government today are not reassuring anyone.
Thus the feeling of helplessness.
Proactive actions
But, if you read the MM writings you realize that your reality is not what it appears to be.
We “share” an apparent reality, but we are not part of what we observe.
We are consciousness. And we are moving world-line to world-line based on our thoughts. And it is important that we NOT get too hung up on what we observe around us. For that too will alter our thoughts. What we are observing is the world-line template. Not our individual world-line.
Do not get too caught up about that looming iceberg ahead of you. Navigate round it. And then when you see another iceberg behind it, navigate around it as well. In fact, maybe you all need to start sailing South as fast as you can to get out of the looming ice pack that is up ahead. You see the warning signs, start the navigation.
Make sure that you have lookouts posted everywhere and that they are rested and alert. Make sure that the engineers and the folk loading coal into the furnaces are up to the job and in control. Make sure that you go to the map room and navigate a path out of the ice floes. Make sure that you radio your concerns and telegraph your direction changes.
Take proactive steps.
You have control
In my real world example that I gave at the top of the post, I referenced my personal affirmation campaign that I implemented back at the start of the year when the COVID-19 outbreak hit.
Up until that time, I kept on believing that Trump wanted to work with China on trade for the mutual benefit of all. I intentionally ignored the hard facts, the neocons in his administrations and his other actions. I wanted to believe. I really wanted to believe. I wanted what I hoped to happen to actually happen and I ignored the facts.
But when people all around me started having seizures, my family became locked inside the house, and the Chinese military went DEFCON ONE, I no longer could live the lie. Donald Trump declared full-spectrum war against China and I was sitting smack dab on the bullseye at ground zero.
Ground zero.
And all the neocon publications were talking about how the USA was going to win a “hot war” against China and invade the South China Sea…
…my home.
I had to do something.
Affirmation Prayer Campaigns
Normally my prayer affirmations are associated with myself. I rarely refer to others and certainly not to Geo-political, or national politics. Those things are like oil and water in regards to my affirmations. I just don’t put affirmations where a preferential presidential candidate wins over another. Instead, my affirmations are about me.
But this WAS about me.
It Was about my FAMILY, and my FRIENDS.
And unlike most Americans, this was not some faraway place that lies at the other end of the world. It is up front and close sitting smack dab in my front yard. i had to so something.
And it seemed like an up-hill battle.
The Fire Hose of Disinformation
Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo turned on the “fire hose of disinformation” against China and it was ridiculous. China could have saved a baby from a burning building and the “news” would report that the Chinese were burning babies.
Anyways, after a full year of this, most Americans consider China evil and are willing and ready to go to war for all the same old reasons and excuses.
330 million people.
And I am but one lone singular person.
What can I do?
You run a Affirmation / Prayer Campaign and you address your fears. You do it to the exclusion of everything else. That’s what you do.
And that is what I did.
My Prayer Affirmation Campaign
Well, I did indeed include personal things, and it was a long slug-fest, I’ll tell you what. But it did work. When I started the campaign, Trump was at the top of his game. He successfully launched numerous events, wars and attacks upon China. six biological weapons designed to destroy crops and livestock. Some with drones carrying vials of toxic bio-weapons to far distant farms. A “color revolution” in Hong Kong, and insurgents flowing into Xinjiang to create another Syria war there. Not to mention the COVID-19B which targeted MYSELF AND MY FAMILY.
Fuck him!
So I launched my own prayer campaign. So if he wanted to be “top dog”, let’s see who’s boss, eh?
At the time I began, everything was pro-Trump and his plans were working out more or less. He was on the verge of creating strife, conflict, starvation, a bio-weapon war, and a future of decades of warfare on the other end of the globe.
So, here’s my relevant affirmations.
[1] Donald Trump will not be able to harm China.
[2] All American military ventures to China will fail.
[3] The harder that Donald Trump tries to break or destroy China, the same and equal effect will hit him and his family personally.
[4] Any WMD’s implemented by America to hurt China will boomerang to the USA a hundred-fold and more.
While he tried to implement policies that would harm me and my family personally, my affirmation campaign was not personal. It was defensive and proactive. He and his minions will be unable to harm me, my family, my friends or China. If he tried, it would all come back to hit him.
Some quick terms on how the MWI operates.
And what?
With 330 million people seething at rage at China, and all those thoughts, anger and emotion, it was my affirmation campaign that turned things around. At least in my neck of the woods, things have become quite the opposite of what was intended.
The point here is that I was able to stop a war in China. And, by extension, world war III … nuclear war on American soil.
One person has the power to change their life. That is you. Do your prayer affirmation campaign religiously. You, it’s up to you, to make the world surrounding you a better place to live. Do not let the “world-line template” alter the fears you generate while in a world-line that lies upon that template.
If you are filled with dread or fear, that can act as a “signpost” to push you to action. You need to hop onto your affirmation campaigns STAT! and perform corrective measures. Concentrate on your personal life, our family and friends. Do not… DO NOT… put anything that you read about in the “news” in your affirmations. That’s alike a dog chasing it’s tail. You’ll go around and around in circles . You will go no where. Focus on you and your family.
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What ever you do, run your campaign on a PERSONAL note.
Do not implement things that you read about in the “news”, or your favorite political leanings or anything like that. Those are distractions and they WILL take away from your core desires as specified within your affirmation campaign.
Trust me on this.
The ONLY reason why I included Mr. Trump in my affirmations was because he had targeted me with his war machine. Other than that, he was no where to be seen anywhere in my campaigns.
But how does it work?
The world that you observe is not real. What you are observing is the highest likely probability at any given moment on a world-line.
You are viewing the “world-line template surface”.
You are not viewing your particular, individual, world-line.
That shrub over there looks that way because that is the highest probability of it’s appearance at that moment of time…
…as VIEWED by your consciousness within that particular world-line.
That person over there is stopping to tie their shoe because that is that highest probability of occurrence at that moment in time…
…as VIEWED by your consciousness within that particular world-line.
The President on television is making a speech raising taxes because that is the highest probability of occurrence at that moment of time…
…as VIEWED by your consciousness within that particular world-line.
You CANNOT change them.
All you can change is your navigation to other world-lines.
So do not worry about what the world-line template looks like, or appears to be. That is, unless there is a guy lunging at you with a knife or some other dangerous event. And that is a special event, just like I am describing herein.
What I did…
I conducted a slide.
I slid the world-line, and carried a lot of people with me, to a new world-line template where I am, and my family, are safe. It is a world-line that avoids a Trump / Pompeo created nuclear war, and one where the human species can continue to develop their individual sentience’s while avoiding some truly horrific consequences.
No. I’m not perfect.
Trump did launch the COVID-19 bio-weapons genie and it is out of the bottle. The Chinese stopped the two successive subsequent follow-up bio-weapons attacks (more on them later), but we all still will need to deal with this mess that he got us all involved in.
I’m good. But, I’m not God.
Conclusions
At a time when an entire nation of 330 million people were ready to go to war with China, and attack my front yard, I adjusted my affirmation campaign for a different result.
I was successful.
And all the thoughts of 330 million people had zero effect on my life.
Frankly obnoxious headlines like “Trump wasn’t wrong about China. But here’s how Biden can do a better job” and “Biden must not fall into China’s smooth relations trap” suggest that Washington’s political class is single-minded: maintain an aggressive, hostile stance toward China.
Trump was wrong about China. In 2016, as a presidential contender and he launched a rhetorical tirade against China accusing that country of “raping” the U.S. economy. In 2018, he added that in addition to rape, it had caused the opioid crisis. These accusations depended on racist stereotypes about China and worked to hide the ineptness of the profit-driven U.S. health system and poor innovation record of the economy.
Trump launched his racist hysteria against China in 2018 with deceitful claims about opioids, trade, technology, and continued in 2020 with demonstrably false allegations about COVID-19’s origins. (Notably, recent media accounts, including the U.K.-based Independent and the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post, have reported that COVID-19 cases appeared in Europe far earlier than initially believed.) Trump’s racially-driven rhetoric exposed the U.S. ruling class’s deepening leadership incapacity in a crisis and its frightening inability to offer and implement rational solutions to complex problems.
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[1] Donald trump will not be able to hurt or harm China.
Happened. Donald Trump’s anti-China policies were a complete failure. Oh, it’s much worse than that. It was a “train wreck”. The USA ended up getting harmed in so many ways. From domestically, to internationally, to scientifically, to socially. The United States has paid the price for these actions.
It’s not that I wanted to hurt the USA, but I just didn’t want myself or my family to die. And that meant that I had to take on the President and his well-paid army of war-mongering neocons with a lust for war, and desire to kill. I was successful. The complete and utter failure of the Trump policies against China were astounding and will be recorded in the history books as something that you want to avoid at all costs.
[2] All American military ventures against China will fail.
This anti-China line of thought provides no real insight into Trump’s demented psychology or the validity of the establishment’s China views. Instead, it only further exposes the persistent void in policy ideas on economic development and the ruling class’s helplessness in leading innovation. Blaming China replaces reasonable interrogation of this failure of economic and social innovation.
One egregious example of the general incapacity for efficient leadership can be seen in the bloated military sector. According to a Government Accounting Office report published this month, of “46 types of aircraft [examined by inspectors] … only three met their annual mission capable goals in a majority of the years for fiscal years 2011 through 2019.” Less than 3% of military aircraft types are consistently service-ready, in other words. Meanwhile, the military budget approaches $800 billion annually.
Massive waste that ties government contracts to political donations (to both major parties), reflects the failure across all sectors to produce sustainability, innovative technology, and necessary infrastructure for a high-level quality of life. If comparisons to the 1970s are permissible, the U.S. is approaching levels of stagnation that required the ruling class to craft neoliberalism as a class strategy for renewing its power and restoring capital accumulation. This time, neoliberalism is in crisis.
And fail they did. From HK, to Xinjigng, to Taiwan, to the South China Sea. They all failed, and failed spectacularly. You can go one by one, but there are no successes in any of them; not one.
It was hardly a secret throughout the Trump administration. Now, dying embers within sight, and with minimum fanfare, comes the declassification – virtually the whole document, minus a few redactions – of the US Strategic Framework for the Indo-Pacific.
Why now, no less than 30 years before the usual, standard US declassification/public record protocols apply? Don’t expect an answer from Trump or from his National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien.
-UNZ
[3] The harder Donald Trump tries to take on China and hurt it, the effects will boomerang back to hurt Trump and his family personally.
And isn’t that what is happening? Isn’t his family and him personally getting “hits” by the American public and legal system?
[4] Any WMD’s implemented by America to hurt China will boomerang to the USA a hundred-fold and more
Evidence for this botched leadership can be seen in the incapacity to adequately meet the COVID-19 danger. The U.S. government proved unable to deliver necessary medical equipment or to define a scientifically-sound national public health policy. It wasted time and resources and still seems incapable of controlling a contagion that has cost more than 263,000 lives.
And look at how America is handling the COVID-19 coronavirus issue, eh? This singular issue is toppling the entire nation, and government alone. It’s more than just mismanagement, it’s a fiasco of historic proportions.
In fact, this mishandling (whether it is a bio-weapon or a pandemic) will go down in the history books as a massive blunder and mistakes and Trump and his administration will be labeled as clowns and buffoons for all of eternity as a result.
The bottom line is this.
You can control the events that affect your personal life and the lives of your family. You just need to control your personal affirmations. You cannot control the entire nations, you are not MM. But you have the ability to control that realm that you inhabit. So do NOT get all hung up and hot and bothered with what you read in the “news”. It’s nonsense. Concentrate on you and your family.
And keep in mind, that here, yes I Mr. MM himself, have you all in my affirmation prayers. I’m watching your backs. So don’t get too fearful.
It’s all good.
Keep in mind that what you think might be bad, if you read the “news” might end up being the best thing that could ever happen to you and your family. So do not let the “news” affect you. Again… for the third time… concentrate on you and your family. Concentrate on happiness and safety. You will be fine.
I love this story:
"One evening, my mother made dinner after she had completed a hard day's work.
She put a plate of eggs, salad and burnt toast in front of my father and me.
I immediately noticed.
The burnt toast and I were waiting to see if my father was going to complain about it.
But he started to eat everything.
Then smiling, he asked me how was my day at school.
My mum apologized to my father for the burnt toast.
I will never forget his response to her:
'Honey, I love burnt toast!'
Later, when I went to bed and my father came over to kiss me goodnight, I asked him if he really liked the burnt toast.
He hugged me and said,
'Your mother has had a difficult and hard day and she is really tired. She went out of her way to prepare the meal for us. Why blame her and hurt her!
Burnt toast never hurt anyone; but words can be very painful!'
We have to know how to appreciate what others do for us, even if it's not perfect, because it's the intention to do well that counts, and no one is perfect."
Do you want more?
I have more posts in my Affirmation Campaign Index here…
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Could there be extraterrestrials on Titan? Or could remote viewers for the CIA observe some events in the distant future? Who knows. One thing is certain, Titan is an interesting place, and the idea that there might be a facility there is something to investigate. Even if it is seemingly unlikely.
I stumbled upon a CIA remote viewing report some time ago. It tickled my interests and I just now got a chance to sit down and ponder about it.
A quick review of Titan
Titan is an interesting moon. Saturn’s largest moon Titan is an extraordinary and exceptional world. Titan has a radius of about 1,600 miles (2,575 kilometers), and is nearly 50 percent wider than Earth’s moon. Among our solar system’s more than 150 known moons, Titan is the only one with a substantial atmosphere. And of all the places in the solar system, Titan is the only place besides Earth known to have liquids in the form of rivers, lakes and seas on its surface.
But it is a dim place.
Titan is about 759,000 miles (1.2 million kilometers) from Saturn, which itself is about 886 million miles (1.4 billion kilometers) from the Sun, or about 9.5 astronomical units (AU). One AU is the distance from Earth to the Sun. Light from the Sun takes about 80 minutes to reach Titan; because of the distance, sunlight is about 100 times fainter at Saturn and Titan than at Earth.
Titan, is an icy world whose surface is completely obscured by a golden hazy atmosphere. Titan is larger than the planet Mercury and is the second largest moon in our solar system. Jupiter’s moon Ganymede is just a little bit larger (by about 2 percent).
Titan’s atmosphere is made mostly of nitrogen, like Earth’s, but with a surface pressure 50 percent higher than Earth’s. Titan has clouds, rain, rivers, lakes and seas of liquid hydrocarbons like methane and ethane.
High in Titan’s atmosphere, methane and nitrogen molecules are split apart by the Sun’s ultraviolet light and by high-energy particles accelerated in Saturn’s magnetic field. The pieces of these molecules recombine to form a variety of organic chemicals (substances that contain carbon and hydrogen), and often include nitrogen, oxygen and other elements important to life on Earth.
Titan would most certainly be a spectacular place to visit.
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Some of the compounds produced by that splitting and recycling of methane and nitrogen create a kind of smog—a thick, orange-colored haze that makes the moon’s surface difficult to view from space. (Spacecraft and telescopes can, however, see through the haze at certain wavelengths of light outside of those visible to human eyes.) Some of the heavy, carbon-rich compounds settle to the moon’s surface—these hydrocarbons play the role of “sand” in Titan’s vast dune fields. And methane condenses into clouds that occasionally drench the surface in methane storms.
Experiments led by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology suggest the particles that cover the surface of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, are “electrically charged.” When the wind blows hard enough (approximately 15 mph), Titan’s non-silicate granules get kicked up and start to hop in a motion referred to as saltation.
As they collide, they become frictionally charged, like a balloon rubbing against your hair, and clump together in a way not observed for sand dune grains on Earth — they become resistant to further motion. They maintain that charge for days or months at a time and attach to other hydrocarbon substances, much like packing peanuts used in shipping boxes here on Earth.
The findings have just been published in the journal Nature Geoscience.
“If you grabbed piles of grains and built a sand castle on Titan, it would perhaps stay together for weeks due to their electrostatic properties,” said Josef Dufek, the Georgia Tech professor who co-led the study. “Any spacecraft that lands in regions of granular material on Titan is going to have a tough time staying clean. Think of putting a cat in a box of packing peanuts.”
The electrification findings may help explain an odd phenomenon. Prevailing winds on Titan blow from east to west across the moon’s surface, but sandy dunes nearly 300 feet tall seem to form in the opposite direction.
“These electrostatic forces increase frictional thresholds,” said Josh Méndez Harper, a Georgia Tech geophysics and electrical engineering doctoral student who is the paper’s lead author. “This makes the grains so sticky and cohesive that only heavy winds can move them. The prevailing winds aren’t strong enough to shape the dunes.”
-The electric sands of Titan
The largest seas are hundreds of feet deep and hundreds of miles wide.
Beneath Titan’s thick crust of water ice is more liquid—an ocean primarily of water rather than methane. Titan’s subsurface water could be a place to harbor life as we know it, while its surface lakes and seas of liquid hydrocarbons could conceivably harbor life that uses different chemistry than we’re used to—that is, life as we don’t yet know it. But because we really do not know much about this place, Titan could also just as well be a lifeless world.
As exotic as Titan might sound, in some ways it’s one of the most hospitable worlds in the solar system. Titan’s nitrogen atmosphere is so dense that a human wouldn’t need a pressure suit to walk around on the surface. At the surface of Titan, the atmospheric pressure is about 60 percent greater than on Earth—roughly the same pressure a person would feel swimming about 50 feet (15 meters) below the surface in the ocean on Earth.
Titan viewed from space.
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Because Titan is less massive than Earth, its gravity doesn’t hold onto its gaseous envelope as tightly, so the atmosphere extends to an altitude 10 times higher than Earth’s—nearly 370 miles (600 kilometers) into space. The the atmosphere is quite large, larger than earths.
And the gravity is light, much lighter. Meaning that you could hop and jump for great distances. Walking would be like walking on a trampoline. Which might be pretty cool. Well, at least initially.
The spacesuit would be lighter and thinner. It would resemble something from the 2019 hit movie “The Wandering Earth”.
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But, you know, you all would, however, need an oxygen mask and protection against the cold—temperatures at Titan’s surface are around minus 290 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 179 Celsius). It makes Siberia look like a tropical oasis. But, what this means is that the spacesuit could be light, and thin. With only a interior heater that would keep your snug and warm against the cold outside.
Indeed, the surface of Titan is one of the most Earth-like places in the solar system, albeit at vastly colder temperatures and with different chemistry. Here it is so cold (-290 degrees Fahrenheit or -179 degrees Celsius) that water ice plays the role of rock.
There is no free standing water at all. The moment you take a bottle of water outside of the hut, it freezes instantly into the hardest ice imaginable.
Titan may have volcanic activity as well, but with liquid water “lava” instead of molten rock. Titan’s surface is sculpted by flowing methane and ethane, which carves river channels and fills great lakes with liquid natural gas. No other world in the solar system, aside from Earth, has that kind of liquid activity on its surface.
Titan is an interesting and complex moon.
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Titan’s dense atmosphere, as well as gravity roughly equivalent to Earth’s Moon, mean that a raindrop falling through Titan’s sky would fall more slowly than on Earth. While Earth rain falls at about 20 miles per hour (9.2 meters per second), scientists have calculated that rain on Titan falls at about 3.5 miles per hour (1.6 meters per second), or about six times more slowly than Earth’s rain.
A rain shower on Titan would be a slow slog of relaxing pitter-patter.
Titan’s raindrops can also be pretty large. The maximum diameter of Earth raindrops is about 0.25 inches (6.5 millimeters) while raindrops on Titan can reach diameters of 0.37 inches (9.5 millimeters), or about 50 percent larger than an Earth raindrop.
Or maybe more like a slog slog of thump-whump.
Vast regions of dark dunes stretch across Titan’s landscape, primarily around the equatorial regions. The “sand” in these dunes is composed of dark hydrocarbon grains thought to look something like coffee grounds. And as I have stated above, are electrostaticly charged to behave like “Styrofoam peanuts”. It might be a real task cleaning off your suit when you come inside.
The moon Titan has a thick and substantive atmosphere.
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In appearance, the tall, linear dunes are not unlike those seen in the desert of Namibia in Africa. Titan has few visible impact craters, meaning its surface must be relatively young and some combination of processes erases evidence of impacts over time. Earth is similar in that respect as well; craters on our planet are erased by the relentless forces of flowing liquid (water, in Earth’s case), wind, and the recycling of the crust via plate tectonics. These forces are present on Titan as well, in modified forms. In particular, tectonic forces—the movement of the ground due to pressures from beneath—appear to be at work on the icy moon, although scientists do not see evidence of plates like on Earth.
Titan takes 15 days and 22 hours to complete a full orbit of Saturn. Titan is also tidally locked in synchronous rotation with Saturn, meaning that, like Earth’s Moon, Titan always shows the same face to the planet as it orbits.
Saturn takes about 29 Earth years to orbit the Sun (a Saturnian year), and Saturn’s axis of rotation is tilted like Earth’s, resulting in seasons. But Saturn’s longer year produces seasons that each last more than seven Earth years. Since Titan orbits roughly along Saturn’s equatorial plane, and Titan’s tilt relative to the sun is about the same as Saturn’s, Titan’s seasons are on the same schedule as Saturn’s—seasons that last more than seven Earth years, and a year that lasts 29 Earth years.
The Saturn moon Rhea in the foreground, with Titan in the background.
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The Cassini spacecraft’s numerous gravity measurements of Titan revealed that the moon is hiding an underground ocean of liquid water (likely mixed with salts and ammonia). The European Space Agency’s Huygens probe also measured radio signals during its descent to the surface, in 2005, that strongly suggested the presence of an ocean 35 to 50 miles (55 to 80 kilometers) below the icy ground.
The discovery of a global ocean of liquid water adds Titan to the handful of worlds in our solar system that could potentially contain habitable environments. Additionally, Titan’s rivers, lakes and seas of liquid methane and ethane might serve as a habitable environment on the moon’s surface, though any life there would likely be very different from Earth’s life. Thus, Titan could potentially harbor environments with conditions suitable for life—meaning both life as we know it (in the subsurface ocean) and life as we don’t know it (in the hydrocarbon liquid on the surface).
A view of Titan when peering through the atmospheric haze.
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All in all, I would say that Titan would not only be an absolutely fascinating place to visit, but it would be a beautiful one as well. With Saturn rises, settings, seasons, clouds, and unique geography. Not to mention the glimmering rings that would hover above you in the smoggy skies above.
The enormous dense atmosphere, with the low gravity, could make individual personal flying a reality. With only the smallest amount of propulsive jet-pack and “wings” necessary. While it would be risky; a tear in your suit due to a tumble or fall could be lethal, it would be extraordinary.
Couple that with sailing on the seas of Titan, or swimming (wearing a spacesuit of course) would be a truly unique and adventuresome experience.
What is remote viewing.
Well, Titan is a very cool place and it would be both beautiful and interesting. So… then, why is the CIA investigating it, and what is the technique that they are using?
Remote viewing is defined as the ability to acquire accurate information about a distant or non-local place, person or event without using your physical senses or any other obvious means. It’s associated with the idea of clairvoyance, seemingly being able to spontaneously know something without actually knowing how you got the information. It is also sometimes called “anomalous cognition” or “second sight.”
Many of us experience this from time to time as an intuitive flash of insight that turns out to be correct. Many well-known entrepreneurs and business people, like George Soros, Conrad Hilton, Thomas Alva Edison and Akio Morita, the co-founder of Sony, have attributed their business success to this ability. And we’ve all seen natural psychics perform seemingly amazing feats of mental skill on TV.
The difference between natural psychic receptivity and remote viewing is that the latter is a trained skill, a controlled process, that the average person can learn to do, to some degree or another.
Why the CIA used remote viewing
The CIA in conjunction with Stanford University operated a program known as STARGATE to investigate ‘paranormal’ abilities and phenomena that some humans are capable of, and perhaps all of us are capable of.
One of the programs under the STARGATE umbrella was the remote viewing program.
As stated above, “remote viewing” is the ability to describe a remote location, regardless of distance and ones proximity to the target, from a given location independent of the target. So basically, if you had this ability you could accurately “see” what’s on the back side of the Moon, if anything, or you could see what’s inside a specific building in another country if you were given the coordinates.
The CIA has viewed this technique as a valuable sensing mechanism / tool ever since they had obtained demonstratively consistent results guaranteeing it’s effectiveness.
To summarize, over the years, the back-and-forth criticism of protocols, refinement of methods, and successful replication of this type of remote viewing in independent laboratories has yielded considerable scientific evidence for the reality of the (remote viewing) phenomenon. Adding to the strength of these results was the discovery that a growing number of individuals could be found to demonstrate high-quality remote viewing, often to their own surprise…The development of this capability at SRI has evolved to the point where visiting CIA personnel with no previous exposure to such concepts have performed well under controlled laboratory conditions.
-Collective Evolution
A CIA remote-viewing exercise
In November 1986, a remote viewing subject who was sent to Saturn’s moon Titan reported seeing a base on Titan’s surface.
Entering the base, the remote viewer found to her astonishment that all the operators were identical to human beings.
She observed two young, healthy human males working at a control panel supervised by an attractive female.
That’s it?
Yea. It’s a fine tantalizing nugget for certain.
What I can say (from my MAJestic experience) that there are extraterrestrial species that really resemble Earth humans in physical appearance. In general, we find them to be handsome / beautiful overall. They are our height, have the same physical proportions as we do and tend to (not always though) wear clothing. They differ from us in some internal ways, in organs and some biological behaviors.
Now, the thing about this remote viewing session is that we do not know WHEN the target viewing occurred. The Remote Viewer could well describe viewing an event that will happen two hundred years in the future, and those individuals are Earth-born humans.
Certainly in 1986 there was a lot of MAJestic activity. And other agencies were often pulled into supplying supporting help tangentially without their knowledge as to why.
In general, I tend to believe that this is a contemporaneous viewing. As almost all of the MAJestic activity at that time was contemporaneous. This was most certainly true about MAJestic, and there is no reason to believe that a supporting other inter-agency group (like the CIA, for instance) would deviate from that criteria.
I can also confirm that I was active in 1986 within MAJestic, though I was still in training at that time. And while my information was “on a need to know basis only”, we (Sebastian and myself) were able to observe other people from other agencies visiting the China Lake NWC facilities from time to time, and going into our restricted access areas. What they were doing, we never found out.
In general
In general, there was always a purpose or a goal that the programs (that we participated in) had. Knowing this, we must also extrapolate that there was a reason, some kind of reason, why the CIA would remote view Titan.
Keep in mind that for many, many years, titan was only considered a little speck of light in the pictures obtained from Earth-bound telescopes. No one knew anything at all about it. For many, it was just another typical moon.
The first spacecraft to explore Titan, Pioneer 11, flew through the Saturn system on Sept. 1, 1979. Astronomers on Earth had previously studied Titan’s temperature, and calculated its mass, and Pioneer 11 confirmed those characteristics. Because of Titan’s extended and opaque atmosphere, scientists at the time thought (incorrectly, it turns out) that Titan might be the largest moon in the solar system. Pioneer 11 also saw hints of a bluish haze in Titan’s upper atmosphere, which scientists predicted the Voyager spacecraft would be able to see.
The first close up views of Titan other than as a speck of light came with the Voyager 1 flyby.
Its flyby of the Saturn system in November 1979 was as spectacular as its previous encounter.
Voyager 1 found five new moons, a ring system consisting of thousands of bands, wedge-shaped transient clouds of tiny particles in the B-ring that scientists called “spokes,” a new ring (the G-ring), and “shepherding” satellites on either side of the F-ring -- satellites that keep the rings well-defined.
During its flyby, the spacecraft photographed Saturn’s moons Titan, Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys, Dione, and Rhea. Based on incoming data, all the moons appeared to be composed largely of water ice.
Perhaps the most interesting target was Titan, which Voyager 1 passed at 05:41 UT Nov. 12, 1979, at a range of about 2,500 miles (4,000 kilometers).
Images showed a thick atmosphere that completely hid the surface. The spacecraft found that the moon’s atmosphere was composed of 90% nitrogen. Pressure and temperature at the surface was 1.6 atmospheres and minus 292 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 180 degrees Celsius), respectively.
Atmospheric data suggested that Titan might be the first body in the solar system, apart from Earth, where liquid might exist on the surface. In addition, the presence of nitrogen, methane, and more complex hydrocarbons indicated that prebiotic chemical reactions might be possible on Titan.
-NASA
Naturally, this information helped direct the follow-up mission with Voyager 2.
When the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft passed through the Saturn system in 1980 and 1981, they couldn’t see Titan’s surface because of its hazy atmosphere—images from that mission showed a featureless orange world—but they did see the blue haze as a seemingly detached layer of Titan’s upper atmosphere.
Just before Voyager 1 arrived in the Saturn system, some scientists speculated that the moon’s cold temperatures and methane meant that Titan might be home to oceans of liquid hydrocarbons. But the Voyager spacecrafts’ cameras were unable to penetrate Titan’s opaque atmosphere to get a clear view of the surface. Voyager did, however, reveal that Titan had traces of acetylene, ethane, and propane, along with other organic molecules, and that its atmosphere was primarily nitrogen.
-NASA
In 1994, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope recorded pictures of Titan using particular colors of infrared light that could pierce through the haze. The Hubble images showed large bright and dark areas, including bright region the size of Australia. The Hubble results didn’t prove that liquid seas existed, though, and the mystery about what was hidden below Titan’s haze remained until 2004.
The Cassini spacecraft, with the European Space Agency’s Huygens probe attached, became the first human-made object to orbit Saturn in 2004. Almost immediately, Cassini began observing Titan, peering through the haze for the first time.
The Huygens probe detached from Cassini and parachuted through Titan’s atmosphere, landing on the surface on Jan. 14, 2005—the first landing of a probe in the outer solar system.
Huygens collected images and atmospheric data during its descent as well as from the surface, and transmitted that data to Cassini, which relayed the data to Earth.
Cassini performed 127 close flybys of Titan over 13 years, using a suite of tools, including radar and infrared instruments to peer through Titan’s haze and finally give scientists a detailed view of the moon’s surface and complex atmosphere. Cassini-Huygens discovered that Titan has clouds, rain, lakes and rivers of liquid hydrocarbons, as well as a subsurface ocean of salty water.
The very first picture taken while on Titan’s surface.
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Meanwhile the Cassini probe orbited the planet and peered through the haze to take detailed pictures.
This mosaic of three frames provides unprecedented detail of the high ridge area including the flow down into a major river channel from different sources. Images captured by the DISR reveal that Titan has extraordinarily Earth-like meteorology and geology. Images show a complex network of narrow drainage channels running from brighter highlands to lower, flatter, dark regions. These channels merge into river systems running into lakebeds featuring offshore “islands” and “shoals” remarkably similar to those on Earth. Other Huygens’ data provide strong evidence for liquids flowing on Titan. However, the fluid involved is methane, a simple organic compound that can exist as a liquid or gas at Titan’s sub-170 degree C temperatures, rather than water as on Earth. Titan’s rivers and lakes appear dry at the moment, but rain may have occurred not long ago.
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Additionally, the probe took pictures as it descended to the planet (ok, well, moon) surface. These pictures are all very interesting. Here is one such picture…
This image, taken during the Huygens descent to the surface of Titan, shows the boundary between the lighter-colored uplifted terrain, marked with what appear to be drainage channels, and darker lower areas. These images were taken from an altitude of about 8 kilometers with a resolution of about 20 meters per pixel.
Investigating this further…
The decision to remote view Titan occurred in 1986. This was directly after the Hubble Space Telescope took pictures of the moon. If you recall, all that anyone knew about Titan was that there were areas of light and dark under the haze of Titan. Perhaps the team wanted to see if there were any entities under this cloud cover involved in the apparent seasonal changes.
Perhaps.
Or, perhaps this “dove-tails” with other remote viewing efforts also conducted prior to it.
What we do know is that after this viewing (and other viewings that are still classified) that…
The CIA Remote Viewed the “Galactic Federation” presence on the Earth.
One of the CIA’s declassified remote viewing sessions conducted in 1988 targeted the Earth headquarters for the Galactic Federation. (see remote viewing notes here) It’s unclear who the remote viewer is. (Names are usually listed.)
First of all, where would the CIA get the idea to even look for some sort of galactic federation? This implies either joint-efforts alongside MAJestic, or independently obtained information suggestive of this.
Remote viewer Lyn Buchanan describes the four general classification-types of extraterrestrials:
“After the military I was asked by a branch of the government to do a…study paper to compare and contrast ET psychic ability to human psychic ability.
…I was given access to many of the things that never made it into Project Grudge or the Blue Book or anything like that because they couldn’t be denied.
…I found out that we can take the ET’s of all different kinds and species and all that and put them into four main categories.
We’ve got those who are more psychic than us and those that are less psychic than us.
In each of those two categories we’ve got friendly to us and unfriendly to us, the unfriendly non-psychic ones tend to not come here. They don’t like us, they don’t want to be around us.
The non-psychic friendly ones come here for trade.
The psychic friendly ones actually want to help us develop our abilities and become stronger at it.
And the unfriendly psychic ones want us wiped off the planet, they want us dead, period, no questions asked.”
To which I say; “Duh!”
Yeah. Dogs are big and small. Some have long hair and some have short hair. Interesting, but not really (at all) of significance on a practical basis.
Remote viewers Ingo Swann, Pat Price and Joseph McMoneagle also claimed to have remote viewed extraterrestrials and ET bases on Earth, with extreme accuracy.
Buchanan said that there are five extraterrestrial bases on Earth, all inside of mountains. Some of these bases have humans working with these extraterrestrials in various ways.
According to Captain Frederick H. Atwater, a retired US Army officer who was involved in remote viewing experiments for [1] the Army’s Intelligence and Security Command, [2] the Defense Intelligence Agency and [3] the CIA, Pat Price remotely viewed four alien bases on Earth, one of which was located under Mount Ziel, in the Northern Territory (Australia), some 80 miles west-northwest of Pine Gap.
Price believed the base contained a mixture of ‘personnel’ from the other bases, one purpose being to ‘transport new recruits, with an overall monitoring function’. The other bases were said to be under Mount Perdido in the Pyrenees (Spain), Mount Inyangani in Zimbabwe, and in Alaska under Mount Hayes. Price described the occupants as ‘looking like homo sapiens, except for the lungs, heart, blood and eyes.’
And so with this, we enter into the realm of Internet-extraterrestrial-lore…
Conclusion
For undisclosed reasons, the CIA remote-viewed the Saturn moon Titan. They say humans or a species similar to humans working within a base or facility there. Not much of interest can be determined from the event aside than the base appears to be isolated and alone. There isn’t a large city or community there, apparently.
After the viewing the CIA conducted a series of remote viewing sessions to “map out” the extraterrestrial presence on the earth. Of which they determined consisted of five “bases” all underground, and all under mountains.
When you read reports like this our minds tend to go into “over drive” to figure things out and wonder what is going on. Those with a military bent might consider that the extraterrestrials are here to take over the planet. While others with different ideology might have completely different views.
But I will not allow that here.
Instead, I will selectively provide this nugget…
Haim Eshed, former head of Israel’s Defense Ministry’s space directorate, former General and respected professor claimed that the U.S. & Israel have been in contact with intelligent extraterrestrials for quite a long time. He specifically referenced the “Galactic Federation” emphasizing how they are waiting for humanity to evolve, and that we are not quite ready for contact.
To which I must say… YES.
The earth is a sentience nursery, and we will never be permitted to egress from it until we get our collective shit together, sort out the kind of sentience that we want to have, and chill out by discarding the selfish, and disastrous from our societies. If we do not, then they will all consume us and we will see a caste system completed on a global basis.
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Here’s some articles that you just will not find in any American media. But they are very descriptive and pretty accurate regarding what the rest of the world thinks about America today. No, you won’t find Rush Limbaugh quoting from these articles, nor will you find a reference to them in Politco or MSNBC. These are the type of articles that the oligarchy; the rulers of the American government do not want the tax-serfs to read.
It’s not so hard to find articles in the American media. They run the gambit from “America is great and the best”, to fear-mongering “the world outside of America looks like a save the children commercial”. But you won’t find anything really critical or persuasive about what America is going through right now. That is the kind of information that Americans MUST NOT SEE.
Well, surprise! You are going to read some of these articles right here and right now, and they are (for the most part) not very flattering.
It’s not that America or Americans are bad. They are not. It is that the entire nation is run by evil psychopaths.
These leaders possess behaviors are dangerous and will will end up destroying the entire world if they are not suppressed. It’s like the drunk friend who is trying to pick a fight with everyone in the bar, and you and your friends just roll your eyes, and after a spell, you all need to leave early before some “shit goes down”. Damn!
Have any of you been in that situation?
Well, that is America today. And it’s pretty bad, and very dangerous.
That’s why the articles outside of the USA are not finding their way into the “approved” American media.
Yes. The reason why these negative articles about America are not cropping up inside of any of the “approved” American media outlets is because they are more than just unflattering. The psychopaths that run America do not want the serf-slaves to revolt against them. So they deliberately suppress any contrary news related to them or their true personalities.
Psychopathy is a condition characterized by the absence of empathy and the blunting of other affective states. Callousness, detachment and a lack of empathy enable psychopaths to be highly manipulative. Nevertheless, psychopathy is among the most difficult disorders to spot.
Psychopaths can appear normal, even charming. Underneath, they lack any semblance of conscience. Their antisocial nature inclines them often (but by no means always) to criminality.
Psychopaths spark popular fascination and clinical anguish: Adult psychopathy is largely resistant to treatment, though programs exist to treat callous, unemotional youth in hopes of preventing them from maturing into psychopaths.
Brain anatomy, genetics, and a person’s environment may all contribute to the development of psychopathic traits. For more on causes, symptoms, and treatments of the related condition called antisocial personality disorder, see our Diagnosis Dictionary.
Ol’ Busted Knucke’s said it best when he said that Russia and the USA have a lot to offer each other. Why not work together and concentrate on our similarities, instead of threatening each other about some imaginary differences. And he’s right, but you and I know that that is not going to happen as the USA is run by a bunch of maniacal evil villains.
What are we dealing with here…
Well, what are we dealing with? Am I being glib concerning who is actually running the American nations, or am I being painfully accurate?
President Donald Trump.
The term “con artist” or “conman” comes from one of American history’s earliest scammers, a man by the name of William Thompson. In 1849, Thompson was arrested in New York City for a slew of successful scams during which he duped unassuming passersby on the street into lending him their valuables before vanishing with them.
Thompson was consequently known among local authorities as “the confidence man,” which was eventually shortened to “con man.” But Thompson was hardly alone in his clever grifts. According to historian Karen Halttunen, approximately 10 percent of all criminals in New York City in the 1860s were con artists.
Nearly all “confidence men” or scam artists are charming. Take Victor Lustig, for example. This conman managed to “sell” the Eiffel Tower and allegedly even swindled notorious mobster Al Capone. He was fittingly dubbed “the Count” by authorities because he was so debonair.
Beyond the smooth talkers, there are also those conmen who play on people’s biases like Anna Sorokin, who cheated her way into the ranks of New York City’s elite by pretending to be a rich heiress named Anna Delvey. The scam artist’s former friends, nearly all of them wealthy socialites, alleged that she had convinced them to loan her cash for lavish vacations abroad only to never be repaid.
Today, the term “Ponzi scheme” is used to describe an illegitimate operation. But the term actually came from the real-life Charles Ponzi, whose $15 million investment scheme claimed to turn the average American working man into a multimillionaire overnight.
-All that's interesting
Psychopathy is a spectrum disorder and can be diagnosed using the 20-item Hare Psychopathy Checklist, which features traits such as lack of empathy, pathological lying, and impulsivity, each scored on a three-point scale based on whether the item does not apply (0), applies to a certain extent (1), or fully applies (2) to the individual. The bar for clinical psychopathy is a score of 30 or higher; serial killer Ted Bundy scored 39.
The checklist was developed in the 1970s by the Canadian researcher Robert Hare. A true assessment should be conducted by a mental health professional.
The revised version of the checklist includes the following characteristics:
The first group really describes Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Mike Pompeo and Barrack Obama, don’t you all think?
The sexual exploits of Bill Clinton are legendary. And do you really think that being a member of the Senate for 60 years isn’t a “parasitic lifestyle”? What about banning coal and sending the citizenry of five states into poverty? Doesn’t that count as a “lack of empathy”?
failure to accept responsibility for one’s own actions
And what about Donald Trump. It’s always someone else’s fault isn’t it? And those 70+ tweets per night, isn’t that a sign of impulsivity?
many short-term marital relationships
juvenile delinquency
revocation of conditional release (from prison)
criminal versatility (i.e., commits diverse types of crimes)
If this does not describe American leadership, Congressmen and Senators, then I don't know what does.
What percentage of people are psychopaths?
Psychopaths exist across cultures and ethnic groups. It has been estimated that approximately 1 percent of males and 0.3–0.7 percent of females could be classified as psychopaths. An individual may show elevated levels of multiple traits associated with psychopathy without qualifying as a psychopath according to a measure such as the Hare checklist.
When we refer to the oligarchy or the PTB, we often refer to them as the 1%. I find it curious that this is also the same percentage of psychopaths in society. Could it be the natural inclination of psychopaths to rise over others and seize the levers of control of a society, and if so, isn’t that a very, very dangerous situation?
Psychopaths are incapable of feeling guilt, remorse, or empathy for their actions or the objects of their actions. They are generally cunning and manipulative. They know the difference between right and wrong but don't believe the rules apply to them.
First Encounter With a Psychopath
On first impression, psychopaths generally appear charming, engaged, caring, friendly, logical, and reasonable, with well thought-out goals. They give the impression that they can reason, that they know the consequences for antisocial and unlawful behavior and will react appropriately. They appear capable of self-examination and will criticize themselves for mistakes.
Under clinical evaluation, psychopaths don't show common symptoms associated with neurotic behavior: nervousness, high anxiety, hysteria, mood swings, extreme fatigue, and headaches. In situations that most normal people would find upsetting, psychopaths appear calm and void of fear and anxiety.
An About-Face
Initially, psychopaths appear reliable, devoted, and trustworthy, but, suddenly and without provocation, become unreliable, with no regard for how their actions affect the situation, regardless of its importance. Once viewed as honest and sincere, they do a sudden about-face and begin lying without concern, even in small matters when there is no benefit in lying.
Because psychopaths have mastered the art of deception, those around them are slow to accept the abrupt change. When psychopaths are confronted with their lack of responsibility, honesty or loyalty, it generally has no impact on their attitude or future performance. They are unable to perceive that other people value truthfulness and integrity.
Can't Accept Responsibility for Failure
Psychopaths turn into performers who can mimic normal human emotions that they have never felt. This holds true when they're faced with failure. If they appear to be humble and own up to their mistakes, their true goal is to be perceived as the martyr or sacrificial lamb willing to accept blame so others don't have to.
If the ploy fails and they are blamed, they will emphatically deny any responsibility and, without feeling shame, turn to lies, manipulation, and finger-pointing. When psychopaths can't convince others that they are innocent, they fume and obsess over it, often murmuring sarcastic comments and plotting revenge.
Risky Behavior With No Gain
Antisocial behavior—cheating, lying, robbing, stealing, agitating, fighting, committing adultery, killing—appeals to psychopaths, whether or not they reap any rewards. They appear drawn to high-risk antisocial behavior that has no apparent goal. Some experts theorize that psychopaths like to put themselves into dangerous situations because of the adrenaline rush they experience. Because psychopaths generally don't feel many emotions that normal people do, any extreme sensation feels good. Others believe that they do it to reinforce their sense of superiority and to prove that they are smarter than everyone, including the police.
Horrible Judgment
Although psychopaths are logical thinkers and view themselves as highly intelligent, they consistently exhibit bad judgment. Faced with two paths, one to gold and the other to ashes, the psychopath will take the latter. Because psychopaths can't learn from their experiences, they are prone to taking the same path again and again.
Egocentric and Unable to Love
Psychopaths are highly egomaniacal, to the point that a normal person has difficulty comprehending it. Their self-centeredness is so deeply rooted that it renders them incapable of loving others, including parents, spouses, and their own children.
The only time psychopaths show an ordinary response to kindness or special treatment by others is when it can be used to their advantage. For example, a psychopathic father still loved by his children despite the deep suffering he has caused them may put on a show of appreciation so that they continue to put money into his prison account or pay his legal fees.
Conventional Treatment Empowers Psychopaths
Most studies indicate that there are no conventional methods to cure psychopathic behavior. When conventional methods have been used, psychopaths become empowered and react by improving their cunning, manipulative methods and their ability to conceal their true personality, even from trained eyes.
Difference Between Psychopaths and Sociopaths
Psychopaths and sociopaths share a diagnosis as having antisocial personality disorder and similar traits, but there are significant differences. Psychopaths are more deceptive and manipulative and maintain more control over their outward personas. They are able to lead what appear to be normal lives, sometimes throughout their lifetime. When psychopaths become criminals they believe they are smarter than the average person and invincible.
Sociopaths often let their inner rage surface with violent episodes, verbally and physically. They become reckless and spontaneous and have little control over what they say or how they act. Because they are impulse driven, they rarely consider the consequences of their actions. It is difficult for sociopaths to live normal lives, and because of their imprudence many of them drop out of school, can't hold jobs, turn to crime, and end up in prison.
Which Is More Dangerous?
Sociopaths have a difficult time hiding their disorder, while psychopaths pride themselves on their manipulative abilities. Psychopaths are masters of disassociation and less likely to feel guilt or remorse for their actions or for the pain that they cause others. Because of this, psychopaths are considered to be more dangerous than sociopaths.
Well, we know that the USA is run by a bunch of crazed lunatics with some severely dangerous tendencies…
What now? Americans, for the most part are unaware of this. And they follow them in the belief that the leaders represent them and their beliefs. But the rest of the world does not see this, and are frankly aghast at the United States for “electing” these people to the levers of power.
And they write articles about this.
The more “mainstream” articles tend to be rather sanitized. But the alternative articles tend to be very spot-on and even vicious. Here we are going to look at some of the articles. It’s a venting of what the world thinks of what America has become and exists as it sits today, in the closing months of 2020.
The US Has Lost Global Power, and Is Now Just Faking It
This article from the Russian Insider archives was first published on RI in April 2018 by Dmitry Orlov . It was republished on Sun, Dec 13 2020 | 1510 words 26,694 Comments
Orlov is one of our favorite essayists on Russia and all sorts of other things. He moved to the US as a child, and lives in the Boston area.He is one of the better-known thinkers The New Yorker has dubbed 'The Dystopians' in an excellent 2009 profile, along with James Howard Kunstler, another regular contributor to RI (archive). These theorists believe that modern society is headed for a jarring and painful crack-up.He is best known for his 2011 book comparing Soviet and American collapse (he thinks America's will be worse). He is a prolific author on a wide array of subjects, and you can see his work by searching him on Amazon.He has a large following on the web, and on Patreon, and we urge you to support him there, as Russia Insider does.If you haven't discovered his work yet, please take a look at his archive of articles on RI. They are a real treasure, full of invaluable insight into both the US and Russia and how they are related.
The US Has Lost Global Power, and Is Now Just Faking It
"If the US manages to convince enough people, at home and around the world, that it is still dangerous, then it will be able to hide its increasing enfeeblement for a while longer."
It’s a hard job being a global hegemon and the world’s sole superpower.
You have to keep the entire planet in line. Every country needs to be taught its place, and kept there, by force if need be. Now and again a country or two has to be conquered or destroyed, just to teach others a lesson. Plus you have to relentlessly meddle in other countries’ politics, rigging elections so that only US-friendly candidates can win, run regime change operations and organize colored revolutions. Stop doing this, and some countries will start ignoring you. And then the rest will quickly realize that you are losing control and go their separate ways while ignoring you.
Is the United States still the world’s greatest power, in control of the entire planet, or has that moment in history already come and gone? We are constantly hearing how the situation is becoming dire: relations between the US and NATO countries and Russia are going from bad to worse; there is a trade war going on with China; North Korea remains an intractable problem and an embarrassment.
Many people maintain that we are very close to a world war. But does “very close” actually mean anything? It is quite possible to stand for hours with your toes hanging over the edge of a cliff and never jump. Suicide is a big decision: big even for a person, much bigger for a large country.
On March 1, 2018 president Putin unveiled Russia’s new weapons systems against which the United States is defenseless and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Previously, the plan was to surround Russia with military bases and missile batteries, then launch a preemptive first strike, destroying its ability to retaliate and forcing it to capitulate.
This plan has now conclusively failed, and a US/NATO attack on Russia is once again assured to be an act of suicide. Worse than that, even limited military confrontations are now mostly unthinkable, because Russia can now inflict unacceptable damage on US/NATO forces from a safe distance and without putting any of its own assets at risk. If Russia won’t attack and the US/NATO can’t attack, then how likely is a war?
The new weapons systems have made it possible to start ignoring the US. It is still important to maintain a credible military posture, but politically the US is no longer in control, and neither are the global institutions on which it has relied. Instead, what we are seeing is the reemergence of nation states, and even of empires.
The political future of Syria is being decided by Russia, Turkey and Iran, with no useful input from the United States at all.
Significantly, whereas Russia and Iran are in categories of their own as far as the US is concerned, Turkey has been a US ally and the second-largest armed force in NATO. The fact that Turkey is no longer eager to please the Americans is quite telling.
Except during the strange and tumultuous twentieth century during which the US briefly flashed across the world stage, these three countries went by different names, which all ended in “empire”: the Russian Empire, the Ottoman Empire and the Persian Empire. Of these three, the Russian and the Ottoman empires were heirs to the Holy Roman Empire, whose eastern half, with its capital Constantinople, went on for centuries after Rome had turned into a depopulated ruin and a dark age had descended on Europe.
After Constantinople fell to the Turks and Islam took over the region, the center of Orthodox Christianity migrated north to Moscow. Now add China, or the Chinese Empire if you like, which is now aligned with Russia, and complete the picture: all of the greatest and most ancient Eurasian empires have come back and are talking and cooperating, while the has-been upstart on the other side of the planet isn’t even invited.
Given this situation, what is the US to do?
It has three choices.
The first is to start a major war, thus committing national suicide (while taking other countries with it). It lacks the political will to make this decision, although it could blunder into a major war by accident.
The second choice is to basically just fold: give up trying to project power around the world, retreat into its own borders and lick its wounds. It lacks the political will to do this as well; all that remains in the realm of possibility is to pretend that everything is still fine for as long as possible.
But how is it possible to pretend that everything is still fine even as everything is falling apart? The answer is to start faking it.
If the US manages to convince enough people, at home and around the world, that it is still dangerous, then it will be able to hide its increasing enfeeblement for a while longer. It may no longer be capable of achieving any of its aims, but it is still very much capable of mass murder, as was recently demonstrated by the US “coalition” bombings of Mosul and Raqqa, which now lay in ruins. Similar wanton acts of mass murder have been committed America’s Saudi-Arabian proxy in Yemen, and by their Ukrainian proxies in the Donbass.
But even the opportunities to commit mindless mass murder with impunity are now becoming fewer and farther between, forcing the US to resort to more boutique acts of violence. To justify these acts, the US (and much of Europe) curtains itself off from the rest of the world using an elaborately constructed wall of complete nonsense.
A favorite trope has to do with dreamed-up chemical weapons as the main frightener. Take a look at the recent Israeli rocket attack on Syria. It was justified using obviously fake video footage produced by the White Helmets—a group known for staging fake terror events. At this point, they don’t even care how fake their product looks: this time around, they didn’t bother editing out the clapper (used to sync up video with sound). The setting was obviously a movie set, but production values were rather missing. Instead, we had actors, some wearing white helmets, but no protective gear whatsoever, dumping buckets of water over shivering children. How is that even supposed to make any sense?
And then note that the rockets (five which got shot down by the Syrians, with only three making it through) came from Israel. Why Israel? Because the Russians had warned the US that they knew the fake chemical weapons provocation was being organized as a pretext to launch a rocket attack, and that they were going to shoot not just at the rockets but also at those who launch them. Therefore, Americans decided that it would be too risky to launch the attack from navy ships, and instead asked the Israelis to do the honor of lobbing a few missiles at a remote airbase in Syria, correctly thinking that the Russians wouldn’t immediately retaliate against Israel if no Russians would hurt, and knowing that there would be no Russians at that airbase during their attack. This is, on the one hand, quite pathetic, but on the other it shows that the Americans are still capable of a modicum of rational thought.
This, then is the strange period of history we are going through. The US is lying nonstop (since truth is not on its side) while pretending to still be dangerous by committing wanton acts of mass murder (small-scale ones, which it can be sure to carry out with impunity).
Meanwhile, both national suicide (via large-scale war) and the decision to shut down the whole imperial project both remain politically impossible. How long this strange, unstable period of murderous nonsense can persist isn’t known—your guess is as good as mine—but it obviously can’t go on for ages.
Give it a few years, or less.
Perhaps you can understand why Rush Limbaugh is not talking about this kind of analysis, or why Alex Jones isn’t. Or why Politico or the Huffington Post isn’t. Or why MSNBC isn’t.
Their calculus uses examples of news articles that are not well-promoted in the USA.
Their conclusions are based on unflattering narratives.
The key players involved in the decision making process are not glorified.
Thus this kind of opinion will not be promoted in any of the “approved” American media. Neither the mainstream, the Alt-Right or the Alt-Left.
Times have changed all across the board. America is nothing like it was intended to be. Instead it is a prison-nation that enslaves citizens under a service-for-self oligarchy run by psychopaths. And us “Joe Averages” haven’t any say in the matter.
America Has Traded God for Empire, Narcissism, Militarism, Usury, Sodomy
Fr. Joseph Gleason, is editor of the website titled “Russian Faith” . In this article he explains America’s current predicament. This article comes from the Russian Insider archives and was first published on RI in February 2019. It is written by Mark Dankof on Wed, Oct 21 2020 | 1120 words 8,438 Comments . All credit to the author.
America Has Traded God for Empire, Narcissism, Militarism, Usury, Sodomy
It goes without saying that Father Joseph Gleason of Russian Faith is making his mark in the world for the Kingdom of God in Jesus Christ. His theological journey has finally taken him into the priesthood of the Russian Orthodox Church. Geographically, the journey he and his family have embarked upon has taken them from the United States to Russia and a place called Rostov-The-Great. His is a story worth following on an ongoing basis. I sense his personal odyssey may prove larger in history than he or anyone else imagines right now.
His most recent entry on the Russian Faith website is entitled, “Homosexuals Persecuting Christians in America: Do You Feel The Walls Closing In?”
This marvelous piece is 5,050 words long. My succinct initial response to his labors before even reading the essay itself was–and is–a simple “Yes.”
I do not come to this conclusion quickly or without study and engagement. Since 9-11, I have set aside most of the rest of my life to attempt to bring the people of America to an awareness of how late the hour is, and the perilous state of both individual souls and a collective people that has turned its back on God in favor of an Empire built on narcissism, militarism, usury, and sodomy.
But the painful truth is that I have failed.
I have lost 17 years of my life in the process. I admitted as much some years ago in a well publicized essay entitled, “Why We’re Finished.” Later, I found myself being pilloried by the Jerusalem Post and the international Jewish press for telling Press TV Iran the truth after the infamous Obergefell Supreme Court decision of 2015 about who played a pivotally disproportionate role in bringing this latest advance of Cultural Marxism to pass in the United States, as was the case in the Roe v Wade decision of January of 1973.
Joseph Biden said the same thing I did, only he hailed the development as a new dawning in America.
I didn’t.
Thus, I was in the cross-hairs of the usual suspects. Not one of my Lutheran colleagues in the United States came to my public defense. I was on my own and I knew it, just as I have been for years in these circles for discussing 9-11, Empire foreign and military policy, the Kennedy Assassination, and the abortion and LGBTQ issues among many others.
Nothing in the last 4 years has changed the equation.
I said as much in an essay entitled, “A ‘Communist’s’ Thoughts on the 4th of July,” appropriately retitled, “Russia is a Beacon of Promise for a Christian Future” for Russia Faith and Russian Insider readers.
The thousands of hits on those sites revealed I had struck a chord or a raw nerve depending on the perspective of the reader, which is why editors like Charles Bausman and Father Joseph Gleason have increasingly come under attack by MSM rags in the United States like The Daily Beast as agents of the Kremlin, which assaulted me well before it did these fine people. I wore that as a badge of honor. I still do.
Which brings me back to Father Gleason’s latest post. His conclusions about what the LGBTQ movement and the power elite’s goals are in both the United States and globally in regard to authentic Christianity and its adherents are no different than what Rod Dreher wrote in Time Magazine after the Obergefell decision, only sharper in focus in the implications. This sharpening of focus leads the American Christian who prayerfully contemplates the reality of the homeland advances of the New World Order to examine his or her position very carefully as the Holy Spirit of God leads and directs.
For the record, after examination over time, I humbly conclude personally that:
1) Father Joseph Gleason has made the right decision for himself and his family in moving to Russia;
2) Recent developments in that country and elsewhere make it clear to me that Orthodoxy is especially being used of God in the proclamation of the Gospel in an age of advancing heresy and apostasy–not declining Lutheranism, Catholicism, or a Protestant Evangelical movement overcome with worship of Zionism and increasing pop accommodation to cancerous American and European cultures headed for absolute shipwreck;
3) For young believers around the world including a couple I have recently read about in Brazil, and young American Christians feeling bewildered and embattled as they Feel the Walls Closing In, examine the Lord’s will very closely in regard to the beckoning of Father Gleason and his migrating minions to the place that the Triune God is restoring at this eschatological hour in history to counter the evil plans of a Western Globalist and Zionist movement bent on using moral and sexual perversion, mass media manipulation, consumerism, economic sanctions, and overt military aggression to achieve Satan’s final victory in this present realm;
4) The latest actions of the United States in the Ukraine in sewing discord in the Orthodox Church only underscore the depths to which the political leadership in America will go on behalf the objectives of the New World Order, along with the entire spectrum of moves being made by The Empire against Iran, Syria, Russia, and Venezuela;
5) When all of this is understood in discernment by the Christian believer in the West in terms of prophetic developments, those of us whose circumstances mandate remaining in our earthly homeland in exile must do so only in the clear understanding that the outcome is not merely an exilic experience of alienation and marginalization, but one which promises martyrdom itself.
My last public address to a Lutheran group discussed this.
I’m still not sure those in the lecture hall in upstate Wisconsin last year really had the foggiest notion of what I was trying to say in the Lord to them. But Father Joseph Gleason knows of what I speak, and so do most of his readers at Russian Faith.
There are a few Christian homeschoolers in Texas who certainly understand. For those in the United States and the West in a position to make choices for themselves and their families on the basis of their individual circumstances and Christian witness for the truth in history, follow him to higher ground.
Get out of Dodge while you can.
I believe God has truly raised this man up at this most critical and final hour in world and redemptive history. Consider his witness and his words carefully. That is my best advice to you. The clock is ticking to midnight.
Wholesome tradition or degenerate empire, take your pick
His opinion is dire and gloomy. He does not feel that he is free to practice his religious freedom, nor raise his family safely or properly in the United States. There was a time, don’t you know, where this was the measurement by which the “freedom” and “liberty” offered by the United States was measured. But it no longer exists.
You will note that none of the American government controlled media; the mainstream, the Alt-Left and the Alt-Right will cover this subject it’s all the same nonsense. Over and over.
Ugh! When I think about the United States government, I get a headache. I just want to chill out and be left alone.
American Collapse – Great Podcast About How and When – with James Howard Kunstler
Now, we go to James Howard Kunstler.
“Personally, I expect our collapse to be as sudden and unexpected as the USSR’s … and to express itself first in the financial markets …”
This article from our archives was first published on Russian Insider in April 2018. Written by Mr James Howard Kunstler on Mon, Dec 14 2020 | 1000 words 11,640 Comments . All credit to the author.
American Collapse - Great Podcast About How and When - with James Howard Kunstler
I had a fellow on my latest podcast, released Sunday, who insists that the world population will crash 90-plus percent from the current 7.6 billion to 600 million by the end of this century. Jack Alpert heads an outfit called the Stanford Knowledge Integration Lab (SKIL) which he started at Stanford University in 1978 and now runs as a private research foundation. Alpert is primarily an engineer.
At 600 million, the living standard in the USA would be on a level with the post-Roman peasantry of Fifth century Europe, but without the charm, since many of the planet’s linked systems — soils, oceans, climate, mineral resources — will be in much greater disarray than was the case 1,500 years ago.
Anyway, that state-of-life may be a way-station so something more dire.
Alpert’s optimal case would be a world human population of 50 million, deployed in three “city-states,” in the Pacific Northwest, the Uruguay / Paraguay border region, and China, that could support something close to today’s living standards for a tiny population, along with science and advanced technology, run on hydropower.
The rest of world, he says, would just go back to nature, or what’s left of it. Alpert’s project aims to engineer a path to that optimal outcome.
I hadn’t encountered quite such an extreme view of the future before, except for some fictional exercises like Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. (Alpert, too, sees cannibalism as one likely byproduct of the journey ahead.)
Obviously, my own venture into the fictionalized future of the World Made by Hand books depicted a much kinder and gentler re-set to life at the circa-1800 level of living, at least in the USA. Apparently, I’m a sentimental softie.
Both of us are at odds with the more generic techno-optimists who are waiting patiently for miracle rescue remedies like cold fusion while enjoying re-runs of The Big Bang Theory. (Alpert doesn’t completely rule out as-yet-undeveloped energy sources, though he acknowledges that they’re a low-percentage prospect.) We do agree with basic premise that the energy supply is mainly what supports the way we live now, and that it shows every evidence of entering a deep and destabilizing decline that will halt the activities necessary to keep our networks of dynamic systems running.
A question of interest to many readers is how soon or how rapid the unraveling of these systems might be.
When civilizations crumble, it tends to fast-track.
The Roman empire seems to be an exception, but in many ways it was far more resilient than ours, being a sort of advanced Flintstones economy, with even its giant-scale activities (e.g. building the Coliseum) being accomplished by human-powered work.
In any case, the outfit really fell apart steadily after the reign of emperor Marcus Aurelius (180 AD).
The Romans had their own version of a financialized economy: they simply devalued their coins by mixing in less and less silver at the mint, so they could pretend to pay for the same luxuries they had grown accustomed to as resources stretched thin.
Our financialized economy — like everything else we do — operates at levels of complexity so baffling that even its supposed managers at the central banks are flying blind through fogs of debt, deception, and moral hazard. When that vessel of pretense slams into a mountain top, the effects are likely to be quick and lethal to the economies on the ground below.
In our time, the most recent crash of a major socioeconomic system was the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990-91.
Of course, it happened against the backdrop of a global system that was still revving pretty well outside the USSR, and that softened the blow. Ultimately, the Russians still had plenty of oil to sell, which allowed them to re-set well above the Fifth Century peasant level of existence.
At least for now.
The Soviet Union collapsed because it was a thoroughly dishonest system that ran on pretense and coercion. Apparently, the US Intel Community completely missed the signs that political collapse was underway.
They seem to be pretty clueless about the fate of the USA these days, too.
If you consider the preoccupations of two very recent Intel chiefs — John Brennan of CIA and James Clapper, DNI — who now inveigh full-time on CNN as avatars of the Deep State against the wicked Golden Golem of Greatness.
Personally, I expect our collapse to be as sudden and unexpected as the USSR’s, but probably bloodier because there’s simply more stuff just lying around to fight over.
Of course, I expect the collapse to express itself first in banking, finance, and markets — being so deeply faith-based and so subject to simple failures of faith. But it will become political and social soon enough, maybe all-at once. And when it happens in the USA, it will spread through the financial systems the whole world round.
It’s heavy dose of “doom and gloom”, but you know, I am much more optimistic about the future.
There will be an American collapse, and systems are in place to keep it localized to the North American hemisphere. There will be economic global ramifications of course, and no nation will really remain unscathed, but the vast amount of damage and hurt will be in America. And of that, it will be localized. If you are prudent and a member of a local community, you should be able to weather “the storm”, and you and yours will survive to carry on through the 2030’s and 2040’s.
Perhaps is best if Americans believe that the rest of the world is a “shit hole”.
The rest of the world is actually quite beautiful.
AMERICA: A Gigantic Clown Car Being Driven Into a Ditch
And another article from James Howard Kunstler. This article from the Russia Insider archives and was first published on RI in September 2017, with a reprint on Sunday, Dec 13 2020 | 900 words 18,995 Comments.
“This homework assignment should be given to the Democratic members of congress, since they are otherwise preoccupied only with hunting for Russian gremlins and discovering new sexual abnormalities to protect and defend.”
AMERICA: A Gigantic Clown Car Being Driven Into a Ditch
Poor old Karl Marx, tortured by boils and phantoms, was right about one thing: History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce. Thus, I give you the Roman Empire and now the United States of America. Rome surrendered to time and entropy. Our method is to drive a gigantic clown car into a ditch.
Is anyone out there interested in redemption?
I have an idea for the political party out of power, the Democrats, sunk in its special Okefenokee Swamp of identity politics and Russia paranoia: make an effort to legislate the Citizens United calamity out of existence.
Who knows, a handful of Republicans may be shamed into going along with it.
For those of you who have been mentally vacationing on Mars with Elon Musk, Citizens United was a Supreme Court decision — Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission 558 U.S. 310 (2010) — which determined that corporations had the right, as hypothetical “persons,” to give as much money as they liked to political candidates.
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We've made important contributions to world culture
This “right” devolved from the First Amendment of the constitution, the 5-4 majority opinion said — giving money to political candidates and causes amounts to “freedom of speech.” The Citizens United ruling opened the door for unlimited election spending by corporations and enormous mischief in our national life. Then-President Obama — a constitutional law professor before his career in politics — complained bitterly about the opinion days later in his State of the Union address, saying that the court had “reversed a century of law to open the floodgates, including foreign corporations, to spend without limit in our elections.”
And for the next seven years he did absolutely nothing about it, nor did the Democratic Party majority in congress. Rather, they vacuumed in as much corporate campaign money as possible from every hokey political action committee (PAC) from sea to shining sea, especially in the 2016 presidential election starring Hillary “It’s My Turn” Clinton. It turned out to not be her turn in large part because the voters noticed the stench of corruption wafting off this toxic flow of corporate money, which Hillary was using to vastly outspend her billionaire opponent, troll that he was.
It's been a heck of a ride, and it's coming to an end ...
Of course, corporations have not always been what they are deemed to be today. They evolved with the increasingly complex activities of industrial economies. Along the way — in Great Britain first, actually — they were deemed to exist as the equivalent of legal persons, to establish that the liabilities of the company were separate and distinct from those of its owners. In the USA, forming a corporation usually required an act of legislation until the late 19th century. After that, they merely had to register with the states. Then congress had to sort out the additional problems of giant “trusts” and holding companies (hence, anti-trust laws, now generally ignored).
In short, the definition of what a corporation is and what it has a right to do is in a pretty constant state of change as economies evolve. And insofar as the current economy is sinking like the USS Titanic — and our republic as a mode of governance with it — surely the time has come to redefine in legislation the role and existential nature of a corporation in this polity. This homework assignment should be given to the Democratic members of congress, since they are otherwise preoccupied only with hunting for Russian gremlins and discovering new sexual abnormalities to protect and defend.
The crux of the argument is that corporations cannot be said to be entirely and altogether the equivalent of persons for all legal purposes. In law, corporations have duties, obligations, and responsibilities to their shareholders first, and only after that to the public interest or the common good, and only then by pretty strict legal prescription. It may be assumed that the interests of corporations and their shareholders are in opposition to, and in conflict with, the public interest. And insofar as elections are fundamentally matters of the public interest, corporations must be prohibited from efforts to influence the outcome of elections.
That’s your assignment Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, and the rest of the Democratic Party leadership. Get serious. Show a little initiative. Do something useful. Draw up some legislation. Get behind something real that might make a difference in this decrepitating country.
Or get out of the way and let a new party do the job.
Politics are a pin in the ass, but even those outside of the USA can see that the United State is wholly out of control. “What planet do they live on” is a common phrase that I am starting to hear in day to day conversation.
For the rest of us, the craziness of Washington DC doesn’t resemble anything in our normal day-to-day lives…
Dear America – You Are Delusional, and Failing at Everything You Undertake
Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan, Russia sanctions – “All of these harebrained schemes, hatched in Washington, have backfired grandly.”
“Those who have pushed for them are now reduced to just two face-saving maneuvers: blaming their political opponents; and blaming Russia. And these two maneuvers are set to backfire as well.”
This article from the Russia Insider archives and was first published on RI in November 2017. Written by Dmitry Orlov Fri, Dec 11 2020 | 1610 words 43,193 Comments .
Dear America - You Are Delusional, and Failing at Everything You Undertake
Back in the days when I was still trying to do the corporate thing, I regularly found myself in a bit of a tight spot simply by failing to keep my mouth shut.
I seem to carry some sort of gene that makes me naturally irrepressible. I can keep my mouth shut for only so long before I have to blurt out what I really think, and in a corporate setting, where thinking isn’t really allowed, this causes no end of trouble. It didn’t matter that I often turned out to be right. It didn’t matter what I thought; it only mattered that I thought.
American involvement in the middle-eastern project is now limited to Putin’s sporadic courtesy calls to Trump, to keep him updated.
Of all the thoughts you aren’t allowed to think, perhaps the most offensive one is adequately expressed by a single short phrase:
“That’s not gonna work.”
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The end is near ...
Suppose there is a meeting to unveil a great new initiative, with PowerPoint presentations complete with fancy graphics, org charts, timelines, proposed budgets, yada-yada, and everything is going great until this curmudgeonly Russian opens his mouth and says “That’s not gonna work.”
And when it is patiently explained to him (doing one’s best to hide one’s extreme irritation) that it absolutely has to work because Senior Management would like it to, that furthermore it is his job to make it work and that failure is not an option, he opens his mouth again and says “That’s not gonna work either.” And then it’s time to avoid acting flustered while ignoring him and to think up some face-saving excuse to adjourn the meeting early and regroup.
I lasted for as long as I did in that world because once in a while I would instead say “Sure, that’ll work, let’s do it.” And then, sure enough, it did work, the company had a banner year or two, with lots of bonuses and atta-boy (and atta-girl) certificates handed out to those not at all responsible for any of it. Flushed with victory, they, in turn, would think up more harebrained schemes for me to rain on, and the cycle would repeat.
America seems to be blissfully unaware of how it comes across to the rest of the world
It is probably one of the main saving graces of corporations that they do sometimes (mainly by mistake) allow some thought to leak through. The mistake in question is a staffing error in promoting those constitutionally incapable of keeping their mouths shut or shutting off their brains. Such errors create chinks in the monolithic phalanxes of corporate yes-men and yes-women.
Trump is too old to be a reformer or a revolutionary. He is of an age when men are generally mostly concerned about the quantity and consistency of their stool and how it interacts with their enlarged prostates.
The likelihood of such mistakes increases with the agony of defeat, which causes attrition among the ranks of qualified yes-sayers, creating holes that can only be plugged by promoting a few non-yes-sayers. However, this only seems to work in the smaller, hungrier corporations; the larger, better-fed ones seem to be able to avoid experiencing the agony of defeat for a very long time by moving the goal posts, outlawing any discussion of said defeat or other similar tactics. Eventually the entire organization goes over the cliff, but by then it is of no benefit to anyone to attempt to inform them of their folly.
It is much the same with governments, except here the situation is even worse. While the smaller, hungrier governments, and those blessed with a fresh institutional memory of extreme pain, do not have the luxury of lying to themselves, the larger political agglomerations—the USSR, the EU, the USA—have the ability to keep themselves completely immunized against the truth for historically significant periods of time.
The USSR clung to the fiction of great socialist progress even when it was clear to all that the cupboard was bare and there were rats gnawing through the rafters. The EU has been able to ignore the fact that its entire scheme is one of enriching Germany while impoverishing and depopulating eastern and southern Europe, neglecting the interests of the native populations throughout. And the amount of self-delusion that is still currently in effect in the USA makes it a rather large subject.
Regardless of how great the lies are and how forcefully they are defended, a moment always comes when the phalanx of truth-blocking yes-men and yes-women stops marching, turns and runs. This event results in a tremendous loss of face and confidence for all involved.
It is the crisis of confidence, more than anything else, that precipitates the going-off-a-cliff phenomenon that we could so readily observe in the collapse of the USSR in the early 1990s. I have a very strong hunch that similar cliff-diving exercises are coming up for the EU and the USA.
But for the time being I am just another disembodied voice on the internet, watching from the sidelines and periodically saying the unfashionable thing, which is: “This isn’t gonna work.” However, I’ve said this a number of times over the years, on the record and more or less forcefully, and I feel vindicated most of the time.
Internationally, for example:
• Carving the Ukraine away from Russia, having it join the EU and NATO and building a NATO naval base in Crimea “wasn’t gonna work.” The Ukraine is a part of Russia, the Ukrainians are Russian, and the Ukrainian ethnic identity is a Bolshevik concoction. Look for a reversion to norm in a decade or two.
• Destroying and partitioning Syria with the help of Wahhabi extremists and foreign mercenaries supported by the US, Saudi Arabia and Israel while Russia, Iran, Turkey and China stand idly by “wasn’t gonna work”; and so it hasn’t.
• Giving Afghanistan “freedom and democracy” and turning it into a stable pro-Western regime with the help of invading NATO troops “wasn’t gonna work,” and hasn’t. Western involvement in Afghanistan can go on, but the results it can achieve are limited to further enhancing the heroin trade.
• Destroying the Russian economy using sanctions “wasn’t gonna work,” and hasn’t. The sanctions have helped Russia regroup internally and achieve a great deal of self-sufficiency in energy production and other forms of technology, in food and in numerous other sectors.
All of these harebrained schemes, hatched in Washington, have backfired grandly. Those who have pushed for them are now reduced to just two face-saving maneuvers: blaming their political opponents; and blaming Russia. And these two maneuvers are set to backfire as well.
In the meantime, the world isn’t waiting for the US to shake itself out of its stupor.
The fulcrum of American influence in the Middle East is Saudi Arabia and the petrodollar. In turn, Saudi Arabia rests on three pillars: the Saudi monarchy, Wahhabi Islam and the petrodollar. As I write this, the next king, Mohammed bin Salman, is busy hacking away at all three: robbing, imprisoning and torturing his fellow-princes, working to replace the Wahhabi clerics with moderate ones and embracing the petro-yuan instead of the now very tired petrodollar.
Not that any of these three pillars were in good shape in any case: the defeat of ISIS in Syria was a defeat for the Saudi monarchy which supported it, for the Wahhabi clerics who inspired it and, consequently, for the petrodollar as well, because Saudi Arabia was until now its greatest defender.
The new guarantors of peace in the region are Russia, Iran and Turkey, with China watching carefully in the wings. American involvement in the middle-eastern project is now limited to Putin’s sporadic courtesy calls to Trump, to keep him updated.
And so here’s my latest prediction: Trump’s goal of “making America great” “isn’t gonna work” either.
The country is so far gone that just taking the first step—of allowing the truth of its condition to leak through the media filters—will undermine public confidence to such an extent that a subsequent cliff-dive will become unavoidable. It’s a nice slogan as slogans go, but Trump is too old to be a reformer or a revolutionary. He is of an age when men are generally mostly concerned about the quantity and consistency of their stool and how it interacts with their enlarged prostates.
Perhaps he will succeed in making America great… big piles of feces, but I wouldn’t expect much more than that.
And time has proven him to be correct.
Remember that the American government controls all mainstream, and Alt-Left and Alt-Right media inside of America.
Now that it is official, and Biden is President, I scan the “news”…
Suddenly all the anti-China narrative has collapsed. the only anti-China article (15DEC20) that I can find is this one…
And this is just “only” a lite narrative with some segmented Chinese political infighting. Nothing about how horrible and awful China is. Not like before. But compared to the average of five to twelve articles per day about how terrible China is, this is really nothing.
Russian Missile Tech has Made America’s Trillion Dollar Navy Obsolete
“Times have changed and America can no longer project its military power like it did in Iraq. Those days are over. ”
This article from the archives was first published on RI in April 2018. Written by Dmitry Orlov Fri, Dec 11 2020 | 1400 words 52,084 Comments
Russian Missile Tech has Made America's Trillion Dollar Navy Obsolete
For the past 500 years European nations—Portugal, the Netherlands, Spain, Britain, France and, briefly, Germany—were able to plunder much of the planet by projecting their naval power overseas. Since much of the world’s population lives along the coasts, and much of it trades over water, armed ships that arrived suddenly out of nowhere were able to put local populations at their mercy.
A financially crippling military brontosaurus
The armadas could plunder, impose tribute, punish the disobedient, and then use that plunder and tribute to build more ships, enlarging the scope of their naval empires. This allowed a small region with few natural resources and few native advantages beyond extreme orneriness and a wealth of communicable diseases to dominate the globe for half a millennium.
The ultimate inheritor of this naval imperial project is the United States, which, with the new addition of air power, and with its large aircraft carrier fleet and huge network of military bases throughout the planet, is supposedly able to impose Pax Americana on the entire world. Or, rather, was able to do so—during the brief period between the collapse of the USSR and the emergence of Russia and China as new global powers and their development of new anti-ship and antiaircraft technologies. But now this imperial project is at an end.
Prior to the Soviet collapse, the US military generally did not dare to directly threaten those countries to which the USSR had extended its protection. Nevertheless, by using its naval power to dominate the sea lanes that carried crude oil, and by insisting that oil be traded in US dollars, it was able to live beyond its means by issuing dollar-denominated debt instruments and forcing countries around the world to invest in them.
It imported whatever it wanted using borrowed money while exporting inflation, expropriating the savings of people across the world. In the process, the US has accumulated absolutely stunning levels of national debt—beyond anything seen before in either absolute or relative terms. When this debt bomb finally explodes, it will spread economic devastation far beyond US borders. And it will explode, once the petrodollar wealth pump, imposed on the world through American naval and air superiority, stops working.
New missile technology has made a naval empire cheap to defeat. Previously, to fight a naval battle, one had to have ships that outmatched those of the enemy in their speed and artillery power. The Spanish Armada was sunk by the British armada. More recently, this meant that only those countries whose industrial might matched that of the United States could ever dream of opposing it militarily.
But this has now changed:
Russia’s new missiles can be launched from thousands of kilometers away, are unstoppable, and it takes just one to sink a destroyer and just two to sink an aircraft carrier. The American armada can now be sunk without having an armada of one’s own. The relative sizes of American and Russian economies or defense budgets are irrelevant: the Russians can build more hypersonic missiles much more quickly and cheaply than the Americans would be able to build more aircraft carriers.
Equally significant is the development of new Russian air defense capabilities: the S-300 and S-400 systems. These systems can essentially seal off a country’s airspace. Wherever these systems are deployed, such as in Syria, US forces are now forced to stay out of their range.
With its naval and air superiority rapidly evaporating, all that the US can fall back on militarily is the use of large expeditionary forces—an option that is politically unpalatable and has proven to be ineffective in Iraq and Afghanistan.
There is also the nuclear option.
And while its nuclear arsenal is not likely to be neutralized any time soon, nuclear weapons are only useful as deterrents. Their special value is in preventing wars from escalating beyond a certain point. But that point lies beyond the elimination of their global naval and air dominance.
Nuclear weapons are much worse than useless in augmenting one’s aggressive behavior against a nuclear-armed opponent; invariably, it would be a suicidal move.
What the US now faces is essentially a financial problem of unrepayable debt and a failing wealth pump.
It should be a stunningly obvious point that setting off nuclear explosions anywhere in the world would not fix the problems of an empire that is going broke.
Events that signal vast, epochal changes in the world often appear minor when viewed in isolation.
Julius Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon was just one river crossing. Soviet and American troops meeting and fraternizing at the Elbe was, relatively speaking, a minor event—nowhere near the scale of the siege of Leningrad, the battle of Stalingrad or the fall of Berlin. Yet they signaled a tectonic shift in the historical landscape.
And perhaps we have just witnessed something similar with the recent pathetically tiny Battle of East Gouta in Syria.
Where the US used a make-believe chemical weapons incident as a pretense to launch an equally make-believe attack on some airfields and buildings in Syria. The US foreign policy establishment wanted to show that it still matters and has a role to play, but what really happened was that US naval and air power were demonstrated to be almost entirely beside the point.
Of course, all of this is terrible news to the US military and foreign policy establishments, as well as to the many US Congressmen (in whose districts military contractors operate or military bases are situated).
Obviously, this is also bad news for the defense contractors, for personnel at the military bases, and for many others as well.
It is also simply awful news economically, since defense spending is about the only effective means of economic stimulus of which the US government is politically capable.
Obama’s “shovel-ready jobs,” if you recall, did nothing to forestall the dramatic slide in the labor participation rate, which is a euphemism for the inverse of the real unemployment rate. There is also the wonderful plan to throw lots of money at Elon Musk’s SpaceX (while continuing to buy vitally important rocket engines from the Russians—who are currently discussing blocking their export to the US in retaliation for more US sanctions).
In short, take away the defense stimulus, and the US economy will make a loud popping sound followed by a gradually diminishing hissing noise.
Needless to say, all those involved will do their best to deny or hide for as long as possible the fact that the US foreign policy and defense establishments have now been neutralized.
My prediction is that America’s naval and air empire will not fail because it will be defeated militarily, nor will it be dismantled once the news sinks in that it is useless; instead, it will be forced to curtail its operations due to lack of funds.
There may still be a few loud bangs before it gives up, but mostly what we will hear is a whole lot of whimpering.
That’s how the USSR went; that’s how the USA will go too.
Things are in the process of change. It is my hope that the changes will be calm and peaceful, but those that live off the old systems will fight “tooth and nail” against change.
The United States fields some very impressive and advanced military systems. But [1] are they sustainable against a large and peer-capable, aggressive nations? And if they are, [2] is it worth the risk of mutual global annihilation for the egos of the psychopathic American leadership?
The United States fields some very impressive and advanced military systems.
.
But you know, I fear that I am not making my point clear. War is not something that you read about in your daily feed. It is something that you endure with heartache and sadness. It is something that destroys relationships, cultures and societies. It destroys civilizations. But the psychopaths don’t care. But you and I should…
War is horrible. It is nothing that should be taken lightly.
.
War is a horror.
Things are dire.
From my email feed…
We are in a situation bleaker than during the last Cold War, and similar to the Cuban Missile Crisis.
And US media is not reporting on any of it. Most of you know this. But I'm posting it because it points out things that most people don't know, because it's suppressed.
This interview with Ray McGovern, who advised US presidents and briefed them daily for many years talks about the very precarious state of US Russia relations. Frankly this dwarfs controversy about the election.
Please watch this. And share with friends and family.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHaBjdRI-DU
Many people who live outside the United States think that the USA is a corrupt nation that is bound to collapse any day now.
EPIC FAIL: Why Most US Weapons Systems Are Worse than Russia’s
“Two reasons: complexity, and too much money .”
This article from the Russia Insider archives was first published on RI in April 2018. It was written by Jacob Dreizin Wed, Dec 9 2020 | 2300 words 52,407 Comments
EPIC FAIL: Why Most US Weapons Systems Are Worse than Russia's
The F-35: Insanely expensive, its costs keep soaring - and it's worse than Russian planes which cost 20 times less
Lately we have seen some good analysis on the limits and vulnerabilities of the American military in light of events in the former Ukraine and especially Russia’s demonstrated competence in Syria.
So we have the “what” of the issue, but how about the “why”?
As a U.S. Army veteran and a longtime resident of the Beltway—including four-and-a-half years living on Crystal Drive in Arlington, Virginia, which has probably the densest concentration of “defense” contractors anywhere in America — I think I understand what is fundamentally wrong with the U.S. military-industrial complex (MIC.)
First and foremost, the MIC has long been incapable of producing durable, efficient, versatile weapons.
We don’t even have to look to the F-35 on this one.
(America's latest fighter which has turned into a spectacular technical failure and massive ($1.5 trillion!) expense - see our super-popular article about how this plane stacks up against the Russian competition- edit)
Just consider the most basic item, the M-16.
The M-16 Assault Rifle
My field experience with this piece of junk is that it runs into problems in the presence of even a small amount of sand. When enough sand gets in to the chamber and mixes with the lube oil on the bolt assembly, the grit thus formed results in up to every second round misloading.
God forbid you should brush an oiled open breach against the side of your foxhole—you are out of commission. In the absence of air or artillery support or sheer overwhelming numbers on your side, you are dead meat against anyone with a gun that functions in a sandy environment.
And why?
Because, as I was told in boot camp (whether it’s true or not), this thing is perfectly built to have zero fault tolerance.
Supposedly, just about every metal component in the M-16 is cast and/or machined to perfection rather than stamped. Contrast this with Russian or Chinese weapons that are said to be built like can-openers to spray lead under any conditions. In other words, the M-16 is so sophisticated that it doesn't work well.
It is now acknowledged that the M-16 with its 5.56mm rounds is insufficiently lethal beyond a couple of hundred meters, making it unsuited to long-distance firefights over open terrain (again those deserts, or perhaps shootouts between mountain ridges.)
The M-1 Abrams tank
Another great example - this can be a real dog. The engine is a gas turbine, like with an aircraft, except that it is being driven around in deserts and even sandstorms, making it extremely finicky and high-maintenance. (Would you fly your Boeing into a sandstorm?) Of course, the Abrams was designed to fight in Germany where sand is not an issue. But during the Iraq adventure, sand so tore up the turbine fans (or whatever) that over 1000 of these million-dollar "power packs" had to be removed and sent up for depot-level maintenance or refurbishment stateside.
Yes, that’s right—these things cannot even be fixed in the field. All you can do is pull them out with a crane and ship them back to the civilians at enormous expense. At the height of the Iraq adventure, around 2007, the maintenance backlog was so bad that even the national media got wind of it.
Of course, when you have the world’s reserve currency, you can afford all that and more—the entire world is paying for your wars.
But the waste and inefficiency are a fact.
The Basic Problem : Excessive Complexity
I think the problem here is that American war planners and logisticians prefer originality, complexity, and/or expense-for-the-hell-of-it over versatility and ease of use and maintenance. This is no surprise given America’s wealth and the longtime generous funding of its armed forces. After all, every military reflects its own society.
Unfortunately for Uncle Sam, what he gets is equipment that may work very well in one environment but not another.
But so much for American equipment per se. Let’s talk about Crystal Drive (a neighborhood in suburban Washington where many defense contractors have offices - edit.) —or more broadly, the MIC.
The Military Industrial Complex (MIC) is failing on a massive scale
It is clear now that the MIC cannot build anything for less than 200 percent of its original planned budget (and that’s being extremely conservative.) Nor can anything it cranks out nowadays meet performance or survivability expectations. Besides the never-ending supersonic train wreck known as the F-35, we have other boondoggle failures such as the Littoral Combat Ship, which by all accounts is less capable and more vulnerable than the 20 to 30 year-old vessels it was supposed to replace.
Or, going back a few years, we see the Army’s “Commanche” helicopter, an intended replacement for the Apache, which blew through $6.9 billion—in 1983-2004 dollars, probably over $10 billion today—before the entire program was scrapped. That’s right, over $10 billion for nothing—not one Commanche was ever delivered for permanent use to an Army operational unit!
Where did that money go, if they didn’t actually manufacture anything besides a few prototypes? Did they spend $10 billion on PowerPoint presentations?
My brain cannot even wrap around this. Can you imagine what Russia or China could do for $10 billion?
However, even that pales before the Army's cancelled Future Combat Systems program, which burned through an estimated (no one knows exactly) $20 billion from 2003 to somewhere between 2012 and 2014 (depending on what termination milestone you go by), with almost nothing to show beyond a few prototypes, a lot of concept art, and a 29-pound toy robot made by iRobot of "Roomba" vacuum cleaner fame. In fact, I can’t think of one big new U.S. weapons system that has succeeded in the last 25 years, other than perhaps the Stryker armored car (though some have argued that point, and I just don’t know enough about it.)
As pointed out by many other observers, part of the blame lies with our political system, where MIC corporations buy politicians and then receive favors in the form of contracts, whether or not the contracts make any sense. However, I think this is not the only problem, nor even necessarily the biggest.
Fundamentally what I think we have is systemic over-complexity resulting in nothing getting done, or done well anyway.
US intelligence agencies have the same problem
This is akin to the deep systemic crisis in Uncle Sam’s intelligence agencies, where from 9/11 to the Arab Spring to Crimea to the ISIS conquest of Mosul to Russia in Syria, the word is always “we didn’t expect…” In this case, we have numerous agencies—some of them with overlapping functions—that are drowning in paperwork and garbage data (or too much data) and are almost totally useless.
As some readers will remember, it got so bad that in April 2014 the State Department released a photo collage aiming to prove that (among other things) a bearded Chechen battalion commander going by the name Hamza, who appeared in Russian TV footage of the 2008 Olympic War, was none other than the bearded, overweight Slaviansk militiaman going by the call-sign “Babai”—in other words, Russian special forces have invaded the Donbass. (The New York Times ran with this and was then oh-so-vaguely and gently reproached by its own ombudsman.)
Shouldn’t this awful joke have been prevented by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which is supposed to promote info-sharing among agencies and centrally vet all claims and conclusions—especially those being trumpeted on the State Department’s website or at its briefings? Apparently not!
Bureaucratic bloat
On the other hand, what the U.S. lack-of-intelligence complex is very good at—besides hiring way too many buxom, flirty young things straight out of college and with no language skills or any experience at all (DIA and NGA, you know your ex-military managers like to beautify their offices)—is providing employment for tens of thousands of its own staff as well as tens of thousands of grotesquely-overpaid contractors, including those who build and run billion-dollar eavesdropping centers that have proven incapable of picking up anything useful, perhaps because when you try to listen to everything, you end up hearing nothing.
The lesson here is that the more offices and agencies, the more managers and political appointees who will seek to justify and expand their turf and budgets by shoveling out as much money on as many contracts as possible, as quickly as possible, in many cases even paying contractors to do little more than just sit around (sometimes at home) waiting for the next contract. (I have seen this many times in Washington.)
Then you get so big that people simply trip over each other and the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.
The US MIC worked great 50 years ago because less money and people were involved
So I think this is what’s going on not only in the intelligence apparatus, but in the MIC as a whole. We have hundreds of thousands of staff and contractors as well as military officers assigned to liaise with them, all kinds of project managers and “six-sigma black belts” and other buzzwords, juggling millions of PowerPoints across the river from Washington and throughout the country, and they can’t field a helicopter after spending $10 billion on it.
Really? How did this great country ever defeat the Japanese Empire?
Go to the National Air and Space Museum in Washington; you will see the most amazing things—e.g. generators designed to operate on the surface of the Moon, drawing electricity from the heat of plutonium decay—that were developed when there was no Crystal Drive, no Tysons Corner, etc.
Then go to the museum’s extension near Dulles airport and check out the SR-71 “Blackbird”, the fastest and highest-flying airplane ever built (this was about 50 years ago.)
How did they do it?
Although there were more men in uniform back then, the MIC itself (or should I say the Military-Industrial-Intelligence-Homeland-Insecurity-Complex (MIIHIC)) - had but a fraction of today’s civilian workforce. Luckily, most of those paper-pushing “systems integrators” and PowerPoint rangers did not exist. Blueprints were drafted with pencil and paper.
Today, Uncle Sam can’t even build a heavy rocket engine, not to mention a good helmet or ejection seat for his F-35.
No hope for change going forward
So it seems that as a technical civilization we are degenerating.
Sure, there are constant advancements in microelectronics (a.k.a. integrated circuits) and the programs they allow, but in terms of heavy engineering—of which the MIIHIC and other government initiatives like the space program were at the forefront since WWII—it seems that the U.S. is tapped out.
And you know what? Throwing more money at it is just going to make it worse.
The organizations with their budgets and their perfectly reasonable-sounding arguments for ever-greater budgets will grow, their workforces will grow, the contracting sector will grow, more shiny office buildings will go up, but the result will be an ever-increasingly-negative marginal return.
John McCain and all the other broken records in and out of the Pentagon will say we still don't have enough funds to counter a pointless Russian invasion of parasitic, inconsequential Lithuania (currently headed by a longtime communist) or any other 1990s-era speculative wargame training scenario that somehow carried over into the public consciousness and morphed into the Greatest Threat to World Peace.
Of course, as long as the U.S. has the money to send gazillion-dollar armies and armadas against illiterate natives armed with sharp sticks and coconuts, this may not visibly threaten its hegemony. Almost any problem or mistake can be papered over with money, for a long time anyway.
But eventually, even if the money spigot does not constrict, we will get to the point where the military really can’t be used as anything more than a façade or a gunboat road-show, hoping no one calls the bluff, because the stuff just doesn’t work like it’s supposed to, or else is too vulnerable (witness the evacuation of the U.S. aircraft carrier from the Persian Gulf after Uncle Sam found out that Russia has cruise missiles with a range of at least 1500km, or the ridiculous sail-around of China's little islands which had the sense to infringe only very slightly and briefly on that country's imaginary territorial waters), or the natives can devise their own countermeasures.
In fact, I would say we are at that point already. Not to mention, the U.S. Army and the Department of Veterans Affairs are still so tapped-out after Iraq and Afghanistan that another major ground operation is unthinkable. (At this point, Washington is more likely to launch nukes at somebody than risk another ground war.)
So you can anticipate a lot of hand-wringing and a lot more money being thrown into the breach. That’s simply what the machine does; there is no chance to reform it, nor will the Hegemony dissipate willingly (although lately it’s done a good job of dissipating unwillingly.)
But all that money may as well be flushed down the can.
The threshold has been reached and it's all downhill from here.
This is all pretty much standard knowledge within the defense industry. The MIL-STD-810 (whatever revision it is now) is all about this particular issue. But the things is that the money is NOT in making better weapons systems for use, but rather as a system to make a lot of money to the owners of the military-industrial industry.
And that is already very well known.
Many people who live outside the United States think that the USA is a corrupt nation that is bound to collapse any day now.
Russia’s Airborne Forces Differ Greatly from NATO’s (Cool Video)
Many analysts consider them the best in the world and totally unique. Why?
They are much bigger (50,000 troops fully combat ready)
They are mechanized (they parachute heavy equipment in with troops)
They are constantly innovating and have legendary esprit de corps
Interesting: They include a saint among their veterans
-This article from our archives was first published on RI in August 2015
Russia's Airborne Forces Differ Greatly from NATO's (Cool Video)
What I want to share with you today is a promo movie by Zvezda TV, the semi-official TV channel of the Russian Ministry of Defense, at the occasion of the 85th anniversary of the Russian Airborne Forces. So don’t expect a hard-hitting documentary asking the tough questions and making critical comments.
However, this is nonetheless a very interesting video and when I saw it, I begged Alena Scarecrow and Tatzhit to translate and subtitle it, which they very kindly did. Before letting you watch the video, I would like to share with you a few thoughts about the Russian Airborne Forces (called ‘VDV’ in Russian) and about their military, social, political and even spiritual role in modern Russia.
The Russian Airborne Forces
The Russian VDV are truly an absolutely unique phenomenon and they should not be confused with any other airborne force.
For one thing, the VDV are fully mechanized.
Firstly. So while they are ‘paratroopers’, these paratroopers are not just light infantry (like, say, the US 82nd AB), but a very mobile force, fully mechanized and with a *lot* of firepower. In the movie you are about to watch, you will see some of their armored vehicles and artillery pieces which, uniquely, can also be delivered by parachute. What the movie does not show is the artillery of the VDV which includes such systems as the 2S9 Nona, the D-30 howitzer or the 2S25 self-propelled tank destroyer.
Second, the VDV are a numerically huge force which currently totals 50’000 men and includes 5 Airborne Divisions and 6 Airborne Brigades (including the 45th Special Forces of the VDV Brigade). All of them air-deployable and on a top-level or readiness.
Thirdly, the VDV truly are the embodiment of military valor and tactical skills and they have played an absolutely crucial role in many Soviet and Russian battles, but probably never more so than during the worst tragedy in their long history: the battle for Ulus-Kert in which the entire 6th Airborne company perished.
I don’t have the space and time to recount in detail what happened on that day of early 2000 but to those interested by this amazing event I would recommend the article “ULUS-KERT: An Airborne Company’s Last Stand” by Sergeant Michael D. Wilmoth, US Army Reserve, and Lieutenant Colonel Peter G. Tsouras, US Army Reserve, Retired, in the Military Review of July-August 1991, pp 91-96 (click here for this article reposted on this blog). Keep in mind that this article was not written by the promotions department of Zvezda TV, but by two US military experts who are very critical of many aspects of what took place that day (and rightly so).
What is absolutely crucial for the understanding of the importance of this battle for Hill 776 in Ulus-Kert is that the year 2000 marked the absolute rock-bottom of the “democratic experiment” (aka the American colonization) of Russia.
Yes, Putin has just come to power, but the country was absolutely devastated by a decade of Soviet stagnation followed by another decade of “democratic reforms” and Putin was just making his very first steps as a new head of state.
What the 6th company achieved on Hill 776 was an immense wake-up call to the entire Russian nation saying “enough is enough” and “not one single step back”.
The article by Wilmoth and Tsouras accurately describes all the failures in command and execution which resulted in the tragedy of the 6th company, but it is precisely these failures which made the sacrifice of these men so amazing: the country had essentially abandoned its own military, but the young men of the VDV did not hesitate to die, all of them, to resist the face of evil (and, in those days, nothing embodied absolute evil as much as the Chechen Wahabis and their reign of terror and medieval atrocities).
It is hard to over-estimate the contribution which the Russian Airborne Forces have made to the rebirth of Russia. But this goes even further.
I strongly believe that it is not a coincidence that the Russian Airborne Forces have even produced an Orthodox martyr and saint: Evgenii Aleksandrovich Rodionov. You can read a short summary of the life and death of Rodionov in the Wikipedia article under his name.
Evgenii Rodionov, photo and icon
Evgenii Rodionov, photo and icon
What is so important about the case of Rodionov is that died as a martyr because he refused to abandon his Orthodox faith and that his podvig (spiritual feat) happened away from everybody at a time when, as the sad expression went, “every boy wanted to become a criminal thug and every girl a prostitute” as people used to say in 1996, in the midst of the “democratic hell” Russia had become.
Though I cannot prove it, I am personally deeply convinced that the fact that Rodionov was a solider of the Airborne Forces is not a coincidence. I have met enough Airborne officers and soldiers myself and I know that their level of patriotism and spiritual awareness is exceptionally high because they live by an honor code, an ideal, which has it roots in the most ancient Russian military traditions which have always been immersed in spiritual and moral values far beyond just winning a battle.
Now, please don’t misunderstand me, I am not saying that all the soldiers of the VDV are some kind of invincible saints or anything like that. Far from it. It is enough to see the footage of the kind of silly drunken nonsense these guys display each August 2nd (the day of the Holy Prophet Elijah, Patron of the Russian Airborne Forces) to lose any such illusions:
And one reality should not overshadow the other one: they are both equally Russian and equally typical of the VDV.
What I am trying to illustrate by all of the above is that the Russian Airborne Forces are an absolutely unique, and uniquely Russian, phenomenon and that they are a truly formidable force by any measure. Now for a more US-style promo movie, with lot’s of high-tech hardware and “cool” shots, please see the following video.
It will show you that the Russian VDV are also very modern and forward looking military forces with over 85 years of development behind their back. And, having watched that video, ask yourself this simple question: how impressed to you think these guys are with the new multi-national NATO “spearhead” and “rapid reaction” forces?
The day of the Holy Prophet Elijah, Patron of the Russian Airborne Forces.
You know…
Yeah, you know, that it’s a really cold day in Hell when the American news would say anything good about any other military force, whether it is Russian on Chinese. But here, on MM we try to provide insight.
As I have tried to state elsewhere, if you want to hear about what other narrative is being promoted in the American echo chambers (election fraud, political bribes, mind control, etc) you need not come to MM. This is a completely different type of site. We are not a “me too” of the preferred NSA narrative venue cabal.
Here’s a taste of what the echo chambers in the USA report on Chinese and Russian military forces… America is the best! America is the largest, strongest and best trained. China and Russia military are “push overs”. We are undefeated, and the most powerful military in the history of the world!
American military in the eyes of American media.
.
The experts have spoken and Americans are ready to die for “their” country…
Russia
NotSoScary: ThisIsWhy Russia's Military IsaPaperTiger.CertainlyMoscow’s military forceswillcontinuetomodernize, but Russian military might—otherthanitsnuclearforces—isan ...
-National Interest
Russia banned from using its name, flag at next two Olympics
Russia will not be able to use its name, flag and anthem at the next two Olympics or at any world championships for the next two years after a ruling Thursday by the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
In other words: this doping scandal never existed; but it was never about sports: it is all - and always was - about propaganda. Russian athletes will continue to compete normally - only without the Russian symbols.
This is a clear attack against Russia.
China
Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said Wednesday that while China has more ships, it'll be a while before it can match the power of the US Navy.
"I want to make clear that China cannot match the United States when it comes to naval power," Esper explained at a RAND Corporation event.
"Even if we stopped building new ships, it would take the [People's Republic of China] years to close the gap when it comes to our capability on the high seas," he said. "Ship numbers are important, but they don't tell the whole story."
And of course, there is the obligatory bullshit reporting on how strange China is. Uh. Sure….
Is this a thing? Only inside American newspapers.
.
Meanwhile…
What does all this mean?
Well, I have been promoting the idea that America as it stands today is not sustainable. But I am NOT a “lone voice in the wilderness”. Many others have also made these observations. For instance…
Other opinions.
.
But you all don’t need to be a reader to follow this. All you need to do is take a casual look around you. Just look.
Fight Club.
.
The stench of decay permeates America at all levels…
Women offer sex for McDonald’s food.
.
Not yet convinced?
I guess that sex comes cheaply in the United States.
.
I guess that if the American leadership are all psychopaths, and that they rigged the elections in their favor so that the serf-slaves serve them, then everything is pretty much following the natural progression of order. It ‘s a stratification of society into a ruler class and a servant class, and that’s just the way it is. If this keeps up, castes will form, and America will resemble the caste system within India.
Any your boys and girls who read this will be in the lower, servant, classes.
If not, then the United States will collapse upon itself. Which is why everyone is writing about this issue, no one wants to face the idea that the USA can continue and be permitted to set up a stratified society. One of the Haves, and the other a “disposable class”.
So, as uncomfortable as it is, let’s all hope for the collapse of the USA.
It’s very difficult to argue otherwise.
.
Let’s trust that the global oligarchy have successfully managed to isolate the USA on the global stage to the extent that any damage during the American meltdown will be limited to the North American region. I sincerely hope that this remains the case.
That is my “gut” feeling. And that is what I am betting on.
But others seem to think that if America collapses, then the entire world will collapse as well. In their minds the USA …IS THE WORLD. And thus it’s collapse will destroy the world (more or less). Nope.
Nope.
Not true.
But you can read for yourself and come to your own conclusions…
That Collapse You Ordered…?
I had a fellow on my latest podcast, released Sunday, who insists that the world population will crash 90-plus percent from the current 7.6 billion to 600 million by the end of this century. Jack Alpert heads an outfit called the Stanford Knowledge Integration Lab (SKIL) which he started at Stanford University in 1978 and now runs as a private research foundation. Alpert is primarily an engineer.
At 600 million, the living standard in the USA would be on a level with the post-Roman peasantry of Fifth century Europe, but without the charm, since many of the planet’s linked systems — soils, oceans, climate, mineral resources — will be in much greater disarray than was the case 1,500 years ago. Anyway, that state-of-life may be a way-station to something more dire. Alpert’s optimal case would be a world human population of 50 million, deployed in three “city-states,” in the Pacific Northwest, the Uruguay / Paraguay border region, and China, that could support something close to today’s living standards for a tiny population, along with science and advanced technology, run on hydropower. The rest of world, he says, would just go back to nature, or what’s left of it. Alpert’s project aims to engineer a path to that optimal outcome.
I hadn’t encountered quite such an extreme view of the future before, except for some fictional exercises like Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. (Alpert, too, sees cannibalism as one likely byproduct of the journey ahead.) Obviously, my own venture into the fictionalized future of the World Made by Hand books depicted a much kinder and gentler re-set to life at the circa-1800 level of living, at least in the USA. Apparently, I’m a sentimental softie.
Both of us are at odds with the more generic techno-optimists who are waiting patiently for miracle rescue remedies like cold fusion while enjoying re-runs of The Big Bang Theory. (Alpert doesn’t completely rule out as-yet-undeveloped energy sources, though he acknowledges that they’re a low-percentage prospect.) We do agree with basic premise that the energy supply is mainly what supports the way we live now, and that it shows every evidence of entering a deep and destabilizing decline that will halt the activities necessary to keep our networks of dynamic systems running.
A question of interest to many readers is how soon or how rapid the unraveling of these systems might be. When civilizations crumble, it tends to fast-track. The Roman empire seems to be an exception, but in many ways it was far more resilient than ours, being a sort of advanced Flintstones economy, with even its giant-scale activities (e.g. building the Coliseum) being accomplished by human-powered work. In any case, the outfit really fell apart steadily after the reign of emperor Marcus Aurelius (180 AD).
The Romans had their own version of a financialized economy: they simply devalued their coins by mixing in less and less silver at the mint, so they could pretend to pay for the same luxuries they had grown accustomed to as resources stretched thin. Our financialized economy — like everything else we do — operates at levels of complexity so baffling that even its supposed managers at the central banks are flying blind through fogs of debt, deception, and moral hazard. When that vessel of pretense slams into a mountain top, the effects are likely to be quick and lethal to the economies on the ground below.
In our time, the most recent crash of a major socioeconomic system was the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990-91. Of course, it happened against the backdrop of a global system that was still revving pretty well outside the USSR, and that softened the blow. Ultimately, the Russians still had plenty of oil to sell, which allowed them to re-set well above the Fifth Century peasant level of existence. At least for now. The Soviet Union collapsed because it was a thoroughly dishonest system that ran on pretense and coercion. Apparently, the US Intel Community completely missed the signs that political collapse was underway.
They seem to be pretty clueless about the fate of the USA these days, too. If you consider the preoccupations of two very recent Intel chiefs — John Brennan of CIA and James Clapper, DNI — who now inveigh full-time on CNN as avatars of the Deep State against the wicked Golden Golem of Greatness. Personally, I expect our collapse to be as sudden and unexpected as the USSR’s, but probably bloodier because there’s simply more stuff just lying around to fight over. Of course, I expect the collapse to express itself first in banking, finance, and markets — being so deeply faith-based and so subject to simple failures of faith. But it will become political and social soon enough, maybe all-at once. And when it happens in the USA, it will spread through the financial systems the whole world round.
Conclusion
I need a beer.
…
[Result 1] So all evidence points to a massive collapse with the inclusion of civil strife, civil war, and global war set up as distractions that quickly get out of hand.
If this does not happen…
[Restult 2] Then evidence points to a fully enslaved nation of dumbed-down slaves that service the wealthy in a forced stratification system that would resemble the caste system in India.
You will not hear any of this in the American “news” because you are not to know of it. Your rulers are all psychopaths that indeed want either of the two outcomes to manifest. They want either result one or two. Nothing else is acceptable to them.
Some John Titor Stuff…
John Titor visits to our primary world line template, showing the deviation values.
A final Thought
And my thoughts…
Do you want to see similar posts?
I hope that you found this post curious. Please take care. You can view other similar posts in my SHTF Index, here…
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How about that for a title? Yah, it’s probably going to get exactly zero hits on Google, don’t you know. But after all, everyone just “knows” what the universe is, and what our role in it is, right? We all know.
Or do we?
Is all we see, all that there is? Is all the rumors about UFO’s, little green men, and strange being that walk in and out of our reality just some kind of Hollywood fiction? Is the idea that we can buy our way into “forgiveness” and “Heaven” possible if we donate enough money to charity and large churches? Is wealth the sole method to determine whether or not you lead a successful life?
What is real, and what is not?
What is important, and what is trivial?
What is actual, and what is a lie?
Here we are going to discuss what our reality actually is. And while I have (in other posts) discussed the nature of our universe, and the nature of our reality, here is where “I bring it home” and discuss it on a very up-front and personal way.
"BringingItHome" "Bringingithome" is making something more clear by seeing the situation more closely. Example: "Taking care of my grandfather is really bringinghome the importance of good health care." When one thing happens which shows you that some thing is real, that "bringsithome".
-GoEnglish.com Idioms
Quick Overview
The universe doesn’t look like anything that we are taught in school or in our religions. It does not at all resemble our physical reality. It is something quite different. So to enter this discussion you all need to be made aware of that.
Is the perception of our reality the same thing as the actual reality?
Our universe is actually something else.
And because we don’t have the proper vocabulary to describe it, we will overuse some terms with will tend to add confusion. That is something that we do not want.
Definition of universe
1 : the whole body of things and phenomena observed or postulated : cosmos: such as a : a systematic whole held to arise by and persist through the direct intervention of divine power
b : the world of human experience
c
(1) : the entire celestial cosmos
(2) : milky way galaxy
(3) : an aggregate of stars comparable to the Milky Way galaxy
2 : a distinct field or province of thought or reality that forms a closed system or self-inclusive and independent organization
3 : population sense 4
4 : a set that contains all elements relevant to a particular discussion or problem
5 : a great number or quantity
Phew!
First off, we all exist within a time-less void.
Within this void, are multiple universes. There are a large number of them. Maybe infinite. Who actually knows?
We, our consciousness, come from one of these universes.
We have a name for it. We call it “Heaven”.
But what about us?
Sure there is a Heaven. It is a “place”. But what about us?
Our consciousness is part of a group of quanta that we call a soul.
And thus, yes, souls reside within Heaven. And they create these objects known as “consciousness”.
And you, who are reading this, are one such being; one such consciousness.
…
Is there anything that is too difficult to understand? It should be pretty clear. Most religions pretty much maintain this belief structure, more or less. Of course, they don’t refer to a consciousness as being a part of soul. Or that you are a being of consciousness. But aside from that, that’s the basics of the void that we call “the universe”.
…
Now, as you all might be aware, you and I are not dwelling within Heaven. We are somewhere else. If we were inside of Heaven things would be quite different. Indeed, and you all can well imagine what the differences would be.
Instead, we are conscious that dwells somewhere else. Not in Heaven. Somewhere else.
We call this other place “reality”.
It is our reality. And that is where our consciousness dwells while our bodies are alive and functioning. And when we die, our consciousness leaves our reality and returns to Heaven.
…
Again, this shouldn’t be too difficult to understand either. Most religions have some idea or concept of this. We live on the Earth, and then we die and return to Heaven. Many religions refer to this as soul, but that is not completely accurate.
Soul stays within Heaven. It is the universe that the soul occupies. It never leaves that universe.
Instead it creates a “vehicle”, known as consciousness, which it uses to acquire experiences with. These experiences are like a giant vacuum cleaner, and it collects all sorts of new, interesting, and curious experiences with it. These experiences are when quanta interact together, and in that interaction they create associations. These associations become building blocks. And those building blocks are what the soul uses to grow.
Phew!
But where does consciousness go to collect those experiences?
It enters another universe.
This other universe is called “reality”.
…
This is a slightly different version than what most religions teach. The Buddhists believe that suffering is the path to enlightenment, and I suppose that you could say that suffering is a sub-set of experiences.
The Christian religions teach that we are born corrupted and that we must cleanse ourselves though pious actions in order to qualify to return to Heaven. Again, not so different.
Our actions, and the experiences associated with them, observe the needs that the consciousness has to build up quantum relationships for soul.
All this I pretty much covered in other posts, describing the “shaft or cylinder of light” that the consciousness passes through to get to Heaven and all that.
But now we are going to diverge a little away from what most religions teach.
…
Our reality is not like Heaven. Each universe is completely different in construction and appearance. And I am very limited in what I can say about Heaven. Though I have written about the geography of Heaven in other posts. The “reality universe” that we (our consciousness) inhabits is not as it appears. The reality is that our reality universe is a very large collection of “frozen moments in time”.
It is a near infinite collection of “snap-shots”.
There is a snap-shot of the moment when you were born. There is a snap-shot of when the dinosaurs became extinct. There is a snap-shot of when the pyramids were built in Egypt. There is a snap-shot of when man walked on the moon, and there is a snap shot of the forest fires of 2134. There is a snap-shot of every moment in time.
Additionally there is a snap-shot of “alternative universes”. There is a snap-shot of when George Washington betrayed the American revolution and became king of France. There is a snap-shot of when the Incas invaded Spain, and a snap-shot of Hillary Clinton winning the 2016 election.
Each snap-shot is a three dimensional reality. With sights, sounds, emotions, feelings, thoughts, and colors.
Now, what happens is that our consciousness moves from one snap-shot to another. And since it moves we experience time. We experience “the arrow of time”. And it seems that the world around us moves. But in reality it is our consciousness is what is moving. Not everything else.
It’s like a movie projector in a movie theater. Each “snap-shot” is a frame in the film. And we, as consciousness experience this movement as “real life”.
Now, for the “head blown” realization…
…each “snap shot” is an individual “world-line”.
Coordinates of location
Since each moment is frozen in time, you can associate it with coordinates.
These are coordinates of location.
The best and most effective way of doing so is with gravity readings.
Each world-line or snap-shot in time has it’s own unique set of coordinates. And if you add geographical coordinates of where your consciousness happens to be, you will have a complete set of coordinates that describes your position in all the universe at any given frozen moment in time.
It is by accessing these coordinates of location that you are able to conduct world-line travel and apparent time-travel. You might want to see my construction notes on my DIY teleportation mechanism or egress portal. HERE.
Dimensional portal showing magnetic field generator, and the “air gap” that the traveler must pass through to use the mechanism. This post discusses the geometry of this “air gap”.
A life time of experiences
Now the way that our consciousness travels this group of world-lines is pretty much fixed. It’s almost like it is pre-ordained or fated.
…
…
The moment that you, as consciousness, tries to deviate from your path, something will happen that will snap you back on that path.
…
But…
Since thoughts change reality, we can use our thoughts to navigate the various world-lines at will. I have devoted an entire section on this called Intention Campaigns.
That’s the good news.
Now for the bad news.
Evil or selfish people use popular media, news, or industry to control the thoughts of others. They flood the airwaves and media with narrative to make people think in certain ways. These patterns of mutated mass-thought is very dangerous. And is the source of many of the problems that we humans are experiencing today. I have also covered this in other posts. With an entire index devoted to the collapse of the United States.
This is a big ol’ subject and you just will not find it anywhere else. But this is how the universe works pretty much.
Now, let’s get to the “brass tacks”, or the real purpose of this post.
A Sentience Nursery
Humans are a very, very young species. Heck we are under 30,000 years old, and our written history only goes back 6,000 years. Pro-humans have been around longer, but not much longer. Maybe 300,000 years.
Older, more mature species have long colonized and settled our galaxy (a collection of solar systems) within our “reality universe”. And they have set aside enclaves, or preserves used for the incubation and growth of new emerging species.
There are five such sentience nurseries in our general geographic region of space.
I do not know much about what lies outside our immediate region of space. I have written some very detailed posts about this subject and our galaxy and if you are really interested, you might want to check them out.
This is where we are protected, and nurtured and lead to “growing up” and becoming a productive species within our galaxy.
Once we “graduate”, our RNA will be altered (with some modifications of our DNA as well) and the human species will become something else.
Our RNA / DNA will be such that it fits an approved archetype. And once that is completed, we (the survivors) will collectively fit within an ecological niche within the galaxy.
You can see what happened with a much older species that already graduated from our sentience nursery; the Cephalopods.
The Guardian Angels
Our “sentience nursery” is tended to by a species that everyone is pretty much aware of known as the “greys”. I refer to them as the “Type-1 greys” because that was the first species that I met when I joined MAJestic.
I have things to say about this species, and things that I am limited to discuss. This is my attempt to add some clarity on this issue, in the midst of all the massive disinformation out there off in internet land.
And where they are from. Nope they are not from Zeta Reticuli. They are from some place nearer…
And… how near, you might ask…
And how long have they been involved with the earth…
And, if they are so prevalent all over the earth, then where is their bases of operation? The sightings are global, and constant and consistent. But Google Earth doesn’t indicate any extraterrestrial bases or housing structures.
Where are they…
And maybe a little bit about how they started interacting with humans.
They pretty much police this entire environment and make sure that the humans are tended to and don’t get into too much trouble. They occupy both the physical reality, and the non-physical reality within this “reality universe”.
Much of what is written about them is much maligned nonsense. They are desirous of humans to get a service-to-self sentience. But aside from that, don’t really care one way or the other about what happens. They are objectively neutral.
But, that’s not really true regarding our protectors.
And it is our protectors that make sure that the Type-1 greys behave themselves.
The human species themselves are tended to by the very first intelligent species to graduate from this sentience nursery. They are a species that dwells within the non-physical reality and performs autonomous world-line travel operations for the human body automatically without human consciousness interaction. They are known as the Mantids. They act as our guardian angels. Because that is what they are, more or less.
Before they took on their role, they evolved naturally on this earth in the physical. As such, they have left behind some relics…
I have much to say about them, and I will get to that once, I establish commonality of dialog about the non-physical realities.
Crazy stuff!
You betya. The world that you think you know isn’t even close to what the actual reality is. Now, can you just believe that this is all just an introduction? Yup it is.
Because right now I’m going to tell you what this “sentience nursery” actually is, and I will try to describe it in ways so that everyone can understand.
Think of a farm. Let’s suppose the farm is raising horses. These are special Arabian horses known for special beauty and personality. And the farm is run by a loving and caring family that loves those horses. They hire people to take care of the horses, and care for them. These caretakers mend the fences and make sure that no one will break in the farm and steal the horses. They also make sure that none of the horses escape the farm. They are very good at what they do, but to them, it’s just a job; a paycheck.
A horse farm can be a very beautiful place.
Well…
Consider the Earth to be the same as the farm. You can consider humans to be the special horses being groomed and cared for. And you can consider the Mantids to be the farmer and his family that love and care for the horses. Finally, you can consider the Type-1 greys to be the farm-hands that maintain the farm and keep everything working and in order.
Now…
There are five other farms in the county. They are all raising horses. But each farm raises a different breed. And that is the way that our section of galaxy works.
Keeping the horses corralled
But how do they do it? How does the type-1 greys keep the horses in their pens, on their learning tracks, keeping them well fed, and steering them away from the gate that will let them out of the farm where they can roam freely?
Type-1 Grey “cowboys” keep the human herds under control..
They use numerous techniques.
The gates are hidden from view. The horses cannot see the gates, and do not know where they are.
The keys to open the gates are never discussed or told to the horses, they wouldn’t know how to open the gates, even if they were right in front of them.
The horses are kept busy and distracted by certain other horses that are intentionally agitated, and are used to distract attention away from the gates.
They also use other animals (dogs) to help keep the horses in their place.
Other Animals
These guardians, or “cowboys”, use “helpers” to help put the humans “in their place” and control them.
This includes the MAJestic organization, and one of the roles that I participated in was as a “cowboy for the human race“. If you all don’t know what I am specifically referring to, then you should read this post…
You see, and this is specifically directed to long time readers to MM, the longer you read, the more articles you absorb, the more “puzzle pieces” that fall into place.
The Gates
In our human reality, the gates are absolutely hidden.
We need to be able to map the coordinates of location, then use a high flux egress portal to assign new coordinates that lead outside of our nursery.
The keys are the specific coordinates that the traveler must use to egress, and that come either from long periods of experimentation, or being told what coordinates to use.
Finally, certain individuals within our human reality are intentionally creating disruptions. These disruptions keep the human species “on our toes” and distracted in such a way that we don’t have the time nor inclination to egress our of our reality.
And that is the way it is.
Cowboy with his cowboy dogs.
Cowboy movement
Because the gates are hidden, the caretakers can enter and leave our apparent reality at will. It doesn’t matter what world-line we are on, they can find us through the coordinates of location and the impression that the quanta associated with our consciousness makes.
When you watch them enter, it is like they are coming out of nowhere, and that they leave just as easily. And these gates can open up just about anywhere, but you all would be surprised that there is an entire non-physical reality that lies outside our physical reality. And our caretakers and guardian angels tend to be in that realm at various states of energy.
They rarely enter the physical realm. That is where the livestock roam.
Conclusion
You are not in Kansas anymore.
We’re not in Kansas anymore is a phrase that means we have stepped outside of what is considered normal, we have entered a place or circumstance that is unfamiliar and uncomfortable, we have found ourselves in a strange situation.
The idiom we’re not in Kansas anymore was first used in the movie The Wizard of Oz, a 1939 film based on the L. Frank Baum book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, published in 1900. In the story, Dorothy Gale is caught in a tornado that transports her and her dog, Toto, into a magical land called Oz.
The line, “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore,” summed up the fact that not only did Dorothy travel away from home physically, but she had traveled to a new reality where anything was possible.
Though the movie premiered in 1939, it was a staple of holiday programming on television through the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s in America. The idiom we’re not in Kansas anymore did not become popular until the 1980s.
-We’re not in Kansas anymore Idiom Definition – Grammarist
The world that we live in is not what it seems.
If you are a new comer to this MM website then all this will seem strange, upsetting and not make any sense to you. Which is why I have an entire series devoted to teach it in great detail, but in stages.
Most people who follow the lesson plan agree that there is a lot here, but once they follow the step plan, it all becomes crystal clear and they see their life, and their role within it, in crystal clarity.
Yes, we talk about world-lines, other species, little “green” men, high technology, and secrets. Strange, and a little crazy, eh? Ah. It’s all American as “Apple Pie”, isn’t it?
Let’s hope that someone else benefits from this information.
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.
Please kindly help me out in this effort. There is a lot of effort that goes into this disclosure. I could use all the financial support that anyone could provide. Thank you very much.
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This post we will look at the general considerations for the design of the egress portal itself.
This is part of the DIY series in making your very own dimensional portal. The geometry of the egress station will stay the same regardless of how you use this dimensional portal. Whether it is intended as a “time machine”, a mechanism to traverse the “what if” worlds, or just something you want to use to improve your physical appearance, the geometry will not change.
Dimensional portal showing magnetic field generator, and the “air gap” that the traveler must pass through to use the mechanism. This post discusses the geometry of this “air gap”.
Basic Introduction
Note that this is an article that is part of a long series of posts on DIY construction of a dimensional portal.
This technology will permit a person to move anywhere in the universe geographically, move through time, and more in and out of different world-lines.
This page is part of a collection of my writings on how to make a home-made dimensional portal that actually works. This portal is a “poor man’s” version of the MAJestic dimensional portal that was present in NAS NASC Pensacola Florida back in 1981.
This particular post covers the geometry of the portal itself’ the “air gap” or region that that traveled must walk through in order to travel the various world-lines.
Teleportation is a proven fact, and is well understood in the quantum physics world. It has been demonstrated continuously and repeatedly in the laboratory as well.
Though public demonstration of large objects is not available and considered "far fetched", the fact is this is a mature technology.
This technology has been in possession of the United States Navy's ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence) branch of high technology MAJestic branch, of which I was a part of.
Overall, this post is part of a much larger series of posts. All of which describe a rather comprehensive DIY project. Within it is everything that you need to construct your very own dimensional portal. The big missing gap is the mapping of the dimensional coordinates. Because unless you are able to lay out a destination coordinate, you will have little use for this mechanism.
The equations tend to be a tad esoteric, but it’s nothing too difficult as long as you know some basic mathematics. Just follow the narrative and the instructions and you will be just fine.
This is part 10. The calculations and equations related to the actual portal geometry.
You are here.
I always like it when you are lost in a big museum, hospital or factory, and you come up to a big sign on the wall; a map really, that says “You are here.”. It helps you figure out where you are relative to the over all scheme of things.
You are here.
Let’s see where this post fits into the big scheme of things.
Essentially, the idea is quite simple, really. [1] You generate a massive, simply massive; “big honker” electromagnet. In it is [2] this “air gap” or a gap large enough for a person to walk though. [3] The magnetic field generated in the electromagnet is enormous. It is [4] strong enough to “erase” or “obscure” your current “coordinates” associated with this world-line and your life. Then, [5] new coordinates are over-laid over your body, [6] using frequency generation techniques, and [7] when the magnetic field collapses you “snap” right to the new reality or dimensions that you have imprinted.
It’s rather simple. The issues are in the implementation of the various steps.
You need to [8] measure the frequencies of location with extreme precision. You need [9] to be able to functionally understand how to change them to take you where ever you want to go. You need [10] to pulse the electromagnet into sine wave configuration, and [11] you need to have the traveler become brainwave neutral during the egress operation.
I’ve covered those steps elsewhere.
Here we will concentrate on the geometry of the “air gap” that the person (traveler) will walk into. It is section #2, above and highlighted in BOLD.
With this in mind, let’s crack open our electromagnetic handbooks and review just how a magnet works and how we can apply that knowledge to our particular application.
The design of magnets and electromagnets is a mature technology. I personally find it fascinating. As it is just a very interesting subject that I have taken a shine to. You can find all sorts of texts, websites, and papers written about this technology. And anything listed herein can be found elsewhere if you were so inclined to research elsewhere.
In this post, I am going to take this very interesting technology and break it down into a very simple format, so that anyone trying to (or who desires of) building their own dimensional portal can understand the issues involved.
Air Gap
This is the “interface” where the traveler enters the transport mechanism. It is an open area. It is a space, and since it contains air, it is known as a “air gap” as it is typically a gap within a large metal ring.
Air gap, is a non-magnetic part of a magnetic circuit.
It is usually connected magnetically in series with the rest of the circuit, so that a substantial part of the magnetic flux flows through the gap. Here’s a three dimensional diagram of an air gap in a magnetic circuit…
Depending on application, air gap may be filled with a non-magnetic material such as gas, water, vacuum, plastic, wood etc. and not necessarily just with air.3)4)
So we can say that if the device were enclosed within a pool of water, the person could swim though the gap and teleport to a new location. But why bother, right? We live and breathe and walk in air.
Flux Fringing
Due to increased reluctance of an air gap the flux spreads into the surrounding medium.
Think of water in a tube, as long as the tube keeps the water inside the tube, it flows forward without any loss or leakage. But the moment that you add a hole, or series of holes in the tube, you will have leaks. Water will squirt out, and as it does so, it will “take away” from the smooth flow of the rest of the water in the tube.
When you add an airgap to increase the reluctance of the core then it is almost as if you have decreased its permeability, and thereby lowered the inductance of a winding on it. Indeed, when you buy a core with a pre-fabricated gap then the manufacturer may specify what is called the effective permeability of the core, μ e.
-Air gapped magnetic cores
This spreading eventually causes an ‘effect” known as the “flux fringing effect.”
Flux fringing - a phenomenon in which the magnetic flux flowing in a magnetic core spreads out (or fringes out) into the surrounding medium, for example in the vicinity of an air gap.
-Fluxfringing [Encyclopedia of magnetics and electromagneti…
Flux fringing
The point behind this is that we need a gap for the traveler to walk through, but the mere presence of the gap will “take away” or detract from the energy, power and efficiency of the magnetic flux in that gap.
In order to quantify how much magnetic flux you will lose, you need to calculate it. This is done by observing the “eddy current loss”.
Eddy Current Loss
Flux Fringing is generally an unwanted phenomenon which usually increases proximity and eddy current loss in conductors located in the vicinity of the air gap. To simplify; the “flux fringing” phenomenon subtracts away from the strength of the magnetic flux inside the air gap.
Eddy Current Loss
A sectional view of the magnetic core is shown in the figure above. When the changing flux links with the core itself, it induces emf in the core which in turns sets up the circulating current called Eddy Current. And these current in return produces a loss called eddy current loss or (I2R) loss, where I is the value of the current and R is the resistance of the eddy current path.
The strength and the magnitude of the loss of magnetic flux is a function of the geometry of the air gap and the over-all magnitude of the flux itself.
Reducing the Eddy Current Loss
If the core is made up of solid iron of larger cross-sectional area, the magnitude of I (current) will be very large and hence losses will be high. To reduce the eddy current loss mainly there are two methods.
By reducing the magnitude of the eddy current.
The magnitude of the current can be reduced by splitting the solid core into thin sheets called laminations, in the plane parallel to the magnetic field. Each lamination is insulated from the other by a thin layer of coating of varnish or oxide film.
Instead of a solid metal core, if you make it out of thin lamination’s, you will be able to be able to control eddy current loss.
By laminating the core.
By laminating the core, the area of each section is reduced and hence the induced emf also reduces. As the area through which the current is passed is smaller, the resistance of eddy current path increases.
Diagram showing how laminated cores operate within an magnetic field environment.
Influence on B-H loop
The B-H loop of a magnetic circuit is affected by the presence of an air gap. This is an important characteristic of the environment inside of the air gap.
The B-H loop is produced by measuring the magnetic flux (B) of a ferromagnetic material when the applied magnetizing force is changed (H). A ferromagnetic material which has been never before magnetized or demagnetized ferromagnetic material will trail the dashed line (see the figure) as magnetizing force (H) is increased.
A B-H Loop in soft magnet.
Permeability of non-magnetic material is low (such as air) and therefore it requires greater values of to obtain the same value of as compared with magnetically soft materials (such as iron). Here is a more detailed image of a typical B-H Loop showing key features of it.
B-H loop
With the introduction of an air gap the B-H loop of a magnetic circuit gets “sheared” (slanted), hence the value of its slope proportional to the effective permeability is reduced.
Effective magnetic permeability (also apparent magnetic permeability1)), often denoted as μe, μeff or μa - a term used in analysis of magnetic performance of gapped cores. For a non-homogeneous core (e.g. gapped or composed of powder-like particles) this would be the value of magnetic permeability of a hypothetical homogeneous material which would exhibit the same permeability.
The amount of “shearing” is proportional to the length of the air gap – the larger the air gap the lower the slope. For our application, this air gap is quite large; it is the height of a human being.
For air core coil (no magnetic material present) the B-H characteristics become by definition the same as for the non-magnetic material encircled by the winding (e.g. air).
The influence of air gap on the shape of B-H loop for a cut core is shown below…
B-H loops (hysteresis loops) measured on a toroidal core, made from grain-oriented electrical steel grade M4. The core was cut and lapped. Blue curve shows the B-H loop with the lapped faces touching. Red curve shows data measured for the same core, with an air gap of 0.07 mm (plastic shim) introduced between the lapped faces. B-H loops measured at 1.7T, 50Hz. Power loss was 1.49 W/kg without air gap, and 1.45 W/kg with the air gap, so very little change comparing to great changes of the shape of the loop.
Changes of effective permeability and linearisation of the B-H loops caused by increasing the air gap …
A comparative graph showing the influence of increasing air gap in a magnetic core. The numbers denote the unitless ratio lg/lc, where: lg – length of gap and lc – length of core. Drawing based on: G.B. Finke, Gapped magnetic core structures, Magnetic Metals Corporation, {accessed 17 Jun 2013}.
Conversely, if no air gap is present then the slope becomes as steep as possible, and the B-H loop will represent the closest approximation of the characteristic of the magnetic material (for a given shape of the magnetic circuit). For our egress portal design, the B-H Loop is very, extremely slanted. It is nearly horizontal. And that does pose some design challenges.
The creation of a workable “air gap” can be achieved for instance by careful polishing or lapping of the flat faces, in order to reduce the surface roughness and the amount of space between the magnetic surfaces. 5)
Calculator of effective magnetic permeability from air gap
For a magnetic circuit with uniform cross-section the value of effective permeability μeff can be calculated if the lengths and permeabilities of both part of the circuit are known.
The equation is valid only for a simple magnetic circuit, made out of bulk material, for relative permeability if lcore >> lgap, and if µcore >> 1.
Gapped core with: total magnetic path length l (orange), length of core lcore (blue) and length of air gap(red)
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I find this all very interesting. But you know, many people cannot visualize the differences between a small model and the actual real object. It’s like that scene from the Movie Hangover III. Where the one character looks at the model of an estate, and comments, (more or less)…
[to Phil and Stu]
Alan: You guys know what’s going on, right?
Phil: What do you mean?
Alan: Well…
[to Chow]
Alan: And please correct me if I’m wrong.
[pointing to the miniature villa]
Alan: We’re not breaking into this house, this house is too small. We’re breaking into another house. This is just a model, right, Chow?
Mr. Chow: What?
In short, if we use the simpler, most basic design for this electromagnet, then the magnet will have to be huge. You would take the picture of the above magnet, and scale it up. So the air gap which is perhaps 1/8 of an inch wide, would actually be six or seven feet tall.
Thus making the entire magnet building-sized.
Gapped and air-cored inductors
To understand other alternatives to this design and style of an electromagnet, we need to understand what options that we have. And, lucky for us, there are many. We can use the technologies involved in inductors to help us work out more “reasonable” solutions that won’t require us to get a building permit to create a five story tall electromagnet.
Now, fundamentally, the presence of the air-gap will change the ability of the electromagnet to work efficiently. From it’s initial conception through to utility, the entire system is fraught with inefficiencies. Never the less, use of it in our application is guaranteed to work provided that the magnetic flux is large enough.
Energy storing inductors
Air gaps are an integral part of gapped inductors.
An analogy of the movement of magnetic flux within an air-gapped inductor and that of an electrical circuit.
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The gap reduces effective permeability of a given magnetic circuit and allows storing much greater energy before saturation is reached.
Effective magnetic permeability (also apparent magnetic permeability), often denoted as μe, μeff or μa - a term used in analysis of magnetic performance of gapped cores. For a non-homogeneous core (e.g. gapped or composed of powder-like particles) this would be the value of magnetic permeability of a hypothetical homogeneous material which would exhibit the same permeability.
Increasing the gap reduces the inductance, so the winding must have more turns to compensate accordingly.12)
The larger the air-gap, the more turns of wire that must be used in the electro-magnet.
For a given size of inductor the amount of stored energy versus applied air gap can be represented by a Hanna curve.13)
If operation with high currents is required then the air gap might be very large, so that the magnetic circuit is quite “open”.
For instance, a common design for electronic chokes is to place a winding on a magnetic rod. The magnetic field lines must close through the surrounding air (outside of the winding), so the length of the air gap is comparable with the length of the rod.14)
In some cases the currents are so high that it is very difficult or cost prohibitive to design the inductor with a magnetic core. In such case a so-called “air core” is used, where the windings are supported by a non-magnetic structure, and the whole magnetic circuit is effectively one big air gap.
The distribution of air gap can be also extended even further. There are magnetic materials, which are made from small particles (mostly based on powder iron, sendust or moly permalloy powder) bound together in such a way as to contain certain percentage of non-magnetic volume in them.
SendustSendust is a magnetic metal powder that was invented by Hakaru Masumoto at Tohoku Imperial University in Sendai, Japan, about 1936 as an alternative to permalloy in inductor applications for telephone networks. Sendust composition is typically 85% iron, 9% silicon and 6% aluminum. The powder is sintered into cores to manufacture inductors. Sendust cores have high magnetic permeability (up to 140 000), low loss, low coercivity (5 A/m) good temperature stability and saturation flux density up to 1 T.
Moly Permalloy. An alloy with exceptionally high magnetic permeability, very low coercive force, very low core losses, and low remnance by magnetic field annealing. The alloy finds application in magnetic shielding where fields much less than the Earth’s magnetic field are required. The highest volume applications using laminations or tape wound cores today are ground fault interrupter and modem transformer cores. The alloy is used as well in a variety of other high performance transformer core applications such as tape recorder heads and audio transformers. Control of the cooling rate during heat treatment and superimposition of various customer bake treatments are used to develop the most suitable magnetic quality for the application
The resultant effective permeability is much lower, but the air gap is uniformly distributed throughout the whole material.16) The fringing effect and leakage flux is greatly reduced, which is especially important for high-frequency applications.
Electromagnets
If the idea of creating a building-sized electromagnet is not appealing, there are other ways of conducting and producing electromagnets. Such as this one. Large electromagnet with a 200 mm long air gap..
Large semi-industrial DC electromagnet, made by Magneto (and co-designed by Stan Zurek). The air gap allows exposing objects 20 x 20 x 20 cm to flux density 0.4 T and higher.
A common performance expected from an electromagnet is to generate magnetic field within a given volume of an air gap.
The purpose of an electromagnet is to generate a strong magnetic field within the air gap.
This could be done for a number of tasks, for instance:
to exert mechanical force on a designed part – this operation is similar to electromagnetic actuators
to exert mechanical force on inclusions or other elements suspended in non-magnetic matter – a principle used in magnetic separators42), recording of shapes on magnetic film43) and some medical applications (e.g. guiding particles inside of blood vessels)44)
to provide magnetic field required for material processing45)46)
And this is exactly what our use of this system is for.
Of the shelf designs for experimentation purposes.
Why go straight to the creation of large (building sized) electromagnets, when there are well made, smaller, units available? You can buy these smaller units, and run tests and experiments using them. You will be able to do everything that a big electromagnet can do, except send a human-sized object to another dimension.
Here is one such product…
DXSBV Double-Yoke Single-Tuning Adjustable Air Gap Electromagnet
Double-yoke electromagnet, whose magnetic pole pieces stay vertically to the ground, with downward magnetic pole piece to be fixed, topside magnetic pole piece and air gap to be adjustable, the magnetic field is vertical with the ground. The main feature is easy to place and remove the sample, which is suitable for repeated measurement, widely used in magnetic materials testing.
And here are some specifications for some of the models that this company produces…
Specifications
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The inspired DIY dimensional experimenter might be interested in following up with this at the company website HERE.
Energy stored in air gap
A magnetic circuit behaves like a “conductor” so that the magnetic field can be efficiently guided along desired path. If a high-permeability material is used then very little energy will be stored in the magnetic core. However, an air gap introduces a discontinuity and due to its low permeability stores significant amount of magnetic energy, as compared to the same volume of magnetic core.
This energy storing property is utilized, for instance, in energy storing inductors and flyback transformers, in which air gap in a pivotal design parameter. On the one hand, the air gap is used for storing the actual energy, but on the other it changes operating characteristics of the B-H curve and allows driving the inductor at higher currents hence higher magnetic field strength thus extending the range before magnetic saturation occurs.
For a simple magnetic circuit with a single air gap (see the first image at the top), for which the core is made out of high-permeability material such that , with the air gap itself and the flux density in the air gap being uniform, and if the flux fringing can be neglected, it can be derived that the stored energy is: 47)
This equation is our GOLD STANDARD from which to calculate the air gap dimensions.
Air Gap Dimensions
Here is what I would suggest to use as the volume and the dimensions for the air gap.
Air gap Dimensions.
Flux fringing
Flux fringing (red arc) around an air gap in magnetic core
An FEM simulation of a gapped inductor. The field lines show the magnetic flux. In the air gap the green trajectory (between the poles) is the desired path for flux, but the red one shows fringing flux.
Flux fringing is caused by the fact that the reluctance of the concentrated air gap is much greater than that of the core. The flux tries to spread as wide as possible in order to minimise the drop of magnetomotive force across the air gap. As a result of flux fringing the total reluctance of the circuit is somewhat lower. This has several major effects.
In energy-storing inductors the inductance is related to the reluctance of the air gap. The fringing lowers the overall reluctance, so that the resulting inductance is somewhat higher. This needs to be taken into account so that the inductance value is appropriate for a given design. There are various empirical equations suggested in literature for calculating the correction of this effect.
McLyman
For instance McLyman suggest the following “flux fringing factor” ():48)
where: F – factor by which the inductance is increased (unitless),lgap– length of the air gap (m),A – cross-section area of the core (m2), lwindow— length of the inside (in the window) of the core leg in which the gap is present (m).
Rectangular Cross Section
Another example is when the area of the air gap is scaled according to its length. For instance if the magnetic core cross-section is a rectangle the following calculation can be used: 49)
where: and are the lengths of each side of the rectangular cross-section of the magnetic core (m).
Hurley and Wölfle
Yet another approximating equation is given by Hurley and Wölfle50)
However, all such equations are only approximate, and usually work only under the assumption that the length of the air gap is much smaller than any of the dimensions of the core.
Additional Copper Loss
The second effect is additional copper loss due to the fact that fringing flux “bulges away” from the air gap. Usually most of the core window is occupied by windings and if they are exposed to fast-changing fringing flux (e.g. in flyback transformers) this causes additional eddy current losses in the windings.51)
Entry Angle
The third effect is that the fringing flux enters the core perpendicularly to the normal flow of magnetic field. In soft ferrites this is not a problem. But in laminated cores this flux does not travel along the laminations, but enters them perpendicularly to their surface, resulting in a large value of normal component, inducing elevated eddy currents and thus additional iron loss. A distributed air gap is employed in order to reduce this effect (see next section).
5) International standard, IEC 60404-3, Magnetic materials – Part 3: Methods of measurement of the magnetic properties of magnetic sheet and strip by means of a single sheet tester
25), 27) P. Marketos, T. Meydan, D. Snell, Performance of single-phase transformer cores assembled from consolidated stacks of electrical steels, Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials, Vol. 254-255, 2003, p. 612-614
40) R.S. Ruffini, Jr., V.S. Nemkov, Magnetic Field Control and Concentration in Induction Heating coils, Heat Treating, Proceedings of the 16th ASM Heat Treating Society Conference & Exposition, 19-21 March 1996, Cincinatti, Ohio, US, p. 127
The first step in building this DIY teleportation / dimensional egress portal is to construct the electromagnet that will be used to erase the universal location frequencies of the traveler. Any strong and powerful enough magnetic field will do, but in this post we discuss using electomagnets with an enormous air gap to provide this ability.
Further, commercially available systems (of a much smaller scale) are available for purchase and use for experimentation purposes, and for purposes of obtaining location frequency data, and that associated with time, and location.
Do you want more?
I’d hope so. I have more posts in my DIY dimensional Portal Index here…
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One of my all time, favorite, websites is “Ancient Origins“. There, resides a repository of hundreds, if not thousands of articles, stories and editorials written by real experts in the fields of archaeology, sociology, anthropology, and the sciences. And their articles are interesting and fascinating, and I could read them for hours and hours, and hours.
ZHENG HE AND HIS TREASURE FLEET
During the reign of China’s Yongle Emperor in 1403, an imperial order was issued to begin the construction of a fleet of super-ships – vessels vastly bigger than anything ever seen before. Officially called Xiafan Guanjun (‘The Foreign Expeditionary Armada’), the behemoth boats would become better known as the Ming Empire’s treasure ships.
I’ve been wanting to reprint a few articles to MM, but haven’t had the time. I’ve chosen this beauty. And of course, It’ is reprinted exactly as found and all credit to the author. I only changed the formatting to fit this venue. This article can be found HERE, and I strongly urge the interested reader to bookmark this site and visit if often. It, like MM, has things that you will not find anywhere else, and that makes it precious.
Metallicaman Introduction
One of the things that really irks me is the statist belief that the entire American continent was populated by nomadic people from Asia that tromped over the Bering Straight on a “land bridge” and then head Southward to populate the Americas. There, they lived in peace and prosperity until the arrival of the Europeans.
And while that is certainly plausible, and does account for some dominant DNA persistence in the America’s, it is not the whole story.
The actual story is that the American continent has seen waves and waves of settlement. They came in various sizes and shapes over the years, and it was NEVER a wholly isolated and independent land-mass.
And every time I see evidence of this, whether a story here, or an article there, my “ears perk up” and I devour the article ravenously.
This is one of those articles.
And it is a great one, well researched, and of course, something that you won’t find anywhere else. If you want to know about how “Christopher Columbus discovered America” read CNN. But if you want to have some insight into the color, the passions and the life that colored the entire human existence, then by all means visit Ancient Origins. And is is just an amazing article…
Does Newfoundland Have the Oldest Intact Ancient Ships in the World?
31OCT20 by Ron Ryan
In relatively shallow ocean waters on the north east coast of Newfoundland Island there are the remains of several ships with the most unusual characteristics. It has been determined that these ships may be the oldest intact ships in the world. We constantly hear of discoveries of the remains of ancient ships and, maybe, because of that, assume that there must be oodles of ancient ships preserved the world over.
Such is not the case. In fact, the number of ships in the 200 – 400-year-old range, in any near-complete state of preservation, can be counted on one’s digits.
The Oldest Known real-ancient Ships
The oldest known real ancient ships are the Mary Rose (1509), a British warship that was sunk in action in 1545, and the Vasa (1628), a ship that did not make it out of Copenhagen harbor before rolling over.
It seems to be common knowledge in most historical circles now that the Chinese began a campaign, in the late 1300s, to build a large fleet and to attempt to exert its hegemony over the nations of south east Asia. A sub-objective of that initiative was to create a world map. There were so many ships in that enormous fleet that National Geographic Magazine called the great armada, “a massive shadow on the ocean that moved like a floating city that stretched across miles and miles of ocean.” (January 9, 2014). National Geographic also states that the Chinese emperor ordered the fleet to take to the ocean and “to sail to the ends of the earth.”
Indicative of their success, is evidence from recent scholarship that has determined that the Chinese had a world map
by 1430 AD, an achievement that could have resulted only from the Chinese fleets visiting virtually every point on earth, including Antarctica.
Kunyu Wanguo Quantu. Chinese world map, circa 1430. ( Public Domain )
Grand Admiral Zheng He’s Treasure Voyages
The Grand Admiral of this formidable armada was one Zheng He (variously spelled), a eunuch who was the favorite of the emperor, Zhu De, and who, although having the support and admiration of the palace eunuchs, had only the enmity of the mandarins who feared losing their power and influence. Apparently, around 1430, the mandarins had succeeded in convincing the sitting emperor to cease the “treasure voyages.”
The Treasure Fleet Sets Sail
Zheng He's most important role in his master's service was being the commander-in-chief of the new treasure fleet, which would serve as the emperor's principal envoy to the peoples of the Indian Ocean basin. The Yongle Emperor appointed him to head the massive fleet of 317 junks crewed by over 27,000 men that set out from Nanjing in the fall of 1405. At the age of 35, Zheng He had achieved the highest rank ever for a eunuch in Chinese history.
With a mandate to collect tribute and establish ties with rulers all around the Indian Ocean, Zheng He and his armada set forth for Calicut on India's western coast. It would be the first of seven total voyages of the treasure fleet, all commanded by Zheng He, between 1405 and 1432.
During his career as a naval commander, Zheng He negotiated trade pacts, fought pirates, installed puppet kings, and brought back tribute for the Yongle Emperor in the form of jewels, medicines, and exotic animals. He and his crew traveled and traded not only with the city-states of what are now Indonesia, Malaysia, Siam, and India, but also with the Arabian ports of modern-day Yemen and Saudi Arabia.
Although Zheng He was raised Muslim and visited the shrines of Islamic holy men in Fujian Province and elsewhere, he also venerated Tianfei, the Celestial Consort and protector of sailors. Tianfei had been a mortal woman living in the 900s who achieved enlightenment as a teenager. Gifted with foresight, she was able to warn her brother of an approaching storm at sea, saving his life.
Final Voyages
In 1424, the Yongle Emperor passed away. Zheng He had made six voyages in his name and brought back countless emissaries from foreign lands to bow before him, but the cost of these excursions weighed heavily on the Chinese treasury. In addition, the Mongols and other nomadic peoples were a constant military threat along China's northern and western borders.
The Yongle Emperor's cautious and scholarly elder son, Zhu Gaozhi, became the Hongxi Emperor. During his nine-month rule, Zhu Gaozhi ordered an end to all treasure fleet construction and repairs. A Confucianist, he believed that the voyages drained too much money from the country. He preferred to spend on fending off the Mongols and feeding people in famine-ravaged provinces instead.
When the Hongxi Emperor died less than a year into his reign in 1426, his 26-year-old son became the Xuande Emperor. A happy medium between his proud, mercurial grandfather and his cautious, scholarly father, the Xuande Emperor decided to send Zheng He and the treasure fleet out again.
Death
In 1432, the 61-year-old Zheng He set out with his largest fleet ever for one final trip around the Indian Ocean, sailing all the way to Malindi on Kenya's east coast and stopping at trading ports along the way. On the return voyage, as the fleet sailed east from Calicut, Zheng He died. He was buried at sea, although legend says that the crew returned a braid of his hair and his shoes to Nanjing for burial.
-thought Co
It is not known who actually initiated the voyages. Although Emperor Zhu De gets the credit, the first of the ships were in the water in less than two years after Zhu De assumed the throne, an impossible miracle of construction attributed to the chief administrator, Zheng He, who was subsequently named the admiral of the enormous fleet.
Zheng He gloried in the strength and endurance capacities of his ships on the world’s oceans. Engraved on a tablet at Fujian is a quote attributed to the admiral :
“We have travelled more than 100,000 Li (Approximately 50 000 KM ) of immense water spaces and have witnessed in the ocean waves like mountains, while our sails, unfurled like clouds day and night, continued their course like a star, traversing those savage waves as if we were treading a city street…”
The Statue of Admiral Zheng He in Sam Poo Kong, Semarang city, Indonesia. ( diamirara /Adobe Stock)
Although there is very little sound information about the Chinese effort at hegemony, over the forty or so years from the late 1300s to about 1433, there seems little doubt that the Chinese treasure fleets did make seven or eight voyages from around 1401 to 1435. There is no definitive information to indicate exactly where ALL of the ships went.
It is not even known how many ships of each fleet arrived back in China or, indeed, when. Indeed, some people refer to the ships of these voyages as “Ghost Fleets” because the reliable information about them is so very sparse.
There seems to be little doubt that the Chinese constructed ships of such a size during the first quarter of the 15th Century, that they would not be rivalled for another 450 years.
Between 1405 and 1433, Ming China under the rule of Zhu Di, sent out enormous armadas of ships into the Indian Ocean commanded by the eunuch admiral Zheng He. The flagship and other largest treasure junks dwarfed European ships of that century; even Christopher Columbus's flagship, the "Santa Maria," was between 1/4 and 1/5 the size of Zheng He's.
Drastically changing the face of Indian Ocean trade and power, these fleets embarked on seven epic voyages under Zheng He's guidance, resulting in a rapid expansion of Ming China's control in the region, but also of their struggle to maintain it in years to come due to the financial burden of such endeavors.
Sizes According to Ming Chinese Measurements
All of the measurements in the remaining Ming Chinese records of the Treasure Fleet are in a unit called "zhang," which is made up of ten "chi" or "Chinese feet." Although the exact length of a zhang and chi has varied over time, the Ming chi was probably about 12.2 inches (31.1 centimeters) according to Edward Dreyer. For ease of comparison, the measurements below are given in English feet. One English foot is equivalent to 30.48 centimeters.
Incredibly, the largest ships in the fleet (called "baoshan," or "treasure ships") were likely between 440 and 538 feet long by 210 feet wide. The 4-decked baoshan had an estimated displacement of 20-30,000 tons, roughly 1/3 to 1/2 the displacement of modern American aircraft carriers. Each had nine masts on its deck, rigged with square sails that could be adjusted in series to maximize efficiency in different wind conditions.
The Yongle Emperor ordered the construction of an amazing 62 or 63 such ships for Zheng He's first voyage, in 1405. Extant records show that another 48 were ordered in 1408, plus 41 more in 1419, along with 185 smaller ships throughout that time.
Zheng He's Smaller Ships
Along with dozens of baoshan, each armada included hundreds of smaller ships. The eight-masted ships, called "machuan" or "horse ships," were about 2/3 the size of the baoshan measuring approximately 340 feet by 138 feet. As indicated by the name, the machuan carried horses along with timber for repairs and tribute goods.
Seven-masted "liangchuan" or grain ships carried rice and other food for the crew and soldiers in the fleet. Liangchuan was about 257 feet by 115 feet in size. The next ships in descending order of size were the "zuochuan," or troopships, at 220 by 84 feet with each transport ship having six masts.
Finally, the small, five-masted warships or "zhanchuan," each about 165 feet long, were designed to be maneuverable in battle. Though tiny compared with the baochuan, the zhanchuan were more than twice as long as Christopher Columbus's flagship, the Santa Maria.
The Treasure Fleet's Crew
Why did Zheng He need so many huge ships? One reason, of course, was "shock and awe." The sight of these enormous ships appearing on the horizon one by one must have been truly incredible for the people all along the Indian Ocean's rim and would have enhanced Ming China's prestige immeasurably.
The other reason was that Zheng He traveled with an estimated 27,000 to 28,000 sailors, marines, translators and other crew members. Along with their horses, rice, drinking water, and trade goods, that number of people required a staggering amount of room aboard the ship. In addition, they had to make space for the emissaries, tribute goods and wild animals that went back to China.
-Thought Co.
Our interest here will focus on the voyage of 1433 – 1435.
At least six voyages of the Chinese Treasure Fleet seem to have been conducted successfully, and there are some records for some of the ships. Admiral Zheng He was in charge of at least some of the voyages. Moreover, there is no record in China of what Admiral Zheng He was doing during the 1417 – 1419 voyage.
Indeed, after the sixth voyage, related history is even more fuzzy. The eunuchs and the mandarins were vying for power and for influence. The old emperor, Zhu De, died; the next one died; the third, Xuan De, had acceded to the “Dragon Throne” and was persuaded by the mandarins that further voyages would be to China’s detriment.
Detail of the Fra Mauro map relating the travels of a junk into the Atlantic Ocean in 1420. The ship also is illustrated above the text. ( Public Domain )
Moreover, it seems clear that the mandarins were fearful of Zheng He and wanted to get rid of this troublesome eunuch. Although Zheng He was a favorite of the first emperor, he was not favored by the second and third. However, the third emperor was reluctant to have Zheng He have a fatal “accident,” and the mandarins were afraid to dispatch Zheng He unless they had a clear understanding from the emperor.
The emperor realized that if Zheng He met with some accident, real or plotted, then the general finger would be pointed at the palace. Even if the emperor held “absolute power,” there were always war lords and other powerful officials ready – and willing – to exploit a judgment lapse. Not willing to risk the wrath of the Chinese people, the emperor appointed Zheng He to some menial administrative job, to get him out of the way. That did not satisfy the mandarins who were beginning to feel their power. They wanted Zheng He out of the picture, completely and permanently.
Besides, in the view of the palace mandarins, Zheng He, a renowned master of military tactics who had been instrumental in placing emperor Zhu De on the throne, was likely at precisely the right place and precisely the right time for him to nurture alliances with those who would be happy to have someone that they could manipulate on the throne. They were concerned at least as much about their heads as they were about their positions of power.
There is, however, no indication that Zheng He entertained any ambition in that direction. Indeed, although still a young man, about 60, apparently, he was ill.
The emperor was cautious. There were literally hundreds of ships out in the bay, riding at anchor. To the Chinese people these ships represented China’s pride. Why were the ships not gone on some important voyage? What is the use of ships, in port, at anchor, slowly rotting, and the reputation and power of the emperor slowly rotting along with them? The ships simply had to go, somewhere. The related optics were crucial!
What to do?
An ancient Chinese ship. ( Мария Тарасова /Adobe Stock)
Go away and NEVER come back.
The emperor recalled Zheng He to Nanjing, the then-capital. What actually happened between the Great Admiral and the emperor is not known. However, it is easy to guess: The emperor told Zheng He to crew all of the ships, to fill the ships, at the emperor’s expense, with everything Zheng He could possibly think of: soldiers, horses, armaments, gunpowder, priests (Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu), specialists of every kind, doctors and other medical personnel, medicines, preserved foods, seeds, root stalks, surveyors, technologists, craftspeople, prostitutes, animals (a veritable Noah’s Ark!), slaves, fine china, silks, and so on.
Then, the emperor had a private conference with Zheng He. The emperor said:
“You have everything you could possibly need. You have overseen everything yourself. You cannot blame me if you are missing something. Talk to your officers. Determine whether there is still something you need.”
Then, in a whisper so that none of the listeners could hear – and in the Emperor’s palace there were always listeners:
“Take the fleet. Go away. I don't care where you go. But, wherever you go, do NOT come back! NEVER come back! Do NOT let any of your officers or sailors come back. Nobody, except ....” and he explained the exception. “You have my best wishes. I never want to see you again! Be smart! Go!”
The carved and painted stern of the last ship had hardly disappeared over the horizon before the mandarins began collecting every last scrap of information that they could find about the fleets and about Zheng He.
Everything was burned, including ship logs, charts of the voyages, maps, architectural drawings of the various types of ships, ship models, tools, records of construction – in short, everything that they could get their hands on. Apparently, the world map was among the scraps of information that did survive, likely hidden by one of the eunuchs.
The fleet had gone for about a year.
Then, one day, a ship, much tattered, arrived back in the harbor. The captain went directly to the emperor. There had been several enormous tempests on the far oceans. Every last ship had been lost, and the grand admiral, himself, the beloved Zheng He, had gone to the bottom with the first tempest near Ceylon. The second tempest had taken the remainder of the fleet near Indonesia.
Woodblock print representing Zheng He’s ships. ( Public Domain )
The emperor then announced the sad news to a shocked and mournful nation. He ordered a tomb be built for the beloved Zheng He. In that tomb, they placed one of Zheng He’s robes, a pair of his slippers, and maybe a lock of the revered man’s hair.
What happened to Zheng He and the great fleet?
Nobody knows!
What is known is that not a single ship of that fleet, other that one messenger, ever made it back to China. Not a single marine officer, not a single craftsperson, prostitute, or sailor. NOTHING was ever heard from them again. Nothing!
For the most part, the myth of the death of Zheng He in India or Ceylon has been accepted in China as historical fact. There is little room in China for shades of grey, most things being black or white. Zheng He and the great fleet become part of the official national lore. The other aspect of the story, the tempests that took all of the ships, except one, to the bottom of the ocean is, likewise, the official story, it was not to be disputed and not to be questioned, at the peril of one’s head!
Zheng He’s tomb. Nanjing, China. ( Public Domain )
What happened to the ancient ships?
About 600 years later, two decades ago, China began to resurrect the story of Admiral Zheng He because it was politically convenient to do so, at least according to the detractors of China’s sometimes awkward diplomacy. Besides, the story of Zheng He and the “peaceful” fleets was a source of pride for China, something they could point to as an example of China’s friendly international intentions.
One of Zheng He’s ships.
Artifacts of the great fleet of 600 years ago would be of inestimable value to Chinese propaganda. Therefore, China entered into agreements with Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and Kenya to find some of the remains of the great fleet. There just had to be thousands – if not millions – of artifacts, just lying on the bottom of the ocean awaiting retrieval by a grateful nation.
China has spent hundreds of millions of dollars, utilizing the latest underwater technologies of the Chinese navy, in an effort to retrieve the millions of artifacts. Plans for museums in China and other displays worldwide were in the planning stages. China was on the cusp of an enormous diplomatic and publicity coup!
What did they find?
After a decade or so of searching in the waters around Sri Lanka and Indonesia, what did they find? Nothing!
No ships, no ship remnants, no artifacts, no fine china, no amphora of preserved olives, no skeletons of Chinese sailors. Nothing!
Nothing!
But somehow – without, just now, having a complete narrative to explain it – at some time before recorded history in the annals of Newfoundland Island , the Chinese arrived. They called the island “Island like a Chinese garden” and mapped the whole north western area of the North Atlantic as far as into the Davis Strait and, indeed, according to Chinese sources, Hudson’s Bay. Indeed, the Matteo Ricci Map (Kunyu Universal Map) is a copy of a Chinese map (Kunyu Wanguo Quantu Map) that was completed by 1430, indicating that the voyages of the Chinese fleets from 1405 onward – or at some earlier time – were successful in “mapping the world” and that Zheng He would have had an almost complete map of the world by which to guide his last voyage, some of which – the north west North Atlantic seaboard – Zheng He, himself, had likely mapped during the 1417 – 1419 voyage.
Portion of Kunyu Wanguo Quantu map showing Newfoundland Island. The four ancient Chinese characters on the representation of Newfoundland Island read “Island like a Chinese Garden.’ (Public Domain )
Portion of Kunyu Wanguo Quantu map showing Newfoundland Island. The four ancient Chinese characters on the representation of Newfoundland Island read “Island like a Chinese Garden.’ (Public Domain )
The ancient Chinese ships in Newfoundland
At least two of these ships are on the ocean bottom in shallow water in a protected harbor on the rugged north east coast of Newfoundland Island. Other ships have been detected with sonic equipment, including one that appears to be 200 meters (656.17 ft.) long. Moreover, phenomena that has been interpreted as a “graveyard” of ships have been detected in another area of deep, cold water.
The two ships in shallow water have been known about for 350 years or more, from the time of the first European fishermen who arrived in the area and established themselves in what became the dozen or so coastal fishing villages in that area. These ships cannot be European or American. No country, other than China, built ships of this size until well past the mid-1800s. These ships were there before about 1650.
Besides all of that, China has no record of any kind related to the structural aspects of their ships of the Treasure Fleets , no drawings, no models, no descriptions, no images. What China has are the remains of the dockyards that built the ships, some tools, and a rudder that is about 13 – 14 meters (42.65-45.93 ft.) long. Although some marine historians and others have drawn speculative designs of what the ships of the Treasure fleet might have looked like, these drawings do NOT correspond with the ships that have been found in Canadian waters.
Surviving blueprints for these ships are rare.
The only known intact examples of the Chinese ships associated with the great fleet are resting on the ocean bottom at the north east coast of Newfoundland Island. Nowhere else in the world are there, presently known, unmistakable large ships that might be identified as the ships of the great Chinese Treasure Fleet.
Based on the balance of probabilities, one would be confident in declaring that these ships are from the great Chinese fleet of 1405 – 1435.
To conclude, it seems clear that in the inner ocean waters on the north east coast of Newfoundland Island are the oldest decked ships in existence, and at least some of them are substantially intact.
By Ronald Lloyd Ryan, DA., PhD.
Model of some of the great Zheng He ships
These were enormous ships, able to have small farms on the deck and cattle pens. They were enormous by all accounts. As such, and as impressive as we can imagine, various people have made, and market scale models of what we can make a hypothesis on what these ships were like.
This model is made from the original drawings of the ship. And it is a beauty.
History of the Zheng He Treasure Ship
The Chinese Treasure Ship was a large wooden ship in the fleet of Admiral Zheng He, during the early 15th century Ming Dynasty. He led 7 voyages. There seems to be disagreement among scholars about the factual accuracy and correct interpretation of accounts of the treasure ship. Treasure ships were considered luxury ships rather than warships.
According to some records, Zheng He’s treasure ships were mammoth ships with 9 masts and 4 decks. Zheng He’s treasure ships could accommodate more than 500 passengers, as well as a massive amount of cargo.
Zheng He’s fleet consisted of 300 ships, including 62 treasure ships. Chinese records assert that Zheng He has traveled extensively, sailing as far as East Africa.
On the return of Zheng He’s last voyage, he found a new Emperor whose court was uninterested and even hostile toward the continuation of his naval adventures. Zheng He’s ships were decommissioned and sat in the harbor until they rotted away. Some scholars suggest that the Emperor ordered the treasure ships and records to be burned, although exact information on their fate is unknown.
A replica of Zheng He’s treasure ship was built in Nanking and was to be ready for sailing in 2013.
MM Thoughts
That was a great article, eh? You betya!
After reading the article, I went and conducted a preliminary Google search for “sunken Newfoundland ships” and came up with some interesting hits. Not really germane to this particular article (unfortunately), but really interesting never the less.
Let’s deep-dive” into this with yet another article from Ancient Origins, and one by the same author;
The Beothuck Key: Finding a Lost Chinese-Norse Civilization in Canada
Two mysteries – one Oriental, one Western – have attracted considerable attention recently both in academic and popular spheres: [1] the disappearance of the Seventh Chinese Treasure Fleet and [2] the disappearance of the people of Greenland. Until now, people have not considered that the two stories might be somehow connected.
Scale comparison.
Indeed, although very much in retrospect, there were numerous pieces of evidence readily available that pointed to the two narratives possibly being associated, even if the key element were missing. However unlikely and counter-intuitive, it appears that key is in the much-disputed continuing existence of the Beothuck People of Newfoundland Island – without them neither of the mysteries would have been resolved.
Origins of the Beothuck People
The journey of discovery began quite by accident, when a Beothuck person observed some unusual artifacts at museums in China that seemed to be the analogues of artifacts of the Beothuck People.
The resulting investigation led to all known information about the Beothuck people being sifted and evaluated, with the conclusion being that the Beothuck People had Chinese origin.
The Beothuk are the aboriginal people of the island of Newfoundland. They were Algonkian-speaking hunter-gatherers who probably numbered less than a thousand people at the time of European contact. The Beothuk are the descendants of a Recent Indian culture called the Little Passage Complex.
...
By the beginning of the 19th century, the Beothuk were reduced to a small refugee population living along the Exploits River system and attempting to subsist on the inadequate resources of the interior. Although a succession of Newfoundland governors had, since the middle of the 18th century, attempted to establish friendly contact with the Beothuk, it was probably too late to change a pattern which had existed for perhaps 250 years. Shanawdithit, the last known Beothuk, died in St. John's, Newfoundland in 1829.
-The Beothuk People
Beothuk, North American Indian tribe of hunters and gatherers that resided on the island of Newfoundland; their language, Beothukan, may be related to Algonquian, but some authorities believe it to have been an independent language. When discovered by John Cabot in 1497 the tribe probably numbered no more than 500 persons; in the succeeding centuries the Beothuk were decimated by Europeans and by Mi’kmaq (Micmac) hunters crossing from Nova Scotia. A few survivors may have escaped to Labrador to intermarry with the Innu (Montagnais).
Little is known of Beothuk culture. The people were apparently divided into small bands of a few related families, each band having its own leader. Their skill as canoeists was noted by many early writers; they speared seals with primitive harpoons and fished for salmon and shellfish. Equally at home in the woods, they tracked deer with bow and arrow. Birch bark was used to make cooking vessels and wigwams. They smeared red ochre on their skin, apparently for both religious reasons and protection against insects; this habit is thought to be the source of the European reference to Native Americans as “red” people.
-Beothuk | people | Britannica
The considerable skepticism about the Chinese voyages seemed to be primarily because the idea of massive Chinese ships, as suggested by Menzies and Hudson was thoroughly doubted. Unfortunately, one could not appeal to China because that country has retained no information as to the design of such massive ships – no models, no sketches, no descriptions.
Curious genetic and ancestral stories of the Beothuck People led to an informal survey that revealed mtDNA of Celtic, Norse, and other Scandinavian/Baltic origin, leading to speculation that all of the people were descendants of the Norse from the time of the Viking Sagas.
However, that speculation was disabused by research reports to the effect that (a) Newfoundland Island had had several waves of occupation, and (b) there is a genetic discontinuity between the maternal lineages of the various occupation groups.
Moreover, historical reports indicate that whoever was on the island were substantially, or completely, killed off by some blight or combination thereof (plague, typhus, smallpox) between 1402 and 1404, which meant that as of that later date the island was effectively empty.
If that were true, then it meant that the Norse ancestors of the contemporary Beothuck must have colonized at least part of the island sometime after 1404 AD.
Ties to the People of Greenland
That led to a consideration of the story of the disappearance of the people of Greenland in the early 15th Century. There is no record of the people of Greenland going east, as some experts have speculated.
According to Catholic Church records, there had been as many as 5000 people in Greenland circa 1409. That’s a lot of people to account for.
In a pastoral letter from the Holy See addressed to the Bishops of Skalholt and Holar in Iceland, dated September 20, 1448, concern was expressed that Greenland had been raided by a “Fleet of heathens” some 30 years previously, and that all of the people had been taken.
It is not immediately clear how the Pope acquired that information.
Related to that was another piece of information: tributes began to arrive at Rome sometime in the early-1400s, from “ Vinland.” Clearly, a vector of communication existed from the “far western lands’ to Rome.
Recent research suggests that there was no violent confrontation in Greenland.
Indeed, everything points to a peaceful, organized departure of the people. The conclusion was that the people of Greenland, all 5000 of them, along with their priests and other religious people (monks and nuns), peacefully departed their homes sometime after 1409 and before about 1420.
William Cormack is the only person whose report we have who actually spoke with the Beothuck. Cormack said that the Beothuck language had all of the sounds of Scandinavian languages, maybe Swedish.
Additionally, J. T. Mullock , Roman Catholic Bishop of St. John’s, Newfoundland, said that many people thought that the Beothuck had “Northmen” ancestry.
Moreover, Dr. John Cooper of Dalhousie University concluded that the language was at least 25% Gaelic and Norse. There was not, necessarily, much difference between Norse and Gaelic because, as Wallace says,
“... the Norse were mixed with Celts and Picts through intermarriage and slavery.”
Because Newfoundland Island was empty of people, say from around 1404, and because the people of Greenland departed their homes around 1418, and because a large number of people from Newfoundland Island has Norse ancestry from the forests of the island, it seemed reasonable to conclude that the Beothuck people were the descendants of the “missing” Norse of Greenland.
The notion of a fleet of ships, as per the Pope’s letter, was, to say the least, intriguing.
More on Beothuck Ancestry
The investigation has now arrived at the point where two phenomena seem to be supported: The Beothuck people had Chinese ancestry and the Beothuck people had Norse ancestry.
The local people in that remote and isolated geography, although having a high degree of illiteracy, had a rich oral tradition. For many generations these people, the European ancestors of whom came to the area around the mid-1700s or earlier, told stories of enormous ships that had been on the nearby ocean bottom since before their arrival. As late as 1890, people could easily see one massive ship in a sheltered harbor of relatively shallow water, and the mast of that ship – enormous, much larger than anything that they had ever seen or could imagine – protruded from the ocean surface. Moreover, at that time, they could see “dishes” and “jugs” on the ocean bottom near the ship.
The subsequent generation (circa 1930) contained a story that two teen boys had attempted to measure the ship and, being creative with fishing cords, estimated that one ship was about 400 ft. (130 meters) long.
After several months of searching with Google Earth, during 2017, two almost identical ships were located, each being about 450 ft. (150 meters) in length. Since then, several other equally large ships, seemingly intact, have been found resting on the ocean bottom. The only ships that fit the circumstances are those of the Chinese of the early 1400s. No European or American ship of the dimensions of the ships that were found would be constructed until after the mid-1800s.
At that point it is possible to suggest, at least, that the enormous fleet that had taken the people from Greenland had been a Chinese fleet. If that fleet brought the people of Greenland to Newfoundland Island sometime around 1418, that would explain the Norse and Chinese ancestry of the Beothuck People.
The Voyage from China and Links to Zheng He
The available information supports the following scenario: after leaving port in southern China the fleet would split into several flotillas, each expediting their individual appointed tasks, more or less, and reassembling later. One voyage took place during 1417 – 1419. The flotilla that had been assigned the task of mapping the western North Atlantic area – whatever the Chinese called it – was under the command of Admiral Zheng He .
It crossed the North Atlantic, discovered Newfoundland Island (1417), and, maybe the next year (1418), returning from mapping Hudson’s Bay, chanced upon the Norse of Greenland, in a state of destitution and at the cusp of starvation. The Chinese “rescued” these desperate people and transported them to Newfoundland island, the mythical Vinland of the Norse people. Zheng He returned to China, but came back to Newfoundland in 1435.
The Matteo Ricci (1552 – 1610) map of 1605 has the lands of the north west Atlantic identifiably drawn. Someone spent time charting the north west Atlantic area, did the cartography, and returned to China, writing four Chinese characters on the land that would be identified as Newfoundland Island: “Island like a Chinese garden.” According to Lee, the Ricci map is a copy of a Chinese map and that the Chinese had a complete map of the world by 1430, a map that included the northwest Atlantic area.
Did Zheng He know where he was going? Was the initial map-making done by a previous Chinese fleet and before 1418? Did Zheng He’s admirals do the charting of the northern lands? Who would have named Newfoundland Island so glowingly?
Wherever he was, the Great Admiral seems to have boasted:
We have traversed more than 100,000 li of immense water spaces and have beheld in the ocean huge waves like mountains rising in the sky, and we have set eyes on barbarian regions far away hidden in a blue transparency of light vapors, while our sails, loftily unfurled like clouds day and night, continued their course. ..
That would have gotten him to Greenland and back in the 1417-1419 time frame of that voyage.
Signs of a Lost Settlement
As a confirmation exercise, Google earth was utilized to seek indicators of Norse and Chinese occupancy of Newfoundland Island. That investigation resulted in the identification of a ubiquitous pattern. It was determined that the pattern was communal housing – much as had been described by John Cabot in 1497 and Jacques Cartier in 1534.
These dwellings were as much as 164 ft. (50 meters) in diameter and contained 10 – 12 family cells around a central common area. These dwellings appeared to be one-story adaption of Hakka-Han TuLu in south east China of the time (which continues today), the area that was the origin of the Treasure Fleets. The basic Hakka housing pattern incorporated Norse features to accommodate winter conditions, those features that the Beothuck descendants had incorporated into their root-cellars, many of which still exist. (Incidentally, the Hakka Tulu figures in the recent movie, “Mulan.”)
Treks into the forest confirmed the speculations: patterns on the forest floor, now covered with trees, certainly still retained the discernible and recognizable communal Tulu pattern. A survey of the island with Google Earth Pro revealed literally thousands of these structures. An estimate related to the number of structures detected suggested dwellings of maybe as many as 300,000 people, an enormous number in comparison to the paltry several thousand that experts have been suggesting up to now.
Satellite imagery revealed structures that seemed to be defensive walls, and treks into the forest confirmed the existence of the artifacts, some of which were not completely occluded by vegetation overburden. One trek also resulted in the discovery of a carving of a three meter long hand, chiseled into a rock-face, with the letter “J” carved just above it, and a scepter carved along the wrist.
The next discoveries were towers and a wall, and, then, astonishingly, several Buddhist-type pyramids. About 12 miles (20 km) away, a set of buildings was discovered, including a three-tiered pagoda and an intact stone church, a basilica – a structure that is not in the history of Newfoundland and Labrador, and not in the history of the local Roman Catholic archdiocese.
The next astounding discovery was a set of massive bluff-carvings, the first found being a Chinese mythical dog, about 161 sq. ft. (15 sq. m.). The image is almost identical to that of a Chinese postage stamp for 2008 “The Year of the Dog.”
Above the dog carving, and about the same size, was the Monkey King, again from Chinese mythology. About a hundred carvings were found in all, ranging in size from 32 – 1640 ft. (10 – 500 meters) in length, the latter being a bird, 500 meters from beak to tail feathers, and about 656 ft. (200 meters) wingtip to wingtip.
The next mysterious phenomenon discovered was a boat, about 114 ft. (35 meters) long, that seems to have been under construction. Then, ten or so similar boats were discovered, all under construction, all in the forest well away from the coast.
A number of what were determined to be row boats, maybe water taxis, were located, still intact, preserved by the chemicals in the peat ponds where they have now lain for maybe as much as 400 years. Thus, it is possible to determine the design of these boats of so long ago. Why the boats were built in the location described is a mystery unto itself and has resulted in speculation that is tangential to this narrative.
Although some experts have written about the massive Chinese ships the fact is that the only existing more-or-less intact Chinese ships from the medieval Chinese period – and, indeed, any medieval period – and, thus, the only accurate information about these ships, there being next to nothing in China, are being preserved by the frigid ocean waters of north east Newfoundland Island. The next oldest existing ship from that period, worldwide, is the British warship, Mary Rose (Circa 1540), about 50% of which was recovered from her watery grave.
Compiling the Evidence in Newfoundland
Although Zheng He was erased from Chinese history shortly after 1433, he has been recently resurrected by China for, as some see it, a contemporary form of Chinese hegemony.
The accepted narrative, in China and south east Asia, of the demise of Zheng He and his enormous seventh fleet is that all succumbed to a typhoon somewhere near Sri Lanka or Malaysia. Virtually every country in south east Asia is seeking evidence that Zheng He and the remains of his seventh fleet is somewhere in their backyard. The Chinese government, believing their own myth, has recently spent hundreds of millions of dollars, with the help of the latest Chinese military technology, in the belief that they were destined to find the remains of their fleet. They have found nothing.
The research group on Newfoundland Island continues to make discovery after discovery that they associate with the Chinese-Norse civilization that began around 1420: fish weirs, harbor complexes, fish processing facilities, buildings (one with a discernible chimney), industrial structures (e.g., huge furnaces).
Moreover, now that considerable evidence and information has been compiled, it is possible to state that, on the balance of probabilities, the only people on the island as of 1450 were the Norse, the Chinese, and their progeny, who called themselves “BeiHanKe” but which was misunderstood as “Beothuck.”
The final conclusion is that the research group in that remote area has found the remains of a collapsed Chinese-Norse civilization of which the contemporary Beothuck are the remnants. Otherwise, they have stumbled on the remains of a collapsed civilization about which nothing else is known.
There is strong reason to believe that Newfoundland was indeed settled by the Chinese. That they interacted, and perhaps forged alliances with local Indians and Vikings. Certainly there was a large city-sized community there in the land described as “Like a Chinese garden”.
No one know what happened to them, and how or why they died out, but it would most certainly make for some interesting reading. They seem to have merged with other migratory and ship-faring peoples, and weathered various periods of illness, natural disasters, and famine. Eventually, they packed up and left.
There is much that I would enjoy reading about these peoples. I look forward to further scholarly studies on this matter.
I firmly applaud Ronald Lloyd Ryan for his great work in this area, and I look forward to his many future discoveries. For this is an area of great interest to me personally.
Do you want more?
I have more articles in this vein, in my Happiness Index here…
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Most of what you read in the Western press is “China = Bad”. And since this is an election year, anything related to China (the evil devil incarnate) association with the opposition party (=Biden) is fabricated and promoted. Oh don’t be too surprised to see all sorts of tweets, videos, and the like on how China has it’s “dirty little hands” in the wallets of Biden and company. It’s pretty much normal this time of year.
Lies.
Distortions.
More lies.
Insane level of howling and screeching of the lies…
Those of us who know better have either stopped reading the “news” or following our feeds, or intentionally point out the ‘bots and other nonsense spewing (and it is truly SPEWING) forth out of the government-owned and controlled Alt-Right, Alt-Left, and mainstream American and Western press.
Fuck that all!
It’s all nonsense and the last thing you want to read when you get up in the morning and check the news is to find out about what ever the calamity of the day is.
OK. Well, then…
Imagine my surprise when I read this piece of sensibility.
It’s penned by a former ambassador and (of course CIA) well experienced in Asian Geo-politics, and well aware of all the shenanigans going on right now. It is long, but gosh and golly is it spot on correct. It’s worth a read.
Reposed as found. All credit to the author. No editing at all simply because the venue it was pulled from was WordPress friendly and devoid of java-script and for-profit advertisements. Obviously this author is like me. Stop making everything for-profit.
The Struggle with China is not a Replay of the Cold War: Remarks to the Asia American Forum
Washington has declared war on China. The administration and its allies hope that the war will be “cold,” but have no strategy for keeping it so. I find it noteworthy that the most belligerently anti-Chinese members of the current U.S. Senate are also its youngest.
They came to adulthood after the end of the post-World War II “Cold War” and have no experience of its anxieties. They appear to take its sudden end as predestined – something that was so inevitably right ideologically that it can and should be taken for granted. Their military experience, if any, has been in the contemporary equivalent of the 19th century’s Indian Wars – combat with gun-toting farmers with no air forces, air defenses, navies, guided missiles, or nuclear weapons with which to answer U.S. hostility. To paraphrase Hilaire Belloc’s riff on Britain’s hubris in its colonial wars:
“Whatever happens, we have got Close air support and they have not.”
The Cold War was radically different from this. It was a global struggle between two competing ideological blocs and nuclear-armed power centers capable of destroying not just each other but all life on the planet except maybe the cockroaches. It began as a series of squabbles over the spoils of a worldwide war. Each side strove to consolidate spheres of politico-military and economic influence and deny the other access to them. But each learned to avoid confrontations that might lead to armed combat directly with the other. Each limited itself to proxy wars aimed at sustaining or imposing its ideology somewhere not in the grip of the other. Each sought to minimize and contain interaction with the other. That was not difficult, given the utter lack of interdependence between the two and the blocs of nations they formally and informally commanded.
The struggle we Americans have now initiated with China has none of these characteristics. To analogize it to the Cold War of 1947 – 1991 is intellectually lazy. More important, it is profoundly misleading and delusional. The Sino-American split is not the sequel to a bloody world war. However politically convenient it may be for Americans to cast antagonism to China in all-encompassing Manichean terms, this is a contest born of contending national self-images and ambitions, not ideologies. The struggle with China on which Americans have embarked is a bilateral contest in which others may or may not choose to take sides, not one between two committed blocs of nations. China is both a much less inherently hostile and far more robust rival than the Soviet Union was.
Emulating China’s autocracy by closing America to foreign goods, services, people, and ideas, as the United States is now doing, is self-defeating. Modeling China policy on Ronald Reagan’s treatment of the USSR before he met Mikhail Gorbachev, as Secretary of State Pompeo has done, is the path to receipt of a national “Darwin award.” The U.S. contention with a resurgent China cannot be conducted in the same manner as the Cold War. It will not end, as the Cold War did, with the voluntary resignation of an ideologically disillusioned and exhausted adversary.
Before I discuss China and how our contest with it is likely to proceed, it may be useful to spend a minute or two on what China is not.
In Chinese literature, there is a beast called a 四不像that is satirically defined by the “four things it ain’t.” The head and face of a “four ain’t[1]” is slender like a horse, but it ain’t a horse. Its horns are like a deer’s, but different. Its neck is like a camel’s, but it is no camel. Its tail is like a donkey’s, but it’s not an ass. The point is that describing a “four ain’t” by reference to previously encountered animals it does not resemble is worse than no help at all in understanding and dealing with it.
China is the “four ain’t” of today’s geopolitics. [1] It is ruled by a “Communist Party” but is an overachieving participant in global capitalism, committed to free trade, expanded foreign investment, and a market economy guided by industrial policy, not central planning. [2] China is armed with nuclear weapons, but it has sized and configured its arsenal for a retaliatory response to an attack on it by other nuclear powers, not for a first strike, which it has abjured and is not equipped to conduct. [3] China is a threat to American global primacy, but mostly in economic and technological rather than political or military terms, in which it remains decidedly inferior. [4] China is once again the immovable economic and cultural center of its native region – where the United States has for seventy-five years been the resident overlord – but China seeks no “allies” and has no political satrapies or military dependencies.
Crucially, China is not the Soviet Union:
China has no messianic ideology to export. Its appeal derives from its performance, not its ideas. It is happy to be emulated, but justly charged with callous indifference to how foreign societies govern themselves.
China is not engaged in regime change operations to create an ideological sphere of influence. It seeks to prevent the overthrow of its own authoritarian system of governance but does not oppose democracy or promote authoritarianism abroad. Where tested, as in Korea, it often has a better relationship with democracies than with their undemocratic opponents.
China’s relationships with foreign nations are transactional rather than sentimental. It has no “satellites,” “allies,” or entente partners to divert its attention from its own defense. Beijing has no ideological soul mates, committed followers, or dedicated sycophants abroad.
China’s economy dwarfs that of the USSR. It accounts for 30 percent of global manufacturing and continues to grow. China has an economy that is almost one-third larger than that of the United States in purchasing power terms and that is rapidly approaching parity at nominal exchange rates.
China is now the largest consumer market on the planet and the biggest trading partner of three-fourths of the world’s other economies. It is fully integrated into the global capitalist system and cannot be walled off from it.
China already possesses one-fourth of the world’s scientific, technological, engineering, and mathematics workforce. It is steadily increasing its ascendancy.
China’s “Belt and Road Initiative” is an order-setting geoeconomic strategy with no Soviet parallel that dwarfs the nearest American equivalent – the Marshall Plan.
China spends two percent or less of GDP on its military vs. the estimated 9 – 15 percent of the USSR and the current 7.9 percent spent by the United States.[2] Unlike the USSR, if pushed to do so, China has the capacity to more than match any U.S. military spending increases.
Despite much wishful thinking on the part of its detractors, premising a policy on China’s collapse from systemic defects, as George Kennan shrewdly did in the case of the USSR in 1947, is – on the evidence – delusional.
China has not built a nuclear arsenal to match that of either the United States or Russia. It has instead adopted a “no first use” policy for nuclear weapons backed by a modest force de frappe that can conduct a limited but devastating retaliatory counterstrike to any foreign nuclear attack on it.
There are no U.S. arms control agreements, exchanges of information, understandings on mutual restraint, or escalation control mechanisms between the U.S. and Chinese armed forces as there were with the USSR
American military intervention in the Russian civil war lasted only two years (1918-1920). Overt U.S. intervention in China’s ongoing civil war, sparked by the Korean War, began in 1950. Seventy years later, U.S. support for the heirs to Chiang Kai-shek’s defeated Chinese regime not only continues but is escalating.
The United States backs challenges to China’s sovereignty over Taiwan and islets in its near seas. By contrast, despite rhetorical opposition to its incorporation of the three Baltic states, America never actively contested the USSR’s territorial integrity.
The armed forces of the United States aggressively patrol China’s shorelines and test its defenses, as they did those of the Soviet Union. But, so far, unlike the USSR, China has not reciprocated.
Equally important, the United States of the 2020s is not the America of the early Cold War.
As the Cold War began, the United States produced one-half or more of the world’s manufactures. It now makes about one-sixth.
For the first time in American history, foreigners do not envy American freedoms. Once almost-universal admiration for the United States has been overwritten by repeated displays of racism, gun violence, political venality, xenophobia, and – most recently – executive incompetence and legislative default in the face of national challenges. No one abroad now seeks to emulate the U.S. political system or believes that the United States illustrates the possibilities of democracy.
During the Cold War, the United States was the uncontested leader of a bloc of dependent nations that it called “the free world.” That bloc is now in an advanced state of decay. America’s international followership is greatly diminished and its capacity to organize coalitions that integrate lesser powers in support of common objectives has atrophied.
Legacy U.S. alliances formed to contain the USSR have little relevance to American contention with China:
US-European alliances like NATO are withering. Though cautious about China, Europeans do not and will not support an effort to “contain” it.
No Asian security partner of the United States wants to choose between America and China.[3] S. “alliances” in Asia embody U.S. undertakings to protect partners rather than commitments by them to come to America’s aid. Such dependent relationships cannot be repurposed to form a coalition to counter China.
The United States is isolated on a widening list of issues of importance to other countries. It has withdrawn or excluded itself from a growing number of multilateral instruments of global and regional governance and is no longer able to lead the international community as it once did.
Americans have repeatedly declined to recapitalize or cooperate in reforming international financial institutions to meet new global and regional investment requirements. This has led China, India, and other rising powers to create supplementary lenders like the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the New Development Bank. The United States has chosen to have no voice in these and continues inadvertently to stimulate the creation of still more institutions that can act without reference to American interests or views.
Since 1950, the Taiwan issue has been a casus belli between the United States and China. But U.S. allies or security partners see it as a fight among Chinese to be managed rather than joined. If the U.S. mismanages the Taiwan issue, as it now appears to be doing, it will have no overt allies in the resulting war.
No claimant against China in the South China Sea is prepared to join the U.S. in naval conflict with China.
U.S. foreign policy is now as partisan as domestic policy. It is often driven by special rather than national interests and is unrealistic, strategically incoherent, divisive, and fickle.
Partisan oligopolies have swallowed independent media in the United States and reduced the thousands of U.S. correspondents once reporting on international affairs to mere dozens. S. corporate media now treat the news as an entertainment-based cost center and consumer product rather than as a necessary public service or civic duty. These developments and the politicization of the U.S. intelligence community diminish and distort American situational awareness, helping spurious narratives to overwrite facts.
In short, this time is different.
Sino-American relations have a history and dynamic that do not conform to those of the US-Soviet contest. If you have seen one “communist,” you have not seen them all. And the United States is much less well equipped to inspire and lead opposition to China than it was to the USSR.
The US-Chinacontention is far broader than that of the Cold War, in part because China, unlike the determinedly autarkic USSR, is part of the same global society as the United States.
The battlefields include
global governance,
geoeconomics,
trade,
investment,
finance,
currency usage,
supply chain management,
technology standards and systems,
and scientific collaboration
In addition to the geopolitical and military domains in which the Cold War played out.
Short of nuclear war, the struggle the United States has begun with China may not be existential, as the Cold War was, but it cannot avoid being hugely consequential.
Four years ago, the U.S. unilaterally decided that geopolitics are inherently driven by great power military rivalry that precludes cooperation.
In 2016 when Donald Trump became President and appointed war-hawk neocons to all the international positions in his administration.
The policies derived from this militaristic reconceptualization of international relations are generating a series of zero-sum games between adversaries seemingly as interested in hurting each other as they are in raising their own status. The newly pugnacious U.S. stance legitimizes xenophobia and justifies bilateral approaches to foreign relations that don’t just ignore issues like global terrorism, pandemic diseases, climate change, migration, nuclear proliferation, or regional tensions but actually cripple the global governance and international coordination needed to tackle them. The United States is going out of its way to demonstrate its indifference to the interests and sensibilities of its past and potential partners. It is withdrawing from international organizations it can no longer dominate. These actions amount to unilateral diplomatic disarmament and the creation of politico-economic vacuums for others – not just China – to fill.
Future historians will puzzle over why Americans have chosen to dismantle and discard the connections and capacities – other than military prowess – that long enabled the United States to direct the trend of events in most global and regional arenas. When they unravel this mystery, they will also need to explain the simultaneous collapse of the separation of powers structure on which the American republic was founded and on which its liberties were built. The checks and balances that made America uniquely resilient are now on life support. A legislative branch that refuses to take a stand on the issues entrusted to it by the plain text of the U.S. Constitution has been sidelined by an increasingly despotic and bellicose presidency. The American judiciary, once the custodian of constitutional rectitude, is now selected and appointed by reference to political rather than legal criteria. The result is governance with declining legitimacy at home and next to no appeal abroad.
Fortunately for post-constitutional America, China’s political system, despite the stability and prosperity it has fostered, has even less appeal beyond China’s borders than the degenerate and debased U.S. “model” now does. Both China and the United States are now repelling other nations rather than attracting them. If the contest were military and didn’t go nuclear, the United States, with its battle-hardened and uniquely lethal military, would enjoy insuperable advantages. But politics and armed conflict are not the central elements in the Sino-American confrontation. And the zero-sum games in other competitive arenas do not look promising for America.
After World War II, the United States made the rules. American statesmen crafted a world order that expressed American ideals and served American interests. In the post-Cold War period Washington began to contract its commitments and to disengage from the global institutions and norms it had sponsored. It also abandoned the effort to lead an expansion of the rule-bound order it had created. Over three dozen treaties are pending in the U.S. Senate. The last time it approved one was in 2008.
The United States has failed to ratify international compacts that regulate a widening range of arenas of importance to it. These include conventions on the law of the sea, nuclear testing, the arms trade, human rights, and crimes against humanity. Washington has withdrawn from or suspended compliance with conventions on the laws of war and agreements on arms control, combating climate change, and trade and investment. It has ceased to participate in or sought to sabotage a growing list of United Nations specialized agencies and related institutions. Notwithstanding the current global pandemic, these include the World Health Organization. This generation of American politicians does not seem to understand that if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.
America’s withdrawal from its traditional role in global rule-setting and enforcement deprives the United States of the dominant influence it long exercised through the institutions it created. Other great powers remain wedded to the old American-led order expressed in the United Nations Charter. But America’s exemption of itself from the comity of nations and its spontaneous metamorphosis from world leader to global dropout have left it unable to aggregate the power of other nations to its own. Washington’s resort to abusive language, threats and coercive measures has grown as its capacity to apply its power non-coercively has declined, further reducing the numbers of foreign allies, partners, and friends willing to bandwagon with America.
The European Union remains impotent and cannot fill the breach created by the United States’ sidelining of itself. Rising and resurgent great powers – like China, India, Brazil, and Russia – now have a free hand to reshape and supplement legacy institutions to their advantage, and they are doing so. In some ways, their initiatives are constructive. Unfortunately, in others they are not. This is especially true of their reliance on precedents set at Guantánamo that justify “extraordinary rendition,” “enhanced interrogation,” the criminalization of resistance to military occupation, “targeted killings,” and the replacement of the rule of law with ruthless expediency. Russia saw the example of NATO’s war to separate Kosovo from Serbia as a precedent justifying its separation of Crimea from Ukraine. As America ceased to set a good example, the world became less civilized.
The decline in U.S. clout internationally is made even more consequential by the fact that China has resources, including money, to offer its partners, and – except for military shock and awe – the United States does not. The United States’ budget is in chronic deficit. Even routine government operations must now be funded with debt. America has spent trillions of borrowed dollars on wars in the Islamic world that it can neither win nor end. Its so-called “forever wars” siphoned off the funds needed to keep its human and physical infrastructure at levels competitive with those of China and other great economic powers. They also crippled U.S. statecraft by defunding non-military means to advance or defend American interests abroad and curtailing U.S. contributions to the international institutions charged with assuring global peace and development.
The Asian Infrastructure Development Bank and the New Development Bank and their infant sister institutions affirm American-invented global systems and practices. They do not challenge legacy lenders like the Asian Development Bank and World Bank. They supplement such institutions by recreating and recapitalizing them in forms exempt from American veto, sabotage, or stonewalling. The most recent example of such necessity-driven invention is the Multi-Party Interim Appeal Arbitration Arrangement. This effectively nullifies a key element of American vandalism of the World Trade Organization (WTO). It enables the continued orderly resolution of trade and investment disputes between the EU, China, and others without the participation of the United States. Similarly, current international efforts to craft a multi-currency system for trade settlement and reserve management to replace the dollar do not reflect dissatisfaction with its service in these roles. They are driven by universal foreign objections to hegemonic American bullying through unilateral dollar sovereignty-based sanctions.
Coercive approaches to statecraft are inherently alienating. Claims to superiority that are not empirically substantiable are unpersuasive. Asking countries to choose between China and the United States, when China is clearly rising and America is simultaneously stagnating and declining, practically guarantees the progressive eclipse of American prestige and power. Advocating democracy abroad while deviating from it at home destroys rather than enhances American credibility. America’s addiction to debt risks eventual financial collapse even as it limits immediate policy options both at home and abroad.
If the United States succeeds in making its contest with China mainly military, as the military-industrial-congressional complex desires, Americans are less likely to spend the Chinese into national bankruptcy than the Chinese are to bankrupt the United States. A strategy based on the presumption that Asian and other nations are committed to eternal dependence on U.S. military protection against Washington’s enemy du jour cannot succeed.
No country wants to be caught in a Sino-American firefight. If the United States goes to war with China, the outcome is at best uncertain.
A nuclear exchange cannot be ruled out.
Protectionism and xenophobia promise to reduce American prosperity and retard innovation, not make the United States once again competitive. Trade and investment policies based on the rejection of comparative advantage promote inefficiency and stagnation rather than growth. Retreating into the “Five Eyes” technology stockade while barring the gates to Chinese scientists and students is less likely to sustain American international standard setting and scientific primacy than to cede the global commons to China and others. Withdrawal from multilateral organizations forfeits influence in them and yields it to others more open to diplomatic give and take. The United States is weakened, not strengthened, by muscular diplomacy-free foreign policy and the incapacitation of every instrument of statecraft other than the military.
For the first time in our history, we Americans must decide how to deal with a country that not only has the capacity to surpass us but is actually doing so. Unless the United States cures its fiscal feebleness, rebuilds the capacities and competence of its government, upgrades its human and physical infrastructure, and reopens itself to trade, investment, and immigration, America’s roles in global governance, trade, investment, finance, supply chain management, technology standards and systems, and scientific collaboration will continue to contract as those of China and others expand. The United States’ capacity to innovate will decline, as will American well-being and self-confidence. This diminishment of the United States is not the consequence of Chinese predation but of American hubris, political ineptitude, and diplomatic decrepitude. To compete internationally with China, the United States must get its act together at home and, in its foreign relations be everything it claims China is now not – that is: trustworthy, truthful, empathetic, considerate, courteous, and dignified. Above all, America must itself return to living by the rules – old and new – it expects others to follow.
The essence of any strategy is the efficient linkage of resources and capabilities to feasible objectives. Current U.S. China policy is strategy-free. With neither resources nor institutional capabilities to back it, it amounts to puerile fantasy. Washington is determined to crush the China of its imagination, but China exists whether the United States understands it or not.
The American turn against China began as neurosis but has now crossed into psychosis…
… evidencing a loss of contact with reality and inability to interact normally with other nations. This is a product of populism, which habitually disdains facts, embraces politically appealing xenophobic narratives, corrodes discipline and the capacity for self-sacrifice, and rejects expertise…
… in favor of ideologically inspired preconceptions implemented by true believers and untested amateurs.
U.S. China policy at present is a classic example of demonizing a foreign foe to rally support at home and divert attention from festering political, economic, and social problems. This is an approach that is highly unlikely to result in a Cold War-style victory for the United States or the Enlightenment values that gave birth to it. Quite the opposite. All the more so if spurious analogies to a cock-eyed view of the Cold War continue to shape the American approach to competitive interaction with China.
End Notes
[1] The 四不像 [sìbùxiàng] is actually the Père David’s deer or 麋鹿 [mílù], a unique species of elk long extinct in the wild but preserved in the imperial game parks of Beijing and saved from complete extinction by rendition to European zoos before its Chinese remnant herd was slaughtered in the Boxer Rebellion. In 1985, the 麋鹿 was reintroduced to China from England, where a breeding population had been established.
[2] Proposed U.S. spending on national security in FY-2021 totals $1.21 trillion, about twice the Pentagon “base budget.” In March 2020, when this budget proposal was put forward, U.S. GDP was $21.535 trillion and falling. For a breakdown, see https://www.pogo.org/analysis/2020/03/creating-a-national-insecurity-state/
[3] SEATO is dead, as is CENTO. The Philippines is moving toward strategic neutrality. Thailand is now closer to China than to America. Pakistan is estranged from the United States. Iran and Iraq are both anti-American. Japan sensibly prioritizes its own defense. South Korea is appropriately obsessed with North Korea and avoiding Sino-Korean hostility. Even Australia is torn between its reliance on the China market and its distaste for China’s increasingly hegemonic behavior.
Conclusion
It’s pretty much an accurate appraisal of what is going on in the world today, and regarding China.
I am personally stunned that you will find this in the English-language press. As most of those venues have been co-opted by the USA and UK governments.
This is it.
So don’t get so hot and bothered and twisted up into a pretzel. over the latest ‘news” out of America. This is pretty much everything that you need to know right now. And as you can well guess, American “greatness” is in shambles and the childish neocons running Washington DC are dangerous in their ignorance.
But that’s all gonna change. One way or the other.
Do you want more?
I have more posts in my Trump Trade War Index here…
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Humans are herd animals. We graze upon the grass in yards fenced in by other sheep. All the time being watched over by the farmer and his barn-dogs.
Now, in this post I am gonna talk about an aspect that I have yet to cover. This is, pretty much, and essentially “the other side of the coin”. Or, to put it in more conventional language, what the other half of me is doing.
Ah. Confused?
Well, of course you are. Or you should be.
In order to explain what is going on, or has happened with me, and what is going to happen to you all, you need to understand what our reality is. you need to understand what our universe is. You need to understand what time is. You need to understand what world-lines are.
And with that being understood, then and only then, I can explain things to you all.
Because it’s really a Hell of a lot of work, and just a casual conversation with a “normal” just isn’t fruitful.
Hey! You're the Jackass that says he was a SEAL and has alien implants in his head and can time travel! Yeah. Yeahhhh right.
It’s like that.
No really.
It’s EXACTLY like that.
It’s a twisting of words, by the intensely ignorant who are not listening, have no desire to listen, and substitute their ideas to replace what I actually say. Then regurgitate it in a disparaging manner so as to ridicule my actions, my experience and my exposures.
But, here… for you handful that are actually reading what I write, who are actually following my lesson plans and learning… I am presenting something that I have not talked about much.
Here we are going to talk about a few things.
They are…
The division of consciousness in any particular world-line.
How consciousness splits between the Heavenly realms and the Reality Universe.
What is going on “behind the scenes” with myself as a “MAJ Operator”.
Quick Note
The post concerns a “medical operation” that I underwent.
When ever one of these “adjustments”, “procedures” or “operations” occur, there are usually larger scale events in the physical world going on afterwards. Whether that is the result of the procedures, or whether the procedures are to mitigate the effects of those events, I do not know.
This post describes an event that took place on 14OCT20 in the early morning.
Introduction
Today in my early morning slumber, I experienced one of my “medical procedures” that I have from time to time. It doesn’t happen in the physical reality.
Nor is it tied to a given place or world-line.
It is not tied to any particular world line.
It occurs outside the world-line travel vector (known as time and space), and for most people it is “just” a dream. That is how we interpret it. It is an event that lies outside our physical reality, and which lies outside our dreams, and which lies outside what we know and understand as “reality”.
Many people mistakenly call these events “abductions”. Where they are forcefully taken against their will to strange places or labs for medical dissection, weird sexual experiments and other horrors.
It’s nothing of that type.
But I can see how someone would get that impression.
What I am going to describe is something that I consider to be “normal”, because I have lived with it for the last four decades. But it will sound strange to “normal people”. I have all sorts of things that are going on regarding me. I mean, not just in my day-to-day life, but outside my life (my 30% of consciousness associated with world-line travel) . It’s the realm of what my other 70% is up to.
Consciousness is divided.
The soul divides the consciousness into groups.
10% to 30% is associated with getting experiences on earth. I call this "world-line travel" within our "reality universe".
The rest is off doing "other" things.
Usually, because it has no direct bearing on my day-to-day activities, I pretty much ignore it all. Much like everyone else does. And for most people, that is all that there is.
Your day-to-day life and then you die.
Game over.
.
.
Well, it’s not that way.
Instead, everyone has a big (huge) part of them off doing “things”.
Much of that is in the “Heavenly realms”, but a lot has to do with nearby (to the “Reality Universe”). Because being a human means that part of your travels the MWI in the physical body, and the rest of you do other things elsewhere. It’s normal. It’s what being a human is.
And me, well…
Well…I signed up for all this.
So I am more active in these other areas (I personally believe) that most of my fellow human brothers and sisters. I am an active participant. I am more involved. I am thus a little bit different.
Like how you might have a stud bull, or a prized milking cow. Or maybe how one of your calves won the State fair.
And, as part of my role…
…It’s many things that I have (already) talked about. All pretty much revolving around sentience sorting…
… and evolution…
…and all that is wrapped up within the program that I entered back in April 1981 in the United States Navy, Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) for a program that fell under MAJestic operations…
… that I be handed over to a specific extraterrestrial species …
… and that they would do things to me…
… and that it would be for the good of all humanity.
But…
While it was explained to me that I would be in the program for life, and that my role would be an important one, and that I would be exposed to very advanced and top secret technologies and concepts…
…I had no idea that I would still be actively involved and being tweaked well past my retirement years.
…
Narrative
I always know that I am going to have a procedure done when I enter this particular room / chamber. Yeah. It’s mostly plan and painted white. But the room is of complex geometry, with rectangular budges here and there, and some odd wall and ceiling shapes.
It’s like the most oddly shaped room that you can think of. Not rectangular. Perhaps trapezoidal with the protrusions to the room rendering it’s shape intensively difficult to discern.
The way that I remember this room is actually rather silly.
There is this particular panel in the deck. It appears to be a pane of glass covering over a wiring conduit (empty and devoid of wires) of a pretty odd shape. Think of a rectangular “T” shaped cutout in the floor of a white deck, only with the top of the “T” cut off forming a Trapezoidal shape. The bottom leg of the “T” forming a long squeezed extension, with a kind of rhomboid shape. And all covered with a clear thick pane of acrylic or glass. Under the glass is just an empty space. Rectangular in shape. White and plain.
It’s odd. I know.
And that is how I remember.
Every time I see this strange feature, I am able to recall other times that I have been in this chamber and (pretty much) what to expect.
And now, let’s talk about this time…
Prep for the procedure
It’s all pretty conventional.
I find myself in this chamber. I’m alone. So I look around and get my bearings.
I notice the room size, the walls, the strange “cut out” in the deck, and move forward.
A few minutes later…
A large group of short people fully dressed in medical garb enter the chamber (and it’s a real bunch. Perhaps twelve or fifteen.) and they all start laying out all sorts of tools, devices and equipment around an operating table. Three or four come to me and two of them get to each side of me and softly but firmly hold me…
“Oh, he’s one of the good ones.”
And they relax their grip, and I take the injection. And it is an injection, of sorts. I mean there is no needle it is just applied to my skin like the soft touch of a cold metal ball bearing. And I just stand there watching the events transpire.
After a few minutes the effect starts to take hold.
A numbness, a ringing in the ears, an inability to feel anything, and I just kind of “stand there” swaying in the room. My consciousness remains in place in the room, but my “dream body” is carried to the table. (By the two orderly nurses, that stood beside me, on my left and on my right.)
My consciousness is "glued" to that spot. Meanwhile my body collapses into the arms of the other two nurses and is carried to the operating table.
One of the “nurses” (the third one that said that I was a “good one”) asks if I would like to observe.
I respond “Yes. Sure.”
I think this. No physical words are actually spoken.
And my eyesight changes (to what I immediately infer as to the kind of eyesight that the doctors and nurses see).
It’s really, really different. With exaggerated reds and yellows, and glaring white spots. Everything else is in light blues. Like a pastel world. The entire room is bluish, but the table, the equipment and the gadgets on the tray surfaces are all light pink and white.
I watch for a while as they perform some kind of actual operation procedure on my “dream body”. I have no idea what they are doing or why.
It continues like that.
I drift off…
…
I wake up early in the morning. It’s 4:45am. The sky is getting light, and the morning clouds over the ocean are really nice. Red. “Red sky in the morning. Sailors take warning.” It’s calm and I hear the morning birds singing their song. I can even hear the sweep of the brooms of the building cleaning ladies as they sweep the sidewalks and ready the complex for the day.
What in “blue blazes” is going on?
Blue blazes. Unknown. An imaginary place somewhere on earth that is said to be excruciatingly hot. invented by old people . grandma: my goodness , its hotter than blue blazes in here!
-Urban Dictionary: blue blazes
Well?
Do you all think that I am just making this up? That I have too much time on my hands and that I just live vicariously in my Metallicman postings? Nope. I’m telling you all what is going on, how it works (to the best of my ability) and how everything fits together.
This little bit of personal exposure can tell you A LOT about our universe and how it works, if you just take the time to listen.
Consciousness Partitioning
I have covered much of this elsewhere.
The universe is complex, and we reside within a specific reality known as a “reality universe”. Our soul inhabits a “Heaven Universe”. And it is a part of our soul that we call a consciousness. And that is what occupies this “reality universe”.
But…
The consciousness is not 100% dedicated to any given world-line. Instead it puts part of it all over the place. But, for purposes of simplicity, we can say that the physical reality has control of from 10% to 30% of our consciousness at any given moment, and the non-physical reality has much of the rest.
Physical vs. non-physical realities.
So…
In the picture, I showed the physical reality that one inhabits as part of the MWI. And I show a person who’s consciousness inhabits a given body. I write in purple that the remainder of the consciousness is split in that non-physical realm. This is shown as 60%.
Ah.
But it should be 70% you argue.
What happened to the remaining 10%? Well, it’s elsewhere. Some in the Heaven Universe and some off and frittering about all over the many, many multitudes of the MWI world-lines. It’s here, there and everywhere.
Ok…
So what is going on here.
Well, as far as I can figure, and I’m pretty convinced that this is the case, my physical body is snoozing and sleeping as my consciousness moves though the MWI. And other entities are spending time dealing with my non-physical body.
Yeah.
We have two (recognizable) bodies that our consciousness occupies. They are…
A physical body.
A non-physical body.
And they both inhabit the “reality universe” simultaneously.
Reality separation (physical and non-physical)
So, let’s look into this a little deeper.
But first. Let’s make sure that we are all on the same page. OK?
Soul. Soul is what we are. It dwells inside it’s own special universe. We call that universe “Heaven”. I like to call that place the “Heaven Universe”. It tends to stay there.
Consciousness. Soul takes a part of itself and forms a vehicle to travel outside of Heaven with. This vehicle is known as “Consciousness”.
Reality. The universe that soul uses to obtain experiences. It’s called “the Reality Universe”. Each experience creates new associations and entanglements at the quanta level. The soul exports the consciousness that it creates into this reality so that it can grow.
Physical. The physical reality is the part of the reality that we humans can sense and interact with.
Non-physical. The non-physical reality is the part of our “reality universe” that our physical bodies cannot see, or sense.
World-line. The “reality universe” is a series of fixed points in time. Each one is a frozen “snap shot” of every possibility of everything in the universe. Each “snapshot” is a world-line.
Time. Time is the movement of our consciousness. It moves in and out of reality in a sequence. It moves one world-line to another at a rate that is governed by the frequency that our physical brain operates in.
Perhaps it looks something like how the Eastern Religions portray it. If so, maybe it is something more in alignment to any of the many pictorials of the various states of the non-physical realities that us humans deal with. Perhaps like this…
The three bodies and the five Koshas.
As I see it…
The physical world and the non-physical world are both sides of the same coin. Your consciousness inhabits both simultaneously.
Yet, strangely enough, when your consciousness moves about (in wave form) you can observe your physical body asleep in bed, or your non-physical body being operated upon in a operating room.
It seems strange to us. But that is the way it actually is.
And, more intelligent, older, more technology advanced species do not see this as an odd separation at all. They view this as the natural order of things and proceed in their day to day lives without a moments thought to this. They use this separation between the physical and the non-physical to “gate us all in” the “pastures” where we can roam free and graze.
We cannot leave the pasture because we don’t know how to open up the gate.
…
But what do I know?
It could very well be something completely different. But to communicate what I experience, one must recognize the idea that our physical body is covered in sheaths or layers that reside outside the physical. They reside int he non-physical realms, and have their own attributes.
Attributes, that others in various religions, have mapped out.
For me, as a novice in regards to Eastern Religious and Spiritual thought, I simply say that there is [1] a physical body and [2] a non-physical body. This non-physical body is different from the physical one. And as such, the extraterrestrial doctors and nurses provided operations upon it. Operations that were apparently unnecessary on my physical body.
And for simplicity purposes. Let’s leave it at that, for now.
…
Anyways, to fully understand what I have described…
… you must recognize that I am telling you all, in the physical reality, what my consciousness was exposed to. As well as what my consciousness observed while events that transpired within the non-physical reality.
My consciousness observed medical procedures conducted by Type-I extraterrestrials on my non-physical body. It is a common enough procedure for me, and something that I have learned to live with. I do not know what they were doing. I do not know why they were doing it.
I am one of numerous humans that have these procedures.
It is part of my role within MAJestic.
I believe that it is for the good of our species.
It is a unique experience, and sounds fucking crazy to an outsider.
The procedure is something that is common enough (for me), so that I recognize the facility. And the nurse comment is such that it implies that I am not the only one who goes through these kinds of procedures. Whether they are all related to my MAJ program is unknown.
Medical procedures on the non-physical aspects of the body
Well…
You all can read between the line on this.
Other species can operate and live, work and “play” within the non-physical reality, and we (humans) haven’t a clue as to what is going on because our senses are far too rudimentary.
These other species thus have a life, with structures, buildings, work, procedures, and relationships there in the non-physical reality. And if they do, so must us humans.
If a species is technologically advanced, it would make sense that they would be masters of the physical environment. But they would also be masters of the non-physical environment.
And as far as the “medical procedures” go…
What are they? I don’t know. I really don’t understand much of any of this. What I can tell you all is that this procedure was NOT “biological sampling” of a random human for monitoring programs. (That involves other activities and <redacted> involvement.)
They were (and I very strongly believe) that they were making CHANGES to my non-physical body of some type. That this is part of a long series of procedures that has been fairly regular over the decades at a rate of maybe four to five a year for the last forty odd years.
I strongly do not believe, at all, that the procedure is corrective in nature or intention.
This procedure is one of a long series of procedures that is altering myself in both the physical and non-physical realities to become something else. Perhaps a more “metallic” sort of person. And I mean that as something different than a robot. I mean that as on the elemental level. Something quite different that what I was biologically intended to be.
Physical areas in the non-physical realms
Yet…
How can there be a “Operating Room” in this non-physical environment? And why is it so oddly shaped?
I do not know.
But what I actually do know is that there all sorts of physical analogs in the non-physical worlds. And others who have traveled through them (no matter what they refer to them as) have reported the same thing. Call it the “astral plane”, or “the realm of the spirits”, or whatever you fancy, the fact is that there are physical analogs of buildings, structures, and creatures off in the non-physical worlds.
But… Wait!
Maybe what is going on isn’t what I think it is. Maybe what I think has been too unduly influenced by the books that I have read, my Catholic upbringing, the occult, and popular narratives. Maybe, just maybe something else is happening…
Maybe I was not observing my non-physical body being operated upon. Maybe I only thought that that was what was going on. Perhaps I am completely misinterpreting the events.
Or, even yet. Perhaps I am just crazy.
But, for the purposes of clarity and to really unload all my experiences as part of being who I am, I’m dishing this all out to you all. Right here and right now. It’s the truth, and you can learn from it. It can provide you glimpses of what our reality actually is, and what your role actually is.
And maybe, just maybe…
Conclusion
…you can see that your thought generation in the physical worlds, have an effect on your non-physical analog body.
That there are species and races that so-inhabit these non-physical realms with us. And that if we welcome their assistance, and not fight it, we can end up growing, improving and becoming a better person and a more active member of society.
Truthfully, as I have stated in my other posts regarding my post-implantation experiences, the “spiritual side” of our reality is stronger and more robust than anything that we can understand. If we are able to control our thoughts, and use affirmation navigation, not only can we improve the physical lifestyle and comforts that we experience, but we can just as well improve it for our communities.
The non-physical worlds are MORE important than we give them credit for. They define what our physical life becomes. We need to spend more time understanding this aspect of our lives, and paying more attention to our thoughts and our actions. Especially when it involves the lives and thoughts of others that we care about in our communities.
Humans are herd animals. We graze upon the grass in yards fenced in by other sheep. All the time being watched over by the farmer and his barn-dogs.
Pink Floyd – Sheep.mp3
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Empires are a real pain in the ass, don’t you know. They are always off concocting one war or the other. Bombing places into oblivion, and just threatening others with all sorts of trouble. They collapse trade, invention, scientific development, society, religion and the environment. But yet, it all continues.
What stops all this madness?
Internal collapse. That’s what historically ends the insanity.
You can tell a empire from a normally peaceful nation by it’s “telltales”. Which are uniformly, and historically stable;
Military bases everywhere.
The most powerful military in the areas that they occupy.
The use of their currency for financial transactions.
On-going wars or conflicts.
Justification for war using “righteous and just” excuses.
Disruption of trade.
Now, it’s pretty obvious to everyone (except the most bone-headed ignorant) that the USA today is a military empire and it is going “down” shooting as it collapses internally. The signs are all there and obvious.
But we are not going to talk about THAT, right now.
John Whitehead.
We are going to talk about something else. We are going to talk about the crimes of the empire when it is still functioning. Because, as soon as it collapses, everything is forgotten and forgiven (apparently). And that is really, really bad, and a serious problem. For how can you learn form your mistakes if you always conveniently forget the past?
“Oh, let by-gones be by-gones.”
Now, one of the big things about these military empires is that they are always invading the “little guy”. They are always invading and taking over smaller and peaceful nations. Either directly or indirectly (like the CIA and it’s many tentacles).
Hey!
Fun fact! Did you know that the United States is currently fighting eight simultaneous wars right now? Yeah. It is. Bet you cannot name them all. And you also wanna know something else? They are all smaller and unable to defend themselves from the nuclear super-power.
Harry Dunn
Well…
Perhaps it’s time for me to butt-in and say a few word about all of this. Eh?
The scarlet pimpernel.
When the British Empire was at it’s peak, it too invaded nations on the slightest whim. And the excuses were the same as they are today “because we should take precautions”. And so, let’s look at one of those little nations states that the British Empire overran and conquered…
The following is a reprint of an article titled “British Invasion of Madagascar” and Authored by John W. Osborn, Jr.. It is reprinted as found with only minor editing to fit this venue. All credit to the author and his work.
British forces were compelled to invade the island Madagascar off the coast of East Africa amid fears of a Japanese invasion.
By John W. Osborn, Jr.
“The first I saw of Madagascar and the last after adventurous months ashore was the eerie color of the soil,”
…a British novelist turned security sergeant would write a decade later.
“It gave to the sky, the vegetation, and the people a strangeness, even a deathliness which still shadows my recollections of the island. For the soil and the dust which rose from it to cake our skins and clothes, our eyelids and nostrils was not brick-colored or terra cotta but the color of dried blood.”
Lying 240 miles off the southeast coast of Africa in the Indian Ocean, at 226,658 square miles Madagascar ranks just behind Greenland, New Guinea, and Borneo in size among the world’s islands.
But with a population in 1942 of just 3.4 million, it had one of the world’s smallest densities, five persons per square mile.
Only 25,000 were French, the rest a mixture of African with ancient arrivals from Malaya and Polynesia dizzyingly divided into 18 sub-ethnic groups such as the Antandroy, the “people of the bush brambles,” and the Tsmimihety, the “people who do not cut their hair.”
Madagascar
Though discovered by Europeans in 1506, its French rulers did not bother to take possession until 1897. Under the rule of Vichy collaborators, the island was ignored and isolated for most of the war; however, events in the Pacific brought it briefly into the action.
As World War II raged on all over the globe, the people of Madagascar lived their lives in peace and tranquility. Knowing full well that they were safe as being uninteresting and of little importance int he grand scheme of things.
When he heard of the attack on Pearl Harbor in his London headquarters, the leader of the Free French, General Charles de Gaulle, asked an aide what he thought the consequences would be for France.
“The Indian Ocean becomes a major theater of operations, and Madagascar suddenly takes on strategic importance. The Japanese will try to seize it,”
…the aide astutely answered.
In Japanese hands, the magnificent harbor of Diego Suarez at the northeast tip of the island and the naval base a mile to the south at Antisare could choke off Allied supply lines to India and Egypt.
De Gaulle appealed to the Allies to take Madagascar, but British Prime Minister Winston Churchill vetoed the idea.
“Our hands are too full,”
…he cabled President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and told his chief of staff,
“Madagascar must still have low priority.”
But then the Japanese captured Singapore and Burma. They landed on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal. With Ceylon threatened, the British war cabinet decided on July 12, 1942, to seize only Diego Suarez rather than all of Madagascar.
“The rest of the enormous island was of less strategic importance,” Churchill later explained. “With the memories of Dakar in our mind, we could not complicate the operation by admitting the Free French. The decision was taken for a purely British expedition.”
Churchill called the campaign for Madagascar …
“our first large-scale amphibious operation since the Dardanelles.”
Operation Ironclad got underway just 12 nights later, winter clothing seen loaded amid rumors of a commando operation against occupied Norway. Rear Admiral Neville Syfret commanded the aircraft carriers Illustrious and Indomitable,the battleship Ramillies, a pair of cruisers, nine destroyers, six corvettes, and an equal number of minesweepers.
Maj. Gen. Robert Sturges commanded 13,000 troops.
During the effort to gain control of the port of Diego Suarez on the island of Madagascar, British soldiers come ashore with their equipment on May 5, 1942.
“It was the nearest I would come to realizing a conception of ‘adventure,’”
…Sergeant Rupert Croft-Cooke later wrote. He had already had his share of extraordinary experiences, working in a circus, traveling with a horse-drawn gypsy caravan, and wandering Europe in an old bus. The writer was now heading for the strangest of all.
The convoy rounded the Cape of Good Hope, spent five days docked in Durban, South Africa, to load supplies, then headed north into the Mozambique Channel separating Madagascar from the African mainland.
Facing the British would be 8,000 unenthusiastic local conscripts along with Foreign Legionnaires and tough Senegalese soldiers from West Africa. “We were told in a whisper that we had agents ashore keeping us informed of every defensive measure of the enemy,” Croft-Cooke wrote. The top British agent on Madagascar since November 1940 was Percy Mayer, a businessman whose work took him all over the island, while his wife, much admired in what passed for society with her looks and piano playing, tapped out his messages to Durban in their bathroom.
“But,” Croft-Cooke recalled, “when the last night came and we realized that in the small hours, the landing would start, the prospect, viewed in the tropical sunlight, suddenly seemed forlorn, uncertain of success, exceedingly dangerous.”
The campaign for Madagascar opened at 4:40 amon May 5, 1942, with the attack at Diego Suarez.
Fairey Swordfish and Albacore aircraft from the carriers bombed shipping at anchor in the harbor and destroyed most of Vichy’s 30 aircraft on the ground, while the fleet shelled the town and paratroopers descended.
Caught in town, Percy Mayer rushed from his hotel room into the street. Unluckily for him, he ran right into a Vichy patrol. When he was searched, secret messages were located on him. He quickly found himself in a cell at Antisare’s naval base, told he would be summarily executed, and was at least offered a priest.
Only the air strikes had been real. The naval bombardment had been star shells and signal rockets, light instead of heat, the “paratroopers” merely dummies. The real attack was taking place on the island’s western side, at Courier Bay and Ambarata.
“Firing at night is not to be contemplated, the entrance to the bay being considered impossible,” a French staff report confidently concluded. Royal Navy minesweepers were nonetheless able to skillfully navigate the shoals, reefs, and mines and then drop buoys for the troopships to follow.
After coming ashore on Madagascar, British soldiers of the King’s African Rifles assemble on the beach.
Commandos and East Lancashire regulars proceeded to scale the 50-foot cliff overlooking Courier Bay. “We moved up to a gun position which we could see clearly in the moonlight,” a Royal Artillery captain serving as a forward observer related.
“Strangely enough, all was quiet and deserted, no sentries were posted, and no sign of life of at all. As dawn broke, we saw some buildings and went in to investigate. There we found the gunners all in bed.”
There was little initial opposition. “In sweltering heat, loaded like pack mules with ammo and grenades, we marched against a hot wind across the 8-mile isthmus to Diego Suarez,” one Commando remembered. When the Commandos and the Lancashire troops reached Diego Suarez at 4:30 pm they finally met bitter resistance.
Sergeant Rupert Croft-Cooke and the 29th Independent Brigade, in the meantime, had come ashore at Ambarate. He dragged his motorcycle to shore, kicked it to life, then joined the advance up the single, dusty road 21 miles east toward Antisare.
“There was no sound of firing, no glimpse of the enemy,” he wrote. “Ten miles or more distance were covered before we saw anything but red earth and florid vegetation.”
“Soon after noon, the battle started,” he continued. He had been traveling 20 yards behind the Bren carrier that the 29th’s commander, Brigadier Fredrick Festing, was riding in. Known as Frontline Frankie, he was, as usual, hundreds of yards ahead of the column when firing suddenly broke out. The British rushed to cover behind the roadside trees and bushes. After five minutes, one of a half-dozen supporting Valentine tanks clanked up. As he walked toward it, Festing saw Croft-Cooke and yelled, “Been fired on much, sergeant?”
“No sir, not at all.”
“I’ve got to speak to that tank,” Festing said and started whacking the turret with his walking stick. More irritated than impressed, Croft-Cooke rode back down the road to rejoin his security section.
The prospect of a Japanese invasion of Madagascar threatened the security of British interests in the western reaches of the Indian Ocean and along the coast of East Africa. However, Vichy French resistance to the British occupation of the island resulted in some difficult fighting before Madagascar was secured.
Festing drove the Vichy defenders back with armor, then a bayonet charge. Hours later, descending a hill and coming to a bridge across a stream, the British vanguard came upon a dilapidated corrugated iron building with a sign that said “Robinson’s Hotel.”
It was actually a store.
“In every village of Madagascar, we afterward learned, there was a Chinaman’s store, usually a tin shanty,”
Croft-Cooke recalled. It was quickly taken over as field headquarters for Festing and Sturges, with Croft-Cooke in charge of the guard detail. All the while, the ancient Chinese proprietor served tea, chattering in his unique brand of French.
Three miles from Antisare, the surprised British ran into a network of pillboxes and trenches the Vichy soldiers called the Joffre Line. Percy Mayer, still sweating out his appointment with the firing squad, had reported on it, but the information had never reached Sturges.
“The firing was now intense and from all sides,” Croft-Cooke related. “Our own artillery and the French 75s were audible in the universal racket of mortars, machine-gun and rifle fire.” Festing threw in his armor, only to have it stopped by a 2,000-yard-long antitank ditch. The last four of the Valentines and two of the six light Tetrarch tanks making up the rest of the operation’s armor were knocked out by artillery fire. Their crews leaped out and fought Senegalese soldiers hand to hand to reach safety. Festing recommended Captain Peter Palmer, killed trying to save his wounded driver, for what would have produced the campaign’s only Victoria Cross, but he was instead awarded the Military Cross.
A long day came to a merciful end at 6:30 pm. “Now, it was deep night, and the crowded stars of the southern hemisphere shone brightly,” Croft-Cooke wrote. To prevent snipers from crawling up in the darkness, the British set the surrounding grass on fire. “I watched the blazing hills and the black shapes of our men against them, and tried to realize that this was a battle, and not merely a rather fantastic night in a strange country.”
Sturges prepared to launch a predawn attack, expecting “a good scrape which would end when we were at breakfast in Antisare.” Actually, he was having his breakfast at 7:30, still at Robinson’s. “It was quite clear that the attack had failed. It was an unhappy moment,” he admitted.
There were more unhappy moments to come. Despite the fires, snipers got through—a naval signalman sitting next to Croft-Cooke fell forward without a sound, a bullet between his eyes. Then, Robinson’s came under heavy artillery shelling, sending everyone but the Chinese owner dashing to cover. Sturges headed back to the coast to board Syfret’s flagship Ramilliesat 2 pm, “hot, begrimed, and unhappy,” in Syfret’s words, and requesting a diversionary seaborne raid against Antisare.
In less than 30 minutes, the destroyer Anthonywas setting out to race 100 miles around Madagascar with Captain Martin Price and 30 Royal Marines. One of them was Syfret’s valet, who begged to go, Syfret agreeing only with reluctance. He later admitted, “I did not expect a score to survive the night. The next hours were not happy ones.”
Lieutenant Commander John Hodges took the Anthonyinto Antisare Bay in pitch darkness at 8 pm, hoping to make a surprise landing, but searchlights on shore came on. Hodges steadily maneuvered through a gauntlet of fire at 30 knots toward the docks. With no time to stop, he overshot the dock, reversed in by the stern while Price and his Marines jumped off, and then headed full speed back out to sea.
Price divided his Marines to seize objectives. Those rushing the gate at the naval depot where Percy Mayer was taken for execution came under rifle fire. Grenades tossed in response soon had the commander emerging with a white flag. A bugler beside him started to sound the ceasefire. The Marines, mistaking it for an alarm, knocked him down and then apologized. Inside, 50 British prisoners taken in the morning’s failed assault on the Joffre Line were liberated, but not Percy Mayer. Luckily, he had not been shot: sensing defeat, the French had ostensibly paroled him.
Price armed the prisoners and soon had Antisare under control, and despite Syfret’s fears, he had not lost even a single Marine. “This was a brilliant diversion,” wrote Churchill. Price was awarded the Distinguished Service Order for it. Sturges ordered a final assault on the Joffre Line at 8:30. Phone calls from Antisare reported that Price’s raid had broken Vichy morale, and at 11 pm, the burst of signal rockets illuminated the black sky, announcing that the Joffre Line had fallen.
The last holdouts in Diego Suarez gave up in the morning. “It was as though we had won a hard game of rugger, and neither team appeared to have any ill feeling,” Price commented.
Rupert Croft-Cooke saw nothing sporting about the score in losses, for 105 British had been killed and 283 wounded, while Vichy French losses were 145 dead and 336 wounded. “There was little for triumph in our entry,” he wrote. “We were angry at the idiotic obstinacy of the French, who had fought and killed many a good fellow. And why? Because an octogenarian marechal at home had ordered them to do so.”
Another soldier was just as angry: Charles De Gaulle. He was in Washington, D.C., to mend relations with President Roosevelt when a reporter awakened him at midnight for a comment—the first word he had received of the invasion. For the moment, the British preferred to deal with the local Vichy authorities. They would find them as hard to handle as De Gaulle, but for a different reason.
A Grumman Martlet fighter aircraft of the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm No. 888 Squadron flies past the old Queen Elizabeth-class battleship HMS Warspite off the coast of Madagascar.A Grumman Martlet fighter aircraft of the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm No. 888 Squadron flies past the old Queen Elizabeth-class battleship HMS Warspite off the coast of Madagascar.
When the police, customs officers, teachers, and other assorted necessary functionaries were summoned to the town hall in Diego Suarez and asked by the British to continue working, they protested, one of them asking how it would endanger their pensions to, ironically, collaborate with the occupiers.
The British made the gesture of threatening to jail them so they could claim later they served under duress. Croft-Cooke, for one, could not hide his disdain for such people “who, thinking that their pensions might be lost or their good name obscured in the eyes of their government, refused to admit the one consideration which should have counted with a Frenchman as it did with an Englishman: the defeat of the Boche who sprawled across France and of the Jap who occupied Indo-China.”
Croft-Cooke got on with his own security work, freeing imprisoned Gaullists, rounding up Vichy sympathizers for questioning, and starting a dogged pursuit of two German agents. He even governed for a while as an acting district officer. “I came to like the Malagasy, his innocent mendacity, his primitive timidity, his talent for storytelling, his indolence, courtesy, and sweetness,” he later wrote.
In the meantime, the British left the French in control of central and southern Madagascar, to his irritation. He wrote in 1953,
“One day, I suppose, we shall be told why it was that having taken the only strongly defended port in Madagascar, we remained precariously within an area of 100 square miles before attacking and controlling the rest of the island.”
Three years before, Winston Churchill had explained why. In the fourth volume of his World War II history, The Hinge of Fate,he included a telegram to Admiral Syfret regarding Madagascar. “It must be a help and not a hindrance. It must be a security and not a burden. We cannot lock up field troops there for any length of time,” it read. Syfret had, in fact, concurred. “I think, as far as our occupation of Diego Suarez is concerned, the French will adopt a policy of live and let live.”
Before long, though, the Japanese again forced Churchill to change his mind, this time directly.
“We had settled down to life in that scruffy little seaport as though we would remain there forever,” wrote Croft-Cooke. On the night of May 29, 1942, sudden explosions in the harbor shattered that tranquility.
Ramillieshad a 20-foot hole blown it its side. An oil tanker was sunk. “Where had they come from? What did it portend?” worried Churchill.
It had been a Japanese midget submarine. Attempting to escape after doing the damage, it ran aground on a reef, the two crewmen swimming ashore to be cornered and killed two days later.
During the next two months, several more midget submarine attacks destroyed 34 ships totaling 150,000 tons. The (erroneous) assumption—the midgets actually launched from Japanese fleet submarines—was that the Japanese were operating from the ports still in Vichy hands: Majunga on the west coast, Tamatave on the east. The premier of South Africa, Jan Smuts, put particular political pressure on Churchill, cabling, “Madagascar is the key to the safety of the Indian Ocean. It all points to the necessity of eliminating Vichy control from the whole island as soon as possible.”
The British first responded with bombing missions into Vichy territory by the South African Air Force. One aircraft with a pilot named Jones went down, and Croft-Cooke was sent on a rescue mission to get him back. Jones, though, had salvaged a machine gun from his wrecked bomber and was leading his crew to safety when they were suddenly faced with a French officer and 40 men.
As operations to secure Madagascar continue in November 1942, British soldiers dismantle a roadblock that has been erected to impede their overland progress.
“I must ask you, gentlemen, to consider yourselves my prisoners,” said Jones, firing a burst from the machine gun into the air. The Malagasy accompanying the French officer scattered.
The Frenchman responded, “I surrender unconditionally.” With his prisoner in tow, Jones reached the coast to be picked up by the Royal Navy. Croft-Cooke also found the German agents he was hunting. After receiving a tip, he nabbed them before dawn while they were sleeping in a hut.
“The west coast ports were needed for control of the Mozambique Channel where our convoys were molested by the U-boats. The governor-general remained obdurate. Further operations had to take place,”
…wrote Churchill. In the end, the decision was finally made to occupy the remainder of Madagascar in a three-stage operation named Stream Line Jane.
Stream would be a landing at Majunga, followed immediately by Line, a march on Madagascar’s capital, Antananarivo, finishing with Jane, a landing at Tamatave. A convoy of reinforcements including the famed King’s African Rifles (KAR) sailed from Mombasa to rendezvous in the Mozambique Channel with Croft-Cooke and the 29th Brigade on the night of September 9, 1942.
Another writer, Kenneth C. Gandar-Dower, was with the reinforcing troops that night. He had flown a rickety two-seater from England to India, later exploring Kenya and the Belgian Congo and publishing accounts of his exploits. The war provided him more opportunity for exotic adventure as a correspondent covering first the invasion of Ethiopia and now Madagascar.
“The world was dark and empty for us—and Madagascar,” he wrote of that night at sea. “I did not know what lay ahead.” What did lie ahead was an episode that would go down in British lore as the Battle Before Breakfast.
The invasion force appeared off Majunga at 3 am. “Between the troopships, something was moving, a little black blob that seemed to have no shape,” Gandar-Dower wrote. “After a while, I realized it was not alone. There was another, and another, and another.”
They were assault craft carrying East Lancashire troops and Welsh Fusiliers to the beach nine miles out of town. When daylight came, his ship moved to 400 yards from shore, and he watched “little figures crawl slowly up cliffs of white chalk, following the convolutions of a winding track, halting, going on…. It was if we cut away half an ant hill, replaced by a pane of glass, and through the glass, were watching ants at war.”
In fact, he was watching a feint attack like the one at Diego Suarez.
Croft-Cooke was coming in with the real landing force, headed straight for the docks. “It took an hour and a half to reach the shore,” he related, “and before we had done, dawn had arrived. We could see Majunga in the rosy light of sunrise, a white city among palms. At first, it seemed peaceful enough, but as we were within earshot, we could hear the sound of machine guns, and we knew the French were resisting. We caught a glimpse of the Commandos hurrying up a narrow street and saw our men along the white sand of the beach.”
The Commandos landed at 5:20, quickly overwhelmed the machine guns then swarmed into the town. Croft-Cooke followed, pushing his ever-present motorcycle through the surf and sand. “The fighting was almost over, but a few shots were still audible to give me the illusion of taking part in a fight for the town,” he recalled.
The Commandos met only scattered resistance as they occupied the bank, post office, and residence of the regional administrator, and in 90 minutes, the battle—such as it was—ended with a dozen British dead. Commandos trying to flank the town had run into a far different, more determined opponent.
“As we traveled up the river,” Fred Munson remembered, “the tide began to go out, and we began to run aground on a sandbank. The river was full of crocodiles, so before we could get into the water to lighten the craft and push them off the sandbanks, hand grenades were thrown into the river to keep the crocodiles at bay.”
In Majunga, the garrison commander, Major Didier Martins, got caught in bed at the time of the attack but managed to get himself slightly wounded in the left elbow and, no doubt for the benefit of his Vichy superiors, made a show of presenting himself with a theatrically oversized sling.
“Did my men fight well?” he asked.
“Magnificently!” the British commander played along.
As at Antisare, finding a bugle to call surrender proved difficult. A young British officer was sent to the Martins home for a white flag. He found Madame Martins hysterically barricaded in her bedroom.
From outside the door, the officer explained why he was there and assured her that he was not going to rape her. The door finally creaked open, and a trembling hand passed out a broomstick and bed sheet. “A curious gaiety spread through the town at lunchtime,” Croft-Cooke observed. “We were openly welcomed, and the hope was expressed we should occupy the capital before long.”
By then, the KAR and a South African armored car column had set out 250 miles southeast to do just that. They covered 131 miles in just 18 hours, only to be slowed to a crawl by the first of some 3,000 roadblocks Vichy forces were eventually to put up all over Madagascar. The KAR worked around the clock dismantling the obstacles and met their only serious opposition 150 miles from Atananarivo, at the mountain village of Ariba.
Senegalese troops kept the KAR under heavy machine-gun fire until a sergeant named Odillo, whose British officer had been killed, led his platoon around the Senegalese and then came screaming down on them wielding three-foot-long, curved panga machetes.
“After firing to the last, one of the Senegalese would jump out and try to scuttle through our lines. We dropped a number of them like rabbits,” the KAR colonel said. Four of the KAR died in the fight, while the eight wounded were laid without rancor or bitterness alongside Senegalese casualties, though neither would accept being put next to a Malagasy conscript.
British colonial troops fire their field artillery pieces toward Vichy French entrenchments on Madagascar. Defending their government’s sovereign territory, the Vichy soldiers were defeated after several sharp fights with the British forces. This action took place near the village of Ambositra.
After 13 days, the column reached Atananarivo to be met by a Special Operations Executive operative, Royal Navy Lieutenant Peter Simpson Jones, standing by a Renault in a crisp, new tropical suit. He and a companion had delivered a radio set to another agent, but their dinghy had capsized in Madagascar’s notoriously shark-infested waters while they were rowing out for pickup. The companion drowned, but Jones was rescued by a fisherman. At his court-martial, at which he was sentenced to five years in prison, the Vichy prosecutor had suggested, “Don’t you think in the next world war,you might do better to join the artillery?”
Percy Mayer’s piano-playing, radio key-tapping wife, who spent several anxious weeks expecting arrest, was also safe. Governor General Armand Annet had fled, and with no one to take the surrender, a British officer walked into the radio station to politely request airtime for a not quite historic announcement:
“At 5 pm, our troops occupied Atananrivo. Everything is quiet. That is all.”
Five days earlier, the Jane portion of the operation had taken place. With the surf at Tamatave too rough for landings in the dark, the plan was to intimidate the town into surrender with an overwhelming show of naval force. “They might bluff up to the last minute, but not beyond it. The guns would never have to fire,” Gandar-Dower believed, but he was proven wrong—for three minutes.
That was how long the British bombardment went on after the French had rejected a 10 AM ultimatum. They hoisted a white flag at 10:03. Gandar-Dower sloshed ashore, bowler hat on head, camera in one hand, typewriter in the other, to witness a great deal of activity—soldiers in firing positions, rushing about, kicking in doors–but no action. “It was,” he wrote, “like a Hollywood assault, which was being held up by the failure of the other side to put in an appearance.”
An old woman shuffled up to him to ask if the battle was over. It was, he said, and soon he and the British were marching into town, at their head, a young lady “in the shortest of bathing costumes and pair of first-class legs.”
Even though Stream Line Jane had been successfully completed, the campaign for Madagascar would drag on for six senseless weeks. With a mix of defiance and delusion, Governor General Annet had sent off a crazed cable to Vichy: “Our available troops are preparing to resist every enemy advance with the same spirit which inspired our soldiers at Diego Suarez, at Majunga, at Atananarivo, where each time the defense became a page of heroism written by La France.”
British troops affected widespread landing don the West coast of Madagascar, including the ports of Majunga and Morondava. At Majunga, opposition, which was only slight, was soon overcome and the civil and military authorities arranged the surrender of the town. British Bren gun carrier on the road in Majunga, Madagascar, Oct. 5, 1942. (AP Photo)
He had fled 190 miles south to Finanarantsoa, and the KAR had set off in pursuit. Gandar-Dower followed in a confiscated Citroen truck, bicycle, and pirogue, admitting, “We saw little of the war, but met with a great deal of curious adventure.”
Rupert Croft-Cooke was having his own adventure with a lieutenant and a half-dozen soldiers searching for a French lieutenant with 100 conscripts. Along the way, they had encountered crocodiles, chasing them off with rifle shots. They later came upon a female English missionary, alone, forgotten, and resigned to staying after over 40 years.
“Five hours of being paddled up a crocodile-infested river in Madagascar to a collection of native huts does not prepare one for such an encounter,” Croft-Cooke wrote. Then he and the lieutenant finally had their discussion with the French officer:
“You have, of course, some soldiers?” the Frenchman asked.
“Yes,” the British one replied. “We have some soldiers.”
“Naturally, they are armed?”
“Naturally.”
“Automatic weapons, I presume?”
“Tommy guns.”
“You have, perhaps, some other forces in the area?”
“We have.”
“With some artillery, no doubt?”
“Certainly.” It was back at the coast.
“Ah. You will excuse me a moment.” He immediately wired Annet, “Occupied today by British forces armed with automatic weapons and supported by artillery.”
The campaign became one more of annoyance than action as the stubborn Vichy put up hundreds more roadblocks. “When I shut my eyes and think of Madagascar, I see one enormous roadblock,” Gandar-Dower remembered.
The French laid melon-sized rocks exactly 20 yards apart for miles and erected 18-foot stone walls. In the last significant action, the KAR turned an attempted ambush on itself, marching 30 miles around to attack from the rear, killing 40 and taking 800 prisoners. The Malagasy, always quick to run from battle, were now running away for good, deserting in droves. Even worse for the Vichy, law and order were breaking down. Croft-Cooke was an official witness at the execution by firing squad of a Malagasy for the unprecedented murder of a French settler.
After a five-week march, the KAR reached Finanarantsoa, only to find that Annet had fled another 190 miles southwest. With the KAR still in pursuit and after almost being killed when his staff car was strafed from the air, Annet finally sent his aide, Captain Louis Fauche, to negotiate surrender. In a 650-mile march, the KAR had routed 6,000 defenders for a loss of five British officers killed, six wounded and 20 Africans killed, 76 wounded.
Fauche agreed to surrender with the curious condition that it did not go into effect for another 10 hours, until 12:01 amon November 6, 1942.
The reason turned out to be, to the very end, about career concerns. Having the campaign last for exactly six months qualified the French for medals, promotions, and even cash awards, but any chance was dashed days later. To cap the fruitless futility of it all in Madagascar, the Germans occupied Vichy France.
Churchill was modestly satisfied with the campaign for Madagascar. “We had gained full military control over an island of high strategic importance to the safety of our communication with the Near and Far East,” he noted. “The Madagascar episode was in its secrecy of planning and tactical execution a model of amphibious operations. The news arrived at a time when we sorely needed success. It was in fact for long months the only sign of good and efficient war direction of which the British public were conscious.”
De Gaulle was angered at being left out. Kenneth Gandar-Dower, by contrast, later wrote, “It was for me a fascinating experience, an isolated six weeks of strange adventure.” He admitted that it was “certainly more than an exercise, but very much less than a war…. The French consciously or unconsciously conducted their defense according to formula. The first was ‘maximum results for minimum expenditure.’ The second: ‘resist as long and as fiercely as you can without loss of life—either French or British.’” Gandar-Dower’s exotic adventuring and writing ended when his transport was torpedoed en route to Ceylon on February 12, 1944.
Rupert Croft-Cooke soon left Madagascar for his next and last wartime posting, India. He spent most of his postwar life in other out-of-the-way locales, including Morocco and Tunisia, after serving six months in prison for homosexual activity in England in 1953, but he was through with Madagascar. He later wrote, “I shall never go back to Madagascar with its blood-red earth and creeping shadows.”
He continued with his prolific, if ultimately forgotten, writing and in 1953 published his account of events in Madagascar titled The Blood-Red Island. Tragically, Madagascar would become that, and not just from the soil. An uprising in 1947 against the French was crushed with perhaps 100,000 dead, and independence in 1958 was marked by more violence and tribal strife.
Empires come and go.
No empire stays around for long. They all have a half-life. This is simply because humanity cannot exist, let alone thrive under an empire. It just cannot.
Empires come and go.
Some thoughts…
It is easy, so very easy, to get caught up in the history of the past. So and so, directing troops of Mr. XYZ and using the artillery of ABC attacked the hamlet of ZZZZ. So exciting. So interesting. So fascinating.
And the geo-political issues… well it is often simplified to “it had to happen, as other decisions were in motion”. Like “we had to invade Madagascar to stop the Japs (the Japanese) from invading Africa, or the Middle East, or the Mediterranean sea.” It was a necessity. They all argue.
Now…
Pause.
Think.
Look at a bigger, a much bigger picture.
No, I’m not talking about the Japanese Empire fighting the British Empire. Or the Russian Empire fighting the German Empire. Or the American empire fighting the world.
Nor, am I talking about the bankers and their control of the finances of the world. (For they tend to be the major players in all this nasty wars and fighting nonsense.)
I am talking about something, much bigger.
Something much bigger than earth-wide politics.
There are so many people, involved in so many aspects of human society that it is one big enormous mess. Everyone is fighting and striving for the bits and crumbs left over on the ground. The “news” is off yelling and screeching one narrative after the other in rapid and rabid succession. And even though you have a kind of allegiance to one side of a complex social-economic coin, the truth of the matter is something else entirely.
We are all puppets.
The American oligarchy has created factions that they pit against one another so that the peasants (debit serfs = you) will not rise up and kill them all.
And with all this confusion going on…
…and all this turmoil, just how can anyone sort any thing out?
The owners of the Earth have a say on what goes on…
What if you were an extraterrestrial looking at this entire event. What if you were watching dispassionately. What would you think about all of this? What would you think of the British invading a tiny island (ok, maybe not so tiny) off the coast of Africa?
What would you think?
Why was the UK busy invading Madagascar?
Why?
Why was the British busy invading Madagascar?
Why, indeed.
What was all this about?
At that time, the entire globe was plunged into war. Empires fought empires. And there were a bunch of them. Don’t you know.
And afterwards…
The British Empire collapsed in stages.
Leaving only two empires remaining. The Soviet Union Empire, and the United States Empire.
In the late 1980’s the Soviet Union Empire collapsed, and that left the United States Empire that maintained sole dominance of much of the globe.
From the 1980’s to today (2020), forty years…
It’s been non stop military wars, military development, military bases. All either open or covert. And while all this has been going on, the internal structure, and balance of what America was founded upon has rotted away. And what is left?
Nothing much.
Americans (and the rest of the world) are “burned out”. They want all this fighting, bickering, and torment to end. They just want to live their lives in peace.
And now today…
You all have a Casino owner for a President, and a cabal of war-mongering neocons that are gonna show the world that America is still the toughest bully in the world. Meanwhile, the media is full of fear, fear fear to control an increasingly upset population of debit serfs, and modern slaves in the urban centers.
Conflict is all but certain…
All of the indicators are pointing to this in alarm!
From 2020 through 2025, will be a very testy and trying time for America and for Americans. However, things will start to get much better and by 2030, everything will be just fine.
We know what is going on.
We know what is happening and why.
But…
You know, if I was an extraterrestrial, and my species was in charge of the earth I would look at things quite differently. I really would.
An extraterrestrial head’s up.
In fact, I would not care at all about the details. Let the humans fight among each other. Let them sort things out. My concern would be long term and everlasting damage. But even at that, there would be some leeway provided.
I would do the following…
I would isolate the biggest troublemaker (the USA from the rest of the world).
Economically, and by trade.
By treaties with other nations.
Keep the citizens of that nation fighting among themselves.
I would allow the nation to collapse.
No support for new technology.
No intervention of any type.
Instead, I’d make new alliances with healthier nations.
In fact, all things being equal, I would permit limited global war engagement.
Sometimes it’s better to kill the rabid dog before it infects others.
Isolation of the battlefield(s) to the American nation.
Permit and encourage shunning or isolation of the rabid nation.
Change the system
I would permit and encourage the development of other forms of commerce.
And, other forms of finance.
And, other forms and systems of society.
Allowing traditional governance with a heavily monitored presence.
Now, with this under consideration, is that not what is going on now?
Sentience selection and sorting. A fight for the dominant sentience for humans. Shall it be “Service for self” (The American neocon, and Oligarchy preference), “Service for others” (Which is more Buddhist, and representative of China, and Russia.) or a continuation of the current state with a segregated humanity. One that has two sentience’s for mankind; a ruling “Service for self”, and a subservient, servant class “Service for another” sentience?
What is going on today…
Let’s look, shall we…
For Americans
it’s confusing. The rabid dog is barking up a storm, jumping around all over, and has started to rollover and over on the dirt, causing you and your fellow fleas great discomfort. To make matters worse, some fleas actually cheer the dog on. Telling everyone else that they have never had it so good, and that the dog must bark to preserve their “flea society”.
It’s all a big mess on the back of that nasty rabid dog.
You are here.
So to understand how to survive and get through the next couple of decades, understand that you all (if you are Americas) are fleas on a very sick and rabid dog. He’s running around everywhere, barking up a storm and digging holes all over the yard. The other dogs are afraid of him, and the farmer has got his shotgun out because he doesn’t want his prized poodle, and collie torn up by the rabid pit bull. Will he pull the trigger?
For the rest of the world
Well, you are a flea on the back of one of the other dogs in the yard. You know that the farmer probably will not shoot your dog. But that crazed rabid dog has been barking and snarling at your dog for some some time now. If the farmer does not shoot, the crazed rabid dog will tear your dog to pieces…
Whats going to happen?
Well…
Time is our friend. Not our enemy.
And the invasion by America of another nation will only accelerate the coming end of the United States. Not delay it.
MAKE NO MISTAKE. Things are falling into place as they should. And do not get too caught up on all the details, and the lies spewing forth from the dying nation.
A big reminder…
What you think the universe is, what you think reality is, and what science is … well, it’s all wrong. The reality that we inhabit is quite different than what you all think. And when I say that things are happening and following a plan because that’s the way it is …
… well, believe me. OK.
Strange coincidences…
Do you want more?
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I hope that you found this post curious. Please take care. You can view other similar posts in my SHTF Index, here…
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The decision to land a probe on the asteroid 433 Eros, and place a spacecraft in orbit around it was not by random chance. No particular scientist looked at a tabulated list of the thousands of asteroids and picked it out randomly. There was a real good reason. And that reason, boys and girls, is because MAJestic (through NASA) wanted a close look at the extraterrestrial facility there.
What the public is told…
The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR)
The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) was designed to study the near Earth asteroid 433 Eros from close orbit. It was designed to operate for over a period of a year. It was designed quickly (for a NASA program) and was successfully launched in February 1996. It traveled for four years until it was able to enter orbit around the asteroid in February 2000.
The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) spacecraft took 4 years from launch until it became the first spacecraft to orbit an asteroid in February 2000.
A month later, the spacecraft was re-named "NEAR Shoemaker" to honor the late Eugene Shoemaker.
To save launch costs, the mission used a special 2-year-period trajectory with an Earth gravity assist. On the way, the spacecraft imaged the asteroid 253 Mathilde.
On 20 December 1998, NEAR’s large engine misfired, failing to brake it for entry into orbit about 433 Eros. Another attempt 2 weeks later succeeded, but the spacecraft was almost a million kilometers away and took over a year to reach the asteroid.
The mission was recovered thanks to a generous fuel supply and robust contingency planning.
The implementation of the spacecraft’s daring orbital maneuvers is described, including those used to land on Eros’ surface in February 2001.
-NEAR Mission Design
In 1991, a “Discovery” Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) mission was proposed, and competitive proposals for it were prepared by APL and by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
The APL proposal was selected and system definition studies were carried out in 1992–1993.
The studies first concentrated on direct flight paths to small near-Earth asteroids that lay on the Ecliptic plan. The initial plan was with a mission to (4660) Nereus that would launch in January 1998.
Jan 01, 2000 · The Apollo type asteroid (4660) Nereus (1982DB) is recognized as one of the most accessible asteroid, and it is a candidate for the target of MUSES-C project, i.e. the first asteroid sample return mission by the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS).
-Photometric observation of (4660)Nereus - ScienceDirect
Strangely, some vocal but un-named scientists were concerned that an intensive orbital survey of such a small asteroid might not be very productive. They INSISTED that the entire mission be re-scoped to a completely different asteroid.
So these un-named scientists had the program target changed.
They argued that the 433 Eros asteroid would be a much better target since it has dimensions of about 14 x 14 x 33 km, about 400 times the area and over 6000 times the volume of 4660 Nereus. It was much, much, larger.
4660 Nereus. The initial size estimate for Nereus came from an optical R-band study (Ishibashi et al., 2000a, 2000b) which concluded that it is an elongated object with diameter between 1.1–1.3 km
433 Eros. Much larger at 33 x 13 x 13 km.
Unfortunately, problem was that 433 Eros was way, way out of the way. It was not on nor lay closely upon the Ecliptic Plane as all the other asteroids that were being considered. It was “in the boondocks”, and way out of the way. Making a trip to visit is outrageously difficult.
Eros’ orbit is inclined 11° to the ecliptic (Earth’s orbit plane), requiring, for direct transfers, high declination of launch asymptotes and launch energies that are too high for a reasonably sized spacecraft with the Discovery-baselined Delta-class launch vehicle.
This problem was solved by using a 2-year delta V-Earth Gravity Assist (delta VEGA) trajectory.
The spacecraft would be launched into an orbit with an approximately 2-year period in the ecliptic plane 23 months before the latest minimum-launch energy departure date on 22 or 23 January 1998.
Near aphelion of this orbit, a delta V maneuver would be performed to target an Earth swing-by at the optimum date. At the Earth return, the spacecraft’s velocity relative to the planet would be increased considerably, allowing a swing-by low over the Northern Hemisphere that would bend the trajectory into Eros’ orbit plane with its 11° inclination to the ecliptic.
-NEAR Mission Design
In mid-1993, the delta VEGA trajectory to Eros was adopted as the baseline for the NEAR mission. At aphelion in early 1997, the space-craft would be behind the Sun as seen from the Earth, so the deep space delta V was moved to early March, several days after the NEAR spacecraft (re-christened NEAR Shoemaker in March 2000 to honor the late Eugene Shoe-maker) left the solar exclusion zone within 3° of the Sun, where communications with the spacecraft would be difficult or impossible.
Trajectory for the NEAR spacecraft to visit 433 Eros.
After a four year travel, the NEAR spacecraft approached the asteroid and started to make it’s approach. This approach involved a lot of fuel, but unusually good planning on the part of NASA made sure that the spacecraft would be able to get into a fine parking orbit around the asteroid.
The table below, lists several parameters for each of the propulsive maneuvers performed by the NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft. In the last column, under “Mode,” the table
The table below, lists several parameters for each of the propulsive maneuvers (changing trajectory planes) performed by the NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft. In the last column, under “Mode,” the table indicates the basic strategy for orienting the spacecraft according to the options available (and described elsewhere).
It’s all very interesting (to me at least), but let’s not get too bogged down on all the interesting details. In short, the spacecraft needed to maneuver to get into orbit. This took generous amounts of fuel and energy. And, as specified earlier, this is simply because the spacecraft was moving to a difficult to visit, and difficult to go into orbit about, asteroid.
Here’s a summary of the orbital and trajectory firings, if you don’t believe me…
Orbital firings of the engines for the NEAR spacecraft.
Objectives
The primary scientific objectives of NEAR were to return data on the bulk properties, composition, mineralogy, morphology, internal mass distribution and magnetic field of 433 Eros. Secondary objectives include studies of asteroid regolith properties (loosely consolidated surface material), interactions with the solar wind, possible current activity as indicated by dust or gas and the asteroid spin state.
NASA’s NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft, met all its scientific goals in orbiting the asteroid Eros and successfully accomplished a controlled descent to the surface of the asteroid on 12 February 2001. The chief goal of the controlled descent to the surface was to gather close-up pictures of the boulder-strewn surface of 433 Eros, more than 196 million miles from Earth.
DESIGN
The NEAR spacecraft design is mechanically simple and geared toward a short development and test time. Except for the initial deployment of the solar panels and protective instrument covers, the spacecraft has only one moveable mechanism. Its distributed architecture allows parallel development and test of each subsystem, yielding an unusually short spacecraft integration and test period.
Several innovative features of the NEAR design include the first use of an x-band solid-state power amplifier for an interplanetary mission, the first use of a hemispherical resonator gyroscope in space and extremely high-accuracy, high voltage power supply control.
Equipment layout of the NEAR Spacecraft.
The spacecraft has the shape of an octagonal prism, approximately 1.7m on each side. It has four fixed gallium arsenide solar panels in a windmill arrangement, a fixed 1.5m X-band high-gain radio antenna with a magnetometer mounted on the antenna feed and an X-ray solar monitor on one end (the forward deck). The other instruments are fixed on the opposite end (the aft deck). Most electronics are mounted on the inside of the decks. The propulsion module is contained in the interior.
PROPULSION
The craft is three-axis stabilized and uses a single bipropellant (hydrazine/nitrogen tetroxide) 450 Newton (N) main thruster and four 21N and seven 3.5N hydrazine thrusters for propulsion, for a total delta-V potential of 1,450m/s. Attitude control is achieved using the hydrazine thrusters and four reaction wheels. The propulsion system carried 209kg of hydrazine and 109kg of NTO oxidizer in two oxidizer and three fuel tanks.
NEAR Spacecraft showing deployment of the solar panels.
Power was provided by four 1.8m x 1.2m gallium arsenide solar panels that can produce 400W at 2.2AU (NEAR’s maximum distance from the Sun) and 1,800W at 1AU. Power was stored in a 9A/hr, 22-cell rechargeable super nickel-cadmium battery.
INSTRUMENTATION
The spacecraft also featured Multi-Spectral Imager (MSI) for imaging Eros in multiple spectral bands to determine its shape and surface features and to map mineral distributions. It had a NEAR Infrared Spectrometer (NIS) for measuring the near-infrared spectrum to determine the distribution and abundance of surface minerals and a NEAR Laser Rangefinder (NLR). This is a laser altimeter that measures the range to the surface to build up high-resolution topographic profiles (giving a global shape model of Eros).
It also has an X-ray/Gamma-Ray Spectrometer (XGRS) detecting X-ray fluorescence from elements on the asteroid surface. Some of the emissions are excited by cosmic rays and some are from natural radioactivity in the asteroid. There is also a Magnetometer (MAG) that searches for and maps any intrinsic magnetic field around Eros and a Radio Science, which is a coherent X-band transponder measuring radial velocities of the spacecraft relative to Earth, helping to map the gravitational field of Eros.
Since the robot spacecraft was not designed for such activity, the success of the landing on asteroid433 Eros was not assured. In short, after the orbital mapping was completed, the NASA team crashed the spacecraft into the asteroid. They tried to do it gingerly, but they pretty much smashed it onto the surface.
The last picture taken by the NEAR-Shoemaker spacecraft prior to impact.
Shown above is the last picture taken by NEAR-Shoemaker before its touchdown.
The streaking on the lower part of the image was caused by the loss of telemetry as the satellite impacted the surface.
The image was taken 130 meters above the surface and spans 6 meters across. Rocks as small as a human hand are visible.
The Official Narrative…
Feb. 12, 2001 — After an apparently gentle descent, the first spacecraft ever to land on an asteroid touched down today shortly after 3 p.m. ET.
The 1,100-pound craft settled on a saddle-shaped depression of the asteroid, Eros, and then continued transmitting signals to Earth, suggesting it was not damaged as it struck the asteroid’s rock-strewn surface.
Asteriod Landing Animation “I am happy to report that the NEAR has touched down,” said Robert Farquhar, the NEAR mission director, just after the craft transmitted its zero altitude location. “We are still getting signals!”
Not only was the dicey landing the first successful touchdown on an asteroid, it was also the most faraway landing ever attempted — at a distance of 196 million miles from Earth. The NEAR Shoemaker robot craft has no legs or landing gear and was never designed to land. To ensure a successful landing, controllers managed to slow the craft from about 20 to about 3 miles per hour.
First, controllers at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., triggered the craft to thrust its engines so the compact car-sized probe was knocked from its orbit and aimed for the asteroid. Then the team used a series of four rocket firings to slow the craft as it drifted toward the asteroid.
“We’re right on the money,” said NEAR Mission Operations Manager Robert Nelson as the NEAR probe drifted toward Eros. By just before 3 p.m. ET, the probe was less than a mile from the asteroid and approaching slowly. During its final descent scientists snapped about two photos of the asteroid every minute.
At one point controllers believed the craft had landed and then bounced away from the asteroid, but soon they received data suggesting it was resting on the rocky celestial outpost. The craft landed nearly on time, touching down on a 6-mile-wide, saddle-shaped depression at Eros’ side at 3:07 p.m.
“It’s an exciting area geologically because we’re on the edge of this large depression — which is probably a very large impact crater — and we’ll be getting images of its interior as well as of the heavily cratered terrain on the outside,” says NEAR imaging team member Mark Robinson of Northwestern University.
Now that it has managed a gentle landing, the tin-can shaped probe is expected to provide unprecedented up-close images and data from the asteroid for up to three months…
(NEAR landing site on Eros) Take a look at these high-quality, close-up images of Asteroid 433 Eros that NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft transmitted as it floated to a historic landing on the rocky surface nearly 200 million miles (322 million kilometers) from Earth on Monday, February 12, 2001.
Science Fiction Landings
As far as I know, the first story about landing a craft on an asteroid was written by Edward Drax in 1931. In The Travel Tales of Mr. Joseph Jorkens, minor navigation problems result in a landing on an asteroid:
"I had not seen it as soon as I had seen Mars, on account of its being so near to the line of the Sun... I couldn't make out anything, as most of the orb was in darkness...
I got into the darkness at last and switched on my engines, and flew till I came to the very first edge of twilight that gave light enough for me to land...
And that was how I came to make a bad landing, with my wheels deep down in a marsh..."
A more technical approach to landing on an asteroid was completed by Robert Heinlein. In his 1939 short story Misfit, young men without a trade were given another chance in the Cosmic Construction Corps. One job was to make a livable space habitat on selected asteroids.
He walked over by the lookouts at stereoscopes and radar tanks and peered up at the star-flecked blackness. Three cigarettes later the lookout nearest him called out.
"Light ho!"
"Where away?"
His mate read the exterior dials of the stereoscope. "Plus point two, abaft one point three, slight drift astern." He shifted to radar and added, "Range seven nine oh four three."
"Does that check?"
"Could be, Captain. What is her disk?" came the Navigator's muffled voice from under the hood.
The first lookout hurriedly twisted the knobs of his instrument, but the Captain nudged him aside. "I'll do this, son." He fitted his face to the double eye guards and surveyed a little silvery sphere, a tiny moon. Carefully he brought two illuminated cross-hairs up until they were exactly tangent to the upper and lower limbs of the disk. "Mark!"
The reading was noted and passed to the Navigator, who shortly ducked out from under the hood.
"That's our baby, Captain"
...McCoy forced them to lie down throughout the ensuing two hours. Short shocks of rocket blasts alternated with nauseating weightlessness. Then the blowers stopped and check valves clicked into their seats. The ship dropped free for a few moments -- a final quick blast -- five seconds of falling, and a short, light, grinding bump. A single bugle note came over the announcer, and the blowers took up their hum.
Public Discoveries
Of course, the entire data pool from the NEAR spacecraft is available for “armchair” and regular scientists to study. Of course, NASA has to “clean up” the data before releasing it. Don’t you know. There were things that might not be easy to explain or might be confusing to “Joe and Suzy Average”.
The photos of the asteroid have been very nice.
433 Eros is an S-type near-Earth asteroid approximately 34.4×11.2×11.2 kilometers (21.4×7.0×7.0 mi) in size, the second-largest near-Earth asteroid after 1036 Ganymed. It was discovered in 1898 and was the first near-Earth asteroid discovered. It was the first asteroid orbited by an Earth probe (in 2000). It belongs to the Amor group. Eros was one of the first asteroids to be visited by a spacecraft, and the first to be orbited and soft-landed on. NASA spacecraft NEAR Shoemaker entered orbit around Eros in 2000, and came to rest on its surface in 2001.
Well, the public will never know what was really discovered or found out.
Instead we get to see nice pictures of dust, rocks and dirt.
This view of asteroid 433 Eros is part of an image mosaic taken in the early hours of October 26, 2000, during NEAR Shoemaker’s low-altitude flyover of Eros. Taken while the spacecraft’s digital camera was looking at a spot 8 kilometers (5 miles) away, the image covers a region about 800 meters (2600 feet) across. Rocks of all sizes and shapes are set on a gently rolling, cratered surface. Locally, fine debris or regolith buries the rocks. The large boulder at the center of the scene is about 25 meters (82 feet) across.
What we are told instead is the geology of the asteroid itself. And while this is very interesting, most people wouldn’t really care about it at all. They just don’t.
433 Eros had a past full of impacts and the resulting craters.
Eros is 20 miles (33 kilometers) long and about 8 miles (13 kilometers) wide. It is the most well studied asteroid. NEAR-Shoemaker mapped Eros in detail back in 2000-2001 before officials executed a controlled and dramatic crash landing, the first-ever touchdown on an asteroid.
433 Eros.
Like any asteroid, Eros been banging around the solar system in some form for about 4.5 billion years.
In the early days of the solar system, when things were more crowded, collisions were frequent. Some large asteroids become smaller. Some small rocks stuck together and grew. Many were scooped up by the fledgling Earth and the other planets.
Two examples of evidence for a joint and fracture structure underlying the regolith layer on 433 Eros, imaged by the NEAR-Shoemaker spacecraft, in the form of: (A) several structurally controlled, `square’ impact craters (MET 132151598, 218.91 W, 16.64 S, 5.57 m/pixel); and (B) a network of criss-crossing ridges and grooves, with a few, small, structurally controlled craters (MET 136266921, 218.72 W, 42.00 N, 4.58 m/pixel).
The asteroids that remain, confined mostly to a belt between Mars and Jupiter, harbor a tale of the solar system’s formation. But first scientists have to figure out how to read their language, with an alphabet of craters and cracks and a grammar based largely on mineral composition and density.
Another great view of 433 Eros.
Among Eros’ most striking features is an impact crater 4.7 miles (7.6 kilometers) wide that scientists have determined was carved fairly recently. Another curious aspect to Eros is that across nearly 40 percent of its surface, all craters up to about a third of a mile (0.5 kilometers) wide have been erased.
Smooth surface.
The smooth surface has puzzled scientists since the NEAR landing.
A great view of 433 Eros.
The new study, led by Cornell University researcher Peter Thomas, nixed one theory by determining that the vanished craters could not have been covered by material ejected in the recent large impact. Further, the locations of the erased craters suggests they were jiggled out of existence by the internal vibrations caused in the impact.
Two examples of ponded deposits on 433 Eros, imaged by the NEAR-Shoemaker spacecraft. Note the marked difference in morphology between these ponds and the degraded craters shown Fig. 1(D) and Fig. 15, indicative of different formation processes. The ponds shown here are located on the low surface-gravity (2.5-3.0 mm sec^-2) ‘nose’ of the asteroid, which also spends a longer than average amount of time near the terminator (light/dark boundary). (A) A beautiful 100 m diameter ponded deposit containing an embedded 25 m boulder. Note the extremely flat surface containing a tiny (few-meter diameter) impact crater (MET 155888598, 179.04 W, 2.42 S, 0.55 m/pixel). (B) A smaller 75 m diameter ponded deposit. Note the difference between the smooth, fine-grained pond surface and the coarse, boulder strewn terrain surrounding the deposit (MET 155888731, 183.88 W, 3.21 S, 0.63 m/pixel).
The hypothesis, if right, can be used to glean an idea of how the asteroid is constructed. Scientists have long wondered if asteroids were solid rocks or, as is likely in at least some cases, loose piles of rubble that have undergone many collisions and managed to hang together.
"Our observations indicate that the interior of Eros is sufficiently cohesive to transmit seismic energy over many kilometers, and the outer several tens of meters [yards] of the asteroid must be composed of relatively non-cohesive material,"
-Thomas and his colleague, Mark Robinson of Northwestern University, write in the July 21 issue of the journal Nature.
That outer non-cohesive stuff would be regolith, which on Earth is called dirt and on our nearest natural satellite is known as Moon dust.
"For the first time, the authors provide convincing evidence that makes this conclusion more than just reasonable conjecture,"
- Erik Asphaug, a scientist at the University of California, Santa Cruz who was not involved in the study.
The non-public discoveries
Famous Taiwanese ufologist Scott Waring, studying NASA official images, regularly publishes his findings and shares his opinions. And, this time, he studied the surface of the near-Earth asteroid Eros from a photograph taken by NASA, and found something interesting on it.
According to the ufologist, on the surface of the asteroid Eros clearly visible unnatural structure, which has a rectangular shape.
NASA has reported that there is a large rectangular shaped object that rests upon 433 Eros.
The ufologist found it very funny that NASA noticed this structure, but the space agency’s explanations turned out to be very predictable and primitive.
According to NASA scientists, this is a “large rectangular object that measures 45 meters (148 feet) across“. There are no further explanations for this finding. (Ah. They know what is going on, and they know that they cannot comment on it.)
It is possible that this object is a mining station that was used by an advanced alien civilization to extract valuable metals.
No further information regarding this feature has been made available.
NASA has nothing further to say about this matter.
What is this thing?
So anyone who looks at this photograph can conclude that this object looks to be of some kind of artificial construction. Why?
The shape is rectangular.
In the exact center of this object is another rectangular object.
The light reflecting off this object is different is type and magnitude from the surrounding terrain.
The shadow of this object shows a rectangular cross section.
The shadow indicates that the front protrusion hangs out and over the terrain, like a gantry crane or some kind of access tube.
Because of the above, those that study this matter believe that this object is not of natural construction.
One thing is clear. The object in the picture is NOT the NEAR Shoemaker probe from NASA. It is something altogether different.
The probe did not “fire” or launch any objects into the asteroid. This is a photo from the NEAR spacecraft as it orbited the asteroid. In so doing it caught a picture of this rectangular object resting on the surface of the asteroid. Then it was ordered to crash into the asteroid.
Non-human probe discovered on 433 Eros. This is a photo of the NASA raw feed for the NEAR Shoemaker Probe as it orbited the 433 EROS asteroid. It shows an object that appears to be a series of interconnected rectangular boxes and containers. There are those that state that these are suggestive of mining operations, but what their true purpose is remains unknown.
Debunkers have their say…
Well, there is no way that this can be “swamp gas”, can it?
Debunkers offer alternative solutions to the observed anomaly. They postulate that [1] it is a Photoshop fraud, or that [2] it is a NASA photo from the Hubble Space Telescope that imaged a photo of the NEAR spacecraft itself on the surface of the asteroid. (If so, then it doesn’t look anything like the spacecraft.) They also postulate that [3] it is merely debris that was ejected from the NEAR spacecraft that happened to land on the asteroid in the fashion shown, and finally [4] it is just a pixilation error caused by a gamma-ray burst that caused an erroneous image pattern.
Interesting stretches of imagination.
But I can personally assure the readership that as of 2004 the MAJestic organization formally considered this object to be an extraterrestrial probe or structure of unknown purpose. That I can tell you all.
Conclusions
In the image of the asteroid Eros made by the NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft on May 1, 2000, when it was at an orbital altitude of 53 km (33 miles), it is visible, a large rectangular object, 45 meters in diameter.
In the image of the asteroid Eros made by the NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft on May 1, 2000, when it was at an orbital altitude of 53 km (33 miles), it is visible, a large rectangular object, 45 meters in diameter.
The size of four (40′ GP) shipping containers laid end to end.
Considering the fact that data from the spacecraft collected on Eros in December 1998 suggest that it can contain 20,000 billion kilograms of aluminum and a similar amount of other metals that are rare on Earth, such as gold and platinum.
The weight of Eros is 6.69 · 1015 kilograms, which is a bit even for an asteroid. However, if we take into account the size of the asteroid – 34.4 km in diameter in the widest place – it turns out that Eros is quite dense, about 2.67 g / cm³. The same density would have an aluminum monolith of similar dimensions. Similar characteristics have the crust. By the way, even with its small size, Eros is the second largest among near-Earth asteroids.
The shape of Eros is irregular, elongated and often compared with peanuts. Because of this, the center of gravity shifts, which creates extremely interesting effects. Moving in its orbit, Eros does not rotate, like spherical bodies – and somersaults, like a boulder rolling from the hill. This also leads to differences in gravitational force. However, it is very easy to overcome it. A man would be able to leave Eros with the help of a foot thrust.
It is possible that this object is a mining station that was used by an advanced alien civilization to extract valuable metals.
The asteroids converging with the Earth are a group of small celestial bodies whose orbit has a chance in future to cross with our planet. The asteroid Eros – is among the most studied asteroids in the solar system.
Eros belongs to the class of asteroids S – the so-called stone asteroids, the material of which consists of silicon and metals.
Orbital characteristics of Eros – its main attraction. Around the Sun, he turns for 1.7 of the Earth year, around his own axis – for 5 and a half hours. But the real feature of Eros is that it belongs to the group of Cupids – asteroids, whose orbit is similar to the terrestrial, but lies further from the Sun. So, none of the Cupids can approach the Sun closer than 1.017 “standard” distance from the Sun to Earth – an astronomical unit. By the way, the Earth itself can move away from the Sun at such a distance – when reaches aphelion, the maximum distance from the luminary. This happens in the middle of summer, between 3 and 7 July.
Due to this they are quite bright – the largest objects of the S-class can be seen in a regular binocular.
Such asteroids also contain a large amount of minerals. After analyzing the composition of Eros, the scientists once again started talking seriously about the industrial development of outer space.
The object found in place on 433 Eros.
This is an interesting object.
If I were a betting man, I would guess that this object is either a robotic mining droid or a monitoring station of some sort.
But I do not know.
As of 2004, neither did MAJestic.
Anyways…
When someone tries to tell you that sooner or later the US Government is going to release “findings” and conduct “studies” on the “UFO issue”, you can laugh in their face. MAJestic has known for years about the population of our solar system by extraterrestrials. It’s just that there are limits to how we can go about in the discovery of these entities and their technologies.
Anyways, enjoy the few precious snippets that you can find on the internet now. The suppression of NASA related images is now “tighter than a drum”. You won’t find much more in the future moving forward.
And this object…
It’s either a robot, a probe, a station, a mining vehicle, or some other mechanism that was not made by humans. It rests upon the asteroid 433 Eros, and does it’s thing. Whatever it’s “thing” is.
MAJestic knows about it. And perhaps it radiated some signals or gave away it’s presence way back in the late 1990’s. Meaning that it was active at that time.
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.
Please kindly help me out in this effort. There is a lot of effort that goes into this disclosure. I could use all the financial support that anyone could provide. Thank you very much.
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Its going to get a lot worse regardless of who wins in November. Get ready
-kerry
As the good Metallicman readership should know, the Second American Civil War started early in 2020. It was at that point in time that a number of unique events transpired that would have been impossible, were American to be a healthy and productive nation. Since then, things have gone downhill fast. Now, prior to the 2020 elections, no one knows who will be elected. But one thing is certain, who ever is elected will not make any difference in the course of what American will go through.
This is true on both sides of the political spectrum, and perhaps that is the only thing that is unifying America right now.
The long, long postponed collapse of the oligarchy run military empire is in process, and no matter what happens, you can rest assured that…
No one will really know what is actually going on.
The “news” is never reported upon. Instead, a confluence of confusing “media reports” and disinformation will occupy much of American media.
External enemies will be identified, and effort made to direct American attention outside the US borders.
Money will continue to be made, but only at the oligarchy level. Everyone else will steadily lose everything.
The stratification of the United States is complete. Most Americans will not be able to ever leave their current status in life.
Now, what this post is all about is something that I have noticed over the last few months, and it is really becoming evident now. It is that idea that [1] the United States is in the middle of an ideological conflict right now, and [2] that it is right before the shooting starts.
Most people, on both sides, agree to this assessment to one extent or the other.
Further, most [3] agree that the election will have a very minor impact on what transpires. That a “hot” American civil war is “in the works”.
I have been told that if President Trump wins the election, that the Progressive Marxists are all set and ready to “burn the nation down”. And the Conservatives, by and large, pretty much agree with this assessment.
In a like way, if the Democratic candidate, Mr. Biden wins, then most Conservatives that I know pretty much expect a forced socialist takeover, and that they would have to fight a militarized Social Marxist America.
Businessmen conduct business. Students go to school. Families make babies. Workers go and toil. Rich people get wealthier. The stock market keeps on going higher and higher. And China is evil, bat-soup slurping monsters. Yada. Yada. Yada.
But behind this colorful exterior lies a cauldron of turmoil that you can cut with a knife.
Yes. All along the “watch-towers” (the modern day equivalents; personal blogs, and small-isolated alternative media) the signals are clear. America is embroiled in a Civil War Right Now. And everyone needs to prepare for the time, in the near future, when things will get ugly.
Most of these blogs are pretty much saying the same thing.
Civil War is going to happen, or is happening.
Other nations will not get involved.
Whatever “external distractions” that are planned will only make things worse.
Among those who discuss the prospects of overthrowing the United States government, there’s a common belief that it would be impossible for domestic rebels to militarily defeat the U.S. armed forces. This inevitably leads to speculations about alternative ways for the rebels to prevail. Maybe we could win most of the U.S. military personnel over to the side of the revolutionaries, or maybe we could get a powerful U.S. rival like China to come to the aid of the rebel forces.
But upon thoroughly examining the situation, these hopes look ever more wishful. China’s goal is not to help foment revolutions abroad. And given that a civil war in the U.S. would no doubt prompt many U.S. allies to get their own militaries involved, Russia, China, and other superpowers would be especially hesitant to intervene given how much risk this would create of world war. Maybe Cuba or the DPRK would come to our aid, but we can’t bank on any foreign army to turn the direction of the class war in our favor.
Propagating Marxist-Leninist theory among U.S. troops is a worthwhile goal. But for every armed forces defector towards the socialist movement that appears in the coming chaotic years of U.S. imperial collapse, there will be plenty of other military members who remain loyal to the forces of fascism and capitalist reaction. Thus comes the recently articulated conclusion from communist YouTuber Hakim that:
The U.S. military and police will never, and I mean will never, join a potential revolution in the U.S. They are a barrier to a revolution. These are the agents of capital sent worldwide to rob, steal, and murder, all for the wealth and power of the bourgeoisie. Reactionary attitudes and counter-revolutionary mindsets are manufactured within the American military and police. For every soldier or policeman that lays down his weapons or, even better, joins the revolution, there will be a hundred, if not a thousand, cracking black skulls and shooting children. I saw it in Iraq. It isn’t far-fetched for it to be the norm in the U.S.
As you look at these facts, you slowly come to realize the stark reality of your situation as someone who’s committed themselves to liberating the world from U.S. capitalism, imperialism, and colonialism. This reality is that you can only rely on the revolutionary organizations within the U.S. to help bring you to victory against the forces of bourgeois reaction. In all likelihood, an army from across the ocean isn’t coming to save you. The throngs of heavily indoctrinated fascists in the U.S. military aren’t going to overwhelmingly join your side. Victory is only going to come from how good you are at sticking with the revolutionary tasks that the material conditions will demand from you.
These tasks are apparent from looking at how the Taliban, despite lacking tanks or warplanes and despite having always been outnumbered and technologically outmatched by the U.S., has managed to prevent the U.S. from defeating it after nineteen years of war. The Taliban has done this by winning the loyalty of much of the local populations in the parts of Afghanistan that they control, using the massive violence and corruption that U.S. imperialism has brought to the country to get many people to see aligning with their organization as the best option.
The Taliban has had advantages that rebel forces in the U.S. won’t necessarily have the equivalent of, like highly mountainous terrain and support from Pakistan. But even if we don’t manage to get military support from Cuba or the DPRK, and even if the U.S. surveillance apparatus forces us to operate with great secrecy, we’ll be able to gain a comparable advantage if we do the work to build popular support for a revolutionary guerrilla effort.
This step is where agitation and organizing come in. If we spend the coming years using the country’s crises to get many more people to join communist parties, and if we do this while educating the masses about the capitalist and imperialist contradictions behind the crises they’re experiencing, we’ll gain a large base of support. Not one that includes the enormous population of reactionaries in the U.S., but one that’s capable of providing a guerrilla struggle with popular backing. With this vision in mind, Hakim has articulated the actions which must accompany these efforts:
Arm yourselves. Establish armed wings of revolutionary organizations. Start coordinating armed actions across the country with as many organizations as you can. Remember, never terrorist activity-only military and state targets. Establish Red bases around the country, and begin building dual power. People’s war is the solution. If you truly want radical change, and if you really want to turn the U.S. from an overwhelming agent of bad in the world into an agent of good, you will need to turn upheaval-with sufficient development-into a civil war.
When this war starts, we’ll need to apply the guerrilla tactics that can make us win. These are the tactics that focus around attrition, the action of gradually weakening the forces of the enemy. Attacking military and state targets, as Hakim said, is how we can accomplish this. If we sustain these attacks, the forces of the U.S. will over time be forced to retreat.
And despite what the “a rebellion can never defeat the U.S. military” perception seems to imply about how such a conflict would play out, the U.S. won’t initially use its heaviest military tools for attacking the rebels. The U.S. will start to cripple itself if it begins bombing cities and infrastructure, and the more military resources it has to sacrifice at home, the less ability it will have to project power abroad. This certainly won’t be good for them in a future scenario where the current resource, climatic, economic, and social crises have all been massively exacerbated, and where U.S. imperial decline will have gone on for much longer than it has so far. Our enemies may have the might of empire on their side, but we’ll have the advantage of fighting against a power structure that’s destabilizing itself amid the collapse of global capitalism.
The foundations of capitalism are falling out. Through guerrilla warfare, we can tear the whole structure down. What this will require from you is the psychological commitment needed to carry forth this operation.
The guerrilla warrior has to endure great bodily sacrifices. In addition to the risks of being killed or injured in battle, the life of a guerrilla can consist of severe hunger, thirst, lack of domestic sanitation, demands for great physical exertion, and the other costs of hiding and traveling outdoors. The accounts of the great guerrilla Che Guevara make these costs apparent. But when you realize the value of revolutionary sacrifice, these things will no longer deter you. The alternative to joining the struggle is to remain complacent, to keep standing by while the U.S. empire collapses into fascism and while your material conditions keep deteriorating. Without making the necessary sacrifices, we won’t be able to defeat the ruling class.
Capitalism and U.S. imperialism may be collapsing, but revolution won’t come of its own accord. It won’t happen after a grand foreign invasion, or after thousands of armed fascists suddenly have a change of heart. It will happen after we realize that the U.S. military is not invincible, and that we have the capacity to win the class war ourselves.
Conclusions
The American media, and the Alt-left and Alt-Right branches are all controlled by the United States government. There is no such thing as a “free independent press” any longer in the United States. That pretty much disappeared in the middle 1980’s. And the narratives that they are promoting today includes a Civil War.
The American media, controlled by the American government / oligarchy, is promoting the idea of an American Civil War.
…
So here you have an American government that controls the media, promoting the narrative that a civil war is either ongoing or will happen soon. This narrative saturates modern life. It affects how Americans view their life, their friends, and their families.
Why are they doing this?
This pushing, this pressing, this march, and drum beat of civil strife is leading up to something. It has a profound influence in what Americans do, how they act, how they save, and how they survive.
…
People are reacting. But not in ways that you (the reader) and I would presuppose. People are guarded, more cautious, and gloomy… but hopeful. Many hold this secret desire that the pain of this year (2020 pandemic, trump trade wars, trump twitter storms, and the city wide riots, not to mention unemployment, etc.) will all come to an end. People want normalcy.
But the media is not giving anyone a break.
Economist Stephen Roach warns next year will be brutal for the dollar.
Not only does he see growing odds of a double-dip recession, the Yale University senior fellow believes his “seemingly crazed idea” that the dollar would crash shouldn’t be so crazy anymore.
“We’ve got data that’s confirmed both the saving and current account dynamic in a much more dramatic fashion than even I was looking for,” Roach told CNBC’s “Trading Nation” on Wednesday.
-Economist Stephen Roach issues new dollar crash warning, sees double-dip recession odds above 50%
It’s non-stop “the world is falling apart” headlines…
Hint: You can tell that the article originated out of the United States government when you see the "index key words" in the title.
In this case "repression".
Let's Google "China + Repression" shall we? I found 10,400,000 results.
…
So, the United States is careening towards a major domestic “hot war”. The government is aware of this, is active in setting the stage for this to occur, and plans to “manage” it in some way.
What we know, from past histories…
The conflicts will be splotchy throughout the United States. Some areas will be basket cases, while other areas will be unaffected.
The leadership plans to be able to ride out the events safely.
The United States (recently) has a terrible record of managing anything.
When the leadership is threatened, the final card will be played (a conflict with a major external power).
What does all this mean?
It means that the next two to three years are going to be testy in the United States. It means that if you planned well, that you will be in a safe area that will be relatively unaffected by the civil assaults. You will not be able to believe the American media. That includes most all alternative media.
Your life will look completely different from what is being “reported”. Just like my life looks completely different from the anti-China “news” reports out of the States.
Now…
Keep in mind, that this is not all.
When things become unmanageable, when the violence they created starts to flow outside their containment structures, then they will set up their back up plans. This will be when the leadership and oligarchy is threatened, they will invoke a war with a major global power. And they DO KNOW the risks. No matter what, they are convinced by their analysts that it will be a long and prolonged conventional war, and that it will be fought far away from the American shores.
But people… listen to me.
It will NOT be [1] a long duration, [2] conventional war, [3] fought in far away battlegrounds, where [4] Americans can be distracted by nightly updates.
It will be a short war.
It will be a nuclear war.
It will be absolutely devastating for the United States.
That war will end the United States as we know it.
Why? Because America as big, and plump and juicy a target as it is, the top leadership, and all the infrastructure has collapsed. It’s a very inflexible, behemoth run by fixed intransigents.
America is FRAGILE.
America is remarkably fragile. All the wealth and industry are concentrated in only a handful of locations.
Ten nuclear missiles is only ONE Chinese ICBM with MIRV’s. One singular submarine can reduce the United States to a third-world shithole within five minutes from launch. (As they tend to carry ten of these missiles each holding ten of these nuclear devices.) And let’s not even talk about the enormous nuclear might of Russia
America IS fragile.
As I see it…
The United States has an enormous military, with far-flung bases all around the world that are dependent upon well-established and fixed lines of supply. But once they logistics channels are interrupted, they are vulnerable.
The United States has some amazing high technology weaponry. But these are complex and need to be maintained, unit readiness is at best 60% and they require fully capable supporting logistics and talent to repair, maintain and operate. All these great weapons systems are vulnerable.
The United States (Through Donald Trump) has pissed of the world. His sole global alignments are Canada, the UK, and Australia. The rest are mercurial, and will change when situations warrant it. Politically, globally, the Untied States is vulnerable.
The oligarchy, and their minions, the American “leadership” fully expect the United States to undergo dramatic change within the next five years. 2020 through 2025.
They have planned for this.
This planning has been in place for decades, and instead of Donald Trump being an aberration in the plan, it is perhaps all a part of the grand scheme of things.
It is curious how the isolation of America "from the world stage" will absolutely limit any chaos and damage that will in America during this period to... ONLY America. There will be very little "spill over" to the rest of the world.
These members of the oligarchy are not fools, and they do not follow the “news” like you and I do. They can see the real picture (to an extent) and know exactly what is going on. And that includes all the various factions vying for power and control in the United States.
What will happen?
No one knows. Certainly I don’t, and I’m perhaps the only “spook” that has some insight into things that’s gonna tell you all the situation publicly. (I am actually much more than a “spook” but you know what I mean.) But all this should be obvious to anyone who spends sometime outside of the American media echo chamber.
But I can say this…
John Titor’s Vision
John Titor claimed to be a time traveler from the future. The world he described is exactly identical to what we are seeing today. The only significant difference are his dates. But, if you add exactly ten years to his dates you get the following….
American civil war starting in 2020 with the first shots fired.
Democratic leadership in control of government afterwards.
Democrat President trying to hold things together and using the DHS (Federal Police) to control the “rebels” in the rural areas.
Well, we will see what happens in November, eh? Who will win? Will Trump win reelection, or will there be a complete sweep of Government to the far-left Marxists? We will find out.
Anyways, John Titor further says that under the democrat President (DHS in control of forces that hunt down Conservatives, according to John Titor.) We have a…
A civil war that lasts for three years.
And then…
An event that triggers a war with Russia.
A possible “First strike” by Russia that devastates all the major cities in America.
Launch of a Chinese SLBM with MIRV (dummy) warheads launched in a practice fun right after Trump pulled the three Carrier Assault flotillas off the Chinese coastline in July 2020.
What is not stated, but implied…
America surrenders.
America is then “sacked”.
Sacked - having been robbed and destroyed by force and violence; "the raped countryside". despoiled, raped, ravaged, pillaged. destroyed - spoiled or ruined or demolished; "war left many cities destroyed"; "
Ten years of so afterwards, after a great “sorting”, many people will die. Many will starve. In fact, John Titor said that the majority of deaths were from Starvation, followed by illness. Then, Guns and radiation, in that order.
A “New America” rises from the ashes of the old.
America is broken up into five nations.
A new world order emerges.
Russia (and China) remain the top trade partners to America.
How accurate is John Titor? I don’t know. But he made these statements back in 1998. He’s been pretty much spot-on, regarding a large number of innocuous predictions and how he described his life. You all might want to plan on his predictions coming true.
It would probably be prudent to plan on his predictions coming true.
Do you want more?
Do you want to see similar posts?
I hope that you found this post curious. Please take care. You can view other similar posts in my SHTF Index, here…
You’ll not
find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy
notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a
necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money
off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you
because I just don’t care to.
Please kindly help me out in this effort. There is a lot of effort that goes into this disclosure. I could use all the financial support that anyone could provide. Thank you.
History can be just amazing. It really can. I have always been interested in history, but that almost ended when I was introduced to history in school instead of stories of the events that took place, I was forced to memorizes dates, names and places. All of which was very, very boring and held no interest to me what so ever. Lucky for me, my father collected some paperback books on history and I would read them at home for fun and enjoyment.
Here is a great little story that took place during “The Great War”, also known as World War I. It involves a German airship and a beautiful Norwegian schooner. Now schooners are beautiful craft. And this one was a nice Gaff-Rigged beauty.
The schooner is a classic sailboat, by definition having at least two masts with the main master being longer than the foremast. Or in other words, the rear mast is taller than all the other masts.
A gaff rig employs a spar on the top of the sail and typically other sails can be set in conjunction with that mainsail with the gaff. Often, on the smaller, non tall ship, gaff rigs, there will be a small triangular sail that fits between the main and the mast like a puzzle piece – this is the topsail.
Now, many of the readership could probably care less about these terms. They want to know the latest news about APPs on their iPhone, not some kind of archaic explanation about how the sails are mounted on wooden boats. But, seriously people, these gaff-rigged schooners were beautiful.
A beautiful gaff-rigged schooner showing all her top-sails riding up high. You can see this wonderful ship can really pick up her skirts and trot.
Anyways…
Back during World War I, German has a fleet of lighter than air military craft called zeppelins. And they were used to conduct military operations at that time alongside the biplanes and tri-planes of that period.
Zeppelins were also very interesting.
A Zeppelin is a type of rigid airship named after the German Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin who pioneered rigid airship development at the beginning of the 20th century.
Zeppelin's notions were first formulated in 1874 and developed in detail in 1893. They were patented in Germany in 1895 and in the United States in 1899. After the outstanding success of the Zeppelin design, the word zeppelin came to be commonly used to refer to all rigid airships.
Zeppelins were first flown commercially in 1910 by Deutsche Luftschiffahrts-AG, the world's first airline in revenue service. By mid-1914, DELAG had carried over 10,000 fare-paying passengers on over 1,500 flights. During World War I, the German military made extensive use of Zeppelins as bombers and as scouts, killing over 500 people in bombing raids in Britain.
-Wikipedia
Anyways, I came across this pretty interesting bit of history in an old (now long gone) internet web page. Then rediscovered this event in an article on futility closet. I found it fascinating. I think that maybe you would as well.
The following is a reprint from futilitycloset titled “Sky Pirates”. It has been edited to fit this venue, and all credit to the authors.
Sky Pirates
The only instance during World War I of an airship capturing a
merchant vessel occurred on April 23, 1917, when the German zeppelin L 23 descended on the civilian Norwegian schooner Royal off the Danish coast. At the airship’s approach the crew abandoned the Royal in boats, and the zeppelin made a water landing to capture them.
The ship turned out to be carrying pit-props, a contraband lading,
and Kapitänleutnant Ludwig Bockholt saw her conducted into the Elbe
escorted by two German destroyers. “The capture of the Royal —
actually a schooner of only 688 tons — hardly affected the trade war
against England,” writes historian Douglas H. Robinson, “but Bockholt’s
flamboyant gesture appealed particularly to the men, and tales of the
exploit were told from Tondern to Hage.”
(Douglas H. Robinson, The Zeppelin in Combat, 1962.)
Conclusion
Can you imagine what it must have been like? The skipper and crew are sailing “close hauled” and then the sky darkens and a huge zeppelin descends. There above you are a crew of angry Germans brandishing rifles and lowering ropes from above to land upon your decks. I cannot help but to think that the uniqueness of the moment had a greater impact than any rifle might have held otherwise.
It might make for a nice little scale model diorama, or a scene in some kind of adventure movie. As I keep trying to tell everyone, history need not be dull, stale, and boring. History is alive with stores of experiences and trials.
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Right now, as I write this, America has two complete battle-ready carrier assault groups in the South China Sea. Each one has one Major carrier, and at least one minor carrier. In addition each are supported by numerous underwater hunter-killer submarines, and both B-1 and B-2 bombers are flying mission sorties over the South China Sea. They are being supported by the British navy with their massive aircraft carrier, and have assurances from Australia that they can be supplied if necessary.
What.
The.
Fuck.
This is extraordinarily dangerous and a difficult time. Why is Donald Trump playing this dangerous “game” with China? Why are these ships off the Chinese coast? And what is all this nonsense about the need to suppress China for “democracy”? Are they out of their collective minds?
Well…
Maybe they are…
The following is a reprint of a great article titled “The Heart of the Matter in the South China Sea” by Pepe Escobar . It was written on July 30, 2020 . It was found on UNZ and copied with very little editing short of fitting within this venue. All credit to the author. You can read the comments on the original article here; Comments .
When the Ronald Reagan and Nimitz carrier strike groups recently engaged in “operations” in the South China Sea, it did not escape to many a cynic that the US Pacific Fleet was doing its best to turn the infantile Thucydides Trap theory into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The pro forma official spin, via Rear Adm. Jim Kirk, commander of the Nimitz, is that the ops were conducted to…
“...reinforce our commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific, a rules-based international order, and to our allies and partners”.
Nobody pays attention to these clichés, because the real message was delivered by a CIA operative posing as diplomat. Mr. Secretary of State Mike “We Lie, We Cheat, We Steal” Pompeo:
“The PRC has no legal grounds to unilaterally impose its will on the region”
,…in a reference to the Nine-Dash Line. For the State Dept., Beijing deploys nothing but “gangster tactics” in the South China Sea.
Once again, nobody paid attention, because the actual facts on the sea are stark.
Anything that moves in the South China Sea – China’s crucial maritime trade artery – is at the mercy of the PLA, which decides if and when to deploy their deadly DF-21D and DF-26 “carrier killer” missiles.
There’s absolutely no way the US Pacific Fleet can win a shooting war in the South China Sea.
The United States has ZERO defense against these deadly missiles.
A crucial Chinese report, unavailable and not referred to by Western media, and translated by Hong Kong-based analyst Thomas Wing Polin, is essential to understand the context.
Not reported in the Western Media.
Unavailable in America.
This report is pretty much well known all over Asia, China, and Russia.
The report refers to US Growler electronic warplanes rendered totally out of control by electronic jamming devices positioned on islands and reefs in the South China Sea.
According to the report,
“after the accident, the United States negotiated with China, demanding that China dismantle the electronic equipment immediately, but it was rejected.
These electronic devices are an important part of China’s maritime defense and are not offensive weapons. Therefore, the US military’s request for dismantling is unreasonable.”
It gets better:
“On the same day, former commander Scott Swift of the US Pacific Fleet finally acknowledged that the US military had lost the best time to control the South China Sea.
He believes that China has deployed a large number of Hongqi 9 air defense missiles, H-6K bombers, and electronic jamming systems on islands and reefs.
The defense can be said to be solid.
If US fighter jets rush into the South China Sea, they are likely to encounter their ‘Waterloo.’”
The bottom line is that the systems – including electronic jamming – deployed by the PLA on islands and reefs in the South China Sea, covering more than half of the total surface, are considered by Beijing to be part of the national defense system.
I have previously detailed what Admiral Philip Davidson, when he was still a nominee to lead the US Pacific Command (PACOM), told the US Senate.
Here are his Top Three conclusions:
1) “China is pursuing advanced capabilities (e.g., hypersonic missiles) which the United States has no current defense against. As China pursues these advanced weapons systems, US forces across the Indo-Pacific will be placed increasingly at risk.”
2) “China is undermining the rules-based international order.”
3) “China is now capable of controlling the South China Sea in all scenarios short of war with the United States.”
Implied in all of the above is the “secret” of the Indo-Pacific strategy: at best a containment exercise, as China continues to solidify the Maritime Silk Road linking the South China Sea to the Indian Ocean.
Remember the nusantao
The South China Sea is and will continue to be one of the prime geopolitical flashpoints of the young 21st century, where a great deal of the East-West balance of power will be played.
I have addressed this elsewhere in the past in some detail, but a short historical background is once again absolutely essential to understand the current juncture as the South China Sea increasingly looks and feels like a Chinese lake.
Let’s start in 1890, when Alfred Mahan, then president of the US Naval College, wrote the seminal The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783. Mahan’s central thesis is that the US should go global in search of new markets, and protect these new trade routes through a network of naval bases.
That is the embryo of the US Empire of Bases – which remains in effect.
It was Western – American and European – colonialism that came up with most land borders and maritime borders of states bordering the South China Sea: Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam.
We are talking about borders between different colonial possessions – and that implied intractable problems from the start, subsequently inherited by post-colonial nations.
Historically, it had always been a completely different story.
The best anthropological studies (Bill Solheim’s, for instance) define the semi-nomadic communities who really traveled and traded across the South China Sea from time immemorial as the Nusantao – an Austronesian compound word for “south island” and “people”.
The Nusantao were not a defined ethnic group. They were a maritime internet. Over centuries, they had many key hubs, from the coastline between central Vietnam and Hong Kong all the way to the Mekong Delta. They were not attached to any “state”. The Western notion of “borders” did not even exist. In the mid-1990s, I had the privilege to encounter some of their descendants in Indonesia and Vietnam.
So it was only by the late 19th century that the Westphalian system managed to freeze the South China Sea inside an immovable framework.
Which brings us to the crucial point of why China is so sensitive about its borders; because they are directly linked to the “century of humiliation” – when internal Chinese corruption and weakness allowed Western “barbarians” to take possession of Chinese land.
A Japanese lake
The Nine Dash Line is an immensely complex problem.
It was invented by the eminent Chinese geographer Bai Meichu, a fierce nationalist, in 1936, initially as part of a “Chinese National Humiliation Map” in the form of a “U-shaped line” gobbling up the South China Sea all the way down to James Shoal, which is 1,500 km south of China but only over 100 km off Borneo.
The Nine Dash Line, from the beginning, was promoted by the Chinese government – remember, at the time not yet Communist – as the letter of the law in terms of “historic” Chinese claims over islands in the South China Sea.
One year later, Japan invaded China.
Japan had occupied Taiwan way back in 1895. Japan occupied the Philippines in 1942. That meant virtually the entire coastline of the South China Sea being controlled by a single empire for the fist time in history.
The South China Sea had become a Japanese lake.
Well, that lasted only until 1945. The Japanese did occupy Woody Island in the Paracels and Itu Aba (today Taiping) in the Spratlys. After the end of WWII and the US nuclear-bombing Japan, the Philippines became independent in 1946 and the Spratlys immediately were declared Filipino territory.
In 1947, all the islands in the South China Sea got Chinese names.
And in December 1947 all the islands were placed under the control of Hainan (itself an island in southern China.) New maps duly followed, but now with Chinese names for the islands (or reefs, or shoals). But there was a huge problem: no one explained the meaning of those dashes (which were originally eleven.)
In June 1947 the Republic of China claimed everything within the line – while proclaiming itself open to negotiate definitive maritime borders with other nations later on. But, for the moment, there were no borders.
And that set the scene for the immensely complicated “strategic ambiguity” of the South China Sea that still lingers on – and allows the State Dept. to accuse Beijing of “gangster tactics”. The culmination of a millennia-old transition from the “maritime internet” of semi-nomadic peoples to the Westphalian system spelled nothing but trouble.
Time for COC
So what about the US notion of “freedom of navigation”?
In imperial terms, “freedom of navigation”, from the West Coast of the US to Asia – through the Pacific, the South China Sea, the Malacca Strait and the Indian Ocean – is strictly an issue of military strategy.
The US Navy simply cannot imagine dealing with maritime exclusion zones – or having to demand an “authorization” every time they need to cross them. In this case the Empire of Bases would lose “access” to its own bases.
This is compounded with trademark Pentagon paranoia, gaming a situation where a “hostile power” – namely China – decides to block global trade. The premise in itself is ludicrous, because the South China Sea is the premier, vital maritime artery for China’s globalized economy.
The FON program
So there’s no rational justification for a Freedom of Navigation (FON) program. For all practical purposes, these aircraft carriers like the Ronald Reagan and the Nimitz showboating on and off in the South China Sea amount to 21st century gunboat diplomacy.
And Beijing is not impressed.
The ASEAN nations have things to say about all this…
As far as the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is concerned, what matters now is to come up with a Code of Conduct (COC) to solve all maritime conflicts between Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and China.
Next year, ASEAN and China celebrate 30 years of strong bilateral relations.
There’s a strong possibility they will be upgraded to “comprehensive strategic partner” status.
Because of Covid-19, all players had to postpone negotiations on the second reading of the single draft of COC. Beijing wanted these to be face to face – because the document is ultra-sensitive and for the moment, secret. Yet they finally agreed to negotiate online – via detailed texts.
It will be a hard slog, because as ASEAN made it clear in a virtual summit in late June, everything has to be in accordance with international law, including the UN Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS).
Mid 2021
If they can all agree on a COC by the end of 2020, a final agreement could be approved by ASEAN in mid-2021. Historic does not even begin to describe it – because this negotiation has been going on for no less than two decades.
Not to mention that a COC invalidates any US pretension to secure “freedom of navigation” in an area where navigation is already free.
Yet “freedom” was never the issue.
In imperial terminology, “freedom” means that China must obey and keep the South China Sea open to the US Navy.
Well, that’s possible, but you gotta behave.
That’ll be the day when the US Navy is “denied” the South China Sea.
You don’t need to be Mahan to know that’ll mean the imperial end of America ruling the seven seas.
Conclusion
So when you look into the issues deeper, you discover that the American military presence near China is more than just trying to put pressure on China, and influence trade. If America does not seize any islands NOW, or disrupt commerce NOW, then by 2021, the United States Navy might be forever limited in action in this region.
This limitation on military movements would be unacceptable to the Neocons currently occupying the White House.
And that is exactly why the United States has an ENORMOUS assault / invasion flotilla off the China coast in the South China Sea.
Do you want more?
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I hope that you found this post curious. Please take care. You can view other similar posts in my SHTF Index, here…
You’ll not
find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy
notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a
necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money
off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you
because I just don’t care to.
Please kindly help me out in this effort. There is a lot of effort that goes into this disclosure. I could use all the financial support that anyone could provide. Thank you.
I have been thinking and musing (a lot) about the absolute arrogance of the United States (out of Washington DC) and the myth of “American exceptionalism”, and that “America has never lost a war”. This has really come into mind with the things that President Trump is doing with multiple assault combat carrier fleets sitting right off the Chinese coast right now.
What he is doing is extraordinarily dangerous.
It reminds me of the bully in school. The one that always gets his way. That always behaves erratically, well because he’s a thug, but also because he never came across another “tough guy” that was bigger than him.
(Time for old guy memories…)
When I was growing up back in the hills of Western Pennsylvania, there was this boy who was two or three years older than me. I cannot say that he was a bully, exactly. It’s just that something wasn’t quite right about him. He was a spoiled brat, that’s for certain, that just was oblivious to the world around him. We was, well, a little “off” in the head, don’t you know.
He was an only child, and he attended the “special education” classes at our High School. They were all pretty much frowned upon as being “weak in the mind”. Which is terrible, I know, as I’m sure that wasn’t the actual case, but we were kids, and that was what we thought.
His father owned a local grocery store as well as a tri-county trash pick up service. They had a house in the nicest part of the town where we lived in, and had an indoor pool that was cool and really unique.
Think of a world where Bruce Wayne wasn't really "Batman". But instead was "The Joker". I guess it was sort of like that.
He would be off doing stuff and getting into all kinds of trouble. Just odd-ball stuff. You know how kids would build a tree-house. Well, he built one too…
…In the back yard of a house that was occupied by two little old ladies that were in their 90’s. The local constable had to have him come and tear it down.
While in High School he lobbed this flat steel disk (Lord only knows where he found it) into a crowd of my classmates. He just somehow got on the roof, yelled at us kids, and threw it. Luckily no one was killed by the flying fifty pound UFO.
He was the one that shocked us fifth graders by telling us how babies were made and how a boy puts his penis into a young lady. He even had magazines to help describe this activity. Not only that, but he was willing to demonstrate to the girls how it worked. (Don’t worry, we all left. Nothing became of it.) Never the less, we were scarred for weeks afterwards. We were just not ready.
Anyways, in hindsight, as an adult you can see that this kid had problems, and it would only be a matter of time before something bad would happen.
When I was 16 I started working in the mines, and perform stock duties in the local grocery store. There we would hear all the local gossip of the community. Of course, we called it “scuttlebutt”. Which was just a guys’ way of gossiping. We found out that he had died.
It turned out, that one Friday evening, around 7PM he was riding his bicycle all over the road. Meaning “all over the road in big lazy arc’s and meandering turns”. He was blocking traffic and forcing the cars to move at abnormally slow speeds. Since the roads were all tight and wove in and out of the hills there, the cars were trapped at the mercy of this crazed Joker-like insane young man. (He was maybe 18 years old at the time.)
Riding a bicycle, not driving a car. You see, he couldn't pass the driving tests at 16.
One of the cars (in the long train of cars beeping and honking behind him) was occupied by three United States marines, who in the early 1970’s probably had done some time in Vietnam (at the American war there). And they were not too pleased with this punk.
So…
So, they got out of the car and grabbed him. And Lordy, they beat the living Dejesus out of him. I mean they really fucked him up bad. They beat the snot out of him, and do you know what?
Do you know what happened?
He died.
That’s right. He was killed.
And the Marines, well they went to Prison. It’s a sad story all the way around. I like to think that everyone learned a lesson in all this. I would see the kid’s father from time to time as he did his business, and lived his life in the town. But, he was a now a small pale sort of man. Not the tall strong man that used to be. I guess that the death of your only child, and the turmoil of life, would do that to you. It’s a sad story for certain.
That’s my story and now for my point.
It’s human nature to believe that we are bigger, smarter, stronger, and more intelligent than everyone else. And if we evolved over time when our notions of who we are and what we are, are not tested, then we continue believing these things long after it becomes obvious that they are no longer true.
The childhood kid ended up getting his “ass whooped” because he had never confronted someone who was bigger, stronger and more aggressive than him. For he was the “big fish in a small pond”. And the Marines that he encountered were some very mean and nasty sharks.
I think of this story often, and it comes to my mind every time I see an article about how “invincible” the United States Navy is.
Now while this might make reading for the American civilian population, the truth is that the leadership of the American military machine are not fools. They know it’s strengths and weaknesses, and are not very keen on testing these expensive military machines with a peer-capable rival.
But, unfortunately, they are not the ones that are making the top-level decisions in Washington DC today. It is Donald Trump, and Mike Pompeo and the rest of the Neocon cabal that are running the country, making the decisions and playing with the military as if it was their very own personal army.
Which brings me to this article…
The following is a reprint of “China Sea Blues: A Thing Not to Do” written by Fred Reed on October 30, 2015. It is reprinted as found on the UNZ site and you can read the Comments to it there. All credit to the author, and note that it was edited to fit this venue, but remains as intact to intent.
China Sea Blues: A Thing Not to Do
It appears that Washington, ever a seething cauldron of bright ideas, is looking for a shooting war with China, or perhaps trying to make the Chinese kowtow and back down, the pretext being some rocks in the Pacific in which the United States cannot possibly have a vital national interest. Or, really, any interest. And if the Chinese do not back down?
The Vincennes. The boxy thing up front is the radar. It is not hardened.
Years back I went aboard the USS Vincennes, CG-49, a Tico class Aegis boat, then the leading edge of naval technology. It was a magnificent ship, fast, powered by a pair of airliner turbines, and carrying the SPY-1 phased-array radar, very high-tech for its time. The CIC was dark and air-conditioned, glowing with huge screens—impressive for then—displaying all manner of information on targets in the air. Below were Standard missiles, then on a sort of chain drive but in later ships using the Vertical Launch System. It was, as they say in Laredo, Muy Star Wars. (The Vincennes was the ship that later shot down the Iranian airliner.)
Being something of a technophile, I took all of this in with admiration, but I thought—what if it gets hit?
As a kid in my preteens I had read about the battleships of WWII, the Carolinas but in particular the Iowa class, fast, brutal ships with sixteen-inch belt armor and turrets that an asteroid would bounce off of. The assumption was that ships were going to get hit. They were built to survive and continue fighting.
American hull armor in a Japanese World War II battleship. Showing not only the thickness, but also the type of damage that it could take.
By contrast, the Vincennes was thin-skinned, hulled with aluminum instead of steel, and the radar, crucial to combat, looked perilously fragile. A single hit with anything serious, or perhaps even a cal .50, but certainly by anything resembling a GAU-8, and she would be hors de combat until refitted.
Damage to the thin hull of the USS Cole by improvised munitions on board a terrorist skiff.
The Iowa, BB-61. I went aboard her at Norfolk at the Navy’s invitation. It altered my appreciation of guns. I came away thinking that if you can’t crawl into it, it isn’t really a gun. And solid: There is a reason why no battleship was sunk after Pearl Harbor.
One hit.
I also knew well that the Navy played Red Team-Blue Team war games in which our own submarines—then chiefly 688s—tried to “sink” the surface fleet. The idea was that if the sub could get into firing position, it would send up a green flare. The subs were then running if memory serves the Mk 48 ADCAP torpedo, a wicked wire-guided thing with a long range. Sailors told me that invariably the subs “sank” the surface force.
When I mentioned this at CHINFO, the Navy’s PR operation in the Pentagon, flacks told me that the potential bad guys only had piddling diesel-electric subs, far inferior to our nukey boats, and couldn’t get near the fleet in open seas. Yes, no, maybe, and then. It sounded like happy talk to me. In WWII, diesel-electrics certainly got in range of surface ships, perhaps the most famous example being when Archer Fish sank Shinano.
DF-21D anti-ship (read: anti-carrier) missile. This is not the place for detail, but China has anti-ship ballistic missiles designed to kill carriers, and is working on others, hypersonic glide vehicles, that are not real interceptible. I do not know how well they work. If I were a carrier, I would make a point of not finding out.
The Chinese DF-21D anti-Carrier missile. This missile is mass-produced and is designed to be fired in clusters of multiple groupings designed to saturate the defensive capabilities of an American Carrier battle group.
I do not know a great deal about the Chinese Navy, having been out of that loop for years. I do know that the Chinese are smart, and that they have optimized their forces specifically to take out carrier battle groups near their territory.
They do not try to match the US ship-for-ship in the kind of war America wants to fight. They would lose fast, and they know it.
The key is to swarm the fleet with cruise missiles arriving all at once, accompanied perhaps by large numbers of aircraft. Would this work? I don’t know, but that is certainly the way I would bet.
The United States Navy has not been in a war for seventy years.
It has sat off various shores and launched aircraft, but the fleet has not been engaged. Over decades of inaction, complacency sets in. Unfortunately, wars regularly turn out to be otherwise than expected. Further, the American military’s standard approach to a war is to underestimate the enemy (there is probably a manual on this).
Yet further, great emotional and financial capital resides in a carrier-battle group, one of the most impressive achievements of the human race. (I mean this: the technology, organization, and competence involved in, say, night flight ops are…”astonishing” is too feeble a word.)
This assures reluctance to question the fleet’s effectiveness in the face of changing conditions. Such as high-Mach, stealthed, maneuvering, sea-skimming cruise missiles. Or terminally guided anti-ship ballistic missiles.
America is accustomed to fighting enemies who can’t fight back.
This may NOT include the Chinese.
The carrier Forrestal, 1967. A single Zuni missile was fired accidentally. A huge fire ensued, bombs cooked off, 134 men were killed, and the ship was devastated, out of service for a very long time. One five-inch missile. Something to think about.
There is also the fact that the American military simply doesn’t matter, which reduces concern with whether it can fight and who it can fight.
It doesn’t defend the US, since there is nothing to defend it against. (What country has the remotest possibility of invading America?)
So the military is used for what are essentially hobbyist wars, keeping Israel happy, providing markets for the arms companies, and for social engineering: we have girl crews who would be a disaster at damage control, but we assume that there will never be any damage to control.
Uh…yeah. The evidence is that these ships are fragile:
What would happen if in a shooting war the Chinese crippled the American fleet?
Washington is rampant with large egos, especially that of John McCain, the senator from PTSD. If it were discovered that China could disable the Navy, many other countries might conclude that they could do it too. They most certainly would think of this.
But…
Washington could not accept the discovery: Fear of the carriers is a large element in Washington’s intimidation of the world. To save face, the US would be tempted to go nuclear, or seriously bomb China proper, with unforeseeable results.
USS Stark, 1987. Hit by two Exocet missiles fired by an Iraqi Mirage.
The Air Force and Navy could hurt China badly by conventional means, yes, for example by cutting off oil from the Mideast, or destroying the Three Gorges dam.
For a variety of reasons this would be playing with fire.
The economic results of any of these bright ideas would be godawful.
Just about every commercial product sold in America is made in China.
Just about every new construction or building project in America is being funded and manufactured by Chinese companies.
China holds a “Lion’s share” of American debt and could collapse the American economy if they wanted to.
Washington seems not to realize that it wields far less military power than it thinks it does, and that the power it does wield is ever less useful than before.
As a land power, it is very weak, being unable to defeat Russia, China, or peasants armed with rifles and RPGs. Air power has regularly proved indecisive.
If Washington somehow won a naval war with China, so what?
It would provide the satisfactions of vanity, but China’s danger to the US imperium lies in increasing economic power and commercial expansion through Asia, where it holds the high cards: it is there, Washington isn’t.
Grrr-bowwow-woofery in the far Pacific, even if successful, is not going to stop China’s commercial expansion, and a defeat would end the credibility of the Navy forever.
As I say, Washington is full of bright ideas.
Conclusion
The purpose of war is to resolve differences when ALL OTHER AVENUES have been exhausted.
However, United States history has clearly illustrated that that doctrine has NOT been followed. Wars have been created for other purposes. Purposes devoted to the obtainment of profits, and to manipulate a compliant and ignorant population.
There is evidence that the last 75 years or so of this behavior cannot end. That those that run and rule over the United States are unable to use the military for any other purpose than what it has been used for.
And like the bully from my High School days, America could see itself on the wrong side of a conflict. One that it started. One that it thinks that it will “win”. And one that will FOREVER change it.
Maybe change it for good, and for infinity.
And, maybe, like the Bully from my High School days, it is long overdue and will be a shock to everyone. From the bully himself who (I am sure) lay there with a look of incredulity on his face, to his toadies who thought he was invincible, to the innocent bystanders (such as myself) who was shocked that such a well-known (if not particularly liked) person could be vanquished so quickly and so easily.
War is NOTHING that the United States should get involved in at this time. It is not healthy. It is a mess, and getting worse. The last thing it should get involved in is a fight with a nation THAT DOES NOT PLAY.
Chinese ships test firing two anti-carrier missiles in the South China Sea in August 2020.
Do you want more?
Do you want to see similar posts?
I hope that you found this post curious. Please take care. You can view other similar posts in my SHTF Index, here…
You’ll not
find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy
notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a
necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money
off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you
because I just don’t care to.
Please kindly help me out in this effort. There is a lot of effort that goes into this disclosure. I could use all the financial support that anyone could provide. Thank you.
Normally I’m not that surprised with things that happen. I know that there is no such thing as coincidences, and that the American military empire is collapsing and thrashing all about. But you know, even I can be bitch slapped from time to time. And this is one of those times.
No shit!
yes. I had bought into the story about the ammonium nitrate warehouse being an accident. I really did. I knew about the Donald Trump / Pompeo shit about the biological weapons attacks on China, the NED, and all that nonsense in Hong Kong. But, you know, I figured that he wouldn’t REALLY start blowing shit up. Not really.
Oh, boy was I wrong!
I just couldn’t believe that Trump would do such a thing. This is true, even though I realized that it was quite a coincidence that this port was earmarked for the Chinese BRI (Belt and Road Initiative), and that suddenly it was destroyed in a completely massive “accidental” explosion. And all of a sudden, a gateway to the BRI is completely obliterated.
An accident?
A coincidence?
Photographs, both visual and thermal, say otherwise.
Not to mention that both President Trump and the Lebanese government has confirmed this to be the case.
The following is a reprint of an article on Veterans Today. It is titled “Updated: Israel hits Beirut with nuclear missile, Trump and Lebanese Govt. confirm”, and written on August 15, 2020. Edited to fit this venue. All credit to the original author and the post.
Updated: Israel hits Beirut with nuclear missile, Trump and Lebanese Govt. confirm
Trump confirms this was a bombing, not an accident and is immediately scourged by pro-Israel press…starting with the Daily Beast.
Overwhelming evidence that Israeli F 16s had just finished an attack run on Warehouse 12 when the large explosion occurred. We have dozens of reliable eyewitnesses and many videos, sound and even the planes pulling out of a dive, not birds, they don’t fly 350 knots, not normally. (Lots of birds were flying away, they look exactly like birds)
Lebanese govt and Hezbollah now accepting that ammonium nitrate was in no way involved. Lebanon is built on rock and everything has to be blasted. The Lebanese know explosives, know how to use AN and all in Lebanon know this is a hoax. AN is not explosive, it burns even in an explosive slurry (ANFO) unless very large TNT charges are used to initiate.
All involved in the AN story, the Russian ship tale, or claiming it exploded are now terror suspects though most are simply internet idiots. AN is debunked.
This video has Trump’s real statement, he is 100% behind VT (embarrassing)…
Investigators are now looking at a two pronged and complex Israeli attack using a probable nuclear tipped Rampage missile (new design) while covering with an F 16 attack and possible conventional explosive. At this point, this is most likely as seen by investigators.
Rampage missile.
Narrative Rewritten
And now to the original story which has been hacked, backward counted by Google and so much more. We love it… VT was right once again while world media just published cheap slop. This never would have happened before early dementia Reagan got on the ‘free enterprise’ train for consolidating America’s wonderfully diverse privately owned local and regional independent media.
#Breaking #Syria President Assad orders all borders and ports in the country open to #Lebanon, orders caravans of ambulances to head to #Beirut and ferry injured to hospitals in #Damascus, and launches an air bridge of medical and food supplies between the two cities
Absurdity squared: YouTube and Facebook “Fact Checkers,” employed by the people VT claims staged the attack are wiping the evidence from the internet…who would have guessed it.
…by Gordon Duff, Senior Editor, with…
Nahed al Husaini, VT Bureau Chief Damascus
Jeff Smith, VT Editor, IAEA Nuclear Inspector/Particle Physicist
Actual Photos of the missiles
This is the original video frame, never posted anywhere, that proves everything on Facebook and YouTube which was taken down is real.
This is the grandfather of them all, one carefully validated as untouched and genuine.
Infrared images of the missile itself prior to impact:
Infrared photos of the missiles
Set II Different camera, different angle
Frame 1 BeirutFrame 2 BeirutFrame 3 Beirut
This is the same missile seen from a slightly different angle on impact.
Israeli Delilah missile carrying 6 kiloton (6000 tons of TNT equivalent) nuclear missile (unretouched photo via VT Damascus) Tineye says this is a unique image and doesn’t appear anywhere on the web. We, however, are always suspicious when something seems ‘too good to be true.’
This is an infrared video which shows, at 6 seconds, the missile coming in and hitting…
This infrared video makes much more sense than ammonium nitrate on its own. Yes NH4NO3 is an oxidising agent and explosive under the right conditions, it is also very stable.
Judge for yourself. Doctored video? Different location? Or #Beirut attacked?
pic.twitter.com/T0LnUqDvoy— Darren of Plymouth 🇬🇧 (@DarrenPlymouth)
August 6, 2020
This is the video that was removed from Youtube for “violating content”.
Pixel analysis says this is a good photo. Thus, debunking it will become a huge issue. An army of trolls is already on Twitter and Facebook.
” First explosion was caused by Gabriel anti ship missile of Israel. The second explosion was caused by Israeli Delilah missile from F16. Our country is in complete jeopardy with this lazy and corrupt regime.”
This is the radiation signature of the explosion received from a source in Italy, submitted to VT by the International Atomic Energy Agency (UN).
So it is actually a NUCLEAR WEAPON.
Evidence of a nuclear fission event in the Eastern MediterraneanTrump confirms attack (nuclear not mentioned) and has suddenly become an “Enemy of Israel” (In 2015, Trump was referred to VT as a source of intelligence briefings. Eventually his staff turned to InfoWars and Steve Bannon. You can see how that has worked out.)
The media in the west claiming that this massive nuclear like explosion is from "fireworks"
-NO THE HELL IT WAS NOT!-
My heart is so heavy 💔😔😭
-Prayers for Beirut, Lebanon 🇱🇧pic.twitter.com/yAom0z9ZgG
— StanceGrounded (@_SJPeace_) August 4, 2020
Official statements from Lebanon
VT: A general in the Lebanese Army reports that Israel dropped a tactical nuclear weapon on the port of Beirut today. He reports that this was done to collapse the current political regime there and revolt against Hezbollah.
Their denial, almost identical to Israel’s supports this hypothesis.
As the lies begin, nothing about this explosion, the mushroom cloud or the strength of the explosion is fireworks, which was the first lie, then ammonium nitrate fertilizer, they say under 3k tons, which was stored for years to use on Lebanon’s golf courses, when they decide to build them. No, nothing about today is funny.
Israel statement
We also add that earlier today, Netanyahu’s statement which we believe is Israel taking credit for the attack. Beirut is still bomb damaged by Israel from 2006. How you take Netanyahu’s statements as outlined in Times of Israel today, is a matter of faith, trust or conjecture.
نتنياهو قال اليوم بأن اسرائيل ستفعل”ما هو ضروري"لحماية نفسها،تهديد لحزب الله- ما يفسر التفجيرات في #بيروت
-Netanyahu said “will do what is necessary in order to defend ourselves”. An obvious warning to Hezbollah, and this explains the explosions in #Beiruthttps://t.co/8ZVLNBA31A
— Reem Al-Harmi ريم الحرمي chez moi 🏠 (@Reem_AlHarmi) August 4, 2020
“Getting reports from Beirut, a tactical miniature nuclear bomb has been used to attack the port, nuclear experts and researchers have randomly pointed out to the reacted particles in the fire ball.
Even if there is going to be a government cover up for peace and political implications in the coming hours, one thing is clear, it is a clandestine operation by some anti-Lebanon foreign agency not by some random terrorist (non-state actor).
Terrorists involved in Urban Warfare in ME do not have access to these highly advance tactical weapons. If they have it now, then someone is equipping them for political gains. Let us wait for the official statements from Lebanon. I hope our friends from Beirut are safe.
As per my latest source of information from Beirut. There is going to be a government cover up. The story about “Nitrate in the containers” is going to be declared as the original cause of the second massive explosion that caused the major damage. This will become the official narrative in the msm.
However, what influential and credible sources from Beirut are telling me is this: “The Beirut explosion is about 100 times the energy than the 2015 Tianjin explosion, or 5.4 kilotons of TNT equivalent (using linear extrapolation from Tianjin, which involved 800 tonnes of ammonium nitrate).
Conventional nukes against Japan had 15 to 21 kilotons. But this explosion is different, it is because of modern tactical nuke that contains up to 10 kilotons of the hybrid material including uranium. It is this reason why we still have acid and radiation in the air. The storage facilities near the grain elevator are NOT marked for hazardous material storage, but are instead marked for general cargo. Therefore, you can guess it, what we will be fed in the coming hours.” – Ghayet Ali
” First explosion was caused by Gabriel anti ship missile of Israel. The second explosion was caused by Israeli Delilah missile from F16. Our country is in complete jeopardy with this lazy and corrupt regime.”
Hezbollah, we are told, is expected to retaliate against Israel and they say there is no way for Syria not to be brought in.
IAEA Confirms
Jeff Smith of the IAEA confirms this is a nuclear explosion.
The lies about fireworks in ships and fertilizer are what we always get. You don’t store either one downtown in a major city like Beirut under any circumstances. Not much farming in Beirut and they don’t celebrate the 4th of July there.
The smoke could well be missile fuel which may mean a missile storage facility was hit by Israel. We have confirmation from Israel that they were planning to attack Beirut 5 days ago in retaliation for Hezbollah’s military attacks on Golan, which were not reported anywhere.
We are told Lebanon asked for nuclear investigators from Russia but there is no attempt to protect the site which, even if this were a modern clean weapon, still be radioactive.
New video shows nature of the blast a bit better. We will keep updating.
Beirut Governor Calls Explosion a ‘National Disaster Akin to Hiroshima’
“A fire brigade of 10 people arrived at the scene. What happened is very similar to what happened in the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They drove to the scene and disappeared. This is a national disaster for Lebanon. We do not know how we are going to deal with this”, Beirut Governor Marwan Abboud said. (Sputnik/Moscow)
“Israel has nothing to do with the massive explosion that rocked Beirut on 4 August, the country’s parliamentary TV channel has announced. A similar statement was made by an anonymous Israeli official in an interview with Reuters, while the country’s Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi alleged that the blast was likely an accident caused by a fire.” (Sputnik/Moscow)
Initial Report 2
Earlier/VT: Two explosions in Beirut, one a conventional guided bomb followed by a small nuclear weapon. The target is now confirmed to be a Hezbollah missile storage facility.
One hospital in Beirut has said it is treating more than 500 injures and is unable to receive any more patients. Tens of the people injured will need surgery and the hospital is appealing for blood donations.
-Follow the latest here: https://t.co/R2Lh904JkCpic.twitter.com/xn85sUgs7q— SkyNews (@SkyNews)
August 4, 2020
This is the second explosion, that looks like the plasma ball of a nuclear explosion to me, note the white colour indicating extremely high temperatures – no conventional explosion burns so hot. Also note the great height of the plasma ball – it is taller than the grain silo. I am very strongly reminded of the nuking of Tianjin a few years ago.The warehouse to the east he speaks of is the black building shown in the video stills above.
A large explosion has been heard in the Lebanese capital Beirut. Security sources said a number of people were injured during the widespread destruction across the city, with residents reporting windows being blown out and ceilings collapsing
-Read more: https://t.co/27zh8LaW5npic.twitter.com/SZ82gxAA7Z— SkyNews (@SkyNews) August 4, 2020
Initial Report 1 – The “official explanation”
This smells like a cover story, I very much doubt there were any fireworks involved, the small explosions seen in the videos were more likely to have been munitions cooking off due to fires started by the first explosion.
RT has just covered the explosions and quotes a Lebanese govt. minister:
Health Minister Hamad Hassan told local media that a ship carrying fireworks exploded in the port. Video footage lends weight to his explanation, as it shows a small explosion followed by the crackling of fireworks, before a second and massively destructive blast.
Local residents have shared images showing extensive damage to property. The office of the Daily Star newspaper was smashed by the blast, with windows blown out and furniture flung to the ground. France24 correspondent Leila Molana-Allen said that her apartment was “blown apart,” adding that she thinks the blast was caused by a “missile from a jet.”
It looks very much like the Lebanese have invented the ship full of fireworks story to cover the truth. Molana-Allen is almost certainly correct – that it was some kind of missile or guided bomb dropped by a jet fighter-bomber.
Or are they going with the one we have heard so many times before when tactical nukes have been used – that it was a store of explosives that went up:Of course they would deny it was an attack, no-one ever admits a nuke went off, it’s terribly bad for public opinion.
Sodium nitrate, basically a big fertiliser bomb, nope, not buying that at all, this is the cover story they appear to be going with.
This local lady describes a feeling of melting, that sounds like radiation hitting her – being hit by radiation feels like heat, it burns you.
Awareness
People in Beirut,Lebanon needs to stay indoors due to the recent Firewooks/nuclear explosion that happened in Beirut. The smoke is filled with nitric acid (Red/pink/purple smoke) which is toxic and can form an acidic rain.
#BeirutBlast#Beirutpic.twitter.com/eyKYSiVJZ0
— Women_Advocate🧕🧕🧕 (@hauwa_farouk) August 4, 2020
I don’t agree with the assessment that it was a fine particulate explosion, that wouldn’t explain the white hot plasma ball, only a nuke can explain that.
The media in the west claiming that this massive nuclear like explosion is from "fireworks"
NO THE HELL IT WAS NOT!
My heart is so heavy 💔😔😭
Prayers for Beirut, Lebanon 🇱🇧pic.twitter.com/yAom0z9ZgG
— StanceGrounded (@_SJPeace_) August 4, 2020
Windows blown out 7km away indicates a huge blast, again, suggesting this was indeed a nuke.
The phones going down is probably due to the EM pulse that nukes produce.
The “nay sayers” suggest that people are watching birds. Like sparrows, pigeons, doves, or maybe parrots. Like this. I’m sure that this is a parrot…
Or, it just couldn’t be a nuke. Right? Stations would pick up the radiation.
These stations would measure the alpha, beta and gamma radiation. Since the gamma radiation travels at the speed of light, the stations would be able to register the exact moment the weapon was detonated.
Well, suddenly this station went off line. Imagine that!
It is now reported as “malfunctioning“.
Funny thing this…
Well, malfunctioning station or what, Italy says they are getting radiation readings that are worthy of note…
Conclusion
It seems that Trump authorized the use of 6kt mini-nuke to destroy the port of Beirut. This was conducted by aircraft of the Israel Air Force, and they apparently used two missiles.
Gabriel anti ship missile.
Israeli Delilah missile carrying a 6kt mini-nuke.
Radiation readings in Europe has confirmed that a nuclear warhead was used.
Trump has admitted to participation and direction of this attack. But he did not confess to using nuclear weapons.
This effort puts a immediate pause on the Chinese Belt and Road initiative with a port on the Mediterranean sea.
Trump scares the living daylights out of me. He had no qualms about unleashing a biological weapon to kill multitudes of Chinese with the COVID-19, and is now using nuclear weapons in the Mediterranean Sea. He has two complete assault carrier task forces off the Chinese coast and is working to provoke war with Russia.
What is wrong with this man?
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In this post, we will discuss the issues with assigning a gravitational frequency profile for both the destination coordinates and the egress coordinates. In addition, we will look at the indexing coordinated for the individual human traveler and what that can mean for other applications.
One of the most stunning realizations that you will encounter when dealing with world-line travel is the idea of fixed and set coordinates.
These coordinates are fixed to a given world-line within the MWI. They include a set time, and a geographic location, as well as the entire world-line that you are targeting. And by changing these coordinates just a small amount can have dramatic changes in location, time, and whatever world-line that the portal opens up to.
But it’s not only the coordinates of destination.
It’s also the coordinates associated with the human traveler that uses the dimensional portal.
So far, we have talked about using the dimensional portal as a gateway. We discussed using it as a gateway to other geographic locations. We also discussed it as a gateway to other times; a time-machine. And, of course, we discussed it as a gateway for other world-lines.
But we never talked about what would happen if you made slight alterations to the human traveler when they are in the portal.
Let’s look at all these issues.
Coordinates
When we refer to coordinates, what we are actually referring to is a complete gravitational frequency profile. This profile can take many forms and be massaged into all sorts of graphs and data sets for ease of understanding.
When I went through the MAJestic portal back in 1981, the coordinate set consisted of a thickly bound book of computer printouts. It was just reams and reams of numbers and symbols. But it need not be that way. Things have advanced technologically since that date.
In short, there are four groups of “coordinates” that we need concern ourselves with;
The egress coordinates of the dimensional portal at the time of use.
The destination coordinates of the destination. It may or may not be associated with a portal.
The coordinates of the human traveler as they enter the portal.
The coordinates of the human traveler as the leave the portal at the destination.
In all the previous posts / articles, we have discussed keeping the traveler coordinate identical from the egress portal to that of the destination coordinates. In this way, the traveler would experience no change at all when they enter the dimensional portal for teleportation purposes.
However, if you were to change the destination coordinates of the traveler, you can actually physically change the traveler itself.
Changes to the coordinates
By now, the reader should well understand that the dimensional portal erases all the coordinates from a traveler who enters it. It erases not only the coordinates of the traveler, but the coordinates of the portal itself.
By changing the coordinates of the destination, we can control…
The geographic location of where the traveler ends up at.
The time and date of where the traveler goes to.
The world-line (variance) or deviance from the egress world-line.
By changing the coordinates of the traveler, we can control…
His/her age.
His/her body and organs.
His/her intelligence.
Even change him into “mush” like a teleportation mishap on the television series Star Trek.
Teleportation mishap on the movie “Galaxy Quest”.
Medical Uses
So if all you do is keep the destination coordinates equal to that of the egress coordinates, then you can limit the changes to the traveler alone.
If you were able to accurately map out how the coordinates for a human change over time, you can then selectively age or regress various organs or parts of the body to another time period.
Age regression is possible with a carefully configured dimensional portal. The only key to this is that only the traveler coordinates change, not those of the portal.
In short, you might be able to turn a 90 year old man into a studly 21 year old full of “piss and vinegar”. Since memories are stored outside of the brain in the non-physical realities, his memories would stay intact while his body would be that of a much younger man.
You could do this with organs, and limbs as well.
With a solid understanding of the human biological makeup and how it pertains to the overall person, you might begin to alter the design of a given person.
You might be able to make them smarter, for instance, or give them bigger organs (a heart for instance, or a penis… perhaps). Heck, you might be able to change their gender or their physical appearance, and if you were really good, alter the physical structure of the person completely.
Using the dimensional portal technology, it is possible to completely revamp and change the body appearance. From just small minor cosmetic changes to an entirely different person completely.
Of course, all this would require extensive experimentation. And, I am sure, that there would be some tradeoffs involved as well.
Interstellar Travel Technology
One of the great benefits of this technology is to allow a person to go anywhere in the universe. And since the universe is so gosh darn enormous, this is amazing. We, as humans, like to think that the Moon is far away, and the nearby star of Alpha Centauri as impossible…
But imagine traveling at will throughout our entire Milky Way galaxy. Imagine it. Not only would there be no limits, but you could do so in a fraction of a second and not worry about that Einstein time-compression issue.
Our Milkyway galaxy.
But not only can this technology take you to nearby stars, but distant ones as well. It can also take you to other galaxies. And, of course, very distant galaxies as well. It is truly mind-boggling.
The galaxies of our “local” group of galaxies.
Who needs FTL technology, when all you need to do is step into a dimensional portal?
Of course, of course, you do need to know where you are going. Otherwise you would probably end up in the middle of deep space, or inside a hot star or somewhere else that would be very dangerous for your health.
Time Travel
With the configuration of the destination coordinates limited to the “dimension” coordinate of “time”, you can construct a real honest-to-goodness “time machine”.
It could take you a few years back where you might want to invest in some Microsoft or Google stock.
Or it could take you further back where you could experience the American Civil War close up and personal.
Or even further back than that. Perhaps the Middle Ages. Or maybe Ancient China. Or perhaps ancient Greece or Egypt.
Exploring Egypt might be interesting.
You could use it to explore the future.
Like in the movie “Back to the Future” you could see what is in store (on a certain world-line) and then return and make the necessary adjustments. You can go forwards and backwards in time at will.
Creative Time Travel with Age Regression
If you were creative, you could age regress yourself to your age when you were 18 years old, and then use the portal to go back to that time and relive it all knowing what you know now.
It’s possible. It really is.
Of course, there would be no return for you, and you would be stuck back in that particular time period. And there would be two of “you”.
For me, that would trap me back in 1976…
The Jimmy Carter years. I was still in High School and living the "Dazed and Confused" lifestyle. I had many opportunities back then that I did not take. I am sure, knowing what I know now, that I should have taken them... What a ride it would have been!
Remember, while we talk about age regression and time travel, any trip would be one way unless you end up taking a portal back with you.
All fun and games aside. It was a different time and a different place, and I might feel really, really out of place. Don’t you think?
1976 was a time when I hung out with my friends, went to keg parties and jammed to classic rock while stoned and drinking beer.
World Line Travel
As I have stated throughout my narrative, I home from a deviant world-line and this one that I happen to be involved in is a bit on the uncomfortable side.
We can alter our course through the world-lines over time and eventually get where we intend to go, but all world-lines move about in clusters and groups. This group is a pretty contentious one for certain.
Never the less, if you really want to explore alternative world-lines, this technology will permit that. It will land you and your consciousness at a new worldline from whence you can start traveling and changing the reality as you see fit through intention.
But it’s really difficult to grasp what kind of world-line that you would end up at.
Imagine a world-line where the hamburgers tend to be on the small side, and are provided with a dipping sauce.
The issue is really what changes and what deviance are you willing to accept? Can you accept a world-line where coke-cola was never invented? Can you handle a world-line where it is the law that pineapple be placed on pizza?
Are you willing to accept a world-line where there are no High Schools or universities, and instead people apprentice with a local craftsman? You do need to be careful, don’t you know.
Mouth condoms might be all the rage in your new world-line. You do need to be ready for some really odd changes.
I have discussed some of my experiences with world-line travel.
But, you all must keep in mind that my experiences were controlled and monitored by experts. And even at that, it was some pretty strange “shit” that I experienced. You will need to steel yourself for the really odd, and if you are not careful, you might end up in a far, far away world-line cluster and it might be near impossible to ever come back.
So you really do need to be careful.
Some things (well, heck… MANY) things that we consider taboo are normal on other world-lines. On this world-line as well, but most Americans are insulated from it all. From the “happy ending” at Chinese massage parlors (it’s fine, it’s not against the law) to the restaurant-chain-style bordellos in Germany. But the odd and the weird can really get mixed up in these areas when you conduct world-line travel.
Imagine landing in a new world-line and wanting to get a hamburger at a fast food joint, and when you say that you want to have the daily special, all the girls get on the counter and do this…
A daily special might be too strange for most Americans.
Anyways, the point that I am trying to make is that there are so many aspects of the coordinates and combinations of coordinates that describe a particular world-line that navigation to a particular one is very difficult. Because if you change one coordinate value it will influence other values as soon as you “land” at that destination coordinate.
So it is true.
You might actually end up in a world-line where pineapple on pizza is not only praised, it is considered the ONLY way to make a pizza. You know, guys, you must really be careful.
Bacon, pineapple and cheddar pizza.
The only way to accurately map the MWI is though careful experimentation.
Conclusion
The DIY dimensional world-line portal is useless unless you are able to specify destination coordinates for either the destination or the traveler or both. This will require some experimentation and tests. But once you are able to do so, the universe of all-possibilities lies open to you.
Do you want more?
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In this post we will cover a few basics regarding the operation of the egress portal for dimensional change. In this post our concentration will be on the magnetic flux itself as well as the way the traveler must enter the portal. For if you do not enter it properly, any thing could happen. And let’s not at all forget the horror movie “The Fly” to remind us of this issue. So let’s talk about this.
Good thing, we are not going to be too technical here. Heck! I can hear all the moans and groans across the globe as I release this post. (“Oh! Not another high jargon, high technology, a high mathematical treatise on world line adventures!)
Magnetic flux
The key to this entire dimensional portal concept is to use a “bath” of magnetism within a magnetic field. The magnetic field is used to erase the attachments of the human traveler with his environment. This field consists of a very strong magnetic force that cycles along a sinusoidal path.
A magnetic field is a vector field that describes the magnetic influence of electric charges in relative motion and magnetized materials. A charge that is moving parallel to a current of other charges experiences a force perpendicular to its own velocity.
The effects of magnetic fields are commonly seen in permanent magnets, which pull on magnetic materials (such as iron) and attract or repel other magnets.
-Wikipedia
Ugh.
Look, people, it need not be complex. When you have a magnet (an iron ferrite rod with a coil wrapped around it) and you pulse it (with electricity through the wire), a magnetic field arises.
Now, within the magnetic field you have the movement of charged electrons. That is, after all, what a magnetic field is. It is the movement of charged electrons.
So if you were to stand within the air gap (of a huge magnet) and receive a “bath” within a magnetic field, you would experience a “shower” of charged electrons.
This “shower” can be heavy or light. Depending on the design of the system.
The determination of whether it is “heavy” or “light” is known as it’s “magnetic flux”.
In physics, specifically electromagnetism, the magnetic flux (often denoted Φ or ΦB) through a surface is the surface integral of the normal component of the magnetic field flux density B passing through that surface.
The SI unit of magnetic flux is the weber (Wb; in derived units, volt–seconds), and the CGS unit is the maxwell.
Magnetic flux is usually measured with a fluxmeter, which contains measuring coils and electronics, that evaluates the change of voltage in the measuring coils to calculate the measurement of magnetic flux.
-Wikipedia
Now there are all sorts of ways that we can describe these attributes and how to increase the density of the magnetic field, and the design of the magnet. All of which are extremely interesting, but would probably have my readership lynch me. So, what I am going to do is talk a little bit about the effect of a magnetic field on a human being.
The strongest magnetic field an average human would ever be exposed is in an MRI machine, which produces magnetic fields of about 1.5 to 7 tesla. Compared to this, the magnetic field strength of our Earth is just .0003 tesla. And the electromagnets at the LHC is around 8.3 tesla.
We can safely say that it is normal for humans to be exposed to magnetic fields with an average dose being around 0.0003 tesla.
We can also safely say that a magnetic field on the order of 7 tesla would be safe for humans to be exposed to. as this is the norm in the medical profession.
We also know that if we expose the human body to extreme levels of magnetic field(s) that it can actually levitate the human body. This would be on the order of 10+ tesla.
Now, I do not actually know the magnetic field density that is required to erase the egress coordinates attachments for the Alan Holt system to function, but my guess is that it would be somewhere between 5 to 10 tesla. too weak and it would not work, to great, and you might end up with physical disruptions inside the body. In general, ti would probably be best to be nearer to the large tesla number than away from it.
Phasing
Magnetic flux arises when you pulse electricity though a wire that is wrapped around an iron ferrite rod. That’s the basic, basic theory and function.
R Type EMI Rod Ferrite Core
The moment that an electrical current enters the wire and the truns of wire around the ferrite core, a magnetic field develops. Then it ends.
The field ONLY exists when the electrons are zooming through the electric wire in the first place. Once they have established themselves, the magnetic flux ends. So in order to prevent this, you need to pulse the electricity. This pulsing will create a magnetic field that comes and goes in intensity.
If you look at the sketch of the egress portal and study the magnetic flux generator, you can see that the electrical substation would be used to transform the electricity into a system that would be used to generate the necessary flux bath to enable dimensional travel.
Dimensional portal showing magnetic field generator.
Now, by using diodes and the proper electronics we can control the size and shape of the pulsed magnetic field “bath”…
System overview
This is important because, we need to time HOW the person enters the field.
We want the field to be such that when the person enters the field, the magnetic flux is increasing to a point that his egress coordinates (and his person coordinates) are erased. Then during a peak period of intensity, all coordinates (frequencies of location) are rendered null. Then, the field starts to change, and the new set of destination coordinates are implanted on to the field.
It will work like this…
The operation of the teleportation mechanism works for a three-second period in which case the old coordinates are swapped out, and new ones are applied.
About the traveler
Now, the traveler will need to center and calm their mind. You see, the way that the mind functions must be neutral when it enters the field. If it is not neutral, then there is a risk of brain or mental instability when the traveler is exposed to peak flux density.
Thus, we need to implement the “feducials” to center the mind.
And that, boys and girls, is how MAJestic does it.
Conclusion
When you look at this dimensional portal from “my” point of view; from my experiences, and from my knowledge, you can see how everything fits together. This “new” information about a DIY dimensional portal strangely fits up and matches with MAJestic technology in widespread use back in the early 1980’s . Fully forty years ago.
It makes sense. It all makes sense. It all fits together.
Sure makes much more sense than being part of a fleet of “space marines” fighting a global cabal of disguised Reptilians who want to enslave the human race. Or have invisible star people give us the gift of “magic crystals” that were developed in Atlantis many centuries ago. Or, to be part of an elite team of people who were selected at birth to “father” the new human race.
Ugh!
Now, people(!), I did not pull of of this shit out of my ass. I am either a [1] genius, [2] a complete lunatic, or [3] someone who is telling the truth. I’ve given enough, heck!, more than enough information herein for you the reader to choose.
Pick your “poison”.
This is how it’s done. This is how it works. This is what is going on, and with all that in mind… know that I really want you the reader to live a good, happy and safe life. I want you all to control your environment and do everything in your power to ply off the gook and nonsense spewed onto you by over five decades of intensive lies and manipulations.
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.
Please kindly help me out in this effort. There is a lot of effort that goes into this disclosure. I could use all the financial support that anyone could provide. Thank you very much.
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This post continues on our study of how to create your very own DIY (Do It Yourself) dimensional portal for world-line travel. This is part six. In this post, we will discuss the generation of the magnetic field that is critical to the operation of the entire mechanism. We will look at the aspects involved and how it works.
Roadmap
Here is a brief summary of our efforts so far…
Introduction.
Gravity separation and isolation.
Measurement of the gravitational frequencies.
Alan Holt Teleportation mechanism.
The coordinate mapping mechanism.
And now this post…
The Magnetic Field Generator
A magnetic field is a vector field that describes the magnetic influence of electric charges in relative motion and magnetized materials. A charge that is moving parallel to a current of other charges experiences a force perpendicular to its own velocity. The effects of magnetic fields are commonly seen in permanent magnets, which pull on magnetic materials (such as iron) and attract or repel other magnets.
-Wikipedia
The creation of a magnetic field is a very mature technology. If you are lucky, you can probably purchase some large surplus magnetic field generators from the United States government, or you can have some custom made at a reasonable cost. This component of the dimensional portal might not be the most complicated item of equipment, but it will certainly be the most expensive on your “bill of materials” for the project.
In any event, you will want something that can create a large magnetic field that a person can walk into. It must be able to create a portal at least seven feet high, and three feet wide at the minimum.
Having this piece of equipment custom made is not hard to do, but you will need to be able to speak the language of the engineers and the designers at the factory or warehouse. So here are some of the basic terms that you will need to acquaint yourself with…
Maxwell’s Equations – The equations behind major modern electromagnetism
Maxwell's equations are a set of coupled partial differential equations that, together with the Lorentz force law, form the foundation of classical electromagnetism, classical optics, and electric circuits. The equations provide a mathematical model for electric, optical, and radio technologies, such as power generation, electric motors, wireless communication, lenses, radar etc. They describe how electric and magnetic fields are generated by charges, currents, and changes of the fields. The equations are named after the physicist and mathematician James Clerk Maxwell, who, between 1861 and 1862, published an early form of the equations that included the Lorentz force law. Maxwell first used the equations to propose that light is an electromagnetic phenomenon.
-Wikipedia
Maxwell’s set of four equations forming the basis for electromagnetism are as important as Newton’s laws in mechanics. Maxwell’s equations are applied in almost all modern technologies. The equations provide a mathematical model for electric, optical, and radio technologies, such as power generation, electric motors, wireless communication, lenses, radar, etc. Firstly let us see these four sweet equations one by one and then discuss them as a whole.
1. Gauss’ Law or Maxwell’s first equation
The following equations are licensed. (no shit! Can you fucking believe it? That's God damn America for you. Everything for a price. Tons of little hands in your pockets.) You can read about this license here.
Maxwell’s first equation, which describes the electrostatic field, is derived immediately from Gauss’s theorem, which in turn is a consequence of Coulomb’s inverse square law. Gauss’s theorem states that the surface integral of the electrostatic field DD over a closed surface is equal to the charge enclosed by that surface. That is
Here ρρ is the charge per unit volume.
But the surface integral of a vector field over a closed surface is equal to the volume integral of its divergence, and therefore
Therefore
or, in the nabla notation,
And thus we can summarize all this as…
Electric charges produce an electric field. The electric flux across a closed surface is proportional to the charge enclosed.
2. Gauss’ Law for Magnetism or Maxwell’s second equation
Unlike the electrostatic field, magnetic fields have no sources or sinks, and the magnetic lines of force are closed curves. Consequently the surface integral of the magnetic field over a closed surface is zero, and therefore
There are no magnetic monopoles. The magnetic flux-and-faradays-law-quantitative across a closed surface is zero.
3. Faraday’s Law or Maxwell’s third equation
This is derived from Ampère’s theorem, which is that the line integral of the magnetic field HH around a closed circuit is equal to the enclosed current.
Now there are two possible components to the “enclosed” current, one of which is obvious, and the other, I suppose, could also be said to be “obvious” once it has been pointed out! Let’s deal with the immediately obvious one first, and look at the figure below…
I am imagining a metal cylinder with current flowing from top to bottom – i.e. electrons flowing from bottom to top. It needn’t be a metal cylinder, though. It could just be a volume of space with a stream of protons moving from top to bottom. In any case, the current density (which may vary with distance from the axis of the cylinder) is JJ, and the total current enclosed by the dashed circle is the integral of JJ throughout the cylinder. In a more general geometry, in which JJ is not necessarily perpendicular to the area of interest, and indeed in which the area need not be planar, this would be ∫J⋅dσ∫J⋅dσ.
Now for the less obvious component to the “enclosed current”.
I imagine two capacitor plates in the process of being charged. There is undoubtedly a current flowing in the connecting wires. There is a magnetic field at A, and the line integral of the field around the upper dotted curve is undoubtedly equal to the enclosed current. The current is equal to the rate at which charge is being built up on the plates. Electrons are being deposited on the lower plate and are leaving the upper plate. There is also a magnetic field at B (it doesn’t suddenly stop!), and the field at BB is just the same as the field at A, which is equal to the rate at which charge is being built up on the plates. The charge on the plates (which may not be uniform, and indeed won’t be while the current is still flowing or if the plates are not infinite in extent) is equal to the integral of the charge density times the area. And the charge density on the plates, by Gauss’s theorem, is equal to the electric field DD between the plates. Thus the current is equal to the integral of D˙D˙ over the surface of the plates. Thus the line integral of HH around either of the dashed closed loops is equal to ∫D˙⋅dσ∫D˙⋅dσ.
In general, both types of current (the obvious one in which there is an obvious flow of charge, and the less obvious one, where the electric field is varying because of a real flow of charge elsewhere) contributes to the magnetic field, and so Ampère’s theorem in general must read
But the line integral of a vector field around a closed plane curve is equal to the surface integral of its curl, and therefore
Thus we arrive at:
Time-varying magnetic fields produce an electric field.
4. Ampere’s Law or Maxwell’s fourth equation
Steady currents and time-varying electric fields (the latter due to Maxwell’s correction) produce a magnetic field.
Maxwell’s Equations as a Whole
As a whole, what do Maxwell’s Equations mean?
Maxwell’s equations describe how electric and magnetic fields are generated by charges, currents, and changes of the fields. One important consequence of the equations is that they demonstrate how fluctuating electric and magnetic fields propagate at a constant speed (c) in the vacuum, the “speed of light“. These electromagnetic waves have a wide variety of usage, they are used in small things like routers to big things like search for aliens using radio telescopes and all these devices involves the use of Maxwell’s equations. Maxwell understood the connection between electromagnetic waves and light with these equations in 1861, thereby unifying the theories of electromagnetism and optics.
Now, on a practical level, seriously no one is going to sit down and create their hand-crafted magnetic field generator. Aside from it being a heck of a lot of work, it will require some specialized fabrication tools and some skill. And with something that large and costly, it would best serve the “Mad Scientist” in you to just simply compile some money and have one built to you to your specifications.
Thus, you can use these laws listed above to help you on your way.
The point that I am trying or attempting to make is that the generation of a magnetic field is not difficult it is common place and is in just about every electrical motor in the world. What is different, however is the [1] scale and [2] the utilization of it.
Generation of a magnetic field
This is pretty much how it is done…
You push an electrical current through a coil wrapped around an insulated magnetic core. By cycling the current in a sinusoidal manner, you will be able to generate a magnetic field within that core. If you have a gap in the core (shown by the cross-hatched area) a person can enter the generated magnetic field.
We (who have torn apart old motors, generators, and television sets) are well accustomed to seeing this kind of set up. To us, it pretty much looks like a typical transformer only scaled up in size immensely.
This is probably the scale and size of the magnetic field generator that we are discussing herein. The image is of a large transformer.
Though, given it’s purpose and requirements, it might be larger and more complex than a standard run-of-the-mill power transformer. Perhaps something along the lines of this, eh?
RAKESH TRANSFORMER INDUSTRIES PVT. LTD, Established in 1984, is a leading Manufacturer of Power & Distribution Transformers . The company is registered with SSI and has the entire infrastructure to manufacture Transformers upto 5MVA & voltage class of 11KV, 22KV, 33KV.
So, you can pretty much expect a layout something along these lines…
Magnetic field generator and the egress portal arrangement…
This is a cross-section view of how the set up would look. You would have this enormous ferrite frame that would carry the magnetic field through an air gap that a person can walk through. This field is generated through a transformer that would pull it from existing powerlines.
A cross-sectional view of the egress portal showing the magnetic field generator.
This drawing is not to scale, but it should give the reader an idea of the general size of what we are talking about here. In fact, if the ceiling covers the ferrite end of the top air-gap, the person entering the portal wouldn’t even be aware that there was a invisible door there at all. It would jsut be a floor and a wall at the end.
Sizing of the air gap
The amount of magnetic flux you can generate will be a function of the size of the ferrite core, and the air gap. In fact, all things taken into account, it will be the air gap that will pretty much establish the power and technical requirements for the mechanism.
The effect of an air gap on a magnetic circuit.
Construction notes
This is a large and expensive piece of equipment and it would be in the best interests of all involved if it is custom made by people who are experts in this kind of thing. You can find these people on the internet. You want to find companies or engineering design teams that specialize in the design of windings, transformers, chokes, ferrite components and windings. Perhaps something like these fellas…
Or, if you want to go it alone, you can access any number of resources on the internet on coil winding, and transformer design. Perhaps something along these links might be of interest…
Now there are some things that you need to take into account if you go the hard (but interesting) way to DIY your very own components…
How Transformers, Chokes and Inductors Work, and Properties of Magnetics
The magnetic properties are characterized by its hysteresis loop, which is a graph of flux density versus magnetization force as shown below:
An hysteresis loop.
When a electric current flows through a conductor ( copper wire), it generate a magnetic field. The magnetic field is strongest at the conductor surface and weakens as its distance from the conductor surface is increased. The magnetic field is perpendicular to the direction of current flow and its direction is given by the right hand rule shown below.
The Right Hand Rule.
When the conductor or wire is wound around a magnetic materials ( ferrite, nanocrystalline, amorphous, iron, nickel steel, grain oriented steel, MPP, sendust, high flux, etc), and current flows through the conductor, a flux is induced on the magnetic materials. This flux is induced by the magnetic field generated by the current carrying conductor. The magnetic material’s atomic parts got influenced by the magnetic field and causes them to align in a certain direction.
The application of this magnetic field on the magnetic materials is called magnetization force.
Magnetization force is called Oersted or A/m (amperes per meter)or A/cm. The units for Magnetization force is “H”.
The results of applying these magnetic field from the current carrying conductor causes the magnetic materials to have magnetic flux being formed inside the magnetic materials. The intensity of these flux is called flux density. Therefore flux density is defined as the flux per square area.
Flux density is called gauss or Tesla. I Tesla is10,000 gauss, or 1mT is 10 gauss.
The unit for Flux is “B”.
Thus, the hysterisis loop is often called the BH curve. Understanding of the BH curve is extremely important in the designs of transformers, chokes, coils and inductors.
For a square wave application as in SMPS (square wave), the Flux density or B in Gauss is given as:
Note that B is a function of voltage ( input voltage if calculated from primary windings, and output voltage if calculated from secondary side). For square wave, the constant in the above formula is 4.0, and for sinewave, it is 4.44. Flux will reduce if you increase the number of turns, increase the switching frequency or increasing the size of the cores ( increasing the area).
The magnetization force or H in Oersted is given as:
Note that H is a function of input current. The unit for H in the above formula is in Oersted. The conversion from Oersted to A/m or A/cm is one Oersted = 1.2566 A/cm. As the current swings from positive to negative the flux changes as well, tracing the curve.
The permeability of a magnetic material is the ability of the material to increase the flux intensity or flux density within the material when an electric current flows through a conductor wrapped around the magnetic materials providing the magnetization force.
The higher the permeability, the higher the flux density from a given magnetization force.
If you look at the BH loop again, you will note that the permeability is actually the slope of the BH curve.
The steeper the curve, the higher the permeability as shown below.
As the magnetization force increases ( or the current over the conductor is increased), a point is reached where the magnetic material or core will saturate. See point “S” above on the curves. When that happens, any further increase in H, will not increase the flux. More importantly, the permeability goes to zero as the slope now is flat. In this situation the magnetic material or core will fail to work as a transformer, chokes, or inductors.
So, it is very important in a choke or inductor design, not to drive the core into saturation by increasing the current (AC or DC). Usually it is the DC current that saturate the cores since it is a constant current, and puts the cores to a certain flux level.
In a transformer design, you must make sure that the maximum AC current swings from positive to negative is well below the saturation point.
Another way to get saturation is by increasing the flux density which is normally achieved by increasing the voltage ( see equation above).
From the BH curve, you can see that when the permeability is high ( slope is steep), the cores will go into saturation faster. Conversely, when the permeability is low, the cores saturate at a much higher flux density.
Power ferrite cores normally have a permeability of about 2000, and they saturate faster than iron powder or MPP cores where the permeability of Iron Powder or MPP core is 125 or so.
The typical saturation flux density of Power Ferrite material is under 4000 gauss (400mT). Whereas the saturation flux density of MPP material is 7000 gauss. High Flux is 15,000 gauss and Iron Powder is 10,000 gauss.
A transformer is an energy transfer device, so you want to have minimum losses when you transfer energy from primary side to secondary side. This is why a ferrite cores is used.
In a choke or inductor design, the application is for energy storage, and there is always a DC current flowing through, so you want to use a iron powder, MPP, sendust or high flux cores. Also, the saturation flux is a lot higher, so a higher DC current can flow through.
Core Losses There are always energy losses in transformers and chokes. These energy losses will generate heat and cause thermal problems. The losses in a transformer, chokes or inductors are from the following sources:
Hysteresis loss from the sweeping of flux from positive to negative and the area enclosed by the loop is the loss. Hysteresis loss is due to the materials intrinsic properties due to the energy used to align and re-align the magnetic domains. You can lower this loss by using a more expansive materials such as TDK PC 44, for example.
Eddy current loss from the circulating currents within the magnetic materials due to differential in flux voltage inside the cores itself. This loss is high dependent upon the thickness of the walls of the cores. The higher the switching frequency, the higher will be this eddy current loss.
Copper or winding loss. This is also dependent on the wire size, switching frequency, etc. Skin effect and proximity effect will contribute to this loss.
Conclusion
This was a collection of thoughts related to the construction for the magnetic flux generator for the dimensional portal egress station. I recommend that a rent-a-engineer be utilized to design up the system, and then you all can make it from bits and pieces of scrap stock materials.
I have much more to say about this project, and I will actually say much more. I think it’s time, however, to give this particular post a break. It’s time for me to let my hair down and have some fun.
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.
Please kindly help me out in this effort. There is a lot of effort that goes into this disclosure. I could use all the financial support that anyone could provide. Thank you very much.
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Let’s talk about profiteers. People who will make rules, bend laws, or create situations so that they can make a buck out of it.
It is people like this that caused the disappearance of public water fountains in favor of bottled water that you can purchase. It is people like this that has made it so that all of us have to endure “child safety caps” on our medicines bottles. It’s people like this that have contributed so much to the destruction of the selfless side of human nature… and who has instead replaced it with a selfish, greedy nature.
“Anything for a buck.”
About three months ago or so, I received an email that pretty much stated that they would copy my website and re-post it online, intentionally distorted, so as to mess up my SEO ranking on Google. What they said that they would do is copy my website word for word, and interject all sorts of lies, and easily proven hoaxes within it. In short making Metallicman just another “hoax website”.
They said that they would do any number of number of things…
Mess up my SEO ranking on search engines.
Post NSFW content that would ban the site from many rankings.
Fill it with outrageous lies, known and proven hoaxes.
Plant bit-mining software in it.
Plant malware in it.
And in many ways render it unreadable.
Not to mention destroy my image / reputation.
The solution to avoid this was to deposit a few thousand US dollars worth of bitcoin to their account. If I didn’t do so, then my website will be “toast”, and my reputation would be shit.
You all would be surprised at all the hoaxes, and scams that invade my Metallicman mailbox. Most are trolling bots, or mass mailings. Typically I just ignore them.
Whether it is my great, great uncle who died and left three hundred billion dollars in an abandoned account...
Or, someone who wants me to join the Illuminati...
Maybe, some dude who says that they have a video of me masturbating to movies on the internet...
Or yet one of hundreds of "invoices" from people who want my "products"...
I pretty much ignore them all.
But this one was different…
Well…
To be honest, I really don’t give a fuck if there is a few hundred copies of this website all messed up and corrupted with malware and porn. Those that are supposed to see this site are already connected. For this site is not monetized, and has no other purpose except to provide information to a very select few.
I can live without it.
It’s more of a pain than anything else.
So it does not matter to me if the SEO ranking sucks. Nor does it matter if it is confused with other similar sounding websites. I really don’t care. Not to mention that I simply don’t have a couple of thousand US dollars to give to someone to blackmail me with.
If it came down to that, I’d just simply pull the site.
I’d let the fakes propagate and go buy myself a girl and get drunk. I really don’t give a flying fuck about what could happen, or who might miss out, or what might happen to my “reputation“.
It’s already fucking shit, for God’s sakes…
…
Well, about two weeks after I ignored this first email, I received another email from those in control of domain names for websites.
It turns out that some jackass tried to buy the Metallicman website name in various forms. The (domain name guardians) asked me if I had any business associated with China as the fucker was trying to purchase the Metallicman.cn domain name.
Metallicman.com is the registered domain. And they tried to buy the Metallicman.cn registered domain.
Now, normally, this wouldn’t be much of an issue. Most Americans who use the dot-com domain registration don’t have any business with China. But I am different. Not only is my contact address Chinese, but my email system, and funding mechanisms are all Chinese.
So they had to do something they normally bypass. They asked me if I had any business associated with China in any way.
I of course, told them that I was not only inside of China, but that I conduct business with Chinese entities. Were they to grant this request, there could be all sorts of disruptions within internet commerce.
Thus no one aside from myself can own this domain name.
The FCC does not permit spoofing other websites. So if it appears that someone is trying to spoof or copy your website they will not be allowed to do so. As it is not only illegal, but it is a felony.
OK. Long story short. He could not carry forth on his threat. I am sure that were it to be his desire, he would probably register with other domains. But my gut feeling is that he was just disappointed and just stopped this shit, and went on to “greener pastures”.
Issue over.
Oh. Don’t worry about me. Nothings going on here.
But…
But…
But, that guy who tried to blackmail me, well…
…“he’s a bad man, a very bad man”.
…”he’s a bad man, a very bad man”.
That poor fuck however, is set to encounter some awfully bad luck in his future. And no, it’s not going to be the color of his socks changing either. (I do so hope you get that reference.) No evil deed goes unpunished, and eventually bad people come across things that can generate real actual real-life nightmares.
It’s not a measured response either.
It’s the stuff that real, honest to God, nightmares are made of.
This is a portrayal of a nightmare. It’s one of those things where you hope you’ll wake up. It’s about an entire community that has been taken over by a child brat who is totally self centered and sociopathic. He probably doesn’t realize the error of his ways. Any effort to educate him would result in being “sent to the cornfield.” This is a state of limbo. When your adversary has no conscience, he cannot be approached in a rational way. This story is about fear. Not only are the people under constant threat, the world the boy is creating is one that is becoming bleak and vacuous. We never know if he has the power to bring things back, but it appears not. We know at some point he will be all that is left. Everyone has a breaking point. Billy Mumy is a great choice for the child monster. The other characters sweat and frown. In their efforts to survive they have the constant mantra “That was a good thing you did. A real good thing.” This is an episode of the Twilight Zone where we never get to relax. See it if you never have. HERE.
Other Disclosures
What if, this fucker was well versed in doing this kind of nonsense? Can you actually believe that I was the very first person that he tried this nonsense with? Nope. I’m sure that he has been doing this for some time, and has had others pay him in bitcoin.
So, what about those other people who have “disclosures”? What about them?
Are they real? Are they fake? Are they sincere, or trying to create a fiction for their own purposes? What’s the story?
“The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those that speak it.”
-George Orwell
There are other people who have stated that they were posted on Mars.
And I am interested in this because <redacted>.
You see, the Martian facility is <redacted>. <redacted>.
So, I read their stories with a great deal of interest and more than a little bit of incongruity. Whether they are intentional elements of a disinformation scheme designed to preemptively advert any actual disclosure, or just isolated profiteers trying to capitalize on the mysteries of the UFO and ET abduction experience, I do not know. (Though I have my own opinions.) In most instances their reported experiences differ from mine substantially.
Of course, my interpretations of my experiences might be erroneous…
They all, however, do accurately describe the transport portal, but do so in a very, very inaccurate manner.
While others describe their entry into the programs intentionally or unintentionally omitting the fact that they had to be implanted with probes to do so. Hum… Let me be terrifyingly specific.
Only people with implanted probes get to go to Mars, boys and girls. (The dimensional portal will not work for you without the probes.) Additionally, if you want to join a top secret program; well then, that is not what it is called.
It is a SAP, W-SAP a U-SAP, or if you are an active MAJestic member a W(U)-SAP. It is not a super (dooper) top secret, grade “X” program. Best get your nomenclature correct. All of this tells me something quite clear; many of them are (perhaps) full of bullshit.
Oh, excuse me, let me say this nicer. Let me sound more reasonable and understandable. Let me be clear in a more polite manner; all of this is suggestive to me of fraud and deceit.
I am afraid that, as open minded as I am, I just simply do not believe many of them. I do not believe them at all.
The reader is thus cautioned not to associate my disclosure with these other individuals or their disclosures. Because even if they are telling the truth, their stories differ from mine in many profound ways that they have no bearing with my story in any way.
It is these kinds of occluded statements that tend to render a real and actual disclosure like mine into the rubbish bin without giving it its fair and just consideration.
That is what would most probably happen. It is, perhaps, their intention.
The truth is, honestly, if they actually did teleport to Mars; if they are actually important enough to be considered for any Mars related program then they will have the implanted probes in their head.
This is a fact; period. End of discussion.
I don’t give much credence to any of them unless they can pass the x-ray test.
Let’s see those probes boys and girls. Let’s see them. Everyone that was involved in MAJestic has these probes. Everyone who was involved in my specific program has these probes. (According to the lecture on the base in Florida; everyone who is even associated with this program has these probes.)
There are many such examples of such rubbish.
Anyone who is states that Mars has [1] standing water…
Standing water requires an atmosphere with a specific pressure range and a suitable temperature. This is basic thermodynamics. All one needs to do is look up the appropriate chart in any classical thermodynamics textbook. Water; if the necessary conditions are not present, there will not be any water standing.
Pressure – Enthalpy (h) table for water.
[2] plant life on its surface…
When I refer to (my) Mars, it is an alternative world line Mars. Other people might also be relating an alternative world-line Mars as well.
However, any alternative world-line Mars would be similar to ours in most significant ways.
To deviate, for instance, to a world-line where the is life on Mars, with indigenous life would also be a Mars with at least a 40% deviance from our reality.
The greater the deviance, the greater the impact on the consciousness and the soul that “farmed” that consciousness.
When the consciousness returned back to this (normal) world-line (or something similar with a 1% deviance), there would be manifest changes in their experiences. It’s the “carry over” effect, that occurs when you move across world-lines.
The larger the deviance, the greater the effect.
Consciousness is not a “stand alone” attribute. It is a very vibrant controlling “ball” or quanta that can alter and manipulate the physical world.
When it moves in and out of different world-lines it affects the physical world (after all, was I not a “dimensional anchor”?).
The greater the change between world-lines, the greater the adverse affect on the consciousness. That does not benefit the soul. Therefore, it is very advantageous for the soul to limit the alterations to the consciousness, because the purpose of the creation of realities is to obtain experiences.
Consciousness is what helps to define the realities that the soul will experience. (Not the other way around.)
[3] carved statues, [4] religious burial crypts, [5] rodents that scurry about the surface, [6] huge pyramid structures or [7] faces that stare up to the sky, [8] native animals or [9] intelligent naturally evolved life…
… is a nutcase.
Either that or they are intentionally trying to throw such an amazing amount of disinformation at the reader that everything becomes distasteful and confused, or they are ignorantly delusional.
Do not believe any of it.
OK, then. Here are just some of the many examples of such disinformation; disinformation intentionally designed to render any real disclosures inert. I culled many of these references from books or the Internet. I present them here with my comments.
I am biased.
Please be prepared for some rather harsh criticism. (Wince.)
Captain Kaye
Let me start this discourse with a Mr. Randy Cramer (Captain Kaye).
The reader needs to understand that once I became retired and my life started to settle out, I began an active search for others who were in the program that I participated in. I wanted to meet up with them, chat with them, and compare notes. It was my hope that they could fill in some blank areas of my memories, or fill in some thoughts that I have had regarding my experiences. However, alas, I have been mostly unsuccessful.
One of the first of these individuals that I started to focus my attention on was “Captain Kaye”.
He is (by his own words) a former US Marine who has claimed that he spent 17 years of his career on MARS. The ex-naval infantryman, who uses the pseudonym Captain Kaye. He states that he was posted to the Red Planet to protect five (!) human colonies from indigenous Martian life forms.
FACT: In this universe, there are no (current) indigenous life forms on Mars bigger than a fossilized microbe. At least this guy doesn’t charge for his bullshit. You can watch him chat about his “experiences” on you-tube at https://youtu.be/ktjuDsAt0yo .
Mr. Randy Cramer also known as “Captain Kaye”.
He claims he then spent nearly three years serving in a secret ‘space fleet’ run by a multinational (!) organization called the Earth Defense Force, which recruits military personnel from countries including the US, Russia and China. Captain Kaye said he was trained to fly three different types of space fighters…
And, by the way, just who were the Earth at war with? Indeed, if we were at war with any known extraterrestrial species that I know of, we would all be long eviscerated by now. Truth. They could swat us like a fly and there would be nothing that we could do about it.
and three bombers.
In testimony released to ExoNews TV.
He added that training took place on a secret moon base called “Lunar Operations Command”, Saturn’s moon Titan, and in deep space.
On Titan? Why would anyone want to locate a command and control center there? It is far from being a neutral and calm place to settle.
The hydrocarbon atmosphere would, I would imagine, cause more headaches and hassles to the inhabitants than any vacuum world or moon would.
Observations from the Voyager space probes have shown that the Titanean atmosphere is denser than Earth's, with a surface pressure about 1.45 times that of Earth's. Titan's atmosphere is about 1.19 times as massive as Earth's overall, or about 7.3 times more massive on a per surface area basis.
It supports opaque haze layers that block most visible light from the Sun and other sources and renders Titan's surface features obscure.
The atmosphere is so thick and the gravity so low that humans could fly through it by flapping "wings" attached to their arms.
Titan's lower gravity means that its atmosphere is far more extended than Earth's; even at a distance of 975 km. The atmospheric composition in the stratosphere is 98.4% nitrogen—the only dense, nitrogen-rich atmosphere in the Solar System aside from the Earth's—with the remaining 1.6% composed of mostly of methane (1.4%) and hydrogen (0.1–0.2%).
Because methane condenses out of Titan's atmosphere at high altitudes, its abundance increases as one descends below the tropopause at an altitude of 32 km, leveling off at a value of 4.9% between 8 km and the surface.
There are trace amounts of other hydrocarbons, such as ethane, diacetylene, methylacetylene, acetylene and propane, and of other gases, such as cyanoacetylene, hydrogen cyanide, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, cyanogen, argon and helium.
The orange color as seen from space must be produced by other more complex chemicals in small quantities, possibly tholins, tar-like organic precipitates. The hydrocarbons are thought to form in Titan's upper atmosphere in reactions resulting from the breakup of methane by the Sun's ultraviolet light, producing a thick orange smog.
Titan also has no magnetic field. Whether there is life on Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, is at present an open question and a topic of scientific assessment and research.
Titan is far colder than Earth, and its surface lacks stable liquid water; factors which have led some scientists to consider life there unlikely.
On the other hand, its thick atmosphere is chemically active and rich in carbon compounds. On the surface there are bodies of liquid methane and ethane; some scientists speculate that these liquids might take the place of water in living cells different from those on Earth.
In short, if you were to walk and operate upon the surface of Titan, it would be more like wearing a deep-sea diving outfit as your trudge your way through a soup of oils and hydrocarbons. It is not an ideal place to set up any kind of base of operations.
Captain Kaye’s testimony reveals that the main human colony on Mars is called Aries Prime which is located inside a crater. Aries Prime serves as the headquarters for the Mars Colony Corporation. According to Captain Kaye, the air is breathable on the surface of Mars…
The atmosphere on Mars is not, nor ever has been, breathable by humans. While there is some oxygen in the atmosphere, the combination of temperature, and pressure, as well as the presence of other gasses in the atmosphere precludes the suitability for organic human life on the surface.
…and the temperature could be warm at times.
Yes, the temperature on Mars near the equator can, at times, approach a human comfort level for a short and brief period of time.
He claims that there are two indigenous species on Mars, both of which are highly intelligent. One of these was a Reptilian species that was very aggressive in defending its territory.
The other was an Insectoid species that was equally capable of protecting its territory.
He said that indigenous Martians are not particularly interested in expanding their territory, only maintaining it. Captain Kaye said that as long as the Mars Defense Force and Mars Colony Corporation did not encroach on the territory of the indigenous Martians, there would be stable relations.
After serving 17 years of a 20 year tour of duty, events changed dramatically when virtually all combat personnel from the Mars Defense force were asked to retrieve an extraterrestrial artifact from a cave sacred to the indigenous Reptilians.
Captain Kaye described how over 1000 (one thousand!) men and women were killed in a subsequent battle and only 28 of his colleagues, including himself, survived. Captain Kaye says he retired after a 20 year tour of duty, describing a retirement ceremony on the moon that he claims was presided over by VIPs including ex-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
My commentary on all of this; he is full of BULLSHIT.
I just do not know where to begin. It is so outlandish, and so full of just complete nonsense.
The physics concerning the planet are just wrong. The presence of life, whether intelligent or not is incorrect. (Even taking into account the possibility that he might have used dimensional travel to go to a world-line where Mars has a human-friendly atmosphere, he wouldn’t have returned to our world-line. There are limits to the technologies employed. (For the planet Mars to have a breathable atmosphere…) He would be so far off “the beaten path” that returning to this kind of world-line would be near impossible.)
All SAP agents in MAJestic are implanted. If he was part of the organization he would have similar probes to mine. (Again, let’s see those probes.)
There are no wars, nor is there a need to maintain a military garrison on Mars to defend humans or other creatures from aggressor forces.
There are no warlike or aggressive reptilians that we need to worry about. (The truth is, the Mantids and the Type-I extraterrestrials are so far advanced technologically, that if they wanted to, they could eradicate humans off the face of the globe within days and there isn’t a thing that we could do about it.)
If you join a W(U)-SAP, you will NOT sign an enormous document (that is what you need to do if you go through American legal channels), you sign a one page document. If you violate it, you are killed. End of story. There just simply isn’t the need for a huge legal document because violators of the MAJestic confidentiality oaths would not go through the American court system. They would be taken into a room and shot in the head.
If what he says were true, then he would be retired as a sex offender, and like me, scared as shit of being killed for his public disclosures.
Additionally, the idea that 1000 people can die on Mars without anyone noticing is just short of mind-boggling.
The greys, of whatever race (supposedly contacted) do not “feel” evil or dangerous. (This is another loud “tell-tale” sign of a lying profiteer.) They do not “ “ooze” a kind of evil dark”.
Summary; I just simply do not believe anything that Captain Kaye has said. It is all hogwash.
Corey Goode
According to alleged Secret Space Program whistleblower Corey Goode, who in October 2016 released a press release about human activity and Mars.
In it he states that we are already present on Mars and have been for a long time. And he’s not the only one who’s saying that. This also comes as less of a surprise given the recent WikiLeaks’ documents, suggest that human and extraterrestrial collaboration that’s been happening for some time.
“Mars was first visited by the Germans as far back as the 1930s, but during the 70s, US space programs were actively exploring Mars and other planets to establish bases. In 1980 the US SSP became – Solar Warden. Under Project Solar Warden vast development and colonization occurred on Mars and other planets. Goode continues, “Bases on Mars were built under the surface.”
-Corey Goode
The reader can watch more on this in detail on GAIA.com where Corey Goode & David Wilcock host Cosmic Disclosure.
He claims he was recruited through one of the MILAB programs at the young age of 6, and trained and served there from 1976-1986/87. Toward the end of his time as a MILAB he was assigned to an IE support role for a rotating Earth Delegate Seat (shared by secret Earth government groups) in a “human-type” ET Super Federation Council.
MILAB refers to the military abduction of a person who is then indoctrinated and trained for any number of military black ops programs.
Apparently, Goode’s IE abilities played an important role in communicating with non-terrestrial beings as part of one of the Secret Space Programs (SSP). During his 20 year service he had a variety of experiences and assignments, including the Intruder Intercept Interrogation Program.
Corey Goode from the US Secret Space Program (SSP) said, “There are humans already on Mars and it’s been colonized.” In Dec. 1986, Goode was recruited into SSP – U-SAP (Un-Acknowledged Special Access Programs) under Project Solar Warden. He was assigned to a research vessel in space to study the solar system from Dec. 1986 – Dec. 2007.
Darren Perks while conducting research for Huffington Post on the “Solar Warren” program, made an FOI (freedom of information) request with the DoD (department of defence) in 2010.
He received a very interesting response in an email;
“About an hour ago I spoke to a NASA rep who confirmed this was their program and that it was terminated by the President. He also informed me that it was not a joint program with the DoD. The NASA rep informed me that you should be directed to the Johnson Space Center FOIA Manager.I have ran your request through one of our space-related directorates and I’m waiting on one other division with the Command to respond back to me. I will contact you once I have a response from the other division. Did NASA refer you to us?”
Interesting. This was obviously a “slip up”.
NASA hacker, Gary McKinnon hacked into U.S. Space Command computers several years ago and learned of the existence of “non-terrestrial officers” and “fleet-to-fleet transfers” and a secret program called “Solar Warden”, he was charged by the Bush Justice Department with having committed “the biggest military computer hack of all time”, and stood to face prison time of up to 70 years after extradition from UK.
But trying earnest McKinnon in open court would involve his testifying to the above classified facts, and his attorney would be able to subpoena government officers to testify under oath about the Navy’s Space Fleet.
To date the extradition of McKinnon to the U.S. has gone nowhere.
McKinnon also found out about the ships or craft within Solar Warden. It is said that there are approx eight cigar-shaped motherships (each longer than two football fields end-to-end) and 43 small “scout ships.
The Solar Warden Space Fleet operates under the US Naval Network and Space Operations Command (NNSOC) [formerly Naval Space Command]. There are approximately 300 personnel involved at that facility, with the figure rising.
Read the rest here; http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/darren-perks/solar-warden-the-secret-space-program_b_1659192.html
+ + +
His experiences are very different from mine. They are so different that there are no points of common reference. Some points;
If he is real, he would have probes inbedded in his skull like mine. All extraterrestrial interaction, and technology transfer falls under MAJestic perview. As such, he would have memory controlling devices, a core kit one inside his skull. He need not have to use the dimensional portal, but he would need to be implanted.
If he spent any period of time on Mars from 1986 until 2004, I would be aware of it.
He would not be part of any kind of research or study unless he possessed a minimum of a technical degree, either in engineering or one of the sciences. This is fundamental. People are not active members in MAJestic unless they have this minimum requirement.
If what he said is true, then he would have been retired as a sex offender.
I think he is full of shit and is a BULLSHIT artist. I do not know why he has made such outrageous statements.
However, that being said, he does know something.
Whether it is in passing, or through a friend of a friend is not clear. I do not believe he is who and what he says he is. I personally believe that he took the little bits and scraps of truth that he discovered and fabricated a large story around them to fit a more conventional narrative in regards to geo-political weapons and technology that was moved to an outer space environment.
What does he know?
Solar Warren
Could he be referring to a SAP known as “Solar Warren”?
When Space Shuttle Atlantis landed at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on July 21, 2011 and headed to a museum, we were told that the U.S. Government no longer had any space-capable vehicles, and that we would have to rely on other countries and private companies to get into orbit and service the Space Station.
And we have. For decades, it has been the Russians that provided shuttle capability for LEO operations.
But according to others, who have elaborated on the Solar Warden project, they have stated that this program is an active Space Fleet!
This program, code-named 'Solar Warden', apparently has now grown to 85 small disc-shaped "scout ships" and 10 elongated-delta-shaped motherships [each longer than three football fields joined end to end]. (There are also apparently additional intermediate-length deltoid spacecraft as well. )
The Solar Warden Space Fleet is operated by Naval Network Warfare Command's subcomponent Naval Network and Space Operations Command (NNSOC), headquartered at Naval Support Facility Dahlgren, VA.
The Solar Warden Fleet utilizes launch facilities at Vandenberg AFB, Lompoc, California and the Utah Test and Training Range in the desert west of Ogden, Utah.
Apparently NNSOC has approximately 365 personnel on Earth and in space. NNSOC operates in cooperation with the Central Security Service-Operations Division and its work to protect extraterrestrials in near-space and on the ground.
The Solar Warden Space Fleet's vessels are staffed by Naval Space Cadre and Marine Space Cadre officers, whose training has earned them the prestigious 6206-P Space Operations specialty designation, awarded after they have graduated from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California with a Master of Science degree in Space Systems Operations.
Space Cadre Officers receive space operations training at NASA, and after graduating and a space flight are awarded the Naval Astronaut or Naval Flight Officer Astronaut insignia.
Other member countries' Navies and Marines furnish men and women officers to this program also.
That’s pretty amazing! Not only is this program enormous, but it is integrated within existing systems BUT not associated with MAJestic or even use the ONI oversight!
Their justification for the existence of this super-dooper top secret amazing program is two-fold.
One part [1] of the Space Fleet’s mission is to prevent rogue countries or terrorist groups from using near space to conduct warfare against other countries, or to fire from space on Earth-bound targets. The Federation has made it quite clear that space is to be used for peaceful purposes only.
A second part [2] of Earth’s Space Fleet’s mission is to prevent the rogue global-elite control group, the Cabal or related organizations, from using its orbital weapons systems, including nuclear missiles and directed-energy beam weapons, to intimidate or attack anyone or any group on Earth it decides to target or extort.
Because this Space Fleet has the job of being “Space Policeman” within our solar system, its program has been named Solar Warden.
WOW! Not only isn’t it part of MAJestic, but it’s not part of the UN either!
How to they justify this?
The Space Fleet operates under authority granted by a secret Resolution of the UN Security Council.
The U.S. component is so highly classified that when British civilian Gary McKinnon hacked into U.S. Space Command computers during 2001-2002 and learned of the existence of "non-terrestrial officers", "fleet-to-fleet transfers", and a secret program called "Solar Warden", he was charged by the Bush Justice Department with having committed "the biggest military computer hack of all time."
Corroboration and Verification
What makes all these flights of fantasy believable is selective extracts of defense authorization bills.
But, let me tell youse guys something. Waived SAP authorizations are not provided within authorization acts in anything other than an alpha-numerical designation. If this was an actual SAP, there would not be any white paper trail at all.
Thus this statement below is just disinformation…
Lest anyone think that Solar Warden is an errant flight of fancy, important corroboration of this information is found in the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2012. Section 912 of that Defense Bill refers to the Secretary of Defense being authorized to purchase and take delivery of "space vehicles". (Relevant Section 912 shown here.)
Summary; Not only do I not believe Corey Goode, but I also do not believe the story about Solar Warden either.
It does not mean that I am an expert and that my opinions are gold, but that I am part of MAJestic and everything associated with this Corey Goode disclosure seems like bullshit to me. Sorry to say. I know that many, many of you all believe his story and the idea that there is a space fleet as part of the Solar Warden fantasy.
It’s just simply not true. There is only one singular umbrella organization. It is MAJestic, and if the information disclosed regarding this Goode / Solar Warden nonsense is incompatible with it.
Here is another “new age” “nut case” trying to cash in on the financial opportunities presented by the gullible. I present the following for the reader to make heads or tails out of it and to determine if my appraisal has any validity.
“My name is Michael Relfe and I helped produce “The Perfect Health System”. My wife Stephanie supplied the talent, healing expertise and the raw determination to create a training system that would allow anyone to learn kinesiology and possess a technology that would help them make fantastic improvements in their life.”
“I want to tell you a little about myself and why you need Disk 11 (The Wernicke’s Correction). I have spent 24 years in the IT industry and have been an employee or consultant for Fortune 50 companies such as AMEX, IBM, American Airlines and The US Navy. I hold a degree in Computer Science and am a graduate of United States Naval Nuclear Power School. I am not sharing these things to attempt to impress you or to be a smartass. I want to help you understand that your success in life and the completion of your goals is in your hands and that with kinesiology….a special kind of kinesiology, you now have the technology to change your situation and get what you want out of life…”
“Kinesiology is scientific. Chiropractors and Licensed Massage Therapists using Kinesiology put treatments on insurance. And this is the actual hands on, repeatable, meat-and-potatoes kinesiology correction. Some kinesiology corrections are for your body. This kinesiology correction is for your brain. And it is demonstrated completely in "Perfect Health With Kinesiology & Muscle Testing - Disk 11"”. And no, it's not available separately. You need to learn Kinesiology from the other disks before you can use it correctly.
After the sales pitch he describes how he found out about this marvelous scientific breakthrough. Of course it involves an adventure of sorts on the surface of Mars. This adventure is outlined in the work titled “The Mars Records”, Book 1 and book 2[i]. Essentially it involves a convoluted mix of astral projection[ii], hypnotic regression[iii], reincarnation[iv], and general gallivanting around the surface of the planet meeting all kinds of curious and interesting individuals. Some of which are quite dangerous; such as those pesky Reptilians[v].
[ii]Astral projection (or astral travel) is an interpretation of out-of-body experience (OBE) that assumes the existence of an "astral body" separate from the physical body and capable of travelling outside it. Astral projection or travel denotes the astral body leaving the physical body to travel in an astral plane. The idea of astral travel is rooted in common worldwide religious accounts of the afterlife in which the consciousness' or soul's journey or "ascent" is described in such terms as "an... out-of body experience, wherein the spiritual traveller leaves the physical body and travels in his/her subtle body (or dreambody or astral body) into ‘higher’ realms." It is frequently reported in association with dreams, and forms of meditation.
[iii]Past life regression is a technique that uses hypnosis to recover what practitioners believe are memories of past lives or incarnations, though others regard them as fantasies or delusions or a type of confabulation. Past life regression is typically undertaken either in pursuit of a spiritual experience, or in a psychotherapeutic setting. Most advocates loosely adhere to beliefs about reincarnation, though religious traditions that incorporate reincarnation generally do not include the idea of repressed memories of past lives
[iv]Reincarnation is the religious or philosophical concept that the soul or spirit, after biological death, begins a new life in a new body. This doctrine is a central tenet of the Indian religions. It is also a common belief of various ancient and modern religions such as Spiritism, Theosophy, and Eckankar and is found in many tribal societies around the world, in places such as Siberia, West Africa, North America, and Australia.
[v]Reptilians (also called reptoids, reptiloids, or draconians) are purported reptilian humanoids that play a prominent role in science fiction, as well as modern ufology and conspiracy theories. The idea of reptilians on Earth was popularized by David Icke, a conspiracy theorist who claims shape-shifting reptilian aliens control Earth by taking on human form and gaining political power to manipulate our societies. Icke has claimed on multiple occasions that many of the world leaders are, or are possessed by, reptilians.
It all begins so innocently;
“The Mars Records, authored by Stephanie Relfe, is a 300-plus page document http://www.surfingtheapocalypse.com/mars_records.html chronicling the biofeedback sessions of her husband Michael who discovered he had been involved in a secret black project while in the Navy. Michael was astonished to find thathe had been living a double life as a covert operative for The Mars Defense Force. Some of his assignments were covert ops, piloting spacecraft, remote viewing, psychic defense and even psychic assassinations.
Michael’s recruitment, training and service for Mars Defense Force was carried out via sophisticated alien and military mind control technology. This included implants, hypno-programming, dissociation of specifically trained alter personalities, advanced psi training, speed learning, psi enhancing drugs and time travel. Michael’s case is unique and very important because he is one of a very handful of persons who have been able to clear, recall and deprogram the sophisticated alien and military mind programming. His success in memory retrieval and deprogramming is due to deliverance prayer and the excellent therapeutic skills of his wife, Stephanie Relfe. She uses a combination of biofeedback clearing sessions and kinesiology .”
-From an interview with Eve Lorgen
I do not believe anything that is written here. I think that this is just simply a traditional “snake oil salesman” who have updated their time honored technique to fleece the gullible by using the opportunities presented by the New Age movement. I believe that activities such as this make real and actual disclosures fall into the realm of the insane.
Henry Deacon(Project Camelot)
Arthur Neumann is his real name. He has made some remarkable statements. Part of which involved the participation in top secret programs authored by the United States government. Initially, when he first came forward he did so under an assumed name (Henry Deacon) to protect himself and his family. In 2009 he decided to come forward under his real name.
Henery Deacon
He has a background as a physicist and is now engaged in a profitable money making project known as “Project Camelot”.
http://projectcamelotportal.com/
On his website one can purchase all kinds of video and audio transcripts as well as books that describe the upcoming US –China war in 2008 (WTF?) and the secret conspiracies involving the United States government and time portals.
As of 2020, there were no overt hostilities between the United States and China.
Interesting stuff, but I rather doubt all of it. Of course it doesn’t really match or fit anything that I was exposed to, but that means nothing. What is important and germane to this discussion is what part of his testimony agrees or disagrees with mine.
Sorry, but I do not believe in time travel. The concept of time is a human fabrication to describe a universally evolving universe subject to the thoughts of all sentient creatures that inhabit it. It's world-line travel.
However, I do believe in dimensional portals. Please read elsewhere to see how a person can utilize dimensional travel to achieve apparent time-travel.
On July 25, 2009, at the European Exopolitics Congress in Barcelona, Mr. Neumann publicly stated,
“There is life on Mars. There are bases on Mars. I have been there.”
The following day, Mr. Neumann participated in Future-talk, a Project Camelot documentary interview, in which he provided details of his teleporting to a base on Mars and participating in a one-hour project meeting, which was also attended by representatives of an intelligent civilization that lives in cities under the surface of Mars.
This experience is indeed, similar to mine in that he describes [1] teleporting to a place, but he fails to discuss the process, the equipment and the mandatory implantation. That sounds quite strange to me. He describes [2] cities under the surface of Mars that are [3] occupied by creatures belonging to an intelligent civilization. That <redacted>.
If fact, if he just left his experiences to the “bare bones”, no-nonsense aspects of visiting the facility, and discusses his implantation I would believe him. But he relates such a large amount of disinformation that it has polluted anything of value that he must contribute to this discussion. In effect, he renders his testimony null and void.
My conclusion of this individual is that he actually might of teleported to the facility, but the other things that he discusses are wholly outside my experience range and thus appear fantastical to me.
I do NOT think he is a crackpot. However, the other statements garnered from him are so far-fetched and outlandish that they make it difficult for me to want to associate with his testimony in any way. I want to believe him. I want to say to him; “Yes, I too was involved in similar programs!” But, alas his descriptions of life on Mars; time portals that bend time and space and strange secret cabals are beyond my experience base. I want to believe him, but I just cannot.
Our mutual experiences are too different.
Andrew D. Basiago(Project Pegasus)
Andrew D. Basiago is a Vancouver, Washington lawyer. As a side project, he runs Project Pegasus. This is a group dedicated to lobbying the government to release the secrets of teleportation and time travel. Basiago also refers to himself as “the discoverer of life on Mars.”
Andrew D. Basiago running for the US Presidency.
He makes many amazing and fantastic claims. They are just and wild and crazy as my own. For instance, he claims to be one of two “planetary-level whistle blowers”. He claims to have teleported to Mars in the 1980s[i] as an Earth ambassador[ii] to the Martian civilization[iii]. Which is why he is mentioned here.
[i] I teleported in the 1980’s, why couldn’t he have also?
[ii] As such, this implies an organization that represents the earth. He has to be an ambassador who he would represent . There isn’t any. The closest organization would be MAJestic, and that organization is primiarily a United States organization that represents human interests in a fractured and dysfunctional global alliance of nations.
[iii] On our dimensional track, there isn’t any indigenous native intelligent Martian life.
This is strange because when he published his article nearly three decades later, he claims to have been “astonished” to discover life on Mars. Along with William B. Stillings, a comrade he dug up somewhere, Basiago now claims that President Obama was a fellow Mars traveller back in the day, then living under the moniker “Barry Soetoro.” In fact, the fact that Barack Obama used to go by Barry Sotero may be the only truth in Basiago’s claims. Basiago and Stillings say they met Obama on Mars, and the government is now covering up the president’s space travel past.
Barrack Obama, or what ever name he used, was NEVER at the facility where <redacted>. The only people who visited the facility were MAJestic members tied with industry and space technologies. No political personages, lawyers, attorneys, or “grass root” fundraisers were ever granted permission to visit the facility. Selection of the particular individuals who would visit was determined by our extraterrestrial partners. They had no interest in any “service to self” individual ever being privy to the projects that we were all involved in.
Mr. Basiago was featured in a six-hour interview posted by Jessica Schab on YouTube. The name of this video is “A Conversation with Andrew D. Basiago” . ( I would hazard a guess that the interview was too controversial for mainstream media.)
Curiously, he has stated that he was involved in time travel. Another person known as Vonheldon also has a compelling narrative. His photos are convincing, though anyone can use Photoshop these days, so that might not be convincing enough. I think this person has a lot to say, but as far as his experiences compared with mine are concerned, I have to offer a “shrugged shoulders” expression. I find all of these stories quite interesting, but unfortunately are far beyond my realm of experience to offer any kind of verification or validity.
In the 39-part interview, he related his experiences in DARPA’s Project Pegasus as one of America’s early time-space explorers during the period 1969-72 and narrates the seven episodes over 40 years in which the CIA, in possession of a “quantum access” capability since 1967-68, briefed him about his destiny as a public figure who would one day be principally associated with the discovery of life on Mars.
Could this be the same as the dimensional portal that I was transported in?
Ms. Schab writes that in this,
“…six-hour interview, American lawyer Andrew D. Basiago, 47, narrates the hidden history of his discovery of life on Mars in 2008 and reveals the fact that by 1968 the US intelligence community was already aware of aspects of his later Mars work. Andy tells the phenomenal story of seven briefings over 40 years in which he was shown evidence of his destiny involving the discovery of life on Mars, and explains how the emergence of time travel and this epochal future event were interlinked.
According to Andy, by 1968, the CIA was already teleporting individuals to the past and future to retrieve artifacts there and bring them back, while propagating holograms of past and future events with devices called chrono-visors to also gather intelligence.
Incredibly, as a result of this quantum access, Andy was given a copy of his landmark paper The Discovery of Life on Mars in 1971 and asked to read and remember it, so that when, in 2008, he wrote it, it would contain as much data about Mars as possible!”
I know nothing about his version of time travel. I know nothing about the CIA. I know nothing about the “discovery of life on Mars” in 1971. They are beyond my base of experience.
As I understand it, “time travel” as is perceived today is not possible. However, apparent “time travel” is possible, but this isn’t so much as travelling forward and backwards in time as it is mostly dimensional swapping. By swapping in and out of the multi-world reality, one could experience universes that were apparently further back or forth in time relative to our departure universe.
Ms. Schab continues,
“During his lecture, Andy shared numerous photographic images evidencing his discovery of life on Mars, including many photos of humanoid beings, different animal species, carved statues and built structures on Mars that put him at the forefront of Mars research.
Throughout the weekend, Andy lectured at his table to small groups of conference-goers, who came and sat in rapt attention as he shared stories about his experiences as a child in Project Pegasus, the secret US research program in which time travel was the focus.
I know that, like me, everybody who took part in those impromptu seminars was certain that Andy is, as Bill Ryan of Project Camelot stated recently, the real deal - a truth-teller with significant new information to share about the real Philadelphia Experiment.”
Again, I must state that I know nothing about “Project Pegasus”, and the “Philadelphia Experiment”. To me it all sounds so fantastical and outrageous. Maybe that is its intention. However, anyone who would actually spend any time of significance on Mars would work in conjunction with us at the base. I do not know any of the afore mentioned people. I never saw them there (not that that means anything), and so their testimony, while outlandish does not mesh up well with my experiences.
Aside from the movie and what I read in the book. It all sounds too fantastical to me. Chances are that it, at most, is derived partially from truth with a lot of fiction thrown in for good measure.
On the other hand, some of the things that he says does absolutely agree with my experience. Though, I never recall seeing him at the facility in any capacity. (This is critical. I was there at the facility through entanglement. It was a large facility, but a small community. We all knew each other quite well, and thus knew everything that went on around us. I knew when we had visitors and who they were. Though I generally did not meet the visitors myself, we monitored them, and knew what was going all at all times. I do not ever recall anyone like him at the facility where I was entangled.)
He states that;
He had secretly teleported to bases on Mars.
There is the existence of a permanent teleportation mechanism linking Earth and Mars.
An intelligent civilization lives under the surface of Mars.
This Mr. Basiago says some pretty outlandish things; things that absolutely do not mesh with my experiences at all. Was he really on Mars, or was he somewhere else? Is all this a big lie, or is there really some truth in what he has to say? For me, it all seems nonsensical and just out and out lies. He for instance, makes the following statements;
There is the existence of native life forms on the “ecologically fragile” surface of Mars.
The US government has had a fully operational teleportation capability since 1967-68[i].
By 1969-70 the United States government was already training a cadre of gifted and talented American schoolchildren, including himself, to become America’s first generation of “chrononauts” or time-space explorers.
Look guys; the planet Mars is pretty much a sterile world today.
The actual surface of Mars within a 2% world-line variance.
It is mostly rocks with some frozen liquids in the shape of crystals scattered about. There once was flowing water on the planet, but it was geologically a long; long time ago [ii]. And, when the water did flow there was not enough time [iii] for any kind of evolutionary process to take place. There are no statues, or ruins on Mars suggestive of a great glorious human-compatible civilization. There are no carved faces the size of mountains on the planet. There are no statues or fossilized bones or remains to be seen.
[i] Perhaps they did. Nevertheless, how would he actually know this. No one told us anything about how the system was developed. They only taught us how to use it. This date he gives places this capability to transport humans across the distances of space before Neil Armstrong stepped on the Moon. I just can’t reconcile this statement that he made. We only started to investigate the facility in the late 1970’s. I just can’t believe this statement.
[ii] Perhaps two billion years ago. That is over a billion years before the first microbes started to form on the earth.
[iii] By all accounts; the presence of standing liquid water on the surface of Mars was a relatively short lived event. Certainly lasting more than a few million years. One must take into account that it took about 700 million years to go from microbes to humans on the earth.
Mars does have relics; bases and facilities. But nothing approaches the size; scope and breadth as what is proclaimed by many of these Martian enthusiasts (Who perhaps want to relive the fictional adventures on Barsoon.).
Barsoom is a fictional representation of the planet Mars created by American pulp fiction author Edgar Rice Burroughs.The world of Barsoom is a romantic vision of a dying Mars. Writers and science popularizers like Camille Flammarion were convinced that Mars was at a later stage of evolution than Earth and therefore much drier, took the ideas farther and published books like Les Terres du Ciel (1884), which contained illustrations of a planet covered with canals.
There are no native Martian inhabitants. There are extraterrestrial colonists who live there underground but there is no way that anyone could mistake them as being native to Mars.
The Mars-analog in this world-line possess none of the things outside of the dimensional portal that this individual claims. If he conducted operations in another world-line, it would have to be so different from this one that returning here would be a near impossibility. (Just saying.)
The Mars-analog in this world-line possess none of the things outside of the dimensional portal that this individual claims. If he conducted operations in another world-line, it would have to be so different from this one that returning here would be a near impossibility. (Just saying.)
The problem with disinformation is that the actual is often mixed up with the fantastical. Thus polluting the entire narrative. Taken in total, this is more like an intelligent profiteer who is trying to capitalize on a niche segment of the population for personal gain.
Laura Magdalene Eisenhower
In a public statement, Laura Magdalene Eisenhower, great-granddaughter of former President Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969), has exposed her attempted recruitment from April 2006 through January 2007 by a secret Mars colony project. (This is pretty amazing, precisely because of her relationship with a former United States president.)
Interview with Laura Magdalene Eisenhower.
Ms. Eisenhower’s account of her [1] targeting by time travel surveillance and [2] attempted manipulation by trained intelligence agents attached to a Mars colony project were revealed in an ExopoliticsRadio.org interview. Further, there is an extensive written statement at Ms. Eisenhower’s website. Ki’ Lia, a Stanford-educated artist, futurist and colleague of Ms. Eisenhower (!), has provided a corroborating first hand witness account of her and Ms. Eisenhower’s attempted recruitment into a secret human survival colony (!) on Mars. The alleged purpose of the secret Mars colony was to provide a survival civilization for the human race on Earth in the event of a planned (such as HAARP or bio-weapon induced) or natural cataclysm (such as by solar flares) that might depopulate the Earth.
+ + +
What can I say? I know nothing about all of this. Their experiences are wholly different than anything that I have experienced. It all sounds so fantastical, and outrageous, not to mention that odd and obscure Science-fictiony name of Ki’Lia.
LOL, Look if you really are going to do some actual technical work regarding another race use simple and easy to remember and pronounce names for Pete’s sake. Jeeze! Even though my drone pilot was an extraterrestrial, I always considered him as a “Paul”. I don’t know why. I just did. It is human nature. We humanize things that we know in comfortable terms that we can understand. We vilify that which we do not understand and do not know with strange words, terms and iconography.
I personally think she is more than just a little off. Her belief structures and experiences are quite unlike mine. For me, she appears crazy. But you know, she might not be; instead she might just be a lousy communicator. In any event, I do not want what I write to be associated with her experiences in any way. She is a little way too “new age-y” for my tastes.
Oh, by the way... LOL is an abbreviation of slang that arose during the growth of the Internet in the 1990’s. If you don’t already know that LOL stands for Laughing Out Loud, then welcome to the Internet!
Other variations of this include ROFL and LMAO.
ROFL is another way to say LOL and it stands for Rolling On Floor Laughing.
LMAO is yet another alternative to LOL or ROFL and it stands for Laughing My Ass Off.
(Yet) This woman is apparently a great expert on time-travel and alternative realities. In fact, she claims that she can open up her own time and dimensional portals at will! (Wow!) I suppose the best thing for me to present to the reader is what this woman writes on her own website, and let the reader come to their own conclusions;
“…She is also a Whistleblower and has been speaking out about being recruited to go to a Colony on Mars that represented a time-line that she refused to go along with. She has been able to uncover some necessary truths and agendas that humanity is being kept in the dark about and lectures and does workshops on these issues along with topics such as Global Alchemy, Christ-Sophia, Sacred Union, ET races, Esoteric Cosmology, the Positive Time-line and seeks to empower the individual so that harmony can be restored.
For more than 15 years, she has been providing clairvoyant readings and transformative healings for individuals with the assistance of many divination tools and astrology. Focusing on chakra systems, Laura has advised on topics such as soulpath, abduction, mind-control, core issues, relationships, past lives and physical ailments. She has been strategizing to solve the roots of major world problems including epidemics, war, environmental degradation and injustices that have been a result of the misuses of power of the shadow government. She also covers hidden agendas connected to ET races and the exile of the Divine Feminine energies.
Going through an intense World Soul journey of the labyrinth, Laura has discovered an ability to open a Natural stargate by co-creating with the Venus transits and weaving through the multi-dimensions of the higher and lower worlds. Clearing portals and moving past gatekeepers, Laura works to free us from the 3-D holographic time-loop and guide us back to the Pleroma, the totality of divine powers. With great passion and courage, she is helping to return Sacred Union, divine wisdom, and the many faces of the Goddess that have been buried and forgotten for thousands of years.”
What can I say? I am speechless.
Conclusion
I think that along with all these other individuals, my story seems just as far fetched. It seems just as fantastical, and just as insane and unlikely.
And perhaps, that’s exactly the point, eh?
But if I could disclose EVERYTHING, well, then things would make much more sense, I’ll tell you what. But I can’t, and thus, you need to discern.
Discernment.
An underappreciated fundamental.
Let’s compare why these people all say that they were part of a top secret program…
Captain Kaye. Space Marines to protect the Earth!
Corey Goode. Space Police to protect the Earth!
Michael Relfe. Space Army to protect Mars!
Henry Deacon. Martian time travel to prevent war!
Andrew D. Basiago. Ambassador to the Martian civilization.
Laura Magdalene Eisenhower. World War III life boat.
What do all these people have in common? Can you figure it out? Aside from all the standard cliche’s like California going to slide into the Pacific Ocean, an upcoming war, or climate change, or social upheaval, or the need to defend the earth from those dangerous extraterrestrials, what is it? Is it the military, war, Martian life, time travel…
… heck, we’ve even got Barrack Obama involved as a time-travelling politician! I mean according to all these people anyone can become a member of a top secret super-dooper program. We’ve got everyone from a jar-head to a confused woman who was asked to preserve the human species on Mars. I’m just surprised there’s no LGBT or “women of color” on the list.
Now.
Discern.
My MAJestic disclosure…
Sentence evolution of the human race within a nursery used for the emergence of young developing species.
So I have to ask you. Now think about it. Really, think about it. Can you tell the difference between Metallicman and all the other “disclosures”? Is this “just another disclosure” in a long, long string of disclosures? Or is it something different?
It’s very easy to confuse the real with the fake if you do not have the tools of discernment.
This is true whether you are trying to figure out things about your life, about the United States government, top secret projects or if you are trying to scam someone.
You need the power of discernment.
You need the power of discernment, or else you risk being led astray by the confused. You can be lead off the edge of a cliff, or follow the pied piper who would gleefully empty your bank accounts. Or even worse.
Worse.
You could end up messing around with the wrong person. And sometimes that person can be way, way out of your league.
Ripley 8.
Do you want more?
I have more posts along these lines in my MAJestic Index, here…
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.
Please kindly help me out in this effort. There is a lot of effort that goes into this disclosure. I could use all the financial support that anyone could provide. Thank you very much.
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If you buy into the government “proof” that the coronavirus is natural and that it was just extraordinary bad-luck for it to strike China on the eve of their busiest holiday, then this post is not for you. This post is a link to a comprehensive report that confirms that the United States unleashed a bioweapons attack on China.
Ah. You can believe whatever you want. It’s “no skin off my back”. You can just go ahead and believe whatever makes you live through the day.
Background
I often receive contributions from others in the form of information, links, and other data that are not usually available on the internet. When someone proposes an idea, a concept, or some information, I tend to listen to them. I might not agree with them, but if they have done their research properly and have something of value to contribute, I will provide access to their information on this site.
Thus this post.
Cautions
I do not agree with everything in the article, but the amount of research and the information conveyed is significant. It is worthwhile reading and I suggest you, the reader, give it every consideration.
Content
The following is a link to a PDF file. The author devoted a significant amount of time and effort to the study of the COVID-19 bioweapons attack, and compiled the information within a PDF for ease of reading. I suggest that if the reader has any doubts that this is a natural virus, that they read this detailed summary.
You can access it here, just click on the picture below…
You’ll not
find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy
notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a
necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money
off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you
because I just don’t care to.
Please kindly help me out in this effort. There is a lot of effort that goes into this disclosure. I could use all the financial support that anyone could provide. Thank you.
This multi-part post is devoted to the issue of travelling between the stars within the lifetime of a human. It does not necessarily mean that the propulsion method would be so fast as to exceed the speed of light, though that possibility does exist. It simply is a discussion on how the great gulfs between the stars can be traversed using contemporaneous human technology. As such, it purposely omits dimensional gates and transport portals. I most certainly do not have the answers regarding this most interesting of subjects. This post discusses this issue because one of the first things a debunker does is complain that engineering solutions are unattainable. I discuss these issues and more. It is a good read.
The sections
This is part 4 of a four part post. This post consists of four sections as described;
First off, MAJestic as well as our benefactors have techniques and mechanisms that permit geographical travel anywhere in the universe without using a vehicle. This technology also enables such things as world-line travel, dimensional travel, and time travel.
This is a very powerful technology, but is not the subject at hand. Here, we will talk about technologies that can be used to traverse large physical distances in relatively short periods of time, without using dimensional portals or gates.
The benefit in this technology is obvious. You need to physically go to a location in order to establish “jump gate” coordinates for it. This will require physical presence, and that means physical travel. (Of course, there are other things that one can do, like trial by error, robots and probes, but please follow my train of thought on this.)
Here we discuss ways to travel “very fast” in our universe, by using existing and known technologies without using a dimensional portal or gate.
Summary
“If the space travel is at the top of a country’s agenda, that country is surely a very developed one!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan
The majority of open research paths involve further study of the fundamental properties of space-time and inertial frames, looking for candidate sources of reaction mass and the means to interact with it.
As much as these are basic areas of investigation for general physics, their investigation in the context of breakthrough spaceflight introduces additional perspectives from which to contemplate these lingering unknowns.
This alternative perspective might just provide the insight that would otherwise be overlooked.
It must be fundamentally understood that the relevant outcome per interstellar propulsion is that subspace exists, and this is how Nature implements probabilities.
Note, neither quantum nor string theories ask the question, how does Nature implement probabilities? And therefore, are unable to provide an answer. The proof of subspace can be found in how the photon electromagnetic energy is conserved inside the photon.
Subspace is probabilistic and therefore does not have the time dimension.
In other words destination arrival is not LFT constrained by motion based travel, but is effected by probabilistic localization. We therefore, have to figure out navigation in subspace or vectoring and modulation. Vectoring is the ability to determine direction, and modulation is the ability to determine distance. This approach is new and has an enormous potential of being realized as it is not constrained by LFT. (This is the core point in this discourse.)
Yes, interstellar propulsion is feasible, but not as of the warp drives we understand today. As of 2012, there are only about 50 scientists on this planet working or worked towards solving the gravity modification and interstellar propulsion challenge.
Final Conclusion
The ability to travel geographically, in and out of different world-lines or to conduct apparent “time travel” are all possible.
There are those that are active doing so, and using these technologies to go to interesting places and to do interesting things.
Those that argue against this are simply ignorant.
Their time would be better served watching Ellen DeGeneres on television.
Do you want more?
I have more posts that fit this venue. You can find them in my MAJestic Index here…
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.
Please kindly help me out in this effort. There is a lot of effort that goes into this disclosure. I could use all the financial support that anyone could provide. Thank you very much.
Error! Missing PayPal API credentials. Please configure the PayPal API credentials by going to the settings menu of this plugin.
This multi-part post is devoted to the issue of travelling between the stars within the lifetime of a human. It does not necessarily mean that the propulsion method would be so fast as to exceed the speed of light, though that possibility does exist. It simply is a discussion on how the great gulfs between the stars can be traversed using contemporaneous human technology. As such, it purposely omits dimensional gates and transport portals. I most certainly do not have the answers regarding this most interesting of subjects. This post discusses this issue because one of the first things a debunker does is complain that engineering solutions are unattainable. I discuss these issues and more. It is a good read.
The sections
This is part 3 of a four part post. This post consists of four sections as described;
This is the introduction that was provided in section / part one…
First off, MAJestic as well as our benefactors have techniques and mechanisms that permit geographical travel anywhere in the universe without using a vehicle. This technology also enables such things as world-line travel, dimensional travel, and time travel.
This is a very powerful technology, but is not the subject at hand. Here, we will talk about technologies that can be used to traverse large physical distances in relatively short periods of time, without using dimensional portals or gates.
The benefit in this technology is obvious. You need to physically go to a location in order to establish “jump gate” coordinates for it. This will require physical presence, and that means physical travel. (Of course, there are other things that one can do, like trial by error, robots and probes, but please follow my train of thought on this.)
Here we discuss ways to travel “very fast” in our universe, by using existing and known technologies without using a dimensional portal or gate.
Other Alternatives Worth Considering
The speed-of-light limit only applies to motion through four-dimensional spacetime. Perhaps wormholes are possible. That is a concept for which Kip Thorne gets the credit (or the blame). It is an old, but still valid, argument for how traveling through vast distances might be circumvented.
Wormholes
Wormholes were first theorized in 1916 (although they weren’t called that at the time), derived from Einstein’s equations for relativity.
A wormhole connects two points in space via a sort of tunnel through a higher dimension. An object entering one end of a wormhole would emerge almost instantly on the other end, even if the openings were separated by trillions of miles.
A worm-hole.
In the 1980’s, Thorne, who is the Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics, Emeritus, at the California institute of Technology, kicked off a serious discussion among physicists about whether or not an object (like a spaceship) could physically travel through a wormhole.
In other words, do the laws of physics forbid it?
Or, with unlimited resources and knowledge, could a civilization build a wormhole and use it as a cosmic highway?
Physicists, including Thorne, have made some progress on this question.
Scientists knew prior to the 1980s that if wormholes existed, they would evaporate before anything (even light) could pass from one opening to another. So sending something through a wormhole would require a kind of scaffolding made from “exotic matter” to hold the wormhole open.
In addition, wormholes for travel would likely need to be artificially constructed, because there is no solid evidence that they exist naturally.
“We see no objects in our universe that could become wormholes as they age,” Thorne writes in his book “The Science of Interstellar” (W.W. Norton & Co. 2014).
By contrast, scientists see huge numbers of stars that will eventually collapse to form black holes. There is a possibility that very, very small wormholes exist in the universe in something called “quantum foam,” which may or may not exist in the universe.
Thorne’s question on the possibility of interstellar travel through wormholes remains unanswered.
Spacetime stretching
Or, alternatively, perhaps spacetime itself can be stretched as proposed by the relativist Miguel Alcubierre (as discussed previously). There is no speed-of-light limit to spacetime stretching. After all, spacetime beyond the Hubble horizon must be receding from us at v>c.
The Alcubierre “warp drive” (Class. Quant. Grav., 11-5, L73-L77, 1994) shows that spacetime warping and stretching around a bubble of flat spacetime is mathematically consistent with general relativity.
Dimensional Shifting
Modern superstring and M-brane theory imply the existence of numerous additional dimensions. Recent work indicates that these additional dimensions may be much larger than the Planck scale.
The article “The Universe’s Unseen Dimensions” by Nima Arkani-Hamed, Savas Dimopoulos and Georgi Dvali in the August 2000 issue of Scientific American, for example, is a good summary of some current thinking on additional spatial dimensions as large as a millimeter:
"Our whole universe may sit on a membrane floating in a higher-dimensional space. Extra dimensions might explain why gravity is so weak and could be the key to unifying all the forces of nature."
Perhaps it is possible to lift off the membrane-universe constituting our four-dimensional spacetime, move in one of the additional dimensions where speed-of-light limits may not apply, and reenter our membrane-universe very far away.
All of this is speculation of course, but it is worth noting that disappearing in place, changing shape or sometimes jumping discontinuously from location to location is frequently reported in extraterrestrial vehicle observations.
Such behavior could conceivably be associated with motion into and out of a perpendicular dimension.
MAJestic Dimensional Portal
And now, I am going to talk about something in much more detail than I have in the past. I am going to discuss (just a little bit) about the fixed dimensional portal that I utilized during my egress back in 1981. I must admit that what I know of is limited in scope. As I was never specifically trained on this technology.
Never the less, I do know a few things.
Introduction
One of the most amazing technologies that I have encountered occurred during my first egress once I joined MAJestic. This was a fixed dimensional portal that was used as a transport node. It is my understanding that the technology enables anyone to travel to any geographic region, within any point in “time”, and upon any world-line, provided the proper coordinates are established and properly entered.
This technology is not a human invention. It is an acquired technology.
Now, I had initially thought that this technology was some sort of “off shoot” of earlier work in high-voltage physics, such as with the “Philadelphia Experiment” and other obscure mysterious events like the “Nazi Bell”, but to be truthful, I have no idea if any of those (well publicized) events actually occurred. Nor if they actually contributed to this technology in any way.
Instead, it is pretty clear to me that this technology is a gift from our benefactors to facilitate MAJestic interaction with them. It is not a derived human invention.
Essentially, this technology consists of an invisible “door”, that one can walk through. It will take you to another geographic location, or another time, or another world-line, as long as the coordinates are properly specified.
And that is the key. It is not enough to be able to have the mechanism and to be able to power it. You need to absolutely know your destination coordinates in exacting detail relative to your egress portal.
<redacted>
Basic Function of Operation
From what I can gather, the operation is rather simple. It requires a number of key components which work together to create the “door” or “portal” that appears.
The most important component is the <redacted>.
<redacted>
Upon leaving the portal, the individual will feel like they are covered in water and are all wet. I do not know why this is the case. But that feeling disappears within three seconds or so.
The Technology
<redacted>
Coordinates
To properly utilize this portal, it is imperative that the proper destination coordinates be input into the mechanism. As the device intuitively interacts with the “passenger”, it is important for the calibration of the particular “mapped travel sequence” be exacting and precise.
<redacted>
The way that the coordinates are compiled and established are alien to what one would expect. Instead of an alpha-numerical sequence of digits, there is a much more complex sequence. It’s complexity betrays it’s capability.
<redacted>
Conclusion
I am sorry that this explanation on this most substantive and interesting technology be so abbreviated. As I had mentioned previously, I was not trained in the operation of the device, or participated in any education regarding it. This technology is considered to be beyond the ability of mankind at this time, and thus the understanding of it’s operation is beyond the scope of most students of this matter.
As I have placed the caveats in regards to this, it is my understanding that the mechanism is quite robust and reliable.
Finally, there is absolutely no way that this technology will never make it to the public domain until long after the human sentience has been sorted out and the the human species is well pacified and established.
Some final notes and considerations on the Planck scale
The alternatives to the propulsive methods as described in parts one and two all operate on the Planck Scale. Indeed, this is the bedrock of our physical universe.
Planck’s length is the (tiny) dimension at which space-time stops being continuous as we see it. It is where things take on a discrete graininess made up of quanta, the “atoms” of space-time.
The universe at this dimension is described by quantum mechanics. Quantum gravity is the field of enquiry that investigates gravity in the framework of quantum mechanics.
Gravity has been very well described within classical physics, but it is unclear how it behaves at the Planck scale.
An interesting study published in Physical Review Letters (Key Name: Pranzetti), presented an important result obtained by applying a second quantization formulation of loop quantum gravity (LQG) formalism.
LQG is a theoretical approach within the problem of quantum gravity, and group field theory is the “language” through which the theory is applied in this work.
Loop quantum gravity (LQG).
I tell the reader this; LQG should be applied to other areas to fully appreciate the benefits that quantum technologies can have on physical systems.
"The idea at the basis of our study is that homogenous classical geometries emerge from a condensate of quanta of space introduced in LQG in order to describe quantum geometries," Thus, we obtained a description of black hole quantum states, suitable also to describe 'continuum' physics—that is, the physics of space-time as we know it."
A “condensate” in this case is a collection of space quanta. All of which share the same properties so that even though there are huge numbers of them, we can nonetheless study their collective behavior. And do so by referring to the microscopic properties of the individual particle.
So now, the analogy with classical thermodynamics seems clearer—just as fluids at our scale appear as continuous materials despite consisting of a huge number of atoms, similarly, in quantum gravity, the fundamental constituent atoms of space form a sort of fluid—that is, continuous space-time.
A vibrating String.
A continuous and homogenous geometry (like that of a spherically symmetric black hole) can, as Pranzetti and colleagues suggest, be described as a condensate…
…which facilitates the underlying mathematical calculations…
…keeping in account an a priori infinite number of degrees of freedom .
"We were therefore able to use a more complete and richer model compared with those done in the past in LQG, and obtain a far more realistic and robust result, this allowed us to resolve several ambiguities afflicting previous calculations due to the comparison of these simplified LQG models with the results of semiclassical analysis as carried out by Hawking and Bekenstein".
I view all this in a very simplistic manner. At the Planck scale, the LGQ is the nexus of time (world-line variations) and space (dimensional variations), and thus the control at the LGQ serves as the key to inter-dimensional transport.
Next…
This was part three of a four part post. To continue to part four, please go HERE.
Do you want more?
I have more posts that fit this venue. You can find them in my MAJestic Index here…
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.
Please kindly help me out in this effort. There is a lot of effort that goes into this disclosure. I could use all the financial support that anyone could provide. Thank you very much.
Error! Missing PayPal API credentials. Please configure the PayPal API credentials by going to the settings menu of this plugin.
This multi-part post is devoted to the issue of travelling between the stars within the lifetime of a human. It does not necessarily mean that the propulsion method would be so fast as to exceed the speed of light, though that possibility does exist. It simply is a discussion on how the great gulfs between the stars can be traversed using contemporaneous human technology. As such, it purposely omits dimensional gates and transport portals. I most certainly do not have the answers regarding this most interesting of subjects. This post discusses this issue because one of the first things a debunker does is complain that engineering solutions are unattainable. I discuss these issues and more. It is a good read.
The sections
This is part 2 of a four part post. This post consists of four sections as described;
(This section is a review of the introduction from the first section.)
First off, MAJestic as well as our benefactors have techniques and mechanisms that permit geographical travel anywhere in the universe without using a vehicle. This technology also enables such things as world-line travel, dimensional travel, and time travel.
This is a very powerful technology, but is not the subject at hand. Here, we will talk about technologies that can be used to traverse large physical distances in relatively short periods of time, without using dimensional portals or gates.
The benefit in this technology is obvious. You need to physically go to a location in order to establish “jump gate” coordinates for it. This will require physical presence, and that means physical travel. (Of course, there are other things that one can do, like trial by error, robots and probes, but please follow my train of thought on this.)
Here we discuss ways to travel “very fast” in our universe, by using existing and known technologies without using a dimensional portal or gate.
The Techniques
“If gravity modification is real, it will alter the entire aerospace business.”
-Gravity Research for Advanced Space Propulsion” (GRASP), Boeing 2012
The following are some of the areas of pursuit that engineers might want to investigate towards obtaining FTL flight ability. I compiled this list in 2014, and periodically updated it subsequently. It is provided here as avenues of investigation only. This list is in no way complete, but is merely suggestive of avenues of investigation.
I do recognize that many extraterrestrial species in our solar system have mastered space flight (among other things) and that they assist MAJestic in transporting personnel within our solar system. I also understand that we are busy developing our own home-grown versions of these vehicles through the study of loaned craft. But that should not simply suffice. We need to pursue our own designs, and our own investigations independent of extraterrestrial influence. To that end, I make and posit my suggestions herein.
In general, there are two basic techniques.
There are numerous avenues to pursue, not only the two listed here. The avenue to investigate, like anything else, will depend on political pressures, funding, the individuals involved, the social-economic situation, and (perhaps) a little luck.
The first [1] involves moving space-time boundaries. Such is the propulsive techniques that have made news in the last few years.
The second [2] involves a reduction in the effect of gravity. If one can control gravity, they can create nearly inertia less vehicles and technologies of great efficiency, yet that work within our space-time envelope. Currently advanced American aircraft such as the B-2 use technologies based on this principle. These are the electrogravitic principles based on the Biefeld-Brown Effect. (The Biefeld-Brown Effect is based on the research of Thomas Townsend Brown who in 1928 gained a patent for his practical application of how high voltage electrostatic charges can reduce the weight of objects.)
Robert Lazar claimed that gravity propagates instantaneously. If one thinks about that, it actually makes perfect sense logically. Gravity warps or bends space and time.
We measure the speed or velocity of an object by observing the distance that the object travels in a given time interval. If the very parameters that we use to measure distance and time are significantly affected by strong gravitational fields, then it would be impossible to actually define a finite speed to the propagation of gravity.
A recent article, “Rethinking Relativity,” had stated that Associate Professor Tom Van Flandern from the University of Maryland issued a document, “The Speed of Gravity - What the Experiments Say,” demonstrating that gravity propagated at least 20 billion times faster than light and may very well propagate instantaneously.
Let’s just play around with some potential possibilities…
The SMART Drive
The SHARP Drive is the fictional drive that propels his third millennia spaceships across the immense distances between stars. Writer Arthur C. Clarke coined the terms SHARP from the initial letters of the four physicists who he jointly credits with originating the concepts and discoveries that make the drive possible Sakharov, Haisch, Alfonso Rueda, and Hal Puthoff.
The concept is named after the dreamers whom inspired it.
Andrei Sakharov is the distinguished Russian physicist who first suggested that space is not empty but is full of energy, the so-called ‘ zero-point field ‘. This suggestion was taken up by astrophysicist Bernhard Haisch of Lockheed’s Research Laboratories and physicists Alfonso Rueda, a professor at California State University at Long Beach, and Harold Puthoff of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Austin
Their article ‘Inertia as a Zero-Point Field Lorentz Force’ appeared in the February 1, 1994 issue of the eminent journal Physical Review A, and it offered a radically new interpretation of the origin of the strange quality of inertia.
Inertia as a Zero-Point Field Lorentz Force.
This new concept of inertia also points to a new understanding of gravity, since gravity and inertia are inextricably intertwined. Hal Putoff goes even further. Pointing to recent success in manipulating atomic processes by controlling zero-point fields in the lab, Puthoff says;
"…If we are right that both gravity and inertia stem from the zero-point field, then someday we might be able to manipulate both."
-Hal Putoff
The Alcubierre Drive
In 1994 Miguel Alcubierre, a theoretical physicist at the University of Wales published a paper called “The Warp Drive: Hyper-Fast Travel Within General Relativity.” This should be well known to anyone reading this manuscript. If not… I would seriously reconsider the pedigree of these who is considering this manuscript.
M. Alcubierre, Class. Quantum Grav. 11, L73 (1994); see also I.A. Crawford, Q. J. R. Astron. Soc. 36, 205 (1995).
Alcubierre showed it is theoretically possible to distort space to allow warp speed travel: to literally expand the volume of space-time behind a starship, while compressing it up ahead — like feeding a tent pole through its sleeve by bunching up the fabric ahead, and pulling it along behind. Alcubierre showed that space-time could be similarly manipulated. The position of a starship within such a distortion would change, relative to its destination – yet the ship itself need not actually “move” at all.
Miguel Alcubierre. The Warp drive: Hyperfast travel within general relativity. Class. Quant. Grav., 11:L73–L77, 1994.
What was so spectacularly different was that Alcubierre realized that one needs to take into account the possibility of engineered dynamic space-times within the context of general relativity.
Specifically, Alcubierre showed by example that by distorting the local space-time metric in the region of a spaceship in a certain prescribed way, it would be possible to achieve motion faster than the speed of light. (As seen by observers outside the disturbed region, without violating the local velocity-of-light constraint within the region.)
Furthermore, the Alcubierre solution shows that the proper acceleration along the spaceship’s path would be zero and the spaceship would suffer no time dilation. This is of great importance due to the great distances between the vast gulfs of space between the stars.
Traveling faster than light has always been attributed to science fiction, but that all changed when Harold White and his team at NASA started to work on and tweak the Alcubierre Drive.
When one combines the technologies associated with the Alcubierre Drive and that of a possible variable speed of light; a very favorable solution presents itself towards travel beyond apparent light speed.
Therefore, the proper conclusion to be drawn by consideration of engineered metric/vacuum-energy effects is that, with sufficient technological means to appear “magic” at present (to use Arthur C. Clarke’s phrase characterizing a highly advanced, technological civilization), travel at speeds exceeding the conventional velocity of light could occur without the violation of fundamental physical laws.
And, we might add, this could in principle be done without recourse to concepts as extreme as wormhole traversal. (However, clearly, exotic matter/field states, e.g., macroscopic Casimir-like negative-energy-density vacuum states, would be required.)
See A. Einstein, Ann. Phys. 35, 898 (191 1); K. Scharnhorst, Phys. Lett. B 236, 354 (1990); P. Wesson, Space Sci. Rev. 59, 365 (1992); A.M. Volkov, A.A. Izmest'ev, and G.V. Skrotskii, Sov. Phys. JETP 32, 686 (1971); T. D. Lee, Particle Physics and Introduction to Field Theory (Harwood Academic, London, 1988), p. 826; M. Morris, K. Thorne, and U. Yurtsever, Phys. Rev. Lett. 61, 1446 (1988).
As a result, the possibility of reduced-time interstellar travel, either by advanced extraterrestrial civilizations at present or ourselves in the future, is not fundamentally constrained by physical principles.
The key to Alcubierre’s warp drive is something called exotic matter.
Exotic matter has the curious property of having a negative energy density, unlike normal matter (the stuff that makes up people, planets and stars), which has a positive energy density. Two bits of matter that have the same energy density are attracted to each other by gravity.
In contrast, bits of positive and negative energy matter would be repelled by gravity. It is the negative energy density of exotic matter that powers the warp drive.
A negative energy density is not the nonsensical thing it appears to be. Indeed, in 1948 the Dutch physicist Hendrik Casimir first predicted that one could observe the effects of negative energy densities. He reasoned that if negative energy densities existed, two closely spaced parallel conducting plates in a vacuum would be attracted to one another.
This phenomenon, now called the Casimir effect, was measured in 1958 by M. Sparnaay, and is usually taken to be a confirmation that negative energy densities are possible.
Exotic matter of a slightly different type is also invoked in the modern theory of cosmology known as inflation.
According to the theory of inflation, exotic matter in the early universe (moments after the big bang) had a positive energy density, but a very large negative pressure. The negative pressure was so large that it counteracted the effects of the positive energy density. The result was an expansion of space-time so rapid that two observers originally very close to each other would be carried apart faster than the speed of light.
This was all ground breaking, but not really practical. That was, until other physicists began to look at the equations.
"I suddenly realized that if you made the thickness of the negative vacuum energy ring larger — like shifting from a belt shape to a donut shape — and oscillate the warp bubble, you can greatly reduce the energy required — perhaps making the idea plausible."
-physicist Harold White
White had adjusted the shape of Alcubierre’s ring which surrounded the spheroid from something that was a flat halo to something that was thicker and curvier.
Harold White presented the results of his Alcubierre Drive rethink a year later at the 100 Year Starship conference in Atlanta where he highlighted his new optimization approaches — a new design that could significantly reduce the amount of exotic matter required. And in fact, White says that the warp drive could be powered by a mass that’s even less than that of the Voyager 1 spacecraft.
That’s a significant change in calculations to say the least.
The reduction in mass from a Jupiter-sized planet to an object that weighs a mere 1,600 pounds has completely reset White’s sense of plausibility — and NASA’s.
Oscillation Thrusters & Gyroscopic Antigravity
Mechanical devices are often claimed to produce net external thrust using just the motion of internal components. These devices fall into two categories, [1] oscillation thrusters and [2] gyroscopic devices.
Their appearance of creating net thrust is attributable to misinterpretations of normal mechanical effects. The following short explanations were excerpted and edited from a NASA website about commonly submitted erroneous breakthroughs.
[1] Oscillation Thruster
Oscillation thrusters move a system of internal masses through a cycle where the motion in one direction is quicker than in the return direction.
When the masses are accelerated quickly, the device has enough reaction force to overcome the friction of the floor and the device slides. When the internal masses return slowly in the other direction, the reaction forces are not sufficient to overcome the friction and the device does not move.
The net effect is that the device moves in one direction across a frictional surface. In a frictionless environment the system’s components would simply oscillate around their center of mass.
[2] Gyroscopic Thruster
A gyroscopic thruster consists of a system of gyroscopes connected to a central body. When the central body is torqued, the gyros move in a way that appears to defy gravity. Actually the motion is due to gyroscopic precession and the forces are torques around the axes of the gyros’ mounts. There is no net thrust created by the system.
To keep an open, yet rigorous, mind to the possibility that there has been some overlooked physical phenomena with such devices, it would be necessary to explicitly address all the conventional objections and pass at least a pendulum test.
Any test results would have to be impartial and rigorously address all possible false-positive conclusions.
There has not yet been any viable theory or experiment that reliably demonstrates that a genuine, external, net thrust can be obtained with one of these devices. If such tests are ever produced, and if a genuine new effect is found, then science will have to be revised, because it would then appear that such devices are violating conservation of momentum.
Hooper Antigravity Coils
Experiments were conducted to test assertions from US Patent 3,610,971, by W. J. Hooper that self-canceling electromagnetic coils can reduce the weight of objects placed underneath.
“Dr. late William J. Hooper, BA, MA, PhD in Physics was affiliated with the University of California at Berkley, and was Professor Emeritus, when he died in 1971. His works are documented and he gained two U.S. patents for his "ALL-ELECTRIC MOTIONAL FIELD GENERATOR".
He claimed use of the "Motional Electric Field" to produce gravity and anti-gravity for use in SPACECRAFT and AIRCRAFT.
Indeed, in U.S. patent #3,610,971 you can see a Flying Saucer diagram is used as an example in Figure 7.”
- James Hartman, CaluNET Future Science Administrator
US Patent # 3,656,013. “Apparatus for Generating Motional Electric Field”, Awarded to William Hooper, April 1972
Hooper, W. J. (1974). New Horizons in Electric, Magnetic and Gravitational Field Theory, Electrodynamic Gravity, Inc. 1969
Frances G. Gibson, “THE ALL-ELECTRIC FIELD GENERATOR AND ITS POTENTIAL”, Electrodynamic Gravity, Inc., 1983
“Electric Propulsion Study”, Dr. Dennis Cravens, SAIC Corp, prepared for USAF Astronautics Lab at Edwards AFB, August 1990 — Section 3.7 Non-Inductive Coils
Summary
During the late 60’s William J. Hooper put forth an interesting theory involving the v x B terms dynamic electrical circuits. There was and is uncertainty as to the exact physical understanding of the Biot-Savart-Lorentz law and Ampere’s law involving the set of reaction forces. Peter Graneau has studied these expressions. Hoopers view was that there are three different types of electric fields due to the distribution of electric field, and two due to induction.
At the heart of the issue is the connection of the magnetic field and its source in the charged particles. EM theory is presently consistent with the idea that spinning magnetic dipoles create effects indistinguishable from charged particles.
There has been no critical experiment which can disprove whether a magnetic flux rotates with its source.
If it does co-move with its source then it is logical to assume that a motional electric field in a fixed reference frame of the current induces a magnetic field. This concept is likewise consistent with a field-free interpretation such as Ampere’s original laws.(with 4 pages more about Hooper’s theories)
FREE FALL OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES: ON MOVING BODIES AND THEIR ELECTROMAGNETIC FORCES, by Nils Rognerud 1994 (nils@ccnet.com) (available at the elektromagnum web site)
This paper is a review of the problem of the observable action of gravitational forces on charged particles. The author discusses the induced electric fields and the sometimes overlooked unique physical properties. He analyzes several experiments, showing the reality of the induced electric fields.
The current interpretation, based on the idea of only one electric field, with certain characteristics, is compared with alternative approaches.
The Hooper Coil: The author has tested a setup by pulsing strong currents, opposite and equal, through multiple parallel conductors.
The configuration of the conductors in this type of experiment will cancel the B-fields, while still producing an Em field, in accordance with Eq. 4.2. This is similar to an experiment by Hooper (W. J. Hooper), who successfully predicted and measured the motional electric field – all in zero resultant B-field.
Interestingly, all of the above experiments can influence an electron with a zero B-field, in the region of the electron.
This has some profound implications – one of which is that the motional electric force field is immune to electrostatic or magnetic shielding.
Experimentally, it can be confirmed that the motional electric field is immune to shielding and follows the boundary conditions of the magnetic (not electric) field. The only way to shield a motional electric field is to use a magnetic shield around the source of the magnetic flux – containing it at the source.
These effects are not startling if one remembers that the motional electric field is a magnetic effect and that a magnetic field has a different boundary condition than the electric field.
The Investigation
This was investigated by NASA and discounted with no further studies ever attempted.
The “official explanation” is that no weight changes were observed within the detectability of the instrumentation.
Officially, it is believed that Hooper may have misinterpreted thermal effects as his “Motional Field” effects.
EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS OF HOOPER’S GRAVITY-ELECTROMAGNETIC COUPLING CONCEPT
National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Lewis Research Center, Cleveland, OH. MILLIS, MARC G. WILLIAMSON, GARY SCOTT JUN. 1995 12 PAGES Presented at the 31st Joint Propulsion Conference and Exhibit, San Diego CA, 10-12 Jul. 1995; sponsored by AIAA, ASME, SAE, and ASEE NASA-TM-106963 E-9719 NAS 1.15:106963 AIAA PAPER 95-2601 Avail: CASI HC A03/MF A01
Experiments were conducted to test assertions from Patent 3,610,971, by W.J. Hooper that self-canceling electromagnetic coils can reduce the weight of objects placed underneath.
No weight changes were observed within the detectability of the instrumentation.
More careful examination of the patent and other reports from Hooper led to the conclusion that Hooper may have misinterpreted thermal effects as his ‘Motional Field’ effects. There is a possibility that the claimed effects are below the detection thresholds of the instrumentation used for these tests. CASI Accession Number: N95-28893.
Investigational Fraud
I have two problems with the methodology used by the NASA scientists in the above experiment.
Firstly [1] The amount of ampere-turns used in the NASA experiment was substantially lower than the amount used by Hooper.
Their experiment did not try to replicate his results.
They did not even attempt to find out why the results were different. Hooper found that his effect increased in proportion the square of the current. If you were motivated to verify that the Hooper effect exists, would you not try to conduct the experiment with MORE current, rather than less?
Secondly [2], NASA conducted it’s tests by energizing the coils and making measurements in an immediate on-off mode, rather than letting things run for a while as Hooper did. NASA’s reason for doing this was to avoid errors due to thermal effects. (They did not follow the advised protocol as provided for in the patent.)
It makes sense for the researchers to do this, however what does not make sense is that if you are trying to verify an original experiment and you make changes, you have an obligation to also conduct the experiment in it’s original mode. To do otherwise is bad science.
But what could be wrong with testing things in an immediate on-off mode? Well, it can be seen in other experiments that a gravitational effect sometimes results from macroscopic spin alignment of the quantum angular momentum of a large number of microscopic particles. It has been demonstrated in other experiments that it takes time for these particles to come into alignment. For example in the inventions of Henry Wallace it sometimes took minutes for the “kinemassic” gravito- magnetic field to fully manifest itself.
The reason that it takes time for particles to come into alignment, could be much the same reason that it takes time to permanently magnetize a magnet. Wallace found that the “kinemassic” effect occurs with elemental materials which have a component of unpaired spin in the atomic nucleus. This includes all common isotopes of copper, which of course is the material used in Hooper’s coils.
Conclusion
I remain skeptical.
That is because, the moment that something looks to be of value by MAJestic, or the Military, or the United States government, it is quickly disparaged and the research thrown into a SAP program.
So when a theory is tested, only once, and then quickly discounted, it becomes suggestive of this kind of process.
I strongly urge the reader to revisit this issue. I strongly suspect that this kind of technology, or ones related to it is already incorporated in a number of highly classified aerospace aircraft designs. I believe that this NASA report is specifically designed to thwart research along these avenues.
Millis, M. & Williamson. 1995. Experimental Results of Hooper’s Gravity-Electromagnetic Coupling Concept. NASA TM-106963.
Schlicher Thrusting Antenna
“Experiments were conducted to test the claims by Rex L. Schlicher et.al. (Patent 5,142,861) that a certain antenna geometry produces thrust greatly exceeding radiation reaction, when driven by repetitive, fast rise and relatively slower decay current pulses. “
Tests of a specially terminated coax, that was claimed to create more thrust than attributable to photon radiation pressure, revealed that no such thrust was present. Again, NASA found no benefit in further investigations of this matter.
Schlicher Thrusting Antenna.
Fralick G. & Niedra. 2001. Experimental Results of Schlicher’s Thrusting Antenna. AIAA-2001-3657. (NASA TM-2001-211207)
“We conclude, in agreement with the momentum theorem of classical electromagnetic theory, that any thrust produced is far below practically useful levels. Hence within classical electrodynamics, there is little hope of detecting any low level motion that cannot be explained by interactions with surrounding structural steel and the Earth's magnetic field.”
The testing showed agreement with classical theory, and no further tests or studies were planned.
The scientists have spoken!
However, they ended the report with the most signifigant statement that they could have made:
“The simplicity and import of the electromagnetic momentum theorem underscore the hopelessness of any space reaction scheme strictly within classical electrodynamics.
This severe bottom line strongly suggests that for practical, globally fast mass/energy transport, one must work around the classical limitations of momentum conservation by digging into the deeper layers of spacetime structure itself---the so called "spacetime engineering". “
Podkletnov Gravity Shield
“The trouble started when Robert Matthews, science correspondent to the British Sunday Telegraph, got hold of the story. Matthews, like any journalist, relies on contacts, and he's disarmingly honest about it.
"You don't get stories by digging for them," he now says with a laugh. "This isn't like Sherlock Holmes, that's a lot of bollocks. It's like, you hope a little brown envelope turns up in the post, and if it does, you're in luck."
“In his case the little brown envelope contained page proofs of Podkletnov's paper, leaked by a man named Ian Sample who worked on the editorial staff of the Journal of Physics-D. Although Podkletnov's paper hadn't been published yet, Sample and Matthews decided to break the story in the Sunday Telegraph, which printed it on September 1, 1996.
The first sentence was key: "Scientists in Finland are about to reveal details of the world's first antigravity device."
“Antigravity? Podkletnov never used that word; he said he'd found a way to block gravity. Maybe this seemed a trivial distinction, but not to the staid professors at the Institute of Materials Science in the University of Tampere, to whom "antigravity" sounded like something out of a bad Hollywood movie.”
-Breaking the Law of Gravity By Charles Platt. Wired Magazine.
A controversial claim of “gravity shielding” using rotating superconductors and radio-frequency radiation was published based on work done at Finland’s Tampere Institute. (i.e. an object placed above this spinning disc would lose weight.)
Podkletnov E. & Nieminen. 1992. A Possibility of Gravitational Force Shielding by Bulk YBCO Superconductor. Physica C. 203: 441-444.
A privately funded replication of the Podkletnov configuration “found no evidence of a gravity-like force to the limits of the apparatus sensitivity,” where the sensitivity was “50 times better than that available to Podkletnov.”
Hathaway, Cleveland, & Bao. 2003. Gravity modification experiment using a rotating superconducting disk and radio frequency fields. Physica C. 385: 488-500.
But this information is completely unfounded and meaningless. Boeing Aerospace is actively developing this technology and is doing everything in it’s power to retain Mr. Podkletnov and his work .
Podkletnov Gravity Shield. Did Evgeny Podkletnov manage to shield an object from the effects of gravity with this 1992 design? Two decades have passed and, so far, only Podkletnov himself has reported success. (Scientists have, however, enjoyed success with superconductors though.)
See below.
Publicly available papers describe this technology as having potential, but needing further engineering research and studies. Just as the exact details of impulse gravity beam propelled spacecraft cannot yet be determined with existing information, there are many unknowns in what the exact characteristics of a mature impulse gravity beamed propulsion transmitter design will be.
Existing impulse gravity generator technology only generates the impulse gravity beam for a very short period of time, on the order of 10-4 seconds. For a practical propulsion system, the transmitter will need to greatly increase the amount of time it provides propulsion to the target spacecraft.
This increase might be achieved with the development of an impulse gravity generator that is able to operate in a steady state condition. If such a generator cannot be built, then pulsing one or more generators at a high frequency could still achieve a high average acceleration of the target spacecraft, even though each individual pulse may be of short duration.
Similar lessons related to Honda’s research into the Biefeld-Brown effect applies to the Finnish/Russian Dr. Podkletnov’s gravity shielding spinning superconducting ceramic disc experiment.
It took many years reading and rereading Dr. Podkletnov’s two papers (the 1992 “A Possibility of Gravitational Force Shielding by Bulk YBa2Cu3O7-x Superconductor” and the 1997 “Weak gravitational shielding properties of composite bulk YBa2Cu3O7-x superconductor below 70K under e.m. field”) before I fully understood all the salient observations.
Any theory on Dr. Podkletnov’s experiments must explain four observations;[1] the stationary disc weight loss, [2] spinning disc weight loss, [3] weight loss increase along a radial distance and [4] weight increase.
The pure fact is that we haven’t see anyone else attempt to explain all four observation within the context of the same theoretical analysis.
The most likely inference is that legacy physics does not have the tools to explore Podkletnov’s experiments. This is the bane and the problem that we possess. Conventional physics is not able to properly describe the technologies of our extraterrestrial allies.
Here is the great warning; we must not rely on conventional physics to describe extraterrestrial technologies. Look what happened with development and investigative work on the Podkletnov Gravity Shield.
Interest in Dr. Podkletnov’s work was destroyed by two papers claiming null results.
First, Woods et al, (the 2001 “Gravity Modification by High-Temperature Superconductors”) and second, Hathaway et al (the 2002 “Gravity Modification Experiments Using a Rotating Superconducting Disk and Radio Frequency Fields”).
Reading through these papers it became very clear that neither team were able to faithfully reproduce Dr. Podkletnov’s work.
An analysis of Dr. Podkletnov’s papers show that the disc is electrified and bi-layered. By bi-layered, the top side is superconducting and the bottom non-superconducting. Therefore, to get gravity modifying effects, the key to experimental success is, bottom side needs to be much thicker than the top. Without getting into too much detail, this would introduce asymmetrical field structures, and gravity modifying effects.
“Of course, reflexive conservatism isn't the whole story. Many physicists are skeptical about gravity shielding because they believe that it conflicts with Einstein's general theory of relativity. According to George Smoot, a renowned professor of physics at UC Berkeley who collaborated on an essay that won a Gravity Research Foundation award, "If gravity shielding is going to be consistent with Einstein's general theory, you would need tremendous amounts of mass and energy. It's far beyond the technology we have today."
“On the other hand, theories developed by Giovanni Modanese, Ning Li, and Douglas Torr portray a superconductor as a giant "quantum object" which might be exempt from Smoot's criticism, since Einstein's general theory has nothing to say about quantum effects. As Smoot himself admits, "The general theory is widely revered because Einstein wrote it, and it happens to be very beautiful.
But the general theory is not entirely compatible with quantum mechanics, and sooner or later it will have to be modified."
“He also says that the nonlinear spin of gravity particles - "gravitons" - makes calculations extremely difficult. "When you add a spinning disc ," he says, "the equations become impossible to solve."“This means that gravity shielding cannot be disproved mathematically. Even Bob Park, the resident skeptic , shies away from describing it as "impossible," because "there have been things that we thought were impossible, which actually came to pass."
Gregory Benford, a professor of physics at UC Irvine who also writes science fiction, echoes this and takes it a step further.
"There's nothing impossible about gravity shielding," he says. "It just requires a field theory that we don't have yet. Anyone who says it's inconceivable is suffering from a lack of imagination."
-Breaking the Law of Gravity By Charles Platt. Wired Magazine.
The necessary dialog between theoretical explanations and experimental insight is vital to any scientific study. Without this dialog, there arises confounding obstructions; theoretically impossible but experiments work or theoretically possible but experiments don’t work.
Coronal Blowers
There are many variants of the original patent where high-voltage capacitors create thrust, many of which claim that the thrust is a new affect akin to antigravity.
Brown, T. T. 1928. A Method of and an Apparatus or Machine for Producing Force or Motion. GB Patent #300,311.
These go by such terms as: “Biefeld-Brown effect,” “lifters,” “electrostatic antigravity,” “electrogravitics,” and “asymmetrical capacitors.” To date, all rigorous experimental tests indicate that the observed thrust to coronal wind is attributable.
Canning, F. X., Melcher, & Winet. 2004. Asymmetrical Capacitors for Propulsion. NASA CR-2004-213312, and Tajmar, M. 2004. The Biefeld-Brown Effect: Missinterpretation of Corona Wind Phenomena. AIAA J. Propulsion & Power. 42: 315-318, as well as Talley, R. L. 1991. Twenty First Century Propulsion Concept. PL-TR-91-3009. Edwards AFB, CA.
Quoting from one such finding:
“… their operation is fully explained by a very simple theory that uses only electrostatic forces and the transfer of momentum by multiple collisions [with air molecules].”
I urge the reader to review my opinions on the Podkletnov Gravity Shield.
Quantum Tunneling as an FTL venue
What do you do when you measure things that are found to actually travel faster than light?
In recent years, some physicists have conducted experiments in which faster-than-light (FTL) speeds were measured. On the other hand, Einstein’s theory of special relativity gives light speed as the absolute speed limit for matter and information!
This violation of causality is very worrysome, and thus special relativity’s demand that neither matter nor information should move faster than light is a pretty fundamental one, not at all comparable to the objections some physicists had about faster-than-sound travel in the first half of this century.
So, has special relativity been disproved, now that FTL speeds have been measured?
The first problem with this naive conclusion is that, while in special relativity neither information nor energy are allowed to be transmitted faster than light, but that certain velocities in connection with the phenomena of wave transmission may well excede light speed.
For instance, the phase velocity of a wave or the group velocity of a wave packet are not in principle restricted below light speed.
The speed connected with wave phenomena that, according to special relativity, must never exceed light speed, is the front velocity of the wave or wave packet, which roughly can be seen as the speed of the first little stirring that tells an observer “Hey, there’s a wave coming”.
(Detailed examinations of the differences between the velocities useful to describe waves can be found in the classic book “Brillouin, L. 1960 Wave Propagation and Group Velocity. NY: Academic Press.”)
Characteristic of the discussion of the FTL/tunneling experiments is that the experimental results are relatively uncontroversial – it is their interpretation that the debate is about.
As far as I can see, right now there is a consensus that in neither of the experiments, FTL-front velocities have been measured, and that thus there is no contradiction to Einstein causality or to special relativity’s claim that no front speed can exceed light speed.
The discussion how much time a particle needs to tunnel through a barrier has been going on since the thirties and still goes on today, as far as I can tell.
This discussion is about “real” tunneling experiments, like the ones a Berkeley group around Raymond Chiao has done, as well as experiments with microwaves in waveguides (that do not involve quantum mechanics) like those of Günter Nimtz et al. An overview of the discussion (including lots of further references) can be found in Hauge, E.H. & Støvneng 1989, Review of Modern Physics 61, S. 917–936.
A prerequisite to faster-than-light travel is to prove faster-than-light information transfer. The phenomenon of quantum tunneling, where signals appear to pass through barriers at superluminal speed, is often cited as such empirical evidence.
Experimental and theoretical work indicates that the information transfer rate is only apparently superluminal, with no causality violations. Although the leading edge of the signal does appear to make it through the barrier faster, the entire signal is still light-speed limited.
Segev, et al. 2000. Quantum noise and superluminal propagation. Phys. Rev A. 62: 0022114-1 to 0022114-15.
This topic still serves, however, as a tool to explore this intriguing aspect of physics.
Mojahedi, M. et al. 2000. Frequency and Time-Domain Detection of Superluminal Group Velocities in a Distributed Bragg Reflector. IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics. 36: 418-424.
The Berkeley group gives a general overview of their research at
An experiment of theirs, where a single photon tunnelled through a barrier and its tunneling speed (not a signal speed!) was 1.7 times light speed, is described in
Steinberg, A.M., Kwiat, P.G. & R.Y. Chiao 1993: “Measurement of the Single-Photon Tunneling Time” in Physical Review Letter71, S. 708—711
Articles concerned with the propagation of wave packets that happens FTL and is somewhat complicated by the fact that the waves “borrow” some energy from the medium, but does not violate causality, are
Chiao, R.Y. 1993: “Superluminal (but causal) propagation of wavepackets in transparent media with inverted atomic populations” in Phys. Rev. A 48, B34.
Chiao, R.Y. 1996: “Tachyon-like excitations in inverted two-level media” in Phys. Rev. Lett. 77, 1254.
Aephraim Steinberg, who is a former graduate student of Chiao’s, has written two papers especially on the problem of tunneling time, which are available online at
Raymond Y. Chiao, Paul G. Kwiat, Aephraim M. Steinberg: “ Quantum non-locality in Two-Photon Experiments at Berkeley” (International Workshop on Laser and Quantum Optics, Nathiagali, Pakistan, 9-14 July 1994) in Quantum and Semiclassical Optics7, 259-78 (was preprint quant-ph/950101).
Earlier experiments by Günter Nimtz of Cologne University (Universität Kön), with whose experiments most of the later newspaper articles are concerned, have been published as
Enders, A. und G. Nimtz 1993, “Evanescent-mode propagation and quantum tunneling” in Phys. Rev.E 48, S. 632-634.
Enders, A. und G. Nimtz 1993, J. Phys. I (France)3, S. 1089
Nimtz, G. et al. 1994: “Photonic Tunneling Times”in J. Phys. I (France)4, 565.
A description of the equivalence between these microwave-experiments and quantum mechanical tunneling is described in
Martin, Th. und Landauer, R. 1991: “Time delay of evanescent electromagnetic waves and the analogy to particle tunneling” in Phys. Rev. A 45 , S. 2611-2617.
In reaction to Nimtz’ publications, a number of articles appeared which deal with a) why causality is not violated in these experiments, and b) how the results of the experiments come about. These are
Deutch, J.M. und F.E. Low 1993: “Barrier Penetration and Superluminal Velocity” in Ann. Phys. (NY)228, S. 184-202.
Hass, K. und P. Busch 1994: “Causality of superluminal barrier traversal” in Phys. Lett. A 185, S. 9-13.
Landauer, R. und Th. Martin 1994: “Barrier interaction time in tunneling” in Rev. Mod. Phys. 66, S. 217-228.
Azbel, M. Y. 1994: “Superluminal Velocity, Tunneling Traversal Time and Causality” in Solid State Comm. 91, S. 439-441.
Nimtz’s reply and general observations on causality and his experiments can be found in
Heitmann, W. und G. Nimtz 1994: “On causality proofs of superluminal barrier traversal of frequency band limited wave packets” in Phys. Lett. A 196, S. 154-158.
As far as the more recent experiments of Nimtz are concerned, especially the popular tunneling of parts of Mozart’s 40th symphony with 4.7 fold light speed, I have not been able to find references to a technical article yet. Heitman/Nimtz 1994 (see above) refer to it as “H. Aichmann and G. Nimtz, to be published”, I haven’t found it in Physics Abstracts (up to July 1996, I think I should look again soon), though.
The problem of tunneling times is also the topic of some articles I’ve found in the quantum physics (quant-ph) archive, namely
Experiments and theories published by James Woodward claim that oscillatory changes to inertia can be induced by electromagnetic means…
Woodward, J. F. 2004. Flux Capacitors and the Origin of Inertia. Foundations of Physics. 34: 1475-1514.
and a patent exists on how this can be used for propulsion…
Woodward, J. F. 1994. Method for Transiently Altering the Mass of an Object to Facilitate Their Transport or Change their Stationary Apparent Weights. US Patent # 5,280,864.
Conservation of momentum is satisfied by evoking interpretations of Mach’s principle. Independent verification experiments, using techniques less prone to spurious effects, were unable to reliably confirm or dismiss the claims.
Cramer, J., Fey & Casissi. 2004. Tests of Mach’s Principle with a Mechanical Oscillator. NASA/CR–2004-213310.
Woodward and others continue with experiments and publications to make the effect more pronounced and to more clearly separate the claimed effects from experimental artifacts.
This oscillatory inertia approach is considered unresolved.
Abraham-Minkowski Electromagnetic Momentum
More than one approach attempts to use an unresolved question of electromagnetic momentum (Abraham-Minkowski controversy) …
Brevik, I. 1982. Comment on Electromagnetic Momentum in Static Fields and the Abraham-Minkowski Controversy. Physics Letters. 88 A: 335-338.
to suggest a new space propulsion method.
Slepian, J. 1949. Electromagnetic Space-Ship. Electrical Engineering. March: 145-146, April: 245; and Brito, H. H. 2001. Experimental Status of Thrusting by Electromagnetic Inertia Manipulation. Paper IAF-01-S.6.02, 52nd International Astronautical Congress, Toulouse France; and Corum, J. et al. 2001; and The Electromagnetic Stress-Tensor as a Possible Space Drive Propulsion Concept. AIAA-2001-3654.
The equations that describe electromagnetic momentum in vacuum are well established (photon radiation pressure), but there is still debate concerning momentum within dielectric media.
In all of the proposed propulsion methods, the anticipated forces are relatively small (comparable to experimental noise) and critical issues remain unresolved. In particular, the conversion of anoscillatory force into a net force remains questionable and the issue of generating external forces from different internal momenta remains unproven.
Even if unsuitable for propulsion, these approaches provide empirical tools for further exploring the Abraham-Minkowski controversy of electromagnetic momentum.
Inertia and Gravity Interpreted as Quantum Vacuum Effects
Theories are entering the peer-reviewed literature that assert that gravity and inertia are side effects of the quantum vacuum.
The theories are controversial and face many unresolved issues. In essence this approach asserts that inertia is related to an electromagnetic drag force against the vacuum when matter is accelerated, and that gravity is the result of asymmetric distributions of vacuum energy caused by the presence of matter.
Puthoff, H. E. 1993. Gravity as a zero-point-fluctuation force. Phys. Rev. A. 39: 2333; Comments, Phys. Rev A. 47: 3454; and Rueda, A. & Haisch. 1998. Inertial mass as reaction of the vacuum to accelerated motion. Phys. Letters A. 240: 115-126; and Puthoff, H. E. 2002. Polarizable-Vacuum (PV) approach to general relativity. Found. Phys. 32: 927-943; and Puthoff, H. E., Davis, & Maccone. 2005. Levi-Civita effect in the polarizable vacuum (PV) representation of general relativity. Gen. Relativity & Gravity. 37(3): 483-489.
The space propulsion implications of these theories have been raised,
Puthoff, Little & Ibison. 2002. Engineering the zero-point field and polarizable vacuum for interstellar flight. Jour. Brit. Interplanetary Soc. (JBIS). 55: 137-144.
But experimental approaches to test these assertions are only beginning to enter the literature.
Rueda, A. & Haisch. 2005. Gravity and the quantum vacuum hypothesis. Ann. Phys. (Leipzig), 14(8): 479-498.
The EmDrive, an experimental propulsion device, may be producing a warp field. The basic idea behind an EM drive, which is based on a 2001 design by a British engineer named Roger Shawyer, is that it can produce thrust by bouncing microwaves around in a cone-shaped metal cavity.
Shawyer is adamant that there is no need for pseudoscience or quantum theories to explain how EmDrive works. Instead, he believes that current models of Newtonian physics offer an explanation, and has written papers on the subject, one of which is currently being peer reviewed.
Thrust measurements of the EM Drive defy classical physics’ expectations that such a closed (microwave) cavity should be unusable for space propulsion because of the law of conservation of momentum.
The issue is, the entire concept of a reactionless drive is inconsistent with Newton’s conservation of momentum, which states that within a closed system, linear and angular momentum remain constant regardless of any changes that take place within said system. More plainly: Unless an outside force is applied, an object will not move.
Reactionless drives are named as such because they lack the “reaction” defined in Newton’s third law: “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.”
But this goes against our current fundamental understanding of physics:
An action (propulsion of a craft) taking place without a reaction (ignition of fuel and expulsion of mass) should be impossible.
For such a thing to occur, it would mean an as-yet-undefined phenomenon is taking place — or our understanding of physics is completely wrong.
Then came NASA…
NASA Eagleworks (an advanced propulsion research group led by Dr. Harold “Sonny” White at the Johnson Space Center (JSC)) made waves throughout the scientific and technical communities when the group presented their test results on July 28-30, 2014, at the 50th AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference in Cleveland, Ohio.
The EM Drive is a propulsive concept that originated around 2001 when a small UK company, Satellite Propulsion Research Ltd (SPR), under Roger J. Shawyer, started a Research and Development (R&D) program.
The concept of an EM Drive as put forth by SPR was that electromagnetic microwave cavities might provide for the direct conversion of electrical energy to thrust without the need to expel any propellant.
According to posts on the NASA Space Flight forum, when lasers were fired into the EmDrive resonance chamber…
The EmDrive is what is called an RF resonant cavity thruster, and is one of several hypothetical machines that use this model. These designs work by having a magnetron push microwaves into a closed truncated cone, then push against the short end of the cone, and propel the craft forward.
…it was found that some of the beams were travelling faster than the speed of light. If this is true, then it would mean that the EmDrive is producing a warp field or bubble. A forum post says that;
"this signature (the interference pattern) on the EmDrive looks just like what a warp bubble looks like. And the math behind the warp bubble apparently matches the interference pattern found in the EmDrive."
The new tests were conducted in a vacuum, unlike all prior tests, and the EM Drive was still found to work.
This lack of expulsion of propellant from the drive was met with initial skepticism within the scientific community because this lack of propellant expulsion would leave nothing to balance the change in the spacecraft’s momentum if it were able to accelerate. However, in 2010, Prof. Juan Yang in China began publishing about her research into EM Drive technology, culminating in her 2012 paper reporting higher input power (2.5kW) and tested thrust (720mN) levels of an EM Drive.
In particular, this allows NASA to rule out the possibility that the drive’s thrust is being created by heat transfer outside of the drive, rather than inside of it.
The theory is that this drive can create force by bouncing electromagnetic waves around inside of a chamber, with some of their energy being transferred to a reflector to generate thrust.
On the surface, this sounds a lot like something that violates the conservation of momentum, though the originator of the idea believes that this isn’t actually the case.
Paul March, an engineer at NASA Eagleworks, recently reported in NASASpaceFlight.com’s forum that NASA has successfully tested their EM Drive in a hard vacuum. Indeed this is the first time any organization has reported such a successful test. To this end, NASA Eagleworks has now nullified the prevailing hypothesis that thrust measurements were due to thermal convection.
Some history;
In 2001
In 2001, Shawyer was given a £45,000 grant from the British government to test the EmDrive. His test reportedly achieved 0.016 Newtons of force and required 850 watts of power, but no peer review of the tests verified this. It’s worth noting, however, that this number was low enough that it was potentially an experimental error.
In 2008
In 2008, Yang Juan and a team of Chinese researches at the Northwestern Polytechnical University allegedly verified the theory behind RF resonant cavity thrusters, and subsequently built their own version in 2010, testing the drive multiple times from 2012 to 2014. Tests results were purportedly positive, achieving up yo 750 mN (millinewtons) of thrust, and requiring 2,500 watts of power.
In 2014
In 2014, NASA researchers, tested their own version of an EmDrive, including in a hard vacuum. Once again, the group reported thrust (about 1/1,000 of Shawyer’s claims), and upon request by the policy handlers in Washington, the data was never published through peer-reviewed sources. Other NASA groups are skeptical of researchers’ claims, but in their paper, it is clearly stated that these findings neither confirm nor refute the drive, instead calling for further tests.
In 2015
In 2015, that same NASA group tested a version of chemical engineer Guido Fetta’s Cannae Drive (née Q Drive), and reported positive net thrust. Similarly, a research group at Dresden University of Technology also tested the drive, again reporting thrust, both predicted and unexpected.
Yet another test by a NASA research group, Eagleworks, also in 2015 seemingly confirmed the validity of the EmDrive.
On April 5, 2015, Paul March reported at NASAspaceflight.com’s Forum that Dr. White and Dr. Jerry Vera at NASA Eagleworks have just created a new computational code that models the EM Drive’s thrust as a three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic flow of electron-positron virtual particles.
These simulations explain why in NASA’s experiments it was necessary to insert a high density polyethylene (HDPE) dielectric into the EM Drive, while the experiments in the UK and China were able to measure thrust without a dielectric insert.
The code shows two reasons for this: 1) the experiments in the UK and China used (unlike the ones in the US) a magnetron to generate the microwaves and 2) the experiments in the UK and China were performed with much higher input power: up to 2.5 kiloWatts, compared to less than 100 Watts in the US experiments.
The test corrected errors that had occurred in the previous tests, and surprisingly, the drive achieved thrust.
However, the group has not yet submitted their findings for peer review. It’s possible that other unforeseen errors in the experiment may have cause thrust (the most likely of which is that the vacuum was compromised, causing heat to expand air within it testing environment and move the drive).
Whether the findings are ultimately published or not, more tests need to be done. That’s exactly what Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory intend to do. For EmDrive believers, there seems to be some hope.
October 2015
As of October 2015, independent European researchers have verified that this drive does actually work.
The so-called "warp drive" that could reach the moon in four hours reportedly works. The Telegraph reports that the electromagnetic propulsion drive (EM Drive), which has been in development for more than a decade, uses solar power to create microwave energy, which propels a rocket; actually works.
The technology is unique in that it negates the need for having to use rocket fuel. Professor Martin Tajmar, of the Dresden University of Technology in Germany, confirmed in October 2015 that the EM Drive is able to produce thrust.
This quote is wonderful; "…we do observe thrust close to the actual predictions after eliminating many possible error sources that should warrant further investigation into the phenomena."
While various individuals have presented papers on how it manages to work without violating any of the laws that seem to govern the world around us.
In mid 2016, a theory was put forth by physicist Michael McCulloch, a researcher from Plymouth University in the United Kingdom, which may offer an explanation of the thrust observed in tests.
McCulloch’s theory deals with inertia and something called the Unruh effect — a concept predicted by relativity, which makes the universe appear hotter the more you accelerate, with the heat observed relative to the acceleration.
McCulloch’s theory deals with the unconfirmed concept of Unruh radiation, which infers that particles form out of the vacuum of space as a direct result from the observed heating of the universe due to acceleration.
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1604.03449v1.pdf
Meanwhile, die-hard statists continue their long watch of skepticism, and refuse to accept the test results as having any validity.
Professor and mathematical physicist, John C. Baez expressed his exhaustion at the conceptual technology’s persistence in debates and discussions, calling the entire notion of a reactionless drive “baloney.”
September 2016
In September 2016, propulsion researchers gathered for a select, invitation-only workshop at an isolated retreat in Estes Park, Colorado. The proceedings and videos of the workshop, sponsored by the Space Studies Institute, are available online.
Later that year, a paper by NASA’s Eagleworks team, titled “Measurement of Impulsive Thrust from a Closed Radio-Frequency Cavity in Vacuum,” published in the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA)’s peer-reviewed Journal of Propulsion and Power, described promising experimental results and hinted at possible theoretical EmDrive models.
The publication of NASA’s paper silenced some objections to EmDrive research based on the lack of peer-reviewed publications in top scientific journals.
November 2017
As of November 2017, China’s state media claims that the country’s scientists have perfected a working EmDrive prototype and are preparing to test it in space. It must work, after all, NASA is funding a feasibility study for an interstellar mission powered by a related exotic propulsion method. Read more HERE.
Honda’s research into the Biefeld-Brown effect
Gravity modification, the conventional engineering term for antigravity, is the ability to modify the gravitational field without the use of mass. According to conventional physics this is impossible. Thus legacy physics, the RSQ (Relativity, String & Quantum) theories, cannot deliver either the physics or technology as these both require mass as their field origin.
Dr. Takaaki Musha has been researching Biefeld-Brown in Japan, going back to the late 1980s, and worked for the Ministry of Defense and Honda R&D.
In recent years Biefeld-Brown has gained some notoriety as an ionic wind effect. Dr. Musha’s 2008 paper “Explanation of Dynamical Biefeld-Brown Effect from the Standpoint of ZPF field.” Investigated this effect. By studying this paper, one can clearly see how thorough, detailed and meticulous Dr. Musha was.
Quoting selected portions from Dr. Musha’s paper:
“In 1956, T.T. Brown presented a discovery known as the Biefeld-Bown effect (abbreviated B-B effect) that a sufficiently charged capacitor with dielectrics exhibited unidirectional thrust in the direction of the positive plate.”
“From the 1st of February until the 1st of March in 1996, the research group of the HONDA R&D Institute conducted experiments to verify the B-B effect with an improved experimental device which rejected the influence of corona discharges and electric wind around the capacitor by setting the capacitor in the insulator oil contained within a metallic vessel . . . The experimental results measured by the Honda research group are shown . . .”
From V. Putz and K. Svozil,
“. . . predicted that the electron experiences an increase in its rest mass under an intense electromagnetic field . . .”
and the equivalent
“. . . formula with respect to the mass shift of the electron under intense electromagnetic field was discovered by P. Milonni . . .”
Dr. Musha concludes his paper with,
“. . . The theoretical analysis result suggests that the impulsive electric field applied to the dielectric material may produce a sufficient artificial gravity to attain velocities comparable to chemical rockets.”
Given, Honda R&D’s experimental research findings, this is a major step forward for the Biefeld-Brown effect, and Biefeld-Brown is back on the table as a potential propulsion technology. This is important and significant. For together we have learned two lessons.
First, that any theoretical analysis of an experimental result is advanced or handicapped by the contemporary physics. While the experimental results remain valid, at the time of the publication, zero point fluctuation (ZPF) was the appropriate theory. However, per Prof. Robert Nemiroff’s 2012 stunning discovery that quantum foam and thus ZPF does not exist, the theoretical explanation for the Biefeld-Brown effect needs to be reinvestigated in light of Putz, Svozil and Milonni’s research findings. This is not an easy task as that part of the foundational legacy physics is now void.
Second, it took decades of Dr. Musha’s own research to correctly advise Honda R&D how to conduct with great care and attention to detail, this type of experimental research. I would advise anyone serious considering Biefeld-Brown experiments to talk to Dr. Musha, first.
Podkletnov Force Beam
On an Internet physics archive it is claimed that forces can be imparted to distant objects using high-voltage electrical discharges near superconductors. Between 4×10-4 to 23×10-4 Joules of mechanical energy are claimed to have been imparted to an 18.5-gram pendulum located 150 meters away and behind brick walls of a separate building.
Podkletnov, E., & Modanese. 2001. Impulse Gravity Generator Based on Charged YBa2Cu3O7-y Superconductor with Composite Crystal Structure. arXiv:physics/ 0108005 v2.
Like the prior gravity shielding claims, these experiments are difficult and costly to duplicate, and remain unsubstantiated by reliable independent sources.
Boeing, the world’s largest aircraft manufacturer, has admitted it is working on experimental anti-gravity projects that are based on this technology. To this end, the company is trying to solicit the services of a Russian scientist who claims he has developed anti-gravity devices in Russia and Finland. The Boeing drive to develop a collaborative relationship with the scientist in question, Dr Evgeny Podkletnov, has its own internal project name: ‘GRASP’ — Gravity Research for Advanced Space Propulsion.
GRASP’s objective is to explore propellentless propulsion (the aerospace world’s more formal term for anti-gravity), determine the validity of Podkletnov’s work and “examine possible uses for such a technology”. Applications, the company says, could include space launch systems, artificial gravity on spacecraft, aircraft propulsion and ‘fuelless’ electricity generation — so-called ‘free energy’.
Although he was vilified by traditionalists who claimed that gravity-shielding was impossible under the known laws of physics, the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) attempted to replicate his work in the mid-1990s. Because NASA lacked Podkletnov’s unique formula for the work, the attempt failed. The GRASP briefing document reveals that BAE Systems and Lockheed Martin have also contacted Podkletnov “and have some activity in this area”. It is also possible, Boeing admits, that “classified activities in gravity modification may exist”.
Next…
Phew! A lot of work going on, eh? You can only imagine what is going on in the BLACK.
This is part two of a four part post. You can go to part three HERE.
Do you want more?
I have more posts that fit this venue. You can find them in my MAJestic Index here…
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Please kindly help me out in this effort. There is a lot of effort that goes into this disclosure. I could use all the financial support that anyone could provide. Thank you very much.
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This multi-part post is devoted to the issue of travelling between the stars within the lifetime of a human. It does not necessarily mean that the propulsion method would be so fast as to exceed the speed of light, though that possibility does exist. It simply is a discussion on how the great gulfs between the stars can be traversed using contemporaneous human technology.
As such, it purposely omits dimensional gates and transport portals.
I most certainly do not have the answers regarding this most interesting of subjects.
This post discusses this issue because one of the first things a debunker does is complain that engineering solutions are unattainable. I discuss these issues and more. It is a good read.
The sections
This is part 1 of a four part post. This post consists of four sections as described;
First off, MAJestic as well as our benefactors, have techniques and mechanisms that permit geographical travel anywhere in the universe without using a vehicle. This technology also enables such things as world-line travel, dimensional travel, and time travel.
This is a very powerful technology, but that is not the subject at hand. Here, we will talk about technologies that can be used to traverse large physical distances in relatively short periods of time, without using dimensional portals or gates.
The benefit in this technology is obvious. You need to physically go to a location in order to establish “jump gate” coordinates for it. This will require physical presence, and that means physical travel. (Of course, there are other things that one can do, like trial by error, robots and probes, but please follow my train of thought on this.)
Here we discuss ways to travel “very fast” in our universe, by using existing and known technologies without using a dimensional portal or gate.
Introduction
I would like to start by discussing the premise of extraterrestrials from outside the solar system visiting the earth. This implies, and requires, that they possess (some sort of) faster-than-light travel capability. Thus, I begin my arcane discussions on this most fundamental topic.
The speed-of-light limit argument against the extraterrestrial visitation phenomenon is a theory-based one, but even without suspending the laws of relativity it may not be valid. We simply know too little about other possibilities to rule them out, and for that reason most people believe that the appropriate thing to do is to suspend judgment based on this argument.
Here, I would like begin by taking the time to address some common misconceptions about Einstein’s equations of motion relative to relativistic flight, from the perspective of an Aerospace Engineer.
This subject was broached decades ago in one of my Aerospace Engineering classes back in my college days.
The subject was as relevant then as it is now.
It is a discussion, not only about the equations used, but also about the differences in comprehension and utility between, “scientists”, “engineers” and the understanding of the “general public”.
"No flying machine will ever fly from New York to Paris ... [because] no known motor can run at the requisite speed for four days without stopping."
-Orville Wright
The reader should know that the ability to travel faster than the speed of light (or a functionally equivalent method) is a physical problem solvable by engineers.
The empirical evidence of the Michelson-Morley experiment of 1887, now known as the Lorentz-FitzGerald Transformations (LFT), proposed by FitzGerald in 1889, and Lorentz in 1892, show beyond a shadow of doubt that nothing can have a motion with a velocity greater than the velocity of light. In 1905 Einstein derived LFT from first principles as the basis for the Special Theory of Relativity (STR).
Today the science of mathematics has become so powerful that it can now be used to prove anything, and therefore, the loss of certainty in the value of these mathematical models.
The antidote for this is to stay close to the empirical evidence. That is to say; don’t rely too much on the calculations, but rather on the physically observed effects. (But we all actually know that in this universe, everything actually is possible. It is a multidimensional universe.)
The scientists want to create an tangible framework by which to constrain their calculations so that they can remain grounded in “reality”. Ai! This is tying the hands of everyone.
That is why conventional scientists have such a problem with FTL flight.Basically the implied axioms (or starting assumptions of the mathematics) requires a multiverse universe or multiple universes, but the mathematics is based on a single universe. Thus even though the mathematics appears to be sound its axioms are contradictory to this mathematics. As Dr. Beckwith states, "reducto ad absurdum". For now, this unfortunately means that there is no such thing as a valid warp drive theory. LFT prevents this.
The question we should be asking is not, can we travel faster than light (FTL) but how do we bypass FTL? Or our focus should not be how to travel but how to effect destination arrival. That is the core issue herein. FTL flight is problematic on a number of levels, but destination flight is not.
For the purposes of this post, for reasons of simplicity, I equated FTL flight to equal that of “bypassing the Lorentz-FitzGerald Transformations (LFT)”.
Physicists might be able to understand the fabric of the universe, but it is the engineers that manufacture contrivances to utilize the physical laws for the interests of humankind.
That is the difference between what a Scientist is and what an Engineer does.
Our extraterrestrial friends have figured out how to do this, and thus I am convinced (by the many species that have accomplished this) that it can be actually be done.
I’ve seen them. I know that they are from another solar system or systems. They exist, and I know they do. (I have seen them and interacted them just like the reader has interacted with a hamburger and a side of French fries. It is visceral.)
Therefore, they got here using advanced propulsive methods. So we too, can also do this. The speed of light can be breeched. The nay-Sayers can just suck an egg for all I care. I do mean that.
I use the term loosely. This is whether they can actually go faster than the light barrier, or bend the fabric of time, or create dimensional doors, or modify time, or alter the fabric of the universe. It is, no matter how it is accomplished, observed by us mere earth-bound humans as “going faster than the speed of light”.
There are different methods to do this, but most seem to revolve around creating a “bubble” that pushes the constraining known physical factors away from the vehicle.
“The idea that UFOs may or may not exist - we’re so past that point. It’s like, it’s dumb to me to debate whether or not that phenomenon is even real or not. We know it’s real, it’s been around for hundreds of years.”
- Tom DeLonge
What the Scientific Community Thought…
“Radical space technologies never reach the public because unknown groups do not wish humanity to have access to the highest knowledge or the most advanced scientific inventions. Perhaps this suppression is out of fear that the masses may be able to explore our Solar System and the Universe beyond it. Whatever the case, it seems they want us to stay at ignorant levels forever.”
― Takaaki Musha, The Orphan Conspiracies: 29 Conspiracy Theories from The Orphan Trilogy
For many years, since the 1930’s, many scientists were convinced that there was a limit to how fast a person can go when travelling through space. They used Einstein’s equations as their “Bible” and burnished it like a huge brass cannon to forcefully shoot down anyone and any statement that dare suggested otherwise.
The following is directly from a discourse ridiculing Mr. Tesla for believing that it was possible to travel speeds faster than light. I think it would be beneficial to read it in it’s entirety at this time.
It comes from “Faster Than Light.” Everyday Science and Mechanics, November, 1931. It was written by Hugo Gernsback.
“It may come as a shock, to most students of science, to learn that there are still in the world some scientists who believe that there are speeds greater than that of light.
Since the advent of Einstein, most scientists and physicists have taken it for granted that speeds greater than 186,300 miles per second are impossible in the universe. Indeed, one of the principal tenets of the relativity theory is that the mass of a body increases with its speed, and would become infinite at the velocity of light. Hence, a greater velocity is impossible.
Among those who deny that this is true, there is Nikola Tesla, well known for his hundreds of important inventions. The induction motor and the system of distributing alternating current are but a few of his great contributions to modern science. In 1892, he made his historic experiments in Colorado; where he manufactured, for the first time, artificial lightning bolts 100 feet long, and where he was able, by means of high-frequency currents, to light electric lamps at a distance of three miles without the use of any wires whatsoever.
Talking to me about these experiments recently, Dr. Tesla revealed that he had made a number of surprising discoveries in the high-frequency electric field and that, in the course of these experiments, he had become convinced that he propagated frequencies at speeds higher than the speed of light.
In his patent No. 787,412, filed May 16, 1900, Tesla showed that the current of his transmitter passed over the earth’s surface with a speed of 292,830 miles per second, while radio waves proceed with the velocity of light. Tesla holds, however, that our present “radio” waves are not true Hertzian waves, but really sound waves.
He informs me, further, that he knows of speeds several times greater than that of light, and that he has designed apparatus with which he expects to project so-called electrons with a speed equal to twice that of light.
Coming from so eminent a source, the statement should be given due consideration. After all, abstract mathematics is one thing, and actual experimentation is another. Not so many years ago, one of the world’s greatest scientists of the time proved mathematically that it is impossible to fly a heavier-than-air machine. Yet we are flying plenty of airplanes today.
Tesla contradicts a part of the relativity theory emphatically, holding that mass is unalterable; otherwise, energy could be produced from nothing, since the kinetic energy acquired in the fall of a body would be greater than that necessary to lift it at a small velocity.
It is within the bounds of possibility that Einstein’s mathematics of speeds greater than light may be wrong. Tesla has been right many times during the past, and he may be proven right in the future. In any event, the statement that there are speeds faster than light is a tremendous one, and opens up entirely new vistas to science.
While it is believed by many scientists, today, that the force of gravitation is merely another manifestation of electromagnetic waves, there have, as yet, been no proofs of this. There are, of course, many obscure tilings about gravitation that we have not, as yet, fathomed, At one time, it was believed by many scientists that the speed of gravitation is instantaneous throughout the universe. This is simply another way of putting it that there are speeds greater than light.
Yet, from a strictly scientific viewpoint, no one today has any idea how fast gravitational waves—always providing that the force is in waves—travel. If the moon, for instance, were to explode at a given moment, how long would it be before the gravitational disturbance would be felt on earth? Would the gravitational impulse or waves travel at the speed of light—that is, 186,000 miles per second—or would the effect be instantaneous? We do not know.
The entire subject will no doubt arouse a tremendous interest in scientific circles. It is hoped that other scientists will be encouraged to investigate Dr. Tesla’s far-reaching assertions; either to definitely prove or to disprove them.”
This was quite an article. A lot has happened since this article was written. I think that it would best benefit us if we considered what Einstein actually stated, in light of what we actually do know now, today.
(And, of course, to alert us to the debunkers who steadfastly hold on to 1920 technology in order to appease the people who control their paychecks.)
The reader should realize that political power and influences can greatly mold and define scientific reality. If the reader is a true seeker, they will realize this fact and plow ahead in the pursuit of the “real” truth.
Einstein Said…
“Crudely stated, the limitations that concern us are… (1) No object travels faster than light (the Einstein speed limit)…”
- Jim Giglio and Scott Snell in "The UFO Evidence: Burdens of Proof". Board Members, National Capital Area Skeptics (NCAS)
When people say that the speed of light is a physical barrier that cannot be breached, and that Einstein proved it, they are flatly wrong.
It shows that not only do they not understand physics, but they have no understanding of [1] mathematics, [2] history, [3] quotes, the [4] sciences or [5] engineering. I guess that is understandable, given what constitutes for education in the United States these days.
This antagonistic statement is not specifically directed at the “Common Core” curriculum, but rather to the entire system of American Public Education. If the reader wants their child to get an education of value then I would suggest they avoid the public school system like the plague, and instead utilize private schools, with outside tutors and a strong dose of parental observed home schooling.
Einstein said no such thing.
I tried to search for a quote by him on this instance, and I was unable to find one. But just because I cannot find one does not mean that there isn’t one.
Though, if he did, he was wrong.
What this alleged “quote” refers to is his equations of motion at high speed relativistic velocities. In those equations, it can clearly be seen that the mass of the vehicle approaches infinity as the speed of light is approached. This means that one can never break the speed of light because it is impossible for the vehicles mass to become infinite.
The physics of Newton is quite fixed in this understanding.
Indeed, under Newtonian physics; matter cannot have an infinite mass in this universe. At least that is the conventional reasoning behind this misunderstanding. It is assumed. No one ever tested the validity of this belief.
Therefore, when people “quote” Einstein, what they are actually doing is “interpreting his equations with bias”. I repeat… “they are interpreting equations with bias to derive a specific predetermined outcome.”
The FTL mass equation that “proves” that speed cannot go faster than the known speed of light (in a vacuum).
On the surface, the equations appear clean and simple enough. As the vehicles speed approaches the speed of light, the vehicles mass also increases. At a point near the speed of light the mass increases to an infinite amount and thus the speed of light can never be breached.
That is how it works and looks on paper. The equations are quite clear on this.
Aerospace Engineers say…
But when an engineer sees this, he sees that the equations tell a different story.
The equations say that the mass increases in a relativistic manner. (That is all that it says.) However, the engineer then looks at the equations in a different way. They view it in terms of how can the equation be “harnessed”, or utilized.
Thus, if there was a way to alter the behavior of mass in a relativistic universe, then the speed of light could be breached. Everyone can thus attest to the validity of this. It is fundamental.
It has been discovered that the massless formula for gravitational acceleration, g=τc2, where tau τ is the change in the time dilation transformation (dimensionless LFT) divided by that distance. (The error in the modeled gravitational acceleration is less than 6 parts per million).
Thereby, proving that mass is not required for gravitational theories and falsifying the RSQ (Relativity, String & Quantum) theories on gravity.
There are two important consequences of this finding, (1) we now have a new propulsion equation, and (2) legacy or old physics cannot deliver.
But gravity modification per g=τc2 is still based on motion, and therefore, constrained by LFT. That is, gravity modification cannot provide for interstellar propulsion. For that we require a different approach, the “new physics”.
The difference between that of a casual “scientist” and that of a practical engineer is that engineers know that laws can be manipulated and modified. It is their job. It is what they have been trained to do. They manipulate the known physical laws to create machines and devices to solve problems. In the case of relativistic speeds, as difficult the equations are, the engineers point towards solutions.
Somehow, and in some way, a given objects mass is not set. But can be changed and altered.
And, if the vehicles mass could be controlled, then the equation is not fixed. Instead of only one variable; the vehicle velocity (which is the conventional statist belief), there are now two variables. The two variables are now both vehicle velocity and vehicle mass. With two variables, then it becomes possible to overcome physical barriers.
Other factors can also come into play.
Perhaps the speed of light is variable. We assume it is fixed, but there is evidence that it might actually be indeed variable. In fact, a team of Australian scientists has proposed that the speed of light may not be a constant, a revolutionary idea that could unseat the vaulted Einstein theory of relativity.
I do not know if this is valid or not.
The team, led by theoretical physicist Paul Davies of Sydney's Macquarie University, say it is possible that the speed of light has slowed over billions of years.
Davies, and astrophysicists Tamara Davis and Charles Lineweaver from the University of New South Wales published the proposal in the August 8 edition of scientific journal Nature.
The suggestion that the speed of light can change is based on data collected by UNSW astronomer John Webb, who posed a conundrum when he found that light from a distant quasar, a star-like object, had absorbed the wrong type of photons from interstellar clouds on its 12 billion year journey to earth.
Fundamentally Webb's observations meant that the structure of atoms emitting quasar light was slightly but ever so significantly different to the structure of atoms in humans.
The discrepancy could only be explained if either the electron charge, or the speed of light, had changed.To establish which of the two constants might not be that constant after all, the investigative team resorted to the study of black holes, mysterious astronomical bodies that suck in stars and other galactic features.
They also applied another dogma of physics, the second law of thermodynamics, which can be summarized as "you can't get something for nothing."
After considering that a change in the electron charge over time would violate the sacrosanct second law of thermodynamics, they concluded that the only option was to challenge the constancy of the speed of light.
Very interesting stuff.
However, let’s not get too caught up in past paradigms. Today, most people believe that somehow we can go faster than the speed of light using technologies that need to be “flushed out” and improved.
Whether or not any of these speculative observations have any bearing on the FTL equation is a matter of debate for another time. My conjecture is that there are always contributory factors that can eventually modify the engineering equations and system solutions involved in a given problem.
Using the previous conjectures as an example, we should look at similar circumstances on how engineers provided solutions towards difficult physical hurtles.
At that, let’s look at another barrier to speed; let’s take a peek into the forgotten past…
The Speed of Sound Barrier
This was not the first time that this sort of obstacle to flight was encountered. Let me discuss an earlier barrier to flight; the belief that nothing could go faster than the speed of sound.
The statist or debunker set would argue that this was not true, and they have done so directly to my face. What nonsense. It was LONG considered that the speed of sound was a barrier to flight.
It was common knowledge…
...that is up until it was disproved. How about that?
They argue that there never was the consideration that there was a barrier to flight faster than Mach 1. They argue this because of engineering efforts during the 1940’s to break the Mach barrier.
After all they reason, experiments were conducted to break the barrier.
Oh, but what memories they have!
Before the 1940’s, in the roaring 1920’s and the 1930’s, this was indeed the case. (Just like today, when we conduct experiments to break the speed of light barrier.)
Key point here. Remember that they will always be someone who will say that things cannot be done. Stay away from those people. They are like zoo animals who like their cages.
Or, as otherwise known, the MACH barrier.
The ratio of the speed of the plane, or the speed of the nozzle flow, to the speed of sound in the gas determines the magnitude of many of the compressibility effects.
Because of the importance of this speed ratio, engineers give it a special name, the Mach number, in honor of Ernst Mach, a late 19th century physicist who studied gas dynamics.
The Mach number M allows us to define flow regimes in which compressibility effects vary.
There was a time, not too long ago, when people believed that nothing could go faster than the speed of sound. This was referred to as the “MACH barrier”.
Today we know that this is not a barrier.
Today we have aircraft that can go much faster than MACH 1. High performance jets can go up to MACH 3 and even faster. And, if that wasn’t enough; efforts have been under way to go much faster to develop conventional airline runway to space access vehicles (MACH 25, and MACH 35 for example).
Chuck Yeager was the first test pilot to break the sound barrier, past Mach 1 on October 14, 1947. He did this in an experimental aircraft known as the X-1.
Chuck Yeager and the X-1 experimental aircraft that was the first to go faster than the speed of sound, and break the sound barrier.
What is little known about that event was that prior to that test flight many people believed that the speed of sound was a barrier that could not be broken.
“Not many people remember W.F. Hilton, a British aerodynamicist, or the reporter who in 1935 asked him about the purpose of the National Physical Laboratory’s new high-speed wind tunnel. Everybody remembers what Hilton said, though.
He displayed a graph plotting the abrupt increase in airfoil drag as its speed nears Mach 1. “See how the resistance of a wing shoots up like a barrier against higher speed as we approach the speed of sound?””
-Stephan Wilkinson (AIR & SPACE MAGAZINE)
No matter how hard the test pilots tried, whenever they flew their planes close to this barrier, the planes literally shook apart.
They would rattle, vibrate wildly, and shutter in wild gyrations.
The plane would become un-flyable, and dangerous for the pilot who flew it. The problem, we know now, was air compressibility.
“The pressure of an oncoming aircraft is transmitted to the air, as the airplane goes faster and faster, it gives a shorter and shorter signal, and the air can’t prepare itself. And when that happens, Bernoulli’s Principle goes to hell in a hand basket.”
-Howard Wolko (special adviser for technology at the National Air and Space Museum)
Air compressibility is an important problem that had to be resolved in order to be able to break the sound barrier, and fly at speeds in excess of MACH 1. The problem was due to the coefficient of pressure and its effect of the air pressure on the engines of the plane.
As the plane flew faster, the coefficient of pressure on the engines increased to such a point that the engines started to malfunction and the planes structure began to resonate in an unsafe manner.
Of course, all this history has been forgotten.
Even the most ardent proponents of spaceflight now repeat the ridiculous assertion that “everyone” always “knew” that the MACH barrier could be broken. Obviously, they have forgotten the periodicals of that time, and the known limitations that “everyone knew”.
The Engineers found a Solution
“Your people talk a lot about going to the stars, but you just keep putting your money into other projects, like war and popular music and international athletic events and resurrecting the fashions of previous decades. If you wanted to go into space, you would have.”
― George Alec Effinger, Live! from Planet Earth
FACT.
But luckily, it was engineers who designed the planes that tried to break this barrier were not physicists, or even worse; politicians.
They would have appointed a “blue ribbon panel” to “study” the issue and paid them handsomely. Everything would still be in committee being debated and bantered back and forth.
For what it is worth, “blue ribbon committees” are nothing more than currency funneling exercises towards political preferred donor classes to maintain their existences.
The problem, it was determined, was how the air compressed when hitting the inlet nozzle of the aircraft engines. By leaving the inlet wide open and flat, the air compressed naturally and the coefficient of air pressure easily caused the sound barrier to affect the speed and operation of the vehicle.
The air would “splash” with greater and greater force upon the engine. It would hit harder and harder the faster the plane flew.
However, it was later discovered, that by placing a cone in the inlet of the engine, that the air could be redirected in certain controllable ways into the engine.
Instead of “splashing hard” against the engine, the force of the air moved around it. Thus, in so doing this simple “trick”, the engineers were able to alter the pressure of the air upon the engine.
The main purpose of an inlet cone is to slow the flow of air from supersonic flight speed to a subsonic speed before it enters the engine.
Except for scramjet engines, all air-breathing jet engines need subsonic airflow to operate properly, and require a diffuser to prevent supersonic airflow inside the engine.
At supersonic flight speeds a conical shock wave, sloping rearwards, and forms at the apex of the cone.
Air passing through the conical shock wave (and subsequent reflections) slows to a low supersonic speed.
The air then passes through a strong normal shock wave, within the diffuser passage, and exits at a subsonic velocity. The resulting intake system is more efficient (in terms of pressure recovery) than the much simpler pitot-intake.
Pictures of various “inlet cones” in the front of various American and Russian supersonic aircraf
Inlet cones (sometimes called shock cones or inlet centerbodies) are a component of some supersonic aircraft and missiles.
Today they are primarily used on ramjets, such as the D-21 Tagboard and Lockheed X-7. Some turbojet aircraft including the Su-7, MiG-21, English Electric Lightning, and SR-71 also use an inlet cone.
The inlet cone is shaped so that the shock wave that forms on its apex is directed to the lip of the intake; this allows the intake to operate properly in supersonic flight.
As speed increases, the shock wave becomes increasingly more oblique (the cone gets narrower). For higher flight speeds inlet cones are designed to move axially to control how the capture area varies with the duct internal throat area.
Today we have also devised other solutions to this problem, and thus the inlet cone was the first solution that worked. However, it wasn’t the only solution. Now, we have various solutions to this problem. So many, it seems, that people tend to forget that it was a problem in the first place.
"A shock wave forms on the aircraft when it reaches supersonic speeds. From the front of the plane, the shock wave appears as a circle, but from the back and sides, it looks like very sharp spikes coming off the plane. It is a rare and spectacular sight, only visible in humid weather. Usually the planes are up too high when supersonic for a visible vapor wave, and since you can't fly supersonic around populations, very few people have caught it stateside.
When you go supersonic, you don't feel a thing. It's not the Chuck Yeager story anymore. Planes that are designed to go supersonic go right through 'the number' without a blink. The airplane is as comfortable to fly at landing speeds as it is supersonic. Things just happen faster."
-From the book "The Cutting Edge".
What is most interesting from our point of view are two key points.
The first point is the most obvious. [1] That is that the speed of sound, once thought of as an unbreakable barrier, was overcome through design engineering techniques.
And the second reason, not so obvious, is [2] that the equations for the compressibility of air on an engine is of the same form of that of the mass effects on a relativistic vehicle approaching the speed of light.
Comparison between the inlet pressure on an air-breathing aircraft when it approaches the speed of sound, and that of a FTL drive as it approaches the speed of light.
This is very interesting for a number of reasons, but for the layperson reading this manuscript, I am afraid that I will have to explain a little about the nature of physics and mathematics in our universe…
It is all about patterns.
No matter what form the physical attribute has; the mathematics that describe the shapes follow patterns.
Physicists have uncovered a hidden connection between a famous 350-year-old mathematical formula for pi and quantum mechanics.
This discovery was presented in a paper titled; “Quantum mechanical derivation of the Wallis formula for π”, by Tamir Friedmann.
This is fun reading, people, and while the mathematics might be a little obscure for most, the elegance of the derivation is sublime.
(Friedmann, Tamar, and Hagen, C.R. (2015) “Quantum mechanical derivation of the Wallis formula for pi,” Journal of Mathematical Physics 56: 112101.).
That is what is obvious here.
But this is not merely coincidence. It is ubiquitous throughout the known physical world. (There are actually university courses in the engineering sciences that teach this principle, so it shouldn’t be too alarming for the uninitiated. There is nothing strange or unusual here. This is standard engineering course material that has been taught in universities for decades.)
F-86 inlet.
The point of all this is to show that while I, myself, do not know how to alter and modify the change of a vehicles mass in relativistic flight regimes, I do believe that it is possible to do so. (Please consider the Robert Lazar comments found elsewhere…) I have this belief, not only because I have physically met extraterrestrials who have this ability, but that there are numerous conventional and mathematical reasons behind my belief.
As such, I most violently reject the often misquoted Einstein quote. “The speed of light is an unbreakable barrier to travel.”
There are means, ways and methods to achieve faster-than-light travel.
It is only that the typical individual does not have the necessary background to resolve this problem, nor the funding and will-power to do so. Thus they are forced to rely on the belief of others.
Others who, for various reasons, loudly make ignorant pronouncements that mask their supreme lack of understanding on the nature of our universe.
We are Still Trying
NASA confirmed in March 2015 that it has selected three companies to develop a new deep space engine to power interplanetary travel. (What this is should be cairified. Obviously the concept of interplanetary travel should be understood. It is travel between planets that is feasible within the lifetime of a human. That is, and should be even more clearly defined as travel from planet to planet that is possible within a 40 year time frame. 80/2 = 40 years.) Really? 40 years travel. Give me a break.
The contestants include privately held [1] Ad Astra Rocket Co. and [2] MSNW LLC, along with the [3] Aerojet Rocketdyne division of space tech stalwart GenCorp. Working under the aegis of NASA’s Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships, or NextSTEP, program, these three companies will offer the agency three separate flavors of cutting-age space engine tech. Generally speaking, none of the three will work on an actual “warp drive,” but rather versions of ion propulsion. Respectively:
The first company; Ad Astra is developing a Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket, or VASIMR, engine dubbed the VX-200-SS. Using a nuclear reactor to heat and ionize propellant that is then emitted through electromagnetic thrusters, the VASIMR engine puts out 200 kW of power and will be able to reach Mars from Earth in just 39 days, according to Ad Astra.
The second company; MSNW has three engine technologies in the works: a one-kilowatt electromagnetic "plasmoid thruster," a "fusion driven rocket," and an electrodeless Lorentz force, or ELF, thruster using "rotating magnetic field and pulsed-inductive technologies." The company said the Department of Defense funded development of its ELF thruster, which can use multiple forms of propellant -- including "Martian Air."
Finally, Aerojet Rocketdyne is receiving the biggest of NASA's awards, $18 million, "to complete the development of NASA's Evolutionary Xenon Thruster-Commercial (NEXT-C) Gridded Ion Thruster System." (The reader however, should understand what these numbers mean. The “huge” award of $18 million is but 1/100 of the budget for the ACA website; the “ObamaCARE” signup website.) AR said its NEXT-C engine is already three times as powerful as "current low-power NASA systems," although not yet operating in the targeted 50-to-300 kW range. NASA has asked AR to deliver two complete flight systems for testing.
I, for one, am very happy that NASA is investigating these avenues. But I do believe that the techniques that will eventually be accepted will be those that isolate, or enclose the ship is a trans-dimensional state. This is because of a number of problems that will occur when the ship exceeds the speed of light.
According to Yurtsever and Wilkinson’s analysis, each cubic centimeter of space contains over 400 microwave photons. A ship traveling through space, say, with a hull made from ordinary baryonic matter, would collide with thousands of billions of these photons every second — collisions that should create electron-positron pairs. This would produce considerable drag on a spaceship.
A paper by Raytheon engineers Ulvi Yurtsever and Steven Wilkinson suggests that spaceships traveling at speeds approaching the speed of light must interact with the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and subsequently produce detectable and distinguishable light signatures. At the same time, however, the ensuing drag from the collisions imposes an upper constraint on the speeds at which spaceships can travel.
“While special relativity imposes an absolute speed limit at the speed of light, our Universe is not empty Minkowski spacetime. The constituents that fill the interstellar/intergalactic vacuum, including the cosmic microwave background photons, impose a lower speed limit on any object travelling at relativistic velocities. Scattering of cosmic microwave phtotons from an ultra-relativistic object may create radiation with a characteristic signature allowing the detection of such objects at large distances.”
-(http://arxiv.org/abs/1503.05845) Limits and Signatures of Relativistic Spaceflight. arXiv:1503.05845v3 [gr-qc].
"Our assumption that matter-matter interactions can be dealt with when civilization can build relativistic spacecraft may prove false and may be a barrier that will prevent space travel [at relativistic speeds]…"
-Raytheon engineers Ulvi Yurtsever and Steven Wilkinson
All of these efforts revolve around improving the techniques to increase vehicular speed. That is the conventional approach. Indeed, development in this arena must be done. However, other avenues of investigation must be considered. And they are, though they are not all that well known.
Compared to other FTL schemes like the Alcubierre drive or Lorentzian wormholes, which rely on unphysical matter fields to stabilize the geometry, the current specified approach relies only on gravitational wave generation and transmission through empty space. (As opposed to some kind of dimensional “bubble”.) Assuming the daunting problem of astronomical scale gravitational wave generation is somehow solved, this method could in principle enable FTL travel without appealing to exotic physics. However a detailed analysis of tidal forces is required before assessing the feasibility of this scheme for transit of payloads.
The nature of the shortcut generation involves the creation of waveforms that compress and dilate spacetime in the direction of flight. In order for signals (or ships) to be able to take advantage of the metric-contracting fields, they must carefully control their timing synchronization, in order to cross the field regions as close as possible to the compression valley, where the distance is minimal between opposing sides of the field region. The region must be crossed in substantially less than T /2, with T being the period of the gravitational wave. Even if the compression of each field region is small, large distance reduction could be accomplished by bridging many pre-configured field regions in a timely manner. It is conceivable that other field configurations exist that achieve better distance compression patterns. Even without exploiting the FTL aspects of the field, time-like geodesics can still be substantially accelerated or decelerated with special field configurations of this type, while remaining in free fall during the transit.
Due to the transversal nature of gravitational waves, the gravitational sources must be distributed orthogonally to the direction of desired FTL geodesic path. These gravitational beams have to be precisely oriented and timed decades in advance, as gravitational waves propagate at the speed of light. This implies some sort of deployment of a wide scale network of gravitational generators around entire star clusters.
For instance, a region-delimited gravitational wave field can be constructed. This is a field of energy or potential that surrounds a vehicle. It works in such a way that it’s apparent movement is greater than the apparent movement of the surrounding physical universe. (Indeed, in such a way that a subset of geodesics crossing this region will move faster than nearby geodesics moving entirely inside flat spacetime, along a preferred direction. ) It is all about relativity. The null geodesics inside this region will move faster-than-light according to far away observers. The waveform is synthesized from homogeneous plane wave solutions, and the resulting field is the gravitational equivalent of a Gaussian beam.
Gaussian beams are one of the most basic propagating fields used in optical applications, and its general properties are inherited from the wave equation (and corresponding Helmholtz equation). However, there are differences. Optical fields are oscillations of the electromagnetic vector field Aµ, while gravitational fields are tensor perturbations hµν with two physical degrees of freedom for each mode, so is not an straightforward realisation that there should be a simple equivalent in the gravitational case.
Several individuals have proposed mechanisms within the standard theory of General Relativity (GR) to allow some level of circumvention around the light speed limit, by warping the spacetime geometry in some compact region.
While we discuss the utility of FTL vehicles, the reader must recognize the most important concept of this post; that distance and time are NOT limitions of the physical. Indeed, all are controlled by the physical manifestation and alteration of our our understandings.
Consider the movement of a vehicle or person devoid of a physical vehicle; consider the mind and it’s pilot; the soul. The concept of consciousness existing outside the body (e.g. near-death and out-of body experiences, NDE/OBEs, or after death, indicative of a ‘soul’) is a staple of religious traditions, but shunned by conventional science because of an apparent lack of rational explanation.
However conventional science based entirely on classical physics cannot account for normal in-the-brain consciousness. The Penrose-Hameroff ‘Orch OR’ model is a quantum approach to consciousness, connecting brain processes (microtubule quantum computations inside neurons) to fluctuations in fundamental spacetime geometry, the fine scale structure of the universe. Recent evidence for significant quantum coherence in warm biological systems, scale-free dynamics and end-of-life brain activity support the notion of a quantum basis for consciousness which could conceivably exist independent of biology in various scalar planes in spacetime geometry.
However, all the mechanisms proposed so far require the engineered spacetime region to be filled with matter that (apparently) violates well established energy conditions, and is not known to exist in nature. ( So many problems…) More over even ignoring the problem of violation of the energy conditions, these geometries have other problems related to acausal setup of the exotic matter distribution, as well as quantum instabilities in the semiclassical limit.
The reader should not get too confused by all the terminology. These are just words that are used to define precise situations. A scalar field is nothing more than just fancy physics-speak for a quantity which takes on a unique numerical value at every point in spacetime. In quantum field theory, scalar fields lead to spinless particles; the Higgs field is a standard example. (Other particles, such as electrons and photons, arise from more complicated geometric objects — spinors and vectors, respectively.)
However, the idea of using matter to curve surrounding spacetime does not exhaust the possibilities that GR offers in order to create customized geometries.
Gravitational waves (GW) are themselves perturbations of geometry that travel at the speed of light. Even while the full theory of GR is a nonlinear theory, the principle of superposition still applies within the limit of weak plane waves, and one can consider some superpositions of such planar waves physically valid perturbations.
The present work shows that for specially crafted gravitational waveforms of this type, one can produce geometries in pure vacuum with Faster-Than-Light (FTL) properties, similar to those obtained via other geometrical drives.
In this work, the geometry of null congruences can be affected in a way that allows FTL communication. To be precise, we can construct a focal region of a gravitational waveform composed of traceless and transverse planar waves.
As such we will find that null congruences entering the focal region can become asymptotically accelerated.
Thus, they arrive effectively before similar geodesics that do not enter the field region (according to distant observers). The asymptotic delay or advancement of congruences will be affected by the local phase of the perturbation at the moment the geodesic enters the region, the period of the oscillation, as well as the width of the focal region.
Observed vehicles operating at FTL speeds
We have observed other things moving at speeds faster than light.
These things could be anything, but they absolutely do fit the profile of a vehicle that is moving in a FTL flight envelope. An unknown object in the nearby galaxy M82 has started sending out radio waves, and the emission does not look like anything seen anywhere in the universe before. Yikes….!
Given the complex nonlinear geodesic equations that result from the Gaussian perturbation, we were only able to compute analytically the first order correction to the geodesic null and time-like rays crossing the field, and its derivation is detailed
The M82 galaxy.
We have thus established that within GR, certain gravitational waveforms can result in geodesics that arrive at distant points earlier than light signals in flat spacetime. As such, we presented an example waveform that can be used to manifest FTL behavior, and obtained an analytic first order perturbative approximation of geodesics approaching the field region. We notice that the timing of entrance to the field region determines the asymptotic delay or advance of signals. The optimal shortcut geodesics are those that cross the field region as close as possible to the time and position of the minimum of the metric waveform.
“We don’t know what it is,”
-co-discoverer Tom Muxlow of Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics near Macclesfield, UK.
The thing appeared while Muxlow and his colleagues were monitoring an unrelated stellar explosion in M82 using the MERLIN network of radio telescopes in the UK. A bright spot of radio emission emerged over only a few days, quite rapidly in astronomical terms. Since then it has done very little except baffle astrophysicists. It certainly does not fit the pattern of radio emissions from supernovae: they usually get brighter over a few weeks and then fade away over months, with the spectrum of the radiation changing all the while. The new source has hardly changed in brightness over the course of a year, and its spectrum is steady.
Yet it does seem to be moving – and fast: its apparent sideways velocity is four times the speed of light. Such apparent “superluminal” motion has been seen before in high-speed jets of material squirted out by some black holes. The stuff in these jets is moving towards us at a slight angle and travelling at a fair fraction of the speed of light, and the effects of relativity produce a kind of optical illusion that makes the motion appear superluminal.
Could the object be a black hole? It is not quite in the middle of M82, where astronomers would expect to find the kind of supermassive central black hole that most other galaxies have. Which leaves the possibility that it could be a smaller-scale “microquasar”. A microquasar is formed after a very massive star explodes, leaving behind a black hole around 10 to 20 times the mass of the sun, which then starts feeding on gas from a surviving companion star. Microquasars do emit radio waves – but none seen in our galaxy is as bright as the new source in M82. Microquasars also produce plenty of X-rays, whereas no X-rays have been seen from the mystery object. “So that’s not right either”, Muxlow told New Scientist.
His best guess is still that the radio source is some kind of dense object accreting surrounding material, perhaps a large black hole or a black hole in an unusual environment. If you look at this observed phenomena from the point of view of an aerospace engineer instead of that of an astrophysicist, one can clearly speculate that the object can possibly be a interstellar vehicle engaged in an unusual flight regime.
What ways can humans achieve FTL flight?
“I think a lot of the American people feel more than a little disappointed that the high-water mark for human exploration was 1969. The dream of human space travel has almost died for a lot of people.”
-Elon Musk
Presuming that our extraterrestrial overlords permit us, we can and probably will visit nearby stellar neighborhoods using FTL flight or similar systems. (Pause for reader consideration.)
I know that the teleportation portal has capabilities that transcend distances of time and physical space. And perhaps using the same technology we, as humans, can venture out and away from our little solar system nursery here. Perhaps someday we will be permitted to develop our own home-grown version of the teleportation portal. Perhaps we will be granted the permission to build our own kinds of spacecraft with this ability. Perhaps this will happen.
Some things to ponder; the use of super conductive materials is one avenue of study that might provide some great benefits. (For instance, a lanthanum copper oxide compound can be doped over a wide range of compositions, which was used to study a potentially new mechanism of superconduction.
In research experiments, a substrate of LaSrCuO4 was used, and an epitaxy technique grew atomically-perfect thin films of three derivative compounds: an insulator and a metal that show no superconductivity, and a superconducting variant with a transition temperature (Tc) of 40K.
By growing literally hundreds of combination of interfaces and film thicknesses, the researchers were able to observe superconduction at different temperatures, including superconduction at the metal/insulator interface.)
What I do know about this subject, the reader might find interesting, so I will place it here with all the necessary caveats. This information is direct from <redacted> that <redacted>. Whether it is accurate is up to the reader to determine. I am just reporting it here for the benefit of the reader.
The Universe, and our galaxy in the Universe, is inhabited with a great variety of intelligent extraterrestrial life. It is not empty by any means. When humans venture forth, they will, accidentally venture into the turf and properties of other races. Some will not care. Other races will care a great deal. It is a wild and dangerous world out there. The human race is far too fragile to venture to the stars at this time.
With the proper technology, FTL travel is possible. It absolutely is, though the technology would probably be different from what we, today, expect it to be. We will be able to traverse the vast gaps of space and visit other places.
However colonization will be problematic. So when we visit them we will find that they are not suitable for our human biological bodies to live there. Any colonies we create will die out eventually. Humans will have to be able to adapt themselves biologically to adapt to other worlds in our galaxy. This cannot be done without extraterrestrial overseer guidance. As the soul construct archetypes are fixed and discrete. (By intention and organization; not by natural biological processes.)
All FTL technology will require a degree of quantum physics in the manipulation of the fabric of space and time. This will affect all of the creatures and beings in all the other stars in our neighborhood. How we proceed with this development and how it will be engaged will have to be through approval of the local federation.
As the reader can clearly see, obtaining FTL flight to leave our planet is not as easy as it appears to be on the surface. It is not simply one of obtaining the technology or science to do so. It is not a problem of getting political or societal support to develop the technology. It is a matter of the realities of our place in the grand scheme of things.
We will need permission to do so from the galactic federation and their representatives in this region; the <redacted>.
Next…
This post continues to part 2, where we discuss the techniques that are being constructed right now.
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When I was a young teenager, I voraciously read science fiction stories like they were going out of style. I couldn’t help myself. I loved the adventure. I loved the stories about outer space. I loved exploration, and shiny metal mechanisms. I loved to hear the heroes get in and out of their particular predicaments. And as such, I read all the “classics”, from anthologies to Heinlein, Bradbury, Asimov, and many others. One of my favorites (alongside my collection of Doc Savage books) was the hundreds of stories by A. Bertram Chandler and his John Grimes saga.
This was around the time of Star Trek (the first season) and before Star Wars or any of the subsequent movies. Boys like myself read these adventure yarns and imagined that we commanded those slick needle-shaped silver rockets and plied the depths of space.
The idea of a “space opera” during the 1960’s and 1970’s was one in which a lone person would explore the heavens as part of some kind of military or merchant marine operation. It was short in space battles and infra-cannons, phasers, and photon-torpedoes. But long on adventure, inter-personal relationships and situational conflicts. I ate it up.
A. Bertram Chandler
A. Bertram Chandler wrote over 40 novels and 200 works of short fiction.
“He writes his stories in the middle of a hurricane with his typewriter lashed to his desk.”
– John W. Campbell, legendary editor of Astounding Science Fiction
Chandler’s descriptions of life aboard spaceships and the relationships between members of the crew en route derive from his experience on board seagoing ships and thus carry a feeling of realism rarely found with other writers.
He was most well known for his Rim World series and John Grimes novels, both of which have a distinctly naval flavor. In the latter, Chandler’s principal hero John Grimes is an enthusiastic sailor who has occasional adventures on the oceans of various planets.
In the books, there is a repeated reference to an obsolete type of magnetically powered spaceship known as the “Gaussjammer”, remembered nostalgically by “old timers” – which is modeled on the Windjammer.
Chandler made heavy use of the parallel universe plot device throughout his career, with many Grimes stories involving characters briefly crossing over into other realities.
In his ironic short story "The Cage", a band of shipwrecked humans wandering naked in the jungles of a faraway planet are captured by aliens and placed in a zoo, where, failing in all their efforts to convince their captors that they are intelligent, some are dissected. Eventually they become resigned to captivity and adopt a small local rodent as a pet, placing him in a wicker cage. Seeing this, their captors apologize for the mistake and repatriate them to Earth, remarking that "only intelligent creatures put other creatures in cages".
Sex is frequent in Chandler’s books, often in free fall. Women on board are typically pursers or passengers; far less often are they regular officers in the chain of command. Chandler’s protagonists are quite prone to affairs and promiscuous behavior, but are also shown falling in love and undertaking long-lasting, harmonious marriages.
The combination of science fiction, life as a starship caption, adventure and sexy relationships in parallel universes was addictive to me. I couldn’t put these books down, and often I would find myself exploring old second-hand booksellers searching for a new and unread Chandler book.
Commander Grimes
"SF's answer to Horatio Hornblower." --Publishers Weekly
Pipe-smoking, action-loving spaceship commander John Grimes (think Captain Kirk with more of a navy, salty attitude) retires from heroic days in Earth’s space navy only to be immediately thrown into adventures on the remote edge of known space…
"As Asimov chronicled the Foundation, as Heinlein built his Future History, so Chandler constructs the epic of the Rim Worlds." --Analog
This is the very first book in the John Grimes story / saga. Please enjoy it as much as I have.
The Road to the Rim
The Road to the Rim.
Lieutenant John Grimes of the Federation Survey Service: fresh out of the Academy-and as green as they come!
“What do you think you’re playing at?”
“Captain,” said Wolverton, “I can no more than guess at what you intend to do-but I have decided not to help you do it.”
“Give me the initiator, Wolverton. That’s an order!
“A lawful command, Captain? As lawful as those that armed this ship?” “Hold him, Grimes!”
. . . They hung there, clinging to each other, but more in hate than in love. Wolverton’s back was to the machine; he could not see, as could Grimes, that there was an indraught of air into the shimmering, spinning complexity. Grimes felt the beginnings of panic . . . all that mattered was that there was nothing to prevent him and Wolverton from being drawn into the machine . . . .Violently Grimes shoved away. To the action, there was a reaction . . .
When he had finished retching, Grimes forced himself to look again at the slimy, bloody obscenity that was a man turned inside out-heart still beating, intestines still writhing . . .
I
HIS UNIFORM was new, too new, all knife-edged creases, and the braid and buttons as yet un-dimmed by time. It sat awkwardly upon his chunky
body-and even more awkwardly his big ears protruded from under the cap that was set too squarely upon his head. Beneath the shiny visor his eyes were gray (but not yet hard), and his face, for all its promise of strength, was as yet unlined, had yet to lose its immature softness. He stood at the foot of the ramp by which he had disembarked from the transport that had carried him from the Antarctic Base to Port Woomera, looking across the silver towers that were the ships, interplanetary and interstellar, gleaming in the desert. The westering sun was hot on his back, but he did not notice the discomfort. There were the ships, the real ships-not obsolescent puddle-jumpers like the decrepit cruiser in which he, with the other midshipmen of his class, had made the training cruise to the moons of Saturn. There were the ships, the star ships, that span their web of commerce from Earth to the Centaurian planets, to the Cluster Worlds, to the Empire of Waverley, to the Shakespearian Sector and beyond.
(But they’re only merchantmen, he thought, with a young man’s snobbery.) He wondered in which one of the vessels he would be taking passage.
Merchantman or not, that big ship, the one that stood out from her
neighbors like a city skyscraper among village church steeples, looked a likely enough craft. He pulled the folder containing his orders from his inside breast pocket, opened it, read (not for the second time, even), the
relevant page.
. . . you are to report on board the Interstellar Transport Commission’s Delta Orionis . . .
He was not a spaceman yet, in spite of his uniform, but he knew the Commission’s system of nomenclature. There was the Alpha class, and the Beta class, and there were the Gamma and Delta classes. He grinned wryly. His ship was one of the smaller ones. Well, at least he would not be traveling to Lindisfarne Base in an Epsilon class tramp.
Ensign John Grimes, Federation Survey Service, shrugged his broad shoulders and stepped into the ground car waiting to carry him and his baggage from the airport to the spaceport.
II
GRIMES LOOKED at the officer standing just inside Delta Orionis’ airlock, and she looked at him. He felt the beginnings of a flush spreading over his face, a prickling of the roots of his close-cropped hair, and felt all the more embarrassed by this public display of his embarrassment. But spaceborn female officers, at this time, were almost as scarce as hens’ teeth in the Survey Service-and such few as he had met all looked as though they shared a common equine ancestry. It was all wrong, thought Grimes. It was unfair that this girl (this attractive girl) should already be a veteran of interstellar voyages while he, for all his uniform and commission, should be embarking upon his first, his very first trip outside the bounds of the Solar System. He let his glance fall from her face (but not without reluctance), to the braid on her shoulderboards. Gold on a white facing. So it wasn’t too bad. She was only some sort of paymaster-or, to use Merchant Service terminology, only some sort of purser.
She said, her clear, high voice almost serious, “Welcome aboard the Delia O’Ryan, Admiral.”
. . . of the Federation Survey Service,” she finished for him. “But you are all potential admirals.” There was the faintest of smiles flickering upon her full lips, a barely discernible crinkling at the corners of her eyes. Her brown eyes, thought Grimes. Brown eyes, and what I can see of her hair under that cap seems to be auburn . . .
She glanced at her wristwatch. She told him, her voice now crisp and businesslike, “We lift ship in precisely ten minutes’ time, Ensign.”
“Then I’d better get my gear along to my cabin, Miss . . . ?”
“I’ll look after that, Mr. Grimes. Meanwhile, Captain Craven sends his compliments and invites you to the Control Room.”
“Thank you.” Grimes looked past and around the girl, trying to discover for himself the door that gave access to the ship’s axial shaft. He was determined not to ask.
“It’s labeled,” she told him with a faint smile. “And the cage is waiting at
this level. Just take it up as far as it goes, then walk the rest. Or do you want a pilot?”
“I can manage,” he replied more coldly than he had intended, adding, “thank you.” He could see the sign over the door now. It was plain enough. AXIAL SHAFT. So was the button that he had to press to open the door-but the girl pressed it for him. He thanked her again-and this time his coldness was fully intentional-and stepped into the cage. The door slid shut behind him. The uppermost of the studs on the elevator’s control panel was marked CAPTAIN’S DECK. He pushed it, then stood there and watched the lights flashing on the panel as he was swiftly lifted to the nose of the ship.
When he was carried no further he got out, found himself on a circular walk surrounding the upper extremity of the axial shaft. On the outside of the shaft itself there was a ladder. After a second’s hesitation he climbed it, emerged through a hatch into the control room.
It was like the control room of the cruiser in which he had made his training cruise-and yet subtly (or not so subtly), unlike it. Everything- but so had it been aboard the Survey Service vessel-was functional, but there was an absence of high polish, of polishing for polishing’s sake. Instruments gleamed-but it was the dull gleam that comes from long and continual use, and matched the dull gleam of the buttons and rank marks on the uniforms of the officers already seated at their stations, the spacemen to whom, after all, a uniform was no more (and no less), than an obligatory working rig.
The big man with the four gold bars on each shoulder half turned his head as Grimes came up through the hatch. “Glad to have you aboard, Ensign,” he said perfunctorily. “Grab yourself a seat-there’s a spare one alongside the Mate’s. Sorry there’s no time for introductions right now. We’re due to get upstairs.”
“Here!” grunted one of the officers.
Grimes made his way to the vacant acceleration chair, dropped into it, strapped himself in. While he was so doing he heard the Captain ask, “All secure, Mr. Kennedy?”
“No, sir.”
“Then why the hell not?”
“I’m still waiting for the purser’s report, sir.”
“Are you?” Then, with a long-suffering sigh, “I suppose she’s still tucking some passenger into her-or his-bunk . . . .”
“She could still be stowing some passenger’s gear, sir,” contributed Grimes. “Mine,” he added.
“Indeed?” The Captain’s voice was cold and elaborately uninterested. Over the intercom came a female voice. “Purser to Control. All secure
below.”
“And bloody well time,” grumbled the shipmaster. Then, to the officer at the transceiver, “Mr. Digby, kindly obtain clearance.”
“Obtain clearance, sir,” acknowledged that young man brightly. Then, into his microphone, “Delta Orionis to Port Control. Request clearance to lift ship. Over.”
“Port Control to Delta Orionis. You may lift. Bon voyage. Over.” “Thank you, Port Control. Over and out.”
Then the ship was throbbing to the rhythmic beat of her Inertial Drive, and Grimes felt that odd sense of buoyancy, of near weightlessness, that persisted until the vessel broke contact with the ground-and then the still gentle acceleration induced the reverse effect. He looked out through the nearest viewport. Already the ocher surface of the desert, streaked by the long, black shadows of ships and spaceport buildings, was far below them, with the vessels and the immobile constructions looking like toys, and one or two surface vehicles like scurrying insects. Far to the north, dull-ruddy against the blue of the sky, there was a sandstorm. If that sky were darker, thought Grimes, this would look like Mars, and the mental comparison reminded him that he, too, was a spaceman, that he, too, had been around (although only within the bounds of Sol’s planetary system). Even so, he was Survey Service, and these others with him in Control were only merchant officers, fetchers and carriers, interstellar coach and truck drivers. (But he envied them their quiet competency.)
Still the ship lifted, and the spaceport below her dwindled, and the land horizon to the north and the now visible sea horizon to the south began to display the beginnings of curvature. Still she lifted, and overhead the sky was dark, and the first bright stars, Sirius and Canopus, Alpha and Beta Centauri, were sparkling there, beckoning, as they had beckoned for ages immemorial before the first clumsy rocket clambered heavenward up the ladder of its own fiery exhaust, before the first airplane spread its flimsy wings, before the first balloon was lifted by the hot, expanding gases from its airborne furnace . . . .
“Mr. Grimes,” said the Captain suddenly, his voice neither friendly nor unfriendly.
“Sir?”
“We lift on I.D. until we’re clear of the Van Allens.”
“I know, sir,” said Grimes-then wished that he could unsay the words. But it was too late. He was conscious of the shipmaster’s hostile silence, of the amused contempt of the merchant officers. He shrank into his chair, tried to make himself as inconspicuous as possible. The ship’s people talked among themselves in low voices, ignoring him. They allowed themselves a period of relaxation, producing and lighting cigarettes. Nobody offered the Ensign one.
Sulkily he fumbled for his pipe, filled it, lighted it. The Chief Officer coughed with quite unnecessary vigor. The Captain growled, “Put that out, please,” and muttered something about stinking out the control room. He,
himself, was puffing at a villainous black cigar.
The ship lifted, and below her the Earth was now a great sphere,
three-quarters in darkness, the line of the terminator drawn across land masses, cloud formations and oceans. City lights twinkled in the gloom like star clusters, like nebulae. In a quiet voice an officer was calling readings from the radar altimeter.
To the throbbing of the Inertial Drive was added the humming, shrilling to a whine, of the directional gyroscopes as the ship turned about her short axis hunting the target star. The pseudo-gravity of centrifugal force was at an odd angle to that of acceleration-and the resultant was at an odder angle still. Grimes began to feel sick-and was actually thankful that the Captain had made him put his pipe out. Alarm bells sounded, and then somebody was saying over the intercom. “Prepare for acceleration. Prepare for acceleration. Listen for the countdown.”
The countdown. Part of the long tradition of space travel, a hangover from the days of the first, unreliable rockets. Spaceships still used rockets-but only as auxiliaries, as a means of delivering thrust in a hurry, of building up acceleration in a short time.
At the word Zero! the Inertial Drive was cut and, simultaneously, the Reaction Drive flared into violent life. The giant hand of acceleration bore down heavily upon all in the ship-then, suddenly, at a curt order from the Captain, lifted.
Grimes became aware of a thin, high keening, the song of the
ever-precessing gyroscopes of the Mannschenn Drive. He knew the theory of it-as what spaceman did not?-although the mathematics of it were beyond the comprehension of all but a handful of men and women. He knew what was happening, knew that the ship, now that speed had been built up, was, as one of his instructors had put it, going ahead in space and astern in time. He felt, as he had been told that he would feel, the uncanny sensation of d‚j… vu, and watched the outlines of the control room and of every person and instrument in the compartment shift and shimmer, the colors sagging down the spectrum.
Ahead, the stars were pulsating spirals of opalescence, astern, Earth and Moon were frighteningly distorted, uncanny compromises between the sphere and the tesseract. But this was no more than the merest subliminal glimpse; in the twinkling of an eye the Home Planet and her daughter were no more than dust motes whirling down the dark dimensions.
The Captain lit a fresh cigar. “Mr. Kennedy,” he said, “you may set normal Deep Space watches.” He turned to Grimes. His full beard almost hid his expression, that of one performing a social duty with no enthusiasm. “Will you join me in my day cabin, Ensign?”
“It will be my pleasure, sir,” lied Grimes. III
HANDLING HIS BIG BODY with easy grace in the Free Fall conditions, the Captain led the way from the control room. Grimes followed slowly and
clumsily, but with a feeling of great thankfulness that after his training cruise he was no longer subject to spacesickness. There were drugs, of course, and passengers used them, but a spaceman was expected to be independent of pharmaceutical aids. Even so, the absence of any proper “up” or “down” bothered him more than he cared to admit.
The shipmaster slid open the door to his accommodation, motioned to Grimes to enter, murmuring sardonically, “Now you see how the poor live.” The so-called poor, thought Grimes, didn’t do at all badly. This Deep Space sitting room was considerably larger than the day cabin of the Survey Service cruiser’s Captain had been. True, it was also shabbier-but it was far more comfortable. Its decorations would never have been approved aboard a warship, were obviously the private property of the Master. There were a full dozen holograms on the bulkhead, all of them widely differing but all of them covering the same subject matter. Not that the subject matter was covered.
“My harem,” grunted the Captain. “That one there, the redhead, I met on Caribbea. Quite a stopover that was. The green-haired wench-and you can see that it’s not a dye job, although I’ve often wondered why women can’t be thorough- isn’t human, of course. But indubitably humanoid, and indubitably mammalian. Belongs to Brrrooonooorrrooo-one of the worlds of the Shaara Empire. The local Queen Mother offered to sell Lalia-that’s her name-to me for a case of Scotch. And I was tempted . . .” He sighed. “But you Service Survey types aren’t the only ones who have to live by Regulations.”
Grimes said nothing, tried to hide his interest in the art gallery.
“But take a pew, Ensign. Spit on the mat and call the cat a bastard-this is Liberty Hall.”
Grimes pulled himself to one of the comfortable chairs, strapped himself in. He said lamely, “I don’t see any cat, sir.”
“A figure of speech,” growled the Captain, seating himself next to what looked like a drink cabinet. “Well, Mr. Grimes, your Commandant at the Academy, Commodore Bradshaw, is an old friend and shipmate of mine. He said that you were a very promising young officer”-like a balloon in a comic strip the unspoken words, “God knows why,” hung between them-“and asked me to keep an eye on you. But I have already gained the impression that there is very little that a mere merchant skipper such as myself will be able to teach you.”
Grimes looked at the bulky figure seated opposite him, at the
radiation-darkened skin of the face above the black, silver-streaked beard, at the fiercely jutting nose, at the faded but bright and intelligent blue eyes, the eyes that were regarding him with more than a hint of amused contempt. He blushed miserably as he recalled his brash, “I know, sir,” in this man’s own control room. He said, with an effort, “This is my first Deep Space voyage, sir.”
“I know.” Surprisingly the Captain chuckled-and as though to celebrate this minor scoring over his guest opened the liquor cabinet. “Pity to have to
suck this excellent Manzanila out of a bulb-but that’s one of the hardships of Free Fall. Here!” He tossed a little pear-shaped container to Grimes, kept one for himself. “Your health, Ensign!”
“And yours, sir.”
The wine was too dry for Grimes’ taste, but he made a pretense of enjoying it. He was thankful that he was not asked to have a second drink. Meanwhile, his host had pulled a typewritten sheet from a drawer of his desk and was looking at it. “Let me see, now . . . You’re in cabin 15, on D Deck. You’ll be able to find your own way down, won’t you?”
Grimes said that he would and unbuckled his lapstrap. It was obvious that the party was over.
“Good. Now, as an officer of the Survey Service you have the freedom of the control room and the engine rooms . . . . “
“Thank you, sir.”
“Just don’t abuse the privilege, that’s all.”
After that, thought Grimes, I’m not likely to take advantage of it, let alone abuse it. He let himself float up from his chair, said, “Thank you, sir.” (For the drink, or for the admonition? What did it matter?) “I’ll be getting down to my cabin, sir. I’ve some unpacking to do.”
“As you please, Mr. Grimes.”
The Captain, his social duty discharged, had obviously lost interest in his guest. Grimes let himself out of the cabin and made his way, not without difficulty, to the door in the axial shaft. He was surprised at the extent to which one not very large drink had interfered with the control of his body in Free Fall. Emerging from the elevator cage on D Deck he stumbled, literally, into the purser. “Let go of me,” she ordered, “or I shall holler rape!”
That, he thought, is all I need to make this trip a really happy one. She disengaged herself, moved back from him, her slim, sandaled feet,
magnetically shod, maintaining contact with the steel decking, but
gracefully, with a dancing motion. She laughed. “I take it that you’ve just come from a home truth session with B.B.”
“B.B.?”
“The Bearded Bastard. But don’t take it too much to heart. He’s that way with all junior officers. The fact that you’re Survey Service is only incidental.”
“Thank you for telling me.”
“His trouble,” she went on. “His real trouble is that he’s painfully shy.” He’s not the only one, thought Grimes, looking at the girl. She seemed
even more attractive than on the occasion of their first meeting. She had changed into shorts-and-shirt shipboard uniform-and she was one of the
rare women who could wear such a rig without looking lumpy and clumpy. There was no cap now to hide her hair-smooth, lustrous, with coppery glints, with a straight white part bisecting the crown of her finely shaped head.
She was well aware of his scrutiny. She said, “You must excuse me, Ensign. I have to look after the other customers. They aren’t seasoned spacemen like you.”
Suddenly bold, he said, “But before you go, what is your name?”
She smiled dazzlingly. “You’ll find a list of all ship’s personnel posted in your cabin. I’m included.” Then she was gone, gliding rapidly around the curve of the alleyway.
He looked at the numbers over the cabin doors, outboard from the axial shaft, making a full circuit of that hollow pillar before he realized that this was only the inner ring, that he would have to follow one of the radial alleyways to reach his own accommodation. He finally found No. 15 and let himself in.
His first action was to inspect the framed notices on the bulkhead.
I.S.S. Delta Orionis, he read. Captain J. Craven, O.G.S., S.S.R.
So the Old Man held a Reserve commission. And the Order of the Golden Star was awarded for something more than good attendance.
Mr. P. Kennedy, Chief Officer.
He ignored the other names on the list while he searched for one he wanted. Ah, here it was.
Miss Jane Pentecost, Purser.
He repeated the name to himself, thinking that, despite the old play on words, this Jane was not plain. (But Janes rarely are.) Jane Pentecost . . . Then, feeling that he should be showing some professional interest, he acquainted himself with the names of the other members of the ship’s crew. He was intrigued by the manning scale, amazed that such a large vessel, relatively speaking, could be run by such a small number of people. But this was not a warship; there were no weapons to be manned, there would never be the need to put a landing party ashore on the surface of a hostile planet. The Merchant Service could afford to automate, to employ machinery in lieu of ratings. The Survey Service could not.
Virtuously he studied the notices dealing with emergency procedures, ship’s routine, recreational facilities and all the rest of it, examined with care the detailed plan of the ship. Attached to this was a card, signed by the Master, requesting passengers to refrain, as much as possible, from using the elevator in the axial shaft, going on to say that it was essential, for the good of their physical health, that they miss no opportunity for taking exercise. (In a naval vessel, thought Grimes, with a slight sneer, that would not be a request-it would be an order. And, in any case, there would
be compulsory calisthenics for all hands.)
He studied the plan again and toyed with the idea of visiting the bar before dinner. He decided against it; he was still feeling the effects of the drink that the Captain had given him. So, to pass the time, he unpacked slowly and carefully, methodically stowing his effects in the drawers under the bunk. Then, but not without reluctance, he changed from his uniform into his one formal civilian suit. One of the officer-instructors at the Academy had advised this. “Always wear civvies when you’re traveling as passenger. If you’re in uniform, some old duck’s sure to take you for one of the ship’s officers and ask you all sorts of technical questions to which you don’t know the answers.”
While he was adjusting his frilled cravat in front of the mirror the sonorous notes of a gong boomed from the intercom.
IV
THE DINING SALOON was much more ornate than the gunroom of that training cruiser had been, and more ornate than her wardroom. The essentials were the same, of course, as they are in any ship-tables and chairs secured to the deck, each seat fitted with its strap so that the comforting pressure of buttocks on padding could give an illusion of gravity. Each table was covered with a gaily colored cloth-but beneath the fabric there was the inevitable stainless steel to which the stainless steel service would be held by its own magnetic fields. But what impressed Grimes was the care that had been taken, the ingenuity that had been exercised to make this compartment look like anything but part of a ship.
The great circular pillar of the axial shaft was camouflaged by trelliswork, and the trelliswork itself almost hidden by the luxuriance of some
broad-level climbing plant that he could not identify. Smaller pillars were similarly covered, and there was a further efflorescence of living decoration all around the circular outer wall-the wall that must be the inner skin of the ship. And there were windows in this wall. No, Grimes decided, not windows, but holograms. The glowing, three dimensional pictures presented and maintained the illusion that this was a hall set in the middle of some great park. But on what world? Grimes could not say. Trees, bushes and flowers were unfamiliar, and the color of the sky subtly strange.
He looked around him at his fellow diners, at the dozen passengers and the ship’s officers, most of whom were already seated. The officers were in neat undress uniform. About half the male passengers were, like himself, formally attired; the others were sloppy in shorts and shirts. But this was the first night out and some laxity was allowable. The women, however, all seemed to have decided to outshine the glowing flowers that flamed outside the windows that were not windows.
There was the Captain, unmistakable with his beard and the shimmering rainbow of ribbons on the left breast of his blouse. There were the passengers at his table-the men inclined to portliness and pomposity, their women sleek and slim and expensive looking. Grimes was relieved to see that there was no vacant place-and yet, at the same time, rather hurt. He knew that he was only an Ensign, a one-ringer, and a very new Ensign at
that-but, after all, the Survey Service was the Survey Service.
He realized that somebody was addressing him. It was a girl, a small, rather chubby blonde. She was in uniform-a white shirt with black shoulder-boards, each bearing a narrow white stripe, sharply creased slacks, and black, highly polished shoes. Grimes assumed, correctly, that
she was a junior member of the purser’s staff. “Mr. Grimes,” she said, “will you follow me, please? “You’re at Miss Pentecost’s table.”
Willingly he followed the girl. She led him around the axial shaft to a table for four at which the purser with two passengers, a man and a woman, was already seated. Jane Pentecost was attired as was his guide, the severity of her gold-trimmed black and white in pleasing contrast to the pink and blue frills and flounces that clad the other woman, her slenderness in still more pleasing contrast to the other’s untidy plumpness.
She smiled and said pleasantly, “Be seated, Admiral.”
“Admiral?” asked the man at her left, unpleasantly incredulous. He had, obviously, been drinking. He was a rough looking customer, in spite of the attempt that he had made to dress for dinner. He was twice the Ensign’s age, perhaps, although the heavily lined face under the scanty sandy hair made him look older. “Admiral?” He laughed, revealing irregular yellow teeth. “In what? The Space Scouts?”
Jane Pentecost firmly took control. She said, “Allow me to introduce Ensign Grimes, of the Survey Service . . .”
“Survey Service . . . Space Scouts . . . S.S . . . . What’s the difference?” “Plenty!” answered Grimes hotly.
The purser ignored the exchange. “Ensign, this is Mrs. Baxter . . . .” “Pleased to meet you, I’m sure,” simpered the woman.
“And Mr. Baxter.”
Baxter extended his hand reluctantly and Grimes took it reluctantly. The amenities observed, he pulled himself into his seat and adjusted his lapstrap. He was facing Jane Pentecost. The man was on his right, the woman on his left. He glanced first at her, then at her husband, wondering how to start and to maintain a conversation. But this was the purser’s table, and this was her responsibility.
She accepted it. “Now you’re seeing how the poor live, Admiral,” she remarked lightly.
Grimes, taking a tentative sip from his bulb of consomm‚, did not think that the self-styled poor did at all badly, and said as much. The girl grinned and told him that the first night out was too early to draw conclusions. “We’re still on shoreside meat and vegetables,” she told him, “and you’ll not be getting your first taste of our instant table wine until tomorrow. Tonight we wallow in the unwonted luxury of a quite presentable Montrachet. When we start living on the produce of our own so-called farm, washing it down with our own reconstituted plonk, you’ll see the difference.”
The Ensign replied that, in his experience, it didn’t matter if food came from tissue-culture vats or the green fields of Earth-what was important was the cook.
“Wide experience, Admiral?” she asked sweetly.
“Not very,” he admitted. “But the gunroom cook in my last ship couldn’t boil water without burning it.”
Baxter, noisily enjoying his dinner, said that this preoccupation with food and drink was symptomatic of the decadence of Earth. As he spoke his knife grated unpleasantly on the steel spines that secured his charcoal broiled steak to the surface of his plate.
Grimes considered inquiring if the man thought that good table manners were also a symptom of decadence, then thought better of it. After all, this was not his table. Instead, he asked, “And where are you from, Mr. Baxter?”
“The Rim Worlds, Mr. Grimes. Where we’re left to sink or swim-so we’ve no time for much else than keeping ourselves afloat.” He sucked noisily from his bulb of wine. “Things might be a little easier for us if your precious Survey Service did something about keeping the trade routes open.”
“That is our job,” said Grimes stiffly. “And we do it.”
“Like hell! There’s not a pirate in the Galaxy but can run rings around you!” “Practically every pirate has been hunted down and destroyed,” Grimes told
him coldly.
“Practically every pirate, the man says! A few small-time bunglers, he means!”
“Even the notorious Black Bart,” persisted Grimes.
“Black Bart!” Baxter, spluttering through his full mouth, gestured with his laden fork at Grimes. “Black Bart! He wasn’t much. Once he and that popsy of his split brass rags he was all washed up. I’m talkin’ about the real pirates, the ones whose ships wear national colors instead o’ the Jolly Roger, the ones that your precious Survey Service daren’t say boo to. The ones who do the dirty work for the Federation.”
“Such as?” asked Grimes frigidly.
“So now you’re playin’ the bleedin’ innocent. Never heard o’ the Duchy o’ Waldegren, Mr. Ensign Grimes?”
“Of course. Autonomous, but they and the Federation have signed what’s called a Pact of Perpetual Amity.”
“Pretty words, ain’t they? Suppose we analyze them. Suppose we analyze by analogy. D’yer know much about animals, Mr. Ensign Grimes?”
“Animals?” Grimes was puzzled. “Well, I suppose I do know something. I’ve taken the usual courses in xenobiology . . . .”
“Never mind that. You’re a Terry. Let’s confine ourselves to a selection of yer own Terran four-footed friends.”
“What the hell are you driving at?” flared Grimes, losing his temper. He threw an apologetic glance in Jane Pentecost’s direction, saw that she was more amused than shocked.
“Just think about a Pact of Perpetual Amity between an elephant and a tom cat,” said Baxter. “A fat an’ lazy elephant. A lean, scrawny, vicious tom cat. If the elephant wanted to he could convert that cat into a fur bedside rug just by steppin’ on him. But he doesn’t want to. He leaves the cat alone, just because the cat is useful to him. He does more than just leave him alone. He an’ this feline pull out their pens from wherever they keep ’em an’ sign their famous Pact.
“In case you haven’t worked it out for yourself, the elephant’s the Federation, and the tom cat’s the Duchy of Waldegren.”
“But why?” asked Grimes. “Why?”
“Don’t they teach you puppies any interstellar politics? Or are those courses reserved for the top brass? Well, Mr. Grimes, I’ll tell you. There’s one animal that has the elephant really worried. Believe it or not, he’s scared o’ mice. An’ there’re quite a few mice inside the Federation, mice that make the elephant nervous by their rustlings an’ scurryings an’ their squeaky demands for full autonomy. That’s where the cat comes in. By his free use of his teeth an’ claws, by his very presence, he keeps the mice quiet.”
“And just who are these famous mice, Mr. Baxter?” asked Grimes.
“Don’t they teach you nothin’ in your bleedin’ Academy? Well, I’ll tell you. In our neck o’ the woods, the mice are the Rim Worlds, an’ the tom cat, as I’ve already made clear, is the Duchy o’ Waldegren. The Duchy gets away with murder-murder an’ piracy. But accordin’ to the Duchy, an accordin’ to your big, stupid elephant of a Federation, it’s not piracy. It’s-now, lemme see, what fancy words have been used o’ late? Contraband Control. Suppression of Espionage. Violation of the Three Million Mile Limit. Every time that there’s an act of piracy there’s some quote legal unquote excuse for it, an’ it’s upheld by the Federation’s tame legal eagles, an’ you Survey Service sissies just sit there on your big, fat backsides an’ don’t lift a pinkie against your dear, murderous pals, the Waldegrenese. If you did, they send you screaming back to Base, where some dear old daddy of an Admiral’d spank your little plump bottoms for you.”
“Please, Mr. Baxter!” admonished Jane Pentecost.
“Sorry, Miss. I got sort of carried away. But my young brother was Third Reaction Drive Engineer of the old Bunyip when she went missing. Nothin’ was ever proved-but the Waldegrenese Navy was holdin’ fleet maneuvers in the sector she was passin’ through when last heard from. Oh, they’re cunnin’ bastards. They’ll never go for one o’ these ships, or one of the Trans-Galactic Clippers; it’ll always be some poor little tramp that nobody’ll ever miss but the friends an’ relatives o’ the crew. And, I suppose, the underwriters-but Lloyds makes such a packet out o’ the ships that don’t get lost that they can well afford to shell out now an’ again. Come to that, it
must suit ’em. As long as there’re a few ‘overdues’ an’ ‘missings’ they can keep the premiums up.”
“But I still can’t see how piracy can possibly pay,” protested Grimes.
“O’ course it pays. Your friend Black Bart made it pay. An’ if you’re goin’ to all the expense of building and maintaining a war fleet, it might just as well earn its keep. Even your famous Survey Service might show a profit if you were allowed to pounce on every fat merchantman who came within range o’ your guns.”
“But for the Federation to condone piracy, as you’re trying to make out . . . That’s utterly fantastic.”
“If you lived on the Rim, you might think different,” snarled Baxter. And Jane Pentecost contributed, “Not piracy. Confrontation.”
V
AS SOON AS the meal was finished the Baxters left rather hastily to make their way to the bar, leaving Grimes and Jane Pentecost to the leisurely enjoyment of their coffee. When the couple was out of earshot Grimes remarked, “So those are Rim Worlders. They’re the first I’ve met.”
“They’re not, you know,” the girl told him.
“But they are. Oh, there are one or two in the Survey Service, but I’ve never run across them. Now I don’t particularly want to.”
“But you did meet one Rim Worlder before you met the Baxters.” “The Captain?”
She laughed. “Don’t let him hear you say that-not unless you want to take a space walk without a suit!”
“Then who?”
“Who could it be, Admiral? Whom have you actually met, to talk to, so far in this ship? Use your crust.”
He stared at her incredulously. “Not you?”
“Who else?” She laughed again, but with a touch of bitterness. “We aren’t all like our late manger companions, you know. Or should know. Even so, you’d count yourself lucky to have Jim Baxter by your side in any real jam. It boils down to this. Some of us have acquired veneer. Some of us haven’t. Period.”
“But how did you . . . ?” He groped for words that would not be offensive to conclude the sentence.
“How did I get into this galley? Easily enough. I started my spacefaring career as a not very competent Catering Officer in Jumbuk, one of the Sundowner Line’s more ancient and decrepit tramps. I got sick in Elsinore. Could have been my own cooking that put me in the hospital. Anyhow, I
was just about recovered when the Commission’s Epsilon Serpentis blew in-and she landed her purser with a slightly broken leg. She’d learned the hard way that the Golden Rule-stop whatever you’re doing and secure
everything when the acceleration warning sounds-is meant to be observed. The Doctor was luckier. She broke his fall . . . .” Grimes was about to ask what the Doctor and the purser had been doing, then was thankful that he had not done so. He was acutely conscious of the crimson blush that burned the skin of his face.
“You must realize,” said the girl dryly, “that merchant vessels with mixed crews are not monastic institutions. But where was I? Oh, yes. On Elsinore. Persuading the Master of the Snaky Eppy that I was a fit and proper person to take over his pursering. I managed to convince him that I was at least proper-I still can’t see what my predecessor saw in that lecherous old goat of a quack, although the Second Mate had something . . . .” Grimes felt a sudden twinge of jealousy. Anyhow, he signed me on, as soon as I agreed to waive repatriation.
“It was a long voyage; as you know, the Epsilon class ships are little better than tramps themselves. It was a long voyage, but I enjoyed it- seeing all the worlds that I’d read about and heard about and always wanted to visit. The Sundowner Line doesn’t venture far afield-just the four Rim Worlds, and now and again the Shakespearian Sector, and once in a blue moon one of the drearier planets of the Empire of Waverley. The Commission’s tramps, of course, run everywhere.
“Anyhow, we finally berthed at Woomera. The Old Man must have put in a good report about me, because I was called before the Local Superintending Purser and offered a berth, as a junior, in one of the Alpha class liners. Alpha Centauri, if you must know. She was on the Sol-Sirius service. Nothing very glamorous in the way of ports of call, but she was a fine ship, beautifully kept, efficiently run. A couple of years there knocked most of the sharp corners off me. After that-a spell as Assistant Purser of Beta Geminorum. Atlanta, Caribbea Carinthia and the Cluster Worlds. And then my first ship as Chief Purser. This one.”
One of Jane’s girls brought them fresh bulbs of coffee and ampoules of a sweet, potent liqueur. When she was gone Grimes asked, “Tell me, what are the Rim Worlds like?”
She waited until he had applied the flame of his lighter to the tip of her long, thin cigar, then answered, “Cold. Dark. Lonely. But . . . they have something. The feeling of being on a frontier. The frontier. The last frontier.”
“The frontier of the dark . . .” murmured Grimes.
“Yes. The frontier of the dark. And the names of our planets. They have something too. A . . . poetry? Yes, that’s the word. Lorn, Ultimo, Faraway and Thule . . . And there’s that night sky of ours, especially at some times of the year. There’s the Galaxy-a great, dim-glowing lenticulate nebula, and the rest is darkness. At other times of the year there’s only the darkness, the blackness that’s made even more intense by the sparse, faint stars that are the other Rim Suns, by the few, faint luminosities that are the distant
island universes that we shall never reach . . . .”
She shivered almost imperceptibly. “And always there’s that sense of being on the very edge of things, of hanging on by our fingernails with the abyss of the eternal night gaping beneath us. The Rim Worlders aren’t a spacefaring people; only a very few of us ever get the urge. It’s analogous, perhaps, to your Maoris-I spent a leave once in New Zealand and got interested in the history of the country. The Maoris come of seafaring stock. Their ancestors made an epic voyage from their homeland paradise to those rather grim and dreary little islands hanging there, all by themselves, in the cold and stormy Southern Ocean, lashed by frigid gales sweeping up from the Antarctic. And something-the isolation? the climate?-killed the wanderlust that was an essential part of the makeup of their race. You’ll find very few Maoris at sea-or in space-although there’s no dearth of Polynesians from the home archipelagoes aboard the surface ships serving the ports of the Pacific. And there are quite a few, too, in the Commission’s ships . . . .”
“We have our share in Survey Service,” said Grimes. “But tell me, how do you man your vessels? This Sundowner Line of yours . . .”
“There are always the drifters, the no-hopers, the castoffs from the Interstellar Transport Commission, and Trans-Galactic Clippers, and Waverley Royal Mail and all the rest of them.”
“And from the Survey Service?” The question lifted her out of her somber mood. “No,” she replied with a smile. “Not yet.”
“Not ever,” said Grimes. VI
ONCE HIS INITIAL SHYNESS HAD WORN OFF-and with it much of his Academy-induced snobbery-Grimes began to enjoy the voyage. After all, Survey Service or no Survey Service, this was a ship and he was a spaceman. He managed to accept the fact that most of the ship’s officers, even the most junior of them, were far more experienced spacemen than he was. Than he was now, he often reminded himself. At the back of his mind lurked the smug knowledge that, for all of them, a captaincy was the very limit of promotion, whereas he, one day, would be addressed in all seriousness as Jane Pentecost now addressed him in jest.
He was a frequent visitor to the control room but, remembering the Master’s admonition, was careful not to get in the way. The watch officers accepted him almost as one of themselves and were willing to initiate him into the tricky procedure of obtaining a fix with the interstellar drive in operation-an art, he was told, rather than a science.
Having obtained the permission of the Chief Engineers he prowled through the vessel’s machinery spaces, trying to supplement his theoretical knowledge of reaction, inertial and interstellar drives with something more practical. The first two, of course, were idle, and would be until the ship emerged from her warped Space-Time back into the normal continuum-but there was the Pile, the radio-active heart of the ship, and there was the auxiliary machinery that, in this tiny, man-made planet, did the work that
on a natural world is performed by winds, rivers, sunlight and gravity.
There was the Mannschenn Drive Room-and, inside this holy of holies, no man need fear to admit that he was scared by the uncanny complexity of ever-precessing gyroscopes. He stared at the tumbling rotors, the gleaming wheels that seemed always on the verge of vanishing into nothingness, that rolled down the dark dimensions, dragging the ship and all aboard her with them. He stared, hypnotized, lost in a vague, disturbing dream in which Past and Present and Future were inextricably mingled-and the Chief Interstellar Drive Engineer took him firmly by the arm and led him from the compartment. “Look at the time-twister too long,” he growled, “and you’ll be meeting yourself coming back!”
There was the “farm”-the deck of yeast- and tissue-culture vats which was no more (and no less), than a highly efficient protein factory, and the deck where stood the great, transparent globes in which algae converted the ship’s organic waste and sewage back into usable form (processed as nutriment for the yeasts and the tissue-cultures and as fertilizer for the hydroponic tanks, the biochemist was careful to explain), and the deck where luxuriant vegetation spilled over from the trays and almost barricaded the inspection walks, the source of vitamins and of flowers for the saloon tables and, at the same time, the ship’s main air-conditioning unit. Grimes said to Jane Pentecost, who had accompanied him on this tour of inspection, “You know, I envy your Captain.”
“From you, Admiral,” she scoffed, “that is something. But why?” “How can I put it? You people do the natural way what we do with
chemicals and machinery. The Captain of a warship is Captain of a warship.
Period. But your Captain Craven is absolute monarch of a little world.”
“A warship,” she told him, “is supposed to be able to go on functioning as such even with every compartment holed. A warship cannot afford to depend for the survival of her crew upon the survival of hosts of other
air-breathing organisms.”
“Straight from the book,” he said. Then, puzzled, “But for a . . .” He hesitated.
“But for a woman, or for a purser, or for a mere merchant officer I know too much,” she finished for him. “But I can read, you know. And when I was in the Sundowner Line, I, as well as all the other officers, was supposed to keep up with all the latest Survey Service publications.”
“But why?” he asked.
“But why not? We’ll have a Navy of our own, one day. Just stick around, Admiral.”
“Secession?” he inquired, making it sound like a dirty word. “Once again-why not?”
“It’d never work,” he told her.
“The history of Earth is full of secessions that did work. So is the history of
Interstellar Man. The Empire of Waverley, for example. The Duchy of Waldegren, for another-although that’s one that should have come to grief. We should all of us be a great deal happier if it had.”
“Federation policy . . .” he began.
“Policy, shmolicy! Don’t let’s be unkind to the Waldegrenese, because as long as they’re in being they exercise a restraining influence upon the Empire of Waverley and the Rim Worlds . . .” Her pace slackened. Grimes noticed that they were passing through the alleyway in which she and her staff were accommodated. She went on, “But all this talking politics is thirsty work. Come in for a couple of drinks before lunch.”
“Thank you. But, Jane”-she didn’t seem to have noticed the use of her given name-“I don’t think that either of us is qualified to criticize the handling of foreign and colonial affairs.”
“Spoken like a nice, young, well-drug-up future admiral. Oh, I know, I know. You people are trained to be the musclemen of the Federation. Yours not to reason why, yours but to do and die, and all the rest of it. But I’m a Rim Worlder-and out on the Rim you learn to think for yourself.” She slid her door open. “Come on in. This is Liberty Hall-you can spit on the mat and call the cat a bastard.”
Her accommodation was a suite rather than a mere cabin. It was neither as large nor as well fitted as the Captain’s, but it was better than the Chief Officer’s quarters, in which Grimes had already been a guest. He looked with interest at the holograms on the bulkhead of the sitting room. They were-but in an altogether different way-as eye-catching as Captain Craven’s had been. There was one that was almost physically chilling, that induced the feeling of utter cold and darkness and loneliness. It was the night sky of some planet-a range of dimly seen yet sharply serrated peaks bisecting a great, pallidly glowing, lenticulate nebula. “Home, sweet home,” murmured the girl, seeing what he was looking at. “The Desolation Mountains on Faraway, with the Galactic Lens in the background.”
“And you feel homesick for that?”
“Darn right I do. Oh, not all the time. I like warmth and comfort as well as the next woman. But . . . ” She laughed. “Don’t stand around gawking-you make the place look untidy. Pull yourself into a chair and belay the buttocks.”
He did so, watching her as she busied herself at the liquor cabinet. Suddenly, in these conditions of privacy, he was acutely conscious of the womanliness of her. The rather tight and rather short shorts, as she bent away from him, left very little to the imagination. And her legs, although slender, were full where they should be full, with the muscles working smoothly under the golden skin. He felt the urge, which he sternly suppressed, to plant a kiss in the delectable hollow behind each knee. She turned suddenly. “Here! Catch!” He managed to grab the bulb that was hurtling toward his face, but a little of the wine spurted from the nipple and struck him in the right eye. When his vision cleared he saw that she was seated opposite him, was laughing (at or with him?). At, he suspected. A
real demonstration of sympathy would have consisted of tears, not laughter. Her face grew momentarily severe. “Not the mess,” she said reprovingly. “But the waste.”
Grimes examined the bulb. “I didn’t waste much. Only an eyeful.”
She raised her drink in ritual greeting. “Here’s mud in your eye,” adding, “for a change.”
“And in yours.”
In the sudden silence that followed they sat looking at each other. There was a tension, some odd resultant of centrifugal and centripetal forces. They were on the brink of something, and both of them knew it, and there was the compulsion to go forward countered by the urge to go back.
She asked tartly, “Haven’t you ever seen a woman’s legs before?”
He shifted his regard to her face, to the eyes that, somehow, were brown no longer but held the depth and the darkness of the night through which the ship was plunging.
She said, “I think you’d better finish your drink and go.” He said, “Perhaps you’re right.”
“You better believe I’m right.” She managed a smile. “I’m not an idler, like some people. I’ve work to do.”
“See you at lunch, then. And thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. It was on the house, as the little dog said. Off with you, Admiral.”
He unbuckled his lapstrap, got out of the chair and made his way to the door. When he was out of her room he did not go to his own cabin but to the bar, where he joined the Baxters. They, rather to his surprise, greeted him in a friendly manner. Rim Worlders, Grimes decided, had their good points.
IT WAS AFTER LUNCH when one of the purserettes told him that the Captain wished to see him. What have I done now? wondered Grimes-and answered his own question with the words, Nothing. Unfortunately.
Craven’s manner, when he admitted Grimes into his dayroom, was severe. “Come in, Ensign. Be seated.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“You may smoke if you wish.” “Thank you, sir.”
Grimes filled and lighted his pipe; the Captain ignited one of his pungent cigars, studied the eddying coils of smoke as though they were writing a vitally important message in some strange language.
“Er, Mr. Grimes, I believe that you have been seeing a great deal of my purser, Miss Pentecost.”
“Not a great deal, sir. I’m at her table, of course.”
“I am told that she has entertained you in her quarters.”
“Just one bulb of sherry, sir. I had no idea that we were breaking ship’s regulations.”
“You were not. All the same, Mr. Grimes, I have to warn you.” “I assure you, sir, that nothing occurred between us.”
Craven permitted himself a brief, cold smile. “A ship is not a Sunday school outing-especially a ship under my command. Some Masters, I know, do expect their officers to comport themselves like Sunday school pupils, with the Captain as the principal-but I expect my senior officers to behave like intelligent and responsible adults. Miss Pentecost is quite capable of looking after herself. It is you that I’m worried about.”
“There’s no need to be worried, sir.”
The Captain laughed. “I’m not worried about your morals, Mr. Grimes. In fact, I have formed the opinion that a roll in the hay would do you far more good than harm. But Miss Pentecost is a dangerous woman. Before lifting ship, very shortly before lifting ship, I received a confidential report concerning her activities. She’s an efficient purser, a highly efficient purser, in fact, but she’s even more than that. Much more.” Again he studied the smoke from his cigar. “Unfortunately there’s no real proof, otherwise she’d not be sailing with us. Had I insisted upon her discharge I’d have been up against the Interstellar Clerical and Supply Officers’ Guild.”
“Surely not,” murmured Grimes. Craven snorted. “You people are lucky. You haven’t a mess of Guilds to deal with, each and every one of which is all too ready to rush to the defense of a Guild member, no matter what he or she is supposed to have done. As a Survey Service Captain you’ll never have to face a suit for wrongful dismissal. You’ll never be accused of victimization.”
“But what has Miss Pentecost done, sir?” asked Grimes.
“Nothing-or too damn much. You know where she comes from, don’t you? The Rim Worlds. The planets of the misfits, the rebels, the nonconformists. There’s been talk of secession of late-but even those irresponsible anarchists know full well that secession will never succeed unless they build up their own space power. There’s the Duchy of Waldegren, which would pounce as soon as the Federation withdrew its protection. And even the Empire of Waverley might be tempted to extend its boundaries. So . . .”
“They have a merchant fleet of sorts, these Rim Worlders. The Sundowner Line. I’ve heard rumors that it’s about to be nationalized. But they have no fighting navy.”
“But what’s all this to do with Miss Pentecost, sir?”
“If what’s more than just hinted at in that confidential report is true-plenty. She’s a recruiting sergeant, no less. Any officer with whom she’s shipmates who’s disgruntled, on the verge of throwing his hand in-or on the verge of being emptied out-she’ll turn on the womanly sympathy for, and tell him that there’ll always be a job waiting out on the Rim, that the Sundowner Line is shortly going to expand, so there’ll be quick promotion and all the rest of it.”
“And what’s that to do with me, Captain? “
“Are all Survey Service ensigns as innocent as you, Mr. Grimes? Merchant officers the Rim Worlds want, and badly. Naval officers they’ll want more badly still once the balloon goes up.” Grimes permitted himself a superior smile. “It’s extremely unlikely, sir, that I shall ever want to leave the Survey Service.”
“Unlikely perhaps-but not impossible. So bear in mind what I’ve told you. I think that you’ll be able to look after yourself now that you know the score.”
“I think so too,” Grimes told him firmly. He thought, The old bastard’s been reading too many spy stories.
VII
THEY WERE DANCING.
Tables and chairs had been cleared from the ship’s saloon, and from the big, ornate playmaster throbbed the music of an orchestra so famous that even Grimes had heard of it-The Singing Drums.
They were dancing.
Some couples shuffled a sedate measure, never losing the contact between their magnetically shod feet and the polished deck. Others-daring or foolhardy-cavorted in Nul-G, gamboled fantastically but rarely gracefully in Free Fall.
They were dancing.
Ensign Grimes was trying to dance.
It was not the fault of his partner that he was making such a sorry mess of it. She, Jane Pentecost, proved the truth of the oft-made statement that spacemen and spacewomen are expert at this form of exercise. He, John Grimes, was the exception that proves the rule. He was sweating, and his feet felt at least six times their normal size. Only the fact that he was holding Jane, and closely, saved him from absolute misery.
There was a pause in the music. As it resumed Jane said, “Let’s sit this one out, Admiral.”
“If you wish to,” he replied, trying not to sound too grateful.
“That’s right. I wish to. I don’t mind losing a little toenail varnish, but I think we’ll call it a day while I still have a full set of toenails.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“So am I.” But the flicker of a smile robbed the words of their sting.
She led the way to the bar. It was deserted save for the bored and sulky girl behind the gleaming counter. “All right, Sue,” Jane told her. “You can join the revels. The Admiral and I will mind the shop.”
“Thank you, Miss Pentecost.” Sue let herself out from her little cage, vanished gracefully and rapidly in the direction of the saloon. Jane took her place.
“I like being a barmaid,” she told the ensign, taking two frosted bulbs out of the cooler.
“I’ll sign for these,” offered Grimes.
“You will not. This comes under the heading of entertaining influential customers.”
“But I’m not. Influential, I mean.”
“But you will be.” She went on dreamily. “I can see it. I can just see it. The poor old Delia O’Ryan, even more decrepit that she is now, and her poor old purser, about to undergo a fate worse than death at the hands of bloody pirates from the next Galaxy but three . . . . But all is not lost. There, light years distant, is big, fat, Grand Admiral Grimes aboard his flagship, busting a gut, to say nothing of his Mannschenn Drive unit, to rush to the rescue of his erstwhile girlfriend. ‘Dammitall,’ I can hear him muttering into his beard. ‘Dammitall. That girl used to give me free drinks when I was a snotty nosed ensign. I will repay. Full speed ahead, Gridley, and damn the torpedoes!’ “
Grimes laughed-then asked sharply, “Admiral in which service?” “What do you mean, John?” She eyed him warily.
“You know what I mean.”
“So . . .” she murmured. “So . . . I know that you had another home truth session with the Bearded Bastard. I can guess what it was about.”
“And is it true?” demanded Grimes.
“Am I Olga Popovsky, the Beautiful Spy? Is that what you mean?” “More or less.”
“Come off it, John. How the hell can I be a secret agent for a non-existent government?”
“You can be a secret agent for a subversive organization.”
“What is this? Is it a hangover from some half-baked and half-understood course in counterespionage?”
“There was a course of sorts,” he admitted. “I didn’t take much interest in it. At the time.”
“And now you wish that you had. Poor John.”
“But it wasn’t espionage that the Old Man had against you. He had some sort of story about your acting as a sort of recruiting sergeant, luring officers away from the Commission’s ships to that crumby little rabble of star tramps calling itself the Sundowner Line . . . .”
She didn’t seem to be listening to him, but was giving her attention instead to the music that drifted from the saloon. It was one of the old, Twentieth Century melodies that were enjoying a revival. She began to sing in time to it.
“Goodbye, I’ll run To seek another sun Where I May find
There are hearts more kind Than the ones left behind . . .”
She smiled somberly and asked, “Does that answer your question?” “Don’t talk in riddles,” he said roughly.
“Riddles? Perhaps-but not very hard ones. That, John, is a sort of song of farewell from a very old comic opera. As I recall it, the guy singing it was going to shoot through and join the French Foreign Legion. (But there’s no French Foreign Legion anymore . . . .) We, out on the Rim, have tacked our own words on to it. It’s become almost a national anthem to the Rim Runners, as the people who man our ships-such as they are-are already calling themselves.
“There’s no French Foreign Legion anymore-but the misfits and the failures have to have somewhere to go. I haven’t lured anybody away from this service-but now and again I’ve shipped with officers who’ve been on the point of getting out, or being emptied out, and when they’ve cried into my beer I’ve given them advice. Of course, I’ve a certain natural bias in favor of my own home world. If I were Sirian born I’d be singing the praises of the Dog Star Line.”
“Even so,” he persisted, “your conduct seems to have been somewhat suspect.”
“Has it? And how? To begin with, you are not an officer in this employ. And if you were, I should challenge you to find anything in the Commission’s regulations forbidding me to act as I have been doing.”
“Captain Craven warned me,” said Grimes.
“Did he, now? That’s his privilege. I suppose that he thinks that it’s also his duty. I suppose he has the idea that I offered you admiral’s rank in the Rim Worlds Navy as soon as we secede. If we had our own Navy-which we don’t-we might just take you in as Ensign, Acting, Probationary.”
“Thank you.”
She put her elbows on the bar counter, propping her face between her hands, somehow conveying the illusion of gravitational pull, looking up at him. “I’ll be frank with you, John. I admit that we do take the no-hopers, the drunks and the drifters into our merchant fleet. I know far better than you what a helluva difference there is between those rustbuckets and the well-found, well-run ships of the Commission and, come to that,
Trans-Galactic Clippers and Waverley Royal Mail. But when we do start some kind of a Navy we shall want better material. Much better. We shall want highly competent officers who yet, somehow, will have the Rim World outlook. The first batch, of course, will have to be outsiders, to tide us over until our own training program is well under way.”
“And I don’t qualify?” he asked stiffly.
“Frankly, no. I’ve been watching you. You’re too much of a stickler for rules and regulations, especially the more stupid ones. Look at the way you’re dressed now, for example. Evening wear, civilian, junior officers, for the use of. No individuality. You might as well be in uniform. Better, in fact. There’d be some touch of brightness.”
“Go on.”
“And the way you comport yourself with women. Stiff. Starchy. Correct. And you’re all too conscious of the fact that I, even though I’m a mere merchant officer, and a clerical branch at that, put up more gold braid than you do. I noticed that especially when we were dancing. I was having to lead all the time.”
He said defensively, “I’m not a very good dancer.”
“You can say that again.” She smiled briefly. “So there you have it, John. You can tell the Bearded Bastard, when you see him again, that you’re quite safe from my wiles. I’ve no doubt that you’ll go far in your own Service-but you just aren’t Rim Worlds material.”
“I shouldn’t have felt all that flattered if you’d said that I was,” he told her bluntly-but he knew that he was lying.
VIII
“YES?” JANE WAS SAYING. “Yes, Mr. Letourneau?”
Grimes realized that she was not looking at him, that she was looking past him and addressing a newcomer. He turned around to see who it was. He found-somehow the name hadn’t registered-that it was the Psionic Radio Officer, a tall, pale, untidily put together young man in a slovenly uniform. He looked scared-but that was his habitual expression, Grimes remembered. They were an odd breed, these trained telepaths with their Rhine Institute diplomas, and they were not popular, but they were the only means whereby ships and shore stations could communicate instantaneously over the long light years. In the Survey Service they were referred to, slightingly, as Commissioned Teacup Readers. In the Survey Service and in the Merchant Service they were referred to as Snoopers. But
they were a very necessary evil. “Yes, Mr. Letourneau?”
“Where’s the Old Man? He’s not in his quarters.”
“The Master”-Jane emphasized the title-“is in the saloon.” Then, a little maliciously, “Couldn’t you have used your crystal ball?”
Letourneau flushed. “You know very well, Miss Pentecost, that we have to take an oath that we will always respect the mental privacy of our shipmates . . . . But I must find him. Quickly.”
“Help yourself. He’s treading the light fantastic in there.” When he was gone she said, “Typical. Just typical. If it were a real emergency he could get B.B. on the intercom. But no. Not him. He has to parade his distrust of anything electronic and, at the same time, make it quite clear that he’s not breaking his precious oath . . . . Tell me, how do you people handle your spaceborne espers?”
He grinned. “We’ve still one big stick that you people haven’t. A court martial followed by a firing party. Not that I’ve ever seen it used.”
“Hardly, considering that you’ve only been in Space a dog watch.” Her face froze suddenly. “Yes, Sue?”
It was the girl whom Jane had relieved in the bar. “Miss Pentecost, will you report to the Captain in Control, please. At once.”
“What have I done now?”
“It’s some sort of emergency, Miss Pentecost. The Chief Officer’s up there with him, and he’s sent for the Doctor and the two Chief Engineers.”
“Then I must away, John. Look after the bar again, Sue. Don’t let the Admiral have too many free drinks.”
She moved fast and gracefully, was gone before Grimes could think of any suitable repartee. He said to the girl, “What is happening, Sue?”
“I don’t know, Ad-” She flushed. “Sorry, Ensign. And, in any case, I’m not supposed to talk to the passengers about it.”
“But I’m not a real passenger,” he said-and asked himself, Am I a real anything?
“No, I suppose you’re not, Mr. Grimes. But you’re not on duty.”
“An officer of the Survey Service is always on duty,” he told her, with some degree of truth. “Whatever happens on the spacelanes is our concern.” It sounded good.
“Yes,” she agreed hesitantly. “That’s what my fianc‚-he’s a Lieutenant J.G.-is always telling me.”
“So what’s all the flap about?”
“Promise not to tell anybody?” “Of course.”
“Mr. Letourneau came wandering into the Saloon. He just stood there staring about, the way he does, then he spotted the Captain. He was actually dancing with me at the time . . . .” She smiled reminiscently, and added, “He’s a very good dancer.”
“He would be. But go on.”
“He came charging across the dance floor-Mr. Letourneau, I mean. He didn’t care whose toes he trod on or who he tripped over. I couldn’t help overhearing when he started babbling away to Captain Craven. It’s a distress call. From one of our ships-Epsilon Sextans.'” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “And it’s piracy.”
“Piracy? Impossible.”
“But, Mr. Grimes, it’s what he said.”
“Psionic Radio Officers have been known to go around the bend before now,” Grimes told her, “and to send false alarm calls. And to receive non-existent ones.”
“But the Sexy Eppy-sorry, Epsilon Sextans-has a cargo that’d be worth pirating. Or so I heard. The first big shipment of Antigeriatridine to Waverly
. . . .”
Antigeriatridine, the so-called Immortality Serum. Manufactured in limited, but increasing quantities only on Marina (often called by its colonists Submarina), a cold, unpleasantly watery world in orbit about Alpha Crucis. The fishlike creatures from which the drug was obtained bred and flourished only in the seas of their own world.
But piracy . . . .
But the old legends were full of stories of men who had sold their souls for eternal youth.
The telephone behind the bar buzzed sharply. Sue answered it. She said, “It’s for you, Mr. Grimes.”
Grimes took the instrument. “That you, Ensign?” It was Captain Craven’s voice. “Thought I’d find you there. Come up to Control, will you?” It was an order rather than a request.
ALL THE SHIP’S EXECUTIVE OFFICERS were in the Control Room, and the Doctor, the purser and the two Chief Engineers. As Grimes emerged from the hatch he heard Kennedy, the Mate, say, “Here’s the Ensign now.”
“Good. Then dog down, Mr. Kennedy, so we get some privacy.” Craven turned to Grimes. ‘”You’re on the Active List of the Survey Service, Mister, so I suppose you’re entitled to know what’s going on. The situation is this. Epsilon Sextans, Marina to Waverley with a shipment of Antigeriatridine, has been pirated.” Grimes managed, with an effort, to refrain from saying “I
know.” Craven went on. “Her esper is among the survivors. He says that the pirates were two frigates of the Waldegren Navy. Anyhow, the Interstellar Drive Engineers aboard Epsilon Sextans managed to put their box of tricks on random precession, and they got away. But not in one piece . . . .”
“Not in one piece?” echoed Grimes stupidly.
“What the hell do you expect when an unarmed merchantman is fired upon, without warning, by two warships? The esper says that their Control has had it, and all the accommodation spaces. By some miracle the Psionic Radio Officer’s shack wasn’t holed, and neither was the Mannschenn Drive Room.”
“But even one missile . . .” muttered Grimes.
“If you want to capture a ship and her cargo more or less intact,” snapped Craven, “you don’t use missiles. You use laser. It’s an ideal weapon if you aren’t fussy about how many people you kill.”
“Knowing the Waldegrenese as we do,” said Jane Pentecost bitterly, “there wouldn’t have been any survivors anyhow.”
“Be quiet!” roared Craven. Grimes was puzzled by his outburst. It was out of character. True, he could hardly expect a shipmaster to react to the news of a vicious piracy with equanimity-but this shipmaster was an officer of the Reserve, had seen service in warships and had been highly decorated for outstanding bravery in battle.
Craven had control of himself again. “The situation is this. There are people still living aboard Epsilon Sextans. Even though all her navigators have been killed I think that I shall be able to find her in time. Furthermore, she has a very valuable cargo and, in any case, cannot be written off as a total loss. There is little damage that cannot be repaired by welded patches. I have already sent a message to Head Office requesting a free hand. I have salvage in mind. I see no reason why the ship and her cargo should not be taken on to Waverley.”
“A prize crew, sir?”
“If you care to put it that way. This will mean cutting down the number of officers aboard my own vessel-but I am sure, Mr. Grimes, that you will be willing to gain some practical watch-keeping experience. All that’s required is your autograph on the ship’s Articles of Agreement.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Don’t thank me. I may be thanking you before the job’s over and done.” He turned to his Chief Officer. “Mr. Kennedy, keep in touch with Mr. Letourneau and let me know if anything further comes through either from Epsilon Sextans or from Head Office. The rest of you-keep this to yourselves. No sense in alarming the passengers. I’m sure that the Doctor and Miss Pentecost between them can concoct some soothing story to account for this officers’ conference.”
“Captain Craven,” said Jane Pentecost.
“Well?”
“The other man at my table, Mr. Baxter. I knew him out on the Rim. He holds Chief Reaction Drive Engineer’s papers.”
“Don’t tell him anything yet. But I’ll keep him in mind. Now, Mr. Grimes, will you join me in my day cabin?”
IX
THE HOLOGRAMS were all gone from the bulkheads of Captain Craven’s cabin. To replace them there was just one picture-of a woman, not young, but with the facial bone structure that defies age and time. She was in uniform, and on her shoulderboards were the two and a half stripes of a Senior Purser. The shipmaster noticed Grimes’ interest and said briefly and bitterly. “She was too senior for an Epsilon class ship-but she cut her leave short, just to oblige, when the regular purser went sick. She should have been back on Earth at the same time as me, though. Then we were going to get married . . . .”
Grimes said nothing. He thought, Too senior for an Epsilon class ship? Epsilon Sextans, for example? What could he say?
“And that,” said Craven savagely, “was that.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” blurted Grimes, conscious of the inadequacy of his words. Then, foolishly, “But there are survivors, sir.”
“Don’t you think that I haven’t got Letourneau and his opposite number checking? And have you ever seen the aftermath of a Deep Space battle, Mister? Have you ever boarded a ship that’s been slashed and stabbed to death with laser beams?” He seemed to require no answer; he pulled himself into the chair by his desk, strapped himself in and motioned to Grimes to be seated. Then he pulled out from a drawer a large sheet of paper, which he unfolded. It was a cargo plan. “Current voyage,” he grunted. “And we’re carrying more to Lindisfarne than one brand-new ensign.”
“Such as, sir?” ventured Grimes.
“Naval stores. I don’t mind admitting that I’m more than a little rusty insofar as Survey Service procedure is concerned, even though I still hold my Reserve Commission. You’re more familiar with fancy abbreviations than I am. Twenty cases RERAT, for example . . . .”
“Reserve rations, sir. Canned and dehydrated.” “Good. And ATREG?”
“Atmospheric regeneration units, complete.”
“So if Epsilon Sextans’ ‘farm’ has been killed we shall be able to manage?” “Yes, sir.”
“Do you think you’d be able to install an ATREG unit?”
“Of course, sir. They’re very simple, as you know. Just synthetic chlorophyll and a UV source . . . . In any case, there are full instructions inside every container.”
“And this? A double M, Mark XV?” “Anti-Missile Missile.”
“And ALGE?”
“Anti-Laser Gas Emitter.”
“The things they do think of. I feel more at home with these AVMs-although I see that they’ve got as far as Mark XVII now.”
“Anti-Vessel Missiles,” said Grimes. A slight enthusiasm crept into his voice. “The XVII’s a real honey.”
“What does it do?”
“I’m sorry, sir. Even though you are a Reserve Officer, I can’t tell you.” “But they’re effective?”
“Yes. Very.”
“And I think you’re Gunnery Branch, Mr. Grimes, aren’t you?”
“I am sir.” He added hastily, “But I’m still quite capable of carrying out a watch officer’s duties aboard this vessel should the need arise.”
“The main thing is, you’re familiar with naval stores and equipment. When we find and board Epsilon Sextans I shall be transshipping certain items of cargo . . . “
“RERAT and ATREG, sir?” “Yes. And the others.”
“But, sir, I can’t allow it. Not unless I have authority from the Flag Officer commanding Lindisfarne Base. As soon as your Mr. Letourneau can be spared I’ll get him to try and raise the station there.”
“I’m afraid that’s out of the question, Mr. Grimes. In view of the rather peculiar political situation, I think that the answer would be No. Even if it were ‘Yes’, you know as well as I how sluggishly the tide flows through official channels. Furthermore, just in case it has escaped your notice, I am the Master.”
“And I, sir, represent the Survey Service. As the only commissioned officer aboard this vessel I am responsible for Survey Service cargo.”
“As a Reserve Officer, Mr. Grimes, I rank you.”
“Only when you have been recalled to Active Service. Sir.”
Craven said, “I was rather afraid that you’d take this attitude. That’s why I
decided to get this interview over and done with, just so we all know where we stand.” He put away the cargo plan, swiveled his chair so that he could reach out to his liquor cabinet. He pulled out two bulbs, tossed one to Grimes. “No toasts. If we drank to Law and Order we should mean different things. So just drink. And listen.
“To begin with, Epsilon Sextans doesn’t know where she is. But Letourneau is one of the rare telepaths with the direction finding talent, and as soon as he’s able to get lined up we shall alter course to home on the wreck. That’s what he’s trying to do now.
“When we find her, we shall synchronize and board, of course. The first thing will be medical aid to the survivors. Then we patch the ship up. And then we arm her. And then, with a prize crew under myself, we put ourselves on the trajectory for Waverley-hoping that those Waldegrenese frigates come back for another nibble.”
“They’d never dare, sir.”
“Wouldn’t they? The original piracy they’ll try to laugh off by saying that it was by real pirates- no, that’s not quite right, but you know what I
mean-wearing Waldegren colors. The second piracy-they’ll make sure that there are no survivors.”
“But I still can’t see how they can hope to get away with it. It’s always been an accepted fact that the main weapon against piracy has been psionic radio.”
“And so it was-until some genius developed a jamming technique. Epsilon Sextans wasn’t able to get any messages out until her crazy random precession pulled her well clear.”
“And you hope, sir, that they do attack you?”
“I do, Mr. Grimes. I had hoped, that I should have a good gunnery officer under me, but”-he shrugged his massive shoulders-“I think that I shall be able to manage.”
“And you hope that you’ll have your weapons,” persisted Grimes. “I see no reason why I should not, Ensign.”
“There is one very good reason, sir. That is that I, a commissioned officer of the Survey Service, am aboard your vessel. I insist that you leave the tracking down and destruction of the pirates to the proper authorities. I insist, too, that no Survey Service stores be discharged from this ship without my written authority.”
For the first time the hint of a smile relieved the somberness of Craven’s face. “And to think that I believed that Jane Pentecost could recruit you,” he murmured. Then, in a louder voice, “And what if I just go ahead without your written authority, Ensign?”
Grimes had the answer ready. “Then, sir, I shall be obliged to order your officers not to obey your unlawful commands. If necessary, I shall call upon the male passengers to assist me in any action that is necessary.”
Craven’s bushy eyebrows went up and stayed up. “Mr. Grimes,” he said in a gritty voice, “it is indeed lucky for you that I have firsthand experience of the typical Survey Service mentality. Some Masters I know would, in these circumstances, send you out on a spacewalk without a suit. But, before I take drastic action, I’ll give you one more chance to cooperate.” His tone softened. “You noticed the portrait I’ve put up instead of all the temporary popsies. Every man, no matter how much he plays around, has one woman who is the woman. Gillian was the woman as far as I was concerned-as far as I am concerned. I’ve a chance to bring her murderers under my guns-and, by God, I’m taking that chance, no matter what it means either to my career or to the somewhat odd foreign policy of the Federation. I used to be annoyed by Jane Pentecost’s outbursts on that subject-but now I see that she’s right. And she’s right, too, when it comes to the Survey Service’s reluctance to take action against Waldegren.
“So I, Mr. Grimes, am taking action.” “Sir, I forbid you . . .”
“You forbid me? Ensign, you forget yourself. Perhaps this will help you remember.”
This was a Minetti automatic that had appeared suddenly in the Captain’s hand. In his hairy fist the little, glittering weapon looked no more than a toy-but Grimes knew his firearms, knew that at the slightest pressure of Craven’s finger the needle-like projectiles would stitch him from crown to crotch.
“I’m sorry about this, Mr. Grimes.” As he spoke, Craven pressed a button set in his desk with his free hand. “I’m sorry about this. But I realize that I was expecting rather too much of you. After all, you have your career to consider . . . . Time was,” he went on, “when a naval officer could put his telescope to his blind eye as an excuse for ignoring orders-and get away with it. But the politicians had less power in those days. We’ve come a long way-and a wrong way-since Nelson.”
Grimes heard the door behind him slide open. He didn’t bother to look around, not even when hard hands were laid on his shoulders.
“Mr. Kennedy,” said Craven, “things turned out as I feared that they would. Will you and Mr. Ludovic take the Ensign along to the Detention Cell?”
“I’ll see you on trial for piracy, Captain!” flared Grimes.
“An interesting legal point, Ensign-especially since you are being entered in my Official Log as a mutineer.”
X
THE DETENTION CELL was not uncomfortable, but it was depressing. It was a padded cell- passengers in spacecraft have been known to exhibit the more violent symptoms of mania-which detracted from its already inconsiderable cheerfulness if not from its comfort. However, Grimes was not mad-not in the medical sense, that is-and so was considered able to attend to his own bodily needs. The little toilet was open to him, and at
regular intervals a bell would sound and a container of food would appear in a hatch recessed into the bulkhead of the living cabin. There was reading matter too-such as it was. The Ensign suspected that Jane Pentecost was the donor. It consisted of pamphlets published by some organization calling itself The Rim Worlds Secessionist Party. The almost hysterical calls to arms were bad enough-but the ones consisting mainly of columns of statistics were worse. Economics had never been Grimes’ strong point.
He slept, he fed at the appointed times, he made a lengthy ritual of keeping himself clean, he tried to read-and, all the time, with only sounds and sensations as clues, he endeavored to maintain a running plot of the ship’s maneuvers.
Quite early there had been the shutting down of the Mannschenn Drive, and the consequent fleeting sensation of temporal disorientation. This had been followed by the acceleration warning-the cell had an intercom speaker recessed in the padding-and Grimes, although it seemed rather pointless in his sponge rubber environment, had strapped himself into his couch. He heard the directional gyroscopes start up, felt the effects of centrifugal force as the ship came around to her new heading. Then there was the pseudo-gravity of acceleration, accompanied by the muffled thunder of the reaction drive. It was obvious, thought the Ensign, that Captain Craven was expending his reaction mass in a manner that, in other circumstances, would have been considered reckless.
Suddenly-silence and Free Fall, and almost immediately the off-key keening of the Mannschenn Drive. Its note was higher, much higher, than Grimes remembered it, and the queasy feeling of temporal disorientation lasted much longer than it had on previous occasions. And that, for a long time, was all. Meals came, and were eaten. Every morning- according to his watch-the prisoner showered and applied depilatory cream to his face. He tried to exercise-but to exercise in a padded cell, with no apparatus, in Free Fall, is hard. He tried to read-but the literature available was hardly more interesting to him than a telephone directory would have been. And, even though he never had been gregarious, the lack of anybody to talk to was wearing him down.
It was a welcome break from the monotony when he realized that, once again, the ship was maneuvering. This time there was no use of the directional gyroscopes; there were no rocket blasts, but there was a variation of the whine of the Drive as it hunted, hunted, as the temporal precession rate was adjusted by tens of seconds, by seconds, by microseconds.
And then it locked.
The ship shuddered slightly-once, twice.
Grimes envisaged the firing of the two mooring rockets, one from the bow and one from the stern, each with the powerful electromagnet in its nose, each trailing its fathoms of fine but enormously strong cable. Merchant vessels, he knew, carried this equipment, but unlike naval ships rarely used it. But Craven, as a Reservist, would have seen and taken part in enough drills.
The ship shuddered again-heavily.
So the rendezvous had been made. So Delta Orionis and Epsilon Sextans, their Drives synchronized, bound together by the rescue ship’s cables, were now falling as one unit through the dark immensities.
So the rendezvous had been made-and already the survivors of the wreck were being brought aboard the Delia O’Ryan, were being helped out of their stinking spacesuits, were blurting out their story to Craven and his officers. Grimes could visualize it all, almost as clearly as though he were actually watching it. He could visualize, too, the engineers swarming over the wreck, the flare of their burning and welding torches, the cannibalizing of nonessential plating from the ship’s structure for hull patches. It was all laid down in the Survey Service’s Damage Control Manual-and Captain Craven, at least, would know that book as thoroughly as did Grimes.
And what of the cargo, the Survey Service stores, Grimes’ stores? A trembling in the ship’s structure, a barely felt vibration, told him that gantries and conveyor belts were being brought into operation. There would be no great handling problems. Lindisfarne was Delta Orionis’ first port of call, and the Survey Service consignment would be top stowage. But there was nothing that Grimes could do about it-not a thing. In fact, he was beginning to doubt the legality of the stand he had made against the Master. And he was the small frog in this small puddle, while Captain Craven had made it quite clear that he was the big frog. Grimes wished that he was better versed in astronautical law-although a professional lawyer’s knowledge would be of no use to him in his present situation.
So, with some hazy idea that he might need all his strength, both mental and physical, for what was to befall him (but what?), in the near future, he strapped himself into his bunk and did his best to forget his worries in sleep. He was well enough acquainted with the psychiatrists’ jargon to know that this was no more than a return to the womb but, before dropping off into a shallow slumber, shrugged, So what?
HE JERKED into sudden wakefulness.
Jane Pentecost was there by his bunk, looking down at him.
“Come in,” he said. “Don’t bother to knock. Now you see how the poor live. This is Liberty Hall; you can spit on the mat and call the cat a bastard.”
She said, “That’s not very funny.”
“I know it’s not. Even the first time that I heard it aboard this blasted ship I was able to refrain from rolling in the aisles.”
She said, “There’s no need to be so bitchy, John.”
“Isn’t there? Wouldn’t you be bitchy if you’d been thrown into this padded cell?”
“I suppose I would be. But you asked for it, didn’t you?”
“If doing my duty-or trying to do my duty-is asking for it, I suppose that I did. Well-and has our pirate Captain cast off yet, armed to the teeth with
the weapons he’s stolen?”
“No. The weapons are still being mounted. But let’s not argue legalities, John. There’s not enough time. I . . . I just wanted to say goodbye.”
“Goodbye?” he echoed.
“Yes. Somebody has to do the cooking aboard Epsilon Sextans-and I volunteered.”
“You?”
“And why the hell not?” she flared. “Captain Craven has been pushed over to our side of the fence, and it’d be a pretty poor show if we Rim Worlders weren’t prepared to stand by him. Baxter’s gone across to take over as Reaction Drive Engineer; the only survivor in that department was the Fourth, and he’s only a dog watch in Space.”
“And who else?”
“Nobody. The Sexy Eppy’s Chief, Second and Third Interstellar Drive Engineers survived, and they’re willing-anxious, in fact, now that their ship’s being armed-to stay on. And the Psionic Radio Officer came through, and is staying on. All of our executive officers volunteered, of course, but the Old Man turned them down. He said that, after all, he could not hazard the safety of this ship by stripping her of her trained personnel. Especially since we carry passengers.”
“That’s his worry,” said Grimes without much sympathy. “But how does he hope to fight his ship if those frigates pounce again?”
“He thinks, he’ll be able to manage-with remote controls for every weapon brought to his main control panel.”
“Possible,” admitted Grimes, his professional interest stirred. “But not very efficient. In a naval action the Captain has his hands full just handling the ship alone, without trying to control her weaponry.”
“And you’d know, of course.” “Yes.”
“Yes, you’ve read the books. And Captain Craven commanded a light cruiser during that trouble with the Dring, so he knows nothing.”
“He still hasn’t got four hands and two heads.”
“Oh, let’s stop talking rubbish,” she cried. “I probably shan’t see you again, John and . . . and . . . oh, hell, I want to say goodbye properly, and I don’t want you to think too badly about either the Old Man or . . . or myself.”
“So what are we supposed to do about it?”
“Damn you, Grimes, you snotty-nosed, stuck-up spacepuppy! Look after yourself!”
Suddenly she bent down to kiss him. It was intended to be no more than a
light brushing of lips, but Grimes was suddenly aware, with his entire body, of the closeness of her, of the warmth and the scent of her, and almost without volition his arms went about her, drawing her closer still to him. She tried to break away, but it was only a halfhearted effort. He heard her murmur, in an odd, sardonic whisper, “wotthehell, wotthehell,” and then, “toujours gai.” It made no sense at the time but, years later, when he made the acquaintance of the Twentieth Century poets, he was to remember and to understand. What was important now was that her own arms were about him.
Somehow the buttons of her uniform shirt had come undone, and her nipples were taut against Grimes’ bare chest. Somehow her shorts had been peeled away from her hips-unzippered by whom? and how?-and somehow Grimes’ own garments were no longer the last barrier between them.
He was familiar enough with female nudity; he was one of the great majority who frequented the naked beaches in preference to those upon which bathing costumes were compulsory. He knew what a naked woman looked like-but this was different. It was not the first time that he had kissed a woman-but it was the first time that he had kissed, and been kissed by, an unclothed one. It was the first time that he had been alone with one.
What was happening he had read about often enough-and, like most young men, he had seen his share of pornographic films. But this was different. This was happening to him.
And for the first time.
When it was over, when, still clasped in each others’ arms they drifted in the center of the little cabin, impelled there by some odd resultant of forces, their discarded clothing drifting with them, veiling their perspiration-moist bodies, Grimes was reluctant to let her go.
Gently, Jane tried to disengage herself.
She whispered, “That was a warmer goodbye that I intended. But I’m not sorry. No. I’m not sorry . . . .”
Then, barely audibly, “It was the first time for you, wasn’t it?” “Yes.”
“Then I’m all the more glad it happened. But this is goodbye.” “No.”
“Don’t be a fool, John. You can’t keep me here.” “But I can come with you.”
She pushed him from her. Somehow he landed back on the bed. Before he could bounce he automatically snapped one of the confining straps about his middle. Somehow-she was still wearing her sandals but nothing
else-she finished up standing on the deck, held there by the contact between the magnetic soles and the ferrous fibers in the padding. She put
out a long, graceful arm and caught her shirt. She said harshly, “I’m getting dressed and out of here. You stay put. Damn you, Grimes, for thinking that I was trying to lure you aboard the Sexy Eppy with the body beautiful. I told you before that I am not, repeat not, Olga Popovsky, the Beautiful Spy. And I’m not a prostitute. There’s one thing I wouldn’t sell if I were offered the services of the finest Gunnery Officer (which you aren’t), in the whole bloody Galaxy in payment!”
“You’re beautiful when you flare up like that,” said Grimes sincerely. “But you’re always beautiful.” Then, in a louder voice, “Jane, I love you.”
“Puppy love,” she sneered. “And I’m old enough to be your . . .” A faint smile softened her mouth. “Your maiden aunt.”
“Let me finish. All right, it’s only puppy love-you say. But it’s still love.
But”-he was extemporizing-convincingly, he hoped-“but my real reason for wanting to come with you is this. I can appreciate now what Captain Craven lost when Epsilon Sextans was pirated. I can see-I can feel-why he’s willing to risk his life and his career to get his revenge. And I think that it’s worth it. And I want to help him.”
She stood there, her shirt half on, eying him suspiciously. “You mean that? You really mean that?”
“Yes.”
“Then you’re a liar, Grimes.”
“No,” he said slowly. “No. Not altogether. I want to help the Old Man-and I want to help you. This piracy has convinced me that you Rim Worlders are getting the dirty end of the stick. I may not be the finest Gunnery Officer in the whole Galaxy-but I’m better acquainted with the new stuff than Captain Craven is.”
Her grin was openly derisive. “First it’s fellow-feeling for another spaceman, then it’s international politics. What next?”
“Where we started. I do love you, Jane. And if there’s going to be any shooting, I want to be on hand to do the shooting back on your behalf. I’ll admit that . . . that what’s happened has influenced my decision. But you didn’t buy me, or bribe me. Don’t think that. Don’t ever think that.” There was a note of pleading in his voice. “Be realistic, Jane. With another officer along, especially an officer with recent gunnery training, you stand a damn sight better chance than you would otherwise.”
“I . . . I suppose so. But I still don’t like it.”
“You don’t have to. But why look a gift horse in the mouth?”
“All right. You win. Get your clothes on and come and see the Old Man.” XI
JANE PENTECOST led Grimes to the airlock. The ship seemed oddly deserted, and he remarked on this. The girl explained that the passengers had been requested to remain in their accommodations, and that most of
Delta Orionis’ personnel were employed in work aboard Epsilon Sextans.
So I haven’t been the only one to be kept under lock and key,” commented Grimes sardonically.
“You’re the only one,” retorted the girl, “who’s been compensated for his imprisonment.”
There was no answer to that, so the Ensign remained silent. Saying nothing, he inspected with interest the temporary tunnel that had been rigged between the airlocks of the two ships. So Epsilon Sextans’ pressure hull had been made good, her atmosphere restored. That meant that the work of installing the armament had been completed. He hoped that he would not have to insist upon modifications.
The wreck-although she was a wreck no longer-bore her scars. The worst damage had been repaired, but holes and slashes that did not impair her structural strength were untouched, and spatters of once molten metal still made crazy patterns on beams and frames, stanchions and bulkheads. And there were the scars made by Craven’s engineers-the raw, bright cicatrices of new welding.
Forward they made their way, deck after deck. The elevator in the axial shaft was not yet working, so Grimes had time and opportunity to appreciate the extent of the damage. They passed through the wreckage of the “farm”-the burst algae tanks, the ruptured vats in which yeast and tissue cultures were black and dead, frostbitten and dehydrated. They brushed through alleyways choked with the brittle fronds of creeping plants killed by the ultimate winter.
And then they were passing through the accommodation levels. Bulkheads had been slashed through, destroying the privacy of the cabins that they had once enclosed. Destroying the privacy-and the occupants. There were no longer any bodies; for this Grimes was deeply thankful. (He learned later that Craven’s first action had been to order and conduct a funeral service.) There were no bodies-but there were still stains. Men and women die quickly in hard vacuum-quickly and messily.
Captain Craven was alone in the Control Room. He was working, rather slowly and clumsily, wiring up an obviously makeshift panel that was additional to the original one installed before the Master’s acceleration chair. It was obvious what it was-the remote controls for the newly fitted weaponry. Grimes said quickly, “There’s no need for that, sir.”
Craven started, let go of his screwdriver, made a fumbling grab for it as it drifted away from him. He stared at Grimes, then growled, “So it’s you, is it?” Then, to Jane, “What the hell do you mean by letting this puppy out of his kennel?”
“Captain Craven,” she told him quietly, “Mr. Grimes wants to come with us.” “What? I warn you, Miss Pentecost, I’m in no mood for silly jokes.”
“This is not a silly joke, Captain,” said Grimes. “I’ve had time to think things over. I feel, I really feel that you have a far better chance if there’s
a qualified officer along to handle the gunnery.”
Craven looked at them, from the girl to Grimes, then back again. He said, “Ensign, didn’t I warn you?”
“It’s not that way at all, sir,” Grimes told him, flushing. “In fact, Miss Pentecost has been trying hard to dissuade me.”
“Oh?
“It’s true,” said Jane. “But he told me that we couldn’t afford to look a gift horse in the mouth.”
“I don’t know what’s been happening,” rasped Craven. “I don’t want to know what’s been happening between the pair of you. This change of mind, this change of heart is rather . . . sudden. No matter. One volunteer, they say, is worth ten pressed men.” He glared coldly at the Ensign. “And you volunteer?”
“Yes, Captain.”
“I believe you. I have no choice in the matter. But you realize the consequences?”
“I do.”
“Well, I may be able to do something to clear your yardarm. I’ve still to make my last entries in the Official Log of Delta Orionis, before I hand over to Captain Kennedy. And when it comes to such documentation, nobody cares to accuse a shipmaster of being a liar. Not out loud.” He paused, thinking. “How does this sound, Miss Pentecost? Date, Time, Position, etc., etc. Mr. John Grimes, passenger, holding the rank of Ensign in the Federation Survey Service, removed by force from this vessel to Epsilon Sextans, there to supervise the installation and mounting of the armament, Survey Service property, discharged on my orders from No. 1 hold, also to advise upon the use of same in the subsequent event of an action’s being fought. Signed, etc., etc. And witnessed.”
“Rather long-winded, sir. But it seems to cover the ground.” “I intend to do more than advise!” flared Grimes.
“Pipe down. Or, if you must say it, make sure that there aren’t any witnesses around when you say it. Now, when it comes to the original supervision, you see what I’m trying to do. Will it work?”
“After a fashion, sir. But it will work much better if the fire control panel is entirely separate from maneuvering control.”
“You don’t think that I could handle both at once?”
“You could. But not with optimum efficiency. No humanoid could. This setup of yours might just work if we were Shaara, or any of the other multi-limbed arthropods. But even the Shaara, in their warships, don’t expect the
Queen-Captain to handle her ship and her guns simultaneously.”
“You’re the expert. I just want to be sure that you’re prepared to, quote, advise, unquote, with your little pink paws on the actual keyboard of your battle organ.”
“That’s just the way that I propose to advise.”
“Good. Fix it up to suit yourself, then. I should be able to let you have a mechanic shortly to give you a hand.”
“Before we go any further, sir, I’d like to make an inspection of the weapons themselves. Just in case . . .”
“Just in case I’ve made some fantastic bollix, eh?” Craven was almost cheerful. “Very good. But try to make it snappy. It’s time we were on our way.”
“Yes,” said Jane, and it seemed that the Captain’s discarded somberness was hanging about her like a cloud. “It’s time.”
XII
AT ONE TIME, before differentiation between the mercantile and the fighting vessel became pronounced, merchant vessels were built to carry a quite considerable armament. Today, the mounting of weapons on a merchantman presents its problems. After his tour of inspection Grimes was obliged to admit that Captain Craven had made cunning use of whatever spaces were available- but Craven, of course, was a very experienced officer, with long years of service in all classes of spacecraft. Too-and, perhaps, luckily-there had been no cannon among the Survey Service ordnance that had been requisitioned, so recoil had not been among the problems.
When he was finished, Grimes returned to the Control Room. Craven was still there, and with him was Jane Pentecost. They had, obviously, been discussing something. They could, perhaps, have been quarreling; the girl’s face was flushed and her expression sullen.
“Yes?” snapped the Captain.
“You’ve done a good job, sir. She’s no cruiser, but she should be able to defend herself.”
“Thank you. Then we’ll be on our way.”
“Not so fast, sir. I’d like to wire up my control panel properly before we shove off.”
Craven laughed. “You’ll have time, Mr. Grimes. I still have a few last duties to discharge aboard Delta Orionis. But be as quick as you can.”
He left the compartment, followed by Jane Pentecost. She said, over her shoulder, “I’ll send Mr. Baxter to help you, John.”
The Rim Worlder must have been somewhere handy; in a matter of seconds he was by Grimes’ side, an already open tool satchel at his belt. As he worked, assisting deftly and then taking over as soon as he was sure of
what was required, he talked. He said, “Mum wanted to come along, but I soon put the damper on that. But I was bloody amazed to find you here.”
“Were you?” asked Grimes coldly.
“You bet I was. Never thought you were cut out to be a bloody pirate.” He cursed briefly as a spatter of hot metal from his sizzling soldering iron stung his hand. “A cold weld’d be better, but it’d take too much time. But where was I? Oh, yes. The shock to me system when I saw you comin’ aboard this wagon.”
“I have my quite valid reasons,” Grimes told him stiffly.
“You’re tellin’ me. Just as my missus had quite valid reasons for wantin’ to come with me. But she ain’t a gunnery expert.” He added piously, “Thank Gawd.”
“And I am one,” said the Ensign, trying to change the drift of the conversation before he lost his temper. “Yes. that’s right. Just stick to the color code. The blue wiring’s the ALGE . . .”
“I know,” Baxter told him. “Tell me, is it any good?”
“Yes. Of course, if an enemy held us in her beams for any prolonged period we should all be cooked, but as far as it goes it’s effective enough.”
“Hope you’re right.” He made the last connections, then replaced the panel on the open shallow box. “Here’s yer magic cabinet, Professor. All we have ter see now is what rabbits yer can pull outer the hat.”
“Plenty, I hope,” said Captain Craven, who had returned to Control. “And are you ready now, Mr. Grimes?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Then we’ll make it stations. If you will take the copilot’s chair, while Mr. Baxter goes along to look after his rockets.”
“Will do, Skipper,” said the engineer, packing away his tools as he pulled himself toward the exit hatch.
The ship’s intercom came to life, in Jane Pentecost’s voice. “Connection between vessels severed. Airlock door closed.”
“We’re still connected,” grumbled Craven. “Delia O’Ryan still has her magnetic grapnels out.” He spoke into the transceiver microphone: “Epsilon Sextans to Delta Orionis. Cast off, please. Over.”
“Delta Orionis to Epsilon Sextans. Casting off.” Through a viewport Grimes could see one of the bright mooring wires snaking back into its recess. “All clear, Captain.”
“Thank you, Captain Kennedy.” And in a softer voice, “And I hope you keep that handle to your name, Bill.”
“Thank you, sir. And all the best, Captain, from all of us, to all of you. And
good hunting.”
“Thanks. And look after the old Delia, Captain. And yourself. Over-and out.” “Delta Orionis to Epsilon Sextans. Over and out.”
(There was something very final, thought Grimes, about those outs.)
He was aware that the ships were drifting slowly apart. Now he could see all of Delta Orionis from his viewport. He could not help recalling the day on which he had first seen her, at the Woomera spaceport. So much had happened since that day. (And so much was still to happen-he hoped.) He heard Craven say into the intercom, “Stand by for temporal precession. We’re desynchronizing.” Then, there was the giddiness, and the off-beat whine of the Mannschenn Drive that pierced his eardrums painfully, and beyond the viewports the great, shining shape of the other ship shimmered eerily and was suddenly warped into the likeness of a monstrous Klein
flash-then vanished. Where she had been (where she still was, in space but not in time) shone the distant stars, the stars that in this distorted continuum were pulsing spirals of iridescence.
“Mannschenn Drive. Cut!”
The thin, high keening died abruptly. Outside, the stars were glittering points of light, piercingly bright against the blackness.
“Mr. Grimes!” Craven’s voice was sharp. “I hope that you take more interest in gunnery than you do in ship handling. In case it has escaped your notice, I would remind you that you are second in command of this vessel, and in full charge in the event of my demise.”
“Sorry, sir,” stammered Grimes. Then, suddenly bold, “But I’m not your second in command, sir. I’ve signed no Articles.”
Surprisingly, Craven laughed. “A spacelawyer, yet! Well, Mr. Grimes, as soon as we get this vessel on course we’ll attend to the legal formalities. Meanwhile, may I request your close attention to what I am doing?”
“You may, sir.”
Thereafter he watched and listened carefully. He admired the skill with which Craven turned the ship on her directional gyroscopes until the red-glowing target star was centered exactly in the cartwheel sight. He
noted that the Captain used his reaction drive at a longer period and at a higher rate of acceleration than usual, and said as much. He was told, the words falling slowly and heavily in the pseudo-gravity, “They . . . will . . . expect . . . us . . . to . . . be . . . in . . . a . . . hurry. We must . . . not . . . disappoint . . . them.”
Speed built up, fast-but it was a velocity that, in the context of the interstellar distances to be traversed, was no more than a snail’s crawl. Then-and the sudden silence was like a physical blow-the thunder of the rockets ceased. The screaming roar had died, but the ship was not quiet. The whine of the Mannschenn Drive pervaded her every compartment, vibrated through every member of her structure. She was falling, falling
through space and time, plunging through the warped continuum to her rendezvous with Death . . . .
And whose death? wondered Grimes.
He said, “I should have asked before, sir. But how are . . . how are they going to find us?”
“I don’t know,” said Craven. “I don’t know. But they’ve found other ships when they’ve wanted to. They’ve never used the old pirate’s technique of lying in wait at breaking-out points. A Mass Proximity Indicator? Could be. It’s theoretically possible. It could be for a ship under Mannschenn Drive what radar is for a ship in normal space-time. Or some means of homing on a temporal precession field? That’s more like it, I think, as this vessel was able to escape when she went random.
“But if they want us-and they will-they’ll find us. And then”-he looked at Grimes, his blue gaze intense-“and then it’s up to you, Ensign.”
“To all of us,” said Grimes. XIII
SHE WAS UNDERMANNED, this Epsilon Sextans, but she functioned quite efficiently. Craven kept a Control Room watch himself, and the other two watchkeepers were Grimes and Jane Pentecost. Four on and eight off were their hours of duty- but there was plenty of work to be done in the off duty periods. The Captain, of course, was in over-all charge, and was trying to bring his command to the pitch of efficiency necessary for a fighting ship. Jane Pentecost was responsible for meals-although these, involving little more than the opening of cans, did not take up too much of her time. She had also taken over biochemist’s duties, but called now and again upon Grimes to help her with the ATREG unit. Its operation was simple enough, but it was inclined to be temperamental and, now and again, allowed the carbon dioxide concentration to reach a dangerous level. Grimes’ main concern was his armament. He could not indulge in a practice shot-the expulsion of mass by a ship running under interstellar drive is suicidal; even the employment of laser weapons is dangerous. But there were tests that he could make; there was, in the ship’s stores, a spare chart tank that he was able to convert to a battle simulator.
Craven helped him, and set up targets in the tank, glowing points of light that were destroyed by the other sparks that represented Grimes’ missiles. After one such drill he said, “You seem to know your stuff, Ensign. Now, what’s your grasp of the tactical side of it?”
Grimes considered his words before speaking. “Well, sir, we could use laser with the Drive in operation-but we haven’t got laser. The pirates have. They can synchronize and just carve us up at leisure. This time, I think they’ll go for the interstellar drive engine room first, so that we can’t get away by the use of random precession.”
“Yes. That’s what they’ll do. That’s why I have that compartment literally sealed in a cocoon of insulation. Oh, I know it’s not effective, but it will give us a second or so of grace. No more.”
“We can’t use our reflective vapor,” went on Grimes. “That’d be almost as bad, from our viewpoint, as loosing off a salvo of missiles. But, sir, when this ship was first attacked there must have been a considerable loss of mass when the atmosphere was expelled through the rents in the shell plating . . . the Drive was running. How was it that the ship wasn’t flung into some other space-time?”
“Come, come, Mr. Grimes. You should know the answer to that one. She was held by the powerful temporal precession fields of the drive units of the two pirates. And then, of course, when the engineers managed to set up their random precession there was no mass left to be expelled.”
“H’m. I see. Or I think I see. Then, in that case, why shouldn’t I use my ALGE as soon as we’re attacked?”
“No. Better not. Something might just go wrong-and I don’t want to become one of my own ancestors.”
“Then . . . ?”
“You tell me, Mr. Grimes.”
“Cut our Drive . . . ? Break out into the normal continuum? Yes . . . it could work.” He was becoming enthusiastic. “And then we shall be waiting
for-them, with our missile batteries, when they break out.”
“We’ll make an admiral of you yet, young Grimes.”
WITH WATCHKEEPING and with off-watch duties time was fully occupied. And yet there was something missing. There was, Grimes said to himself, one hell of a lot missing. Jane Pentecost had her own watch to keep, and her own jobs to do when she was not in the control room-but she and Grimes had some free time to share. But they did not share it.
He broached the subject when he was running a test on the artificial chlorophyll in the ATREG. “Jane, I was hoping I’d see more of you.”
“You’re seeing plenty of me.” “But not enough.”
“Don’t be tiresome,” she snapped. Then, in a slightly softer voice, “Don’t . .
. “
. . . spoil everything?” he finished for her sardonically. “You know what I mean,” she told him coldly.
“Do I?” He groped for words. “Jane . . . Damn it all, I hoped . . . After what happened aboard the Delia O’Ryan . . .”
“That,” she said, “was different.” Her face flushed. “I tell you this, Grimes, if I’d known that you were coming along with us it never would have happened.”
“No?”
“NO!”
“Even so . . . I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t . . .”
“Why we shouldn’t what? Oh, all right, all right. I know what you mean. But it’s out of the question. I’ll tell you why, in words of one syllable. In a ship such as Delta Orionis discreet fun and games were permissible, even desirable. No shortage of women-both crew and passengers. Here, I’m the only female. Your friend Mr. Baxter has been sniffing after me. And Mr. Wolverton, the Interstellar Chief. And his Second. And even, bereaved though he is, the Bearded Bastard. He might get away with it-the privileges of rank and all that. But nobody else would-most certainly not yourself. How long would it remain a secret if we went to bed together?”
“I suppose you’re right, but . . .”
“But what? Oh John, John, you are a stubborn cow.” “Cow?”
“Sorry. Just Rimworldsese. Applicable to both sexes.” “Talking of sex . . .”
“Oh, shut up!”
“I’ll not.” She looked desirable standing there. A small smudge of grease on her flushed cheek was like a beauty spot. “I’ll not,” he said again. She was close to him, and he was acutely conscious that beneath the thin uniform shirt and the short shorts there was only Jane. He had only to reach out. He did so. At first she did not resist-and then exploded into a frenzy of activity. Before he could let go of her a hard, rough hand closed on his shirt collar and yanked him backwards.
“Keep yer dirty paws off her!” snarled a voice. It was Baxter’s. “Keep yer dirty paws off her! If we didn’t want yer ter let off the fireworks I’d do yer, here an’ now.”
“And keep your dirty paws off me!” yelped Grimes. It was meant to be an authentic quarterdeck bark, but it didn’t come out that way.
“Let him go, Mr. Baxter,” said Jane, adding, “please.”
“Oh, orl right. If yer says so. But I still think we should run him up ter the Old Man.”
“No. Better not.” She addressed Grimes, “Thank you for your help on the ATREG, Mr. Grimes. And thank you, Mr. Baxter, for your help. It’s time that I started looking after the next meal.”
She left, not hastily, but not taking her time about it either. When she was gone Baxter released Grimes. Clumsily the Ensign turned himself around, with a wild flailing motion. Unarmed combat had never been his specialty, especially unarmed combat in Free Fall conditions. But he knew that he had to fight, and the rage and the humiliation boiling up in him made it certain that he would do some damage.
But Baxter was laughing, showing all his ugly, yellow teeth. “Come orf it, Admiral! An’ if we must have a set-to-not in here. Just smash the UV projector-an’ bang goes our air conditioning! Simmer down, mate. Simmer down!”
Grimes simmered down, slowly. “But I thought you were out for my blood, Mr. Baxter.”
“Have ter put on a show for the Sheilas now an’ again. Shouldn’t mind puttin’ on another kind o’ show with her. But not in public-like you was goin’ to. It just won’t do-not until the shootin’ is over, anyhow. An’ even then . .
. . So, Admiral, it’s paws off as far as you’re concerned. An’ as far as I’m concerned-an’ the Chief Time Twister an’ his sidekick. But, if yer can spare the time, I propose we continue the conversation in my palatial dogbox.”
Grimes should have felt uneasy as he followed the engineer to his accommodation but, oddly enough, he did not. The rough friendliness just could not be the prelude to a beating up. And it wasn’t.
“Come in,” said Baxter, pulling his sliding door to one side. “Now yer see how the poor live. This is . . .”
“No,” protested Grimes. “No.”
“Why? I was only goin’ to say that this is me ‘umble ‘umpy. An’ I’d like yer to meet a coupla friends o’ mine-and there’s more where they came from.”
The “friends” were two drinking bulbs. Each bore proudly no less than four stars on its label. The brandy was smooth, smooth and potent. Grimes sipped appreciatively. “I didn’t know that we had any of this aboard Delia O’Ryan.”
“An’ nor did we. You’ll not find this tipple in the bar stores of any merchantman, nor aboard any of yer precious Survey Service wagons. Space stock for the Emperor’s yacht, this is. So here’s ter the Waverley taxpayers!”
“But where did you get this from, Mr. Baxter?”
“Where d’yer think? I’ve had a good fossick around the holds o’ this old bitch, an’ there’s quite a few things too good to let fall inter the hands o’ those bloody Waldegrenese.”
“But that’s pillage.”
“It’s common sense. Mind yer, I doubt if Captain Craven would approve, so yer’d better chew some dry tea-that’s in the cargo too-before yer see the Old Man again. All the bleedin’ same-it’s no worse than him borrowing your Survey Service stores an’ weapons from his cargo.”
“I suppose it’s not,” admitted Grimes. All the same, he still felt guilty when he was offered a second bulb of the luxurious spirit. But he did not refuse it.
XIV
HE WAS A GOOD FOSSICKER, was Baxter.
Two days later, as measured by the ship’s chronometer, he was waiting for Grimes as he came off watch. “Ensign,” he announced without preamble, “I’ve found somethin’ in the cargo.”
“Something new, you mean?” asked Grimes coldly. He still did not approve of pillage, although he had shared the spoils.
“Somethin’ that shouldn’t be there. Somethin’ that’s up your alley, I think.” “There’s no reason why equipment for the Waverley Navy shouldn’t be
among the cargo.”
“True enough. But it wouldn’t be in a case with Beluga Caviar stenciled all over it. I thought I’d found somethin’ to go with the vodka I half pinched, but it won’t.”
“Then what is it?” “Come and see.”
“All right.” Briefly Grimes wondered if he should tell Craven, who had relieved the watch, then decided against it. The Old Man would probably insist on making an investigation in person, in which case Grimes would have to pass another boring hour or so in the Control Room.
The two men made their way aft until they came to the forward bulkhead of the cargo spaces. Normally these would have been pressurized, but, when Epsilon Sextans’ atmosphere had been replenished from Delta Orionis’ emergency cylinders, it had seemed pointless to waste precious oxygen. So access was through an airlock that had a locker outside, in which suits, ready for immediate use, were stowed.
Grimes and Baxter suited up, helping each other as required. Then the engineer put out his gloved hand to the airlock controls. Grimes stopped him, bent forward to touch helmets. He said, “Hang on. If we open the door it’ll register on the panel in Control.”
“Like hell it will!” came the reply. “Most of the wiring was slashed through during the piracy. I fixed the hold lights-but damn all else.” Grimes, through the transparency of the visors, saw the other’s grin. “For obvious reasons.”
Grimes shrugged, released Baxter. Everything was so irregular that one more, relatively minor irregularity hardly mattered. He squeezed with the engineer into the small airlock, waited until the atmosphere it held had been pumped back into the body of the ship, then himself pushed the button that actuated the mechanism of the inner valve.
This was not the first time that he had been in the cargo spaces. Some of the weapons “borrowed” from Delta Orionis’ cargo had been mounted in the holds. When he had made his inspections it had never occurred to him that the opening and closing of the airlock door had not registered in Control.
He stood back and let Baxter lead the way. The engineer pulled himself to one of the bins in which he had been foraging. The door to it was still open,
and crates and cartons disturbed by the pillager floated untidily around the opening.
“You’ll have to get all this restowed,” said Grimes sharply. “If we have to accelerate there’ll be damage.” But he might as well have been speaking to himself. The suit radios had not been switched on and, in any case, there was no air to carry sound waves, however faintly.
Baxter had scrambled into the open bin. Grimes followed him, saw him standing by the case, its top prized open, that carried the lettering, BELUGA CAVIAR. PRODUCE OF THE RUSSIAN SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC
REPUBLIC. Baxter beckoned. Grimes edged his way past the drifting packages to join him.
There was something in the case-but it was not jars or cans of salted sturgeon’s eggs. It looked at first like a glittering, complex piece of mobile statuary, although it was motionless. It was a metal mismating of gyroscope and Moebius Strip. It did not look wrong-nothing functional ever does-but it did look odd.
Grimes was standing hard against Baxter now. Their helmets were touching. He asked, “What . . . what is it?”
“I was hopin’ you’d be able ter tell me, Admiral.” Then, as Grimes extended a cautious hand into the case, “Careful! Don’t touch nothin’!”
“Why not?”
‘Cause this bloody lot was booby-trapped, that’s why. See that busted spring? An’ see that cylinder in the corner? That’s a thermite bomb, or somethin’ worse. Shoulda gone orf when I pried the lid up-but luckily I buggered the firin’ mechanism with me bar when I stuck it inter just the right crack. But I think the bastard’s deloused now.”
“It looks as though it-whatever it is-is hooked up to one of the electrical circuits.”
“Yair. An’ it’s not the lightin’ circuit. Must be the airlock indicators.” “Must be.” As a weapons expert, Grimes could see the thermite bomb-if
that was what it was- had been rendered ineffective. It hadn’t been an
elaborate trap, merely a device that would destroy the-the thing if the case housing it were tampered with. Baxter had been lucky-and, presumably, those who had planted the-what the hell was it?-unlucky.
With a cautious finger he nudged the rotor.
It turned-and he was reminded of those other rotors, the ever-precessing gyroscopes of the Mannschenn Drive.
He remembered, then. He remembered a series of lectures at the Academy on future weapons and navigational devices. Having decided upon his specialty he had been really interested only in the weapons. But there had been talk of a man called Carlotti, who was trying to develop a device that would induce temporal precession in radio signals, so that instantaneous communications would be possible throughout the Galaxy without ships and
shore stations having to rely upon the temperamental and unreliable telepaths. And beacons, employing the same principle, could be used for navigation by ships under interstellar drive . . . .
So this could be one of Signor Carlotti’s gadgets. Perhaps the Empire of Waverley had offered him a higher price than had the Federation. But why the BELUGA CAVIAR? To deter and confuse industrial spies? But Epsilon Sextans possessed excellent strong rooms for the carriage of special cargo.
And why was the thing wired up?
Suddenly it was obvious. Somehow, the Duchy of Waldegren possessed Carlotti equipment. This . . . this beacon had been transmitting, unknown to anybody aboard the ship, during the voyage. The frigates had homed upon her. When, inadvertently, its power supply had been shut off the victim, using random precession, had been able to make her escape.
So, if the pirates were to make a second attack it would have to be reactivated.
“We’d better throw this lot on to the Old Man’s plate,” said Grimes. CAPTAIN CRAVEN listened intently as Grimes and Baxter told their story.
They feared that he was going to lose his temper when told of the
engineer’s cargo pillaging, but he only remarked, in a dry voice, “I guess that the consignees can afford to compensate us for our time and trouble. Even so, Mr. Baxter, I insist that this practice must cease forthwith.” And then, when Grimes described the device, he said, “Yes, I have heard of Carlotti’s work. But I didn’t think that he’d got as far as a working model. But the thing could have been developed by Waldegrenese scientists from the data in his published papers.”
“So you agree, sir, that it is some kind of beacon upon which the pirates can home?”
“What else can it be? Now, gentlemen, we find ourselves upon the horns of a dilemma. If we don’t reactivate the bloody thing, the chances are that we shall deliver the ship and cargo intact, at no great risk to ourselves, and to the joy of the underwriters. If we do reactivate it-then the chances are that we shall have to fight our way through. And there’s no guarantee that we shall be on the winning side.”
“I was shanghaied away here as a gunnery officer,” said Grimes. “Shanghaied-or press-ganged?” queried Craven.
“The technique was more that of the shanghai,” Grimes told him.
“Indeed?” Craven’s voice was cold. “But no matter. “You’re here, and you’re one of my senior officers. What course of action do you recommend?”
Grimes replied slowly and carefully. “Legally speaking, what we’re involved in isn’t a war. But it is a war, of sorts. And a just war. And, in any case, the Master of a merchant vessel has the legal right to resist illegal seizure or destruction by force of arms. Of course, we have to consider the illegal circumstances attending the arming of this ship . . . .”
“Let’s not get bogged down in legalities and illegalities,” said Craven, with a touch of impatience. “The lawyers can sort it all out eventually. Do we reactivate?”
“Yes,” said Grimes.
“And you, Mr. Baxter. What do you say?”
“We Rim Worlders just don’t like Waldegren. I’ll not pass up a chance ter kick the bastards in the teeth. Reactivate, Skipper.”
“Good. And how long will it take you to make good the circuit the beacon’s spliced in to?”
“Twenty minutes. No more. But d’yer think we oughter put the whole thing to the vote first?”
“No. Everybody here was under the impression that we should be fighting. With one possible exception, they’re all volunteers.”
“But I did volunteer, sir,” objected Grimes.
“Make your mind up, Ensign. You were telling me just now that you’d been shanghaied. All right. Everybody is a volunteer. So we just rebait the trap without any more yapping about it. Let me know as soon as you’re ready, Mr. Baxter. Will you require assistance?”
“I’ll manage, Skipper.”
When he was gone Craven turned to Grimes. “You realize, Ensign, that this puts me in rather a jam. Let me put it this way. Am I justified in risking the lives of all my officers to carry out a private act of vengeance?”
“I think that you can take Mr. Baxter and myself as being representative, sir. As for the others-Miss Pentecost’s a Rim Worlder, and her views will coincide with Baxter’s. And the original crew members-they’re just as entitled to vengeance as you are. I know that if I’d been an officer of this ship at the time of the original piracy I’d welcome the chance of hitting back.”
“You would. Yes. Even if, as now, an alternative suddenly presented itself. But . . .”
“I honestly don’t see what you’re worrying about, sir.”
“You wouldn’t. It’s a matter of training. But, for all my Reserve commission, I’m a merchant officer. Oh, I know that any military commander is as responsible for the lives of his men as I am-but he also knows that those lives, like his own, are expendable.”
“It’s a pity that Baxter found the beacon,” said Grimes.
“It is-and it isn’t. If he hadn’t found it, I shouldn’t be soliloquizing like a spacefaring Hamlet. And we should have brought the ship in intact and, like as not, all been awarded Lloyd’s Medals. On the other hand-if he hadn’t found it we-or I?-should have lost our chance of getting back at the
pirates.”
“You aren’t Hamlet, sir.” Grimes spoke with the assurance of the very young, but in later years he was to remember his words, and to feel neither shame nor embarrassment, but only a twinge of envy and regret. “You aren’t Hamlet. You’re Captain Craven, Master under God. Please, sir, for once in your life do something you want to do, and argue it out later with the Almightly if you must.”
“And with my owners?” Grimes couldn’t be sure, but he thought he saw something like a smile beneath Craven’s full beard. “And with my owners?”
“Master Astronauts’ certificates aren’t all that common, sir. If worst comes to worst, there’s always the Rim Worlds. The Sundowner Line, isn’t it?”
“I’d already thought of that.” There was no doubt about it. Craven was smiling. “After all that you’ve been saying to me, I’m surprised that you don’t join forces with our Miss Pentecost.”
“Go out to the Rim, sir? Hardly.”
“Don’t be so sure, young Grimes. Anyhow, you’d better get Miss Pentecost up here now so that we can see how friend Baxter is getting on. There’s always the risk that he’ll find a few more things among the cargo that aren’t nailed down.”
XV
GRIMES CALLED Jane Pentecost on the intercom; after a minute or so she made her appearance in Control. Craven told her what Baxter had discovered and what he, Craven, intended doing about it. She nodded in emphatic agreement. “Yes,” she said. “The thing’s here to be used-and to be used the way that we want to use it. But I don’t think that we should make it public.”
“Why not, Miss Pentecost?”
“I could be wrong, Captain, but in my opinion there are quite a few people in this ship who’d welcome the chance of wriggling out of being the cheese in the mousetrap. When there’s no alternative they’re brave enough. When there’s a face-saving alternative . . .”
Baxter’s voice came from the intercom speaker. “Chief Reaction Drive Engineer to Control. Repairs completed. Please check your panel.”
Yes, the circuit had been restored. The buzzer sounded, and on the board a glowing red light showed that the outer door to the cargo hold airlock was open. How much of the failure of the indicators was due to battle damage and how much to Baxter’s sabotage would never be known. Craven’s heavy eyebrows lifted ironically as he looked at Grimes, and Grimes shrugged in reply.
Then, the watch handed over to the girl, the two men made their way aft from the Control Room. Outside the airlock they found Baxter, already suited up save for his helmet. There had been only two suits in the locker, and the engineer had brought another one along for the Captain from
somewhere.
The little compartment would take only two men at a time. Craven and Grimes went through first, then were joined by Baxter. There was no longer any need for secrecy, so the suit radios were switched on. The only person likely to be listening in was Jane Pentecost in Control.
Grimes heard Craven muttering angrily as they passed packages that obviously had been opened and pillaged, but the Captain did no more than mutter. He possessed the sense of proportion so essential to his rank-and a few bulbs of looted liquor were, after all, relatively unimportant.
They came to the bin in which the case allegedly containing caviar had been stowed, in which some secret agent of Waldegren had tapped the circuit supplying power to the beacon. Inside the box the gleaming machine was still motionless. Craven said, “I thought you told me the current was on.”
“It is, Skipper.” Baxter’s voice was pained. “But I switched it off before I fixed the wiring.” He extended a gloved finger, pressed a little toggle switch.
And nothing happened.
“Just a nudge.” whispered the engineer.
The oddly convoluted rotor turned easily enough, and as it rotated it seemed almost to vanish in a mist of its own generating-a mist that was no more than an optical illusion.
It rotated, slowed-and stopped.
Baxter cast aspersions upon the legitimacy of its parenthood. Then, still grumbling, he produced a volt-meter. Any doubt that power was being delivered to the machine was soon dispelled. Power was being delivered-but it was not being used.
“Well, Mr. Baxter?” demanded Craven.
“I’m a fair mechanic, Skipper-but I’m no physicist.” “Mr. Grimes?”
“I specialized in gunnery, sir.”
Craven snorted, the sound unpleasantly loud in the helmet phones. He said sarcastically, “I’m only the Captain, but I have some smatterings of Mannschenn Drive maintenance and operation. This thing isn’t a Mannschenn Drive unit-but it’s first cousin to one. As I recall it, some of the earlier models couldn’t be started without the employment of a small, temporal precession field initiator. Furthermore, these initiators, although there is no longer any need for them, are still carried as engine room spares in the Commission’s ships.”
“And that gadget’ll start this little time-twister, Skipper?” asked the engineer.
“It might, Mr. Baxter. It might. So, Mr. Grimes, will you go along to the Mannschenn Drive room and ask Mr. Wolverton for his initiator? No need to tell him what it’s for.”
WOLVERTON was in the Mannschenn Drive room, staring moodily at the gleaming complexity of precessing rotors. Grimes hastily averted his eyes from the machine. It frightened him, and he didn’t mind admitting it. And there was something about the engineer that frightened him, too. The tall, cadaverous man, with the thin strands of black hair drawn over his gleaming skull, looked more like a seer than a ship’s officer, looked like a fortune-teller peering into the depths of an uncannily mobile crystal ball. He was mumbling, his voice a low, guttural muttering against the thin, high keening of his tumbling gyroscopes. The Ensign at last was able to make out the words.
“Divergent tracks . . . . To be, or not to be, that is the question-“
Grimes thought, This ship should be renamed the State of Denmark. There’s something rotten here . . . . He said sharply, “Mr. Wolverton!”
Slowly the Chief Interstellar Drive Engineer turned his head, stared at Grimes unseeingly at first. His eyes came into focus. He whispered, “It’s you.”
“Who else, Chief? Captain’s compliments, and he’d like to borrow your temporal precession field initiator.”
“He would, would he? And why?”
“An-an experiment.” said Grimes, with partial truth. The fewer people who knew the whole truth the better.
“An experiment?”
“Yes. If you wouldn’t mind letting me have it now, Chief . . . .”
“But it’s engine room stores. It’s the Commission’s stores. It’s a very delicate instrument. It is against the Commission’s regulations to issue it to unqualified personnel.”
“But Mr. Baxter is helping with the . . . experiment.”
“Mr. Baxter! That letter-off of cheap fireworks. That . . . Rim Runner! No. No. Mr. Baxter is not qualified personnel.”
“Then perhaps you could lend us one of your juniors.”
“No. No, I would not trust them. Why do you think that I am here, Mr. Grimes? Why do you think that I have been tied to my gyroscopes? Literally tied, almost. If I had not been here, keeping my own watch, when the pirates struck, this ship would have been utterly destroyed. I know the Drive, Mr. Grimes.” He seized the Ensign’s arm, turned him so that he was facing the gleaming, spinning rotors, endlessly precessing, endlessly tumbling down the dark dimensions, shimmering on the very verge of invisibility. Grimes wanted to close his eyes, but could not. “I know the Drive, Mr. Grimes. It talks to me. It shows me things. It warned me, that
time, that Death was waiting for this ship and all in her. And now it warns me again. But there is a . . . a divergence . . . .”
“Mr. Wolverton, please! There is not much time.”
“But what is Time, Mr. Grimes? What is Time? What do you know of the forking World Lines, the Worlds of If? I’ve lived with this machine, Mr. Grimes. It’s part of me-or am I part of it? Let me show you . . . .” His grip on the Ensign’s arm was painful. “Let me show you. Look. Look into the machine. What do you see?”
Grimes saw only shadowy, shimmering wheels and a formless darkness. “I see you, Mr. Grimes,” almost sang the engineer. “I see you-but not as
you will be. But as you might be. I see you on the bridge of your flagship,
your uniform gold-encrusted and medal-bedecked, with commodores and captains saluting you and calling you ‘sir’ . . . but I see you, too, in the control room of a shabby little ship, a single ship, in shabby clothes, and the badge on your cap is one that I have never seen, is one that does not yet exist . . . .”
“Mr. Wolverton! That initiator. Please!”
“But there is no hurry, Mr. Grimes. There is no hurry. There is time enough for everything-for everything that is, that has been, that will be and that might be. There is time to decide, Mr. Grimes. There is time to decide whether or not we make our second rendezvous with Death. The initiator is part of it all, Mr. Grimes, is it not? The initiator is the signpost that stands at the forking of the track. You weren’t here, Mr. Grimes, when the pirates struck. You did not hear the screams, you did not smell the stench of burning flesh. You’re young and foolhardy; all that you want is the chance to play with your toys. And all that I want, now that I know that alternatives exist, is the chance to bring this ship to her destination with no further loss of life.”
“Mr. Wolverton . . .”
“Mr. Grimes!” It was Captain Craven’s voice, and he was in a vile temper. “What the hell do you think you’re playing at?”
“Captain,” said Wolverton. “I can no more than guess at what you intend to do-but I have decided not to help you to do it.”
“Then give us the initiator. We’ll work it ourselves.” “No, Captain.”
“Give me the initiator, Mr. Wolverton. That’s an order.”
“A lawful command, Captain? As lawful as those commands of yours that armed this ship?”
“Hold him, Grimes!” (And who’s supposed to be holding whom? wondered the Ensign. Wolverton’s grip was still tight and painful on his arm.) “Hold him, while I look in the storeroom!”
“Captain! Get away from the door! You’ve no right . . .”
Wolverton relinquished his hold on Grimes who, twisting with an agility that surprised himself, contrived to get both arms about the engineer’s waist. In the scuffle the contact between their magnetic shoe soles and the deck was broken. They hung there, helpless, with no solidity within reach of their flailing limbs to give them purchase. They hung there, clinging to each other, but more in hate than in love. Wolverton’s back was to the machine; he could not see, as could Grimes, that there was an indraught of air into the spinning, shimmering complexity. Grimes felt the beginnings of panic, more than the mere beginnings. There were no guardrails; he had read somewhere why this was so, but the abstruse physics involved did not matter-all that mattered was that there was nothing to prevent him and Wolverton from being drawn into the dimension-twisting field of the thing.
He freed, somehow, his right hand, and with an effort that sprained his shoulder brought it around in a sweeping, clumsy and brutal blow to the engineer’s face. Wolverton screamed and his grip relaxed. Violently, Grimes shoved away. To the action there was reaction.
Craven emerged from the storeroom, carrying something that looked like a child’s toy gyroscope in a transparent box. He looked around for Grimes and Wolverton at deck level and then, his face puzzled, looked up. He did not, as Grimes had been doing for some seconds, vomit-but his face, behind the beard went chalk-white. He put out his free hand and, not ungently, pulled Grimes to the deck.
He said, his voice little more than a whisper, “There’s nothing we can do. Nothing-except to get a pistol and finish him off . . . .”
Grimes forced himself to look again at the slimy, bloody obscenity that was a man turned, literally, inside-out-heart (if it was the heart) still beating, intestines still writhing.
XVI
IT WAS GRIMES who went for a pistol, fetching a Minetti from the weapons rack that he, himself, had fitted up in the Control Room. He told Jane Pentecost what he wanted it for. He made no secret of either his horror or his self blame.
She said, “But this is a war, even if it’s an undeclared one. And in a war you must expect casualties.”
“Yes, yes. I know. But I pushed him into the field.”
“It was an accident. It could easily have been you instead of him. And I’m glad that it wasn’t.”
“But you haven’t seen . . .”
“And I don’t want to.” Her voice hardened. “Meanwhile, get the hell out of here and back to the Mannschenn Drive room. If you’re so sorry for the poor bastard, do something about putting him out of his misery.”
“But . . .”
“Don’t be such a bloody coward, Grimes.”
The words hurt-mainly because there was so much truth in them. Grimes was dreading having to see again the twisted obscenity that had once been a man, was dreading having to breathe again the atmosphere of that compartment, heavy with the reek of hot oil, blood and fecal matter. But, with the exception of Craven, he was the only person in the ship trained in the arts of war. He recalled the words of a surgeon-commander who had lectured the midshipmen of his course on the handling of battle
casualties-and recalled, too, how afterward the young gentlemen had sneered at the bloodthirstiness of one who was supposed to be a professional healer. “When one of your shipmates has really had it, even if he’s your best friend, don’t hesitate a moment about finishing him off. You’ll be doing him a kindness. Finish him off-and get him out of sight. Shockingly wounded men are bad for morale.”
“What are you waiting for?” demanded Jane Pentecost. “Do you want me to do it?”
Grimes said nothing, just hurried out of the Control Room.
Craven was still in the Mannschenn Drive room when Grimes got back there. With him were two of the interstellar drive engineers-the Second and the Third. Their faces were deathly white, and the Second’s prominent Adam’s apple was working spasmodically, but about them there was an air of grim resolution. The Third-how could he bear to touch that slimy, reeking
mess?-had hold of its shoulders (white, fantastically contorted bone gleaming pallidly among red convolutions of flesh), while the Second, a heavy spanner in his hand, was trying to decide where to strike.
The Captain saw Grimes. “Give me that!” he snapped, and snatched the pistol from the Ensign’s hand. Then, to the engineers, “Stand back!”
The little weapon rattled sharply and viciously. To the other smells was added the acridity of burned propellant. What had been Wolverton was driven to the deck by the impact of the tiny projectiles, and adhered there. There was surprisingly little blood, but the body had stopped twitching.
Craven handed the empty pistol back to the Ensign. He ordered, “You stay here, Mr. Grimes, and organize the disposal of the body.” He went to the locker where he had put the initiator, took out the little instrument and, carrying it carefully, left the Mannschenn Drive room. Neither of the engineers, still staring with horrified fascination at their dead Chief, noticed.
“How . . . how did it happen?” asked the Second, after a long silence. “He fell into the field,” said Grimes.
“But how? How? He was always getting on us about being careless, and telling us what was liable to happen to us, and now it’s happened to him-“
“That’s the way of it,” contributed the Third, with a certain glum satisfaction. “Don’t do as I do, do as I say.”
“Have you a box?” asked Grimes.
“A box?” echoed the Second.
“Yes. A box.” Now that he was doing something, doing something useful, Grimes was beginning to feel a little better. “We can’t have a funeral while we’re running under interstellar drive. We have to . . . to put him somewhere.” Out of sight, he mentally added.
“That chest of spares?” muttered the Second. “Just the right size,” agreed the Third.
“Then get it,” ordered Grimes.
The chest, once the spares and their packing had been removed and stowed elsewhere, was just the right size. Its dimensions were almost those of a coffin. It was made of steel, its bottom magnetized, and remained where placed on the deck while the three men, fighting down their recurring nausea, handled the body into it. All of them sighed audibly in relief when, at last, the close-fitting lid covered the remains. Finally, the Third ran a welding torch around the joint. As he was doing so the lights flickered.
Was it because of the torch? wondered Grimes. Or was it because the beacon in the hold had been reactivated?
Somehow he could not feel any real interest.
CLEANED UP after a fashion, but still feeling physically ill, he was back in the Control Room. Craven was there, and Baxter was with him. Jane Pentecost had been relieved so that she could attend to her duties in the galley. “Not that I feel like a meal,” the Captain had said. “And I doubt very much that Mr. Grimes does either.”
“Takes a lot ter put me off me tucker,” the engineer declared cheerfully as he worked on the airlock door telltale panel.
“You didn’t see Mr. Wolverton, Mr. Baxter,” said Craven grimly.
“No, Skipper. An’ I’m not sorry I didn’t.” He paused in his work to rummage in his tool bag. He produced bulbs of brandy. “But I thought you an’ the Ensign might need some o’ this.”
Craven started to say something about cargo pillage, then changed his mind. He accepted the liquor without further quibbling. The three men sipped in silence.
Baxter carelessly tossed his squeezed empty bulb aside, continued with what he had been doing. The Captain said to Grimes, “Yes. We got the thing started again. And we’ve improved upon it.”
“Improved upon it, sir? How?”
“It’s no longer only a beacon. It’s also an alarm. As soon as it picks up the radiation from the similar pieces of apparatus aboard the enemy frigates, the buzzer that Mr. Baxter is fitting up will sound, the red light will flash. We shall have ample warning . . . .”
“She’ll be right, Skipper,” said the engineer.
“Thank you, Mr. Baxter. And now; if you don’t mind, I’d like a few words in private with Mr. Grimes.”
“Don’t be too hard on him, Skipper.”
Baxter winked cheerfully at Grimes and left the control room.
“Mr. Grimes,” Craven’s voice was grave. “Mr. Grimes, today, early in your career, you have learned a lesson that some of us never have to learn. You have killed a man-yes, yes, I know that it was not intentional-and you have been privileged to see the end result of your actions.
“There are many of us who are, who have been, killers. There are many of us who have pushed buttons but who have never seen what happens at the other end of the trajectory. Perhaps people slaughtered by explosion or laser beam do not look quite so horrible as Wolverton-but, I assure you, they often look horrible enough, and often die as slowly and as agonizingly. You know, now, what violent death looks like, Mr. Grimes. So tell me, are you still willing to push your buttons, to play pretty tunes on your battle organ?”
“And what did the bodies in this ship look like, Captain?” asked Grimes. Then, remembering that one of the bodies had belonged to the woman whom Craven had loved, he bitterly regretted having asked the question.
“Not pretty,” whispered Captain Craven. “Not at all pretty.” “I’ll push your buttons for you,” Grimes told him.
And for Jane Pentecost, he thought. And for the others. And for myself? The worst of it all is that I haven’t got the excuse of saying that it’s what I’m paid for . . . .
XVII
DOWN THE DARK dimensions fell Epsilon Sextans, falling free through the warped continuum. But aboard the ship time still possessed meaning, the master chronometer still ticked away the seconds, minutes and hours; the little man-made world was still faithful to that puissant god of scientific intelligences everywhere in the universe-the Clock. Watch succeeded watch in Control Room and engine room. Meals were prepared and served on time. There was even, toward the end, a revival of off-duty social activities: a chess set was discovered and brought into use, playing cards were produced and a bridge school formed.
But there was one social activity that, to Grimes’ disappointment was not resumed-the oldest social activity of them all. More than once he pleaded with Jane-and every time she laughed away his pleas. He insisted-and that made matters worse. He was (as he said), the donkey who had been allowed one nibble of the carrot and who could not understand why the carrot had been snatched away. He was (she said), a donkey. Period.
He should have guessed what was happening, but he did not. He was young, and inexperienced in the ways of women-of men and women. He
just could not imagine that Jane would spare more than a casual glance for any of the engineers or for the flabby, pasty youth who was the psionic radio officer-and in this he was right.
Epsilon Sextans was, for a ship of her class, very well equipped. In addition to the usual intercom system she was fitted with closed circuit television. In the event of emergency the Captain or watch officer, by the flip of a switch, could see what was happening in any compartment of the vessel. Over the control panel, in big, red letters, were the words: EMERGENCY USE ONLY. Grimes did not know what was the penalty for improper use of the apparatus in the Merchant Navy-but he did know that in the Survey Service officers had been cashiered and given an ignominious discharge for this offense. The more cramped and crowded the conditions in which men-and women-work and live, the more precious is privacy.
It was Grimes’ watch.
When he had taken over, all the indications were that it would be as boring as all the previous watches. All that was required of the watchkeeper was that he stay awake. Grimes stayed awake. He had brought a book with him into Control, hiding it inside his uniform shirt, and it held his attention for a while. Then, following the example of generations of watch officers, he set up a game of three dimensional tic-tac-toe in the chart tank and played, right hand against left. The left hand was doing remarkably well when a buzzer sounded. The Ensign immediately cleared the tank and looked at the airlock indicator panel. But there were no lights on the board, and he realized that it was the intercom telephone.
“Control,” he said into his microphone.
“P.R.O. here. I . . . I’m not happy, Mr. Grimes . . . .” “Who is?” quipped Grimes.
“I . . . I feel . . . smothered.”
“Something wrong with the ventilation in your shack?”
“No. NO. It’s like . . . it’s like a heavy blanket soaked in ice-cold water . . .
. You can’t move . . . you can’t shout . . . you can’t hear . . . . It’s like it was before . . . .”
“Before what?” snapped Grimes-and then as the other buzzer sounded, as the additional red light flashed on the telltale panel, he realized the stupidity of his question.
At once he pressed the alarm button. This was it, at last. Action Stations! Throughout the ship the bells were shrilling, the klaxons squawking. Hastily Grimes vacated the pilot’s chair, slipped into the one from which he could control his weapons-and from which he could reach out to other controls. But where was the Old Man? Where was Captain Craven? This was the moment that he had longed for, this was the consummation toward which all his illegalities had been directed. Damn it all, where was he?
Perhaps he was floating stunned in his quarters-starting up hurriedly from
sleep he could have struck his head upon some projection, knocked himself out. If this were the case he, Grimes, would have to call Jane from her own battle station in Sick Bay to render first aid. But there was no time to lose.
The Ensign reached out, flipped the switches that would give him the picture of the interior of the Captain’s accommodation. The screen brightened, came alive. Grimes stared at the luminous presentation in sick horror. Luminous it was-with that peculiar luminosity of naked female flesh. Jane was dressing herself with almost ludicrous haste. Of the Captain there was no sign-on the screen.
Craven snarled, with cold ferocity, “You damned, sneaking, prurient puppy!” Then, in a louder voice, “Switch that damn thing off! I’ll deal with you when this is over.”
“But, sir . . .” “Switch it off, I say!”
Cheeks burning, Grimes obeyed. Then he sat staring at his armament controls, fighting down his nausea, his physical sickness. Somehow, he found time to think bitterly, So I was the knight, all set and ready to slay dragons for his lady. And all the time, she . . . He did not finish the thought.
He heard a voice calling over the intercom, one of the engineers. “Captain, they’re trying to lock on! Same as last time. Random precession, sir?”
“No. Cut the Drive!”
“Cut the Drive?” Incredulously. “You heard me. Cut!” Then, to Grimes, “And what the hell are you waiting for?”
The Ensign knew what he had to do; he had rehearsed it often enough. He did it. From the nozzles that pierced the outer shell spouted the cloud of reflective vapor, just in time, just as the enemy’s lasers lashed out at their target. It seemed that the ship’s internal temperature rose suddenly and sharply-although that could have been illusion, fostered by the sight of the fiery fog glimpsed through the viewports before the armored shutters slammed home.
There were targets now on Grimes’ fire control screen, two of them, but he could not loose a missile until the tumbling rotors of the Drive had ceased to spin, to precess. The use of the anti-laser vapor screen had been risky enough. Abruptly the screens went blank-which signified that the temporal precession rates of hunted and hunters were no longer in synchronization, that the fields of the pirates had failed to lock on. In normal spacetime there would be no need to synchronize-and then the hunters would discover that their quarry had claws and teeth.
Aboard Epsilon Sextans the keening note of the Drive died to a whisper, a barely audible murmur, fading to silence. There was the inevitable second or so of utter disorientation when, as soon as it was safe, the engineers braked the gyroscopes.
Craven acted without hesitation, giving his ship headway and acceleration with Inertial Drive. He was not running-although this was the impression that he wished to convey. He was inviting rather than evading combat-but if the Waldegren captains chose to assume that Epsilon Sextans was, as she had been, an unarmed merchantman (after all, the anti-laser screen could have been jury rigged from normal ship’s stores and equipment), taking evasive action, that was their error of judgment.
Grimes watched his screens intently. Suddenly the two blips reappeared, astern, all of a hundred kilos distant, but closing. This he reported.
“Stand by for acceleration!” ordered Craven. “Reaction Drive-stand by!”
It was all part of the pattern-a last, frantic squandering of reaction mass that could do no more than delay the inevitable. It would look good from the enemy control rooms.
“Reaction Drive ready!” reported Baxter over the intercom.
“Thank you. Captain to all hands, there will be no countdown. Fire!”
From the corner of his eye Grimes saw Craven’s hand slam down on the key. Acceleration slammed him brutally back into his chair. There was a roar that was more like an explosion than a normal rocket firing, a shock that jarred and rattled every fitting in the Control Room.
Craven remarked quietly. “That must have looked convincing enough-but I hope that Baxter didn’t really blow a chamber.”
There was only the Inertial Drive now, and the two blips that, very briefly, had fallen astern, were now creeping up again, closing the range.
“Anti-laser,” ordered Craven briefly. “But, sir, it’ll just be wasting it. They’ll not be using laser outside twenty kilometers.”
“They’ll not be expecting a gunnery specialist aboard this wagon, either.” Once again the nozzles spouted, pouring out a cloud that fell rapidly astern
of the running ship, dissipating uselessly.
Craven looked at his own screens, frowned, muttered, “They’re taking their sweet time about it . . . probably low on reaction mass themselves.” He turned to Grimes. “I think a slight breakdown of the I.D.’s in order.”
“As you say, sir.” The Ensign could not forget having been called a damned, sneaking, prurient puppy. Let Craven make his own decisions.
“Stand by for Free Fall,” ordered the Captain quietly. The steady throbbing of the Inertial Drive faltered, faltered and ceased. There were two long minutes of weightlessness, and then, for five minutes, the Drive came back into operation. A breakdown, the enemy must be thinking. A breakdown, and the engineers sweating and striving to get the ship under way again. A breakdown-it would not be surprising after the mauling she had endured at the first encounter.
She hung there, and although her actual speed could be measured in kilometers a second she was, insofar as her accelerating pursuers were
concerned, relatively motionless. Grimes wondered why the warships did not use their radio, did not demand surrender-Epsilon Sextans’ transceiver was switched on, but no sound issued from the speaker but the hiss and crackle of interstellar static. He voiced his puzzlement to Craven.
Craven laughed grimly. “They know who we are-or they think that they know. And they know that we know who they are. After what happened before, why should we expect mercy? All that we can do now-they think-is to get the Mannschenn Drive going again. But with that comic beacon of theirs working away merrily they’ll be able to home on us, no matter how random our precession.” He laughed again. “They haven’t a care in the world, bless their little black hearts.”
Grimes watched his screens. Forty kilometers-thirty-“Sir, the ALGE?” he asked.
“Yes. It’s your party now.”
For the third time reflective vapor gushed from the nozzles, surrounding the ship with a dense cloud. Craven, who had been watching the dials of the external temperature thermometers, remarked quietly, “They’ve opened fire. The shell plating’s heating up. Fast.”
And in the Control Room it felt hot-and hotter, Grimes pressed the button that unmasked his batteries. The gas screen, as well as affording protection from laser, hid the ship from visual observation. The enemy would not be expecting defense by force of arms.
He loosed his first salvo, felt the ship tremble as the missiles ejected themselves from their launching racks. There they were on the screens-six tiny sparks, six moronic mechanical intelligences programmed to home upon and destroy, capable of countering evasive action so long as their propellant held out. There they were on the screens-six of them, then four, then one. This last missile almost reached its target-then it, too, blinked out. The Waldegren frigates were now using their laser for defense, not attack.
“I don’t think,” remarked Craven quietly, “that they’ll use missiles. Not yet, anyhow. They want our cargo intact.” He chuckled softly. “But we’ve got them worried.”
Grimes didn’t bother to reply. The telltale lights on his panel told him that the six AVM launchers were reloaded. The AMMs-the anti-missile
missiles-had not yet been fired. Dare he risk their use against big targets? He carried in his magazines stock sufficient for three full salvos only- and with no laser for anti-missile work dare he deplete his supply of this ammunition?
He had heard the AMMs described as “vicious little brutes.” They were to the Anti-Vessel Missiles as terriers are to mastiffs. Their warheads were small, but this was compensated for by their greater endurance. They were, perhaps, a little more “intelligent” than the larger rockets-and Grimes, vaguely foreseeing this present contingency, had made certain modifications to their “brains.”
He pushed the button that actuated his modifications, that overrode the original programming. He depressed the firing stud. He felt the vibration as the war-rockets streaked away from the ship, and on his screens watched the tiny points of light closing the range between themselves and the two big blips that were the targets. They were fast, and they were erratic. One was picked off by laser within the first ten seconds, but the others carried on, spurting and swerving, but always boring toward their objectives. Grimes could imagine the enemy gunnery officers flailing their lasers like men, armed only with sticks, defending themselves against a horde of small, savage animals. There was, of course, one sure defense-to start up the Mannschenn Drive and to slip back into the warped continuum where the missiles could not follow. But, in all probability, the Waldegren captains had yet to accept the fact, emotionally, that this helpless merchantman had somehow acquired the wherewithal to strike back.
Two of the AMMs were gone now, picked off by the enemy laser. Three were still closing on the target on Epsilon Sextans’ port quarter, and only one of the target abaft the starboard beam. Grimes loosed his second flight of AMMs, followed it with a full salvo of AVMs. Then, knowing that the protective vapor screen must have been thinned and shredded by his rocketry, he sent out a replenishing gush of reflective gas.
He heard Craven cry out in exultation. The three AMMs of the first flight had hit their target, the three sparks had fused with the blip that represented the raider to port. The three sparks that were the second flight were almost there, and overtaking them were the larger and brighter sparks of the second AVM salvo. The Anti-Missile Missiles would cause only minor damage to a ship-but, in all probability, they would throw fire control out of kilter, might even destroy laser projectors. In theory, one AVM would suffice to destroy a frigate; a hit by three at once would make destruction a certainty.
And so it was.
Seen only on the radar screen, as a picture lacking in detail painted on a fluorescent surface by an electron brush, it was anticlimactic. The blips, the large one, the three small ones and the three not so small, merged. And then there was an oddly shaped blob of luminescence that slowly broke up into a cluster of glowing fragments, a gradually expanding cluster, a leisurely burgeoning flower of pale fire.
Said Craven viciously, “The other bastard’s got cold feet . . . .”
And so it was. Where she had been on the screen was only darkness, a darkness in which the sparks that were missiles and anti-missiles milled about aimlessly. They would not turn upon each other-that would have been contrary to their programming. They would not, in theory, use their remaining fuel to home upon the only worthwhile target remaining-Epsilon Sextans herself. But, as Craven knew and as Grimes knew, theory and practice do not always coincide. Ships have been destroyed by their own missiles.
With reluctance Grimes pushed the DESTRUCT button. He said to the Captain, gesturing toward the wreckage depicted on the screen, “Pick up
survivors, sir? If there are any.”
“If there are any,” snarled Craven, “that’s their bad luck. No-we give chase to the other swine!”
XVIII
GIVE CHASE . . .
It was easier said than done. The surviving frigate had restarted her Mannschenn Drive, had slipped back into the warped continuum where, unless synchronization of precession rates was achieved and held, contact between vessels would be impossible. The Carlotti Beacon in Epsilon Sextans’ hold was worse than useless; it had been designed to be homed upon, not to be a direction-finding instrument. (In any case, it could function as such only if the beacon aboard the Waldegren ship were working.) Neither Craven nor Grimes knew enough about the device to effect the necessary modifications. The interstellar drive engineers thought that they could do it, but their estimates as to the time required ranged from days to weeks. Obviously, as long as it was operating it would be of value to the enemy only.
So it was switched off.
There was only one method available to Craven to carry out the
pursuit-psionic tracking. He sent for his Psionic Radio Officer, explained the situation. The telepath was a young man, pasty faced, unhealthy looking, but not unintelligent. He said at once, “Do you think, Captain, that the other officers and myself are willing to carry on the fight? After all, we’ve made our point. Wouldn’t it be wisest to carry on, now, for Waverley?”
“Speaking for meself,” put in Baxter, who had accompanied Jane Pentecost to Control, “an’ fer any other Rim Worlders present, I say that now the bastards are on the run it’s the best time ter smack ’em again. An’ hard. An’ the tame time-twisters think the same as we do. I’ve already had words with ’em.” He glared at the telepath. “Our snoopin’ little friend here should know very well what the general consensus of opinion is.”
“We do not pry,” said the communications officer stiffly. “But I am willing to abide by the will of the majority.”
“And don’t the orders of the Master come into it?” asked Craven, more in amusement than anger.
“Lawful commands, sir?” asked Grimes who, until now, had been silent. “Shut up!” snapped Jane Pentecost.
“Unluckily, sir,” the young man went on, “I do not possess the direction-finding talent. It is, as you know, quite rare.”
“Then what can you do?” demanded Craven.
“Sir, let me finish, please. The psionic damping device-I don’t know what it was, but I suspect that it was the brain of some animal with which I am unfamiliar-was in the ship that was destroyed. The other vessel carries only
a normal operator, with normal equipment-himself and some sort of organic amplifier. He is still within range, and I can maintain a listening watch-“
“And suppose he listens to you?” asked the Captain. “Even if you transmit nothing-as you will not do, unless ordered by myself-there could be stray thoughts. And that, I suppose, applies to all of us.”
The telepath smiled smugly. “Direction-finding is not the only talent. I’m something of a damper myself-although not in the same class as the one that was blown up. I give you my word, sir, that this vessel is psionically silent.” He raised his hand as Craven was about to say something. “Now, sir, I shall be able to find out where the other ship is heading. I know already that her Mannschenn Drive unit is not working at full capacity; it sustained damage of some kind during the action. I’m not a navigator, sir, but it seems to me that we could be waiting for her when she reemerges into the normal continuum.”
“You’re not a navigator,” agreed Craven, “and you’re neither a tactician nor a strategist. We should look rather silly, shouldn’t we, hanging in full view over a heavily fortified naval base, a sitting duck. Even so . . .” His big right hand stroked his beard. “Meanwhile, I’ll assume that our little friends are headed in the general direction of Waldegren, and set course accordingly. If Mr. Grimes will be so good as to hunt up the target star in the Directory . .
.”
Grimes did as he was told. He had made his protest, such as it was, and, he had to admit, he was in favor of continuing the battle. It was a matter of simple justice. Why should one shipload of murderers be destroyed, and the other shipload escape unscathed? He was still more than a little dubious of the legality of it all, but he did not let it worry him.
He helped Craven to line the ship up on the target star, a yellow, fifth magnitude spark. He manned the intercom while the Captain poured on the acceleration and then, with the ship again falling free, cut in the Mannschenn Drive. When the vessel was on course he expected that the Old Man would give the usual order-“Normal Deep Space routine, Mr. Grimes,”-but this was not forthcoming.
“Now,” said Craven ominously. “Now what, sir?”
“You have a short memory, Ensign. A conveniently short memory, if I may say so. Mind you, I was favorably impressed by the way you handled your armament, but that has no bearing upon what happened before.”
Grimes blushed miserably. He knew what the Captain was driving at. But, playing for time, he asked, “What do you mean, sir?”
Craven exploded. “What do I mean? You have the crust to sit there and ask me that! Your snooping, sir. Your violation of privacy. Even worse, your violation of the Master’s privacy! I shall not tell Miss Pentecost; it would be unkind to embarrass her. But . . .”
Grimes refrained from saying that he had seen Miss Pentecost wearing even
less than when, inadvertently, he had spied upon her. He muttered, “I can explain, sir.”
“You’d better. Out with it.”
“Well, sir, it was like this. I knew that we’d stumbled on the enemy-or that the enemy had stumbled upon us. I’d sounded Action Stations. And when you were a long time coming up to Control I thought that you must have hurt yourself, somehow . . . there have been such cases, as you know. So I thought I’d better check-“
“You thought . . . you thought. I’ll not say that you aren’t paid to
think-because that’s just what an officer is paid for. But you didn’t think hard enough, or along the right lines.” Grimes could see that Craven had accepted his explanation and that all would be well. The Captain’s full beard could not hide the beginnings of a smile. “Did you ever hear of Sir Francis Drake, Ensign?”
“No, sir.”
“He was an admiral-one of Queen Elizabeth’s admirals. The first Elizabeth, of course. When the Spanish Armada was sighted he did not rush down to his flagship yelling ‘Action Stations!’ He knew that there was time to spare, and so he quietly finished what he was doing before setting sail.”
“And what was he doing, sir?” asked Grimes innocently. Craven glared at him, then snapped, “Playing bowls.”
Then, suddenly, the tension was broken and both men collapsed in helpless laughter. In part it was reaction to the strain of battle-but in greater part it was that freemasonry that exists only between members of the same sex, the acknowledgment of shared secrets and shared experiences.
Grimes knew that Jane Pentecost was not for him-and wished Craven joy of her and she of the Captain. Perhaps they had achieved a permanent relationship, perhaps not-but, either way, his best wishes were with them.
Craven unbuckled his seat strap.
“Deep Space routine, Mr. Grimes. It is your watch, I believe.” “Deep Space routine it is, sir.”
Yes, it was still his watch (although so much had happened). It was still his watch, although there were barely fifteen minutes to go before relief. He was tired, more tired than he had ever been in his life before. He was tired, but not unhappy. He knew that the fact that he had killed men should be weighing heavily upon his conscience-but it did not. They, themselves, had been killers-and they had had a far better chance than any of their own victims had enjoyed.
He would shed no tears for them. XIX
CRAVEN CAME BACK to the Control Room at the change of watch, when Grimes was handing over to Jane Pentecost. He waited until the routine had been completed, then said, “We know where our friends are headed. They were, like us, running for Waldegren-but they’re having to change course.” He laughed harshly. “There must be all hell let loose on their home planet.”
“Why? What’s happened?” asked Grimes.
“I’ll tell you later. But, first of all, we have an alteration of course ourselves. Look up Dartura in the Directory, will you, while I get the Drive shut down.”
Epsilon Sextans was falling free through normal spacetime before Grimes had found the necessary information. And then there was the hunt for and the final identification of the target star, followed by the lining up by the use of the directional gyroscopes. There was the brief burst of acceleration and then, finally, the interstellar drive was cut in once more.
The Captain made a business of selecting and lighting a cigar. When the pungent combustion was well under way he said, “Our young Mr. Summers is a good snooper. Not as good as some people I know, perhaps.” Grimes flushed and Jane Pentecost looked puzzled. “He’s a super-sensitive. He let me have a full transcript of all the signals, out and in. It took us a little time to get them sorted out-but not too long, considering. Adler-that’s the name of the surviving frigate- was running for home. Her Captain sent a rather heavily edited report of the action to his Admiral. It seems that Adler and the unfortunate Albatross were set upon and beaten up by a heavily armed Survey Service cruiser masquerading as an innocent merchantman. The Admiral, oddly enough, doesn’t want a squadron of Survey Service battlewagons laying nuclear eggs on his base. So Adler has been told to run away and lose herself until the flap’s over . . . .”
“And did they send all that en clair?” demanded Grimes. “They must be mad!”
“No, they aren’t mad. The signal’s weren’t en clair.” “But . . .”
“Reliable merchant captains,” said Craven, “are often entrusted with highly confidential naval documents. There were some such in my safe aboard Delta Orionis, consigned to the Commanding Officer of Lindisfarne Base. The officer who delivered them to me is an old friend and shipmate of mine, and he told me that among them was the complete psionic code used by the Waldegren Navy. Well, when I had decided to take over this ship, I’d have been a bloody fool not to have Photostatted the whole damned issue.
“So that’s the way of it. Herr Kapitan von Leidnitz thinks he can say what he likes to his superiors without anybody else knowing what he’s saying. And all the while . . .” Craven grinned wolfishly. “It seems that there’s a minor base, of sorts, on Dartura. Little more than repair yards, although I suppose that there’ll be a few batteries for their protection. I can imagine the sort of personnel they have running the show-passed-over commanders and the like, not overly bright. By the time that we get there we shall have concocted a convincing story-convincing enough to let us hang off in orbit
until Adler appears on the scene. After all, we have their precious code. Why should they suspect us?”
“Why shouldn’t we be Adler?” asked Grimes. “What do you mean, Ensign?”
“The Waldegren Navy’s frigates are almost identical, in silhouette, with the Commission’s Epsilon class freighters. We could disguise this ship a little by masking the dissimilarities by a rough patching of plating. After all, Adler was in action and sustained some damage-“
“Complicated,” mused the Captain. “Too complicated. And two Adlers-each, presumably, in encoded psionic communication with both Waldegren and Dartura . . . . You’ve a fine, devious mind, young Grimes-but I’m afraid you’ve out-fixed yourself on that one.”
“Let me talk, sir. Let me think out loud. To begin with-a ship running on Mannschenn Drive can put herself into orbit about a planet, but it’s not, repeat not, recommended.”
“Damn right it’s not.”
“But we have the heels of Adler? Yes? Then we could afford a slight delay to carry out the modifications-the disguise-that I’ve suggested. After all, forty odd light years is quite a long way.”
“But what do we gain, Mr. Grimes?”
“The element of confusion, sir. Let me work it out. We disguise ourselves as well as we can. We find out, from intercepted and decoded signals, Adler’s ETA-and the coordinates of her breakthrough into the normal continuum. We contrive matters to be more or less in the same place at exactly the same time. And when the shore batteries and the guardships see no less than two Adlers slugging it out, each of them yelling for help in the secret code, they won’t know which of us to open fire on.”
“Grimes,” said Craven slowly, “I didn’t know you had it in you. All I can say is that I’m glad that you’re on our side.”
“Am I?” asked Grimes wonderingly,. suddenly deflated. He looked at the Captain who, after all, was little better than a pirate, whose accomplice he had become. He looked at the girl, but for whom he would not be here. “Am I? Damn it all, whose side am I on?”
“You’d better go below,” Craven told him gently. “Go below and get some sleep. You need it. You’ve earned it.”
“Jeremy,” said Jane Pentecost to Craven, “would you mind looking after the shop for half an hour or so? I’ll go with John.”
“As you please, my dear. As you please.”
It was the assurance in the Captain’s voice that hurt. It won’t make any difference to us, it implied. It can’t make any difference. Sure, Jane, go ahead. Throw the nice little doggie a bone . . . . we can spare it.
“No thank you,” said Grimes coldly, and left the Control Room. But he couldn’t hate these people.
XX
AFTER A LONG SLEEP Grimes felt better. After a meal he felt better still. It was a good meal, even though the solid portion of it came from tins. Craven’s standards were slipping, thought the Ensign. He was reasonably sure that such items as caviar, escargots, pƒt‚ de foie gras, Virginia ham, Brie, and remarkably alcoholic cherries were not included in the Commission’s inventory of emergency stores. And neither would be the quite reasonable Montrachet, although it had lost a little by being decanted from its original bottles into standard squeeze bulbs. But if the Captain had decided that the laborer was worthy of his hire, with the consignees of the cargo making their contribution toward that hire, that was his privilege . . .? Responsibility?-call it what you will.
Jane Pentecost watched him eat. As he was finishing his coffee she said, “Now that our young lion has fed, he is required in the Control Room.”
He looked at her both gratefully and warily. “What have I done now?” “Nothing, my dear. It is to discuss what you-we-will do. Next.”
He followed her to Control. Craven was there, of course, and so were Baxter and Summers. The Captain was enjoying one of his rank cigars, and a limp, roll-your-own cigarette dangled from the engineer’s lower lip. The telepath coughed pointedly every time that acrid smoke expelled by either man drifted his way. Neither paid any attention to him, and neither did Grimes when he filled and lighted his own pipe.
Craven said, “I’ve been giving that scheme of yours some thought. It’s a good one.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Don’t thank me. I should thank you. Mr. Summers, here, has been maintaining a careful listening watch. Adler’s ETA is such that we can afford to shut down the Drive to make the modifications that you suggest. To begin with, we’ll fake patching plates with plastic sheets-we can’t afford to cannibalize any more of the ship’s structure-so as to obscure our name and identification letters. We’ll use more plastic to simulate missile launchers and laser projectors-luckily there’s plenty of it in the cargo.”
“We found more than plastic while we were lookin’ for it,” said the engineer, licking his lips.
“That will do, Mr. Baxter. Never, in normal circumstances, should I have condoned . . .”
“These circumstances ain’t normal, Skipper, an’ we all bloody well know it.” “That will do, I say.” Craven inhaled deeply, then filled the air of the
Control Room with a cloud of smoke that, thought Grimes, would have
reflected laser even at close range. Summers almost choked, and Jane
snapped, “Jeremy!”
“This, my dear, happens to be my Control Room.” He turned again to the Ensign. “It will not be necessary, Mr. Grimes, to relocate the real weapons. They functioned quite efficiently where they are and, no doubt, will do so again. And now, as soon as I have shut down the Drive, I shall hand the watch over to you. You are well rested and refreshed.”
“Come on,” said Jane to Baxter. “Let’s get suited up and get that sheeting out of the airlock.”
“Couldn’t Miss Pentecost hold the fort, sir?” asked Grimes. He added, “I’ve been through the camouflage course at the Academy.”
“And so have I, Mr. Grimes. Furthermore, Miss Pentecost has had experience in working outside, but I don’t think that you have.”
“No, sir. But . . . “
“That will be all, Mr. Grimes.”
At Craven’s orders the Drive was shut down, and outside the viewports the sparse stars became stars again, were no longer pulsing spirals of
multi-colored light. Then, alone in Control, Grimes actuated his scanners so that he could watch the progress of the work outside the hull, and switched on the transceiver that worked on the spacesuit frequency.
This time he ran no risk of being accused of being a Peeping Tom.
He had to admire the competence with which his shipmates worked. The plastic sheeting had no mass to speak of, but it was awkward stuff to handle. Torches glowed redly as it was cut, and radiated invisibly in the infrared as it was shaped and welded. The workers, in their bulky, clumsy suits, moved with a grace that was in startling contrast to their attire-a Deep Space ballet, thought Grimes, pleasurably surprised at his own way with words. From the speaker of the transceiver came Craven’s curt orders, the brief replies of the others.
“This way a little . . . that’s it.” “She’ll do, Skipper.”
“No she won’t. Look at the bend on it!”
Then Jane’s laughing voice. “Our secret weapon, Jeremy. A laser that fires around corners!”
“That will do, Miss Pentecost. Straighten it, will you?” “Ay, ay, sir. Captain, sir.”
The two interstellar drive engineers were working in silence, but with efficiency. Aboard the ship were only Grimes and Summers, the telepath.
Grimes felt out of it, but somebody had to mind the shop, he supposed. But the likelihood of any customers was remote.
Then he stiffened in his chair. One of the spacesuited figures was falling away from the vessel, drifting out and away, a tiny, glittering satellite reflecting the harsh glare of the working floods, a little, luminous butterfly pinned to the black velvet of the Ultimate Night. Who was it? He didn’t know for certain, but thought that it was Jane. The ship’s interplanetary drives-reaction and inertial- were on remote control, but reaction drive was out; before employing it he would have to swing to the desired heading by use of the directional gyroscopes. But the inertial drive was versatile.
He spoke into the microphone of the transceiver. “Secure yourselves. I am proceeding to rescue.”
At once Craven’s voice snapped back, “Hold it, Grimes. Hold it! There’s no danger.”
“But, sir . . . ” “Hold it!”
Grimes could see the distant figure now from a viewport, but it did not seem to be receding any longer. Hastily he checked with the radar. Range and bearing were not changing. Then, with relative bearing unaltered, the range was closing. He heard Jane call out, “Got it! I’m on the way back!”
Craven replied, “Make it snappy-otherwise young Grimes’ll be chasing you all over the Universe!”
Grimes could see, now, the luminous flicker of a suit reaction unit from the lonely figure.
Later, he and the others examined the photographs that Jane had taken.
Epsilon Sextans looked as she was supposed to look-like a badly battle-scarred frigate of the Waldegren Navy.
XXI
IN TERMS OF SPACE and of time there was not much longer to go.
The two ships-one knowing and one unknowing-raced toward their rendezvous. Had they been plunging through the normal continuum there would have been, toward the finish, hardly the thickness of a coat of paint between them, the adjustment of a microsecond in temporal precession rates would have brought inevitable collision. Craven knew this from the results of his own observations and from the encoded position reports, sent at six hourly intervals, by Adler. Worried, he allowed himself to fall astern, a mere half kilometer. It would be enough-and, too, it would mean that the frigate would mask him from the fire of planet-based batteries.
Summers maintained his listening watch. Apart from the position reports he had little of interest to tell the Captain. Adler, once or twice, had tried to get in contact with the Main Base on Waldegren-but, other than from a curt directive to proceed as ordered there were no signals from the planet to the ship. Dartura Base was more talkative. That was understandable. There was no colony on the planet and the Base personnel must be bored, must be pining for the sight of fresh faces, the sound of fresh voices. They would
have their excitement soon enough, promised Craven grimly.
Through the warped continuum fell the two ships, and ahead the pulsating spiral that was the Dartura sun loomed ever brighter, ever larger. There were light years yet to go, but the Drive-induced distortions made it seem that tentacles of incandescent gas were already reaching out to clutch them, to drag them into the atomic furnace at the heart of the star.
In both Control Rooms watch succeeded watch-but the thoughts and the anticipations of the watchkeepers were not the same. Aboard Adler there was the longing for rest, for relaxation-although Adler’s Captain must have been busy with the composition of a report that would clear him (if possible) of blame for his defeat. Aboard Epsilon Sextans there was the anticipation of revenge-insofar as Craven, Baxter, Jane Pentecost and the survivors of the ship’s original personnel were concerned. Grimes? As the hour of reckoning approached he was more and more dubious. He did not know what to think, what to feel. There was the strong personal loyalty to Craven-and, even now, to Jane Pentecost. There was the friendship and mutual respect that had come into being between himself and Baxter. There was the knowledge that Adler’s crew were no better than pirates, were murderers beyond rehabilitation. There was the pride he felt in his own skill as a gunnery officer. (But, as such, was he, himself, any better than a pirate, a murderer? The exercise of his craft aboard a warship would be legal-but here, aboard a merchantman, and a disguised merchantman at that, the legality was doubtful. What had his motives been when he volunteered-and as a commissioned officer of the Survey Service he had had no right to do so-and what were his motives now?)
He, Grimes, was not happy. He had far too much time to ponder the implications. He was an accessory before, during and after the fact. He had started off correctly enough, when he had tried to prevent Craven from requisitioning the Survey Service cargo aboard Delta Orionis, but after that .
. . after he and Jane . . . (that, he admitted, was a memory that he wanted to keep, always, just as that other memory, of the bright picture of naked female flesh on the screen, he wished he could lose forever.)
He had started off correctly enough-and then, not only had he helped install the purloined armament but had used it. (And used it well, he told himself with a brief resurgence of pride.) Furthermore, the disguise of Epsilon Sextans had been his idea.
Oh, he was in it, all right. He was in up to his neck. What the final outcome of it all would be he did not care to contemplate.
But it would soon be over. He had no fears as to the outcome of the battle. The element of surprise would be worth at least a dozen missile launchers. Adler would never have the chance to use her laser.
ADLER, REPORTED SUMMERS, had shut down her Mannschenn Drive and emerged briefly into normal spacetime to make her final course adjustment. She was now headed not for the Dartura Sun but for the planet itself-or where the planet would be at the time of her final-and fatal- reemergence into the continuum. The last ETA was sent, together with the coordinates of her planetfall. Epsilon Sextans made her own course
adjustment-simultaneity in time and a half kilometer’s divergence in space being Craven’s objective. It was finicky work, even with the use of the ship’s computer, but the Captain seemed satisfied.
The race-the race that would culminate in a dead heat-continued. Aboard the frigate there was, reported Summers, a lessening of tension, the loosening up that comes when a voyage is almost over. Aboard the merchantman the tension increased. The interstellar drive engineers, Grimes knew, were no happier about it all than he was-but they could no more back out than he could. Craven was calm and confident, and Baxter was beginning to gloat. Jane Pentecost assumed the air of dedication that in women can be so infuriating. Grimes glumly checked and rechecked his weaponry. It passed the time.
Dartura itself was visible now-not as tiny disk of light but as a glowing annulus about its distorted primary. The thin ring of luminescence broadened, broadened. The time to go dwindled to a week, to days, to a day, and then to hours . . .
To minutes . . . To seconds . . . .
Craven and Grimes were in the Control Room; the others were at their various stations. From the intercom came the telepath’s voice, “He’s cutting the Drive-“
“Cut the Drive!” ordered the Captain.
In the Mannschenn Drive room the spinning, precessing gyroscopes slowed, slowed, ceased their endless tumbling, assumed the solidity that they exhibited only when at rest. For perhaps two seconds there was temporal confusion in the minds of all on board as the precession field died, and past, present and future inextricably mingled. Then there was a sun glaring through the viewports, bright in spite of the polarization-a sun, and, directly ahead, a great, green-orange planet. There was a ship . . . .
There were ships-ahead of them, astern, on all sides.
There were ships-and, booming from the intership transceiver, the transceiver that was neither tuned nor switched on (but navies could afford induction transmitters with their fantastic power consumption), came the authorative voice: “Inflexible to Adler! Heave to for search and seizure ! Do not attempt to escape-our massed fields will hold you!”
The effect was rather spoiled when the same voice added, in bewilderment, “Must be seeing double . . . there’s two of the bastards.” The bewilderment did not last long. “Inflexible to Adler and to unidentified vessel. Heave to for search and seizure!”
“Hold your fire, Mr. Grimes,” ordered Craven, quietly and bitterly. “It’s the Survey Service.”
“I know,” replied Grimes-and pressed the button. XXII
HE NEVER KNEW just why he had done so.
Talking it over afterward, thinking about it, he was able to evolve a theory that fitted the facts. During the brief period immediately after the shutting down of the Drive, during the short session of temporal disorientation, there had been prescience, of a sort. He had known that Adler, come what may, would attempt one last act of defiance and revenge, just as Adler’s Captain or Gunnery Officer must have known, in that last split second, that Nemesis was treading close upon his heels.
He pushed the button-and from the nozzles in the shell plating poured the reflective vapor, the protective screen that glowed ruddily as Adler’s lasers slashed out at it.
From the speaker of the dead transceiver, the transceiver that should have been dead, roared the voice of the Survey Service Admiral. “Adler! Cease fire! Cease fire, damn you!” There was a pause, then: “You’ve asked for it!”
She had asked for it-and now she got it. Suddenly the blip on Grimes’ screen that represented the Waldegren frigate became two smaller blips, and then four. The rolling fog outside Epsilon Sextans’ viewports lost its luminosity, faded suddenly to drab grayness. The voice from the transceiver said coldly, “And now you, whoever you are, had better identify yourself. And fast.”
Craven switched on the communications equipment. He spoke quietly into the microphone. “Interstellar Transport Commission’s Epsilon Sextans. Bound Waverly, with general cargo . . .”
“Bound Waverley? Then what the hell are you doing here? And what’s that armament you’re mounting?”
“Plastic,” replied the Captain. “Plastic dummies.”
“And I suppose your ALGE is plastic, too. Come off it, Jerry. We’ve already boarded your old ship, and although your ex-Mate was most reluctant to talk we got a story of sorts from him.”
“I thought I recognized your voice, Bill. May I congratulate you upon your belated efforts to stamp out piracy?”
“And may I deplore your determination to take the law into your own hands? Stand by for the boarding party.”
Grimes looked at Craven, who was slumped in his seat. The Master’s full beard effectively masked his expression. “Sir,” asked the Ensign. “What can they do? What will they do?”
“You’re the space lawyer, Grimes. You’re the expert on Survey Service rules and regulations. What will it be, do you think? A medal-or a firing squad? Praise or blame?”
“You know the Admiral, sir?”
“Yes. I know the Admiral. We’re old shipmates.”
“Then you should be safe.”
“Safe? I suppose so. Safe from the firing squad-but not safe from my employers. I’m a merchant captain, Grimes, and merchant captains aren’t supposed to range the spacelanes looking for trouble. I don’t think they’ll dare fire me-but I know that I can never expect command of anything better than Delta class ships, on the drearier runs.” Grimes saw that Craven was smiling. “But there’re still the Rim Worlds. There’s still the Sundowner Line, and the chance of high rank in the Rim Worlds Navy when and if there is such a service.”
“You have . . . inducements, sir?”
“Yes. There are . . . inducements. Now.”
“I thought, once,” said Grimes, “that I could say the same. But not now. Not any longer. Even so . . . I’m Survey Service, sir, and I should be proud of my service. But in this ship, this merchant vessel, with her makeshift armament, we fought against heavy odds, and won. And, just now, we saved ourselves. It wasn’t the Survey Service that saved us.”
“Don’t be disloyal,” admonished Craven.
“I’m not being disloyal, sir. But . . . or, shall we say, I’m being loyal. You’re the first captain under whom I served under fire. If you’re going out to the Rim Worlds I’d like to come with you.”
“Your commission, Grimes. You know that you must put in ten years’ service before resignation is possible.”
“But I’m dead.”
“Dead!”
“Yes. Don’t you remember? I was snooping around in the Mannschenn Drive room and I got caught in the temporal precession field. My body still awaits burial; it’s in a sealed metal box in the deep freeze. It can never be identified.”
Craven laughed. “I’ll say this for you. You’re ingenious. But how do we account for the absence of the late Mr. Wolverton? And your presence aboard this ship?”
“I can hide, sir, and . . .”
“And while you’re hiding you’ll concoct some story that will explain everything. Oh Grimes, Grimes-you’re an officer I wish I could always have with me. But I’ll not stand in the way of your career. All I can do, all I will do, is smooth things over on your behalf with the Admiral. I should be able to manage that.”
Jane Pentecost emerged from the hatch in the Control Room deck. Addressing Craven she said formally, “Admiral Williams, sir.” She moved to one side to make way for the flag officer.
“Jerry, you bloody pirate!” boomed Williams, a squat, rugged man the left
breast of whose shirt was ablaze with ribbons. He advanced with outstretched hand.
“Glad to have you aboard, Bill. This is Liberty Hall-you can spit on the mat and call the cat a bastard!”
“Not again!” groaned Grimes.
“And who is this young man?” asked the Admiral.
“I owe you-or your Service-an apology, Bill. This is Ensign Grimes, who was a passenger aboard Delta Orionis. I’m afraid that I . . . er . . . press-ganged him into my service. But he has been most . . . cooperative? Uncooperative? Which way do you want it?
“As we are at war with Waldegren-I’d say cooperative with reservations. Was it he, by the way, who used the ALGE? Just as well for you all that he did.”
“At war with Waldegren?” demanded Jane Pentecost. “So you people have pulled your fingers out at last.”
The Admiral raised his eyebrows.
“One of my Rim Worlders,” explained Craven. “But I shall be a Rim Worlder myself shortly.”
“You’re wise, Jerry. I’ve got the buzz that the Commission is taking a very dim view of your piracy or privateering or whatever it was, and my own lords and masters are far from pleased with you. You’d better get the hell out before the lawyers have decided just what crimes you are guilty of.”
“As bad as that?” “As bad as that.”
“And young Grimes, here?”
“We’ll take him back. Six months’ strict discipline aboard my flagship will undo all the damage that you and your ideas have done to him. And now, Jerry, I’d like your full report.”
“In my cabin, Bill. Talking is thirsty work.” “Then lead on. It’s your ship.”
“And it’s your watch, Mr. Grimes. She’ll come to no harm on this trajectory while we get things sorted out.”
GRIMES SAT WITH JANE PENTECOST in the Control Room. Through the ports, had he so desired, he could have watched the rescue teams extricating the survivors from the wreckage of Adler; he could have stared out at the looming bulk of Dartura on the beam. But he did not do so, and neither did he look at his instruments.
He looked at Jane. There was so much about her that he wanted to remember-and, after all, so very little that he was determined to forget.
The intercom buzzed. “Mr. Grimes, will you pack whatever gear you have and prepare to transfer with Admiral Williams to the flagship? Hand the watch over to Miss Pentecost.”
“But you’ll be shorthanded, sir.”
“The Admiral is lending me a couple of officers for the rest of the voyage.” “Very good, sir.”
Grimes made no move. He looked at Jane-a somehow older, a tireder, a more human Jane than the girl he had first met. He said, “I’d have liked to have come out to the Rim with you . . . .”
She said, “It’s impossible, John.” “I know. But . . .”
“You’d better get packed.”
He unbuckled his seat belt, went to where she was sitting. He kissed her. She responded, but it was only the merest flicker of a response.
He said, “Goodbye.”
She said, “Not goodbye. We’ll see you out on the Rim, sometime.” With a bitterness that he was always to regret he replied, “Not very likely.”
The End
Final notes on John Grimes
It's all fiction, but glorious fiction, and great fun.
- Metallicman
Do you want more?
I have many more stores in my fictional story index, here…
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.
Please kindly help me out in this effort. There is a lot of effort that goes into this disclosure. I could use all the financial support that anyone could provide. Thank you very much.
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This post discusses a hidden aspect of the EBP. It was used to teach and / train me (aside from it’s other purposes).
Once I had the EBP installed, and my genetic makeup modified, I underwent a long period of time being trained. This was during the time that I described in my post; lost as an autonomous vagabond. This period in my life was absolutely confusing. As I lived on the outskirts of society, living hand-to-mouth at a below-poverty level. While all the time, my consciousness was partitioned and participating within a training regimen.
Here we will discuss what it was like for me during my training and the kind of things that I was taught. It’s way, way, WAY “out there” and rather incredulous. But this is my record, and this is my autobiography. Read it or not. Believe it or not. I don’t fucking care. It’s your life.
Sponsors
I was trained by our extraterrestrial benefactors. MAJestic had nothing to do with the training. It was all associated with the EBP.
MAJestic
MAJestic controlled the ELF probes only.
They were used to monitor what was going on between the benefactors and my mind. I do believe that it must have been rather boring to the operators, as it relied on the optical sensors and the auditory sensors of my brain. While just about all the activity took place with consciousness with operates outside of the brain.
There was activity that took place between the ELF and the benefactors in regards to mission parameters at Oxia Palus. But this began AFTER this period of training.
MAJestic knew about the EBP. They knew that it was installed, and that I had a role that involved our benefactors. They also knew that they had to be “hands off” in regards to this role.
They did not know the scope of what the EBP entailed, or what my actual role with the benefactors would be.
Technology
Our benefactors consider the physical world to be a small part of the totality of reality. They operate within the non-physical world, and what we see in the physical is but a small part of their operations.
Thus it makes complete sense that I would be trained in using their technology, and their systems within their environment. And ya!, it’s really, really different than anything we (as humans) know.
The Mantids are a multi-dimensional species, and the EBP interfaced with that species using their technologies and their sciences.
Sequence of events.
This is the sequence of events…
Enter MAJestic.
ELF probes installed.
EBP installed and genetically re-engineered.
Left on my own as a vagabond.
Training via the EBP while a vagabond. – You are HERE.
Recovery by MAJestic at China Lake Naval Weapons Center.
Calibration of the ELF probes at China Lake.
Operations with the ELF probes via Oxia Palus.
Mission operations…
The Schools
To understand what is going on, you need to recognize that over a period of at least three years I “attended” schooling. It occurred in my mind via my consciousness. My brain observed two things happening all at once.
I lived a normal physical life, and my consciousness participated in that life.
My brain also observed that my consciousness attended school in the non-physical realms. This occurred simultaneously with my normal day to day life.
This education took place with my partitioned consciousness and our benefactors. There was zero participation with MAJestic. To an outside observer, there was zero physical evidence that anything was going on. There was nothing that would tell an outside observer what I was going through or enduring.
I went through “training” of a unknown nature at facilities and training centers.
While there were occasional “schools” that I attended that lasted for under a day. Most attendance was sequential at various “facilities” or “places”.
Appearance
While my consciousness migrated in the non-physical worlds, it would attend schools. These schools in all instances resembled human structures with campuses, buildings, vegetation, parks, quads, and entities. Most of the entities were human people, for the most part, but not always.
The appearance of the structures varied from a simple outdoor amphitheater to huge buildings of amazing construction and complexity.
I would attend classes with other students. Some of the classes had a few as three students while other classes had perhaps thirty. Most of the classes were of small size. Only a a few very rare occasions did I participate in larger classes.
There would be a teacher / instructor.
Often, that instructor would take a special notice of me and devote the class to my particular studies while the rest of the class watched on. I have no idea why this was the case.
Class length and duration
This education at different facilities had a degree of uniformity to it. I would attend “training” at one place for a period of time, and then attend another school or a different period of time. After that, another school, and then again, yet another school.
Duration was typically three days per school. This would occur during my waking life, as well as intrude into my dreams. I was 24-7 “on” in regards to this.
The longest time that I spent at any school was (perhaps) around two and a half weeks. The shortest time was just a few hours. I estimate that I attended perhaps 300 to 350 different “schools”.
That is quite a lot, in case you aren’t paying attention.
Breaks / vacations
There were breaks between sessions. I do not know why the breaks occurred or what was behind the breaks. Breaks typically lasted between four to six days. Then the education procedure would continue. I would typically have a break every three or four months or so.
When I was on a break, I would have a more or less “normal” life. No strange thoughts, experiences, dreams or feelings.
Subjects
The subjects were beyond the conception of anything that I can explain. Sorry.
If we used a scale to compare educational complexity, we might be able to compare difficulty and advancement levels. So here’s my attempt.
Toddler learning how to walk – 1
Kindergarten – 4
Elementary School – 12
High school – 22
College – 38
Post-graduate studies – 45
Using that as a scale, I would say that the content, the subjects, the content and the degree of saturation and density of the information portrayed as…
EBP 3 year training – 3450
Graduation(s)
I attended numerous “programs” that consisted of “blocks” of education and specific “classes”.
After a certain period of time had elapsed I would then attend another school.
Infrequently, and for reasons I do not understand, I would attend a sort of “graduation ceremony”. This procedure would acknowledge that I had obtained the necessary education, skills and abilities that I was supposed to learn.
I perhaps graduated, maybe, five separate times, plus my “final” graduation ceremony. Thus, I can only assume that I attended approximately six Major “educational programs” (and at least 12 minor programs) from which I obtained some type of ‘certificate”.
Ability
So, the question is what abilities do I now have?
I think that most of the training was associated with the world-line switching and slides that I experienced once I completed my training at China Lake NWC. I also believe that most of the training was elementary (from our benefactors point of view) as it taught me how to use their systems and understand their technologies.
After all, if you are going to teach a dog to drive a car, you would need to show him how to get into the car, where to sit, and other basics that we humans take for granted…
…and not to sniff and pee on the tire.
Important points
All this took pace before the ELF probes were calibrated at China Lake NWC.
Which means that the EBP and the genetic changes were such that they were able to partition my consciousness into a secondary “container”.
Imagine this much the same way that we partition a hard drive into different “drives”.
If you install a 500 MB hard-drive into a computer, it is preset as drive C:. Thus it would appear in your Windows Explorer as “Drive C:”.
Partitioning a hard drive into separate drives.
You can use partitioning software to break that drive down into other drives. Such as Drive D:, Drive E: and Drive F:.
In a way, and this is very simplistic, I believe that this is what occurred with my consciousness.
Partitioning and education
Most of what I was taught had zero utility in my physical life.
Therefore, it wasn’t even transmitted to my physical brain in in any kind of meaningful way. I just cannot vocalize my teachings, or be able to explain them to anyone within this world-line.
The consciousness partitioning was absolute and what could be utilized by my physical body was conveyed by the shared consciousness. What could not be, was not transmitted. and this leads to some interesting conclusions…
There is a segmentation and stratification of understanding, experience and knowledge between the physical and non-physical worlds.
A given world-line within the physical world might have information restricted or access denied to the consciousness that is within that reality.
The idea that the physical reality is all that there is, is laughingly pathetic. It is but a very tiny part of a much larger, much more expansive non-physical reality.
To obtain my role in the physical reality, and acquire my experiences for the non-physical reality, certain non-physical universe training was necessary. What it is, and how to communicate it to the reader trapped within this physical reality is impossible.
Conclusion
My role in MAJestic required me to perform tasks for our benefactors.
I had two set of physical modifications. They were a set of ELF probes that were MAJestic implanted, and operated. And a EBP that was installed with other substantial genetic modifications and training by our benefactors.
The training of the EBP is what this post covers.
The EBP modified my physical body and created multiple consciousnesses. Both consciousnesses can communicate back and forth between each other. The two consciousnesses have different roles and different functions, and much of what the EBP educated me with was involved in the newly segmented consciousness. Not with my original consciousness.
And finally…
MAJestic traded myself to our benefactors for technology.
They used me as a kind of “ambassador”.
This role was monitored by MAJestic via the ELF technology.
This ambassador role was unlike anything that we can conceive of.
I was altered and changed.
Not only physically, but spiritually as well.
I had my consciousness segmented.
As such, I was able to utilize advanced non-physical technologies provided by our benefactors.
This training enabled me to conduct world-line travel with a great degree of facility over and above what most humans are capable of.
It enabled me to anchor world-lines.
It enabled me to be the “representative” of humans to “adjust” our world-line trends towards a preferred sentience.
Are you confused?
You should be. Our world, our universe, and our lives are not like anything that we have been taught or understand. It is different, really, really different on so many, many levels.
If you want to kick the computer screen and yell, go ahead. Then go read about the “enlightened ones”, the (shape changing) “reptilians”, chrononauts, the “Zeta’s” that are going to take over America, Eh? It’s your reality. Read about the “coming age of enlightenment” and other fictions.
This is my history. Not a relatable fiction that makes you feel good about yourself.
Like I said before. The “real world” doesn’t resemble anything that you think it does.
Do you want more?
I have more posts along these lines in my MAJestic Index, here…
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.
Please kindly help me out in this effort. There is a lot of effort that goes into this disclosure. I could use all the financial support that anyone could provide. Thank you very much.
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This article goes into a much more involved study of how consciousness interacts with world-lines in the MWI.
In so doing, we have to deconstruct some of the simpler conventions that we have used in the past, and layout a better foundation of how the MWI actually interacts with the consciousness.
In earlier posts, I have gone into details on how the MWI actually manifests in our reality. In those presentations, I intentionally simplified things for easy understanding.
It's sort of like how you teach a person to swim by holding them and letting them kick their legs in the water. You use "supports". These supports aren't really the "real thing", but they help you along the road to eventually master the real thing.
In this post, we will assume that you the reader have mastered a basic understanding of those previous points.
Consciousness moves in and out of world-lines.
This movement appears as “time”.
Our thoughts direct which world-lines that we enter.
Introduction
In this article, we will now elaborate upon the world-line construction. We will look at what it actually is and how it actually works. Not everyone needs to know or understand this. But for those that do, this will help obtain a better understanding of it.
This
is an illustration of what time actually is. Time does not exist. It is
a perception that our consciousness has as it moves and weaves in and
out of different world-lines. Here we use an old-fashioned movie reel
projector to help illustrate this understanding.
It will appear really strange, but I do hope that I can help add some insight into everything.
Now, this article is for advanced students and are advanced studies.
Most of the people who have already mastered World-Line-Travel 101, you won’t need to read this. For the handful of people that understand world-line-travel-101, you don’t really need to understand much more than that.
But for those of you that need more, then here it is.
Of course, it’s long due. But all this COVID-19 nonsense has pretty much hijacked my postings and articles.
Quick Review
The universe is nothing like people think it is.
Instead of all of us sharing the same physical universe, we exist as consciousness within our very own personal reality. It only appears that we share it with others.
There is a near infinite number of these realities. They are known as individual world-lines.
We travel through these different world-lines at a rate of around 4 Hz. The selection of the world-line we exist within momentarily is manifested by our thoughts. This is a rather speedy switching in and out of world-lines.
Roughly, our consciousness pops in and out of four different world-lines every second.
Each world-line is nearly identical to the one before it.
The differences are determined by your thoughts, conscious and unconscious.
If you want to review what all this is about, I would suggest you check out these following posts first:
So please keep in mind that while everything posted previously is quite accurate, it is actually simplified for understanding.
Now, we get into a deeper perception of how things actually work. And in the process better understand all that PSI and “twilight zone” stuff that appears from time-to-time.
Once you understand these new elements of consciousness fundamentals and world-line interaction, you can understand how people are able to do many "tricks" with PSI, and other strange things...
Clarification #1 – Consciousness cycles in and out of world-lines in a sinusoidal manner.
This should be obvious to the astute reader, but it needs to be stated.
The consciousness moves in and out of world-lines naturally. It moves in a sinusoidal manner. It moves in and out. In and out. Over and over.
The rate of travel varies from person to person, but typically averages around 4 Hz.
Standard sinusoidal waveform.
During this time it changes “shape properties”. Back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth.
At “the top” of the cycle it takes on wave behavior.
At the “bottom” of the cycle, it takes on particle behavior.
Consciousness movement in and out of different world-lines.
When it takes on wave behavior it moves from one world-line to another directed by thought. It exists “in the spirit world”.
Movement of consciousness.
When it takes on particle behavior, it occupies a world-line and inhabits a physical body.
Our consciousness cycles in and out of different world-lines. Between each trip it exists within “heaven”.
With this understood, we can define the amount of time that the transition from world-line to world-line takes, as well as the duration a consciousness spends inside each world-line.
If there are 4 cycles per second, then, each trip back and forth from the "Heavenly realms" to a world-line is 1/4 a second.
And thus, (roughly) each moment at a given world-line is half of that. Or, 1/8 of a second.
Some “take aways”;
Humans, via our consciousness, is continuously in touch with the “Heavenly realms”. Every moment we touch heaven, and enter our latest world-line.
When in the wave form, we can perform all sorts of activities and have all sorts of “abilities” not tied to any world-line. There are no physical limitations. Humans spend approximately 50% of their time “connected” to the “Heavenly realms”.
For us to maintain (retain) our memories from world-line to world-line, the memories are deposited outside the brain. It exists within the “Heavenly realms” not within the physical brain.
Key Correction #1 – Consciousness moves about the MWI when attached to a human body.
In my previous simplifications, I have referred to, and drawn the consciousness as a red blob; a point of light. I have stated that “Soul” can generate multiple Consciousnesses that it places on “journeys”. These “Journeys for experience” is a life-experience for a soul.
Simplified diagram of how consciousness moves in and out of the MWI and gives us the illusion of time. This is what one second of life looks like for the average person. He / she enters and leaves four different world lines each second. This “movement” appears as time.
The Consciousness normally travels in and out of world-lines all a person’s life.
Once a consciousness uses up a body as it travels in and out of world-lines, it dies. The consciousness stays in the wave-form and “rests” within the “Heavenly realms”.
A decision is thus made by the soul, the consciousness, and their associations with other spirits, angels, and heavenly denizens on what to do next.
Often, it involves being injected on another “journey” in another life. This is often referred to as reincarnation.
This graphic shows how the the “passage of time” is viewed in the big-scale of things. MWI movement occurs during a human “lifespan”. You can only experience world-line travel within a given life. (There’s exceptions to this, but let’s stay focused.)
Key Correction #2 – Consciousness is not a point-source.
Consciousness is actually quite complex and complicated.
It is not a blob, a dot, a “something”.
It’s a collection of “stuff” that operates in such a way that the soul, the consciousness, the MWI and the thoughts generate memories and navigate the life-path to create experiences that the soul can learn from.
Soul creates a “consciousness” that it uses to travel the MWI.
It inserts it into a given world-line, and allows it to move unencumbered and subject to it’s own thoughts. Each world-line is a “physical reality” that the consciousness occupies.
The soul, which resides in the “Heavenly realms” creates a consciousness from which to experience things and events. Thus learns and grows. Consciousness is the passageway or “tunnel” that connects the physical reality to the soul.
Now, in all of this, I drew consciousness (literately, and artistically) as a point. I drew it as a red circular blob. Like in the two earlier drawings.
As in the above drawing showing the consciousness as a red blob in front of a long tunnel to the soul.
Movement of consciousness into a world-line as depicted as a point source.
However, the true reality is a bit different.
Get ready to have your mind blown.
The consciousness actually occupies multiple World-line-realities at any given moment simultaneously. It is actually not a “red blob”. It’s a lot of “red blobs”. Each one occupying a different world-line… simultaneously.
It is a “shared potential”. Some of the consciousness occupies one world-line at any given moment, while other aspects of it’s consciousness occupies other world-lines.
Sort of like this…
Consciousness occupies multiple world-lines at any given moment. The sum total of what our consciousness experiences is what we view as “our” present world-line. It appears to be but one singular world-line, but it is actually a aggregate composite of all the world-lines that our consciousness occupies at any given moment. 1 / (30/4+40/4+20/4+10/4) = Momentary reality.
Then, they move on to the next group of world lines. Then again. Then again. Then again. Over and over.
It’s not a red blob moving in and out.
Consciousness occupies multiple world-lines at any given moment. The sum total of what our consciousness experiences is what we view as “our” present world-line. They all change in the same cycle as governed by the consciousness.
Instead, consciousness occupies numerous world-lines at any given moment. Each world-line is different, but similar. The Consciousness interprets the differences as a singular world-line.
Key Correction #2 – World-Lines are not point-sources either.
We have a tendency to think of a “world” as a fixed and solid place. And the way that I have described the movement of time, has been the consciousness moving in and out from these fixed world-line realities.
A "world-line" is the resultant combined perception of a moment "frozen in time" that combines multiple world-lines into a singular apparent place.
What we think a world-line is is not a fixed singular place.
It is the sum total average of all the experiences that a conscientiousness is exposed to at any singular moment in time.
By fracturing a consciousness and occupying many similar world-lines simultaneously, the resultant consciousness would end up with a richer “experience”. It can also help to direct the travel and migrate to “better” world-lines per it’s directives.
It is the exact opposite of “living within an echo chamber“. It enables the consciousness to experience different experiences instead of simply reinforcing existing ones that the consciousness has been accustomed to over the years.
Key Correction #3 – World-Lines are not entirely empty of other consciousnesses.
To best understand how you can move in and out of multiple world-lines, it makes sense to think of things simply. Your consciousness is a point or sphere. The world-lines are empty and only occupied by “shadow consciousnesses”. But that’s really a simplistic picture.
It’s a simple narrative.
Imagine that you are only consciousness. And that you can move in and out of different world-lines freely. They seem to be occupied by all kinds of other people, but that is just an illusion. Most world-lines are just empty. And all those other people are just “quantum shadows” of others.
Now, this simplistic narrative needs to be revised to reflect the reality.
Instead of 100% of a consciousness entering a world-line where all the “quantum shadows” only have 0% occupancy within that reality…
…we now look at the reality…
Your consciousness might devote (say) 23% occupation within a given world-line, and all those “quantum-shadows” are actually occupied by other consciousnesses. Only they are a much smaller percentage. Often varying from 0.0002% to 0.1%.
Thus, in truth, all world-lines are not truly empty. They are occupied to some extent. And all of the other consciousnesses react to the way your consciousness behaves within any given particular world line.
Conclusion
And this, boys and girls, is the more advanced understanding of how the universe actually works. It’s simple, but complex.
It’s “rich” and “colorful”.
It also helps to understand how PSI and other psychic behaviors manifest within our reality.
And no, you are not going to find this anywhere else on the internet or in the halls of the universities. But this is what I have been tasked to understand (or at least part of it, anyways) as part of my MAJestic role.
I have much more, but it starts to really get complicated.
In it, I explain how the physical materials can be manipulated by thought and how one can travel through “apparent time”, and all sorts of curious other things. But, I am not ready to release all these other things out to the public at this time. It’s not the time.
I do not want to anger the PTB (Powers That Be) at this time.
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Please kindly help me out in this effort. There is a lot of effort that goes into this disclosure. I could use all the financial support that anyone could provide. Thank you very much.
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America is an empire. It is an oligarchy that is ruled and controlled by the wealthiest interests in the world, and many of them are neocons. These neocons that believe that power-projection will never result in “push-back” on American soil. To this end, they heavily promote the idea of mobile military platforms; fleets of aircraft carriers that sail the world and exert military influence where ever they travel.
My argument is legion against these mobile armadas;
The role of the American military should be defensive, not offensive. (Coast Guard NOT international Navy).
They are expensive.
They can be destroyed.
When fighting a nation that has the ability to fight back, the loss of an aircraft carrier would be the last thing that anyone should worry about. The loss of New York, Chicago, Washington and LA, should be what you worry about instead.
Keep in mind that Japan lost all of their aircraft carriers during world war II, and America lost a sizable number as well. They are NOT invincible.
Here is an article that expounds on that point. I think that it is a good read. Please check it out.
Translated by Eugenia. Recently, the American journal The National Interest published an article with a telling title: “5 Reasons Russia and China Might Not Be Able to Sink a U.S. Aircraft Carrier”. The author of the article discusses these reasons in detail. All of them are, by the way, pretty self-evident. I obtained this from the Russian translation by Eugenia. All credit to both the Russian translation and the original authors.
“Unsinkable” American Aircraft Carriers: Five Nonsensical Statements
So there’s five reasons, right…
The first one turned out to be (do you believe this?) that “the American aircraft carrier is big and fast . . . “.
The second one – “it has many weapons . . . “.
The third reason – “it is well defended . . .”.
The fourth reason – “it acts prudently . . . “.
And, finally, the fifth – “the American military technologies are the best in the world . . .”.
Such is a collection of simplistic propagandist clichés that the American propaganda machine is pounding into the head of the Western common man.
OMG!
It is important to understand that the National interest is not some “yellow” paper; this in an analytical journal that is expected to offer responsible and professional publications.
It is the voice piece for solid and thoughtful military planning and decision making efforts.
A Large And Fast Coffin With A Propeller
Let us take a closer look at the way the author of the article – an
expert and political analyst – explains to his readers why the American
aircraft carriers are invulnerable and unsinkable . . .
First Reason
OK, the first thesis. The American aircraft carries is indeed large
and fast. It has 25 decks; its maximal height is 80 meters; it displaces
100,000 tons of water and can carry 70, or even up to 90, aircraft of
different types.
Aircraft carrier cross section.
Unfortunately, one small detail spoils this lovely picture: a large target is easier to hit!
But the Americans simply cannot make their aircraft carriers smaller. The reason is simple: they are insanely expensive.
The carries have to be made in such enormous size, simply because if they are made smaller, more of them will be needed. Flexibility of the American aircraft carrier fleet would in such case increase, but the price would skyrocket.
Carl Vincent aircraft carrier.
Judge by yourself: a modern aircraft carrier costs the US approximately $13 billion (that is how much the newest “Gerald Ford” cost), and the carrier air wing (the Navy version of F-35) based of the carrier costs additional $7 billions.
Plus, there are the ships of the “carrier strike group” – multiple guided missile warships, destroyers equipped with Aegis combat system, and stealthy attack submarines.
Thus, one such group costs the Americans around $50 billion dollars!
Aircraft carrier strike group.
And, by the way, these $50 billions are never able to move as quickly as the “expert” in the National Interest asserts . . .
But in America nobody is concerned with such details.
The author does not shy away from stating:
“The aircraft carriers are constantly moving when deployed at up to 35 miles per hour – fast enough to outrun submarines – finding and tracking them is difficult.
Within 30 minutes after a sighting by enemies, the area within which a carrier might be operating has grown to 700 square miles; after 90 minutes, it has expanded to 6,000 square miles”.
It sound great but in reality not one American aircraft carrier can reach this speed. The maximal speed that it can maintain – for a limited time – is 30 knots.
The key word here is LIMITED time.
If anyone thinks that an aircraft carrier can immediately upon
entering the open sea accelerate to 30 knots (almost 56 km per hour) and
keep racing on the waives, he is very much mistaken.
This is impossible.
In reality, 95% of their time American aircraft carriers move in an economy mode at the speed no faster than 14 knots (about 26 km/hour). When airplanes take off or land on the carrier, the carrier is seriously limited in its ability to change speed or course.
An aircraft carrier is not a bike. If this floating airdrome turned from side to side all the time, pilots would not be able to make landings.
Soviet missile Granit being loaded into launch tubes
Another small detail: who would give to an aircraft carrier 30 min so it could escape from the battle zone?
Even the old Soviet missile “Granit” (note that the American still do not have anything like it), which our nuclear submarine cruisers of 949-project “Antey” type are armed with, fired from its maximal distance would reach its target in just slightly more than 500 second.
Cross section showing the anti-ship launch tubes.
This means that when a missile is fired, an American aircraft carrier would have time to get away from the point of its detection at its maximal speed to no more than 7.5 km.
Such distance is definitely within the range covered by the self-targeting mechanism of “Granit”. Thus, the missile will reach its target and, if not neutralized by the air defense systems (which is not very probable), destroy the target.
Furthermore, as the American “expert” should know, no one will fire at an aircraft carrier group just one missile!
Every our “Antey” submarine is equipped with 24 such missiles. Additionally, I believe, if the Chief of Staff of our Navy plans an operations to destroy an American aircraft carrier, such operation will involve more than one “Antey”.
The first submarine of Project 949 was laid down in the mid-1970s and was commissioned in 1980. In 1982 an updated and larger version (Project 949A) replaced the earlier version. In total thirteen submarines were constructed. The Oscar class was designed to attack NATO carrier battle groups using long-range SS-N-19 \"Shipwreck\" anti-ship missiles and targeting data provided by the EORSAT satellite system.
- Oscar-class submarine | Military Wiki
If all 24 “Granit” missiles are fired simultaneously, it will be all but impossible to intercept them. Most of them fly at a very low altitude: they creep just above the surface of the ocean.
Just one missile flies above – it guides the whole pack to the target. If the adversary destroys the guiding missile, it is immediately substituted by one of the remaining missiles flying below.
Project 949A Antey Submarine.
When the Soviet engineers designed these missiles, they incorporated elements of the artificial intelligence in their design: the missiles communicate with each other selecting their targets in such a way, so that two missiles accidentally do not hit the same small target.
For example, our missiles know how to select the main target, and if that target is an aircraft carrier, the “Granits” would not self-target the accompanying warships – they will target specifically the carrier.
In addition, the missiles know other little tricks that certainly will come as a “unpleasant” surprise for the Americans, such as the ability to interact with the Naval Space System of Intelligence and Guidance (NSIG).
It seems, however, that the author of this American article has not idea that NSIG exists. However, such a system existed back in the Soviet Union – named “Legend”.
It’s Russian descendant is “Liana” that has broad capabilities to detect and follow American aircraft carrier groups in the ocean. This system is capable of guiding missiles to targets even after their have been launched.
Liana is the second-generation Russian system for space-based surveillance and targeting. Work on the project began in the early 1990s, shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
- Ocean Surveillance - Liana - Lotus C and Pion-NCC
Obviously, no matter how good the weapons are or how sophisticated the detection system is – there is no 100% guarantee that an aircraft carrier will be destroyed by the first missile launch. However, the probability that by using all means at our disposal we will be able to sink it…
… is pretty high.
All the aircraft carriers in the world placed on one info-graphic.
Armed To The Teeth And Very Careful…
Let us find out who provides serious American journals with such analytical trash.
Who is this fantastic American “expert” that has no problem misleading his readers?
He is Loren Thompson, Chief Operating Officer of the Lexington Institute, a well-known organization, by the way. He is also a Deputy Director of the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University where he taught strategy to graduate students and lectured at the Harvard University’s School of Government.
We can only guess what kind of strategy this expert in strategic
thinking taught his students. I think we can appreciate the quality of
the government officials trained on the lecture of this illustrious
“expert”.
But let us return to the reasons why we, supposedly, will never be able to sink an American aircraft carrier.
Second and Third Reasons
The second and third reasons, according to Thompson, is that an
American aircraft carrier “has lots of weapons and can defend itself . .
.” Who could have thought? Really, one immediately senses that he is
dealing with a true professional looking into the heart of the matter
An aircraft carrier is indeed loaded with weapons.
Thompson, however, does not seem to understand that these are offensive and not defensive weapons. A carrier is completely incapable of defending itself! The air defense and defense against submarines are expected to be provided by the accompanying ships.
During World War II, American Aircraft carriers were targeted and sunk.
Loren Thompson says that these ships are numerous and well armed, and that is why a carrier will never be sunk. I am almost afraid to remind that an attack on the carrier will not be conducted single handedly, either!
And I would like to interject, that a modern nuclear missile detonated 25 miles away would severely damage a carrier group, if not sink it entirely.
...and...
The purpose of a carrier group is to go up against nuclear-armed major powers.
During the Soviet regime, a whole regiment of missile-armed Ty-22 aircraft was designated for the destruction of one American aircraft carrier. This means dozens of airplanes. Plus submarines armed with cruise missiles. Plus other means of attack and destruction at our Navy’s disposal.
As history teaches us: 70 years ago during the World War II the presence of a large number of accompanying ships did not prevent the Japanese from sinking many an American aircraft carrier. In two years from 1942 to 1944 they successfully sunk as many as 11 of them!
We should think the offensive weapons advanced significantly since those times.
Fourth Reason
Tu-22 M3M bomber.
For example, the fighter-interceptor Tu-22 M3 (long distance supersonic missile-armed bomber – editor note). These Soviet-time airplanes are being thoroughly modernized, and the equipment of these newly modernized machines Tu-22 M3M will include, in particular, anti-ship new generation missiles X-32. For some reason, they are rarely mentioned in press, but these are fantastic missiles.
After launch, the come up to 40 km and fly at the speed almost 5 time faster than the sound. After coming upon the target, they descend on it almost vertically.
Russian anti-ship new generation missile X-32.
Today, the United States Navy does not possess any weapon even remotely close in its characteristics to our X-32. The Americans also do not have any air defense system capable of intercepting this missile . . .
That is why the fourth reason that, as The National Interest asserts, makes the enemy incapable of destroying American aircraft carriers is particularly important.
What is this reason?
Oh yes – they “do not take chances”.
When, perhaps, it would be better not to leave the base and go into the open ocean at all? It is so much safer . . .
But if you are out there . . .
Take chances or not, but on the way to the area of conflict with our (Russian) Navy (in the North Atlantic, for example) the American aircraft carries would have to pass through straits, narrow channels, where…
… naturally, our submarines and other forces would be waiting for them…
…and, according to the Russian customs, welcome them…
… with the “bread-and-salt” of cruise missiles seasoned with torpedoes, mines, and bombs . . .
In any case, the traditional Russian welcome for the aircraft carriers will be assured!
Captain’s quarters inside one of the American Aircraft Carriers.
Whether you are careful or not, but you cannot arrive from
Jacksonville, an American Navy base on the US East coast, to our shores
(for example, to the area of responsibility of the Northern Navy with
its mane bases on the Kolsky peninsula) bypassing several well-known
narrow channels and straits.
The Americans themselves during the Cold War constructed anti-submarine barriers in those places with the goal of preventing our subs from getting into the Atlantic. The best-known examples – the barrier along the line the North Cape – Medvezhyi (Bear) island and between Iceland and Faroe islands . . .
Fifth Reason
The last, fifth, reason of the invincibility of the American aircraft carriers, according to Loren Thompson, is the greatest achievement of his expert-analytical approach.
The reason is a fact self-evident for every American that the Americans are generally the best in the world and they possess the best technologies, including the military ones.
However, this is not exactly a fact.
For example, the Russian technologies of the anti-ship cruise missiles are definitely better than their American counterparts. Everyone who knows anything and learned anything knows that. In particular, the military experts are paying close attention to the Russian hypersonic missiles of the new generation.
The Americans do not appear to be amenable to reason but some of their allies are more or less adequate. Thus, recently the media in the Great Britain created a veritable hysteria on the subject of the new Russian missile “Zircon”.
When an aircraft carrier is lost, so are all the aircraft and air wings associated with it.
The first to raise alarm was the British newspaper TheIndependent.
It stated: “It is impossible to stop “Zircon”. Even the newest air
defense systems are yet to come to the British Navy will only be able to
destroy target at the maximum speed of 3700 km/hour, whereas “Zircon”
can reach 6000 or even 7400 km/hour”.
The Daily Star offered further development of the theme about the scary Russians:
“Russia produces deadly missiles capable of destroying the entire Royal Navy in one hit. A representative of the British Foreign Ministry believes that the Russian “Zircon”, which cant carry a nuclear warhead, completely changes the rules of war at sea. Our aircraft carriers simply could not be deployed where the Russians have these missiles . . .”
Another British newspaper, The Mirror, carried on in the same alarmist tone.
It wrote:
“The Russian missile moves with the speed twice as fast as the speed of the sniper bullet. It can send the most advanced ships to the bottom of the sea. The experts say that out Navy today has no defense against this terrible weapon.
The appearance of “Zircon” in the Russian arsenal make both our aircraft carriers costing $7 billion each useless”.
The Daily Mail added the final accord to this panicky choir:
“Russia created an invincible cruise missile that travels at 4600 miles per hour and is capable of destroying a British aircraft carries with one hit. This deadly missile “Zircon” can be launched from the land, sea, or air carriers.
It covers 155 miles in 2.5 minutes. Its appearance make the very idea of the aircraft carrier groups meaningless, and we simply do not have anything to counter it with”.
The Americans might, of course, hope that our “Zircon” is a threat exclusively to the British aircraft carriers.
Regardless of what they think, the facts say differently: any attempt by the American Navy to test in the real battle conditions whether or not the Russians can sink their aircraft carrier will most likely end quite badly for the US of A.
Conclusion
While the American military and public lie safely ensconced within the “echo chamber” of “enormous military might”. The idea that American overseas projection – the carrier Navy can we eliminated within minutes has taken hold in the rest of the world.
This might be true, or might be wrong.
I, for one, hope that we never find out.
The systems for Empire projection, that America has relied on for the last 70 years, is coming to a close. What the evolution is pointing towards is…
America to step-down and stop being the world’s policeman.
The idea of carrier battle groups is a dangerous and outdated concept.
The idea that they can be used against a well-equipped and motivated enemy and nuclear weapons WILL NOT be used is insanity.
Losing all 12 carriers is possible along with the destruction of all of the biggest cities on American soil.
This is a terrible reality, and it may come to fruition unless United States stops it’s Empire-building role, and concentrates on domestic issues and tranquility.
If you enjoyed this post, you might find other posts in the SHTF index to your liking…
You’ll not
find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy
notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a
necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money
off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you
because I just don’t care to.
American elites remain out of touch with everyone, our institutions are broken, and some people on the Left and the Right are still in denial about how bad things have gotten. Yet, they continue to play their games, oblivious that they are treading on dangerous territory. As the rest of the world has gotten stronger, better, healthier, the United States has grown corrupt, slothful, and evil. Eventually there will be a point where these two dichotomies will cross.
It will probably be the result of some American “push” which would involve military action (of some sort) designed to exert pressure on a major Asian nation. This is already ongoing, but at some point in time, it will get “hot” and “loud”. As such, America is unprepared to the consequences that will result.
Here we talk about this.
Not the first to say that America is going to collapse…
I am not the first to point this out.
I do believe that it is the most obvious thing on the face of the planet. What I argue, in other postings, is that this collapse is inevitable. And as such, it should be “managed” so that a “new and improved” America may result.
(It’s) Sort of like Isaac Asimov’s foundation series of stories..
It is 12,020 G.E. (Galactic Era). For more than 12,000 years, the human race—thanks to hyper-space traveling technology—has colonized the Milky Way Galaxy in the form of a far-reaching Galactic Empire.
The Galactic Empire, whose failures have started to outnumber its successes, is still able to hide its faltering behind the Gordion Knot of a social, economical and political mess comprised of millions of habitable worlds and over 500 quadrillion people.
The oppressive and authoritarian rule of Emperor Cleon I is at its peak.
Young mathematician Hari Seldon, hailing from a backwater planet called Helicon, arrives at the Galactic Capital, Trantor, to present his latest research at a mathematical convention.
Having become associate professor at a considerably young age, Seldon proposes a new field of science that could be used to predict the future actions of the galactic society and humanity.
He cites the law of mass action, explaining that advance mathematical calculations can analyze the aggregate behavioral data of an enormous number of people to deduce the patterns of behavior of the masses.
- Asimov 101: Your Ultimate Guide to the 'Foundation' Series
Of course, the wealthy elite, and the “deep state” won’t have any of this.
They still want to maintain the pre-2016 uni-party oligarchy. But forces, far larger than their desires have set things in motion.
It’s like a large locomotive that is on the path to smash right into a solid granite mountain. It cannot be stopped easily.
Other opinions on this, from both the Left and the Right side of the political spectrum have written about this. You can read some of these articles here…
Not the first to say that America cannot win World War III…
Like my statement that America is in decline, others have also voiced agreement that America is not equipped to fight a major war against a major superpower.
Well, here is yet another article, and I think it is pretty well-written and I would like to include it here.
Check it out…
The following is an article titled “Why America Is Set to Lose the Next War” and it was penned by Angelo Codevilla. It’s quite good. All credit to the author, and I would recommend a visit to the American Mind website from whence it was first published.
Our elite forces are not so elite.
News that the wargames which the RAND corporation runs for the U.S. government show U.S. forces getting “its ass handed to it” by Russia and China have elicited disbelief: “how could this possibly be?”
The short answer is that the U.S. armed forces are utterly corrupt: the very definition of parade ground forces, superbly equipped, fabulously paid (to look good)—but utterly incapable of winning the wars that our even more corrupt national security establishment defines for them.
Corrupt, and un-serious.
Specifically: U.S. forces fail in the wargames, and would fare worse in real life, because they would be sent to fight the Chinese for control of the Western Pacific, and Russia for control of areas west of the Niemen river, as well as north of Crimea.
The Chinese and Russians, respectively, would enjoy advantages in these areas.
U.S. forces, configured as they are because of inter- and intra-Service corporate priorities, because of military-industrial collusion, and above all because of the national security establishment’s self-regarding prejudices and proclivities, are not based, sized, or equipped seriously to contest those advantages.
Above all, they lack realistic plans for doing so.
In sum, U.S. forces would lose these wars because of classic mismatches between ends and means. All entirely foreseeable. I repeat: Corruption.
The wargames dealt only with operational/tactical factors on the conventional level in the theaters of operation. But China and Russia are nuclear powers whose missiles can deliver nuclear warheads to the U.S.
Neither has been shy about pointing out that they might force the U.S. to choose between its objective in their back yard and the loss of one or more American cities.
Moreover, longstanding U.S. policy, most recently reaffirmed in 2019, is not to have any equipment that can defend against Russian or Chinese missiles.
If, perchance, Chinese or Russian forces should have difficulty disposing of U.S. challenges, raising the nuclear specter would surely force the U.S. side to reconsider why we engaged in war in others’ back yards without the capacity to protect ourselves at home.
Since nuclear weapons are fully integrated into Russia’s ground forces, this rude awakening would likely come in the course of ordinary operations.
On the Chinese side, we might well see the annihilation of Guam. But, one might respond, “U.S. nuclear missile forces are so superior to China’s!” Sure. Superior for what? What good would killing a couple of million Chinese do?
What forces against what, where, to do what, is the nub
of the military matter. The Chinese and Russians, respectively, have
good strategic, operational, and tactical answers. The U.S. side does
not.
The Chinese want to control the Western Pacific militarily largely from the land. They began by building hundreds, perhaps thousands, of medium-range missiles able to cover the sea out to the eastern edge of Taiwan, making them largely invulnerable by emplacing them in caves or on mobile platforms.
To this they added excellent aircraft with cruise missiles, and diesel-electric submarines that would be placed—still and quiet—to wait for the U.S. carriers.
Then, they developed the DF-21, a ballistic missile that can adjust course on re-entry and kill a carrier with a nuclear warhead.
And then, they pushed that defensive envelope outward by building a network of artificial islands in the South China Sea, the military value of each exceeding that of several carriers.
China’s control exists.
To try undoing it with current bases and equipment, the U.S. would have to send at least four irreplaceable carrier battle groups across the Pacific to battle their way through Chinese defenses.
The full health of America’s satellite network is a prerequisite for such an attempt.
But the Chinese are certain to attack that network. Since the U.S. has precisely zero means of protecting against kinetic ASATs, we must assume something less than precise functioning of numerically vastly inferior forces whose perfect functioning is essential to their operation in an enemy environment.
Guam, and Yokosuka, over a thousand miles away from the action, would be the only nearby bases.
The U.S. has studiously avoided fortifying Taiwan.
But even assuming perfect functioning, the U.S. offensive in the Western Pacific would consist of a contest of attrition, in which China has the overwhelming advantage. There is no substitute for strategic vision.
China has it, the U.S. does not.
On the Russian side, the strategic objective is equally clear: maintain superiority in an area well known to, and easily reached by, the home team against what the Americans can bring from far away.
The area east of Poland, between Lithuania and northern Ukraine, was the scene of the great Soviet summer 1944 offensive that crushed the Wehrmacht.
One or perhaps two combat brigades would be the maximum that the U.S. could deploy to that area, probably by air through Warsaw.
Russian operations would consist of encirclement by land and denial of resupply by air through its formidable S-400 air defense system. Russian operations envisage a minimum of combat and maximal exploitation of the theater’s distance from U.S. power.
The operational objective would be to turn U.S. troops into hostages.
The same would apply to the southern theater—except that U.S. operations there would be aided by a U.S. carrier battle group in the Black Sea—another reservoir of hostages.
For a half century, the U.S. military-industrial-national-security establishment has been getting America’s collective ass kicked around the world. As patriotic Americans have bled, their superiors have gone to Valhallas in their retirement villas and as experts on Fox News.
It’s past time for Americans to realize how overpraised and overpaid this bunch really are.
Angelo Codevilla is a Senior Fellow of the Claremont Institute and professor emeritus of International Relations at Boston University.
If you enjoyed this post, please visit some of my other posts in my SHTF index here…
You’ll not find
any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy
notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a
necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money
off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you
because I just don’t care to.
This is an interesting interview with Andrei Martyanov. He is a Russian military expert who emigrated to the United States. In it he argues that the stranglehold of American propaganda by the mainstream media has created a dangerous situation – one in which the “fake news” is believed by the American leadership.
ANDREI MARTYANOVisanexpertonRussianmilitaryandnavalissues. HewasborninBaku, USSRin 1963. HegraduatedfromtheKirovNavalRedBannerAcademyandservedasanofficerontheshipsandstaffpositionofSovietCoastGuardthrough 1990. HetookpartintheeventsintheCaucasuswhichledtothecollapseoftheSovietUnion.
- Losing Military Supremacy: The Myopia of American Strategic Planning
He explains that the American leadership, knowing full well that the media is a propaganda tool, actually believes much of the propaganda that they create. This is true on all levels.
The American leadership actually believes this “news”. Not only the “fake news” from CNN, MSNBC an WaPo but also from the conservative and alternative “Right wing” media.
He argues that this is extraordinarily dangerous.
Andrei Martyanov.
This belief in American propaganda is dangerous because it creates a situation where foolish men in leadership positions can make some very serious mistakes.
The majority of travelers I have met see foreign lands entirely through the filter glasses of their home front. Their worldview is shaped by government schools, Hollywood actors, television programming, mainstream pressing, and the resulting illusion of “us being the good guys.” When they travel, they carry a lifetime supply of brainwash shampoo with them. A backpack full of sheep’s wool over their eyes. And a dumbed-down uniform of sweatshop t-shirts, shorts and sandals that sores the eye of the beholder.
-Doug Casey, International Man
Mistakes, Leadership mistakes, that could absolutely devastate the United States. The leadership of a healthy and functioning nation needs good and accurate intelligence. It cannot rely own it’s own propaganda to base decisions upon.
History is full of stories of the destruction of cities, nations and empires that fell due to the bad Intel, and decisions by the top leadership. Read about the destruction of Hungary by Genghis Khan, if you don't believe me.
Or, consider the Marketing strategy of Gillette with their "Men are inherently foul pigs" campaign (to sell razors).
Or, consider Hollywood and their bevy of all-female re-writes of famous movies. Movies that no one will watch. Like "Oceans 8".
Or, consider what happened to NFL football, when the team owners permitted the players to protest against America.
Now, consider what might happen to America if it believes the narrative that both Russia and China are backwards, third-world shit holes and are no match for the United States military...
Ah. Andrei . You do not need to believe him. You just need to consider that he has some good ideas and makes some valid points.
Now, I find that he has some good points, especially his appraisal on the ignorance of the Washington “insider” class. His ideas are able to explain much of the strange decision processes that originate out of Washington DC today.
Andrei wrote…
Time after time the American military has failed to match lofty declarations about its superiority, producing instead a mediocre record of military accomplishments.
Starting from the Korean War the United States hasn’t won a single war against a technologically inferior, but mentally tough enemy.
Vietnam
Syria
Lybia
Somalia
Yemen
Lebanon
Iraq
The technological dimension of American “strategy” has completely overshadowed any concern with the social, cultural, operational and even tactical requirements of military (and political) conflict.
With a new Cold War with Russia emerging, the United States enters a new period of geopolitical turbulence completely unprepared in any meaningful way—intellectually...
... economically,
... militarily...
...or culturally
... to face a reality which was hidden for the last 70+ years behind the curtain of never-ending Chalabi moments...
... and a strategic delusion concerning Russia, whose history the US viewed through a Solzhenitsified caricature kept alive by a powerful neocon lobby, which even today dominates US policy makers’ minds.
The book Losing Military Supremacy: The Myopia of American Strategic Planning explores the dramatic difference between the Russian and US approach to warfare, which manifests itself across the whole spectrum of activities from art and the economy, to the respective national cultures;
Losing Military Supremacy: The Myopia of American Strategic Planning illustrates the fact that Russian economic, military and cultural realities and power are no longer what American “elites” think they are by addressing Russia’s new and elevated capacities in the areas of traditional warfare as well as cyberwarfare and space;
Losing Military Supremacy: The Myopia of American Strategic Planning studies in depth several ways in which the US can simply stumble into conflict with Russia and what must be done to avoid it.
Martyanov’s former Soviet military background enables deep insight into the fundamental issues of warfare and military power as a function of national power—assessed correctly, not through the lens of Wall Street “economic” indices and a FIRE economy, but through the numbers of enclosed technological cycles and culture, much of which has been shaped in Russia by continental warfare and which is practically absent in the US.
-Amazon
Indeed, a point that I have “hammered” over and over again, is the idea that the most dangerous propaganda is the news reports that we WANT to believe.
Propaganda works best when we WANT to believe the lies told to us.
Such as 11 million Uighur Muslims are in reeducation concentration camps in Xinjiang China. That America must "do something" to free the poor Muslim innocents! All, yes ALL of conservative news is full of these stories and the figure of 11 million is bantered about without question.
Except...
No one can point out where these concentration camps are.
You cannot find them on Google Earth. And you should. After all, the population of New York City is 6 million people. So a concentration camp housing 11 million people would be over twice the size of New York city. It would be pretty fucking big. Bigger than the largest city in America, and then some.
You would be able to see it from the Moon.
If there were 11 concentration camps in Xinjiang, China, (each one million people in size) then you would be able to easily locate all eleven Atlanta, Georgia sized complexes on Google Earth. Where are all these concentration camps?
Simple math.
Simple thought process.
... Propaganda. Don't fall for it.
Anyways, he makes a great point.
Our American leadership has taken to actually believing what is being repeated day in and day out by the lying American mainstream press. And this is very dangerous.
Some minor Russian Naval ships.
You might not like his opinions, but please just view his point of view as something that you will not hear from the mainstream, or alt-conservative news. As such it is a valuable alternative view point.
One that should be taken seriously.
The interview.
Yvonne Lorenzo interviews Andrei Martyanov …
Yvonne Lorenzo: I’d like to discuss the central thesis of your first book, Losing Military Supremacy. Aside from a civil war in the late 1800s, the United States has never experienced the effects of a devastating war fought on its own soil by foreign nation and believes it is invulnerable and won’t be attacked. To the contrary, Russians to this day know the price of war. If you would be so kind to summarize, if possible, the key points you wished to make known about Russia.
"America believes that it is invulnerable and won’t ever be attacked."
The Severodvinsk, the first of Russia’s multirole Yasen K-560 submarines, by the pier of the Sevmash shipyard in Severodvinsk, Arkhangelsk Region.
The difference is that I get more in depth into the tactical, operational and technological issues—to a degree that is possible in what amounts to a geopolitical study—to demonstrate and drive my point home…
… that the current American political elites are utterly delusional on the nature of modern warfare…
Crew of the Alexander Nevsky nuclear submarine topside at a welcome ceremony for the Navy’s new Borei-class project 955 vessel at Kamchatka’s Vilyuchinsk base.
… especially in a peer-to-peer scenario of which the United States hasn’tfaced since WW II.
My point is very simple…
…the ignorance of the American ruling class of modern warfare is such that it has become a clear and present danger for the world…
John Bolton neocon in the Trump administration.
… since, while improbable at this stage, it is totally plausible to see at some point of time someone in the US political top losing it…
…and unleashing a confrontation with Russia, or China…
…being fully convinced, mostly by Hollywood or [Tom] Clancy-esque pseudo military fiction…
…that the United States and NATO can attack Russia and survive.
That, America could attack Russia or China and it would remain unscathed and devastate the rest of the world and America would not suffer at all.
That’s the danger…
…especially in a country whose elites completely lost their mind and are delusional…
Rulership class in America are bat-shit crazy.
…or reside in what I define as a Perpetual Chalabi Moment.
American leadership, on both sides of the political spectrum, plus the oligarchy that controls them are completely delusional and out of touch with the American citizens, the rest of the world, and the comparative technological strengths of America.
The arms race.
The US did lose the arms race.
The arms race was not lost in 2018 or even 2015, however; it was lost much earlier and it was mostly due to the US media-propaganda machine…
… which kept it secret from the US public.
It still continues to do so but it is increasingly difficult to keep it under wraps when information, including imagery of what Russia does in this field becomes increasingly available.
Ships from Russia’s Caspian Flotilla launching Kalibr-NK cruise missiles against Daesh targets in Syria.
But that is just part of the issue: I write about predictors—the real economy, scientific development, education, etc.—for war’s outcomes [are] non-stop.
Other people have written about these predictors. Not once do they agree with the narrative coming out of the American mainstream media.
In the end, when I state that the US elites have no clue about the size and complexity of Russia’s economy, it is one thing…
…but when I state that they basically have no clue about their own economy, not Wall Street’s cooking of books, I can rely on some serious American professionals in the field.
President Trump, right, talks with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo during a Cabinet meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House in Washington, on July 18, 2018. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
The report was prepared by an Inter-agency Task Force in September 2018 and reads as an epitaph to the US machine-building complex…
… and the issue is not just massive de-industrialization…
America has still not recovered from the de-industrialization of the last forty years. It is not going to recover in only one or two years.
… or the lack of a labor force which can fill in for departing old-timers…
…with many in the new generation of Americans being mostly interested in pot and drugs or in avoiding any productive labor…
…nor money alone can solve the problem of America’s declining military strength, which was always overstated to start with.
It is the culture, an institutional one, which is responsible for this decline.
Russia presents new MiG-35 fighter jet to the public.
The decline of American culture
The United States is very good at building extremely expensive and dubiously effective (against a competent enemy) power projection forces, which by definition are offensive and aggressive.
Once one gets into the issues of actual defense, the picture changes dramatically for the United States.
It is enough to mention the whole non-stop hysteria about Turkey buying and activating the S-400 complex, with India already having a 5 billion dollar contract signed with Russia, and many Arab states lining up for Russian-made air and anti-missile systems, not to mention combat aircraft, such as a contact for SU-35s between Egypt and Russia signed, following next.
S-400 complex launching system.
All of it creates an extremely emotional reaction in the United States, but the fact that Russian military technology is in some key defense fields better than anything out there was never in doubt.
S-400 complex launching system with potential targets that it is designed to strike.
It is enough to recall Vietnam, but in the time of radio and printed media it was easier to control narratives.
The American media blitz on this subject is constant and unyielding.
Today it is extremely difficult.
Russia always built weapons to effectively kill the enemy—such is Russia’s experience with warfare, much of which being invasions of foreign powers.
The United States has zero historic experience with defending the US proper against powerful and brutal enemies.
While the Revolutionary war had some moments of brutality, as did the American civil war, neither wars EVER approached the level of absolute depraved scorched earth devastation that Russia, Europe, and China have experienced.
It is something that America has NEVER experienced.
Mexico never invaded. Canada never invaded. Russia never invaded. Cuba never invaded. Bermuda never invaded.
It is a cultural difference, a profound one and it manifests itself across the whole spectrum of activities, not just the respective military-industrial complexes.
In other words, Russians MUST build top of the line weaponry, because the safety of Russia depends on it.
Dr. Matthew Alford of the University of Bath, author of National Security Cinema: The Shocking New Evidence of Government Control in Hollywood, told MintPress that the new Amazon product is a “disgrace of a series,” unfairly demonizing a nation at a time when the United States has its boot on the throat of Venezuelan society.
Russian SU-30SM.
“The new Jack Ryan series comes in the context of four movies stretching back decades that have all had Department of Defense and/or CIA support at the scriptwriting phrase,” he noted, labeling Jack Ryan as a classic “national security entertainment product”.
The character of Jack Ryan first appeared in Cold War era Clancy stories such as The Hunt for Red October and The Cardinal of the Kremlin, where the heroic Ryan battles the dark forces of the Soviet Union.
The series was put on hiatus but has recently returned, bringing with it much of the same Cold War mentality and rhetoric.
Ryan has been previously played on screen by Hollywood stars such as Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford and Ben Affleck.
Alford’s book, which he co-wrote with Tom Secker, describes the enormous influence that the national security state has on popular culture.
Based on Freedom of Information requested documents, the two calculated that between 2004 and 2016, the Department of Defense was directly involved in the production of 977 Hollywood movies or television shows, many of which were carefully scripted, edited and curated by government agents in order to present a certain viewpoint of the world to the public.
For example, the writers of Homeland were revealed to have private meetings with ex-CIA officials before each season.
From big budget movies like Ironman and Transformers to surprisingly banal television productions like The Biggest Loser, Mythbusters or American Idol, virtually every movie or television show featuring the military or intelligence figures has been edited, scripted or funded by the Department of Defense in order to cast the government in the best possible light.
Those that do not comply with the Department of Defense’s requests are not given privileged access to, or use of, military resources and may be attacked by the state as being unpatriotic or deceptive.
The constant flow of pro-security state messages has an effect on the public.
Researchers found that respondents who were shown torture scenes from the television series 24 were more likely to subsequently support the government’s policies of torture in sites like Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib.
This held even for liberal college students.
Andrei Martyanov: The first person of repute who challenged Tom Clancy’s fantasies was professor Roger Thompson in his seminal 2006 book Lessons Not Learned, in which he correctly asked a question how an insurance agent who never served a day in uniform and had undergraduate degree in English can write competently on any issue related to modern combat and technology.
In Clancy’s case it was clear that he was promoted, he openly writes about it in his book, by former Secretary of the Navy John Lehman, for purely propaganda reasons.
Secretary of the Navy John Lehman swearing in Grace Harper.
Most of what Clancy wrote was cringe-worthy pop-literature, which could be described as incompetent military-intelligence porn.
Ouch!
Clancy never made it a secret that his Jack Ryan character was written from…Tom Clancy himself. A good testimony about late Clancy himself.
Why Jack Ryan was written as a spy as opposed to as insurance agent remains a complete mystery to me, but, I guess, whatever sells books for the late Tom Clancy.
These digs… oh, boy!
In Soviet/Russian military environment Clancy’s “literature” overwhelmingly was treated with ironic smile at best, and with Homeric laughter at worst.
Yup. How the rest of the world feels about this kind of literature, and movies.
But that pretty much describes the “level” of American “knowledge” and awareness of Russia in general and her military in particular—a caricature.
It is, however, one thing to promote caricatures in pop-art, totally another when a caricature becomes a working model for decision making at the top political level.
That is dangerous.
And his point is very, very valid…
As General Latiff of DARPA correctly noted—most of what the US public and political class know about war is from entertainment, from Hollywood to the literature of such “professionals” like the late Clancy.
The Generals won’t save us.
Yvonne Lorenzo: I quoted (retired) Major Danny Sjursen earlier. He wrote a piece title, “The Generals Won’t Save Us From The Next War”
for the American Conservative. I want to reproduce an excerpt and then
ask you to comment. Your disdain for the political class is well known
but what about the generals in power? How capable and knowledgeable are
they? How competent?
Why should any sentient citizen believe that these commanders’ former subordinates—a new crop of ambitious generals—will step forward now and oppose a disastrous future war with the Islamic Republic?
Don’t believe it!
Senior military leaders will salute, about-face, and execute unethical and unnecessary combat with Iran or whomever else (think Venezuela) Trump’s war hawks, such as John Bolton, decide needs a little regime changing.
John Bolton. Donald Trump’s National Security Advisor John Bolton said that it would be great if the United States could get their hands on that Venezuelan oil, and that statement alone tells you everything that you need to know about why the US is trying so hard to interfere in Venezuelan affairs.
Need proof that even the most highly lauded generals will sheepishly obey the next absurd march to war? Join me in a brief trip down an ever so depressing memory lane.
Let us begin with my distinguished West Point graduation speaker, Air Force General and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Richard Myers.
He goes down in history as as a Donald Rumsfeld lackey because it turns out he knew full well that there were “holes” in the Bush team’s inaccurate intelligence used to justify the disastrous Iraq war.
Yet we heard not a peep from Myers, who kept his mouth shut and retired with full four-star honors.
Air Force General and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Richard Myers .
Then, when Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki accurately (and somewhat courageously) predicted in 2003 that an occupation of Iraq would require up to half a million U.S. troops, he was quietly retired.
Rummy passed over a whole generation of active officers to pull a known sycophant, General Peter Schoomaker, out of retirement to do Bush the Younger’s bidding.
It worked too.
Schoomaker, despite his highly touted special forces experience, never threw his stars on the table and called BS on a losing strategy even as it killed his soldiers by the hundreds and then the thousands.
Having heard him (unimpressively) speak at West Point in 2005, I still can’t decide whether he lacked the intellect to do so or the conscience.
Maybe both.
General Peter Schoomaker.
After Bush landed a fighter plane on a carrier and triumphantly announced “mission accomplished” in Iraq, poor Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the newest three-star in the Army, took over the hard part of conquest: bringing the “natives” to heel.
He utterly failed, being too reliant on what he knew—Cold War armored combat—and too ambitious to yell “stop!”
Soon after, it came to light that Sanchez had bungled the investigation—or cover-up (take your pick)—of the massive abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison.
Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez.
General John Abizaid was one of the most disappointing in a long line of subservient generals.
It seems Abizaid knew better: he knew the Iraq war couldn’t be won, that it was best to hand over control to the Iraqis posthaste, that General David Petraeus’s magical “surge” snake oil wouldn’t work.
Still, Abizaid didn’t quit and retired quietly.
He’s now Trump’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia, which is far from comforting.
General John Abizaid .
Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster was heralded as an outside-the-box thinker.
And indeed, he was a Gulf War I hero, earned a Ph.D., taught history at West Point, and wrote a (mostly) well-received book on Vietnam.
Yet when Trump appointed him national security advisor, he brought only in-the-box military beliefs with him into the White House.
He then helped author a fanciful National Defense Strategy that argued the U.S. military must be ready at a moment’s notice to fight Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and “terror.”
Perhaps at the same time!
No nuance, no diplomatic alternatives, no cost-benefit analysis, just standard militarism.
These days, McMaster is running around decrying what he calls a “defeatist narrative” and arguing for indefinite war in the Middle East.
Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster .
Then there was the other Washington insider and “liberal” favorite, one of a trio of “adults in the room,” General Jim Mattis.
Though sold to the public as a “warrior monk,” Mattis offered no alternative to America’s failing forever wars.
In fact, when he decided his conscience no longer allowed him to stay in the Trump administration, his reason for leaving was that the president had called for a reduction of troops in Afghanistan after 18 senseless years.
U.S.-supported Saudi terror bombings that killed tens of thousands of Yemeni civilians? A U.S.-backed Saudi blockade that starved at least 85,000 Yemeni children to death? Yeah, he was fine with that.
But a modest troop withdrawal from a losing 18-year-old war in landlocked Central Asia, that he couldn’t countenance.
General Jim Mattis.
Then there’s the propensity for politics and pageantry among senior military officers.
This was embarrassingly and unconscionably on display in the tragic cases of Private First Class Jessica Lynch and Corporal Pat Tillman.
When, during the initial invasion of Iraq, the young Lynch’s maintenance convoy got lost, she was captured and briefly detained by Saddam’s army.
Knowing a good public relations opportunity when they saw it, Bush’s staff and the generals concocted a slew of comforting lies: Lynch was a hero who had fought to her last bullet (she’d never fired her rifle), she’d been tortured (she hadn’t), her combat-camera equipped commando rescue had come just in the nick of time (she was hardly guarded and in a hospital).
Who cares if it was all lies, if this young woman’s terrifying experience was co-opted and embellished? The Lynch story was media fodder.
Private First Class Jessica Lynch.
More tragic was the Pat Tillman escapade.
Tillman was an admirable outlier, the only professional athlete to give up a million dollar contract to enlist in the military soon after 9/11.
Tillman and his brother went all in, too, choosing the elite Army Rangers. It was quite the story.
Rumsfeld even wrote the new private a congratulatory letter. Then reality got in the way. Tillman was killed in Afghanistan during a friendly fire incident that can only be described as gross incompetence.
Almost immediately, President Bush’s staff and much of the Army’s top brass went to work crafting the big lie: a heroic narrative of Tillman’s demise, replete with dozens of marauding Taliban fighters and a one-man charge befitting the hard-hitting former NFL defensive back.
Promoted to corporal posthumously, he was awarded the Silver Star. Some of his fellow Rangers were instructed to lie to the Tillman family at the memorial service regarding the manner of Pat’s death.
Corporal Pat Tillman.
Only Bush’s neophytes and the Army’s complicit generals didn’t count on the tenacity of Tillman’s parents.
They waged something nearing war with the U.S. military for several years until they found out the truth, unearthing a cover-up that implicated Bush’s civilians and many of the military’s four-star generals (including Stanley McChrystal, John Abizaid, and Richard Myers).
The Tillman family got their congressional hearing, but the sycophantic representatives on the Hill refused to seriously criticize the top brass and no one was seriously punished.
Andrei Martyanov:
I don’t know the exact answer to this question. I am positive that
there are many highly educated and competent people in US Armed Forces
but there is no denial of the fact that some segments of the US top
brass are more politicians than military leaders. It is not unique to
the United States Armed Forces, but the record of failures is in the
open and everyone can make their own conclusions.
Fighting Russia is the goal of the political class
Yvonne Lorenzo: Your latest book, The (Real) Revolution in Military Affairs provides further detail on Russia’s technological advancements. A layman, I see America as principally using bombing as artillery and proxy fighters (see Syria) on the ground—not too competent. I’ve read enough to be dangerous—having no military background—but wars can’t be won by bombing campaigns alone, even against a mediocre target (I think you called Iraq’s army third-rate).
Fighting Russia, which appears to be the goal of the political class, is not what they will expect, even if the confrontation doesn’t rise to a nuclear exchange.
I’d appreciate your summarizing some of the key points of this book but I have to ask, having read some of The Saker’s writings…
… can Russia be overwhelmed by thousands upon thousands of slow missiles, like the TLAMs…
… or will Russia use their “800 Pound Gorilla” in your parlance, that is…
A leaked memo confirms that Russia is developing Kanyon, the world's most powerful nuclear weapon, with twice the power of any ever tested.
This is 2x, or double the destructive power of the most dangerous and largest nuclear weapon ever designed; TheSovietRDS-202hydrogenbomb (codenameIvanorVanya), knownbyWesternnationsasTsarBomba.
Russia's New 'Satan' Nuclear Weapons System Could Wipe Out Texas orFrance. Russia hasformonthsbeentestingagiant nuclear weapons deliverysystemthatcancarry 10 heavyweightwarheads—enoughpowertowipeout Texas orFrance. This is theRS-28Sarmatintercontinentalballisticmissileknownin Russia as "Satan 2"Mar 06, 2018 · Russia announced it is about to test its Satan 2 missile, a nuclear weapon so powerful it could destroy a country size the of Texas or France in seconds. While its official name is RS-28 Sarmat, NATO officials have given the weapon the nickname Satan 2, the Mirror reports.
RS-28 Sarmat ICBM.
… does Russia have enough weapons, from cruise missiles, to defensive, to hypersonic, not to be overwhelmed…
… and are American generals aware of the risk if it does should they engage in hostilities?
Rumors of Kanyon (or Ocean Multipurpose System Status-6, as it’s known in Russia) first started swirling in 2015 following a leak on Russian television. Soon after, the nation confirmed the weapon’s existence, while claiming the leak was a mistake.
However, as defense analyst and military historian H. I. Sutton told Futurism, this leak of the latest nuclear posture review is the first official recognition of Kanyon by U.S. officials.
“The unclassified posture review document doesn’t really tell defense analysts anything new, but it does establish Kanyon as a military fact,” said Sutton. “Until now, many observers had regarded the system as ‘fake news.’ I think that this was partly because the stated specifications are so incredible and partly because it is hard to understand how it will be used.”
Incredible Devastation
“Incredible” is perhaps putting it mildly.
Based on leaked Russian documents, Kanyon is a nuclear-armed autonomous torpedo capable of traveling 10,000 kilometers (6,213 miles) with a 100-megaton thermonuclear weapon as its payload. That’s at least twice as powerful as any nuclear weapon ever tested. According to nuclear bomb simulator Nukemap, it would instantly kill 8 million people and injure an additional 6.6 million if dropped on New York City.
Kanyon’s weapon wouldn’t be dropped, though. It would arrive via the ocean and bring with it a massive artificial tsunami that would blanket the coastal area in radioactive water. If the warhead is “salted” with the radioactive isotope Cobalt-60, as some have reported, a detonation could render contaminated areas uninhabitable by humans for an entire century.
“Kanyon is unique in every respect,” said Sutton. “There really is nothing like it in any navy’s inventory.”
- US Report Confirms Russia Is Developing the World’s Most Powerful Nuclear Weapon. The 100-megaton thermonuclear weapon isn't "fake news."
The latest nuclear weapons that China and Russia field are smarter, more technically advanced, faster, and superior to their American counterparts in every way.
I noted your comments on Professor Cohen’s latest on Ukraine posted to Unz.com on November 14th but his most recent video in PushBack from The Grayzone he said that in all the years he studied Russia and America he’d never thought the two nations would go to war.
Yet now he fears this possibility. I’d appreciate your thoughts.
America WILL NOT survive World War III, and it is foolish to believe that it will.
It is a kind of Anglo-Saxon policy not to have cooperation on the European continent – mainly between the Russians, the French, the Poles and the Germans. They want to have a line of confrontation in this area and therefore are against all promises. [As a result] NATO was extended to the East.
I was responsible for the organization of the German Armed Forces on the German territory following reunification.
We did not want foreign troops in former East Germany.
We did not want to have British or French troops there; we wanted to have only German ones.
We wanted to explain to the world that there was no desire to enlarge NATO up to the new borders with Russia that were created in 1992.
It was against all the ideas we had after reunification.
What is happening now is some kind of Anglo-Saxon policy that was created even before WWI.
We are on the path of war again.
That is so much against the will of our people.
What is happening now is some kind of Anglo-Saxon policy that was created even before WWI. We are on the path of war again.
This is also against the will of the Dutch, the French, the Spanish and the Italians.
We see it as a disaster that a US president that is willing to cooperate with the Russian President Vladimir Putin – President [Donald] Trump – has to face such a disastrous policy organized by the US deep state, which is against our national interests and the national interests of all other western Europeans…
What is happening now is some kind of Anglo-Saxon policy that was created even before WWI. We are on the path of war again.
***
But, when you now come to Rostock, Dresden or Leipzig they are learning Russian again, they go to theaters to watch Russian performances and listen to Russian music.
They have re-established their links with Russia, and if they could do what they want to do, they would be the big economic partners of Russia these days.
Things have really changed for the Russian Federation and with regard to Russia.
People in Dresden, Saxony’s capital, are absolutely proud that Russian President Vladimir Putin once served there.
That is the reality these days, despite what the American mainstream media say.
Would Russia engage in tank battles and soldier-to-soldier combat if NATO attacked, or would they use stand-off weapons that you discuss just to obliterate command and control centers, the sources of munitions, etc.?
Mr. Wimmer clearly sees that some Germans, as opposed to the “vassal” government, want better relations with Russia as opposed to war, including cold war.
Andrei Martyanov: The issue of TLAMs: in a conventional configuration, I don’t think that they can do much damage to Russia, especially considering Russia’s unique anti-air and anti-missile defense.
A few possible leakers in conventional configuration will not do much damage; a few leakers in a nuclear configuration, however, is a completely different game. Hence Russia’s worry about Aegis Ashore installations in Romania and Poland. That’s the main worry.
"Leakers" missile weapons systems that are able to bore through national defenses.
In a
conventional scenario, Russia will not be overwhelmed and even
conventional response-head on (otvetno-vstrechnyi) strike will be
extremely damaging to NATO and the US.
Thatfirst strike (inRussianparlance, a retaliatory strike, or otvetno-vstrechnyi udar) followsRussia’smilitarydoctrine, whichmandatessuch strikes tocompensateforRussia’sconventionalinferiority vis-à-vis NATOandtheUnitedStates.
- Eastern European Missile Defense: Russia's Threat ...
Valeri Gerasimov was explicit couple of years ago in his interview about Russia having enough stand-off weapons at every strategic direction to provide a reliable deterrence.
Even in conventional exchange Russia can launch weapons at the US proper with Russian bombers not leaving Russia’s aerospace.
The X-101 cruise missile has a range in excess of 5,500 kilometers. Russia continues to increase her deterrence with 3M22 Zircon getting ready to be tested from Admiral Gorshkov frigate very soon, with Kazan SSGN of project 885 planned to launch the hyper-sonic Zircon from underwater early next year.
All this changes deterrence dynamics completely because the United States cannot defend her coasts and in depth against such systems.
In this photo released by China’s Xinhua News Agency, officers and soldiers of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy hold a welcome ceremony as a Russian naval ship arrives in port in Zhanjiang in southern China’s Guangdong Province, Monday, Sept. 12, 2016
Russia can intercept the bulk of US and NATO cruise missiles; the US cannot do so against Russia.
Yvonne Lorenzo: As I write this on December 3rd, 2019, Vesti News posted this video on the Zircon: Putin Unveils Zircon Hypersonic Missiles! Stresses Importance of Beefing Up Russia’s Navy!
The brilliant Houthi military victory over the Saudis fulfilled the predictions in military doctrine made by America’s own De Gaulle, a retired US Army Colonel, Douglas Macgregor with an outstanding combat and command record who has been treated over the past 20 years by most of his own country’s four star generals and civilian theorists with contempt: Just as the French Army ignored DeGaulle’s armored warfare doctrines 90 years, when they were being read and applied passionately by the generals of Germany.
Macgregor observed after the Houthi victory in September that that there was no reason for surprise. Sure enough, two and a half years earlier, in testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) on March 7, 2017, he stated:
“The skies over the battlefield will be crowded with loitering munitions, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs or drones). These agile cruise missiles are designed to engage beyond line-of-sight ground targets. With proximity-fused, high-explosive warheads, these systems will remain airborne for hours, day or night. Equipped with high resolution electro-optical and infrared cameras, enemy operators will locate, surveil, and guide the drones to targets on the ground… When these loitering missiles are integrated into the enemy’s Strike Formations armed with precision guided rocket artillery that fires high explosive, incendiary, thermobaric, warheads including sub-munitions with self-targeting anti-tank and anti-personnel munitions warfare as we know it changes.”
Macgregor was even more prescient in predicting the previous Houthi precision missile strikes that wiped out half the production capacity of Saudi Arabia’s oil refineries earlier in September.
Those attacks humiliatingly exposed the ultra-expensive, endlessly praised US missile defense systems sold to Riyadh as worthless dinosaurs.
Yet, writing in his book “Transformation Under Fire” published back in 2003, Macgregor had said: “The idea is to link maneuver and strike assets through a flatter operational architecture empowered by new terrestrial and space-based communications throughout the formation… Long-range, joint precision fires and C4ISR [Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance] offer the possibility to reach over enemy armies to directly strike at what they hope to defend or preserve.
Precision strategic strikes closely coordinated and timed with converging Army combat forces would present a defending enemy with an insoluble dilemma.”
As you see, he’s retired and never became a general.
At least he appears to oppose war with Russia and Iran and China, from his appearances on Tucker Carlson that I’ve seen. Can you comment on the above piece and how Russia might respond if America used such techniques? It seems to me Russia would also be able to implement such techniques.
Andrei Martyanov: Douglas Macgregor is a brilliant man but his testimony is about…
… fighting an enemy which does not posses C4ISR [Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance] capabilities comparable to that of the United States.
Russia does and we have to be very clear on that distinction.
Fighting a modern combined arms war against such opponents as North Korea or even Iran the United States will have massive leverage, at least initially, before boots get on the ground, in terms of stand-off operations.
Once boots hit the ground, well, then it will change. But fighting peers, such as China, let alone Russia—…
…I simply cannot see how the United States will stay away from escalation to a nuclear threshold, because the scale of losses will be catastrophic both in men and materiel.
It’s EXTREMELY unlikely that the US can stop modern nuclear weapons from Russia. There is ZERO evidence that any of the US anti-missile technologies would be sufficient to stop a MIRV warhead – let alone multiple MIRV warheads – traveling at the speeds a modern missile can achieve. In a war with Russia, literally hundreds if not thousands of warheads would be heading towards the US. No missile defense system known can handle that.
- Richard Steven Hack on 09/19/2017 at 3:40 PM
In 110 days of fighting the German army in France during 1918, the U.S. Army Expeditionary Force sustained 318,000 casualties, including 110,000 killed in action.
That’s the kind of lethality waiting for U.S. forces in a future war with real armies, air forces, air defenses and naval power.
Only… on American soil.
Ignoring this reality is the road to future defeats and American decline. It’s time to look beyond the stirring images of infantrymen storming machine-gun nests created by Hollywood and to see war for what it is and will be in the future:
the ruthless extermination of the enemy with accurate, devastating firepower from the sea, from the air, from space and from mobile, armored firepower on land.
The United Sates is not in a position to take this scale of losses, not to mention having its rear, from staffs to munition depots and airfields being under relentless and devastating fire impact from operational to a strategic depth—a condition the US Army simple has no experience with.
As even RAND people admitted:
In war games with either Russia, China or both, almost always, the United States loses.
I’ve been writing about this for years.
It’s good that some people are beginning to get it. I hope—although I don’t hold my breath—their opinions will be heard at the political top.
Yvonne Lorenzo:
Recent articles have posted on cooperation between Russia and China,
not just the well know business deals but cultural and Chinese students
coming to Russia. See these articles, “Top Russian nuclear university
eyes future cooperation with China” and “Film about WWII sniper ‘Lady
Death’ kicks off ‘2019 Russian Film Exhibition’ in Beijing” posted on
China’s Global Times.
I’d appreciate your thoughts about the Russian-Chinese relationship/partnership.
Andrei Martyanov: The answer is extremely simple—Russian-Chinese cooperation is not only natural, but it was inevitable, considering the state of the combined West and, especially so, of the United States.
Yvonne Lorenzo: Andrei, you posted this on your blog on November 26th, 2019, “New S-400 Contract For Turkey?” which I want to discuss not only because of your observations, but because in the past (and I’m not picking on him) Paul Craig Roberts wrote in effect that Russia must be more aggressive with America to avoid a shooting war, quoting him, “The Russian government’s failure to stand up to Washington’s bullying guarantees more bullying. Sooner or later the bullying will cross a line, and Russia will have to fight.”
However, in this post of yours I cited above you commented:
So, [the] Turks are already running, it seems, detection routines with F-16 and F-4 as targets.
Turks will, already do, want more.
The Turks know what comes next, and it is S-500—they want it.
The reason is simple: look at [a] map of Turkey and see how much [of the] Eastern Mediterranean she will be able to cover—pretty much all of it. Just in case.
And it is not just for reasons of Greece and gas fields, but for reasons of Israel. The Turkish path towards a leadership in [the] Islamic world lies through the fate of Palestine.
So, a lot of thing are riding on those systems for Turkey and, just a hunch, SU-35s will follow.
I’m surprised the Turks haven’t start testing against any F-35s, unless Turkey had to return them to America;
I’d love to see the reaction if they did, which so far has included this:
“‘Erdogan thumbs his nose at Trump’: US senator says Turkey crossed ‘another red line’ with S-400 test, calls for new sanctions.”
As
you also wrote recently: “How about State Department creating a new
Office of S-400 Weekly Complaints and Threats Towards Turkey (OSWCTTT).
Should be a pretty nice sinecure for some bureaucrat. Should pay well
too—rent and real estate prices inside the Beltway are atrocious. Foggy
Bottom especially.”
And I see in the way they’ve turned Turkey away from American dominance, or Western dominance, that Russia’s diplomatic team, of course under the leadership of President Putin, have performed a Jujitsu move against the West more effective than using force.
Andrei Martyanov: As a Russian proverb says: “Diplomacy is the art to say to your counterpart that he is an idiot in the politest manner.”
In reality, the Russian version is very profane, so I softened it a bit. Russians do not operate on the so called “values-based,” ideological that is, principle in foreign policy. Russians actually DO consider the other side’s interests and concerns and that is what makes Russian diplomacy so effective.
This, plus, of course, military power. As another Russian saying goes: “If you do not want to talk to Lavrov, you will talk to Shoigu.”
With Turkey, Russia does accommodate many Turkish interests; the Turks feel that.
This is as much as I can respond to, because I am not in the position to pass deep and knowledgeable judgment on Turkey’s policies since I do not know the region that well.
I am sure, however, that Turks have a very good idea about what Russia offers technologically and economically.
The Turkish officer crews for S-400 underwent an extensive training in Russia so they do not need any additional argumentation in favor of the system they were trained on.
The F-35 is irrelevant here, apart from the fact that Turks cannot use, I believe, from the top of my head, those two aircraft which they had and which will be returned to the US.
Question: You have worked for over five decades as a war reporter and documentary film-maker in Vietnam, elsewhere in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
How do you see current international tensions between the US, China and Russia?
Do you think the danger of war is greater now than in previous times?
John Pilger: In 1962, we all may have been saved by the refusal of a Soviet naval officer, Vasili Arkhipov, to fire a nuclear torpedo at US ships during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Are we in greater danger today?
During the Cold War, there were lines that the other side dared not cross.
There are few if any lines now;
The US surrounds China with 400 military bases and ...
...sails its low-draught ships into Chinese waters and...
...flies its drones in Chinese airspace.
American-led NATO forces mass on the same Russian frontier the Nazis crossed...
...the Russian president is insulted as a matter of routine.
There is no restraint and none of the diplomacy that kept the old Cold War cold.
In the West, we have acquiesced as bystanders in our own countries, preferring to look away (or at our smart phones) rather than break free of the post-modernism entrapping us with its specious “identity” distractions.
Question: You traveled extensively in the US during the Cold War years. You witnessed the assassination of presidential candidate Robert Kennedy in 1968.
It seems the American Cold War obsession with “communism as an evil” has been replaced by an equally intense Russophobia towards modern-day Russia.
Do you see a continuation in the phobia from the Cold War years to today? What accounts for that mindset?
John Pilger: The Russians refuse to bow down to America...
...and that is intolerable.
They play an independent, mostly positive role in the Middle East, the antithesis of America’s violent subversions...
...and that is unbearable.
Like the Chinese, they have forged peaceful and fruitful alliances with people all over the world...
...and that is unacceptable to the US Godfather.
The constant defamation of all things Russian is a symptom of decline and panic...
...as if the United States has departed the 21st century for the 19th century...
...obsessed with a proprietorial view of the world.
In the circumstances, the phobia you describe is hardly surprising.
Andrei Martyanov: As in any event, war between Russia and the US is possible, but how probable it is, is a completely different matter. Some probability of Russia and the United States actually fighting each other certainly exists.
It is not very high, I think, but it does exist.
We all have to do our utmost to prevent this scenario becoming a reality.
Paradoxically, Russia’s very real military strength today is a guarantor or, at least, a robust deterrent against such a nightmarish scenario.
As I said, the US military does understand the implications, even when American politicians don’t.
I always repeat that I feel much better when Gerasimov and Milley talk to each other than when Lavrov is forced to explain basic things to Pompeo.
Mike Pompeo.
Yvonne Lorenzo: Hypersonic weapons, impressive as they are, rely on Newtonian physics. There was—to me—a term that you would call “Runglish”, Russian-English, discussing “New physical principles” which I finally understood to mean “new principles of physics” relating to the new Peresvet laser, which I think you’ve speculated on its purpose but is highly secret.
Peresvet laser complex.
However, all this technology is used for military purposes; what I find it sad about deteriorating relations with Russia because the best of the West and Russia could accomplish a great deal sharing and developing non-military technology.
I’m
reminded of this wonderful video of a Russia cosmonaut’s interactions
with an American astronaut and seeing the world below they have disdain
for politicians.
I Need More Space: Russian Cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin’s long road to the stars
What are your thoughts and how can Russians and American in this environment of “Russophobia” which is a polite, diplomatic word for hatred of Russians, cooperate as we two are doing now for peaceful and good purposes?
I worry both your doors and mine, for simply communicating with one another, will be kicked in one day by someone from the government, as happened with Max Blumenthal.
Andrei Martyanov: As I stated repeatedly, the combined West committed cultural suicide in Russia.
Yes, Russians are open to mutually beneficial cooperation, with space being one of those exhibit A cases where international cooperation manifests itself in the most profound and positive way.
Primary military targets that would be obliterated by first nuclear strikes.
Sadly, with the current US political “elites” who are Russophobic in the extreme, any prospects of serious Russian-American cooperation look very grim.
The world is in the process of unprecedented geopolitical realignment which increasingly degrades the position of the United States and Russia is at the center of this process.
The Obama Administration destroyed Russian-American relations totally and I don’t see any improvement, bar some symbolic gestures, such as, I hope, President Trump visiting Moscow on May 9th next year, because the American political class’s Russophobia is systemic and was nurtured for generations.
Plus, the United States is not an agreement-capable entity because it is ungovernable, as the last three years so dramatically demonstrated.
The first thirty cities to be attacked with nuclear weapons during a Russia or China first-strike event. Say, if America puts troops in the Ukraine, or conducts Naval operations near the Chinese coast.
Russia is aware of that—no agreement signed with the United States is worth the paper it is written on.
"... no agreement signed with the United States is worth the paper it is written on." I think that China would agree.
We can only hope that things will change for the better in the future but this change may come only through the United States reassessing its role in history and the world…
…a process which may take decades, serious tribulations and, hopefully, emergence of new American elites that would be able to formulate real American national interests.
Nuclear Targets Map in the United States.
***
After
I asked Andrei my last question, this Russian video posted on YouTube:
so much for future cooperation between America and Russia in space,
because of sanctions Americans cannot be carried to the space station by
Russians any longer:
US Will Be Stranded On Earth! Baikonur Cosmodrome Sends Very Last American Into Space!
I’d
like to thank Andrei for his kind answers to my questions and highly
recommend his books and his writings on his blog and on Unz.com for
those who wish to escape the Matrix and find a knowledgeable Russian
perspective on events and military matters; Martyanov is the antidote to
Tom Clancy disease.
Radioactive fallout map of America. Assuming a minor nuclear exchange using small, but accurate nuclear warheads.
I want to close by noting Andrei Martynov’s recent blog post “Ishenko Delivers” that referenced an article by Rostislav Ishenko entitled “In Bulgaria, a Russian Soldier” the title itself a reference to the song “Alyosha,” which I am familiar with from the album Wait for Me by the late exceptional baritone Dimitri Hvorsostovky. The below passage Ishenko wrote is moving, as is the song.
It was 1970. I was five years old.
I came to visit my grandmother. To the White Church. Near Kiev.
My grandmother is from the Urals.
My grandfather (on my father’s side) started the war near Stalingrad, and ended on the Dnieper (six wounds, four of them heavy, two shell shocks, medals “For Military Merit” and “For Courage,” the Order of the “Red Star” and “World War II” degrees).
The commander of a machine gun company. He fought for an incomplete year. From October 1943 he was no longer sent to the front (and his division arrived near Stalingrad in November 1942).
He died (in 1956) at 36 years old, from the consequences of a concussion (as a young major, in a colonel’s position).
In 1970, I was five years old (to be exact, then four and a half).
Grandmother was a teacher of French. At the same time and a class teacher. I came to visit her. Contrary to usual, I didn’t go straight home, but (for some reason unknown to me) I went to the school where she taught.
I think that she needed to complete the work with the class, and the school was five to seven minutes’ walk from home.
Here I am, as a future student, and they brought me to see how the children learn.
For about fifteen minutes I studied desks in an empty classroom (which at that time did not differ from the gymnasium at the beginning of the century) and read what was written on the board.
And then she went with her grandmother to the porch of the school, where her class (and other classes) performed.
Now I don’t remember what the holiday was, but I suspect it is May 9th. Because I went out onto the porch (they rather took me out, I was too small to go out myself), just as the girls from my grandmother’s class (8–10, already without pioneer ties and, as for me, adult aunts) sang “Alyosha.”
I haven’t heard the song so often since then, but I remember it well, because, in the words, “He doesn’t give flowers to girls, they give him flowers,” the entire female team of the school, which was standing next to me, wept.
It was the 70th year.
My grandmother was 48 years old.
Exactly at that age (in 2014) I left Kiev.
The city where four generations of my ancestors lived, in which my mother survived the occupation (and met the Red Army at the age of three), became not just a stranger, but a hostile one.
I can be forced to return there, but I cannot be persuaded or persuaded to do so voluntarily.
It’s like in a war.
All who survived and won are proud of the Victory, and while their fellow soldiers were alive, they met and remembered the days of old.
But they themselves did not dream of returning to the dugout under shelling, nor did they want to experience the “pleasure” of the attack (to their full height on the prepared defense) for their children.
Russians have in their collective memory the trauma of a war that killed millions, a subject Martyanov has discussed in depth especially in his first book;
…in that respect, they are different from Americans and I question the sanity of the rulers…
…especially the feckless political class…
…of the West who make the Russians foes.
Launch of American ICBM’s from the underground silos.
Perhaps only the people of the two nations—if they are enough in number in America—can prevent war from coming, because I am uncertain if the American military can reign in the powers that control them.
Or perhaps it is the fate for Russia to humble America, the way she did Nazi Germany, not necessarily by military might—at least I pray.
I suspect the process has started already.
Sadly, we know which side is most at fault for this deterioration of relations between our nations.
Reminders… China.
China and Russia will mutually work together militarily to counter American aggression.
As a history buff I must point out that ALL Major Wars started from misconceptions (they enemy is weak, cannot hit the broad side of the barn etc) AND starred new disruptive weapons (the Machine Gun in WW1 vs Calvary/Infantry charges, Aircraft carrier in WW2 vs the MIGHTY Battleship).
Will WW3 find the USA under EMP? Will Russian and Chinese high tech ECM systems shut off our High Tech Weapons? Ask the commanders of the two recent US Navy collisions if they think ECM jammed their Command and Control Systems. Both of the Ships were very high tech Aegis Warships, yet were rammed by slow moving clumsy Cargo Ships.
Will we get our heads handed to us like the Germans?
You know that in both world wars the Germans did not expect to lose you know.
Prepare for bad times my friends the petrodollar is almost done. The cost of everything is about to rise quickly.
-NH Michael
Chinese President Xi Jinping has urged Russia to strengthen bilateral comprehensive cooperation and mutual political support during a meeting with President Vladimir Putin at the G20 Summit in Hangzhou. This action has prompted political analyst Rostislav Ishchenko to assert that both countries are moving towards a political and military alliance.
"De facto a political and military alliance between Russia and China has existed for a long time and it is not a secret to anyone. Rumors have repeatedly surfaced that it could be formalized. But at the recent G20 summit the Chinese leader has for the first time mentioned the need to 'formalize relations' as openly as Chinese political and diplomatic traditions permit."
- Ishchenko, head of the Center for Systems Analysis and Forecasting, wrote for RIA Novosti.
Xi Jinping said that both countries should support each other in their efforts to protect national sovereignty and security. The Chinese president added that both nations should step up cooperation in such areas as infrastructure development, energy, aviation, aerospace and cutting-edge technology.
In addition, Russia and China should foster bilateral military exchanges and security cooperation.
Reminders… American Mainstream media
The US is likely to provoke a major war, partly in an attempt to unite a culturally divided country. But not just a sport war such as we’ve had in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan. Probably with China, possibly Russia or Iran. Perhaps with all three. The US won’t do well, since it will find that its aircraft carriers, F-35s, and the like are equivalent to cavalry before WW1 and battleships before WW2.
- Doug Casey’s Top 7 Predictions for the 2020s
Americans, all jazzed up with the mainstream media news, and the mainstream pro-military movies, and a neocon government, is all but “chomping at the bit” to fight and (of course) win a war with either, Russia or China or both…
You’ll not
find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy
notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a
necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money
off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you
because I just don’t care to.
As I have repeatedly stated, the United States government has known about extraterrestrials for decades. They have established a very secret organization known as MAJestic to study this matter. This organization is used to interact with extraterrestrials and extract technologies from them. This organization is completely removed from the US government and operates secretively within it. It’s sort of like bubbles of water floating within oil.
This article serves as a secondary source of validation of my disclosure of the existence of MAJestic.
MAJestic exists.
It operates outside of government control.
All classifications within it are unacknowledged special access programs. (USAP).
Elected officials , politicians, and bureaucrats are not permitted access ever.
It is involved in all things extraterrestrial.
It is well established and has been in operation for decades.
Executive Summary about this “Leak”.
The world “leak” carries a lot of baggage with it. It’s kind of silly, don’t you know. All that went on is a United Sates Admiral, Tom Wilson, wanted to inquire about certain R&D programs that some of his subordinates had participated in.
He did not care to know all the details, just an executive overview. He felt that he had to, at the bare minimum, understand their involvement in R&D support efforts that lie within deep black special access programs.
Thus…
Notes have been made public of a conversation that allegedly occurred on Oct. 16th 2002 with US Admiral Tom Wilson.
At that time, US Admiral Tom Wilson was Deputy Director of the DIA & Vice Director for Intelligence [VJ2] for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Tom Wilson admits he was denied access to a SAP involving reverse engineering an alien UFO craft.
If true, this incident shows that high-ranking officials are excluded from SAPs & USAPs by an oversight committee.
The top military/aerospace corporations can reject anyone without ‘need to know.’
Highly advanced technology is in private hands with no public oversight.
The Admiral Wilson leak refers to notes where Wilson, a senior official, admits he was denied access to a Special Access Program where they were reverse engineering vehicles that were not of human fabrication.
Admiral Wilson
Admiral Wilson is a military officer with a long and distinguished career.
He was a Real Admiral (upper class).
He served as the Deputy Director, and later the Director, of the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency).
He also served as the Vice Director for Intelligence for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a position known as VJ2 or J2.
The Notes and their history
On April 19th 2019, researcher Canadian Grant Cameron uploaded to the internet 15 pages of documents.
About Mr. Grant Cameron Grant Cameron is the recipient of the Leeds Conference International Researcher of the Year and the UFO Congress Researcher of the Year. He became involved in Ufology as the Vietnam War ended in May 1975 with personal sightings of a UFO type object which locally became known as Charlie Red Star.
- Grant Camerion Bio - Modern Knowledge
These documents are allegedly the notes taken by Dr. Eric Davis on October 16th 2002.
These notes record the conversation between Admiral Wilson and Willard Miller, a US Naval Reserve Commander and top military advisor to Steven Greer of The Disclosure Project.
GreerfoundedtheCenterfortheStudyofExtra-TerrestrialIntelligence (CSETI) in 1990 tocreateadiplomaticandresearch-basedinitiativetocontactextraterrestrialcivilizations. In 1993, hefoundedtheDisclosureProject, anonprofitresearchproject, whosegoalistodisclosetothepublicthegovernment'sallegedknowledge...
- Steven M. Greer - Wikipedia
In the exchange, the admiral admits he was denied access to a SAP (Special Access Program) or more accurately a (U)SAP (Unacknowledged Special Access Program).
This is because, despite his rank and position, he still didn’t have need to know.
This particular (U)SAP lies wholly outside the purview of the United States government, the military and the entire bureaucracy that supports it. It is in the careful, and well-trained hands of a number of top military aerospace corporations.
In this instance, the (U) SAP involves the reverse engineering of UFO/alien craft technology.
The Alien / ET face on the side of the Bigelow Aerospace building. NASA has partnered with Robert Bigelow, who’s an unconventional figure in the aerospace world. He’s more at home on the Vegas strip than at America’s space agency, and he’s obsessed with aliens and UFOs. In the spring of last year, he and NASA carried out an historic test to prove his high-flying technology is ready to support humans in space.
The Admiral Wilson Leak Documents
The notes were taken by Dr. Eric Davis, a scientist who was a member of NIDS (National Institute for Discovery Sciences).
The National Institute for Discovery Science, known also as NIDS, was founded by Robert Bigelow serving as a way to channel funds into the scientific study of paranormal phenomena. The NIDS performed research in the area of cattle mutilation and black triangle reports. The NIDSci bought Skinwalker Ranch after journalist George Knapp first wrote about it in 1996, and Deputy Administrator Colm Kelleher led the investigation for a number of years.
-National Institute for Discovery Science - Wikipedia
NIDS is owned by aerospace billionaire Robert Bigelow (who has openly talked about UFOS and aliens for decades). NIDS conducted scientific research into UFO-related phenomena such as the mystery of the black triangles.
Additionally, Davis is an associate of Dr. Hal Puthoff, the famous developer of remote viewing in the US in the 1970s.
Hal Puthoff Dr Hal Puthoff is one of the original SRI (Stanford Research Institute) team members and creators of the Remote Viewing program, contributor to the development or remote viewing and Ingo Swann’s Controlled Remote Viewing (CRV).
- Hal Puthoff - Remote Viewing information and resources
Exopolitical researcher Dr. Michael Salla contacted Davis to verify whether the leak was genuine and confirm whether he had indeed written the notes.
Davis replied that he had no comment.
Taken in total, this is a clue that the content is genuine, since Davis refused to call them a hoax.
The full 15 pages of the Admiral Wilson leak documents are available here. They are worth reading in full.
What the Documents Reveal
The documents record a conversation from 2002 where Admiral Wilson, with hindsight, was referring back to a period from April-June in 1997.
They start with Admiral Wilson confirming that he met with Greer, Miller, Edgar Mitchell (Apollo 14 astronaut and founder of Institute of Noetic Sciences), Admiral Mike Crawford and General Pat Hughes (who was Wilson’s boss) in a Pentagon conference room.
The notes state that Wilson and Miller talked privately for 2 hours on UFOs, MJ-12, Roswell, crashed UFOs, alien bodies, etc.
In the notes, “TW” stand for Tom Wilson and “EWD” stands for “Eric Davis”:
TW: Confirmed Greer/Miller/Mitchell gave talk in Pentagon Conference room. Adm Mike Crawford, Gen. Pat Hughes (Hughes his boss) were present (others too.) Date April “97. (Ed Mitchell said 4/9/947.) After group broke up, Miller/Wilson talked (privately) 2 hours on UFOs, MJ-12, Roswell, crashed UFOs/alien bodies, etc. TW intrigued – knew about intelligence on US mil/intel UFO close encounters – and foreign gov’t encounters. Seen records. Told Miller.
TW: Yes, Miller asked the question on MJ-12/UFO cabal – crashed UFO. Confirmed he called Miller ca. late June ’97 and told that he/Miller was right – there is such an organization in existence.
Davis notes that Wilson was furious that Miller had betrayed his
confidence and shared the conversation with others (according to Davis,
Miller only told Greer and Mitchell). Wilson goes on to state that he
started investigating whether there was a secretive group hiding UFO
secrets:
EWD: Okay then, what happened in April-June ’97?
TW: After parting with Miller (week later, he thinks) – I made calls, knocked on a few doors, talked to people – went on for 45 days (thereabouts) on and off– Suggestion came from Ward (Gen. M. Ward) to go through the records groups files (like an index system) in OUSDAT (Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology)– Ran into Bill Perry in May ’97 – talked about this quietly – he suggested the same thing– They told me of a special projects record group not belonging to usual SAP – a special subset of the unacknowledged/carve-outs/waived programs – not belonging to usual SAP divisions as organized in ’94 by Perry himself – set apart from rest but buried/covered by conventional SAPs
Admiral Wilson Leak Docs Mention Existence of MJ-12 and (U)SAPs
In just the first few pages of this leak, Wilson has admitted both that MJ-12 exists (or existed) and that advanced technology projects/UFOs are hidden within (U)SAPs.
In the second quoted section above, Wilson states he spent about 45 days looking into the matter, and in the first quoted section above, he states that he concluded that MJ-12 did exist.
He also reveals how he learnt that (U)SAPs exist, as a special subset of SAPs which are “unacknowledged/carve-outs/waived”, something which various whistleblowers have exposed over the years.
Ufologist Richard Dolan, who wrote his analysis of the Admiral Wilson leak here, coined the phrase “Breakaway Civilization”.
The term “Breakaway Civilization” is used to describe the state of affairs whereby a private military aerospace contractor is in possession of extraordinarily advanced technology and is able to speed light years ahead of what the public thinks is possible.
In short to literally create another civilization. Which is to say, to “breakaway” from the old civilization and evolve. Leaving the old civilization behind, like the discarded skin of a snake that slithers away.
(U)SAP’s reside inside SAP’s.
Michael Salla points out how (U)SAPs are often hidden inside SAPs. He also has shown a confidential NSA document leaked by Snowden to prove the point:
“The method of hiding the most highly classified programs behind less classified ones was verified in one of the NSA documents leaked by Edward Snowden called Sentry Eagle. It graphically depicted how Exceptionally Compartmented Information (ECI – an Intelligence Community classification similar to an Unacknowledged SAP used by the Pentagon) would be hidden behind a Non-ECI Program (similar classification status to a conventional SAP).”
Wilson Meets the (U)SAP Gatekeepers.
There are more fascinating details to the story, however to keep this brief, it gets really interesting when Davis starts asking Wilson what he found.
Wilson at first is tight-lipped:
EWD: … so what SAP compartment did you find in?TW: Core secret – won’t sayEWD: Code name?TW: Again won’t say – core secret.
Code name is MAJestic.
EWD: Who was the project contractor or USG agency that runs the program?TW: An aerospace technology contractor – one of the top ones in US.
EWD: Who?TW: Core secret – can’t tell.
EWD: Defense contractor?
TW: Yes, the best one of them.
EWD: Intelligence too?TW: In their corporate portfolio.EWD: Give a hint?TW: Sorry no.
People have guessed that it could be Northrop Grumman or Boeing, although Lockheed Martin is also likely, given the notoriety of its Skunkworks program.
We do not know which particular sub-program (U)SAP is involved in this instance. However, just about all American aerospace companies participate in MAJestic operations to some extent.
Wilson goes on to say how he called them.
He demanded to be “read in” or informed about the project.
It was a surprise to him, and he was given the access denied treatment:
TW: (End of May ’97) Made three calls to the program manager – one of them conference call with security director and corporate attorney. Confusion on their part at to why I was looking for them and what I wanted from them or wanted to know about. Very testy tone from all of them.
…
TW: I told threesome I wanted formal briefing, tour, etc. – was exploiting my regulatory authority as Deputy Director DIA/Assistant Joint Chief of Staff J-2 – Told them my not being briefed was oversight they needed to correct – I demanded!
TW: They needed to discuss this (his demand) so hung up. Got called 2 days later and they said they don’t want to talk on phone and arranged for face-to-face meeting at their facility.
EWD: Did you go?
TW: Yes, ten days later (mid-June or so). Flew out there– Met in their conference room in their secure vault– Three of them show up
EWD: 3 guys with whom you had telecon?
TW: Yes, same 3– Security director (NSA-retired, a CI expert)– Program director– Corporate attorney– Called themselves “the watch committee” or gate keepers
This watch committee or group of gatekeepers then proceeded to tell Wilson that although his rank, authority and credentials checked out, he still wasn’t getting access. In (U)SAP programs within MAJestic, there is always a handful of people in the know. They are the “gatekeepers” and “watch committee”.
They are the ONLY people within MAJestic that has any idea of the detailed scope of actions within that sub (U)SAP.
In my own (U)SAP, the "gatekeepers" are two in number, with a third that might have partial understanding of my role. They filter the summaries and context that I acquire as part of my role, and provide the distilled simplified "executive summaries" to the MAJestic management for utilization.
They said they had reached a previous formal agreement with the Pentagon’s Special Access Programs Oversight Committee (SAPOC).
TheplanstandardizedandformalizedtheSAPapproval, termination, revalidationandrestructuringprocessthroughthe Special Access Program Oversight Committee (SAPOC). ASeniorReviewGroup (SRG) wasestablishedtosupporttheSAPOCprincipals.
- Special Access Program Oversight Committee (SAPOC)
The agreement was that they (the watch committee) and only they would decide who met the rigorous criteria to gain access. Those few people would be on a list called the bigot list:
[TW] Said after that episode a formal agreement was struck with Pentagon people (SAPOC) to prevent this in future
– didn’t want a repeat
– Special criteria were established in agreement
– A special circumstance that must meet rigorous access criteria set by contractor committee
– No USG personnel are to gain access unless they met the criteria
– to be administered by contractor committee (program director, attorney, security director) irregardless of the tickets and position USG personnel possess
– Literally their way or the highway.
EWG: What are criteria?
TW: I asked for that and they refused to give answer. I was mad
– implication is now
– to me
– they operate without official oversight or any justification
– politically dangerous place to be!
…
TW: … they weren’t going to let me in the door
EWD: Why?
TW: They said my tickets were all confirmed and valid, but I was not on the bigot list
“is a list of personnel possessing appropriate security clearance and who are cleared to know details of a particular operation, or other sensitive information.”
It is a term of British origin and is widely used by US intelligence agencies.
The program director then, somewhat surprisingly given this exceptional program secrecy, showed Wilson the bigot list.
Wilson saw that there was no-one from the Executive (i.e. White House) or Legislative Branches of the US Government – just private contractors and a couple of Pentagon people.
EWD: Who was on it? Recognize names?TW: That is core secret.Willing to say that most were program employees – names and titles (job titles) – civilians – didn’t recognize any military personnel – could be there.
This is something that I have been saying for years. MAJestic members are technically educated professionals with a military background, working in a civilian capacity.
EWD: Any politicians?TW: No– No White House names, no President!– No Congressional people– No Congressional staffers
EDW: Any in Clinton or Bush Sr. Administrations?TW: No! But handful of names were Pentagon individuals I recognized …
The Watch Committee Admits They are Reverse Engineering UFOs of Extraterrestrial Origin
The Admiral Wilson leak document describes how the Project Manager of the watch committee actually admitted the nature of the project they were so closely guarding.
The Project Manager admitted that the project was about reverse engineering technology from extraterrestrial vehicles.
– [TW] Program Manager said they wereNot any weapons programNot any intelligence programNot any special ops or logistics program
Doesn’t fit these categories– I asked what they were then– Loud groan from Program Manager– Security Director and attorney say it’s okay to say it.
EWD: Say what?
TW: There were a reverse engineering program – Something recovered years ago in the past– Technological hardware was recovered– So I thought they meant recovered Soviet/Chinese, etc. hardware and reverse engineer it – like a missile or intel platform or aircraft – actually came to meeting expecting to find a sensitive foreign collection and reverse engineering operation – thought “UFOs” (was) used as a cover for that – So I said that and they said they weren’t that either– They had (program manager talking) a craft – an intact craft they believed could fly …– Program manager said they didn’t know where it was from [they had some ideas on this] – it was technology that was not of this Earth
– not made by man
– not by human hands
Conclusion
Wilson ended his tale by saying that eventually he did meet with the SAPOC chairman at the Pentagon. He backed up the access denial Wilson was given.
Wilson got angry against at the SAPOC chairman, who then told Wilson that he had better shut up and drop the matter, else he wouldn’t get the DIA directorship and he may lose a ranking star.
Wilson backed off. The matter ended.
Opinion
As time moves forward, other parts of the enormous puzzle will start to fall into place.
Any American, living in 2020, who believes that America doesn’t have secrets or that we are alone in the universe, or that America still has “freedom” inside of our wonderful “democracy” is living a terrible, terrible lie.
The world is not what you all think it is.
As I have been saying for years, now.
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Before the Iranian Revolution, which began in 1978, Iran was a
steadfast U.S. ally. Consequently, the Iranian military arsenal was
packed with American-made weapons. Iranian infantry carried M-16s;
Iranian tankers drove M-60 Pattons; Iranian pilots flew F-4 Phantoms and
F-14 Tomcats — a superb airframe, that was immortalized by the movie Top Gun.
Iranian F-14 tomcat aircraft. This aircraft has been in use by the Iran military ever since the 1980’s, and has been upgraded using non-American parts and components.
Since that revolution, however, Iran has been barred from purchasing weapons or, more importantly, components and spare parts for its ageing military.
Successive ways of economic sanctions, moreover, have constricted the country’s military budget, thus making it more difficult to purchase new arms for those willing to sell (Russia and China, most notably).
The Iranians have confronted this restriction by either developing their own weapons or by scavenging the global arms market for spare parts and “smuggling them” into their country.
Iran still operates some Tomcats that are being modernized to extend their operative life. Domestic upgrades include avionics, weapons (R-73E, AIM-54A+“Fakkur”, AIM-54A, AIM-7E and AIM-9J are among the air to air missiles adapted to the aircraft’s fire control system) and color scheme: indeed the plane was give a three-tone Asian Minor II camouflage pattern resembling the one adopted by Russian 4th and 5th generation fighter planes and U.S. Aggressors.
- The Aviationist
But despite Iran’s threat to the West through its sponsorship of terrorism, there are individuals who are unsurprisingly willing to put profit before security.
Alexander George, a British pensioner, was jailed for shipping F-4 and MiG parts to Iran, thus violating the American “Weapons of Mass Destruction” embargo. George utilized front companies, which he had established in both Dubai and Malaysia, to smuggle into Iran essential components for the Iranian Air Force’s ageing fleet.
In return, he made almost $7 million.
What is the role the Tomcat could play in a hypothetical war against Israel?
As already explained in the blog post about the possible long range strike on Iran’s nuclear program, IRIAF interceptors, should play “hide and seek” with the enemy forces: they could hide from the incoming packages and try to achieve some kills during the egress phase. They could be effective by simply disturbing the strike packages to let them “feel” the threat and waste some gas.
The Tomcats could somehow be effective against isolated targets, like drones, mainly before or after the first waves of air strikes: even a UAV kill could play a role in the psychological war against Israel.
For sure, radar activation would be reduced to a minimum: during the most intense part of the air campaign their AWG-9 radar would be either jammed (although it was domestically modified or locally upgraded to make it more jamming-resistant) or detected as soon as switched on, with the latter hypothesis implying the risk of interception by enemy fighters.
-The Aviationist
Iranian F-14 fighter aircraft in operation.
The 77-year-old received a two-and-a-half year sentence and has been disqualified from managing a company for nine years.
George had been working with a couple, Paul and Iris Attwater, who purchased used aircraft spare parts with dual-use — i.e., they could be used for both civilian and military aircraft — from the U.S.
They used their company, Pairs Aviation Limited, to avoid any suspicions.
According to “IRIAF 2010“, the book published by Harpia Publishing and written by Tom Cooper, Babak Taghvace and Liam F. Devlin, that I consider one of the most detailed sources about Iran’s Air Force, due to the lack of some spare parts, the fleet of more than 40 Tomcats is roughly divided into “airworthy” and “fully mission capable aircraft”.
The first fly without primary weapon systems and/or no AWG-9 radar; the second can perform QRA (Quick Reaction Alert) and air defense missions.
-The Aviationist
The British couple, then, sent the components to George’s front companies, which then smuggled them into Iran.
The Attwaters received a suspended six-month prison sentence for their involvement — they pleaded guilty, and that probably saved them from a severer sentence.
For their involvement, they made an estimated $650,000 profit.
Iranian desert camouflage on a F-14 fighter.
“These three sold banned items that ended up in Iran. They didn’t
care what these parts might be used for, as long as they got paid,”
Simon York, the leading investigator of HM Revenue and Customs.
“This was a calculated and cynical attempt to undermine strict trade
embargoes and internationally agreed controls. They knew the rules and
weaved increasingly elaborate plans to stay under the radar,” added
York.
Hence, although IRIAF officials have described the current fleet of F-14s as “completely overhauled” and “improved”, and referred to it a a “new generation of bombers” in the recent past, only a small amount of Tomcats can be used for air defense purposes in spite of the large amount of spare parts that Iran was able to clandestinely collect after the type was retired by the U.S. Navy and the efforts of various domestic companies to produce some specific parts and subsystems.
-The Aviationist
George, however, denied the allegations and claimed that he instead
shipped wheelbarrows, goggles, and gloves for the construction industry.
Iran hasn’t been the only nation to try and circumvent international embargoes. Israel faced a similar conundrum back in the 1960s-1970s. The French government had imposed an arms embargo. Nonetheless, the Israeli government and the Israel Aerospace Industries worked with Dassault, a French aerospace company, to produce an Israeli variant of the Mirage 5 fighter jet. The jet proved a great success, accounting for more than 100 kills in the 1973 Yom Kippur war.
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Patent documents indicate that the U.S. and China are actively developing radical new craft that seem eerily similar to UFOs reported by Navy pilots.
The United States Secretary of Navy is listed as the assignee on several curious aviation technologies patents. These are highly unusual patents, devices and mechanisms.
Highly unusual.
These patents were generated by an aerospace engineer working at the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division (NAWCAD) headquarters in Patuxent River, Maryland.
They are very interesting.
Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division (NAWCAD) headquarters in Patuxent River, Maryland.
The patents are very interesting.
One of these patents describes a “hybrid aerospace-underwater craft”. You know, one that can swim through the water as easily as it can fly through the air or jet through space.
Vehicle from the movie “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow”.
According to the patent, it is capable of truly extraordinary feats of speed and maneuverability in air, water, and outer space. It is truly a revolutionary electromagnetic propulsion system.
Very exciting. Bordering (or perhaps, crossed over) the line between accepted scientific paradigms and God-like technology.
A scientific paradigm is a framework containing all the commonly accepted views about a subject, conventions about what direction research should take and how it should be performed.
- What Is A Paradigm? - Explorable.com
To most classically educated scientists, it sounds pretty far fetched.
Imagine trying to get a patent for it!
Trying to get a patent.
A primary patent examiner at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) thought that they were too fantastic to approve. And as such, he denied the patent applications as “too fantastical” to be considered in any degree of seriousness.
“Brawndo has what plants crave. It’s got electrolytes.”
United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)
This did not sit well with the United States Navy.
No sir. Not at all.
They absolutely and urgently, wanted these patents to be granted. They believed that it was in the best interests of “National Security”.
Washingtonhasbeenincapableofcopingwiththegreatchangesthathavetakenplaceinrecentyears, includingtheriseofemergingmarketsanddevelopingcountries, and national security hasbecomean excuse itleansonwhenitwantstoactonitssuspicionsabouttheeconomicdevelopmentandtechnologicalprogressofothercountries.
- The phony excuse of national security - CGTN
The Chief Technical Officer (CTO) of the Naval Aviation Enterprise personally wrote a letter addressed to the examiner. He claimed that the U.S. needs the patent. As the Chinese are already “investing significantly” in these aerospace technologies.
His argument is that the patents were necessary for “American Defense superiority”.
Chinese idiom.
UFO’s? No way!
The descriptions on the patents sound very, very similar to the UFOs reported by Navy pilots.
They do.
Why is that, you suppose?
Well, everyone know that there’s no such things as “little green men”, extraterrestrials or “star people”. That’s just nonsense for school children. Right?
Right?
And since the USA would never keep secrets and technologies hidden from the American people, we know that they would tell us about extraterrestrials and their technologies. They would be open and transparent.
Open and transparent is the way America always does things. Right?
That’s what it’s like to live within the best democracy in the history of the world. Right?
The government is open and has no secrets. Don’t you know!
So, there are no extraterrestrials at all. After all, President Obama got on the Ellen DeGeneres show and said that to an audience of millions. Millions!
US
President Barack Obama has awarded the USA’s highest civilian honor to
various actors, musicians and athletes during a ceremony at the White
House.
It must be the dastardly Chinese or Russians!
Since it cannot be extraterrestrials that are using these technologies, then it MUST be those terrible Chinese or Russians! Right?
Damn Commies!
It’s easy to find demonization of the Chinese on the internet. Oh, they are so evil… right?
This raises the question, are the Chinese developing (or even already flying craft) leveraging similar advanced technology and is the American Navy now scrambling to catch up?
I rather doubt that the Chinese are anywhere near this level of development, and I am a pretty strong supporter of the Chinese. Yes, it is true that many Chinese cities look like something out of the "The Jetsons", but this level of technology is centuries more advanced than what is publicly available in peer review journals.
-Metallicman
And I am not alone…
I deeply doubt that the Navy is playing catch-up to what the Chinese have secret developed. Tingly and Rogoway do not appear to be aware of the many insiders who have come forward with their startling testimonies about U.S. reverse engineering programs involving captured flying saucer technologies that go back as far back as the 1940s.
-EXOpolitics
Why not reverse engineering of extraterrestrial craft?
Why not?
I mean, you have to be a rather retarded block head not to realize that the universe is a very big place, and time goes on a long long way. To think that the world, as we know it, and the beliefs that we hold are absolutely fundamentally correct, is absolute lunacy.
Extraterrestrials exist.
The Untied States government knows about them, and has treaties with numerous entities. They have been reverse engineering their technologies for decades now, and it’s only a matter of time when the research will pay off with some kind of hybrid developmental vehicles.
It’s only a matter of time.
Maybe like now.
And if the reverse engineering has reached a point where actual prototypes can be manufactured, perhaps it would also be a good time to secure intellectual patents protections. Right?
Right?
The Wondrous Inventions Of Dr. Salvatore Cezar Pais
Maybe a look at some of these patents might give us some insight.
Maybe we can take a peek at the strange aerospace patents filed by Salvatore Cezar Pais, an aerospace engineer at NAWCAD.
Aerospace engineers work and develop the technologies and systems that go into vehicles that fly though the air and space.
Let it be well understood that there are some supplemental documents in the USPTO’s databases that imply that Navy leadership knows that these technologies are actually feasible.
Throughout the supplemental documents are references to actual validation tests and observations. All of which point to the idea that these parents are not just “ideas of merit”, but rather “technical protection documents for technology that has been proven to work”.
Let it be well understood that there are some supplemental documents in the USPTO’s databases that imply that Navy leadership knows that these technologies are actually feasible.
Little information can be found about Salvatore Cezar Pais; he has virtually no web presence.
What is known is that he received a PhD in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Case Western Reserve University in 1999. We also know that he currently works as an aerospace engineer for NAWCAD at Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland. This facility is one of the Navy’s top aircraft test bases.
Pais has published several articles and presented papers at American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics conferences over the years.
With all the “hush hush” and top secret development work in the deep black SAP’s, it’s just a simple matter of time before some of the technologies will need to be patented.
In those papers he covers his work in electromagnetic propulsion, and revolutionary room temperature superconductors. Not to overlook such topics like his PhD dissertation: “Bubble generation under reduced gravity conditions for both co-flow and cross-flow configurations.”
While all are pretty outlandish-sounding, the last one is the one that the Chief Technical Officer of the Naval Aviation Enterprise personally vouched for.
This is the patent that he claimed that the Chinese are already developing similar capabilities.
The patent was first applied for on April 28, 2016, over a decade after the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group encountered strange Tic Tac-shaped aircraft. It is also nearly a year after Navy pilots across multiple squadrons flying out of Naval Air Station Oceana and NAS Norfolk experienced a string of bizarre encounters with unidentified aircraft. Some of which, like the Tic Tac UFO, seemed to possess exotic performance capabilities.
The Nimitz Carrier Strike Group encountered strange Tic Tac-shaped aircraft. It is also nearly a year after Navy pilots across multiple squadrons flying out of Naval Air Station Oceana and NAS Norfolk experienced a string of bizarre encounters with unidentified aircraft.
The hybrid aerospace-underwater craft in Pais’ patent, meanwhile, is described as being capable of incredible feats of speed and maneuverability. It can fly equally well in air, water, or space without leaving a heat signature.
This is possible, Pais claims in the patent, because the craft is able to “engineer the fabric of our reality at the most fundamental level” by exploiting the laws of physics.
“…engineer the fabric of our reality at the most fundamental level”
The concept is fairly simple, although the engineering required to make it a reality is another issue all together.
The basic theory…
All matter contains energy on the quantum level.
Allparticlesareripplesinfieldsandhave energy; photonsarenotspecialinthisregard. Photonsarestuff; energy isnot. Thestuffoftheuniverseisallmadefromfields (thebasicingredientsoftheuniverse) andtheirparticles. Atleastthisisthepost-1973viewpoint.
- Matter and Energy: A False Dichotomy
By theoretically creating its own incredibly dense and polarized energy field, the hybrid craft is claimed to be able to create a quantum ‘vacuum’ around itself. This vacuum allows it to repel any air or water molecules with which it interacts.
Thus, the craft can essentially ignore aerodynamic or hydrodynamic forces, or so it is claimed in the patent.
The hybrid craft is claimed to be able to create a quantum ‘vacuum’ around itself which allows it to repel any air or water molecules with which it interacts.
Throughout his patents and publications describing the hybrid aerospace underwater craft (HAUC), Pais writes that the radical feats of speed and maneuverability (of which the craft is supposedly capable of) can be achieved by coupling “high-frequency axial spin” or “accelerated vibration” with “high-frequency vibrations of electrically charged systems.”
High speeds are possible with [1] High frequency axial spin (or vibration) and [2] high frequency vibrations of electrically charged systems.
In other words, if you can [1] create a room temperature superconductor capable of storing an incredibly high amount of energy and [2] get the energy field created by that superconductor moving at incredibly high speeds around or within the craft, then…
… you can create a polarized energy vacuum around it.
This then, allows it to basically ignore the energy of the air or water around it, thereby removing its own inertia and mass from the equation.
The application of the theory…
In his most recent publication, Pais describes the hybrid aerospace / underwater craft as a roughly cone-shaped vehicle that would appear round from the front or rear.
“the HAUC is conical in configuration, with an elliptical cross-section, similar in geometry to a hypersonic glide vehicle / dart.”
The radical vehicle would have room for a crew compartment. Maybe something along the lines of the space shuttle, where the pilot and NFO would sit side by side.
He presented it at the 2019 American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics SciTech Forum in San Diego on January 2019.
Man, with all these papers of a great diversity of subject matter and content, you would think this guy is either a genius, or is the designated patsy for technical patent assignments for IP.
In the paper, Pais writes…
"the achievement of room temperature superconductivity (RTSC) represents a highly disruptive technology, capable of a total paradigm change in Science and Technology,” and adds that its “military and commercial value is considerable."
The capabilities described in the paper
should certainly sound familiar to anyone who’s been following the Navy
UFO stories over the last several years:
“the achievement of room temperature superconductivity (RTSC) represents a highly disruptive technology, capable of a total paradigm change in Science and Technology,” and adds that its “military and commercial value is considerable.”
From the paper…
It is possible to envision hybrid aerospace-undersea craft (HAUC), which can function as a submersible craft capable of extreme underwater speeds (lack of water-skin friction) and enhanced aerial/underwater stealth capabilities (non-linear scattering of RF and sonar signals).
This hybrid craft would move with great ease through the air/space/water mediums, by being enclosed in a Vacuum/plasma bubble/sheath, due to the coupled effects of EM field-induced air/water particles repulsion and Vacuum energy polarization.
Dr. Brian Collett provides his opinions
Dr. Brian Collett, is a Hamilton College physics chair who teaches courses in electromagnetic theory and quantum physics. He has some thoughts on these patents and what they might imply.
Dr. Brian Collett, is a Hamilton College physics chair who teaches courses in electromagnetic theory and quantum physics. (Image is for reference only. Not an actual photo of the good doctor.)
Collett stated that patents and peer-reviewed articles about theoretical physics are one thing, however the descriptions of the HAUC and the claims in Pais’ research…
"...bear no more resemblance to quantum physics as I understand it than does ‘The Force’ from Star Wars."
Moreover, Collett adds,
"a working room temperature superconductor would have far more radical uses that are actually within the bounds of possibility"
…than a hybrid craft that can theoretically create a quantum vacuum around itself.
Other physicists have stated the same thing – although most of them refused to go anywhere near on the record concerning the hybrid craft patent based on how outlandish it seems.
But…
But…
But, why then would the Naval Aviation Enterprise CTO personally vouch for this patent to the USPTO?
Is it possible?
Just because something is patented doesn’t mean it’s currently in production or even possible.
Private entities and the U.S. government both regularly patent forward-looking technologies to ensure that they own the rights to them when or if they’re ever fully realized. The patent for the hybrid craft is set to expire on September 28, 2036.
That being said, the unorthodox circumstances surrounding the approval of this patent have us wondering why the Chief Technology Officer of the U.S. Naval Aviation Enterprise, Dr. James Sheehy, personally vouched for the legitimacy of this beyond-revolutionary aerospace technology in the Navy’s appeal to the USPTO.
Take important note. Sheehy assured the patent examiner in charge of this application that the aircraft propulsion method described in the patent is indeed possible or will be soon based on experiments and tests NAWCAD has already conducted.
Never the less, the application was initially rejected by Patent Examiner Philip Bonzell on the grounds that “there is no such thing as a ‘repulsive EM energy field,'”
While repulsive fields are well known in physics, the patent examination did not agree that this new type of repulsive field was possible. He saw no evidence that it could be constructed, tested or applied.
Further, he argued it was outrageous. Here;
"when referring to the specifications as to ascertain about the microwave emitters needed in this system it is seen that for a high energy electromagnetic field to polarize a quantum vacuum as claimed it would take 10^9 [T]eslas and 10^18 V/m."
That’s roughly the equivalent to the magnetic strength generated by most magnetars and more electricity than what is produced by nuclear reactors.
What would be needed to generate such amounts of energy is perhaps the potentially revolutionary room temperature superconductor described in one of Pais’ other patents for which the Navy is listed as the assignee.
Obviously, the examiner believed it’s impossible with today’s technology. He believed that it was impossible to create the insane amount of energy needed to generate the EM field. And this is what would be required to propel this craft in the manner described in the patent application.
More New Technology…
The implication is that another type of new technology would be required.
Well, to do A, you need to have B, C, and D.
Well, imagine that! All these things are suddenly available simultaneously for patent.
Wow oh wow!
Either an army or geniuses have been toiling away in the dark, in secret, and being fed through their cages for decades, or we have been secretly reverse engineering very advanced technologies based on principle that make the internal combustion engine, electronics, and rocket engines look like "Romper room play toys".
What would be needed to generate such amounts of energy is a revolutionary room temperature superconductor . One, mind you, already described for in one of Pais’ other patents for which the Navy is listed as the assignee.
Hum…
Superconductors
are materials that can conduct electricity with zero resistance,
meaning the electrical currents carried through them never degrade or
dissipate like they do in metals, such as copper or silver.
After it was rejected, the NAWCAD’s patent attorney, Mark O. Glut, appealed the decision and submitted further documentation to ensure the patent office that this craft is indeed “enabled,” meaning it can actually be built and can perform as described in the patent.
Superconductors also create their own repulsive magnetic fields when placed near magnets, enabling applications like the levitating Maglev trains currently floating at high-speed in Japan and China.
Most superconductors today require extremely low temperatures to operate, however, making them impractical for most uses outside of laboratories or large scale industrial applications. Room temperature superconductors for years have been something of a "Holy Grail" of science for engineers, because, once realized, they would open the doors for incredible new forms of power transmission and storage, electric motors, and magnetic levitation devices.
According to documents available to the public at the USPTO website, the Patent Office rejected Pais’ and the Navy’s application for this craft on March 30, 2018.
After it was rejected, the NAWCAD’s patent attorney, Mark O. Glut, appealed the decision and submitted further documentation to ensure the patent office that this craft is indeed “enabled,” meaning it can actually be built and can perform as described in the patent.
NAWCAD’s patent attorney, Mark O. Glut, appealed the decision and submitted further documentation to ensure the patent office that this craft is indeed “enabled,” meaning it can actually be built and can perform as described in the patent.
This craft has already been built…
One of the most compelling items in the collection of appeal documents is the letter accompanying the final appeal written CTO Sheehy concerning the U.S. Patent Office’s rejection of “Craft Using an Inertial Mass Reduction Device.”
This craft is indeed “enabled,” meaning it can actually be built and can perform as described in the patent.
In the letter dated 15 December 2017, Dr. Sheehy claims that Salvatore Pais has “already begun a series of experiments to design and demonstrate advanced High energy Density/High Power propulsion systems” that are described in the patent.
In the letter dated 15 December 2017, Dr. Sheehy claims that Salvatore Pais has “already begun a series of experiments to design and demonstrate advanced High energy Density/High Power propulsion systems” that are described in the patent.
Furthermore, Sheehy claims that…
"the realization of this result demonstrates that this patent documents the future state of the possible and moves propulsion technology beyond gas dynamic systems to field-induced propulsion based hybrid aerospace-undersea craft."
Have a look at the letter yourself:
“the realization of this result demonstrates that this patent documents the future state of the possible and moves propulsion technology beyond gas dynamic systems to field-induced propulsion based hybrid aerospace-undersea craft.”
It’s important to note that Sheehy doesn’t go so far as to say on the record that the Navy currently possesses this technology and instead notified Patent Examiner Philip Bonzell that he agrees that…
"this mode of acceleration/movement is beyond the state of the possible, at least at present."
Sheehy, of course, adds that…
"China is already investing significantly in this area" and "would prefer we [the U.S.] hold the patent as opposed to paying forever more to use this revolutionary technology" as he asserts "this will become a reality."
Remarkably, it seems to boil down to the ol’ “we must not allow an Inertial Mass Reduction Device gap!”
Heh. Heh.
Approved patent.
Perhaps because of that threat from the Chinese looming, the USPTO finally issued a notice of allowance for “Craft Using an Inertial Mass Reduction Device” to the Department of the Navy on October 31, 2018, at a fee of $1,000 USD.
No reason was given for why the patent was eventually approved.
It’s important to note, as well, that U.S.
patent law ends at America’s borders. The Navy can patent anything it
wants to, but those patents would not necessarily keep a foreign country
from developing and patenting similar technologies.
The Dawn Of Electromagnetic Propulsion?
Normally, I would agree with others that these patents are likely just the Navy ensuring that when or if this technology does become available, the U.S. will be able to control it.
However, these are not normal times.
Thanks to To the Stars Academy (TTSA), the Department of Defense, and the media at large, the Navy pilots have witnessed aircraft behaving exactly like the craft these patents describe. Additionally, some of the pilots’ visual descriptions of those anomalous aircraft even seem to be uncannily similar to the drawings of the aircraft as depicted in Pais’ patents.
One of those patents depicts a curiously and distinctly shaped gravitational wave generator that resembles the Tic Tac-shaped object reported by retired U.S. Navy Commander David Fravor and other NimitzCarrier Strike Group pilots in encounters that took place in 2004 off the Baja Coast.
The so called “Tic Tac” encounter.
One of those patents depicts a curiously and distinctly shaped gravitational wave generator that resembles the Tic Tac-shaped object reported by retired U.S. Navy Commander David Fravor and other NimitzCarrier Strike Group pilots in encounters that took place in 2004 off the Baja Coast.
In regards to claims that these patents may simply be speculative “math theory,” as the patent examiner called them in one of the rejections. Never the less, it’s important to remember that scientific and engineering research sometimes reach tipping points. Tripping points in which incremental progress made over decades suddenly culminates in large paradigm shifts. Shifts, mind you, that bring the theoretical into the realm of the possible. (Of course, massive bursts of associated funding also can really help, of course.)
The patents appear to draw upon established theoretical research. Included in the Navy’s patent appeals and Pais’ most recent publication are references to decades’ worth of peer-reviewed research in room temperature superconductors and macroscopic quantum effects. Additionally, there are even notated copies of several studies related to Pais’ research.
In the publication, Pais also thanks Naval Aviation Enterprise CTO Dr. James Sheehy…
"for the many hours of thought-provoking discussions on the concept at hand."
To the Stars Academy.
Interestingly enough, both Pais’ research and some of his patents also contain acknowledgments to the work of Dr. Harold E. Puthoff.
Dr. Harold E. Puthoff is the co-founder and Vice President of Science and Technology of To the Stars Academy.
TTSA’s goal is to advance “our current understanding of scientific phenomena and its technological implications.”
The stated mission of TTSA’s Aerospace division is to find “revolutionary breakthroughs in propulsion, energy, and communication”.
The company claims it is “currently working with lead engineers from major Department of Defense and aerospace companies with the capability to pursue an advanced engineering approach to fundamental aerospace topics.”
This includes Space-Time Metrics Engineering (STME). (This is a theoretical concept in which quantum vacuums are engineered as a means of propulsion.)
It remains unclear how TTSA intends to follow through with and secure funding for these ambitious goals.
Physicist Harold White stunned the aeronautics world when he announced that he and his team at NASA had begun work on the development of a faster-than-light warp drive. His proposed design, an ingenious re-imagining of an Alcubierre Drive, may eventually result in an engine that can transport a spacecraft to the nearest star in a matter of weeks — and all without violating Einstein’s law of relativity.
In a press release marking the official launch of TTSA on Oct. 11, 2017, former Program Director for Advanced Systems at Lockheed Martin Advanced Development Programs at the Skunk Works, Steve Justice, described how TTSA was working on developing revolutionary “Advanced Electromagnetic Vehicles”.
These are vehicles that will “dramatically reduce the current travel limits of distance and time” and “mimic the capabilities observed in unidentified aerial phenomenon by employing a drive system that alters the space-time metric.”
Without a doubt, these advanced electromagnetic vehicles that TTSA says it plans to develop sound uncannily like the electromagnetic hybrid aerospace underwater craft in Pais’s patent.
Few Answers, But Plenty Of Questions
NAWCAD has a liaison for pubic communication.
Kurt Larson is NAWCAD’s Public Affairs Director.
Larson states that…
"when it comes to patent applications, [NAWCAD] cannot provide any context outside of the filed patent application documents."
Similarly, USPTO policy states that applications for patents are not generally open to the public, and…
"no information concerning them is released except on written authority of the applicant, his or her assignee, or his or her attorney, or when necessary to the conduct of the business of the USPTO."
As striking as the similarity between the claimed capabilities of the hybrid craft and those of the objects described by Navy personnel, it’s still unknown whether these patents are related to the ongoing UFO revelations.
It is important to note that if the Navy had wanted this patent to remain classified, it could have filed the patent under the Invention Secrecy Act of 1951 (35 U.S.C. ch. 17).
This is a law which allows patents to remain classified if they might pose a possible threat to the national security of the United States.
Instead of doing that, however, all of Pais’ patents are currently fully available to the public.
If such a propulsion technology was so revolutionary and if the Navy indeed wanted to keep this technology out of others’ hands, it’s curious that they would choose to make the patent public.
Maybe the Navy is signaling to its adversaries that it, too, is aware of this revolutionary capability and to whom it belongs.
It is important to note that if the Navy had wanted this patent to remain classified, it could have filed the patent under the Invention Secrecy Act of 1951 (35 U.S.C. ch. 17).
Also, consider the fact that Senators, including the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Community, have been briefed in recent weeks by Navy officials about the unexplained sightings Navy pilots have reported.
Even President Donald Trump recently stated in an interview that the Navy UFO reports could be due the fact that pilots
"see things a little bit different from the past,"
This is a comment which could be taken to mean that pilots are witnessing new types of aerospace technology for the first time.
Trump seemed to indicate that he does not believe the objects reported by Navy pilots are evidence of anything extraterrestrial. As such he took his interviewer’s UFO question in stride without any apparent surprise. This could be an indication of just how far into the mainstream the UFO discussion has become.
A Technology “UFO” Race
Consider as well the comments made by former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, reportedly a key figure in securing funding for programs like the now-infamous Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program and its associated studies.
Has China and Russia also been reverse engineering exotic extraterrestrial spacecraft as well?
Could Reid have meant that these three military powers are currently scrambling to be the first to master the technology behind a hybrid aerospace-undersea craft and deploy it on a substantial scale? If so, where does the Navy, and the Pentagon as a whole, currently stand in that clandestine race?
Well known in “UFO circles” that the Russians have been working with extraterrestrial species for decades and has various vehicles in their possession.
Furthermore, Pais notes in the paper that such a technology…
“would permit swift movement of the HAUC beyond our Solar System.”
Image is from a source who claims China will be releasing Hi Res images taken by the Chang’e-2 moon orbiter, which clearly show buildings and structures on the moons surface.
It’s also possible that this patent is just another facet of an information operation that goes along with a larger UFO narrative to promote the Pentagon’s undisclosed interests.
But…
But…
But the inclusion of China, a very terrestrial potential foe and America’s chief technological adversary, as a direct competitor when it comes to the technology seems odd and even counterproductive if that were the case.
On the other hand, some may say that this could be proof of two superpowers struggling to mimic the capabilities of something they are observing, but do not fully understand on a technological level. Considering all the unknowns, all possibilities are worth examining.
... some may say that this could be proof of two superpowers struggling to mimic the capabilities of something they are observing, but do not fully understand on a technological level.
Much of this work and investigation are being “bird dogged” by Brett Tingley and Tyler Rogoway. They are doing some great work. Now, of course, they know nothing of MAJestic or any thing related to it, so they are doing the necessary journalistic ground work with a healthy dose of skepticism. Well, good for them!
Much of this work and investigation are being “bird dogged” by Brett Tingley and Tyler Rogoway. They are doing some great work. Now, of course, they know nothing of MAJestic or any thing related to ti, so they are doing the necessary journalistic ground work with a healthy dose of skepticism. Well, good for them!
In any event, I would strongly advise the interested reader to follow their work and observe that the US Navy is making headway in the understanding and development of technologies that mimic that of our extraterrestrial benefactors.
Check out the patents yourself…
To view them for yourself, visithttps://portal.uspto.gov/pair/PublicPair and search for application number 15/141,270. Once there, click on the “Image File Wrapper” tab.
The Inventor speaks out
I hate it when other people get credit for work that you do. I know, it has happened to me, more than just a few times.
Comment or Message
The article on patents held by the Navy make me feel angry because I have an unmet need for the US Government to acknowledge my patents on gravitomagnetic energy. https://patents.google.com/patent/US10177690B2/en I observe I also filed for a patent in China too.
They denied the patent even though the US had already granted it. I feel suspicious that they stole my invention along with the US Navy. I have an outstanding FOIA request on this with the Navy.
I have analyzed the Navy's Tic Tac UAP video to demonstrate spacetime metric engineering effects.
I observe I have some research results I would like to share. Here's a report I conducted with correspondence with Dr. Hal Puthoff of TTSA. There's a few of the slides in the beginning that cover my background.
http://www.calfree.com/TicTacUhtm.pptx
Also I have several GIF files I created to share to show some of the UAP technology in action I would like to explain in more detail. It makes me feel happy to know your curious. I request you check out the following background information that goes with the PowerPoint presentation. I suggest you run the presentation software to operate the Gif on quantum tunneling; slide 7. My explanation of the presentation is in the form of a dialog.
Where do slides 6-11 come from? Are they your research, or from Dr. Puthoff? Both? Somewhere else?
Observe the information in slide 6 from Hal’s paper which I cite on the upper left of the slide. Spacetime metric engineering allows for altered spacetime. Basic hypothesis in altered spacetime: denser spacetime (g00 <1, |g11| > 1) time dilates, length shrinks “gravitational”, and, expanded spacetime (g00 > 1, |g11| <1) time shrinks, length dilates “antigravitational”.
Observe slide 7 explains how quantum entanglement [quantum tunneling] works and its possible to move information through spacetime instantaneously.
I feel this is useful to explaining the concept of wormholes. Observe slide 8 explains the concept of gravitational frame dragging using nano-bump [empirical] data from the mass spin-valve device.
My invention is called the mass spin-valve or gravitational rectifier, aka gravity diode. Observe slide 9 explains using nano-bump [empirical] data from the mass spin-valve device to support the creation of denser spacetime (g00 <1, |g11| > 1) time dilates, length shrinks “gravitational” energy at the nano-scale.
Observe slide 10 explains using nano-pit [empirical] data from the mass spin-valve device to support the creation of expanded spacetime (g00 > 1, |g11| <1) time shrinks, length dilates “antigravitational” energy at the nano-scale.
Observe slide 11 explains that utilizing data from variable area nano-bumps and nano-pits we are able to show that moving objects at the nano-scale produce parabolic pull force of nano-gravity and hyperbolic push force of nano-antigravity [like a balloon].
The term 'antigravity bubble', I'm not quite sure what that is -- how it operates or what it looks like. So, when you mention balloons (i.e. 'a dark torus shaped balloon', 'A balloon shaped brighter region', or 'small dark oval shaped balloon') -- are you saying 'balloon' because they appear balloon-shaped?
That is to say -- they aren't physical balloons travelling alongside the craft? Observe denser spacetime (g00 <1, |g11| > 1) force magnitude of gravity |g11| is greater than 1 G force and anti-gravity force is less than 1 G, and, expanded spacetime (g00 > 1, |g11| <1) force magnitude of gravity |g11| is less than 1 G force and anti-gravity force is greater than 1 G. I hope this helps your understanding of slide 6.
Greater G force means time dilates, length shrinks “gravitational” energy while lower G force means time shrinks, length dilates “anti-gravitational” energy. This is based on principals of General Relativity, Einstein's theory of geometric gravitation and the data.
http://www.calfree.com/TicTacSpacetimeMetricEngineering.gif
No, [not a real balloon] the dark balloon shaped region over the top of the UAP appears to be a region of expanded spacetime. The other balloon shaped regions on the right of the UAP are also regions of altered spacetime used to open a wormhole on the left of the UAP. These regions appear to be utilized to create gravitational winding spring like force that propels the craft to the left at the entrance to the wormhole. Empirical evidence is from slides 7-11. This second GIF includes this first one above. Above the UAP is the anti-gravity balloon I explain in slide 11. The left of the image is where a worm hole is opened and the right side is where the UAP is spacetime engineering a gravitational bow, like in a bow and arrow, where the UAP is the arrow. This second GIF shows the arrow being released; aka warp drive. http://www.calfree.com/TicTacWarpDrive.gif This third GIF shows something I felt was pretty cool. It appears the UAP as hitting the Nimitz aircraft with an EMP pulse which saturates the IR detector array. http://www.calfree.com/TicTacEMPattack.gif Are you suggesting that the Air Force acted aggressively towards the UAP -- possibly hitting it with some type of hypersonic weapon? -- 'These slides make me feel uncomfortable. I have an unmet need for reassurance of future nonviolent interaction with UAPs.
I request the support for further failure analysis and for development of protocols for remedial measures.' My experience as an Archaeologist necessitates me to intercommunicate with native Americans about their culture. This requires a feeling of trust be established so I don’t go where I am not invited.
The UAP appears to be hitting the Nimitz aircraft with an electromagnetic pulse that charged the IR detector array fanout on the back of the array causing it to saturate. The image observed shows the fanout behind the array in that frame. I don’t know what the Nimitz aircraft did to the UAP that would be considered hostile by the UAP.
Michael Boyd (408) 891-9677 PS the GIFs are mine so feel free to use them.
MAJestic Related Posts – Training
These are
posts and articles that revolve around how I was recruited for MAJestic
and my training. Also discussed is the nature of secret programs. I
really do not know why the organization was kept so secret. It really
wasn’t because of any kind of military concern, and the technologies
were way too involved for any kind of information transfer. The only
conclusion that I can come to is that we were obligated to maintain
secrecy at the behalf of our extraterrestrial benefactors.
MAJestic Related Posts – Our Universe
These
particular posts are concerned about the universe that we are all part
of. Being entangled as I was, and involved in the crazy things that I
was, I was given some insight. This insight wasn’t anything super
special. Rather it offered me perception along with advantage. Here, I
try to impart some of that knowledge through discussion.
Enjoy.
Utilizing Intention
Influencer Questions
Here are posts
that have gathered a series of questions from various influencers. They
are interesting in many ways and could help all of us unravel the
mysteries of the lives that we live.
MAJestic Related Posts – World-Line Travel
These posts
are related to “reality slides”. Other more common terms are “world-line
travel”, or the MWI. What people fail to grasp is that when a person
has the ability to slide into a different reality (pass into a different
world-line), they are able to “touch” Heaven to some extent. Here are
posts that cover this topic.
John Titor Related Posts
Another
person, collectively known by the identity of “John Titor” claimed to
utilize world-line (MWI egress) travel to collect artifacts from the
past. He is an interesting subject to discuss. Here we have multiple
posts in this regard.
They are;
Articles & Links
You’ll not
find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy
notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a
necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money
off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you
because I just don’t care to.
"We discovered that if you want to monetise a blog you need to be getting about 100,000 hits a day! "
-6F12
What do you know? Hell finally froze over, well… maybe started to get a little slushy, maybe. I thought it would never happen. But it seems that a slow but cautious opening up of admittance is a start. No, of course they aren’t admitting the active studies, the contacts, the programs, and all that. That is never going to happen. But, at least they are starting to acknowledge that someone or something appears to have some extremely advanced technology. And it is the Pentagon, and not the CIA, that is actively changing the nature of the conversation about it.
Finally, after decades of public denials, and public cover-ups, the Navy finally admits that there are vehicles and objects that possess technologies far, far advanced than what we are capable of having.
I’m sure that there are “officials” that are livid about this.
Jack Sarfatti writes, The USS Nimitz UFO incident refers to a 2004 Radar-Visual encounter of an unidentified flying object by US fighter pilots of the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group. In December 2017, infrared footage of the encounter was released to the public. Prior to the December 2017 incident, early November 2004, the Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser USS Princeton, part of Carrier Strike Group 11, had been tracking mysterious aircraft intermittently for two weeks on an advanced AN/SPY-1B passive radar.
Prior to the December 2017 incident, early November 2004, the Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser USS Princeton, part of Carrier Strike Group 11, had been tracking mysterious aircraft intermittently for two weeks on an advanced AN/SPY-1B passive radar.
When the same event occurred again around 12:30 EST on 14 November 2004, an operations officer aboard Princeton
contacted two airborne US Navy jet fighters from USS Nimitz.
The first fighter aircraft was piloted by Commander David
Fravor, commanding officer of Strike Fighter Squadron 41,
assisted by his weapon systems officer (WSO) in the back
seat. Lieutenant commander Jim Slaight was aboard the second
jet which was serving in the role as a wingman. The officers
were training aboard two FA-18F Super Hornets in a routine
combat exercise.
The first fighter aircraft was piloted by Commander David Fravor, commanding officer of Strike Fighter Squadron 41, assisted by his weapon systems officer (WSO) in the back seat. Lieutenant commander Jim Slaight was aboard the second jet which was serving in the role as a wingman. The officers were training aboard two FA-18F Super Hornets in a routine combat exercise.
Princeton’s radio operator first asked the AWACS of the
Carrier Airborne Early Warning Squadron 117, which was
assisting the two F-18s to guide them to intercept the
unknown aircraft. Princeton’s radio operator directly instructed
the pilots to change their course and investigate and asked
if they were carrying operational weapons; they replied that
they were not.
The weather conditions for that day showed excellent visibility. When the jet fighters arrived on site, the crew of four saw nothing in the air nor on their radar.
Looking down at the sea, however, they noticed a turbulent oval area of churning water with foam and frothy waves “the size of a Boeing 737 airplane” with a smoother area of lighter color at the center, as if the waves were breaking over something just under the surface.
A few seconds later, they noticed an unusual object hovering with erratic movements 50 feet above the boiling water. Both Fravor and Slaight later described the object as a large bright white Tic Tac 30 to 46 feet (10 to 14 meters) long, with no windshield nor porthole, no wing nor empennage, and no visible engine nor exhaust plume. According to Fravor “I have no idea what I saw. It had no plumes, wings or rotors and outran our F-18s. But I want to fly one”.
Bigelow, stated, “Internationally, we are the most backward country in the world on this issue,” Mr. Bigelow said in an interview. “Our scientists are scared of being ostracized, and our media is scared of the stigma.”
“China and Russia are much more open and work on this with huge organizations within their countries. Smaller countries like Belgium, France, England and South American countries like Chile are more open, too. They are proactive and willing to discuss this topic, rather than being held back by a juvenile taboo.”
Fravor began a circular descent to approach the object, but he claimed the UFO was intentionally avoiding any short-range dogfight radar lock-on with “impossible” maneuvers [not in citation given] that made engagement difficult. As Fravor got closer descending, he reported that the object began ascending along a curved path, maintaining some distance from the F-18, mirroring its trajectory in opposite circles.
Fravor then made a more aggressive maneuver, plunging his fighter to aim below the object, but at this point the UFO accelerated and went out of sight in less than two seconds, leaving the pilots “pretty weirded out”.
Subsequently, the two fighter jets began a new course to
the combat air patrol rendezvous point. “Within seconds” the
Princeton radioed the jets that the radar spot had reappeared
60 miles away at the CAP point indicating a speed of 2,400
miles an hour to cover the distance in the reported time.
The jets went to investigate the new radar location, but “by
the time the Super Hornets arrived […] the object had already
disappeared.” Both F-18s then returned to Nimitz.
The aircraft carrier and its strike group also engage in maritime security operations to interdict threats to merchant shipping and prevent the use of the seas for terrorism and piracy. Aircraft carriers also provide unique capabilities for disaster response and humanitarian assistance. The embarked carrier air wing provides helicopters for direct support and C4I assets to support them and ensure aid is routed quickly and safely.
The 10 nuclear powered Nimitz class aircraft carriers are the largest warships in the world, each designed for an approximately 50 year service life with one mid-life refueling. USS NIMITZ (CVN 68), USS DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER (CVN 69), USS CARL VINSON (CVN 70), and USS THEODORE ROOSEVELT (CVN 71) have all completed their Refueling Complex Overhauls (RCOH) at Newport News, Va., with USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN (CVN 72) having commenced RCOH in 2013.
A second team took off at 15:00 EST, this time equipped
with an advanced infrared camera (FLIR pod). This camera
recorded an evasive unidentified aerial system on video,
publicly released by the Pentagon on 16 December 2017
alongside the revelation of the funding of the Advanced
Aviation Threat Identification
This footage is known as the 2004 USS Nimitz FLIR1 video.
It officially shed some light on a decade-old story that was
largely unknown, except for a 2015 second-hand story on FighterSweep.com that, in spite of providing a lot of details, remained unconfirmed at that time.
Over a two-week period in late 2004, an unknown, 45-foot long Tic Tac shaped object played cat and mouse with the U.S. Navy off the coast of California. The mighty U.S.S. Nimitz aircraft carrier, and its support ships including the U.S.S. Princeton, carrying the most sophisticated sensor systems in the world, repeatedly detected recurring glimpses of the Tic Tac but were unable to lock on.
On Nov.14, F-18s were ordered into the area and saw it up close. Veteran pilot Dave Fravor, commander of the elite Black Aces unit, says the Tic Tac reacted to the presence of the F-18s then took off like a bullet fired from a gun.
“It takes off like nothing I’ve ever seen. One minute it’s here, and off, it’s gone,” said retired Navy pilot David Fravor.
In the explosion of media interest that followed the Pentagon’s release of the Tic Tac video along with recordings of two other encounters, Commander Fravor expressed the opinion that the technology was far more advanced than anything known on earth.
A second infrared footage, known as the GIMBAL video, has been released by the Pentagon alongside the 2004 FLIR1 footage. Although the media often present the two videos together to illustrate the 2004 USS Nimitz UFO incident, the GIMBAL video is unrelated, filmed at the East Coast of the United States at an unknown date.”
Confirmed
The U.S. Navy has confirmed that three F-18 gun-camera videos first released by The New York Timesand a UFO research organization show “unidentified aerial phenomena.”.
The term “unidentified aerial phenomena.” or UAPs is a more formal term for UFOs that doesn’t have all that little-green-men baggage.
The Times originally released two of the videos in a December 2017 article. The article revealed that the Pentagon had operated a secret UFO investigatory project, called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP).
All three videos were published on the website of To the Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences, a UFO research organization founded by former Blink-182 singer and guitarist Tom DeLonge.
The news that the Navy considers the three videos, unofficially known as “FLIR1,” “Gimbal” and “GoFast”, first appeared on The Black Vault. The Black Vault is a web site that specializes in declassified government documents.
“FLIR1” is from November 14, 2004, and “Gimbal” and “GoFast” are from January 21, 2015.
Joe Gradisher, a spokesman for the office of the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Information Warfare, said in a statement that the Navy expects to keep the information it gathers private for a number of reasons. “Military aviation safety organizations always retain reporting of hazards to aviation as privileged information in order to preserve the free and honest prioritization and discussion of safety among aircrew,” Gradisher said. “Furthermore, any report generated as a result of these investigations will, by necessity, include classified information on military operations.” “Therefore, no release of information to the general public is expected.”
Joseph Gradisher, official spokesperson for the deputy chief of naval operations for information warfare, emphasized that these videos represent only some of the many UAP sightings the Navy is investigating.
“Those three videos are just part of a larger effort by the U.S. Navy to try and investigate a series of incursions into our training ranges by phenomena that we’re calling unidentified aerial phenomena,” says Gradisher, who declined to say how many sightings there have been. “Our aviators train as they fight. So when they’re out there training, if there’s an incursion by any kind of aerial vehicle phenomena, whatever, it puts the safety of our aviators
at risk as well as the security of our training operations.”
Sample Links
Here are some links related to this subject matter. The United States Navy is openly admitting that they have witnessed, observed and tracked unknown vehicles with amazing behaviors that they cannot understand which defy the known laws of physics.
What many may not know about this event is that it occurred in a place and time where the most powerful set of aerial surveillance sensors ever created were amassed together and were watching and recording it all.
The new Navy position on this matter.
Few stories have garnered more requests for elaboration than the recent news that the Navy has decided to very publicly change its UFO / USO reporting rules and procedures.
Why? People ask?
Everyone has their opinions. As do I. And, yes, there have been wildly varying takes on all of this.
Finally, after decades of public denials, and public cover-ups, the Navy finally admits that there are vehicles and objects that possess technologies far, far advanced than what we are capable of having.
Swamp gas! This obviously implies that it wasn’t ours, and unfortunately doesn’t explain the different objects seen in the pictures. Top Secret claims that on one of the pictures, there were some inscriptions. I don’t have a version of this, and it is too faint to see on these photographs. Upper left it says “Official Photograph. Not to be Released. CT.” In the bottom right corner it says (sic) “Unauthorized Disclosure Subject. Security Certificat SSN 674. Criminal Sanction”
Politico was first to report on the Navy’s new directions for reporting unexplained objects operating in the same environment as its vessels and aircraft.
Politico’s Bryan Bender writes:
"There have been a number of reports of unauthorized and/or unidentified aircraft entering various military-controlled ranges and designated air space in recent years," the Navy said in a statement in response to questions from POLITICO. "For safety and security concerns, the Navy and the [U.S. Air Force] takes these reports very seriously and investigates each and every report."
"As part of this effort," it added, "the Navy is updating and formalizing the process by which reports of any such suspected incursions can be made to the cognizant authorities. A new message to the fleet that will detail the steps for reporting is in draft."
To be clear, the Navy isn’t endorsing the idea that its sailors have encountered alien spacecraft. No, that will open up an entire keg of worms. Truthfully, it’s not admitting to anything other than the fact that the Navy has observed and recorded strange objects in the skies and in the waters of the world.
It’s a Duh! moment, for certain.
Swamp Gas! On this photo, we identify without a doubt a triangular-shaped UFO. It seems to be in trouble.
However, there is an entire army of CIA paid debunkers, and a branch of MAJestic that has been devoted to obscuring, covering up, and ridiculing anyone who even vocalizes that strange objects have materialized and disappeared in and around our planet that defy conventional explanations.
So, in a way, it’s a kind of vindication.
I and others have told our stories about MAJestic and the involvement of the US Navy in it. We have been ridiculed and laughed at, and even though this latest posturing is a long, long way off from the actual reality. It is a start.
It is a start.
For what ever it’s worth; been enough strange aerial sightings by credible and highly trained military personnel that they need to be recorded in the official record and studied. Yes, rather than dismissed as some kooky phenomena from the realm of science-fiction.
Several impressive photos of alleged UFOs over the arctic captured on camera by the Navy in 1971 have been leaked to UFO researchers, and their discovery has been getting worldwide media attention.
UFO researcher Alex Mistretta claims that the images were originally given to him by an anonymous source in Europe. Later, he discovered that they were also published in a French paranormal magazine called Top Secret.
The Washington Postdid their own follow-up to Politico’s story, stating:
Recently, unidentified aircraft have entered military-designated airspace as often as multiple times per month, Joseph Gradisher, spokesman for office of the deputy chief of naval operations for information warfare, told The Washington Post on Wednesday.
Citing safety and security concerns, Gradisher vowed to “investigate each and every report.”
He said, “We want to get to the bottom of this. We need to determine who’s doing it, where it’s coming from and what their intent is. We need to try to find ways to prevent it from happening again.”
As if.
But, like I said, it’s a start.
Now, you all have to realize that there is no real way to distinctly classify something like a UFO or USO without the creation of controversy. And controversy in the Navy can be a career limiting move.
Controversy in the Navy can be a career limiting move.
The moment you report something like this, the ONI and MAJestic takes control. Any investigation outside those channels are squelched and suppressed.
Of course, and as such we can naturally conclude that the military knows far more about these strange happenings than they are willing to let on. It’s not like suddenly out of the blue they started, just now, to observe and record these sightings. Do not be silly.
The original anonymous source claims that these:
1) The photos were taken from a United State Navy submarine.
2) The location was between Iceland and Jan Mayen island in the Atlantic Ocean. (Jan Mayen belongs to Norway, and is only inhabited by the Norwegian Meteorological Institute and the Norwegian military.)
3) They were taken in March of 1971.
4) The Submarine was the Navy’s USS Trepang (SSN 674) and the Admiral on board was Dean Reynolds Sackett. Obviously, the next step is to try and locate this Admiral Dean Reynolds, if he exists.
5) The Submarine came upon the object by “accident,” as they were in the region on a routine joint military and scientific expedition. Officer John Klika was the one who initially spotted the object with the periscope.
Otherwise, why wouldn’t they want to know more about intruders wielding fantastic technology that makes them impervious to existing countermeasures and defenses?
Now all this appears to be changing. Why?
The technology is real
The fact is that we actually know that in the last 15 years, under at least some circumstances, the military has wanted certain high-fidelity data related to encounters with UFOs.
The most compelling encounter of recent, at least that we know of, occurred in and around where the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group was operating during workups to deployment in 2004.
A carrier strike group (CSG) is an operational formation of the United States Navy. It is composed of roughly 7,500 personnel, an aircraft carrier, at least one cruiser, a destroyer squadron of at least two destroyers and/or frigates, and a carrier air wing of 65 to 70 aircraft. A carrier strike group also, on occasion, includes submarines, attached logistics ships and a supply ship.
This encounter is known as the “Tic Tac Incident”.
The incident, or really the series of incidents as they occurred over a number of days, have become near legendary in nature as the witnesses involved are highly credible in nature and numerous.
In addition, we have official reports detailing the incident that convey a very compelling story, as well as hours of testimony from those who were there—a group of sailors and naval aviators that seems to be emerging more and more out of the shadows with each passing day.
To examine all public evidence available, it becomes clear that [1] someone has some amazing technology, [2] modern technology is recording it all over the world, and [3] it didn’t just start happening…
The WSO first picked up a contact on the radar around 30nm away while it was operating in the RWS scan mode. He checked the coordinates and it was indeed hovering at their precise CAP point. He attempted several STT locks, to no avail. Later, in the debrief, he explained that he had multiple telltale cues of EA. The target aspect on the track file was turning through 360 degrees along with some other distinct jamming indications. In the less precise scan mode, the return indicated that the object was, in the WSO’s words, “A few thousand feet below us. Around 15-20K– but hovering stationary.” The only movement was generated by the closure of the fighter to the CAP location.
And since it didn’t just start happening, then the Navy knows more about all this than they will ever admit. The classification is MAJestic.
No matter how you look at it, the “Tic Tac” incident that involved the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group off the Baja Peninsula in 2004, implies some pretty mind blowing conclusions.
Our reality is wrong.
The main revelation is that technology exists that is capable of performing flying maneuvers that shatter our perceptions of … well, everything.
Everything.
It’s quite possible that by the time the FLIR saw the object, it was closer than 30 nmi. The account also says that the object was “hovering at their precise CAP point,” which corroborates Princeton’s radar contact, and suggests that this was not an ordinary civilian jet. But the account also says that the F-18’s radar indicated that the object was hovering below them and that the FLIR was slaved to the radar, yet the FLIR footage shows the object moving to the left above them, assuming that TTSA’s video annotation is correct when it says “Sensor aimed 6° above aircraft axis.”
This includes propulsion, flight controls, material science, and our basic ideas of physics. So many things that we thought were so fixed, unchangeable and fundamental to our universe are just wrong.
Let me underline this again for you, the Nimitz encounter with the Tic Tac proved that exotic technology that is widely thought of as the domain of science fiction actually exists.
It is real.
The WSO first picked up a contact on the radar around 30nm away while it was operating in the RWS scan mode. He checked the coordinates and it was indeed hovering at their precise CAP point. He attempted several STT locks, to no avail. Later, in the debrief, he explained that he had multiple telltale cues of EA. The target aspect on the track file was turning through 360 degrees along with some other distinct jamming indications. In the less precise scan mode, the return indicated that the object was, in the WSO’s words, “A few thousand feet below us. Around 15-20K– but hovering stationary.” The only movement was generated by the closure of the fighter to the CAP location. The WSO resorted to the FLIR pod on board, slaving it to the weak track the RWS mode had been able to generate.
It isn’t the result of altered perception, someone’s lucid dream, a stray weather balloon, or swamp gas.
There has been speculation as to where Allen Hynek, scientific consultant for Project Blue Book, came up with the possible explanation of swamp or marsh gas as to what was seen on successive nights in Dexter and Hillsdale, Michigan, (March 20, 21, 1966).
Some reports suggest Hynek got the idea from a University of Michigan botany professor or that Hynek became informed about the phenomenon through reading. However, in my research for an article titled "Swamp Gas Revisited", published in the February, 2004, issue of UFO Magazine (UK), a much different explanation was revealed to me.
In interviewing Washtenaw County Sheriff Doug Harvey for the article, the former Sheriff explained how he had taken Hynek to the Frank Mannor farm near Dexter for some on site investigation. The sheriff described how Hynek interviewed witnesses and sloshed around in the swamp for a time in an attempt to determine what the many witnesses had seen a few nights earlier. The Sheriff then brought Hynek back to the Sheriff's headquarters located in Ann Arbor.
According to Harvey, they talked for a time about the sighting and Hynek admitted he didn't know what the witnesses had seen on the Mannor farm. "That's when the phone call came in," Harvey told me.
"What phone call I asked?"
Harvey said, "it was a call for Hynek and it was from Washington.""How did you know it was from Washington," I replied.
"Because the dispatcher stepped into the office and said, 'Dr. Hynek, you've got a call from Washington.'"
Harvey told me that Hynek stepped out of the office to take the call and then returned in a few minutes looking a bit perplexed. And then, according to the sheriff, Hynek said, "it's swamp gas they saw, swamp gas."
It was a short time later that Hynek held the infamous press conference at the Detroit Press Club and suggested that a possible explanation for the recent sightings might have been marsh or swamp gas. The explanation became a front page story the next day in papers across the country and Hynek became the butt of jokes and cartoons. He was ridiculed to such an extent that Michigan Congressman Gerald Ford (later President Ford) asked for a Congressional investigation. It was one of Hynek's worst moments.
The important thing here is that if the Washington phone call actually took place, and I believe it did, then Hynek was receiving direction from a high government source. The whole thing smells of more UFO governmental coverup.
- The origin of Dr. Hynek's "Swamp Gas" explanation
Someone or something has crossed the technological Rubicon and has obtained what some would call the Holy Grail of aerospace engineering. And now the Navy is throwing up it’s hands, and letting the rest of the world (a little bit) in on it’s big secret…
…it’s not swamp gas.
This reality is very hard to process for many.
Hows Stuff Works is for fags. Electrolytes are what plants crave. Duh.
There is always an out for some in the form of claiming an odd impromptu conspiracy. Or alternatively, some hollow explanation that doesn’t pass muster beyond the first paragraph. Yet, seriously, in the end, it actually happened.
Some people are so caught up in their belief system that they are unable to reason at any sort of cognitive level.
Consider the skeptics...
A UFO can land on network television, within a football stadium with hundreds of onlookers. The hatch can open up, and everyone in the stadium, and all the news-media would record the event on their cameras. An extraterrestrial can get out, bow to the camera, and dance a tango with the star quarterback.
All the skeptics would report would be that swamp gas affected a nation-wide bout of insanity.
As uncomfortable as that fact is, it’s reality.
It was simply hanging in midair. He [the WSO] switched to the TV mode and was able to again lock the FLIR onto the object while still trying, with no luck, to get a STT track on the radar. As he watched it, the AAV moved out of his screen to the left so suddenly it almost seemed to disappear. On the tape, when it is slowed down, the object accelerates out of the field of view with shocking speed. The WSO was not able to reacquire the AAV either in RWS or with the FLIR.
So, we need to use this event as a precious insight going forward when it comes to evaluating and contemplating what is possible and where truth actually lies.
Because, I’ll tell you what, the general public hasn’t a clue.
Perfect location for observation.
What many may not know about this event is that it occurred in a place and time where the most powerful set of aerial surveillance sensors ever created were amassed together and were watching and recording it all.
This entire encounter was not captured on a cell phone. It was captured with an array of the most advanced electronic and sensing equipment known to man.
What many may not know about this event is that it occurred in a place and time where the most powerful set of aerial surveillance sensors ever created were amassed together and were watching and recording it all.
And it is the recording part that is maybe the most interesting facet of the Nimitz encounters that has largely been passed over in terms of significance and notoriety.
Ideal test conditions.
What most don’t realize is that the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group wasn’t just equipped with some of the most advanced sensors the world had to offer, but that it also had hands-down the most advanced networking and computer processing capability of any such system.
What most don’t realize is that the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group wasn’t just equipped with some of the most advanced sensors the world had to offer, but that it also had hands-down the most advanced networking and computer processing capability of any such system.
Dubbed Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC), this integrated air defense system architecture was just being fielded on a Strike Group level for the first time aboard Nimitz and the rest of its flotilla.
At its very basic level, it uses the Strike Group's diverse and powerful surveillance sensors, including the SPY-1 radars on Aegis Combat System-equipped cruisers and destroyers, as well as the E-2C Hawkeye's radar picture from on high, and fuses that information into a common 'picture' via data-links and advanced computer processing. This, in turn, provides very high fidelity 'tracks' of targets thanks to telemetry from various sensors operating at different bands and looking at the same target from different aspects and at different ranges.
Whereas a stealthy aircraft or one employing electronic warfare may start to disappear on a cruiser's radar as it is viewing the aircraft from the surface of the Earth and from one angle, it may still be very solid on the E-2 Hawkeye's radar that is orbiting at 25,000 feet and a hundred miles away from the cruiser. With CEC, the target will remain steady on both platform's CEC enabled screens as they are seeing fused data from both sources and likely many others as well.
This is a amazing “quantum leap” in sensing capability and data fidelity that provides information (and all associated data imagining fidelity) at an amazing degree of detail.
Advanced sensors, sources, and optical components for the generation, transmission and detection of ultraviolet, visible and infrared radiation RF and mmW photonic devices and circuits Electro-optical quantum components for sensors, information and computation are all available and in active, constant use by the United States Navy in Carrier Groups during deployments.
The data-link connectivity and the quality of the enhanced telemetry means that weapons platforms, such as ships and aircraft, could also fire on targets without needing to use their own sensor data.
For instance, a cruiser could fire a missile at a low-flying aircraft that is being tracked by a Hawkeye and an F/A-18 even though it doesn’t show up on their own scopes.
What many may not know about this event is that it occurred in a place and time where the most powerful set of aerial surveillance sensors ever created were amassed together and were watching and recording it all. This entire encounter was not captured on a cell phone. It was captured with an array of the most advanced electronic and sensing equipment known to man.
This capability continues to evolve and mature today and will be the linchpin of any peer-state naval battle of the future that the U.S. is involved with.
Now, to keep things in mind, you must take note that back in 2004, it was new and untested. At least on the scale presented by the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group as it churned through the warning areas off the Baja Coast.
The key takeaway here is that if ever there was an opportune time to capture the very best real-world sensor data on a UFO, it was then. At that place. At that time. Under those circumstances. Thus, it did capture data and sensor readings off the scale. It observed and recorded a high-performance target in near lab-like controlled settings offered by the restricted airspace off the Baja Coast, this was it.
The key takeaway here is that if ever there was an opportune time to capture the very best real-world sensor data on a high-performance target in near lab-like controlled settings offered by the restricted airspace off the Baja Coast, this was it.
Thus, by intention or chance, this is exactly what happened.
Someone within the DoD was very interested
By multiple accounts from vetted first-hand sources, the hard drives that record CEC data from the E-2C Hawkeye and Aegis-equipped ships were seized ( some may say “in a very mysterious fashion”) following the Tic Tac incident.
MAJestic has full authority over extraterrestrial events. So there is really nothing mysterious about it at all.
Uniformed U.S. Air Force officers showed up on these vessels and confiscated the devices and they were never to be seen again. Which is a normal, programmed and standard operating procedure for these events. MAJestic takes over.
This is not rumor or hearsay, this is attested to by multiple uniformed witnesses that were on the vessels that made up the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group at the time. Hundreds of people observed the “Tic Tac” UFO. And hundreds of people watched the information being suppressed right before their very eyes.
A radar dish aboard Mobile At-Sea Sensor (MATSS) barge (IX-524). MATSS provides advanced remote telecommunications capability that extends the reach of the 42,000 square-mile Pacific Missile Range, the world’s largest instrumented multi-environmental range capable of supported surface, subsurface, air, and space operations simultaneously.
At the same time, on an official level,
the Navy seemed to shut down any further investigation into the
incident. The aforementioned after-action report states that the Nimitz
Carrier Strike Group’s senior intelligence officer, whose name is
redacted, alerted the Navy’s 3rd Fleet intelligence officer, or N2,
about the incident via secure Email. That same Email, known as a Mission
Report (MISREP), included the video footage and other details.
For unexplained reasons, officials at the 3rd Fleet N2 declined to send this report up the chain of command. It went straight from the Senior Intelligence Officer (N2) direct to MAJestic.
The reason might be unexplained to the layman, but all issues of an extraterrestrial nature alerts MAJestic and then everything falls under the MAJIC classification.
They also deleted the MISREP ( Mission Report ), but speculated that paper copy should have been available. However, there is no indication that anyone went looking for this physical copy of the MISREP during the investigation.
That night in the berthing I asked a very close friend in intel if he could confirm the legitimacy of the film. Without speaking, he gestured that it was correct. So, my skepticism began to fade and that next day a group of individuals were “cod’ed” onto the carrier and they retrieved all the tapes. I can confirm they cod’ed onto the ship, but the seizure of tapes came from people that work in those shops.
As such there is no official indication that an investigation into the events that week ever occurred.
According to hundreds of witnesses, we do know someone within the military had a very high interest in what went on. As such, after the N2 alert, they wanted the high-fidelity radar data collected from the Strike Group.
According to hundreds of witnesses, we do know someone within the military had a very high interest in what went on. As such, after the N2 alert, they wanted the high-fidelity radar data collected from the Strike Group.
That night in the berthing I asked a very close friend in intel if he could confirm the legitimacy of the film. Without speaking, he gestured that it was correct. So, my skepticism began to fade and that next day a group of individuals were "cod'ed" onto the carrier and they retrieved all the tapes. I can confirm they cod'ed onto the ship, but the seizure of tapes came from people that work in those shops.
- https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comme...re_while_on_board_an/?st=JBGR1RZM&sh=51769c5f
Not deleted, seized, potentially for exploitation.
So yeah, someone was highly
interested in this event within the DoD. Whether that was because it
was of an unexplained nature or part of a test of a very capable secret
aerospace program, remains unclear.
What is so interesting
Luis Elizondo, the former DoD intelligence officer who headed up the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) until 2012, is now an investigator with Tom DeLonge’s ‘To The Stars Academy’ and is featured on HISTORY’s new television program (ie: the History Channel), “Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation”.
It was Elizondo and the ‘To The Stars Academy’ that were integral in bringing to the public the ‘Tic Tac’ UFO Navy cockpit video from 2004, with USS Nimitz-based pilots’ comments that included, “Holy sh*t, what is that?”, and “It’s white. It has no wings. It has no rotors,” and “It didn’t fly like an aircraft. It was so unpredictable.”
When Elizondo ran the DoD’s AATIP, he compiled a list of extraordinary, logic-defying capabilities most commonly associated with unidentified aerial phenomena sightings. Here are Elizondo’s “five observables”:
Anti-gravity lift– UAPs (Unidentified Ariel Phenomenon) have no visible means of propulsion and lack flight surfaces such as wings – thus the tubular, ‘Tic Tac’ description. They thus fly and operate using systems that do not rely on air, pressure, lift forces, and other qualities that conventional propulsion utilize.
Sudden and instantaneous acceleration– UAPs will accelerate or change direction so quickly that no human pilot could survive the g-forces. This implies [1] non-human operation, [2] robotic or automated operation, or [3] inertial suppression abilities.
Hypersonic velocities without signatures– Aircraft traveling faster than the speed of sound will typically leave a “signature” like vapor trails and sonic booms. UAPs don’t. They are a closed-loop system, where all conventional vehicles are open-loop systems.
Low observability or cloaking – Witnesses to a UAP will usually only see a glow or haze around them.
Trans-medium travel – UAPs have been seen moving in and between different environments, such as space, the earth’s atmosphere and even water. USS Princeton radar operator Gary Vorhees later confirmed from a Navy sonar operator in the area that day that a craft was moving faster than 70 knots underwater, roughly two times the speed of nuclear subs.
UAPs’ origins are still officially unknown. Are they a super-top-secret U.S. defense project? Do they hail from Russia? China? Or from even further afield? The only thing we do know is that their capabilities exceed any technologies currently in the U.S. arsenal.
Could it be ours?
The latter possibility is also very hard for people to come to terms with—that this capability could belong to the U.S. military.
There is no better place to test such a system than against the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group with its CEC abilities during its workup off the Baja Coast.
It is not an operational environment.
According to the report (turn to page 6), a Lt. Col. was doing a Function Test Flight (a test to see if the plane was fully functional after being repaired) when he was asked to go check out an "unidentified airborne contact," along with two other pilots.
He was asked if he had any ordnance (weapons) on board, to which he replied no.
Officials say this was a strange question; no air controller had ever asked him that when dealing with an unknown contact situation.
Soon after, he came close to the coordinates of the unknown object and was told to "skip it" and head back by the controller.
Instead, the Lt. Col. decided to go check it out.
What he found was a "disturbance" in the water between 50 and 100 meters in diameter that was close to a round shape.
It created a large area of frothing white water, and reminded the pilot of "something rapidly submerging from the surface like a submarine or a ship sinking."
Soon after, he looked toward the area again and found no trace of the disturbance or any craft near the spot.
According to the report, the disturbance may have been caused by an AAV that was 'cloaked' or 'invisible to the human eye.'
-Outerplaces
Aircraft are not armed and nobody is expecting a fight.
It is high-level integrated training with crews that have sharpened skills as they prepare for a cruise in which they could very well be called upon to fight for their country.
Those warning areas and range complexes that extend out and down from the Channel Islands off the SoCal coast are among the best space the U.S. military has for training and testing advanced hardware and tactics in a secure and sanitized environment.
In
other words, it was an ideal testing environment that featured the very
best aerial, surface, and undersea surveillance sensors and sensor
crews on the planet.
It was an ideal testing environment that featured the very best aerial, surface, and undersea surveillance sensors and sensor crews on the planet.
Black research budget
Maybe these are super-secret new technology on evaluation trials, instead of ET trying to buzz our military.
What then?
The fact is that the U.S. government has poured tens of billions of dollars each year into the black budget. It has done so for the better part of a century. Maybe, the argument goes, they developed some amazing technologies that appear to be extraterrestrial in origin. We consider them extraterrestrial as they are so advanced that we cannot possibly associate them with “home grown” technology.
Maybe, the argument goes, the Navy developed some amazing technologies that appear to be extraterrestrial in origin.
The idea here is that somewhere along the way they got lucky. The argument goes that they made major breakthroughs in highly exotic technologies. And these technologies are so outrageous that difficult to understand that we simply associate them as “impossible” or “from another world”.
"There are some new programs, and there are certain things, some of them 20 or 30 years old, that are still breakthroughs and appropriate to keep quiet about [because] other people don’t have them yet."
-Ben Rich
There’s some reason to follow this train of thought. This argument mirrors some cryptic statements in the industry. These were made by top players in the “dark areas” of aerospace development.
Like, for instance, the late Ben Rich.
"Anything you can imagine we already know how to do...."
-Ben Rich
Clearly, the ability to defy the limits of traditional propulsion and lift-borne flight would be the pinnacle of aerospace and electrical engineering. It would define new rules. New laws to abide by, and a host of new procedures and disciplines from design, to physical laws, to manufacturing.
"The U. S. Air Force has just given us a contract to take E. T. back home."
-Ben Rich
Because of this, it would be far too sensitive to disclose, at least in some people’s eyes within the national security establishment. Though, and I do mean this, how are you going to field the new technology without observation? Eh?
"We also know how to travel to the stars."
-Ben Rich
But forget fielding. Let’s get down to “brass tacks”. How about testing. For long, long before anything can be put on the “field”, it needs to be developed, prototyped, and tested. First in sub-assemblies, and then in pilot models.
Indeed, even the risk of testing this technology against known air defense capabilities would have to be weighed against the need for the tightest of secrecy.
"Anything you can imagine we already know how to do."
-Ben Rich
But, of course, the CIA, MAJestic and all the rest have done a real “smash up” job on the idea of extraterrestrial life. It is just about impossible for anyone, contemporaneously, to come forth and say that UFO’s exist. They risk a serious backlash from the programmed mindless masses.
The movie Idiocracity pretty much aptly describes the direction that America is heading, and with the dumbing down of the institutional systems, a pretty accurate one at that. In the movie, the main character enters a hospital. St. God’s: Insurance Slot Machine. He sees a man with a blank expression and a bleeding head wound above his left eye, who stands a bank of slot machines. The backglass of each has diagonal logos advertising BLAKDIX capsules (n.b. the wallpaper advertises BONERAX), telling players they can play while they wait, and that they can WIN FREE MEDICAL CARE. The reel strips don’t show bells or fruit, but rather, pills. The blood from the head wound shines in the lights.
This is very true, since UFOs carry such a stigma and have deep pop culture roots in our society, the risk of doing so against an unknowing Carrier Strike Group operating under tight training restrictions seems small and the setting uniquely ideal.
Seems so.
America is so dumbed down, that very few people are capable of understanding the transgressions of those in government.
"If you've seen it in Star Trek or Star Wars, we've been there and done that."
-Ben Rich
In other words, could the Tic Tac have been ours?
"We have things in the Nevada desert that are alien to your way of thinking far beyond anything you see on Star Trek."
-Ben Rich
Yes. It could have been.
Could have.
But…
Listen up.
If this entire sequence is a result of a “black budget” testing of new technologies, then I will need to point out a few points…
It would be tested at NWS China Lake.
Field trials are a late testing development.
The N2 would be aware of the testing beforehand and briefed.
The crews and officers would be briefed on the testing.
The retrieval of the sensor data would have been handled differently.
We know that whoever that craft belonged to, the information the flotilla collected on it was of great importance to some entity within the DoD.
NavalAirWeaponsStationChinaLakeisalargemilitaryinstallationwhosemissionistosupporttheresearch, testingandevaluationprogramsoftheU.S. Navy. ItispartofNavyRegionSouthwestunderCommander, NavyInstallationsCommand. TheinstallationislocatedintheWesternMojaveDesertregionofCalifornia, approximately 150 milesnorthofLosAngeles.
- Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake - Wikipedia
And the fact that just the radar data was seized makes sense in that the extent of the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group radar network could not be replicated over land during small-scale testing, or via a chance encounters with military aircraft.
The fact that just the radar data was seized makes sense in that the extent of the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group radar network could not be replicated over land during small-scale testing, or via a chance encounters with military aircraft.
With all this in mind, the idea that the Navy is supposedly just now interested in what its aviators and sailors see when it comes to unexplained craft peculiar and nebulous, to say the least.
One can’t help but feel there are two realities at play within America’s defense apparatus—one that sits on or very near the surface and one that resides deep below it.
Thus…
MAJestic has been working with highly advanced extraterrestrial technology for decades, and operates in the deep black.
NWS China Lake has coordinated advanced development programs via MAJestic.
Whether extraterrestrial-related, or home-grown, an event (known as the “tic toc event” occurred) and was observed. For certain China Lake, and MAJestic were both involved.
Whether extraterrestrial in origin, or “home grown” is all up to speculation.
Controlled release of the visible portion of technology without disclosure of achievement milestones.
So why the release now?
Why is the DoD admitting to the observation and study of vehicles that are clearly not of conventional human design? Why now? Why in this venue and in this manner?
If the DoD truly has no idea of what these things are, then it seems absurd that it is just now curious about them. Now, for goodness sakes. After the better part of a century of sightings and major encounters, and denials.
"UFO's are just the imaginings of simpletons. There are no extraterrestrials. The government would tell us."
Publicly, the government and the military, has had varying degrees of documented interest in the topic over the years. This includes funded studies, and research. For instance, there is the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (better known as AATIP), and many others.
One could posit the idea that a government-manufactured (or at least encouraged) information conduit of sorts, is behind this latest admittance by the US Navy.
"It's clearly swamp gas. There is no other reasonable explanation."
This entire arrangement sounds… well… Squirrely.
This, folks, is where the rabbit hole of information and disinformation opens up below us. There is no way around it. We accept it as it is, or we plunge into the abyss. There are no alternatives.
There is the enormous vacuum of verifiable information that the government has created on the matter. That is intentional, and has been in place since the late 1940’s.
Yes. That long.
Now with all the rumor and speculation, one’s truth compass begins to spin crazily, as you dig into these issues.
UFO’s are UAP’s.
The idea that extraterrestrial life exists is still considered outlandish.
There is a black budget, but the technologies developed will never be observed by the common man.
There might be the remote possibility of others having technologies and vehicles that are superior to what we field in our military.
It is not only about what is real and what is not real. It is fundamentally about what does the government want us to believe and not to believe.
In other words, even if the government wants the truth to come out eventually, it seems alarmingly clear they are going to do it on their own terms, and the timeline for that plan could be measured in decades, not years, or more.
Reasons for the switch in direction.
There is a very real reason why the Pentagon would want the idea of UFOs injected back into the public’s consciousness and to add validity to it.
They literally spread disinformation to the public in order to create a wonderfully convenient cover for the myriad clandestine weapon systems in development or operational at the time.
Doing so is in itself a very old chapter in Uncle Sam’s information warfare playbook.
During the Cold War, the government actively lied about UFOs and perpetuated UFO hysteria to cover up its secret aircraft programs.
They literally spread disinformation to the public in order to create a wonderfully convenient cover for the myriad clandestine weapon systems in development or operational at the time.
Now, we are once again back in an age of “great power competition,” according to the Pentagon, and billions of dollars are being pumped into new technologies that were considered exotic themselves just years ago.
Trans-medium travel – UAPs have been seen moving in and between different environments, such as space, the earth’s atmosphere and even water. USS Princeton radar operator Gary Vorhees later confirmed from a Navy sonar operator in the area that day that a craft was moving faster than 70 knots underwater, roughly two times the speed of nuclear subs.
With this in mind, reanimating maybe the best and most broadly self-perpetuating cover story of all time for sightings of clandestine aircraft that people see in the sky seems like a highly logical and proven act.
They literally spread disinformation to the public in order to create a wonderfully convenient cover for the myriad clandestine weapon systems in development or operational at the time.
Reinvigorating the presence of UFOs in the American psyche by adding heaps of validity to the topic on an official level and possibly also on a less than official level (To The Stars Academy for instance) can help keep secret programs that grace the skies just that, secret.
And who knows, that list of programs and technologies could include the very Tic Tac and other bizarrely shaped craft that can defy imagination with their aerial feats that have been spotted and even recorded in recent years.
Conclusion
If the Pentagon really doesn’t know what these things are, then I am a sweet potato. Of course they do. The issue isn’t at all about the situational facts, but how the information can be manipulated for advantage.
If the DoD doesn’t know where they come from, after so many years of sightings and odd encounters and its own studies and shadowy probes, then that would be an unfathomable dereliction of duty.
Bigelow, stated, “Internationally, we are the most backward country in the world on this issue,” Mr. Bigelow said in an interview. “Our scientists are scared of being ostracized, and our media is scared of the stigma.”
“China and Russia are much more open and work on this with huge organizations within their countries. Smaller countries like Belgium, France, England and South American countries like Chile are more open, too. They are proactive and willing to discuss this topic, rather than being held back by a juvenile taboo.”
Certainly, considering they are, after all, tasked with keeping America safe from the foreign harm.
But really, how can we believe the idea that the military has zero opinion on the matter?
It seems like a laughable proposition at best. If there is anything they would have high interest in, it would be craft capable of decimating the enemy on a whim.
With all that being said, what does the Navy’s move to change its procedures and rules in regards to reporting UFOs mean?
It means nothing.
So don’t get your collective hopes up.
MAJestic Related Posts – Training
These are
posts and articles that revolve around how I was recruited for MAJestic
and my training. Also discussed is the nature of secret programs. I
really do not know why the organization was kept so secret. It really
wasn’t because of any kind of military concern, and the technologies
were way too involved for any kind of information transfer. The only
conclusion that I can come to is that we were obligated to maintain
secrecy at the behalf of our extraterrestrial benefactors.
MAJestic Related Posts – Our Universe
These
particular posts are concerned about the universe that we are all part
of. Being entangled as I was, and involved in the crazy things that I
was, I was given some insight. This insight wasn’t anything super
special. Rather it offered me perception along with advantage. Here, I
try to impart some of that knowledge through discussion.
Enjoy.
Utilizing Intention
Influencer Questions
Here are posts
that have gathered a series of questions from various influencers. They
are interesting in many ways and could help all of us unravel the
mysteries of the lives that we live.
MAJestic Related Posts – World-Line Travel
These posts
are related to “reality slides”. Other more common terms are “world-line
travel”, or the MWI. What people fail to grasp is that when a person
has the ability to slide into a different reality (pass into a different
world-line), they are able to “touch” Heaven to some extent. Here are
posts that cover this topic.
John Titor Related Posts
Another
person, collectively known by the identity of “John Titor” claimed to
utilize world-line (MWI egress) travel to collect artifacts from the
past. He is an interesting subject to discuss. Here we have multiple
posts in this regard.
They are;
Articles & Links
You’ll not
find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy
notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a
necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money
off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you
because I just don’t care to.
"We discovered that if you want to monetise a blog you need to be getting about 100,000 hits a day! "
-6F12
It’s true, and boy does it make me feel old. When I joined the Navy, this was the latest thing. The talk was that it would replace the F-14 Tomcat and the E-6 Intruders. Never did happen, though.
The single-seat F/A-18 Hornet is the nation's first strike-fighter. It was designed for traditional strike applications such as interdiction and close air support without compromising its fighter capabilities.
- The US Navy -- Fact File: F/A-18 Hornet strike fighter
I well remembering seeing my first Hornet up front and close. It as at NAS, NASC Pensacola , Florida. It was a typical Florida day with blue skies and cumulus clouds at just under 1000 meters. Hot and sunny. We were wearing service khaki’s with garrison caps.
An aviator was practicing on a Boeing CH-47 Chinook nearby. Turn to port, then turn to starboard. Over and over. It was making a racket but we didn’t mind. The huge awesomeness of the F/A-18 Hornet lay there in front of us in all of it’s glory.
For me, this retirement of the F/A-18 Hornet is the end of a historical milestone. Here is a nice video, and it is my tribute to this great aircraft.
I never had the opportunity to fly this wonderful beast. My future lay elsewhere, but others in my class did. Today, the latest incarnation of this monster is the “Super Hornet”, and by all accounts, it’s quite an aircraft.
My “hats are off” to anyone who has had the opportunity to fly this wonderful machine.
“Overall, the Hornet was my first love. I’ll always look back fondly on flying the F/A-18C and often times I miss it. However, there is no doubt the Rhino is the jet I want to fly off the boat into combat. Great question, keep them coming!” – Former Naval Aviator G.M.
Posts Regarding Life and Contentment
Here are
some other similar posts on this venue. If you enjoyed this post, you
might like these posts as well. These posts tend to discuss growing up
in America. Often, I like to compare my life in America with the society
within communist China. As there are some really stark differences
between the two.
More Posts about Life
I have
broken apart some other posts. They can best be classified about ones
actions as they contribute to happiness and life. They are a little
different, in subtle ways.
Funny Pictures
Be the Rufus – Tales of Everyday Heroism.
Articles & Links
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Men’s adventure magazines were the bastard child of the popular pulp magazines of the ‘20s, ‘30s and ‘40s, and many of the artists who worked for the pulps also put paint to canvas for this next evolution, most famous among them being Norm Saunders. Numerous publishers saw an easy buck in the men’s adventure magazines, but none more so than Martin Goodman’s Magazine Management, whose titles included Male, Stag, Action For Men, Battlefield, Complete Man, For Men Only, Man’s World, and many others.
![What’s next between Russia and the United States; a video illustration [1]](https://metallicman.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/2022-01-30_13-52BIG-825x510.jpg)
![More LD assignment and task results – October 2021 – Backdoors to the Old Empire Prison Complex [2]](https://metallicman.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/caldera-trail-amp-sunset-viewing-from-the-top-of-a-hill-1920x956-1-825x510.jpg)
Keith Kaplan
CEO, TradeSmith
(@Partisangirl) 
AFGHANISTAN CONFLICT
Kabul airport on the morning Of August 16, 2021
(@ASBMilitary) 
America seems to be blissfully unaware of how it comes across to the rest of the world
As importantly, PRC air and naval forces have long had existing plans to fight a U.S. force sent to aid Taiwan and have conducted countless 
Is the United States still the world’s greatest power, in control of the entire planet, or has that moment in history already come and gone? We are constantly hearing how the situation is becoming dire: relations between the US and NATO countries and Russia are going from bad to worse; there is a trade war going on with China; North Korea remains an intractable problem and an embarrassment.
Many people maintain that we are very close to a world war. But does “very close” actually mean anything? It is quite possible to stand for hours with your toes hanging over the edge of a cliff and never jump. Suicide is a big decision: big even for a person, much bigger for a large country.
On March 1, 2018 president Putin unveiled Russia’s new weapons systems against which the United States is defenseless and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Previously, the plan was to surround Russia with military bases and missile batteries, then launch a preemptive first strike, destroying its ability to retaliate and forcing it to capitulate.
This plan has now conclusively failed, and a US/NATO attack on Russia is once again assured to be an act of suicide. Worse than that, even limited military confrontations are now mostly unthinkable, because Russia can now inflict unacceptable damage on US/NATO forces from a safe distance and without putting any of its own assets at risk. If Russia won’t attack and the US/NATO can’t attack, then how likely is a war?
The new weapons systems have made it possible to start ignoring the US. It is still important to maintain a credible military posture, but politically the US is no longer in control, and neither are the global institutions on which it has relied. Instead, what we are seeing is the reemergence of nation states, and even of empires.
The political future of Syria is being decided by Russia, Turkey and Iran, with no useful input from the United States at all.
Significantly, whereas Russia and Iran are in categories of their own as far as the US is concerned, Turkey has been a US ally and the second-largest armed force in NATO. The fact that Turkey is no longer eager to please the Americans is quite telling.
Except during the strange and tumultuous twentieth century during which the US briefly flashed across the world stage, these three countries went by different names, which all ended in “empire”: the Russian Empire, the Ottoman Empire and the Persian Empire. Of these three, the Russian and the Ottoman empires were heirs to the Holy Roman Empire, whose eastern half, with its capital Constantinople, went on for centuries after Rome had turned into a depopulated ruin and a dark age had descended on Europe.
After Constantinople fell to the Turks and Islam took over the region, the center of Orthodox Christianity migrated north to Moscow. Now add China, or the Chinese Empire if you like, which is now aligned with Russia, and complete the picture: all of the greatest and most ancient Eurasian empires have come back and are talking and cooperating, while the has-been upstart on the other side of the planet isn’t even invited.
Given this situation, what is the US to do?
It has three choices.
The first is to start a major war, thus committing national suicide (while taking other countries with it). It lacks the political will to make this decision, although it could blunder into a major war by accident.
The second choice is to basically just fold: give up trying to project power around the world, retreat into its own borders and lick its wounds. It lacks the political will to do this as well; all that remains in the realm of possibility is to pretend that everything is still fine for as long as possible.
But how is it possible to pretend that everything is still fine even as everything is falling apart? The answer is to start faking it.
If the US manages to convince enough people, at home and around the world, that it is still dangerous, then it will be able to hide its increasing enfeeblement for a while longer. It may no longer be capable of achieving any of its aims, but it is still very much capable of mass murder, as was recently demonstrated by the US “coalition” bombings of Mosul and Raqqa, which now lay in ruins. Similar wanton acts of mass murder have been committed America’s Saudi-Arabian proxy in Yemen, and by their Ukrainian proxies in the Donbass.
But even the opportunities to commit mindless mass murder with impunity are now becoming fewer and farther between, forcing the US to resort to more boutique acts of violence. To justify these acts, the US (and much of Europe) curtains itself off from the rest of the world using an elaborately constructed wall of complete nonsense.
A favorite trope has to do with dreamed-up chemical weapons as the main frightener. Take a look at the recent Israeli rocket attack on Syria. It was justified using obviously fake video footage produced by the White Helmets—a group known for staging fake terror events. At this point, they don’t even care how fake their product looks: this time around, they didn’t bother editing out the clapper (used to sync up video with sound). The setting was obviously a movie set, but production values were rather missing. Instead, we had actors, some wearing white helmets, but no protective gear whatsoever, dumping buckets of water over shivering children. How is that even supposed to make any sense?
And then note that the rockets (five which got shot down by the Syrians, with only three making it through) came from Israel. Why Israel? Because the Russians had warned the US that they knew the fake chemical weapons provocation was being organized as a pretext to launch a rocket attack, and that they were going to shoot not just at the rockets but also at those who launch them. Therefore, Americans decided that it would be too risky to launch the attack from navy ships, and instead asked the Israelis to do the honor of lobbing a few missiles at a remote airbase in Syria, correctly thinking that the Russians wouldn’t immediately retaliate against Israel if no Russians would hurt, and knowing that there would be no Russians at that airbase during their attack. This is, on the one hand, quite pathetic, but on the other it shows that the Americans are still capable of a modicum of rational thought.
This, then is the strange period of history we are going through. The US is lying nonstop (since truth is not on its side) while pretending to still be dangerous by committing wanton acts of mass murder (small-scale ones, which it can be sure to carry out with impunity).
Meanwhile, both national suicide (via large-scale war) and the decision to shut down the whole imperial project both remain politically impossible. How long this strange, unstable period of murderous nonsense can persist isn’t known—your guess is as good as mine—but it obviously can’t go on for ages.
Give it a few years, or less. 
![It was simply hanging in midair. He [the WSO] switched to the TV mode and was able to again lock the FLIR onto the object while still trying, with no luck, to get a STT track on the radar. As he watched it, the AAV moved out of his screen to the left so suddenly it almost seemed to disappear. On the tape, when it is slowed down, the object accelerates out of the field of view with shocking speed. The WSO was not able to reacquire the AAV either in RWS or with the FLIR.](https://metallicman.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/navy-tic-tac-observed-1024x577.jpg)
One of the residents of one of the new Republics.
This explains so much! Guy is from one of the new provences, the LDR or the NDR (not specified) that is joyous about Russia stopping the Ukrine shelling of their homes.